IPI Publication Opinions/Editorial
Related Publication Title:
No Voice, No Exit:
The Inefficiency of America's Public Schools
IPI Policy Report - # 158
Related Publication Title:
No Voice, No Exit:
The Inefficiency of America's Public Schools
IPI Policy Report - # 158
| Released by Robert Franciosi, Ph.D | Published Outlet: |
| on 08/14/2001 |
| URL to original published op/ed: |
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Press Release (07/17/2001)
Press Release (07/09/2001)
Press Release (04/05/2004)
OpEd (07/07/2001)
OpEd (08/14/2001)
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by George A. Pieler
Director
IPI Center for Educaiton Freedom
Director
IPI Center for Educaiton Freedom
Congress won’t wrap up the Bush education reform plan before September, but a few things already are crystal clear: Washington (aka, the U.S. taxpayer) will be pumping a lot more money into schools; and states and localities will press hard for more ‘resources’ (aka higher taxes) to respond to federal pressure for testing students and improving ‘educational outputs’ (aka test results).
None of this is surprising. The Bush education reform proposals simply linked the trends toward more testing and higher per-pupil spending levels, making a straightforward offer to the states—Washington will give you more money, and more flexibility in how to spend it, if you will pledge better results as measured by more batteries of tests in each grade. Congress (especially the Senate) has honored this basic outline, but grossed up the spending part dramatically, while softening the testing demands on states and gutting the President’s proposals for state flexibility in the use of federal funds.
This is a bad mistake. As documented by Dr. Robert Franciosi in “No Voice, No Exit,” published by the Institute for Policy Innovation, public spending on K-12 education has grown by leaps and bounds, with little to show for the investment. As Franciosi notes, government education spending “amounts to a 1300 percent increase in real spending per student since 1919—to nearly $8,000 in 1998.” And while American students rank well in some test comparisons, Franciosi concludes that, “Measured in terms of value added per dollar invested, American students ranked last.”
In other words, even if states tested students more often and more effectively, as President Bush asks, improvement would not come from spending more money. Yet, as the current debate in Washington makes clear, more money is about all the political status quo can come up with.
A recent report by the Heritage Foundation’s Kirk Johnson and Krista Kafer, “Why More Money Will Not Solve America’s Education Crisis,” points out that federal spending alone on K-12 education has doubled in less than two decades to over $27 billion (including $18.7 billion spent under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which is the subject of the Bush proposals and this year’s congressional debate). The Senate wants so much more money for ESEA that, according to Johnson and Kafer, “After six years, the authorization level would grow to over $78 billion annually.” Similarly, Empower America Education Policy expert Nathaniel Koonce calculates the ten-year cost of the Senate’s ESEA bill at well over a third of a trillion dollars.
Talk about squandering the surplus! It would be one thing to contemplate massive spending hikes if there were any evidence it did any good for children in school—but there just isn’t.
Political compromise will bring down the extravagant Senate figure (the House also wants an increase, but a much more modest one), but the newly-Democratic Senate is determined to drive a hard bargain on education spending, and the increase will be very substantial. Taxpayer dollars that could have gone to further tax relief, or prescription drug benefits, or debt retirement will instead go to fatten up the government education establishment and its culture of mediocrity.
What’s more, these new federal dollars almost certainly will drive states and localities to raise taxes for education, even where state and local taxpayers already pay top dollar for their schools. The New York Times reported on July 17 that state education officials, balking at new federal testing requirements, said it would “take up to three years—and a huge influx of resources—to develop and administer more exams [emphasis added].”
That ‘huge influx’ is just to cover the mechanics of testing, not to prepare students to perform better on tests. The education establishment mantra was best put by Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN), who argues that “If we’re going to test, we must invest.” In a nutshell, that’s what we’ll be hearing from state officials in the years ahead as they justify more spending and higher taxes in the name of complying with new federal testing standards.
It’s a classic dog-chasing-tail situation: Government spends more, results don’t measure up, higher standards are dictated by the same government that produced mediocre results, spending is hiked yet again to meet the new standards, and the cycle begins all over again. It’s a shame President Bush’s well-intentioned reform package got us back on this old treadmill, but in a sense he fell right into the trap by emphasizing more spending in the first place.
It should never have been about money. It should have been about choice, competition, freedom, and accountability to parents and students, not bureaucrats. Until our political leaders develop the wisdom and courage to drive that message home, expect more of the same from our public schools.
George Pieler is the Director of the IPI Center for Education Freedom of the Institute for Policy Innovation.
For further information or to reprint this op/ed, please contact Sonia Hoffman at (972) 874.5139 or shoffman@ipi.org .
