Here's something that would be falling down funny if it weren't also so frustrating. The Arizona Education Network (AEN) has proposed "something truly transformational for the trajectory of our state".
Guess what it is? They want to renege on the promises made two years ago that the 1% sales tax would be temporary and make it permanent to enable more education spending.
Can you believe it? There is no idea more stale than pouring more money into our present system and hoping for the best. We've been doing it for five decades now.
Per-student inflation adjusted spending has more than doubled since 1969 alone, yet student achievement has been flat. Most of the increase seems to have gone into administration and employee benefits.
Pleas to make the sales tax permanent, far from "transformational", were actually a primary argument against its enactment in the first place. But AEN is right about one thing. Our educational system needs fundamental structural change if America is to escape lagging the other developed economies.
Education savings accounts – putting education funds under the control of parents and allowing them to spend them as they see fit for the benefit of their child – now that's transformational!
Funding streams that don't go through school districts would also be transformational. Districts are anachronisms from an era when home location determined school attendance. Today, they add a lot of expense and bureaucracy to public education, but there's no evidence that they add much value.
Wonder why AEN and other status quo folks don't advocate for these transformational changes?
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