Charles Lane has lurch uncontrollably on to a point I’ve been trying to make around here for some time:
Since the 2010-11 school year, more than 40 percent of education job cuts were due to attrition or declining enrollment, as opposed to outright staffing cutbacks, according to a survey of school systems by the American Association of School Administrators (AASA), published in March.
So when David Axelrod declares that “we have lost 250,000 teachers in the last . . . couple of years,†as he did on Sunday, he’s exaggerating. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment of all kinds in “local government — education†is down 224,100 since the recession began in December 2007.
Oh, and what measures were school systems least likely to use in order to avoid job cuts, according to the AASA survey? That would be reductions in health or pension benefits. Despite the potential for savings that could help preserve jobs, those perks are locked in by multi-year union contracts.
In other words, in the name of stimulating the economy, the president would shovel dollars into school systems regardless of specific need and without requiring reforms in return for the cash.
You could argue that the infusion, like previous rounds in the 2009 stimulus bill and in 2010, will enable schools to avoid drastic cuts — but it may also let them postpone structural changes that improve educational quality and long-term financial stability.
The problem facing state and local governments isn’t merely that revenues have fallen. In many jurisdictions revenue has increased sharply since 2007. It is that revenues aren’t rising as fast as healthcare and pension costs and state and local governments don’t have the ability to change the former or the flexibility to respond to the latter.
Under the rubric of “never letting a good crisis go to waste” you’d think that the federal government would put a few strings on the money the president is proposing that we’d dole out to enable or compel state and local governments to correct the underlying problems. Otherwise the additional money will only help until it runs out. What then? Another dollop of money, just to tide them over?
I’ve got another gripe with the President’s “jobs” proposal. It is supposed to create (or maybe “save”) 450,000. Is this seriously their proposal for ending the jobs crisis? That’s an order of magnitude short of anything helpful. Or do they think the multiplier is at least 10?
Unfortunately, having “strings attached” would defeat the whole purpose of vote buying which Obama’s stimuluses have been – buying union teacher NEA votes. Ever notice that the only jobs Obama wants to create or “save” are union jobs?? Teachers, firemen, cops – all union.
I think this sort of thing is primarily why the right side of the political spectrum is hostile to the operational realities of our monetary system. They’re afraid government would shed all constraint on how and how much it spends, and they have a point.
Hey, I can post!
I determined that what was preventing you from commenting was that a malformed link in one of your comments had caused Wordpress to decide that you were a spammer. Some comments of yours had been disappeared but others were waiting for moderation. Once I’d approved them that apparently stopped Wordpress from deciding that all of your comments were spam.
Mysterious are the ways of the content management software.
I’m not psychic but I will attempt to read the president’s mind. I believe it’s something like this: Let’s make a bullshit proposal that neither accomplishes much nor costs much but will be invaluable in forcing Romney to be openly “against teachers.”
It isn’t wise to bight the hand that feeds you.