Where does all the money in schools go to?

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Originally Posted by Omnis Dei

You cannot blame the graduation rate on the funding. There are too many elements in play including a general disillusionment with the school system that has been brewing for years now.

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I didn't. I said that we are spending $10,000 per student and 30% aren't even making it through high school. I think the results are pretty atrocious when you consider the kind of resources that 10,000 a year affords you. That's $120,000 per student. You can do a lot with that much money and what we have is simply pathetic.

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Honestly though, I can't account for all the spending you're referring to but I also need to see something that explains the spending so I can see the unaccounted for money. It goes somewhere and that somewhere is recorded. Public funding is not laundered so easily.

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I'm not even saying it's laundered, though that's definitely a possibility. I'm thinking it's likely spent in the usual crony capitalist way. Public money being given to favorite companies that really aren't providing the kind of value they're being payed for. But it also seems pretty unlikely that someone somewhere isn't abusing the system and leeching money out of it.

Right but again this is not a funding issue so don't put it on funding like we would fix education by throwing more money at it. (I know you weren't saying that but your point about graduation implies its a financial issue so you have to clarify that). Our education system is terribly biased and backwards, this is revealed by the very fact that something like graduation exists in the first place.

Nextly, I understand how private companies often receive no bid contracts and bypass natural competition. But which ones? Don't be Glenn Beck, don't just insinuate people are doing bad things without explaining what that is or who's doing it. It's not exactly news that our public funding is grabbed up by profit driven companies. The hundred dollar hammer rumor has been around since the 80s.

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Originally Posted by Omnis Dei

Right but again this is not a funding issue so don't put it on funding like we would fix education by throwing more money at it. (I know you weren't saying that but your point about graduation implies its a financial issue so you have to clarify that). Our education system is terribly biased and backwards, this is revealed by the very fact that something like graduation exists in the first place.

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I do think there should be going more funding into it. The American citizen should pay higher taxes into the educational system, depending on someone's wealth, so the tuition fee can go down a lot. That way people who don't have the financial capacities to go to the university will be able to do so.

You're missing the point that there is already more than enough money going in to it.
But it's obviously not actually going anywhere productive.

Although I do think all education should be paid for by taxes.

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Originally Posted by StonedApe

I get the first 2 but how do banks get in there?

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Schools have projects that occasionally cost millions and millions of dollars. New sports arenas, expansion. Both require more money than the school has at any given time. Sometimes the government gives grants for them, sometimes they take loans from the banks.

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Originally Posted by tommo

You're missing the point that there is already more than enough money going in to it.
But it's obviously not actually going anywhere productive.

Although I do think all education should be paid for by taxes.

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No there's not enough money pumped in by the government. By people, yes, but the system should be regulated by the government, otherwise we have the nefast consequences that we see now, basically schools turning into businesses asking a ridiculous amount of money. I think they should socialize education, just like Obama did with health care.

I mean, how can you be surprised that they're asking so much money if you're basically dealing with a business? If you're buying a product, like, for example a Lee Cooper jeans, the largest percentage of the price you're giving for it isn't about the fabric or the labor.. it's just going to the brand. Companies will always try to make as much money as they possibly can. Just basic economic principle.

If all schools were socialized, would they be on the same standardized curriculum? Because I don't think our schools need any more indoctrination and reinforcement of what a bureaucracy believes they should know... we have far too much already. Parents need to be directly involved in their children's education both financially (with locally-funded schools) and personally.

I find that most independent schools are like this. Here in the UK some independent schools (Eton, Harrow etc) are on the verge of hitting over £25,000 a year - and thats just on tuition fee.

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Originally Posted by ThePreserver

If all schools were socialized, would they be on the same standardized curriculum? Because I don't think our schools need any more indoctrination and reinforcement of what a bureaucracy believes they should know... we have far too much already. Parents need to be directly involved in their children's education both financially (with locally-funded schools) and personally.

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Private Education is susceptible to the same kind of mass produced indoctrination meant to create a complacent working class. This is not the state's fault, if there wasn't such pressure to mass produce education from the private sector then more creative based teaching methods could thrive.

It's a tricky concept because obviously the government isn't going to throw money at schools that cant uphold some sort of standard and these standards are currently what confines our teachers to teach the test rather than empower the student. But they wouldn't disappear if public schools disappeared, it would only get worse because the private sector doesn't want an empowered middle class. They want a complacent middle class.

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Originally Posted by Omnis Dei

Right but again this is not a funding issue so don't put it on funding like we would fix education by throwing more money at it. (I know you weren't saying that but your point about graduation implies its a financial issue so you have to clarify that). Our education system is terribly biased and backwards, this is revealed by the very fact that something like graduation exists in the first place.

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My issue is with that much money going into it and so little coming out of it, I thought that was clear.

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Nextly, I understand how private companies often receive no bid contracts and bypass natural competition. But which ones? Don't be Glenn Beck, don't just insinuate people are doing bad things without explaining what that is or who's doing it. It's not exactly news that our public funding is grabbed up by profit driven companies. The hundred dollar hammer rumor has been around since the 80s.

