Wednesday, January 04, 2006

First Class Education

That's the name of a group led by Tim Mooney, a Republican political consultant from Arizona. His idea is a simple one--put 65% of the education budget in the classroom.

NY State already exceeds that figure, according to the article, though I have my doubts about NYC. There are many who oppose it:

The American Federation of Teachers has not taken a formal position on the 65 percent solution, but Ed Muir, the assistant director of research and education services, indicated that the union was skeptical.

"We don't think this should be a battle between the services teachers provide and other services that are necessary for kids, particularly poor kids," Dr. Muir said. "If you have a problem with spending, you should do something about wasteful spending."

That makes sense to me. In NYC, for example, Bloomberg's created several layers of bureaucracy that could disappear without any detrimental effect to kids. These people go to luncheons, give presentations, and make huge salaries without any direct involvement with students.

As Joe Thomas would say, 65% of inadequate is still inadequate. This could be a Trojan Horse--an attempt to keep more money from going into schools by suggesting the only problem is percentages.

As we all know, 72% of statistics are made up on the spot.
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