Stupid In America
ABC used their 20/20 program last night to air John Stossel's special report about education in America. The hour took the form of Stossel's claim that smaller government can solve most problems. I found it very interesting and mostly accurate. I'm sure others (teachers) did not.
The High Point: The Belgium model
Countering the claims that there are no working examples of vouchers, Stossel uses Belgium. They have a population of 10 million and a student population that beats the United States in education.
The Low Point: The GE Model
John Stossel's love of libertarianism shows through by praising Jack Welsh, who raised GE's stock price while firing workers and generally destroying the quality of the products. The worst VCR I ever had was made by GE. I would prefer that Welsh not fire all the current teachers and ship the kids to Mexico and China.
Amusing Anecdotes
-An 18 year old who read at a 4th grade level went to Sylvan Learning Center and improved two grade levels in 72 instruction hours.
-An educator was asked how much should be spent per pupil. She proposed that $30,000 a student wasn't out of the question. The US spends about $10,000 currently.
-NYC's rubber room where pervert teachers who can't be fired are housed all day away from kids because they still have to be paid.
Money spent per pupil translates to teacher pay. Around here, $0.55 of every dollar goes to instructor pay and benefits. The rest goes to support staff, administration, buildings, and utilities. Somewhere in there, I think there's some money for books, too.
The High Point: The Belgium model
Countering the claims that there are no working examples of vouchers, Stossel uses Belgium. They have a population of 10 million and a student population that beats the United States in education.
The Low Point: The GE Model
John Stossel's love of libertarianism shows through by praising Jack Welsh, who raised GE's stock price while firing workers and generally destroying the quality of the products. The worst VCR I ever had was made by GE. I would prefer that Welsh not fire all the current teachers and ship the kids to Mexico and China.
Amusing Anecdotes
-An 18 year old who read at a 4th grade level went to Sylvan Learning Center and improved two grade levels in 72 instruction hours.
-An educator was asked how much should be spent per pupil. She proposed that $30,000 a student wasn't out of the question. The US spends about $10,000 currently.
-NYC's rubber room where pervert teachers who can't be fired are housed all day away from kids because they still have to be paid.
Money spent per pupil translates to teacher pay. Around here, $0.55 of every dollar goes to instructor pay and benefits. The rest goes to support staff, administration, buildings, and utilities. Somewhere in there, I think there's some money for books, too.
posted by RomeHater @ 7:28 PM
3 Comments:
At January 14, 2006 11:11 PM,
NewsGnome said…
If Rome sucks so much, leave!
Schools are amazingly inefficient at
spending their money. On top of that, the NEA could care less about the quality of education, their main concern is money, money money. Education to the NEA is always secondary.
What would you suggest for a company that is moving toward bankruptcy, hire more employees? Obviously, you've never run a company or met a payroll. So you're saying its better that the company fail and all employees lose their jobs than to make the difficult decision to cut some jobs or cut wages.
Just curious.
At January 15, 2006 6:25 PM,
RomeHater said…
Try reading my blog instead of having your data mining software do it.
At January 15, 2006 8:35 PM,
Strikeslip said…
I saw the Stossel program and he's pretty much on target. The solution will be a difficult one given the teachers' union, state ed departments, colleges of education, and a whole host of leeches living off the education "system". It's all about making money and finding creative ways of creating jobs for oneself. The kids are an excuse. Unfortunately, most parents don't understand what's happening, and think even more money needs to be spent.
In the Utica paper last week there was a "glowing" article about kids in elementary school taking yoga ... any wonder why kids can't read or add . . . but they will feel good!
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