For the first time since President Ronald Reagan was in office, the Boston Red Sox are playing in the World Series.  Overcoming a 0-3 deficit in the American League Championship Series, the Red Sox managed to beat the New York Yankees in four well-executed baseball games.  Their accomplishment is made more impressive by the tremendous amount of money spent by George Steinbrenner in his efforts to buy the best players in baseball and bring them together on one baseball team.  The problem is, even with their contracts and multi-million dollar deals, the Yankees players still didn’t have the necessary incentive to win other than their paychecks and maybe pride.  Many had demonstrated their ability to play well enough to get bought for the Yankees, but as they reached the pennant race, they must have realized that they would be paid no matter the outcome.  The Red Sox simply wanted the win more than the Yankees, and, in a fact contradicting the common perception that money and success go hand in hand, the Red Sox players were actually getting paid, on average, about two-thirds the average Yankees player.

That fact, coupled with the complete collapse of the Yankees, goes a long way towards debunking one of the central principles of liberalism: that society’s problems in places like education can be solved by simply increasing the budgets of the organization.  It may seem strange or even a stretch to try and connect baseball to the political debate, but the similarities between the attitudes of Steinbrenner and various high-ranking members of the Democratic party cannot be ignored.

On behalf of the National Education Association, Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy (D.) frequently demands increases in the Department of Education’s budget and other educational grants, loans, and opportunities.  President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act offered substantial increases in education budgets, but it coupled those increases with accountability provisions demanding a certain level of accomplishment.  Kennedy and other Democrats, with the blessing and support of the National Education Association, staunchly opposed and eventually removed these measures from the final bill and at the expense of the reforms that it was attempting to accomplish.  Like Steinbrenner, Kennedy’s view is simple: if we spend more money, we’ll win more.  That isn’t always the case.

To be sure, there is a correlation between funding and success.  Boston’s payroll was $125 million, substantially less than the Yankees’, but still impressively large.  There has to be some measure of demonstrable skill in order to have real success, but there also has to be a desire on the part of the participants to succeed – whether they are baseball players or teachers.

The success of a baseball team or a school is not strictly a function of its level of funding, no matter what George Steinbrenner, Ted Kennedy, or the NEA insist.  Throwing money at a problem is not as necessary as having employees desiring success and victory.  The key to the success of any branch is incentive, and it can’t simply be a paycheck.  No job pays what people want to be paid, but that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t take pride in the work that they are doing.  And even if there isn’t pride, there must still be accountability for those who receive a paycheck.  Baseball players have to prove their worth if they want to continue with their contract just as teachers and others should be required to demonstrate a similar success rate if they want to continue their employment.

Educators, like baseball players, must realize that there has to be accountability on their part in order to guarantee them an increase in their salary.  The Yankees players got there because Steinbrenner believed they were the best, hence their substantial salary.  Regardless of how high their salaries are, they’re still a result of their ability to do their job.  It may not be as critically important a job as teaching a child to read or helping the sick, but isn’t that all the more reason that teachers and doctors should be expected to succeed at their job and earn their paychecks more than some baseball player?

The NEA insists that teachers are not getting paid enough and, especially when compared to the outlandish salaries earned by professional athletes, no one can coherently argue otherwise.  But, until the NEA and Democrats realize that the taxpayers of this country expect and deserve quantitative results – like their children reading and succeeding at school – why should we continue to simply throw money at the problem?

After all, it didn’t work for Yankees fans.

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