SwampFox

We spend a quarter of a million per classroom. Why don't we pay teachers $125K?

Submitted by: John Warner on Apr 01, 2011 at 8:48 am Tagged with: public education Source: Swamp Fox

In a recent meeting of the SC Education Oversight Committee, we reviewed data showing that in the 2008-2009 fiscal year, the latest for which data is available, we spent $8.6 billion on public education in South Carolina, or $12,207 per student. There are about 21 students on average in classrooms. That means we are spending over a quarter of a million dollars per classroom to educate students.

I made this observation on my weekly public radio update on the SC Business Review with Mike Switzer. A listener replied with an email:

Dear Mike

I enjoy listening to your program. This past Monday, you had John Warner on as usual. I found his statements about the amount of money used to fund public education high…..so I checked with the local Partners in Education. Their information is attached. The numbers show that John’s numbers were high. Having worked in the public school setting for 30 years, I know that right now public education is under fire from all sides. If information is going to be presented, it needs to be accurate. I feel like John Warner had his own agenda.

The listener linked me to information a public school district put out saying:

The most recent independent, CPA audited state data shows that South Carolina spent an average of $9,286 per pupil in 2008-09.

What they leave out is the $2,921 per student we spend on Debt Service and Capital Projects to pay for all the buildings. Why is this important? Because as taxpayers, all of us are investing over a quarter of a million dollars per classroom in South Carolina. How might that be spent differently to more effectively educate students?

60 Minutes a couple of weeks ago highlighted The Equity Project, a charter school in New York with a very novel education model to invest their money in what makes the most difference in classrooms - teachers. The don't spend $2,921 per student on expensive buildings. They don't have an assistant principal, reading specialists or librarians. They do pay teachers in the classroom $125,000 per year and recruit the best and brightest from across the country.

I am guilty of having an agenda. Education=Prosperity. If per capita income in South Carolina was at the national average, there would be $35 billion more personal income in the state. We can't get there without significantly increasing educational attainment.

Education thought leader Ken Robison eloquently states a new model of education for students to succeed in the 21st century global, creative economy.

Education doesn't need to be reformed—it needs to be transformed. The key to this transformation is not to standardize education, but to personalize it, to build achievement on discovering the individual talents of each child, to put students in an environment where they want to learn and where they can naturally discover their true passions.

That is going to require the best teachers in classrooms, which is going to mean attracting some of the best and brightest away from professions like law and accounting and into teaching. That will require paying teachers like professionals. The Equity Project is a very interesting high impact innovation that just might do that. It is the kind of high impact innovation in education we need more of.