| Late last week, Rick Santorum publicly admitted something that conservatives very definitely want to do, but usually don't talk about: Defunding public education. In Ohio on Saturday, Santorum said public schools are anachronistic: "Where did they come up that public education and bigger education bureaucracies was the rule in America? Parents educated their children, because it’s their responsibility to educate their children." "Yes the government can help," Mr. Santorum added. "But the idea that the federal government should be running schools, frankly much less that the state government should be running schools, is anachronistic."
Santorum made a similar statement in Idaho a few days earlier, where he criticized both federal and state funding of public schools. Once you take away both the federal and state funding, all that's left is local tax money, so that poor communities will have dirt poor schools, while wealthy communities can afford much better. If you think we have inequality now, wait until that happens. This view is especially relevant to the education funding debate in Alabama, where the GOP sponsored HB159 and HB160 bills would take millions in income taxes out of the education budget and redirect it to corporations. I've heard some speculation that Alabama educators are "overreacting" to the proposal to sneak money out of the Education Trust Fund and that no one, not even Republicans, really want to leave Alabama schools underfunded. Conservative Republicans don't like public schools -- look how controversial the right to an education has been in Alabama -- and are quite capable of using "industrial recruitment" as a red herring to further the cause of defunding public education in Alabama. Look at what the bills definitely do -- take income tax money out of the ETF -- not what someone promises they may do. |
