Economics, Education, Political Commentary

The Last Thing That Public Education Needs

6 Comments

…is more money:

The stimulus bill devoted $100 billion to education (about $80 billion of it for K–12). As Reason magazine notes, that’s twice the Department of Education’s annual budget. “Race to the Top” is less than 5 percent of this staggering gusher of money. It’s not “Race to the Top” that is the Obama administration’s signature education initiative, but spending that the teachers’ unions would only have dreamed of two short years ago.

These funds have kept school systems from having to undertake wrenching changes, or any changes at all. They have helped goose federal spending on education from $37.5 billion in the last year of the Bush administration to $88.8 billion in the second year of the Obama administration, according to the calculations of Jay Greene of the University of Arkansas.

While the private economy has shed 8 million jobs in a work force of 150 million during the downturn, the $550 billon education system has added jobs. It’s the great wonder of the American economy, growing during recessions and regardless of its quality. If everyone in America were a teacher, we’d truly be a worker’s paradise.

The spending would be justified if it correlated with outcomes.

But it never does. It was just a huge payoff to a huge Democrat political contributor, with money that we don’t have, but we’ll have to pay for eventually.

[Update a few minutes later]

Uniting political adversaries — against the unions. Public employee unions should be outlawed. They’ve destroyed California.

6 thoughts on “The Last Thing That Public Education Needs”

  1. I read somewhere that public employee unions were authorized by JFK via executive order. Trying to find a link but no success yet.

    If that is the case, wouldn’t it be easy (at least mechanically) to pull the plug on this monster?

    I also wonder what process must be followed by the President to shut down a cabinet-level department. I have dreamed of a day when moments after being sworn in, the new President announces the immediate end of the Departments of Education, Energy, Commerce, Labor, HHS, Homeland Security, and Agriculture (for starters), followed by a directive that the remaining cabinet departments have six months to reduce staffing levels of the remaining departments to, oh, say the levels that existed in 1980.

  2. Public employee unions should be outlawed. They’ve destroyed California.

    I read somewhere that public employee unions were authorized by JFK via executive order.

    In California they were authorized under a bill signed by … drumroll, please … Governor Jerry Brown.

    I know! Let’s make him Governor again! That’s what California needs to get its economy going!

  3. And we all know what will happen when that “temporary” stimulus money is exhausted. Merely allowing the spending to lapse will be met with cries of “They’re defunding your childrens’ future!” and the insanely increased budget will outlast the pyramids.

  5. SECTION 1. (a) Employees of the Federal Government shall have, and shall be protected in the exercise of, the right, freely and without feel of penalty or reprisal, to form, join and assist any employee organization or to refrain from any such activity.

    Emphasis added. I’m wondering if that right to work clause is being properly respected these days. Anyone know any non-union federal employees this would apply to?

  6. It’s amazing that once an organization is formed, that never existed before, it the becomes extremism to suggest it be eliminated. And this perspective is never challenged by the media who just nod along.

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