I know I should not have expected any different, yet I had hope. However as is often the case, PU is taking shots at the GOP.
Parents United 22Jul11: The Liberal Editorial...
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From our Finland discussions, I find it interesting that the USA has one of the most expensive educational systems and yet lack luster results. Yet the Liberal folk that praise the Fins, would say that the USA's poor academic performance is because we are providing inadequate funding...
MAKE UP YOUR MINDS !!!! If our funding is high and our results are not, then the Educational System is broken !!! Not our funding of it !!!
With this in mind, if Finland spends less and gets more... What is our Educational System doing wrong and how are they going to change to fix it? Other than asking for MORE MONEY? (ie apparently we are already number ONE in spending...)
Who is paid too much? Who is not productive or effective? Do we have too many ineffective personnel? Too good of benefits? Are we teaching too many subjects? Is are curriculum totally ineffective? Too many or too nice of buildings? Too many buses?
If we are spending more the the Fins and getting less, where is it going?
Star Trib: Big Changes
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4 comments:
We have good results, and not so good results. Unlike Finland, we are very diverse nation.
--Hiram
Finland has a population of about five million people. Although it does have a national anthem, this isn't it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJWNLIQhYH0&feature=related
--Hiram
The other question is how they fund their spec ed programs, welfare, social services, etc? Maybe they actual keep it out of the educ budget.
My point is be careful when conparing programs.
Over the past few days I have continued my reading about ed reform (yes, my life is pretty dull) and learned there are no simple answers to your questions (or to my own.) Here are a couple other good links I have come across:
Standing on the Shouders of Giants, An American Agenda for Education Reform
(50 page report)
Why American Students Lag in Test Scores
(1 page editorial by same author)
I am still puzzled about with the US spending so much $ why are teachers paid so poorly (especially beginning teachers and charter school teachers):
"oecd data show that teachers’ pay in the united States is fourth from the bottom among oecd countries, when teachers’ compensation is compared to that for other occupations requiring the same amount of education."
"Not only do teachers make markedly less than other occupations requiring the same level
of education, but census data shows that teachers have been falling farther and farther
behind the average compensation for occupations requiring a college degree for 60 years.
The average earnings for workers with college degrees are now 50 percent higher than
average teachers’ salaries, which is a very long way indeed from the Singapore minister’s
standard"
about how we allocate resources there is this:
"Japan puts a greater share of its resources into core instructional services by spending much less on extravagant school buildings, school services (cafeterias and janitorial services), glossy textbooks, elaborate local
school-administrative services and expensive sports programmes (the United States spends 11.6% of its resources for schools on capital outlays, a figure that is higher only in the Netherlands, Norway, Luxembourg and Greece,
while the OECD average is 7.6%)."
I think we also spend more on support teachers (i.e. special education, ELL, title)
If there is interest/questions, I will pass along more findings from my reading in a later comment.
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