KKOB's Bob Clark will be discussing money and public education this morning, link.
The discussion will focus as it always does on the causal correlation between the amount of money spent and the amount of education delivered. There is no such. If there were, we would be spending more on education and be done with it.
In truth perfectly good education can be achieved on occasion in the worst of financial circumstances and, the best of circumstances there is equivalent failure.
The real stumbling block in public education is the model.
Public education has forever, taken thirty kids with nothing in common but their age, arranged them in five rows of six desks, and expected them to learn together, each on the same page in the same book on the same day for twelve grueling years.
All student achievement gaps are individual achievement gaps. There is no good purpose in grouping individual gaps for no good purpose. The student in front of the teacher has individual needs. It doesn't make a whit of difference if there are thirty, or thirty thousand other students with similar needs.
Nearly every problem educators experience in public schools is rooted in a relentless commitment to an unjustifiable premise; the solution to any student's individual problem is to group kids with that problem and then apply group solutions.
There will be money enough for education when the goal and number one objective of public education becomes
the creation of independent lifelong learners,
at the earliest possible opportunity.
1 comment:
I would like to see an audit of where the money goes in education. As a teacher, I can testify nothing much is going into the classrooms which is why it is coming out of my pocket!
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