Angela Villar – 3/15/13

This page was last updated on March 16, 2013.

Education should be available to all; Angela Villar; Beaver County Times; March 15, 2013.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“After watching President Obama deliver the State of the Union Address, I would have to say that I agree with his ideas for the education system.”

[RWC] The U.S. Constitution gives the feds no role to play regarding education. The Tenth Amendment states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Therefore, any federal involvement in education is unconstitutional. The sole intent of federal involvement in education is to increase federal power at the expense of the states and the people.

“For example, I strongly agree with his plan for making high quality preschool free. Fewer than 30 percent of kids attend preschool. Depending on where you live, preschool costs anywhere from $4,460 to $13,158 a year, or $372 to $1,100 a month, which is something not all families can afford. And preschool is a necessity because 75 percent of brain development occurs from birth to age 3. This is why I agree that high quality preschool should be made available to everyone.”

[RWC] Do I have to write it? NOTHING IS FREE! As P.J. O’Rourke (an American satirist) once said, “If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.” The same is true for education.

“Preschool is a necessity?” Just about every major technology we use today was developed by those of us educated long before preschool was anything but a rarity. Do the space program, computers, cell phones, the Internet, et cetera ring a bell?

As for the efficacy of preschool, the research is anything but clear. Regarding Head Start specifically, the Department of Health and Human Services concluded, “In the long run, cognitive and socioemotional test scores of former Head Start students do not remain superior to those of disadvantaged children who did not attend Head Start.”

Researchers at Georgia State University (GSU) found Georgia’s universal preschool provided no measurable benefit. GSU concluded, “The study sample does not differ from the entire kindergarten population in GKAP (Georgia Kindergarten Assessment Program) capability scores.

“I also agree with him lowering the cost of college. Tuition for a four-year public college costs $21,706, and a private four-year college costs $29,056, and that’s just tuition alone, not counting the cost of books, possibly housing, and things like that.

“The average student debt in 2011 was $26,600, which might be hard for low-income families to pay off, which is why I think the cost of college should be lowered.”

[RWC] The more money we throw at anything – education and medical care are examples – the more expensive it gets. As I noted in a previous critique, college tuition increases leave the consumer price index (CPI) in the dust. The quickest way to drive up prices is to subsidize the activity.

Here’s President Obama’s “plan” regarding college tuition.

“Through tax credits, grants and better loans, we’ve made college more affordable for millions of students and families over the last few years. But taxpayers can’t keep on subsidizing higher and higher and higher costs for higher education. Colleges must do their part to keep costs down, and it’s our job to make sure that they do. (Applause.)

“So tonight, I ask Congress to change the Higher Education Act so that affordability and value are included in determining which colleges receive certain types of federal aid. (Applause.) And tomorrow, my administration will release a new ‘College Scorecard’ that parents and students can use to compare schools based on a simple criteria -- where you can get the most bang for your educational buck.”

Here’s the “College Scorecard” Mr. Obama mentioned. It’s OK, but weren’t most of us already doing a similar comparison when we were choosing a college? Does anyone doubt politics won’t rear its ugly head in a government-run scorecard?

What Mr. Obama failed to mention is the very government spending he advocates is at the core of education’s runaway inflation.