when your completely bored it can make you laugh… Which i happen to be right at this moment.

Crazy part is supposed to read he just seems….

The money will not help until the system is fixed. This is a reason to repair the system, not to keep pouring more money into the broken system.

The reason the market incentives are out of whack is because American culture is completely muddle-headed about whom public education is designed to serve. Do we do it for the benefit of the students and their parents, or do we do it for the benefit of society?

On both sides of the political spectrum, the discussion of education is dominated by the idea that it is a service to students, but fundamentally it is structured as if it is a service to society. This leads to contradictions and market failures. People who fancy themselves libertarian argue for school choice and voucher programs because they think it is more "efficient" if parents choose their own schools. But if the goal of education is to serve each parent, what is the libertarian rationale for devoting public funds to it at all? If it is no more than an individual entitlement, which is what a voucher program makes it, then there is none.

Public education is only rational to the extent that it is a public good. If it weren’t, there would be no rationale to asking the 40-something single guy with no kids to contribute funds to a system that does not benefit him. The reason we do ask him is because in fact public education does benefit him just as much as it benefits his neighbors with kids. Or at least that’s the rationale. But when that rationale is lost, so is the effectiveness of the system.

If we want public education to work, we need to stop thinking of it as a service provided to kids and parents and see it as a service provided to that single guy with no kids. Then with every dollar you spend, you’re asking the right question in terms of whether you’re getting real results. Yes, of course, you are absolutely right that education is one of the best investments a society can make, but to invest intelligently you have to have a rational definition of what constitutes success.

That means giving up a lot of cherished ideas. For one, it means suburbanites can give up the satisfaction of knowing that their property tax dollars are going to their schools. Because if you look at it from the point of view of how do we get the most benefit to society out of our education dollar, the answer is not going to be to spend the most money on the kids who are already most privileged. It also means that colleges need to be looked at with the ruthless eye of an efficiency expert with no romantic attachment to campus tradition. And it means accepting that public education is fundamentally coercive. Education benefits society in the same way conscription does. It’s entirely possible that the kid will come out a better person for it, but it’s not about giving him what he wants. America is a profoundly individualist nation and thus has a real problem with that. It’s no coincidence that public education was born in Prussia and when it took root in America it did so in New England.

You talk about pay rates for teachers being out of whack with skill levels, and indeed they are. But it’s not just about skill level. It requires very great skill to stand on a sidewalk motionless as a statue for two hours, too, but that doesn’t mean anyone will pay you to do it. People are paid for worthwhile services because the person receiving the service values it and is willing to pay to get it. Teachers will get paid what they deserve once we as a society figure out who their true clients are and we restructure our system so that those true clients are the ones who select them and pay for them.

Until then, you may as well be hiring Bill Bavasi as your scouting director and then instructing him not to skimp on signing bonuses.

If we get rid of the university, can I get in on this action?