LIMBAUGH COMMENTARY: REMOVING FED FROM ED

Sometimes kids, like their parents, don't choose the correct tense for their verbs. But what's worse, but endearingly cute, is when they butcher their incorrectly chosen words.

For example, I asked my 3-year-old daughter, "How do you know?" Her response was not, "I just know." She chose to use the past tense, but she didn't say, "I just knew." She decided to use the wrong tense and more, "I just knoweded (pronounced NODID) it."

As I was typing these words, perhaps intuiting that I needed another example, she came into my office and asked me if she and her older sister could take a bath in a tub (a plastic laundry tub with leaky holes in it). In my characteristic deference to their mother's superior wisdom, I asked her if she'd asked mommy. She nodded affirmatively. "We could if we be'd good."

Many of our esteemed Washington politicians are obviously convinced that if we middle Americans be'd good and just let them tend to our business, they could educate our kids properly.

Currently under consideration by the Senate is a Republican-sponsored bill designed to give states more discretion and flexibility in spending federal education money. The program already exists in 12 states, but the Education Flexibility Partnership Act (called ed-flex) would expand its application to all 50 states. Although the measure is states' rights oriented, it also has practical benefits.

Federal education money, like all federal money channeled back to the states, has cumbersome bureaucratic strings attached. Missouri Republican Sen. John Ashcroft's office puts this in perspective by reporting that the federal government currently provides only 7 percent of local school funding but demands 50 percent of all school paperwork in some states.

Ed-flex would free state schools from certain federal regulations that consume valuable time of our educators -- time that could be more efficiently spent on improving the quality of education.

Though ed-flex has much bipartisan support and is even ostensibly supported by President Clinton, the Los Angeles Times reports that the bill "appeared destined for swift enactment until Democrats sought to expand (it) to fit the president's agenda."

Specifically, they have proposed an amendment that would add $11.4 billion over six years to hire 100,000 new teachers. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott says that he wants to keep ed-flex streamlined for quick passage and therefore prefers that the "new-teacher" and other education proposals be dealt with later in the year as part of the comprehensive Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Congress better think long and hard before making a commitment to throw massive additional monies toward our educational problems. This is especially true of commitments that by their nature are permanent. When you add 100,000 teachers, you don't just have to pay them for one year. If they are truly needed now they will continue to be, which means federal funding for them will have to continue in perpetuity.

Beyond that, there is much evidence that more federal money is not the answer for education any more than it has been for a host of other problems, such as welfare. The National Center for Policy Analysis reports that while education spending has increased exponentially during the past three plus decades, the scholastic performance of America's children has declined abysmally. In addition, University of Rochester economist and education expert Eric Hanushek, after surveying 227 studies of student-teacher ratios, concluded that policies of class-size reduction are extremely expensive and yield little benefits in terms of student achievement.

There is no question that America has serious problems with education. But pouring endless money into education programs has been and will continue to be like pouring water into a porous laundry basket.

The ed-flex bill may be a baby step in the right direction in terms of reducing the federal government's stranglehold on state education. But more radical reform is urgently needed.

We must begin to liberate our educational institutions from the constrictive tentacles of the federal government. If more states would adopt private-school choice legislation, it would introduce much-needed competition into the system. And the federal government should enact legislation allowing education savings accounts.

In the meantime, the public education system should abandon so-called progressive ideas such as outcome-based education and return to the fundamentally sound core-curriculum that has been tried and tested through the years.

~David Limbaugh of Cape Girardeau is a columnist for Creators Syndicate.