It costs about $8,000 to $10,000/year/child to educate our children.
A school dropout is more likely to be incarcerated than a diploma earner and less likely to be employed.
It costs about $41,000/year/person to incarcerate our citizens.
We should …
It costs about $8,000 to $10,000/year/child to educate our children.
A school dropout is more likely to be incarcerated than a diploma earner and less likely to be employed.
It costs about $41,000/year/person to incarcerate our citizens.
We should …
… stop cutting funding to education. Education should be the LAST resort for funding cuts. Most cuts could be avoided if processes were leaned out to remove un-needed costs.
Teach our youth to be entrepreneurial minded. Also, educate at home daily! Also, not let the school be the end all. We have to place value in something greater, especially since kids don’t connect (mostly) that education = success. Particularly if they have no real, tangible examples around them!! TV and Radio examples aren’t enough!!!
Find people that like to teach and have fun within the class room.
Encourage our children to make the most of their education laying strict guidelines for expectations on completion of assignments while offering needed supports and guidance in achieving success. That’s what we’re doing and with quite a positive outcome.
…be more influential on our kids and do a better job encouraging them to continue their education.
I say, we put all the money towards better aftercare/tutoring/sports/music/art programs through grade 10. Kids find worth and respect in their talents and abilities when nurtured by caring adults.
Allow 11th and 12th grade students to earn the 1st two years of college and then allow those with B averages to finish college debt-free with a stipend privilege for the 3.25gpa and above students.
Also, a senior should be able to intern with corporations with a greater ease to get over the hurdle of not having experience. The government can provide incentives by offering the corp./businesses the usual tax credits because if they aren’t spending it on a prisoner they can surely afford to spend it on a positive contribution to society of which we are all better off.
*Teachers should NEVER pay to complete a college degree, plain and simple.
We should hold parents accountable for their own children. We do not need to put more money into education, just use it more wisely by not allowing parents to opt out of participating in their child’s education. We do not need to pay children to get good grades or pay parents to participate. At the beginning of the public education process, parents need to be told what role they need to play in their child’s education process and if they will not cooperate then the child should be held back in grades until they learn and parents need to attend school with the child, read to them and basically learn how to learn and how their child learns. I would rather put some of the money into “parent participation” than incarceration later on. Headstart doesn’t work by the way.
Love not only our own children, but our neighbor’s children as well.
…spend $20,000/yr/child, or more in education, and in the long run save millions while collecting more income tax from well educated higher income-earning graduates.
start holding educators accountable for educating all of our children. I believe that too often educators give up on kids early in their school experience. When students fall behind and we pass them off to other teachers, year after year without making up that initial deficit in knowledge and skills. Unless they’re lucky enough to get a great teacher, they simply fall farther behind every year until they finally give up and look for an easier way, like crime.
Dave
Start making those big companies that recieved “bail-out” monies (or any willing corporation) to sponsor an entire 9th grade freshman class, of an inner city school, with “College Contracts.” The terms will be that if any of those students can maintain a 3.5 average all the way to 12th grade graduation, they will pay for a full scholarship.
Start sending college educated celebrities, from music and sports fame, to elementary schools in the inner city to do motivational speeches.
Have college educated A-list celebrities to “adopt” an inner city high school, to come once a month to do special mentoring to troubled teens.
Stop sending troubled teens home for punishment. They’d rather be out and about anyway. Even if it is expulsion, make a “confinement” wing where he can’t interact with others, but he still has work to do.
I can go on, shall I continue…?
work harder, as a society, to ensure our children are educated. Parents need to be made aware that their contribution is very important. Local, state & federal governments need to ensure proper funding for educational institutions. They also need to draw direct comparisons to the rising costs of incarceration in the US as well as the distinction we hold of having the largest prison population in the world. By outlining the need to increase spending in education, government can demonstrate the long-term savings in prison costs, especially at the state level which operates under stricter budget rules.
Wake up and understand that apathy and complacency regarding our responsibilities to our children and the future of our nation is just as dangerous as any threat from outside enemies. To individually care enough to at least be informed and interested in your local schools and how they are being run is the best first step in making a change happen. To go further, and be a volunteer in some capacity or to really become involved in the system and find new ways to make the changes happen, that’s the key to open the doors which now seem locked and bolted.
