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That it guarantees to all people, regardless of class, race or whatever, the chance to learn, to be literate. Is there nothing more sacred for Americans, than the chance to compete as equals with those who have had more advantages in life?

Public education ensures productivity, ensures a prosperous middle class, and allows those with the will and the drive to literally graduate to a higher level of education, should they so choose. Public education has been one of America’s triumphs. School choice pales in in importance compared to school universality.

Matt,

I personally would like the system to be changed to allow vouchers.
My reasons for that are a lil different than some expect. Its not something to help Me/Mine, we have quite good public schools in my area.
I think those in the inner citys would be helped by it. A large % of the inner citys population is minority, they also tend to be both religous, and lacking funds to send their children to a private school.

There may well be a good school right across the street from them, that both shares their views and would provide a good education for their children in a safe enviorment.

They are excluded because they’ll never have the funds to basicly, pay twice, to send their kids to school.
I think thats wrong.

Matt,

I think that everyone agrees that parents have a right to choose the nature of their children’s primary and secondary education. If fact, it’s even guaranteed by the United Nations in its Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26.3, which states that,

“Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.”

I also agree with you that vouchers should be permitted. I see an analogy between private schools and toll roads. I have no problem paying highway taxes to maintain roads or bridges that were built with private money and charge a fee for use. My taxes are basically road vouchers for people who pay their own money to drive on that toll road.

I would have a problem, however, if that road was substandard and dangerous or if it discriminated for or against some drivers. I’d have a serious problem if my tax dollars were used to support a toll road that could only be driven on by Catholics or Jews, or men or women, or blacks or white, or good or bad drivers. (This is why I have such a problem with affirmative action programs in higher education. I see them as racial HOV lanes. But I digress.) Since the toll road is in the public domain, it would have to be universally accessible to everyone who wanted to drive on it for it to qualify for public financial support.

So public education vouchers are not only appropriate but beneficial because I agree with your contention that a little competition never hurt anybody. I would be happy to see my taxes dollars go to parents who’ve taken more than a casual interest in the nature and quality of the education that their children receive.

I’d attach only three conditions to this program:

First, the school’s enrollment and educational policies could not discriminate for or against child for any reason. In other words, they’d have to accept anyone who wanted to attend, regardless of race, religion, gender, ethnicity, nationality (i.e. immigration status), physical or psychological disabilities (including but not limited to learning disabilities), etc.

Second, the schools, teachers and curricula would have to be fully accredited by their respective states.

Finally, any school that required any form of religious instruction or training as an element of its educational curriculum would be unable to participate, of course, because the use of public money to support a private religious institution would be a gross violation of the First Amendment.

Nevertheless, if the schools met these three criteria, you could count on my enthusiastic support of private school vouchers.

Elementary/Secondary education is compulsory, while college level is not. For all the libertarian talk about “choice,” do the choice advocates also advocate allowing parents to “opt-out” of Elementary/Secondary education for their children as well? Should parents be allowed to let their kids stay at home all day and watch TV if that’s the choice they want?

Steve,

Most states have an opt-out of “compulsory” elementary/secondary education—it is called homeschooling and in case you didn’t know it is a rapidly growing trend.

Just google homeschool resources and you get a very long list of available resources that allow parents the option to avoid the “compulsory” education.

Matt Johnson writes:

Most states have an opt-out of “compulsory” elementary/secondary education—it is called homeschooling and in case you didn’t know it is a rapidly growing trend.

I know all about home schooling; I have friends who’ve done it for their kids. I’m talking about NO SCHOOLING. I’ll ask my question again:

For all the libertarian talk about “choice,” do the choice advocates also advocate allowing parents to “opt-out” of Elementary/Secondary education for their children as well? Should parents be allowed to let their kids stay at home all day and watch TV if that’s the choice they want?

Can I assume that I am not the only poster on this blog that has actually attended a private school?

Those that have not have to realize that there are requirements to attend. The high school I attended required an entrance exam, which in essence, was a collage entrance exam, and not everyone that applied was admitted.
Private schools must have standards of application, or what is the point?

Beagle,

I don’t know how most states handle the taxes that fund schools, but here in Arizona they are funded by property taxes. That would probably exclude most of poor urban families as I think that a good many rent their dwellings.

