Nevada Looks at 6.9% Cut to Education Spending

In an interesting compromise that could see the state of Nevada reduce its spending on education by 6.9%, lawmakers continue to try to make progress in addressing a nearly $900m state budget deficit.

"On education, Gibbons had proposed a 10 percent cut in state spending on kindergarten through 12th grade and higher education for a potential savings of $250 million. Democrats were pushing for a 5 percent reduction."

Of course, the usual critics of decreased state spending will emerge with their typical alarmist hand-wringing about "the children".

It's laughable to think that educational results in the state of Nevada will be negatively affected with such a small reduction in spending. The Nevada Policy Research Institute already addressed that issue last year in an interesting report.

There is simply no correlation to spending money and results. If anything, they are most likely inversely related (i.e., if one goes up, the other goes down, etc.).

What would improve educational results is increased parental involvement in the lives of their kids - nothing more, nothing less.

Having the government tax and spend more and more of the hard-earned money of Nevada workers is not the solution to poor educational results. So the proposal here to reduce spending should be applauded.

The only remaining question is to ask why the state should stop at 6.9%?

Denver Man Picks Fight With TABOR

Colorado's TABOR (Taxpayer Bill of Rights) amendment requires that year-over-year increases in overall state tax revenue be tied to inflation and population increases unless larger increases are approved by referendum.

Herb Fenster, a Denver attorney and education gadfly, has announced plans to challenge the federal constitutionality of Colorado's TABOR amendment.

"TABOR, he argues, violates Article IV Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, which says the federal government must guarantee that states have a republican form of government, which he interprets as "a tripartite government, a legislative, executive and judicial branch."

Under TABOR, the state legislature is unable to raise taxes. That power resides with the voters.

Fenster believes this constitutes a form of popular democracy, where the population decides everything, not a representative democracy, where the people are represented by a legislature that decides."

Fenster is another misinformed education establishment advocate, believing that throwing more taxpayer money at education will produce meaningful results. In fact, a 2008 Heritage Foundation study found no such correlation.

"Taxpayers have invested considerable resources in the nation's public schools. However, ever-increasing funding of education has not led to sim­ilarly improved student performance."

I have a better idea Herb. Let's dramatically skinny down the percentage of our state educational budget spent on administration and overhead, let's eliminate teacher tenure and bloated retirement benefits and then, and only then, come back to the Colorado taxpayers and tell us that we need to spend more on education.

In the meantime Herb, if all we need to do to improve education results in our public schools is to increase spending, please give us some insight into why the Washington DC school system has some of the worst educational results in the country, despite having some of the highest per-pupil spending.