We hope Kansas parents, teachers and other community members take note of this op ed. A few years ago, many of us had never heard of the Kansas Policy Institute and assumed the Kansas Chamber of Commerce was an organization to promote the interests of Kansas businesses. Now we understand that these two organizations are Koch-funded mouthpieces which actively advocate against the interests of Kansas public schools and the children they serve.

The arguments in this piece are easily refuted. See the comments below it. We also note that the claim that districts choose to operate inefficiently is a mischaracterization of information in LPA reports and testimony before the K-12 performance and efficiency panel. When districts explain the sound reasons they have for choosing not to implement what would be the “most efficient” practice in terms of cost only, the authors say they are choosing to operate inefficiently. (One example is block scheduling being more “efficient” but districts choosing not to do block scheduling for academic reasons.)

They also choose to ignore the fact that the State didn’t present any cost studies and the real reason why a new comprehensive cost study has not been undertaken, which is that legislators fear or believe (depending on their perspective) that any new study will show what districts have been saying all along-school funding in Kansas is too low to meet current demands.

Here’s the op ed: http://www.kansas.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/article26820676.html

It’s also helpful to remember that the 1980 Libertarian presidential platform when David Koch was the Vice Presidential candidate included the following:
“We advocate the complete separation of education and State. Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals. Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended.”