Here is the national education spending (including state and local) since 1870 as a percentage of GDP.
Sorry, but I must question the accuracy of your chart. And whether it really reflects education spending patterns over time.
What was the source for what's plotted? Does it reflect total spending by all government entities or only the federal contribution? And isn't expenditure per student far more illuminating than simply plotting the % of GDP spent on education?
Is that federal contribution even really inclusive of everything the federal government spends related to education? Here's why I doubt whatever source you used included everything:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/html/pa662/pa662index.html
March 10, 2010
… snip … this paper reviews district budgets and state records for the nation's five largest metro areas and the District of Columbia. It reveals that, on average, per-pupil spending in these areas is 44 percent higher than officially reported.
Real spending per pupil ranges from a low of nearly $12,000 in the Phoenix area schools to a high of nearly $27,000 in the New York metro area. The gap between real and reported per-pupil spending ranges from a low of 23 percent in the Chicago area to a high of 90 percent in the Los Angeles metro region.
To put public school spending in perspective, we compare it to estimated total expenditures in local private schools. We find that, in the areas studied, public schools are spending 93 percent more than the estimated median private school
Here's the data from Table A19 of that report. In the District of Columbia, real public per student expenditure was calculated to be over $28,000. The stated public expenditure however was only about $17,500. And the NCES (an organization whose data is often used for charts like yours) claimed they spend only $15,847 per student. So real public education costs are 78% higher than the NCES claims. Meaning that your chart may not be accurate.
Furthermore, perhaps focusing on the issue of what public schools are doing to fix the education system is simply missing the real opportunity here. Afterall, $28,000 is a lot to spend in a system that is graduating only about half the students from high school on time. Table A19 indicates that an estimated private education cost in the DC community costs $11,032 per student, which makes the cost of a public education about 155% higher than a private sector education. Yet the private sector schools get better results in testing, graduation rates, and long term outcome … even with minorities and low income students.
http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/3459396.html
according to test score results from four recently conducted randomized experiments in New York City; Washington, D.C.; Dayton, Ohio; and Charlotte, North Carolina, African American students from low-income families who switch from a public to a private school do considerably better after two years than students who do not.
… snip …
Students from all racial and ethnic groups are more likely to go to college after attending a Catholic school, but the effects are the greatest for urban minorities. The probability of graduating from college rises from 11 to 27 percent if such a student attends a Catholic high school.
… snip … University of Wisconsin professor John Witte concludes that studies of private schools "indicate a substantial private school advantage in terms of completing high school and enrolling in college, both very important events in predicting future income and well-being. Moreover . . . the effects were most pronounced for students with achievement test scores in the bottom half of the distribution."
How about Los Angeles Unified, another huge district with massive efforts to make it's curriculum and schools multi-cultural and multi-ethnic. The real public cost is found to be $25,208 per student. Stated public cost is $10,053 per student. The NCES estimate is $13,341. And a private sector education costs $8,378 per student. And here again, it's a school system that is failing to graduate about half it's students and REALLY failing ethnic students:
http://www.examiner.com/parenting-e...duation-rates-for-latinos-lausd-are-declining
June 19th, 2010
… snip …
According to the “Fingertip Facts 2009-2010” of Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), 74.2% of Hispanics make up the student body.
The LAUSD’s “School Report Card 08/09” states that 52% of all their 9th graders from 2005 were expected to graduate from high school in 2009.
If we complete the math with these figures, this left Hispanics with fewer than 40% graduating on time in 2009.
… snip …
However, this is assuming that 74% of Hispanics fit into the 52% graduation rate (Llanos, 2010) and the graduation rate is not inflated as*reported by*in the L.A. Times *(Rubin, 2006), when it reported on the research findings by* Education Week and .UCLA.
The reality is that the LAUSD graduation rate for Hispanics could be far lower than 40% in 2009.
