US Spends Much More on Education, but the Student Performance is Much Worse, Why?

To be honest, I do not get how can US teacher salaries be considered low. I have lived in US for some period. The taxes, the food, clothes, rent was much cheaper than round here, yet the salaries are much higher. With around 40-50k a year, I would live like a king there Here teacher make around 10-12k a year with prices higher than in US in consumer items. Rent is similar, although most people just pay house/appartment loans. Water is highest in EU, gas is around 6.5-7 dollars. That is underpaid

reply to post by Cabin


I have a masters degree and post grad credits. I've worked as a teacher for over ten years. My annual salary, before taxes, is less than $35,000. Consider I spend roughly 500+ a year on school supplies, that's not a great paycheck. Also keep in mind I spend about 75 hours a week working.

Now, I'm very grateful for my salary...but no one goes into teaching to get rich.

reply to post by smyleegrl


I apologise, if I came a bit harsh.

Teacher´s job is hard. My mother used to be one. It is not a work to get rich with. Strong social responsibility and purpose rather than finances + strong education needed. Takes lots of extra hours after school which are not considered, strong stress.

Nothing but respect for teacher´s profession.


Sorry again about the salary thing. It is one thing that hits my nerve often. I have lived here some time when I was younger and then for last 4 years. Although Im not local citizen, it has become my home. I see the people suffering a lot because of lower finances. Having lived in lots of countries, knowing the living costs, whenever somebody tells about the salaries, whether it would be Greece, US, Germany or some other country, where Ive lived at, it just touches the nerve, as people have to do with much less round here with similar/higher costs or just the difference is much more ala 2x higher prices there 5x times higher salaries.

Originally posted by Cabin
reply to post by smyleegrl

 

I apologise, if I came a bit harsh.

Teacher´s job is hard. My mother used to be one. It is not a work to get rich with. Strong social responsibility and purpose rather than finances + strong education needed. Takes lots of extra hours after school which are not considered, strong stress.

Nothing but respect for teacher´s profession.


Sorry again about the salary thing. It is one thing that hits my nerve often. I have lived here some time when I was younger and then for last 4 years. Although Im not local citizen, it has become my home. I see the people suffering a lot because of lower finances. Having lived in lots of countries, knowing the living costs, whenever somebody tells about the salaries, whether it would be Greece, US, Germany or some other country, where Ive lived at, it just touches the nerve, as people have to do with much less round here with similar/higher costs or just the difference is much more ala 2x higher prices there 5x times higher salaries.

edit on 14-5-2013 by Cabin because: (no reason given)

Oh, hon, you weren't harsh at all. I wasn't offended, I'm just venting in general.

When you compare my salary to other salaries around the world, the I'm wealthy beyond compare. I know this. But thank you for putting it into perspective and reminding me of how fortunate I truly am.

Although I'm not American, I have a point of view on this. I need to provide some background first, though. Bear with me.

Education in my country is government-provided and free of charge to all citizens. However, the quality of State education is laughable, and those who can afford it have their children educated privately. From 1950 onwards, the government made it very difficult for private schools to exist, but a few old, elite schools, relics of the Colonial era, survived. I was lucky enough to be educated at one of these.

Everybody agrees that State education in my country is a joke. But due to entrenched opposition within the bloated, incompetent, politicised State education sector, reform is impossible. So in the 1980s, a free-market-loving government decided to support private education. Since the teachers' unions and other lobbies were opposed to this, and because the laws and rules governing the provision of education were so restrictive, the government made it possible to register new schools as private businesses. These schools weren't subjected to national education regulations – they followed different curricula and prepared pupils for foreign examinations such as SATs and the London and Cambridge University Entrance exams. They have been very successful.

Now we come to the interesting bit. The new private schools differ not only in their curricula, but also in their approaches to education, child development, 'pastoral care', etc. They follow various foreign models; the most popular are British and American.

Recently, I was doing some publicity work with one of the 'British' schools here. Interviewing the principal, I asked him to describe how educational approaches at some of the leading schools differed, and to comment on these differences. Among the things he said in reply was that the American system (as practised at some of the private schools in my country, at any rate) offered less oversight and guidance than the British, or indeed any other school system, with which he was familiar. Pupils were left much more to their own devices, were expected to be self-motivated, and were allowed more latitude in their behaviour and expression than in other systems. He expressed the opinion that, while such a system might be suitable and culturally appropriate for Americans, it wasn't so good for Asians and Europeans. His own school followed the English national curriculum and adopted a more guidance-based 'hands-on' approach to child development and pastoral care.

He left me wondering whether this difference in approach to education and child development might be at least partly responsible for the well-publicised shortcomings of education in the United States.

