HB 1076: Transferring Wealth from Teachers to Bureaucrats

The Associated School Boards' Open Forum got me reading HB 1076, a revision of the K-12 funding formula. The ASBSD is torqued, perhaps rightly so, that the bill reduces state aid by $71.46 per student. The Department of Education will keep that money for itself "to fund technology in schools and statewide assessment testing on behalf of the school districts."

If I'm reading the bill right, that means $71.46 times 120,000 kids [state stats -- PDF!]... ouch! That's $8.6 million dollars diverted to Pierre! And where will that money go? More tech specialists who never work directly with kids? More lucrative contracts for out-of-state companies producing bubble tests? More bureaucrats in fancy offices flipping through academic journals and saying, "Hey! Let's make the schools do this!" Any time Pierre says it's doing something on behalf of school districts, we should be suspicious.

$8.6 million dollars. Hmm... we have 9000 teachers actually working in classrooms with our kids. That's $950 per teacher. Our teachers need $3000 raises just so we can catch up with the next lowest-paying state in the nation, North Dakota. And the state wants to take away almost a $1000 of potential salary for each teacher, just to pay for more computers and multiple-guess tests? Priorities, anyone?