Liberating schools from the unions

Alternatives to a failing public education

By Alexander Marlow
From the October 2006 Print Edition

In Milton Friedman’s 1980 masterpiece, Free to Choose, the Nobel Prize–winning economist noted that "not all ‘schooling’ is education, and not all ‘education’ is schooling." This concept seems to elude most Americans, Republicans included. The U.S. government ensures that students are in school, but often neglects the actual quality of education. It is astonishing to read Friedman’s complaints about declining test scores and violence in urban schools knowing that we still have the same problems a quarter-century later.

The other day, I discovered that a judge halted a free Bible giveaway at a Missouri school. Doesn’t it seem a little unfair that students are denied Bibles but are supplied with enough condoms to outfit the entire U.S. Navy for a Bangkok furlough? According to USA Today, in my hometown, the Los Angeles Unified School District boasts a dismal high school dropout rate of 55.8 percent. (For you LAUSD grads, 55.8 percent is more than one half.) Locally, The Daily Californian reported that 9 of the 17 Berkeley Unified schools do not meet academic performance standards set by the No Child Left Behind Act, and many of these schools have failed national standards before.

According to E.G. West, a respected scholar of government’s role in schools, the movement for public education was not initiated by fed-up parents worried about their children’s education, but "mainly by teachers and government officials." In fact, Friedman argues teachers and government officials championed public education so that they would gain guaranteed employment.

Americans were easily persuaded because public education seems "free", but in fact, public education is much more expensive than private education. In 2003, the average American public school student cost tax payers $6,000 a year, whereas the average private school tuition was only $3,100. In the LAUSD, the average cost per student was $12,300.

The problem starts with public education’s disregard of basic economic principles; the incentive motive is absent. There is no competition among teachers and schools. It is already difficult to earn raises in government positions, but teachers have unionized to the point where schools cannot even fire incompetent teachers without incurring union backlash. Consequently, teachers have less incentive to perform. Mr. Saunders, my middle school teacher, inspired me to love history, so it stands to reason that he should get a larger paycheck than Mr. "T," an aptly named counterpart who often dismissed his class to the basketball court upon finishing 15-minute quizzes. Unfortunately, our current public education system doesn’t allow Mr. Saunders to be rewarded for a job well done.

One possible solution is the implementation of a voucher system. Let’s say a student named Molly currently attends a public high school in Los Angeles. If she were to leave the public school for a private school, she would immediately save taxpayers upwards of $12,000. The government would give her parents a portion of the money through a coupon redeemable at a private school of their choosing, and return the rest to taxpayers. Everyone will save and Molly will learn to read and write.

Another approach to improving the educational system is making schools partially funded by the government, as is the case with our great university. This system is less successful for undergraduate studies, as most of UC Berkeley’s fame comes from graduate work and research, but students and faculty are open to gaining both public and private financing.

Re-evaluating compulsory schooling laws may be beneficial as well. Friedman points out classrooms don’t necessarily teach students basic literacy skills, since children often spend years in classrooms without attaining literacy. Compulsory schooling drags a very high volume of disruptive students into the classroom, so we must ask whether the benefits of sitting disruptive, unmotivated students in classrooms outweighs the cost of disrupting motivated students. It is definitely worth an experiment.

Home schooling is also a viable education option. Many critics of home schooling adamantly believe the social skills learned in schools (putting condoms on bananas, drawing graffiti in a gym, etc.) are ends in and of themselves. However, there are no statistics to corroborate this. According to a Time magazine piece, home-schooled children tend to fight less, be more patient, compete less, introduce themselves to others more, and exchange phone numbers more often.

The current state of the Berkeley Unified School District is the tip of the iceberg. The problems stem from lack of incentive — monopolies aren’t tolerated in the business world, and likewise the government’s education monopoly should not exist. I believe the precept ought to be a society with a purely privatized, market-based educational system where charities pay the discrepancy between education’s cost and what students can afford to pay. Vouchers or partial privatization have incredible potential and ought to be implemented in tandem with a re-evaluation of compulsory education laws.

My hope is that current schools’ poor test scores will eventually motivate taxpayers and parents to come together and rise up against Big Public Schooling and experiment with alternatives. We will declare once and for all that it is not enough that our children are entitled to a desk in some jail cell–like classroom designated by the state and supervised by a disciple of Ché Guevara. Schooling isn’t enough; we want the education too.

If you enjoyed this article, please consider supporting the Patriot