The Moral Imperative for School Choice: Parts I-III

This posting represents Parts I-III of the posting entitled The Moral Imperative for School Choice: The Complete Posting. It is the first of 3 new postings which will cover Parts I-III, Parts IV-VI, and Parts VII-IX, respectively, of the original posting.

Introduction

The encouraging school choice proposal by Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey, highlighted here, and the absurd response by Senator Chafee has led me to repost below an expanded version of a November 18, 2005 posting on the moral imperative for school choice.

Contrasting this week's posting with an earlier posting on this issue - also by Andrew and entitled Cranston’s and Rhode Island’s Need for a Sensible School Choice Program - shows how Mayor Laffey and other Cranston leaders have evolved their policy solution in recent months in response to a genuine problem. The comments section of that earlier posting is alive with a debate about two issues: Should children from Providence - where public schools are mediocre - have the right to attend better schools in Cranston and what effect does this have on education funding flows? These are two central questions underlying the school choice debate.

School choice is a moral imperative because the performance of our schools greatly influences whether (i) our children have a clean shot at living the American Dream; and, (ii) whether our country can maintain the strength of its economy via a well educated citizenry capable of competing successfully in an increasingly global economy.

To provide an indepth review of the school choice debate, this posting covers the first three of the nine sections. Each section is identified below and you can proceed directly to it by clicking on the title of that individual section below:

I. The Unavoidable & Serious Performance Problems with Public Education

II. The Current Problem in Rhode Island: Spending a Lot of Money & Getting No Return on our Investment

III. The Structural Problem with Public Education

I. THE UNAVOIDABLE & SERIOUS PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS WITH PUBLIC EDUCATION

There is a huge and well-documented performance problem with public education in America and in Rhode Island. The long-term implications of this problem are severe. Patrick Callan describes the likely future impact on Rhode Island.

Maintaining the status quo is not a viable option.

II. THE CURRENT PROBLEM IN RHODE ISLAND: SPENDING A LOT OF MONEY & GETTING NO RETURN ON OUR INVESTMENT

As Tom Coyne points out in his February 22 analysis:

Rhode Islanders are some of the most generous people in the nation. The facts speak for themselves: As a percentage of our per capita state income, Rhode Island’s per pupil spending is the second highest in the country. Our per-pupil spending on [teacher] salaries and benefits is the nation's highest. Our spending on students below the poverty line is the seventh highest in the nation. Rhode Island's average teacher salary, as a percentage of its average private-sector worker's salary, is the highest in the country, and has been since at least 1990. Rhode Island has the nation’s second highest number of teachers per student...And we also have the nation’s highest percentage of students in very expensive special education programs...

Yet, Tom's November 17 posting shows we get a lousy return on this investment of our hard-earned monies:

The only tests taken by students in every state in the nation are the National Assessment of Educational Progress...On these tests, Rhode Island public school students perform poorly. Let's look at 8th grade reading...the national average score was 260. Rhode Island scored 261 (ranking 31st in the country)...Rhode Island's relative performance on 8th grade math was even worse. The national average score was 278. Rhode Island scored 272 (ranking 38th in the country)...

And what has been the outcome from this disconnect between lots of money invested and lousy performance results? The outcome is a sense of desperation in parents whose kids are trapped in schools that are failing them, a desperation easily understood when reviewing the abysmal performance data of the Providence schools on pages 4-7 of the above Cranston presentation.

Take a step back and ask what makes it necessary to have this debate in the first place? Just like it was ill-conceived government actions that made health insurance belong to companies instead of individual citizens, the school choice and related money issues are a structural problem created by unproductive government actions.

III. THE STRUCTURAL PROBLEM WITH PUBLIC EDUCATION & ITS CONSEQUENCES

Two previous postings define the structural problem with public education more clearly:

Parents or Government/Unions: Who Should Control Our Children's Educational Decisions?

...Elementary and secondary education in America is in serious trouble because government has combined the appropriate role of financing the general education of children with the inappropriate role of owning and operating schools. It would be much better and more equitable, [Friedman] argued, if the government would "give each child, through his parents, a specified sum [voucher] to be used solely in paying for his general education...The result would be a sizable reduction in the direct activities of government, yet a great widening in the educational opportunities open to our children."...it is imperative to remember that what we are talking about is a question of who controls education: parents or government. And so long as the government both finances education and administers schools it can't help but exert its power over parents...

Milton Friedman on School Choice

With respect to education,...government was playing three major roles: (1) legislating compulsory schooling, (2) financing schooling, (3) administering schools. I concluded that there was some justification for compulsory schooling and the financing of schooling, but "the actual administration of educational institutions by the government, the 'nationalization,' as it were, of the bulk of the 'education industry' is much more difficult to justify on [free market] or, so far as I can see, on any other grounds." Yet finance and administration "could readily be separated. Governments could require a minimum of schooling financed by giving the parents vouchers redeemable for a given sum per child per year to be spent on purely educational services. . . . Denationalizing schooling," I went on, "would widen the range of choice available to parents. . . . If present public expenditure were made available to parents regardless of where they send their children, a wide variety of schools would spring up to meet the demand. . . . Here, as in other fields, competitive enterprise is likely to be far more efficient in meeting consumer demand than either nationalized enterprises or enterprises run to serve other purposes."...

What really led to increased interest in vouchers was the deterioration of schooling, dating in particular from 1965 when the National Education Association converted itself from a professional association to a trade union...

...[The 1983 study] "A Nation at Risk" stimulated much soul-searching and a whole series of major attempts to reform the government educational system. These reforms, however extensive or bold, have, it is widely agreed, had negligible effect on the quality of the public school system. Though spending per pupil has more than doubled since 1970 after allowing for inflation, students continue to rank low in international comparisons; dropout rates are high; scores on SATs and the like have fallen and remain flat. Simple literacy, let alone functional literacy, in the United States is almost surely lower at the beginning of the 21st century than it was a century earlier. And all this is despite a major increase in real spending per student since "A Nation at Risk" was published.

There is a lot at stake here for our country and for our children's ability to realize the American Dream. The problem is best stated in this excerpt from the "A Nation at Risk:"

For the first time in the history of our country, the educational skills of one generation will not surpass, will not equal, will not even approach, those of their parents.

Here is another quote from the report:

If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves.

That is a damning indictment of the status quo and those who support it.