Tag: education

The Private Sector Lacks What?!?

By
Andrew J. Coulson

So there I was, checking e-mail this morning on my JooJoo when I came across this editorial about how the private sector lacks accountability unless the government provides it through regulation! This naturally caused me to expectorate New Coke all over over myself and my Apple III, forcing me to toss my Levi’s Type 1 jeans in the wash and hop back in the shower. (You know, that Touch of Yogurt shampoo by Clairol is really… uh… something).

Twenty minutes later I was still so preoccupied about responding to the editorial that I backed over my neighbor’s Segway as I pulled the Edsel out of the garage. Oops. Sorry Dean.

Anyway, once I got into the office I popped a couple of Ben Gay Aspirin to ease my now ferocious headache, but realized as I did so that I’d left my Colgate Kitchen Entree frozen dinner at home. Argh!

You get the idea, yes?

The fact that consumers have demands, and that they can go elsewhere if you fail to meet them, makes producers accountable. We see this in every sector of the economy. Provide a product or service that people don’t want, take away one that they do want, or charge more than they are willing to pay, and they will kick you right in the bottom line.

The result is the same in education as in other fields: the least regulated, most market-like education systems consistently outperform highly regulated state-run school systems such as we have in this country—across every measure people care about.

Regulations are an attempt, crude and usually unsuccessful, to imitate the accountability inherent in competitive markets. So as long as you allow market forces to work in education, and you allow people to allocate their own money rather than taxing it and spending it through the state, regulations are not only unnecessary they are generally counterproductive. (Milton and Rose Friedman had a good chapter on this in Free to Choose.)

Note that this is true under both personal use education tax credits (for parents’ own education costs) and scholarship donation tax credits (in which taxpayers donate to non-profit organizations that subsidize education for the poor). If a scholarship organization becomes corrupt or inefficient, taxpayers can easily redirect their donations to better-run competing organizations. The accountability is built into the system’s design. No other private school choice program has this feature, and certainly public schools do not.

There is no evidence that layering government regulations on top of this market accountability system improves outcomes, and ample evidence that heavily regulated school systems perform badly. Unless those facts change, there is good reason to fight off attempts to regulate private schools under education tax credit programs.

Topics: 
Education and Child Policy, General

Remarkable Interest in School Choice in Colorado?

By
Daniel J. Mitchell

In Douglas County, CO, a jurisdiction with 240,000 residents south of Denver, there is strong public interest in the possible implementation of a sweeping school choice program.  Here’s a blurb from the Denver Post:

Douglas County School District officials say an unexpected level of interest in a retreat exploring school choice today and Saturday is forcing them to add an overflow room and a video feed to allow the public to watch the discussion. The school board is investigating a voucher program that would allow students to use public money to help with tuition at approved religious schools and other private ones. The two-day retreat will discuss the findings of a school-choice task force that has been mulling several issues, including vouchers.

…The board will officially discuss the school-choice recommendations at a meeting Tuesday night, during which the public will be allowed to comment. No Colorado school district has a voucher program.

Here’s a link to the full proposal. I’m told that parents will have a voucher for about $4,500 per child that can be used to finance tuition at any qualifying school. This is more than enough money to cover costs at most non-government schools, and the population is sufficiently large to make this program a dramatic test case.

Keep your fingers crossed that Douglas County officials resist special-interest groups that are seeking to thwart this reform. The teacher unions have been vicious in their efforts to stop this kind of development. If Douglas County succeeds in putting kids first, this could break the logjam and lead to better education policy across the nation.

Topics: 
Education and Child Policy, Government and Politics

“Dear Foreigners, You Do the Math” —USA

By
Andrew J. Coulson

A brand new Harvard University study finds that American students perform very poorly in math compared to their peers in other nations.

What’s that? You’ve heard this all before? Not quite.

This study compares the percentages of students scoring at advanced levels across countries, and it controls for the confounding effects of differing populations of disadvantaged groups. When the researchers looked exclusively at white students and at students with at least one parent with a college degree, the results remained largely the same. Among white students, for instance, 8 percent of Americans scored “advanced” in math, landing us in 25th place among nations for which scores were available–behind nearly every other advanced industrialized nation on Earth. And the highest ranked U.S. state, Massachusetts, trails the overall averages of 14 nations.

This may come as a shock to those who imagined that America’s educational shortcomings were restricted to inner cities or disadvantaged populations, but it is entirely consistent with results reported more than a decade ago as part of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, showing that U.S. students taking advanced mathematics and physics classes lagged their peers in other industrialized nations at the end of high school, often by wide margins.

So how, then, have we remained an economic superpower for so long if our school system is so bad? The answer is that we have historically enjoyed one of the freest economies on Earth, a relatively unfettered labor market, and comparatively low taxes–all of which have drawn to our shores many of the world’s best and brightest. Regrettably, our comparative advantage in those areas has eroded over the past several years.

Perhaps, instead of continuing to make our economy more like our failing centrally planned school monopoly, we should allow our education system to benefit from the freedoms and incentives of the marketplace that was always the engine of our prosperity….

Topics: 
Education and Child Policy

Election Results in School Choice States

By
Andrew J. Coulson

While most of the election punditry to date has been focused at the national level, major gains by Republicans in states that already have k-12 education tax credits or school vouchers could lead to the expansion of such programs or the passage of new ones. To see where the action might lie, I offer the chart below, showing post-election party control of the legislative and executive branches of government in school choice states (the height of each bar represents degree of control, with the height of the executive branch = 100%). The states are sorted by the number of branches of government that changed hands (represented on the chart by the yellow circles, which correspond to the axis on the right).

There might be gridlock at the national level, but at the state level we may see some interesting school choice developments over the next 2+ years.

