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Originally Posted by YelloJeep
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These first three charts look rather dramatic, don't they? The first two charts would seem to imply that students aren't getting any better at reading, math, or science, despite skyrocketing education costs. The third suggests that education expenses are skyrocketing past the prices of tangible goods. They seem to suggest that the education is becoming less and less efficient. They would suggest that if you stole a kid from 1970, brought him forward to today, put him in a class, that he would do just as well now than he did then.
And in math, science, and reading, that might be true. (On the other hand, it might not - standardized tests are typically normalized during their development so that a certain percentage of students will pass them every time they are taken. If the average student is consistently improving, the tests will need to become more and more difficult to remain normalized. But I digress...)
What's also true is that this kid would be sorely lacking in the basic skills expected of students today. For one big example, he would not have the knowledge or skill required to effectively use a computer.
These first three charts show the cost of education, but they don't indicate the volume of knowledge that was imparted on students. Any school that successfully teaches math, science, and reading would maintain math, science, and reading scores. But a school that teaches *only* those three subjects and only to the testing standard is going to be far less expensive to operate than one that also teaches health, social studies, foreign languages, home economics, shop, automotive, driver's ed, and any math, science, or reading classes that exceed the testing standard.
These 4th and 5th graphs also suggest inefficiency. But there's nothing here to show how much knowledge is being imparted on children, and how that has changed since 1970.
This 6th chart continues the trend of trying to show inefficiency. But, it ignores that public schools are required to take in all kids, no matter how expensive it may be to teach them. (I know of no private school that offers bus services to its students; every public school district I've ever heard of offers at least partial bus services.
There's been a bit of a conversation about special needs students. I know of no private school in my area that offers a true automotive program, for example.
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Gotta run - I'll critique the others when I get a chance.
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