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There was small Catholic school near where I live that had a 99.9% graduation rate and something like a 92% graduation rate for Colleges and Universities and these kids were going on to some of the best schools in the nation. If i recall the tutiton was like $7K... I couldn't imagine what they would do with $21K. Unfortunately they had to close because of lack of students.
Funding is important however that is not going to make difference if you do not have dedicated good teachers, proper management and help from the parents.
Its a combination of multiple factors. Also one thing to keep in mind is when you are looking at poorer districts, or those with a large student body that is poor you have things like free and reduced lunches, breakfasts, etc which are part of the per pupil spending. By that metric alone you are going to need more per pupil spending in those districts than you would in wealthier ones since you need to provide more services due to economic issues
Its a combination of multiple factors. Also one thing to keep in mind is when you are looking at poorer districts, or those with a large student body that is poor you have things like free and reduced lunches, breakfasts, etc which are part of the per pupil spending. By that metric alone you are going to need more per pupil spending in those districts than you would in wealthier ones since you need to provide more services due to economic issues
You do also have to consider a lot of religious schools are subsidized by the churches their attached to.
For decades critics of the public schools have been saying, "You can't solve educational problems by throwing money at them." The education establishment and its supporters have replied, "No one's ever tried." In Kansas City they did try. To improve the education of black students and encourage desegregation, a federal judge invited the Kansas City, Missouri, School District to come up with a cost-is-no-object educational plan and ordered local and state taxpayers to find the money to pay for it.
Kansas City spent as much as $11,700 per pupil--more money per pupil, on a cost of living adjusted basis, than any other of the 280 largest districts in the country. The money bought higher teachers' salaries, 15 new schools, and such amenities as an Olympic-sized swimming pool with an underwater viewing room, television and animation studios, a robotics lab, a 25-acre wildlife sanctuary, a zoo, a model United Nations with simultaneous translation capability, and field trips to Mexico and Senegal. The student-teacher ratio was 12 or 13 to 1, the lowest of any major school district in the country.
The results were dismal. Test scores did not rise; the black-white gap did not diminish; and there was less, not greater, integration.
The Kansas City experiment suggests that, indeed, educational problems can't be solved by throwing money at them, that the structural problems of our current educational system are far more important than a lack of material resources, and that the focus on desegregation diverted attention from the real problem, low achievement.
Even though those kids had poor home environments you would expect some positives in this, there was none.
That is because you can not undo in 1200 hours a year what happens in the other 7500+ hours of a child's year and schools don't even get them until they are five. The schools can not replace the absentee father, can not erase the drugs taken while pregnant, can not force them to go to bed at a resonable time, can not make the new boyfriend quit hitting their mother, can not force their parents to quit smoking, can not make their parents work in order to set a good example, can not increase their IQ. The only way to improve schools in bad areas is to improve their parents.
My kids are military brats who have been in a lot of different schools whose test scores ranged from the 71st percentile to the 19th percentile - that's right 19th, hard to get much worse - and their personal test scores never varied more than 1-3%. Most military parents will tell you the same thing. America needs to get the ugly truth through their heads - standardized test scores are more a reflection of the parents than the schools. Yes, I am sure if my kids spent more than a year in 19th percentile school it would have an impact, but I don't think it is as great as people make it out to be. I will tell you the peer group was a far greater concern to my husband and I than the academics while they were at the school.
Money isn't the answer. Greater parental responsibility and something that hardly exists at all now, great parental accountability, would be a step in the right direction. All that extra money currently is spent on trying to over come obstacles created by the child's family, culture, and community.
Education starts at home. Unfortunately, the home is broken, dad is nowhere to be found, and kids are running around reveling in truancy and graduation is nowhere in sight.
Thankfully, gentrification of Washington DC is taking hold at a pretty rapid rate. Eventually this will mean that the dregs of society will be forced out and off the Gigantic Public Tit™ that exists in DC.
If DC would stop subsidizing the terrible life decisions of its revolving-door-loser-citizens, the nation's capitol could return to something resembling integrity and liveability.
Yeah, out to Mayland, which has been happening for the last 20 years. The destination County for these "dregs" is Prince George's which now has 70% of its public school population on FARM. Thanks a **** load.
Charles County is now beginning to see this movement and the consequent increase of various social ills such as poverty and crime.
I guess that refutes the claim that the cure for a failing school district is to fill a truck with taxpayer money, drive it to the district, then tip it in.
I guess that refutes the claim that the cure for a failing school district is to fill a truck with taxpayer money, drive it to the district, then tip it in.
Yeah, maybe. DC has an inordinate nimber of Special ED students whose schooling costs more to begin with. Add in a bunch who need residential treatment, which can cost up tp $500K/year, and the per pupil number ratchets up pretty fast. The new racket is to place those kids in foster care in MD so we pick up the tab.
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