Former UT Regent Has Plan for Saving Billions
If you were $10 billion in the hole, would you fork over $6 million for a chance at billions in savings? That’s the modest proposal that businessman Charles Miller is offering the state’s public education system.
Of course, Miller’s not just anyone. He’s a former chairman of the University of Texas System Board of Regents and one of the architects of the public education accountability system in Texas. A Republican, he can claim a sizable chunk of the credit or blame for helping to enable tuition deregulation, the rise of charter schools and the prevalence of ...
Comments (3)
b fuller
Snake oil salesman - I have a tonic that will cure all of your ills. It is just costs $100 per bottle.
Customer - $100 per bottle, why so much?
S-O-S - Well, you don't expect me to invest my money in trying to make something that works do you?
Politician - The state is broke but we will front the $100 and hope you can come up with something. It is no skin off of my nose. Go right ahead.
Miller is a money-grubbing idiot.
Jerry Thompson
Whoopee! A bunch of bean counters having NEVER been a teacher or administrator telling schools what programs are and are not succesful. Even these mental midgets know that educating kids is far more than just the money spent. I challenge anyone who is not now a teacher to fill a teachers shoes for a couple of weeks - it cannot be done unless we are talking about merely going through the motions and babysitting! You cannot measure educational succes by counting pennies and comparing that to unmeasurable program success rate. What is the measurement that is used for folks who put their kids in private schools? Simple! They want the kid to graduate - nothing more and nothing less. Want a solution to the current public education problems? Stop taking in as students all those whose chances of success are known to be marginal - ESL students, migrant students, special ed students, students from families of low socio-economic status, etc. Take in only those who have a good chance of success as do the private and charter schools and the schools in the foreign countries who outperform us on the various tests. Then you will see HIGH success rates!
John Reed
At face value I agree with Fuller and Thompson simply because I've read enough stories about fools. Thinking a little deeper, I agree even more. "Free Market Fundamentalists" keep selling us the promise that competition and greed will cut waste. It does work for some commercial activities where there is no chance of monopoly, price fixing, and gouging, but it works very poorly for programs that emphasize human rights, pure research, and equal services for all. I think the foxes make great argument for privatized chicken watching, but we have to recognize that the world view of a fox -though completely logical- doesn't work for every animal on the farm.
More importantly, (seen through the eyes of a fox) the notion that "the system is broken" applies without question to higher education, but oddly NOT to such institutions as the banks, the investment firms, and the insurance companies -paragons of fox market freedoms. Did public education get bailed out? No, public education has used tax dollars to fund its work less and less every year. The percentage of state subsidy has fallen in 30 years from about 50% to about 25% across the country. It is true that the amount of money has gone up over that time, and this argument is often made, but it fails to take into account that the universities and colleges have grown and there's been inflation. 54% of the University of Houston's budget used to come from the state. This year, I believe that number is 27%. It was announced this past week that UH had been recognized as a Tier One School, a testament to its continual improvement over the years.
So what's the answer? It's a real-world answer. "It's complicated." But it sure isn't to give some nitwit all our money for a "simple answer". To me, this just looks like another tale of Confucious.