I just want him for once to provide links to sources - it's ridiculous not to.

But yea, their priorities are clear. We can rip the constitution to shreds with warantless wire taps, holding people without charges or access to counsel, torture, etc. We can spend literally trillions fighting a war of choice against a 7th rate country that had nothing to do with 9/11, argue for another war of choice against a country who helped us against the very group that perpetrated 9/11, but when it comes to doing something about education, man o man! That's crossing the line...

Bizarre priorities.

Obviously, factors other than cost per year per student are in operation.

That no single factor explains all or even most of the variation does not mean that said factor does not explain some of that variation. There are many factors involved in education outcomes and it can be difficult to separate out the effects of each. Teacher compensation when coupled with student:teacher ratio appear to explain some of the differences in educational outcomes across and within states. Correct teacher compensation for cost of living, add instructional expenditure per student (also corrected) and the fit will likely be much closer.

Level of parental education and wealth, community homogeneity, crime rate, and other societal factors complicate but do not completely obscure this picture.

Like Hal though I am consistently amused at the people who defend exorbitant salaries of business executives and others as necessary to attract the best and brightest argue the opposite when it comes to teacher salaries. This same group argues the necessity of warrantless wiretaps and other invasive Patriot Act provisions whle arguing that more money for the DOE is Orwellian.

The whole hyperlink thing is vastly overrated and providing sources is so liberal anyway.

Dream up another false post.

Also, you'd be better off talking median, rather than average (assuming you know the difference), as that's the relevant measure in pay, spending per pupil, class size, etc. Averages in this domain are a meaningless measurement.

Come up with references for your assertions ( a claim I keep making and you keep refusing, I might add, in our arguments) or I'm just going to assume you're pulling them out of your ass.

And I gots to love the invocation of states rights and the demand that a constitutional issue be found! Bravo. Brings back memories of school segregation and southern governors blocking black children with dogs and rifles from attending schools - must be your fantasy. It's a perfect lead in to your typical Birchian rant at the end where it's all an ACLU conspiracy resulting in a dictatorship of the mind...

I mean, seriously. You seem to consistently degenerate into conspiracy theories to explain everything. Pray tell, how do the black helicopters fit into all this?

we spend over 473 Billion dollars a year on primary and secondary schools.
The average teacher is paid about $47,000 a year.
The average per student is over $8,300. Classroom sizes average 15 to 16 students.
The Federal Gov averages paying about 8.8% of the budgets (way over $41 Billion), while state Gov averages about 48.6%, and local Gov averages about 42.7%.

There are over 48 million students in these levels.

The correlation between expenditure per student and success rate in terms of percent graduating is all over the place, with Utah spending about $4,900 per student, yet rates at Number 5 in the nation for percent graduating. NJ is Number 1, and pays about $13,000 per student. There are only 19 states with a reported graduation rate above 75%.

Obviously, factors other than cost per year per student are in operation.

Your figures are way off, friend: you say 27 Billion and the NEA says 41.4 Billion. Trying to cook the books again?

There is no valid reason for the Federal Gov to put more money into education, in my opinion. It is a local and state issue, and the Feds should actually bow out completely. Zero out the 8.8% in favor of state and local revenues over several years. We need to get the Fed nose out from under the tent. There is no constitutional reason for the Feds to be involved at all. But to increase the Fed role suits liberals very well. One more big growth in government, and Federal intrusion far into state and local life that we will have to combat.

Next, we will have the Feds mandating deep cultural changes to go along with their biased curricula for schools accepting Fed money, if the liberals have their way. Just as the ACLU is doing. We can eliminate that bias by refusing Federal money, as private schools do.

Nice solution to the problem you have: dictatorship of the mind. 1984 coming true.

The root problem is virtually impervious to added money: the surrounding culture dominates.
I guess you want the Federal Government to legislate the left's version of culture into law.

--30--

As one can plainly find out by using googling skills as poor as yours are, the federal government spends hardly anything - 92.7% of all funding for public schools comes from non-federal sources. We spend about $27 billion. Quick, mannning, how many times does 27 billion go into 2 trillion?

And what have we got for this investment? Seriously? You'd think that we have a third world nation with children drooling on the side walk according to your world view.

Maybe you should invest in a few more google searches to find out how the federal money is actually spent (here's a hint: it largely doesn't go to schools qua schools).

And another thing, it probably suprises you to learn that 62 cents of every education dollar goes to teachers in the form of salaries, benefits, supplies (e.g., textbooks), and purchased services. Quick! That leaves how much for the other "wasteful" expenditures like buildings, property upkeep, transportation, meals, etc.

I mean, really mannning. You clearly don't know how much your poor pocket book is doling out - and if you live in a red state, then you're actually getting more of my blue state federal money in than you're doling out.

Geebus. Now, move the goalposts and ignore any of the points I addressed.

Just for laughs, why don't you look up how much money the current administration has thrown at education in the last 7 years--and with not much to show for it! You might be surprised!

You are not worth debating.

This is something I love about your type of conservative, mannning. It's that almost Calvinist believe that everything is the person's fault and nothing environment is to blame for anything.

