Education is the silver bullet

During the 2010–11 school year, American taxpayers will spend about $543 billion to teach the nearly 50 million students who attend public elementary and secondary schools (kindergarten through 12th grade) across the country. In comparison, taxpayers will pay about $60 billion to house, correct and punish the 2.2 million prisoners who are behind bars every day in American prisons. Americans spend about $26,000 per prisoner but just $11,000 per student (U.S. Department of Education; Washington Post). Just incredible.

Common sense — and every study and analysis proves this — tells us that the more educated one is, the less likely one is to end up in prison.

However, American taxpayers, lawmakers and leaders — regardless of the information in front of them — have yet to seriously act on this correlation. We’ve tried just about every strategy in the world to keep people out of prison, yet most states are suffering from overcrowded prisons, and one state out West is set to release over 50,000 inmates over the next few years because it simply cannot handle the influx of inmates. So if we know education keeps people out of prison, why are we spending more than twice as much money on prisoners as on students?

When you think about the aforementioned numbers, it shouldn’t shock anybody that American students, according to international comparison exams, have long lagged behind their counterparts in Asia and Europe in math and science. Nor should it be surprising that more and more American companies are hiring foreign workers, or that American universities are accepting foreign students at a higher rate than ever before.


Armstrong Williams can be heard nightly, Monday through Friday, from 9 to 10 p.m. on Sirius/XM Power 169. For more info text Army 7 to 80672.