Re: Idaho sales tax exemptions

[Kelley Racicot <kelley@racicot.org>]

Hi Dale,

Arguing that spending more money for less schools might be interesting, and
if you have data, you should share it.  I know that Vision 2020 readers
would be very interested in any data that shows that we should pay teachers
$10K/yr. if we want REAL quality education.  It would let us know exactly
how seriously we should take your study.

However, I would caution you against making a linear assumption about money
dispensed vs. quality of education.  There's nothing that argues the
relationship is linear-- in fact, it is probably non-monotonic, and
non-linear-- in short, there are probably breakpoint levels of funding that
produce better education, and if you don't get the funding up to that
breakpoint, it doesn't make much difference.  That would make logical sense.
It is probably also time-dependent.  Raising teachers' salaries next year
might not make much difference in test results the following year.  But
moving teachers' salaries up into the professional class over a period of
ten years might make a world of difference-- because considering job
mobility, attracting new teachers is not something that is going to happen
over a 3-year window.

Post your data.  It's condescending not to.  You really don't want to have a
battle of condescension, because as a university professor, I would win
hands down.  ;-)

Chuck Pezeshki

> From: "Dale Courtney" <dmcourtn@moscow.com>
> Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2002 17:08:31 -0700
> To: "\"Vision 2020 \(E-mail\)\" <Vision 2020" <vision2020@moscow.com>
> Subject: Re: Idaho sales tax exemptions
> Resent-From: vision2020@moscow.com
> Resent-Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2002 17:14:41 -0700 (PDT)
> 
> Logical Fallacy of the False Dilemma.
> 
> In reality, there is a reverse correlation between spending money for
> schools and results (if you would like to see all the formal studies that
> support this, contact me off-list; I'd hate to overwhelm our pro-government
> school liberals with research data).
> 
> But throwing more money at the problem does make us feel better about
> ourselves.