Make American Schools Better . . . Cut Their Funding?

The great myth of all government bureaucrats is this: if the taxpayers shovel in more money, performance will increase. The opposite is usually true. Cut a budget, and performance increases.

The best example in America life of the failure of the “spend more, and results improve” is tax-funded K-12 education.

I graduated from high school in 1959. Five years later, SAT scores began to decline. They have never gotten back to 1963′s scores.

It was in 1964 that Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs got rolling, including federal money for public education.

In 1959, the typical high school class had a student-teacher ratio above 30-to-1. Today, it is half this.

Small class sizes end when students go off to college. If small classes are good for education, why do colleges stick 100 to 1,000 students in a lecture hall? Why are discussion groups at least 25 students?

Because in college, there are no disciplinary problems. The thugs don’t go to college.

Solution: expel the thugs, early. But school districts are paid by the state in terms of students enrolled. Principals keep the thugs on campus. You get what you pay for. State funding pays for thugs.

If we really wanted better schools, we would enforce these rules: “Cut funding. Expel thugs.”