Today's Seattle Times published side-by-side op-eds on the subject of I-884. The pro from Bill Gates the elder, the con, from Sound Politics contributor Marsha Richards of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation.

Bill Gates wrote, and I paraphrase, "Everybody values education, so let's spend a ton more money on it!". But he failed to explain whether and how spending all of this money would actually translate into tangible results.

Marsha Richards smoked him. She outlines a number of specific education reforms that really would work and then tells us exactly why I-884 would be an unmitigated disaster:

I-884 does not address any of these crucial issues. It would delay necessary reforms and make the current failed bureaucracy $1 billion bigger.

Does it cost money to provide a good education? Of course. But how we spend that money is just as important as how much. Right now Washington spends more than $9 billion a year on its K-12 public schools — almost $9,500 per student. Yet less than half of that amount actually reaches the school building and classroom where learning takes place. A full 57 percent goes to feed the bureaucracy or other "non-basic-instruction" programs. That needs to change.

We cannot afford to mistakenly or lazily assume, yet again, that if we just throw a little (or in this case a lot) more money at our education problem, it will be solved. The cost to taxpayers and students is too high.