[macintologist]

http://tinyurl.com/2yu7x

That was an interesting concept. Just take 1/8th of the Pentagon's budgets and reallocate it to schools. Very interesting. What do you think?

[nonhuman]

I think it's fairly obvious that if we're going to increase funding to education the money's going to have to be taken from military funding, since that's where most of the money goes currently. Unfortunately, I also think that the government will never choose education over the military, and a lot of Americans probably agree with that policy.

Better education is so completely necessesary to improving the quality of life of the people, but for some reason no one in power seems willing to acknowledge that. They just see education as a tremendous sinkhole that you put a lot of money into and no money comes [directly] out off. I wonder if it would be possible to do things the way Costa Rica does. Completely scrap the military and instead focus on the economy so that we can use economic muscle to protect ourselves. That would free up all the money we could ever want for education and still probably leave us with billions left over. Sadly, the military is probably far too firmly entrenched in bot the American government and American culture that it's unlikely to ever happen.

[SimeyTheLimey]

Why not cut out the wasteful crap and concentrate on the essentials? I'd start by firing all the full time coaches in high schools. School sports programs are a colossal waste of resources, particularly when they are on the scale of many US high schools. As someone who did not go to high school in this country, I'm amazed at the facilities ever time I visit an American school. If money produces a good education, then we ought to have the best in the world because we certainly seem to dump the most money into it.

The second thing I would do in the US is restructure the school year. If you shortened the summer, kids wouldn't have to relearn so much in the fall. More frequent but shorter breaks makes more sense than one long one in the summer. My schools in England had a 6 week summer break. That's much more sensible than the long American summer break.

I've read that schools have also managed to improve performance by starting the school day later in high school. Teenagers do not perform well at 7:30 in the morning.

I'd also ditch most after school activities and clubs. I know universities love them, but they are a diversion from what matters and pretty much a waste of money. You can join clubs in college.

Finally, I'd arm the teachers to restore the balance of power a bit.

[macintologist]

No, just fire the football coaches. Football is an utter waste to kids, giving them false impressions and promises. Track, basketball and other sports are cool.

[nonhuman]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
[Lots of good stuff said by Simey.

I agree, public schools in the US (privates can do whatever they want, I don't care) spend way too much money on sports. Especially compared to other programs that are at least as valid as sports such as music and drama. I'm sure this is just my bias shining through, but I would love to see more money devoted to music programs in schools and think music and drama should have a higher priority than sports. Education should defnitely come first, however, at the expense of all else, if necessary. Unfortunately, doing away with, or even just scaling back, sports in public schools is never going to go through. It would tip the balace and ensure that only the students who could afford to go to private schools were able to succeed in sports. Many people believe (wrongly in my opinion) that sports are the only way the disadvanted and particularly minority students can succeed, and such a move would be viewed as racism/classism regardless of the fact that it would, I think, actually be much better for those selfsame disadvantaged and minority students.

Your break idea is a good one. The students would complain to no end about a shortened summer break, but you're right, I certainly did forget a lot of stuff over the summer which just slowed down my education. More shorter breaks would definitely be a good thing, as would starting later in the day.

Your point about after school activities and clubs is an interesting one. As I said before, I definitely think that music and drama have a place in schools, though not at the expense of learning. The other activies (even sports) also have their value and I think are an important part of preparing students to face post-school life (not to mention being one of the factors that gets kids to actually want to go to school). Perhaps both could be accomodated by saying money for education is strictly for education, but maybe setting aside other money for other things. Or saying that money can be spent on non-academic programs only after a certain amount has been spent on academics. Or, just removing them from schools and leaving it up to the communities to provide these things separately as other people like myself would almost definitely step forward to create these programs.

Also, high school should not be so dedicated to sending students to college. While college is a good thing and the right thing for many students, some people just aren't going to go to college, and trade courses should be offered for those people as well as for others who maybe are just interested in the particular trade (I would have loved to take shop classes or auto-repair classes in high school, but they just weren't available).

[davesimondotcom]

Originally posted by macintologist:
No, just fire the football coaches. Football is an utter waste to kids, giving them false impressions and promises. Track, basketball and other sports are cool.

Football isn't a waste - it teaches kids discipline, working as a team for a common goal, competitiveness, and many other things.

Soccer, that's the waste.

[BlackGriffen]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
Why not cut out the wasteful crap and concentrate on the essentials? I'd start by firing all the full time coaches in high schools. School sports programs are a colossal waste of resources, particularly when they are on the scale of many US high schools. As someone who did not go to high school in this country, I'm amazed at the facilities ever time I visit an American school. If money produces a good education, then we ought to have the best in the world because we certainly seem to dump the most money into it.

