I often find it incomprehensible what the US does in line with it's education budgets. I'll break this down in just a bit as to why. Let me give you some examples first.
In Florida many years ago, the state was looking for some way to unload that part out of it's budget. It found it by making a state lottery, who's income would go towards paying for education. Many were under the false impression that the lottery would contribute to the amount the state was putting in for education. But that's not how it played out. As soon as the lottery became popular enough, the state cut the education budget by the average the lottery was contributing. When the lottery became accepted the state ended it's contributions to education.
Many of the federal dollars that are shared with the state in funding education, come with lots of strings. Things you have to do in order to qualify for the money. During the Bush years, there came a new political program called 'No child left behind'. Well enough intentioned but poorly executed. The idea was to improve student grades and provide a metric for tracking that improvement. What actually happened was more and more required testing and less and less remaining for education time. Because how well the students did connected back to a teacher holding their job, education changed. It became more interested in teaching how to pass a test, not in educating the masses.
For the break down, let me start here. Teachers' jobs are some of the most under appreciated jobs there are. It's not only for teaching young people but it's political as well in the sense that it's local politics. For instance, corporal punishment (ie getting a paddling for misbehaving) was thrown out as publicly unacceptable. So how do you discipline the child who won't behave and is intent on disrupting the class in the process? It started out that they were sent to the principal of the school, who decided if the infraction was severe enough to expell the student from school for a set amount of days. I'll note this doesn't help the student expelled and at that young an age is often looked at, as a benefit of not having to deal with schooling.
Then there is the parent aspect. The belief that 'Little Johnny is never like that' and the teacher has it in for Johnny. No teacher I ever knew actually had that attitude in reality. They had a job to do and wanted to do it well. But after hours, many teachers get a call at home, with these sorts of issues about their students. They aren't paid to deal with this after hours. Instead they have tests to grade, lesson plans to make, and presentations for meetings after hours. Most often the teacher will refer the upset parent to the school principal or superintendent. School management is sort of like a corporation. They don't get paid to educate. They get paid to administrate and their pay scales are not on level with teachers. Instead teachers are treated as the lowest of the low and their pay scale advances not through accomplishment but through years of service.
The issue becomes not paying for quality but rather paying for passing tests. So that's what is taught and given more attention to is passing tests so the teacher will continue to have a job the next year. Rinse and repeat, year after year. Today, colleges are not starting out teaching college level courses. Instead the first year will cover what they should have covered in high school because they weren't taught the subjects at high school.
In the end of all this, comes one thing that stands out. You can not provide low level education and come out with world class economy, technology, engineering, advances in products, advances in medical, advances pretty much in any field with out world class education and the public is being short changed in this aspect.
Often you hear in the news that the US is hurting for STEM educated (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics). Truth is that's not the case. We have gobs of folks coming out of college STEM educated. The problem with this is they also come out with huge bills to pay for their education and can't just accept a minimum wage job to pay for it. Nearly 80% of those trained in STEM never work in the field because there aren't enough jobs to go around. Most will find a job unrelated to STEM. The industry uses the excuse to import foreign workers at cheaper wages, rather than pay what the job is worth.
At any rate, I could fill a newspaper on this topic and the post is already long enough.
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