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Public School Answers

5 October 2006

I received an email today from the campaign of Jim Rex, candidate for South Carolina Superintendent of Education. Mr. Rex’s email focused almost entirely on the subject of vouchers and he staunchly opposes them. It was interesting indeed to read his reasons for such opposition.

My view is simple: not only is it the wrong approach, we can’t afford the half a billion dollar price tag. We don’t have to break our public schools before we fix them. I believe public funding should be used to make public schools more effective, not make private schools more affordable. And I know we can’t afford – in money or in wasted time – to become a national education gamble that fails.

There are a number of things wrong with the above paragraph. First, to say we can’t afford to break our public schools in order to fix them is pure hyperbole. South Carolina public schools are about as broken as they can possibly get. The state ranks approximately 49th out of 50 states in education.

Second, Rex says public funding should go to make public schools more effective, not private schools more affordable. That statement betrays both a profound misunderstanding of the problem and little appreciation for the solution. In fact, the solution offered in vouchers has nothing whatsoever to do with making private schools more affordable and it is either disingenuous or laughably ignorant to suggest otherwise. Vouchers are about taking the money that currently goes to public schools and attaching it to the students. As Milton Friedman has noted, there are two ways you can subsidize something. You can give money to producers or you can give it to consumers. Giving it to producers (public schools) encourages mediocrity. It is no different from subsidizing agriculture by giving money to farmers. Giving money to consumers (students), on the other hand, promotes competition, something sorely lacking in public education. It is this lack of competition that drives failing schools. Jim Rex talks about accountability but the ultimate accountability is competition. Failing schools will either shape up or close. Failure would no longer be rewarded with more money.

Mr. Rex revels in platitudes, as in this statement:

Make no mistake: no child in South Carolina should be trapped in a failing school. Moreover, South Carolina’s schools need reform – comprehensive reform – to move from incremental to dramatic progress, in order to compete in America and around the globe. We can’t afford to do nothing while countries like India and China improve their educational systems and become more competitive with us for jobs.

That sounds wonderful. Unfortunately it is devoid of actual content. Of course everyone wants to save kids trapped in failing schools. Of course everyone wants comprehensive reform. Of course we can’t afford to do nothing. In fact, do nothing is precisely what Mr. Rex is proposing. He wants to keep doing what we’ve been doing, only do more of it. That means spend more on failing schools, i.e., reward failing schools. I fail to understand how that is going to help. It hasn’t helped for decades and there is no reason to assume that it will suddenly start working now. It has been observed that a working definition of insanity is doing what you’ve always done but expecting a different result. That is what Mr. Rex proposes.

Mr. Rex says he supports full and open public school choice, expansion of charter schools and greater implementation of technology to improve public schools. Sounds great except for the problems. For one, technology is not the answer. While greater use of technology is laudable, it will not fix failing schools. The problem is not a lack of technology. The problem is a top down bureaucracy that focuses on schools, teachers and building programs instead of focusing on the education of our kids. All Mr. Rex is really proposing is a little juggling between existing bad schools. There may indeed be some incremental improvements in some schools. It is just as likely that other schools will experience declines. The reason is obvious, there is still no real accountability, in spite of Mr. Rex’s claim that he supports accountability.

Rex goes on to say,

But extending those choices to private schools with public dollars is a bad idea. Diverting taxpayer dollars to private schools would reduce the resources available to reform our schools, many of which are struggling to meet our students’ basic needs now. It would mean giving up on our public schools when we should be doing everything we can to fix them.

Again, Mr. Rex doesn’t understand vouchers. He continues to look at the problem from a top down position. He sees it as a school’s problem rather than an education problem. He sees the answers in the bureaucracy rather then in empowering parents to take control of their children’s education. Fundamentally, Rex sees the problem as one of resources. He wants to continue subsidizing the producers rather than the consumers of education. He does get one thing right though. Vouchers do encourage giving up on public schools and that is a good thing.

Milton Friedman also observed that prior to the advent of public education almost every citizen in this country could read, write and do math. That’s because the consumers of education made all the decisions about their own education instead of having those decisions made for them by people who didn’t know them and didn’t understand their needs. The more the bureaucracy grows the larger the problem grows. There is a one to one relationship between the two.

At its root, the education problem is an economic problem. I’m sure Mr. Rex would agree with that statement but he would mean something entirely different from what I mean. He believes that the answer lies in more tax money to more failing schools. If only they can get enough money they can succeed. History has demonstrated the folly of that approach. We’ve seen time and again that throwing money at problems tends to make them worse, not better.

What I mean when I say this is an economic problem is that the economics of education have been turned around. Consumers of education, parents and their children, are not involved in the process. Just as with the health care system today, the consumers are not the payers. Providers do not work for consumers. Instead, providers work for the government bureaucracy and consumers have little to no say in the process. The answer is to return natural economics to the process. If tax money is to be used, it should go directly to the parents of students. They can then make their own choices about educational options. Eliminate the bureaucracy altogether and you will have taken the first large step in fixing the problem.

Mr. Rex sees all kinds of problems with this approach, not least that the bureaucracy can’t hold private schools accountable. Does he really think that he and the bureaucracy are better qualified to hold teachers and schools accountably than are parents? If he does, he is delusional.

Mr. Rex’s basic problem is what he considers his greatest asset. He has spent his entire adult life in education. He’s been a teacher, a coach, a college dean and a college president. In all these experiences Mr. Rex has missed out on basic economics. He has also been so buried in the problems that he can’t see the answers. He has been so indoctrinated in modern educational thinking, demonstrably failed thinking, that he is fundamentally incapable of seeing what the problems are, much less the solutions. He can’t see the forest for the trees. And he, like most in the education establishment, believes that he is better qualified than parents to make educational decisions.

While this particular campaign is specific to South Carolina, its implications are national in scope. States all across this country are grappling with the problem of poor education. The United States lags farther and farther behind the rest of the western world. While many readers of this blog will not have the opportunity to vote in this election in South Carolina, all can work to improve the situation in their individual states. Until we get serious about the education of our children the problem will only grow worse. Until we focus on students instead of teachers, we will make no positive progress. Until parents, not the education establishment or the National Education Association, are in control of the education of their children, we will fall farther behind. The choice is ours to make.