Why Riley skipped the math on summer school

Secretary of Education Richard Riley didn't do the math when he boldly urged the other day that all American school districts make their teachers year-round employees.

Maybe that's because, as Virginia conservative sage John Randolph of Roanoke once observed, "spending other people's money is the most delicious of privileges." Why spoil the moment by doing a cost analysis?

Riley urged states and local school boards to tack two months onto teaching contracts primarily so teachers would get paid to undergo "intensive professional development" during what's now summer vacation. Granted, teachers might merit extra dough for having to endure education professors' lectures about portfolio assessment and managing classroom diversity, but the fact remains this prolongation of the school year would result in roughly a 200/c increase in salary costs.

And those costs would be largely shouldered by local school boards. Salaries and benefits are by far the largest items in the school budget. The National Center for Education Statistics' website shows that in 1995-96 (the most recent year with complete data) $210 billion of the $294 billion in total K- 12 expenditures went for compensation.

Naturally, the National Education Association, the 2.4million-member teacher union, loves the idea of teachers getting paid an extra two months annually for retooling. "Paid time" for implementing "higher standards" is a natural step in the march of standards-based education, said NEA President Bob Chase.

Still, there's that little practical problem: Where would the extra bucks come from? Hmmm

Twenty per cent of $210 billion-that's a little over $40 billion.

So speaking of delicious, here's a yummy morsel wrapped in irony: President Clinton's FY2001 budget would boost spending for Mr. Riley's Education Department by a record $4.5 billion-to a total of just over, yes, $40 billion. (By the way, that's a 12.6% increase over last year, which compares with the 3.9% average hike for all other government programs.)

Ergo, if Secretary Riley truly wants to help local school boards with a massive new commitment to personnel, he could simply urge the President to strike the tents at the Department of Education and send its $40 billion back to local schools according to some equitable formula.

Come on now: Can anyone really name anything the Department of Education produces that's worth $40 billion? Recently its Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs (OBEMLA) paid to crank out something called "Oli, Ole, Oh Ole"-a teaching manual with lesson plans and assessments done entirely in Haitian-Creole, for the benefit of children hoping to learn, uh, English down in Miami. But as in the credit card commercial, the worth of that kind of Department of Education endeavor surely is "priceless."

For that matter, does the Department of Education even know for sure where its mega-billions go? A few weeks ago, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R.-Mich.), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation, released data from the department's fiscal 1998 audit raising serious questions about its handling of numbers (but perhaps explaining its preference for fuzzy, skip-the-computation math in its recent endorsements of "exemplary" math curricula for the nation's schools).

Chairman Hoekstra contended the department authorized an $800-milion Stafford Loan for one college student, issued $123 million of duplicate grant payments, and couldn't even account for $6 billion in spending for assorted unidentified programs.

According to Education Week, Ernst & Young auditors said they couldn't complete the paperwork because of missing documentation and conflicting figures supplied by DoEd- The chief of the education section for the, General Accounting Office agreed there were serious problems with DoEd's record-keeping and added that while there is no evidence money has been stolen, the sloppy accounting increases the risk of fraud and abuse.

This is the outfit that deserves a 12.6% raise in its 2001 budget? This is the department that President Clinton entrusts to start another 20 federal education programs?

Mr. Riley ought to do the right thing: Close up shop and leave the $40 billion in local communities to spend on locally determined education priorities, among which two months of annual re-indoctrination of teachers in ed-school probably would rank low.

Mr Holland is a senior fellow at the Lexington Institute, a public-policy think tank in Arlington, Va.

Copyright Human Events Publishing, Inc. Mar 10, 2000
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