Throwing Inner City Kids Under The School Bus
As if we need more reasons to oppose the Scheme-ulous Bill, I give you wasteful school construction spending.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the bill will spend nearly twice as much on schools than we did in 2007. Some $88.6M will go to the Milwaukee Public School system even though the city currently has 15 VACANT chools and enrollment is actually dropping.
To understand the problem with the stimulus bill, it helps to focus on specific parts. Take the $142 billion for schools, which is nearly double the total outlays of the Department of Education in 2007. Now consider that much of this cash would go to public-school systems that don’t even need the money for its earmarked purposes.
The Milwaukee Public School system, for example, would receive $88.6 million over two years for new construction projects under the House version of the stimulus — even though the district currently has 15 vacant school buildings and declining enrollment. Between 1990 and 2008, inflation-adjusted MPS spending rose by 35%, per-pupil spending increased by 36% and state aid grew by 58%. Over the same period, enrollment fell by a percentage point and is projected to continue falling, leaving the system with enough excess capacity for some 22,000 students.
“In general, MPS facilities have been described by school officials as being in good to better-than-good condition,” reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “The kind of situations that create urgent needs for renovation or new construction in some cities have not been on the priority list for MPS officials in recent years.”
What’s worse, though, is the bill prohibits dollars from going to students to attend private schools. It just so happens that Milwaukee has one of the better voucher programs in the nation which is helping to educate otherwise disadvantaged students.
The Milwaukee situation is instructive for another reason. The city is home to the country’s oldest and largest school voucher program, which provides public funds for children to attend private schools. Families who participate in the means-tested voucher program receive $6,700 per pupil, while the city spends more than $13,000 per student. In addition to saving the taxpayers money, voucher students graduate at higher rates and outscore their counterparts on reading and math exams, which is one reason waiting lists for the program are common.
Yet language in the stimulus bill expressly prohibits any dollars from going toward financial assistance to students attending private schools. In other words, Milwaukee can use the money to build schools it doesn’t need, but not to expand education programs that are producing better outcomes for disadvantaged kids. The Senate version excludes provisions in the House bill for teacher merit pay and charter schools now serving more than a million students, two more education reforms that are gaining popularity nationwide despite opposition from teachers unions and local school boards.
So, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelousy, Barack Obama & Company - the ones who claim the high ground when it comes to education - are doing nothing more than throwing disadvantaged kids under the bus subjecting them to worse educations and ultimately worse futures.
Change!
Cross-posted at Conservatives with Attitude!
