Our schools are grossly overfunded in this country. Yes, I said grossly overfunded. You ever seen the salaries of some administrators? And, don't get me started on the high school football coaches.
Private sector lobbyists at work, buying politicians. Did someone say Greed? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-a-palermo/university-of-phoenix-rig_b_673978.html
I'm a little worried about myself for agreeing with you Lukie, but got to say: Good post. [But, I'm not a redneck or Fox (fake) News junkie.]
Go to 4:38 of the video if you want to see the numbers. District school in New Jersey.(Run by the Government, no competition) Average Proficieny level by student: English. 49.9% Average Proficieny level by student: Math 35.3% That means less than half the people coming out of the government run schools are proficient in either subject. Charter school, (Private sector, competition) Average Proficieny level by student: English. 88.4% Average Proficieny level by student: Math 93.0% Average Cost per student: District School 17,237 Charter School: 10,994 So we pay half as much for twice the results in the private sector..... seems about right. The people going to these charter schools are selected on a lottery based random system, where parents are literally crying because they got their kid out of the train wreck of an education system the government is running. The people running the charter schools know damn well no one is going to want to go to their schools if they dont perform, and they will probably lose funding, whereas the teachers in the underperforming government schools get raises year after year, and do not lose their job based on how badly they are failing our kids, once a teacher gets tenure they just managed to lock down one of the most important jobs we have in our country(teaching our kids), for life, regardless of how hard they work after that, because they are essentially unfireable. Not only that, they only have to work for about 5 hours a day, 8 months of the year, and they can retire in 25 years. The way we treat the education system is the epitome of what is wrong with government, and the height of government insanity. We give them the keys to the golden kingdom, and dont even require that they work for it.
More proof/evidence of the same bull shit. <iframe width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Bx4pN-aiofw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Saw this one with Stossel a few times, it was quite good, if you want to watch one that is equally "damning" rent the documentary I linked to called "The Cartel," I found it on the video on demand on my satellite, its also about the teachers union. I think you can find most of it on youtube now though.
You repeat and reinforce yourself and only yourself when you cut out parts of my post with your quotes. Do you feel better when you do that, in a "neener neener I can't hear you" kind of way?
Get over yourself lil' Ricky. While I'll be the first to admit, in the interest of entertaining myself, I frequently take certain liberties with my quotes. In this particular case I left out nothing of importance or that added context. IOW you're still full of shit thinking and trying to claim we have no spending problem or that government waste and government employee incompetence are nor MAJOR issues.