The identity crisis of American education

[hkem1]

Not to be picky, but do you have any stats less than a decade old? Europe wasn't even on the Euro when those stats were compiled.

If you want education spending as a percentage of the Nation's budget, here you go.

Canada spends 12.7 percent of its total yearly budget on education. The United States spends 17.1 percent of its budget on education expenses. Mexico uses 24.3 percent of its budget on education spending.
Nicaragua spends 15 percent of its yearly budget on education. In Columbia, education spending is 15.6 percent of its annual budget. Argentina education spending is 13.8 percent of its yearly budget.
Norway spends 16.2 percent of its budget on education spending, while Sweden spends 12.8 percent of its budget on education. In the U.K., education spending is 11.5 percent of the yearly expenditure. In Germany, education spending is 9.5 percent. In France, education spending is 11.4 percent of France?s yearly budget. Italy uses 10.3 percent of its annual budget for education spending. The annual education spending of Spain is 11.3 percent of its budget.
In the United Arab Emirates, education spending makes up 22.5 percent of the country?s annual budget. In Iran, education spending is 17.7 percent of its allocated budget. The education expenditure of Pakistan is 7.8 percent of all its yearly expenditures.
Morocco spends 26.4 percent of its annual budget on education expenditures. The education of South Africa is 18.5 percent of its budget. In India, education spending is 12.7 percent of its total spending. Thailand spends on education.
Australia spends 13.3 percent of its budget on education. New Zealand education spending is 15.1 percent of the New Zealand yearly budget. In China, 12.1 percent of the annual budget is spent on education expenses. South Korea spends 15.5 percent of its total yearly expenditures on the education. In Japan, the education spending percentage is 10.5 percent of the country?s annual budget. Russia spends 11.5 percent of its annual budget on the education.

How Countries Spend Their Money -

 

[30ashopper]

(education spending graph)

Can I adopt you?

 

[beachmouse]

...and not waste money on systems that don't work. We spend billions on our government run public education system and in return we get mediocre results. The special interests resist change hard but 'we the people' must be strong, ignore all the FUD, and work toward a better system.

So you're in favor of doing away with charter schools in Florida then? Because studies show they're doing more harm than good to students here at this point.

 

[30ashopper]

So you're in favor of doing away with charter schools in Florida then? Because studies show they're doing more harm than good to students here at this point.

That's interesting because I've read that charters actually do better overall. Parents tend to be more involved in these schools because they provide freedom to communities vs. the locked down mandated curriculum common in standard public schools. People tend to thrive when offered choice, wouldn?t you agree? Plus charters represent just the beginning of the movement to remove the job of educating our kids from government. It?s a positive step forward IMHO.

 

[30ashopper]

But let's not get ahead of ourselves... You attack the alternatives, but I think before you can do that you should spend some time defending the status quo. You think charters don't work.. ok, but standard public education doesn't work either. What's your solution?

 

[30ashopper]

Let me guess, mo money mo money mo money?

 

[beachmouse]

Please refute the following report with appropriate citations as necessary:

CREDO
http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/National_Release.pdf
http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/MULTIPLE_CHOICE_CREDO.pdf

While the report recognized a robust national demand for more charter schools from parents and
local communities, it found that 17 percent of charter schools reported academic gains that were
significantly better than traditional public schools, while 37 percent of charter schools showed
gains that were worse than their traditional public school counterparts, with 46 percent of charter
schools demonstrating no significant difference.

States with reading and math gains that were significantly below their peers in the traditional
public school system included: Arizona, Florida, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio and Texas.

In Arizona, Florida, Minnesota, New
Mexico and Texas, the effect for charter school students was significantly worse than the gains
realized by the TPS students.

In Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, New Mexico,
North Carolina, Ohio and Texas, charter school students? gains were eclipsed by their TPS virtual
twins.

 

[Matt J]

I'd love to know what the sources of those monies are. If they are just including the budget of the FDOE then there are certain things you can cut out. Keep in mind this does not include state budgets which contain the same line items. Bet you can't find them in those "socialist" countries.

http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget12/summary/appendix6.pdf

Subsidies for new student loans $14,710,000.00
Subsidies for existing student loans $12,128,000.00
Total subsidies for student loans $26,838,000.00
Page 14 of referenced document

Federal Perkins loans interest subsidies $0.00
Page 15 of referenced document
That program was in the sites of both the last President and Teabaggers.

The first set of numbers is basically a check written to SallieMae. That number is drastically reduced in the FY2012 budget due to student loans being originated and serviced by the Federal Government.

I'm still curious where the figures for the graphs come from. I'm betting it includes the massive infrastructure building that came with the real estate boom. Compared to many of those countries we have two things they don't; exploding population numbers or a much lower poverty rate.

 

[hkem1]

Please refute the following report with appropriate citations as necessary:

I'll take this one. And it's a post I've made previously.

First, I will quote you from a previous thread.

http://www.sowal.com/bb/politics-current-events/52092-another-study-more-bad-results-charter-schools.html

Some big result variations by state- California charters do well, while the Texas and Florida charter systems should probably be regarded as failures.

Ok, so know we know that even you think that charters in some states perform well while others, not as much. You also think that it is wrong to paint all charter schools as failures when some are doing extremely great things, while having their reputation bogged down by those performing less well.


Now, to get to the actual study.

You selected quotes that fit your argument, so will I.

"States that have limits on the number of charter schools permitted to operate, known as caps, realize significantly lower academic growth than states without caps, around .03 standard deviations"

"Charter students in elementary and middle school grades have significantly higher rates of learning than their peers in traditional public schools, but students in charter high schools and charter multi-level schools have significantly worse results"

"Charter schools have different impacts on students based on their family backgrounds. For Blacks and Hispanics, their learning gains are significantly worse than that of their traditional school twins. However, charter schools are found to have better academic growth results for students in poverty."

"English Language Learners realize significantly better learning gains in charter schools. Students in Special Education programs have about the same outcomes."

"Students do better in charter schools over time. First year charter students on average experience a decline in learning, which may reflect a combination of mobility effects and the experience of a charter school in its early years. Second and third years in charter schools see a significant reversal to positive gains".

"The news for charter schools has some encouraging facets. In our nationally pooled sample, two traditionally disadvantaged subgroups fare better in charters than in the traditional system: students in poverty and ELL students. This is no small feat. In these cases, our numbers indicate that charter students who fall into these categories are outperforming their TPS counterparts in both reading and math. These populations, then, have clearly been well served by the introduction of charters into the education landscape."

The study is not all bad. Also, the fact that students in poverty do better in charter schools should definitely not lead us to abandon them.

 

[hkem1]

I'm still curious where the figures for the graphs come from. I'm betting it includes the massive infrastructure building that came with the real estate boom. Compared to many of those countries we have two things they don't; exploding population numbers or a much lower poverty rate.

Well the graph is from visual economics. They cite the CIA world fact book.

http://www.visualeconomics.com/

I suppose if you believe that visualeconomics.com is a conservative propaganda spreading machine hell bent on destroying American public education, then you don't have to take their word for it.

But American education spending vs. the rest of the world is not really my point. My point is that we need to decide what the purpose of our education system is before we should devise better policy or spend more money.