[quote]Gambit_Lost wrote:
dhickey wrote:
Joe Cool .vs the agitated old man.
Well said, this was the impression that I saw as well. [/quote]
too funny. that’s not what I saw. I suggested that the average joe not interested in politics would see. One that percieved what they were saying as jibberish.
You ain’t gonna beat a Joe Cool Harvard educated lawyer in a debate, especially if he looks better than you.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
Just get rid of the Dept. of Ed.[/quote]
Along with a half dozen other departments right off the bat.
[quote]msd0060 wrote:
You ain’t gonna beat a Joe Cool Harvard educated lawyer in a debate, especially if he looks better than you.[/quote]
[quote]jsbrook wrote:
BabyBuster wrote:
dhickey wrote:
Gambit_Lost wrote:
The budget for most schools comes primarily from state and local taxes. The federal funds going to Ed is about 10% of the total budget with the other 90% coming from state/local taxes.
Depends on the school. The worst schools get the most money yet still fail. Hmmm…sounds familiar.
Actually, the worst school are usually in the areas with the least property value, which means they are collecting little in property taxes, which is the primary source of school funding.
Yup, this is true. The worst schools get more federal money but still are massively underfunded. If there is a solution, it’s a state and local one and not a federal one. It will take more than money too, but that is needed in some cases.
But federal initiatives and funding can only be a bandaid when complicated surgery is what’s called for. I wish more people could understand this. Obama and McCain know it.
But they are forced to make education an issue cause most constitutents wrongly think it should be a federal problem and that federal iniatives can effectively make a big difference.[/quote]
The education is more a state and county problem that is started at the federal level. The fed’s slash funding and enact budget cuts. What is always number one on the list? Education (it’s never senate and congressional salaries).
Then they cut a bunch of funding for the state level. What number one on the list to be cut? Education. Then they cut funding to the counties. What’s the first thing the county cuts? Education. So, by the time it gets to the school district, they have a pittance of what they need. Now all this and everyones wonders “why can’t Johnny read in 7th grade?”
If something isn’t done about education, America will have less of an intelligence pool than most 3rd world countries. We need to either fix education or expand the use and power of an H-visa.
[quote]RoadWarrior wrote:
jsbrook wrote:
BabyBuster wrote:
dhickey wrote:
Gambit_Lost wrote:
The budget for most schools comes primarily from state and local taxes. The federal funds going to Ed is about 10% of the total budget with the other 90% coming from state/local taxes.
Depends on the school. The worst schools get the most money yet still fail. Hmmm…sounds familiar.
Actually, the worst school are usually in the areas with the least property value, which means they are collecting little in property taxes, which is the primary source of school funding.
Yup, this is true. The worst schools get more federal money but still are massively underfunded. If there is a solution, it’s a state and local one and not a federal one. It will take more than money too, but that is needed in some cases.
But federal initiatives and funding can only be a bandaid when complicated surgery is what’s called for. I wish more people could understand this. Obama and McCain know it.
But they are forced to make education an issue cause most constitutents wrongly think it should be a federal problem and that federal iniatives can effectively make a big difference.
The education is more a state and county problem that is started at the federal level. The fed’s slash funding and enact budget cuts. What is always number one on the list?
Education (it’s never senate and congressional salaries). Then they cut a bunch of funding for the state level. What number one on the list to be cut? Education. Then they cut funding to the counties. What’s the first thing the county cuts? Education.
So, by the time it gets to the school district, they have a pittance of what they need. Now all this and everyones wonders “why can’t Johnny read in 7th grade?”
If something isn’t done about education, America will have less of an intelligence pool than most 3rd world countries. We need to either fix education or expand the use and power of an H-visa.
[/quote]
I think you are missing the point. State and local governments fund 91% of the education in this country. This is ENTIRELY independent of ANY federal funds.
Education is funded almost exclusively by state and local property taxes. To the extent it’s a funding problem, it’s because taxes in poor neighborhoods are very low, the schools in those areas accordingly have no money, and inner city schools lack basic resources.
To the extent affluent schools HAVE money, it’s not because of the federal government. It’s because of state and local taxes.
Even if ALL federal funds went only to the poorest schools (which wouldn’t be so bad in my mind if the education must be a federal issue, since other schools are doing fine on state funds) it would be a drop in the bucket of what schools need.
