The Mark(ings) of Zorro

The Mark(ings) of Zorro

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
H.L. Mencken

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More ruminations, rambles, rants and raves from the downhill side of the mountain.

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What's the Matter with Kansas?

Friday, December 13, 2002

by El Zorro Viejo (aka; Jim)

The real problem with public education
In our local newspaper the article referenced by the following link had a stat box attached to it which is not included in the online version. " Plainfield chief of schools announces intent to resign - Courier News " The key stats that I focused on were the "Spending per pupil" and "Enrollment" categories. The relevant numbers were, respectively: $11,557 and 1,749. Using my handy-dandy little TI calculator, I come up with a budget of some $20,213,193. Now, if you allocate 50% of that budget for teacher salaries, and set the average teacher salary at $65,000/year, you get 11 students per teacher. But, up a couple lines in this chart, one sees that the average class size is 25 kids. This leads me to the conclusion that the majority of our education money goes not to the people who actually teach our kids, it goes...someplace else.

Therefore, my solution to the whole controversy about public education is simply to mandate that 50% of every dollar spent on public education has to go to teacher salaries. If that means that administrators and other various and sundry hangers-on (read parasites) have to go, so be it. We'll end up with smaller classes and better educated kids. Actually, the cure is a little more involved than this, but making sure that teachers receive both a good income and increased status in our society is a good first step in the right direction.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. ©El Zorro Viejo 2002-2005

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