No Dollar Left Behind

In spite of his proposed three-year freeze on all domestic discretionary expenditures unrelated to defense, homeland security, or veterans’ affairs, President Obama’s $3.8 trillion budget for 2011 will actually increase spending for various education programs. We welcome the influx of money to a system in dire need of help, and take heart that Obama sees education as a priority even during trying financial times.

We also recognize, however, that more must be done should the United States truly aspire to offer all of its citizens a world-class education. Beyond simply throwing funds at a broken system, we urge the president to maintain his commitment to championing real reforms in tandem with the needed surge in spending.

The increase in question, released on Feb. 1, augments the current budget for Pell Grants by six percent, raising the minimum grant from $5,500 to $5,710. It will also allocate an additional one billion dollars to the National Institutes of Health, constituting a 3.2 percent increase, the largest such increase in eight years. The National Science Foundation, likewise, will see an eight percent growth in the size its budget under Obama’s proposal. These changes will likely make American education available to an even wider group of students, and they therefore deserve praise.

Although the NIH and NSF could always use additional funds, and while we laud the president’s ongoing crusade to expand the availability of higher education to low-income students, we reiterate our belief that fundamental reform is needed to rectify the unforgivably inadequacies of American education. Such reforms include expanding charter schools in order to encourage innovation, instituting merit-based pay for teachers in order to incentivize excellence, and raising teacher salaries to attract the best-qualified candidates to the teaching profession. The president’s Race to the Top program, which provides monetary incentives to states that embrace charter schools and merit pay, embodies the approach that we support.

The president’s emphasis on education in the face of economic adversity is the correct approach. Strong schools are integral to a strong workforce and a strong economy, for education is a most potent mechanism for equipping American workers to compete in a global economy. We remain optimistic about actions at both the federal and state level that demonstrate our elected officials’ understanding of the primacy of education. Massachusetts, for example, recently passed a bill doubling the number of charter schools and expanding the powers of superintendents to overhaul failing schools. Even in the face of soaring deficits, it is essential for education programs to be the very last budget items to receive cuts, for education is the very foundation of any nation’s economy.