It's Not About the Money--If spending more made better schools all DC kids would go to Harvard.

Wall St Journal ^ | October 30, 2003 | ROD PAIGE

[SJackson]

A new semantic game is being played out in the corridors of the Capitol -- one that has been echoed in media outlets across America, thanks to a campaign by special interests and their allies in the Democratic Party. Typical of Washington's Beltwayspeak, a cry has gone up, saying that the No Child Left Behind education reform bill is "underfunded." Nothing could be further from the truth. President Bush has increased K-12 education spending by 40% since he took office. That's more in two years than it increased during the eight previous years under President Clinton. In raw terms, this president has increased education spending by $11 billion. As a nation, we now spend $470 billion dollars a year on K-12 education locally and federally -- more than on national defense.

[SJackson]

Politically it is, thus It's Not About the Money coexists with President Bush has increased K-12 education spending by 40% since he took office

[Guillermo]

And till the vast majority of the American Public says the #1 problem in education is a lack of funding.

Which politician campaigns without promising bigger budgets for the schools? (The ones who lose)

[ladylib]

Washington, DC, wants to spend more money, keep kids in school an extra 6 weeks until 6 at night.

Nothing is going to help kids in Washington, DC, except an escape route from the lousy schools:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37731-2003Oct29.html

[appeal2]

I always liked Rodney Paige. He is one of the few straight talking politicians in the Beltway. He has always kept to the sidelines while trying to clean up the cesspit inherited from the Clintons. When he took over, The Ed. Dept. couldn't figure out what happened to over 13bil. He went on O'Reilly and admitted as much and pledged to clean it up, which by all accounts he has.

[GOPJ]

Liberal policy to to "spend more".

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Any move to give the adults most responsible for education more authority over education will tend to improve the system. The adults most responsible for education (in the sense of being most affected by failure of it) are the parents.

The authority of the parents within the government school system is diffused by the bureaucracy, which attempts to overawe the parents with credentials and intimidate them into not trusting their own judgement. The government schools tend to take authority away from the parents (via taxation) and feed it to the administrators of the government schools.

But the American education system includes the freedom of parents who are sufficiently dissatisfied, and sufficiently determined or affluent, to provide for their children's education via private or parochial schools or via homeschooling. That freedom of the parents is part of what keeps the government schools at least somewhat responsible. Any change in the system toward lower taxation of the parents, or toward subsidy of parental choice, tends to give the people with the responsibility more authority over education, and therefore to improve it.

[blackdog]

What is really going on regarding the public's buying into underfunding, class sizes, and all kinds of ridiculous explanations of school budgets is plain and simple guilt.

Parents stopped being parents about fourty years ago. They give birth to children, send em away at six weeks to daycare, and leave all social development, learning skills, and emotional development to the schools(state). This is a terrible thing to do and down deep the public knows it. So do the teachers unions.

In order to absolve ourselves of this guilt from human abandonment we just do what all Americans do when we feel bad about something. We throw money at it to feel better. When we keep getting the bad news that it's not better yet, we throw more money at it. It's big business and a growth industry in not getting any better.

The school systems have a disincentive to actually improve our childrens education. It's a tight line to walk. It's a fine art creating an industry image like education when the real force behind the issue is money and power. The public education system is the place where Carney's flourish. "The art of separating an individual from his money through emotion"

[Uncle Miltie]

North Dakota has the lowest paid teachers and highest SAT scores in the nation. Hmmmm.....