Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot about budget caps for school districts, and the kinds of numbers that are being thrown around. Would a reasonable cap be $25,000 per student? Or closer to $100,000?
It’s crazy to try to choose a number without first knowing what you would be getting for that amount of money, isn’t it?
Imagine buying a car that way. You give the dealer some amount of money, which you can’t get back; and then he decides what kind of car to give you. How much should you be willing to fork over?
That’s essentially the way voters are being treated by the people who organize to protect their subsidies and salaries.
But suppose school administrations were required, when crafting a budget, to answer a series of question like these?
(1) If you had a budget of $5000 per student, what could you do with that? Don’t tell us what you can’t do, but rather what you can do.
How about (2) $6000 per student, or (3) $7000 per student, or (4) $8000 per student, and so on?
For each possible amount, give us a detailed answer about what kids could be expected to learn, if that’s what you had to work with.
And when that answer gets to a reasonable point — for example, for $7000 per kid, we could expect to get 75% of them to proficiency in reading and math, if we did nothing else — then 2/5 of the voters, as a group, could end the auction. Sold!
(Why 2/5? Well, currently, tax measures often require a 3/5 majority to pass, meaning it’s okay for 3/5 of the people to screw over the other 2/5. This just turns that around, and gives those 2/5 a way to protect themselves.)
It’s basically Marie Kondo’s approach to decluttering. Instead of focusing on what you are discarding, focus on what you would buy again if you were starting from scratch.
Her book is called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. It’s life-changing, she says, because
basically, when you put your house in order, you put your affairs in order and your past in order too. As a result, you can see quite clearly what you need in life and what you don’t, and what you should and shouldn’t do.
Doesn’t that sound like exactly what’s needed in our approach to school funding?
Ruth Ward et Rick Ladd removenda sunt
