The disparity you see is at the district level. The state allots certain funding with the expectation that it be used on special education, but it is largely up to the individual boards and administrators as to where that money actually goes. It isn't too far different than a guy from the state walking in the door and dropping a sack of money (with a dollar symbol on it, of course) in front of the school board, who then divide it up and spend it on what they really want.

I worked in two different districts, and I can tell you that this money goes to things that you can see in plain sight; mostly at Friday night home games. Artificial turf fields, state-of-the-art practice facilities, fancy team helmets and logos and large coaching staffs are now the norm in public ed. Meanwhile, the people who the money is meant for struggle with antiquated facilities, understaffed classrooms and a lack of truly qualified personnel. The last of those is a result of the first two; finding special ed teachers, specifically good ones, is a struggle because very few people want to work in the field. Frankly, the job sucks, and they know it.

When it comes down to it, school districts waste a lot of money. If the funding was actually spent on what it was intended for, you'd see improvement.

More on-topic, a friend of my daughter has a tree nut allergy, apparently. I have no idea if it is "real" (meaning a challenge test, since I never asked). We were at a party last weekend, and her mom told the other mom about it, then since the girl knows me pretty well, she asked if I could be the grownup that Alexandra could ask if she had any questions. I said sure, then asked a few questions of mom so I'd know how to answer :)

Anyway, for this girl, peanuts are fine, just not tree nuts. As a result, her mom sorta pushes peanuts since it's a "nut" (not really) that her daughter CAN eat, whereas other allergy kids can't. So she revels in eating peanut stuff, and brings peanut treats to replace possible tree-nut treats. In this example (OP post), she'd be intentionally armed with a deadly weapon in school, lol. Course so would my daughter given her love of PBJ, or PB, banana, and honey sandwiches.

I know in my son's preschool class that we used to make an effort on snack day or party days to have something for allergy kids even when we know they keep special treats for them at school in case of parties, but the teachers ended up not using it because they could not be sure without the say-so of the right parents (and what if something was contaminated? Yikes!).

I think the responsibility should be 100% on the parents of the kid in question, plus the kid. Any additional effort on the part of the other kids is inappropriate, IMHO (and ultimately not something the kid with allergies should count on, anyway, it's a false sense of security).

So they (a district) make a claim to the State that they have XXXX students that qualify for SpecEd, then receive the money that might be 17% of their total budget...

then blow it on sports crap, and other non-special ed needs? (assuming I understand correctly)

Wow. That sucks.

It's too bad those kids don't get to enjoy peanuts and everyone has to bend over backwards for the sake of just one person.

If only there were some way to make schools more like stores and diners and things. Y'know, where there are just so many that there's something for everyone, everywhere, in every price range. A kind of market, you might say, butfor schools. One that would be free of the public sector.:hmmm:

Nah, that would never work. Better to let the state handle it by throwing resources and proper legislation for good educational standards at the problem while we sit around scratching our heads and wondering why it isn't working. They'll get it right some day, I'm sure.


Alright, I'm done being a sarcastic ass for the moment (nobody panic, I'm sure the mood will strike me again soon). Seriously though, this kind of issue where the schools are doing something that not everyone approves of comes up often enough that one would think people would just naturally be agitating for a broader range of choices in schools.

And it's not like anyone is happy with the current US school system, anyway. The unions are never happy, the kids are never happy, the parents are never happy, our educational standing on an international level certainly isn't happy. But instead of actually doing anything about it we spend all our time arguing over who should get to tell whose kids how to learn what or whatnot.

It never ends. Should there be prayer in schools? Should there be a dress code? Is it ok to teach this, is it not okay to teach that? Are the standardized tests biased? Are the teachers paid enough? Would more pay help? Can we afford that? Which schools are underfunded? Which ones are overfunded? Why? Are the intelligent-designers idiots? Are the secularists morally bankrupt? And yes, should kids wash their hands more often? Et cetera et cetera. Back and forth. Over and over.

So why? For the love of God, or for the lack of it if that's your choice, will someone please tell me why we insist on this mandated institutionalization of public education? Why do people look at me like I've just grown a third head when I suggest privatization, or partial privatization, or even a voucher plan?

I could go on, but I'm sure we'll all agree this post is long enough for now.

The other oddball thing in the US is that people with kids pay lower taxes (since you get a deduction, and if poor enough a "credit" for paying taxes you never paid (ie: a handout).

