Nixon and Education

Matt Miller (a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress) wrote an interesting Op-Ed piece in the December 27 Los Angeles Times. He was dealing with the consequences of that sacred American value – perhaps outmoded in a world of global competition where the failure to upgrade our national educational standards in public primary and secondary public has dire consequences for the country as a whole – local control of public schools.

In effect, a child in this system is saddled with the budget, quality and opportunity of whatever school district he or she happens to live in, particularly difficult in rundown, over-crowded, underfunded and even dangerous inner city schools, where the parent(s) often cannot afford to move away (or whose social and cultural limitations do not give them that choice). The great “leveling field of opportunity” that we believe our public school system to be is a myth.

Without even addressing the quality of the teachers themselves (which is essential), Miller notes that where an inner city school district might allocated $10,000 per pupil, a rich suburban district nearby might spend $17,000. Schools are normally funded by property tax, and it seems painfully obvious that many school districts are often plagued with low-valued real estate. It’s hardly a level playing field.

A further erosion of effectiveness lies in the massive mismanagement of certain school districts – Miller notes Newark and Washington, D.C. – where incompetent, overloaded bureaucracies, simply make bad choices and waste taxpayer dollars. Again, this reality stems from the notion that local control of schools is a necessity. While the No Child Left Behind Act actually rated school performance, its failure to provide even close to the required funding to address the issue has had spotty and very limited success, at best. But just “hiring” more teachers without more is not the answer.

Teachers with seniority often have the choice of the schools to which they are assigned, so dangerous and troubled inner city schools are thus often saddled with the least experienced educators. With a few exceptions, these neophytes simply cannot cope with the challenges. Not only do these teachers often quickly leave the system in frustration, but the students who need the most help get the teachers with the least ability. Poor performance is thus reinforced.

Enter the thoughts and plans of President Richard Nixon’s administration from more than three decades ago. Miller: “Nixon’s commissioner of education said publicly that the federal government should pay 25 percent to 30 percent of the cost of public education. His domestic policy staff considered a new national tax, with the proceeds distributed to states that drastically reduced state and local property taxes while closing the financing gaps among their school districts… In the end, of course, Nixon found he had bigger problems to deal with [the cost of the Vietnam War was crippling]. But he left a blueprint for Mr. Obama to follow. The federal government contributed just $45 billion of the $488 billion spent on primary and secondary schools in 2004 and 2005 (the most recent data available). That’s just nine cents of the nation’s education dollar.”

Meeting the recommendations of the Nixon administration today, which would effectively aid cash-strapped states and level off deficiencies between school districts, might cost us $100 billion a year, maybe more (and that is in addition to repairing and building schools under President-elect Obama’s infrastructure-jobs program), but as I have hammered home in previous blogs, given the rate that our national debt is growing to counter this managed depression, we need a productive work force to pay it back in the future or face staggering inflation and a concomitant decline in our quality of life. (To put the cost in perspective, we spend approximately $10.3 billion on the Iraq war every month.)

I’ve suggested a number of ways to attract more young people to choose the teaching profession in the future, but eliminating federal (and even state) taxes on income derive from teaching (not administering) would be an easy step we could take to find teaching candidates right now. There are many qualified educators, currently working in other professions, who would be ready to get back to the classroom… if only a decent living was possible. The time for action is now; the clock is ticking on this time-bomb.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message.