NJ, big on home rule, has more school districts than municipalities! (600+ > 566). An average K-12 district has perhaps 10,000 people, <2000 students, but there are many local K-8s paired with regional high schools for 2-3 towns. Asbury Park has proposed a $90 million budget for 3,400 students! The city will spend $1,500 per student, the rest of us $25,000 for each, in a system where most fail the standardized tests!
1) NYC spent about $15.6 billion dollars this year for about 1.1 million students: more than $14,000 for each. However, the budget is skewed in many areas. The older pie chart shows only 39% for general education, an equal 39% for 'special' ed., 'categorical' ed. & 'private' ed., which are the black holes of education. I don't know how many students are in the general category & how many are in the others, but would guess that 10-20% of the students consume the portion of the budget. http://www.edpriorities.org/Info/info_FAQNYC.html http://www.edpriorities.org/Info/BudgetInfo/WhereGo/BudInf_EPPAna00.html http://www.edpriorities.org/Info/BudgetInfo/WhereFrom/WhereFrom_99.00.html 2) I wish that public schools would focus on basic education first! Children need to read, write & speak English well, have a command of mathematics & behave (pt. 3) first. Then we can expand into sciences, arts, etc. 3) IMO, loss of discipline is more the fault of parents than schools. If students arrive knowing how to behave, the battle is more than half won.
All great points. And all could be the subject of national focus and federal initiatives. Not saying that is the best way to approach them. Merely to say I am not writing off the feds just becuase. As to number three, I think that is of course correct, but that doesn't change the reality that the kids are going to be in the schools absent some other place to put them.
I can't tell you how local control trumps federal control, because currently there is little to no federal control over education. I am basing my opinion on the essential principle that the further away you get from the classroom, the less qualified you are to make decisions which affect the classroom. Also, a larger educational bureaucracy means more room for blame shifting and less accountability. My opinion is far from "just spew." I'm a good big government liberal and I firmly believe in the government's ability to solve problems. This is one place where that just isn't the case. These are conclusions that I arrived at through personal experience as a educator. I'm not talking about those forms of federal funding, am I? I'm talking about education. In education, the added money might not be worth the cost. The US Congress does not know more than I do about what Destiny and Ty'Kenyia and Quazel need. So I don't want them telling me how to teach them. If you want to propose throwing money at schools without any requirements or caveats, fine. Bring on the money. Keep in mind, though, that schools in poor areas already receive extra federal money. And under NCLB, schools with low test scores receive even more federal money. It's not really the money that's the problem for many failing schools. I would absolutely have a problem with it. The federal government has no place making decisions about class size or curriculum or training. Those should be the Pricipal's decisions, maybe the district's. Failing schools are not failing because they lack books and supplies. Money is NOT the problem. Don't get me wrong, money is good to have. I'm sure there are plenty of school districts that are suffering financially, but in NYC it is not so. The schools have plenty of money. Yet the children are still failing. If I had the choice, I would not accept an additional dime from any level of government if it had a requirement attached to it. As I said above, inadequate funding is not really the problem. There is so much money in the system, it's sickening. Part of the problem is that there are so many restrictions on how schools can spend their money. Every year schools buy fresh new textbooks and new programs and pay experts to come in and train the staff to use them. That's wonderful, but the books I had last year are still around and they work fine, and I'm already trained to use them. I would much rather have the money spent on a full time school aide or paraprofessional to help out in my classroom. But if the money doesn't get spent on the books or the professional development, it goes away. What a waste. I really don't see how "federal direction" or any federal program could make a difference. One of the biggest reasons that science has taken such a backseat lately is that NCLB requires that students be tested in math and reading. So all the focus is on math and reading, at the expense of science, social studies, the arts, and everything else. Discipline is a big problem at many schools. There are two parts to creating and sustaining an orderly school. The first is leadership. The second is, as you say, getting the troublemakers out of the way. Unfortunately, the troublemakers have to be educated too. They can't be kicked out of the system entirely. I believe that school districts which have discipline issues should establish intervention schools for serious behavior problems, and retain the right to send students there after a certain number of discipline code infractions. But in the end, it comes down to school leadership. That's a nice idea. Teachers deserve to be rewarded. I wouldn't object to that. But I wouldn't expect it to fix anything either.
The reason why people take federal funding for stuff is because they've already lost that money when they paid it in the first place. So if you offer them 95% with strings attached, they'll take that over 0%.
Do you have any info or links on the percentage of students in the non-general ed. categories? I guessed 10-20% earlier. 20% of 1.1 million = 220,000. $15.6 billion x 39% = $6 billion. This would be $27,000 per student. If 80% are in general education (880,000), that would be less than $7,000 per student.
If effect, the amount spent on each general education pupil is halved due to the higher cost of the others.
I don't think it works that way. Special ed students increase the overall amount of money in the pot, rather than taking away money that would otherwise go to general ed students.
Sounds like a local question to me. I always liked the Mortimer Adler goal -- to create good citizens. You can run with that definition as far as you want -- creative citizens, economically valuable citizens. But the key goal is to create a person who understands that he has an important and active place in his society -- and in todays world that goes beyond borders. No place for insular school boards when it comes to creating an intelligent and tolerant citizen.
Can you identify the author of these two brief passages? "There were some schools, so called; but no qualification was ever required of a teacher, beyond "readin, writin, and ciperin," to the Rule of Three. If a straggler supposed to understand Latin, happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the Rule of Three; but that was all. I have not been to school since. The little advance I now have upon this store of education, I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity." "While here A. went to A.B.C. schools by littles, kept successively by Andrew Crawford, ---Sweeney, and Azel Dorsey. He does not remember any other. A. now thinks that the aggregate of all his schooling did not amount to one year. . . He regrets his want of education and does what he can to supply the want."
Lincoln was one of those students who would learn regardless of obstacles presented them. In spite of the fact that Lincoln was poorly schooled and too poor to attend college, he was gifted with an amazingly retentive memory and a passion for reading and learning. While his formal education may only have amounted to a year, his practical education was continuous. He learned from almost everyone he met. He engaged neighbors and strangers in dialogue. He learned from his contact during his work ...
I think we should recreate the Lincoln experience for all students? Except maybe no field trips to see a play.
What we need to do is create and maintain a love, even a thirst, for knowledge. Start early. Maintain the enthusiasm.