The 2005 NAEP Reading and Mathematics test scores for 12^th Graders have just been released.


Here’s the detail you’ll hear in all the media coverage: Reading achievement has hit its lowest point in the entire period since the first comparable score was collected back in 1992. (The math test has changed, so no trend analysis is possible).


Here’s a detail you won’t see in many news stories: The highest degree earned by students’ parents has gone up substantially since 1992. In that year, 41 percent of students reported that at least one of their parents was a college graduate. Today, it’s 47 percent. Researchers have long known that parents’ level of education is a strong predictor of children’s academic success, so this increase in the share of college graduates among parents should be associated with higher student achievement (other things being equal). But achievement went down. Significantly. If the home environment is now more conducive to learning, but less learning is actually taking place, that leaves… the schools.


So: No, the NCLB isn’t helping. No, more money isn’t helping (it’s up more than 20% per pupil since 1992, in real inflation‐​adjusted dollars). It’s. The. Schools. We suffer from an education monopoly. Monopolies are bad.


A one‐​size‐​fits‐​few state‐​run school system simply can’t produce the kind of innovation and improvement we take for granted in the competitive, free enterprise sector of our economy. We need to inject parental choice and competition into our education system if we want to see the trend lines going up instead of down.