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Contributor
Ray
Haynes
Mr.
Haynes is an Assembly member representing Riverside and
Temecula.
He serves on the Appropriations and Budget Committees. [go to
Assembly Member Haynes
website at California Assembly][go to Haynes index]
 Planning
For Failure
The
Master Plan for Education...
[Ray
Haynes] 8/17/04
No one has
ever accused any politician of being too modest in his or her
approach to the problems of society.
When the ruling class sees a problem, there is always one of its
members fast to propose a solution, usually a government program
funded with your money, with broadly overstated goals and early
prognostications of a quick and complete success in conquering
the problem.
The politician then usually hands the problem off to a bureaucrat,
whose job usually depends on making sure that the problem is never
solved. In other words, this bureaucrat has a job, and a reason
for living, as long as the problem exists. Once the problem is
solved, the bureaucrat loses his or her job. As a result, no government
program (of which I am aware) has ever ended. We have been fighting
a war on poverty since 1966. There are more poor people in this
country today than when we started.
Given that
grand tradition in government, it is no wonder that several years
ago, the state
commenced an effort to revamp our
schools. Everyone knows they are failing, so let’s get together
and draw up a plan to reform them—let’s give them a
blueprint for success. Hence—the Master Plan for Education
was born.
A grandiose
name—to
be sure. Lots of effort and money went in to drawing up this
Master Plan. Lots of study went into the
details of the plan. Legislators, bureaucrats, experts, moms and
dads everywhere studied the plan. It was unveiled to an adoring
public last year. More hearings on its details were held. Now the
Legislature is convening a last minute conference committee to
implement some of its provisions.
Except that
the parts they want to implement are its worst, and most expensive
parts.
The Master Plan called for available universal
pre-school. The reason? Available universal pre-school will help
children get ready for school earlier. The plan called for this
pre-school to be available to everyone, regardless of income, for
free. Well—we have had pre-school for the disadvantaged since
the mid “60’s (called Head Start), and $44 billion
later, there has been no appreciable increase in the academic performance
of those in the Head Start program, over those never enrolled.
Since this universal preschool will probably cost the state $50
billion over the next several years, you would think we might look
at whether or not it would actually be effective. Naaah—let’s
just implement the program and spend the money.
In addition, they want free, universal childcare, run by the
state, regardless of income. Right now, we have thousands of private
providers of childcare. These providers would all become government
run institutions with public union employees, the theory being
that the state is doing such a good job right now in our government
run schools and other government run agencies, like Unemployment
and DMV, that we want government-run childcare too.
When asked
where the money would come from for all the facilities necessary
for the
pre-school and childcare, not to mention the
teachers and employees, the chair of the legislative committee
responded—“I don’t know, it is up to the Governor
to figure out how to pay for it.” Right—the last Governor
who tried to keep up with the spendthrift legislature is now doing
Yahoo! Commercials.
It is the
same old story. A grandiose plan, with someone else’s
money, that pays off the special interests (like public employee
unions), and utterly fails in its essential purpose, insuring that
the program will last forever. Only the mind of a politician could
conceive of such a thing, and only a bureaucrat could run it. It
won’t change until those in charge of the Legislature change.
We can only hope. CRO
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