American Prospect Strikes Mother Lode of Falsehood
Dana Goldstein of the American Prospect blogs that “research clearly shows that students using vouchers perform no better academically than their socio-economically similar peers in public schools.” This is flamboyantly false.
I recently reviewed the literature comparing public, private, and truly free market school systems, and an expanded version of that study is forthcoming in the Journal of School Choice. The JSC version tabulates the findings of 65 scientific studies (including every U.S. and foreign voucher study I am aware of), collectively reporting 156 comparisons of educational outcomes. What does the research “clearly show”? It shows this:
Summary of Findings Comparing Private and Government Schooling,
by Result and Outcome Category
|
|
Total |
Ach |
Eff |
Sat |
Ord |
Fac |
Ear |
Att |
Int |
|
Sig Priv. Advantage |
106 |
46 |
25 |
11 |
5 |
2 |
5 |
11 |
1 |
|
Insignificant |
37 |
28 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
5 |
3 |
0 |
|
Sig. Gov’t Adv. |
13 |
10 |
3 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
The above table summarizes the results of the scientific literature, showing the number of findings favoring the private sector by a statistically significant margin, the number that are insignificant, and the number favoring the public sector by a statistically significant margin. It does this for all eight available outcome measures: academic achievement, efficiency (achievement per dollar spent per pupil), parental satisfaction, the orderliness of classrooms, the condition in which facilities are maintained, the later earnings of graduates, the highest school grade or degree completed, and effect on measured intelligence. And it incontrovertably shows that private sector outperforms the public sector in education across all of those measures.
But there’s more. As I note in the conclusion: “It is in fact the least regulated market school systems that show the greatest margin of superiority over state schooling.” When the above results are winnowed down so that we compare only free markets of private schools that are funded at least in part directly by parents to public school monopolies like those of the United States, the findings are even more starkly divided:
by Result and Outcome Category
|
|
Total |
Ach |
Eff |
Sat |
Ord |
Fac |
Ear |
Att |
|
Sig Mkt Adv. |
59 |
20 |
17 |
6 |
4 |
1 |
3 |
8 |
|
Insignificant |
13 |
7 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
3 |
3 |
|
Sig. Gov’t Adv. |
4 |
4 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
Note the staggering overall results. Findings favoring free market school systems outnumber contrary findings by a margin of 15 to 1. They also outnumber the combined insignificant findings and the findings favoring monopolies by more than 3 to 1. Most tellingly, when we look at efficiency we find that there are NO results in the literature that favor government schooling and NO results that are statistically insignificant. EVERY study that compares academic achievement per dollar spent per pupil between market school systems and public school systems finds a significant market advantage.
Goldstein and The American Prospect should obviously print a retraction. But if they are interested in the truth, they might want to do something more. They might want to ask themselves why they continue to cling to a monopoly system that has been overwhelmingly discredited in the scientific literature….
Ed. Dept. Advisor Wary of Politicizing the Curriculum
Mike Smith, a senior education advisor to Ed. Secretary Duncan, expressed concern yesterday about the possible ill effects of federal government standards. In a Library of Congress presentation, Smith told the crowd that if common national standards are funded by the federal government, “you can’t keep ideology or politics out of the ball game.”
This is a pearl of empirically validated wisdom. The problem is that it has been empirically validated at the state and district levels as well as the national level, as Neal McCluskey demonstrated in “Why We Fight: How Public Schools Cause Social Conflict.” And the U.S. is not alone in finding that official government schools cause social conflict over what is taught.
What can we do about it? How about real educational freedom that gives choice to both parents and taxpayers, eliminating the source of the problem?
Why Vouchers?
Yesterday a universal voucher bill heavily promoted by state Sen. Eric Johnson died in the Georgia legislature.
I can’t understand why anyone continues to push for a brand-new voucher program when they already have a universal education tax credit.
Tax credits are more popular and pose less of a threat to private schools and homeschoolers than vouchers, and Georgia already has a tax credit program. All they need to do is lift the cap on available tax credits, which is set at $50 million.
School choice programs actually save money — billions of dollars in fact — so there is no sense in capping the program, especially during an economic downturn.
And there is no sense in pushing for a new, inferior policy when you can focus your efforts on increasing funding for an existing law.
Week in Review: A School Choice Victory, Earmark Reform, and Drug Violence in Mexico
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Obama Dips a Toe in the Educational Choice Pool
After Congress voted to let the Washington D.C. voucher program expire, stripping 1,700 low-income children of the opportunity to attend private schools, President Obama said he will keep the program afloat in subsequent legislation.
