Posted on 02/01/2010 5:30:41 PM PST by ReleaseTheHounds
Education Spending Increases and Broken Promises [Dan Lips] Whoever was working on the Department of Education’s budget for 2011 in the White House apparently missed the memo about the president’s new commitment to fiscal discipline. The 2011 budget proposal includes a whopping $173 billion in spending on college student aid programs, a $3 billion increase for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (a.k.a. “No Child Left Behind”), and a proposal to create the federal government’s 70th preschool and child-care program (at a cost of $9.3 billion over ten years).
But experience has shown that federal spending increases have delivered few benefits to students. For starters, the massive spending increase for college student aid comes in the wake of a 99 percent increase in federal spending on student aid over the past decade. While college costs continue to climb (following a consistent trend since 1982 which has seen college costs increase by more than 400 percent -- or four times the rate of inflation). As economists like Dr. Richard Vedder have argued, generous government subsidies have actually contributed to the college cost problem. Rather than continuing to follow this failed approach, the time has come for policymakers to solve the college affordability problem through strategies that can lower college costs.#more#
For K-12 education, the administration’s call for more spending follows last year’s unprecedented funding for schools in the stimulus. While the administration has earned some praise for its “Race to the Top” campaign (which they hope will encourage more charter schools), the largely unnoticed story is how the Obama administration is using this competition to strengthen federal power in education, including by pushing forward plans for national standards and tests. More than four decades of experience (including the last eight years under No Child Left Behind) has shown the limits of what Washington can do to improve education. And if history is any guide, more federal spending and control won’t solve the problems in our nation’s schools.
Perhaps the most galling education item in the budget is the $1 billion spending increase proposed for Head Start, the federal government’s largest and longest standing preschool program. In January, the Department of Health and Human Services, which administers Head Start, released the result of a long-overdue rigorous evaluation of the Head Start program. It found that Head Start provided zero lasting benefits to children by the end of first grade. That’s right. Since 1965, American taxpayers have “invested” $167 billion in a preschool program that apparently yields no lasting benefits for the children it serves, and now the program could get $1 billion in additional funding.
Last year, President Obama promised that his administration will use “only one test when deciding what ideas to support with your precious tax dollars: It's not whether an idea is liberal or conservative, but whether it works.” Perhaps Jim Geraghty should add this to his list of promises reaching their expiration dates over at the Campaign Spot?
— Dan Lips is a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation.
Posted at 5:55 PM
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