No wonder we’re always running a deficit!
I would hazard a guess that your cite is using federal $ only and not counting state and local expenditures.
http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlite-chart.html
Look down at the chart that tracks the inflation adjusted spending per student, yet we have not improved our education outcome in 40 years.
I’m not seeing anything on that chart suggesting it’s adjusted for inflation–what am I missing?
Also, when you say we haven’t improved our education outcome, what measure are you using?
Also, how are you controlling for other variables, e.g., the decline in families in which one person is a full-time caregiver for children, the massive flight from public schools to private schools as a result of desegregation, the increase in children’s screen-time spent on non-literacy and non-active entertainment?
“Consistent dollars” means inflation adjusted.
The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report shows our educational attainment has been similar for decades.
This is a nation wide assessment, private schools participate too so the makeup of private/public does not matter.
All I have to say is that nobody who has actually taught in China thinks that the Chinese system is better.
But their scores are the best in the world.
Seriously, their scores are #1 (and by a comfortable margin) in
Reading (556 to #2’s (South Korea) 539)
Math (600 to #2’s (Singapore) 562)
Science (575 to #2’s (Finland) 554)
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2011/2011004.pdf (PDF, pages 24, 33, and 39 respectively)
IMHO, I would not be surprised if some of the countries, er, “massage” their scores/tests in order to go up in the rankings.
Ah, gotcha. Interesting–I’d like to see an analysis of why cost has increased so much. Is it due to increases in teacher salary, and if so, is that due to the changing gender roles in teaching (i.e., it used to be considered a women’s profession and not therefore paid enough to support a family)? Is it due to increased equipment costs (it’d be criminal to have kids not learn how to use a word processor now, but nobody had to buy computers for the 1970 classroom)? Is it due to services provided for disabled children taht were not provided 40 years ago? What accounts for the differences?
As for PISA, I’m not totally familiar with what it tracks. Has PISA changed to incorporate knowledge of how to research online or how to use a spreadsheet? Does PISA correlate well with a nation’s success at producing innovators, artists, and scientists? What, in other words, is PISA’s validity?
And you accounted, presumably, for one of the variables. How have you controlled in your analysis for other variables, including the few examples I gave?
Its interesting to note that in many European countries including those who do better than us, far fewer people percentagewise go to college than in America and instead far more people go to vocational schools.
I haven’t seen anyone in this thread who has responded to this, and in fact most people seem to have just ignored it, so I thought it was worth quoting just to say that it is interesting and makes more sense than the ‘well, Americans is stupid…plus it’s all the Republicans/Democrats fault anyway!’ meme that seems to mostly permeate the discussion.
From reading what you wrote here, it doesn’t seem that the US is either behind or ahead…we are about on par with most other industrialized nations…which makes sense when you consider the sheer size of the country, and how much variability there is in schools across the country.
-XT
I basically agree with this. I also keep harping on the point that these same schools that are supposedly so bad keep teaching new generations of world-class entrepeneurs, artists, and scientists, so it’s a little hard to believe they’re really that universally bad.
There are certainly features of the US educational system I’d like to change, some of which would benefit me as a teacher and some of which would not. But overall I think the handwringing over our educational system is a bit much.
It tracks basic literacy, science literacy or things that are required to know what to use a spreadsheet for.
I think part of the issue is we have connected teachers pay, which is important to educational performance, it appears it is not related but obviously it is within the interests of an employee advocacy group to claim it is related.
As for innovation etc… I would say that most of the success we have had in that arena was by being the destination for the worlds best and brightest, we have never been great about growing those individuals domestically by choice.
I think most of the issues in the US are due to cultural expectations, no amount of school spending will fix that.
We just do not value knowledge as a country, some groups value educational attainment but they tend to put more value in the titles then knowledge.
I do not know of a practical way to change that and to be honest I think the marginalized uneducated labor population will continue to grow until they are numerous enough to gain majority power.
Automation has already removed most of the unskilled factory jobs and it will remove almost all the professional driver jobs in the next 50 years.
Blaming teachers and blaming schools is an easy out vs. accepting we need to make massive changes in what our culture values to stay at the top.
In my experience people are good at striving for better when they are climbing the hill but are pretty poor at preventing a slide into a hole on the way down.
[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
I basically agree with this. I also keep harping on the point that these same schools that are supposedly so bad keep teaching new generations of world-class entrepeneurs, artists, and scientists, so it’s a little hard to believe they’re really that universally bad.
There are certainly features of the US educational system I’d like to change, some of which would benefit me as a teacher and some of which would not. But overall I think the handwringing over our educational system is a bit much.
[/QUOTE]
I used to drink the kool-aide about how bad the US educational system was (it’s interesting that this meme seems to transcend -wing, since both left and right wingers go on about it, though from different perspectives of what’s really wrong, obviously), but I spend years working for various schools as a private consultant, and I found that the reality wasn’t nearly as horrific as I was lead to believe. I’ve seen some bad schools where the kids still manage to get decent educations, and some really top notch schools where they get a really good one. Do I think we could do better? Youbetcha…there is always room for improvement, and some of the inner city schools in my neck of the woods are as bad as it can get (in some of them the average student doesn’t even speak or in some cases understand spoken English), and we could certainly do more to improve such places. But overall? We aren’t behind in any meaningful sense of the word, especially considering what I’ve seen students in some other countries (like Japan) go through, pressure and everything else wise, to be on the top shelf (and even there, not ALL schools are up to the same standards…or the same insane, IMHO, pressure).
