School funds: What's the need, where's the waste? - sacbee.com

The article posted below talks about an issue that has become near and dear to my heart in teh past couple of weeks. The question of how money is spent in education. As readers who scan through my previous posts will see, I have a strongly held belief that public schools need to adopt some fundamental changes, changes based on market theories in order to advance.

I found particularly interesting in this article a public panel being assembled, whose "purpose is not only to determine the needs but also to consider "the efficient use of education funds," meaning to find out where money is being wasted." What is also interesing is that the panel is being funded by four private foundations with a keen interest in education, Hewlett, Irvine, Gates and Stuart Foundations.

For decades, the common response to education problems has been to throw money at the problem, whatever it was, we needed new funding. But as a taxpayer, there is a finite limit to the amount of money I am willing to see spent on programs and bureaucracies that consistently yeild poor results. If I ran a business like localities run schools, I would be out of business.

While it may not have been the intention or at best a secondary intention, the focus of No Child Left Behind on provided quantified, standardized data is more of a link between educational success and funding levels. What many citizens and taxpayer like myself are doing is the simple calculation, if test scores are not improving and more of my money is being allocated to improve scores, am I getting the most out of my hard earned money. The answer is no.

Thus comes this California panel. By examining where money is being WASTED, perhaps the country's biggest state can provide a few answers to the rest of the country. In short, we don't need to spend more money, we need to spend more wisely.

I realize that such a statement is not exactly earth shattering, but NCLB will hopefully force more school officials to begin to understand where money is spent and where it is being wasted and ask themselves, Why?


Opinion - Peter Schrag: School funds: What's the need, where's the waste? - sacbee.com