Where's all the education money going?

The Times

Friday, February 12, 2010

Editor:

At over $8,000 per student yearly, education funding comes to a whopping $200,000 yearly for an average class of 25.

That is a ton of money to do the job. Alas, that's not happening. As it stands, less than half the funds are actually reaching the regular classroom.

The expensive special education, so often blamed for cost-overrun, happens to be a failure on many fronts. Done right, roughly half of that money can be saved. Prevention is wholesale, remediation retail. As it stands, we're not getting the biggest bang for our buck here.

Just take a look at the latest provincial report card. It shows how B.C.'s elementary schools have been doing over the last five years on the Foundations Skills Assessment (FSA) tests, which measure reading comprehension, writing, and math.

Contrary to the official spin, the news is not flattering. Students are struggling. Performance has been mediocre at best. In fact, within some schools there appears to be "a race to the bottom."

The FSA measures provincial curriculum, spelling out performance standards. It is made in B.C., by the teachers, and marked by a separate group of educators. Schools are expected to use FSA results as a benchmark to compare progress by the students, and factor the results in school improvement plans.

Sadly, last year from one quarter to one third of students failed to meet provincial standards. Worse still, the reading and math skills of B.C. students appear not to be getting better. Without school-by-school measures of success and failure--and a solid start--how would we ever hope to improve? The system may be drifting without clear direction and accountability but we won't know it.