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April 11, 2005
65% Solution
George Will writes on the proposed 65% solution for schools in Arizona. This proposal would force Arizona to spend 65% of its education budget on classroom instruction. Only four states currently spend that much of their education budget on classroom instruction. The other reform Will mentions is the one that is probably needed most to solve our education problems: the ability to fire bad teachers. As Will writes:
The 65 Percent Solution solves the misallocation of resources, but there is scant evidence that increasing financial inputs will, by itself, increase a school's cognitive outputs. Or that a small reduction in class sizes accomplishes much. Or that adding thousands of new teachers would do as much good as firing thousands of tenured incompetents. However, firing a bad teacher is, according to a California official, less a choice than a career -- figure two years of struggle and $200,000 in legal costs. That is why in a recent five-year period only 62 of California's 220,000 tenured teachers were dismissed.
Posted by Pete at April 11, 2005 03:35 PM
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