ManyEyes - Education Data

Not sure how I am going to use these yet but here are a few interesting infographics I found on the ManyEyes site today related to education:

Public education spending, total vs. per student:



School District Technology Use:



Impact of Testing Culture on Student Contact Days:



So, if only 61.8% of our school days can be spent on anything but testing and test prep (low-level cognitive skills) and technology resources are monopolized for most of the year for these two purposes, how much of our education spending is spent on authentic, high-quality education? Lets go back to that chart with the six countries and see how our adjusted spending compares:

Now this is starting to make more sense. Still, even with that adjustment it seems Japan still spends less than we do. But, perhaps that can be explained by the amount of time they spend each year in school not doing test prep or dumbing down their curriculum to teach only the rote skills assessed.

On Monday I will do a breakdown of how much standardized testing likely costs Minnesotan's (beyond the $23 Million/year we give Pearson Education to create and manage our tests). I will also create some infographics that will show what we might be able to do with that money instead.