Stop ‘Feeding’ the Angry Ed Gods

by Steve MacDonald

There is no connection between money and academic outcomes unless you mean that kids can learn more for a lot less – there is a lot of evidence for that. But the Ed god behemoth demands to be fed, and those who benefit politically from this arrangement insist the answer is more. Always more.

They can’t teach kids to read or do math because they need more. More money, overhead, administrators, support staff, and (believe it or not) more responsibility. Some so-called public servants think the institution that broke learning in the name of education should be empowered to manage our children’s mental and physical healthcare.

These are the experts who, if they’d never brought DEI, CRT, or the transgender agenda into the school system, would not have created the mental health crisis they now claim they need more money and power to fix but fixing it was never in the cards. The education crisis, the mental health crisis, and now the public health crisis are all ‘bait’ to convince taxpayers to spend more even when they get less.

They made classes smaller, more than doubled the cost, and kids are still learning less (banning cell phones in class is a good idea, but it’s a distraction).

Like all progressive systems, public schools create crises to grow their budget. They mismanaged bullying (online and in person). They tortured kids during COVID-19 for no good social or medical reason. They label them irredeemable racists with no path to forgiveness. They fearmonger them about the weather despite nearly fifty years of not predicting one thing correctly. They lied and told them they might be in the wrong body, then badgered them with compelled speech and thought experiments, cross-dressing, drugs, and surgeries, none of which lower the rate of suicidal ideation.

Girls are terrified of finding boys in their bathroom and locker room and bullied by the adults if they dare express concern.

When parents complain, they get silenced, noticed, investigated, even arrested

Oh, and they still can’t get kids to read or do math in any majority at any grade level, even with curricula dumbed down considerably from previous generations. This is what you are paying for – a cultural prison whose guards are vying for more money and responsibility but don’t you dare ask why Johnny can’t read.

Public education is the biggest and most expensive confidence scam in America. A Ponzi scheme that enriches the education industrial complex and administrators at the expense of kids and education! And it is harming every part of the community.

Taxdollars sucked down the Ed hole are not available for police, fire, or ambulance. Everything at the local level is beholden to this cult. Local roads, bridges, and other projects and upgrades are sacrificed annually on the altar of the Ed Hole gods. And the Ed Pharisees come back every year asking for more, and everyone else is expected to live with less.

I got a message from someone telling me we had three medical emergencies in town at one time, but only two EMT/ambulances were available (a third vehicle was out of service for repair). But your schools sure as heck made sure your kids had access to dick books by pretending that objecting to that access was book banning. I don’t think the person waiting on an ambulance is likely to agree and who has to die before someone takes school budgets apart by their fibers and works down to what is essential to education and guts the rest.

And why is that so controversial, given that with rare exceptions, there isn’t one public school in the state that can do something so simple as teaching all the kids to read or add? And at these prices!

They can’t do it, so giving them more responsibility is the wrong direction. Our schools need less to do, not more. We must strip them of everything besides core learning of basic subjects.

Until you can teach a super-majority of kids to read and do math at even the crappy diluted standards you are using currently, you should get nothing else.

If you want, as Ian suggests, a community center, music, arts, and sports, how much a year would you pay to have your kid participate in that? Public schools are overcharging and under-delivering.

How much more do you think it will take for them not ‘to unscrew up ‘fix’ the kids they screwed up in the first place? A lot more and you’ll get more mess than when you started.

I’ve made this suggestion before. Cut the administrative budget in half and hire some cops or firemen. Train some EMTs. Put money down on new equipment. Fire any DEI, Diveristy, Equity or belonging staff, and anyone else, including assistant superintendents (all of them) and any extra assistant principals, counselors, and their staff. Gut your non-productive overhead, and you can lower property taxes.

If they say there’d be too much paperwork for fewer people, remove the functions responsible for the paperwork until you get down to the ones for which public education was meant. Teach kids to read, do math, ethics, debate, and the lessons of human history we were meant not to repeat.

It’s Public Education. Not public band, glee club, softball, or even daycare. If towns want those things (again, borrowing from Ian), they can have them at a fraction of the cost and distraction separate from schools and lower the cost of education because educating is all they’d be doing.

They are your property taxes, but if you don’t start making the school board, district, teacher’s unions, and the SAU uncomfortable, they’ll keep raping you until you are fiscally dead.

Stop feeding the Ed hole gods and put learning back in public education.

Author

  • Steve MacDonald

    Steve is a long-time New Hampshire resident, award-winning blogger, and a member of the Board of Directors of The 603 Alliance. He is the owner of Grok Media LLC and the Managing Editor, Executive Editor, assistant editor, Editor, content curator, complaint department, Op-ed editor, gatekeeper (most likely to miss typos because he has no editor), and contributor at GraniteGrok.com. Steve is also a former board member of the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire, The Republican Volunteer Coalition, has worked for or with many state and local campaigns and grassroots groups, and is a past contributor to the Franklin Center for Public Policy.

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