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July 11, 2006
Teachers Listen Up!
by Tina Grazier
I don’t think it takes a genius to realize that tax dollars aren’t getting the job done when it comes to educating the children of America.
It frustrates me that calls for reform of the current system, calls to consider a voucher program, or to at least engage in honest discussion often ends in name calling and hurt feelings with nothing accomplished in the end. Understandably, teachers often feel targeted and unappreciated and that’s a real shame, because they would benefit greatly from a more fiscally responsible system. A short paragraph from an article by Newt Gingrich, “Time to Face Our Education Crisis�, illustrates the need for teachers and educators to join with others in the call for reform. As Newt says, the fate of our children and of the nation depend on it.“One of the favorite talking points of the left-liberal is that more money will cure what is wrong with our education system. But here is just one of the facts that exposes this for the lie that it is. Nationally, our education bureaucracy is receiving more than $440 billion a year of our tax dollars to fund our schools, but only about 61% of this is actually spent in classrooms. …The rest goes to the bureaucracy for undefined, unaccountable “overhead�. It cannot be overstated, that unless and until we make it a priority to put the welfare of our children over the welfare of the education bureaucracy, our education bureaucracy will continue to consign our children to future poverty and our nation to future failure�
Education dollars should first and foremost reach the children and teachers in the classroom. If every school district received only 20% more of those dollars what might come of it? In fact if there are any educators out there I’d like to ask the question directly. What would you do, what might you accomplish, with extra money in your classroom?
Posted by Post Scripts at July 11, 2006 11:03 AM