The cost per pupil means something, but yes there is waste . . .
A School Finance Wish List
**This was originally a response to The Voice in the Wilderness's comments about school waste in Lookout's Weekly Watch essay on education. Posting this as an essay to hopefully generate more discussion. I encourage you to read it if you haven't . . . https://caucus99percent.com/content/weekly-watch-26 **
In my experience, I don't ever remember seeing a teacher being wasteful. Most teachers I knew even paid for materials out of pocket. If there was waste, it was administrative and the result of poor planning. The great example is the aforementioned story about the computers sitting in boxes. There was always this "great new program" that was going to save the day. I would also concur with the charge of software waste. This is because I am a Linux geek and as a tech teacher spent $0 on software. Yet I taught 3D modeling, animation, computer graphics, video/audio editing, music composition, web design, and desktop publishing. We even built a supercomputer to serve as a render farm using distributed computing. Sigh. In the U.S., schools never caught on to Linux. That was a giant waste.
The waste then IMO, comes mostly as a result of education's ties to greedy education supply corporations. Pearson is making quite a haul on testing like you mentioned. Everyone is trying to profit from education. It always made me feel sick to go to a tech convention and see the host of blood sucking vendors. It is a vicious cycle because the vendors pay for the conventions.
So where should the money go?
A good place to start to improve schools through proper funding is to simply pay the teachers and staff decent wages . . . and make sure they are paid for extra stuff you ask them to do. I have been in both places - where you feel like you are earning what you are worth, and where you feel like you are being taken advantage of at every turn. It speaks to morale.
These are the other areas where I would direct school funding:
- Feed the kids. Pay for all of the meals.
- Pay for school supplies. Parents should not be required to buy supplies of any kind.
- Insure small class sizes.
- Provide reading accommodations for all students who ask for them from Pre-K - 12. This means that audio books, text-to-speech, video materials, and voice recognition technology are always available in every circumstance. Educators facilitate these accommodations because they understand that for many students, reading skills will not kick in until later in life. But there are many other subjects to learn before that happens! (dyslexia mitigated!)
- Always provide "study hall" time so that students can do their assignments in school. (no homework) The fact is that some kids can't do school work at home. That's just the way it is.
- Fund fine arts programs.
- Fund practical arts programs.
- A personal wish of mine would be to move away from competitive sports in the physical education programs and include more life-long fun healthy activities. Some schools probably do this already.
- Elementary schools should include ample recess time. Ten years ago I taught in an Intermediate school that did not provide recess. Terrible. The kids were so wound up, but it was not their fault.
- Scheduling in the high school should more reflect traditional college scheduling, so classes do not meet every day. There are probably many forms of modular scheduling that could be effective. In 2014 I went back to a former school (that I had really enjoyed) to fill in at the beginning of the year. They had gone to a 9 period day. That means the students attended 9 classes every day of the week. The last three periods were useless. Everyone was exhausted. The motivation of course was to get more teacher bang for the buck by requiring everyone to teach more classes. In my most eloquent teacher voice, I have to say . . . "WTF!!!"
- Fund ample support staff. Don't overwork the custodians, aides, lunch workers, secretaries. Pay them well.
- Fund the maintenance of the school facility so it is well lit, spacious, safe, and clean.
That's where I think the money should go when financing schools.
Any other ideas?
Comments
schools supplying all school supplies doesn't work.
Michigan schools already do that. So instead of letting the teachers request the school supplies they want the kids to have, they can only request the school supplies the school thinks it can afford. They do the same thing to the teachers. They can't have want they want, they can only have what the school wants them to have. The severely limit the # of copies they can run so the teachers have to limit handouts.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
I have seen that happen too . . .
I used to buy my own paper and print them myself.
But this is supposed to be a list of the way things should be. And in many cases this could be achieved by redirecting resources. My husband was the director of purchasing for a large metro school district. I remember seeing a purchase order that was back to school coffee mugs for $40,000 (something close to that). That would have bought a bunch of pencils.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
ideas
Great point! And make this study hall to be organized as an actual class, in a classroom, with a small class size. Don't just pack all the kids in study hall into some auditorium with no desks and expect anything worthwhile to get done.
And music. Make basic levels of each of these mandatory for graduation. Today's over-dependency on Science, Technology and Mathematics (STEM) is not only turning kids into a bunch of automatons, but it's destroying most enthusiasm for STEM in the process and is therefore counter-productive and hence a pure waste.
