Education is the Key to Success
For the last 10-15 years or so, everything, including public health, has been politicized.
Not to miss the ‘political’ party, our children’s education is now in that arena as well.
But putting the politics of education aside for the moment, I think most of us would agree that education is the main factor in increasing the chances for success of individual kids, and for our continued success as a country.
Having agreement on that, let’s focus on why our K-12 system is failing. On a comparative scale, we spend enough money to be successful. Only Norway spends more than the average $12,600 per pupil we do. In an average classroom of 20 students, for example, we spend $252,000. The national average salary of K-12 teachers is $64,500. So, we spend an additional $187,500 per classroom in the example.
It would appear we’re spending enough overall, but where is that $187,000 per classroom going? Answer: other than the direct expenses books and materials and providing the room –– the rest is going to ‘administration.’
That brings us to what we can consider a major part of the problem. Our school districts are too big. Prior to the 1960’s school districts were much smaller – meaning there were a lot more of them. The theory behind the mergers of districts then and since was/is that those smaller districts would benefit from the consolidation of administrative expense. Paying one superintendent vs. two seemed to make economic sense, and so on.
But what’s happened as a result of mega school districts? Answer: Parents are further removed from the administration and have less influence and less participation in their child’s education. That’s a big factor in student’s academic success. On the other side of the coin, does a big school district result in economies of scale vs. smaller ones? It would appear not only has that not happened, but it may be even more expensive overall.
When expectations for local involvement are low or non-existent or even frowned upon, the system suffers. Parents feel powerless, and therefore so do the kids. That’s not a formula for educational excellence.
Successful communities have high levels of involvement and participation by its members. Bigger is not better. Successful anything, even companies that are huge organization are successful when they’re broken down to smaller pieces of responsibility and operation.
The larger the school district, the chances of a higher percentage of successful students goes down. The same is true for government, but that’s another blog. But big, failing school districts have resulted in the federal government entering the operations of our school districts, now representing close to 10% of the funding on average. The feds got into the picture to try to help fix and enhance the outcomes, the results. But frankly, it’s misguided – throwing good money after bad – and it’s the tail wagging the dog.
Most parents are trapped without a choice of an alternative to the public school system in their neighborhood or their larger community.
What that means is the big school district has no competition. Take it or leave it.
We know that the waiting lists for charter schools, when allowed, are long. Why? Because parents want an alternative to their child’s education situation, especially when performance and results are lackluster at best.
Do you know of a private school, a parochial school that failing? I don’t. And I also know most of our political leaders don’t send their kids to public schools. Why? Because unlike most parents they have the means for a better alternative – to access a better chance for their kid’s success. So why do they leave the big, public schools for the poorer proletariat to be uneducated?
Which brings me to the next problem – teachers’ unions. I have a problem with the concept of unions for public service employees to begin with. But teachers’ unions have grown with their districts.
The country’s two largest teachers’ unions — the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers — spent a combined $330 million in the past five years on outside causes, political campaigns, lobbying and issue education, the Wall Street Journal reports.
There is little if any political will to change the education system. It may not be working for your kids, but it is working for the politicos – particularly the Democrats where almost all of the teacher’s unions political contributions go. Bigger seemingly works for everyone except the kids. What’s wrong with this picture?
New York City has the largest school district in the country with over 995,000 students and 1800 schools. Los Angeles is 2nd with 667,000 students, then Chicago with 405,000. Can any one person effectively administrate those numbers?
Niche.com, is a private company that reviews and ranks schools and school districts. It ranks the best school district in the country as the Solon City School District in Solon, Ohio. With an overall Niche grade of A+, the district received a grade of A+ in academics, teachers, clubs and activities, college prep and health and safety. For diversity, Niche awarded the school district an A-. Solon is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. According to the 2010 census, the city population was at 23,348. The city has been recognized by Money in its list of “Best Places to Live” in the US. The school district has 2,500 students.
Solon, OH is referenced as an example of what smaller, public-school districts can accomplish. It can compete with private schools.
If we really want to address poverty in this country and give our kids the opportunity for academic, social and career success, let’s change the public education system.
We start by breaking it into smaller units – and allowing competition. It’s what works.
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Have a great and Prosperous week.
Hug somebody.
References:
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/teacher-pay-by-state
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/countrys-two-largest-teac_n_1672335
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/largest-school-districts-in-the-united-states.html
https://www.niche.com/k12/search/best-school-districts/
SPIDER Bites
The opening of the Winter Olympics was visually impressive Friday night using the entire field and stadium for a computer-generated, sensory spectacular.
The Budweiser Super Bowl ad featuring the Clydesdale and the dog apparently will be a tear-jerker. Dependent on where you want to sit at the game, ticket prices are between $5 & $6,000. A 30 second ad will cost $6.5M – up $1M from last year. The Rams are favored by 4.5 points over the Bengals with the o/u at 48 ½ in next Sunday’s game in LA.
The housing market in most of the country has been on upward tear through 2021, but there are signs that ‘cheap’ money is coming to an end even before the Fed raises rates. In January 30-year mortgage rates were up over half a percentage point.
After finally getting a solid monthly jobs report for January, total employment is still down 1.3 percent from pre-pandemic levels and the labor participation rate at 62.2 is 1.2 points behind a year ago.
The national debt hit the $30T mark last week. That’s up 8% the past year while our GDP was up 5.7% in 2021. Debt and inflation are winning. Anybody with their fingers on the purse strings concerned?
OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, and Russia have agreed to collectively increase oil production in March by 400,000 barrels/day. So, President Biden is getting part of his plea to oil producing countries to do more to offset his mandated curtailment of US production – in hopes of stopping the increased price of fuel used domestically – with commensurate inflation. Crude hit $91+ in the US on Friday. Oil production has implications, especially for Europeans, for the US-Russia conflict over Ukraine. Are we getting used to messes created by our government yet? But we’re showing our commitment to addressing the impact of burning fossil fuels on ‘climate change’ if we burn that produced by other countries and pay twice as much-plus for it. Makes perfect climate change sense.
US truckers are planning to emulate their Canadian counterparts with a cross-country convoy of trucks to protest lockdowns and mandatory COVID jabs – and extoll the ‘freedoms’ guaranteed by the Constitution. Last word is 130,000 truckers have signed on so far.
9.5 million cancer screenings were missed due to government mandates in dealing with COVID. Last Wednesday President Biden announced the creation of a White House Cancer Cabinet to coordinate a goal of cutting cancer deaths in half over the next 25 years. I wonder what the reduction in deaths would be without so-called government intervention. Every health research organization is already focused on finding a cure.
We’ve all learned the word ‘transgender’ – meaning a person born a specific gender but identifing with the other. In case you aren’t up to date, there’s also the word ‘nonbinary’ – meaning a person who doesn’t identify as either male or female. Neither gender fits them. How anybody knows that 1 in every 250 people are nonbinary beats me. And to quote a neighbor, they don’t know which bathroom to use.
President Biden paid a visit to ‘out of crime control NYC’ last week and called for more social workers, crackdowns on ‘rogue’ gun dealers, and more background checks as solutions. He didn’t call for law enforcement or legal consequences for criminals.
