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Heavy-Handed Politics

"€œGod willing, with the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world
without the United States and Zionism."€ -- Iran President Ahmadi-Nejad

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Is More Money the Answer, or Not?

There are those who seem to believe that there can never be enough money spent on education. People complain about the schools underperforming, test scores not being good enough, and we're falling behind other countries, etc. You've heard it all before.

And the answer always is more money.

Recently, Governor Pawlenty floated his 70% idea. I have not put a lot of thought into, nor developed a position on Governor Pawlenty's idea of 70% of school funds to be spent on "direct classroom expenses."

But what I found interesting was an e-mail that was forwarded to me. The original email comes from the Minnesota Association of Secondary School Principals (MASSP). It should be of surprise to no one that the email was critical of Pawlenty's 70% plan and attempted to debunk all the reasons that one might use to support it.

Here is an excerpt of the email. Chew on this for awhile.
Is there research showing that good schools are linked to a standard of 65% of revenue being spent in the classroom? There is no research to show this proposal will increase student performance. A recent analysis by Standard & Poor's found no connection between the percentage of funds spent on instruction, and the percentage of students who score at or above "proficient" levels on state reading and math test."

In their attempt to discredit the wisdom of spending an "arbitrary" percentage, whether it be 65% or 70%, on classroom expenditures, they have unwittingly shot themselves in the other foot, dismantling their always handy argument that they need more money to solve their problems; so they can pay higher salaries to teachers, and increase spending on other "necessary items" to improve the schools, the education environment, and ultimately raise test scores. Comments anyone?

1 Comments:

  • We seriously over fund education already. If we would focus on teaching and not indoctrinating students the money may be better spent.
    The kid can't read or write but he feels good about himself. The girl can't even balance her check book but she can dress a cucumber in a condom in record time.

    We need to get back to education plain and simple. It would also be wonderful if we could focus on English. We don't need multilingual schools, we live in America. We live in an English speaking country. If you don't like it go back to where ever you came from.
    I have tons of ideas that will never be approved by the teachers assoc or the various other dictatorial groups. We could cut costs by over a third and increase the quality of education probably ten fold.
    Yet all we seem to hear about is throw money at it.

    By Blogger ablur, at 11:11 PM  

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