To all those out there who are clamoring for “market-based” approaches to education reform, please tell me this: What kind of a business slashes inventory in the face of increasing demand?
Because that is exactly what’s going on with public education in America today. Many states that are experiencing the sharpest increases in student enrollment (pdf) are, at the same time, mandating the most extreme cutbacks in education spending, effectively reducing the inventory of education opportunity available to the nation’s children and youth. Just take a look at Texas.
Texas this year added the highest number of new students to its system of any state in the country, taking in nearly 85,000 new students. Faced with demand increases of this magnitude, how did members of the Republican-dominated state legislature respond? By putting forth bills that would reduce the state’s public school budget by at least 13 percent — nearly $3.5 billion a year. According to the New York Times, “School administrators predict that as many as 100,000 school employees would have to be laid off to absorb the cuts.”
In Florida, a state that added over 15,500 new students, education cuts proposed by its Tea Party-backed governor could lead to 20,000 teacher layoffs.
