President Demonstrates an Open Mind on Public Schools

President Obama today acknowledged the fact that more money being spent on public schools won't necessarily produce better results.

This is a truism that few proponents of public education are willing to acknowledge.

If spending more and more money on education always generated better results, then the test scores of kids in the Washington DC public school system (which has some of the highest per capita education spending in the nation) would far exceed those of, say, your average home-schooled child. This is obviously not the case.

Also surprisingly, some of the President's other comments on the matter revealed an open-mind about changing some of the prevailing standards of public schools.

"Asked in an interview if he supported a year-round school year, Obama said: "The idea of a longer school year, I think, makes sense." He did not specify how long that school year should be and said that U.S. students attend classes, on average, about a month less than children in most other advance countries.

He said more resources must be matched with reforms, including the removal of teachers who, once identified as underperforming and given the chance and the training to improve, are still not serving students well."

All in all, making changes along the lines of the President's suggestions would allow taxes that are used for education to be spent more efficiently and would more than likely produce far superior educational results, which would be a great outcome for taxpayers and parents alike.