Battle-hardened educator Rod Paige addresses the dumb notion du jour about school finance, which, being dumb, has been naturally embraced by our own blow-dried and empty-headed Texas governor.
Dumb liberal ideas in education are a dime a dozen, and during my time as superintendent of the Houston Independent School District and as the U.S. secretary of education I battled against all sorts of progressivist lunacy, from whole-language reading to fuzzy math to lifetime teacher tenure. Today, however, one of the worst ideas in education is coming from conservatives: the so-called 65 percent solution.Posted by Alan at July 2, 2006 11:23 AMThis movement, bankrolled largely by Patrick Byrne, the founder of Overstock.com, wants states to mandate that 65 percent of school dollars be spent "in the classroom." Budget items such as teacher salaries would count; librarians, transportation costs and upkeep of buildings would not.
The only drawback is that such laws won't actually make schools any better, and could make them worse. Yes, it's true that education financing is a mess and that billions are wasted every year. But the 65 percent solution won't help. The most likely outcome is that school officials will learn the art of creative accounting in order to increase the percentage of money that can be deemed "classroom" expenses.
More ominously, it will tie school leaders' hands at a time when they need more freedom to innovate. Things we should be stressing, such as teacher training, online content to supplement lessons and after-school tutoring, would not fall under "classroom expenses."