This AEI piece from Jay Greene attempts to explode certain myths about education. The main myth he explodes is that schools would be better if they had more money. Greene points out that in inflation adjusted dollars we spend far more than we did 50, 40, even 30 years ago while educational attainment has, at best, flat lined. Indeed, I have seen countless studies that show that the longer students are in our educational system the worse they perform compared to their counterparts in other industrialized nations.
Greene is a bit naive when it comes to teacher pay. While, as a rule, the "teachers are underpaid" claim is an exaggeration (with exceptions), Greene tends to under-appreciate how much teachers work both during the school year and during the summer. For example, the "students" Prof. Blanchard and I will be teaching next week are actually teachers who are gaining professional development hours (and, of course, knowledge more valuable than gold).
An emailer to SDP a while back asked me to develop my claim that our education problems are with curriculum, not money. Let me address that here:
Curriculum: I know more about government and history than any other area. Text books tend to emphasize politically correct history over hard facts (see Diane Ravitch's book). We all know that History is more than names and dates. But it is not less than names and dates. When the majority of our 11th graders can't place the Civil War in the correct half century (I am not making up this statistic), then exploring the "context" of the war is fruitless. There is a controversy in Math over whether the important thing is to get the right answer (new math) or learning how to get the answer (old math). A college friend who has a PhD. in Math tells me that the problem with college students is precisely that they don't know how numbers work, therefore they cannot do high level mathematics. Their K-12 education emphasized getting the right answer over learning how math works. I also include here the idea that it is the school's job to serve as a social service agency. In South Dakota's last legislative session there was much debate over what the schools should teach about sex. I have an answer: nothing, outside of biology. We have students who cannot read, write or do math at a high enough level. They are also historically ignorant. How about we remedy those issues before they learn anything about either condoms or abstinence?
I do not claim this is the only problem in our education system. I would include low standards, teacher preparation, and federal bureaucracy as other problems.
Update: I suggest the people who filed suit read the Jay Greene article. Also, if you think education in South Dakota is underfunded (and you may have a point), I suggest a novel tactic: convince your fellow citizens. Filing suit is a gimmick and a waste of valuable resources.
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