Monday, February 25, 2008

St. Louis Public Schools need a clean sweep

It is inconceivable while, over the past few years, the St. Louis Public School District has closed 25 schools,yanking the heart right out of many neighborhoods (see School closings "take the heart" out of urban neighborhoods) that SLPS has also invested over $600,000 in the ludicrous Adequacy Trial trying to sue Missouri taxpayers for more money! While the school boards and educrats in the SLPS would have you believe that more money would fix the problem, in fact, the opposite is true. Stanford Fellow and nationally lauded economics expert extraordinaire, Dr.Eric Hannushek, said recently at a presentation at St. Louis University:

"Now this is where most of the economists in the room start getting a little bit squeamish, at the idea that you develop an incentive system that says: If you fail you get more, and the more you fail the more you get. And if you succeed, you get less."

As long as SLPS remains in the adequacy trial, they continue to commit education dollars that should be spent in classrooms. People in the city should call for more withdraw. Truly people in the city need a clean sweep of their public schools. How long will they continue to cry 'poor' when they are the TOP spenders in the COUNTRY~that's right, in the entire United States of America, SLPS has among the highest per pupil spending and they are actually suing us for more money?

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