Early education is key. Parental education and initiatives are key. And, yes, poor schools need more money for a host of reasons, from providing students with basic resources such as textbooks to attracting better teachers. But most of that money needs to come from the State.
[quote]jsbrook wrote:
Early education is key. Parental education and initiatives are key. And, yes, poor schools need more money for a host of reasons, from providing students with basic resources such as textbooks to attracting better teachers. But most of that money needs to come from the State.[/quote]
I understand that, but the what I am talking about is, the feds cut the funds dispursed to the states. The states now have less money to use for “needed” services (Fire, Police, etc.) so they cut the education budget and use the money to fill other slots.
Another problem is (there are alot of people around here that think like this) is they don’t have kids, so why should they pay for schools etc. until people drop this notion, the “quality” of the average citizen will drop and the immigrant becomes more valuable.
Also, this is an example of the federal approach to education. On the day that the feds delared catsup a vegtable (this way the schools could include catsup and not a “real” vegatble like spinach) The Senate and the House approved a very large raise for themselves. So much for the priority of future generations.
[quote]jsbrook wrote:
BabyBuster wrote:
dhickey wrote:
Gambit_Lost wrote:
The budget for most schools comes primarily from state and local taxes. The federal funds going to Ed is about 10% of the total budget with the other 90% coming from state/local taxes.
Depends on the school. The worst schools get the most money yet still fail. Hmmm…sounds familiar.
Actually, the worst school are usually in the areas with the least property value, which means they are collecting little in property taxes, which is the primary source of school funding.
Yup, this is true. The worst schools get more federal money but still are massively underfunded. If there is a solution, it’s a state and local one and not a federal one. It will take more than money too, but that is needed in some cases.
But federal initiatives and funding can only be a bandaid when complicated surgery is what’s called for. I wish more people could understand this. Obama and McCain know it.
But they are forced to make education an issue cause most constitutents wrongly think it should be a federal problem and that federal iniatives can effectively make a big difference.[/quote]
Schools suck because most of your hard earned tax dollars never get near the teachers. The funding is like welfare — the bureaucracy gets most of the money while the intended recipients get crumbs. For ex, the number of administrators has doubled in the last 15 years but class sizes have gone up and the number of teachers has slightly declined.
Fire most administrators and pay teachers $60,000 to start, like engineers get. Watch what happens.
[quote]RoadWarrior wrote:
The education is more a state and county problem that is started at the federal level. The fed’s slash funding and enact budget cuts. What is always number one on the list? Education (it’s never senate and congressional salaries).
Then they cut a bunch of funding for the state level. What number one on the list to be cut? Education. Then they cut funding to the counties. What’s the first thing the county cuts? Education. So, by the time it gets to the school district, they have a pittance of what they need. Now all this and everyones wonders “why can’t Johnny read in 7th grade?”
If something isn’t done about education, America will have less of an intelligence pool than most 3rd world countries. We need to either fix education or expand the use and power of an H-visa.
[/quote]
Total Education funding by State.
INCREASE in funding from 2001-2009
AL �?? 47%
AK �?? 27%
AR �?? 56%
AZ �?? 52%
CA �?? 43%
CO �?? 63%
CT �?? 34%
DE �?? 46%
DC �?? 44%
FL �?? 50%
GA �?? 61%
HI �?? 54%
ID �?? 47%
IL �?? 46%
IN �?? 58%
IA �?? 36%
KS �?? 41%
KY - 43%
LA �?? 45%
ME �?? 41%
MD �?? 44%
MA �?? 33%
MI �?? 41%
MN �?? 35%
MS �?? 42%
MO �?? 45%
NT �?? 33%
NE �?? 45%
NV �?? 91%
NH �?? 44%
NJ �?? 37%
NM �?? 34%
NY �?? 37%
NC �?? 73%
ND �?? 26%
OH �?? 49%
OK �?? 42%
OR �?? 55%
PA �?? 45%
RI �?? 48%
SC �?? 58%
SD �?? 35%
TN �?? 57%
TX �?? 63%
UT �?? 45%
VT �?? 42%
VA �?? 51%
WI �?? 48%
WY �?? 32%
LOOK AT ALL THESE EDUCATION CUTS!!!
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
jsbrook wrote:
BabyBuster wrote:
dhickey wrote:
Gambit_Lost wrote:
The budget for most schools comes primarily from state and local taxes. The federal funds going to Ed is about 10% of the total budget with the other 90% coming from state/local taxes.
