Politicos Fail Homework On Funds In Education
Education spending will get a significant boost in fiscal year 2009 judging by budget resolutions passed by the United States Senate and House.
Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate pushed through funding well above the amount President George W. Bush requested.
The House resolution, approved by a 212-207 vote with no Republicans favoring, calls for $7.1 billion in additional funding for job training and other education-related social service programs. The Senate plan was approved 51-44, with two Republicans voting in favor. It included creation of a new $2 billion education reserve fund.
Congressional budget resolutions are nonbinding, but they outline the majority's priorities and establish a framework for appropriations bills to be considered later in the year.
Proposed new education spending figures also created comment from political observers and analysts. Neal McCluskey, an education policy analyst at Cato Institute, questioned the return on education dollars invested.
"Washington has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on education over the last several decades and can show hardly any academic improvement to justify it," McCluskey observed. "Almost invariably, federal money has helped the adults employed in public schooling, while the children have just been convenient political props."
The American education system has disturbingly little progress since the 1983 "Nation at Risk" report highlighted a crisis in the operation. That report said American students were falling behind students around the world, endangering out national security and prosperity.
A quarter of a century later the American education system remains in a state of crisis, said Dan Lips, education analyst at The Heritage Foundation.
Each year the United States spends more than $550 billion on K-12 public schools, more than 4 percent of the nation's gross domestic product. A student attending public schools in 2008 can expect taxpayers to spend an average of $9,266 on his or her behalf, a real increase of 69 percent over the average per-pupil expenditure in 1980.
President Reagan in the 1980s offered a bold vision for public education: End federal intervention, restore federalism and state and local control, and expand parental choice.
Policymakers rejected that vision and took a different approach of increasing funding and expanding government authority that analysts contend has done virtually nothing to address the crisis first identified in the 1983 report.
American taxpayers likely agree the amount of public education money being spent would be worthwhile if it were providing the results needed to compete globally. But American students still score poorly compared to students from other countries, especially in math and science.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress shows 18 percent of fourth-graders and 29 percent of eighth-graders scored "below basic" in mathematics last year. In addition, far too many students continue to drop out. At least one of every four quits high school, and the picture is even worse among minority children.
The Census Bureau has found a full-time employee with a college degree will earn more than $2 million over a lifetime. One with only a high school diploma will earn half that, while a dropout will earn even less. In another finding, an independent study determined dropouts die an average of nine years sooner than high school graduates.
There is 25 years of evidence that more spending and greater government involvement simply is not working to make public education better for the students. Yet the latest Senate and House budget resolutions follow the same hopeless trail.
Improving the educational is a national problem, but it calls for local solutions, said Edwin Feulner, Heritage Foundation president. One approach working in areas where it has been tried is school choice.
The District of Columbia and 13 states have choice programs, and as many as 150,000 children will use publicly funded scholarships to attend private school this year. Feulner said research shows the programs are helping students, and they are popular.
People need to demand a new approach on the public education problem, starting with letting states provide the funding and hold themselves accountable.
Giving state and local authorities an opportunity to implement reforms based on local students' needs is a proposal Congress should give a try instead of perpetuating an expensive exercise in futility.
