Mo Money, Mo Problems

Today, tax payers spend more than $6,000 a year per student, more than any other country. Yet science, reading, and math test scores have fallen behind other countries. Are we not spending enough money???

Let's look at the great state of California, the growing sentiment is that we're not spending enough money. Last year we spent $11,541 per student, up from $11,163 per student in 2006. You can never put a price tag on a good education...right? Where is this money going? Since 2004 there has been a decrease in attendance for public schools due to a steady decline of birth rates in the 1990's. In 2004 we spent $50 billion on education and today we're set to spend $60 billion for this year. We've seen a decrease of 34,000 students yet have seen an increase of $10 billion in spending.

From 2004 to 2008 we've seen Pupil Teacher Ratio decrease from 21.8 students per teacher to 20.81. We've also seen drop outs go from 60,052 to an alarming 109,011 during this time period. Spending has gone up, number students have gone down, and number of teachers has gone up.

As Americans we need to get our hands dirty. Let's work teachers up or work them out. Teachers need incentives. It's the carrot we all look for in life. Where's a teacher's incentive to improve? Sure there are the few teachers out there that can be great at self motivating and find success through the improvement of our kids. Let's be real, this is the minority. Teachers are judged mainly on the number of degrees they own. What's a "qualified" teacher? Does more education mean better qualified to teach? I would argue no.

In sales, if you paid everyone the same amount, what would our results look like? Would we see people coming in early to work? Would you see people reading sales books to help with techniques to help sell more? I applaud all the teachers and sale-persons that would do this but again this is the minority. Would you rather get an A or a C in class? Would you work harder to earn the A? If not, you shouldn't be teaching anyway.

"Money"...there's that word again. It comes down to how we spend the money. Who makes the decision to spend money on education? The government. Government has no place in our schools. Why let corruption from our government agencies leak into our schools? The government's poor spending record is evident in our education system. Since 2004, the state of California has added almost 2,000 administrative jobs while adding close to 2,000 new teaching jobs. One administrator to every teacher added over the past 4 years? The government has already thrown money at the problem and it hasn't worked! We need to eliminate the jobs that aren't helping teachers teach and students learn. Pay teachers what they're worth. If Teacher A is a better teacher than Teacher B then heck...pay Teacher A more! We would all like to think teachers are robots but the fact is they're like everyone else...human beings.