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

To: tejek who wrote (79)	1/12/2007 1:35:16 PM
From: TimF	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. Land costs quadrupling, even in real dollars, wouldn't be close to enough to cover the increase in resources that have gone to schools. Also were talking about the national averages here, the highest increases in land costs factor in to those averages but shouldn't be used as replacements for those average. I am simply telling you that many schools.....particularly large city schools don't have a enough money. Or they don't spend the money they have wisely. 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. Lots of people have received a quality education with no computers, and with large class sizes. Those might be issues that should be dealt with, you might see a benefit from smaller class sizes or more computers, but they obviously aren't the heart of the problem. 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. You define reality as whatever example fits your argument. That isn't the reality for the average or the typical school. Computers are quite common in schools. 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? Another example of ignoring the central point. If they didn't have musical instruments they would still be able to learn to read and write, and solve math problems. Also you look at one school. You provide anecdotes. That's perhaps better then nothing but as Frank Kotsonis said "The plural of anecdote is not data". Wouldn't it have been better and cheaper to have spend the money on their schools? We have spent the money on their schools. Spending on schools keeps going up, and up, and up. I have been in seven city schools since I started my masters program. Not one of those schools had a computer for every student. So one computer per student is a requirement for a good education??