Get the picture? The public-private school costs brouhaha is a false argument because public schools are legally required to do so much more than the vast majority of private schools. But let's not stop there! How do our educational costs stack up to other nations? Is our educational system really bankrupting our federal and state governments? No.
Examining the cost of education as a percentage of our GDP, we're thirty-seventh on the list. Not the top. Not even in the top ten. Thirty-seventh. Here's a more graphical view of how much we're spending as compared to other countries. This should make it glaringly obvious that the cost of education skyrocketed not only in America, but around the entire world.
It all boils down to this: When all the factors are examined, it is obvious that America taxpayers are not spending too much on our kids' education. Yes, there will always be some waste, just as there is in any institution that contains human beings, but it is not wise to throw out the baby with the bath water.
While spending too much money on education will never be a guarantee of a quality education on a national scale, spending too little is a virtual guarantee of an educational handicapping of our youth before they ever enter the workforce.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Clavos
Unfortunately, your otherwise well-written article misses the principal point about the increase in education costs, Glenn. The quality of America's educational system has not only not increased to a degree commensurate with the increase in costs, it has actually decreased significantly over the past five decades.
Also, your comparison of education expenditure against GDP is fallacious. It ignores the fact that the USA's GDP is so much larger than all but a very few other countries' GDPs, it's neither unusual nor worrisome that we would spend a smaller proportion of our GDP on education than say, Cuba or Lesotho.
2 - jamminsue
When mandates such as NCLB are imposed without funding, then of course someting has to give. "Teaching to the test" has lowered the quality of education. Class material had to be "dumbed down." Why? To be sure the students passed. Why aren't the students studying? When both parents work, sometimes each with two jobs, leaving kids to thier own devices. Hence, the TV or computer games or whatever. Do these kinds of entertainment ever make the person who studies a hero or respected? Consider the number of individuals who have to take preparatory classes in English and Math before being allowed into the University system. Further, I have seen studies where kids from France and England have come over and taken the US tests (the French had to do it in English) they were shocked at how easy the tests were.
3 - Glenn Contrarian
Clavos -
Your method of looking at the costs alone without looking at the reasons behind it works VERY well when it comes to health care, since we spend nearly twice as much per capita as any other nation yet we're something like 37th on the life expectancy list.
But such does NOT work with education, since we not only do not spend more than any other nation per capita, but we're something like ninth on the list. I'm in a hurry right now but you can look it up on nationmaster.com.
And concerning the percentage of our GDP, I might be wrong, but I think we spend a greater proportion of our GDP on defense than on education. If that is so, I think you should sharpen your knives for the military-industrial complex LONG before you should attack our all-important education system.
And besides, the ONE statistic you attack is not the only point I bring out in the article, is it? Yet again, you refuse to address the reasons WHY the cost has tripled. You refuse to identify exactly where it is that the money is wasted, but instead are repeating the same simplistic and logically-flawed claim.
4 - Glenn Contrarian
And Clavos -
While you have every right to stand up and say that we're wasting SO much taxes in education while refusing to identify exactly where the taxes are wasted, it puts you in a rather bad light by making you seem intellectually dishonest in that you're claiming there's a huge amount of wasted funding while refusing to even attempt to identify exactly where the funding is being wasted!
I gave the Texas school system as an example. Texas governor Rick Perry wants to slash education funding by something like $5B, yet is he identifying where the taxpayer dollars are being wasted? No.
So why don't you go back to the list of cost percentages that I provided and show us where you think the billions of dollars are being wasted? Would you at least do that?
5 - Glenn Contrarian
jamminsue -
It's the same old story - America rested on her laurels after spending a few decades being Number One, and now we're shocked that the rest of the world is catching up, and that quite a few nations have passed us by.
6 - Tommy Mack
I must agree with Clavos on this one, Glenn. It's a cost-benefit thing. Old things can be polished to a new lustre but it only changes the patina.
