I recently took a look at the report in Education Week – Quality Counts 2009. According to Education Week this is a series of annual report cards tracking State education policies and outcomes. It is a rather lengthy report, as most are, covering areas dealing with school finance, standards, assessments, and accountability, the teaching profession, k-12 achievement, and transitions and alignment to name a few.

The report provides a map of the USA, in which you can click on your State and find out how it stacks up to the rest of the States. You can also generate reports by clicking on various tabs at the top of the map. According to this report the overall grade for schools in the USA averages a C (76.2). The overall K-12 achievement averaged at a D+ (69.4), the teaching profession overall averaged at a C (73.1), and standards, assessments, and accountability overall averaged at a B (83.6).

The School Finance category has two sub-categories: equity and spending. Equity deals with how the State disperses its funds and spending deals with how schools spend their monies in proportion to students, regional differences and total State budget. According to the information I read, I don’t think that this is all inclusive to these areas. There may be more involved then the information I read. But, taking into account what I read we have quite a few States that have a failing grade in this area (ten).

According to this report most States did not do well in both the sub categories. States with high scores for equity had low scores in spending. Payroll tends to be more than three-quarters of the school districts payouts. In many districts, the school is the biggest employer.

The report goes on to talk about the differences in the amount of monies spent per pupil. According to the report nearly half of the states spent more then $ 10,000 per student. Vermont was the highest, at $ 15,139 and Utah the lowest, at $ 5,964. I have heard and read conflicting information on how much is spent per student in the past. This report uses information from 2005-06 school year.

Many people feel that schools do not use their money wisely. I would have to agree with that. Every two to three years, many school purchase new text books at a cost of often more than $ 100 per book. They have disposable workbooks that often cost in excess of $ 12 per book. These generally have to be replaced every year. Most schools give teachers an allotment of copies per school year. Since many schools rent their copy machines and pay per copy, this can be a very expensive part of their school budget.

Too many schools leave utilities on during weekends and summers. I wrote another article dealing with these issues of waste in the school systems. I feel very strongly that if simple little things were in place that required all teachers and staff members to turn off unused computers, copiers, lights, and even air conditioners – the schools could save a tremendous amount of money each year.

Schools need to be held accountable for every penny they spend, every program they decide is crucial to purchase, every book that needs to be replaced and every specialist they feel they need to bring in to make their schools better. In the past, we have run our schools on a lot less monies. We have provided a better education to more of our students then we do today. We need to make it work again. Every child should get an appropriate education to help them either go college, go to vocational school, go in the military, or get a job that pays enough for them to survive in our world.