Pages

Search This Blog

Thursday, May 25, 2017

Where has all the money gone, long time passing





Where has all the money gone, long time passing,
Gone to profits everywhere, long time passing,
When will we ever learn,
When will we ever learn.

Accountability matters, and so does the stealth robbery of funding for our public schools.
In the late 1990's Former Secretary of Education William Bennett saw a potential 250-billion-dollar assessment market.
NCLB and Race To The Top more than doubled on that prediction.
Public school students use to be test three time in the past. Once in Elementary school, once in middle school, and once in high school. This is still the way it is still done by most nations. Especially the nation's out scoring America on international assessments.
Let me play with the math a little. We have about 53 million children in our public schools. It takes some 13 years to complete a child's public education. In 2015 NCLB and RTTT first 53 million children completed their public-school journey.

In my day those children would have taken national/state exams three times costing about 300 dollars per child. Now when we calculate it out for 53 million students it come to somewhere around:
300 U.S. dollars per child over 13 years. Time that by 53 million = 15.9 billion U.S. dollars A massive amount of money. Testing in our public schools has always been a lucrative business.
Now people stay with me people? Under NCLB and Race To The Top testing when from 3 standardized tests to some 112 standardized tests per child. No one in the Department of Education wants to put a number on the cost of those 112 Standardized tests that children take during their 13 years in our public schools. But, heck let me take a shot at it for them? Let us say buying these tests and paying for the scoring equal somewhere around a 100.00 a pop.

So that comes 11, 200 U.S. dollars for every child during their public-school experience. Sure, sounds like a great deal of money. In most districts that equals what many schools spend to educate a child. Now we don't want to stop people. We have to take that 11,200 dollars, and times it by 53 million to fully see the cost of testing in our public schools. That comes 593.6 billion U.S. dollars for every generation of children that pass through our public schools. That is over 45 billion dollars for every year during a child's public school experience.

Where have all the art teachers gone,
Where have all the music teachers gone,
Where have all the Special Education teachers gone,
Where have all the Reading Specialists gone,
Where have all the school councilors gone,
Where have all the school social workers gone,
Where have all school nurses gone,
Where have all Gym teachers gone,
Where have 540 learning days gone,
Where have all teachers gone,

Gone to 112 Standardized tests everywhere, long time passing,
Where has all the money gone, Gone to profits everywhere, long time passing,
Where have all our school house smiles gone, long time passing,
Gone to tears everywhere, long time passing,
When will we ever learn,
When will we ever learn.

Parents, students, and teacher must Fight For Six, before ESSA robs another generation of hundreds of billions of dollars on useless testing.
Fight this insanity,
Jesse The Walking Man Turner

If you want to listen to what tune inspired this walking man on his walk this morning in the rain...its Pete Seeger singing “Where Have All The Flowers Gone” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1t...

No comments:

Post a Comment