Ron Paul on Education

Ron Paul is calling for an end to the Federal Student Loan program saying that the program (or more specifically government) is responsible for soaring tuition costs. Look, I like Ron Paul but he is dead wrong on this one. I went to UW-Madison when the State (government) was subsidizing the school by 2/3. So, with research grants from corporations and the federal government and out of state students paying much more those of us from Wisconsin were left with paying $1000 per year. Not cheap but an amount of money that could be obtained by working a minimum wage job. The Federal Student Loan program also existed at that time. What has changed? The subsidy from the state to UW for one, they are slated to take a $250 million dollar cut this year alone. Federal research grants for another. This has resulted in tuition now being nearly $10,000 per year. In order to earn that much money working a minimum wage job you need to work full time for more than 33 weeks. The sad reality is that most 18 year olds are going to working for minimum. I would contend that it is nearly impossible for someone to "work" their way through school today.

There are still private research grants coming into the universities but this is a problem in another direction. A private company can place research into a university for much less money than doing it themselves. The problem is that when the students that did that work graduate and need a job no jobs are available because the research has been outsourced to the universities.

I don't get it

I was reading the paper today and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce is dismayed that in this economy they are having a hard time finding qualified employees. I wonder if they think that maybe cutting education funding might be a problem. We are caught in a trap. We don't have qualified workers but we can't fund training and education that might create qualified workers. Unfortunately, business doesn't look at education as being important to their business so they advocate against it. The reality is that education is a big subsidy to business. Imagine if education was the responsibility of business. What do you think they will teach? How much will it cost them?

Advice for the new majority

I think that it is time that the legislature and new governor solve the school funding problem in Wisconsin.  If you take the costs of schools out of the budget it remarkably comes into balance.  This problem is the remnant of the "I dare you vote" that the Democrats presented Gov. Thompson.  In it the State agreed to fund 2/3 of the cost of schools in an effort to limit property tax increases.  There were several problems with this, but one of the biggest was that the State was paying for something that the State had little control over.  This is a State that is big on local control.  What is the solution?  It needs to be a major reform.  You can't nibble around the edges.  The conservative believe if the QEO is reinstated it will all be good.  No it won't!  A good first step would be to make teachers state employees.  We could move to privatize the entire system.  This is extremely unpopular, school choice yes as long as it is public money.  What I'm saying is no public money.  Some say that this will lead to an erosion of standards and quality.  Look around we already have that.  I believe that there should be curriculum standards but look at some of the standards in other states like Texas.  Texas has become the Federalist state in terms of the history of the founding.  Of course, if you follow the Federalists there should be no public schools.  Public schools are a construct of the German immigrants to the country.  Granted a person like Jefferson or Paine would agree with the idea of pubic schools.  The problem with the public schools is how to fund them and this is something that we haven't figured out in the US.  In Germany, France, and the Scandinavian countries they are federally funded.  Other countries tax gambling, use sales taxes, or rely on private schools to educate more.  The new majority needs to come up with some real ideas this time.

Madison schools

As an observer from the rural part of Dane County, I have always been amazed at the perception that Madison's public schools are "bad". Once again we have had a couple of contradictory articles in the media. The first that Madison wants to stop their students from leaving through public school choice because it is a net loss in money needed to run the system. I fault the media and to a lesser extent the school board with a failure to dig at all and answer the question, why are they leaving? This of course generated multiple letters decrying how unfair it is that I will no longer be allowed to provide a better education for my child or that the schools are failing so people are voting with their feet and leaving. The first issue is easy to address, send your kid to private school. You want to take a stand fund it yourself. The other issue not so easy to address until today. New article, Madison schools tops in the state for National Merit Scholarship semi-finalists. Wow, and I was led to believe that they were awful. Doesn't make much sense. National Merit Scholars represent <1%>1% of its students qualifying. You could say that these students succeeded in the face of adversity or just imagine how many we would have if it was a good district. The first is plausible except it is exceedingly rare to have that percentage even in the best of the best private schools. The second is also unlikely for the same reason, and look at how well the districts that kids are transferring to did. No one from Mt. Horeb, Oregon, Cambridge, McFarland, Columbus public, Beaver Dam, or Janesville Parker. Only one from Waunakee and Marshall, 2 from Sun Prairie, 4 from Verona. Waunakee, Sun Prairie, and Verona are big supposedly excellent schools in the burbs and they are not even close to Madison (except LaFollete with only 1). McFarland is a smaller school with an excellent reputation and none. What then? This brings me to the last article, also printed today by Thomas Friedman where he contends that motivation is the problem, kids aren't willing to do the work. I think that he is on to something. I see it in hiring people to work in a cafe. First off the kids that are in the tops of their class aren't looking for jobs, so we're left hiring middle to lower level students. For the most part they don't work hard unless you are always in their face. When I started working most of the hires were the better students so those other kids just didn't get jobs. This generation more than any other expects that everything will be handed to them. They want to get paid big money and not do anything and that is just not how it works. The same in school you have to work to get to where you want to be. If that is college you have to earn the grades to get you there. Obviously some kids in Madison have figured that out and have done well.

I think that the schools need to challenge students before they get to high school. I think that we all know someone who never studied in high school and always got A's. The problem with that is that these same kids struggle in college, no concept of hard work. Teachers know if the kid is putting forth effort or just doing what is required for an A. Let teachers mark that work down especially in the early grades where grades don't matter (you're not trying to get into Harvard or MIT yet). The problem with this approach are the parents, they won't stand for Jonny or Suzy being marked down. It is a rare parent that will tell a teacher to mark down their child. I have done it more in the context of private schools (my kids were there because the public schools wouldn't push them to work harder or push them into a more challenging curriculm.