Matt,

Again I will take you to task for your opinion that parents have an “absolute right” to anything. Nothing could be further from the truth, and to continue to repeat this outright lie does the cause you are championing a grave disservice.
There is no such thing as an “absolute right” to choose, there will never be such thing as an absolute right to choose.

Stephen wrote:
“That it guarantees to all people, regardless of class, race or whatever, the chance to learn, to be literate. Is there nothing more sacred for Americans, than the chance to compete as equals with those who have had more advantages in life?

Public education ensures productivity, ensures a prosperous middle class, and allows those with the will and the drive to literally graduate to a higher level of education, should they so choose. Public education has been one of America’s triumphs. School choice pales in in importance compared to school universality.”

Yes. Well said. Public Schools, like Social Security also ensures our citizens a sense of community, solidarity and collective responsibility. And I contend that the major reasons that the Right has been trying to do away with both is because they are in favor of promoting an uncaring and selfish attitude toward our neighbors, and collectively to the entire country.

I’d attach only three conditions to this program:

First, the school’s enrollment and educational policies could not discriminate for or against child for any reason. In other words, they’d have to accept anyone who wanted to attend, regardless of race, religion, gender, ethnicity, nationality (i.e. immigration status), physical or psychological disabilities (including but not limited to learning disabilities), etc.

Posted by: Chuck Hanrahan at August 22, 2005 12:06 PM

How about the most obvious discriminatory factor, income? The result of vouchers would be several “tiers” of public-subsidized schools. Everyone would want to get accepted into the most expensive schools but would be unable to afford to and thus be forced to settle for the most expensive school that they could afford.

Government money should not be allowed to help provide better educations for the “haves” than for the “have-nots.” This would create sort of a class system from kindergarten up. I understand that some of this happens anyway, however it should not be facilitated by the government.

In order to make it fair, the voucher-accepting schools would all have to charge the same rate, and accept their students totally at random. In my point of view it would defeat the purpose of private education. The whole point of private education is that the school can accept who it wants and teach exactly what it wants. It doesn’t have to hold its students back in any manner because the general public can’t afford a specific resource.

Private education exists largely free from government regulation. If you think anything can get government money but remain free from public regulation, you are sadly mistaken.

Darrius,

“The whole point of private education is that the school can accept who it wants and teach exactly what it wants.”

My point exactly.

The private schools that may accept vouchers should be able to accept those students with the stipulation that the students want to actually learn something. This is not a game for those that are unable to keep up.
There is no point in having children that will spend their time disrupting the class, as that seems to be the biggest complaint with public schools.
There should be an apptitude test to pass even before the resources are allocated for the vouchers.

If we have to “dumb down” private schools to except just anybody, we have already defeated the purpose, and shouldn’t bother wasting the time or the resources.

But, why Beagle and Rocky, does funding have to be removed from Public Schools that are doing well with education to fund private schools for students who aren’t doing well. Seems like a ‘shooting your own foot’ solution.

Voucher funding should be in addition to what is already provided to fund public schools, then public schools continue to have the resources to keep good education good, and students not doing well receive funding to go to a better school where they can prove the extra dollars spent on them are worth spending, or not.

The right wing notion of withdrawing resources from public schools on a per student basis for students who aren’t doing as well as others in the same school or system, is illogical, UNLESS, the goal is to end public education by a thousand voucher cuts over a protracted period of time.

And what is to stop vouchers from funding Madrassas, or neo-nazi, or KKK schools? Provided their students meet other basic educational criteria, are we not opening the door to all manner of religious schools that could one day come back to harm our society at large, and all with public taxpayer dollars?

I’d be willing to bet Osama BL would be glad to front the money for a private school for Muslim students. Remember, in this country, we don’t discriminate on the basis of religion.

David,

How much does it cost to fund the education of one student anyway?

I am against the voucher system on it’s face, but if it is going to go through, my suggestion is that only the best and the brightest be accepted into the voucher system. I don’t think that would be too much of a hardship on the public schol system, and it is far and away better than Matt’s “absolute right”.

Oh, and BTW, I definitely don’t want to fund someone’s religious school. Let the parents pay for that themselves.

David,

Realisticly I see this whole thing as a fallicy. This will be a boondoggle that will waste a tremendous amount of taxpayers money and that results will be the same as everything that has been tried before.
Vouchers will not be everything to everybody, and as a result they will end up being nothing to anybody.

