Comments about ‘Richard Davis: Republicans keep starving Utah public education’

The ten best educated states all voted for President Obama. Nine of the ten worst educated states voted for Mitt Romney. Therefore: education equals socialism. No wonder our guys are starving education.

Did everyone notice that the UEA didn't ask for more money this year? They actually held a rally at the capitol to thank the legislature for not cutting funding further this year. This is how low we have sunk in Utah.

We like to say we put our children first but when it comes to how we spend our money, we don't.

Re: "Dear Gov. Herbert and Republican legislators . . . . Stop claiming you love public education while financially starving it."

Better yet -- Dear liberal UEA/NEA shills: Stop claiming you love public education when your sole concern is not for its quality, but rather, that your reputation is suffering amongst your national peers because Utah is able to achieve excellent educational results without succumbing to ever-increasing UEA/NEA demands to heave tremendous sums of money at bogus non-problems.

It's not Utah education that's starving. Judging by its results, education in Utah is actually doing quite well. NEA/UEA union bosses are peddling the "starving" issue to enhance their bottom line, not because it's true.

Funding education at DC, New York, or New Jersey levels -- not "starvation" by any measure, but typically among the highest in the Nation -- hasn't produced schools that compete well with Utah's.

We fund our schools at just over half the average cost around the country and produce an average, or slightly above average, result.

Imagine if we could do that well in other areas: How about buying a $200,000 home for about $120,000 just because we are in Utah. How about buying that $3.50 gallon of gasoline for about $1.90, just because we are in Utah. How about buying that $100 of groceries for %58 just because we are in Utah. Now that sounds like wishful thinking.

Yet that continues to be our education system in Utah. Legislators, even many of the public, expect that we should buy an average, or even an excellent, education for 58% of the average cost. Let's thank our educators who doing so much with such limited funding.

Why do people always think throwing money at education will make it better? I've been hearing this for 40 years and I'm sick of it. Money is not a measure of "good" education. How about our state-funded universities stop throwing our tax dollars at new buildings and throw it at the education process itself?

How much should it really cost to educate one child for about 9 months each year? $6000? $12000? $18000?

I think the right answer is about $5000. So congrats to Utah for wasting far less money per child than all those other states!

Imagine if all government funding of education was taken away. Parents could go anywhere to educate their kids, but to get your kid into the local public elementary school you had to write out a check for $6000 at the start of the school year.

How quickly would private schools pop up all over the place and attract me and all my neighbors to send my kids there for less? I don't think it would be hard to put together a great program, hire great teachers, and provide a truly great educational experience for a class of 30 kids with $150,000.

Great article. Could not agree more.

Re: "It means students’ performance on standardized tests is slightly above the national average when, given Utah’s demographics, it should be at the top."

Some of the posters seemed to have missed the above point; namely, that the seemingly good educational performance of Utah students is really an illusion.

Three cheers for Richard Davis. Keep telling it like it is.

Joe -- your dream world is filled with fiscal hallucinations.

one old man: I know my dream world is completely different than yours. Mine doesn't include tons of bureaucrats and layers upon layers of "administration" that sucks away half or more of every dollar spent on education.

It puts the education of kids ahead of the interest of the teachers unions.

If the private sector can build a computer that fits in your pocket, stores the equivalent of the library of congress, and has more computing power than the entire space program did 20 years ago (all for about $500), then why can't we figure out how to teach Johnny to read, write, and do math for less than the cost of a new car each year?

Truth is...we can. We just don't have the political will to change the "system". Too many people depend upon the status quo and enlarging the bloated educational union machine.

Thanks, Richard. But watch your back. You can't keep publishing stuff like this in the DesNews.

All American:

Why do Republicans think that sucking money out of education (and everything else) will make it better?

By all means we should starve the monopolistic beast of public education. I'm not opposed to public funding of education to a point, just don't force me to pay into a one-size-fits-all system that works well for some kids but not others. Of course these academics will defend the current system from their unassailable positions with tenure. They have a vested interest in persuading the rest of us that they know best, that only government can look out for the interests of "our children". How about we hear more from parents who are frustrated with a monolithic system that is failing their kids?

Legislators are breaking their arms patting themselves on the back for helping education, when they simply kept the status quo. Meanwhile, our kids continue to get more mediocre by the day.Please, heaven, save us from this blind, self-congratulatory state legislature!

"Utah spends the least per pupil of any state in the nation, by far."

Why not also mention that Utah has the youngest population of any state, with 31.2% of its population under the age of 18 (meaning the most students)

Or that Utah is 10th in terms of spending on education as a portion of the state budget

Oh yes: If facts don’t support the preferred narrative; ignore them
After all, anyone who has been past first grade knows that you can prove the earth is flat if you select you only those facts that support that conclusion

Counter Intelligence,

Neither of your "facts" matter in this argument. It doesn't matter that we are young and that we high percentage of our budget going to education. Those are excuses for not doing better.

What matters is we are dead last in per pupil spending and we can and should be doing better.

Yay! a voice of reason. Thank you Mr. Davis

I think Mr. Davis should check out SB 79 which failed this year and see that there are ideas out there to provide teachers with 50% more pay, more professional development, smaller class sizes, and a quality blended learning model that can truly prepare kids for college.

Why do Republicans whine and cry about the price of our children's Education,
but are suspiciously quiet about raging wars in the Middle East for Oil?

All I can figure is they expect the ignorant, under-privledged and under-educated to get have no other options but enlisting in the Military and fight their wars for them.

Are these the 20 million new jobs Romney hoped to create?

Davis did the cause of long-term funding of public education in Utah a huge favor. Far better financial support than the annualized patch, patch, patch offered by the state's governor and legislators is necessary--and soon. Utah is falling ever further behind in national and international measures of K-12 effectiveness.

Davis, unlike some of those in this comments section, knows his stuff and should be first invited when statewide discussion and debate begins.

@Lifelong Republican

"Neither of your "facts" matter in this argument."

Really? Utah already devotes the tenth highest high percentage of its state budget to education. The fact that there are so many young people means that even at that level of spending we are spending last per pupil. Even if we spent the highest percent of the budget, it would still remain low per pupil. Utah is where it is precisely because of the facts that you don't think matter.

Fact: More money does not inherently equate to good education. The judge of a good education is how well students perform and in that category Utah was number 12 in terms of output (reading and ACT scores), number 19 in terms of social impact (college degrees, etc) and number one in efficiency

Fact: Ostriches still get eaten by lions regardless of how deep they stick their head in the sand

Ignoring FACTS (or feigning indignation regarding facts) does not change them - it merely means that you cannot or will not deal in reality.