<p>
Because the federal government isn’t spending anywhere near $10K per student. That’s the figure for total elementary/high school education spending. 90% of that is local funding. Also, a big chunk of federal education spending is for special education. What’s left is far less than $1000 per kid, and most of that is “targeted.”</p>
<p>The amount spent per child at DS school is $8,740. In Indiana it ranges from $6,607 to $16,366. Most of that is collected from local taxes. Course, just looking at these numbers makes me sad to see the $10000 difference.</p>
<p>I looked up government site numbers before I posted it. It was for elementary school for 2009. $10,000 was the average given. Nowhere near 90% local money.
No matter, the money is still being spent. It’s still a lot.
Indiana (after collecting taxes) according to MizzBee spends 6-16 thousand per student just as an example. All kids should still be getting a first rate education at that price especially the high end. Are they?
Question: Where do you think your school tax dollars should be spent to get the more bang for the buck (so to speak)? what would you do to revamp the system?</p>
<p>I’m in Indiana. My dad is a long time educator and has now been on the local school board for 15 years, and is also active in education-related state gov’t. He is very interested in all these types of research.</p>
<p>There is a huge disparity in education between districts in this state (I assume in most states). What is interesting though is that based on the usual indicators, there isn’t much of a correlation between the high-performing districts and how much is spent per pupil. In fact, some of our most failing districts spend the most.</p>
<p>Indiana’s schools are now funded through the state level. The state is trying to force the smallest school corporations to consolidate and they are doing it through withholding funding. In theory then, schools should be equal educationally. Don’t I wish.</p>
<p>Indiana students have been paying tuition and attending out of district schools for at least the last 30 years. This changed recently and I do not know any schools now charging tuition. The student can transfer if both schools agree (and except for discipline issue cases, they do agree). Schools are marketing to get new “customers”. It’s been interesting.</p>
<p>don’t think a lot of people have the FULL story on the Williams-Bolar case:
[Bob</a> Dyer writes a letter to his pal, the Rev. Al - Local - Ohio](<a href=“http://www.ohio.com/news/local/bob-dyer-writes-a-letter-to-his-pal-the-rev-al-1.226427]Bob”>http://www.ohio.com/news/local/bob-dyer-writes-a-letter-to-his-pal-the-rev-al-1.226427)</p>
<p>Read the article and as always there are two sides of the story. Not surprising but still interesting.
BUT, it doesn’t discount the fact that a lot of tax payer dollars are spent on education without results or mixed results. And a lot of people opt for private schooling which they feel they have to have. I still think with all the dollars spent that people shouldn’t have to go out of district to get a decent education. What would you change? If it’s not money (and according to a lot of stats that is not the problem), what is?</p>
<p>Kluge -</p>
<p>OK, Kluge, since YOU “appear to be struggling with the basics”: </p>
<p>No one said it is “illegal to attend elementary school in the school district in which you live even if you’re not a U.S. citizen.”</p>
<p>No one said it is not “illegal to attend a school in a school district in which you do not reside, regardless of whether you a re a U.S. citizen or not”.</p>
<p>Why is that so difficult for YOU “to get a grip on”? </p>
<p>Here is what your argument looks like (the very one you just threw at me) with the words changed to reflect the topic that this thread is supposed to be about. This is your reasoning, only now it is applied to the subject at hand. Is THIS what you think? Is this what I should be saying back to you?:</p>
<p>Dear Kluge…"Okay, I actually do understand why you elect not to get it: You are [unmoved] that unauthorized [and typically underserved children] are…hunted down and punished, and are [not] allowed to receive the benefit of things they [have a RIGHT to]. Who cares if they live and work in a given school district, supporting it with their taxes, [but THEIR school district does not provide a fair or reasonable education]? They weren’t born [into a family that can afford to live in a better school district]. Those of us who were born [into wealthier families] have changed the rules since our ancestors got here, so the poorer Americans should not be allowed to utilize the better resources they [really have the RIGHT to have, like richer] folks - including those who [are not US citizens and are not covered by the Constitutional guarantee of a fair education]. </p>
<p>
Despite many people on this thread, including me, attempting to veer the conversation back in the direction of school children getting a raw deal, and parents getting punished for trying to remedy that, you seem pretty fixated on the illegal immigrant issue yourself. Out of many paragraphs in the original post, two sentences were included to point out inconsistency and hypocrisy. Other posters have tried to point this out as well. You have devoted a whole lot of your time to those two sentences, and have taken them in your own private direction. </p>
<p>How about, once again, taking me up on my request to show some sympathy and concern for kids whose parents have tried a little civil disobedience in order to access a better education? Can you do that, Kluge?</p>
<p>ALH
</p>
<p>I am supporting equal access to quality education for all children. YES. Is anyone not in support of that???!</p>