The second thing I would do in the US is restructure the school year. If you shortened the summer, kids wouldn't have to relearn so much in the fall. More frequent but shorter breaks makes more sense than one long one in the summer. My schools in England had a 6 week summer break. That's much more sensible than the long American summer break.

I've read that schools have also managed to improve performance by starting the school day later in high school. Teenagers do not perform well at 7:30 in the morning.

I'd also ditch most after school activities and clubs. I know universities love them, but they are a diversion from what matters and pretty much a waste of money. You can join clubs in college.

Finally, I'd arm the teachers to restore the balance of power a bit.

Overall, great post Simey.

I would like to add, though, that having some sort of PE can be beneficial when the kids are younger. By the time they hit high school, it's pretty useless. Mostly, I'm just thinking in terms of getting the kids into good health habits (exercise, eating well, discipline, etc). That should be grade school, though, and not high school. I also agree, though, that something like this should be done inexpensively.

I'm also dubious about that last point...

BlackGriffen

[Millennium]

The school system does not need more money allocated to it. The US already spends more money per student than any other nation in the world. This is a fact.

That doesn't mean there are no problems. We all know that the US public education system is a joke compared not only to most of its private schools, but the public school systems of many other nations. All of these schools -except maybe the most elite private schools, which comprise far less than 1% of the total- have far less money, and yet they all seem to do so much more.

The question is: if the problems are not for a lack of funding -which they cannot be, given the financial situation- then what is causing them? I don't claim to know this. That's why I think that the first thing we need to do before we can ever hope to solve the educational crisis is to find out what is causing it. We're blaming a money shortage when it can be easily shown that this money shortage should not be there, given the money that's going in. There may be only one cause, or there may be more than one. But regardless, a lack of funding cannot logically be a cause here.

Now, it is entirely possible that the money going into the schools is being grossly misspent. I don't think that there is only one cause for the educational crisis, but I do suspect that this may be one of the causes. I have seen brand-new schools opening for their first year, with wonderful architectural fluff but not enough textbooks. We need to find out exactly where every dollar being spent in our school systems is going, and judge it all by exactly two standards: Does it help the students to learn, or does it help the teachers to teach? Anything that can't get a 'yes' on either of these questions needs to be seriously rethought.

But frankly, while I think something like this would relieve the funding problems that many teachers complain about (and I do not think the teachers are to blame for this one; clearly the money being spent is not getting to them for some reason), I don't think this will solve the larger crisis. We could allocate 12% or 100% of the Pentagon's budget to education, and it probably would not fix much.

Even if money is the problem, there is more at work than that. This, too, must be found, and steps must be taken to correct it. The first thing we have to do, however, is find it.

[Meneldil]

I had a rather interesting high school career, in that I attended four different high schools (not counting my year in China) without ever moving.

The first was a small rural school, drawing students from 5 small towns, with each year having about 70-80 kids.

The second, which I began attending in eight grade and continued until 11th grade, was a magnet school in Des Moines. It had two major programs - Central Academy, a place to concentrate the 'most talented' students into an accelerated learning program geared towards AP classes and eventual college entrance; and Central Campus, which offered a large number of vocational and other classes too low demand to be offered by any one high school. The classes included Marine Biology, Veterinary Tech, Fashion Design, Radio Broadcasting, and many others.

The third was North High, one of Des Moines 5 high schools, and regarded as one of the worst. To the extent that Des Moines has an inner city, North is in it. I transferred here from the rural high school in tenth grade because it was the closest to my hometown and administrative difficulties made it necessary to transfer into the Des Moines school district. I took one class here in tenth grade.

The fourth was Roosevelt, another of Des Moines 5 high schools and probably the best in terms of student achievment and class sizes. I took AP Calculus here in 11th grade due to scheduling conflicts at Central Academy.

I think this weird list of schools gave me a chance to see where a lot of problems come from, and some ways to fix them. Iowa has some of the best schools in the country overall (according to testing), but some still have problems. The largest in my opinion is distribution of local tax revenue - open enrollment plans and relative prices of housing in different neighborhoods lead to large disparities in revenue for schools. People move to be closer to the better schools, and even if they don't move seek approval to transfer in. This siphons money granted per student away from the poorer schools, increasing the problem. Added to the fact poorer neighborhoods produce less property tax revenue, the schools percieved as worse lose money over time.

