About Me

In writing the "About Me" portion of this blog I thought about the purpose of the blog - namely, preventing the growth of Socialism & stopping the Death Of Democracy in the American Republic & returning her to the "liberty to abundance" stage of our history. One word descriptions of people's philosophies or purposes are quite often inadequate. I feel that I am "liberal" meaning that I am broad minded, independent, generous, hospitable, & magnanimous. Under these terms "liberal" is a perfectly good word that has been corrupted over the years to mean the person is a left-winger or as Mark Levin more accurately wrote in his book "Liberty & Tyranny" a "statist" - someone looking for government or state control of society. I am certainly not that & have dedicated the blog to fighting this. I believe that I find what I am when I consider whether or not I am a "conservative" & specifically when I ask what is it that I am trying to conserve? It is the libertarian principles that America was founded upon & originally followed. That is the Return To Excellence that this blog is named for & is all about.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Government Schools - An Odd Enterprise

Thanks to a subscriber to ReturnToExcellence.net, who is currently working on several higher education projects, for sending along the above graph that shows the tremendous increase in the cost of educating children in government schools from 1970 to the present (& of course the commensurate increases in property taxes) along with the pitiful unchanged results in reading, math, & science over the same period. Math & science scores are actually negative for most of the the time shown on the graph - this only hampers Americans trying to make a living in the global economy & naturally draws our country down.

Just who is going to hire the 9.1% of the unemployed poorly-educated labor force plus the six million of similarly poorly educated people who have given up looking for work & are living with their parents or children or are homeless by now - because there are no jobs to be found? Half of the 54,000 jobs created in May were created by McDonalds - the hamburger flipper. Meanwhile China & the rest of Asia progresses on creating wealth.

These results will change shortly before November 2012 after BO puts in programs he hates but are necessary for him to get re-elected. Thereafter he will trick people totally extinguishing all of our liberties by returning to his program of promoting the above type of results since his goal is to make every citizen a government dependent with absolutely no rights whatsoever other than mindlessly collecting whatever chicken is thrown on front porches once a month.

Mike Antonucci, of the Education Intelligence Agency (EIA), provides insight for the information (explains the paradox) shown on the graph when he writes - "The latest Census Bureau report provides details of the 2008-09 school year as the nation was in the midst of the recession. That year, 48,238,962 students were enrolled in the U.S. K-12 public education system. That was a decline of 157,114 students from the previous year. They were taught by 3,231,487 teachers (full time equivalent). That was an increase of 81,426 teachers from the previous year. This is not new information. We knew last October that the entire public education workforce - teachers, principals, administrators, & support workers - grew by more than 137,000 employees during the recession. What the Census Bureau numbers add to that information is that we almost replaced every lost student with a new employee. Twenty seven states had fewer students in 2009 than in 2008, but 16 of them hired more teachers...It's an odd enterprise that reacts to fewer clients by hiring more employees."

3 comments:

  1. The Left continues its myth that we need more education $. However the chart says it all -- there has been no positive correlation between education spending and test scores in the US. This is also true in Greece. Greece has 4 times as many teachers per pupil than Belgium, one of Europe's more successful economies. Source: John Mauldin's new book, 'Endgame - The End of the Debt SuperCycle' - great book about the current world economy.

    Greece also has 3 times as many public employees than private. What a near socialist utopia! What about the US? Since the start of the Great Recession Dec 2007, as of a few months ago (last I checked), the US had more public employees in Spring 2011 than Dec 2007. One factor has been the $850 billion stimulus bill which paid back public unions for Democrat support- saving and adding public jobs the market will not support because there is no wealth creation with these jobs. Many of these public jobs the stimulus added or saved are being lost now.

    Nevertheless BO and his Left cronies in Congress have been very consequential in their drive to create a near Socialist nation modeled after Greece. What insanity!

    So what must free market capitalists do?

    1 – blog to sites dominated by the Left but with fair number of conservatives who will respond and further drive our points. Blog to NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times

    2 – write to Leftist Congress reps. Let them know we listen to their myths and will challenge them

    3 – encourage our weak moderate and conservative representatives to challenge all economic myths

    4 – Be part of a grass roots movement to educate many who are not well informed. Is politics not appropriate at social gatherings? MOST APPROPRIATE in 2011. This is especially true if your friend or neighbor makes a comment supporting any of the Left economic myths. I never restrain and have challenged many friends, neighbors, even relatives – with some success!

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  2. With all the Federal govt proposals out there do you notice not one of them talks about any structural changes? Structural changes like ending Dept of Education?? I would like to nominate the Dept of Education to be closed now. Other Depts. could include Energy, Interior and Agricultural.

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  3. What a sad state of affairs. Public schools are funneling students through like cattle down the ramp to the slaughterhouse. These kids don't stand a chance at success. As I see it, the only ones who have any way of making it are those who are home schooled or whose parents are willing to sacrifice by paying tuition to private or parochial schools or those who are lucky enough to get into charter schools.

    Also, there are always some who are truly self motivated and will let nothing stop them but the majority will end up at McDonalds or some other schlock job or, Heaven help us, dealing drugs or robbing banks. If something isn't Done soon t get the federal government out of the education business, this generation of students Will Be a lost generation. Schools need to be back in the hands of local control with parental oversight.

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