Posted on 01/25/2011 11:34:37 PM PST by Scanian
"We're going to have to out-educate other countries," President Obama urged this week. How? By out-spending them, of course! It's the same old quack cure for America's fat and failing government-run schools monopoly. The one-trick ponies at the White House call their academic improvement agenda "targeted investing" for "winning the future." Truth in advertising: Get ready to fork over more Cash for Education Clunkers.
Our government already spends more per capita on education than any other of the 34 wealthiest countries in the world except for Switzerland, according to recent analysis of data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Overall inflation-adjusted K-12 spending has tripled over the past 40 years, the Michigan-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy points out. Yet American test scores and graduation rates are stagnant. One in 10 high schools is a dropout factory. And our students' performance in one of the most prestigious global math competitions has been so abysmal that the U.S. simply withdrew altogether.
Obama's fiscal year 2011 budget already represents "one of the largest increases" in federal education spending history, and hikes total discretionary spending to nearly $51 billion. Toss in another $35 billion for mandatory Pell grants. And add another $4 billion for the illusory "Race to the Top" charade to improve academic standards.
Then there's the $10 billion for the Education Jobs Fund signed into law last August -- a naked payoff to the public teachers union, which also includes $50 million for the Striving Readers comprehensive literacy development and education program; $82 million for Student Aid Administration; and $10.7 million for the Ready to Teach program.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
You can’t force someone to become educated just by throwing money into the system.
I homeschooled my nephew. We didn’t spend a great deal of money and his scores were great.
AFTER SOBER and judicious consideration, and weighing one thing against another in the interests of reasonable compromise, H. L. Mencken concluded that a startling and dramatic improvement in American education required only that we hang all the professors and burn down the schools. His uncharacteristically moderate proposal was not adopted. Those who actually knew more about education than Mencken did could see that his plan was nothing more than cosmetic and would in fact provide only an outward appearance of improvement. Those who knew less, on the other hand, had somewhat more elaborate plans of their own, and they just happened to be in charge of the schools.
Zero’s promise of job security for teacher unions
We don’t need more spending - we need smart spending of what we already have to spend - and throwing it into bottomless pits is not smart spending
its never about edukation, its about more money going to the fatcats in the unions and using the same lame excuse of "failing students" to again justify that same tired old lie.
howbeit that lie has been very good at getting more & more $$$ over the years, so why stop using it? After all the "kids" are always a good excuse to get practically ANYTHING passed for spending or new laws!!
forgot to add, ‘race’ to the top, may not have been the best choice of words for this ‘no-child-left-behind’ rehash
Needless to say, Socialist/Democrats control both houses of the state legislature.
Would they ever legislate that children be literate?
yitbos
Even I could put a plan in place to restore US education to its former prominence. But it would entail a lot of hurt feelings.
Several years ago Missouri passed a major education reform bill in something like two days. Like Obamacare, no one had actually read the bill. One legislator had slipped in the same provision—3rd graders had to read at grade level before they could be promoted to 4th.
When this was discovered a few weeks later, the entire educational establishment was shocked. There was no way this could be done. Since half to three quarters of third graders read below grade level, the state was faced with prospect of ever-growing third-grade classes with older and older third graders.
So everyone agreed to ignore the law (just the third grade reading requirement, not the increased taxes and testing) until it could be repealed.
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