The Economics of Education & Financing Education Adequately - Essay Example

This paper explores the evidences that increasing social problems may lead to large increases in the annual cost of public elementary and secondary education in Fentress County Tennessee. The paper also determines the current expenditures per pupil in Fentress County, three surrounding counties, and the state per pupil expenditure average. Response to question one. Increasing social problems could cause massive increases in the annual cost of public secondary and elementary education. Social problem involves social issues that may plague the system of education.

For example, emotional, ethical, gender, economic, and cultural issues are some of the social problems in education. The major effect of these problems on education has always been to increasing the cost of education (Brimley, Rulon, Garfield, et.al. 2008). For instance, economic issues increase the cost of education by making the government give out financial support to families with low income, give scholarships, and run the education programs. This leads to a high cost of maintaining education in the secondary and elementary levels of education.

According to the Fentress County Tennessee, the average cost of educating a child placed in a public school was more than six thousand dollars ($7,436) for one year (Brimley, Rulon, Garfield, et.al. 2008). Of this annual amount, a huge percentage of funds are typically allocated to activities of teaching. This is an area where the effects of social problems are realized. The cost due to behavioral problems is approximately 65% or about $ 4,833. Even though, the other sections of the school like supervision and administration could also be affected by social problems, the annual figure of the teaching portion of education, in this case, was used in the calculation.

As per a research conducted by the Public Agenda research group in Fentress County Tennessee, 45% of school teachers reported that they normally spend a significant part of their time to manage the behaviour of their classroom thus making them to spend a little time in teaching (Brimley, Rulon, Garfield, et.al. 2008). This implies that, for every ten teachers, four of them spent over 55% of their principal classroom time on dealing with social problems of the learners. In terms of finances, the impact cost of a statistic like this one is 55% of $4,833 which is equal to $ 2,658.

This is the amount of finances that is wasted on the management of social issues for every child per year. A study conducted on a number of schools in Fentress County Tennessee, having different school size, reported a massive education cost due to managing social problems in the school (Brimley, Rulon, Garfield, et.al. 2008). From this study, a table (Table1) was drawn to display the cost impact of social problems on education. Table 1: Cost impact of social problems management in Fentress County District schools.

School Size Cost impact of social problems management on education based on the percent of time spent. 25% 30% 50% 250 $328,563 $394,275 $657,125 400 $525,700 $630,840 $1,051,400 500 $657,125 $788,550 $1,314,250 650 $854,263 $1,025,115 $1,708,525 800 $1,051,400 $1261,680 $2,102,800 1000 $1,314,250 $1,577,100 $2,628,500 The table (Table1) shows out the cost effect of managing the behaviour of students in the classroom. When observed keenly as a percent of the time lost out of approximately 180 days (a school year), the figures are disturbing.

Number of school days lost due to social problems m