THERE WAS A STORY IN THE NEWS THIS past week about the sorry state of the education system in the state of California. To understand the situation, one should start with the state budget, which is about $128 billion. Just to get a feel for how strange budget figures are, the governor’s Summary Highlights package is 178 pages. That’s the summary.
Education, K-12 and the community college system consumes 41.9 percent of the state’s revenue right now with its $60 billion dollar budget. Health and Human services takes another 26.6 percent share, prisons and the “rehabilitation” of criminals takes $10 billion (or 7 percent of the budget). Those categories combined account for 75.5 percent of the state’s budget.
All that money is being used to create a paternalistic government which is attempting to play the role of parent, educator, arbiter of social proprieties, enforcer of laws and general all around good guy.
Each actor in this stage play called “The Crisis in Education” blames a different cause. The governor wants to be able to fire ineffective teachers and upgrade facilities, the teachers want better books, the principals want better schools, the mayor wants to be in charge, the president wants to ‘leave no child behind’ (but doesn’t want to pay for it) and the parents just want to know why their kids can’t read.
The one thing everyone seems to agree on is that money, and more of it, can solve the problem, but seldom do they agree on how much or where it is supposed to come from.
One report the news outlets have seized upon states that the amount of money needed to make each child ‘academically proficient’ is $1.5 trillion... annually. Quoting the Los Angeles Times: “That trillion-dollar figure ‘assumes nothing in the system will change,’ explained researcher Jennifer Imazeki, an assistant professor of economics at San Diego State University. Her calculation, she said, was not a serious proposal for funding, but rather an exercise to demonstrate how broken things are now.”
Thank God we don’t have to take her seriously, because if we assume that there are approximately 36 million people in the state, and that roughly 70 percent of them are going to be paying taxes of some sort to fund this universal education program, then we can see that the average amount that each of us needs to pony up to have an ‘academically proficient’ society would be a mere $71,428 per person.
When I was growing up, California had great schools. Teachers were respected, parents were involved and kids learned. We need to get back to the days when teachers were respected, not only by the kids, but by the parents. When I was a kid, if a teacher told my mom I did something wrong, she took the teacher’s side. It was assumed that the adults in the relationship, acted as such, and that included entrusting them with the right to enforce proper social behavior.
Today, we first accuse the teachers of incompetence, overreaching or neglect. We expect that a bigger budget, newer books and more computers will make our children smarter.
I think we should increase the respect we give our teachers. Empower them with the ability to enforce order. Make the parents of these ne’er-do-well hooligans do the job they signed up for by having kids. Parents are supposed to raise their children, not the state.
The per capita amount we spend as a state on our children has consistently fallen over the past 20 years, and now we are among the bottom of states in investing in our future. I fully believe that we should increase the amount we spend on our children’s education. It should be financed by a head tax on each child that a family has. We give tax deductions and credits for children, which is precisely the opposite of what we should be doing. Children are a fiscal drain on our social budget and we should hold their responsible parties accountable for them.
When you go to a restaurant or buy a plane ticket or go to the movies, they don’t ask if you have children coming along and then charge you less. Why are we, as a society, encouraging people to have children, and making the rest of society responsible for their education and acculturation?
It seems to me that if you have made the choice to have a child, you have a responsibility to raise them as a socially adjusted individual... and you should pick up the tab. The state charges me for a driver’s license, a business license and a passport. If I choose to have a child, they should charge me for that too.
DAVID PISARRA is a partner in the Santa Monica law firm of Pisarra & Grist. He (310) 664-9969 or by e-mail at
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 20, 2007. Read the original PDF.