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Politics : Socialized Education - Is there abetter way? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (78)	1/12/2007 1:13:45 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1513

Land costs have not skyrocketed enough in the country as a whole to make up for three three doublings of the entire school budget. Since WW II? Yes, they have. In some cities, land costs have quadrupled and more.....in real doublings. Note that's real doublings, not nominal doublings, in other words its already adjusted for inflation. 3 doublings is 8X the total cost. Land costs are only a fraction of the school's total cost. Most school districts built a lot of new schools for the baby boom generation and then more schools for the echo boom. What percentage do you think they are? 5%, 10%, 20%? Lets assume 20% as a national average. Sounds high to me, but I don't want to underestimate it. For land costs to soak up the large increase in school spending, real land costs would have had to have gone up by 8 (3 doublings) X 5 (land costs at 20%) or 40 times. Since inflation has been about 10X nominal land costs would have had to have gone up about 400 times. I don't know what percentage they are..........what do I look like......a superintendent of schools. I am simply telling you that many schools.....particularly large city schools don't have a enough money. Their buildings are falling apart.....they have lots of deferred maintenance; they are too cold in the winter and too hot in the spring. They leak; there's 10-20 kids per one computer; there's 35-40 kids to a classroom. Its not quality education.....instead its a sham. technical equipment such as computers have increased in complexity and cost Computer have greatly decreased in cost. You probably have as much computing power in a cell phone as ENIAC had, and ENIAC costs over a half million in nominal dollars (over $5 million in today's dollars). Tim, you live in a world that occassionally skims reality. If you don't have $100 extra in your budget, then it doesn't matter how much the price of computers has come down. Many school districts rely on donations. One inner city school in LA that wanted to have an orchestra had an instrument donation drive, trying to get people who weren't using their musical instruments to make a donation. Is it any wonder that some kids in our society are poorly educated? Is it any wonder that most black boys drop out of school between 8th and 10th grade? Kids are very sensitive to their environment.....they know when they are getting flim flammed. And all these kids dropping out....what do you think happens to them? They are filling our prisons......costing a ton of money. Wouldn't it have been better and cheaper to have spend the money on their schools? Spending on computers has gone up because we have a huge number of computers in schools now, instead of very few or perhaps zero, but you would expect a real educational return for that spending. Either we haven't gotten it (in which case that spending didn't achieve much), or more likely it has achieved something, but there have been declines in other areas. I have been in seven city schools since I started my masters program. Not one of those schools had a computer for every student. The best I saw.....forget it, there was no best. And most of those computers were donated. After all, these schools are in the home city of Microsoft. But go across the city line to a northern, well off suburb and there is a laptop for every student. I'll grant you the increase in security costs, but even with land cost increases, there is no way that it accounts for the huge increase in spending. You are mistaken. As for non-uniform spending - Spending has always been non-uniform, and its increased across the board. DC schools are awful and DC spends a ton per pupil. Your right that school spending is non-uniform but its not much of an argument. Like I said earlier, Tim, you only occasionally skim on reality. Having said that......I don't absolve the school districts. I am sure they could do better in terms of managing their money. Those of us who have worked in private industry know all kinds of ways to get extra bang from the buck. Those people who have worked in schools all their lives may not be aware of the options. Interesting, your author shows the changes in cost from WW II going forward but only shows the changes in math, science and reading scores for the past 30 years. What's the problem? Was there are dramatic increase in scores from 1945 to 1975? Do you have any idea with what city schools are coping? In one high school in LA they are dealing with kids who speak over 100 different languages and dialects. Have you ever tied to teach a kid who only has a smattering of English? It is the most exhausting work around. I don't think these tests go back more than 30 years. In any case there has been a real doubling since the 70s. Just looking at that period why hasn't the extra money produced better results? I'm not saying that some schools or school districts wouldn't benefit from more money. I'm not saying all the new money has accomplished nothing at all. But it seems clear that continually throwing more money at the same system isn't likely to produce any dramatic benefit. I think if you look at school districts that have the money and have spent it wisely, you will see improvements. However, the way things are now you will never see improvements in city schools. Everything, and I mean everything, is stacked against them.