Just goes to show once again, that you can't make problems go away just by throwing more money at it.
I'm sure even Obama is beginning to realize this.

Originally posted by Wertdagf
reply to post by Cabin

 

Because America doesn't value education or science.

When nearly 50% of your population think fossils were placed inside rocks by the devil to lure people away from jesus your gonna have major problems.

Thats a crock of crap seriously.

Then the other half thinks people can be made smart by how many billions of dollars are thrown at them.

Originally posted by Alxandro
Just goes to show once again, that you can't make problems go away just by throwing more money at it.
I'm sure even Obama is beginning to realize this.

True for the first part.

False for the second.

If we spent half as much on getting qualified teachers, without Government intrusion, you might have better students.

Part of the answer is that the money is spent on top administrator, who never see a student. on consultants and on standardized test. Other countries may be spending their money on student success.

One explanation that you will universally find among older teachers and individuals is bad parenting which, of course, starts the young child on the way to behave or misbehave in society in general.

This problem compounds itself from one generation to the next. That results in a degeneration of all social structures and an increase in measures within that society to protect itself from unsocial activities (i.e., more laws). In turn, that results in increased anti-social behaviors across all elements of modern life, a self-perpetuating decline. There is no hope.

Originally posted by smyleegrl

Originally posted by tallcool1
reply to post by smyleegrl

 

Smylee - Please don't get me wrong. I have the utmost of respect for a lot of teachers who, in my opinion, are severely overworked and underpaid. But there has been in the recent past (can't remember when/where) that there was the idea of annually testing teachers and basing their continued employment/pay on it...and they lost their collective sh!t at the thought of it. I believe it was here in Washington state, but I could be wrong. That's really what I was referring to, but I had already been a little long winded in my post.

As with everything, I know not all teachers are like that. I know a great many only wish to teach. I do sincerely apologize if I offended you or anyone else...but there are a number of teachers that I am aware of who are...less than deserving of their jobs.

You didn't offend me, no worries. I needed to vent, we're in the testing season right now and it's stressful.

The idea of merit pay has advantages and disadvantages. Consider my school; I have a couple of kids who are homeless and sleeping in their cars. I have four students with little or no English skills. Because I'm the grade level chair, I have the students who have severe discipline problems (one threw a rock and hit me in the back, it left a huge bruise and this is first grade!)

So the students in my class are not, generally speaking, going to be the brightest of the bunch (I am NOT saying they cannot learn). Working with this group has been a real challenge. The majority came to me not knowing the alphabet or the sounds each letter made.

Rising kindergarten students are supposed to be on reading level D. In my class, I had 1 D, 3 Cs, and the rest were reading behaviors. The requirement for the end of first grade is that the child be on level J. That's a growth of 6 levels.

After giving the reading test last week, only seven of my eighteen students were reading on level J or higher. However, all of my students had grown at least6 levels, with 4 students growing 8 levels and 2students growing 9 levels.

Now,if my pay was based solely on the number of kids reading on J, I'd be screwed. But if my pay is based on the GROWTH of my students, I'd be sitting pretty.

That's the main argument against merit pay.

You make sense with this line of thought. It is egregiously unfair to measure performance based on standardized criteria, such as that foisted onto educators by the Dept of Education. I have always felt that intelligence is the measure of how WELL we learn as opposed to how MUCH we learn. While the real world value of knowledge is obvious, the equivalent value of intelligence is overlooked. In fact, "intelligence" is often used when actually referring to "knowledge".
Obviously it is easier to provide state of the art facilities, free transportation, free lunches, myriad programs too numerous to list...all free. And a bureaucracy of highly paid "administrators" to maintain standards. Millions of dollars spent on people who NEVER get nose to nose with a student except to chastise or punish for an infraction.
Give me a teacher who can do the job in a field under a big ole tree with nothing but desire and the determination to teach.
Standardization on a massive scale kills education.
Fools.

reply to post by Cabin


It's not about how much is spent on the education system that is important, rather how the money allocated is spent.

Big difference.

America likes to do things big, bigger and biggest...although unfortunately, biggest isn't always best (as i keep telling my wife).

The budget is only half the story, how wisely the budget is spent is the other half of the equation...so really, America fails because it is only bothering with 50% of the whole.

Throwing money down a huge hole, may fill the hole over time, but all you're left with is a useless hole full of money and not much else.

The answer is simple. Most of the money spent on education does not make it into the classroom. The admisistrators make a huge amount more than anyone else and take a large chunk of that. Add in things like new cars for superintendants, money wasted on programs tat are ineffective or never fully implemented and there goes some more. By the time the money makes it to the classroom there is very little left.

