I wrote on education on Monday, and
there was a thought-provoking comment I’d like to respond to.
Hey! I've got a couple genuine questions for
you, knowing that you've spent much of your life focused on education. As long
as parents have the ability to homeschool their children, how does public
education usurp power from the people? Is the main issue with spending tax
dollars on education or are there other ways you feel power is being taken? And
2.) while it's admirable that the general population was relatively well
educated in the early 1800s, what of the slave population during the same time
period? What of the many immigrants and non-English speakers who have come
since? And what of the increasing number of households who need two incomes to
provide for their families, and even then still can't get by? These are issues
that have increased dramatically, and they are issues public education
*attempts* to address. Totally imperfectly to be sure. But I can't see how a
free market or philanthropy alone would do any better. As of 2011, one in five
kids live in poverty--what is the incentive to supervise/educate/feed these
kids, relying on philanthropy alone? It would be wonderful if parents were able
to take full responsibility, but that is not the reality for most households.
Help me to see what should be done.
These are good questions, and worth taking some time to
respond to, in the ongoing conversation about education.
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| photo source |
To begin, I agree with Lease that the problem looks
overwhelming. And I agree that, with things as
they are now, suddenly switching to a system of “pay for your own kids’
education” plus “we’ll use philanthropy to pay for the education of the poor
kids” is an idea that brings on a panic attack. I’m not advocating for anything
sudden, or anything that will leave a generation of kids without what they
need.
I do believe in educating every child, including those whose
families can’t provide. But I think right now there is a generation not getting what they need—because of the public schools.
Texas is big enough to generalize from. So let’s use some
numbers from a piece I wrote in January:
[T]here are about 5.2 million K-12 students in Texas. That
means 10% of kids in the US are going to school in Texas.
More fun facts: there are 130,000 students on wait lists for
charter schools—which are proliferating in Texas, but can’t meet the need.
Meanwhile there are 100,000 empty seats in private schools….
Also, there are 900,000 (17% of that 5.2 million) attending
1,032 failing schools in Texas. That means the school didn’t meet the minimal
yearly progress (a pretty low bar) for three years in a row.
If you’re worried about 1 in 5 students being below the
poverty line, a bigger worry ought to be that nearly 1 in 5 students is stuck
in a school that does not educate them, but they are trapped there by the
public school system with no way out—with the exception of a lottery for the
lucky few who might get into a charter school.
Failing schools are most likely to be located where the
poorest students live: inner cities and rural areas.
And remember, to be just above failing is a very low bar.
That means huge numbers of children are trapped in public schools that do not
offer them an adequate education—let alone an education tailored to help that
child reach his/her potential.
Every time the school choice movement begins to get the word
out, for even tiny, incremental changes, there is a huge outcry claiming this
takes money away from the kids. This is during a period during which real money
per student has increased manifold with no measurable increase in education
outcomes.
This is, again, from my January piece, about my highly rated
school district that failed my children:
·
Student enrollment has grown 30%, with a
population explosion.
·
Teacher ranks have grown 50%, which is well
above that population growth.
·
Non-teaching staff has grown 102%.
If you really care about educating children, why would you
spend so much education money on something other than educating children?
Let me repeat the Spherical Model axiom:
Whenever government attempts something beyond the proper role
of government (protection of life, liberty, and property), it causes unintended
consequences—usually exactly opposite to the stated goals of the interference.
To apply that to education, if the stated goal is to provide
an education for every child, the unintended consequence of government
institutionalized education is less education, especially for poor children.
This is assuming that a quality education leading to an
educated next generation is actually the goal; I suspect that the real,
unstated goal of government institutionalized education is control of the
populace and the inculcation of radical post-modernist ideas. I wrote about
John Dewey, a founding father of modern public education here.
So, in answer to Lease’s first question, there is a problem
with taking my tax dollars for public education while failing to provide my children with the education they need. And there’s also a problem with the
government’s attempts to control the minds of children. There are attacks by
CPS, as though homeschooling your own children is equivalent to neglecting
them. There are attempts to control what is taught, attempts to “approve” of
curriculum, attempts to enforce dissemination of certain messages and exclusion
of other messages.
In Texas we have a lot of homeschool freedom—but we have
that because of constant vigilance to prevent the (relatively conservative)
legislature from encroaching on parental rights to see to the care and
upbringing of their own children.
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| Daughter Social Sphere, citizen lobbying at the state capitol, one of our homeschool adventures |
I do believe the only antidote must consist of free market
plus philanthropy. But Lease asks, with the overwhelming numbers of children
whose families can’t afford to educate them, how can free market and
philanthropy possibly fill that need?
As things are now, maybe they can’t. But I’m not in favor of
keeping things as they are. The market for educational options needs to grow.
We need more choices, better quality, and lower prices—which are the usual and
expected results of innovation in the free market.
