I have been discussing our American disaster in education with an educational historian in England. There new program is called Every Child Matters, so I assumed that it was just a copy of our American 'No Child Left Behind". He informs me that I am wrong and it is nothing like our programs. There the children actually do matter and though changes are being made, the improvements are real and not just a facade that the school boards are feeding parents to cover their failures.
When asked to describe our funding system I felt ashamed. I'm not ashamed, like Barak Obama that our children can't speak two or three languages, I am ashamed because high school students can't make an intelligent sentence and can't do simple math. Here is why the funding we have will never improve our schools.
As far as funding streams go, it does vary across the country as individual states and local school boards supposedly control local taxes. When I tell you that audits have shown that millions and millions of dollars are misspent every year, I'm not kidding. Federal grants are used for personal use. Contractors of all stripes are favored in return for part of the profit. All of this is documented, but no one ever swings for it. Our educational system is the biggest, among many, of fraudulent operations in the country. That is why the system never improves, because no one is willing to give up their lions share of the market. I am talking about publishers, putting out second rate and informationless textbooks, Psychologists, Psychiatrists, Colleges, food suppliers, office suppliers, administrators, principals, the pharmaceutical industry,etc. It's like the web - every part attached to the other - if one falls, they all fall - thus the whole economy falls. And the poor innocent children are the ones getting ripped off. Parents can't even trust the grades(marks) that children bring home on their report cards because that is fixed too. This will go down in history as the biggest shame of America.
