Gap

Last night our local school district held a meeting open to the public to go over their plans and about 90 people attended. Before I went, I did a little research and found that there are 3.1 million K-12 teachers and added on top of that are 5 million staff. The US spends more per pupil than any other country except Luxemburg. In 1950 the student teacher ratio was 27 to 1 and today it is 15 to 1. The schools, especially in the suburbs, look like the Taj Mahal with the best equipment money can buy. The results are that test scores have declined since 2000 and the gap between Blacks and Whites is too wide. Black students have more discipline problems, higher drop out rates and lower graduation rates. The first question is what are all those staff people doing. Part of the evening the attendees were asked to go to the black board and select what they thought should be the emphasis on education and there were 5 categories. Far and away the most important choice was academics. People felt that the basics of reading and writing should be at the top. This was on peoples minds since a recent report said that only half of MN students can read at grade level. From my personal perspective the two biggest problems facing the country today are the education gap and the wealth gap.