History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
NEW REPORT: Los Angeles' road to A-G for all
Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
Pepperdine’s soggy waffle
- 02-07-2011
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Column by Peter Schrag/California Progress Report
Peter Schrag is the former editorial page editor and columnist of the Sacramento Bee
Education research, someone famously said many years ago, “is a soggy waffle.” Nothing demonstrates that better than the latest version of a Pepperdine University report purporting to show that, as one headline summarized it, since 2003 “California schools spent less in the classroom as budgets increased.” Politically, especially for tax cutting conservatives these days, it’s a great weapon. But as research, it’s hard to imagine a soggier waffle. School districts, the report suggests, don’t need more money. If they just devoted enough to the classroom and cut out the waste, especially the money spent on bureaucrats, they could hire thousands of additional teachers, give every student a computer and still have money left over. In just one year, the report says, the state could have captured an additional $1.7 billion for the classroom, good for 21,000 more teachers. It’s the pet argument of a deep pockets operative named Patrick Byrne, the CEO of Overstock.com and his First Class Education organization that’s been pushing something they call “the 65 Percent Solution.” (more...)
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