Originally posted by pngxp
my teacher friends have said that other countries dont count "special needs" students in their scores and the US includes EVERYONES scores.

if true, obviously that can change things quite a bit. especially depending on how easy/hard it is to classify a student as "special needs" or whatever the technical term was.

any teachers verify this? or just my teacher friends idiots?


also, totally agree with the whole concept of other countries value education and family structures more.

im going to guess that finland doesnt have shows like teen mom, jersey shore and any of the garbage put out by the kardashians. just a guess, never been there so dont really know what their tv programming is like. i do know that the US is pretty much nothing but garbage 95% of the time.

except duck dynasty. thats a show more people should watch and take notes from.

I agree!!

The other day, I researched this very topic and found that in Japan, the grading scale is:

98 + = A
97 - = F

See, they simlpy do not accept failure, and expect high achievments.

Here in America, the grading scale is:

90 += A
89 -80= B
79-76= C
75-70= D
69- F

I grew up in the 80's and the the scale was slightly different:

95 + = A

So children are in a sense being 'dumbed down' and have much lower expectations. The problem is that the scale has too much room for the "just good enouh category".

On an ATS thread, someone posted a sample 8th grade exit exam from the 1800's. All questions required a great deal of critical thought and a thorough demonstration of mastery of the subect.

They compared it with an exit exam of today. Questions included were:

What does a caterpillar eventually turn into?

Water at its coldest temperature turns into _____?

So children are in a sense being 'dumbed down' and have much lower expectations. The problem is that the scale has too much room for the "just good enouh category". On an ATS thread, someone posted a sample 8th grade exit exam from the 1800's. All questions required a great deal of critical thought and a thorough demonstration of mastery of the subect. They compared it with an exit exam of today. Questions included were: What does a caterpillar eventuall turn into?

reply to post by ButterCookie



My state just adopted the Common Core Curriculum. Everything is far more rigorous and demanding.

Here are a couple of the end of year exam for first grade.

"There are seventeen plants. Nine wilted and died. How many plants are left?"

Easy enough...only the children were required to do the following in order to get the problem correct.

Solve the problem. Write an equation with a VARIABLE. 17-9=x Then write a sentence that explains how you got your answer.

There are a few problems with this math test, but its an improvement. I love the fact that the children have to articulate their thinking. The truth of the matter is, if you can explain your thinking, then you've got the skill down pat.

In the last ten years or so in education, things have really started to change. We've sent education experts to study how the Japanese and other high-ranking schools teach math. What we discovered is their students thoroughly understood the base ten system and could manipulate it in their heads. So you could give a child the problem 560 divided by 20 and the child could do it mentally. Compare that to the way we were taught in the states.... procedural steps.

For example. Lets take the problem 7 + 8. Most of us raised in the 80s and 90s would likely write the problem vertically and count on our fingers to get the answer. But that's not how we teach math now. The way my students would solve this problem: they would notice the doubles fact (7 + 7 = 14). Then they would add the extra 1 to 14 and get 15. This would be done mentally, not on paper and pencil.

I have high hopes that we will see a turn around in math education in the next few years.

reply to post by smyleegrl


Wow...that is simply amzing..

I so agree with you. I have the same feeling as you have about the way that passing children who are not functioning at grade level not being good for them or society.

I'm hoping something changes.

I could write a book on all the reasons, but here's some high points:

• Our standards are worthless.
  
  We have standardized testing in our high schools for every graduate. The teachers and schools are evaluated based on how many students pass those standardized tests. So instead of teaching Johnny why x+7=10 means x=3, we teach him shortcuts so he can pass the test. Then, when x+4=17, he has no clue.
  
  
• No Child Left Behind.
  
  Whenever a teacher makes an attempt to teach more than the bare necessities for passing those tests, some kids in school start crying because it's too hard, there's too much homework, they want to play Halo III, etc., etc., etc. So, since the class can't move forward until everyone in the class gets the lesson, the rest of the class gets to sit and wait while Johnny beats Boss Level XXVII.
  
  
• Sports.
  
  I like school sports; they help support the schools and give the kids something to be interested in, while teaching teamwork and maintaining health. But it becomes a problem when the school puts sports ahead of academics. The typical math or science teacher today is not a math or science teacher... they are a basketball coach who had a couple of math or science classes while getting their physical education certificate. It's a lot cheaper to hire one coach to also teach math than to hire a coach and a math teacher.
  
  
• Parents.
  
  As has already been mentioned, most parents today are too busy with their own careers to spend much time with their children, much less attend school events, talk to the teachers, force the kids to do their homework before playing, or get involved with the school. A child is not stupid, and they will respond based on what they see their parents place emphasis on. If the emphasis is on going to work, the kids will place emphasis on getting a job, any job, which is obviously supposed to pop into existence because Mommy and Daddy have a job. If the parents attend the awards day events, make the kids do their homework, and demand the kids do their best in school, the kids will learn education is important.
  
