Special Session Was Just About Money for Education Cartel

By Senator Joe Balyeat, Belgrade
Article X, Sec. 3; Montana Constitution states, “The legislature shall provide a basic system of free quality public schools.” The relevant questions:1) Are Montana's children getting a quality education?2) Is state education funding sufficient?Only 13 states have higher ACT scores than Montana. But even that statistic understates Montana's education quality. In most of those 13 states only a very small percentage of students (“the cream of the crop”) take the ACTs; while in Montana almost 60 percent of our students take ACTs, yet Montana still scores high...In the annual “Smartest State” competition, Montana has ranked in the top 10 nationally four years running. Only a handful of states can make that claim. Obviously, the claim that Montana isn't providing quality education is pure smoke from the education industry to hide their financial self-interest.
But once we quit using children as a smokescreen, is Montana education really underfunded?Recent U.S. Census data shows only six states spend a higher percentage of their income on K through 12 schools than does Montana. Teachers' union data itself reveals that Montana again ranks second-highest nationally for the premium it places on teacher pay -- with average teacher pay exceeding 140 percent of the average Montana worker's pay. Including fringe benefits, average Montana elementary teachers earn $44,271, for a nine-month job. Per the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Division, average Montana high school teachers earn $51,411 including benefits. These salaries are equivalent to $59,186 and $68,731 for regular 12-month jobs. Hardly chump change, by any measure.Montana education spending exceeds $8,000 per student -- which means the average Montanan's entire annual paycheck is consumed educating just three children for nine months. The last Legislature increased this spending by another $80 million, yet that's still not enough to satisfy Montana's education cartel. More than 100 national scientific studies have proven that level of funding has no connection with school performance or student achievement, so the QSIC committee should be renamed the “Quantity Spending Interim Committee.”...Democrat officials are just throwing hundreds of millions more down the black hole with no education reforms whatsoever. Meanwhile, Montana remains one of only three states in the entire country with no competitive education reforms -- no charter schools, no magnet schools, no private school choice program, not even real public school choice. So with no competition, Montana's education monopoly has no need or incentive to become more efficient or more effective.So make no mistake about it -- this special session was not about the children -- they're already getting a great education in Montana... My vote against this bill was not a vote against educating kids; it was a vote against the education cartel using children as political pawns, the education monopoly using kids as a fig leaf to hide naked financial self interest. It's a vote against the travesty of using taxpayer money to sue the taxpayers for more taxpayer money. A vote against judicial tyranny usurping the will of the people's legislature, and a vote for real education reform that would further improve the quality education which Montana's children are already getting.Liberals seldom wish to debate facts and hard numbers. They usually just misquote conservative opinions out-of-context and then engage in name-calling based on the misquotes. Let's grow up and honestly debate the numbers.
Click here to read this full opinion in the Bozeman Chronicle