I think that one major reason for this problem is the practice of funding schools with property taxes - their primary source of income depends on the value of properties located nearby. This essentially guarantees families with more money will have access to schools with more money. This is a recognized problem with schools in Des Moines, and something they try to address, but now instead of Roosevelt being the best school in the metro area, Valley, in a western suburb, is regarded as the better school. As families who can afford it move out to developing suburbs, these schools gain more money while the property values in the city slowly decline. The Des Moines school district can reallocate money to North from Roosevelt if it can get the plan past parents, but eventually, the suburban schools will rise higher and Roosevelt will probably suffer the same fate if funding continues to be done in this manner.

Secondly, I think that Central is an excellent model for larger districts to follow. Central Campus allows classes with less demand to be offered by drawing from a larger pool of students, allowing other schools to spend money on the basics. Central Academy is more controversial since it draws the brightest (as measured by GPA and ITBS scores) students away from the other schools, but it offers the same benefits: a larger variety of classes, and an accelerated track for high achieving students that individual schools could probably not afford to maintain.

One thing about the rural high school that I feel I should mention - in most ways we were a typical small town school, but we had an obscene computer budget. This was related to a Department of Energy program called Adventures in Supercomputing and another grant program I forget the name of. We drew on this money because of an interest by students and the computer science teacher. I've always felt this was a good model for federal money; schools with a teacher or students who show interest in using money for a goal can be targeted, allowing students access to things they wouldn't otherwise have. The lab hardware we recieved would have been wasted without a good computer science teacher to make use of it, and I think that's something important to think about. Not every school needs a computer per student, especially if districts are close enough together to give students a choice between, for instance, a school oriented towards music and art or a school that focuses on math and science.

I'm also a big proponent of giving schools more money, as long as said money is being watched carefully. The rural high school I attended laid a new football field with full lights the same year we all bought a ream of paper for the computer lab. That should be reported and raise an alarm that said school needs to be looked at by the federal funding agency in charge of throwing money. I also think a set amount per student should be extracted by the state from the property tax revenue, then redistributed evenly so that all schools start with an even amount for basic academics. The rest of the property tax revenue could be spent on the extras - music, sports, drama, etc. by the wealthier districts, while poorer schools could afford reasonable class sizes and enough textbooks.

Okay, finished. Sorry about the length, but this is something I feel is extremely important to fix, and soon, because the problem is getting worse.

[chabig]

if we're going to increase funding to education the money's going to have to be taken from military funding, since that's where most of the money goes currently.

This is flat wrong. According to the government, defense spending is just 16% of the federal budget.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget...html#Chart_2_7

But aside from that, I thought the Ben Cohen animation was unclear (lied?) about how much we already spend on K-12 education. I think he said it was 3.5 cookies. But what wasn't said was that this was just federal dollars. Our federal government has no responsibility for education at all (it's not in the constitution.) Education has always been a local responsibility. And if you add up the local dollars spend on education I am sure it is much more than 3.5 cookies.

Chris

[swrate]

if its the same as here:

Lots of he system is reformed, -each time new people are elected-, to please the voter parents. Books, methods change, loads is put into research, promises are made, stress for results is put on teachers. Then a few years after the new system is in function, it is dropped or rechanged, ----thats where the money goes. (not paper and pencils)

yes, US has a well developed sport program I often hear the critic about Europe not doing enough for athletes.

Most civilizations acknowledged a healthy mind and body.
The Greeks, the Romans,
J.J Rousseau spread that concept widely in modern education.
Before children can choose branches, its good they have a fair amount of education in all basic fields: perceptions, intellectual, social, physical artistic.

Then, well different places different systems.(economy, job market)

The army is also “sport” orientated and in many countries an obligation for men. In Switzerland it still is.

With a lower budget, US would not be so good in many athletic fields: race track, NBA sport sponsoring salaries ……..
Look at the market of basket shoes: they think its worth it.
imported jobs ,,, benefits
Is that the other word for exploitation of cheap main d’oeuvre.

If there is one place I would try and make economies, it would be defence, weapons and not education.
I would not leave the future generations tons of weapons as spiritual luggage. (I would also try and reduce the debt, and catch lots of head aches)


The evaluation teacher/time, I think the time one spends to prepare the day depends on the intensity and energy one needs to “feed” the others minds. If Interested in the subject one teaches, the preparation/matter is new all the time.
It’s 100% presence, and nervously exhausting for both students and teachers.
In European nations I doubt the average summer holiday is over 8 weeks. (+in warm –in cool)

What is the yearly average holidays of high school students?
How do other countries manage with holidays? Does Australia have more around Christmas in the summer, what about China, India and so on...