Depends on the school. The worst schools get the most money yet still fail. Hmmm…sounds familiar.
Actually, the worst school are usually in the areas with the least property value, which means they are collecting little in property taxes, which is the primary source of school funding.
Yup, this is true. The worst schools get more federal money but still are massively underfunded. If there is a solution, it’s a state and local one and not a federal one. It will take more than money too, but that is needed in some cases.
But federal initiatives and funding can only be a bandaid when complicated surgery is what’s called for. I wish more people could understand this. Obama and McCain know it.
But they are forced to make education an issue cause most constitutents wrongly think it should be a federal problem and that federal iniatives can effectively make a big difference.
Schools suck because most of your hard earned tax dollars never get near the teachers. The funding is like welfare — the bureaucracy gets most of the money while the intended recipients get crumbs. For ex, the number of administrators has doubled in the last 15 years but class sizes have gone up and the number of teachers has slightly declined.
Fire most administrators and pay teachers $60,000 to start, like engineers get. Watch what happens.
[/quote]
Quite true. One only need look at the numbers to see the answer is not more money. www.edu.gov and your state site is enough to make you puke. Unbelievable waste. $10B in federal dollars go to admin. That alone is a great argument for vouchers.
Federal adn State vouchers would probably fix the problem all together. Now schools will have to compete. If you were competing for students, where would you invest? Teachers or Admin? Good teachers or bad teachers? The teachers unions would go nuts.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
jsbrook wrote:
BabyBuster wrote:
dhickey wrote:
Gambit_Lost wrote:
The budget for most schools comes primarily from state and local taxes. The federal funds going to Ed is about 10% of the total budget with the other 90% coming from state/local taxes.
Depends on the school. The worst schools get the most money yet still fail. Hmmm…sounds familiar.
Actually, the worst school are usually in the areas with the least property value, which means they are collecting little in property taxes, which is the primary source of school funding.
Yup, this is true. The worst schools get more federal money but still are massively underfunded. If there is a solution, it’s a state and local one and not a federal one. It will take more than money too, but that is needed in some cases.
But federal initiatives and funding can only be a bandaid when complicated surgery is what’s called for. I wish more people could understand this. Obama and McCain know it.
But they are forced to make education an issue cause most constitutents wrongly think it should be a federal problem and that federal iniatives can effectively make a big difference.
Schools suck because most of your hard earned tax dollars never get near the teachers. The funding is like welfare — the bureaucracy gets most of the money while the intended recipients get crumbs.
For ex, the number of administrators has doubled in the last 15 years but class sizes have gone up and the number of teachers has slightly declined.
Fire most administrators and pay teachers $60,000 to start, like engineers get. Watch what happens.
[/quote]
I agree. Teachers are way underpaid, and the administration generally just wastes money and spends it on stupid things.
I was talking about this with a colleague of mine this week who did Teach for America for a year. In the school she worked at, there wasn’t even enough money to provide textbooks for each student in her class.
But why? Because the idiot administration decided it was more important to buy ONE computer for the entire class of students than to purchase textbooks, so the students could learn their lessons and do their nightly assignments.
Computers are great resources. But ONE computer shared by 40 kids, with only access during class time, over books for all is an absolutely moronic waste of funds.
I live in N. California and here it’s real bad. Teachers are going on strike because they haven’t had a raise in years. The schools don’t have material (paper, pencils, printer cartridges) and the teachers are constantly begging for supplies. We donate about $300 a month to my daughters class, because most of the other parents refuse to donate anything of if they do it’s cheap junk.
[quote]RoadWarrior wrote:
I live in N. California and here it’s real bad. Teachers are going on strike because they haven’t had a raise in years.[/quote]
Teachers strikes should never happen. The issue is, there is a strong local teachers union and a very strong national one. When their contracts expire, they work without one until their union bargains on a new contract and settles. They probably have not gotten a raise due to not having a new contract ( I could be wrong…I know CA is in a budget crisis). It’s fun when they settle, because they are then due all the back pay they should have gotten. Lots of retroactive payments.
When it comes to teachers, I feel state administrations should try to get the teachers unions in on contract negotiations early in the ball game so there is no threat of a strike and they can plan on how the new salary increases and health benefit costs effect the upcoming budgets.
