Michelle Malkin isn’t buying Obama’s latest call for additional “investment” in education. And who can blame her? The US already spends more on education per person than “any other of the the 34 wealthiest countries in the world,” save Switzerland — who throws in skiing and modeling lessons, and courses in yodeling and chocolate-making.
Okay, so maybe I made that last bit up.
Writes Malkin:
Obama’s fiscal year 2011 budget already represents “one of the largest increases” in federal education spending history, and hikes total discretionary spending to nearly $51 billion. Toss in another $35 billion for mandatory Pell grants. And add another $4 billion for the illusory “Race to the Top” charade to improve academic standards.
Then there’s the $10 billion for the Education Jobs Fund signed into law last August — a naked payoff to the public teachers union, which also includes $50 million for the Striving Readers comprehensive literacy development and education program; $82 million for Student Aid Administration; and $10.7 million for the Ready to Teach program.
Oh, and don’t forget the $100 billion in federal stimulus funding for school programs and initiatives administered by the U.S. Department of Education.
As he extols the virtues of “innovation” and “accountability,” the last thing Obama wants you to think about is the actual results of these profligate federal ed binges:
– As education analyst Neal McCluskey accurately described the real impact of the $4 billion Race to the Top paperwork theater: “States must say how they would improve lots of things, but they actually have to do very little. It is decades of public schooling — from the Great Society to No Child Left Behind — in a nutshell.” You need a chainsaw to cut through the bureaucratese of the winning state applications, but the bottom line is that the “race” is “won” only when school reformers get buy-in from the teachers unions — the most stalwart enemies of introducing choice and competition to the atrophying system.
– Despite massive multibillion-dollar “investments” in teacher training, America’s educators are horrifyingly incompetent at even elementary math. Explaining why American grade-school students can’t master simple fractions, one math professor confessed: “Part of the reason the kids don’t know it is because the teachers aren’t transmitting that.” Instead, they’ve ditched “drill and kill” — otherwise known as the basics — for costly educational fads ranging from “Mayan Math” to “Everyday Math” that substitute art, self-esteem and multiculturalism for the fundamentals of computation.
– Among the supposedly cutting-edge programs funded by Obama’s federal stimulus program is the $49 million technology initiative for the Detroit Public Schools. The urban school system is overrun by corruption, violence and incompetence. The teachers union sabotaged classroom instruction and denied schoolchildren an education through an apparent illegal work stoppage. Yet, Washington went ahead and forked over a whopping $530 million in federal porkulus funds to reward yet more Detroit government school failure and bail out the reckless-spending boobs who mismanaged the DPS budget and engineered a fiscal crisis. The $49 million technology program distributed some 40,000 new (foreign-made) ASUS netbook computers, plus thousands of printers, scanners and desktop computers to teachers and kids from early childhood through 12th grade.
One teacher was caught late last year trying to pawn his shiny new booty. No doubt, he has company. Nationwide, in both urban and rural school districts, large and small, these technology infusions have turned out to be gesture-driven boondoggles and political payoffs that squander precious educational resources — with little, if any, measurable academic benefits. Mark Lawson, school board president of one of New York state’s first districts to put technology directly in students’ hands, told The New York Times in 2007: “After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement — none. The teachers were telling us when there’s a one-to-one relationship between the student and the laptop, the box gets in the way. It’s a distraction to the educational process.”
Were I a Democrat, I’d take this opportunity to propose several billion dollars in new spending that would go toward studying why the last several billion dollars in new spending hasn’t had a demonstrable effect on academic achievement.
And I’d do it with a straight face, too.
Never let a crisis go to waste and all that, you see.
As a homeschooler- you know how often my kids use computers for “schooling”?
Never.
It doesn’t even make a lick of sense. How does having words (or numbers) appearing on a screen versus on a piece of paper make ANY difference?
Any?
Computers are tools. One doesn’t learn how to build a house by playing with a hammer and saw.
