q Stop the 65% Deception

MEMORANDUM

July 3, 2006
TO: Interested parties
FR: Real Education Solutions
RE: Conservative criticism of the 65 Percent Deception

Last week, Rod Paige, the former head of the Bush Department of Education, became the latest conservative to criticize what has become known as the "65% Deception." In a New York Times column on Tuesday, Paige called the plan "one of the worst ideas in education," saying it had the potential to make America's schools worse.

Paige's noteworthy op-ed was only the latest in a growing chorus of conservative voices opposing the 65% Deception:

In an article in the country's most influential conservative magazine, The National Review, conservative policy experts Jay P. Greene and Jonathan Butcher called the 65% Deception a "seductively simple and horribly wrongheaded proposal" with "no evidence to support" its claims.
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 former assistant secretary of education under Ronald Reagan, 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."

These conservative voices are only part of the diverse coalition of people from across the political spectrum who agree that the 65% Deception would hurt America's schools. An objective study by Standard & Poor's found that the percentage of "classroom spending by schools was not related to how well a school performed."

Despite this, proponents of the 65% Deception continue to lobby for this misguided policy proposal. The proponents have clearly shown that the 65% Deception is designed for political goals — not to improve schools. Read their internal memo here. For more information, please contact Real Education Solutions by e-mail, news@realeducationsolutions.com.

Who's Behind the 65% Deception

65% Deception's Impact on Kids