The Woes of a Balanced State Budget

Today the Times continues reporting on the state of Oregon's reduction of the school year as a cost saving measure. Could there be a more shortsighted measure? (Rationing out nuclear waste to every American to burry in their backyard to save the costs of Yacca Mountain?) That's about 8% of the school year. Hopfully this will mean an end to "free days", movies that are shown as a reward, and other time-wasting elements which fill up so much of the school day. Otherwise its an 8% cut in the amount of education children recieve, at least in bad budget years. Those familiar with compound interest can see where this goes after a couple of years. Already we graduate too many high school students with 8th grade educations. This is moving the trend in the absolute wrong direction. And all for the sake of a cast savings, as though we are too poor as a people to educate our youth.

The problem is twofold. One the one hand, the American public wants our children educated on the cheap. We want to optimize educational spending, getting the biggest bang for our buck, rather than working our way up the return on investment curve to someplace where tomorrow's workers will get the eduaction they will need to be competative. On the other hand we have states governed by 19th century ideas of budgeting. Our states are pre-Kensyian. They apply budgeting principles that Herbert Hoover thought too inflexible. I can understand we don't want states treating debt the way the Federal brach does, but there must be some intermediate possition between perpetual deficits and devestaing budget cuts.