United Liberty

I think my head will explode if I have to listen to any more whining or protests about cuts to education budgets. From California to Washington, D.C., and right here in Georgia, students, teachers and various union members are showing up at capitols and at county board meetings, whipped into a fury over the thought that any cuts might be made to the precious education system. Well, here is a news flash. We’re all hurting here. Everybody has to make sacrifices, and everyone will have to make do with a little less. Unemployment in Georgia is almost 10.5%, and no one in the private sector has the luxury of raising prices to keep from laying off workers. Why should the education system, or any government department for that matter, be immune from tightening their belts like the rest of us.

Like every other government agency and department, education spending has been rising for years. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2006 (latest statistics available) we spent an average of $9138 per student on education nationally, with Georgia spending $8565 per student. And what exactly have we gotten for such an impressive financial outlay “for the children”? Georgia consistently ranks in the bottom 10% in academic achievement of American students, and America ranks in the lower middle of the pack of industrialized countries. The PISA test (Program for International Student Assessment) ranked American students near the bottom in math (23 of 30 countries ranked ahead, two tied) and science (where American students were 11-points below the average). So maybe I would have sympathy for protecting education budgets if we were producing the top students in the world, but we are not. We are getting our tails kicked by countries like South Korea and Poland (which, according to the 2008 OECD study, spend about half of what we do per student).

Obviously, the problem with poor academic achievement has nothing to do with spending on education, or we’d have the smartest kids in the world. So what is the problem? From my observations it appears to be a number of things. It is a lack of competition, lack of accountability, lack of discipline, an affinity with many administrators and teachers to try new ways of teaching that focus less on math and science and more on “diversity” and self-esteem. Parental disengagement from the process, due in part to the fact that they have limited power to affect change unless they have the money to put their kids in private school or move to an affluent area, also stifles success. And of course there are the teachers unions, possibly the biggest impediment to academic improvement.

Teachers unions guarantee overall mediocrity by making it near impossible to fire bad teachers and administrators. New York City spends more than $65 million per year on “rubber rooms”, which are facilities to house teachers no longer allowed to teach but which, due to labyrinthine union rules, also can’t be fired. These include teachers that have physically and verbally assaulted students, and even some placed there for sending sexually explicit photos to minor students. There is no room for common sense.

This type of thing is discouraging to the good teachers that actually struggle and sacrifice to make a difference. Why should they work so hard when bad teachers are guaranteed the same pay? Good teachers also suffer on the student side. A dear friend is a teacher with my local public school system and told me that she often gets cursed at by students and on several occasions has feared for her safety, like when a student threw a chair at her when she told him to sit down. She was told by the principal that she could not touch the student, even to defend herself, or she would be fired. When teachers have to spend the majority of time dealing with a handful of bad students, the other students suffer. However, whether it is bad teachers or bad students, the system virtually guarantees that they will not have to suffer for poor choices and actions.

This is why we need to introduce more choice into education, allowing the education dollars to follow the students, giving the parents a way to choose what is best for their child. My wife and I home-school seven of our eight children (the youngest is eight months), and they are stellar students. On top of our property taxes which fund public schools, we spend several thousand more out of pocket for our curriculum and supplies. We are rewarded with children that consistently score several grade levels above their age on the same standardized tests that the public school children take. I salivate when I think of the type of education my children could enjoy if my wife and I had the $65,000+ per year that would be spent on my kids if they were in public schools.

Literally trillions of dollars have been spent nationally over the last two decades on education. Both Bush (No Child Left Behind) and Obama (Race to the Top, and others) have pushed for more nationalization of education. In return, America has seen a steady decline in education quality relative to other nations, and this will put us at a distinct competitive disadvantage in the global economy. Let’s privatize education. Let’s eliminate tenure and start richly rewarding teachers that produce and get rid of teachers that don’t. Let’s open the whole market to competition, which will force accountability and efficiency on the entire education establishment. Those that protest give a thousand reasons why none of these things will make education better…but it’s hard to see how it could make it worse. For once let’s have the actions of our politicians match the rhetoric and truly do what is best “for the children.”