Ditto state income taxes if the state has them.

What is the end purpose of public education?Personally, I think the entire goal should be a competent electorate. Past that, I don't see the compelling government interest. It's not like people graduating from public schools are considered capable of skilled jobs, they then need to seek real training (either on the job with a trade, or college).

Clearly overall it fails at this (the recent thread about the % that fail the citizenship test (when realistically there is no reason for anyone to leave HS without getting an "A" on that simple test).

Personally, I don't think those of us with kids should get a tax break at all (some of us already don't for federal). My state spends ~80% of the budget on edu, but that includes the U. Still, there is no reason I should get a break (except that I don't use public edu, since we send the kids to a good school, instead).

I'm against vouchers in general, because I see it as a handout. I'd be fine with a 100% deduction for tuition, though. To even be remotely fair, if a state did a voucher system, it should eliminate all standard deductions for kids. If you're gonna get a hand out for tuition, then you should at least pony up the same taxes as a guy who has no kids who is paying for you.

Why don't we just completely stop funding education? I don't just mean the vile public institutions, but even the noble and sacred private ones as well. This mean that now you are directly responsible for little Johnny's education; after all, he's your kid. For any institution to survive would probably mean a several hundred percent increase in tution, since private and charter schools also currently receive substantial government subsidies.

What that now means is that if little Johnny's dream is to become a lawyer, it is his parent's job to make sure he can pass the collegiate entrance exam. No, of course not everyone is comfortable teaching every subject, but the free market solves that problem too. With legions of now unemployed educators milling about, tutors in every concievable subject will be readily available for private work. Of course, the best and most experienced ones will likely be very, very expensive, as they will be setting their own prices, but that is the law of the jungle. For others, there will certainly be some correspondence school flunkie willing to work for a pittance.

The end result is a society where far, far fewer people go to college. The ones that do will naturally be of much higher quality than what we see now. As a college professor who home schools his children, this gives me the best of all worlds both at home and work. And so I welcome this brave new world where always the strongest thrive. After all, as a career educator now working at the collegiate level, I am both uniquely qualified and of sufficient financial means to ensure that my children will rise to the top. As to your [globally speaking] children, they are neither my problem, nor my concern.

takeda, is most of the subsidy for religious schools? I seem to remember a situation where a parochial system got subsidy because if they shut down, the city would have to absorb all the kids, so XXX bucks a head subsidy was a savings. I also think that the majority of private schools are religious (virtually every church in town has a school, but there are only 3-4 secular schools. Of course every single religious school is subsidized by a tax break (I'd end all tax exempt status for churches, period).

I'd be curious what subsidy secular private schools get. I know our school has a speech therapist that comes like 1 day a week from the city, but past that there is nothing obvious. Our tuition is already nearly twice was APS spends per kid.

I can't speak for every private or charter school, but all of the charters that I know of are actually grouped with the local school district. For example, all charters in Philadelphia are actually funded by the School District of Philadelphia.

My first year teaching was spent in a non-religious private school. Our textbooks, various teaching aids, some salary and equipment (smartboards, overheads, etc) were purchased through state subsidies. The rest was covered by tuition and fundraising. Again, I don't know about every single school out there, but I am under the impression that this is the norm.

You are right about religious school receiving substatial subsidies. Of course, that doesn't seem to be keeping them open in this part of the country, but the problems with priests and young boys seem to play a major part in that.

Seriously? You don't see the value in state funding of education? By extension, an educated population? Your answer, in one graph:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...-schooling.jpg

source.

Go ahead and move to Haiti, the privately funded education utopian state. Let me know how that works out for you. ;)

Don't I wish. I wore the same Home jersey for 3 years and only got new pads my senior year. Luckily we had a lot of helmet decals (somebody bought a lot like 15 years ago). My team still plays On grass, and practices oh some old field out back. We also Just got new bleachers after 30 years because our old ones were unsafe. I dunno. maybe its because were a division 6 team in MI.

http://michigan-football.com/f/suttonby.htm

Population demographics with a hatian-like demographic in the US likely lie with Haiti on that chart.

I was not arguing the benefit of education, I was arguing what was the compelling government interest.

Increasing GDP is not worth government investment?

Our kids are not in a charter school, but a full-blown private school. I assume there is a difference there, but I'm unsure.

