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65% Deception's Impact on Kids
The widely respected Educational Research Service says spending by school districts averages 67.8 percent on classroom and classroom-related expenses, including books and materials, staff training, and special education. A Utah tycoon, Patrick Byrne, wants to force schools to spend 65 percent of their school budgets on the categories that exclude many of the important parts of school programs that keep our children healthy, safe and productive at school. That's unfortunate, because school districts in America are different, and their spending needs vary widely. Rural schools districts in areas with cold winters need to spend more to keep the buses in shape to transport children long distances in bad weather. Urban schools often have large numbers of children with special needs. Patrick Byrne is bankrolling a multi-state plan that would have you believe that a great deal of money is being wasted on school administrators and central office bureaucracy. He is presenting his plan as the "65% Solution" to this problem. The facts suggest that this "Solution" is more gimmick than anything else. That's why the editorial board at USAToday - the largest newspaper in America - has called the 65% Deception a "fad" that would reduce the quality of teachers, hurt rural schools and become a "useless distraction" to the true task of educating children. The American Association of School Administrators (AASA) reported that figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics compiled by the widely respected Educational Research Service show that the ratio of employees to school administrators in elementary and secondary schools is 12.8 to one. That's a higher number of employees being managed by each administrator "than in any other business or industry." According to the AASA, the Educational Research Service reported:
The bottom line is that the 65% Deception, as critics are now calling it, will cut programs and positions filled by people whose job it is to keep children healthy, safe and productive at school. These categories include school nurses, librarians, and crossing guards. The list of those services has drawn the concern of the National PTA (Parent-Teacher Association) In fact, Standard & Poor's recently completed a significant study that found that the percentage of "classroom spending by schools was not related to how well a school performed." However, the Library Research Service's review of recent studies shows that spending on school libraries is associated with higher student performance. That's why the American Association of School Librarians, the American Association of School Administrators and the National School Boards Association have joined the PTA in opposing the 65% Deception. It seems like such a strange thing to do, the question is: what is the motivation behind this effort? Byrne's political consultant, Tim Mooney, wrote a memo he circulated to legislators in his home state of Arizona. The memo lays out the intentions — to pit teachers against other school employees in order to weaken the organizations that represent them, and to bolster the electoral fortunes of politicians who back the 65% Deception. Even some leading conservatives have recognized the 65% Deception as a dangerous political stunt. The country's most influential conservative magazine, William F. Buckley's National Review, called the 65% Deception a "seductively simple and horribly wrongheaded proposal" with "no evidence to support" its claims. In a New York Times column, Rod Paige, recently head of the Bush Department of Education, called the plan "one of the worst ideas in education." Paige, like many others, worries that the 65 Percent Deception would "tie school leaders' hands" and make America's schools worse. Also, the conservative American Enterprise Institute's Frederick M. Hess has criticized the 65% Deception as stripping local school districts of control. "If a 'corporate reformer' acquired Wal-Mart and decreed that 65 percent of all revenues be spent on floor staff and in-store improvements, Wall Street would greet him with derision. There is nothing innately wrong with such moves — but well-managed firms know that one-size-fits-all management went out with lava lamps and leisure suits." Even Chester E. Finn, a leading education policy expert in the conservative movement, said the 65% Deception would "shackle a state's or school system's education budget" to an over-simplified formula. "Like most formulaic solutions, it's too simple — and apt to retard other important reforms that K-12 education also needs," Finn wrote. "An example of how it's too simple: School libraries and librarians aren't counted as "classroom" expenditures. Yet field trips are." Read more about conservative opposition to the 65 percent deception. Across the political spectrum, the message is clear: the 65% Deception is not just a gimmick, but bad policy — bad for our schools, bad for our teachers, and bad for our children. |
Who's Behind the 65% Deception 65% Deception's Impact on Kids |