I live in Washington State where we contribute nearly 30% of our budget to education.  This over twenty billion of state and local taxes going to the schools, more if you add in the federal dollars.  But is it really a money issue or a political one.  It always seems to come back to how can they punish us most by not wanting to pay more taxes.  The perfect place is the highly visible schools.

  But I digress, the point I really was going for is a couple of letters we received in the mail stating the two schools are kids are going to attend don’t meet standards.  If we wish we can bring our kids to another school in the area which meets the standards.  Of course we will be re-imbursed for the expense of taking our kids to the new school.  If we qualified for free school lunches, we could also get a free tutor for our kids. 

  Why are we spending thirty cents of every tax dollar on schools that are failing our children.  Should we throw more money at them or should we demand they clean house and find out what is wrong first.  The government method is throw enough money at it and the problem will go away.  However, it’s not the government’s money, it’s ours.  The people with the kids getting poorly educated.

  One of the problems I see is the Washington Assessment of Student Learning or WASL.  The students are taught the WASL.  Not necessarily the exact test they will take, but the subject matter of the test.  In my opinion, (which is of course the most important), there should be a standard curriculum which all students are taught to.  Then the test material can be pulled off that curriculum to see if the kids have learned it adequately.  This way no freaking out and cramming for the test.  Now granted, I passed Nuclear Power School in the Navy doing that.  But you tend to not really learn the material as well as you should.  No long term knowledge.

  One area I’d be willing to spend more tax money up front on is an independent audit group.  Someone who could go into the various government agencies and see what they are really spending the money on.  I bet this group would pay for itself in short order.  And maybe once the different agencies learned how to spend the peoples money more responsibly we could scale down the audit group.  Think how much more successful this country would be if the PEOPLE had their money to spend and invest.