Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) has had a very on-again, off-again relationship with his desire to collect federal funds. He turned down money for high-speed rail funding that could have created 71,000 jobs, said he would reject funding from President Obama’s jobs act, and flirted with rejecting money from the first phase of the administration’s Race to the Top education program (which Florida won under the tenure of Scott’s predecessor).

Now, Race to the Top is back for a second phase, this time aimed toward early childhood education. In order to apply for this phase at all, Scott has to direct the Florida legislature to accept funding for child abuse prevention that he had previously rejected. But now, even though Florida has already applied for the Race to the Top early childhood education funds, Scott says he may well not accept them:

Gov. Rick Scott said Florida will reject a federal early learning grant if it comes with strings attached.

The state submitted an application for up to $100 million Wednesday. The early learning grants are part of President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top program. [...]

Scott issued a statement saying the state would not accept the money if it came with requirements that include any state funding or future legislative action.

Scott’s protestations aside, Florida could benefit from new investments in early childhood education. According to the National Institute for Early Education Research’s State of Preschool 2010 report, “Florida has one of the nation’s highest percentages of 4-year-olds in preschool programs…but state and local spending on those programs is among the worst in the nation.”

Scott likes to change his political rhetoric entirely depending on which way the wind is blowing. (After all, he went from promising to create 700,000 jobs in addition to what Florida’s natural economic growth would create to saying, “I don’t have to create any jobs.”) But this latest turn really is dizzying, as he’s saying that just because he applied for federal funding (that already had preconditions on it) doesn’t mean that he actually wants it, if it comes with any preconditions.

Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) has made his opposition to federal funding — for everything from the Affordable Care Act to high-speed rail — extremely well known. As Igor Volsky has noted, Scott’s opposition to federal grants makes no sense, but that hasn’t stopped him from refusing them while claiming that they “ultimately create obligations that our taxpayers can’t afford.”

However, Scott may be slowly changing his mind when it comes to federal funding. As the Orlando Sentinel noted, Scott may direct the Florida legislature to accept funding from the Affordable Care Act that it had previously rejected in order to free Florida up to compete in the latest round of the Education Department’s Race to the Top program. The current round of RTTT allows states to apply for funding to enhance early childhood education programs:

Florida plans to compete for $100 million in the federal government’s latest Race to the Top program, assuming the Florida Legislature is willing to accept other federal money it had previously rejected.

To apply for the Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge, which is designed to improve the care and education of young children, states must be taking part in a federal home-visiting program meant to prevent child abuse.

Florida won an earlier round of the Race to the Top program that it entered before Scott took office, earning itself $700 million, which Scott at the time made some noise about rejecting.

Meanwhile, the Sunshine State could undeniably benefit from additional investments in early childhood education. According to the National Institute for Early Education Research’s State of Preschool 2010 report, “Florida has one of the nation’s highest percentages of 4-year-olds in preschool programs…but state and local spending on those programs is among the worst in the nation.” “The problem in Florida isn’t quantity, it’s quality,” said W. Steven Barnett, co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research.

Scott has already made it quite clear that his opposition to federal funding is much more about politics than policy. In this case, if Scott is willing to look past political games for just a moment, Florida’s children may see the benefit.

Last month, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) — a long-shot contender for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination — said American students scoring low on history tests is proof of “a conscious effort on the part of the left, who has a huge influence on our curriculum, to desensitize America to what American values are so they are more pliable to the new values that they would like to impose on America.” During a campaign appearance at the Perry Public Library in Perry, Iowa this week, Santorum took this line of thinking a step further, explaining that he is opposed to early childhood education programs because he feels they are a government attempt to “indoctrinate your children“:

It is a parent’s responsibility to educate their children. It is not the government’s job. We have sort of lost focus here a little bit. Of course, the government wants their hands on your children as fast as they can. That is why I opposed all these early starts and pre-early starts, and early-early starts. They want your children from the womb so they can indoctrinate your children as to what they want them to be. I am against that.

