Doom and gloom over proposed education budget is off base, overblown0

• June 28, 2017

The proposed $9 billion in cuts are largely being taken from small portions of various education programs, not a large portion from any one program. In fact, a billion extra dollars are being put into public charter schools and school choice via Title I. Charter schools are worth investing in, particularly because they tend to outperform their traditional public counterparts.

The leaner proposed budget matches funding levels in 1997. That may not be a bad thing, as it is unclear whether public education has improved student outcomes as a result of the steady increase in federal funding over the past two decades. Nine billion dollars less sounds like a lot, but if the current system has not benefited from simply increasing the budget, then perhaps the amount of funds isn’t the problem, but rather the way the funds are utilized.