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I wasn't insinuating that, I was merely pointing out that a lot of money goes into schools and yet they are total shit. I started this thread because I don't know where the money is going and am curious, again I thought I made that clear in the OP. That's why I asked questions rather than making statements.

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Originally Posted by Meeps

I do think there should be going more funding into it. The American citizen should pay higher taxes into the educational system, depending on someone's wealth, so the tuition fee can go down a lot. That way people who don't have the financial capacities to go to the university will be able to do so.

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We're not talking about University here, or at least I'm not. I was mainly talking about public schools where there is no fee at all. Except the taxes you pay, which is total bullshit in my opinion. But we can talk about that in a different thread, I don't wanna get too off topic.

To stay on topic, you don't think that $10,000 is enough money to provide someone with an education for a year(not even, only 9 months really)?

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Originally Posted by ThePieMan

I find that most independent schools are like this. Here in the UK some independent schools (Eton, Harrow etc) are on the verge of hitting over £25,000 a year - and thats just on tuition fee.

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Yeah, it's ridiculous. Somebody's getting paid a hell of a lot of money and it's not the teachers. That really needs to be switched around. Administrators are far less important than teachers are.

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Originally Posted by Omnis Dei

Private Education is susceptible to the same kind of mass produced indoctrination meant to create a complacent working class. This is not the state's fault, if there wasn't such pressure to mass produce education from the private sector then more creative based teaching methods could thrive.

It's a tricky concept because obviously the government isn't going to throw money at schools that cant uphold some sort of standard and these standards are currently what confines our teachers to teach the test rather than empower the student. But they wouldn't disappear if public schools disappeared, it would only get worse because the private sector doesn't want an empowered middle class. They want a complacent middle class.

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Do you think that the government doesn't want this kind of indoctrination and complacency as well? For it's own purposes, not having anything to do with business?

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Originally Posted by StonedApe

Yeah, it's ridiculous. Somebody's getting paid a hell of a lot of money and it's not the teachers. That really needs to be switched around. Administrators are far less important than teachers are.

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I don't think you know what you're talking about here... Eton is one of the top private schools in the UK. They have a student teacher ratio of 10:1, so even if everything went to teachers that'd be a salary of £250,000 per year, which I wouldn't be particularly surprised by. In any case it's a small private organisation paid for directly by its customers; they're not going to be apathetic if it all went to pointless bureaucrats, are they?

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Originally Posted by StonedApe

I wasn't insinuating that, I was merely pointing out that a lot of money goes into schools and yet they are total shit. I started this thread because I don't know where the money is going and am curious, again I thought I made that clear in the OP. That's why I asked questions rather than making statements.

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I apologize, I suppose I misread your tone. To be fair, Glenn Beck would use the same excuse. He's not making allegations, he's just raising questions. There is probably a lot of companies profiting from schools the same way companies profit from prison and military and every other public institution. The companies selling the school their cafeteria food are not public utilities and we assume the school will do its best to hunt the best bargain but the result is the opposite, they're bribed or extorted into bleeding our funds dry with outrageously overpriced shit so somebody can make an extra buck. But this is not just a problem with school, this is the problem with government and in fact schools are probably less affected by this because the people spending the budget are more invested in the community.

That's why I find your OP troubling because it implies that every school spends exactly 10,000 per child and then they smuggle the rest away. The truth is every dime they get is averaged out per child (the school is there for children in the first place) but the children are getting majorly ripped off by the purchases being made.

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Originally Posted by Xei

I don't think you know what you're talking about here... Eton is one of the top private schools in the UK. They have a student teacher ratio of 10:1, so even if everything went to teachers that'd be a salary of £250,000 per year, which I wouldn't be particularly surprised by. In any case it's a small private organisation paid for directly by its customers; they're not going to be apathetic if it all went to pointless bureaucrats, are they?

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I really don't know much about UK schools other than that they aren't as shitty as US schools. I was talking about US schools when I made that comment.

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Originally Posted by Omnis Dei

I apologize, I suppose I misread your tone. To be fair, Glenn Beck would use the same excuse. He's not making allegations, he's just raising questions. There is probably a lot of companies profiting from schools the same way companies profit from prison and military and every other public institution. The companies selling the school their cafeteria food are not public utilities and we assume the school will do its best to hunt the best bargain but the result is the opposite, they're bribed or extorted into bleeding our funds dry with outrageously overpriced shit so somebody can make an extra buck. But this is not just a problem with school, this is the problem with government and in fact schools are probably less affected by this because the people spending the budget are more invested in the community.

That's why I find your OP troubling because it implies that every school spends exactly 10,000 per child and then they smuggle the rest away. The truth is every dime they get is averaged out per child (the school is there for children in the first place) but the children are getting majorly ripped off by the purchases being made.

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I got that number from the government actually. That is how much they spend per student(actually it's a more than that), though obviously they don't spend that much on each student, it's averaged out.
http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66

My point is more that I don't think these students are getting $10,000 worth of education each year. I recently heard Ron Paul comment on how many home schooled kids get a better education with $500 a year. Obviously its a different environment and they don't get everything that you get from a normal school but it's pretty obvious that the schools could be doing much better considering how much money they get.

