STILL WAITING FOR SUPERMAN

STILL WAITING FOR SUPERMAN

            Jac Wilder VerSteeg of the Palm Beach Post published an editorial in the Sunday edition 12/11/11 entitled “Seek quality at ballot box”. He discusses pending lawsuits filed by parents and education activists against Florida, claiming that education is not paramount when it comes to State spending. Jac reports that in 1998 voters amended the state constitution requiring that Florida have a paramount duty to provide a high quality public education.

            Even in the face of the economic recession, Governor Rick Scott has proposed increasing the portion of the state budget dedicated to education by ONE BILLION DOLLARS. To the left, a billion taxpayer dollars is peanuts! The government pocket to them is a fathomless, infinite abyss stuffed with government money.
          Florida currently spends $6,900 per student for 190 teaching days per year. The NEA ranks Florida at 41^st out of 51 (50 states + D.C.) when it comes to the amount of “public revenue per student”. Despite the lower amount spent, the Quality Counts Report ranks Florida 5^th out of 51 in education results. This means that compared to the national average, Florida is providing a high quality education! This also means that the amount of money spent has no relationship to education quality. Need further proof?  New York State spends a whopping $18,126 per pupil and has a 38% failure rate of schools falling short of federal standards!  Compare N.Y. with Utah. Utah the lowest spending state has only 21% of schools failing to meet goals.

Waiting for Superman, a 2010 documentary film by director Davis Guggenheim was a devastating indictment of the public education system and mortifying exposure of the self-serving teachers unions. Michele Rhee an education activist and prominent figure in the documentary claims, “Money does not necessarily correlate with student achievement. In the last 30 years we have more than doubled the amount of spending per child… and results have gotten worse, not better.”

 

As usual Democrat’s assume, almost instinctively, that increased spending equates to increased quality. As if suffering from some type of genetic deficiency, the liberal mind can come to no other conclusion; government spending is the only remedy to any social problem. To the Democrat, other people’s money collected by the government and redistributed to government-favored institutions and projects is the only way of achieving social justice. History consistently shows the opposite effect and the federalization of education is yet another example.

Florida teachers should be rewarded for doing an exceptional job of educating our children efficiently. Our student achievement ranks 5^th and our spending rank is 41^st. In the private sector Florida’s education results would be viewed as a great achievement; to the socialist, Florida’s education system is being ripped off by not confiscating enough private sector money per student when compared to N.Y. Thus we have frivolous lawsuits brought by progressives to advance their personal, political and economic agendas, further wasting Florida’s resources and tax dollars.  

Jac Wilder VerSteeg apparently believes that lawsuits are not the proper method to make education paramount. His solution involves electing officials who will make education a priority. I agree. Where we disagree is when despite Governor Rick Scott’s desired billion dollar increase in funding, Jac apparently views Scott as not a friend of quality education; the socialist view, more money equals better education and a billion dollars of hard earned taxpayer money is simply not enough for Jac.

Until Clark Kent runs from the Palm Beach Post and dons Superman tights, and Jimmy Olsen agrees to be his campaign manager, Florida voters must keep electing more fiscally conservative leaders like Governor Scott who has given us an education rank in the top 5 nationally at a cost to the Florida taxpayer in the bottom 10.

Without massive government waste and fraud much can be accomplished in all sectors of society. The type of waste and corruption exposed by the film Waiting for Superman should not be tolerated anywhere, especially in education! Keep the education progressives in N.Y. and D.C. if that’s what the voters’ there desire! Keep them out of Florida!

We can always strive to be better, but for now I applaud Florida’s teachers for doing an outstanding job! In the private sector their success and efficiency might be rewarded by year-end bonuses. In public sector the motto of spend the budget money or lose it would apply. The tenured,  incompetent, union teachers exposed in Waiting for Superman and working in N.Y. and D.C. will likely mock the success of Florida's education system for not squeezing more cash out of the taxpayers.

Henry David Thoreau: “The more money, the less virtue.