Tommy
7 - Glenn Contrarian
Then identify where the money's being wasted, Tommy - that's all I ask.
See, that's the problem with Clavos - he's claiming the money's being wasted based only upon the results, and that slashing the funding will somehow fix our education system.
I give you the same challenge I gave Clavos - look at the lists of cost percentages and tell me where the money's being wasted.
And while you're at it, bear in mind the MANY things our schools have to deal with now that they didn't have to deal with forty years ago - little things like computers and networks, buses that are FAR more expensive than before, buildings that are more expensive, and I don't know if you remember, but forty years ago, schools didn't take kids who were severely disabled - but they do now, just like the two medically-fragile kids I have downstairs as I type this.
Tommy, Clavos' approach is too simplistic by far - you've GOT to look at the whole picture, at how our schools and our society has changed so much, and not just at total budget versus results.
Throwing money at schools doesn't ensure they'll provide quality educations. Slashing their funding not only does NOT solve any problems, but also virtually ensures that the quality of the education provided will take a nosedive - ask the 25% of ALL teachers in Texas who are having to moonlight to be able to make a living, instead of being able to concentrate on little things after hours like grading tests and homework and all the other things that teachers normally do.
8 - Cannonshop
#7 Okay, Glenn, I'll point out a couple places it's wasted:
Administration costs, and remember that you're playing with GROSS numbers-so, what percentage of the budget of, say, the Dept. of Education (Federal) actually reaches...schools at the TEACHING end?
and what's the slice of Education Dollars such agencies absorb before one dim dime hits the customers (that's the student end, or teacher end.)
The real question isn't "More or less" but HOW the money's being spent.
The second one only fringes a tiny bit on the usual 'blame the unions' thing. Unions in and of themselves aren't a bad thing-but when Management and Unions are the same people, they ARE a bad thing-it's a conflict of interest created that serves, in the end, only the Leaders of the Union.
NEA has that kind of relationship in many states. Again,it isn't the money, per-se, it's how it is being spent. When my family moved here to Washington in 1986, this state was third highest in spending on K-12 education, and 47th or so in ranking in terms of quality of that education. About five or six years ago, the proportions started evening out-the rough dollars spent started getting closer to the actual quality of the product-it's the quality of the product that we need to be examining here, and that comes down to HOW the money's being spent...or misspent.
9 - Dr Dreadful
Cannon, only your first point addresses a specific instance of waste, and that vaguely.
I'll agree that having a federal department of education at all is somewhat superfluous, as constitutionally the responsibility for educating their young rests with the states. There's a very strong limit on what the feds can actually do.
Your second point is just "it's the unions", but doesn't explain what exactly it is the unions are doing that's wasteful. As Glenn has been complaining about of Clavos, your answer focuses on the supposed results rather than the details.
10 - Clavos
you're claiming there's a huge amount of wasted funding while refusing to even attempt to identify exactly where the funding is being wasted!
Glenn, I'm a taxpayer; I don't work for the government, it works for me (or is supposed to). That there is waste in the educational system is obvious by the fact that the students (many, if not most of them) are not getting educated. Colleges are having to set up remedial courses in reading and writing for incoming freshmen, and our nation scores very poorly academically against other developed nations.
Since the kids aren't getting a proper education, maybe we should look at...oh, I don't know...maybe how we're "teaching" them?
In any case, it's not my responsibility to ferret out the waste and correct things, that's what all those overpaid bozos in the DOE should be doing.
11 - Glenn Contrarian
Clavos -
As always, y'all conservatives just hate paying attention to the details, as if the word "why" is of absolutely no meaning to you.
I've pointed out many times how many things the schools are required to have and required to do that they were not required to have and do forty years ago. All these things cost MONEY.
Furthermore, schools cost MONEY. Has the cost of real estate merely kept pace with inflation? Or has it exceeded it? Has the cost of construction (including all modern construction requirements) kept pace with or exceeded the pace of inflation?
