Ticker ran some numbers. Just as important, he excerpted a report on WHAT and HOW to teach the little darlings.
Direct Instruction (DI), devised by Siegfried Engelmann in the early 1960's as he taught his own children, is defined by the researcher James Baumann: "The teacher, in a face to face, reasonably formal manner, tells, shows, models, demonstrates and teaches the skill to be learned. The key word is teacher, for it is the teacher who is in command."
Longitudinally studied, it produces the best results, when combined with:
Models that emphasized basic skills succeeded better than other models in helping children gain these skills. Groups of children in Basic Skills models performed significantly better on measures of academic skills than did non-Follow Through groups. Abt evaluators concluded that a Basic Skills model would be preferable if an educator was concerned with teaching skills such as spelling, math computation, language, and word knowledge. Note that the Abt report refers to the superiority of a model type. However, it is not inclusion in a category that leads to educational effectiveness, but the particular instructional materials and procedures used.
Then he ran the numbers, and (yup) came up with ~$4,200.00/year--and the teachers would be well-paid--that is, in the the second-from-the-top quintile of household incomes in the US.
Throw in another $800.00/kid for higher-end supplies (chem, bio, physics stuff) and an extracurricular or two, and it's $5K/kid/year.
About HALF the Wisconsin average.
And oddly enough - just about how much it costs per child at parochial schools.
ReplyDeleteHe didn't take into account the massive $$ siphoned off by administration and other things that take public $$ for 'education'. Once you factor that in, if you listen to Libs, even double what we spend would never be enough.
ReplyDeleteCost of education of regular education students is always lower. This figure doesn't include special education, English as a 2nd language students and all the other mandates the Feds and states put on local school districts.
ReplyDeleteThe pay for teachers and administrators is a little off, but that is for another day.
That $5000 is close to what we spend in Clark County, NV. and is probably cheaper than that.
Well, yah...
ReplyDeleteExcept there is NO Constitutional basis for Fed interference in school-district issues. Screw them.
ESL? No problem-o. Immersion worked in the 1920's (German/Polish immigrants in Milwaukee.) It'll work again.
Granted, special-ed is another thing entirely.