And what's the solution that the democrat controlled education system tries? More bureaucracy. Here:
http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_10579906
LAUSD administration swells 20 percent in 6 years
02/20/2009
... snip ...
a Daily News review of salaries and staffing shows LAUSD's bureaucracy ballooned by nearly 20 percent from 2001 to 2007. Over the same period, 500 teaching positions were cut and enrollment dropped by 6 percent.
The district has approximately 4,000 administrators, managers and other nonschool-based employees - not including clerks and office workers - whose average annual salary is about $95,000. About 2,400 administrators are among the 3,478 LAUSD employees who earn more than $100,000 annually.
Meanwhile, the average salary for an LAUSD teacher is $63,000.
... snip ...
The growth of LAUSD's bureaucracy is evident in the size of the union that represents district administrators. It has seen its membership grow from about 2,100 to 2,600 members in the past several years.
Next, consider Obama's and his Head of Education's home town of Chicago. Same thing. Real public cost? $15,875. Stated public cost: $11536. NCES cost claim: $11051. Private school cost: $8849. And the outcome from all that public waste?
http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2008/feb/25/news/chi-dropout_25feb25
February 25, 2008
Nearly half of Chicago public school 9th graders who started high school in the last seven years have dropped out without earning a high school diploma, according to a study to be released Monday.
And what happens to them once they leave the public school system?
http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/news_citations/042106_chicagotribune.html
Of every 100 freshmen entering a Chicago public high school, only about six will earn a bachelor's degree by the time they're in their mid-20s, according to a first-of-its-kind study released Thursday by the Consortium on Chicago School Research.
That's a disgrace, when nationally the rate of public school students entering college after graduation is around 60-70%. But it's even more disgraceful, when you consider that the percent of students going to college after graduating from private schools is in the 90-95% range (
http://privateschool.about.com/od/choosingaschool/qt/comparison.htm ).
And it's triply disgraceful when you compare how much is spent by the public system to achieve that sad result. In fact, averaging the 18 cities studied in the
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/html/pa662/pa662index.html report, one finds that real public school spending per student is $19,275, stated public spending is $12,663, NCES estimates $13057 and private schools cost $9173 per student. So the real cost of public education is about 50% higher than the NCES estimate and even more than what the government claims it spent. And the real cost of public education is more than twice the cost of private educations.
And I have other reasons to doubt the accuracy and utility of your education spending chart.
http://biggovernment.com/acoulson/2...nomy-needs-fewer-public-school-jobs-not-more/ looks at a study done of public school enrollment, public school employment, the cost of K-12 public education and the change in achievement since 1970. And concludes that:
Over the past forty years, public school employment has risen 10 times faster than enrollment (see chart). There are only 9 percent more students today, but nearly twice as many public school employees. … snip …
(see figure showing that school employment has increased 100% since 1970 yet enrollment has stayed essentially flat)
… snip …
(see figure showing that the inflation adjusted cost of an education has tripled since 1970 yet achievement scores for 17 year olds have remained flat or declined.)
Student achievement at the end of high school has been flat for as long as we’ve been keeping track—all the way back to 1970. . But we did get something in return for all that hiring: a great, big, fat, BILL.
Here's a chart put out by CATO showing pretty much the same thing, although only using Federal education spending from NCES.
http://www.cato.org/images/pubs/commentary/091105.jpg
In summary, the real trend in public education spending is not reflected by your GDP chart. Nor does your graduation percentage chart tell the real or complete story. Let's look at that next in more detail:
Then here is the national graduation rate since 1870.
Again, I question whether that chart accurately reflects the situation. Here's why …
http://www.publicschoolreview.com/articles/15
2008 Study of Graduation Rates
A report issued in April 2008 on high school graduation rates has generated considerable media attention. Cities in Crisis: A Special Analytic Report on High School Graduation was authored by Christopher B. Swanson, Ph. D., of the EPE Research Center, and supported by America's Promise Alliance and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The report studies graduation rates in the nation's 50 most populous school districts and the larger metropolitan areas in which they are located.
... snip ...
The study concluded that the schools in the largest cities are truly experiencing a crisis in graduation rates. Looking solely at the most populous school districts, here is some of the data that the study revealed:
- 52 percent of students in the 50 largest school districts on average fail to graduate with a high school diploma.
