fact Noun
New York is in the process of trying to disengage itself from a 20-year-old commitment to this system of school governance , even as Chicago and other cities are moving to institute it .
-- In most states , increasing expenditures on education , in our current circumstances , will probably make things worse , not better .
The reason is simple : Education takes place in the classroom , where the influence of money is minimal .
Decades of educational research tell us unequivocally that even smaller classes have zero effect on the academic performance of the pupils -- though they may sometimes be desirable for other reasons .
The new money flows into the already top-heavy administrative structure , which busies itself piling more and more paper work on the teachers .
There is neither mystery nor paradox in the fact that as educational expenditures ( in real terms ) have increased sharply in the past quarter-of-a-century -- we now spend more per pupil than any other country in the world -- educational performance has declined .
That is the way the system works .
-- Students should move up the educational ladder as their academic potential allows .