Reforming Education Means More $?
There is something seriously wrongwhen politicians and opinionmakers believe that to reform education you just need to spend more on it and ‘open up’:
The recent economic stimulus bill contains more than $100 billon in education spending, a historic investment equal to about 16 percent of the nation’s annual expenditures on public elementary and secondary schools. In exchange, states are required to report more information about student performance and make “assurances” that they will work to improve schools. However, the law requires little in the way of actual changes. “States have made these assurances over and over again, the question is whether they’re going to have to meet the promises they keep making,” argues Charlie Barone, formerly a top aide on the House of Representatives education committee and now policy director for Democrats for Education Reform, an advocacy group.
The article quoted above is written by Andrew J. Rotherham, who criticizes both Obama and Bush, but who is equally wrong himself…
Read my entire post on education at Hot Air’s Greenroom.
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I agree that you can’t fix education by just throwing money at it. It has to be a multi-pronged approach.
However, there are many districts in this country that are severely underfunded, where more money could go a long way to buying updated materials and texts, supplies, etc. I think the key is to find out where the money needs to go.
The government has had years to find these districts with NCLB, so there’s no can be no excuse that they don’t know where to spend the money.