Here it is around 13 weeks holidays a year, depends.
There has been discussions in the education middles since over a decade about alternating 7 weeks school with 2 weeks off, but, because of religious celebrations (Christmas i.e.) its difficult to apply. I don’t know if Canada, actually tried that system.
Schools = families, its difficult to impose 3 weeks holidays to everyone on the same time (economy, travel).


Often politicians are theoricians and new problems arise with new methods especially when short sighted.

[nonhuman]

Originally posted by chabig:
This is flat wrong. According to the government, defense spending is just 16% of the federal budget.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget...html#Chart_2_7

The only single thing that gets more money is social security. And there's no money to spare there.

But aside from that, I thought the Ben Cohen animation was unclear (lied?) about how much we already spend on K-12 education. I think he said it was 3.5 cookies. But what wasn't said was that this was just federal dollars. Our federal government has no responsibility for education at all (it's not in the constitution.) Education has always been a local responsibility. And if you add up the local dollars spend on education I am sure it is much more than 3.5 cookies.

Chris

That, I think, is one of the problems. If education were a federal responsibility it would be a lot easier to ensure equality between school districts. If everyone's taxes for education went to the federal government, it would be able to portion it out equally amonst all schools and ensure that everyone had an equal start. Locally money could be used to augment the public school system, or maybe it could tie in with my previous suggestion: federal money goes to academics, and local money goes to other things.

Of course whether or not it's a good idea to put education in the hands of the federal government is another question. It could solve the problem of unequality between schools, and could also help standardize the curriculum between schools, but I'm sure there are plenty of potential problems that I'm not thinking of at the moment.

[chaldean oracle]

Originally posted by chabig:
This is flat wrong. According to the government, defense spending is just 16% of the federal budget.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget...html#Chart_2_7

Over half the budget is non-discretionary, i.e. is entitlement programs like social security, medicare, medicaid.

Defense spending is half of the discretionary budget.

[macintologist]

We need the federal government to implement the international baccalaureate (IBO www.ibo.org) into every school in the country. That would solve the problem easy.

[itai195]

Originally posted by chabig:
This is flat wrong. According to the government, defense spending is just 16% of the federal budget.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget...html#Chart_2_7

Right, actually it's like 17.5% in 2004. It is about 48% of the discretionary spending. There's a lot of people who don't think that's enough.

OTOH, Social Security, medicare, and medicaid are 42% of the entire 2004 budget. I'll just leave it at that

[chabig]

Don't tell me social security is "non-discretionary." Everything is discretionary. Non-discretionary just means the politicians have promised not to cut that spending. That's it, it's just a promise. All the politicians need to do is develop the backbone to tell people that they aren't going to get everything that they were promised. As far as I am concerned, the only item on the budget that truly is non-discretionary is the interest paid on the national debt.

I work for a large company. I have a contract. So you might think that my wages are non-discretionary. Nevertheless, I was forced to take a 40% pay cut last year. We can cut social spending too, if we have the will.

Without security, all of the social programs are kind of worthless, no?

Chris

[nonhuman]

Originally posted by chabig:
Without security, all of the social programs are kind of worthless, no?

Chris

Security doesn't necessarily require huge military spending. It doesn't necessarily require military spending at all. And realize, that with all the military spending we do, people are still afraid and paranoid and think that we need more. Do we really? Will it make a difference? Where does it end? Is it really worth living in a society that requires that much money just to defend itself from threats real or imagined?

[Krusty]

Originally posted by Millennium:
The school system does not need more money allocated to it. The US already spends more money per student than any other nation in the world. This is a fact.

Really ?
Secondary education spending per student- we're 50th
Tertiary education spending per student- we're 98th

Where in god's name did you get your stats ?

Also, how is Ben Cohen lying? he said 400bln for defense. The total outlays for defense in 2002 was 20% of the budget (17% defense, 1% military aid, 2% Veterans affairs) 20% of the total outlays for 2002 (2.1 trillion) is about 420 billion. Check your tax booklets, folks ... its all right there (image below taken from page 76 of the 2003 1040 instruction booklet.

[chabig]

Also, how is Ben Cohen lying?

He said we spend just $35 billion on education. First of all, the Department of Education has a total budget authority of close to $64 billion. Second, he's neglecting the money spent on education by state and local governments.

