Time: Wed Oct 01 05:51:46 1997
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Date: Wed, 01 Oct 1997 05:25:03 -0700
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From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: Education: The Real Budget Time Bomb (fwd)
<snip>
>
>
>
>The following article by Dr. Van Eaton of the Lincoln Heritage Institute
>and Manager of the Economics Department of Hillsdale College outlines the
>events that have been set in motion by the Congress and President. For
>additional information, or to read additional article on the status of
>U.S. education contact C. Grady Drago, President of the Lincoln Heritage
>Institute, or go to the Institute's home page
>http://members.aol.com/lhiadmof. I also suggest you ask about the
>GUARDIAN program.
>
> "Education: The Real Budget Time Bomb"
>By Charles Van Eaton, Ph.D., Chairman of Lincoln Heritage Institute's
>Advisory Committee on Economics and Finance
>
>Almost immediately after agreement was reached on the broad outlines of
>the FY 1998 budget, the president said, "This is the greatest increase in
>spending for education in three decades. Education will be the big
>winner. Education is at the very core of our new budget--an investment
>which will carry us into the 21st Century."
>
>I take this to mean that our president is getting essentially what he
>wants in this budget. He has spoken of this budget as a budget which
>preserves what he calls "our values." Central to that value is more
>spending on education. Whether it's spending to help children read or
>spending to make it possible for kids to go to college, this budget aims
>to accomplish these goals. (I note that there is absolutely nothing wrong
>with this. My concern is not with who got what, but whether what he got
>is right for not just the country now, but for the future as well.)
>
>On education: If it actually goes through as he wants, the education
>component of this budget--particularly the provision which provides tax
>deductions and credits for higher education costs--will quickly become an
>entitlement monster. It will be almost impossible to eliminate even when
>(not if, but when) evidence makes it clear that this provision will make
>the matters worse rather than better. Once begun, this subsidy coupled
>with more spending on K-12 education programs, will pour billions down
>what will quickly become a fiscal black hole which absorbs everything
>which goes in without emitting any thing of substance.
>
>Regarding spending on higher education via tax credits, there is a piece
>of history far too often ignored: the more higher education is
>subsidized, the more it costs. The more it costs, the more it has to be
>subsidized. (College administrators know enough economics to understand
>the concept of "reservation price." They know that when families are
>being subsidized, they can raise their tuition charges so that when it's
>all over the typical family will still have to dig a certain amount out
>of their own pocket to cover the bill. Subsidizing costs will only raise
>costs. It's a vicious circle. This circle has to be broken. Now is the
>time to do it. Someone of courage needs to stand on the floor of either
>Chamber of Congress and say, "Not one dime more for education. Not one
>dime less because the demons who run the system have locked-in their
>budgets, but not one dime more this year or any year in the future. Not
>one dime more because we all know, but have been scared to admit it, that
>more money now cannot do anything good and would certainly do harm. It's
>time to starve the beast."
>
>I first entered the college classroom as a teacher in 1965. I found
>most of my students ready to handle the level of mathematics one
>generally has to use in teaching economics. In addition, I found their
>writing and reasoning skills to be pretty solid. My students were not
>top-of-the-class types because this was not an ordinary college crowd.
>These were students who weren't quite ready for the rigors of full-time
>college work. This was evening college and most of my pupils held
>full-time jobs during the day.
>
>Now, in my 32nd year in the college classroom, I'm teaching young people
>who come to our reasonably selective college from the top fifteen percent
>of some of the better high schools in America. Yet I continue to find
>that they are not one whit better or smatter than the kids I had long
>ago. Indeed they are far less well prepared in mathematics and writing
>than were my working-class southern students long ago in the days before
>the birth of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and the beginning of unending
>dollars for higher education costs.
>
>Federal spending on education of the type which exists today was
>unknown when I attended college and virtually unknown when I began to
>teach at the college level. There were federal student loan programs in
>the early and mid-1960s -- largely a product of the scare which followed
>our early failure and Russia's early success in launching a space
>satellite. Money poured from Washington to help train scientists for the
>future space wars which everyone knew were upon us. Like all federal
>spending, it spilled over into all kinds of programs, few of which had
>anything to do with training scientists and engineers. Once on the books,
>and once the colleges found their way to the trough, it grew, and hasn't
>stopped growing.
>
>And from that point on, the cost of sending a kid to college has
>continued to rise faster than the rate of inflation. Indeed, if one were
>to track their relative cost increases from the mid-1960s to the present,
>one would find that both health care and higher education costs have
>increased at about the same rate--and for the same reason: both have been
>heavily subsidized by taxpayer money passed through Washington.
>
>Kids do not read as well or as early as they once did. They are not
>as computationally competent as they once were at the end of twelve years
>of schooling. They know less history. They know little or no geography.
> In the face of this our president and college administrators all across
>the nation are crying for more support for higher education because they
>can argue that college training is more important than ever.
>
>Why is college so important? College is important because high schools
>have become so weak. High school has been weakened because junior-high
>school has become so weak. Junior high school has become so weak because
>elementary school has become so weak. Elementary school has become weak
>because kids are having trouble learning to read. Kids are having
>trouble reading because they are being taught reading by methods
>developed in colleges of education which seem to have had -- and which
>will continue to have if the president gets what he wants -- more federal
>money to play with in an effort to justify more of the federal money they
>love to play with. Now our president wants more money to send kids to
>college so they can volunteer to go out and teach kids to read by at
>least the third grade.
>
>Kids used to routinely be able to read at the end of the first grade.
>Kids in Wesley Elementary in Houston, Texas, read above norms at the end
>of the first grade. They also outscore other kids in the Houston system
>in all areas be the end of the third grade. But their principal and
>their teachers are considered out of step by the Houston education
>establishment -- indeed they have been attacked by the education
>professionals who have come to their current level of destructive power
>by virtue of all the federal money spent on higher education in the past.
>
>Wesley Elementary serves black and hispanic kids. Single-parent
>families are the norm. The principal is black. So are most of the
>teachers. They use phonics to teach reading. They use old fashioned
>drill to teach arithmetic. They use directed teaching methods -- the old
>fashioned way of teaching. And they use discipline.
>
>All the federal spending in the past was aimed at getting rid of the old
>methods still stubbornly used at Wesley Elementary. Keep feeding the
>monster with federal money and they may succeed in killing off all the
>old fashioned folks like those at Wesley Elementary. Then after more
>billions some future president may call for more federal money to assure
>that all kids will be able to read by the fourth grade.
>
>Wesley Elementary works not because we spend money on education. It
>works because courageous people refuse to be intimidated by all the folks
>whose power if fed by federal money. The issue is not more money. The
>issue is starving the monster which is trying to devour the schools which
>work. It's time to stop feeding the education monster with more federal
>money -- whether direct or indirect. I'm waiting for some conservative to
>make this case in this budget. But I don't think I'll hold my breath.
>-------
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>
>
>
========================================================================
Paul Andrew Mitchell, Sui Juris : Counselor at Law, federal witness
B.A., Political Science, UCLA; M.S., Public Administration, U.C. Irvine
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