We're #3, We're #3........... in running out of smart people.

[Red Arrow]

And to suggest that somehow money WON'T help is to completely ignore one of the fundamentals of market economics, which we all know but really want to ignore when it comes to government:  you get what you pay for.

You pay for what you get but you don't always get what you pay for.

[custosnox]

Yea we get that.  How do you propose to fix that and how much will that cost?  How do you force people (many who may be children themselves, and or poorly educated, and or without good life skills, etc.) to be good parents?  Heck a high percentage of people in this state can't even take care of their very own health, or eat or drink right.  

Personally I think we should make parents responsible again.  I remember if I skipped school too much and got into trouble, my parents would get a fine.  Eventually I might have ended up in juvi, but my parents would have fit a larger court bill first.  Now, parants are not held accountable at all.  

Still, that is only a part of the equation.  As it's been said, the system is broken.  Yes, it needs more money, but blindly throwing money at it isn't going to do anything except make money disappear.  If the bill had passed as it was, I have a real funny feeling that the administrators salaries would have doubled, while the educators might have gotten at most a %5 increase.  All the football teams would have gotten new equipment while five students still had to share one book.  

I too generally had 30 students to a class, and I don't see where even having a teacher to myself would have improved anything, much less a class size of 15.  Small class size in the higher grades really just sounds good to parents who want "the best" for junior.  What we need are teachers that know the subject, and can teach.  Pay grades should depend more on performance than tenure.  Fixing the system includes increasing spending, but it encompasses more than just that.

edited to take out a typo

[Breadburner]

O now cust...That will never work, mo money and the internets will learn them just fine.......

[Conan71]

Personally I think we should make parents responsible again.  I remember if I skipped school too much and got into trouble, my parents would get a fine.  Eventually I might have ended up in juvi, but my parents would have fit a larger court bill first.  Now, parants are not held accountable at all.  

Still, that is only a part of the equation.  As it's been said, the system is broken.  Yes, it needs more money, but blindly throwing money at it isn't going to do anything except make money disappear.  If the bill had passed as it was, I have a real funny feeling that the administrators salaries would have doubled, while the educators might have gotten at most a %5 increase.  All the football teams would have gotten new equipment while five students still had to share one book.  

I too generally had 30 students to a class, and I don't see where even having a teacher to myself would have improved anything, much less a class size of 15.  Small class size in the higher grades really just sounds good to parents who want "the best" for junior.  What we need are teachers that know the subject, and can teach.  Pay grades should depend more on performance than tenure.  Fixing the system only includes increasing spending, but it encompasses more than just that.

Spot on, Cust.

[Breadburner]

Lets start charging parents an "Impact Fee" at birth (the city does this to certain buisnesses) The money(s) collected can go into an education endowment....Lets say 5000.00 per child due before the child reaches kindergarten....Fee will be waved for parents enrolling children in private school...... If said child does end up attending public school "Impact Fee" will be pro-rated.......Ya...That will work.....

[Red Arrow]

I had several classes at college in my Freshman and Sophomore years that were huge (100+ students) lectures by a professor for a few hours per week and then smaller sessions (20 to 30 students) with Grad Students once or twice a week.  Most of my engineering classes for the first 2 years were about 30 students.  By the Junior and Senior years, enough students had either changed majors or dropped out all together that class size was frequently 10 to 15.

A few large classes in High School might be good preparation for college.

[Conan71]

For those of you who are new to the conversation we had another thread on this after 744 FAILed.  There were some good solutions stated and rather than re-posting stats I uncovered, I figured I'd link to the post.  Certain stats were state vs. local contribution to educational spending, which made the 744 campaign somewhat misleading, finding out that for every dollar spent on instruction, an additional 75 cents is spent on non instructional expenses.  Townsend also floated out the idea of making more instruction web based as a cost-saving measure.  It's working on the university level and I think it's something worth looking into.

http://www.tulsanow.org/forum/index.php?topic=16444.0

As an historical retrospective and why I'm skeptical about more money and more teachers makes a difference, all one has to look to is HB 1017.  Teacher's salaries have doubled since 1989 and according to national statistics our student/teacher ratio is about 13.9:1.  In other words, we've thrown more money at education and we've brought down the size of the average class, yet we are still lacking in outcome.  I honestly can't see a better example of the flawed logic that throwing more money at a problem will make it better.  More educational funding would not hurt, but until families take education more seriously outcomes won't improve. 

We are under the mistaken notion that all of a child's education occurs between 8am and 3:30pm M-F.

Jenks is a great example of a school district which spends less per student, but has great performance.  One thing I've seen through my days as a student there and through my daughters being students there is it's got very high parental participation.