- The Detroit, Indianapolis, Cleveland, and Baltimore school districts all had graduation rates below 40 percent.
- 13 school districts had graduation rates between 40 and 50 percent, including Minneapolis, Dallas, New York City, Denver, and Miami.
- Only six school districts had graduation rates above the national average of 70 percent.
Also,
Jul 27, 2010
The National Center for Education Statistics has a new study breaking down characteristics of the 100 largest public schools districts in the U.S. … snip …
Here are some of the findings for the 100 largest districts:
… snip …
63 percent of students in 2006-07 completed high school in 87 of the 100 largest districts for which data was available, as compared to 74 percent for the U.S.
Also,
http://vdare.com/sailer/080101_dropout.htm
In an important paper with the bland title of The American High School Graduation Rate: Trends and Levels,
(BAC - see http://www.nber.org/reporter/2008number1/heckman.html ) Heckman of the U. of Chicago and co-author Paul A. LaFontaine of the American Bar Association report:
"The true high school graduation rate is substantially lower than the official rate issued by the National Center for Educational Statistics."
... snip ...
Why is the federal government’s favored measure of high school graduation
(BAC - referring to the 70-80% numbers often quoted by defenders of the public school system) as the American Average misleading? It’s biased in large part by counting as graduates those dropouts who subsequently pass the GED test (the "General Educational Development" exam, often referred to, incorrectly, as the "Graduation Equivalency Degree".) Heckman's earlier research shows, however, that the GED counts for less in the eyes of potential employers than does a genuine high school degree:
"Although GED recipients have the same measured academic ability as high school graduates who do not attend college, they have the economic and social outcomes of otherwise similar dropouts without certification."
Even 70% is a "catastrophe" as noted by former Secretary of State Colin Powell (
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,344190,00.html ). It's a sign of a serious problem that the predominantly democrat controlled public education system has failed to face and address for
decades. No private business would stay in business if it failed 30-40% of it's customers this badly over decades. And that dismal graduation rate is in public school systems that have steadily spent more and more and more per student as proven above. And all we hear from those educators is really more of the same as the solution. Along with demands for more staff and even bigger salaries and pensions. Sooner or later we need to stop listening to these folks and try something new ... or perhaps something old.
In comparison, how do private high school graduation rates compare?
Consider South Carolina. Public high school graduation rates are about 49%. In comparison, the on-time graduation rate for South Carolina's private high schools is between 85 and 95 percent ... nearly double.
And South Carolina is typical. In fact, the National Center for Education Statistics in it's 2003-2004 Private School Universe survey (
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2006/2006319.pdf ) found that well over 90 percent of private high school students graduate on time. In other words, private school graduation rates FAR exceed those in public schools.
And it's hard to argue that's just because private schools get the best and the brightest. According to
http://thevoiceforschoolchoice.wordpress.com/tag/graduation-rate/ with respect to the South Carolina results, "this massive disparity cannot be explained by differences in student composition. South Carolina’s 370 private schools serve a huge range of student types, from low-income African American students in urban Catholic schools to rural white students attending small evangelical Christian schools. A wide range of secular and independent schools such as Montessori and single-gender schools exist too."
In fact, 82 percent of private school students attend religiously-affiliated schools (
http://www.capenet.org/facts.html ). Those type of schools don't usually discriminate on the basis of socioeconomic status. In fact, that link states "In December 2006, the U.S. Census Bureau released data on the social and economic characteristics of students enrolled in the nation’s schools in October 2005. It turns out that of the eight million youngsters in grades K-12 who come from families with annual incomes of $100,000 or more, 80 percent (6.4 million) attend public schools and 20 percent (1.6 million) attend private schools." Since there were 6.1 million kids in private schools, the vast majority did not come from high income families.
