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The United States spends more per pupil than all but four other countries in the world! Most schools are not underfunded. http://www.politifact.com/florida/sta

by rpiguy 9y ago

The United States spends more per pupil than all but four other countries in the world! Most schools are not underfunded. http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/apr/21/jeb-bush/does-united-states-spend-more-student-most-countri/ http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/apr/21/jeb... Much like healthcare the U.S. spends a lot of money per pupil on public education, but it is a wildly inefficient system. Our return per dollar is poor. Furthermore, there are a lot of factors contributing to this inefficiency. - Schools are locally controlled and budgeted, but have to deal with federal and state regulations and initiatives. - Wildly different systems for school funding, property tax, school tax, etc. that all have their drawbacks and favor middle and upper class neighborhoods. - In the US we expect a lot of services from the school that are not provided in other countries (sports and band are prime examples that in other countries would be programs staffed by volunteers and not paid out of the school budget). - Litigation, helicopter parents... - Intellectually bankrupt unions opposing reform Outside of the discussion around funding, the larger problem is cultural. You could gold plate the toilets in Detroit or Baltimore or Appalachia and buy every student a MacBook Pro and pay the teachers 50% more and it won't make students want to learn. If you want to increase the "quality of eduction" you need to fix the culture first. I am not denying that there are some deplorable public schools out there and those should be fixed, but they are a small minority of schools. The problems are larger and societal.

dv_dt 9y ago
On it's surface that spending looks terrible, but it really needs to be broken down at least urban vs rural and adjusted for very regional costs of living. When you compare against European nations, I would strongly suspect there is much more variation among district or even individual school funding in the US because we base our funding on local taxes and their funding models are more national. There is a lot to fix, and part of it is that for all the money we spend, to little filters down to teacher salaries.
jancsika 9y ago
> You could gold plate the toilets in Detroit or Baltimore or Appalachia and buy every student a MacBook Pro and pay the teachers 50% more and it won't make students want to learn. Average elementary teacher salary in North Carolina in 2013 was $45,947 times 0.5 is $22,973.50 plus $45,947 equals $68,920.50 For that kind of salary I'd go teach arithmetic at Nantahala School in the middle of the Western NC woods. Like a lot of schools in remote locations of "Appalachia" it is small-- a K-12 school with something around 100-200 students total. 200 divided by 13 would equal a pretty manageable class size. For that kind of average salary I'd bet there'd be a nice mix of similarly chipper new teachers also happy to get paid handsomely for their efforts. I'd also bet that the students would respond to a sudden influx of interest and funding in a place that otherwise looks like it was frozen in the year 1973. First lesson plan would be titled: "Math: The Details matter."
- rpiguy 9y ago
  The average salary is close to 65K in NJ and it hasn't helped Camden or Newark. I am not against paying teachers more but it won't solve our education problem. 65K for 9 months of teaching with several holidays built into those 9 months is quite a lot. Perhaps if we made school year-round teacher pay would go up considerably. Of course one of my favorite summer experiences was when I realized that as a supervisor at a theme park that my algebra teacher was one of my subordinates, as he took a summer job there too!

by rpiguy 9y ago

dv_dt 9y ago

On it's surface that spending looks terrible, but it really needs to be broken down at least urban vs rural and adjusted for very regional costs of living. When you compare against European nations, I would strongly suspect there is much more variation among district or even individual school funding in the US because we base our funding on local taxes and their funding models are more national. There is a lot to fix, and part of it is that for all the money we spend, to little filters down to teacher salaries.

jancsika 9y ago

> You could gold plate the toilets in Detroit or Baltimore or Appalachia and buy every student a MacBook Pro and pay the teachers 50% more and it won't make students want to learn. Average elementary teacher salary in North Carolina in 2013 was $45,947 times 0.5 is $22,973.50 plus $45,947 equals $68,920.50 For that kind of salary I'd go teach arithmetic at Nantahala School in the middle of the Western NC woods. Like a lot of schools in remote locations of "Appalachia" it is small-- a K-12 school with something around 100-200 students total. 200 divided by 13 would equal a pretty manageable class size. For that kind of average salary I'd bet there'd be a nice mix of similarly chipper new teachers also happy to get paid handsomely for their efforts. I'd also bet that the students would respond to a sudden influx of interest and funding in a place that otherwise looks like it was frozen in the year 1973. First lesson plan would be titled: "Math: The Details matter."

rpiguy 9y ago
The average salary is close to 65K in NJ and it hasn't helped Camden or Newark. I am not against paying teachers more but it won't solve our education problem. 65K for 9 months of teaching with several holidays built into those 9 months is quite a lot. Perhaps if we made school year-round teacher pay would go up considerably. Of course one of my favorite summer experiences was when I realized that as a supervisor at a theme park that my algebra teacher was one of my subordinates, as he took a summer job there too!