It's simply an immutable fact: children who have the full support and interest of their family will do better in school.  You can send a child to a school where teachers are paid $80,000 per year and it's still no guarantee that child will get any more out of it if they don't have a support system at home to keep them interested in it. 

I'm looking for logical and serious solutions.

I've heard a lot about what the problems are:

-Underpaid teachers,

-Student teacher ratio is too high

-Too many school districts and administrative overhead

-Administrators and legislators will be reluctant to accept consolidation

-Massive amounts being spent on school building projects like performing arts centers and athletic training facilities

-We cannot cut funding

Here's the real numbers from NCES as it relates to the issues:

Oklahoma has a student/teacher ratio of 13.9:1 vs. a national average of 15.3:1

Arkansas & Kansas have populations of approx. 2.4mm people each.  Arkansas lists 1151 schools, Kansas lists 1447.  Oklahoma has about 800,000 more residents and 1806 schools.  Colorado has approx. 900,000 more residents than Oklahoma and 1837 schools.  I'd say that makes a reasonable case that Oklahoma is operating too many schools.  All four of those states have large chunks of rural areas, so I think it's a fair comparison.

Teacher pay is actually on par with other occupations requiring a bachelor's degree given the number of work days per year and the benefit package is generally better than those in the private sector

Solutions:

-Consolidate rural districts, find a logical population size and what would constitute an unusual hardship for travel to and from school to determine which districts must consolidate.

-Higher teacher pay to attract better teachers into common ed instead of the private sector or university level instruction

-Tone down the thirst for facilities which don't directly affect the learning process

-Find and eliminate waste wherever possible, come up with some sort of reward system for school districts who are determined to be operating at an efficient fiscal level and achieving performance results

-Target areas of wasteful state general spending so those funds can be placed into common education (this is precisely what SQ 744 was attempting to do)

-More home-school programs

More ideas, please.

[RecycleMichael]

Inflation since 1989 to 2011 shows a dollar then is equivalent to $1.80 today.

It is disengenious to say teachers salaries doubling has been throwing money at the problem.

[RecycleMichael]

All I want is for common education to receive they average that other states spend on common education.

In Oklahoma, we fund higher education to ridiculous amounts compared to common education...a few examples...

Common Education (k-12)   $3.181 billion  639,000 students  $4,978 per


Northeastern State              $174 million     9,780 students   $17, 779 per

Southwest Oklahoma State   $104 million     4,841 students   $21,467 per

Northern Oklahoma College   $ 58 million     2,700 students   $29,057 per

https://okreporting.ok.gov/analytics/saw.dll?Dashboard&_scid=ziMPcT-C7t8

[RecycleMichael]

Let's look at what we spend on incarcarating Oklahomans...

Department of Corrections  $563 million   25,000 prisoners  $22,520 per

[Breadburner]

Lets make having children a right and not a privelege...We could test the potential parents for intelligence if they pass they can have a child....Ya that will work....Or we could just throw money at it.....

[Conan71]

All I want is for common education to receive they average that other states spend on common education.

In Oklahoma, we fund higher education to ridiculous amounts compared to common education...a few examples...

Common Education (k-12)   $3.181 billion  639,000 students  $4,978 per


Northeastern State              $174 million     9,780 students   $17, 779 per

Southwest Oklahoma State   $104 million     4,841 students   $21,467 per

Northern Oklahoma College   $ 58 million     2,700 students   $29,057 per

https://okreporting.ok.gov/analytics/saw.dll?Dashboard&_scid=ziMPcT-C7t8

So ignoring all other reality presented to you, or relevant outcome you simply want parity in funding, is that what I'm hearing?

[ZYX]

I believe raising teacher pay is a solution that is almost guaranteed to help. I have a parent who is a teacher and at one point, we considered moving to NW Arkansas because of the higher teacher pay there. If we raise what we pay our teachers we could attract more  potential teachers who would otherwise go into different careers.

[RecycleMichael]

So ignoring all other reality presented to you, or relevant outcome you simply want parity in funding, is that what I'm hearing?

What reality? Posters thinking we are using state funds to build fancy olympic sized swimming pools? Posters thinking we should have classroom sizes of 100 students?

All I have ever said is that the legislature has their funding priorities wrong. Other states make common education funding a priority.

Oklahoma does not. We build prisons. We build state funded colleges in every town with an influential politician.

We pay prison guards with a high school degree and two years experience more than we pay teachers with a bachelor's degree ad the same amount of experience.

[Red Arrow]

What reality? Posters thinking we should have classroom sizes of 100 students?

My point was that small class size alone does not fix the problem.

Edit:
Forgot to say that although I realize your real goal is to get the kids a better education, your posts only indicate that you want to spend what our neighbors do regardless of the outcome.