{"id":26375,"date":"2011-02-23T06:25:36","date_gmt":"2011-02-23T13:25:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=26375"},"modified":"2011-02-23T06:26:20","modified_gmt":"2011-02-23T13:26:20","slug":"new-mexico-education-show-us-the-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2011\/02\/new-mexico-education-show-us-the-money\/","title":{"rendered":"New Mexico education: Show us the money!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Thomas Molitor<\/p><\/div>\n

New Mexico and America are spending more money on education while producing worse outcomes.<\/p>\n

As Paul Gessing stated in a recent column<\/a>, back in the 1994-1995 school year, New Mexico schools spent $4,100 per pupil annually.<\/p>\n

Quickly, that number started to rise at a rate that was far faster than inflation, with both Gary Johnson and Bill Richardson approving ever-growing education budgets. By the 2007-2008 school year, the last year available, New Mexico was spending $9,068 per year, per-pupil, according to the Census.<\/p>\n

According to the 2009 OECD figures<\/a>, the U.S. government spends more per pupil than any nation in the world except Switzerland. The United States spent an average of $149,000 for the K-12 education of every 2009 public high-school graduate. That works out to $11,461 per year or so.<\/p>\n

So New Mexico spends below the national average, but before you break out the champagne glasses, let\u2019s look at our return on money spent.<\/p>\n

Let the kids stay home and study on the Internet<\/h3>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

What if we shut down the schools and invest the money instead?<\/p>\n

Just let the kids stay home and study on the Internet. Personally speaking, I\u2019ve learned more on the Internet about business than the graduate school I attended.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say we even save some money to reduce the federal deficit, and only invest $11,000 per year. At 7 percent return, each child would have a $391,000 IRA when they\u2019re 18. That way, each even if they spend the next 50 years skiing Taos, they would all retire at 68 with $12,512,000 (assuming the same 7 percent average yearly return).<\/p>\n

This solves not only the education crisis, but the social security problem (they wouldn\u2019t need it), and the health-budget crisis (how much heart disease could there be, if everyone spent their time on the ski slopes?<\/p>\n

So we are spending a really staggering amount of capital on public schools. How\u2019s it paying off for the lucky recipients?<\/p>\n

Not so well, nationally. While at the top rank in funding, the United States is not exactly at the top of educational achievement. In the 2010 PISA report<\/a>, US.. students placed 25th\u00a0out of the 34 OECD countries in math.<\/p>\n

Only 77.5 percent of U.S. students even graduate from high school. If that seems frighteningly low, it isn\u2019t. As Paul Gessing points out, in 1997, New Mexico graduated 56.3 percent in 1997. Ten years on and many dollars more, it\u2019s 54.9 percent.<\/p>\n

Getting back to the OECD statistics, West European graduation rates are closer to 90 percent, and that doesn\u2019t count the many Europeans who enter industrial apprenticeship programs.<\/p>\n

Bottom line: We don\u2019t look so rosy \u2013 nationally or internationally.<\/p>\n

If money doesn\u2019t work \u2013 what does?<\/h3>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

We New Mexican taxpayers have plenty of money to give our children great educational opportunities. But we are turning the money over to a system with no options for parents or innovative teachers. A system with no competition or choices is a system\u00a0 doomed to fail.<\/p>\n

Of course, the moral and practical solution is to leave education to the free market. Parents would pay for their own children, voluntary charity would pick up for the children of the unlucky or improvident few. There would be as many educational options as there are children.<\/p>\n

But the debate today is framed by the Department of Education and the teachers\u2019 unions or how many \u201coutside consultants\u201d Hanna Skandera purchase orders.<\/p>\n

The teachers\u2019 unions scream that \u201ceducation needs more money.\u201d Fine. As a first step, let\u2019s agree with them. Education does need more money. But I say the only way to get more money for actual education is to give it to the parents, not the bureaucracy.<\/p>\n

Molitor is a regular columnist for this site. You can reach him at\u00a0tgmolitor@comcast.net<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Molitor bio<\/a> \u2502\u00a0Archives<\/a> \u2502\u00a0Feed<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Mexico and America are spending more money on education while producing worse outcomes. What if we shut down the schools and invest the money instead? Just let the kids stay home and study on the Internet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,182],"tags":[125,107,116],"class_list":["post-26375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-molitor-columns","tag-education","tag-roundhouse","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26375\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}