Tulsa Public Schools Spending

[Gaspar]

You do wriggle and wiggle when you can't go point to point. They could have used you in the Spanish Inquisition..."We know, sir, that you have sinned against nature yet we have yet to discern whether it was beast or fowl and what your atonement might be. These are our answers, perhaps you could share your's with us. 1. It was a pig 2. It was a chicken 3.Punishment by hanging. What say you, sir?"

My short answer? Contract out education to another country.

So, you're done?

You don't have to provide answers to my questions if you don't wish to.  Provide the solutions that you feel strongly about.  Just provide something other than criticism and snark.

[AquaMan]

I've skimmed a lot of this.  In the debate about private school vs public school has anyone mentioned teacher tenure?  It is much harder for a public school to fire a teacher than it is for a private school.  IMO, that is a game changer.

It may appear so but I've never seen anything to prove it is the difference between the two. Consider the alternative choice. A teacher spends their career dedicated to teaching other people's children, obtaining continuuing education to stay sharp and earn increase pay and achieves success in the field. Then one supervisor doesn't like her methods, her personality, her carriage, her politics, anything about her and decides he can hire two younger teachers for what he pays her and is willing to risk poorer performance to meet budget restraints. So he fires her. Oklahoma is an at will state. Doesn't take much to fire someone.

That is what happens without tenure.

[AquaMan]

So, you're done?

You don't have to provide answers to my questions if you don't wish to.  Provide the solutions that you feel strongly about.  Just provide something other than criticism and snark.

You ended it. You have no interest in changing your viewpoint and have steadfastly ignored the points Conan and I have made. I can curse at the wind or I can close the window.

[Hoss]

So, you're done?

You don't have to provide answers to my questions if you don't wish to.  Provide the solutions that you feel strongly about.  Just provide something other than criticism and snark.

This coming from the king of snark?

Pot/Kettle/someneutralcolor?

[Gaspar]

It may appear so but I've never seen anything to prove it is the difference between the two. Consider the alternative choice. A teacher spends their career dedicated to teaching other people's children, obtaining continuuing education to stay sharp and earn increase pay and achieves success in the field. Then one supervisor doesn't like her methods, her personality, her carriage, her politics, anything about her and decides he can hire two younger teachers for what he pays her and is willing to risk poorer performance to meet budget restraints. So he fires her. Oklahoma is an at will state. Doesn't take much to fire someone.

That is what happens without tenure.

That is a valid argument, but is that the exception or the norm when choosing to hire or fire an employee?  Typically, business people choose to retain the most talented, and productive employees over the least productive.  Sure, there are bad bosses out there, but why punish generations of children just to safeguard a workforce from a small minority of bad bosses.  Additionally, supervisors who employ that decision making process ultimately find themselves out of a job because their performance is judged against the success of others.

I've seen people terminated for the wrong reasons, and I recognize that it happens and is tragic.  I also recognize that the primary responsibility of an educational system is the children, not the employees.  If we choose to take actions that serve to protect the employees at the expense of the children, we do more harm than your supervisor who terminates a teacher for the wrong reasons.

[RecycleMichael]

I are a graduate of public schools...

Oklahoma has cut education funding dramatically. The 2012 budget is $300 million less than it was in 2010.

Total general fund revenues in Oklahoma are up 15% this year over last year (up $283 million).

Why is the legislature saying they are going to cut education funding again?

Because they can and because we let them.

[nathanm]

This chart is completely useless. It does not account for student population nor does it break down what is being spent on the actual mission of education, what is being spent on buildings, what is being spent on maintenance, what is being spent on utilities, and what is being spent on sports, what is being spent on security, and what is being spent on special ed. Without that breakdown it tells us only what we all already know, that spending has risen and aggregate outcomes have not.

Schools pay for more things now than they used to. Some schools in poor areas serve three meals a day now, for example. We seem to have decided that high technology is somehow necessary in schools, so you get districts spending millions on iPads. I suspect that much of the budget increases are due to aging infrastructure and the aforementioned cost of educating even the unruly.

[Conan71]

Nathan, I believe the metric is spending per pupil which seems to be the most logical metric everyone looks at in being able to compare from large to small school systems.  At least that's what was used when they tried to get the billion tax grab via cutting other state funding a year or so back. I have no idea if capital expenditures are considered as part of the spending per pupil.

[Gaspar]

This chart is completely useless. It does not account for student population nor does it break down what is being spent on the actual mission of education, what is being spent on buildings, what is being spent on maintenance, what is being spent on utilities, and what is being spent on sports, what is being spent on security, and what is being spent on special ed. Without that breakdown it tells us only what we all already know, that spending has risen and aggregate outcomes have not.

