On Another Educational Mudslinging Episode

On a whim yesterday I decided to pick up the "Weekly Special" edition of Investor's Business Daily. I guess they got my $2.00 because I found some humor in the title - "IBD" "Weekly Special" (some small sense of irony), but more so because of the front page story entitled "Effort Growing To Require More School Money Go To Classroom"

I became eager to read this as a title such as this is more likely to find its way to the front of the NYT than IBD. Apparently Patrick Byrne the CEO of Overstock.com doesn't have enough to do running his Amazon clone, but instead has stirred up the bees nest by encouraging states to push 65% of all school district operating budget dollars into direct classroom expenses.

Strange bedfellows are joining the cause on this as more money in the classrooms means the teachers and taxpayers are on the same side of the barbed wire this time. Opponents to this plan site different problems including differing heating and transportation costs, but the biggest belly aches seem to be arising from a philisophical basis of argument - that which has found its way into the debate over the "No Child Left Behind" act - that of measuring new quidelines and the administrative overhead required to support and regulate new guidelines.

The main argument as I see it is - in order to abide by the 65% guideline new administrators will be needed to monitor this and other such guidelines such as can be found in the "No Child Left Behind" act. This will of course cost money and deter some school district budgetary dollars from the classroom. I find this humorous given the fact the IBD has somehow found a source for budgetary percentages allotted to the classroom for each state.

I guess we must already have someone performing this calculation to an accuracy of 1/10th of a percent! Problem solved as I see it. No more administrators needed - just give IBD a call and tap their source. No more belly aches.