“It wouldn’t make sense to disrupt the education of those that are in that system,” said Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary. “And I think we’ll work with Congress to ensure that a disruption like that doesn’t take place.”
Andrew J. Coulson, director of Cato’s Center for Educational Freedom, commented on Obama’s decision to continue to extend school choice benefits to underprivileged children in the nation’s capital:
This is a crucial milestone. There is finally a major national Democratic leader who is beginning to catch up to his state-level peers. Democrats all around the country have been supporting and signing small education tax credit programs because they realize that these programs are win-win: good for their constituents and good for their long-term political futures.
In an op-ed that ran the day Gibbs made the announcement, Coulson explained why those who oppose school choice will find themselves on the wrong side of history.
In 2006, Susan Aud and Leon Michos published a report on the fiscal impact of the D.C. voucher program, which documented the success of the District’s school choice pilot, the first federally funded voucher program in the United States.
Obama Signs Earmark-Heavy $410 Billion Omnibus Bill
After signing a bill that had nearly $8 billion in earmarks, President Obama declared that from then on, his administration would work toward earmark reform.
Sounds a bit like St. Augustine’s famous prayer, “Lord, make me chaste but not just yet,” said Daniel Griswold, director of Cato’s Center for Trade Policy Studies:
Recall that as a candidate, Obama said he and Democratic leaders in Congress would change the “business as usual” practice of stuffing spending bills with pet projects. Those earmarks, submitted by individual members to fund obscure projects in their own districts and states, typically become law without any debate or transparency.
Saying he would sign the “imperfect bill,” President Obama offered guidelines to curb earmarks … in the future. “The future demands that we operate in a different way than we have in the past,” he said. “So let there be no doubt: this piece of legislation must mark an end to the old way of doing business and the beginning of a new era of responsibility and accountability.”
Lord, make us fiscally responsible, but not just yet.
Meanwhile, Republican leaders are condemning the president’s expansion of the federal government. But do they have any standing to judge? Senior Fellow Michael D. Tanner said no:
The Bush administration’s brand of big-government conservatism was, at the very least, the greatest expansion of government from Lyndon Johnson to, well, Barack Obama.
For Cato’s policy recommendations on earmarked spending, see the “Corporate Welfare and Earmark Reform” chapter in the 2009 Cato Handbook for Policymakers.
Violence Spills into the U.S. from Mexico’s Drug War
With daily reports of increased violence coming from Mexico, Cato Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies Ted Galen Carpenter said the brutality is an indicator of power and arrogance, not desperation, and asserts that gun restrictions in the U.S. will not subdue violence:
The notion that the violence in Mexico would subside if the United States had more restrictive laws on firearms is devoid of logic and evidence. Mexican drug gangs would have little trouble obtaining all the guns they desire from black market sources in Mexico and elsewhere…
… Even assuming that the Mexican government’s estimate that 97 percent of the weapons used by the cartels come from stores and gun shows in the United States-and Mexican officials are not exactly objective sources for such statistics-the traffickers rely on those outlets simply because they are easier and more convenient, not because there are no other options.
Carpenter spoke at a Cato policy forum last month, and explained why the war on drugs sparks such intense levels of violence.
In a Policy Analysis published in early February, Carpenter warned of the need to change our policy on the Mexican drug conflict, so as to prevent the violence from spreading across the border.
Tax Credits, Courts, and Cabers
As Adam Schaeffer notes on this blog today, education tax credits have won in court, again. This time in Arizona.
I’ve long argued that their superior resistance to court challenge is one of many reasons to favor tax credits over other approaches to school choice. But there’s one court that even credits are likely to run into trouble with: the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The 9th Circuit is the most statist appellate court in the nation, and it has been sitting on an education tax credit case, Winn v. Garriott, for more than a year. For the record, I expect it to rule against the program sometime in 2009. If it does, that ruling will be appealed and almost certainly overturned by the Supreme Court of the United States.
Supporters of educational freedom should both brace themselves for this setback and also put it in perspective. The 9th Circuit is overturned more often than a caber at the Highland games.
Education Tax Credits Upheld, Again
The decision by the Arizona court of Appeals today upholding the constitutionality of the business tax credit program should put to bed once and for all these frivolous lawsuits against tax credits. Opponents are wasting their money.
