Education
I know I've said some things before on the topic of education. Here's a little bit more, thinking in terms of economics.
A recent US Census press release notes that per pupil spending on education is nigh upon $9,000. (That's a national average, I assume Nebraska's would be less, but give it a couple years, it'll get there.) Lest you mistakenly assume that that figure is a sum for all years K-12, it's not. That's per year. So let's say a 5 year old starts kindergarten this year. After 13 years of (let's just assume constant) $9,000 a year education that high school diploma costs a grand total of $117,000 for ONE student. Now we do need to bear in mind that the girth of this (thankfully) isn't just shelled out by the kid's parents--that would be quite a burden for "educating" even one kid, let alone two or three at the same time. But it is paid by every single taxpayer in the state. Your money, my money, (almost) everybody's money.
Anyway, I wanted to think about this economically, in terms of dollars and sense. Yeah, that's right: sense. It seems to me that if we're going to drop over a hundred grand per student in order to get them high school diplomas, it would be good to get something useful out of that investment. I don't want to say that on the whole it's a bad investment. If we can be optimistic about the future, it's not hard to imagine that some kid in high school right now, some kid for whom we're spending thousands of dollars, will be the person who discovers a cure for cancer. In that case, I say money well spent. On the other hand, if we can be realistic, there's going to be the kid (who am I kidding, "the kid"--there's thousands of them) who, whether he drops out or graduates, will end up in prison or on welfare or use your imagination. In that case, I'm looking for a refund.
I guess it's kind of like a mutual fund--having a diversified portfolio. There might be a few bad options, a couple money-losers, in the bunch, but the idea is that there will be some bigger money-makers (getting you bigger returns on the investment) that will outweigh the negative and get you something positive in return. You know, end up in the black.
I would be interested to see a further break down of this. Anybody who is looking to do research in the field of education, here are some questions for you. How can we determine if our investments will be leaving us with a positive outcome? By what means do we calculate the return on our spendings? How many bad investments are we willing to put up with? How can we identify bad investments? Can we get a refund for an investment that fails to materialize? If a student fails a class, should he and/or his parents be responsible to compensate for the money poorly spent?
Let's see, $9000 per year, figure 7 classes both semesters for a total of 14--call it 15 for even division--that's $600 per class. A kid fails, dad writes a check. *sigh* Only in my happiest dreams. Of course that would also be assuming some degree of competence on the part of the teachers (can't go on...must...keep...tongue...in cheek) which we can't always assume.
Do you see where this is going? There are so many problems here it's less funny than Bill Maher, though to be fair he actually tries. Making students take standardized tests doesn't fix it. Having the government get off on withholding funds for under-performing schools doesn't fix it. Woo! It's all been done. And it hasn't helped. We need something drastic that will probably not sit well with a lot of people, whatever that solution may be.
A recent US Census press release notes that per pupil spending on education is nigh upon $9,000. (That's a national average, I assume Nebraska's would be less, but give it a couple years, it'll get there.) Lest you mistakenly assume that that figure is a sum for all years K-12, it's not. That's per year. So let's say a 5 year old starts kindergarten this year. After 13 years of (let's just assume constant) $9,000 a year education that high school diploma costs a grand total of $117,000 for ONE student. Now we do need to bear in mind that the girth of this (thankfully) isn't just shelled out by the kid's parents--that would be quite a burden for "educating" even one kid, let alone two or three at the same time. But it is paid by every single taxpayer in the state. Your money, my money, (almost) everybody's money.
Anyway, I wanted to think about this economically, in terms of dollars and sense. Yeah, that's right: sense. It seems to me that if we're going to drop over a hundred grand per student in order to get them high school diplomas, it would be good to get something useful out of that investment. I don't want to say that on the whole it's a bad investment. If we can be optimistic about the future, it's not hard to imagine that some kid in high school right now, some kid for whom we're spending thousands of dollars, will be the person who discovers a cure for cancer. In that case, I say money well spent. On the other hand, if we can be realistic, there's going to be the kid (who am I kidding, "the kid"--there's thousands of them) who, whether he drops out or graduates, will end up in prison or on welfare or use your imagination. In that case, I'm looking for a refund.
I guess it's kind of like a mutual fund--having a diversified portfolio. There might be a few bad options, a couple money-losers, in the bunch, but the idea is that there will be some bigger money-makers (getting you bigger returns on the investment) that will outweigh the negative and get you something positive in return. You know, end up in the black.
I would be interested to see a further break down of this. Anybody who is looking to do research in the field of education, here are some questions for you. How can we determine if our investments will be leaving us with a positive outcome? By what means do we calculate the return on our spendings? How many bad investments are we willing to put up with? How can we identify bad investments? Can we get a refund for an investment that fails to materialize? If a student fails a class, should he and/or his parents be responsible to compensate for the money poorly spent?
Let's see, $9000 per year, figure 7 classes both semesters for a total of 14--call it 15 for even division--that's $600 per class. A kid fails, dad writes a check. *sigh* Only in my happiest dreams. Of course that would also be assuming some degree of competence on the part of the teachers (can't go on...must...keep...tongue...in cheek) which we can't always assume.
Do you see where this is going? There are so many problems here it's less funny than Bill Maher, though to be fair he actually tries. Making students take standardized tests doesn't fix it. Having the government get off on withholding funds for under-performing schools doesn't fix it. Woo! It's all been done. And it hasn't helped. We need something drastic that will probably not sit well with a lot of people, whatever that solution may be.
posted by the jake at 9:48 AM
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