Obama asks for reform and more CASH for education system

How many times have we reformed the education system in the United States? How many billions have been thrown at the problem? In Boston yesterday, President Obama asked for more reform and more money to solve the education woes.

From Real Clear Politics.

“People started to realize what is needed is not either, or — not either more money or more reform, it’s both and. Both more money and more reform,” President Obama said at a technology school in Boston on Tuesday.

Click on the image to watch the video over at RCP, but this quote at the end grabbed my attention. Obama wants to have education leaders who “get more flexibility in exchange for accountability.”

Huh? I guess he’s knocking the federal mandates tied to accountability, but how are you supposed to measure success (accountability) so they can have more flexibility without defined measures of success (mandates)?

Didn’t the late Sen. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and President Bush (43) solve the issue with No Child Left Behind? This top-down approach we’ve been pushing for years does not work. We’ve been throwing billions and billions at education and what do we have to show for it? Status quo at best.

How many more reforms do we need? How about getting the federal government completely out of the education business and allow the states to deal with it exclusively.

If the states need more funding for education … raise the state and local taxes. If a state wants to get out of the education business and privatize the entire system, I’m totally cool with that.

Set standards, reform and funding by the federal government just screws everything up for everyone.

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Steve McGough

Steve's a part-time conservative blogger. Steve grew up in Connecticut and has lived in Washington, D.C. and the Bahamas. He resides in Connecticut, where he’s comfortable six months of the year.

14 Comments

  1. Dimsdale on March 9, 2011 at 5:27 am

    Mo' money, mo' money, mo' money.  Since when has throwing money at the education system worked?  Look at Washington D.C., right in Øbama's backyard, and see how that has fared.

     

    And let us not forget how Øbama and the Democrat congress pulled the rug out from under the poor folks who tried to get their kids out of the money rich, education poor D.C. schools using vouchers…

     

    The money should follow the children and not the teachers.  Let the children and their parents vote with their feet.  That is the fastest form of reform.



  2. GdavidH on March 9, 2011 at 5:35 am

    I'm tired of this administration and it's union ideology, idiocy. "Click on the image to watch the video over at RCP" I think not. I would rather watch my fingernails being pulled out at this point.



  3. TomL on March 9, 2011 at 11:29 am

    Maybe he can ask sebellious for a loan, after all she's sitting on 130 billion



  4. sammy22 on March 9, 2011 at 1:23 pm

    Right, we've spent oodles of money and have little to show for. But how is bottom-up going to work? In the end, the local Boards of Ed are just spending that money. And privatizing is just another way of spending money. As I see it, the goal of the educational system is simply to distribute diplomas, not to see is the students have learned anything. The system gives diplomas to functionally illiterate students (not good).



  5. Dimsdale on March 9, 2011 at 1:31 pm

    Yes, it is all "spending money", but what we really need to concentrate on is "bang for the buck".  If it takes vouchers or private schools, who cares?

     

    We need to really make it "about the children!"



  6. TomL on March 9, 2011 at 2:49 pm

    Why do we need to send it to the Feds and then the local boards have to go begging to get 60 cents on the dollar back. We can keep it right here and keep 100%  of the cash and as Dims says get "bang for the buck"



  7. PatRiot on March 9, 2011 at 4:17 pm

    I must be getting old. Listening to "mo' money for school" is like watching sitcoms – rehash rehash.

    We have yet to get the bang for the buck we have paid for.  The State and Feds know why things aren't working out and what the solution is – but they do not have the backbone to admit to the facts and act in the students/America's best interest.

    An educated populous is self sufficient, independent and creative.  Thus creating huge amounts of profit and less babysitting than this socialist agenda we now see.

    Privitize – OMG – I see a layer of corporate "Dumbing down" enslavement at local levels to specific jobs – profits over quality, eh!  Another form of instigated working class vs working class red herring tactics to keep Americans farther removed from the folks – elite, politico, big business class who would ruin this country for the next quarter profits.



  8. PatRiot on March 9, 2011 at 5:11 pm

    And the money, Mr. President, will come from where?  Thin air? The Easter Bunny?  There are not enough teeth in America to have the tooth fairy pay for your schemes.

    Money won't fix the problem Mr. President.  Discipline, higher expectations of students and from parents,  repeating a year of school, that should wourk nicely.  And especially encouraging the team of student, parent, teacher and administration.her.



  9. Dimsdale on March 10, 2011 at 4:40 am

    Who will pay for the Treasury's printing presses when they fail from overuse?



  10. sammy22 on March 10, 2011 at 6:26 am

    I agree w/ PatRiot on discipline, expectations and repeating years. Privatizing, charter and similar "solutions" are another way of kicking the can down the road. Spending education money for athletics is mis-spending resources. Academics and athletics should be in separated in the educational systems.



  11. Lynn on March 10, 2011 at 9:27 am

    OMG, Dimsdale, it's scary. When I listened to the video, all I could think was mo' money, mo' money, mo' money.. and there it was in your response.  I don't even know where I heard that phrase, it was either on that TV show  with the Wayon Brothers or it was a movie.  Sorry Steve, I know I wasn't focusing on the subject.



  12. sammy22 on March 10, 2011 at 11:16 am

    I have read that some states, e.g. Wisconsin and Idaho are doing something about this. What I keep reading here is that the "fault" always goes to the President. When are you going to DEMAND something from your state legislators?



  13. NH-Jim on March 10, 2011 at 12:56 pm

    Whatever happened to the "Race to the Top" tax money distribution?

    Education, and the constant push to expand it, is the typical "layup under the basket".  It is a safe topic when all else in the country and world is crumbling (like Rome burning).  I am beyond tired of hearing p<a title="State-Federal Education Policy" href="http://www.archives.nysed.gov/edpolicy/research/res_essay_preface.shtml&quot; rel="nofollow">resident after president lecturing us on pulling more hard working cash out of our wallets to send to the federal government that, somehow, finds a way to lose a large chunk of it, then, according to the Dept of Ed's wishes, divvies out to the states  who then find a way to lose another chunk of it and, then to the municipalities that use it to pay for the mandates of the former.

     

    Can we, once and for all, realize that money is not the answer!  Remember that horrendous waste of our money called the Stimulus?  It has become nothing but a <a title="With the federal Stimulus Money Gone… – NYTimes" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/08/education/08educ.html?_r=1&quot; rel="nofollow">one-year stop-gap expenditure of $100 billion that has resulted in nothing but "kicking the kid down the road" and shoring up 250,000 teachers' jobs.

     



  14. sammy22 on March 11, 2011 at 6:07 am

    The money trickles down to keep teachers employed (pretty good), the administrators employed (not so good), all sorts of support jobs (less than good) and various hangers-on. Picking which sector to down-size can cost votes, hence the apparent status quo.



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