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Posted By: boxingcardman

You don't need a study to prove that smaller classes work. The free market that you bootstrapping types are so fond of citing to justify not spending more money on anything that might force you to (horror of horrors) pay more taxes has already proven it. If those big class public institutions generated the same results as small class private schools why would all of us smart, wealthy parents waste hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on private schools? And why would those of us who are making policy in those schools not buy a few more desks and jack up enrollment 50%? Because we know it degrades the result.

I love the raw spending across nationalities argument because it is such a crock of crap. You cannot compare the raw spending here with the raw spending in other countries unless you adjust for social differences reflected in how the costs are accounted for. Blaming the unions is a typical canard that misleadingly ignores differences between countries. Your point is that the countries that are kicking our asses spend less per pupil, yet you ignore the fact that many have far stronger union presences than we do. I would suggest that a good deal of the explanation for that number lies in the fact that a big chunk of the cost of union workers here is the benefits package that is a public cost in other countries. Health care, for example, is a benefit here that the workers have to fight to get but is a publicly funded right in every civilized country. Add that to the cost of schooling in those countries and take it away from the costs columns for the unions here. Ditto a strong retirement system and a strong social safety net. These items add thousands of dollars in costs to every car we turn out by the calculations of the automobile companies themselves; don't you think the same is true of education costs?

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