School reform is a waste of money

It’s back-to-school time, when teachers complain about the number of students in their classrooms and politicians promise more money for education.

Let’s do some math. With 40 kids in a classroom and the state paying $5,800 per student, it works out to $232,000 for each classroom. That seems like more than enough money to pay a teacher a living wage and keep the air conditioning running. So what I want to know: Where does all the money go?

I was around when Nevada lawmakers passed class-size reduction for kindergarten through third grade along with a large tax increase to pay for it. We were promised that third-graders would be reading and this would result in higher graduation rates. I don’t think either has happened. The program should be ended. And I want my money back. But we all know that no matter how poorly a government program performs, it will almost never go away and the money will always be spent on something else.

Charter schools were supposed to save us, too. But they seem to produce rich consulting contracts and sweetheart leases that benefit the owners of the schools.

John Merrow’s book “Addicted to Reform” discusses why school reforms don’t work and why they waste our money. We need to start asking how each child is intelligent, instead of how intelligent is a child. We need schools that meet the needs of this century and are modeled on modern educational standards. Schools used to be a repository of knowledge. Now knowledge is on your smartphone. We need people who know how to use that knowledge. We need something more modern than a school year that closes down each summer so kids can go work on the farm.

We don’t need to spend a lot of money on new reforms before we find out that the reforms the last tax increase paid for haven’t worked.