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Re: Education



----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert A Cohen" <bbq@ESU.EDU>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2000 1:45 PM
Subject: Re: Education


I hate to jump in on a conversation I know so little about (not that it
has stopped me before) but I have some nagging questions...

1. If we can take money out of the federal treasury and give it to the
states, can we take money out of the state treasury and give it to the
feds?

For what purpose???


2. Instead of giving the money to the states to administer, can we give
the money directly to the school districts or, better yet, directly to the
teachers themselves?

Heaven forbid! How will the new HS gym and football stadium get built that
way?

The problem with the Federal/State/Local funding is that each of these
funding bodies then wants a 'piece of the action'. They want to set
standards and control 'their' monies. Unfortunately, to rely on local
funding only becomes problematic if the tax burden falls entirely on the
property owners (property tax model) or if there is an insufficient tax base
to support the schools such that one creates 'poor' and 'rich' school
districts with 'poor' education in the former. So we jump to the state
level, to spread out the tax base and grab some money from income, sales,
and gambling taxes. This helps equalize the spending across school
districts (although there can still be large discrepancies). However, now
the State wants to set standards, license the teachers, control the books,
set the curriculum, set graduation standards, set up state-wide testing,
etc., etc. and of course there is paper work for both teachers and
administrators for all of this. But the states complain that they don't
have enough money (Indiana is all upset because our budget surplus is going
to drop to a mere 1.1 billion) so ask rich Uncle Sam to throw in some money
(not sure what the logic is). If indeed that is in the form of block grants
with the monies simply going back to the states (again--why the complicated
chain of funds where surely we are paying a large fee to the money handlers)
then OK, but that is not how it usually goes. The Feds set up programs to
''help" education but then add their own sets of requirements and paper
work. What happens in the trenches is that there are dozens of Title this
and that programs, grant programs (both state and federal), tons of
regulations with the accompanying paper work until it gets to the point
where everyone is confused and frustrated. Retention of both teachers and
administrators becomes a problem and that ultimately leads to lower quality
teaching.

There are lots of other concerns in all of this, quality of education from
state to state for one. I don't have any answers either. At least some of
the experiments to privatize the public schools seem to have failed.
Throwing money at the schools doesn't necessarily work (especially if they
take the money and build new gyms as my local system has done--oh they did
put in a new computer lab). Too much control seems to stifle teachers and
too little control leads to chaos. I don't think there are enough 80 year
old nuns left out there that we could recruit to 'shape up' the
system--besides all their rulers are now broken. ;-)

Rick