Government V: Education

Like most folks, I believe that parents are ultimately responsible for the basic (K–12) education of their children. Whether parents choose to educate their own children or send them to public or private school, it is they who are responsible for ensuring their children receive a good education. Even though I recognize that many parents do not live up to that obligation, I remain confident that most parents want the best for their children and care very much about their education.

Parents naturally trust our public schools to deliver a good education, but American public schools are now subject to so much pressure from government agencies, teacher unions, and the education industry (ranging from colleges of education to textbook manufacturers) that parents no longer have much influence on school policies or programs. Government regulation and a pervasive liberal agenda in the education industry have displaced parental judgment on virtually all school matters, including which courses are taught, textbooks, and even value judgments on controversial issues. American parents have slowly but inexorably lost control. Instead of public schools being responsible to the parents, the schools have taken charge, and it is government employees and elected officials, not the parents, who are empowered to make the critical educational decisions.

Nearly 90% of American kids attend government controlled public schools, some of which are public charter or specialty (math, science, music, etc.) schools. The remaining 10% of children are home schooled or attend church or private schools. Home education has always worked reasonably well for those families with the means to hire tutors or a parent who is willing and able to teach, but this option is either out of reach or too overwhelming for most parents. For the most part, church schools provide a fine education, and non-church private schools almost always deliver a good, if not superior, education. Allowing that charter and specialty public schools generally provide a better education than the traditional public school down the street, I conclude that neighborhood public schools are at the bottom of the quality of education scale. With some notable exceptions, they are the least effective at accomplishing the primary goal of all schools – educating kids.

Many intervening forces plague our public schools: a regulated, legally established government controlled monopoly on education; school districts and administrative hierarchies that choke on their own bureaucracies; colleges of education which produce teachers who are committed to a progressive agenda and revisionist curricula; and, teachers unions that are focused more on themselves than the students. The result: our children are being educated by a public school monopoly that is failing to provide even minimally adequate, much less good education. Public schools are not preparing our children to compete in either the local or the global markets. Businesses continually complain that young people entering the work force have poor reading, writing, and mathematical skills. A recent widely publicized report on education concluded that American students rank 25th when compared to kids from other countries, even though American spending per student was the highest in the world. Ugh.

So, nearly everyone agrees that our immediate goal must be to improve education in America, but, what do we mean by a good education? Certainly, education should be open and available to all, providing every student with the same opportunity to excel and succeed. Most of us would agree that a good education must provide competency in core subjects like math, science, reading, writing, history, geography, and citizenship. (Some might argue about the last one, but this is my essay.) A good education should also offer an opportunity for students to explore their own interests and to honestly discuss opposing views on societal issues (without being coerced by their teachers); but make no mistake, education is first and foremost about the core subjects. All other goals, however important, are secondary. In the end, the overriding goal of education is to prepare students to provide for themselves and their families in an increasingly competitive world.

Let’s look at the big picture. The fundamental notion underlying education in America is that all students are equal. How silly. Certainly all students are equally valuable, but they are definitely not equal. Their abilities and interests vary immensely. The problems faced by the top 10% of each class are totally different from those of their peers in the bottom 10%. All the kids have problems and issues, but it is the lowest performing students that capture our attention. For example, consider “No Child Left Behind”. The name itself implies that we will concentrate on keeping even the lowest performing students in school, and nearly everyone seems to concur that this is an admirable goal. Admirable perhaps, but, should it be the primary goal of American education? How about broadening the emphasis to include all the students? How about, “No Child’s Potential Left Behind”? This would suggest that we should educate every child to the best of their individual abilities. It would suggest that top performing students are as important as their less gifted or less motivated classmates (oh, my ...). Of course we need to keep low performing students in school – the alternative is to condemn them to scratching for a living, or even gang life. That having been said, it is equally important to support and celebrate the top performers – our country and our future are in their hands.

