Letter: Opposing more education funds is shortsighted

Monday, Feb. 28, 2005 | 9:01 a.m.

There are primarily two arguments used against spending more money on educating children in Nevada. The first states that Nevada's increases in education spending have not led to great gains in achievement. This argument is normally countered with the fact that Nevada spends less per student than every state except Utah. The second argument is that some places that spend more money do not perform as well as some places that spend less.

Perhaps the following analogy can shed some light on why this argument lacks credibility:

There is no significant correlation between per-patient spending and health. Katherine, for example, ranks first in my family in per-patient spending and first in patient-doctor ratio. But in health, she sits flat on the bottom of the family barrel. Meanwhile, Brian brings up the rear on spending in my family, last in both per-patient spending ($0) and ratio of patient to doctors, but in actual health, he ranks first.

Katherine is my 77-year-old, cigarette-smoking grandma and Brian is my somewhat younger construction worker cousin. Of course my grandma's health care costs are higher and of course her health is worse. Maybe when my grandma needed quadruple bypass surgery we should have told her that throwing money at the problem is no solution and demanded that we see some improvement in her health first.

JEREMY M. CHRISTENSEN