This teacher has an idea why the costs of American education are going up while teachers are being laid off, and teachers must pay for supplies out of their own pocket. It is no paradox to her. She left this comment:
When I think of the money that has been diverted from classrooms to testing and teacher evaluation companies, it makes me sick. The extra supports (after school programs, counseling, smaller classes, electives, etc.) have been sucked away by corporate greed. This borders on plain stupidity and theft.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
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Double Bingo! Comment is a Winner!
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LAUSDeasy what have you done to our children and our tax money?
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It’s a FREE for ALL for the ALREADY RICH.
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Stupidity implies that they just don’t know any better. Theft implies that they do. I know which one I believe….
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Agree!!
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I have noticed alarming growth in the number of administrative positions in the past few years even as teacher get pink-slipped and budgets shrink.
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They need more people to produce analyze all the data. There also seem to be more people with “coordinator” or “specialist” in their title. You are right, though. None of them spend any time in a classroom.
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File open records requests for the contracts with Wireless Generation also known as Amplify. Follow the money related to devices that have NO proven impact on student learning. Duncan funneled millions in tax funds to Wireless Generation while he was the Chicago “CEO.”
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It is really sickening.
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NM tax dollars are being diverted to Teachscape ( $2 million a year for teacher evaluation) Measured Progress ($10 million so far for EOC’s), god knows how much to Riverside for interim assessment, and Measured Progress for summative assessment. Then there are the millions upon millions being spent on technology upgrades to ready ourselves for PARCC. This money could be spent on OUR children. This is an immoral injustice to the children of New Mexico. We had a school shooting at a middle school this week, supposedly in retaliation to bullying. I am a literacy coach at another middle school and I spend much of my day dealing with student issues such as bullying and cutting because we don’t have a counselor anymore. I can’t refer out for counseling because those social services have been cut as well. This is a tragedy!
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Teachscape is the biggest waste of money I have ever seen. So So stupid!! It is all criminal but no one is going to do anything about it. The politicians continue to deliver money to the privatizers and greed mongers.
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Laura:
New Mexico’s Elementary and Secondary School operating spend is $3,137,994,000. Obviously there are alternative ways to spend $12 million plus, but the reality is the amount is of minor significance in the overall budget. 1% of the NM budget is over $31 million. Any analysis would require a more detailed breakdown of the budget.
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Yesterday I heard Michelle Obama, whom I usually admire, blame colleges for poorly recruiting low income students, yet not a peep about the thousands of K-12 laid-off counselors and teachers who should be helping those students.
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The wasted money that has gone into testing, evaluation is absurd! The politicos insist that they are trying to improve education with all this…crap (for lack of a better word-I can think of a better word). The simple truth is that they need to put the money where it’s needed- more teachers, more resources (not necessarily technology-sorry Mr. Gates), and into the failing schools that need help. The new evaluation here in Mass.-most the teachers that I work with have spent enormous amounts of time up-loading evidence of stuff that they already do. How does that make sense?! This tactic makes me think of when my kids were little and they would move the food around on their plate hoping I would think that they had eaten everything despite the fact that they hadn’t. Well, they (the education reformers) just keep moving the money around (new testing) and not really doing anything.
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There are several research papers out there about the money that has been siphoned off for “supplemental services” that were a major piece of NCLB. (Thanks GW!) The amount of money handed off to private companies for tutoring and other services is staggering, and it only continues to increase under the Obama/Duncan era.
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Yes, please. Let’s have a look at where the $ is going. Locally, from my view as a parent/taxpayer, in my public school region, it’s to admin costs for data collection. Wake up, taxpayers!
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If your interested in the broad categories of expenditure, the NCES is the place to start. Here is one table: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_205.asp
From the 2000-2001 to 2009-2010 school yeas, administrative expenses grew from about $34.6 billion to about $40.9 billion (about 18% growth) while instructional expenses grew from about $278.5 billion to about $338 billion (about 21% growth)
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TE:
I think there is something wrong with the table. Take a look at the current and constant dollar numbers for recent years. Compare the change between say 2004-5 and 2005-6. What do you think?
