Solyndras in the Classroom – a Commentary

Investment in education – one of the most overused and discredited of motivations. If we really want to invest in education, let us invest in not investing more power, money, and authority into our school districts. Like the federal government and statehouses across the country, our public schools do not have a revenue problem; they have a spending problem. What percent of every dollar actually reaches the classroom? In one school district, the waste is so bad, only about fifty cents out of every dollar actually pays for education. Where is the rest of the money going? Six figure salaries to unnecessary district staff, along with underfunded pensions and health care benefits, usually unsubsidized by the worker and subsidized for the life of the employee by the district.
How much more money will taxpayers permit to be wasted on the public school  education monopoly?

So this country is not getting its money’s worth for our investment in the education of our youth – why is the federal government allocating any funds toward education in the first place? What role does Washington really play in reading, writing, and arithmetic? They do not read their legislation, they do not write the bills they submit, and they invest almost no time in adding and subtracting, since the government has cost overruns every minute of every day.

In the same line of thinking, what does Sacramento have to do with they daily curriculum in our local classrooms? Why does a monstrous Office of Education oversee educational funding, curriculum, and instruction throughout every county? Cut these offices away, and school districts throughout the state of California would save millions right there. No more teacher layoffs, not more increasing class sizes. Just cut out the district management and middling bureaucrats who offer little and take so much more from our students, our classrooms, and our future.

“Solyndras in the Classroom: -- “They have enriched teachers unions and other rent-seekers but have done little for the students other than saddle many of them with crushing student-loan debt.”
What about the school districts? What about the parents who have kids who have grown old but have not grown up? The debt of wasted money has created a behemoth national debt which is threatening our nation’s solvency. The Chinese will not go with the flow of red ink forever. What was the purpose of an education, anyway?

[In response to an article in Forbes Magazine from Louis Woodhill, Leadership Council for the Club for Growth]