Building a Competitive Education Industry
A Weekly Column by Myron Lieberman

One of the most depressing aspects of educational controversy in the United States it the abysmal intellectual level of the arguments for and against school choice. On this point, I see very little difference between its supporters and its opponents, but let me begin with an example on the supporters' side. The example is the assertion, iterated and reiterated, that more money won't improve education. The proof is supposed to be in the fact that educational expenditures have increased steadily since the 1960s but meanwhile achievement levels have stagnated or declined.

Actually, expenditures for K-12 education have increased much more than is revealed by government expenditures. First of all, the government statistics on the issue substantially understate government spending for public education, an issue to be discussed in future columns. Furthermore, private expenditures for public education have also increased in recent years. Public school districts receive more support from philanthropic foundations than ever before. PTAs and PTOs contribute more, as do private corporations. Thus from the financial side, public education has been receiving more support on an inflation adjusted basis than in the years preceding the Great Society and higher levels of inflation-adjusted government spending for public education. Nevertheless, this does not prove that the critics of public education assert, to-wit, that more spending for public education will not improve achievement levels.

The logical point may be phrased thusly: The failure of more spending for A,B, and C to bring about higher levels of achievement does not prove that higher levels of spending for X, Y, and Z will not result in higher levels of achievement. What we can say is that higher levels of spending for reforms that have been tried are not likely to bring about improvement, but even this point is not as clear-cut as some assume that it is. The fact that a transfusion of one cup of blood did not result in restoration of health does not necessarily tell us anything about the results of transfusions of a quart or more.

Of course, in the transfusion example, there is a persuasive explanation of why "more of the same" will bring about dramatic improvement. Unfortunately, the supporters of the status quo have not addressed any plausible explanation of why "more of the same" spending patterns in education will have more beneficial outcomes than the previous levels of spending for public education. Instead, to avoid this conclusion, they have adopted new labels for "experiments" or "projects," most of which emerged as a result of the same process of mangling the truth about our educational situation. At any rate, the issues should not be resolved by resorting to cliches and half-truths that are one hundred percent false when put into practice.

A good example of the boomerang effects of cliches is the Bush administration's educational program. The critics of "throwing more money at public education" have elected a president who appears to be doing just that; clearly, the Bush administration is aggressively supporting several educational programs that have failed to bring about higher levels of achievement in the past. The one issue on which it can plausibly argue that more money will make a difference is its emphasis on reading, but even on this issue, we are not likely to know very much more than we do now by the time of the November 2004 elections. By the time the additional funding gets into the pipeline and out into the schools, there will be too little time to determine whether the higher appropriations for reading instruction have raised achievement levels. And it will be interesting to see whether the critics of more spending for public education continue to complain about it under a Republican president. As I opined last week, I believe that the Bush administration's educational program is based more upon strategic/tactical political positions than educational ones, but I am not critical of it for that reason (even though I'm not sure that it is a good strategy). After all, it will strengthen the teacher unions, something that Republican candidates can do without.

Regrettably, the same low intellectual level characterizes the criticisms of school choice. For instance, one of the most reliable (read "sound bite tested") criticisms of school choice is that it would "drain money from the public schools." The overwhelming likelihood is that it would lead to much greater expenditures for K-12 education for at least three reasons. First, parents are likely to spend much more from their personal resources if the government absorbs some of the costs of schooling their children. Many parents who cannot afford to pay $6,000 for the private schooling they want will be able to afford the $3,000 required if the government absorbs $3,000 of the cost.

Second, we are certain to experience an explosion of expenditures for educational research and development by private companies seeking to enter educational markets. And third, a competitive system will lead to advertising on a large scale, and advertising will lead many parents who have never thought about spending from personal revenues to improve their children's education will do so. These are all interesting issues for later discussion.

These examples, limited as they are, help to answer question that puzzled me for a long time. Why is it that with all the freedom that we enjoy in the United States, our citizenry knows so little about public education? The answer, or part of the answer, is that so much that is disseminated is interest driven, and accuracy is the first casualty of interest driven commentary.