Take a more active interest on our children education. We also, as parents and the society, be more of example setters and not allow the media and pressures from the dictates of trend setters or disinterested people (whose vain approach is for self gratification) be the source of inspiration to our children. Respect and courtesy hard work should be taught instead of selfish ideas. These ideas should be taught in the early years and continuously watered so they take root.
As Parents, we should do everything we can to be involved with our children’s live as early and often as possible. As parents, we should ask: “Did you behave at school?” “What did you learn today at school?” “What is your homework assignment?” “What can I do to help?” I believe that parental involvement is more important than “per pupil spending”, the teacher, the principal or the school. By the way, I grew up watching Albert and the gang…I wasn’t careful, and I actually learned something! Take care! Bob
focus all of our efforts plus some on keeping our young men in school. We have to increase our mentoring efforts in elementary and middle schools and establish ongoing mandatory classes where at risk yong men and women can receive life instruction from positive men and women. Every life we change will play a vital role towards finding more young men in school and not in prison. It cannot be acceptable for more prisons to be built while schools are closing. Education, education, education must be our focus and it must be done with finding the appropriate vehicle to transfer that knowledge. i am committed to doing my part, are you?
Spend some time, effort and money getting the parents of at risk children educated and involved regarding their child/children’s education. A strong support system is important & if the family/home support is not there the structure is at risk of tumbling no matter the educational “system” that is in place.
Let students know that without an education, their life options are very limited.
Let tax payers know that it’s more cost effective and better for society to keep people in school.
Paradox
http://www.getparadox.com
1)Make sure the students today in grade six and under know how to read at the six grade level before they leave the sixth grade.
2)No need to recreate the wheel, find the two best models of successful K -12 teaching methodology and implement the models nationally in at-risk school systems. Frederick Douglass Academy is one of them. I am also a proponent of one gender schools like Englewood Academy in Chicago which has 100% of its graduates going to college this fall.
3)Students who drop out are likely not to return to school. There is little incentive to do so, if you are bussed to a remote location, requiring you to get up early in the morning, pass by people who ridicule or bully you for going, have no chance or opportunity to participate in extracurricular activities because your bus leaves right after school and you have no transportation home, and/or you have to pay to play. Parents are disconnected from interaction because by the time they get home from work, if they have the transportation are too tired to attend school/teacher meetings. Solutions: Either provide incentive to learn programs specifically for dropouts from age 14 – 20. Either a day school with highly integrated programming of technology, sports, craftbuilding (woodcraft,plumbing, etc),culinary arts, music, film, visual arts — with a caveat that in order to participate in all those wonderful programs, you must maintain a grade average of B- or greater and must voluntarily participate in tutoring support for any classes needed. The curriculum goes back to the basics of full academic, which includes math, science, history – General, world and multiracial, English – business English as a language and one foreign language and literary English, art appreciation (correlation between art and other disciplines of learning). AND All students get their books provided on Kindles versus regular books. An ergonomic, green solution to providing up-to-date textbooks to everyone, along with removing the stigma of carrying books home through the neighborhood. THE other solution is to consider piloting a closed campus school for high risk dropouts where they live on campus with the same curriculum as identified above, but classes are year round and they are accelerated to graduate in two years versus four. Pretesting helps determine their curriculum paths and counseling is an ongoing must.
Contact me, I have more ideas.
…not allow kids to drop out of school to save money, and help everyone in the long run. Conversely, we could spend more on education and less on incarceration.
Step 1. Choose a day and declare everyone in America a convict by changing the word “American” to “convict” in all our legal documents.
Step 2. Hire enough people needed to allow us house, feed, and care for 300 million+ convicts. (BTW, with everyone a convinct, it would mean the end of unemployment.)
a. Building enough housing for the convicts would end homelessness.
b. Feeding all the convicts would end hunger.
c. All the convicts would be entitled to live in a relatively healthy, safe environment, a basic education*, and medical care, etc.
Step 3. All the people who got jobs providing services to the convicts could then be declared no longer convicts and there would still be no unemployment.
So to recap:
We can arbitaritly choose a day and commit to a country where there is no unemployment, homelessness, or hunger and everyone is entitled to a nice environment, an education, and medical care.
Step 4. Replace the word “American” to all the legal documents where they were before the choosen day.
* Training people to provide services to the convicts would give them additional educations.
