Neal Boortz: Reed wrong 
on school funding

By Neal Boortz

For The AJC

Ahhhh. Another school year and the prospects of poor test scores, massive numbers of high school dropouts and, of course, maybe another cheating scandal.

And through it all we’ll be pounded with incessant demands to spend ever more taxpayer money to “improve,” if you will, our government schools.

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed had a few things to say on the subject to Gov. Sonny Perdue’s tax reform commission. Reed was right in saying that the quality of education in Georgia must improve to attract both domestic and overseas business investment. Reed was off-base, though, in saying the key was to spend more money. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if businesses and families always had the “just spend more” option as a solution to their problems.

Does increasing spending really improve education? This is a safe road for politicians to take because polling consistently shows that Americans believe that the top problem with our schools is that they just don’t have enough money to spend. Sorry, the proof just isn’t there. The Heritage Foundation did an excellent study just two years ago: “Does Spending More on Education Improve Academic Achievement?” Conclusion? “A basic comparison of long-term spending trends with long-term measures of student academic achievement challenges the belief that spending is correlated with achievement.” I have a copy of this study for you, Mr. Mayor, if you would like to read it.

The Heritage study contains a rather eye-opening chart showing a $9,000 increase, duly adjusted for inflation, in per-student spending in our government schools from 1970 to 2005. Now you might think that more than doubling per-student spending would really kick up those grades. You would be very wrong. Reading scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress for that period remained flat. Reading is the key — the portal — to all education. We more than doubled spending over 25 years, and reading scores improved not one whit.

Is this “spend more” thing starting to lose some of its appeal for you yet?

Well, let’s look at graduation rates! This month, this newspaper’s investigation showed that Atlanta government schools’ bragging about improved graduation rates might have been a bit over the top.

So, does boosting spending improve dropout rates? Sorry, no. The National Center for Education Statistics reports that high school graduation rates have remained pretty much flat since 1990. The graduation rate for 1990-91 was 73.7 percent. (Lordy, we would kill for that graduation rate in the Atlanta schools!) The graduation rate for 2005-06? Try 73.4 percent. In 2009, our Atlanta schools reported a 69 percent graduation rate: below the national average and, in all likelihood, somewhat inflated. The AJC reported that other experts put the rate much lower. And what do we spend per student in the Atlanta schools? Try north of $13,000 per year.

If the mayor really wanted to advocate for better schools and higher academic enforcement, he would suck it up and call for parental choice. Let the parents choose where their children go to school and send the money, not necessarily more money, to follow the students. Then stand back and watch the achievement. Oh, and watch the teachers go ballistic at the same time. It’s students who are supposed to perform. Not teachers.

Listen to Neal Boortz live from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. weekdays on AM 750 and NOW 95.5FM News/Talk WSB.

His column appears every Saturday. For more Boortz, go to boortz.com