John Maynard Keynes was once confronted by a critic who pointed out a contradiction between the economist’s past and present views. Keynes is said to have replied, “When I’m wrong, I change my mind. What do you do?”
With this lesson in intellectual humility in mind, I must now confess to having changed my mind about school choice.
A Long-Time Advocate
School choice refers to public programs that allow all parents to choose the schools their children attend. Public, private, secular, and religious schools compete for students, and public funds follow the children to their chosen schools. Vouchers are the premium kind of school choice. Tax credits and charter schools are the low-carb and ultra-light versions.
Over the years, I coauthored three books advocating school choice (We Can Rescue Our Children (1988), Rebuilding America’s Schools (1991), and Education & Capitalism (2003)). Heartland just sent copies of Ten Principles of School Choice, coauthored by Herb Walberg and me, to every state and national elected official in the U.S. Oops.
I Was Wrong
I now realize I was wrong about school choice, and like Keynes, I have bravely changed my mind. School choice is bad. Government school monopoly is good.
I thank Robert Chitester, president of The Palmer R. Chitester Fund, for my epiphany. Bob recently told me the case against school choice rests on a flawed assumption: Parents are too stupid to choose their children’s schools. Who could possibly agree with such an elitist position?
Since that conversation, every news story about neglected children and child abuse I have read or seen challenges the confidence I had in the fitness of parents to make their own decisions. I read about social workers finding children tied to urine-soaked beds or kept in basements for months at a time. Children and babies left home alone while their parents go on drug binges for days at a time.
I began to think maybe some people shouldn’t have kids. Maybe they are too stupid, lazy, or befuddled by drugs to lead productive lives, much less oversee the education of their children. Do we really want to give them more choices? If we allowed their children to attend the few good private and government schools, they would ruin those schools, too.
I concluded that somebody at the Department of Children and Family Services should be paid to make sure those at-risk children are assigned to the most appropriate schools.
It was a slippery slope from there. Having government assign only students from low-income families to public schools would stigmatize those children, which is bad. We all know having disadvantaged students sit next to smarter students is good (for the disadvantaged students). If only poor kids attend government schools, taxpayers would soon lose interest and stop funding the schools, which would be bad.
The only logical conclusion, then, is that all children should be assigned to schools selected by government employees.
No Role for Private Schools
I used to think private schools ought to be allowed to compete with government schools for public funds, since otherwise parents who choose private schools get nothing in return for their school taxes. But I was wrong about that, too.
Every dollar given to a private school through a voucher or tax credits means a dollar taken away from a public school that really needs it. We should not be talking about subsidizing private schools when there are government schools that can’t afford new textbooks, art and music classes, or enough guidance counselors and nurses to keep their students out of trouble.
Private schools are elitist, expensive, unaccountable to taxpayers, refuse to administer the same tests as government schools do, underpay their teachers, have too few guidance counselors and other support staff, and use outdated teaching methods (such as phonics) and curricula (not politically correct).
My old friends in the school choice movement focus too narrowly on a few facts that cast a favorable light on private schools, such as their superior test scores, graduation rates, college admission rates, and teacher and parental satisfaction levels; lower incidence of crime and harassment on school grounds; smaller enrollments (which give more students a chance to participate and shine in sports and other extracurricular activities); and superior performance on civics exams and smaller gap between black and white student achievement. They note private school students are more likely to socialize with children of different races and religions than are students attending government schools.
But all this is just nitpicking. Everyone knows private schools are elitist. Well, except for the Catholic elementary school I attended along with my six brothers and one sister, all on my dad’s blue-collar paycheck. But schools like Holy Name of Jesus aren’t a real option for parents anymore. They either have long waiting lists or so few students they are closing. It’s, um, a paradox.
If We Only Had More Money
If ending the government school monopoly is off the table, how can we improve our nation’s schools? I can think of only one way: Raising taxes and spending more on our government schools.
True, I oppose raising taxes for anything, even national defense. But I now realize education is different. We should ask professional educators how much money they need to do their job right, and then make whatever sacrifices it takes to deliver it to them. Spending more in the past hasn’t resulted in better schools, but that just means we haven’t tried spending enough.
Average inflation-adjusted per-pupil spending has nearly doubled since I graduated from high school in 1976, and public high schools today look like the Taj Mahal compared to the one I attended. But lots of things have doubled in inflation-adjusted price since then and they haven’t gotten any better either (although I can’t think of an example just now).
With more money we could reduce class size even further (it fell from about 37 students per teacher in 1900 to 27 in 1955, 18 in 1986, and about 17 today). Smaller class sizes, like higher spending, hasn’t led to more learning, but again, we haven’t gotten really serious about it yet. If we doubled spending we could get the average class size down to about eight. Surely that would make a difference?
Who Needs School Choice?
Private schools spend, on average, less than half as much per pupil as government schools. A voucher or tax credit large enough to cover the entire cost of tuition at private schools would actually save taxpayers or the government schools money each time a student transferred to a private school. So vouchers and tax credits don’t really take money away from government schools.
Although this takes away the second best argument of my new allies (you will recall our best argument is that parents are too stupid), I think we still win the debate.
You see, most parents don’t want their kids mixing with children from poor families in schools where most of the staff is too busy teaching to play counselor and nurse. They don’t trust teachers who are too smart or have expectations that are too high. They don’t like the idea of their kids spending time in old buildings with lots of small rooms and corners where they might get into trouble.
Most parents want board-certified career teachers who don’t assign too much homework and are easy graders. They want big, new, shiny schools where the lights are always on, the hallways are wide and graffiti-proof, every door has a lock, and security guards or cameras are on constant patrol.
School choice can’t deliver what most parents want for their children. So who needs school choice?
PS: Contrary to this April Fool’s Day essay, Joseph Bast hasn’t changed his mind about the need for school choice. He and The Heartland Institute remain committed to allowing parents to choose, schools to compete, and students to learn.
