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Overpaying for Educational Underachievement

6 points by robg 18y ago

tokenadult 18y ago
This is an aspect of education policy discussion that gets too little play in the United States: bang for the buck. I've been concerned about this since living in Taiwan in the early 1980s, back before Taiwan had officially "graduated" from the Third World into the newly industrialized world. I observed a poor country, a country in which the great majority of schoolchildren were not native speakers of the sole language of instruction in the country's schools, and where class sizes were typically sixty pupils per classroom, produce a lot of smart, capable young people. They could mostly run rings around me in math and science, and they were a good bit more knowledgeable about Western history and geography than most Westerners are about Asian history and geography. And, yeah, they did all that while being instructed in school in a second language, and then learning a foreign language (which happened to be English) beginning in secondary education. That was quite remarkable. A lot of the excuses I see in the United States for poor performance of the school system have been unconvincing to me since those days.
falsestprophet 18y ago
When you weigh the costs by per capita purchasing power parity, the results are somewhat different. This approximation is crude as well, but I think it is much more meaningful. Italy 248 Portugal 221 Austria 180 Denmark 178 France 168 Switzerland 165 United States 165 Belgium 155 Japan 153 Iceland 150 Sweden 148 Spain 146 Australia 141 Canada 133 Norway 131 Korea 131 Germany 130 Finland 129 Mexico 129 Poland 129 Hungary 125 Netherlands 119 Greece 113 Czech Republic 92 Ireland 91 Slovak Republic 63
- tokenadult 18y ago
  It's interesting that the Netherlands comes out particularly economical that way, because for a century Dutch schools have been funded on a per-capita enrollment basis, even if they are religious schools or schools with particular educational philosophies (e.g, Montessori or Waldorf). Parents choose what schools in which to enroll their children, and the funding follows the learner. The guess of Charles L. Glenn, author of Choice of Schools in Six Nations http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED316478&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED316478 http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordD... was that Dutch schools would be especially expensive because of that, but it seems they are actually more cost-effective than United States schools. Glenn liked the Dutch system for its freedom of choice--he didn't know that it provides better efficiency too.

6 points by robg 18y ago

This is an aspect of education policy discussion that gets too little play in the United States: bang for the buck. I've been concerned about this since living in Taiwan in the early 1980s, back before Taiwan had officially "graduated" from the Third World into the newly industrialized world. I observed a poor country, a country in which the great majority of schoolchildren were not native speakers of the sole language of instruction in the country's schools, and where class sizes were typically sixty pupils per classroom, produce a lot of smart, capable young people. They could mostly run rings around me in math and science, and they were a good bit more knowledgeable about Western history and geography than most Westerners are about Asian history and geography. And, yeah, they did all that while being instructed in school in a second language, and then learning a foreign language (which happened to be English) beginning in secondary education. That was quite remarkable. A lot of the excuses I see in the United States for poor performance of the school system have been unconvincing to me since those days.

falsestprophet 18y ago

When you weigh the costs by per capita purchasing power parity, the results are somewhat different. This approximation is crude as well, but I think it is much more meaningful. Italy 248 Portugal 221 Austria 180 Denmark 178 France 168 Switzerland 165 United States 165 Belgium 155 Japan 153 Iceland 150 Sweden 148 Spain 146 Australia 141 Canada 133 Norway 131 Korea 131 Germany 130 Finland 129 Mexico 129 Poland 129 Hungary 125 Netherlands 119 Greece 113 Czech Republic 92 Ireland 91 Slovak Republic 63

tokenadult 18y ago
It's interesting that the Netherlands comes out particularly economical that way, because for a century Dutch schools have been funded on a per-capita enrollment basis, even if they are religious schools or schools with particular educational philosophies (e.g, Montessori or Waldorf). Parents choose what schools in which to enroll their children, and the funding follows the learner. The guess of Charles L. Glenn, author of Choice of Schools in Six Nations http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED316478&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED316478 http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordD... was that Dutch schools would be especially expensive because of that, but it seems they are actually more cost-effective than United States schools. Glenn liked the Dutch system for its freedom of choice--he didn't know that it provides better efficiency too.