This is in response to a opinion piece titled “Budget cuts hurt education.” The writer goes to great lengths to blame Republican politicians for the education system in Georgia and all over America.

A few years ago, two professors from Harvard and MIT got together and performed a $1.5 million experiment. They awarded $300,000 per year for five years to 15 poorly performing schools — 13 continued to perform poorly at the end of the five years.

Alternates to public education do a better job educating students for less money. Academic educational performance in recent decades has not improved dramatically with substantial increase in spending. Efforts should be focused on allocation of resources.

The problem in the classroom was not so much the lack of money as it is discipline problems with unruly students, like teachers catering to one or two problem students while the other 25 or so get less attention. That is not the fault of the teacher, but it is the fault of problem parents and spineless principals refusing to back the teacher but caters to the parent because of worries about a lawsuit or trying to make everyone think that the school has no discipline problems.

Throwing more money at the problem won’t solve anything. Welfare is a perfect example of $15.5 trillion spent and more people than ever in poverty.

Tom Quattlebaum

Newnan