Rhee Gives The Endgame Away

She just couldn't help herself:

Cavuto: "...all of the budget balancing, the measures [Chris Christie] he's taken, are on the backs of cuts. No revenue enhancements, as the debt commission calls them, or tax increases... are you of that mindset? Can you do all of this kind of stuff just spending cuts or do you have to entertain at least some...[tax increases]?

Rhee: Well, I can only speak for the education vantage point. And if you look over the last three or four decades in America, we have more than doubled the spending on education, and the results have actually gotten worse. So if we had doubled our spending, and it had resulted in twice as good test score results, than I don't think anybody would be complaining. But given that we've put so much money into this, and really not getting the benefit, I actually think we should look at this time - which is a really tough time - but also see it as an opportunity to think a lot more efficiently and effectively about how we're spend ing our dollars.

Cavuto: Well, you make too much sense...

[edited to omit many "you knows"]

So there you go. We spend too much on educating our kids, and we need to cut back, as all serious people know we should.

Except when people like Rhee start throwing around stats, I always get suspicious...

"Doubled our spending"? Nice that she can't decide between three or four decades... but is it true?

No:

Percentage of GDP is really the only way to look at this. "Constant dollars" doesn't take population growth into account.

Now, let's compare this chart to health care as a percentage of GDP:

Yeah, there's your "doubling" - or worse. And, since spending on teacher health care is part of education spending....

As to Rhee's complaint that we haven't seen "twice as good test score results": Michele, do you really expect test scores to correlate exactly to educational spending? Really?

Rhee has moved further and further into the political realm; I wouldn't be surprised if she gets her own reality show soon in Alaska. This means her new role is to willingly give cover to the conservatives who want to gut school spending under the guise of "reform." The endgame is to use "reform" as an excuse to cut spending on education.

So my question for her is the same as the one I have for all 'formers:

You say you want to reward great teachers. You say you want a great teacher in every class.

How do you square that with paying the teaching corps less than what they make now?