Christina Romer is a distinguished economist and, or at least this is the impression I have gotten from her public appearances, a very nice person. But as a member of an administration that, like all administrations, makes some policy decisions for political reasons, it falls to her sometimes to justify the unjustifiable. Case in point: her opinion article in today’s Washington Post supporting the administration proposal for $23 billion in aid to school districts to prevent layoffs of teachers. Er, not exactly teachers, though but “education positions,” the term Romer uses when claiming that the 2009 stimulus package saved 400,000 “education positions” from layoffs.

The $23 billion is, of course, a political payoff to the teacher unions who pumped tens of millions of dollars into Democratic campaigns in the 2008 cycle. It is a way of keeping union dues pouring in from teachers—er, “education positions”—to the unions. Romer scarcely makes a stab at arguing that “education positions” are more important to society than the number of jobs that could be saved by alternative ways of spending $23 billion—or that could be generated by reducing taxes by something like that figure. Is student achievement going to plunge sharply if class size is increased slightly in response to layoffs? Numerous studies indicate there is little relationship between class size and student achievement. Is student achievement going to plunge sharply if the number of “education positions” is reduced? I’m not sure anyone has even bothered to run a study to see if achievement is improved by increasing the number of administrators. How could you get funding to test a proposition that is so obviously absurd?