Huppenthal: Spend $50 million [on a data system] to improve education

by David Safier

Looks like Ed Supe John Huppenthal is a born again big spender when it comes to education. We absolutely need to spend $50 million more for the sake of education reform, he says, and he plans to get the cash out of the legislature next session.

We don't need the money for more teachers or up-to-date materials, of course. The fifty mill is to create a data collection computer system that would gather together student and teacher data from all over the state. Using all that data, one presumes, Huppenthal — also known as Cherry-Picker-in-Chief — would decide what he wanted to prove, then massage the data to "prove" it. After all, the guy has a black belt in correctly citing one small portion of one study, misconstruing the findings of another study, then arriving at a conclusion he decided on beforehand.

See, if (to analogize) kids are undernourished and underdeveloped, the best way to fix the problem is to buy a fancy, high tech scale, not to "throw money at the problem" by putting more and better food on the table. If we can weigh those kids and be accurate to a fraction of an ounce, we'll be able to pinpoint the problem and fix it.

Hupp had no idea we needed these extra bucks when he was a budget-cutting legislator.

“When I was down at the Capitol, no one down there ever grabbed me by the lapels and shook me and said, ‘If you really want a great education system, you need to fix this computer system,’” he said. “Nobody down there will be able to say that next session.”

And here's the best part. Spending $50 million would actually save money, so we can put more money in the classroom. At least that's what Mark Masterson, ADE's chief information officer, says.

And once the system is in place, it will be a money-saver in the long term by streamlining maintenance and administrative operations, [Masterson] added. Ultimately, a well-built, effective system should pay for itself within months. “If this will cost the state more money long-term, we would throw it in the trash,” Masterson said. “But what this will do is take more money and get it back to the classroom, back to the kids.”

I have to admit I'm not a conservative theologian, so I don't really understand how you can spend money creating a data collection system we don't have, spend more money on the employees to take care of the system, then spend more money on employees to analyze the data . . . and end up saving money. I guess it's one of those conservative miracles, akin to the miracle of loaves and fishes, or the miracle of lowering the deficit by cutting taxes. Nobody knows quite how it works. It just does.