Soon, I will be publishing a blog post that highlights the four most daunting obstacles to education reform in America. One of those reform barriers is the perception that switching to a merit based system for teacher pay would drastically increase education expenditures at the local, state, and national levels. While deficit hawks are sorely needed in today’s fiscally irresponsible Washington atmosphere, education reform is simply not the policy arena that they should be scrutinizing for two reasons.
First, the education of American students is absolutely critical for the future success of this country. While it is almost impossible to cut spending in entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, the government simply cannot focus on critical domestic policy arenas, like education, to try and appear fiscally responsible. Second, education spending is a miniscule part of the federal budget, taking up approximately 1.8% of federal spending annually. Although a majority of the education spending in the United States comes from state and local government coffers, there are far larger sectors of the federal budget for those interested in fiscal responsibility. These statistics and a wealth of additional information can be found at the Federal Education Budget Project.
For those interested in exploring how federal education spending affects the national budget, be sure to check out the Committee For a Responsible Budget’s budget simulator. You’ll notice that only a few levers within the domestic part of the simulator touch on education reforms, and these changes do not drastically affect the overall federal budget. Try the simulator yourself at: http://crfb.org/stabilizethedebt/ .
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