BUT YOU KNOW WHAT, CLAVOS? If we were to go in and get rid of everything in today's schools (including staffing) that they didn't have in 1970, they'd probably cost just as little as they did then! But then, when was the last time you spent much time in a modern school? Do you really understand how much they have changed, and what challenges they face that they did NOT face forty years ago? It is an indisputable FACT that schools are required to be and do much more today than they did forty years ago, but you're pretending that this shouldn't have any effect on how much K-12 education costs! Clavos, when it comes to this particular argument, you're living in fantasyland!
12 - Cannonshop
#9 I was trying to be more 'nuanced', I think is the term on the Union side of the issue.
I guess I'm not being clear...
Okay, when you have Unions, it's best that they are in opposition to the management-the compromises thus achieved tend to benefit both the membership, and the customers (and often the employer as well). When the Union is ALSO the management, there's a problem-and it's not so much the fault of the membership, as it is the system that allows Union Officials to also be part of the management structure (whether directly, or indirectly.)
American education is saddled with seniority rules, merit pay is blocked, and it's nearly impossible to fire a bad teacher and make it stick. This creates a situation wherein the ones who will hang on, regardless of skill, or commitment to the profession, end up being the highest paid, and are immune to firing-a teacher practically has to sleep with students (and even then, in at least one prominent case, it wasn't enough to make the firing stick!) to lose their job.
Lawyers and Doctors carry malpractice insurance, because they can lose their license to practice if they violate the ethical rules of their professions, or do a crap job of DOING their professions.
Teachers don't face this. A teacher can be compleatly incompetent, teach that the world is on the back of a turtle and that 1+1=Blue, and they're immune. Does that make sense to you? a Doctor might kill one patient, and ruin that person's family's life, or ruin someone's life with a bad call, but Teachers influence the lives of thousands of students, many of them simultaneously, a bad one can damage a decent proportion of the community for generations.
In school systems, Unions and Management both work frantically to block any effort to measure the effectiveness of their teachers-doesn't that strike you a little odd for professionals we're supposed to trust our futures to? (and don't think it's not trusting your future to these people-it's your kids who decide what kind of home you'll end up in when you get to be that old...your kids, and their peers. something to think about.)
It's not entirely the Unions fault-parents have a big chunk of this too-but who educated the parents? I have a Niece who graduated high school, she can barely multiply two-digit numbers without assistance, can't divide fractions, can read at what used to be about a sixth grade level...but she graduated, because she knows the right causes to support, did her 90 hours of school-approved community service, and got a break on the standardized tests because of a lawsuit that claimed they were unfair.
A suit partially sponsored, by the Teacher's Union.
13 - Clavos
It is an indisputable FACT that schools are required to be and do much more today than they did forty years ago, but you're pretending that this shouldn't have any effect on how much K-12 education costs!
[Sigh.]
No, Glenn, I'm questioning the cost of the ineffective education system we have.
Not how much it costs, Glenn, but the fact that it isn't educating the kids.
14 - Glenn Contrarian
Cannonshop -
Hey! A detail! Not much of one, and certainly not enough to come close to answering my challenge to show me where all that money's being wasted, but at least you tried - which is more than can be said for anyone else so far.
As I stated in the article, I've agreed with conservatives for many years that it's wrong that school districts have such difficulty in firing teachers who are incompetent.
But think about this: look at every thing you wrote in comment #10, and would that alone account for a tripling of the cost of education? Would it really? No - not even close. It wouldn't account for much of it at all, since American teachers are famously underpaid when compared to teachers in other first-world nations. Sure, teachers who have tenure eventually get paid well...but shouldn't that be the case in any field where the minimum education to get hired is usually a master's degree?
So I send you back to the blackboard, chalk in hand, with the same challenge I've given Clavos and Tommy Mack - show me where the money's being wasted! Show me how it is that when the challenges faced by schools have changed so radically, when they're required by law - and by common sense - to teach and provide things that were never taught or provided in 1970, our education departments are supposed to somehow do the job for the same amount of money that they were budgeted forty years ago!