Double the amount of money spent on education (or triple it) and maybe be able to reduce the costs of supporting incarcerated citizens because their numbers will drastically decrease.
Get rid of or modify teacher unions who harbor bad/disgruntled/ineffective teachers. We should also give parents tax vouchers in order to be able to apply those funds to the school of their choosing, both public and private. Teacher pay/benefits/bonuses/job security should be based on a combination of performance reviews, peer reviews, test scores, seniority and observations in order to get rid of rediculous pay schedules and job security that only looks at how long a teacher has been teaching. There is no corellation between an old teacher and a good teacher. Not to mention that newer teachers usually have the latest teaching techniques, technology and behavior management skills due to the ever increasing standards new teachers must acquire.
Of course, this is all assuming no responsibility from the parents. In all reality, dropout rates would dramatically decrease if there were parents at home who took control of their children and instilled in them the idea that laziness/giving up/poor performance/dropping out were not an option. That problem is a whole other topic… that can only be answered with more self responsibility.
Hello Bill
Well it puzzles me to think of all the money we spend to build prisons. And we are more willing as a soceity to close schools and fire teachers than we are build a prison and hire correctional officers. Do get me wrong, I have family in both fields. And I’ve worked with kids and adolescents most of my career. I just think that we should pay more attention to our children and our students. More like a village, we must conduct ourselves as adults. Star making wiser descions. Closing a school will not help our children learn. Just like cutting nurses and in- home care for our elderly parents would be (let’s just say it” Very Dump. Residents and families are cutting cost and saving their properties that their parents and relatives have willed and left them. They are taking upon their selves to care for their elderly family members to save money and keep their property out of probate courts. Now can we as a society cut cost in other places besides our school. We have less students wanting to become teachers just because their under paid, and their own parents, who are both teachers are about to lose the only jobs they’ve ever done. We ask our children to do and learn their school work. When will we as adults act like we have been to school and ever learned anything other than art with scissors cuuting on and out something we probably should have not cut out. I remember getting in big trouble doing something like that when I was young. Let’s grow up together on this. Please !! Coach Kevin Caldwell, Lancaster, Ca
Strive to learn our children’s learning style. If we can keep their interest, they will want to learn. I’m 43 years old and going back to school. I hated high school, but I’m loving community college. If we can offer a free college education to students who maintain a 3.0 average in high school, it will be cheaper than paying for prison.
We should have Bill Cosby make a commercial and possibly a video for presentation in schools that emphasize the importance of education. Mr. Cosby could first tour a prison so kids don’t want to be there, and then on a more comic/light hearted side, be shown sitting in the classroom with the other students smiling at the teacher and enjoying himself while learning, to show that school is much more fun and the clear choice. Perhaps he could sit in several classrooms – elementary through high school – and then be shown with a graduating class getting his diploma.
we should insure the parents are held responsible for keeping kids in school. Assisting parents in placing “drop out risk” kids in proper classes/school/GED situations. We should make parents responsible for cost of incarceration if child is under 18, as well as having to pay restitution for costs/damages incured for the “crime”. If parents will take the time to insure their kids stay in school then maybe the kids will see it as a worthwhile venture.
I think ultimately it comes down to parents not being “parents” and kids doing whatever they want.
We should…
We need your help in DC, Mr. Cosby. It’s not easy to stay positive in a sea of negativity and denial from the top down. We no longer have the luxury of using a one-size-fits-all system for educating our youth. We must must must must make education personal, relevant, and engaging, and that may mean tweaking the day’s learning for each of the 25 kids sitting in front of us. Thank you for keeping this conversation alive.
With love and best wishes,
Heather
hmleenders@gmail.com
educate our children and do everything we can to ensure they graduate. Maybe someone should film some people who are, or have been, incarcerated, and they can talk about their path that led them to prison. These kinds of films can then be shown to kids, especially in schools with high dropout rates.
…obviously educate our children, but there needs to be a long term, maybe a 20 year plan that drives home this focus…so the cycle has a chance of ending
Place tax liens and jail sentences on absent parents. Thank you Mr. Cosby for your leadership.
Be proactive and spend to educate children instead of being reactive and incarcerating..
we should reinstate the chain gang and quit putting everyone in prisons that look and seem like heavily guarded hotels, and spend more money building schools, paying teachers better, and getting better programs in public schools.