By Nicolas Martin For the Journal-News Despite the endless harping of columnists and government commissions, Americans seem in no hurry to arrest the contin- ued erosion of educational stan- dards. As long as our basketball is world-class, we're content with fourth-rate schools. Fairfield has managed to sleepwalk its way through the MTV decade along with the rest of the country. Like so many other shrubs, we are planted squarely in the median of the national freeway to academic mediocrity. We may be stupid, but at least we're not different. Just how effective the educa- tional establishment has been at removing our capacity to . think will be. tested ill the up- coming primary, when we'll have the opportunity to grease the palms of the organized syn - dicate controlling the schools. A "yes" vote on the Fairfield School Levy is an endorsement of a scholastic policy which, with a .little fme-tuning, will doom our stUdents to the academic at- .. J Guest column tain.ment level 'of, say, Botswa- na. Students in the 1990-91 school year scored lower on both the math and English portions of the ACT than students in 1981-82. . . How much are we paying for this increased ignorance? In 1981-82 there were 7,133 stu- dents in the system and the school budget was a mere $13,382,000, which works out to $1,876 per student. In 1991-92, the number of students had grown to 8,440, an increase of 18 percent. Meanwhile the bud- get has hit $30,148,789, a breathtaking 225 percent in- crease in the same period. We are now spending $3,572 per , badly educated student. What else has changed in Fairfield schools over the past decade? Compared to the 18 per- cept increase in pupils, we have experienced a 53 percent in- administrative staff. We have also had a 255 percent in "special services" staff, and a 340 percent increase in the number of teacher's aides. While .the increased number of teachers has been relatively modest at 20 percent, the salary hikes for all teachers have been anything but modest. The aver- age salary for a Fairfield teacher has jumped by 167 per- in the past 10 years, about twice the rate of inflation. For t he rest of Americans, inflation- adjusted income has increased hardly at all over the same peri- od, especially in industries which have done as poorly as the schools. The average yearly salary of a Fairfield teacher is now $31,419. The average per capita income of all Fairfield residents was $11,680 in 1991. Most Americans, brainwashed by the education trust, still be- lieve the fiction that money is the answer to the country's edu- cation problems. Many studies have examined the relationship of teacher salaries to student 84 percent of these studies have found no re- lationship' or a negative one, ac- ducation problems cording to a, 1989 survey . . To boost that 225 percent in- crease we will now pony up an- other $3,280,552 per year, or else. What does the "or else" in- clude? All busing for grades 9-12 Will be wiped o'ut. "Extra- Duty, Extra-Curricular, Extend- ed-Time Contracts" will be slashed. Field trips will be nixed. Bowing to public rela- tions, some administrative ries and positions are destined to be cut, but ot nearly enough. After a decade of massive in- creases in expenditures and sliding test scores, we are in- formed that only another whop- ping tax increase can prevent vi- cious cuts. Official jargon obscures the size. of this tax increase behind discussion of "mills" and "annual yields." The truth is, though, that this levy is a tax increase of about 16 percent. If you own a home worth $30,000 you presently pay $258 in school taxes a year. If the levy passes that will increase td $303. If your home . is worth $50,000, your school tax will go from $430 to $505. If you own a home worth $150,000, your tax , burden will increase fro r $1,292 to $1,497. Asia and Latin America 11re booming. The Western ans are moving to union, and Eastern Euror e is free of communism. Meanwhile the American economy 1s dead in the water, saddled by g3,rgan- tuan deficits, regulatory stran- gulation, and a poorly e .ucated workforce. We can, and better, deal with the inadequacy of the schools here at home right now. The first step is to ''just say no" to extortinate tax increases to feed the incompetent education es- tablishment. Then a major housecleaning is needed to re- move the political know-noth- ings who perpetuate the prob- lem. You'll identify them when you hear them say, "We've made strides; but there is much more we could do if we had the mon- ey." (Nicolas Martin is executive director of the Consumer Health Education Council and lives in Fairfield.)