Teachers don't make money or have respect. I'd challenge you to do an excellent job in that scenario.
No matter what it's not a money problem. No amount of money will solve that problem. Only a shift back where parents are as responsible for their childrens education as they paren't will solve this.
Make a ranked list of factors and teacher competency isn't even in the top ten. Which makes all this school reform chatter drive me nuts.
This ($57k) is right around the median household income in the US. Note that is per household, which may include multiple earners.
Tough to look at teacher salaries, which are above the median, and say that's garbage.
Yes, they have a tough job, balancing between students, administrators, and (especially) parents. But lots of people do want to do the job, and get paid an OK salary, and get lots of time off during the year.
[0] http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/high-school-teache...
According to http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm the median salary for an individual with a master's degree in the US in 2014 was $1326/week or about $69k/year.
Or would you say "I bet these employees are poorly managed. I'm sure they can work more effectively if we change aspects of the process."
Here's an idea that doesn't cost any money: segregate students by ability so that kids can learn at their own pace.
1. Don't see how you can claim that is a zero cost idea.
2. In practice this just becomes the smart kids, normal kids, idiots. Good luck once you get labelled an idiot.
It would of course suck if you just had a cold on the day of the rest and wound up in the idiot school by accident, you'd need to review performance regularly. Ideally you'd have more than three levels of schooling. Maybe five, you could label them alpha through epsilon.
How does that money get spent?
In other words, it's a governance issue. (Also, I believe, but cannot prove, it's also a scale issue. Large districts should be split up. Would give parents more choice.)
A buddy was CFO for the local school district. Admin swallows half the budget. Real estate investments are poorly managed. Maintenance has been neglected.
Meanwhile, teachers are underpaid, no COL raises for years, student to teacher ratios continue to climb, they're adding "portables" because they ran out of class room space, special needs kids are neglected, programs are cut to the bare minimum.
Et cetera, et cetera.
Yes, we US taxpayers spend a lot education. No, we're not getting our money's worth. No, privatizing via charter schools (reducing transparency and accountability) doesn't help.
Meanwhile, our kids are screwed.
The reason why charter schools work is because parents are often more involved in their kids education. The school simply forces it.
For instance:
Readling Log. Every day we have to write which book we read with our son and what book(s) he read.
Student corrections. The students are measured everyday from Green (no corrections) to yello (some and a warning) and red (paren't gets called)
Pick-up Parents line up and the teacher tells them how the day went and if there are things they need to improve.
Just a few of the things that are forcing parent involvement.
But apparently miraculously when SA started in Harlem the parent who cared about their childs education appeared in perfect sync with the charter school. Before that they simply didn't exist.
I have lost track of what this discussion is about anymore. No one is saying that charter schools is the only way to do things. I was reacting to a claim that charter schools had advantages compared to public schools.
There is a very specific reason why the kids spend a long time in school btw but since you are more interested in miracles I will save that for another day.
Some school districts spend almost $25,000 per student which is drastically larger than all but a handful of the most expensive private K-12 schools in the world.
Money is simply not the problem and every single statistical number I have seen shows it.
You want to fix education in the US, the money must follow the student. Until the school systems themselves are forced to improve by having students want to attend they won't.
The recent issue with testing which they said was putting too much pressure on students and teachers is also a misdirect. The old school method before testing was required was just to pass the student. As in, Johnny got a D where in no way he knew anything but he is now in eight grade.
We have no teacher shortage, we have less student per teacher than anytime before. The amounts spent per student are many times higher than in the seventies yet what about the value of that education.
It isn't a money issue.
With regards to for profit college educations, well the same with all new high costs course at my local state university - they are created to soak up the money because the fed loans it.