Education tax credits are taxpayer funds and therefore cannot run afoul of state constitutional provisions regarding the use of government funds. It really is just that simple.
Some school choice supporters have given up on vouchers because of recent disappointments and think that means the end for private school choice. They forget the most successful school choice policy in recent years is education tax credits.
Not only have tax credit programs been passed and expanded with regularity (GA just passed a $50 million, universal program last year), education tax credits have proven bullet-proof in court.
Education tax credits are the future for school choice, and it’s looking pretty bright.
Obama First Dem President to Support Vouchers
Through his press secretary Robert Gibbs, president Obama has declared that he will reverse congressional Democrats’ phase-out of the DC Opportunity Scholarships program. The scholarships make private schooling affordable for 1,700 poor DC children, most of whom would be forced back into the District’s broken public school system if it were to end.
However — yes, there’s always a however — there’s every indication that president Obama will do the minimum necessary to keep the program going at its current size, and will not help to expand it.
This is nevertheless a crucial milestone. There is finally a major national Democratic leader who is beginning to catch up to his state-level peers. Democrats all around the country have been supporting and signing small education tax credit programs because they realize that these programs are win-win: good for their constituents and good for their long-term political futures.
The old guard of the Democratic party — typified by congressional leaders — still imagines that school choice is bad for them. They still think that they can roll back time to a period when the public school monopoly was inviolate. That time has passed. Real educational freedom is spreading — slowly — around the country. That is not going to stop.
The last Democrats to be found jamming their fingers into the dike, hoping to stop the flight to educational freedom, will find their political careers swept away when that dike finally crumbles.
The Early-Ed Big Lie
In a speech on education this morning at the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, President Obama repeats questionable statistics in support of his bid to expand the government’s monopoly on education back to the womb, asserting that “$1 of early education leads to $10 in saved social services.”
Unfortunately he’s referring to small-scale programs that involved extensive and often intensive total-family intervention rather than simple “early education.”
In contrast to the– real-world school choice programs have been tested extensively with solid, random-assignment studies. Nine out of ten of these studies find statistically significant improvement in academic achievement for at least one subgroup.
Obama should follow the scientific evidence on what works in education; school choice, not “early education.”
Vouchers vs. the District with ‘More Money than God’
Editor’s Note: This post was updated on March 9, 2009.
This week, education secretary Arne Duncan referred to DC public schools as a district with “more money than God.” Perhaps he was thinking of the $24,600 total per-pupil spending figure I reported last year in the Washington Post and on this blog. If so, he’s low-balling the number. With the invaluable help of my research assistant Elizabeth Li, I’ve just calculated the figure for the current school year. It is $26,555 per pupil.
In his address to Congress and his just-released budget, the president repeatedly called for efficiency in government education spending. At the same time, the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate have been trying to sunset funding for the DC voucher program that serves 1,700 poor kids in the nation’s capital. So it seems relevant to compare the efficiencies of these programs.
According to the official study of the DC voucher program, the average voucher amount is less than $6,000. That is less than ONE QUARTER what DC is spending per pupil on education. And yet, academic achievement in the voucher program is at least as good as in the District schools, and voucher parents are much happier with the program than are public school parents.
In fact, since the average income of participating voucher families is about $23,000, DC is currently spending almost as much per pupil on education as the vouchers plus the family income of the voucher recipients COMBINED.
So Mr. President and Secretary Duncan, could you please sit down with Democratic leaders in the Senate before next Monday’s vote on an amendment to keep funding the DC voucher program, and reassert to them your desire for efficiency and your opposition to kicking these children out of a program that they depend on?
Week in Review: A Health Care Summit, School Choice and Ayn Rand
Obama Holds White House Health Care Summit
President Obama hosted almost 150 elected officials, doctors, patients, business owners, and insurers on Thursday for a White House forum on health care reform. The Washington Post reports Obama “reiterated his intention to press for legislation this year that dramatically expands insurance coverage, improves health care quality and reins in skyrocketing medical costs.”
Cato senior fellow Michael D. Tanner responds:
The Obama administration and its allies mainly seek greater government control over one-seventh of the U.S. economy and some of our most important, personal, and private decisions. They favor individual and employer mandates, increased insurance regulation, middle-class subsidies, and a government-run system in competition with private insurance. On the other side are those who seek free market reforms and more consumer-centered health care.
These differences are profound and important. They cannot and should not be papered over by easy talk of bipartisanship.
