Spend an extra $6.2 trillion on education over the next 20 years, get a return of $225 trillion on the investment. That’s what Randall Lane, who edits Forbes, suggests in the magazine’s December 15 issue (Hat tip to commenter Michael S. Ellegood for pointing me to the article). That’s Forbes, the business magazine.
Lane discusses the costs of five educational policies and estimates the returns on the investment.
The investment required to implement all five would run somewhere in the neighborhood of $6.2 trillion, spread over 20 years. Or $310 billion a year in today’s dollars. And the payoff, as calculated by factoring in all those additional, better-skilled high school and college graduates on our national GDP? Almost $225 trillion, spread over an 80-year time horizon, which incorporates an entire generation’s professional achievement.
Lane didn’t create the policy suggestions. They came from a number of educators and people involved in education policy.
I don’t have to agree with all the policy suggestions—I don’t—or be convinced the costs and return-on-investment figures are accurate—I’m not—to be encouraged that an article in Forbes talks about spending on education as a good investment, not “throwing money” at schools. I’m also encouraged that this isn’t an ideological shopping list compiled either by a like-minded group of educational privatizers or progressives. It’s an honest attempt to look at ways to spend money on education to get positive economic results, drawing from ideas across the spectrum.
Here’s a quick summary of the five policy changes:
1. Teacher Efficacy. Raise teacher salaries to attract top candidates for the job. Adding 50% to salaries would mean most new teachers would come from the top third of college grads. Investment: $4.8 trillion. Return On Investment: $64.5 trillion.
2. Universal Pre-K. Guarantee pre-kindergarten education for every child. Investment: $1.1 trillion. Return On Investment: $38.4 trillion.
3. School Leadership. Give school principals greater roles in hiring and firing staff and managing school budgets. Raise salaries by 26% to attract the best talent. Investment: $11 billion. Return On Investment: $61 trillion.
4. Blended Learning. Put a computer in every student’s hand and use them as one way to deliver rote lessons optimized to individual student needs, giving teachers more time for more complex instruction. Investment: $44.3 billion. Return On Investment: $33.1 trillion. (I’ve added a note on “blended learning” at the end of the post.)
5. Common Core/College Readiness. Create high national standards building on the current Common Core standards. Develop new instructional materials, assignments and professional development. Investment: $185.4 billion. Return On Investment: $27.9 trillion.
That’s it. No mention of charters or vouchers or training students to be business ready. There’s not even a mention of high stakes testing. This is big picture stuff, worthy discussion starters for people interested in improving U.S. education.
A NOTE ON BLENDED LEARNING. “Blended learning” is one of those terms concocted by PR folks whose purpose is to sell an idea like you sell toothpaste. The privatizers and profitizers created the term to push massive use of computer-based learning programs, often coupled with teacher cutbacks. (Who needs so many teachers when you have all those amazing, student-individualized, corporate-produced-and-sold computer learning programs? Ka-ching!) But all the two words really mean is that education should be a blend of teachers teaching along with other educational resources. Every time a teacher says, “Read Chapter 5 and answer the questions at the end of the chapter,” that’s blended learning. A reasonable amount of computer-assisted learning added to the rest of the curriculum—a thoughtful use of high tech “blended learning”—makes perfect sense. Having students spending half their days in isolated cubicles with computer programs and cutting the teaching staff in half makes no educational sense at all.
This article appears in Jan 1-7, 2015.
The problem is with the math David. ROI never comes back to the taxpayer that financed. They simply increase spending and waste it on additional programs.
Now is the time for honesty.
I believe that California did something like that with one of their referendums to raise somebody else’s taxes to support education. The bulk of the money ended up going to retired teachers in higher pensions. The real beneficiaries are condo communities in Florida and Arizona.
The challenge is to make sure that the money goes to educating students and not greasing the education bureaucracy. I would agree that more money should go to outstanding high performing educators. But that requires real performance evaluations and the unions fight that pretty hard.
David, thank you for picking up on this article in Forbes – glad to have passed on the tip. In reply to Rat T and Bill S., the ROI comes to the US as a whole, not only in taxes but rather in better educated folks who earn more money, improve our economy and raise children who will, in turn, work to improve our economy and so forth. Professionally, I am a Civil Engineer and have been delivering public infrastructure for nearly 5 decades. Most public works projects go over budget but we still need public infrastructure and we still build projects (yes, I have the data). Just because there are issues and obstacles, does not mean that we should stop building just do it better. Same with education, there are issues but we still need to educate our kids.
David, keep up the good work.
Sounds great in theory, but once again there is no imperical proof. If that worked property taxes would cover infrastructure, but money always seems to get “moved” to one’s pet projects and the taxpayer is left holding the bills.
Can you say Rio Nuevo?
Why, bother TUSD would spend it on it’s bloated administration rather then the kids.
Proven by the AZ legislature, as well as cash prize lotteries in many states, a revenue stream created specifically for public education is all too often high-jacked by politicians. Also here in AZ, these same “public servants,” still refuse to pony up the money as they scornfully spit in the faces of good faith voters who originally approved the education funding. This is more than just wrong – it is criminal malfeasance.
Good, thought provoking article. My math might be off by a few digits but it looks like the proposed annual return is just under $3B. No matter the fact is there is only so much money to go around. Money, like dirt is a finite commodity {though we are managing to print more money every second of every day} and therefore wages are also finite. But my point isn’t as much about the wages as it is the tools that should enter the classrooms in the form of computers and tablets. This would remove from the classrooms books that need constant, expensive updating such as history and put them on the hard drive. The computer is such an amazing tool with still untapped potential. As an example, important events such as the recent NASA Orion test launch & recovery could have been sent via WiFi to a student tablet to be view & reviewed at a later time. The science teacher could even interject into the class time a quick discussion of the event and the connection to what is being studied.
However, I have to agree with a previous commentor that we have thrown plenty of tax dollars at the problem with not all that great a resolution. Articles such as this are important to keep the efforts moving forward. More like this, please.