Yes, education must be first in 2012

New Mexico Sen. Pete Campos wrote recently in the Albuquerque Journal about the need for K-12 education to be a top priority for the Legislature in the upcoming session. I couldn’t agree more with that (as I’ve written recently), but in reading the article, I discovered that our methods are far different.

To make a long story short, Campos wants to dramatically-increase spending on a variety of early childhood, public health, and government education programs. He does propose some ideas that won’t necessarily increase spending — like “strengthening curriculum and aligning it with employment trends…and manufacturing” These are nice ideas, but New Mexico doesn’t have much more money to spend. Even if it did, I’m not convinced that much of what Campos wants to do would really result in educational improvement.

Instead of more funding, we have repeatedly discussed several proposals (here and here) that would result in greater school choice and improved results. Unfortunately, when it comes to our schools, it always seems that more money is the mantra, even though we’ve already been there, done that.