The 70% shell game won't help schools

Rep. Mark Green proposed his school funding gimmick plan today, "The 70% Solution", requiring 70% of all money spent on public schools to be spent in the classroom.

Revolutionary, huh? Or does it sound a lot like the 65% solution proposed in April, near the end of the legislative session, by a couple of Republican State Senators?

It's a plan that's being pushed by right-wingers around the country.

The National PTA calls it a shell game.

Here's what the Center for American Progress says:

A handful of conservatives have embraced a plan that undermines America's schools and are selling the plan as a silver bullet to the problems faced by those schools. The plan, dubbed the 65 Percent Solution, is the brainchild of Utah businessman Patrick M. Byrne, president and chairman of Overstock.com, Inc. It requires school districts to reallocate existing funds so that at least 65 percent of their educational budget is spent on classroom instruction...

... Frederick M. Hess of the American Enterprise Institute points out, "If a 'corporate reformer' acquired Wal-Mart and decreed that 65 percent of all revenues be spent on floor staff and in-store improvements, Wall Street would greet him with derision. There is nothing innately wrong with such moves -- but well-managed firms know that one-size-fits-all management went out with lava lamps and leisure suits."

... With a system of standards-based education and accountability, local leaders should have the flexibility to allocate funds wherever needed to ensure gains in all students' academic performance. The 65 Percent Solution simplistically focuses on financial inputs rather than learning outcomes by limiting local control over how education dollars are spent...

In addition to doing nothing to improve academic achievement, the 65 Percent Solution's narrow definition of classroom instruction actually hurts students and schools. Classroom instruction as defined in the plan includes teacher salaries, general instruction supplies, instructional aides and activities such as field trips, athletics, music and arts. It does not include, however, building maintenance, school lunches, transportation, heat, nurses, counselors, libraries and librarians, computer labs, teacher professional development, speech therapists, or school security. Under the 65 Percent Solution, these important resources have to compete for 35 percent of already scarce funds...

Teacher professional development, library and school nursing programs are not the only ones that suffer under the 65 Percent Solution. Resources for school safety, transportation, building maintenance, and school lunches are also among the many programs that would have to be eliminated or significantly reduced because the 35 percent of school budgets allotted to "outside the classroom expenses" would not be sufficient to adequately fund all of them.

Meanwhile, and more importantly, Mark Green has refused to commit himself to continuing the two-thirds state support for public schools, while promising to reduce state taxes. Green's unwillingness to make that commitment could cost public schools hundreds of millions of dollars. Last year, Republicans in the legislature tried to cut $350-million from Wisconsin public schools, but a creative use of the veto by Gov. Jim Doyle restored the money.

The 70% Non-Solution, which Green claims would put another $300-million into the classrooms, looks very much like a way to cover up the fact that he wants to cut $300-million or more in state aid.

Let's see if the news media let him get away with that shell game. Wanna bet?

UPDATE: One Wisconsin Now asks: Are choice schools covered?

UPDATE 2: The Doyle campaign says Green's budget and education plans are a double-barreled assault on Wisconsin public schools.

UPDATE 3: Green wiggles and squirms, but tells the Eau Claire newspaper he can't commit to two-thirds funding.

UPDATE 4: The AP commits what Charlie Sykes would call a flagrant act of journalism and reports that Green's plan "has been lambasted nationally by the PTA and others as being ill-conceived and bad for schools."