Money Won't Fix Schools

Richard Cohen points out the silliness of the argument that more tax money will fix public education:

The eight Democratic presidential candidates assembled in Washington last week for another of their debates and talked, among other things, about public education. They all essentially agreed that it was underfunded -- one system "for the wealthy, one for everybody else," as John Edwards put it. Then they all got into cars and drove through a city where teachers are relatively well paid, per-pupil spending is through the roof and -- pay attention here -- the schools are among the very worst in the nation. When it comes to education, Democrats are ineducable.

One candidate after another lambasted George W. Bush, the Republican Party and, of course, the evil justices of the Supreme Court. But not a one of them even whispered a word of outrage about a public school system that spends $13,000 per child -- third-highest among big-city school systems -- and produces pupils who score among the lowest in just about any category you can name. The only area in which the Washington school system is No. 1 is in money spent on administration. Chests should not swell with pride.

The litany of more and more when it comes to money often has little to do with what, in the military, are called facts on the ground: kids and parents. It does have a lot to do with teachers unions, which are strong supporters of the Democratic Party. Not a single candidate offered anything close to a call for real reform. Instead, a member of the audience could reasonably conclude that if only more money were allocated to these woe-is-me school systems, things would right themselves overnight.

Having come from a family of educators (my mom and both of my wife's parents were teachers) I can tell you that there's a lot more to good schools than the amount of funding. All three teachers in my family spent a considerable amount of their own funds to provide things for the students that the school wouldn't provide, all to make the learning experience better. They were dedicated to their kids and to making sure they learned what they were supposed to learn.

You can throw massive dollars at the schools, as they do in Washington, but if the teachers don't care, it won't matter. The parents also have to have a commitment to excellence, and that's often lacking in those districts with high failure rates. Teacher's unions have managed to kill nearly every effort to put accountability in the teaching profession (unlike most other professions), and as long as their only interest is in protecting the jobs and salaries of their union members, the dismal failure rate on many of those big inner city districts will continue regardless of the amount of funding.