

Public Schools and Money - tokenadult
http://educationnext.org/public-schools-and-money/

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debacle
For reference, because this statistic boggles my mind, with an average class
size of 30, the average expenditure per classroom is roughly three hundred
thousand dollars.

What is wrong with this country's public education system when we can spend
three hundred thousand dollars on a single classroom and children can't learn
fractions?

I disagree that the problem is teacher salaries. I would posit that teacher
salaries are good and fair in my state (and low in others), but that there are
many teachers out there undeserving of their jobs let alone their salaries.

The problem is bloated administration, vast overspending on technology,
underqualified teachers that cannot be fired, and the impossibility of
supplanting entrenched, malignant teachers unions.

What can be done about these problems? Well, not much really. The upper middle
class is taking their school taxes on the chin and putting their children
through private schools, the lower middle class doesn't have the weapons or
resources to fight the public school bureaucracy, and the teachers union has a
vested interest in doing what is best for teachers, not what is best for
students.

I am very much in favor of unionization, however time and time again we've
been shown that school boards cannot be trusted to broker a good deal when
they're paying for things with someone else's money, and unions aren't going
to do them any favors.

