Alternatively: Education actually has plenty of money, but too much of it is leeched out by low value vendors charging high premiums for easily replaced commodities, low value administrative staff performing easily automated tasks, and public-sector unions filling their coffers and the coffers of friendly politicians, long before teachers receive a penny, many of which then have to shell out for materials out of their own pockets, materials which ought to be provided for by their employers.
I went to public schools which were thick with staff, and for the life of me I could never figure out why there was any more staff than the faculty, the principal, the vice principal, a secretary and maybe a janitor and lunch lady. Even the libraries, IT tasks and sports equipment were maintained by faculty. Janitorial tasks and catering could be good exercises for the kids if you wanted to cut some staff because frankly a good number of kids, myself included, could have used the extra discipline growing up.
Meanwhile there were too many unused classrooms, too many kids per class, too few seats and tables and too few lockers. Teachers were paying for printouts and unreturned textbooks (that the students didn’t return to the teacher) but the administration sure had a thick wad of newsletters, handbooks, forms, reports (not all to do with the students, mostly administrative crap) and all manner of garbage for us to take home every single week.
I think a lot of the question here is in the Administrator/Faculty divide. Is a special education teacher faculty? What about learning center, where students who need extra help in a specific subject go while the rest of the class continues regular learning? What about specialists who teach computer, science, garden, art, music? (And who give the teachers a break during the school day.)
As for administrators, the ones I see at schools are usually needed: a nurse or medical aide, a psychologist, a librarian, two front desk people (both so you have backup if someone is sick, and so you aren't without someone if a student/parent needs assistance out of the office), custodians are important (you need two, one for daytime, and one for nighttime. Yes, students can do cleanup at some point, but not K-3 at least), etc.
> Alternatively: Education actually has plenty of money
It doesn't--even if you get rid of the "administrative staff".
The Gates Foundation went through and analyzed this for younger students (early middle school and younger). It takes roughly $15K per student do what you need: two fully qualified adults in a classroom of 15 with sufficient resources. This allows you to bring your poor performers up to average in 3 years.
Not good--just average. Every single one of those initiatives were cancelled because of money.
People claim they want better education systems--until they have to actually pay for it.
What were the overhead costs associated with educating each student and why two adults?
For a class of 15, 1 teacher is sufficient, and even if you reduce class sizes to 10, that's one teacher per 10 rather than 1 per 7.5. The school district I grew up in spent about $13K per pupil in the school year following my graduation (easiest year to find quick and dirty data for), and still had all of the problems I outlined. I assure you, it wasn't going to high teacher salaries when I was in school.
So how about we do trim off some of that fat, give the teachers a raise, and then evaluate whether we need the additional spend?
No, it's not. And we have LOTS of research on that.
Some young child always has a problem. When that happens, the attention of a teacher is completely tied up. You need two so that the class can keep going.
>Almost all high-quality early learning programs, including all of the programs featured in this paper with outcomes that stick, have teacher- child ratios of 2:20 or better.
I think the elephant in the room, however, is the enormous wealth transfer needed to provide the necessary home environment for a child to succeed at a similar level to children who do have homes conducive to academic education.
Thank you, I’m on the clock but first impressions from the first few pages: this does not appear to be a document detailing the cost of a basic education, this appears to cover supplementary programs.
Fine if that’s what you want to discuss, but not pertinent to the high cost and low quality of a basic K-12 education provided by public schools. These types of programs are more suited for a social services budget.
So here is what I have been looking at all these years: my State’s K12 budget[1] and student body[2].
You don’t need a Gates Foundation report to see this information, it’s all public, and searchable, and has been for a very long time.
Per pupil spending[3] includes capital, materials, labor and any other operating costs including public debt. School districts, at least in my State, tend to finance their buildings through bonds and own them outright, so they’re not paying rent but they are making regular debt payments on at least some of their facilities.
So when you look at what is allocated in the State budget which includes non-State sources, the Cal Department of Education was allocated about $91B and change divided across a State student body of about 6M and change, 6.7M if you include charter school students, for per-pupil spend of about $13K and change, ~7Kish from the State. The non-State sources are mostly Federal from my recollection, I’m typing this on the fly and don’t have time to double check hence my liberal use of rounding, but not necessarily so.
This does not include funds raised by the school districts themselves (see [2] for how many of those there are) nor contributions from local governments which sometimes but not necessarily so contribute to the district funds.
If you want to do some back of the envelope math yourself, I’ve given you the basics, you can find the equivalents for your own State of choice on your own, and figure out if there isn’t a better way to effectively allocate what already exists. Chromebooks didn’t exist the first time I did this exercise, but the existence of very cheap laptops has brought this figure down over time. It’s both fun and depressing!
I went to public schools which were thick with staff, and for the life of me I could never figure out why there was any more staff than the faculty, the principal, the vice principal, a secretary and maybe a janitor and lunch lady. Even the libraries, IT tasks and sports equipment were maintained by faculty. Janitorial tasks and catering could be good exercises for the kids if you wanted to cut some staff because frankly a good number of kids, myself included, could have used the extra discipline growing up.
Meanwhile there were too many unused classrooms, too many kids per class, too few seats and tables and too few lockers. Teachers were paying for printouts and unreturned textbooks (that the students didn’t return to the teacher) but the administration sure had a thick wad of newsletters, handbooks, forms, reports (not all to do with the students, mostly administrative crap) and all manner of garbage for us to take home every single week.