BY BRANDON DUTCHER
"There’s a tradition in education,” former New York City school chancellor Frank Macchiarola once observed, "that if you spend a dollar and it doesn’t work, you should spend two dollars; and not only that, you should give those two dollars to the same person who couldn’t do the job with only one.”
That tradition is alive and well in Oklahoma, and indeed is the animating spirit of the teacher unions’ push for State Question 744, the so-called HOPE initiative, a proposed constitutional amendment that would require the Legislature to increase per-pupil spending to the regional average.
Granted, the education system needs money. You’re going to need money — lots of it — when you pay above-market prices for everything from skillets to schoolteachers. News9 recently reported that one Oklahoma school district spent $10,600 for a skillet. Oklahoma’s state auditor reported that another district paid $540 for three mop heads valued at $13.50. And of course public school teachers on average are paid more than the market-determined teacher salaries in the private sector (both nationwide and in central Oklahoma, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics).
What SQ 744’s boosters need to explain to weary and wary taxpayers is this: How, exactly, is more money going to help? That’s not an unreasonable question, especially in light of the nearby chart.
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