Hat tip to Physics Geek for this wonderful link to John Derbyshire who talks about an email he received from one of his readers...
(convoluted enough for you?)
SCHOOL BUDGETSMakes sense - we tend to think that there is an inherent economy of scale when things get larger. This certainly holds true in a lot of areas but it doesn't seem to when talking about education.
Good point from a reader: "A quick way to debunk the 'we need more money' claims from public schools: calculate how much they are spending per class.
"Lets suppose the district is spending $8,000 per student, which I believe is below the national average and well below what they spend in your region. If each class has 20 students, which again would be quite low, they are spending $160,000 per class. If there are 25 students then its $200,000. On what? Pay the teacher $80,000 and you still have $80,000 left for the building, administrators, buses, books, etc, $120,000 if you use the bigger class.
"Give me $100,000 to educate 20 kids for a year and I'll gladly quit my job as an attorney, rent the necessary facilities, and provide a much better education to them than the public schools do.
"As a homeowner who would under no circumstances allow any of my five children to attend any public school (which means I am giving up a $1/2 million government subsidy), I find the amounts the government spends on schools to be utterly outrageous."
I've pondered several times what a statewide initiative on this would do:
"More than 75% of all funds spent on education must be paid out in full-time teachers' salaries."
It would clearly short-circuit the union's stranglehold on the votes of individual teachers at the very least. The bulk of the folks on the right don't have issues with the _teachers_ per se, I can't see independents disagreeing, and those on the left not explicitly tied to the unions would either accept the 'let's help the little guy' premise... or have to argue that this doesn't help students somehow.