Hot Air:
New study, new confirmation that dumping money into schools doesn’t fix them
So many progressive “solutions” to public policy problems simply involve dumping money into a hole. Education is no different. From teachers’ unions to New York Times pundits, the answer is always “more money.” Conservatives doubt that solution – that just dumping money into the education system doesn’t actually improve student outcomes. This isn’t a new argument, but a new study out from the Cato Institute [pdf] finds that not a single state was able to improve their education outcomes by increasing the amount of taxpayer money they spent on education.
Author Andrew J. Coulson writes:
Not only have dramatic spending increases been unaccompanied by improvements in performance, the same is true of the occasional spending declines experienced by some states. At one time or another over the past four decades, Alaska, California, Florida, and New York all experienced multi-year periods over which real spending fell substantially (20 percent or more of their 1972 expenditure levels). And yet, none of these states experienced noticeable declines in adjusted SAT scores—either contemporaneously or lagged by a few years. Indeed, their score trends seem entirely disconnected from their rising and falling levels of spending.
I started school in 1965. Back then there were no preschools or Headstart programs where I lived and kindergarten was sort of a free year academically. We didn’t start getting serious about learning until the first grade, and I still remember learning to read starting with “See Spot. See Spot run. Run, spot, run!”
Our teachers were almost all women – some of them blue haired old ladies who had been teaching since the 1930’s and 1940’s. We didn’t have all the benefits of modern educational methods and I don’t remember having lots of homework, but somehow we still learned to read and write and do arithmetic. We also had art, music, and athletics.
I know for a fact that people have been complaining about the quality of “modern” education since before I started school. I know this because I can think of at least two books that were written back then where the characters talk about how the schools aren’t teaching kids right. One of them is Have Spacesuit, Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein. The other is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
It is an article of faith on the Left that the problem of inner-city illiteracy is caused by inferior schools which in turn is due to underfunding because of racism. But the cold hard fact is that those inner-city schools typically spend more per student than schools in the suburbs.
After nearly half a century of desegration, busing, class-size reductions, new programs, new technologies, free lunches, curriculum changes, new teaching methods, the Internet and huge increases in spending, inner-city illiteracy and drop-out rates are as bad as they ever were. On the other hand, suburban schools haven’t improved much either.
I’m just spitballin’ here, but you think maybe we should try something different?
This was published in 1958:
My YD is an experienced, hard working, dedicated 3g teach with a crowded, underachieving E2L class of inquisitive kids w/o an aide and w/next-to-zippo parental involvement. She HAD an aide a couple of years ago but her district needed more administrative staff to “facilitate” the new Fed and state guidelines, so in her district classrooms lost their aides. She will have her masters in four months and get a nice raise, but is trapped in a system that will become increasingly dysfunctional because they still insanely keep trying to fix themselves the same old way when that method never works. If only they had more money……
Public education is run by scammers.
Scott Walker taught us how worthless teachers’ unions are.
That he did. 🙂
Would like to see true stats on #nolongerlookingforjobs in CA. Got to be sky-high.
heh
Oh yeah ! Also, check out the PDS in the replies. Beyond haters, misogynist pigs.
Libiots might wee-weed up over this tweet. LOL
Speaking of school …. Michelle visits one in China! While we remove teaching cursive writing in our schools, Chinese children learn calligraphy. Of course, this sounds like one of their better schools for the smartypants/wealthy kids, kinda like Sidwell Friends?
http://time.com/33164/michelle-obama-china-beijing-peng-liyuan/
Texas had me worried after I saw the headline …. LOL ……
Ted Cruz tweeted that pic too. LOL
Linkee no workee.
Are you on twitter 49er ? Not sure if non-subscribers can see our full tweets/photos ?
Yes I am. When there’s time. Bc of slow loading issues tweets are not visible on my tablet unless I leave the page up for 15 mins, which doesn’t happen often. 😦
Oh, I asked because on WHD, non-twits can’t even click on a url link to see a twitter post, takes them to the sign up page or somewhere.
¿Que es WHD?
On the PC they’re great.
WHD es http://www.whitehousedossier.com/ one of my daily fixes for insider info on the White House Press Corpse. 😉
🙂 thx
OT, is this feline fine art or fine feline art?
http://www.kittyarmy.com/purr-fect-cat-art-for-arts-sake/
The flat test scores in the “Trends” chart are likely pure bull shit. IIRC, SAT scores peaked in 1961-1962 and have been “re-normalized” three times since then in order to compensate for falling performance. I remember, about thirty years ago, a program on Public TV where the re-normalization was justified by the fact that more minorities were taking the SAT and the original SAT curves were based on White males. WTF??
I have see from time to time some samples of essays, schoolwork, etc from average , say, 6th grade students in decades past. Most of our high school graduates couldn’t turn in that quality of work today.
This is very long and very involved, but you ought to read it. Did you know that your local bank (not just the central banks) creates money out of thin air every time they make a loan?
It’s all a house of cards. All of it.
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2014-03-20/bank-england-admits-loans-come-first-…-and-deposits-follow
This explains the incessant solicitations to refi the mortgage “at a lower rate”. Marginal banks are “churning” the marketplace attempting to bolster themselves. Might also explain Helen’s rash of banking suicides. Unmet commitments and unfulfilled expectations.