And we also need some family changes. In order for a society
to support the exceptions to families providing for themselves, there needs to
be a critical mass of families with married mother and father taking care of
their own children. I’m guessing a critical mass is somewhere north of 75%. If
nearly all children are born to married parents, and no more than 25% are then
raised by single parents, poverty is greatly reduced. We know the way to avoid poverty in America:
1.
Don’t
have sex before age 20.
2. Don’t have sex until after
marriage.
3. Stay married
4.
Obtain at least a high school diploma.
That’s a pretty low bar. But we’re not meeting it. Only a
few of us are teaching it.
Economic and social spheres interrelate. If we don’t value
and preserve marriage and family, then we get the calamities we see in inner
cities today. If we don’t have schools—and families—getting this message
through, we’re stuck in a downward spiral, and I have no answer other than
changing direction.
Meanwhile, here are some direction-changing ideas worth
acting on:
Idea 1: Get rid of the US Department of Education—and have
the money that has been sent there be given back to the states for use on
education. My concern here is that, simply getting rid of the Department of
Education wouldn’t be combined with a cut in US taxes (or spending), and the
money counted on now for education would simply disappear into the abyss of
national debt. That must not happen.
Idea 2: Have all education money attach to the child. If the
goal is to educate every child, then it is obvious that is not equivalent to funding public schools. No family should
be forced to pay taxes for public schools and then also pay for their child’s
education when the public schools do not provide for their needs. That’s true
for poor families as well as the families able to make the huge sacrifices to
educate their children no matter the odds.
Idea 3: Allow the parents to use the money attached to their child’s education as they see fit: for public school, for private school
(including parochial), for private tutoring, for private lessons, for
alternative therapies (equine therapy, for example), for online courses, for
homeschool curriculum, or any combination thereof.
Step 4: Encourage businesses, through tax credits, to offer
scholarships to supplement or replace the per child allotment for certain
students based on need and/or merit. This is being put forward by both my state
representative and my state senator in the current Texas legislative session.
Step 5: Encourage any and every form of educational choice:
charter schools, ESAs, use of public school buildings for private education
business uses, and ideas we haven’t thought of yet.
Everywhere it has been tried, allowing parents to control
the money for their child’s education costs less than the per child cost of
public education, with better outcomes. Allowing that money to stay with the
child—for future years and even for higher education—encourages wise use of the
money for the particular child. And simultaneously it encourages market answers
to educational needs.
Already, in large part because of the growth of
homeschooling, we’re seeing online educational resources proliferate. Many of
these are free or low cost.
For example, I wanted to use a particular math program for homeschooling
my daughter that my boys had used in a gifted school in another state. I
contacted my boys’ teachers and asked what the program was. I happened to ask
why, if the program was so good, it wasn’t used for all students, but only the
gifted classes. The answer was that it was too expensive. I bought the teacher’s
edition, everything I needed, grades 3-6, for around $350. It was one of our
bigger curriculum purchases. It was intended for an entire classroom; I used it for one
child. There were a few consumable pages, but otherwise you’re looking at under
$100 per year per classroom. I can’t figure out why a typical classroom,
spending $1100 per year per child, couldn’t afford that. By the way, the
program is now available online for free.
At some point we can look at the internet as a higher education alternative to astronomically expensive college tuition. MIT has free
courses online. Many universities have online courses at lower per credit hour
costs than on-campus tuition. YouTube is mostly free. There’s a lot out there. What we
need is a way to free ourselves from the cost of entry into society that an
ever-less-valuable university degree program provides.
Meanwhile, in some third-world countries, very poor people are successfully building private schools to get the education the government
schools are failing to provide. We’re told it can’t be done, but it’s
happening.
I don’t know that I’ve fully answered all of Lease’s
questions. I didn’t touch on the history of slaves not being educated (wish it
hadn’t happened, and that no one had been deprived of their life, liberty, and
property). Or immigrants (my grandfather immigrated in 1906, at age 16, speaking
no English, and went on to be successful in various businesses—no government
intervention needed).
The biggest hurdle is how do we get to the ideal I see from
where we are. I don’t know. But I believe that recognizing that education is a
parental right, not a government responsibility, is a first step.
We ought to encourage parental control of education wherever
possible, allowing the market to meet growing demand for alternatives.
And we need stronger families, which will lead to less
poverty and less societal need beyond what parents must provide for their own
children.
Do I foresee the ideal happening? Sometimes I’m hopeful;
sometimes I’m discouraged. All I can really do is what is in my power: see to
the education of myself and my children, and share good ideas in hopes others
will make good choices.
I know this is already long, but if you want fuller answers
and more details, follow the links in the copy.
Thanks, Lease, for engaging in the conversation. I welcome
respectful feedback like yours.
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