Yesterday, The U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce approved The Setting New Priorities in Education Spending Act (H.R. 1891), which was originally introduced by Congressman Duncan Hunter (CA-52), permanently eliminates 43 K-12 education programs including Reading Is Fundamental (RIF). Chairman Hunter describes all of these programs as "wasteful" and "ineffective".
Is Chairman Hunter really saying that RIF, a 44-year-old, research-based program that puts 15 million books into the hands of over 4 million of the nation's most vulnerable children each year is a waste of taxpayer dollars? The grand irony is that RIF actually embodies the very principles of limited government, local control, and public-private partnership that Chairman Hunter and others in the House of Representatives espouse. For example,
* Federal support for RIF generates a substantial financial return on federal investment. In the Chairman's home state alone in FY2010, RIF programs raised $681,050 in new, local money to match the $2,631,965 in federal funding spent in California.
* RIF is administered locally by only those programs that choose to participate, without the direct entanglement of government bureaucracy. Nationally, the program involves more than 400,000 volunteers who serve students who are at the highest risk of academic failure. In California, the program serves 504,124 students who have few books in their homes.
* At roughly $25 million, RIF constitutes a small fraction of overall K-12 federal education spending. Yet at less than $8 per student, the program delivers results in motivating children to read and has a statistically significant positive impact on reading achievement.
* RIF targets many small, rural communities that historically have been overlooked and underserved by federal agencies and programs.
If all of these characteristics make RIF a "waste", perhaps Mr. Hunter really means that all investments in providing literacy services to low-income children are a waste? Is that what he means by "new priorities" in education spending? We hope not.
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Yes, he is. If the money isn't going into his pocket, the pockets of the wealthy or off his corporate friends, then that money is wasted.
You should know by now that Republicans consider money wasted if it benefits children, women, the poor, the sick, the elderly, anyone that isn't a heterosexual, anyone that isn't their definition of Christian, anyone who isn't American by birth (except for those anchor babies), anyone who isn't white.
But they'll be more than happen to accept your money and your vote.
He wants schools to fail and he wants poor kids to remain ignorant. Future slave labor for when his party eliminates minimum wage and repeals child labor laws.
Living in a rural community, I also remember as a child when the bookmobile (library on wheels) came to the little town close to us. That was my first exposure to a library. I've never lost the excitement of going to the library.
That said, I think today most kids have access to community libraries, and our local library is involved in an interlibrary loan system that really makes a large library system available to a small community. I'm just hoping that libraries aren't axed in the next effort to save money.