Ed. Policy Reality Check (Now with More Reality!)
The Orlando Sentinel published an article over the weekend titled “Education: Big reforms haven’t yet produced big results.” It seems to have been meant as a reality check, and certainly it does contain a few relevant facts, but it also leaves this statement from “critics” unchallenged: “schools won’t get better without more money.”
Slight problem: Florida’s k-12 scholarship tax credit is raising academic achievement at less than half the per pupil cost of the traditional state-run schools. That’s according to academic studies commissioned by the state of Florida and by the state’s own spending and enrollment data.
Figlio and Hart, 2010, found that the scholarship tax credit program improves academic performance in public schools; and Figlio, 2011, found that students using the scholarships to attend independent schools are also benefiting academically. As for cost, the average scholarship is about $4,000. For comparison, the state’s public school districts spent $27 billion in 2009-10 (bottom of page 21, first column), for 2.6 million students, for per pupil spending of just over $10,000.
I’ll Take “Whatever Evidence I Like” for Hundreds of Billions, Alex
Right before the President’s 2012 budget proposal was released, I wrote a bit about what I was hearing the administration would call for with Pell Grants. Notably, ending year-round Pell on the grounds that the cost was too high and “there was little evidence that students earn their degrees any faster.” I found this argument a bit odd because eligibility to get more than one Pell award annually started in just the 2009-2010 academic year — way too recently to have any conclusive evidence on its effect one way or the other. I was also surprised because, well, evidence of success has never been important in decisions to keep or kill programs.
Take the embattled — and near dead — Washington, DC voucher program. There is currently a concerted effort to revive the program, but the Obama administration and most congressional Democrats evinced no qualms about killing it despite its well-documented success with graduation rates and parental satisfaction. Documented, in fact, using “gold-standard,” longitudinal, random-assignment research methods. That documentation is why Cato Center for Educational Freedom director Andrew Coulson last week testified to the House education committee that “there is one federal education program that has been proven to both improve educational outcomes and dramatically lower costs. That is the Washington, DC Opportunity Scholarships Program.”
Sadly, the administration – and, to be honest, pols of all stripes – are as happy to ignore the evidence of success in programs they dislike as the very common evidence of failure in programs they support.
Take the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program, which funds after-school activities intended to keep kids off the streets and provide them with social and educational enrichment. A series of studies — the last published in 2005 — found that not only didn’t the program appear to provide many positive results, it might have had overall negative effects:
Conclusions: This study finds that elementary students who were randomly assigned to attend the 21st Century Community Learning Centers after-school program were more likely to feel safe after school, no more likely to have higher academic achievement, no less likely to be in self-care, more likely to engage in some negative behaviors, and experience mixed effects on developmental outcomes relative to students who were not randomly assigned to attend the centers.
In light of its (at-best) impotence, did the program go away? Of course not! In FY 2010 it was appropriated $1.17 billion, and the Obama administration has asked for $1.27 billion for FY 2012. And this despite not just poor performance, but a pesky $14 trillion national debt.
This is small potatoes, though, compared to some other programs. Take Head Start: Run by the Department of Health and Human Services, Head Start is supposed to give poor kids an early boost in life. In reality, however, it has proven itself to be largely worthless, with benefits disappearing after just a few years. It’s a finding that was repeated in a federal evaluation released in 2010, which reported that ”the advantages children gained during their Head Start and age 4 years yielded only a few statistically significant differences in outcomes at the end of 1st grade for the sample as a whole.”
Despite this fecklessness, the administration wants to increase funding for Head Start from $7.23 billion in FY 2010 to $8.10 billion in FY 2012.
Clearly, “evidence” doesn’t drive budgeting decisions — it’s just a term that’s invoked when it’s politically expedient to do so. But maybe one more bit of evidence is in order to illustrate this. Compare increases in overall federal spending on K-12 education to the academic performance of 17-year-olds, our schools’ “final products”:
In light of this, if federal policymakers really cared about evidence, would they still be spending money on education at all? The evidence on that, unfortunately, is almost indisputable.
Vouchers, Tax Credits, and Social Conflict
Yesterday, I contended that education tax credits substantially avoid the compulsion inherent in school voucher programs — that vouchers compel all taxpayers to fund every kind of schooling (including ones they may strongly object to) whereas tax credits do not.
In his most recent response, NRO’s Robert VerBruggen disagrees. He writes
I don’t see how [tax credits do] anything whatsoever to change this, at least mathematically speaking. Whenever someone earmarks their tax dollars for a certain purpose — in this case, by “donating” to a voucher program and being reimbursed with a tax credit — the government has to devote a higher share of everyone else’s tax dollars to the rest of the budget. Non-”donating” taxpayers, therefore, subsidize the voucher program to the exact same degree they would have if the government funded it directly.
Let’s deal with the core of our disagreement by following the money. Under a voucher program, you pay your taxes as always, the money goes into a big government pot, and it pays for every type of schooling — including some that may violate your convictions. About this sort of thing, I agree with Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in the The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom that:
to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical
(Well, I agree with the tyrannical part, anyway).
The Case of the Missing Evidence
Last fall, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated a lawsuit against Arizona’s K-12 scholarship donation tax credit program. Under the program, citizens can donate to non-profit organizations that help families pay for private school tuition, and in return, the donors receive a dollar-for-dollar tax cut. The 9th Circuit, ruled that the program violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, because many taxpayers choose to donate to religious scholarship-granting organizations whose scholarships are only usable at religious schools. This, in the Court’s view, meant that the program unconstitutionally favored religious scholarship-seeking parents over secular ones.
Supporters of the program will soon be appealing this decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. They’re very likely to win, for a variety of reasons. Foremost among them, the Establishment Clause forbids only governments from favoring religion, but imposes no similar limit on individual citizens. It is for this reason that charitable tax deductions can be claimed for donations to both religious and secular charities without running afoul of the First Amendment — even if taxpayers overwhelmingly choose to donate to religious charities.
In rereading the original complaint, I noticed something interesting: even if the 9th Circuit’s misconstrual of the Establishment Clause were correct, plaintiffs still wouldn’t have a case. That’s because the evidence they presented did not — and still does not — support their claim that secular parents have been at a comparative disadvantage in obtaining scholarships. To see why, read on….
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