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I am not sure what you are seeing. If you are concerned that the real expenditure is higher than the nominal expenditure, recall that the base year is in the future relative to the years reported in the table.
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TE:
Apparently the rate of inflation applied to each year to create the 2011-12 constant dollar figures varies by year.
2003-04 2.5%
2004-05 2.5%
2005-06 2.3%
2006-07 2.2%
2007-08 1.8%
2008-09 2.0%
2009-10 2.5%
I guess I am surprised at this year to year variation – given that these are essentially averages across the time period. Yet they do reflect actual CPI inflation rates.
2003 2.3
2004 2.7
2005 3.4
2006 3.2
2007 2.8
2008 3.8
2009 -0.4
2010 1.6
2011 3.2
2012 2.1
I relearned the power of compounding.
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I agree with the author but… it doesn’t border on stupidity or theft… IT IS STUPIDITY AND THEFT!!!
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In California, $1.3B (plus uncounted transitional and opportunity costs) going to unwanted and unneeded downgrade to Common Core. Money could be used to hire a good number of teachers, our classes are balooning out of control.
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UnCommon California:
Do you have a reference for that figure? What does it actually cover?
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Alan, good point. It’s one teachers in our district know all too well. Unbeknownst to most teachers until they received their first paycheck this year, Shelby County Schools (Memphis) decided to freeze teacher step increases but pay the customary increases to central office employees.
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TESTING…That is where the money goes…Testing..Testing…Testing.Testing…Testing….etc
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Let me offer another explanation for the waste of hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars by thoughtless and uncaring SD managers. The lack of attention and response to dangerous building conditions, including allowing mold and other contaminants to grow and accumulate while building systems continue to deteriorate to impossible-to-fix levels, thereby resulting in excessive and unsustainable costs that then loop back and undercut funding everywhere else is a pervasive and easily documented problem.
Just one prime example from the urban school front: an elementary school in our area had a major water leak on an upper floor impacting several classrooms below. The leak occurred on a weekend and was not found until Monday by which time much damage had resulted to beautiful wooden floors. Despite the existence of SD and Union environmental science experts who are supposed to be contacted and involved in remediation-response planning and direction, this did not happen; Facilities Dept. manager attempted to dry out the areas and reoccupy as quickly as possible and without the “interference” of environmental assessment.
Students and staff were out of the classrooms for about a week, causing educational challenges [of course making testing and accountability even more questionable metrics] and then the classroom floors started to come up. Maintenance workers then lifted floor boards, let the area dry out [so they believed] and then, about 3 days later, when they thought all was dry, replaced all the flooring — total cost was about $33,000. But still no call or notice to union or SD environmental reps.
All seemed fine for about a week, students and staff were put back into the rooms and after another few days some people started to smell a musty, moldy odor, and felt a bit sick. A day or 2 later, some of the new flooring started to buckle and “cup.” At that point, we [environmental reps – union and management] were contacted.
We determined that drying had been insufficient and inadequate and that moisture remained, mold had grown and now all the newly installed flooring needed to be discarded and the job redone – no great surprise really. Another $33,000 and another week+ out of the classroom – an incredible waste especially in such a cash-strapped SD.
But this story repeats over and over because of the failure of management to be willing to listen, learn and involve “stakeholders.” Instead a vindictive, inefficient and “us against them” management approach and philosophy operates to destroy schools and then to blame others for the incompetence of management.
It appears that were we really to employ data-driven, evidence-based decision making and to enforce accountability, we would be forced to fire the management team and leadership that oversees and directs such ineffective, inefficient and fundamentally flawed policies and procedures.
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One problem is that people aren’t very good at analyzing large numbers — millions and billions blur together, even though a billion is a thousand times bigger than a million.
