"Stupid in America: How Lack of Choice Cheats our Kids out of a Good Education"
Last Friday, John Stossel did an excellent piece on ABC's 20/20 entitled "Stupid in America," in which he broke down many of the myths and truths about public education and school choice.
The whole piece is worth a read, but Stossel really hits home with points about how more money is not the answer to improving education.
...without competition, parents don't know what their kids might have had.
And while many people say, "We need to spend more money on our schools," there actually isn't a link between spending and student achievement.
Jay Greene, author of "Education Myths," points out that "If money were the solution, the problem would already be solved … We've doubled per pupil spending, adjusting for inflation, over the last 30 years, and yet schools aren't better."
He's absolutely right. National graduation rates and achievement scores are flat, while spending on education has increased more than 100 percent since 1971. More money hasn't helped American kids.
~whitney
posted by AFPVA at
12:08 PM
1 Comments:
I would go a lot further than Mr. Stossel and say that public education is broken for good and can't be fixed. In my view I would like to see it all privatized and all the $$ spent on education to be given to the children's parents in the form of a tax credit or educational savings account so they could pick whatever school they wanted. Probably a little radical, but I look at it this way. I am 27 and I thank God I went to public school when I did and then ended up in a magnet school (1989) when I did.
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Anonymous, at 1/18/2006 11:16 AM
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