The Taxpayers Get an Education

The legislature is proposing to spend an additional 35 million dollars on education in each of the next two years, and that is a "nice gesture."

You might recall that our educators banded together recently and sued us claiming that we are so underfunding their system that we are failing in our constitutional obligation to provide a quality education to the children of our State. I'm not exactly sure how they, the educators, escaped scrutiny in the analysis of our education but, apparently, they did.

It was not much of a surprise that the Montana Supreme Court agreed with the education bureaucracy and directed the legislature to change the way schools are funded. So, here we are facing an additional 70 million in spending over the next two years, and our friends in the schools are apparently turning up their noses at it.

The education bureaucracy has had almost exclusive control of our schools during the last 30 years as the test scores of gone down, down, down. And there has been only one solution offered: "More Money." And, despite the posturing from the schools, they have gotten more money. Unfortunately, it hasn't worked.

It should be readily foreseeable to anyone with even a modern education that if those in charge of a failing system offer only one solution that doesn't work, eventually the 'customers' of the system will demand a role in the reform. Maybe it's just perception, but the educators would have a lot more credibility if they offered solutions that didn't always seem geared toward pay increases. Am I wrong, or does it least seem like the increased money for schools is always mentioned in the same sentence as raises for school employees?