Local opinion: Trying ignorance over education

School has begun for most of Arizona’s 1.1 million K-12 students and will start soon for the state’s more than 600,000 university and community college students.

Resumption of classes comes two months after legislators approved a parsimonious 2% spending increase for K-12 schools and cuts for colleges and universities, once again shorting public education. When setting school funding levels, lawmakers fail to heed former presidential speechwriter Robert Orben’s observation: “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”

Funny but not funny, because Republican legislators consistently try the latter, their ignorance coming at the expense of job growth and economic well-being.

To enact tax cuts, lawmakers this year lopped $16.3 million from universities, $9 million from community college adult education and workforce training programs and $30 million in one-time workforce training and education appropriations.

They allowed expiration of $300 million a year in supplemental funding from the state land trust for public schools. Proposition 123, which passed in 2016, provided the payments.

Another $1 billion in de facto cuts hit public education this academic year because lawmakers won’t require accountability for or place limits on universal vouchers, which go mostly to families that don’t need help sending their kids to private schools.

The sum total is expensive ignorance, stifling business growth and repelling out-of-state investors, which hurts job creation and the economy, because it denies what businesses say is their No. 1 need – an educated workforce. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s website says, “Quality education is essential to a skilled and competitive workforce.”

Republican Bill Owens, Colorado’s governor 1999-2007, stressed education when in office, saying, “A strong economy begins with a strong, well-educated workforce.” He and others made it happen.

Here’s proof: Colorado ranks second in percent of population with college degrees, U.S. News & World Report says; its per capita GDP was $97,179 last year, based on data from macrotrends.net. Arizona is 31st in college degrees; per capita GDP was $78,451, or 19% below Colorado. The latest reported unemployment rate, for June, had Colorado at 3.9%, Arizona at 4.9%.

Those numbers vividly demonstrate how expensive ignorance is, brought to you by Arizona’s Republican legislators slashing taxes at education’s expense.

Low taxes are nowhere near businesses’ big needs, barely making the top 10 of most surveys. An educated workforce is No. 1, followed by infrastructure and health care.

Yet, our allegedly business-minded GOP lawmakers keep cutting taxes, certain – and certainly wrong – they will grow jobs and the economy. To cover tax reductions, they cut the real economic driver, education.

Some of their doing is, perhaps, from ignorant contempt for teachers’ unions and claims of liberal brainwashing at universities.

Their actions belie the state constitutional mandate to “provide for the establishment and maintenance of a general and uniform public school system,” opting instead for disestablishment of public schools, which they scornfully label “government schools,” while favoring private education for the privileged few.

They ignore that public schools, which enroll nine of 10 Arizona children, are being bled to death by vouchers and school choice. They lambaste public schools for poor test results while requiring no testing at private schools, some of which legislators’ cronies operate for handsome profits.

Why do some public schools struggle? It’s not teachers, administrators or parents. It’s stingy lawmakers keeping public education from its natural role as the starting point for a civil society and economic growth.

Robert Orben’s one-liner about expensive education would be a good laugh if it didn’t expose Republican legislators’ ignorance in willfully killing public schools and handicapping economic expansion.