To: saveslivesbyday who wrote (203127 ) 5/20/2009 6:30:51 AM From: Think4Yourself Read Replies (1) | Respond to On a hunch I looked into more current data. As I expected Washington DC is by far the highest in spending, and by far the most incompetent. The school system is a perfect match for the federal government.gadflymag.com In fact, it’s relatively uncontroversial to say that public schools in D.C. are the worst in the nation—despite the District spending over $15,000 per pupil in its public school system, by far the highest in the nation and well above the national average of $10,071. Despite spending more per pupil than any state, students in the D.C. school system consistently rank among the lowest in critical learning areas. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEPP)—an annual report released by the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES)—reported in its 2007 study that students in Washington, D.C. were being outperformed by every state in the nation. The Heritage Foundation writes, “On the 2007 NAEP, 61 percent of fourth-grade students scored ‘below basic’ in reading, and 51 percent scored ‘below basic’ in math. Among eighth-grade students, 52 percent scored ‘below basic’ in reading, and 66 percent scored ‘below basic’ in math.” The NCES estimates that fewer than 60% of D.C. students graduate high school, and the Washington Post found that “only 9 percent of D.C. public school freshmen will complete college within five years of graduating from high school.” The high dropout rate and low rate of higher education has had a demonstrable effect on the rates of adult illiteracy, poverty, homelessness, incarceration and various other social pathologies.Schools in Washington, D.C. are also mismanaged, violent, and falling apart. In June 2007, the Washington Post reported, “The schools spent $25 million on a computer system to manage personnel that had to be discarded because there was no accurate list of employees to use as a starting point. . . . It also lacks an accurate list of its 55,000-plus students, although it pays $900,000 to a consultant each year to keep count.” Another report shows that before the 2007-08 school year, “half of the city’s public schools [did not] have all of their textbooks arrive on time and [did] not have functioning air conditioning units.” Despite these failures, D.C. ranks first in the nation in the percentage of its budget spent on administration (44%), and last in percentage spent on teachers and instruction (56%).
