Arne Duncan Is Making Our Point

Barack Obama’s Education Secretary “unleashed a barrage of dismal statistics” about South Carolina’s public schools today, apparently attempting to guilt S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford into claiming $700 million in bureaucratic bailout money – or less than 10% of the total $7.3 billion that the Palmetto State is slated to receive from Washington D.C.

From the NY Times:

Mr. Duncan unleashed a barrage of dismal statistics about the South Carolina schools, noting that only 15 percent of the state’s black students are proficient in math and that the state has one of the nation’s worst high school graduation rates.

“Those are heartbreaking results; those are children who will never have a chance to compete,” Mr. Duncan said. “For South Carolina to stand on the sidelines and say that the status quo is O.K., that defies logic.”

Actually, Arne, pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the same, old broken system is what “defies logic.”

That’s the status quo. That’s what we’ve been doing for years in this state, and you seem to have a pretty good handle on the results.

Plus, if money was so tight, couldn’t our public schools could just tap some of that $800 million they’ve got sitting around in the bank? We understand keeping modest general and capital reserves, but some of these districts have 18-20% of their budgets sitting around in reserve funds.

That’s insane.

Of course what’s really insane is that we’re spending twice the $$$ per student what we were a decade ago and absolutely nothing has changed. We’re still last in the nation, and pouring more money into the “status quo” (where less than fifty cents on the dollar actually makes it into the classroom) isn’t going to change that.

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