Stupid in America -- Why your kids are probably dumber than Belgians

Reason ^ | January 13, 2006 | John Stossel

[xzins]

I lived in the German community for 4 years on my last tour. We had various neighbors within shouting distance whose kids were going to vastly different schools and some had been released to go altogether to trades.

This is the best explanation why our 10 year olds score the same or better than their international counterparts. We're surveying the entire population at that point.

This is just my opinion, but it's based on my experience. Incidentally, I was told of a similar system when I was stationed in S. Korea.

[Eepsy]

Here are my current school choices for my soon-to-be five year old:

1. Public School, well reviewed, generously funded, hideous fuzzy math curriculum K-8 (Everyday Math). FREE.

2. Local Parish Scool. Fantastic academic curriculum. Bad, Catholic-Lite, Extra-Social-Justice-Hold-the-One-True-Church, mandatory catechism program. $2400 YEARLY

3. Private Catholic School. Two years old, twenty minute drive, Orthodox. Great across the board curriculum. So small it's two grades to a classroom teacher. $2500 YEARLY


sigh

[Capriole]

I pay a lot of attention to French culture and to their very competitive and rigorous educational system. French people are very educated, but they have a dying culture.

What about this: what about we have a rigorous educational system and a strong culture? The two are not mutually exclusive. That's what we had during the early years of this nation, until about forty years ago, and it worked well. Providing a rigorous education to American children does not necessarily lead to social decay or the corruption of society. A wholly uneducated populace is much more manipulable, much more easily led into corruption. A case may even be made that declining educational standards have contributed to our culture's current slide into decadence.

[alanthemanc]

Population of Belgium was 10 million last time I checked.

[BluH2o]

ABC's GMA did a lead in this AM for tonight's "Stupid in America". They interviewed U.S. teenage high schoolers from NJ and their counterparts in Belgium ... who took the same test. Test scores aside, the NJ teens came up way short, it was interesting the Belgium kids responded to questions asked by the interviewer in flawless English. Which brings up another point, that being, most European kids, aside from their native language, speak at least one foreign language well ... and many have a working knowledge of several more. Contrast this with the typical HS kid in the U.S. who barely speak English well.

[redgolum]

Hardy Boys are better than Johnny has Two Daddies.

Heck, I loved Hardy Boys novels in grade school, but we still had to read more than that.

[ModelBreaker]

Comparing 300 million Americans to 40 million Belgians is stupid. We have a larger sample OBVIOUSLY we will score worse.

You're joking, right?

[wintertime]

If you think that running a country on educated folks is to expensive try having it run on jerks. Globalheater

To Globalheater,

America spends plenty on education. It spends more on education that the military. ( federal, state, and local combined) This amounts to MORE than $10,870 per government schooled K-12 child per year. It is MORE than $2,500 per taxpayer.

So....compare these expenses to the cost of my alma mater, St. Joan of Arc. The tuition for this school in the year 2002-2003 was a mere $2,383. That is less than the cost of babysitting!

We can pour money down the government school rat hole and we will still get the same results!

Solution: Begin the process of completely privatizing universal K-12 education.

Government school taxes have turned our citizens into a nation of renters! It is our government who really owns our homes and business. Refuse to or fail to pay your property-school taxes and the government, using sheriffs will evict you. ( Real bullets in those guns on the hip)

Government school taxes are driving industry off-shore, forcing mothers into the work force, and for all this still fail to educate our children.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
http://www.reformk12.com/archives/000174.nclk

Doing the Math Here's how we came up with the numbers used in this article.

Using the data from the 2000 U.S. Census, the US population is about 281 million, with about 72 million of these under 18 (pdf). To figure about how many school-age kids there are we divided the 72.3 by 18, then multiplied by 13 to encompass the grades K-12. This gives us an estimate about 52.2 million kids in Kindergarten through 12th grade.

Interestingly, while searching for other statistics we came across this 1999 Census report on education (pdf) with all sorts of breakdowns of the student population, including how many in each category of age. We added up the columns for Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle, and High School and reached a total 52.6 million, satisfyingly close to our original estimate.

Now what about private schools? "Public Schools: Make Them Private" by Milton Friedman, and "How Members of Congress Practice School Choice" by Krista Kafer and Jonathan Butcher from the Heritage Foundation both indicate about 10% of students are enrolled in private schools. Subtracting 10% of 52.6 million for private school and another million for homeschooled kids gives us a final estimate of about 46 million public school kids. To keep the numbers user-friendly we'll call this 50 million.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, taxpayer expenditures for education this school year is over $501.3 billion. Rounding to $500 billion this gives us a ballpark estimate of $10,000 per school-age child. (Note that this is an underestimate, since the actual number of public school students is closer to 46 million, giving us an average of about $10,870 per kid in public school.)

Subtracting persons under 18 from the U.S. population, we get about 209 million folks 18 and over, which we rounded to 200 million, since some folks don't pay taxes. These 200 million citizens pay $500 billion in taxes for education, or $2,500 per taxpayer on average, per year.