Private schools do not ignore the top performers. We often hear that private schools offer the best educations, but they are too expensive for most of us ... or are they? We cannot know how expensive private schools really are because we have never allowed them to compete on the open market. Recent studies have shown that, in open competition, many private schools would be cost competitive with public schools. This is not too surprising considering that inflation adjusted spending for public school students has increased more than 300% in the past 40 years. Think about it. How can anyone reasonably justify a nearly quadruple increase in per student spending while student performance has remained flat or decreased? Any way you look at it, and regardless of the money spent, most public schools are doing a poor job of educating our kids.

Isn’t the answer obvious? If public education isn’t working, then eliminate the government monopoly. Open education up to competition in the free market. Allow public and private schools to compete for tax dollars. To do this, we must remove control of the money from the government and empower those who are responsible for the children – the parents. Instead of giving public schools tax dollars for each student, give the parents an equivalent amount in school vouchers and allow them to spend the vouchers at the public or private school of their choice. In order to be eligible for vouchers, schools would not be allowed to discriminate by race, ethnicity, etc., or to limit enrollment for any reason other than capacity, but they could advance students on different or even individual competitive tracks, based on student performance. Note that I suggest vouchers, not cash, be given to the parents. The vouchers could only be cashed by schools, thus ensuring that the money is spent on schooling. No doubt, some private schools would continue to charge more, some less, than the voucher amount, and parents would be free to pay the extra amount themselves or choose the less expensive school. All schools, public and private, would then be eligible to compete for the tax money. Top performing kids from even the poorest families would have an opportunity to attend the best schools, public or private.

Teachers unions, government bureaucrats, and their progressive friends often become apoplectic at the very suggestion of competitive education. Sadly, their opposing arguments are often more concerned with teacher benefits and teacher issues than with the quality of students’ educations. Their ongoing mantra is that they need more money, even though the last 40 years have clearly demonstrated that more money is not the answer. Even when they do set teacher issues aside and address educational quality, their arguments are related to equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity. They prefer to teach all children the same, regardless of gender, drive, intellectual capacity, academic interest, or ability. Hogwash. This is classic dumbing-down.

Another commonly heard progressive argument against educational competition is that all the best students will leave and the public schools will be left with only the most difficult students. What a silly argument. If it is true that the best students will leave, it must be because they are leaving for better schools, including, by the way, some public schools. Yes, there are some public schools that will immediately attract the best students, because they are good schools. Obviously, it can and is being done, so why aren’t all the public schools providing a good education? Could it be because, absent competition, public schools have no incentive to change or adapt or improve? Competition works, and some healthy competition would force the rest of the public schools to adapt and become good schools themselves, to close their doors, or to change their educational emphasis.

Here’s a thought. How about a renewed interest in vocational education? At the risk of committing a huge politically incorrect faux pas, not every kid is college material. Many kids despise classroom academics, but are intrigued by mechanics, electronics, computers, construction, and other trades, and there happens to be an increasing dearth of young Americans who are qualified in the skilled trades. How often do we waste tens of thousands of dollars trying to cram a college education into a kid who hates school, will very probably never graduate from college, and, even if he/she does, it will be with a degree of doubtful value that is unlikely to ever generate enough income to pay back their student loans? Instead, why not convert some of our schools into work-study Vo-Tech schools that will graduate valuable, income producing, skilled trades-persons? They will become productive and enter the workforce at an earlier age, with the potential for a good income, and with no student loan debt hanging over their heads.

As long as our public schools remain a monopoly, and, as long as our teachers are protected by union contracts and tenure, neither the schools nor the teachers have any incentive to improve or even change. It is time to concentrate on every student’s potential, and to match their education to their abilities. It is time to provide access to good academic schools for students with academic potential, vocational training for those who dislike academics, and everything in between. It is past time to:

o institute a voucher system that will allow all schools, public and private, to compete,
o make each school an “open shop” where the teachers have an option whether or not to join the union,
o abolish tenure,
o provide nation-wide access to vocational training, and
o adjust each public school’s educational emphasis to the local demographics.

Call it what you will – our public schools are controlled by a government monopoly that is steeped in a liberal agenda. The result has been a system of “educational socialism” that is failing miserably.

I believe most Americans, given the choice, would chose the free market, thank you, and our children and our country would be so much better for the experience.