And let's look at the worst schools. Turns out that 38 of the schools in the worst 100 schools are in South Carolina (
http://thevoiceforschoolchoice.word...ome-to-11-of-nations-25-worst-public-schools/ ). And if my sampling of the 25 worst schools is a guide, all of them are democrat controlled. Every single one. And this (
http://thevoiceforschoolchoice.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/what-does-your-district-spend-per-child/ ) indicates that in 2008-2009 South Carolina public schools spent an average of $11,480 per student which is above what's claimed is the national average for spending. It's $1300 more than North Carolina which has no schools in that 25 worst schools list. And in fact, this analysis (
http://thevoiceforschoolchoice.wordpress.com/2008/08/06/poorest-schools-are-states-best-funded/ ) finds that the worst schools in South Carolina are in the best funded districts.
And if the public system is doing such a good job, how come only 56% of black students graduate nation-wide on average? If racism is to blame, how can it be that Texas graduates about 72% of blacks (
http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/research/pdfs/NGA_compact_rate_policy_brief.pdf )? Could it have something to do with the Texas school board being less dominated by liberals than the rest of the nation? Because Texas doesn't spend more on it's students than other states.
I think a good idea would be to look at what factors existed in the late 1960s that lead to such an increase in graduation rates. Spending appears to be a factor but not the determining factor.
Although I don't agree with how you got to this conclusion and don't agree at all with the notion that spending (above a certain amount) is a factor in raising graduation rates, I still agree with the suggestion that maybe we should be looking for answers outside the box. Maybe we should be asking what is it about private and catholic schools that leads to better results:
http://www.heritage.org/research/urbanissues/bg1128.cfm
In a study published in 1990, for example, the Rand Corporation analyzed big-city high schools to determine how education for low income minority youth could be improved. It looked at 13 public, private, and Catholic high schools in New York City that attracted minority and disadvantaged youth. Of the Catholic school students in these schools, 75 to 90 percent were black or Hispanic. The study found that:
- The Catholic high schools graduated 95 percent of their students each year, while the public schools graduated slightly more [than] 50 percent of their senior class;
- Over 66 percent of the Catholic school graduates received the New York State Regents diploma to signify completion of an academically demanding college preparatory curriculum, while only about 5 percent of the public school students received this distinction;
- 85 percent of the Catholic high school students took the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), compared with just 33 percent of the public high school students;
- The Catholic school students achieved an average combined SAT score of 803, while the public school students' average combined SAT score was 642; and
- 60 percent of the Catholic school black students scored above the national average for black students on the SAT, and over 70 percent of public school black students scored below the same national average.
Maybe the answer is not to continue the liberal approaches that have already failed so miserably despite decades of trying them, but go back to an earlier era and how they did it? What was it that was working so well back in the early 1960s to raise graduation rates so dramatically?
Or perhaps we should ask how Finland spends only a third as much on education as we do but ranks near the top in science, reading, and math testing (from
http://mercatus.org/publication/k-12-spending-student-oecd )? Maybe their solution won't apply to us due to differences in our societies but maybe there is something to be learned?
But in any case, clearly we need to try something new.
I speculate that wealth inequality helps play into this.
Sorry, but that's just part of the failed liberal agenda. Wealth inequality is NOT the underlying problem. Spending even in the poorest schools is up dramatically from what it was years ago, yet graduation rates among impoverished are as bad as back then. Income redistribution is not the solution. Prior to the start of LBJ's War On Poverty, more than half of blacks had already entered the middle class (the $15,000 - $50,000 income range). But after the democrat WOP began, what happened? Contrary to the public perception that mainstream media has fostered, that percentage declined. According to
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/race/economics/analysis.html , in 1970, that percentage was 56%. But by 1994, it had declined to less than 47% … despite the government spending literally trillions and trillions of dollars on welfare programs that largely targeted the black community. Shockingly, this 2007 article (
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2007/11/13/ST2007111300084.html ) indicates that
forty-five percent of black children whose parents were solidly middle class in 1968 -- a stratum with a median income of $55,600 in inflation-adjusted dollars -- grew up to be among the lowest fifth of the nation's earners, with a median family income of $23,100"
Despite literally TRILLIONS of dollars being transfered to them over that time. Wealth redistribution simply does not work.