As some scholars pointed out fairly recently, the amount that the U.S. spends on testing is very small compared to our total education spending. http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2012/11/29%20cost%20of%20assessment%20chingos/11_assessment_chingos_final_new.pdf In their words:
“This seemingly large number amounts to only one-quarter of one percent of annual K-12 education spending. Were all statewide assessment activities to cease and the funding used to hire new teachers, the pupil-teacher ratio would only fall by 0.1 students.”
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WT:
Facts and figures always help this type of discussion. The variance in the spend by State seems too high for an apples to apples comparison despite the obvious differences in the size of the States and the amortizing of development costs. Have you seen any more up to date numbers?
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Let’s look at the misappropriation of education funds. In the years that I spent in the classroom, I have watched as more and more funding was cut from the classroom and the children, in the name of Professional Development. In that same school, as in many, if not, most schools around our fair city, class sizes grew disproportionately to the needs of our students. While children became more and more needy for education to practically begin and end in the classroom, as opposed to being fostered heavily in the home, teachers became inundated with more and more paper, directives, cumbersome emails, less “teacher manuals” heavily replaced with the flavor-of-the-day packets of “teaching scripts,” and requirements to provide data upon data, leaving them with very little time or energy to really “know” and respond in-kind to the human beings in their charge. How frustrating!
In New York City, a teacher is required to have a Master’s Degree and a substantial grade point average in order to be hired. We come to the classroom with extensive knowledge of content as well as life experience and hopefully, wisdom. Why then, should highly educated individuals be expected to take on “MORE” courses? What other business does this? The problem with Professional development is NOT Professional development. Rather, it is the expectation that individuals who have “earned” their degree(s) be, now, required to relearn a NEW way of doing things. Learning something new has great “Merit,” but, year after year of having last year’s teachings and techniques thrown out the window, in light of something “new,” that (our data) helps private companies “fix,” is overbearing, insulting, and frustrating. After all is said and done, there is very little time left for the passion one brings to the classroom. It is ALWAYS the children that suffer. Let me restate, Professional development is NOT professional development. It is likened more to earning a new and different degree without any of the fieldwork or experience. It would be far more advantageous to spend that money on wise mentors to help struggling teachers who are willing to accept help to hone their craft.
Teachers enter this job with a love of learning themselves, and a desire to share that passion with the children entrusted to their care. There are some great teachers, and some not so great teachers. With the exception of a minority of teachers that really don’t care and are buying time until retirement, most teachers that might need support would be more than happy to “get” that support. If the heads of our education systems weren’t so hell-bent on throwing “good” money after “bad,” we might just be able to have a thriving population of young learners.
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Well said, Mary Biz! I, too, have sadly seen the progression that you so eloquently describe. My husband, too, coined the phrase, “It’s just the new flavor of the month”…several years ago as we both saw these things come and go, come and go, come and go. I, like you, stay very worried about our nation’s children!
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I have said/written many times how strange it seems.
Every year we:
Have more costly corporate made tests (benchmarks, pre tests, post tests).
Spend more money on administrating those tests (security, shipping, administrator time, teacher time, pencils and calculators we provide, etc.)
Buy more test prep materials (work books, computer programs, iPad apps, etc.) to help our student “succeed”.
Use large and larger amounts of printer paper, markers, pens, etc. to provide the students with extra handouts and activities in order to “get ready” for the tests.
Buy more and more data bases (which have to be maintained and over seen by the district and data inputed by the teachers ) to keep up with all the “data” (both kid and teacher “data” ,by the way)
Pay to send teachers to “classes” to learn about the newest thing directly related to testing.
Buy new curriculums along with books and materials that are “aligned” with them.
And it goes on and on.
No one ever says “we cannot give that test, it costs too much”, “lets not adopt an new curriculum, the old one is just fine and the new one cost too much”, No it is always full speed ahead.Not a word about cost.
But what ever you do, don’t ask about new lab equipment, or supplies, or more social services, or smaller class size or technology we can use for something other than testing, or anything else that might actually benefit a kid .
Nope, pockets empty.
Then the sober serious people tell us that these two situations are unrelated and that we “just don’t understand”.
Curiouser and curiouser.
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