$16,344 Per Student, 12% Reading Proficiently

[Marnie]

From this week's Human Events:

The District of Columbia spends far more money per student in its public elementary and secondary schools each year than the tuition costs at many pivate elementary schools, or even college-preperatory secondary schools. Yet, District 8th graders ranked dead last in 2005 in national reading and math tests.

D.C.'s public elementary and secondary schools spent a total of $16,334 per student in the 2002-2003 school year, according to a Deptartment of Education study. That compares to the $10,520 tuition at St. John's College High School, a District school that sends almost all its graduates to four-year colleges.

Last year, however, only 12% of 8th graders in the Distric's public schools scored at grade-level proficiency or better in reading in the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress tests that were administered in the District and all 50 states. Only7% of the District's public-school 8th graders scored grade-level proficiency or better in math.

Not one U.S. state can boast that a majority of the 8th graders in its public schools last year had achieved grade-level proficiency or better in either reading or math.

From the week of March 10, 2006 issue, page three.

For an eye-opening article on the education crisis in America, see this link.

[Copper Scroll]

The District's public schools are also in horrible physical condition....

...And now tax dollars are being spent on a new ball stadium.

It's a mayoral election year though and financially the District is in the black, so (hopefully) things are poised to change.

[GentleGiant]

Here are some tidbits regarding our school district's spending of money:

My kid in middle school can't bring home a book to study for a test or do homework, because the school doesn't have enough copies for each student in the sixth grade to have their own copy. The school board's reply is, "we just doesn't have the funds".

Yet at the same time, they can spend $110,000 on a new weight room for the football team, so as to make them 'more competitive'. Their record since getting the new weight room... 0-30.

Our school board just started the construction on a new sports stadium... at the price of $13,000,000 because the bleachers were getting in a state of disrepair. The new design includes state-of-the-art this and state-of-the-art that... At the same time, our junior high school building is over capacity, and they are in dire need of more classroom space. Some classes are being held in the auditorium.

The current school board president is the husband of my wife's one friend. When I approach him about these concerns he just laughs at me, and says, "I don't want to hear it".

[Guest LadyC]

this is my whole problem with the "no child left behind act". it's one of the policies i despise. it doesn't work. on a recent episode of 20/20 they did a show about education, and talked to a teacher of a very small rural school that kept it simple and basic. i don't know what their per studen spending was, but it was about half the average, and the students were much better educated. maybe it's the same school you mentioned above, marnie.

and think about home-schooled kids... they're MUCH better educated than students who have the latest and greatest.

throwing money at something that is broke won't fix it unless you start from the bottom up. my youngest daughter just graduated mid-term from high school. my oldest daughter is now 19. i can tell you that they didn't learn much of anything in school that i didn't teach them. except for math.... i was useless beyond simple math.

what my kids WERE taught was how to take a test. more focus is spent every day in schools on being coached to pass taas tests and proficiency exams than anything else. and how do they teach them? by drilling them with practice tests over and over and giving them the answers. in my opinion, they're being taught to cheat.

but english? reading? HA! neither of my daughters even know there is such a thing as diagramming a sentence. my youngest can't spell worth a flip. her reading has improved since the birth of her son because she took great interest in the traci hogwash books, but prior to that, she had difficulty reading more than a page or two without giving up. in all their years of school, neither had to do more than one book report the entire 12 years! in fact, i have a story to tell about that, that goes into the incompetancy of many teachers today... my oldest was sent home with an assignment sheet, which i read, to write a "book review". not a book report, a review. now, there were no guidelines as to how to do it, it was simply a list of the week's assignments, including "book review".

now, i was always good in the language arts, it was my strongest subject, aced every book report i ever did in jr. high and high school. and as an adult, i had a weekly column in a local paper in which i wrote book and entertainment reviews. so i know the difference here. and i helped my daughter as she wrote her first and last book review for school...

and she got a big fat F.

the teacher graded her with a failing grade and criticized her for giving an in depth analysis of the book, telling her how it should have been done. and lemme tell ya, i marched straight into the school the next day to rip that teacher apart. she asked for a book review, and she got a book review. then i proceeded to explain to the teacher what the difference was between a review and a report, which, according to the criticisms of the teacher as to what she had wanted, was a report, not a review.

another story. my oldest was reading and writing cursive by age five. in first grade, i worked nights, and my daughter and i kept a notebook where she would write me letters about her day (in cursive) and i would write her back about mine, and encouraging her with hers, (in cursive) and her teacher took it up in class one day and GRADED it, poorly i might add, writing in red ink "you are not allowed to write cursive til third grade because it will make other students feel dumb". i gave that teacher some much needed correction too, and my daughter and i continued writing in cursive.

i can't tell you how many times my kids came home and told me that the teacher had told them their use of a word was incorrect, when it wasn't... but the teacher had confused it with another word. or how many times my kids were marked off for spelling words incorrectly when they actually had spelled them with the british spelling that i had taught them with (color/colour, etc).

and even worse was that in any class other than the english language classes, teachers could care LESS about punctuation, sentence structure, grammar or spelling. in my day, if you misspelled a word on a history assignment, you were counted off for the misspelling. in today's world, spelling and grammar are only concerns to english and reading teachers.

and the bottom line is, the teachers are not being properly educated. i'm not trying to criticize teachers on this board (and they could probably criticize me for my grammatical laziness that has developed over the years!) because i don't fault the teachers at all. i fault the colleges who are passing out teaching degrees without having properly trained them in teaching. i blame the teachers unions that spend too much time pushing political correctness and agendas and not allowing the teachers to do their jobs the way they feel led to do. i blame the system for not giving teachers the knowledge or the freedom to teach in any other way than academic, limiting their ability to effectively teach students who perform and learn better with hands on and visual teaching aids. and i blame the government for putting so much emphasis on test scores and not enough emphasis on the core subjects, so students are only learning a fraction of what they need to know.

ok, i'll shut up and get off my soapbox now!

[Copper Scroll]

Amen!

Parents know about their kids. Parents should be more involved in schools. It won't fix everything, but it's the only genuine place to start.

[bryan]

Yet another reason home schooling is growing slowly but surely.

We moved to be closer to work and spent considerable time researching school districts and local schools. We ended up living in what was supposedly one of the best districts in the state, but then a funny thing happened. Our son found he was suddenly two years ahead of everyone else in math. After several months of fights on school buses, drug deals everywhere at school, and teachers with alcoholic drinks in water bottles on their desk, we gave up and started home schooling. Six years later, we've found home schooling involves less stress, less fees, and the kids are doing better on their tests.

[BrandonL]

The District's public schools are also in horrible physical condition....

...And now tax dollars are being spent on a new ball stadium.

It's a mayoral election year though and financially the District is in the black, so (hopefully) things are poised to change.

[buckthesystem]

It seems that this "education" thing (or rather I should say "indoctrination") is a world-wide phenomenon. This is the brilliant idea that some moron has came out with (well, not actually not "came out with" on their own, but aped a crazy idea out of Europe) that spends an incredible amount of money and does absolutely nothing for the betterment of children:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3609438a11,00.html

I just love the part where it says "...but it is about every child and making sure they are doing better".

Now if there ever was an incentive to homeschool, this is it. Seems that our state schools are so busy teaching the kids to put condoms on clothespegs that they do not teach them how to read or write properly and add simple figures.