<p>Don’t get me wrong, folks. Inaction in the face of disaster is inexcusable. But as someone up-thread eloquently said, the powers that be (both city and state) have had years to bring progress to Newark’s schools. When high school upperclassmen have improved such that they now read at middle-school level, that incremental success is a very mixed blessing. And let me say that I give the State government much credit for tossing out the corrupt education department officials at the onset of the state takeover of Newark schools. At least more procurement contract money has being going to the kids’ needs rather than the pocketbooks of school officials’ relatives.</p>
<p>Why is reading improvement a mixed blessing? What possible downside is there to having kids leave, drop out or graduate from HS at least having a middle school reading ability?</p>
<p>^ Because while it’s an improvement, it’s still rather sad.</p>
<p>^ Merely stopping the decay is a step in the right direction. A bunch of small steps become a mile. The biggest problem is to recognize what it might take to reverse the negative trends, and most importantly having the courage to admit how wrong we have been for a long time. Rome was neither built or destroyed it one day. </p>
<p>So, how much is currently spent per pupil? </p>
<p>An eye-popping $25K each approx. NJ schools have crazy funding levels.</p>
<p><a href=“Taxpayers' Guide to Education Spending 2013”>Taxpayers' Guide to Education Spending 2013;
<p>then turn the schools into strict boarding schools.</p>
<p>@barrons thanks for that link</p>
<p>eye popping indeed.</p>
<p>So salaries and benefits for teachers is half of the total cost.
The other half includes:
- support personal 22% of budget and are paid 58% more than teachers.
- administration 9% and they make 74% more than teachers.
- operations (maintenance, etc) 16%. No salary info.</p>
<p>And this is for an average student:teacher ratio of 15:1 (which sounds healthy)</p>
<p>And teacher pay is not bad either in most districts. </p>
<p>A 15:1 ratio is ridiculously low and is obviously not accomplishing much. With a sound plan in place, success could be had with a 20-30:1 ratio…which the rest of the nation has.</p>
<p>if I were a property-tax payer in NJ, I would MOVE.</p>
<p>^mom2, NJ does have the benefit of being near NYC. My wife’s job is in the city, and we are bound here for the time being. That said, we will not stay here in retirement. I looked today, and 26% of our high property taxes get sent to the county (pronounced Newark). </p>
<p>Eta: ps to add insult to injury, our kids go to private school, for an additional $35k each. I know, first world problems. </p>
<p>M2CKs, New Jersey leads the nation in out-migration. Statisticians have extrapolated data from services like U-Haul and Mayflower Movers etc. to determine who is going where and NJ is often the source of a large proportion of customers asking for those services.</p>
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<p>My point about the wake up call is that it is not just a “simple” matter of throwing $100M at the problem.
(at least locally, there is always a cry for parcel or other taxes or special funding initiatives to throw more money at the schools)
There are fundamental structural problems.</p>
<p>Regarding the systemic failures, we could borrow the words of a wise ma: you can always count on Americans to do the right thing after exhausting all the alternatives. </p>
<p>Repeating the same mistakes of throwing good money at perennially failing systems without extracting long term concessions will not get us anywhere. If the consensus is that families and students are to blame for the failures, perhaps we ought to start offering them compelling incentives to gain an education. After all, our schools do a good job in educating the students who have the resources to … educate themselves. </p>
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<p>We could borrow the words of a wise ma: you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t force it to wear a bathing suit.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, not everyone values the free education that they are entitled too. That is a hard problem to solve.</p>
<p>My retirement target of Central Va is attracting many from NJ. Most come to retire. Not many to work. Pay is much lower than in NJ.</p>
<p>Fluffy, I understand the argument made to describe the number of students who live in such difficult situations that education becomes unimportant or difficult. However, we cannot compare the human brain to an equine one. Humans react to different sets of incentives. </p>
<p>Even facing abject poverty, students and families line up to participate in charter lotteries. Others work hard to attend schools such as Cristo Rey. When the path to a better future is clear and tangible, students cling to that hope. </p>
<p>Again, perhaps we should pay the students to overcome their misconceptions, and fetter corruption out to cover the increases in salary for educators. When support services such as janitors earn six-figures at a school that spends 200 dollars for books and supplies, one can see how deep the disconnect has become. </p>
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<p>Yes, that is true for some students and families and certainly there are some students who cling to that hope. I don’t know how prevalent that hope is at this point after all the deep disconnects that you mentioned (which I agree with).</p>
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My retirement target of Central Va is attracting many from NJ. Most come to retire. Not many to work. Pay is much lower than in NJ.</p>
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<p>Most people cant afford to retire in these high tax states. Rarely would a retiree have enough income to also be paying several thousand per year in property taxes. We bought our retirement home in March…the prop taxes? a low $500 per year. yay</p>
<p>^And yet the place I bought a home to retire in, in NJ, is surrounded by homes owned by…retirees. Middleclass ones. So I disagree with that “rarely.” </p>