Shirtless Guy
Old Dirty Basterd
Re: Obama XIII: It's all Bush's fault.
My problem is every time I have voted since I moved to Minnesota, there has been a referendum for a tax increase to fund schools. One time there were three different referendums to increase property taxes by different amounts to get funding...it seems extremely ridiculous to me that every few years they need more and more money...I understand that things have gotten expensive with the addition of computers and such but education spending is out of control in many ways...Too much right wing whining about education. In fact, is there anything you people don't cry about? We'll cover that later, but I too don't buy this "America can't compete" argument, nor the "unions are keeping students back" nonsense.
Simply put the big problem with American education compared to other countries is that 1) all US kids are required to be educated (unlike in say China where I seriously doubt all children are being educated, especially in rural areas) and 2) no other country has to educate so many non native speakers as the US.
20 years ago Boston University was tasked with running a nearby city's school system. Their results with students who spent all 12 years in the system were good, but overall the results were about even. Why? Because the system had to educate new arrivals every year who will naturally score lower. Even in an "English only" environment, that's still going to be the case.
So stop whining. Cut education spending and watch other countries move ahead of us. Keep it where it is and we'll be fine. I always ask knuckledraggers whenever they bring up education cuts: How will making it harder for US schoolchildren to get educated help the country compete against the rest of the world?
