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.

School Districts Forecasted to Cut Jobs

Given the downturn in the economy and falling tax receipts, school districts across the country are expected to dramatically reduce headcount in the upcoming year.

Based on a survey of school administrators from 49 states, a total of 275,000
education jobs are expected to be cut in 2011, according to the American
Association of School Administrators.

"Faced with continued budgetary constraints, school leaders across the nation are forced to consider an unprecedented level of layoffs that would negatively impact economic recovery and deal a devastating blow to public education," said AASA Executive Director Dan Domenech.

It's high time that school districts around the country were forced to tighten their belts a bit and respond to market realities just like other businesses, instead of relying on ever-higher tax revenues to hide their bloated staff and pay.

Of the projected job cuts, about 54% are teacher positions, 9% are support personnel, such as nurses and guidance counselors, 5% are administrative and 31% are classified, a category including maintenance employees and cafeteria workers.

It's telling that such a high proportion of the job cuts (46%) are expected to come from non-teaching positions. This is further evidence that school districts have turned into a bloated bureaucracy that is ripe for downsizing.

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.