11-29-2012, 04:54 PM
(11-29-2012, 09:17 AM)kandrathe Wrote: From what I see in the data, we are spending more on education, and getting the same or worse results.
1) You aren't really spending more on education. It's barely tracked GDP, and that includes a hefty slice of pure inflation. And the demand for education in production, shown in the skill premium, is going up and up. Or, put another way, the penalty for having uneducated people is increasing.
2) You have had a large migration from much less literate societies, which will continue to drag down literacy rates. If almost 1/20 people is an undocumented migrant, that's going to tank your literacy figures in the first generation, and put increasing pressure on the 2nd. This wasn't true in the 1960s.
Regardless, I cannot conceive of a possible world where backsliding in literacy figures would lead to calls for *less* education funding. The programs necessary to boost literacy rates and K-12 education are not mysterious or esoteric. They do not suffer from the problems you describe with higher education management. Just build more damn schools, hire qualified teachers, pay them well, and make sure they're supplied with the necessary materials. I have no doubt there are serious administrative challenges, but in the end, it's not rocket science, at least up until high school.
-Jester