Lastly, he's suggesting that spending just $10 billion more will solve all of our problems.

Chris

[itai195]

Originally posted by Krusty:
Also, how is Ben Cohen lying? he said 400bln for defense. The total outlays for defense in 2002 was 20% of the budget (17% defense, 1% military aid, 2% Veterans affairs) 20% of the total outlays for 2002 (2.1 trillion) is about 420 billion.

The problem isn't whether he's lying, it's that he abstracts the military budget into 'cookies.'
There's a lot of pressure on military spending and a lot of discussions going on about which weapons the Pentagon really needs. The bottom line is that modern weapons are expensive, and even though the dod gets a lot of money to spend it still has to make a lot of tough decisions about what's necessary and what isn't. The other things he doesn't mention are that our military relies on technology a lot more than those other countries, that we have more international obligations than them, and that DoD spending to fuels much of the technology industry to some extent.

Personally, I'd rather see 5 cookies taken off the social security and medicare piles.

[chabig]

Personally, I'd rather see 5 cookies taken off the social security and medicare piles.

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by Krusty:
Really ?
Secondary education spending per student- we're 50th
Tertiary education spending per student- we're 98th

Where in god's name did you get your stats ?

Wow! Niger, Vanuatu, and Lesotho must be quite the industrial powerhouses with those spending figures!

I wonder if those figures are per student enrolled, not per school age citizen? That would seem likely to me. Also, remember that most countries in the world, including European countries, do not set the mandatory school leaving age at 18. The majority in those countries leave school at around 16. That reduces the secondary population considerably. Likewise, a higher percentage in the US go on to college.

[itai195]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
Wow! Niger, Vanuatu, and Lesotho must be quite the industrial powerhouses with those spending figures!

LOL! Isn't Niger one of the poorest countries in the world too?

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by itai195:
LOL! Isn't Niger one of the poorest countries in the world too?

Right. You can't look at those kinds of figures without looking at what exactly is being compared. For example, in this ranking, countries are ranked by percentage of GDP spent on education. Moldova is #1 with 10.3%, the US is #47 with 4.7%. Is this a like with like comparison? Not really. According to the CIA world fact book, the US' per capita purchasing power parity GDP is $36,300 as against Moldova's $2600. 4.7% of $36,300 is a lot more per student than 10.3% of $2600.

[Krusty]

Originally posted by chabig:
He said we spend just $35 billion on education. First of all, the Department of Education has a total budget authority of close to $64 billion.

True, but if you look at the header of his graph, it specifically says "K-12 education" ... which is believable given that the total is ~64bln.

Originally posted by chabig:
Second, he's neglecting the money spent on education by state and local governments.

True .. and that's part of why US education is so weird/bad/good. So much of the education budget is dependent on state and local governments which varies wildly from state to state and even district to district.

Originally posted by chabig:
Lastly, he's suggesting that spending just $10 billion more will solve all of our problems.

Good point Simply throwing money at it will not necessarily solve any problems. I was just contesting the "fact" that we spend more per student than anyone. If someone has cumulative data for federal + state + local expenditures, I'd love to see what the numbers really add up to (no sarcasm at ALL here, I'm curious)

Re: Niger, Vanuatu, Lesotho. Please select North America and Europe as filters. we end up 28th out of 35 ... relatively much worse than our status compared to the entire world. Re: Moldova example. Again, filter for NA and Europe, we still end up 19th out of 25 and many of the countries above us have GDPs that are more impressive than Moldova. I'm not saying we're as low in education as the rankings from this page --just that we're not #1.

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by Krusty:
Re: Niger, Vanuatu, Lesotho. Please select North America and Europe as filters. we end up 28th out of 35 ... relatively much worse than our status compared to the entire world. Re: Moldova example. Again, filter for NA and Europe, we still end up 19th out of 25 and many of the countries above us have GDPs that are more impressive than Moldova. I'm not saying we're as low in education as the rankings from this page --just that we're not #1.

Denmark was the highest European country on the list I linked to (originally your linked site) with 7.7% of GDP. Denmark's purchase power parity per capita GDP is $28,900. The US' is $36,300, and the list says we spend 4.7% of GDP. Denmark's 7.7% of $28,900 is $2225. The US' 4.7% of 36,300 is $1706. So Denmark spends slightly more than the US, assuming that the percentage of children in the population is the same. The next European country is Sweden, which has a per capita GDP of $26,000 and spends 7.1%. That would be $1846, a figure that is just a little higher than the US.