“Never try to teach a pig to sing, it wastes your time and annoy’s the pig”.

It may be a fallacy, but, here in Texas bible school is part of daily lessons in a W. Texas publicly funded school. And between charter schools and vouchers, millions and millions of dollars that would have gone to public schools, aren’t.

Fallacy or not, the inroads to American Christian Madrassas are being made, and Islamic madrassas will not be far behind if the laws against discrimination by religion mean anything, and then of course, to follow those will be Marxist schools, Neo Nazi schools, Aryan Nation schools all fighting for their unfair share of the public tax dollar to defeat those principles that made America the greatest nation on earth.

Many on the right just don’t see (why am I not surprised) the pandora’s box they are opening.

Its pretty obvious to anybody who takes time to look at this question that public education in America is a joke.Any system that chooses to ignore the basic learning points of science(in favor of candy coated phrasims like intelligent design) to satisfy the whims of the religious mafiosi is a joke.
Most high school graduates are half baked and totally ignorant of the wider world outside their immediate neighbourhoods.All because they know that the little academic knowledge they have is enough to get them a job that can pay the bills.
Im willing to bet that the majority of high schoolers in the US would be hard pressed to pass a university entrance test in a third world country that required them to name answer questions like which side German was in in WW2 or what elements table salt consists of.
If you think im exagerrating watch them make fools of themselves on the Tonight show’s Jaywalking.When a recent graduate with a degree in Political Science cant tell you who the country’s VP is then you know we are in trouble.

What about public education makes it so sacred that we dare not change it?

Nobody wants to be responsible for f***ing it up when they do change.

There have been many great ideas in education that have been used as battle cries for election into public office, but they are never enacted because they realize they can’t afford it.

Vouchers, for example. I’ve never heard of anyone advocating a voucher system that would pay 100% of the tuition to a private school. What good is offering vouchers to parents when they can’t afford to pay the rest of the tuition? And they will NEVER cover them fully, because private education is expensive.

All free market educational settings fail. The people who start them aren’t around long enough to be responsible for the failure, and the public winds up paying for it in inummerable ways.

Take any failing school in this country and do the following, and the school will be successful:

1. Lower class size to 12 for elementary schools, and 18-24 for high school. Ask anyone who knows anything about education, and they’ll bring this up first.

2. Provide useful professional development for teachers. If you want standards and technology in the classroom, provide constant training and support. This isn’t being done anywhere on a satisfactory level.

3. Mandate arts in the school

4. Students must have sports and phys ed every day, as well as recess( or slack-off time for teen-agers)

5. Oh, and you might consider paying your teachers more. A teacher making a salary of $35,000/year makes about $1.14/student/day. That might explain why they don’t pay much attention to your kid.

One more: The more parental involvement, the more successful school. Parents who are involved at the school have more successful kids. They are more likely to hold the school accountable for its failures.

One more: The more parental involvement, the more successful school. Parents who are involved at the school have more successful kids. They are more likely to hold the school accountable for its failures.

Posted by: Loren at August 23, 2005 11:11 AM

Most importantly, involved parents are more likely to hold the child accountable for his/her failures.

Rocky, it is not fair to accept government money and say, “I’m going to accept this child but not that child.”

How do you know which children will disrupt class until you accept them and put them in a classroom? Right, they will make a judgement based on some other factor. Vouchers will amount to government subsidized discrimination on a number on every factor imaginable. Various private schools will discriminate based on race, gender, income, religion, sexual orientation, and several other unforeseeable factors.

Government money should not support discrimination.

Primary, secondary and higher education in this country is a classic case of pork barrell approach to meeting the needs.

Teachers at the lower level do need to be paid more. Administrators need to be paid less. In my community the Superintendant of the school district makes over $100,000 a year. The chief of police makes about $60,000. The Supe does not have a doctorate. She does not go by policy. She continually breaks the law. She mirco-manages.

Now, the responsibility is first with the parents. Get involved and change the above situation. Run for the school board. Attend school board meetings. Talk to teachers and admiinistrators to learn what is going on.

New programs started usually only cost money and achieve very little. There are, of course, exceptions.

