Paul Jacobs with Common Sense on Back-to-School Horror stories

Paul Jacobs runs a mailing list called Common Sense. He sends out commentary on politics. He strongly believes we should reduce the size of the Federal Government. If you are interested, you can join the mailing list here.

This week he wrote about horror stories with the Washington DC schools.

Often you can present events in a way that is favorable to you. I remember a joke from twenty years ago about a car race between the United States and Russia. The American car won and all the papers in America ran it as the front page news. The Russian papers reported that they had come in second and the American car had come in next to last.

When business does this it is called marketing. When politicians do this it is called spin. To an extent it is reasonable. When the spin is very misleading it is better known as lying.

Paul Jacobs writes about some schools in Washington DC which don't seem to have their textbooks. Back in 2005 the schools had a similar problem and "some students didn't get books until December."

Here comes the spin: Paul Jacobs writes that The Washington Post explains "textbook department had its budget cut from $8 million to $1.5 million. And that it only has one employee."

It sort of sounds reasonable. The poor school is struggling meeting the needs of the students, but they just don't have enough money.

Then Paul Jacobs cuts through the spin and reminds us that the DC public schools are spending $13,000 per student and the overall budgets are going up, not down. He found that the "have been bought and paid for, and sit in warehouses because there is no system for keeping track."

Paul Jacobs says "This isn't a money problem, but a case of incompetence or neglect . . . or both."


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