FreedomTalks

I received a call today from an upset parent in Oregon. She was worried about one of our campaigns in Oregon to curb out-of-control government spending. She said that cutting taxes and reducing spending would harm students like her son, who would have less money thrown at them for their education. When I asked her how much money would be sufficient to educate her son, or any student for that matter, she could not give me a number.

She also admitted that the amount of education spending in Oregon is much more today than it was when she attended high school. Therefore, I told her, money alone is not the answer to a better education. I noted that good parenting and good teachers (in that order) are needed for a good education. With that, she yelled that I was blaming her and other parents for the inadequacies of students in Oregon’s school system. Then she hung up the phone on me.

I rather enjoy these types of calls from time to time, because they really reveal the lack of arguments coming from big-government liberals and the education lobbyists. When you ask them tough questions that they can’t answer, they hang up the phone. Sad.

I did some searching afterwards and found some interesting tidbits worth sharing:

From economist Walter Williams– ”More money and smaller class sizes are what’s needed.” That’s what the education establishment would have us believe. However, if money were the answer, Washington, D.C. public schools would be the best in the nation — if not the world. Per student expenditures are $10,500 a year, second highest in the nation. With a student-teacher ration of 15.8, they have smaller-than-average class sizes. What is the result? In only one of the city’s 19 high schools do as many as 50 percent of its students test as proficient in reading, and at no school are 50 percent of the students proficient in math.

From the Cascade Institute– Just last month a teachers union spokesperson testified before an Oregon legislative committee that the union wants taxpayers to give schools over one billion dollars more per biennium to meet Quality Education Model goals. [Steve Buckstein] testified later that lawmakers shouldn’t be surprised if any additional money they allocate to education doesn’t reach the kids, because “there are powerful special interest groups standing between the kids and the money, and their understandable goal is to capture as much of any additional funding as they can.”

And a sampling of the argument against school choice from a Florida teacher:  “Competition is not for children, it’s not for human beings, it’s not for public education. It never has been and it never will be.”

Wow.