At “The Quick and the Ed,” Kevin Carey has offered an intriguing if somewhat peculiar response to my and Rick Hess’s piece in the Education Gadfly and the National Review Online. We pointed out that the Obama administration had–months back–argued that K-12 reform is critical and that education’s $100 billion in borrowed “stimulus” funds ought to promote systemic improvement but, according to the administration’s own calculus, has not done so. In response, Kevin mounts an admirably straightforward, old-fashioned defense of government spending for its own sake. This includes what strikes us as a particularly dated defense of Keynesianism, seemingly imagining that government can and should create jobs at will–in the comfortable certainty that such makework will pay for itself.

Regardless of Kevin’s broader affinity for what might be regarded as Stalinist job creation, two more concrete considerations really ought to be kept in mind. First, President Obama and Secretary Duncan went out of their way to promise a lot more than simple spending and job preservation in promoting the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), so there’s an issue of consistency,integrity, and honesty here. They justified the immense borrowing for K-12 (and higher) education not merely as a makework jobs program, but as a tool for promoting a much-needed overhaul of schooling. They have not delivered and now they (and their acolytes) seem disinclined even to recall the promises that were made. Second, there are scads of other ways one could spend dollars on education in stimulative fashion without necessarily propping up current jobs. Many of these alternatives hold greater promise of boosting student achievement–and doing so without aggravating the structural deficits (and staff bloat) that menaces K-12 schooling. Indeed, with our colleague Mike Petrilli, we suggested a number of such alternatives last winter.

It takes a special sensibility for someone living in a nation drowning in public and private debt, one that is now dumping onto our kids and grandkids another $1.5 trillion in borrowing this year alone, to take offense at the notion that the Obama administration ought to respect its promise that borrowed funds would bring about educational improvement rather than simply padded job rolls to preserve an unsatisfactory status quo.