Primary and secondary education are one of the core functions of local government, and the state government has an obligation to help fund that mission, to the extent necessary to do the job.
Charter schools in Colorado outperform their district school counterparts, on tighter budgets
According to the Federal Department of Education measurements, Colorado’s charter schools vastly outperform district schools, in both the AYP and the NAEP assessments. They have increased their lead in these measures over the years, and spend roughly 70% of what public district schools do.
As importantly, teachers in charter schools report being happier and more satisfied in their jobs, despite the pay differential. This is not an argument for cutting teacher pay, but it is an argument for liberating them to do their jobs.
- We need to remove the stifling rules and restrictions that are crippling our public schools and trapping hundreds of thousands of children in an educational system that leaves them unprepared for success in life.
As valuable as a college education is, many well-paying jobs, especially service jobs, can be had without a college degree. We are fortunate to have a wide range of technical and trade schools here in the Denver area.
- Our high schools need to provide vocational and trade training for those students who are not on the college track, to prepare them to get the most out of these technical schools.
Our Colleges and Universities Need to Adapt
I am a graduate of a public university. I took advantage of students loans to finance my master’s degrees. Few people recognize the value of quality public colleges and universities more than I do.
But for too long, our colleges and universities have seen themselves as immune from the economic realities that the rest of us have to face on a daily basis. Student loans helped their early recipients to secure an education otherwise beyond their reach. However, they have also allowed colleges to raise tuitions at far above the inflation rate for decades, saddling their more recent recipients with crippling debt. According to the highly respected Wilson Quarterly, they have spent the money largely on building their brands rather than educating their students. Parents and students are starting to notice, leading them to question whether those four years are really worth the money they’re paying for them.
- Our colleges and universities need to admit more students, taking advantage of economies of scale, and re-introducing many professors to the teaching profession.
- They need to follow the lead of increasing-successful for-profit universities, and expand the use of distance-learning and the Internet as a teaching tool.
Raising taxes is not the answer.
Given the deep recession, which has left record numbers unemployed for record lengths of time, it is unrealistic, unfair, and unproductive to try to raise taxes on wages those citizens aren’t earning. Likewise, the legislative majority – backed by my opponent – sought the ability to raise taxes at any time, by any amount, as long as they promised to use the money for education. Given their fundamental unseriousness about reining in spending, we would be foolish to believe that any legislature would abide by such a promise.
Those who would argue in favor of virtually unlimited funding for public schools, have to contend with some unpleasant facts:
According to the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, on an hourly basis, public school teachers in Denver earn virtually the same amount as their white-collar private-sector counterparts.
We are now spending, in Colorado, roughly the national average per pupil on public school education. More importantly, there is only a rough correlation between per-pupil spending and student performance. The District of Columbia spends the most per student in the country, for the lowest test scores. Detroit pays its teachers, including benefits, the equivalent of $48/hour for substandard student performance. According to the OECD, virtually all the countries we compete against spend less – sometimes much less – per student than we do, both at the primary and secondary levels.
