MUCH MISCHIEF has been suggested in the current General Assembly session, with yet some hope outstanding that not all of it will actually occur. No such luck regarding the so-called “65 percent solution” requiring local school boards to spend 65 percent of their total outlays on “the classroom.”
Both houses have passed this creature, which may have the secret motive of destroying public education as it is known today. Given that Gov. Sonny Perdue advanced this idea, there’s no likelihood he will refuse to sign it. It’s a done deal, declaring for all to see that, in Georgia, the football field and baseball diamond are class-rooms while librarians and books have nothing important to contribute to the education of the young.
Those who believe this newspaper’s editorial page is too hard on the Republicans currently in power, and who many not recall that it was a Democrat who once sued us (and lost) for telling the truth about his party, might consider this headline from an editorial in the Dalton Daily Citizen: “Removing local school control an asinine idea.”
IT WENT ON to say: “It was too much to expect from the Georgia legislature to get through the 2006 session without doing something really stupid. That said, they have outdone themselves.”
Anyone remaining puzzled as to why Georgia scores at or near the very bottom in educational achievement need only look to the General Assembly. That the dumb are now leading this dumbing down becomes obvious by asking a simple question.
If mandating that 65 percent of all money to operate schools be spent in the classroom is a miracle cure for what ails education then how come every state that doesn’t have this rule is delivering better results in the classroom than Georgia?
To order a one-size-fits-all distribution of education money is utterly illogical in a state as diverse as this one, with rich and poor school districts, privileged and underprivileged student bodies, with great and small distances separating pupils from their classrooms.
Many educators have pointed this out to the legislators but were ignored. After all, what could they possibly know since they’re not politicians - a job to which, it should be noted, an illiterate can aspire.
YET, THE REAL threat posed by this 65 percent rule is actually not contained in the formula itself. Much has been made of the fact that administrators, principals, guidance counselors, social workers, librarians and media specialists, school nurses along with transportation, maintenance costs and plant operations, food services and teacher training now are lumped into a single category labeled as contributing nothing all that important.
To become really alarmed, one must look elsewhere.
First, this 65-percent notion is not something Georgia Republicans made up. It is the brainchild of a lobbying group known as First Class Education, which seeks to have all 50 states adopt it.
It has already been reported in the press that the group’s documents admit to “hopes that the issue will create rivalries between teachers and administrators while boosting Republicans’ political credibility on education issues, making it easier for them to build support for charter schools and private school vouchers.”
In other words: Make public schools so bad it will make government vouchers to send students to private institutions (including religious ones) look like the only way out.
PERHAPS EVEN worse is this largely unnoticed aspect of what Georgia is now adopting: A state mandate on how all school money must be spent.
Instead of only being able to tell local school boards how state-provided money for edu-cation should be spent, Georgia is now ordering that 65 percent of all local school property taxes, and federal education grants, be spent in a particular way - including maintaining prep sports even if all the libraries must be closed.
This is an immense seizure of governmental power, and by a political party that prattles constantly about big government being bad government to boot.
There are numerous “escape clauses” written into this legislation that permit school districts to slip past its demands, particularly if their classroom achievements excel without adhering to the formula. The real damage is in the institutionalization of this kind of thinking, completely identical to the “big brother knows best” mentality so regularly displayed by Democrats when they held power.
THIS FORMULA approach to budget allocations is foolish. The thinking behind it is downright dangerous.
