Education - and why it shouldn't cost you so much.

Going to Georgia Tech (where most of the students are in state) made me think – what was I going up against in terms of inter-student competition? Turns out GA was at 41st the year I graduated high school. This made me think again – what did the state spend on education to earn such a prestigious ranking? The answer? 10 BILLION FREAKING DOLLARS (I feel like Dr. Evil when I say that, with my pinky up to my mouth). You’ve got to click “view document” after the break, and then find the department of education in that balance sheet. Its not hard, go to page 37 and look at the top under any one of the “Total Funds” header. Anyways, I was further perplexed when I discovered that this number is 25% of the state’s total budget. Here, ladies and gentleman, we have hard proof thanks to the glory of the interblub and the Freedom of Information Act that government spending does NOT equal government success. If a ranking of 41st isn’t enough to convince you of that, just talk to anyone who lives in Georgia (particularly Atlanta) and they’ll tell you how much your friendly neighborhood public school sucks.

So all this poking around got me thinking: “How much of this unholy amount of my money are they spending on programs that are useful?” The answer was, unsurprisingly, almost none. Many of the line items in the budget are in fact budget cuts, but in some are in USEFUL programs, like “Reduc[ing] the State Health Benefit Plan employer contribution rate from 18.534% to 8.579%, effective February 1, 2009 through June 30, 2009. (Revised: Reduce employer contribution rate to 8.579% for February and to 3.668%, effective March 1, 2009).” So basically they saved money but cutting out their employee’s health benefits by 15% so the government can swoop down from the rooftops when they turn the Obama-Signal on and save everyone from the evils of private healthcare (though not so much PRIVATE in this case since they’re state employees, but same concept). Many of the other budget cuts, however, have less to do with making no sense. They finally realized all those OTHER ridiculous programs made even LESS sense in this economy and finally decided to cut the budget by a hefty 8%. I’ll be, an 8% cut brings it down to 10 BILLION? Who’da thunk it?

Like my friend in liberty Jason Pye provides a good example of; “[school systems have] never had to deal with real budget restrictions. The voters, until this year, have always approved any bond referendum or other plea to grant them more money. It has also been the position of the [Board of Education] that “for the children” and political correctness and strengthening the community were primary concerns.” But now after their municipal bonds have devalued to the point where they’re worth about half a pancake (give or take), the GA DoE seems to no longer find keeping their employees alive valuable anymore, and would take cutting that back by 80% over cutting some diversity-promotion program back by 3%. So, there you have it folks. Hard numbers on why education spending means education failure.