RIGHT DIRECTION, WRONG DESTINATION (via dick thompson)

A modest proposal (Daniel Weintraub, January 13, 2006, Sacramento Bee)

It hasn't received a huge amount of attention since no one is screaming about it, but the increase in education spending in the governor's budget proposal comes to a cool $600 per student in K-12, or an 8 percent increase over the current year. I offer a modest proposal here for how that money might be best spent.

I say we give half of it to the districts to cover general cost increases and give the rest to the teachers to decide how to spend. Really. Why not authorize each classroom teacher to spend $300 per student more in whatever way they think would best improve the education of those children? Even better, I'd take that money and give it all to the teachers who are teaching kids in the bottom half of the socioeconomic spectrum, where the achievement gap is the largest. Since half of the total increase would be going to half the kids, that would bump the amount back up to $600 for each of those kids.

If we did that, a teacher with 30 such kids in say, inner city Los Angeles, would get a chit worth $18,000. I say let them decide how to spend it.

Mr. Weintraub's heart is in the right place, but he's normally more sensible than this. Give chits for the full amount that CA spends per student to the kids' parents and let them band together to hire better teachers or move their kids to better schools.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 13, 2006 4:14 PM