According to Capital Confidential, the federal government puts in 8% of what education costs in this state - the rest comes from the state budget and local property taxes.
How many mandates does the federal government impose upon this state and its school districts in return for that money?
Do these some of these mandates (Yes, Race to the Top, I am looking at you!) cost the state more than the feds actually give?
What if these sequestration cuts gave us all an epiphany moment where we realized some of this fed money costs more in mandates and might not actually be worth taking?
Because even as the feds cut aid to the state, we are going to have to continue with all the RttT reforms, the Common Core Federal Standards implementation, the high stakes national standardized tests derived from those standards, the computers and bandwidth needed in every school in order to give those tests, the data tracking systems in order to analyze those scores and use them as a bludgeon against teachers and schools.
That's an awful lot of money we have to put out just to win $700 million in RttT money.
Maybe we can channel Nancy Reagan here and "Just at no?"
Maybe the sequestration cuts will give us that epiphany money to at least question why we take federal money with mandates attached that wind up costing the state more in the long run?
No comments:
Post a Comment