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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joe NYC who wrote (125291)	10/4/2000 3:49:47 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1570288

Giving up on it is the current policy. Throwing more and more money and getting less and less in return. United States has the lowest return on educational dollars of the whole world. The US spends more than any country in the world and we rank well below average, if not on the bottom. Don't you find this a little disturbing? Joe, I don't care if we have to spend twice as much on our educational system to get it healthy...and I don't have any children..yet. Without a good public school system, this country is screwed.....we will watch the decline of the Roman Empire one more time. ted

To: Joe NYC who wrote (125291)	10/4/2000 5:43:30 PM
From: pgerassi	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1570288

Dear Joe: The problem with a lot of these world educational comparisons is that each country is using a different base. Here its all of the students. In Europe and Asia, its those student who are destined for college. The technical school track students are not tested for. What happens to the percentages if, all Asian and European students are tested? Conversely, what are the percentage for college bound students here in the US? IMHO, the US educational system would show a better ranking. However, on the question of vouchers, US colleges and universities are rated the world's best period. The public universities and colleges have privately run ones to compete for the students and keep them honest and thus have made the group as a whole the best in the world. Why not allow this system to grow downward into the primary education system. It works and produces the results everyone claims they want. Perhaps the system should be that vouchers only cover a percentage, say for example, half of the per pupil costs of the public school. Add to that a system by which each public primary school can get endowments just like public universities (usually from prominent citizens and graduates) using the same well known systems. Thus, we can turn this problem around by using what we know to work. Now good schools (public and private) have rewards for turning out graduates that are well prepared and poor schools (again public or private) will have consequences of doing a bad job (although since they keep some of the costs of the students no longer there, could get rid of the teachers that do not educate well, decrease class sizes, move out of dilapidated buildings to the remaining better maintained ones, etc. thus getting a chance to turn things around). Another change I would suggest, is that special education be paid the costs of that special education student over those of a normal student by the federal government. This reduces any penalty to public schools that are forced to take these students (if this is done, even private schools could take these students as well). I think this would go a long way to make Primary education as world's best as Secondary education is now. Pete

To: Joe NYC who wrote (125291)	10/4/2000 9:05:52 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1570288

United States has the lowest return on educational dollars of the whole world. The US spends more than any country in the world and we rank well below average, if not on the bottom. Don't you find this a little disturbing? Joe, I haven't seen the statistics you quote; however, assuming you are correct, its not terribly surprising to me. There are problems indigenous to American schools that probably are not found to any great degree in other countries. First there is the mixing of many different cultures and languages....that in itself incurs a lot of expense. Many students are not biligual when they first attend school in the US and must be taught English. In one school in Seattle, there are 43 different languages spoken and in a CA school, there over a hundred. Secondly there is the issue of maintaining a population mix that resembles the surrounding community...resulting in additional expenses such as crosstown busing. Its a wonder our schools work at all.....but they do. There are many good public schools in this country, turning out great students who go on to college. But the truth is that many do not want them to work for a lot of reasons that I don't want to get into on this thread. ted