[latch]

Kudos to the superintendent for doing his job. Whatever validity you think his point has, there's no doubt he'll get a lot of attention thanks to the clever way he's approached the problem.

I'm one of those people that, whenever they hear about economic problems, always thinks individuals are responsible. I want to know, am I wrong? Nowhere does it say you need a house with a spare bedroom and a bathroom for each person. You aren't entitled to a car, let alone two. It isn't some birthright that you go on vacation or buy a flat screen through credit.

Education is important. It's also expensive and difficult. Why aren't parents more on the hook? Yes, some parents really, really can't. But most could. It might take substantial life style changes, but the amount of money an average westerner can free up is staggering.

I know michigan is particularly hard hit, so this might not be the most sympathetic example to ask, but I just can't help feeling this way. (and that doesn't change the fact that I think the superintended did a great job, whether I think it's the states problem or not).

[SoftwareMaven]

In a knowledge-based economy, education is critical to keep that economy moving, which is good for every tax payer. Make parents pay the full cost of educating their children, you'll see half the kids out of school, poverty will increase, and crime will skyrocket.

Unemployment would go way up, but companies wouldn't be able to find skilled employees. This is already a problem now, imagine how bad it would be in a society with 1/4 of the current high school graduates not graduating.

Then, coming full circle, we would find ourselves paying $30-40k/year to incarcerate more people we could have paid $10k/year to educate.

Education isn't an investment in an individual, it's an investment in a society.

[leot]

You're under the impression that the wealthy are looking to increase their absolute, rather than their relative, wealth. But much of what I've seen in the U.S. are policies focused on preserving or increasing relative wealth at the expense of the absolute kind.

The millions who, for their whole lives, have been poorly educated and are now unemployed (or imprisoned) could be making stuff of value that would ultimately make us all (absolutely) richer. This would increase the absolute wealth of the people-paying-the-bills (the already rich), but would decrease their wealth relative to those around them.

[SoftwareMaven]

This effect will be I treating to watch as the cost to produce goods approaches zero and our economy transitioms away from a scarcity model to something else. I suspect there will be a lot of people fighting that along the way.

[sorbus]

> This is already a problem now, imagine how bad it would be in a society with 1/4 of the current high school graduates not graduating.

By comparison, the dropout rate in 2008 was 8.0%, down from 11.8% in 1998[1].

[1] http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=16

[owenmarshall]

>I'm one of those people that, whenever they hear about economic problems, always thinks individuals are responsible. I want to know, am I wrong?

Yes. And no. Economic problems arise because of a complex interactions between individuals and institutions. Both share responsibility -- while individuals should never go into a debt that they will likely struggle to repay, institutions shouldn't make it possible, or even easy.

>Nowhere does it say you need a house with a spare bedroom and a bathroom for each person. You aren't entitled to a car, let alone two. It isn't some birthright that you go on vacation or buy a flat screen through credit.

No, it doesn't.

But consider: many people are financially illiterate -- they don't understand just how long it'll take to pay off revolving debt when they are paying interest + 1%, they don't know how to save money, and so on.

And when the credit card company says "don't worry 'bout it, we will give you a year same as cash", they're not going to read the fine print that says if the payment is late even one day the APR resets to 30%.

And when the mortgage company tells them that "housing prices always go up, so you just get the ARM now and refinance later!" they aren't going to think what happens when the bubble bursts.

Now, those people must share some of the blame, not only for what happens to them but what they do to everyone else. But at the same time, we need to ask two important questions:

1. How do we get people to stop living paycheck to paycheck and on easy credit, and start learning to save money, read the fine print, and understand finances?

2. How do we get institutions to provide a more critical evaluation of a persons finances before they offer them a huge loan, both in bad times and in good?

[nobodyspecial]

#1 education. It's your duty as a parent (if you are) to teach your kids to live below their means, AND demonstrate by your own actions that it's the right thing to do. This would cause a lot of problems as our society recalibrates their thinking, but it's the only long-term solution that is reasonable (imho). #2 quit pushing liar-loans, limit the amount of interest that can be charged on credit-cards to 8-10%. Sure, that would limit the available credit, but so what - it would help insure we, as a people, stay solvent.

Another thing to remember - all of this credit just inflates the dollar cost of all goods and services - credit card companies get their cut, and the credit is created out of thin air (oversimplification, but it's based on a bank's reserves).

