Education: It's not just the dollars

It seems one can't pick up a newspaper these days without reading a headline on funding education - from the proposed $77 billion federal budget for the Department of Education, to the upcoming vote on the $25.8 million levy for Cd'A District 271, to the protests of teachers unions nationwide.

I recently reminisced with a classmate about our experiences at the small church school we attended grades 1st through 8th. Each class held around 30 students with two grades per room. The buildings were old, the desks genuine antiques, the teachers scrubbed the toilets after school, parents mowed the lawns, school repairs and upkeep were accomplished by volunteers as "work bees." Basic supplies were purchased through fundraisers such as paper drives and bake sales.

We laughed as we recalled the time the public school across the railroad tracks threw away some textbooks, and our teachers hoisted us into the dumpsters to retrieve their rejected books, which we subsequently used for years. The school was run on a shoestring budget without any of what the public schools considered essential.

But if you look at the dozen students who graduated with us in 8th grade, almost all went on to college. Two took medicine and are board certified in their specialties, one is a well respected architect, another a CPA whose clients include Trader Joes and No Fear, one invented the Easy-Up portable tents and retired young and wealthy, several own successful businesses.

The lack of amenities did not hurt our future scholastic endeavors one bit. I recall a study in my Master's Degree program: the No. 1 variable involved in educational outcome (compared to factors such as physical plant, textbooks, technology, extracurricular opportunities, even well trained teachers) - the critical factor was the home environment and whether education was valued at home. The students at our poorly funded school did well without huge financial expenditures. My own children attended a similarly minimally funded private school: our eldest is in her 3rd year of medical school, the middle son begins medical school this August, and our youngest is still in college.

I am not claiming that their education was academically superior to our local public schools; it probably was not. I'm saying it didn't make a difference. All over our nation students are learning all they need to be successful and contributing member of our society in dingy church basements or around their kitchen tables with a fraction of the budgets of the public schools.

We ALL want the educational system in our country to be the best in the world, but spending more and more money isn't making any difference. If we really care about children, we need to be open and honest about what is and what is not working. We need a new paradigm in the quest for positive outcomes from our educational investment.

Denise Graves is a resident of Hayden Lake.