Education: Democrats know one thing: Newly confirmed Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is a major threat to one of their richest, most reliable supporters. That's why they fought so hard to see her nomination destroyed. Republicans pulled out all the stops in confirming her. It was a fight worth fighting.
The Democrats' deep pockets — in this case, teachers unions — spoke loudly in the debate. They see DeVos, a longtime advocate of local control, school choice and charter schools, as a threat to their racket, which includes near-total control of public schools with virtually no accountability for their failures. Rather than debating the issues her nomination raises, the unions' allies in the Senate engaged in slurs and insults, questioning her character, her wealth and her intellect.
DeVos is a reformer who will rely on choice as her agent of change for the schools. Once you give parents and kids real choices, the drawbacks of the union-owned U.S. public school system become quite apparent.
To understand the education mess DeVos will face you need only peruse a recent chart displayed by American Enterprise Institute fellow, economist and blogger Mark J. Perry.
What it shows is stunning, depressing and infuriating all at the same time. The chart, composed of data from the National Center for Educational Statistics, compares U.S. K-12 public schools from 1980 to 2015 in a number of areas. The result is shocking.
From 1980 to 2014, the data show, the number of students grew by 22.6%, or 9.25 million, to 50.132 million kids. Over the same period, however, the number of staff members jumped 50.1%, which includes an 88.1% rise in administrative staff and a 63.1% jump in school principals and assistant principals.
Cut to the chase. During that period, there was no appreciable improvement in science, math or reading scores, and in fact by several key measures, the U.S. lost ground against other major industrial nations.
And yet we went from spending just $294.5 billion (in 2015 dollars) in 1980 to $633.8 billion in 2014, a 115% real increase. Per student, that comes out to a 75.5% increase in real spending, going from $7,204 in 1980 to $12,642 in 2014.
So, basically, there's been a doubling in spending with no improvement in test scores. While everything around us in the world of private markets gets better, bigger, faster, smarter, education remains stagnant, eating up ever-more of our resources but not producing more or better education.
It's the very picture of a failed, corrupt system. And at the top of it all sits the teachers unions, who gush about teaching "the kids", but in reality run an educational shell game.
This is why DeVos spooked the unions and, by extension, the Democrats, who get millions and millions of dollars each election cycle from their teacher-union comrades. She wants to break the dysfunctional education system up by empowering more charter schools, giving parents vouchers and introducing the idea of choice to schooling.
It's the only thing that will truly reform the schools, but the unholy alliance between the unions and one major political party can't afford that. They're happy with the failed status quo and, despite their protestations, don't really give a hoot if kids learn or not. As long as they can guilt you into spending more on education to get less, they win.
In some ways, DeVos' appointment is more important than even that of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch.
Arguably, by freeing the public schools and pushing educational decision-making away from the nation's capital and the union halls and down to the district and parental level, she could have a much bigger potential social and cultural impact than almost anything one person on the high court might do.
This is especially true for poor and minority kids, who stand the most to gain from school choice. Those poor and minority kids are now tied to union-run, failed inner-city schools. Imagine the possibilities if, for the first time, they and their parents can choose success instead of failure. That's a revolution.
Economist Thomas Sowell on Tuesday called DeVos' nomination and the coming education battle an "opportunity ... that may not come again in this generation." He's exactly right.
Sadly, DeVos only got 50 votes in the Senate, and had to win confirmation with a tiebreaker vote cast by Vice President Mike Pence. The margin of error was zero.
Still, it was a good day for education in America. It may be the last real chance to salvage our ruined school system.
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