aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Monday, March 20, 2006

The 65% distraction

In an excellent post on The Rightwing’s War on the Public Schools, Nathan Newman exposes the 65% Solution for what it is:

[D]istraction is what the newest rightwing educational campaign - the so-called ”65% Solution”—is all about.

The proposal requires each district to spend at least 65% of all revenue “in the classroom.” It’s poll-tested and sounds good-- Texas, Kansas, and Louisiana passed the law last year, and Georgia passed it just last month, with many other states proposing similar bills. 

The problem is that their definition of spending “inside the classroom” excludes teacher training, speech therapy for students, curriculum development, and school libraries, while athletics and field trips count as “in the classroom.” It’s hard to explain how a rule that creates incentives for a school to cut libraries to fund uniforms for the football team is some magic solution to educational problems. 

And there is zero evidence from the experience of school districts that the 65% mandate will make a difference.  The credit-rating agency Standard & Poor’s published a report last November which found “some of the highest- performing districts spend less than 65%, and some of the lowest- performing districts spend more than 65%” and concluded that “no minimum spending allocation is a ‘silver bullet’ solution for raising student achievement.”

The whole post is a must read.