I know of no schools currently doing this. As it is structured now, physical education (PE) is a total waste, benefiting only a tiny fraction of the students while all their parents have to pay for it. And that's before we address the fact that PE is little else besides preparation of the kids for war.
This should continue throughout, not just elementary school. Hell, in adult worklife, unions fought and fought to get the benefit of periodic "recess" in their lives!
Speaking of unions, American History and Civics should be compulsory courses, and they should be modeled after such histories as Howard Zinn's A People's History Of The United States. The role of unions and civil disobedience movements should have a prominent role in the telling of our country's story.
Here's an example of why teachers should be unionized! A strike, in the interests of the kids themselves, is certainly called for in a situation like this.
And in these interests, maintain the tradition of summer vacation. Do major maintenances of the physical plant when the kids aren't in it. You don't perform transmission repair on a car while driving it. Likewise, school buildings should be reliably ready to go when the kids show up for school. Whether the bean counters like it or not, that means down time. The kids need that down time, too, for a host of reasons!
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Great comments IMO!
I agree with you totally about summer vacation. As a teacher, you are so totally burned out by the end of the year . . . you need to recover. Kids do too.
And I think in some areas, the year round school could be viable where you have a month's vacation in between each term. I especially think that could be great in Texas where the summers suck.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
Thank you, Marilyn!
And, as I pointed out above, the schools' facilities need to recover, too, and not all of that repair can be done while the facilities are in use.
Why do people insist on living in that part of North America?
Seriously: in Texas, Arizona, much of New Mexico, etc., the preservation of traditional summer vacation is also fiscally smart, as it gets the kids out of the buildings at the very time they are most expensive to operate. Spend the money on some of the other things we've been talking about, instead!
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
more ideas
Kill, destroy, and annihilate the right-wing politically motivated high-stakes testing schemes and utterly abolish any use of testing except for the benefit of individual students. "Teaching to the Test" is resulting in the complete non-education of these kids.
And somewhere in the development of every high school student there needs to be mandatory deliberate training in critical thinking skills -- regardless of who might say nay!
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
IMHO, testing
would be the very first thing to go. What was once a tool to evaluate overall curriculum has now become a cudgel to bludgeon teachers, students, and schools. In Florida, school funding is heavily dependent upon school performance with better performing schools getting better funding.
This is the exact opposite of what it should be. The best teachers and resources should be allocated to poorer schools so that each student has the benefit of more individualized attention. But the competitive nature of testing prevents this from occurring. A big part of school should be to instill the love of learning in our children so they become lifelong learners. However, teachers and parents both say that the emphasis upon testing and teaching to the test has dampened the spirits of young minds for learning. Anecdotally, I have talked to people who have their children in a small private school and they say it has been worth the cost because their children look forward to going to school and to learning new things every day. But not everyone can afford a small private school. Shouldn't all our schools be like this?
Speaking of poverty, this is probably the single greatest factor in school performance. Often poor children are also hungry. The local school district where I spend much of my time in NC provides a free breakfast for every child in public school regardless of family income. This ensures that every child starts the day with some food in their stomachs. And by providing it to all students, it does not stigmatize poorer children. I believe all children should receive both breakfast and lunch each day, free of charge to them.
Just my $.02 worth.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Testing is indeed the greatest evil . . .
My (dyslexic) son loved school until third grade, when the state testing began.
And we need to feed them. How can they learn if they are hungry?
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
Good ideas. I also think money should be directed to
write history school books that tell our kids Columbus was a genocidal racist and did not discover America, that U.S. democracy is a lie, and that the U.S. is an imperialist Empire.
We need to get them off to a better start.
Absolutely!!
Accurate history that is not based on war.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
Absolutely!!
Accurate history that is not based on war.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
Let teachers develop the budget cooperatively
As mhagle said teachers don't waste money, administrators do. Where is the nicest copy machine in a school system? The central office. Who gets the largest salaries? The administrators. I believe the greatest waste happens at the administrative level.
If teachers could develop the school budget, hire fellow staff, and essentially run a school cooperatively, money would be saved and the school would be a better learning environment.
And to an earlier comment about textbooks, just do away with them. Have them available as a resource, but never teach from them! Teach from your own deep understanding the subject or skill set.
I'll share more of my thoughts on this subject next Sunday in the weekly watch. Thanks mhagle for extending our conversation on this important topic!
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”