K-12 Education Costs

[jonsonite]

Hey guys, I think I just figured out how we can educate our children for less than a fourth of the cost! Thanks, Washington, DC!

Alternately, if you'd like, we can keep our education budget the same and multiply the effectiveness by four. Either works for me, I guess.

Comments

[susiebirds]

I had this whole ranty comment written about the state (and wacky math) of education funding, but I was too tired to post it coherently.

The voucher system for charter schools is not a good way to go, but public education as is isn't either, so my ranty post offered little solution.

The biggest problem with public education is that it suffers from the same bureaucratic bullshit that all federal programs suffer from, which makes it hard for schools to be treated equitably when it comes to funding.

I'm hoping it'll change, but not until we start attracting and rewarding talented educators and administrators in large numbers, and getting away from crappy standardized tests as being our sole measurement of success, and until we start treating education as critical and crucial to the future of the country as a whole will we really see any change.

This reminds me of this story from the Economist (http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13825184&CFID=63527209&CFTOKEN=70973384).

[jonsonite]

To get more talented educators and administrators we'll have to fire some of the ones we already have, right? Isn't that really hard to do?

[jonsonite]

That's a good article, and it's made me more interested in potentially expanding the school day or school year. It is true that there's no good reason to have a 3 month long break--except summer camps, and those could easily fit into a month break, ne?

[zabrahl]

I'll give you a reason! The 3 month summer vacation gives educators a chance to not only get supplemental training to keep up with Progress, but it gives them a chance to do something else besides give of themselves for a space.
A one month break is what the kids here in Japan receive, but the teachers don't see any of that. Well, on average they see about 3 days that they can use to travel with their families or something, but most of the time is spent at meetings and training and God knows what.
And it's not just the summer break that is a soul crushing lie in Japan... Many teachers live separated from their families in tiny one room dorm-style apartments. And one room is plenty because they spend 95% of their waking hours at school, again doing God knows what. All too often I'll see them for dinner at our better-than-dorm-style cafeteria only to watch them go back to school for more work afterward.
The point of all that, besides that I feel sorry for Japanese school teachers, is that you need to keep in mind when you talk about expanding the school year by two months that that is a considerable increase to cost. Also, one of the great attractors I see in the teaching system in the States is that for 3 months out of the year you get to be someone else. Many of my mom's coworkers at the Canadian border have day jobs as teachers, so yeah, boo hoo, teacher salary is low, but you can do other things with your time. You aren't locked in to one institution.

And as long as we are talking about expanding child torture, I mean education, why must we keep them going to the same school all summer? Let's enhance the summer camp experience into a more valuable active learning environment! Mandatory summer internm-*cough* camp for everyone in K-9 and professional training classes for 10-12. Let's prepare the next generation for when the economy flat lines and we can't resuscitate it. Or we could have options for summer immersion language classes. Grade school is dull enough without filling in every living hour of one's young life. Let's make a new system.