My recent writing, “School Walkouts” received a fair bit of feedback including some from my friends Pete and Ed, who discussed funding efficiency a little.
Among other things, Ed commented, “Ohio has great options for supporting charter schools & directing our tax dollars via provisions in state tax law. We have options to designate up to $1500 (for those married & filing jointly) to specific charter, private & religious schools. By making the donation you are then allowed to take the $1500 directly off the bottom line of your state tax bill. Ohio started this 3 years ago……” Editor’s note: As I previously wrote, Ohio has about twice the population of Wisconsin and their state budget is about half of Wisconsin’s.
But what really got my attention was a comment from Pete implying that the education establishment was “on the run”. Obviously, Pete doesn’t live in Wisconsin. Here in Wisconsin “Education” is about to crush the taxpayers even more. Here are my comments back to Pete and Ed:
I agree that “education” needs to be defunded, (at least partially) but it is NOT happening across the country, as you suggest. We do NOT have them “on the run”. The State of Wisconsin is a good example. The REPUBLICAN controlled Assembly and Senate keep pouring $Billions into the rat hole that is the education system. WHY? That’s a good question and I’m not sure that I have the answer. It could be kickbacks……er, I mean “contributions”……or it could be that the Republicans are just too chicken poop to do what needs to be done and take the criticism that will come from the commie media.
Of course, having Tony Evers as Governor doesn’t help. But the pattern was THE SAME under 8 years of Scott Walker. Education spending never went DOWN nor was it even FROZEN. NOTE: The implementation of ACT 10 did provide a significant drop in spending on teachers’ expenses, but I don’t’ think that spending actually went down from the previous budget, nor do I think that any reduction in the over bloated education system was ever achieved. If someone has data to the contrary, please point it out.
What needs to happen……at least here in Wisconsin……is two, make that three-fold.
One is to eliminate or completely defund the Department of Public Instruction. DPI is a complete waste of money and doesn’t do anything for the education of kids. But hey, it did spend $368,000 to hold a 4-day teachers’ conference. And the funny thing(s) about THAT conference was(were): No recordings were allowed. No notes were allowed to be taken. And an NDA had to be signed by EVERYONE THERE. There is no public record of the meeting despite what the LAW requires.
The second thing is that School districts need to be forced to be more efficient. When districts are spending in excess of $20,000 (Some say $30,000) per student, there is ample room for cuts even if it means to get rid of personnel that are not contributing to increasing test scores. School districts must be held financially responsible.
But the bottom line is RESULTS. School systems that produce kids with 8% math and 4% reading competency should be (figuratively) burned to the ground and either re-built or consolidated into more efficient systems.
Perhaps EDUCATION REFORM should be forced as an issue in the upcoming Governor’s race? Perhaps the DPI should be replaced with the Wisconsin Department of Education REFORM? Perhaps the whole education system including the UW needs an enema? We need to ask Tom Tiffany about his plan to REFORM education in Wisconsin and hold the system accountable for RESULTS.
P.S. Republican Assembly and Senate candidates should also take a stand on EDUCATION REFORM. This is a 70/30 issue. Or would you rather be the 30%?
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