THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 25, 1996 TAG: 9602240018
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: KEITH MONROE
LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines
Virginia has long been a low tax, no frills state. Virginia was parsimonious when parsimonious wasn't cool. Gov. Doug Wilder squeezed hard during a recession and George Allen won office promising to squeeze harder.
A backlash has now developed, especially as regards education. Some prominent businessmen, who employ the products of public education, worry that the austerity is in danger of going too far.
Obviously, no one wants gold-plated government services when pot metal will do. Conversely, it isn't in the long term best interest of a society when public schools, great institutions of higher education and renowned teaching hospitals are subjected to relentless economic pressure. Streamlining for greater efficiency is one thing, fiscal anorexia another. At some point, Virginia is in danger of ceasing to be competitive.
It's not merely a philosophical quibble; our future prosperity may hinge on the answer. Lately, the Virginia Beach public schools have been in the news. There's no question they've been mismanaged. More money was budgeted than was available. Critics claim millions more could be squeezed out of the schools that now goes to pay for inessential frills.
Perhaps, but Virginia Beach has always run its schools relatively lean and has even boasted in the past of keeping class size large in order to keep costs low. The chief cost of providing an education is teacher salaries. Education is a labor-intensive business, and quality teachers cost money.
That's increasingly so because the pool from which teachers are drawn has shrunk. Once, not really very long ago, one of the few jobs available to a bright woman was schoolmarm. Now the best and the brightest are far more likely to wind up as MBAs, investment bankers, lawyers or physicians. Greater opportunity for women to obtain jobs offering greater pay, prestige and advancement has forced schools to pay more or settle for less.
Figures from the Virginia Education Association for the 1992-93 school years show that the per-pupil cost in Virginia Beach was $4,328. The average for all Virginia districts was $5,488 and for the United States $5,616. Thus, the Beach spent about 78 percent as much as the average Virginia district or the country as a whole per pupil.
Virginia Beach ranked near the bottom of state districts at 112th. Many have responded to the recent fiscal follies by proposing to give the schools even less money, since they don't know how to manage it. The impulse is understandable, but at some point you get what you pay for. Ask Mississippi.
The picture is also troubling in the case of state colleges and universities. As state funding has shrunk, tuition has risen to take up the slack. A college like Norfolk State has endured cuts of 20 percent in state funding over the past five years. Virginia now ranks 42nd among the states in the per-student support provided by the state.
The state's teaching hospitals also face fiscal difficulties in a more competitive environment. More state funding would help, but isn't in the cards. The state provides only 10 percent of the budget for the medical chool at the University of Virginia. That level of funding puts U.Va. in 60th place out of 76 public medical schools in the nation. The associated teaching hospital gets no money from state appropriations.
Taxpayers may find this a cause for rejoicing, but it is not really a good thing that our children attend public schools that regularly rank in the bottom 20 percent in funding (and test scores), that our colleges and universities, medical schools and teaching hospitals are in the race for dead last in the nation.
For many years, Southern states couldn't even dream of competing with more prosperous rivals. So the quaint custom developed of comparing themselves with themselves. In this way, relatively enlightened states like Virginia and North Carolina were able to boast of leading the Southeastern states even though the average they were beating was pulled down by the truly dismal performance of places like Mississippi and Louisiana.
Now Virginia is in danger of failing to beat even the Southeastern state averages. And even if it were still leading its more benighted neighbors, that would no longer be good enough if it ever was. In a global economy, Virginia's scholars are no longer competing just with those from Southern states or even the nation as a whole but with the Germans and the Japanese.
An old saw argues that if you teach a person to fish, he will be able to feed himself for life. We are teaching our children to fish with a bent pin and bamboo pole. The leading states have their kids using nets, and some of our international competitors equip their children with dynamite, sonar and factory ships. Guess who's going to go hungry in such an environment?
Keeping costs low is good. Saving money is admirable. But it isn't everything.
In an unguarded moment, the late Gus Grissom is said to have answered an interviewer with his true feelings about space flight on a Florida radio show early in the Mercury program. ``How does it feel to sit there on top of that rocket waiting for liftoff?'' the starry-eyed interviewer asked. He was expecting the standard gung-ho response. Instead, Grissom is supposed to have said, ``How would you feel if you knew every part had been made by the low bidder?''
Virginia is in danger of preparing its schoolchildren, its college students and its doctors in low-bidder institutions. Their trajectory could be disappointing.
MEMO: Mr. Monroe is editor of the editorial page of The Virginian-Pilot.
by CNB