Linda Schrock Taylor’s recent article, 100% Control for 6.5%, brought up a sizzling statistic. It’s one that I hadn’t read before, and it made me sit up straight in my seat. “We are selling the souls and minds of our children, and the future of our country, for 6.5 cents on the dollar!” she states right off the bat. Wha…? I knew that the fedbeasts didn’t cough up much dough for schools, even though they’d like you to think they’re all wringing their wallets dry “for the children.” But 6.5 cents per dollar spent? Could the fed-imposed chains that bind up each public school, and sadly more and more private schools, be purchased with such a paltry amount of funding?

After reading Taylor’s article, I started to dig around on the Internet for some back up to her claim. Yes, Virginia, it turns out that the fedbeasts are both bullies and cheap.

Disclaimer: When it comes to statistics, education sources are infamous for being immensely behind. As any ed activist knows, if you can find a source that’s only two to three years old, you’ve miraculously stumbled across the most recent statistics available. It is on par to find “current” statistics that are at least five years behind the times.

I found more than three sources that support Taylor’s claim. For your reading pleasure, I’ll site the top three. Back in 2000, the New York Times ran several articles about presidential candidates’ views on education. In The Education Issue: Each Candidate has a Plan for Schools, it is stated:

“Underlying the platforms of all four candidates is a central frustration: with the federal government responsible for contributing only 7 cents of every dollar spent in public schools, each candidate is struggling to demonstrate how he would improve performance from a perch so removed from the classroom.”

Virginian U.S. Senator, John Warner (who joyously proclaimed he helped bring No Child Left Behind to every neighborhood school in the country), stated on his web site back in 2002:

The No Child Left Behind Act makes important reforms to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Originally passed in 1965, the ESEA provides authority for most federal programs for elementary and secondary education. These programs currently receive about $18 billion in federal funding, which amounts to an estimated 7 cents out of every dollar that is spent on education on all levels of government.

According to the May 2003 report Statistics in Brief from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES):

As in the previous school year, local and intermediate sources for school year 2000–01
made up 43 cents of every dollar in revenue; state revenues comprised 50 cents; and the
remaining 7 cents came from federal sources.

No matter how you slice it, the gooberment is calling all the shots while chipping in the least amount of moola. They fly is in the face of that old cliché’, “Money talks and bullshit walks.” Taylor, appropriately, calls this travesty what it is: a shell game. In the NCES report, under the definitions section, the term federal revenue is explained:

Federal revenues include direct grants-in-aid to schools or agencies, funds distributed through a state or intermediate agency, and revenues in lieu of taxes to compensate a school district for nontaxable federal institutions within a district's boundary.

So, for a measly 7 cents on the dollar, which is probably rounded up from the 6.5 cents that Taylor sites, the gooberment wants to run the whole education show, call the shots and generally make everyone miserable. This comes to no surprise to me—that’s how those fedbeasts operate. What does astound me is that the state and local folks give in to them; parents let it continue, unchallenged. Educators who try to blow whistles find themselves unemployable—no one black balls better than the public education system. We all play the three monkeys—see no evil, hear no evil and say no evil—while our kids become increasingly ensnared in fedgov education, just to reap 7 cents on the dollar.

“Not my child,” you intone. Maybe you home school; or you scrimp and send your child to a private school. Taylor mentions in her article a review Steve Yates wrote on FedEd: The New Federal Curriculum and How it’s Enforced by Allen Quist. In this review, Yates noted that FedEd brings up the fact that, “…New Federal Curriculum is, for all practical purposes, federal law.” That 7 cents comes with gnarly chains that bind our local schools, by law, to the nonsense the fedgov instigates back in DC. With each “voluntary” piece of federal legislation that offers seed money so states can start the legislated program in their schools, the states have to sign an agreement that that outlines quite clearly what the states have to do if they accept the tainted money. If you ever get a chance to read any of these documents—they disappear quickly as they sunset and new, worse legislation takes over—there’s lots of mention of “all.” Folks, all means all. The gooberment wants all children to be roped into this system, because like houses made of cards, it’s flimsy. To work, the changes within a generation have to be all-inclusive. It won’t do to have these little homeschoolers running around, mucking everything up.

According to Yates, Quist discusses how the feds propose to pull all students into the brainwashing mix through means like the NAEP. Plans to make the NAEP an admission for colleges or employment is apparently in the works. That makes fedgov education everyone’s problem. Yates asked the question, “How is all this to be enforced?” Well, besides money strapped education systems that will exchange their essence for 7 pieces of copper, most of the hair brained schemes of the fedbeasts go unnoticed. People are caught unawares. That’s why so few parents make a stink. And the ones that do are obligingly painted up as nut jobs.

Education, its impact on our society and on our freedoms, is a special interest of mine. I’ll be following up in the near future with two more entries on education. Stay tuned.