Picking on kids is nasty business. But that's exactly what the education spending caps proposed by Gov. James Douglas — and recently passed by the Vermont Senate — will do.

Gov. Douglas is fanning the flames of taxpayer discontent this year by declaring that schools spend too much. The governor argues that the solution to rising taxes is to simply limit annual school spending increases to 3.5 percent. Tax caps are a crude approach that have failed spectacularly from California to Massachusetts, but that hasn't stopped our governor from championing this crowd-pleasing loser of an idea. The Vermont House, which will consider this idea next, should not swallow this toxic bait.

I've seen what happens when schools are underfunded. A few years ago, I was asked by a magazine to identify and write about the biggest education disaster in the country. What I found should serve as a cautionary tale.

As I called around the country to speak with education officials about where they saw the biggest problems, all roads led to states that had imposed inflexible tax or spending caps. Several states were mentioned most frequently: California, Massachusetts, Colorado and Oregon. Each of these states once had great school systems. After imposing tax or spending caps, their school systems were nearly crippled.

Take Colorado. In 1992, Colorado adopted a Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR), a constitutional amendment that limits budget growth to a rigid formula of changes-in-population-plus-inflation. TABOR has been proposed by conservatives in many states, but Colorado is the only one to have implemented it. Colorado schools are reeling from the impact of these budget caps: Under TABOR, Colorado dropped from 35th to 49th in the nation in K-12 spending as a percentage of personal income. The state's average per-pupil funding fell by more than $400 compared to the national average.

Colorado's spending caps were so destructive that business leaders and Chambers of Commerce campaigned to suspend TABOR. In November 2005, Colorado voters voted to suspend the tax and spending caps for five years, giving public services and schools time to recover.

In 2004, I traveled to Oregon to see what happens when schools are underfunded. Oregon's tax revenues had dropped sharply due to a national recession and a downturn in the state's high tech and forestry industries. The Oregon State Legislature had passed a temporary half-percent tax increase to help plug a growing budget deficit, but Citizens for a Sound Economy, a Washington-based anti-tax group chaired by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, launched a successful ballot measure campaign to repeal the tax package.

With their revenue lifeline choked off, Oregon's school system collapsed. I visited Hillsboro, an affluent Portland suburb that is adjacent to the sprawling campus of Nike's world headquarters. Faced with a shortage of funds, Hillsboro lopped nearly a month off the school year. I visited classes crammed with 50 students. Anyone who could began fleeing the public schools: enrollment in private schools around Portland soared, as did the student dropout rate and the number of students choosing to graduate a year early. "How can kids not feel that they are devalued?" the Hillsboro High School principal asked me.

California and Massachusetts also used to have top-ranked school systems. But a tax revolt occurred in both states: Proposition 13 was passed in California in the mid-1970s, and Massachusetts voters passed Prop 2-1/2 in 1980, both of which capped property taxes and resulted in slashed school spending. Reed McCracken, a Waterbury resident who taught high school in California, witnessed the carnage that followed. "California just dropped," he recalls. "In just about every category of K-12 spending, California fell to dead last." McCracken saw his classes in California swell to 35 students, and watched academic achievement plummet.

Now consider where our investment in Vermont schools has gotten us today: Vermont high schools ranked third in the nation in achievement and achievement gains. Vermont's fourth and eighth graders ranked second in the nation in math performance. Vermont has the highest high school completion rate— 88 percent —in the nation. And — careful how you break this to your out-of-state friends — for the second consecutive year, Vermont was ranked the "smartest state in the nation."

Where else would you rather our schools be ranked?

Vermont has great schools. But as the residents of Colorado, Oregon, California and Massachusetts have learned, great schools can be broken. Instead of slapping destructive spending caps on our schools, let's work on ways to reduce the big drivers of rising school budgets, including health care costs, special education, and energy, to name a few. We should not solve these problems at the expense of our kids.

David Goodman is a journalist and author who lives in Waterbury Center.