  
• Arrogance.
  
  "Not my little Johnny!" "Oh, hell no, you are picking on my kid!" "How dare you fail him this year! He put in his time!" Wake up people. Those little angels you sent to school this morning can morph into devils when they walk on campus. Your genes do not automatically guarantee your offspring will become Albert Einstein. All kids will misbehave at some point, and when they do, it is your duty as parents to discipline them and teach them different.
  
  Also, a kid's butt is directly connected to their behavior. There's nothing wrong with a good old-fashioned spanking. I spanked both my kids from age 1! Neither has any issues with it, but both excelled in school and both are happy, healthy, well-adjusted individuals. I believe the worst thing we ever did was deny schools the ability to use corporal punishment.
  
  
• Common sense.
  
  OK, so the 2nd grader drew a picture of daddy hunting with his gun. That may be against the rules, but it does not indicate there is a need to call in the SWAT team to disarm this master criminal. Rules are absolutely necessary, but when dealing with children the purpose of the rules is not just to maintain order - they are also there to teach the children to obey the rules! When they get older, those rules become laws and the consequences get a whole lot tougher...
  
  
• Politics.
  
  I know for a fact that in our local school board, the best bid does not get chosen for the contract; the closest relative does. Programs are implemented in order to show how great the school board members are, not to improve the ability of kids to learn. I have taken an active role the last two elections in local politics, and weeded out the worst of the offenders already. You can do the same, but expect it to be a dirty and time-consuming fight.

(continued)

(continued)

• Prison Environment.
  
  Try to go see your kid during the day to see how they are doing... just try. The TSA I believe is trained by school personnel. Every entrance is blocked by a metal detector, locked doors, bullet-proof glass, and a hoard of people who really believe I am Charles Manson's eviller twin brother. And I am a parent; what are the kids going through? I know some of it: surprise locker searches where the kids don't even get a chance to open the lock, confiscation of cell phones needed after school (as opposed to a check-in policy), threats of lowering grades if they step out of line in the least, threats of being sent to correctional schools for not allowing bullies to pick on them, and outright discrimination based on who their parents are.
  
  I am all for reasonable security... banning students from carrying knives or guns, make sure there are people in that school who can protect the children in case of a crazed invader, even metal detectors if needed, but 9-year-old Jessica is not on the FBIs ten most wanted list. Treat a group of people like criminals, and you will create a group of criminals.
  
  
• Responsibility.
  
  If a fight breaks out, someone started it. Find out who before you just go around treating everyone like the perpetrator. Even children have rights; respect them and demand they respect yours... that's called "teaching by example." In short, force children to be responsible for their own actions. The anti-bullying regulations have done what I expected them to do: just the opposite. They protect the bullies from anyone trying to fight back. Instead, when a known bully gets a black eye, give the puncher a little talking-to and call it a day. When a known bully gives a smaller kid a black eye, light his rear end up with that paddle (oh, right, did I mention I am pro-corporal punishment?).

There's plenty more, but I'm tired of typing...

TheRedneck

reply to post by Cabin


there is going to come a time real real soon when we realize that throwing money at something does not make it better.

throwing money at something doesn't make somebody happier. more alive. more free. more peaceful. more worthy than another. more loved. more anything. it only creates the illusion with which we have for far far far too long been able to convince ourselves that it does.

Originally posted by Cabin
I came across this interesting study, where the education spending and student performance are compared in different countries - Mexico, Brazil, Australia, Japan, Canada, France, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Russia, South Korea, UK and USA.



U.S. EDUCATION SPENDING AND PERFORMANCE VS. THE WORLD [INFOGRAPHIC]


The results show that USA is annually spending on education (per school kid) more than any of the other countries mentioned above (over 1/3 more than any other European country), while the results of US are much poorer.

US Spending on Education: 1st
US Sciences Scores 9th
US Math Scores 10th

Where do the things go wrong? What are the reasons behind the lower quality of education in sciences and math. Overpaid teachers? Weak system? Weak standards?

To be honest, it was really surprising study to see. I knew about the weaker scores in sciences and math, but the money spent was stunning. Nearly 8k per kid in one year, compared to nearly 6k with the nearest contenders in the list is a lot.

Where does it go wrong?

edit on 14-5-2013 by Cabin because: (no reason given)

Unions. The blight of the nation.

reply to post by neo96

Thats a crock of crap seriously.

Aw sorry! That's an incorrect response. The correct answer was "Your right as usual. Religion is indeed a poison."

Although we would have accepted:
1. "That's a small minority of the population."
2. "No one really believes that."

Thanks for playing though!