The 65 Percent Solution

The 65 Percent Solution
Posted by Chuck Muth on BattleBornNew.com Saturday 31 December 2005

Patrick Byrne, founder of Overstock.com, is leading a national effort to require that at least 65 percent of money spent on education actually goes into, get this…classrooms. Several states are already considering “First Class Education” (www.firstclasseducation.org) ballot initiatives, with the goal to have such a requirement in place in all 50 states by 2008.

The national average for in-classroom spending, according to figures compiled by the federal government’s National Center for Education Statistics, is 61 percent. Supporters of the proposal estimate that if the 65 percent requirement was in place in every state, an additional $14 billion would be available for teachers and kids. “That’s enough to buy every K-12 student in America a desktop computer or to hire 300,000 more teachers at a starting salary of $40,000 a year,” First Class Education maintains. “Most states would add hundreds of millions of dollars each year to the classroom. All of this without a tax increase!”

The idea has already been embraced by Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Democrat Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, as well as Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell - in addition to national conservative leaders such as Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform and my old boss, David Keene, over at the American Conservative Union. Indeed, who could possibly argue with the idea of putting more money into classrooms without a tax increase?

The unions, of course.

Kay Coles of the National Education Association told Roll Call that the teachers union is “certainly letting our members know that it’s a bad public policy.” The NEA complains that First Class Education doesn’t increase spending, but “rearranges it.” And the administrators union is even more opposed, since money redirected to the classroom would likely mean cut-backs on unnecessary dues-paying non-teachers who seem to pop up and grow like weeds in every school district around the country.

Richard Disney, a Republican assembly candidate in District 26 (Washoe County), has already announced that, if elected, he’ll propose First Class Education legislation which would require that 65 cents of every education dollar in Nevada be kept in the classroom. It would be nice to see all of the state’s gubernatorial and legislative candidates, Republican and Democrat alike, endorse this proposal in their own campaigns.

It’s for the children, after all.