Hopefully, the bewitched constituency of the more-money crowd will not cave and appease the bureaucratic angst attempting another swipe at the Battle Ground levy in April. The hollow cry: Who wants to see the little ones deprived of a quality education? We’ve seen this movie before.
Never mind the reality. In fact, we are slipping down the educational ladder relative to the rest of the developed world in primary education. The OECD Program for International Student Assessment report, which compares the knowledge of 15-year-olds in 70 countries, ranked the United States 14th out of 34 countries for reading skills, 17th for science and a below-average 25th for mathematics.
From 1971 to today, America has gone from spending an average of $4,300 per student to $9,000 per student, (adjusting for inflation). Are the 53 percent of “no” voters really prickly outliers? Or are they just tired of being thumped by an ever larger tax club?
The middle classes are rapid-boiling in post-recession uncertainty. Outfitting them with more taxes at this time is a rash, unconscionable slap on a very tender fiscal face.
