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Tonight's Democratic Forum, unsurprisingly, brought no new ideas to the table on how to improve poor performing schools. Like any domestic issue, the left's answer is to throw more money onto the pyre of good intentions. This misses the point entirely. Money is not what bad schools need. What they need is accountability.

The question posed by the panel dealt with how to improve failing schools and achievement gaps between white and minority students. The echo across the board of candidates included variations of the need to spend, and then tax, and then stop funding the military to spend even more. Easy, right?

Unfortunately, the easy answer is not the best answer. If we could simply pour money into the problem like pouring water on a fire, we already would have done so. In Washington, DC, students enjoy the highest per capita spending, and are still “enjoying” some of the worst schools in the nation.

Real change calls for more than just cold hard cash. It involves an institutional change. However, this is an idea that serious Democratic candidates can never accept. The teacher's unions that fill Democratic campaign coffers would be furious to learn that teachers would actually be held accountable for the quality of their work. And perhaps even worse, the endless rhetoric promulgated by the Democratic Party over class warfare, and the ignored rights of minorities, would seem less relevant.

Democrat's are right that it is time for a major change in American policies toward education. But offering more of the same old purely fiscal solution is just not going to make the grade.

Read Victor's follow-up post.