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Schools need all the money they can get, says the Chicago-based Heartland Institute in June:
"In New York, charter schools get generally 20 percent less per student than the other public schools. It is hardly fair to deny them funding and then complain about their reliance on private donors."
Schools can do their job with much less money than they get now, says the Heartland Institute in August:
"An April 2007 report from the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation estimates the 12 voucher and tuition tax credit programs in operation nationwide before the 2006-07 school year will produce a 15-year cost savings of $444 million.... 'Some of the voucher programs for special-needs students show these students can be instructed for much, much less than the public education system does.'" The article claims that Utah children can be educated just as well on $3,000 vouchers as on the state's per-pupil cost of $7,500.
Moral to alleged think tanks: when you tell the truth, you don't have to remember what you said.
and otherwise. Recently updated blogs are in bold text.
I do have a serious question for you. Based on all the scholarly research you've read on the subject, what is your opinion on the link between $ and student performance? My own take (based largely on James Heckman's research) is that beyond some very basic amount of $ per pupil, $ can't do much. What matters in the end are socio-economic and genetic variables.
The truth no one wants to face is that we have an obligation to guarantee the same quality of education to every student, and if socioeconomic or (*cough*) genetic variables make that harder, our obligation calls on us to do MORE to bring students' education up to par, rather than less. The way we fund schools now, the students whose need is lesser get more, and the students whose need is greater get less. Show me a free-market solution to THAT, Mr. Libertarian.
You are certainly entitled to your own opinions, but NOT your own facts. The research indicates that class size and $ spent per pupil have almost NO measurable effect on student achievement. You simply repeat the classic lefty canards (my favorite is "tattered textbooks that are 20 years out of date"...because folks 20 years ago didn't know how to teach math and reading) and assume your readers won't know better. My own daughter attends one of the best public elementary schools in the State and they have crowded classrooms (the first grade class had 30 kids), no full-time nurse, and a half-time librarian. Why do the kids score so well on standarize tests? Because my wife and I are married, we are smart, and we are responsible parents who read to our kids every night, teach them how to behave, etc., etc. Most of our neighbors fit the same profile.
I would agree with you were you to argue that a good principal and teachers can make a difference, but that is a story for another day (involving the goofy teachers unions and bloated city bureaucracy).
Finally, I do agree that society should strive to provide every child with a quality education. How we accomplish this (hint, it won't involve money) is the question. One free-market solution is turning the provision of education into a market (i.e. vouchers) and another free-market solution is to pay teachers more for results.
As for paying teachers more for "results," all it should take is one read-through of "Freakonomics" for a rational person to realize that performance would not improve across the board, only in those criteria that were being measured -- probably to the detriment of others. As for vouchers, take the effect that magnet schools have had on education in the city of Chicago (i.e., creaming off children with concerned and active parents from neighborhood schools, leaving behind concentrated populations of children with more problems and less support at home) and carry it to the furthest possible extreme.
Frankly, I don't care whether I get more money. I mean, I won't refuse it if you offer it to me, but what I really want as a teacher are respect, autonomy and administrative support. Treat me as a professional and let me apply my professional knowledge to the best of my ability, don't treat me like a recalcitrant child, don't saddle me with ridiculous burdens that make my job more difficult than it already is, and I'll make sure the kids in my classroom learn. But if you load me up responsibilities without also giving me the power to fulfill them, what happens is your doing, not mine.
Please point me to one study that demonstrates a strong link between class size and achievement controlling for all the variables I discussed above.
What a terrible tragedy that our inner-city kids might have to learn 20th century history using a textbook that doesn't cover the past 20 years. If the problem with inner-city schools was that kids who reach the age to learn about 20th century history were well-equipped to handle that subject matter (i.e. they could read and write well, their critical thinking skills were up to snuff, etc.) then I would agree we should start worrying about our 20th century history books. Until then, I'll worry that the kids are actually learning to read and write first.
Finally, you say that if left to your own devices, you'll make sure kids in your classroom learn. Fine, then how do you propose to measure this learning? And if it can be measured (which I assume it can) then can we fire you if you fail to teach these kids what they are supposed to be learning? Or can we allow the parents of the kids to place them in a different school where they think their kids will get a better education? If not, why not?
The state puts out oodles of goals, standards, benchmarks and performance descriptors (see http://www.isbe.net/ils/), and it's easy enough to note which ones students are meeting at the beginning of the year and which ones they're meeting at the end of it. It's also easy enough to tell, if you spend enough time in the classroom, that carrots and sticks work better with donkeys than they do with students. Behaviorist approaches to learning -- and that includes behaviorist approaches to the teachers responsible for student learning -- have a magnificent track record of utter failure. You get results by creating the right environment for them to occur, not by getting progressively angrier and noisier -- or by resorting to bribery. May I suggest approaching educational issues from the starting point of asking, "What is the best way to prepare every student to learn what he or she needs to know?" and not, "What is the best way to punish every student, teacher and administrator who fails to meet my expectations with the resources I feel like sparing today?"
Private schools however have none of these. In theory, they can achieve certain "economies of scale" through uniform curriculum and centralized administrative functioning. Charter schools don't have the luxury of either.
While I agree that voucher proponents are prone to exaggerate the amount of waste in the system. It's not fair to reduce complicated considerations to "lying" on the part of Heartland. (Disclosure: I work for them, but Harold can attest to my not being an apologist to bogus arguments.)
It's also important to note that School Reform News is a NEWSPAPER and so Heartland does not vet each story for ideological consistency. It simply reports what others in the movement are saying ... if there is some disagreement between different advocates, so be it.
In case you still might be checking this old post, I think you'll find this item interesting:
http://blogs.britannica.com/blog/main/2007/08/teac...