-XT
er…can you rephrase this? I’ve read it five times, and I’m not sure what it means.
We must be talking about very different things. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and the founders of just about every other major computer company from the past four decades was born in the US. While there are plenty of immigrant geniuses here, the reason we’re the destination for the world’s best and brightest is because our education system is so amazingly rocking. They want to get the same education that Americans get.
#1 teachers unions are what they are, employee advocacy groups, they are valuable but not the best source of education reform. I think most teachers should be paid better but the problem is not teachers, it is our culture and what we value.
#2 Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were business men, they are brilliant but not “innovators” just good at managing those who are.
You also cherry picked I can do that too.
Jerry Yang of yahoo, Taiwan
Andrew Carnegie was German
Andy Grove of Intel, Hungary
Levi Strauss was from Germany
An Wang of wang, China
In my group I am one of two native born Americans and this is not by choice, US education is still biased towards producing factory workers and professionals. If you have a good technical education, or the ability to learn how technology works jobs have been trivial to find through the entire recession. It has been very difficult to hire good talent though.
Here is a cite to show how incorrect your assumptions are.
http://www.kauffman.org/entrepreneurship/foreign-born-entrepreneurs.aspx
So where is your cite on all these US born companies for the past four decades? Google was only 50% US born.
Our college education system is still good but our K-12 is not a leader by any measure.
Wrong thread
In a sense, I agree: when we look to health care reform, we don’t necessarily ask the AMA to lead the way, nor is the ABA at the head of tort reform. However, nor do we vilify AMA or ABA to the extent that NEA and AFT are vilified: we recognize them as partners at the table, not enemies to be defeated.
Your cherry-picking does more to support my case than you may realize :). You suggested that over the last 40 years, we’ve seen no improvement in education despite the amount of money spent on it. I pointed out that OVER THE PAST FORTY YEARS, we’ve seen the lion’s share of scientific achievement come from the United States, which would be peculiar if everyone is passing us by.
Your response is to list four entrepreneurs from the time period before the one in question–Carnegie, Grove, Strauss, and Wang are not from the past four decades. Is it the case that educational spending in the US correlates with an increasing concentration of innovation in the US?
You did mention one person from the past four decades: Jerry Yang. He was indeed born in Taiwan. And he moved to the US when he was 10, attending middle school and high school in the US public school system.
Want to try again? 
First, to the Google note: Sergey Brin moved to the US when he was six. It’s true that he attended Montessori grade school, but he too attended a US public high school. He is support for my position, not a rebuttal.
Second, your stats are interesting but not exactly to point. Yes, there are plenty of companies in the US founded by immigrants. The question isn’t that. The question is (and I’ll capitalize some key words I think you’re neglecting), how many of the WORLD’s LEADING technology companies are founded by people who DID NOT ATTEND US PUBLIC SCHOOLS?
Your cite instead lists how many of the US’S COMPREHENSIVE (as opposed to leading) technology companies are founded by people who WERE BORN ELSEWHERE (as opposed to being educated elsewhere).
Even your cite, though, contains some support for what I’m saying:
Note that over half of the company founders came to the US for a specific reason: the quality of our schools. Of course, most of those are probably coming here for postsecondary education, which may not really be what we’re discussing here. To the extent that the cite is at all relevant, however, it’s relevant in a way that supports my claim, that the US still has a world-class school system by the metric of the innovators it produces.
Actually no, being first generation immigration directly supports my position, which is that the main issue with education in our country is the lack of educational expectations from parents and society.
I provided citations for that above.
Please don’t try to build a straw man about my argument again.
Please show me a cite how people are immigrating for the quality of k-12, that study was about secondary which you admit is outside the scope of this discussion.
Please show me a cite where it is our k-12 system that is superior by any means.
That may well be–it’s orthagonal to what I’m arguing, and you and I may both well be correct. I wasn’t refuting that point in the post you just responded to; I was refuting your claim that the cite you provided showed how “incorrect” my assumptions were.
I’ll thank you not to accuse me of arguing dishonestly (as, for example, by trying to build a straw man about you). This once I’ll let it slide, but if you cannot trust that I’m discussing this point as honestly as I can, and that our disagreement is honest, then I’ll end the discussion with you.
The first cite is unnecessary, since it’s not what I’m arguing. As I said, your study is probably outside the scope of our discussion (inasmuch as it doesn’t show how incorrect my assumptions are–it may be relevant to some other point).
As for the second cite, my central argument is that our educational system produces world-class innovators. The two people you’ve mentioned that are innovators from the past 40 years and were from outside the US both turned out to have attended precisely the public educational system that I’m arguing produces world-class innovators. I’ve cited several leading companies founded by graduates of the US public school system; that’s the evidence I gather for my claim. Admittedly it’s anecdotal rather than comprehensive and rigorous; I acknowledge that flaw in my evidence. However, it suggests pretty strongly to me that our system is doing something right.