The Question Conservative Republicans Dread

But should they?

The question liberal reporters love to ask conservative politcians when the subject of budget cuts come up:

"Are you willing to cut funds to education?"

If results are important, maybe those conservatives should respond with:

Hell, Yes!

From Investor's Business Daily:

Money For Nothing
editorial

The Education Department is getting one of its largest spending increases under the president's proposed budget. And what can the country expect in return for all this added spending? Not much.

History shows us that spending increases do not equate with improved results. Though there are a lot of problems in America's public school system, a lack of funding is not one of them.

The Heritage Foundation says that since 1985, five years after the Education Department was established, "inflation-adjusted federal spending on K-12 education has increased 138%." Yet during that time, enough time for bright minds to put a lot of money to use, "indicators of educational improvement such as increases in academic achievement and graduation rates have remained flat."

For instance, in the 1990-91 school year, the graduation rate was 73.7%. It crept up to 74.7% in 2004-05 before slipping to 73.4% the next year.

Reading scores have also stagnated. Rather than increasing as spending has increased, they have gone sideways for a quarter of a century. (See chart.)

Math scores on the SAT have gone nowhere. In 1966-67, the mean for that section was 516. In 2007-08 it was 515.

American kids are not even making great strides in geography. In 1994, the fourth-grade average was 206. Seven years later, it was 209. Over that same period, eighth-graders went from 260 to 262 and high school seniors haven't been able to move from 285.

Meanwhile, science scores for eighth-graders fell from 148 in 1996 to 147 in 2005, though fourth-grade scores rose from 145 in 2000 to 149 five years later.

Yearly spending on public education, including state and local dollars, on grades kindergarten through 12 is now well beyond a half-trillion dollars. That's a big chunk of the economy. For that amount of money, our kids should be getting far better educations. [link]

This, coupled with an earlier report that shows that lavish government funding of pre-K education serves no worthwhile purpose,should give politicians every reason in the world to say, "Hell, yes, we can cut education spending!  Obviously there'll be no detrimental effects.  Why not make drastic cuts?"

They can say it.  They won't.  Our schools need more money.  Otherwise the kids will grow up stupid.  That's what all the experts say.

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Just think what Abraham Lincoln might have accomplished had he more than a few months of formal education ... what Benjamin Franklin might have been had he not been taken out of school after only two years of study ... what wondrous works Charles Dickens might have crafted had he not been removed from school at age 12 to go to work to support his family ... what George Washington might have done for his country had he even one day of formal education in his entire life ...

Nah.  We all know it takes lots and lots of money.

Chart courtesy of IBD.
Click on the image to enlarge it.