More and more with each passing day, our local, state and federal governments are spending less and less on public education; yet, they are expecting better and better results! They’re expecting teachers to work harder, new teaching recruits to be smarter, the quality of instructions to be better, and students’ achievements―regardless of circumstances, to be greater. Our governments, which have argued time and time again that investments are important in producing positive outcomes, and have used this argument as a justification for cutting corporate taxes, seem unwilling to apply this same line of reasoning to investing in public education. Instead, they expect public schools to be the exception to their rule: They expect public schools’ levels of excellence to increase as public schools’ funding continue to decrease.
Currently our nation has some of the best sports teams in the world in virtually every sport for women and men. Our stadiums and athletic fields, at every level of competition, are second to none, and our athletes are among the highest paid Americans. On our best colleges and universities, the average salary of a football or basketball coach is millions of dollars more than the salary of the President of the University. Yet, our nation wonders why our students’ achievements are falling behind the achievements of students in other countries ― except in the area of sports.
Obviously, our governments haven’t learned a basic economic lesson that is well known to most of us ― middle class folks: Although we occasionally encounter a few bargains when making purchases, most of the time we get exactly what we paid for! by
James A. Porter
