Pennsylvania TownHall -- Where the Voice of Pennsylvania is Heard!

Guest Articles

Spend Smarter on Schools

by Leslie Carbone

K-12 EDUCATION cost U.S. taxpayers $536 billion during 2004-05. This figure,
4.3 percent of gross domestic product, is roughly equivalent to the entire
sum spent over the last five years on the Iraq war. U.S. taxpayers pay more
per public-school student than nearly all other economically advanced
countries. But while per-pupil spending continues to climb, student
performance doesn't.

What's needed here is a surge of common sense. In other words, America needs
to start spending smarter, not bigger, on education.

The way to spend smarter is to increase the power of the market in education
funding. There are a number of innovative solutions to do just that.

First and foremost is parental choice in education. As with any other
service, competition and accountability are key to cost-efficient
improvement. Studies consistently back up the commonsense wisdom that school
choice improves educational quality. For example, several studies have
demonstrated that the Milwaukee voucher program, the longest-running in the
nation, has substantial benefits for participants - and even for
public-school students who do not use vouchers.

Milwaukee students who receive vouchers achieve much higher high-school
graduation rates than public-school students overall, according to a 2004
study by Jay Greene, one of the nation's leading education-policy
researchers. During 1997 to 2004, Milwaukee public-school students increased
their scores in 12 of the 15 categories on Wisconsin's standardized tests,
notes the American Legislative Exchange Council. According to Hoover
Institution researcher Caroline Hoxby, student performance improved faster
at Milwaukee public elementary schools where vouchers were available to many
students than at schools where they were available to only few. For example,
during 1999-2003, the public schools that faced the most competition from
vouchers saw their students' math scores rise by 7.1 percentile points.

But education choice can't help families without the resources to back it
up.

Derrell Bradford, of Educational Excellence for Everyone, based in New
Jersey, proposes an innovative plan: Dollars Follow the Child. Mr.
Bradford's proposal differs somewhat from New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine's,
which essentially allocates educational dollars at the district level.

Mr. Bradford's plan, on the other hand, allocates funding at the student
level. In other words, when a family decides to send a child to a different
public school, the appropriate funding arrives at the new school with him.
The amount varies according to the student's needs, and the money can be
spent flexibly, guided by results - not planned programs or activities. Such
an approach would "direct much-needed resources to low-income students . . .
and, with adjustments, enhance reforms and drive better outcomes for
low-income and minority children," Mr. Bradford argued in testimony before
the Education, Budget and Appropriations Committees of the New Jersey
Assembly.

Mr. Bradford also points out that a Dollars-Follow-the-Child approach could
help reform teacher compensation. He points to a study, "The Hidden Gap," by
the Education Trust, which found that perverse incentives in teacher
compensation can distort per-pupil spending between schools within the same
district. Teachers' union contracts give the longest-tenured teachers the
highest salaries, but union rules also allow these teachers the most control
in selecting the schools in which they teach, and they choose the least
difficult schools. This means that tax money supports teachers' school
choice at the expense of parents' school choice.

Directing educational dollars toward individual students would help ensure
sufficient money to implement market-based reforms in teacher compensation.
Instead of a formulaic approach, based on tenure, teachers should be paid on
the same basis that many tax-paying parents are paid. In other words, higher
salaries should go to those who perform the best and to those who are
willing and able to teach challenging subjects or work with the students who
need the most help. This approach would be good for teachers because it
would put the best teachers in the schools where they are needed most and
reward them for doing the best work.

Implementing smart-spending reforms like these can help boost taxpayers'
return on their enormous investment in the education system. Uncorking the
power of the market in education gives families the double benefit of the
freedom to choose the best education and the resources to provide it.

Leslie Carbone is an adjunct scholar at the Lexington Institute.

Leslie Carbone is co-editor of Fifty Years After the Declaration: The United Nations Record on Human Rights.