“Obviously, socialists love children, just like they love people in groups of one million or more,” Santorum added.

Santorum’s bizarre conspiracy-theorizing aside, study after study has shown that federal early childhood education programs have substantial benefits. For instance, students enrolled in Head Start are more likely to be reading and writing at the appropriate level in their early school years, have better health outcomes, earn more money, and commit fewer crimes. Parents with students in Head Start and Early Head Start are also more likely to be involved in their child’s education and cost states less in Medicaid outlays.

One long-term study in California found that “our society receives nearly $9 in benefits for every $1 invested in Head Start children.” Meanwhile, conservative projections show that the real fiscal rate of return overall on public early education investments is about 10 percent. The Center on Children and Families has found that investments in pre-school not only boost GDP, but pay for themselves in the long-term.

As Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said when discussing the value of investments in education, “the payoffs of early childhood programs can be especially high.” But Santorum would rather play the socialist card than ensure that the richest nation on Earth do all it can for its youth.

One of the current trends that is vogue in the politics of K-12 education is to bash teachers and claim that they do not care about the quality of education they are providing and that they are solely responsible for poor outcomes in schools in impoverished communities.

After passing a new bill that would make it much more difficult for the North Carolina Association of Educators to collect dues from its members, North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis (R) said at the state’s GOP convention that teachers who oppose the new legislation — which could dramatically harm teachers’ collective bargaining organizations — don’t care about kids and only care about their jobs and pensions:

Tillis drew applause also when he said the legislature planned next week to adopt both a bill requiring voters to produce a photo identification, and a bill that would bar the state from collecting dues for the N.C. Association of Educators, the group that lobbies for teachers and other groups. “They don’t care about kids. They don’t care about classrooms,” Tillis said. “They only care about their jobs and their pensions.”

It’s highly ironic for Tillis to claim that the state’s teachers do not care about the education their children are provided, given his own actions on education during the budget debate. Tillis and his Republican colleagues cut over a hundred million dollars from K-12 spending, including $92.2 million from textbook purchases alone. 13,000 education jobs are expected to be lost as a result of these cuts. Local news station WCNC reviewed some of these cuts in a special report. Watch it:

While teacher-bashing may be vogue at the moment, one would hope that cynicism that involves cutting the state’s education budget by nine figures and then claiming that it’s teachers who don’t care about kids would not be acceptable to North Carolinians. (h/t: @21stprincipal)

Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI)

The spending cuts that House Republicans proposed for the remainder of the fiscal 2011 year would gut important federal investments in special education, K-12 education for low-income students, federal job training, environmental protection, community health centers, nuclear security, infrastructure, programs that aid both pregnant women and newborns, housing assistance for veterans and rental assistance for people with long-term disabilities. And one of the primary targets on the long list of programs that Republicans have slated for reductions is Head Start.

Head Start, as Alex Seitz-Wald noted, is “a valuable early education program, which has helped millions of low-income children and their families through comprehensive education, health, nutrition, and parent involvement services since it was started in 1965.” Protests have been staged across the country against these particular cuts, with many taking place at the offices of various lawmakers. However, when Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) is asked about why Republicans proposed cutting Head Start, he just shrugs:

U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Tipton, said when groups ask him why their budgets were picked to be cut, he asks them, “What would you cut?” [...]

[Walberg] added that the cut to Head Start was just one piece of the Republicans’ proposal, and the program was not singled out for a separate vote. “It was just one of those things,” he said.

Walberg doesn’t seem interested, but study after study has found that Head Start provides substantial long-term benefits to disadvantaged children. Head Start students are more likely to be reading and writing at the appropriate level in their early school years, have better health outcomes, earn more money, and commit fewer crimes. Parents with students in Head Start are also more likely to be involved in their child’s education and cost states less in Medicaid outlays.

One long-term study in California found that “our society receives nearly $9 in benefits for every $1 invested in Head Start children.” There are certainly ways to reform the program to make it even more responsive to the needs of children and their parents, but Republicans are simply throwing it under the budget knife, without even having bothered thinking up a reason.