For those of us who think we should have a more unified education policy in this country – and more balanced funding – NCLB really opens the door to that (even if they’ve only turned the knob so far).

And, as I recently wrote, we could have fixed all of the bridges in the US TWICE with all of the money we spent in Iraq.

I don’t think anyone would argue that we could have spent that money better. But that money is, unfortunately, gone. Actually- it was never even here since we had to borrow so much of it.

But School Funding is, right now, mainly a state issue.

More importantly, it’s also a local issue- since such a big percentage of the cost must be covered (or not covered, in the case of poor districts) by local communities.

Obviously, the best solution, as I mentioned, is to get the state to fully fund the schools. But as long as we have a republican majority in the general assembly, this isn’t going to happen.

So what else can under-funded school districts do to help get caught up?

A bake sale, unfortunately, isn’t going to cut it.

Why don’t we divert some of the obscene amount of money we spend on weapons systems and spend it on educating kids in a way that doesn’t have them knocking on doors every other week selling cookie dough, flowers, or tins of popcorn.

I know. It’s bekuz da terrists might come and git our dumb asses. yahuck! I mean, have you seen the statistics on how many IEDs the new FALCON system is able to disarm? (zero)

Ah fuck it. Why don’t we just have school sponsored by Wal-Mart? We already spend over $500/pupil there anyway. You could easily turn the greeters into crosswalk guards as they already have vests and everything!

At lunch you could have “McDonalds-at-school” operate the lunchroom and Nike could run the gym program. Put it out for bid too as I’m sure Wendy’s and Reebok might have something to offer.

Or we could be brave and decide that spending nearly 90% of what we did in the Cold War era on “defense” while setting unfunded mandates for schools and teachers to meet is a bad idea.

(For the record I also think we need to shift current military spending so as to emphasize intelligence over weapons – I think modern threat analysis would support this thinking)

Just a few ideas on how we might better spend the federal tax dollars we are already paying!

A few new-but-already-outdated text books from an advertiser are not going to solve (or pay for!) these problems.

Eating coco puffs, reading the cereal box, listening to Disney radio… it’s a full-on, all-senses, advertising experience from morning until night.

And yes- in a perfect world we would have fully funded, commercial-free schools where kids could learn other values besides consumption.

But we don’t have that money available.

So… if we don’t want to raise taxes and we don’t want to cut teacher salaries and benefits (which is what going to for-profit schools would do)- then we need some other solutions.

I’d love to hear some other ideas.

PS – So…you think I won the “debate”? I love winning debates.