At the higher education level, people like Ward Churchill should have been fired a long time ago. A plagarist who lied about his Native American ancestry and called the people who died in the 9/11 attack, little Eichmans, and on it goes. He needs to a career path change. There are other reports from time to time that are equally disturbing. Profs are supposed to teach, not propagandize their own foibles into a young mind.

My whole approach is to do away with public education as we know it. Institute private education and let the free market operate freely. Sure, there should be standards. The basic standards are being able to function in the arena of reading, writing, and math. Far too many high school grads cannot function in that environment at a level to that is competitive with society. Higher education grads share the same. It is appalling the number of higher education grads that cannot function very well in society. Many are challenged putting a resume together. Many do not know how to use what little true education they got for those thousands of dollars.

The phone rang. Finish later.

You are absolutely right, public education in this country needs to be changed. this change should be started by massively increasing public spending on education (should be about ¼ of total government spending). we need to pay teachers enough to entice bright and motivated people to consider teaching as a career. innovations in the utilization of online resources and challenging and individually oriented goals should be made priority 1. we need to build more schools (right now the number 1 government funded infrastructure development is Jails, anyone think that maybe if we focus on education the # of people turning to crime would decrease?). education is the single most important aspect of helping individuals reach their potential and it has been done in a half assed and extremely wealth preferential manner. Is anyone really going to argue that a child does not have the right to a GOOD education regardless of where and who they were born? If you argue no, then how can you possibly be pro-life? That must be the most HYPOCRITICAL thing I have ever heard, insist that every life from the point of conception to the point of birth is precious but when it comes to nurturing those who are actually born and in the world with a real education in an environment that is conducive to learning you abandon them? Educating the youth in hopes that their future will be better and brighter should be the top priority of this nation, instead we have a war we didn’t need or want and huge corporate giveaways.
I weep for the future born of this egotistical mentality that your child is better than a child of the inner city.

Smaller class sizes
More motivated teachers
Interactive education based upon parental involvement
Textbooks that are not put out by corporations
Real evaluations giving more training to those that need it and advancing those that don’t
EQUAL OPPORTUNITY TO ALL CLASSES AND REIGONS!!!

Matt,

“And so I return to the original question of this article, what about public education makes it so sacred that we dare not change it?”

First of all, I don’t agree that “public education is so sacred that we dare not change it.” Politicians change aspects of public education on a regular basis. IDEA changes public education. Four-year-old kindergarten changes public education. For just two examples, not to mention the fact that vouchers and charter schools do exist.

Second, public education serves a purpose private education cannot. The Janesville Public School System (where my kids attend school) have teams of experts on various matters to deal with special situations. These teams are comprised of various members with specialist degrees who teach at different schools. No one school can have all the resources these teams do when combined together, no school could afford it. In my area, many of the specialists have to work at several schools, just to meet all the needs. Now, it isn’t just a shortage of funds, but a shortage of people who have these specializations.

The private schools in my area are completely incapable of teaching my children, because none of them are equipped to handle children with my sons’ needs. They don’t have the staff, the expertise or the equipment. In order to attend a private school that has these things, it would require an hour long trip, each way, and would provide them with a school setting that is ALL special needs kids, with no scholastic contact with normally developing children. This would be a major step back for my children. Besides, the school that could meet their needs is already over-crowded and under-staffed.

The public school system is designed to provide all children with a way to have their needs met. This design has been improved upon many times over. Seventy years ago, my children wouldn’t have been allowed into any school. My children would have been considered unteachable and would have been abandoned by the state. Now, resources are being invested in my children, because people realize my children are worth teaching, and are able to teach their peers in ways many can’t comprehend without seeing it for themselves. My children’s teachers do NOT “dumb down” the class material for my kids, aides are provided for my children to help them keep up.

Considering the history of public schools, your assessment that they are deemed somehow sacred and thus unchangeable is invalid. They’ve been changed many times over. And, even when avoiding the monetary issue, fracturing the public school population on the basis of ideology would negate the impact that these kids are intended to have on each other. Even if you take the “good” kids away from the “bad” kids, you essentially take away the role model the “bad” kids have at how to improve themselves. If the only kids that are left are those who do not strive, because they can “excel” by merely skating by, you do those children a great disservice by not showing what real competition they will have when they grow up. While for some it may not matter, for others it will and they’ll want to be competitive.

Vex,

While I agree that the public school system, and our priority for making it work, is still in need of dramatic change. But like any other government program, dumping money on it isn’t the solution. Dividing it isn’t the solution. We’ve tried both with little to no success.

