OEA Calls on Congress to Override Veto of Education Spending Bill

On Wednesday, the Ohio Education Association stated that President Bush's veto of an education spending bill would eliminate 49 federal education programs and strangle others, leaving some of the nation's neediest students without "essential" programs that they need to succeed in school.

The Association says that the veto cuts 30,000 children out of Head Start, cuts $800 million from the budget for special education and special needs children, cuts Teacher Quality grants by $100 million, and cuts federal funding for career and technical education in half.

In Ohio, the veto would reduce federal education program payments by $161 million.

The Association insists that studies have shown that these programs enhance learning and help student performance, and says that the veto is a misguided attack on children.

"This is a bipartisan issue. We are asking all Democrats and Republicans to come together to override the president's veto. Cutting these programs would leave thousands of Ohio's children behind instead of moving them forward into the twenty-first century," Ohio Education Association president Patricia Frost-Brooks.

Critics of federal funding and government involvement in education say that federal programs promote more homogeneity in the educational system when what is really needed is more differentiation. Children do not mature or learn at the same pace nor do all students respond the same to all teaching methods and programs.

Many teachers in recent times have also pointed out a disconcerting phenomenon: the brightest students tend to be very disinterested in most of their classes, even to the point of apathy. Critics charge that this is the fault of purblind, top-down central planning in education that is too far removed from the realities of learning and teaching.

Another criticism of the federal funding for education is that it provides money to established institutions that are foremostly interested in perpetuating their own existence, instead of giving the grants to parents and students, who working together would best know what to do with the money.

Some education philosophers, teachers, and economists have urged the federal aid for education to be transformed into the granting of vouchers to help parents and their children choose their own schools, thereby entering a degree of competition into public education that would serve to drive schools and teachers to higher performances, instead of funding ill-advised "schemes" like No Child Left Behind.

The Bush Administration has consistently promoted the idea of giving federal school vouchers to students that come from poor families, but since the Democrats became the majority in Congress the Administration has not made progress in that endeavor.

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