The problem is something else. Perhaps certain ethnic groups simply don't value education as much as others and so their parents and peers don't encourage one but even disparage one. And that problem is not solved by wealth redistribution or by removing parents even more from the responsibility for seeing to their children's education (which seems to be what democrats encourage by not allowing vouchers).
Perhaps it's something other than income that's the problem? Perhaps it's the values of certain segments of society?
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16281886
November 14, 2007
A new poll by the Pew Research Center shows that many African-Americans say they can no longer be seen as a single race. Work ethic and education are creating a class divide. Nearly 40 percent of low-income blacks say they have nothing in common with middle-income and poor blacks.
… snip …
INSKEEP: So when large numbers of black Americans say they don't think there's just one race there anymore, they're not really talking about skin color; they're talking about values and economics?
WILLIAMS: Exactly. What we're talking about is things like work ethic and education. … snip ...
WILLIAMS: Right now, Steve, it's like 53 percent of black Americans who say that African-Americans who aren't getting ahead are responsible for their own problems, and then two-thirds of all Americans - whites, blacks, Hispanics - now feel that personal behavior - and by that we come back to the values concern - that wrong values with regard to education, keeping family together - that those are the things that are keeping poor black people oppressed. It's not racism.
And perhaps public education itself is the problem. Perhaps it's what they teach, how they teach, and low expectations that are the problem? Private schools do considerably better and (
http://www.capenet.org/benefits4.html ) "are racially, ethnically, and economically diverse. Twenty-three percent of private school students are students of color; twenty-eight percent are from families with annual incomes under $50,000." And those percentages are about the same as in most public schools. Perhaps its the public schools that make kids poor students. Even uneducated parents can apparently do a better job than public schools …
http://newsblaze.com/story/2007100403040200003.cc/topstory.html
TORONTO, ONTARIO - (Marketwire - Oct. 4, 2007) - Home schooling appears to improve the academic performance of children from families with low levels of education, according to a report on home schooling released today by independent research organization The Fraser Institute.
"The evidence is particularly interesting for students who traditionally fall through the cracks in the public system," said Claudia Hepburn, co-author of Home Schooling: From the Extreme to the Mainstream, 2nd edition and Director of Education Policy with The Fraser Institute.
"Poorly educated parents who choose to teach their children at home produce better academic results for their children than public schools do. One study we reviewed found that students taught at home by mothers who never finished high school scored a full 55 percentage points higher than public school students from families with comparable education levels."
Wow, now that's an indictment of public education.
Perhaps the problem is public education unions and the top heavy bureaucracy they've encouraged?
http://www.nysun.com/editorials/the-catholic-example/77313/
The Catholic Example
December 31, 2002
... snip ...
The Archdiocese of New York is able to administer to about 110,000 students with a total central administrative staff of 28. At that level, the city's school system would have no more than a few hundred administrative staff. But New York has almost 9,000 administrators, secretaries, clerks, accountants, and other assorted bureaucrats.
Which is why New York public schools are the most expensive in the nation. That is why they can't get rid of bad teachers (
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25430476/ ).
Perhaps the problem is illegal immigration, another factor that the democratic party seems to want to ignore or even encourage? Afterall, graduation rates been declining since about 1970 and that's when poor, non-english speaking illegal immigrants began to account for a significant number of the people in this country. Coincidence?
You see, maybe it's time to think outside the box rather than continue the multi-cultural, more money can solve the problem bandwagon that the predominantly democrat controlled public education system has been on for the last 4 decades.
If the strongest factor found for student succes is income class
It's not, as several studies linked above clearly show.
And where does all the above put us? In terms of international competition, back in the pack:
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/12/07/education/07education_graph.html?ref=education , even though we spend more per capita than almost every country in the world on education. Let's just face facts … the democrat dominated public education system in the US is a failure. And to expect that the same people, pushing more of the same tired liberal ideology and out of control spending that got us into this state, will cure the problem is frankly delusional.
