"Total tax collections in the U.S. are expected to be $2,667,000,000,000 in 1998. This represents 35.4% of the country's total income. In comparison, medieval serfs paid an effective tax rate of 33.3 percent." (Source: Just Facts)
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"Total tax collections in the U.S. are expected to be $2,667,000,000,000 in 1998. This represents 35.4% of the country's total income. In comparison, medieval serfs paid an effective tax rate of 33.3 percent." (Source: Just Facts) |
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For a number of years, there has been a trend that cloaks advocacy of larger government and more spending in a mantle of concern "for our children". As government has seized more and more power from parents, taking on, first, education (so as to be able to ensure that all children are indoctrinated with the government-approved spin on history and economics - and this is not a spin which respects liberty in either realm), and, next, day care (so as to get an earlier start on affecting the moral compass of our children), and now children's health care (so as to find yet another way to prove they care more than parents do), advocates have then asserted the demand (from someone - usually them) to "pay for all of this".
On a local level, this is typically manifested in the local budget and bonding battles. Here, advocates of spending restraint, or even (gasp) tax cuts, have been assaulted with the mantra of "mean-spirited", "against the children", and even freely expressed desires that those older citizens worried about the state of their fixed incomes in the face of assaults by ever-increasing taxes "would just die off".
Of course, the opposed spending is typically for increases in the salaries of teachers and administrators who already make relatively enormous amounts of money in the face of a complete lack of even the most basic accountability (such as pay increases linked to performance review or student academic performance). Or for programs which would employ more such persons, regardless of any demonstrated or demonstratable effect of such programs. Or, as in the case of the latest salvo, here in the Town of Windsor, the Windsor High School Enhancement Project bond issue, it is simply to improve the working conditions of these same teachers and adminstrators.
It started as a small and reasonable renovation, which would, even now, cost no more than 7 million dollars. That would have brought the buildings up to code and ensured that they were both safe and sustainable. But as time went on, and every special interest group surrounding the trough of public education got their favorite item in, the project ballooned from 9.5 million dollars to its current 35 million dollars of intended spending.
12 new classrooms are in this package now, even though enrollment is flat and demographics suggest it is either likely to remain so or to decrease. Of course, the current practice of heterogenous grouping (which simply means placing students all across the range of achievement and intelligence in the same room and then expecting the teacher - somehow - to manage to deliver a coherent and enjoyable lesson which will rivet them all) makes discipline almost impossible to achieve, and is used to justify the teachers union's desire for small class sizes, thus ensuring full employment for their members. Thus, the need for more space, and more spending. Of course, never suggest they should change their methods. You are mere amateurs. They are the education professionals.
Under the mantra that "the state will pay for half" and a determined eye-squeezed-shut against the fact that the money from "the state" is really money from the same people here in town who will end up paying the "other half" anyway, so-called "education supporters" assure us that this is a good and effective deal. But have they connected the 28 million dollars of work over and above the renovation cost to any specific and measurable improvement in student performance, much less to a method by which such improvements would be attained? Of course not.
Naturally, there are some computers in the package - as if computers in and of themselves will ensure that students will learn better. Of course, with the methods in use in our government school classrooms, all that is certain is that there will be more distracting and defocused "multidisciplinary" assignments (where students will supposedly learn more by combining biology, history, and math into a "concrete" (i.e. non-conceptual) assignment, than by studying the subjects separately and abstractly), and that now, on top of everything else they are not learning, students will get to have added the need to learn how to use a variety of different software packages and web sites.
In addition, one must wonder what will happen to the result of this 35 million dollars of spending in the event that the state becomes aggressive in its "remedies" to Sheff vs. O'Neill. If we're lucky, some of our students, the ones not shipped off to other regional schools, will actually get to go there.
Is the Windsor High Enhancement Project a good deal? You can be sure the education establishment is getting a good deal. You can be sure the contractors and architects are getting a good deal. And you can be sure that the "education supporters" will promptly ignore the additional taxes represented by this bonding when they come back in the budget for yet another "absolutely essential to offset the fiscal neglect of our school systems" tax increase. But for the taxpayer, it isn't a good deal, and it should be rejected on Tues, Feb, 9.
Mark Cashman
Content and Layout Copyright 1999 by Concerned Taxpayers of Windsor