I guess I should clarify. First, the $14.5 billion comes from the NPR report (which, ultimately, came from the Ypsilanti study). And it would cost $14.5 billion per year.

However, that’s not the entire story. For each $14.5 billion (to be somewhat simple), we realize roughly $137 billion in economic gains over a 20-year time span. That is, in year 1, we spend $14.5 billion and receive in year 20 $137 billion. In year 2, we invest another $14.5 billion, and receive $137 billion in year 21, and so on. And we realize these dollars not just in increased economic output of the individual, but in the decrease in imprisonment, decrease in remedial education, etc.

Essentially, study after study in economics have found the best place to spend money if you’re a government is in educating underprivileged youth. The reason it’s such a hard sell is that you don’t see the benefits immediately. It takes roughly 20 years, or until the newly preschooled toddler becomes an adult.

A ONE TIME spend today of 14.5 billion dollars will provide preschool for underprivileged children for the next 20 years without further investment? Seems like a stretch to me. Can you provide the backup for the figure?

Your ideas as to the merit and benefits of such a program are convincing. I’m having a hard time swallowing the figure.

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And the reason I make it my #1 priority is twofold.
1. It’s (comparatively) the easiest to get done.
2. It has the highest cost-benefit ratio of anything we can do.

Yes, more vocational education is needed. But teaching kids to just fix cars or cut wood (which was the extent of my high school’s tech ed offerings) isn’t going to cut it. Kids are going to have to learn computers beyond Facebook, Twitter, and Google. They’re going to have to learn how to program a CNC lathe. They’re going to have to learn basic CAD. They’re going to have to learn some basic electrical engineering, like working a multimeter, etc.

And those that are college-bound are going to have to learn how to write a frickin’ paper (it’s amazing how few understand that’s part of what’s expected of them). They’re going to have to learn some form of calculus, physics, chemistry, or something else along those lines. And they’re going to have to have a well-rounded education for a couple reasons. Mainly, having someone who can solve theoretical physics equations but can’t string a coherent sentence together isn’t particularly useful. That, and the broad curriculum employed in the first year or two of college is part of what helps guide students into their fields of interest.

Either way, I think it speaks rather negatively of our education system when, in this economic state we’re in, we have companies in the US looking to hire 3 million people (according to US DoL data on current job openings), but cannot find people in the US with the skill sets needed to fill them.

Beyond that, all the economic reform stuff you’re talking about…well…that’s coming next. Heh.

Practical courses in money management, job skills training, and other life needs knowledge should become our focus. Right now we encourage high school graduates to trot on to college to learn even more about liberal arts, majoring in English, History, our, *gasp* Telecom. Ultimately, these kids graduate college with a head full of knowledge that qualifies them for nothing more than arm-chair enthusiasm in the subject matter. And no, they cannot all go on to get Ph.Ds in the subject and become professors themselves… there would be no one left to take my order at the drive through.

Ultimately, more time and effort needs to go into vocational training and better guidance counseling for students. My guidance counselor asked me about my family background and decided college was right for me. No inquiry into my personality, no attempt to discern what I enjoy doing, no investigation of my work ethic or actual intelligence level. A guidance counselor who is close to the kids, knows what they are like, and has a good understanding of the job market would do miracles for helping place people into careers they will excel at and actually enjoy. Not my guidance counselor and his three options: College for the middle class kids, Food service or fixing cars for the lower class kids, and cosmetology school for the girls.

And, I know you think fixing education is key, number one on your list of things that will fix America, but I don’t think that’s our main concern right now. Our main concern has got to be that we are not far off from ceasing to be part of the “developed world.” ANd it’s not because our kids are stupid or ignorant. It is because our businesses send the money that should be paid to middle class Americans to do manufacturing or production jobs overseas. While this must have some positive effect on these foreign economies which, in a couple hundred years may benefit us greatly, in the short term (as in, a couple of generations), we are watching our middle class get poorer while those who own these business reap the only domestic rewards.

Until our economy begins producing again, rather than merely consuming, it doesn’t matter how bright the eggheads are that we churn out of our public schools. They’ll graduate with swollen heads, swollen egos, and zero job prospects. There is always room to build a life using your back and the growing sophistication in some industries does not mean that we need a genius or even highly educated labor force. Certainly some industries will require it, but Ford’s unimpressive increase in workforce size over the past eighty years is a red herring. Technology has constantly been decreasing the number of workers needed to do a task, but a growing number of consumers and reduced prices for the fruits of those tasks has so far allowed for a balance to be struck with more money and more people with more time constantly looking for more stuff to spend their time and money on.

The manufacturing jobs allocated to sweat shops or even legitimately operated factory throughout the developing (or unfriendly to labor) world could very well be done by Americans right here at home. The financial incentive, however, is too great to ignore. Our workers simply cost too much. Now that 401(k)s have replaced defined benefit plans as our main source of retirement funding, we should see the cost of hiring an American decrease significantly, however, something more needs to be done.

The two obvious solutions are both fraught with significant drawbacks. First, we could de-unionize our labor force. Let them rely on government set minimum wages, ERISA protections, and other state sponsored labor regulation to protect their interests. This would certainly decrease the costs associated with hiring American laborers. It also means that the guy who installed your airbags got paid as much as the guy who picked his nose in front of you while he folded peanut butter chips into your vanilla ice cream atop the Cold Stone. You never saw what happened to the booger after it escaped his nostril, but you cannot help thinking that it was the same color as your peanut butter chips… I think we can all agree that some jobs require more care than others, and that it might be wise to pay the people that do them a little more than people who wear paper hats and touch pictures on a computer screen to arrive at your total.

The second is to disincentivize the use of foreign labor for products shipped into this country. This could be done through the tax code, taxing the goods as they return to the country, offering tax breaks for companies that use a domestic labor force, or increasing taxes on all dollars earned abroad. This, however, risks running us afoul of a number of treaties we actually sponsored regarding tariffs and the flow of trade goods from country to country.

Obviously, I am way off point here (but this is just ranting in the comment section, so I have not got the same duty of coherence as you do as the author) and no longer talking directly about schools. So, I’ll wrap it up and in summary say that schools need fixing, but more with regard to what their primary purpose is rather than simply doing the same thing they already do, only with the funding to do it better. I don’t want an over-educated workforce, I want an employed one.