Finland!

Followed by Canada!

(Source: D. Little)

Exactly,

According to mdare we should slash spending and we will leap forward.

You tell the parents we don’t need to spend more and I will tell them we need to spend much more on their kids. Who do you think they will follow? Hmmm

Major new study by Wilding on Michigan Early Childhood spending shows that it actually save the state $1 billion per year. Study advocates that more spending will lead to even more savings.

The savings come from less very expensive special ed, less grade retention, lower welfare payments, lower EI payments, les crime, lower rates of incarceration, higher productivity and higher incomes subject to higher taxes.

I don’t know when conservatives are going to understand some basic economics that spending more on education means higher revenues for the government? Sigh. We soldier on. Bless them, they still believe in Reaganomics and Milton Freidman notwithstanding the incredible debts and deficits it caused in the USA.

Debt and deficits went up fastest under Reagan and 2 Bush presidential terms. Balanced budget under Clinton.

Not one more dime until the money we waste on fads, poor programs and way too many bureaucrats translates to improved achievement to prove there’s value in the money spent.

Luckily it is not exactly up to you is it Chuck?

Chuck, if you were actually charged with running a school system you would soon find out that whether there is improvement in the system or not, the salaries go up because the staff will not work for less even with minimum inflation. Hydro goes up, paper goes up, gasoline goes up, all the imputs into education go up. Without increases of at least the rate of inflation you are actually talking about cuts.

Trustees, and I am sure the Minister as well hear a steady stream of delegations saying, we need a French Immersion program here, we need a new gym there, our science labs must be retrofitted over here, the textbooks are out of date and falling apart over there. Get used to it my friend. EVERYBODY is trying to improve education but costs go up regardless.

BTW, the OECD says one of the reasons Finland has the best results in the world is that they spend the most money although their teacher salaries are only average for similar European countries. Their teacher training is a three year post grad Masters that you must take to teach and it is very hard to get in so only top A BA students can make it. With this system teachers are held to high esteem like doctors. In order to qualify many get another Masters in their field of study before they even apply to increase their chances of being accepted.

Now that is a country that takes education seriously. Did I ever mention that it is the only country with better education results than Canada?

The BLOB and the Schools Revolution

“The Schools Revolution” is the title of a conference in England, March 4, 2010. I wish I could go.

Discussed will be “Radical changes …freeing schools from government control, empowering parents to choose where their children are educated, and prioritising discipline.”

This conference is sponsored by the Spectator magazine in anticipation of the Conservatives gaining government, expecting to overturn the present Labour government in the elections expected May.

If you think you can make it, here is the link:  http://www.spectator.co.uk/shop/events/5725068/spectator-one-day-conference-the-schools-revolution.thtml

A lot of the problems Britain is experiencing is because of the BLOB – BLOated education Bureaucracies.  It has hijacked the curriculum, bled most of the money from students before it enters the classroom, and denies effective methods such as phonics. On top of the bureaucracy there are the teacher unions, teacher training and research facilities which also divert effort and resources. 

Read an interesting article from the Spectator magazine on the BLOB:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/all/5704478/michael-gove-vs-the-blob.thtml

The BLOB is alive and well in Ontario and BC, for sure.

The Sec is the magazine of right wing extremists. It is funny how the whole world of education conspires against phonics and DI. You sound like the Flat earth Society when you promote it and almost no educational experts agree with this direction. Is it a conspiracy? It the whole education world either duped or in on the massive conspiracy to deny kids a proper education? Listen to yourselves.

Well now, again I have to respond. and to suggest that the above posting is only questioning the increase spending in education is relationship to successful outcomes. No where did I read, that decrease in spending, will provide successful outcomes. What I read, I have more questions that it is the education system that is the problem, and not the amount of dollars spent. Finland has been mention as a education system to be followed as an example of a success. There are successful, because their system adapts to the needs of their students, rather than the students adapting to the needs of the system. The Finland system, is rather popular with parents who have LD kids, and are struggling in getting services for their children. If my mild to moderate dyslexic child attended a Finland school. by the end of grade 6, she would be an excellent reader and writing. As North America parents, we can only dream of having such a system, where grades K to 6 concentrates on teaching the basic skills of reading, writing, and numeracy without skipping any foundation steps in the process. As a result, the majority of students by grade 6, are capable of doing much more advance work, because of their skills in reading, writing and numeracy. Another stat that bold well for the Finland system, is that most students who have learning difficulties, no longer have major difficulties with language by grade 6. Hence, special education classes, accommodations within the regular classroom, are greatly reduce, and the teacher can get on, teaching knowledge, rather then worrying about teaching at the level of the students, due to weak foundation abilities and skills of the students.
Furthermore, teachers are seen differently in Finland, They are well respected in Finland’s culture and society, because they are trained differently than teachers in North America. If my daughter was in a grade 1 Finland classroom, the signs of dyslexia would not be ignored, as it is in North America classes. In fact, the school will identified them, keep them in the regular classroom because the very things they need, the regular classroom provides, good quality reading, writing, numeracy instruction, long with good direct implicit teaching.
Doug, you are advocating more spending, but not in favour of making changes within the education system, that will actual help to improve success in the schools. Here is a link, that provided a summary of the Finland’s school system. I can also provide, with a little help from LD advocates, mostly parents that increase spending, does not lead to better students, until the system starts to adapt to the needs of the students, and to provide quality teaching based on solid research, rather than using the bean counter approaches to education.
http://www.edu.fi/english/SubPage.asp?path=500,4699

More Choices and Escapes Needed in Education

Education in Finland is compulsory between ages 7 - 16, but children are not obliged to go to school to get a good education.

Parents have a great opportunity to choose to home school their children or not. If they home educate their children, the state and schools have almost no control over the methods used by them. The only thing required by the municipal officials is that the child has to have learned almost every subject taught at school.

Many home educators tell me that they need spend just half a day or less to complete expected curriculum work.  The rest is free time, and is often used for hobbies, talent development, or entrepreneurial effort.

On the other hand what the public schools do with that extra time, especially in America, UK and Canada, is social engineering stuff like injecting social justice issues of race, gender, and class into as much of the curriculum as possible. 

The discussion in this thread is about the efficient and effective use of public money. However, In education, increasingly and ironically we are seeing a startling inverse relationship.  The more that is spent, the less satisfactory the results!

That does not seem to bother the education system or the teacher unions – the BLOB.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/all/5704478/michael-gove-vs-the-blob.thtml

It is in the BLOB’s self-interest to keep duping the public that we need their service and long days.  Their monopolistic industry guarantees jobs, good pay and benefits, security and a captive audience for social engineering. That is the hidden curriculum!

That is rank child exploitation and abuse. We need more choices outside this trap.

I agree with pretty much everything Nancy says above including in the link and am a very strong advocate of the Finnish system.

For my friends on the far right who would use the Spectator for more than fish wrap, I can say that I will go on demanding radical increases in educational expendidture and you can say it has no effect and we will see who the parents agree with.

It would take only about $3 BILLION MORE PER YEAR for us to catch up and pass have-not Manitoba but I advocate much more. I would like to see Ontario strive to be the highest spending education jurisdiction on the planet. This will give us the highest standard of living. Even the business community, who don’t want to pay the taxes, is beginning to agree. If you want the best people for your firm we need to educate them.