Restructuring it to make it more effective would make a big difference. Funding it with a new, more progressive model in mind would make a big difference. Determining what our children need to know by graduation (to compete in a world market) and setting up class schedules to meet that end would make a big difference.

Dividing it piece-meal to private organizations would only further hurt those who are left behind and would further de-stabalize the institutions that were designed with specific needs (and private funding) in mind. While parents have the choice of whether or not to send their children to public school. They should not have the choice to not pay for public school (that’s everyone’s responsibility). Nor should they have the choice to send their child to private school with public funds.

It was announced yesterday that the state of Conneticut has filed suit against the government for the “no child left behind” legislation.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/?feed=TopNews&article=UPI-1-20050823-09265200-bc-us-nochild.xml

“The suit, filed Monday in U.S. District court in Hartford, Conn., by state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, is the first filed by a state in a series of legal challenges to the federal law.

Blumenthal challenged the federal law as being “rigid, arbitrary and capricious” in requiring the state to test students in grades 3-8 every year instead of every other year.”

Personally I think that the education of our children is at least as inportant as the Dept. of Defence.
Why do we spend so much money on destruction when we would be better served with construction.

tom,

“My whole approach is to do away with public education as we know it. Institute private education and let the free market operate freely.”

Sorry, pal, but I disagree. Children are not a comodity to be used as pawns in some free market game. We will need private schools to be as they are, a place for advanced learning. Most children could not compete in the atmosphere of a private school.

Rocky,

Maybe you know the answer to this, or perhaps could help me find it.

I know there are a number of “think-tanks” to determine how the war should be run. How many “think-tanks” (compared to the number for the war) are there to determine how to best teach the wide variety of children we have in the US?

Rocky said: “Sorry, pal, but I disagree. Children are not a comodity to be used as pawns in some free market game. We will need private schools to be as they are, a place for advanced learning. Most children could not compete in the atmosphere of a private school.”

Besides, if we screw up we lose a lot more than money. A better education for ALL CHILDREN means a better nation for ALL CITIZENS. If we all were willing to sacrifice to give all our children the best education this world can offer, then we would all benefit in our “old age” when these children take over. How is it that our children aren’t worth our best?

stephanie,
I was not insinuating that we should divide the system simply make teachers in charge of less students so they can focus on the individual needs of every student. as for funding i agree just throwing money at the situation will not solve it, but prolly just lead to corruption. the massive increase in funding i am speaking of should be well planned out before implementation to hit the infrastructure and staffing issues i pointed out.

Vex,

And I agree with that last comment (though you completely lost me at the abortion portion, since I’m pro-life and pro-“best schools in the world,” and thus didn’t fit the stereo-type you were suggesting), however Matt is suggesting we should divide the system and you were agreeing with him, thus our confusion.

Darrius,

“Rocky, it is not fair to accept government money and say, “I’m going to accept this child but not that child.”

Wake up and smell the pavement!

What part of “best and brightest” don’t you understand?
It’s pretty self explanitory to me.
Look, we can’t afford to send every child to private school, and most wouldn’t survive academically anyway.
Let’s send those that would qualify, they would be able to prove that they belong there. I don’t care if we are talking about green people, if they can’t cut it, they wil be a distraction, and therefore pull the rest of the class down.
This should be treated as a scholorship program for those that can’t afford it.

Rocky,

Except most private schools already have their own scholarship programs funded by their benefactors. Instead of nosing into private schools, which vouchers inevitably lead to, we should be working to fix public schools. Public schools serve too vital a purpose to dismiss them as “unrepairable” and leave them to wither.

Stephanie,

As I stated in a previous post on this thread, I am not for vouchers.
If they are inevitable, however, I think that they should be used as a scholorship program for those that deserve them academically.
I can see no other use for them.

Some studies show the U.S. gets the least bang for the buck (i.e. spent on Education; not the fact that it’s steadily falling).
Is all that money really going into the classroom ? Or, some bureaucrat’s salary ?
The U.S. spends more public and private money on education than other major countries, but its performance doesn’t measure up in areas ranging from high-school graduation rates to test scores in math, reading and science.
And, why are college books so ridiculously expensive?
And, why let our schools remain vacant 3 months of each year?
And, why are 36% of 45 million public school students attending remedial reading, math, and language arts lessons to 16 million allegedly disadvantaged and disabled students?
Something is amiss…one more of a long list of symptoms of a nation being mismanaged and run into the ground.

