I know when writers like me even mention education or the sacred cow of MAEP many of you out there begin to squirm. But for the next few minutes, let’s drop the political rhetoric and agree to shoot straight on Mississippi’s education funding. We’ve already played enough games with our children’s futures.
The Mississippi Adequate Education Program was passed in 1997 to provide a formula designed to ensure that every Mississippi child receives an adequate education. Why such a phrase as “adequate education” was ever used is beyond me; money alone does not provide an adequate education but that is what MAEP implies. And why would we ever desire our education system to be adequate? Call it semantics if you will but words have meaning.
MAEP’s formula is as questionable as its name since determining the cost of doing business, say on the Coast, varies significantly from the cost of doing business in other areas of the state, such as in the Delta. Economically, regions across the state are just as diverse as our people. To think that there is a one size fits all model is ludicrous.
Call it what you will, but there is no question that MAEP was an attempt at equalization, of making every school district, rich or poor (or should I say tax rich or tax poor), as equally successful as possible through the redistribution of state revenues (your taxes). Instead of reimbursing the local school districts that portion of state taxes they contribute allowing them to be able to provide for themselves at a rate they determined necessary (you know, “the government closest to the people” concept), the state believed it knew better and took on more authority, redistributing your tax dollars, and we as Mississippi citizens readily obliged since after all, it was “in the best interest of our children,” or so we thought. We allowed bureaucrats and politicians to think they knew the children better than the parents.
MAEP sought to require that every student be provided an “adequate education” based on accountability standards assessed through a series of standardized tests, thus resulting in what many teachers and parents now call “teaching to the test” since the students often are not retaining what they learn, simply spewing it out for the benefit of the school district’s rating. But when you take state or federal monies, strings are attached and so local school districts had to comply with the new standards if they wanted to be able to dip both hands in the till.
The truth is that MAEP has not provided the equalizing effect its creators had hoped; the program may have actually accelerated the disparities by increased attendance in private schools in even the more successful, tax rich districts and now by the push for Charter Schools, which local school districts are actively lobbying against because they see their coffers dwindling before their eyes. Parents are not content with the level of education their children are receiving even at “adequate” or near adequate funding levels; they are desperately searching for more options to advance their child’s education with fewer restrictions and less academic anorexia. MAEP may simply be dumbing down the most successful public schools while allowing the failing schools to milk the system for longer than they otherwise would have had it not been for the promise of redistributed funding.
It is time for the Legislature to end the charade and end MAEP as it is currently structured. There is a better, less socialistic way to administer public education funding.
Ideas abound but we could start by the state sending taxes collected within local school districts back to the same district and not redistributing the funds to other areas. Local school districts should be allowed to keep more of their own money. If they then require subsidizing by the state, the state needs to ensure that the local school district is taxing their residents at a level that is feasible to meet its own needs by insisting on a plan that forces the districts to operate within their means and weans it off the state nickel.
The hard truth will follow that not every small town or little community will be able to have their own school district; consolidation of resources will happen by default or the districts will close their doors and people will move to better educational areas. It would not surprise me if parental and taxpayer involvement increased in local schools if this happened since the crutch of the government would fall on their doorstep instead of at the Capitol. Less government entitlement breeds more responsible citizens; you take responsibility for yourself and your family and you have no one else to blame.
I know this will likely never happen since education, like healthcare, is an extremely sensitive political topic. Everyone wants to be the hero now; it seems very few these days see the big picture and consider principled governance. It would be political suicide to lead such an effort, but as my Dad often told me, “Doing what’s right isn’t always easy, but it’s always right.”
