With Billions in Federal Aid, Joe Biden Has Called K12 Leaders’ Bluff

Since we moved to Colorado eleven years ago from Alberta (which has one of the world’s highest performing K12 education systems), I’ve heard the same answer over and over again when I questioned why our local district performed so poorly:

“We need more money.”

To be sure, this was always a very incomplete counterfactual, that evaded three critical issues:

• If the district had had the money it wanted, on what activities would it have spent it?
• What evidence is there of a causal relationship between these activities and student outcomes — particularly academic proficiency in reading, writing, math, and science?
• What evidence is there that the existing funds the district receives have been spent as effectively and efficiently as possible?

For eleven years (and counting), I’ve never gotten an answer to those three questions. I have, however, been on the receiving end of some very creative insults (and temper tantrums) from defenders of the failed K12 status quo.

For example, my local school district (Jefferson County), is the nation’s 37th largest, with over a billion dollar in annual revenue. You would be very hard pressed to find the CFO or CEO of a billion dollar public company who would claim that all their revenue is being spent as effectively and efficiently as possible. But Jeffco’s K12 leaders keep making that claim, even as the decline in the district’s academic performance accelerates.

But now, with a hundred billion dollar bet, Joe Biden has called K12 leaders’ bluff.

Districts are getting the cash. Will student achievement results substantially improve?

If they don’t, it will prove a point that many critical of K12 education in the United States have been making for a long time: The real problems have nothing to do with a lack of money.

This is going to be interesting…

Tom Coyne is a business executive who has invested 20+ years of volunteer time in K12 performance improvement, in New England, Alberta, and Colorado.