1. Table of the Day I
. . .
During the 34-year period between 1980-2014, the number of public school students increased by 22.6% (and by 9.25 million). Over the same period, total staff headcount increased by 50.1% (and by 2.1 million), led by an 88.1% increase in school district administrative staff and followed by a 54.1% increase in instructional staff which included a 63.1% increase in school principals and assistant principals. The total expenditures for America’s public schools more than doubled between 1980 and 2014, from less than $300 billion 1980 to more than $600 billion in 2014 (both in 2015 dollars). On a per-student basis, the cost to educate a student in US public schools increased by more than 75.5%, from $7,204 in 1980 to $12,642 in 2014. Meanwhile, reading and math test scores for 17-year old public school students have been basically flat since the 1970s.
As my AEI colleague Andrew Biggs commented on Facebook about the table above: “If you think more resources will solve our educational problems….”
Friday afternoon links
Also see “Public School Is Often The Most Destructive Institution In American Life”
Tags: cost of public schools, Home school, Home schooling, Ozymandias, public school, public schools, Statolatry, teacher unions
Posted 2017/02/11, 7:07 am
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Comments Off on Public School is a BARGAIN!
I’ve seen a new attack from liberals on social media in the last few weeks as they try to paint Republicans and school choice advocates as being horrible, angry elitists who want to take funding away from students. This is mostly centered around Betsy DeVos, President Trump’s secretary of education.
All of a sudden, liberals who want the choice to end a human life want to vilify parents who want a choice in which type of institution best suits their child’s educational needs.
Whether DeVos is qualified to become the education secretary will continue to be heavily debated on social media. But for anti-school choice advocates, I’d like to share a story with you about my children.
As the mother of 16- and 9-year-old boys, I’m very familiar with the public education system. I grew up attending public school during a time when bullying was common but rarely discussed. When my oldest child attended school, it seemed it had progressed to a new stage that shocked even me. Bullying progressed with the help of technology and, as I wrote in 2014 for the Good Men Project, is so easily captured on cell phones and shared immediately that it stays with our children for their entire lives.
. . .
Parents know what is best for their children, and they deserve a choice. Whether that’s a charter school, a private school, home schooling or public education. Vilifying parents who want to make their own choices for their children is absurd. The real problem is telling parents they must allow their children to be placed in bad situations at a public school because someone else thinks that’s what is best for everyone.
But don’t tell a liberal that “choice” is a good thing unless it’s the “choice” to end the life of an unborn child.
One reason we need school choice you never hear about: Bullying
Also see “Public School Is Often The Most Destructive Institution In American Life”
Statolatry, Ozymandias
Tags: Clerisy, cost of public schools, Home school, Home schooling, homeschool, Ozymandias, public school, public schools, Statolatry
Posted 2017/02/10, 7:07 am
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Comments Off on School and Bullying
There’s something perverse about an ideology that views the disposing of a child in the third trimester of pregnancy as an indisputable right but the desire of parents to choose a school for their kids as “zealotry.” Watching Donald Trump’s pick for education secretary, Betsy DeVos, answer an array of frivolous questions was just another reminder of this warped worldview.
Many liberals, for instance, tell us that racism is one of the most pressing problems in America. And yet few things have hurt African Americans more over the past 40 years than the inner-city public school system. If President Obama is correct, and educational attainment is the key to breaking out of a lower economic strata, then no institution is driving inequality quite as effectively as public schools.
Actually, teachers unions are the only organizations in America that openly support segregated schools. In districts across the country — even ones in cities with some form of limited movement for kids — poor parents, most typically black or Hispanic, are forced to enroll their kids in underperforming schools when there are good ones nearby, sometimes just blocks away.
Public School Is Often The Most Destructive Institution In American Life
The economic interests attached to the Democratic party are fairly easy to identify: people who work for government at all levels. You may come across the occasional Ron Swanson in the wild, but when it comes to the teachers’ unions — which are the biggest spender in U.S. politics — or the AFSCME gang or the vast majority of people receiving a taxpayer-funded paycheck, the politics of the public sector is almost exclusively Democratic. And what they care about isn’t social justice or inequality or diversity or peace or whether little Johnny can use the ladies’ room if his heart tells him to — they care about getting paid.
What Is the Democratic Party?
Statolatry
Tags: cost of public schools, Home school, Home schooling, public school, public schools, Statolatry
Posted 2017/02/08, 7:07 am
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Category:
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Clerisy,
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