The Legislative Black Caucus and Education

The Legislative Black Caucus in Mississippi met yesterday to discuss their "concerns" over education. I am concerned about education, but not in the ways that they claim to be.

At least two members of the caucus claimed that throwing more money at our already failing education system would correct many of the ills in our state, and one stated that throwing money at the problem would mean that "we wouldn't have dropours exploding, we wouldn't be spending $400 million incarcerating people, we wouldn't have the highest teen pregnancy rate in the nation for the last eight out of ten years." They want to increase funding for education when we already spend 60 percent of our state budget on education.

I think that a better plan would be to privatize education, close down the state department of education, issue school vouchers to give parents a real choice in educating their own children, and stop robbing our children who attend public schools of the opportunity which is provided by having required Bible classes.