TED Community » Sandy Machado

Location:: United States, Philadelphia, PA
Gender:: Female
Areas of expertise:: Teaching Spanish as Foreign Language, Teaching French as Foreign Language, Organizational Development, Training - Organizational Strategies, Planning & Coordination, Event Planning and Coordination

Associations:: ACTFL
Languages:: English, Spanish, French
Universities:: Saint Joseph's University, Philadelphia, University of Central Florida, Florida State University

TEDCred score: 0.00 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.
A comment on Conversation: jails should be more widely known as schools

Oct 13 2011: We should turn schools into schools first. In K-12 schools, we spend about $10,000 per student/per year (on average). In prisons we spend about $30,000 per inmate/per year. If we reversed these amounts, schools would be able to address many of the current issues and shortfalls, such as inadequate facilities, class size, teacher training, supporting special needs kids, etc. before these kids would become illiterate drop-outs destined for the rotating doors of the penal system. I'm not an advocate that throwing money at schools is going to solve all the education problems in our country, but a better distribution of funding in the education/prison symbiosis is certainly worthy of exploration.