Education spending
This from the governor's office. Spending more than ever. But what he doesn't say...we are getting less. Our kids are not more educated, and they too often lack the character necessary to become the successes they need to be in a global and Kingdom economy.Governor Barbour has proposed the biggest increase in K-12 spending in any four year period in state history – nearly $530 million. After the most recent revenue estimate, this is what Governor Barbour proposes for the next school year – all within a balanced budget, while honoring the law to set aside 2% of our revenues and not dipping into or diverting from our rainy day fund:What reforms do we need? For if there is no major - and I mean major - reform we will only feed a medicore to poor monster of pedagogy that will only get bigger, not better.
● A $206 million increase for our K-12 schools - a 9% increase.
● Spending more than $8000/student in state, local and federal funds – the highest in state history!
● Fully funding the Department of Education’s request for the MAEP formula – the first time in state history!
● A 3% pay raise for our teachers so our average teacher pay will be more than $42,000 – the highest in state history!
● Funding the increased cost of health insurance and retirement for our teachers.
● Funding a “High School Redesign” program for dropout prevention.
● Funding a new dyslexia screening program for K-3 students.
● Funding a mentor program for new middle school teachers to help them better manage classroom discipline.
● Requiring new physical activity standards for K-8 students because healthy kids will have fewer discipline problems and will learn more.
But the House Democrat leadership says this isn’t enough if they can’t get another $13 million!
Labels: Mississippi education
posted by Matt Friedeman at
6:59 PM
2 Comments:
her Barbour or the Democrats give two spits about the students of this state. Barbour is elitist as all get out and the Democrats just play the education card for election time.
Both sides want to over simplify education and neither is the answer alone. One side does not want to increase funding, but with whatever happens, funding is going to be needed. The other side thinks more funding is all that is needed and thats not the case. Each side really only looks at the situation from their perspective and is unwilling to admit that they may not have the answer. Matt is as sensitive about his position on education as the teachers and administrators are about theirs. Honestly, private schools and home schools are distinctly different than public schools and I dont think people honestly express those differences. Private schools have great control over who they educate and weed out undesirables in costs and refusal to admit. That is not going to change regardless of whether you have vouchers or not. Home schools have even more control, not to mention the students are family. For the most part, home and private schools dont have to deal with transportation, special needs kids, etc and dont have to accept everyone that shows up. Public schools do. Its really not intellectually honest to compare those things to public schools. When you here people take numbers like $8000 per student to educate a child in MS public schools, that includes all kind of expenses that home and private schools do not have. Its almost like trying to compare a emergency room to a private doctor. Public schools have to try to educate the kids that show up regardless of their situation. Private schools will not fill that need and if the majority of the kids in public school could or cared enough to homeschool, public schools would be better. So the answer to public schools are not going to be systems that originated as ways to opt out of public schools. The system is too complex and the problems too in depth to say the solutions are just vouchers, merit pay, etc. Vouchers wouldnt presently work because its not enough schools to accept all the students from failing schools if they wanted to leave. Not to mention private schools came about from people that wanted to be segregated from public and inner city school kids. So for vouchers to be largely successful, an entire new system of schools would need to be developed. Without question, they would help some kids and we should try to do that. Merit pay? I would be all for that, but I would really like to see the system that would be used to determine it. When I was in school and from what I saw as my mother being a teacher, the smarter kids were in the advanced class and the other teachers got a mix of kids across the board. My mother was a science teacher and with her students she had tremendous success and tremdous failures; does that mean she was a good teacher or bad? Who would determine that? She had three sons, one is a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry, the other is a nuclear physicist and the last has a Master's in Public Health. One All-State Academic student, one Salutatorian, all in the top 2o, no score lower than 26 on the ACT. I said all of that to say that Public School is just a lot more complex than either side wants to admit. Unless both sides respects that other has something to say and has something to contribute, nothing will get accomplished.
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