Issues like this come down to a single question sooner or later: to what degree can the single one or the small minority expect the majority to design the majority's rules in favour of the minority or the single one? Where does natural, justified solidarity end and individual ego-centrism begin?

Must all public schools do lessons with a second teacher skilled in gesture for those few kids that are deaf-tumb, or is it more reasonmable to have all deaf-dumb children collected in a few exceptionnel school specialised on their needs?

Must all kids in a school change their own eating habits and behavior habits, that are quite natural for normal, healthy people, because of just one kid being allergic to certain agents in peanuts?

Years ago when i still worked in a store, one day there way a man in a wheel chair comi8ng to my cashdeks. He was in a bad mood and started to complain abaout us not being a faciulity totally derswiogfned to the needs of wheel chair drivers. He then complained that all the city and all the world is not designed to the needs of wheel chair drivers. I agreed that it isn't that way. He continued to reason that all world should be designed according to the needs of wheel chair drivers, and that the anti-discrimination laws of the EU demands it so. I said that this would mean that all the world would need turn according to the demand of a minority only, whereas I thinbk it would be more reaosnable if the small minority - the exceptions from the rules, if you want to put it that way - find themselves better places to live in according to their demands and needs, and that he maybe better finds one of those appartements designed for wheel-chair drivers, instead of all appartements now being changed no matter who live sinside of them. Which really blew him off. But he really pissed me, so I told him straight to the face that wheel chgair drivers are not the rule in our societies, but are the exception from the rule. And it is not as if they were not being taken care of at all. Their are taxis for their needs. Busses can lower to make it easier for them to enter. Appartements and houses are available where doors are wide and no stairs are being build in. After all, they are an exception from the rule,. not the rule of human design.

Shall all universe now start to revolve around the wheel-chaired sun?

If the kid at school is in danger to its life when visiting that school, then maybe it is a clever thing not to send it to that school. Like you also would not send a kid to school that is so vulnerable to germs and dust in the air that it must wear a breathing mask and on y rolling bed that is completely isolated from the environment.

One can understand parents of ill children that they want as much normality for their kids as possible. But fact is, kids with such diseases are noit that normal like the rest, the majority that defines the statistical norm of "normality".

But I think it is reaosmable to see that any attitude and attempt of the community around to meet these special demands and needs of the few, can only go so far, and not further.

And the many other childrens have rigfhts on their own, too. For example to eat peanut butter on their bread and maybe not cleanign their mouth every time they enter the classroom. It is quite normal for the overwhelming majority of children in our countries to do so. Must they all pass on this now - just because of the need of just one individual that by definition is ill?

I have a fruit allergy myself, harmless, but my nose goes watering like hell if I smell strawberries, and my mouth is terribly itching when eating certain fruits, amongst them apples and my second-favourite fruit of all - strawberries. :wah:

Shall I demand now that strawberries are banned from all public buffets, and no strawberry farms being run by farmers anymore, because their presence violates my right to walk along that one field without an itching nose, instead of just evading onto another path along another field...? And public markets! Ohg dear, I cannot walk a marketplace with all those vegetables and fruits without consuming two packs of cleenex per hour. Be social, guys, show your solidarity with me. Ban those damn markets!

I see the need for solidarity, absolkutely. I also knbow that biologists can show how apes act altruzistically and show soldierity, because in the end it not onyl serves the others, but themselves too. Crows and parrots and other birds also show this behaviour. But in our politically correct times, soldiartity has become a combat-term to battle through minority interests and to en force demanded ideolgic goals of said poltical correctness. Solidarity here, solidarity there.

Many people have missed the mark where solidarity was turned into harsh egoism and ideoplgoic warfare to kill opposing opinion by using rehtorical overkill - if you oppose this or that ideological drive, you now are "non-solidaric" - additional to being xyz-phobic, being intolerant, being right-winged, beign cold-hearted.

The majority of educational spending is at the state and local level, not federal.

Many states are almost bankrupt at the moment. For most states, education is the supermajority of state spending. This is true of states that have the very highest tax rates, too (NY, NJ, CA, etc). Instead of the graph posted, it would be interesting to look at gross state product as a function of time with education spending superimposed on the same time scale.

You could also likely chart GDP vs calories eaten, too. Maybe even fat calories. It's not necessarily causal. Does spending on edu cause GDP growth, or do countries with large GDPs spend more just because?