So the US may not spend the most. But it is hardly 50th in the world as you suggested. In reality, it is well in the first league.

In any case, it seems that there is no particular correlation between spending and the quality of education. If there were, then the US should have a public school system very much like Denmark's or Sweden's. If there is still perceived to be a crisis, the reason is somewhere other than raw spending.

Personally, I think a lot of the "crisis" goes away when you allow for the fact that Europeans stream much more agressively than Americans do. The ones who stay in school past age 16 tend to be the academically oriented kids, whereas in the US we try to educate everyone to the same level. That will result in a defferent outcome simply because of the bell curve of abilities. I still think there are things that could be done better (see my first post in the thread), but I think the biggest factor is that you aren't making an apples with apples comparison when you compare the US with other industrialized states.

[thunderous_funker]

The usual "throwing more money at the problems won't solve them" stuff.

Prove it.

Spend 1 Trillion on eduction every year for the next 10 years and prove that it won't fix anything once and for all.

[ghost_flash]

It isn't the lack of money, because they have it, it is the WASTED money.

What happened to the money promised from the LOTTERY? Vapor-paper.

The way to fix it?
Seek out the most successful educational systems and institutions and mimick what they do!

They attempted to do it:


Goals 2000

[nonhuman]

Originally posted by thunderous_funker:
The usual "throwing more money at the problems won't solve them" stuff.

Prove it.

Ok. How's this?

The money needs to be regulated or it does no good at all. (All glory to the hypnotoad, I mean Fark, for the link.)

[ghost_flash]

Originally posted by nonhuman:
Ok. How's this?

The money needs to be regulated or it does no good at all. (All glory to the hypnotoad, I mean Fark, for the link.)

Good one!
I'm with you on this issue 100%.

[thunderous_funker]

Originally posted by nonhuman:
Ok. How's this?

The money needs to be regulated or it does no good at all. (All glory to the hypnotoad, I mean Fark, for the link.)

Sad but true. So little of our education budget actually gets to classrooms.

Fixing that should be job #1. But that just underscores the fact that increased funding (more money in classrooms) would fix a helluva lot of the problems, despite what many critics say.

[ghost_flash]

Ok:

Stakeholders:

- Parents
- Teachers
- Politicians
- Students
- Administration
- The public
- Special Interest Groups

You can see there are many people with
varying parts to play and only limited
powers of influence when dealing with
the development and delivering of the
curriculum.

Some important questions must be asked.

1. What is missing? (i.e., books etc.)
2. Who needs more or less power?
3. How can we get it to them?

I know teachers are limited in their ability
to deliver the curriculum and are given little
flexibility. This could be one problem
addressed.

This topic is like eating an elephant, it can
be done, but one bite at a time.

There are some great teachers out there
with their hands tied, and then there are
some really bad teachers that cannot be
gotten rid of.

[DeathToWindows]

I consider myself fortunate in that I'm attending one of the best public high schools in the US...

Even so, there are places in the budget where money needs to be moved around...

1. Physical Education - Who was idiotic enough to make that a REQUIREMENT for HS students? Yes, in elementary and middle school its a good thing, but in HS I could use the time so much more productively! So, remove PE as a requirement, give some PE electives and slash the PE budget - use the money for the arts (studio arts / photo / theater) and where it will have a real effect - not on making a bunch of teens grunt.

2. Organized sports - Yes, some enjoy them, but they are a HUGE money-sink... lots spent, almost no real gain (unless you like to see tank-like humans bash into each other) - shift the money to the academic subjects

3. Full-time coaches - waste of money! part time! Put the money to better use!

4. "Rethinking the educational process" - aka see how much $ we can waste on standardized tests and random evaluations of random pieces of school life. Waste of $.

----

What should be changed;

1. Pay the teachers well! At my HS, the average teacher load is 150 students / day (25 student classes on average, 6 blocks) and they take a lot of crap.
2. Fund the arts better [example; photo gets 1500/yr (enough for 1 class/yr) - requires a $60 lab fee + paper + film]
3. Start the school day at a civilized time... say 9:00am and make it go to 3:30... hey, we might be awake for first block for a change...

Screw school sports & PE (PE, what one teaches when one fails everything else)

[macintologist]

Originally posted by DeathToWindows:
Even so, there are places in the budget where money needs to be moved around...

1. Physical Education - Who was idiotic enough to make that a REQUIREMENT for HS students? Yes, in elementary and middle school its a good thing, but in HS I could use the time so much more productively!

