Wisconsin Schools Need a Real
100% Solution,
Not Mark Green’s Flawed 70% Solution
Gubernatorial candidate Mark Green on Aug. 14 unveiled an
education funding plan that requires 70% of all K-12 tax revenue
to be spent on classroom expenditures. Green claimed this
would shift $295 million into instruction without raising
taxes, since Wisconsin currently spends only 66.4% of school
revenue on “instruction” and “instruction-related”
activities.
This is a flawed solution to a real problem. The plan would
do nothing to help Wisconsin schoolchildren.
Similar proposals have been floating around state capitals
over the past few years, all of them sparked by, supported,
and funded by a national conservative-advocacy group known
as First Class Education.
In its various formats, the idea has been blasted by experts
as varied as Rod Paige, President. Bush’s first Secretary
of Education; the National PTA; the National School Boards
Association; Standard & Poors, the financial analysis
firm; Frederick Hess of the conservative American Enterprise
Institute; the Wisconsin School Administrators Alliance; the
American Library Association; and both major teacher unions,
the National Education Association and the American Federation
of Teachers.
What’s wrong with the idea?
- Goodbye, local control. Green is implying
that local school officials don’t know what they’re
doing, and an arbitrary statistical formula can make better
decisions. As Hess put it, “Well-managed firms know
that one-size-fits-all management went out with lava lamps
and leisure suits.”
- Research finds no correlation between
student achievement and the percentage of budget earmarked
for particular costs. “Student performance does not
noticeably or consistently increase at 65 percent, or any
other percentage spent on instruction,” the New York
financial firm said. [Most states where the idea has been
launched call for a 65% threshold, rather than Green’s
70%. But Green says Wisconsin already spends more than 65%
on classroom activities.]
- Former Education Secretary Paige, a Republican,
wrote an op-ed in the New York Times this summer saying
it’s “one of the worst ideas in education”
and that it would “tie school leaders’ hands
at a time when they need more freedom to innovate.”
- It would hurt rural school districts
that rely heavily on school busing, and on any district
that believes strongly in having quality libraries, counselors,
and other ‘non-classroom’ services.
- Districts could eventually get around
the intent of the plan by reclassifying non-classroom expenditures.
- It avoids dealing with the real
solutions to our educational crisis, which among other things
requires dealing with the actual resource needs of schools.
Ironically, Green made his 70% proposal the same week he
refused to promise to continue the state’s commitment
to fund two-thirds of public education.
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