This is especially true in a market that doesn’t operate efficiently. (I’ve mentioned the state of education a few times before.) And, yet, the idea that throwing more money at education will fix everything pervades. Why? I’m scratching my head on this one.
California’s education budget (in 2002) is 43 percent of the total state budget. This figure leaps up to 53 percent if one considers only the general fund. Over 22 percent of Michigan’s 2005 budget will go towards higher education alone. Mississippi allocates 65.26 percent of its budget to education. Most states fall in the 40-70% range.
Where does it stop? More money is obviously not fixing anything. When do we try alternatives? When do we say enough is enough? When do we insist that public education use our tax dollars more efficiently?
My first idea? Introduce market dynamics into the teacher market. It would lead to an incentive for those that would be excellent teachers/educators to enter the market because market dynamics would allow good teachers to be properly rewarded for their efforts.
This is a small step, but it could be one of the most important.
Further reading on the subject:
2 responses so far ↓
1 Charlie Seven // Jul 16, 2004 at 11:25 am
I just found an interesting article from Public Agenda related to this. here’s the link…
http://www.publicagenda.org/specials/teachers/teachers.htm
and
http://www.publicagenda.org/specials/standbyme/standbyme.htm
Public Agenda does Polls, and doesn´t get involved in the politics of the issues. They instead find out what people think about the issues. Very interesting reading.
-7C
2 Scott // Jul 19, 2004 at 10:17 am
When do we get back to the basics - “The Three R’s” and history.
I am not sure how relative this is to all of the population of younger adults but if you ever watch Leno and see the basic history questions or current event questions he asks and people have no idea what he is talking about.
The education system is broke and I think we need to go back to the basics.