WRT limits, I can only remind you that the current war on Islamo-whatever is an open ended check looking like the water output of Hoover dam on release day.

You seem to have no problems with that, no metrics to measure success and zero issues with the galactic scale of incompetence shown in the planning, execution and follow through.

Again, you have plenty of money to waste on killing and committing strategic blunders of historic proportions, but can't even comprehend spending a miniscule amount of that for our children's future.

What a very depressing and quite twisted - not to mention horrifically pessimistic - philosophy and outlook you have.

Yep, it's going to be a great 2008.

The whole infrastructure is designed around quality in order to attract the right students from the families that can afford the best and desire that quality.

Lacking the parent's motivation, the student's discipline at home and in the private school system(which is beyond the reach of much of the Federal and union bureaucracy), you do not get improved learning even with the best teachers and administrators available and in the most lavish buildings man can achieve.

The focus should be on the 8 to 10 thousand dollars a year per student spent on public education with tax dollars, and not let us be diverted by spurrious comparisons with the far fewer private systems. I think dear Hal is expressing envy of the private schools and their products--as if he didn't get to go Groton or Exeter. but Groton and Exeter are not the problem: Thomas Jefferson High School a mile from here is the problem.

Throw another 2 thousand a year per student at the system, and what you will get are some new education experts on staff, some new studies by expensive consultants, a few town meetings designed to show progress, and an empty pocket after all that. Plus, you will get some rather unhappy taxpayers that do not believe that progress is being made by these so-called experts, and who will not stand for yet another education tax rise. There is a limit to just how much you can tax the public for education without showing real progress. That limit must be in the range of 10-15% more than they are paying now,I suggest, and not all at once in a year either.
So you have a tax limit to deal with, and a solid gage of progress to meet in the public schools.

Therefore, I suggest that showing solid progress in education of students in the public schools today takes absolute precedence over trying to match private endowments and tuitions with public money. You cannot solve the culture problem with tax money.

I think this is precisely the situation you see in jobs that don't pay well.

To mannning:

Money is not the problem, I say again.

You really are a loon with that rant. Simple question: why is it that all the private schools that are objectively better than public schools spend *more* per pupil - lot's more - than public schools? You have to ask yourself why that is. It's because money is a big part of the problem. The correlation between money spent per student and any measure of success you're willing to commit to (given our past discussions, I can't imagine any you'd pin yourself down to, but what they hey) is fantastic.

Sure, you can throw money away. Heck, we're currently on track to throw 2 trillion down the Iraq black hole with the sole result of making more terrorists and killing and injuring more soldiers in the biggest strategic blunder in the history of the world.

But hey! It's killing people! It's macho!

We have plenty to spend on more bombs, deaths and destruction.

No money to spend on our children's future. Rather, it seems the consensus is that it's the kid's and parent's d*mn fault for being so stupid in the first place.

Bravo!

Even in our very poor district we have quite a few dedicated and capable teachers. There are very few teachers I don't like.

Administration is a different matter entirely. Most of the people at the administrative level here aren't worth half the salaries they are paid.

The root of the problem, in my opinion, is indeed the surrounding culture, not the school itself. This is a generational problem that has no effective solution in the short term, especially not throwing money at it.

1. They were forced to teach to the tests and not the subjects, or they would suffer in appraisals and salary.
2. They were forced to use texts that were abominable but approved by the board and the education authorities. Dumbed down texts are being fostered on the system by political correctness drones.

Their main complaint from a salary perspective was that they were forced to contribute to the union a substantial sum each year, with no opting out.
Sure, they said, we all would like to have more pay and benefits, who wouldn't? But they didn't go into teaching for the pay, but for the rewards in seeing youngsters' minds take off.

They complained a lot about discipline in the classroom, and told me stories about abuses and threats of violence from students, especially at the high school level. Their administrators were not strong on discipline, by and large. There were students that the teachers could not "reach" that became dropouts.

The facilities were more than adequate, and supplies were good, they said. The local PTA stepped in and provided the extras the teachers wanted.

These teachers were from one of the better urban systems in the state, and their students did better than average on tests, but every teacher voiced the opinion that they could have been far more effective if allowed to teach in a tried and true manner, teaching subjects and how to think about them, and not by using wacky theoretical approaches and redacted texts.

Money is not the problem, I say again. It is bureaucracy that expands to absorb the new funds the legislators throw at the problem, without trickle down to the systems, and teachers. It is school boards that insist on PC, or they fear the ACLU will sue them. It is parents that are not fit, and their offspring that are not civilized.

It is dishonesty in several situations, where money simply isn't spent in the right way, or it disappears. It is PC again by unions and their political aspirations to keep the flow of tax dollars going their way.

It is also the unions that force systems to keep poor teachers and to pay all teachers equally, and will not allow merit pay for the better teachers, even if the money is there to do so.

It is experiments conducted by ambitious administrators that want a credit line to advance their careers, not caring how this affects the students in their future. This I witnessed first hand with my children, my wife's experience and my daughters' as well.

Be thankful if your school system is as good as this one is.