[jbooth]

Public education isn't even that expensive. Did you read the guy's letter? 7k/head/year, that's including everything. Society definitely gets a huge return on that investment. It should be a no-brainer.

Michigan is A) hard hit and B) elected a fundamentalist lunatic for a governor. The guy's been in office less than 6 months and everyone hates him already, he has an ideological beef with the idea of public education in general and teacher's unions in particular, so he's slashing those budgets even more than necessary to prove his point.

[CWuestefeld]

Public education isn't even that expensive. ... 7k/head/year, that's including everything.

The guy's stats are way off. The average in 2006-2007 was $10,041 [1]. And MI is toward the large end of the spectrum, at $9,912 [2]. And where I live, these numbers are spiraling ever upwards.

Michigan ... elected a fundamentalist lunatic for a governor.

I have a hunch you may be a bit of a fundamentalist yourself.

[1] http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66

[2] http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/of-all-states-n...

[jbooth]

He didn't make any claims about the national average, he was making a claim about his district. So his stats were pretty dead-on. Dummy.

If you'd like to learn something, suburban school districts are typically way cheaper per student than urban ones, which is why his number is lower than the average and urban ones tend to be higher.

Even for a national number (which you fudged from your own link, heh), that's a phenomenal return on investment, no private schools are nearly that cheap except for catholic schools, and they have an unscalable labor model (cheap nuns aren't in infinite supply).

Supporting public education and the profession of teaching as noble causes that benefit everyone used to be mainstream in this country. If it makes me a fundamentalist now, that's just one more sign of our decline.

[CWuestefeld]

This is gonna be fun.

He didn't make any claims about the national average, he was making a claim about his district.

False. He made a claim about the State:

The State of Michigan spends annually somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 per prisoner, yet we are struggling to provide schools with $7,000 per student.

He said "schools", not "my schools". And I provided a MI-specific figure of $9,666 in my response, reproduced here: [1].

Even for a national number (which you fudged from your own link, heh)

False. I copied that from the linked government data [2]:

Current expenditures in constant 2007-08 dollars ... School Year 2006-07 ... 10,041

So, what do you have to say now?

Dummy.

You're a classy guy.

[1] http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/of-all-states-n...

[2] http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66

[jbooth]

Sigh. The guy was pretty clearly talking about his schools, and definitely was not talking about the state average. The entire letter he's talking about "his" schools. The sentence you quoted might have been the only one in the whole passage that he omitted a posessive. He certainly never used the word "average"

If the state average is 9.6k, and his district is suburban, it stands to reason he'd be a fair bit under that at around 7k, esp in michigan where the cities are so f'd up. That would make total sense. Or we could just assume he's talking about something else and lying about it for no reason. Whatever.

Sorry for accusing you of fudging, I misread the stats myself and your attitude didn't generally come across as honest so I was too annoyed to double-check.

Anyways attempted gotcha nitpicking that doesn't change conclusions is way more substantive than actual education policy, I agree that this is awesome. You should work for CNN.

[nkassis]

Most parent that can already do send their kids to private school. But we have to admit that public schools often get the short end of the stick in most state budget discussions. Even if parents contribute more (taxes) it ends up not being used properly. Also, the bigger the house usually means the more taxes you pay to the school board ;p

[matwood]

it ends up not being used properly

Here is the key. Plenty of school districts get tons of money yet it never reaches the students. The money ends up stuck somewhere in the administration.

Where I grew up the public school district took tax money and built a huge administration building on prime real estate in the cities posh downtown area. This all was while textbooks were falling apart, school buildings were falling down and there was a already a working administration building in a different part of the city. The new building was dubbed the 'Taj Mahal' by local media and it's still a joke.

[Duff]

Huh?

Public school STUDENTS get the short end of the stick. Public schools as institutions get rich funding streams, second only to Medicaid at the state level.

I'd suggest looking into the $7,500 per student figure as well. Usually when school people look for more money, they lowball that figure by excluding things like capital expenses, administrative expenses and busing.

[jbooth]

Public schools as institutions? What's that even mean, that when you add up 1,000 salaries it's a lot of money? Ok, so what?

Teachers and school administrators aren't taking home megabucks -- if they were, that per student figure would be a lot higher. Typically, administrative expenses and busing will be included in that figure but capital expenses are probably not (but the building may be already paid off anyways).

[rapind]

As an example of improper use, google: tenure public schools