No one wins when there is a teachers strike. Teachers then look bad, children suffer and taxpayers become irate because their property taxes go up because thats where most of the money comes from to fund schools.
Well, I have lots of problems with teachers’ unions, but they are not the root of the problem.
Bad teachers should not get raises for BEING bad teachers. But one of the chief reasons the teachers in poor schools district are bad in the first place is that their salaries are so low.
The only people willing to work in those neighborhoods for that level of pay are ignorant and unintelligent and/or unmotivated or don’t care.
Sure, there are some truly altruistic people that do care and are good teachers. But even they tend to only last a few years. It’s very frustrating to spend a lot of out-of pocket money to provide resources for the class when you get paid peanuts and even the personal funds you do devote aren’t close to being enough.
Of course that’s only one of many problems in these schools. And a solution to even this one of many problems is hard to come by. But part of it is certainly misallocation of funds and resource mismangement. Schools will spend on stupid things when they could be using money on essential educational resources and funding higher pay to attract better teachers.
If the federal government should have any part in education at all, I don’t think it should really be throwing money at the situation, that without better guidelines, is going to be misused anyway. Or setting arbitrary benchmarks that turn out to be unfunded mandates and whose appropriateness is questionable in the first place. It should provide guidelines for resource prioritization and identify effective use of money.
Because the way some schools use funds is patently ridiculous. A school that chooses to buy one computer for an entire classroom before ensuring that each student even has a textbook should not be receiving federal funds (or state and local funds for that matter).
[quote]jsbrook wrote:
Well, I have lots of problems with teachers’ unions, but they are not the root of the problem.
[/quote]
Are you kidding me? They are one of the biggest reasons for shit education. You’re facination with extreme examples of shitty schools is mildly entertaining but has very little to do with the real problem. ON AVERAGE we score much lower on standardized test compare to almost every other developed nation, even though we spend the most money.
Shitty teachers getting raises is not as much of concern and shitty teachers still teaching. Tenure is fucked. Hiring and firing rules are fucked.
when your figuring a teachers salary remember that most only work 9 months of the year. So the average teacher making 47K can be equlibrated to 62k/year on a 12 month scale . . .
I work in education, and the biggest issue are definitely caused by the teachers union. They have essentially turned what should be a white colar job into a blue colar job.
[quote]koffea wrote:
when your figuring a teachers salary remember that most only work 9 months of the year. So the average teacher making 47K can be equlibrated to 62k/year on a 12 month scale . . .
I work in education, and the biggest issue are definitely caused by the teachers union. They have essentially turned what should be a white colar job into a blue colar job.[/quote]
Do you talk to many teachers about the union. How do good teachers feel about being on the same pay scale as teachers that don’t give a shit? How do good teachers feel about making less than bad teachers that have been doing a shitty job for a little longer?
I’ve always wondered what good teachers think of the teachers union. My sister in law is a teacher but she won’t talk about it much. My sister is teacher in TX but I don’t think she has to be in the union.
[quote]dhickey wrote:
I’ve always wondered what good teachers think of the teachers union. My sister in law is a teacher but she won’t talk about it much. My sister is teacher in TX but I don’t think she has to be in the union.[/quote]
My half a brain says,“There are no teacher unions in TX.” Thats why I only have half a brain. 
[quote]Big_Boss wrote:
dhickey wrote:
I’ve always wondered what good teachers think of the teachers union. My sister in law is a teacher but she won’t talk about it much. My sister is teacher in TX but I don’t think she has to be in the union.
My half a brain says,“There are no teacher unions in TX.” Thats why I only have half a brain. ;P[/quote]
I didn’t say you had a half a brain. I said you shared a half a brain with inner hulk.
[quote]dhickey wrote:
jsbrook wrote:
Well, I have lots of problems with teachers’ unions, but they are not the root of the problem.
Are you kidding me? They are one of the biggest reasons for shit education. You’re facination with extreme examples of shitty schools is mildly entertaining but has very little to do with the real problem. ON AVERAGE we score much lower on standardized test compare to almost every other developed nation, even though we spend the most money.
Shitty teachers getting raises is not as much of concern and shitty teachers still teaching. Tenure is fucked. Hiring and firing rules are fucked.[/quote]
Just noting: A lot of other countries the US gets compared to don’t count retards and tech students in their scoring like we do.
(I fucking hate the concept of tenure. It makes NO sense <_<)