[steveplace]

>As a nation, we spend more on education than the military

That's an incredibly misleading claim. Consider this graph:

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/edgraph.html

So we see that funding for public k-12 is roughly the same as defense, but let's consider the funding sources. IIRC, defense spending is funded solely by the federal government, whereas public school spending is sourced from federal, state, and local-- property taxes taking a big chunk out of it.

So if we compare apples to apples-- which is federal spending between the two, we see a very wide disparity. This of course is exacerbated by the military occupations currently taking place by the US gov't.

I could also argue how spending in education will have a better effect on GDP relative to defense spending, but I'm a little tired of googling things.

[edit] Here's a much clearer picture of the spending distribution: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_education_spending_20...

Compare edu to defense and you'll see my point.

[yummyfajitas]

Why is it misleading to look at total cost or total government cost rather than simply federal government cost? What makes the federal government special?

Now, as for my numbers: 2007, $972B total, the government portion of it was $809B. If you restrict to K-12, it is indeed slightly less than the military ($493B vs $653B). Government expenditures on education are still $150B more than the military as of 2007, the year I originally cited (including higher education and "education not definable by level").

For 2009 (the last year for which full data is available), the gap between government spending on the military and education is $50B (in favor of education).

Regardless of whether spending on education is better for GDP than defense spending, it would be better still to provide the same education for less money. When you spend this much money, small gains multiplied systemwide yield huge gains. A 1% increase in efficiency saves you $8.5B in gov spending and $9.7B in total spending.

Or, to put it another way, every teacher we replace saves $50-150k/year directly and removes a massive unfunded liability (their pension/future health care costs) from the government balance sheet. If Khan Academy isn't ambitious enough to try to do this, hopefully someone will step up and do so.

[pbhjpbhj]

>every teacher we replace saves $50-150k/year directly and removes a massive unfunded liability (their pension/future health care costs) from the government balance sheet

Who looks after the children?

If parents are working then, even if children are learning through a computerised system, children still need to be cared for.

Are you going to do away with teaching staff altogether? So no one to monitor and encourage the students, to watch that they're not going lord-of-the-flies and building a bonfire out of the learning terminals or are you going to mandate that parents look after their kids and take responsibility for what is currently [often] school based learning.

Don't get me wrong, teachers are not solely childcare professionals. But, children still need care without teachers.

Presumably non-teaching child care staff in a school like environment still need to be paid wages and pensions and have their health costs paid - did you account for that in your savings?

Are you planning on Khan Academy sorting out emotional education, social education, etc. too?

[yummyfajitas]

The fact that we can't replace every single human does not mean we shouldn't try to replace some of them.

Is it your assertion that with 16% less adult supervision (to borrow a number from my first post), schools would degenerate into "lord of the flies"?

If anything, I expect the situation would improve. Rather than having 1 teacher trying to do double duty (lecture and impose discipline), we could have cheaper discipline-only employees handle the discipline side and leave the lecturing to Khan.

[pbhjpbhj]

I guess what I'm wondering is how're you implementing it beyond just telling about 1 in 5 teachers not to come in to school next term?

It sounds like you're planning on having a "person with a big stick" in a room of 35 kids playing a video on a screen. Or possibly in a room of 35 computers with kids at each one.

For sure, have a room of 1000 computers and one person with a machine gun ... sorted!??

[tedunangst]

You hire new teachers slower than old teachers retire.

[pbhjpbhj]

OK, in most schools where I am that won't work (for example if there are 2 teachers for 1 year of pupils, one retires you then have a 60+ student class and classrooms designed for about 24) but that's not what I'm trying to get at.

What I want to know is how you're integrating Khan Academy (or similar) use into a pupils learning experience - eg give them a terminal to interact with for all their learning?

Also he seemed to be suggesting that we get rid of people in the role of teachers and have some form of child/youth minder. What's their actual role, what setting are they working in, how do they relate to the kids, are we shouldering kids/youth with the entire responsibility for their own education, is this the ultimate pupil-led learning or something else?

[philwelch]

"So no one to monitor and encourage the students, to watch that they're not going lord-of-the-flies and building a bonfire out of the learning terminals"

It's an amusing mental image, but let's be honest with ourselves. If the system is intended to prevent the students from going lord-of-the-flies, it's already failed. School systems don't even reliably stop students from engaging in outright physical violence on each other on a regular basis.

[akkartik]

"Why is it misleading to look at total cost or total government cost rather than simply federal government cost? What makes the federal government special?"

It makes sense to say we as a nation spend $XXX billion on defense because there's a central organization deciding how it's allocated.

It makes less sense to look at the total for education because each district largely gets paid out of its own property taxes - influenced by demographics, by the regulations of different states, and by the disparity in real-estate prices.

[tokenadult]

It makes less sense to look at the total for education because each district largely gets paid out of its own property taxes

In some states, the great bulk of government expenditures for schooling come from the state budget, and the state budgets rely on other forms of taxation besides property taxes. It has been that way in my state since the 1970s, when I was still in K-12 schooling. All states have some funding of government-operated schools by state taxes and all states receive federal government expenditures for their school systems.

[akkartik]

"In some states, the great bulk of government expenditures for schooling come from the state budget"

Interesting, I didn't know that.

But doesn't my point still stand? If each state has its own byzantine policies for paying for schools, it makes no sense to say the US spends $X on education. All you can say is that the federal govt spends x, california spends y, and so on.

[JoeAltmaier]

I don't get your point. Why does it matter where the money comes from? It all comes from us. That we spend more on education that the military is still true, right?