<p>No (to what I believe is your suggestion to redistribute property taxes). What we should do is UNLOCK the gate imprisoning these kids and families. Let them access better education through a different school, using the money that is being spent on them. </p>
<p>OPM (other people’s money) already pays for much of the education in districts where the taxpayers don’t live. That money is often in LARGE quantities, and it is being managed POORLY. Is your approach to take money from successful, functioning districts with higher property taxes and redistribute it to underperforming ones (giving more money to the poor managers, to let them squander that as well)? Now you have the same underperforming district, the same underserved kids, but you have disrupted the performing school district as well (and you have wasted even more money). Not much common sense in that. </p>
<p>I don’t think that most kids care if their marching band has $300 a piece uniforms. I really have not heard much class warfare from poorer parents of children sentenced to lousy educations. People stuck in those situations, I believe, really just want a reasonable education for their kids. The education that is supposed to be a right. I doubt if any of them would mind not having the cash to attend Collegiate, but I bet they would be thrilled to access some smaller parochial or private schools where voucher dollars (and maybe a scholarship) would buy them what they were supposed to get in the first place.</p>
<p>Regarding what is actually being spend on public education:</p>
<p>They Spend WHAT? The Real Cost of Public Schools</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa662.pdf[/url]”>http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa662.pdf</a></p>
<p>
Originally posted by Spideygirl, in her first post:
Spideygirl - you were the one who brought unauthorized immigrants into the discussion, no one else. And you’ve continued to harp on it, insisting that Americans who break the law relating to school attendance rights are entitled to more sympathy than unlawful immigrants who haven’t done so. You characterize the Americans who break that law as engaging in “civil disobedience” - for their own private benefit, I’d note, which is kind of an odd sort of “civil disobedience” as I understand the term - and insist that others are insufficiently sympathetic to those people engaged in that noble cause. </p>
<p>I’ve got a mixture of sympathy and disapproval for all of the folks you’re talking about. Life is complicated, and people do what they feel they need to do, especially for the benefit of their children, even if it’s against the law - I get that. But a parent who is an American citizen has pretty clear options if they don’t like their local schools. They can move. I live in a community with excellent public schools. Housing here is ridiculously expensive. But you can rent a 2 bedroom apartment in this school district for less than $1500 a month. Not cheap, but if the schools are your priority, you can do it, and you’re not breaking the law.</p>
<p>Unauthorized immigrants don’t have quite the same options. Their kids can legally attend the local schools which their taxes have been paying for. But to avoid breaking the immigration laws, they have to go back to China, or Ireland, or Mexico, or wherever they came from - a country which, in many cases, the schoolchildren have never lived in. You place a lot of importance on the entitlement you feel people who are born in this country should have as a matter of right, just by being born here. You obviously feel that is more important than how much an individual might have contributed to the local school system by living in the community and paying the taxes which support the schools - regardless of their immigration status. I’m more inclined to look at the choices people have and what decisions they make based on what options they have before deciding just what quantum of “sympathy” I should extend. </p>
<p>I am prepared to feel sympathetic to people who have hard choices regardless of where they were born. You are apparently not so inclined. That’s your prerogative. But your insistence that people who feel differently than you do are hypocrites is simply an expression of your own prejudices.</p>
<p>Kluge - let it go. Your warped interpretation of what those two sentences meant (out of many paragraphs of text in the OP) is entirely subjective.</p>
<p>The actual meaning of the two sentences has been explained many times to you. Stick to the topic of the thread. </p>
<p>MoveON.Kluge</p>
<p>Kluge, </p>
<p>Parents trying to get what their kids are already supposed to have (a reasonable education) are not practicing
if they sneak them into a better school.</p>
<p>Saying that they are trying to access education
sounds pretty harsh to me. It’s not like these parents are trying to buy their child a 2012 Jeep. Strange word choice. “Stealing” education is more like grabbing a loaf of bread from the shelf at the market because your child is hungry.</p>
<p>
Kluge, in the real world, many parents are too poor to move out of underperforming districts. $1500 a month might as well be $150,000 a month. This does not sound sympathetic to me, and it certainly is not at all realistic.</p>
<p>Spidey–Okay, still in the 10K range that I started with (or maybe I was low side!).
So, again…what’s the problem? Or rather the solution.
Vouchers? I’ll be upfront, I’m for vouchers. Vouchers solve a short term problem for parents…kids grow up fast and I personally wouldn’t want to have to wait for government wheels to catch up. I would advocate vouchers. This isn’t a political forum so I won’t entertain arguements against them. I know both sides already. I do see them as a short term solution at best.