Another OT, click cc to turn English on:
😀
http://americanthinker.com/2014/03/too_busy_to_be_president.html
too busy to be president.
the educational system we have now is a result of low expectations.
do not really expect teachers to be able to teach
do not really expect kids to have to learn
not every teacher or every kid are geniuses but it is no longer expected for everyone to be the best they can be.
don’t tell Johnny he is not doing well in reading , writing or counting, it may hurt his feelings
don’t tell the teacher he or she is not doing a good job after all they put in the time and paid union dues
http://weaselzippers.us/180139-api-study-confirms-existence-of-low-information-voter/
the sad result of a failing educational system
I just turned on NPR to hear that there is a bill pending in the IL legis. to amend the state constitution regarding the way the monies for education is distributed. Right now, the bulk of it goes to the cities so the $ per student is greater in the cities. The proposal woulod make the distribution more equitable so the suburbs would get more money and the cities – less. The discussion that followed was led by the “reporter” who asked how this would affect the voting in the GE and how many Democrat votes would the legislators lose, not how would this improve the quality of education in Illinois. Really, this is disgusting.
Hammer of Kraut:
We probably sent them rape whistles too.
And told them not to be bossy.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/eric-scheiner/us-govt-study-pays-mexican-male-prostitutes-not-getting-stds
new definition of government worker???
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/03/chicago-teachers-union-prez-urges-teachers-to-politicize-math-in-the-classroom-video/
maybe this is part of the problem with education
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/03/21/texas-school-fires-principal-who-wants-students-to-speak-english/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
maybe it is me, but I think the principal was trying to help the kids. You are in an english speaking country. If you want to succeed maybe it would be a good thing to practice your english
From “The Hitler Model” by VDH:
More:
Saddam Hussein used to think that way.
http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2014/03/21/sharyl-attkisson-there-is-coordination-between-reporters-and-politicians/
very interesting interview with Sharyl Attkisson
Yes there are, they’re called “plants” and everybody does it. Wish they’d stop.
Oh what fun, meet a new follower 😉
https://twitter.com/TeaParty_Italia
I tell ya, the Tea Peeps are going to take over the world, we all have the same goals …. get rid of corrupt politicians for starters.
Awesome.
Yeah it is, now only if I could read Italian 😀
‘oogle Translate app saves my bacon….
My dd’s in-laws are from Honduras and we’re all FB friends, so learned about translator and it’s indeed my friend 🙂 Also, FB provides a translate feature, twitter does not 😦
The east bay triangle is pretty spooky, if one may say that w/o being r****t.
http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2014/03/21/get-to-know-the-common-core-marketing-overlords-n1812206/page/full
interesting who makes money on this
I’m utterly shocked at such baseless calumny!
Cathayans do appreciate a thin veneer of sociability and manners. Good luck with Marian’s.
The Secret Service act like assholes because the Obama’s think it is fine for them to be their proxies and let them and their “guests” get away with it. I have been around Secret Service with Lady Bird and Bush I and they did not act like dicks because the people they were guarding would not have put up with it. If people were booked in rooms on the same floor that means this was a “hurry up and spend money trip before the Republicans slap a budget on us”.
Yep on the last minute. SS has evolved downhill, IMO. Worked with them several times; each progressively worse. Some agents use travel assignments as personal party time between shifts, and aren’t always at their best.
Worked with DoS Dignitary Protection twice. Much more professional and thorough, again IMO.
looks like being nasty runs in meeeschele’s family
Totally bogus headline:
Ted Cruz Throws a Temper Tantrum After Eric Holder Refuses His Special Investigator Request
Body of article:
Gowdy threw a bigger TIZZY fit. As did I 😦 Good grief, Holder’s a jerk, no, he’s freakin’ corrupt.
I’m ordering up extra popcorn if 2016 goes against the dems. Watching them try to keep Holder out of prison has got to be beneficial to Orville Redenbacher’s bottom line.
Always dig the hole first. You don’t want to be digging a hole with a body in the trunk when the cops drive up. Too many awkward questions.
It helps to live in a place where there are lots of old mineshafts around, like Kentucky and W.VA. No muss, no fuss, just roll ’em in the hole and go home.
Oh yeah. The stories I could tell. Oops, must not start blabbing after drinking.
One of the “developments” in education is something we’re not supposed to talk about. Before the late 60’s a lot of professional jobs were not particularly welcoming to women. To go into those fields meant you had to fight and claw your way in. So a lot of very smart, capable women went into teaching where being smart and female went together. Most teachers were in the top of their classes academically. When medicine, the law, engineering, and business became more welcoming, even if not always enthusiastically so, the “cream of the crop” of women had many more choices, and a lot of the best and the brightest took them. Today’s teachers do not come from the top of the class anymore. A lot of them have a hard time passing the basic literacy tests required for licensing and struggle with the subject matter tests required of secondary school teachers. I took those tests, and I was flabbergasted that anyone with a bachelor’s degree couldn’t pass them. But a lot of candidates for licensing don’t, and a lot of teachers who are licensed passed by the skin of their teeth.
Same thing has happened in nursing. Some of the nurses they are graduating now scare me. They really are ignorant.
The woman who ran my nursing program was an old Army nurse battle axe who brooked NO failure. She taught you well, but if you could not meet her standards, she failed your ass in a heartbeat. She took very seriously the fact that you would have people’s lives in your hands. She wanted you to KNOW nursing, physiology, drug interactions, mechanisms of body systems, etc, not just regurgitate canned answers. Some years after I graduated, they fired her. They wanted someone who would fudge and coddle and graduate a bigger percentage, whereas she made nurses go back and retake courses. She was too demanding and made students feeeeel baaad. The fact that she graduated top-notch nurses didn’t matter. Get rid of her, put in someone who will shove students through the system with minimal requirements for actually knowing anything.