Henry Imler January 22nd, 2006

A few days ago I posted a few links about publics schools
from Stossel’s point of view. I want to revisit a few of his points
that really stuck out to me:

(Check out the read more section for quotes related to these points)

1. Public Schools waste money on projects that do not impact student’s education enough to warrent their cost.
2. That money would be better spent on teachers and books.
3. Teacher’s saleries are too low to attract lots of high quality teachers
4. Hard to fire bad teachers
5. If child lives in the area covered by a bad school they are stuck there.

Hard to argue with that. The above is the main reason why Missouri
Governor Matt Blount is proposing a law that would require schools to spend 65% of thier funding in the classroom. Quite natually, many people disagree with this proposal ^{1 2 3}.
On the surface, Blunt’s proposal seems to make sense. Spend more in the
classroom, and on teachers. If you draw quality teachers you will
produce quality students. I know many people, including myself that
would love to teach in puplic schools, but the pay does not match the
costs of getting the education. The nation has a very high vested
interest in having quality teachers, I think that they should attract
them by higher saleries.

However, with that said, I am not a teacher, nor a public school
administration offical. I don’t want to claim to have any good answers
here. The case Stossel quoted with the Kansas City school was surely
one of the most extreme examples he could find. He then goes on to
quote a study that showed Catholic Schools out-performing public
schools in New York. To further evidence his case for a voucher system,
he gives us the example of the American Indian Charter School in
Oakland, CA:

Hard to argue with that. As a firm believer in the public school system, is this the way it should be done across the board?

=> Read more!

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