Critical Mass

Dan Lips of the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation has a piece over on EdNews.org looking at the facts regarding federal spending on education.  According to Mr. Lips, despite Democratic claims to the opposite federal spending on both lower and upper level education has increased tremendously under the current Republican administration.  "Annual U.S. Department of Education spending on elementary and secondary education has increased from $27.3 billion in 2001 to $38 billion in 2006, up by nearly 40 percent," says Lips, and spending on special education will have increased by 59% percent between 2001 and 2007, yet "student performance has not markedly improved,"  in that time period or from 1970 to now.  Higher level education spending grew even more, as "annual Department of Education spending on federal Pell Grants grew from $8.7 billion in 2001 to $13 billion in 2006, nearly 50 percent growth," and "federal funding for higher education in 2004-2005 totaled $90 billion, a real increase of 103 percent over ten years."  Despite this fact, student improvement is minimal, and "college tuition costs increased by 295 percent between 1982 and 2003, a growth rate higher than health care costs (195 percent), housing (84 percent), and all items (83 percent)."  Says Mr. Lips:

These are important lessons that policymakers and taxpayers should keep in mind during the 110th Congress. Calls for more funding for public schools and subsidies for college tuition may be popular on the campaign trail, but simply increasing federal funding for education is not the answer. If it were, we should have seen better results by now.