And Cannonshop - you can't say it's because of the teachers' salaries (and therefore the union) when 25% of ALL teachers in Texas have to get second jobs to support themselves!
15 - Glenn Contrarian
Clavos #13 -
Changing your argument, hm? First, you were saying that we need to slash the education budgets since the education hasn't kept up with the costs...
...and now you're saying that it's not how much it costs, but how effective it isn't! So if the issue now isn't how much it costs, then why are you insisting that the budgets must be slashed as if that's going to somehow fix our educational system?
And yet again, you REFUSE to show where you think the money's being wasted. You decry the fact that we're having to spend so much money, but you refuse to show where it's being wasted.
And NO argument you bring up will be effective so long as you continue to refuse to show where the money's being wasted, Clavos.
16 - Clavos
So if the issue now isn't how much it costs, then why are you insisting that the budgets must be slashed as if that's going to somehow fix our educational system?
Because (and I realize this is an alien idea to Democrats) I hate see the people's money wasted. To the DOE I say, either stop wasting our money and fix the damn system!
And yet again, you REFUSE to show where you think the money's being wasted.
Yep. And I'll continue to do so. It's my money that is being wasted, and I am under no obligation (despite your mistaken assertions to the contrary) to do the job of those yahoos in DOE and in the educational system. They screwed it up. It's enough that it's plainly ineffective and wasteful, and it's enough that taxpayers say "fix it." It's the job of those who screwed it up (and their bosses, Congress and the WH) to identify the problem and correct it.
17 - Cannonshop
#14 Glenn, I guess most of my ranting goes past you. Teaching should be a Profession, like Lawyering, or Doctoring, or engineering, savvy? Means teachers on the sharp end (that is, with students) should definitely be paid more than a fixed wage for their work.
in particular, if they do it WELL. The problem is, the system as it currently exists is geared toward a less-quality-based model, more 'quantity' than 'Quality'-but that goes all the way from the courses required to GET that teaching certificate, to the quality of applicants, to the manner in which personnel are handled in the schools.
and in how the schools themselves are run-a lobotomized monkey with a pencil can usually score on multiple-guess testing, and that's testing that has become "THE" standard at all grade levels. When we were in school, the tests were usually essay questions and 'show your work', remember that?
They don't do that anymore outside of 'advanced placement' classes.
it's not the money, it's how it's being spent-Bush's idiotic "No Child Left Behind" project just underscores the real problem-the idea was a set of standardized tests to measure learning, but the easy (Lazy man) way of going about it from the teacher's desk, is to teach the test, not the class.
When most "Educators" are culled from the bottom 20% of College applicants, it shouldn't be a surprise that application does not follow intent.
Many of these people don't have the education YOU did coming out of a Georgia High School in the Seventies.
TEACHERS, not Administration staff, coordinators, counselors, or DARE officers, should be paid WELL above what they're getting now-but they should be also held to a much, much, higher standard than they currently are.
18 - Glenn Contrarian
Cannonshop -
I agree wholeheartedly with the first half of your comment #17 - you won't hear me say much different. But you actually touched on the biggest problem - our 'educators' come from the bottom 20% of college applicants.
And why is that? Ask yourself this - which would you rather do? Spend two years becoming an RN and make $25 an hour starting pay? Or spend six years getting your master's degree in order to teach, and still have to get a second job in order to make ends meet?
THAT is why we've got poor educators - we're refusing to pay them what good educators are worth! While holding the teachers we do have to higher standards will help somewhat, we will STILL get only the bottom 20% - and what are your fellow conservatives wanting to do? Cut the education budgets even more!
Garbage in, garbage out - and it doesn't matter what standard you hold the garbage to, it's still garbage. You get what you pay for.