Screw school sports & PE (PE, what one teaches when one fails everything else)

What??? Ok maybe if you are in shape already you can be exempt, but what about all those young fat people that are poisoning our culture? They need to be forced TWO periods of PE everyday so they can loose some damn weight!! Seriously...people in this country need to stop excusing obesity and start being proactive about it! Let's start with the young generation and make them know that being fat is not acceptable.

[thunderous_funker]

Not to mention what it would do the the Trillions of dollars tied to the sports industry in America.

PE is preparing people to be agents in the economy as much (or perhaps even more) than any other aspect of high school education.

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by macintologist:
What??? Ok maybe if you are in shape already you can be exempt, but what about all those young fat people that are poisoning our culture? They need to be forced TWO periods of PE everyday so they can loose some damn weight!! Seriously...people in this country need to stop excusing obesity and start being proactive about it! Let's start with the young generation and make them know that being fat is not acceptable.

But why does that require massive amounts of public funds? And besides which, the really costly school sports programs are the team sports. Those are the ones with the expensive facilities and full time coaches. How much exercise does the average high school kid get as a result of the football team? Very little I suspect because the average shool kid has no chance whatsoever of being picked.

If fitness and weight loss is really the goal, then all you need is a track and a pair of running shoes. That's all we used in the Army. We never set foot in the gym. We just ran and did exercises -- push ups, sit ups, and so on. The total cost was essentially nil, but the exercise value was a lot better than a bunch of fat footballers get.

Face it: school sports are an enormous boondoggle. Unfortunately, they are also a sacred cow.

[ghost_flash]

Originally posted by DeathToWindows:
I consider myself fortunate in that I'm attending one of the best public high schools in the US...

You seem to be very well informed about some
of the issues that plague public schools.

PE
Sports
Arts


Let me address some of these issues:

1. PE, I agree is not necessary, this is something
that can be handled by intramural sports
by the students themselves. Have them
take on responsibility to organize these
events, and activities before and after
school. Make it like the chess club.

2. Sports, I am on the fence with this one
as I do see some great benefits from this
activity, though I do agree that some
coaches and staff are sorely overpaid and
by my experience overbearing.
Trim /them/ down.

3. Arts, I saved the best and most important
for last. The arts encourage young people
to imagine. To stretch themselves into new
ideas, and to be more articulate.

Excellent post, and great ideas.

[DeathToWindows]

[wishing]

Priorities for academic funding in Death's ideal world:

1. Real Academica [English/History/Math/Sciences] & Arts (visual/studio/theatre/film)
2. Elective courses / Vocational
3. Anything else that requires actual cognition.
...
#3,000,500,831 : Physical education
#99,999,999,999 ; School-funded team sports

[/wishing]

Death gives the Massachusetts Comprenhsive Assessment Test (MCAS) the finger. Teachers should teach, not just pump us for silber's damned test. [/rant]

[maxelson]

Originally posted by macintologist:
http://tinyurl.com/2yu7x

That was an interesting concept. Just take 1/8th of the Pentagon's budgets and reallocate it to schools. Very interesting. What do you think?

I agree 100%. And it will never happen. We can caugh up 287 billion for a war. 287 Bil to kill folks, destroy a country and then build it again (and not even do it well). But when it comes to our own kids... we get NCLB... UNFUNDED.
GO ahead. Defend THAT one. Rationalize THAT.

[maxelson]

Oh. BTW. Death To Windows for EDUCATION CZAR. Mean it. DTW: you running for school board in your town? Do it. MassEd needs all the help it can get.

[DeathToWindows]

Can't quite... do know the student rep for my town though... (power to the real nerds - the people who take AP English).

[nonhuman]

Originally posted by DeathToWindows:
Can't quite... do know the student rep for my town though... (power to the real nerds - the people who take AP English).

AP English does not a nerd make. I tended to just skip it to go get breakfast at Noah's Bagels.

And I only got a 4 on the test.

On the other hand I'm a CS major, and am considering taking up my prof's offer to let us do our programs in any language we want by doing them in FORTRAN. So maybe I am a nerd.

[DeathToWindows]

Originally posted by nonhuman:
AP English does not a nerd make. I tended to just skip it to go get breakfast at Noah's Bagels.

And I only got a 4 on the test.

On the other hand I'm a CS major, and am considering taking up my prof's offer to let us do our programs in any language we want by doing them in FORTRAN. So maybe I am a nerd.