What one (or twenty for that matter) things need to change? Is it regulations? Standards? How we do things?</p>
<p>
I suspect you checked the same government website I looked at, which does give that impression - but it’s just sloppy captioning of the charts. If you cross-reference the number of schoolchildren and the total dollars spent, federal vs. local, it’s clear that the $10K figure is the total, and that the federal component is only about 10% of that. (Total federal education spending for K-12 comes out to about $1K per student.)</p>
<p>The problem a lot of people overlook in discussing schools - and their cost - is that the assignment given to public schools is not the same as that undertaken by private schools. Public schools are given the responsibility of educating every single kid in their district - including the ones with physical, mental and emotional disabilities, the ones whose parent are neglectful (or worse) and the ones who are totally unmotivated and disruptive. Those students all require a much greater allocation of resources than the “regular kids.” My daughter had a blind friend in elementary school - she had a personal assistant help her every day in school - at the expense of the school district. A big chunk of the federal education budget goes specifically to special education. A big part of many school’s budgets is just maintaining order - security guards, disciplinary functions, etc. And it’s my impression that more and more money is being spent on those functions that are outside the ambit of teaching regular kids the 3 R’s as time goes on.</p>
<p>Private schools don’t have that assignment. A disruptive kid can be expelled. Only kids with parents who care enough to get them into the private schools - and pay for it - send their kids there. Of course private schools will get better results at lower cost. They are dealing with a selected group of students right out of the box.</p>
<p>I don’t suggest I have an answer. I do know a number of K-12 teachers, including some who work in “challenging” assignments in less-desirable schools. They spend a lot of time doing a lot of things that you wouldn’t consider “teaching” but which have to be done.</p>
<p>Kluge
The right to a fair education is not an “entitlement” Kluge. It’s in the Constitution.</p>
<p>
In your last post, you were pointing the finger about prejudicial thinking, but I think you should reread this sentence of yours a few times. It sounds pretty prejudicial to me in the context of kids and the poor education they are receiving. </p>
<p>Drive to the worst performing elementary school in your nearest city and look in the faces of the little kids and then read this sentence back to yourself. Maybe while you are there, give them a good talking to about their “choices” and “options”.</p>
<p>Kluge–hear you loud and clear. Very valid points.
What do your friends in “challenging” assignment have to offer as solutions? What would they change? What is their biggest problem with the existing system? Regulations, lack of autonomy in their jobs?</p>
<p>When I grew up (long ago and far away) if you were a discipline problem you were no longer in the system (same as a private now). If you weren’t “cutting it” you were gone (same as a private now). Needed a math teacher? Science teacher? Go get a retired army colonel who ran his class that way but knew his stuff. Teaching credentials? Not so much…know the topic? Very.</p>
<p>I don’t advocate necessarily the way things were done. I know people dropped through some very unfortunate cracks. but there has to be a balance somewhere and it appears to be very lopsided.</p>
<p>I though we were going to “move on”, Spideygirl.</p>
<p>And much as I am a supporter of taxpayer-funded education, there is nothing in the United States Constitution which guarantees citizens the right to a “fair education” or any education at all, for that matter. K-12 education has historically been under the jurisdiction of state and local government, if public schools existed at all. At the time the Constitution was written and executed there wasn’t much in the way of public education of any sort.</p>
<p>Gouf78 - I think my friends are too busy being up to their armpits in alligators to spend time figuring out how to drain the swamp. They complain (oh, do they complain…) about the alternately indifferent and belligerent parents, the disruptive students, the regulations, the restrictions on discipline, etc., but I don’t think they have any better solutions than you or I might come up with. It really is a thorny problem, with lots of important, but at times conflicting, priorities.</p>
<p>I moved you on, Kluge. Last posts moved you, hopefully, to the topic.</p>
<p>Kluge - You are correct that the US Constitution does not touch upon education rights. I believe in the documents of all fifty states the topic is covered.</p>
<p>I think you bring up a great point, Kluge. Since the United States Constitution does not guarantee education, there must have been a good reason why the folks who wrote it left that out. I guess they believed it was a state issue?</p>
<p>What we should do, then is dismantle the Department of Education. In that instance, a national teacher’s union would no longer be relevant, and everything would switch to a “state and local” level focus. That would really benefit kids, because things are almost always managed better when Big Government is not in charge.</p>
<p>This type of idea…Is this what you were alluding to, Kluge? Getting Big Government out of the way of kids getting a good education…You might be on to something. :)</p>
<p>So…What would you do? Go for it. How would you revamp our educational system?</p>