Funds for STEM education.

• Author: Chamber, Jim
• Position: Readers' Forum - Letter to the editor

* I read your article, It's a Hobson's Choice: Dollars for Defense or for Education," (Feb. 2012, p. 8) with interest but beg to differ with your premise. We keep hearing that education will wither and die without more federal funding. The majority of primary and secondary educational funding comes from local taxation on real estate with additional state funding of public universities. All Federal funds come with strings, either compliance or reporting tasks that add to support staff workload. Ask your local school for their budget to see costs allocated to teacher salaries compared to administration and other overhead.

Better yet, compare today's educational system to what we had 50 years ago, when the best and brightest put us on the moon in a much shorter time than we can manage any major project these days (or even the 1-95/495 mixing bowl).

I'll bet our investment in education as a percentage of GDP was much less then. What we did have was leaders with...