A huge part of the problem is the parents.
Is the U.S. failing its youth due to poor parenting?

Rocky,

I know you’re not for voucher programs (as per earlier threads), but I guess I missed it on this one, and for that I apologize. (I am doing this while my kids run around, constantly interrupting me.) I just kinda wanted you to say it. :-)

d.a.n.,

“A huge part of the problem is the parents.”

Equating parents with adults (not always applicable, I know), and isn’t that the majority of our problems with anything governmental? People just don’t seem to be paying attention to what’s going on outside their comfort zone any more.

Where are these studies that show that the US spends more than other developed countries? It’s the first I’ve heard of it. If you mean to say that we perform poorly on standardized tests compared to other developed nations, that’s another matter. Surely those “socialists” spend more than we do.

We would have to increase educational spending by at least 30% to have school open year round, and that doesn’t even include the air conditioning.

And college books aren’t that much more expensive than high school books, it’s just that most of us never have to pay anything, much less retail price, for our books before college. Add to that the lower demand for college books than secondary ed books, since fewer people go to college than high school.

And anybody who says that we can’t fix education by dumping more money on it has obviously never seen the decrepit state of the educational infrastructure in the urban areas. And just try to improve education WITHOUT spending more money.

Loren,

“And just try to improve education WITHOUT spending more money.”

You missed my point. It’s not that the schools DO NOT need more money. It’s that the schools need better organization and money-management BEFORE they get more money. Once more of our actual dollars can go to actual benefits for the actual students, then the government can dump as much money on the kids and they want and I can have a party. But, as long as the funds get eaten up by bureaucracy along the way, it’s not the funds themselves that need the MOST fixing.

I challenge all who comment to this post to answer the lead question: What about public education makes it so sacred that we dare not change it?

This question shows that the writer is not very involved in Public Education. Public Education has been in a constant state of change for many years. Just ask a teacher!!

Craig

Craig, ain’t that the truth?

Stephanie

Believe me, I definitely got your point. As a NYC teacher, I hear this all the time. If every government mandate were fully funded, we could do our jobs. Bureaucracy exists BECAUSE we have to do less with more.

Loren,

“Bureaucracy exists BECAUSE we have to do less with more.”

I’m not sure what you meant by that. I’m not a teacher, but I work very closely with the teachers and administration staff at my children’s school. (I even found out today that the school secretary remembers me by name even after this long summer.)

I would say that teachers have to do MORE with LESS because bureaucracy EXISTS.

I know that good teachers don’t get paid what they’re worth. I know that teachers often have to buy supplies out of their already insufficient pay checks. I know that most of the teachers my children have (and here I’m including SPL therapists, OTs, ect.) often need advanced degrees to know how to best help their students, and yet do not necessarily get pay increases for having these degrees. I know that the pay doesn’t compensate for the expenses. I also know that the GOOD teachers stick it out, because they believe in what they’re doing.

At my children’s school there are a lot of people who get paid for providing services that do not go directly to teaching the kids, but do help facilitate the learning atmosphere. This I have no objection to. However, I also know the further the professionals get from having daily contact with the children, the more they’re likely to get paid. I know the higher you go up the chain of command, the more opportunities there are to waste tax dollars in ways that do not benefit the children that money is supposed to educate. I know that, often times, change has to be studied to death, wasting lots of money, to verify things we already know.

I mean, recently in my area there was a study to determine whether four-year-old kindergarten was wanted, how it would effect child care providers, and how it would effect the school system. While I admit these are nice things to know, we already knew that affording four-year-old kindergarten was already a major issue, that many of the elementary schools already lacked space for the students they had let alone space for another whole grade level, that such services were already provided by other venues including those for the poor, and that there weren’t enough of the desired supplies for the kids already in school.

And now, because of the factors we knew before the study, four-year-old kindergarten is dead in the water, the study proved it wasn’t anything near essential, and thousands of dollars have been spent that didn’t do anyone any good, that could have gone to more of the supplies that the teachers say the schools are lacking.

That is one immediate example of wasting resources, when they are already insufficient for the needs established. And it is one of many.