Dollar-wise, this means it takes about four taxpayers to pay the government for the education of one child.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

http://www.cato.org/dailys/09-08-03.html

The most recent figures available from the U.S. Department of Education show that in 2000 the average tuition for private elementary schools nationwide was $3,267. Government figures also indicate that 41 percent of all private elementary and secondary schools -- more than 27,000 nationwide -- charged less than $2,500 for tuition. Less than 21 percent of all private schools charged more than $5,000 per year in tuition. According to these figures, elite and very expensive private schools tend to be the exception in their communities, not the rule.

Many people may think private schools are expensive because the costlier private schools also tend to be the most well known. For example, many in Houston have heard about St. John's or Tenney High School, where tuition runs over $13,000 a year. But fewer Houstonians have likely heard of Southeast Academy, Woodward Acres, or Pecan Street Christian Academy, all of which charge less than $3,000 per year, well below the city's private school average of $4,468.

Average private school tuition in other cities tells the same story: a large number of moderately priced private schools with a few very expensive, well-known exceptions. Median private elementary school tuition in Denver is $3,528. In Charleston, $3,150. In Philadelphia, $2,504. In New Orleans, $2,386.
88888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888
\
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pdupont/?id=95001424

Federal spending on K-12 education will top $41 billion in 2004. Add in state and local spending, and the figure rises to a record half-trillion dollars. That's double the amount spent in 1990 and a third more than the $375 billion the U.S. will spend on defense this year. The negligible impact of this ever-increasing cash infusion on reading scores is illustrated in this chart:

[GeorgefromGeorgia]

Belgium does not have 40 million people.

[jec41]

Federal spending on K-12 education will top $41 billion in 2004. Add in state and local spending, and the figure rises to a record half-trillion dollars. That's double the amount spent in 1990 and a third more than the $375 billion the U.S. will spend on defense this year. The negligible impact of this ever-increasing cash infusion on reading scores is illustrated in this chart:

The number 1 rated high school in the US (public or private) is the The Kinkade School in Houston, Texas. Its funding is much less than Texas public schools. 100% of their graduates attend and graduate from collage or University. All students take the SAT's and the average score is ~1350 vs ~1000 for the national average. It's a great model but a well kept secret. Take the time and goggle up The Kinkade School. Look at the graduating class and their achievement and choices of Universities.

[somniferum]

As someone else said on an earlier thread, we have moved from teaching Latin and Greek in our high schools to teaching remedial reading in our universities.

[Warren_Piece]

My kids go to an Academic Catholic school (stress the academic). It costs a LOT more than $2500, and our school has no tiered system for non-catholics. You would get quite a deal on that one.

My kids have been studying spanish since kindergarten, and my 3rd grade son started French this year. He also brought home his latest assignment - a research paper. With bibliography. 3rd grade.

I think kids will rise to whatever level is expected of them, barring learning disabilities or some other debilitating hardship.

One final thing, if Belgium has such an educated populace, why aren't they running the world, instead of the US? Maybe education isn't the only factor to creating a healthy, prosperous society. See my tagline.

[The Toll]

Years ago I watched a show that compared how the Japanese were teaching first year algebra as apposed to America. Their way was so much better that it made me furious. For example the text book they used was 1/4 of the size of the American one and the students didn't get intimidated. They stuck to the basics and left all of the exceptions to the rules for more advanced classes later. They also had a system that rewarded class participation and competition among students. They moved to word problems as soon as the basics were mastered, which helped teach the students the purpose of learning the material. It was inspiring and depressing at the same time.

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

Okay, waffles, chocolate and beer. Actually, Belgium doesn't seem so bad now...

And don't forget the legendary detective...

[AppyPappy]

If you are tenure-track, you had better publish or get grants.

[Marie]

btt

[RobbyS]

When the civil rights revolution hit the United States, it was decided to bring black students into the largely white public schools. Wrongly this was proposed to be the way to integrate the black population into American society. But, many years before, Booker T. Washington had realized that only ECONOMIC integration would achieve SOCIAL integration. Because no money was forth coming, blacks got little schooling of any kind. Nonetheless, by the 1950s, there was a small but growing Middle class, in part because. thanks to readers like Randolph, blacks were able to get jobs in defense and other industries and accumulate money. By the 1950s. blacks were are rising class in the USA and demanding the political equality to which they were entitled by the Constitution. The Brown decision ought to have been taken as a largely symbolic victory. Instead, it decided as a social experiment to make the schools an engine of equality. The result has been a dumbing down of the schools, for not only have blacks but even poor white and Hispanic students been brought into the "system" with the aim of imposing a kind of social equality at the expense of academic excellence. All youngsters between 14 and 19 have been "DRAFTED" into what has become increasingly a NATIONAL school. We have seen our national defense community abandon this idea in favor of a volunteer force. At the same time we have pressed all youngsters into "educational" service. The result is a deadening uniformity that rewards mediocrity.

[RobbyS]

You have it. They are "people's palaces" for teenagers.

[RobbyS]

Forty years ago, we had a "new Math" program in place in the public schools. It foundered for three reasons: 1) the teachers did not understand it 2) the teachers mistaught it;3) middle-class parents did not understand it because it was do different from the math they had been taught. The end result was students who didn't understand the new math and couldn't do arithmetic.