Bring on Death's Nerd Cred;

Courses ; Senior Year

AP English
AP Biology
AP Psychology
AP European History
Senior Math
Photo Major III

Other Geek Cred;
Internship, MIT Media Lab Summers 01 02 03
Published Scientific Paper : thinkcycle.org (dyd 02)

--

Believe me, I am a Nerd! And damn proud of it too.

[Switched2Mac]

Unfortunately, our colleges are choking with kids trying to get virtually worthless degrees anyway.

Science and Technology are sadly becoming less appealing. And who can blame them now. Any job worth the effort salary wise is going to be outsourced so that a handful of executives can get a slightly smaller bonus that year.

No long-term thinking or planning.

[nonhuman]

Originally posted by Switched2Mac:
Unfortunately, our colleges are choking with kids trying to get virtually worthless degrees anyway.

Science and Technology are sadly becoming less appealing. And who can blame them now. Any job worth the effort salary wise is going to be outsourced so that a handful of executives can get a slightly smaller bonus that year.

No long-term thinking or planning.

A good point. That's why I'm getting a degree in computer science: because I have no intention of working in the industry and just wanted to study something fun. I'm probably going to end up either in grad school for poly sci or law school after spending the next few years teaching English or something in asia. I'm outsourcing myself, damnit.

[itai195]

Originally posted by Switched2Mac:
Unfortunately, our colleges are choking with kids trying to get virtually worthless degrees anyway.

Science and Technology are sadly becoming less appealing. And who can blame them now. Any job worth the effort salary wise is going to be outsourced so that a handful of executives can get a slightly smaller bonus that year.

No long-term thinking or planning.

This is a short term view... By about 2010 when many baby boomers have retired, there's projected to be a record labor shortfall in the US that even outsourcing will have trouble reconciling. It's not some crazy prediction either -- just follows from normal annual US economic growth. You're right on one count -- there is no long term planning, but the problem is the opposite of what you think it is. For example, aerospace companies are only now starting to realize that within ten years something like 75% of their skilled labor force will have retired! Compounding the problem is that enrollment in engineering and computer science programs is actually dropping, and physical science enrollment has been dropping for years.

That's why complaining about outsourcing is rather shortsighted, though it would sure stink to lose your job now because of it.

I hope all the companies who exploited the desperately unemployed for the last few years are the first against the wall. I actually got a job offer out of college that was for 20% less annually than I made in an internship and 33% less than a comparable offer I got from another company! I'm not one to cry over it, but that kind of practice is pure exploitation in my book.

[maxelson]

Originally posted by DeathToWindows:
Bring on Death's Nerd Cred;

Courses ; Senior Year

AP English
AP Biology
AP Psychology
AP European History
Senior Math
Photo Major III

Other Geek Cred;
Internship, MIT Media Lab Summers 01 02 03
Published Scientific Paper : thinkcycle.org (dyd 02)

--

Believe me, I am a Nerd! And damn proud of it too.

Death: MIT Media Lab? Do I ever see you at the Lincoln Lab as an intern?

[macintologist]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
But why does that require massive amounts of public funds? And besides which, the really costly school sports programs are the team sports. Those are the ones with the expensive facilities and full time coaches. How much exercise does the average high school kid get as a result of the football team? Very little I suspect because the average shool kid has no chance whatsoever of being picked.

If fitness and weight loss is really the goal, then all you need is a track and a pair of running shoes. That's all we used in the Army. We never set foot in the gym. We just ran and did exercises -- push ups, sit ups, and so on. The total cost was essentially nil, but the exercise value was a lot better than a bunch of fat footballers get.

Face it: school sports are an enormous boondoggle. Unfortunately, they are also a sacred cow.

You're 100% correct. If a school doesn't have a 3 million dollar football stadium built already, then the PE classes can take the fat slobs in the school, hire ONE full time fitness coach, and make them run around the damn school. I can't believe how much society it allowing obesity to foster. People need to put their foot down and say NO this is not good for our country! It should be compulsory that if you are f***ing fat you must do P.E at school.

[DeathToWindows]

More info for you on my location during the summers at MIT Media

--

2001 - ThinkCycle Team, rm.383
2002 - Random Java programming for Sumit Basu, rm. 383
2003 - UNIX programming and hardwae bench work, MITHRIL project/BorgLab rm.383

all internships under the supervision of Dr. Sandy Pentland.

[saab95]

Originally posted by macintologist:
http://tinyurl.com/2yu7x

That was an interesting concept. Just take 1/8th of the Pentagon's budgets and reallocate it to schools. Very interesting. What do you think?

Bogus.

Privatize Education.