Is YOUR district still in?

We have alot of money being mismanaged in our public education system and the sooner we get a handle on it, the sooner our kids will benefit. Our public education leaders--the superintendents, the teachers and their unions, administrators--all need to get focussed on a new approach to education reform. For districts who remain committed to funding the appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court (see CEE vs. State of Missouri) the prospect of improving education is threatened.

Instead of looking at their school funding and finding the HUGE amount of waste that most certainly exists, as pointed out by Jack Wenders, a School Choice Activist, our educrats insist on suing taxpayers with their own money. We/they should, instead, be focussed on creative solutions to education reform including, but not limited to, parental choice and involvement, merit pay for teachers, charter schools, virtual education, support for special needs and competition in the public education system.

Only 61 cents of every tax payer dollar reaches the classroom (see First Class Education ). "By raising that figure just four cents to 65 cents on the dollar, we could have put an additional $272 million more into Missouri classrooms without a tax increase. That's an average of $304 per student or $6,080 for each class of 20."

Challenging the adequacy of school funding is just a distraction from the root cause of inefficient spending enforced by the public school bureaucracy. Missouri schools can and should do better.