Schools pay for more things now than they used to. Some schools in poor areas serve three meals a day now, for example. We seem to have decided that high technology is somehow necessary in schools, so you get districts spending millions on iPads. I suspect that much of the budget increases are due to aging infrastructure and the aforementioned cost of educating even the unruly.

That's easy to answer.  According to the Department of Education, enrollment is only modestly higher (46 million in 1970, and 50 million today) http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/tables/dt10_003.asp .  You are correct, while it does account for inflation, it does not account where the money is spent, and that is part of the problem.  It simply divides the money by total enrollment.

Most of us don't send our kids to elementary and secondary school to learn football or the African drum, however those are part of the spending that probably needs evaluation.  As for "aging infrastructure" and "educating the unruly," infrastructure expenses have always existed and always will, as will the potential for delinquency.   The measures taken to address those expenses and challenges are all subject to review.  

The point I am making is that we are continuing to attempt to solve the same problems using the same approach that has never worked in the past.  That approach is to appropriate an ever increasing amount of funds from tax payers and continue to produce little or no return.  Reason would dictate that a different approach is necessary.  My proposal is to replace public enterprise with private.  What do you propose?

[nathanm]

The point I am making is that we are continuing to attempt to solve the same problems using the same approach that has never worked in the past.  That approach is to appropriate an ever increasing amount of funds from tax payers and continue to produce little or no return.  Reason would dictate that a different approach is necessary.  My proposal is to replace public enterprise with private.  What do you propose?

Never? You think all the kids turned out by our school systems who ended up doing things like sending men to the moon and robots to Mars weren't successfully educated by the system as it existed from the 50s to the 70s?

Given that private companies can't successfully run prisons, I don't suspect they'll have much better luck running schools.

[Gaspar]

Never? You think all the kids turned out by our school systems who ended up doing things like sending men to the moon and robots to Mars weren't successfully educated by the system as it existed from the 50s to the 70s?

Given that private companies can't successfully run prisons, I don't suspect they'll have much better luck running schools.

Let me see if I understand you.

You are fine as long as the public system can turn out a minority of success stories and pass on the rest with little improvement.

You feel that schools are similar to prisons, and based on that assumption you think that private industry is less productive than public endeavors.

I suppose you subscribe to Tom Daschil's philosophy that you cannot professionalize unless you federalize.

You still have yet to propose a solution, is that because you don't believe a problem exists?

[nathanm]

Let me see if I understand you.

You clearly aren't interested in having a reasonable discussion given this post, so I'm just going to bow out here.

[Gaspar]

You clearly aren't interested in having a reasonable discussion given this post, so I'm just going to bow out here.

Just trying to squeeze an answer out of you.  Good bye.

[Red Arrow]

The point I am making is that we are continuing to attempt to solve the same problems using the same approach that has never worked in the past.  That approach is to appropriate an ever increasing amount of funds from tax payers and continue to produce little or no return.  Reason would dictate that a different approach is necessary.  My proposal is to replace public enterprise with private.  What do you propose?

I propose a MicroSoft solution.  They consistently get different results with the same input.

[AquaMan]

That is a valid argument, but is that the exception or the norm when choosing to hire or fire an employee?  Typically, business people choose to retain the most talented, and productive employees over the least productive.  Sure, there are bad bosses out there, but why punish generations of children just to safeguard a workforce from a small minority of bad bosses.  Additionally, supervisors who employ that decision making process ultimately find themselves out of a job because their performance is judged against the success of others.

I've seen people terminated for the wrong reasons, and I recognize that it happens and is tragic.  I also recognize that the primary responsibility of an educational system is the children, not the employees.  If we choose to take actions that serve to protect the employees at the expense of the children, we do more harm than your supervisor who terminates a teacher for the wrong reasons.

It is the norm. The reason teachers work for tenure is that it is such a politically tenous position. With the election of a new wave of legislators you can suddenly be forced to change your principles and learning to match theirs or your out. Imagine if a Santorum administration came to power and you had no tenure. You may very easily be canned for teaching basic biology. For failing to teach creationism etc. It already happens on an informal basis with school boards bullying administrators in Kansas. But that is not a problem in a for profit business. If they tell you Yield means go then you go or find another place to work.

You're organizational business naivete is stunning. You actually believe that stuff and it just makes me giggle that I once felt similarly. You are too long in the business world to not understand that competence, productivity and performance are not closely related to corporate personnel decisions or success in climbing the corporate ladder. Those are the exceptions. Its CYA, all the way baby and the Peter principle is alive and well. It works fine for profit making businesses but sucks when your task is to teach someone else's child.