19 - Glenn Contrarian
Clavos -
To summarize the argument between you and me:
Clavos - "We're wasting money on the educational system"
Glenn - "Show me where the waste is"
Clavos - "No. I don't have to. We're wasting money on the educational system"
Glenn - "Okay. Show me where the waste is"
Clavos - "No. I don't have to. We're wasting money on the educational system"
Glenn - "Okay. Show me where the waste is"
Clavos - "No. I don't have to. We're wasting money on the educational system"
Glenn - "Okay. Show me where the waste is"
ad infinitum, ad nauseum
When you've got the intestinal fortitude to show me where the waste is, then come talk to me. Otherwise, just keep talking into the echo chamber that prevents you from hearing anything that might somehow threaten your worldview.
20 - Clavos
Otherwise, just keep talking into the echo chamber that prevents you from hearing anything that might somehow threaten your worldview
Obviously, spending enormous amounts of money and obtaining nothing more than babysitting services for your money isn't a waste to you, Glenn. And apparently you're either not sending your children to government schools (a VERY smart move) or you don't care whether or not they get educated, because all the evidence points to they aren't getting educated; not in the government schools.
Oh, and thanks for the endorsement.
21 - zingzing
clavos, you say it's just a babysitting service. is that what you really think? or is that rhetoric?
how is it that many kids have escaped public schools with an education if that's true? yes, a significant portion of america's children score low on tests, but they're in classes with 30 other kids, some of which score quite high.
i know i've made the point before, and maybe you don't believe it, but what if--just hang with me here--what if the parents who bitch about their kid's schooling actually gave a shit beyond the bitching?
22 - Cannonshop
#18 That two-year degree RN is held to objective standards, Glenn. The pay isn't where most of the waste is anyway-I think even Clavos would agree with me on that, it's not the pay that needs cutting, if anything, individual teacher salaries should increase...
It's the overhead. It's using the schools as a babysitting service that usurps the role of Parents (albeit often with the collusion and agreement OF the parents), it's the administrative overhead, the excess non-teacher staff, the assistant-principal to the assistant principals, the non-education crap added to a school year, and it's the ass-covering by district management and superintendents that gobbles up a disproportionate amount of limited resources that is the issue, the bit that needs cutting out.
It IS a thorny, complicated problem, but ask yourself:
Why do Politicians who take NEA money send their kids to Private, non-union schools?
Because they love their children, and want them to succeed, and that is far less likely in public schools run by the government.
23 - zingzing
beyond parents, it's up to the student as well. i know one family that raised two children. one became a social extrovert that now attends a fine school in massachusetts. another, even though parented the same, became painfully introverted and a lax student. he's barely scraped through to this point, but seems to be coming out of his shell and has been accepted at a state college. scored horribly on the SAT. it was his essays that got him in. he's an incredibly bright kid when you leave him alone and let him work.
were they judging kids based on standardized tests back when america's education system was "the best in the world?"
24 - Tommy Mack
Where is the cost-benefit? Since the Reagan administration, schools have been infrastructure considerations. Content and quality didn’t generate money.
The lives that tossed aside so that single parents could put their children on Ritalin while school boards broke ground verges on being criminal.
Tommy
25 - S.T..M
I've always believed the US education system should actually educate kids, rather than feed them propaganda.
One if the things almost all non-Americans notice about Americans is that they have tend to have a world view focused solely on the US, and not much of one at that.
The study of modern history and geography and global politicas, which you might think are obvious places to start, lack hugely in the American curriculum.
The classic example is that US schools are still teaching that the US won the War of 1812 (in so many words, even describing it as the second war of independence, which it wasn't - it was a grab for Canada that failed spectacularly), when almost all modern historians - including the foremost US historian on that era - says the opposite.
I once read a text used in American schools about WWII that almost failed to mention except in passing the sacrifice of any other allied nation among the victors. Had you read it and not known, you'd have thought this was a singular achievement of the US.
And that's the problem: thanks largely to an education that lacks dreadfully, many Americans simply don't know.
And education system that breeds ignorance is no education system at all.