Public Education Spending

This graphic understates actual public education spending. It omits capital expenditures.

Teacher Unions Represent Teachers Not Students

"I'll start representing kids when kids start paying union dues."

Albert Shanker, former president of the American Federation of Teachers

Why American Students Stink At Math

77% of American high school seniors are not proficient in math.
They are not proficient in math because their is a shortage of math teachers to teach them math.
There is a shortage of math teachers because math teachers are paid below market wages.
Raising math teachers wages to market rates would eliminate the shortage.

Audit Public Schools

When politicians inflate public school graduation rates and test scores for their own political benefit it hides the seriousness of the problems with public education and thereby reduces the pressure to implement reforms that would fix those problems. This harms the students who would benefit from improvements in their education.

The measures of how public schools are doing, like graduation rates and test scores, should be audited to ensure their accuracy. Companies' earnings are independently audited, why not public school graduation rates and test scores?

Education Is The 7th Most Important Issue To People

A Gallup poll discovered that education is the seventh most important thing that the general public wants their elected representatives to focus on.

State Tests Do Not Measure Proficiency

The reason that state standardized tests differ so much from national test, the National Assesment of Educational Progress, is that state tests only measure basic skills while the NAEP measures proficiency skills.

Roy Romer, chairman of ED in 08, explains in his education blog:

"A lot of states have set “proficiency” standards on their tests that are really lower-level basic standards."

Vouchers Are Better Than Charter Schools

"The proven academic gains from even limited voucher programs are significantly greater than those from charter schools."

"There is a lot of high-quality research on charters and it consistently finds that charter schools are only marginally better than regular public schools."

Robert Enlow, Executive Director of the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation in a school voucher debate.

High Schools Are Not Academically Rigorous

According to the group that administers the ACT test, only 26% of students who complete the recommended college preparatory curriculum are ready for college.

Cynthia B. Schmeiser, president and chief operating officer of ACT’s education division:

“What’s shocking about this, is that since ‘A Nation at Risk,’ we have been encouraging students to take this core curriculum with the unspoken promise that when they do, they will be college-ready,” she said. “What we have found, now, is that when they do, only one in four is ready for college-level work.”

Some have suggested that the disconnect between what high schools say students have learned and what they actually have learned is due to the low level of rigor in high school classes.

Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust:

“When you look at the assignments these kids get, it is just appalling,” she said. “A course may be labeled college-preparatory English. But if the kids get more than three-paragraph-long assignments, it is unusual. Or they’ll be asked to color a poster. We say ‘How about doing analysis?’ and they look at us like we are demented.”

Pathetic

47 out 100 New York City public school students who began high school in 2001 had failed to graduate by 2006.

How To Evaluate Public School Districts

Use edweek.org to find the public high school graduation rate for the district.

Use schoolmatters.com to find the % of students proficient in reading and math for each school in the district.

What Is Ed In 08?

Answer:

1. National Education Standards (This is a bad idea.)
2. Merit Pay (The teacher unions will not support merit pay.)
3. More Time In School

ED in 08

Milwaukee, Wisconsin: School Choice Capital Of The United States

Milwaukee's 2006 charter school market share: 16%
Milwaukee's 2004 private school market share: 23.4%

Therefore, approximately 40% of Milwaukee's K-12 students do not attend a traditional public school.

Higher Education Equals Much Higher Wages

Source: American.com

Private School Choice Saves Taxpayers Money

From the Friedman Foundation:

"Of the 12 voucher and tax-credit scholarship programs that began operations before 2006, every program is at least fiscally neutral, and most produce substantial savings."

"opponents have claimed that school choice reduces spending in public schools. Yet the study's analysis of the states and school districts where school choice is available finds that this is not the case. Instructional spending in areas affected by school choice has uniformly increased. "

Difficult To Judge The Effectiveness Of Schools

Passing High School Classes Does Not Show That A Student Is Ready
Because of grade inflation and course inflation passing high school classes does not show that a student is ready for employment or higher education.

Passing State Standardized Tests Does Not Show That A Student Is Ready
Since passing high school classes does not show that a student is ready, it therefore falls to standardized tests to show whether or not a student is ready for employment or higher education. But since states dumb down their standardized tests, they can not be used to judge whether or not a student is ready for employment or higher education.

National Standardized Test Scores Are Not Available For Every School
The National Assessment Of Educational Progress can be used to accurately evaluate what a student knows. But since only a select few schools administer the NAEP ("In an average state, 2,500 students in approximately 100 public schools are selected per grade, per subject assessed."), most of them can not us it to evaluate what their students know.

In summary, high schools and state standardized tests can not be trusted to accurately describe what a student knows. The NAEP can be used to evaluate what a student knows, but it is administered in only a minority of schools, so most schools cannot therefore know what it's students have learned.

Chairman Of The Board Of Intel On Education

"The K-12 system does a good job of weeding out any students interested in math and science. We prepare them to be lawyers and consultants instead."

Craig Barrett, Chairman of the Board of Intel in a 2003 interview

Newark, New Jersey Public Education

Newark, New Jersey's 2005-2006 Per-Student Public School Spending: $17,502

Newark, New Jersey's 2006 High School Graduation Rate: 38.8%

90% Of Elementary School Students Are Mistreated By Their Peers

A study from the division of child and adolescent psychiatry at Stanford University Medical Center found that 90% of elementary school students are bullied. The majority of those bullied experienced a "high level" of victimization.