Just as US students go back to school, a news story today told of an LA high school where $350 million was spent to build it. Yikes! ... With a student population of 2,400, that's spending $145,000 per student on the building alone ... They'll pump another $10-$20k per student in annually just to make the school run (ie, hire teachers, pay administrators, etc).
Just a few quick stats from the Wikipedia article on US Education:
- Average spending per student in US is $11,000 per year - which is #1 highest in the world (...this also equals $250k to $300k spent per classroom, while teachers only earn $25-$40k)
- Many districts with higher spending have worse results (ie, DC spends $13,000 per year, gets terrible results).
- In some areas, public schools spend 50% to 100% more than what private schools spend per student, and still get worse results.
- In 1994, less than half of all public schools employees were teachers.
- The US is tied for first place in the world on annual spending per student -- and yet ranks last in achievement and graduation among developed nations.
Somehow, we're constantly told by the teacher's unions that "we need more money" to fix the schools. Yet money has not solved our problem for 40 years now that the US has lagged behind. Can we allow the teacher's unions and failed schools to hold millions of our nation's youth -- and, indeed, the future of our nation -- hostage year after year? ... We can only hope that the next administration might be willing to stand up to this broken system and allow millions of minds and lives to be broken by a failed education system.
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