education secondary

education secondary

In a conversation with Ben Bernanke, Gerry Connolly asks whether there’s enough spending to be cut from a $3.8 trillion+ budget to close a $1.3 trillion deficit.

One place he can start is the Department of Education. This column is spot on:

[T]he whole Department of Education could be scrapped. It vacuums up money and produces…what exactly?

The Dept of Ed’s budget has increased from $13.1 billion (in 2007 dollars) when it was first stood up to $77.8 billion (requested) for 2011. The number of employees has more than decupled from 450 to 4,800.

What do we have to show for all this spending?

Between 1973 and 2004, a period in which federal spending on education more than quadrupled, mathematics scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress rose just 1 percent for American 17-year-olds. Between 1971 and 2004, reading scores remained completely flat.

In a word, nothing. There is no correlation between spending and educational achievement.

The Education Department has done more than waste money. Busy bureaucrats have created reams of paperwork for teachers and administrators, pushed dubious curricula, such as bilingual education, and adopted manifold extra-educational missions. The department’s website lists hundreds of programs that bear little to no relation to schooling, including the “Spinal Cord Injuries Model Systems Program,” the “Small Business Innovation Research Program,” “Protection and Advocacy of Individual Rights,” the “Predominantly Black Institutions Program,” “Life Skills for State and Local Prisoners,” “Institute for International Public Policy,” “Grants to States to Improve Management of Drug and Violence Prevention Programs,” “Grants to Reduce Alcohol Abuse,” and the “Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program,” to name just a handful. No one checks. There is no accountability. There are no consequences for failure, except perhaps requests for even greater funding next year.

There’s no correlation between spending and educational achievement, but, as with all government agencies, there’s a very strong correlation between spending and the following year’s budget. Use it or lose it, as they say.

The Department of Education is a great, burbling vat of waste, and it is not extremist to say so.

Even if it was extremist to say so, it would be no less true. The question for Mr. Connolly’s buddies in the US Congress isn’t whether there’s enough spending to be cut, but whether Congress can stop its spending binge and addiction to debt.

This entry was posted on June 14, 2010 at 8:00 am and is filed under Education, Spending/Taxes.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

In a conversation with Ben Bernanke, Gerry Connolly asks whether there’s enough spending to be cut from a $3.8 trillion+ budget to close a $1.3 trillion deficit.

One place he can start is the Department of Education. This column is spot on:

[T]he whole Department of Education could be scrapped. It vacuums up money and produces…what exactly?

The Dept of Ed’s budget has increased from $13.1 billion (in 2007 dollars) when it was first stood up to $77.8 billion (requested) for 2011. The number of employees has more than decupled from 450 to 4,800.

What do we have to show for college punjab india all this spending?

Between 1973 and 2004, a period in which federal spending on education more than quadrupled, mathematics scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress rose just 1 percent for American 17-year-olds. Between 1971 and 2004, reading scores remained completely flat.

In a word, nothing. There is no correlation between spending and educational achievement.

The Education Department has done more than waste money. Busy bureaucrats have created reams of paperwork for teachers and administrators, pushed dubious curricula, such as bilingual education, and adopted manifold extra-educational missions. The department’s website lists hundreds of programs that bear little to no relation to schooling, college punjab india including the “Spinal Cord Injuries Model Systems Program,” the “Small Business Innovation Research Program,” “Protection and Advocacy of Individual Rights,” the “Predominantly Black Institutions Program,” “Life Skills for State and Local Prisoners,” “Institute for International Public Policy,” “Grants to States to Improve Management of Drug and Violence Prevention Programs,” “Grants to Reduce Alcohol Abuse,” and the “Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program,” to name just a handful. No one checks. There is no accountability. There are no consequences for failure, except perhaps requests for even greater funding next year.

There’s no correlation between spending and educational achievement, but, as with all government agencies, there’s mba college in punjab a very strong correlation between spending and the following year’s budget. Use it or lose it, as they say.

The Department of Education is a great, burbling vat of waste, and it is not extremist to say so.

Even if it was extremist to say so, it would be no less true. The question for Mr. Connolly’s buddies in the US Congress isn’t whether there’s enough spending to be cut, but whether Congress can stop its spending binge and addiction to debt.

This entry was posted on June 14, 2010 at 8:00 am and is filed under Education, Spending/Taxes.
You can follow any responses to mba college india this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own