April Fool
Boston Globe columnist Derrick Z. Jackson believes a “lack of money is killing our public schools.”
If we were to be generous, we could call this a bold position to take. Bold, because it flies in the face of every spending statistic and figure for the last 30 years or so. Even Jackson admits that $9,800 per student is “technically high by global standards.”
But why let the numbers stand in the way of a good recitation of talking points, like how some elite private schools cost $35,000, or how we spend more on college students, or how Germany pays starting teachers more, or how five states spend more on corrections than on higher education (well, let’s assign armed guards to the coeds and lock them in their dorms at night surrounded by concertina wire – that should make up the difference).
Jackson misses nary a shibboleth, and small wonder, because he went to the leader of the tribe, Linda Darling-Hammond, for his information.
“We’re disinvesting in a significant way,” she said. “With the huge decline in America of manual labor jobs that are being off-shored or digitalized, the vast majority of jobs are knowledge based. If we do not invest that way, we really can’t survive as a nation. To deeply underfund public education as we are doing does not make any sense.’”
Only in America could a half-trillion dollar annual enterprise be labeled deeply underfunded. That amount of money is not only “technically high,” it’s actually high. If Jackson doesn’t think so, he probably wouldn’t mind sending me a check for $9,800 each year for the next 12 years. I’ll be waiting by my mailbox.