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Originally Posted by StonedApe

I really don't know much about UK schools other than that they aren't as shitty as US schools. I was talking about US schools when I made that comment.

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Well, the comment you were responding to was about the British system. Eton isn't remotely representative of UK schools in general.

Right well funding is an issue but it's not purely an education issue, it's a problem with our government as a whole. Individuals will protect themselves at the expense of the whole.

To me the way to solve education is not attack it by making sure they use all their money. Yeah, it's grievous that money is getting wasted but that's something we need to approach in a more general way, changing our system of government to protect people from their legislature's self-interests.

To fix the problem of education, first of all it cannot be mandatory and secondly it cannot be standardized. This makes funding even less accountable than it it is currently but it's necessary to evolve our education system from a workforce factory into a means to empower individuals and communities. Like you said people get better education in home schools. I disagree with this because I think a social environment provides a type of learning on its own and home-schooled kids miss out on that peer to peer learning so they always seem sort of awkward. But my point is we can come up with a better education system if remove standards and obligations so students and teachers are free to obtain the knowledge they want to pursue their dreams. However, we cannot do this by ending the public education system and making people rely on private schools. We need to build a ladder and the people on the top of the ladder need to aid in its completion but they tend not to unless they're obligated. It's a conundrum in evolution, those with power don't need to worry about the ways in which we can improve society. In fact its detrimental to them because it means more competition.

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Originally Posted by Omnis Dei

Private Education is susceptible to the same kind of mass produced indoctrination meant to create a complacent working class. This is not the state's fault, if there wasn't such pressure to mass produce education from the private sector then more creative based teaching methods could thrive.

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I wasn't endorsing private schooling, either :P I think parents need to be as actively involved in their children's education as possible, ensuring their school is educating them properly, regardless of whether it is public, private, or homeschooling.

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Originally Posted by ThePreserver

If all schools were socialized, would they be on the same standardized curriculum? Because I don't think our schools need any more indoctrination and reinforcement of what a bureaucracy believes they should know... we have far too much already. Parents need to be directly involved in their children's education both financially (with locally-funded schools) and personally.

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There should be some sorta school plan but no not Russia style of course :D What's wrong with a standardized curriculum? It just means they'll tell the history teacher for example this year you'll be teaching about the medieval age (history) and the next the modern age, etc. It's not that they say:"and you'll be saying that we saved Europe from these vicious communists and blablabla..."
I hear they don't even teach proper biology in America due to the interference of religious beliefs well... I think that's worse.

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Originally Posted by ThePreserver

I wasn't endorsing private schooling, either :P I think parents need to be as actively involved in their children's education as possible, ensuring their school is educating them properly, regardless of whether it is public, private, or homeschooling.

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Why though? Parents are indoctrinating their kids anyway whenever they're not in school... It's probably better for them when they get some other views too to counter their parents beliefs.

Back on topic: I found an article but can't put the link here due to that silly 7 days rule :D It's from wsj and called "public schools increase fees charged to students."

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Originally Posted by Omnis Dei

To fix the problem of education, first of all it cannot be mandatory and secondly it cannot be standardized.

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That's why the UK has a 1 in 5 illiteracy rate and ranked lower on the HDI than other MEDCs.

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Originally Posted by ThePieMan

That's why the UK has a 1 in 5 illiteracy rate and ranked lower on the HDI than other MEDCs.

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I don't care, I'm more interested in creating a system where anyone of any economic level can empower themselves with knowledge rather than complete a workload to prove their competency in the workforce. Besides the UK still has standards. Last I checked you still have to pass a test or two and get ranked by grade.

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Originally Posted by Omnis Dei

I don't care, I'm more interested in creating a system where anyone of any economic level can empower themselves with knowledge

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And where would they get this knowledge from?

I don't really think opportunity for knowledge is the issue so much. In my opinion the problem stems from the use of force just like 99% of our problems. If you are within biking distance of a library you can "empower yourself with knowledge". The problem is that people don't want knowledge. And why don't they want knowledge? Because of the way our culture attempts to impart it on them; through force. This turns them off to learning at a very early and crucial age and has a drastic effect on their relationship to their schoolwork for the rest of their lives. It's why so many people procrastinate. We need to create a system where there are incentives for learning starting at the age of 4-5 so that kids will want to learn, they will want to go to school. This can be done regardless of the amount of funding you have so long as you have some money; even $500 per student would be enough though obviously more than that would be ideal.

I was watching a documentary recently and apparently the Finnish, I think it was, start learning much later than most other Western countries, yet they are still more knowledgeable and score higher on tests than other Western countries.

I think you may be on to something there, that it turns us off from learning, when it's forced on us at an early age. Especially all these "educational games" that you can buy for 2 year olds.
No wonder they hate learning, they never got to play.

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Originally Posted by tommo

I was watching a documentary recently and apparently the Finnish, I think it was, start learning much later than most other Western countries, yet they are still more knowledgeable and score higher on tests than other Western countries.

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Culture is a primary determinant of educational success. I reckon the Finnish culture communicates the merits and significance of education far better than the British one.