Here's Federal (I think.) Looks like 156B for 2001. State and local expenditures could be a lot tougher - unless somebody has already compiled the lot.
I can understand why you said I think. Can't really tell what's in there, can we? I'm sure someone has compiled it, probably under a federal grant <LOL>. Finding it, that's the problem. The more direct approach might be to focus on a State school budget and hope there's a line in there for Federal funds. Or look at the State budget under revenue on hope for a line on Federal funds for education.
While the Feds give a lot of $$$, it's a big country with a lot of kids. So it's important to understand whether it's 1%, 5%, or 25% , etc., of the school budget to begin to assess what influence the Feds have on the curriculum. We do know that there was a State in the mid-west, that put creationism on equal footing with evolution in the science program [I've forgotten which State at the moment.] Fed influence [strings] didn't affect that decision. And then there's the question of What are the strings?. If it's a string for a pot of money that is designated for education in low-income areas and the State wants to funnel it to the football team in high income district; it's hard for me to be sympathetic. If you're correct on that $156B for 2001...I'd like to have $156B with no strings attached.
Interesting report though, glad you looked it up [though your still a ways away from answering the original question.] A couple of observations.
First Sentence: The President's education reform plan is devoted to two fundamental principles: that all children can learn, and that no child should be left behind.
You thought it was worthwhile throwing in a somewhat sarcastic comment that the bolded phrase was NEA originated. But when you were told that it was a Bush phrase, you didn't find any need to comment.
It appears that the proposed budget is crammed with "strings". ...The Administration seeks $9.061 billion, an increase of $459 million or 5.3 percent, to help students most at-risk of not reaching State standards improve their academic achievement. ....The budget builds a foundation for success by investing $900 million in the Reading First initiative to help all children read by the third grade. ....The budget also includes an additional $75 million for the Early Reading First initiative that helps implement research-based reading practices in existing pre-school and Head Start programs that feed into participating elementary schools. ... The President requests $2.6 billion, an increase of $0.4 billion to prepare, train, and recruit a high-quality teaching force..... It's loaded with strings.
This one in particular caught my eye...The budget provides $320 million to support the costs of developing new assessments. Maybe that's a good number, but when I read that line item, I'm a little stunned. Develop, print, and distribute might be ok, if that's what it means. But develop = $320M...wow!. Some people worry about $600 toilet seats and don't worry about $320M to develop new assessments.
But I suppose where we end this topic is that you really don't know what % of the State Budget is Federal funds.
I did think of a nifty chart for your point re: Utah. A scatter chart; for each State, x-axis would be the State outlays per student capita; y-axis would be a performance scale; and a specific State plot would be a circle whose diameter represents the school population of the State. With that chart you should be able to see if there is a trend on performance vs funding and whether Utah is part of that trend or an exception. But that would be a good amount of effort.
I find funding for performance in education to be somewhat of a paradox. Notionally, it's appealing based on business practices. But if it's true, as you suggested in an earlier post [re: Utah] that funding and performance are not related, why tie the two together at all. On the other hand if they are related in the sense that more funding means better education then you increase funding to those States that already do well, and penalize those States that don't do well, which seems to be the exact opposite of what I thought we were trying to do. The kids that are left behind, get further left behind.
But my approach is simple. Screw the States.<s> It's their kids; that ought to take care of them and collect whatever taxes they deem necessary to school their children. If they want their kids to be ignorant...well, the US can use a pool of ill-educated adults to form a low-wage labor pool and we can keep more manufacturing in the US. [BTW, this is not a devil's advocate point, I mean screw the States.]
Besides, Rumsfeld is having some difficulty in getting States to volunteer some bases for closure. If the Feds cut out the funds sent to the States for those military dependents, maybe he could get a couple of base closures that he wants.
jttmab |
