Teacher Bailout: Do the Ends Justify a Lie?

It's expensive preventing trumped up mass layoffs.

by Collin Hitt

Bad economic times have hit local governments, school districts especially. Taking a page from last year’s bailout and stimulus book, the schools’ lobbyists are asking Washington for $23 billion in printed money to prevent some 300,000 teacher layoffs.

There’s at least one big problem with the bill, as pointed out in an absolute must-read piece from WaPo’s Charles Lane.  The 300,000 figure is bunk, with 100,000 being a much more likely figure.  Here are some other highlights:

Given these facts, it’s unclear how the bill’s supporters came up with its $23 billion price tag. It works out to about $77,000 per job saved in the 300,000-layoff scenario, but $230,000 per job if only 100,000 jobs are at risk…But what about class size? Well, 300,000 teacher layoffs would increase the national student-teacher ratio in public schools from 15.3 to 1, to 16.6 to 1 – roughly where it was in 1997. And 100,000 teacher layoffs would increase it to 15.6 to 1 – the 2005 level. Neither number portends educational apocalypse, especially when you consider how uncertain the links are between class size and student achievement. Student-teacher ratios shrank by roughly 10 percent nationally between 1996 and 2008, but reading scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress stayed essentially flat.

Read the whole piece for yourself.  Then call the number that the Illinois Education Association’s automated service asked me to dial yesterday, when I got a robocall: it’ll give you their “facts” and then offer to transfer you to your congressman to share your thoughts on the bill, which you should do: 866.608.6355.