In a new article, Tanner explains why universal health care is not the best option for Americans seeking a better system:
If there is a lesson which U.S. policymakers can take from national health care systems around the world, it is not to follow the road to government-run national health care, but to increase consumer incentives and control.
To find out how the free market system can increase health care security, read University of Chicago professor John H. Cochrane’s new policy analysis, which explains how markets can “provide life-long, portable health security, while enhancing consumer choice and competition.”
Battle Over Washington DC School Choice Program Continues
Congressional Democrats are considering cutting the funding for a pilot education program that sends low-income children in Washington, D.C., to private schools through vouchers. The program serves as an example of how helpful school choice programs can be to children who are born into families that cannot afford to send them to good schools.
Adam Schaeffer, policy analyst at Cato’s Center for Educational Freedom, says even the mainstream media is on the side of school choice this time.
In a recent study, Andrew J. Coulson, director of Cato’s Center for Educational Freedom, demonstrates the superiority of market-based education over monopolies.
For comprehensive research on the effectiveness of charter schools, private schools, and voucher programs, read Herbert J. Walberg’s book, School Choice: The Findings.
Cato Celebrates Women’s History Month
The Cato Institute pays homage to three women during Women’s History Month who unabashedly defended individualism and free-market capitalism early in the 1940s — an age that widely considered American capitalism dead and socialism the future.
In 1943, Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane and Ayn Rand published three groundbreaking books, The God of the Machine, The Discovery of Freedom and The Fountainhead, that laid the foundations of the modern libertarian movement.
On Rand’s centennial, Cato executive vice president David Boaz highlighted the many contributions she made to liberty:
Although she did not like to acknowledge debts to other thinkers, Rand’s work rests squarely within the libertarian tradition, with roots going back to Aristotle, Aquinas, Locke, Jefferson, Paine, Bastiat, Spencer, Mill, and Mises. She infused her novels with the ideas of individualism, liberty, and limited government in ways that often changed the lives of her readers. The cultural values she championed — reason, science, individualism, achievement, and happiness — are spreading across the world.
Ed Secretary Crosses Congressional Democrats on DC Vouchers
Libby Quaid, the Associated Press’s intrepid DC education correspondent, has just broken the biggest education story of the year to date: Education Secretary Arne Duncan opposes congressional Democrats’ efforts to kick kids out of the DC voucher program and back into the public schools.
While Duncan said he opposes vouchers, he added that, “D.C. is a special case,” saying that ”kids already going to private schools on the public dime should be allowed to continue.”
I confess, I’m surprised by even the qualified support for DC vouchers expressed by Duncan — surprised, and delighted. From the sound of it, though, Duncan is suggesting only that existing participants be grandfathered into the program, not that any additional children should be allowed to join them.
And Duncan makes a misstep when he implies that school choice can only “help a handful of children.”
Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and a host of other nations have large school choice programs already. The Dutch program is nearly a century old and private schools enroll nearly three quarters of the student population. As for Duncan’s desire to create new schools that will serve whole neighborhoods, he need only visit Milwaukee to see the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been invested in creating new private schools in some of the most depressed parts of the city, thanks to that city’s private school choice program.
School choice is not only good for kids and communities, it’s good for taxpayers. The government of Florida’s own accountability office reported last year that its statewide k-12 education tax credit program is saving $1.50 for every dollar it costs to operate.
Will Duncan’s comment rescue the voucher program from Senate Democrats who are set to vote on the bill in question this week? Stay tuned.
Mass Problems Solved with Mass Choice
Massachusetts is facing shortfalls after an extended binge on tax dollars. The AP reports today that some school districts are cutting grants for full-day kindergarten to save money, but that’s pocket change compared to what they could save with a serious school choice program.
School choice, especially bipartisan and increasingly successful education tax credits, can save states billions of dollars according to a fiscal analysis by the Cato Institute. New York could save more than $6 billion over the first five years alone, while Illinois could save more than $3 billion and South Carolina more than $400 million. And even the small programs already up and running saved taxpayers more than $444 million between 1990 and 2006 even though most of the programs began at the end of the 1990s or later and were small and restricted.
These huge savings should come as no surprise considering that the median full tuition paid at U.S. private schools is just $4,000, compared to an average of about $13,000 per student in public schools. Massachusetts spends more than $13,500 per student every year.
School choice saves money and children. Massachusetts can’t afford not to have education tax credits.
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