Topics: 
Education and Child Policy, Government and Politics

Keep Fed Ed? What, Do You Hate Kids?

By
Neal McCluskey

Yesterday, Tad DeHaven wrote about an interview with Rep. John Kline (R-MN), likely chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee should the GOP take the House majority. Tad lamented that Kline seemed to declare any potential effort to kill the U.S. Department of Education (ED) already dead in the water. Unfortunately, Kline is certainly right: Any effort to kill ED in the next couple of years would not only have to get through a (presumably) GOP-held House, but (also presumably) a Dem-controlled Senate and Obama-occupied White House. There just aint no way ED will be dismantled – and more importantly, it’s profligate programs eliminated – in that environment.

That said, if many Tea Party-type candidates win today, it will be precisely the time to start pushing the immensely powerful case for ending fed ed. I won’t post them yet again, but Andrew Coulson’s charts showing the Mount Everest of spending and the Death Valley of student achievement over the last roughly forty years should, frankly, be all the evidence anyone needs to see that the federal government should reacquaint itself with the Constitution and get out of elementary and secondary education. When it comes to higher education, the evidence plainly points to student aid helping to fuel the massive tuition hikes – and major waste – that plague higher education. And let’s not forget the ongoing failure of Head Start…

The biggest obstacle to ending federal intrusion in education is that no one wants to vote against more education funding or programs no matter how akin to money-sack bonfires they are. Politicians simply don’t want to be tarred and feathered in campaign ads as being against children, or education itself. (No doubt almost everyone has seen ads attacking candidates for just such impossible cruelty over the last, seemingly endless, few months.) But if Tea Party sentiment proves strong today, tomorrow will be exactly the right time to launch a full-on, sustained attack against the federal occupation of education.

For one thing, teachers unions – arguably the most potent force in domestic politics, and the biggest “you hate children” bullies – are on their political heels, with even Democrats acknowledging that the unions don’t actually put kids first. Next, people are very concerned about wasteful spending, and as Andrew’s charts illuminate,  education furnishes that in droves. Third, the latest Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll reveals that by large majorities Americans want state and local governments – not the feds – in charge of education. Finally, and most importantly, the evidence blares that federal spending and meddling hasn’t actually done anything to improve education. All of which makes this the perfect time to drive the argument home: We must get Washington out of education because it is bad for your pocketbook, and bad for education!

Now, some inside-the-Beltway types have counseled the GOP to ignore the Constitution and abundant evidence of federal failure because they think the feds can somehow do good. They should be ignored because logic, evidence, and the Constitution simply aren’t on their side. And for those who might say to drop the issue because you won’t win in the next year or two? They would be right about the time frame for victory, but absolutely wrong to not take up the fight.

Topics: 
Education and Child Policy, General

The Student Aid Did It!

By
Neal McCluskey

The College Board is out with its annual reports on college prices and student aid, and the story is pretty familiar. According to The New York Times, the reports reveal that over the last year tuition and fees rose 8 percent at public, four-year schools, and 4.5 percent at private non-profits. Meanwhile, student aid rose at a very fast clip. Indeed, over the last five years, despite lightning-quick growth in sticker prices, after-aid college costs actually dropped.

Now, don’t expect to hear this from the College Board or even mentioned in the Times, but doesn’t it seem at least plausible that giving more and more aid to students enables schools to raise prices? You know, that colleges might jack up tuition and fees knowing that government, largely, will ensure that students can cover them? It’s not only plausible, it’s almost certainly the case. But like I said, forget about ever reading that in The New York Times. Instead, we get this standard lament:

“The College Board figures are depressing and utterly predictable,” said Terry Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education. “When states cut funding for higher education, tuitions go up to make up for the difference.”

Dealing with this one gets incredibly tiresome, and it should infuriate taxpayers who fund both massive student aid and subsidies to public colleges.

For one thing, of course, cuts in  state subsidies don’t explain constantly increasing private school costs. Moreover, while no doubt public schools sometimes raise tuition to make up for state funding dips, they also raise it when state funding is going up. Indeed, as this chart from the State Higher Education Executive Officers illustrates, public schools raise prices no matter what is going on with state and local subsidies:

How can schools get away with this? Because students are able to cover the incessantly rising prices. And how can students do that? By using more and more money that comes from someone else!

The data scream this reality so loudly even passed-out undergrads could hear it. So why does it get so little attention? In part, no doubt, because many in the media refuse to even consider that there could be a causal connection between ballooning aid and skyrocketing prices. Even worse, the people controlling the aid see votes, votes, votes from playing education Warbucks. And if, say, the President of the United States can buy votes with student aid, why would he ever admit that his “generosity” mainly just lets higher education bleed taxpayers dry? The unfortunate answer is, he wouldn’t.

Topics: 
Education and Child Policy, General, Government and Politics

Heightening the Contradictions in Iran

By
Justin Logan

This, it seems to me, is a sign of a brittle, weak government that is fighting time and surviving exclusively on its nationalist credential:

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran will not allow its universities to begin teaching certain disciplines it deems too “Western,” and existing courses will be revised, a senior Education Ministry was quoted as saying Sunday.

“Expansion of 12 disciplines in the social sciences like law, women’s studies, human rights, management, sociology, philosophy….psychology and political sciences will be reviewed,” Abolfazl Hassani was quoted as saying in the Arman newspaper.

“These sciences’ contents are based on Western culture. The review will be the intention of making them compatible with Islamic teachings.”

Hassani said Iranian universities will not be allowed to open new departments in these disciplines and the curricula for existing departments would be revised.

Link via John Sides.

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security, Government and Politics, International Economics and Development

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