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Originally Posted by aceventura3
We live in a country where on average we spend $9K to $10k per student. Why does it cost so much to share knowlege with our children? To say the system needs to be fixed top to bottom is an understatement...
I would bet if we gave you $100k/year and 10 children to teach, you would do a hell of a job (well actually for business, economics and political science you would have to send them to me so they have a fighting chance in life, otherwise you would do fine) and not think you were under paid.
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As someone who's intimately familiar with the ins and outs of the education system (grew up with educators for parents and am studying to be one myself) I can tell you the reason why it costs so much to educate children...well, there are a few reasons.
1) Parents no longer want to take personal responsibility for raising their children. They see it as the school's job to constantly supervise, discipline, and educate their children. Sex ed? Parents don't want to talk about that--that's the school's job. PE? Parents can't be bothered to help their kids exercise--that's the school's job. Disciplining Johnny when he acts up? School's job. Getting a student extra help for falling behind? Well, isn't that what we have alternative schools for? After-school programs?
2) Special Education. Since we decided that we wanted to "mainstream" this portion of the student population, costs have risen substantially. These kids clearly need more specialized educational help in the form of teacher's aides and other assistants. The problem is that while SOME of these kids can get by in public schools with minimal assistance, most of them can't--and that increases the amount we spend per student, whether that student is special ed or not. If we want education to be an equal opportunity enterprise, then we have to accept these costs. Personally, I think school acts more as respite care for the parents of these children than actual school (especially in the case of medically fragile handicapped).
3) Insurance/legal fees. Schools, like everyone else these days, are super-paranoid about getting sued. The average large school district in this country almost always has at least 1 lawsuit pending against them. That takes money away from actual education for certain.
4) Bureaucracy. Large school districts love bureaucracy. My dad was once one of 8 Curriculum and Instruction people for a school district with three high schools. Do we REALLY need 8? No, in fact we didn't--when push came to shove, three got laid off and my dad took early retirement. The rise in standardized testing has also contributed to the amount of bureaucracy in education.
5) Sports. If your school district has not yet switched to a pay-to-play system, your after-school sports are costing taxpayer dollars.
6) Activities. Again, this goes with sports. Unless there is an activity fee charged to students, this cost gets passed on to taxpayers.
7) Learning disabilities. God knows how many kids have one of these these days. And each kid fits under a section of the Americans With Disabilities Act called Section 504. The result of this? More paperwork for teachers as each kid with a learning disability has to have an Individual Education Plan. Do learning disabilities exist? You betcha. Are they overdiagnosed? Of course. There's got to be a more cost-effective way to integrate students with learning disabilities into public school but we've yet to discover it.
So there you have it.
As for teacher pay, when I'm done with my final degree (a Master's), I can expect to make $28,000 a year. My boyfriend, by contrast, will be making $55,000 a year with a Bachelor's. Not quite fair, is it? But most teachers I know aren't there for the pay--they're there for the personal rewards they get from teaching. Unfortunately because of the bureaucracy, standardized testing, and the constant threat that "if your test scores drop too low, you'll lose funding," teaching isn't nearly as rewarding as it used to be.
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My problem with the original article dealing with the education budget is the section that says the money was eliminated from programs that were "deemed unnecessary or inefficient." Who deems them such? An outside, nonpartisan source? I don't think so.
The fact is, if we truly want to fix education in this country we're going to have to put politics aside. That's the only way to discover what's really wrong here, and we certainly don't want to throw good money after bad.