Scott McLeod asked yesterday, “Does anyone think that … our elementary and secondary schools don’t need any help on the technology front?
Well, yes, in the spirit of comity I’m not convinced schools need Federal money help with technology. U.S. schools already receive and spend more money than most countries in the world.
What data indicate that more money will change student learning rates? Rather, educators could redeploy existing funds instead of asking for more money. Maybe release some administrators and teachers and use those funds to buy and use advanced technologies in order to increase student learning efficiencies.
I’ve helped receive and spend more school money than most educators have. Sadly, the philosophy of throwing money at schooling has not measurably improved student learning rates.
Today, to demonstrate a need for more money, it seems reasonable to expect at a minimum for educators to account directly for how much it costs for a student to learn, for example, to say /a/ when seeing the letter “a” and to recite /two/ when seeing the numeral “2”.
I wonder if anyone shares my reasoning about demonstrating changes in learning rates to justify school funding.