Well, Carin, that’s probably because you have it exactly backwards. We’re stimulating the economy here. Education would just be a happy side benefit.
Not that you care. You’re probably responsible for one unemployed teacher and one administrator all by yourself.
So that’s what I’ve been doing wrong!
Obviously the solution to our education problems is to recruit assistants to assist teachers’ aides to aid teachers.
And iPads. Lots and lots of iPads.
Oh hell no. Everybody knows you learn to build a house by being sent out for coffee and doughnuts for the crew.
No required courses in chocolate-making!? A whole new career as a student, totally ruint.
Heh.
And this is his friend. Who shows no alarm whatsoever. No. We’re not fucked the next two years. Not at all.
Oh hell no. Everybody knows you learn to build a house by being sent out for coffee and doughnuts for the crew.
LOFL so true.
Now go out to the car and get me my screwdriver and then.. uh, sweep the floor while I do this shit.
Everybody knows you learn to build a house by being sent out for coffee and doughnuts for the crew.
Which is not to say that computers are never a better tool for other people’s kids. Who may or may not be orthopedically impaired.
So, the kid can operate a calculator and a keyboard just fine, but can’t write very legibly. Go figure.
Also, navigating a textbook on computer is a lot easier for her than paging through an actual text. Faster. So she doesn’t have to do homework for six hours a day; only four.
Is there any problem we can’t fix with tolerance, diversity, high speed rail and borrowed Chinese money?
#12 – I have nay heard of one yet!
I saw a graph somewhere once that plotted the increase in federal education dollars over the last 10 years per student for each year. It was a steeply sloping line starting in the lower left corner and exiting the top right.
The same graph also displayed the average test scores, per student, over the same time period. It was essentially a flat line across the page. Despite the monumental increases in dollars spent per child, it has benefitted them little.
The recent ousting of DC mayor Fenty, replaced by the teachers union’s choice, for having the temerity to propose widening a school voucher program that had met with some success in it’s test phase was more than the union could bear-especially since the teachers at schools where no one chose to use their vouchers would be subject to losing their jobs regardless of tenure.
In other words, accountability and responsibility was completely out of the question.
I’m with Rand Paul on this; abolish the Dept of Ed, now…
Actually Carin? I have to disagree. at 18, I was a gas jockey, the only staff kept on when the station was sold. I knew only that there was no such thing as a left handed screwdriver, already having fallen victim to the joke…In the end? I owned 2 shops, my own house and a large following that continues to this day, with my brother running the shops now.
So sometimes? Let a moron play with the right tools and he MAY just come up with an idee, kk?
Yes, but did you ever find where they keep the left-handed muffler bearings?
The same graph also displayed the average test scores, per student, over the same time period. It was essentially a flat line across the page.
I once spent a couple hours putting together a graph and spreadsheet of expenditure per pupil by state – PPP adjusted for cost of living, graphed against national testing scores by state in math, reading, and science.
There’s no correlation whatsoever. People who saw the graph scratch their heads and say they don’t get what it means. It’s just a bunch of random squiggly lines and points with no pattern.
Exactly, mofos. This ‘for the chillins’ BS and underfunded schools and striking teachers… it is demonstrably, empirically wrong. No one cares.
I knew only that there was no such thing as a left handed screwdriver
That’s what THEY want you to believe.
Oh Sheesh Slart, EVERYONE knows that the left muffler bearings are in the scarf section at your local Target…
Next you’ll be asking about cam slotting…I’m not a gonna go there, NSFW…
Where the hell do they keep the blinker fluid? I gave up on trying to find the franostats.
Much like I have yet to find a problem that couldn’t be solved with a judicious application of high explosives.
Hmmm….Blinker fluid, franostats and high explosives? I may have come up with an alternative to SQUID brand pitchforks…
All federal monies spent by the Department of Education are payoffs to the NEA. Full stop.
But just think of the embrace you’d receive from your old teachers!
Pablo, all problems can be solved by the proper application of chocolate.
Sometimes the proper application is 1 kg lumps moving at .99 c.