After reading a factual, cogent piece like I referenced in my previous post, this MinnPost article on how "We are failing our schools" really stands out. Liberal talk show host Matthew McNeil claims that "there is no more 'fat' to cut" in our public school districts. Must be that healthy fat I keep hearing about.
After two decades of conservative education policy, it has become apparent that these two talking points can no longer exist together, as government entities have not only cut the fat from most school districts — in many cases they have also taken the meat, and now they're shaving the bone.
"Conservative" policy!? The same conservative policies that have more than tripled state spending those two decades? Let me quote another statistic I found in the half price book store, "City Schools, Suburban Schools" published 1972 by Seymour Sacks. Minneapolis St. Paul ran on $ 415 per student in 1962, the suburbs averaging $ 442. In today's dollars that's $ 2,998 and $ 3,193 respectively, and we're clearly spending many times that today. And all that just to tread water on test scores.
But even if we accept that as mere prologue, we still have many opportunities to reduce costs, some of which would improve results, like pinning all that money on the students' lapels. We pay extra for Masters degrees that have yet to pay any educational dividends. Arbitrary class size targets also seem to have no effect, as New Jersey, Kansas City and our own Minnesota experiences have shown.
It's time for conservatives to answer some serious questions. How is closing schools and laying off teachers, and in turn forcing class sizes to greatly expand, making our schools better? How is forcing our schools to beg parents to bring in basic supplies, such as paper and pencils, making our schools better? How is removing the teacher's ability to mold the curriculum to the student and instead forcing a cookie cutter, one-size fits all test on our kids making our schools better? How is weakening the state's qualifying standards to be a teacher from a degree to a teaching certificate making our schools better? None of this is making our schools better, only worse.
It's time for liberals to answer those same questions. They are the ones closing the schools rather than challenging the teachers unions. They are the ones shorting the supply cabinet rather than trimming headcount ever so slightly. They're the ones that love developing all those common curricula as consultants and regulators. And show me one conservative who wants to weaken standards. I can show you a lot of liberals that decided our high school graduates don't really need to pass the math test after all.
The liberals have dodged these questions in the past by dutifully handing over more and more money. But even the largest DFL tax increase on the table won't buy any free passes this time.
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