http://michaelklonsky.blogspot.com/2010/09/if-you-want-to-be-tops-in-world-in.html
Toward the very end of the clip, they mention that Finland spends about 40% less per student. I don't really know how to process the statistic because they just drop it in there at the end and don't discuss it. Do higher retention rates for teachers lead to lower costs overall? The sense that I've been getting over the past few years is that public schools have pretty inefficient use of the funds they do have. I used to work as a tutor for a private company in Oakland that would contract out to the public schools. I can't recall if it was a federal requirement or a state requirement, but public schools that were deemed failing couldn't use emergency funds within the school district and had to higher outside contractors, which generally hired young and inexperienced tutors straight out of college (such as myself). I wasn't bad for receiving next to no training, but there were plenty of times when I thought that that money would be so much better spent on teachers who actually knew what they were doing.
James
On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 3:50 AM, Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> wrote:
> spend a lot more money per student on virtually everything.
>