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Friday, Aug. 10, 2001

Institute for Policy Innovation, a think tank in Texas, has issued a report interpreting the collective meaning of nearly 400 studies on the U.S. education system, and the verdict is not favorable.

Robert Franciosi, the author of "No Voice, No Exit: The Inefficiency of America's Public Schools," and a senior research fellow at the conservative Goldwater Institute, concludes the report with a bleak prognosis: "The standard prescriptions for fixing what is wrong with America's schools - spending more, lowering class size, raising teachers' salaries - cannot be relied on to deliver consistent results."

Franciosi says that over the past 40 years, there has been an ever-increasing flow of resources into government schools. He says that over these decades, the number of pupils per teacher has fallen, the number of teachers with advanced degrees has more than doubled, and the experience level of teachers has increased.

However, despite these seeming improvements, Franciosi says that 20 percent of today's students still fail to attain basic proficiency in the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests. Also, graduation rates continue to decline and, until recently, so did SAT scores.

"If we want inputs to once again equal outputs, we must increase schools' accountability to parents, instead of bureaucrats. The most feasible way to do this is through school choice," says Franciosi.

Franciosi points out that the United States spends more on education than it does on all other federal, state and local programs. His report also says that America leads the world in the amount of money it spends per pupil. The lack of choice parents have in regard to their children's education, and the growth of teachers unions are the principle reasons Franciosi cites for the decline in educational quality.

The growth in teachers unions has helped to drown out parents' concerns about the state of schools, he says. And the lack of alternatives has caused many parents to accept troubled government schools for their children.

Franciosi believes that markets, not political reform, offer the best hope for disaffected parents. The power of politicians and unions make political reform of schools unlikely, he says, but more school choice for parents can offer alternatives.

"School choice, whether through vouchers or charter schools, has the potential to restore local accountability," Franciosi concludes.

But liberals disagree. Recently in Washington, two think-tank scholars debated education policy, and neither seemed to be in sync with Francosi's argument.

In a discussion at New America Foundation, Richard Kahlenberg of Century Foundation argued that government schools should have a mix of economic backgrounds in their students.

Kahlenberg reiterated the points made in his recently published book, "All Together Now." He argued that low-income government schools, on average, spend about half of what more affluent government schools spend per pupil. Money spent in poor areas is often spent unwisely, he said.

"In low-income areas, pressure is intense to make education a jobs program, so bureaucracies are more likely to be bloated," he said.

The presence of high-achieving peers makes all students more academically engaged, said Kahlenberg. He admitted that forced busing, which attempted to bring together students from varied backgrounds in the 1970s, has been a failure. But he said that voluntary incentives should be made to encourage students from varied backgrounds to attend the same schools.

Michael Lind, a fellow at New America Foundation, argued that funding is the primary cause of the differences in schools. Lind and Ted Halstead, the president of NAF, recently published an excerpt from an upcoming book which argues that the traditional funding by property taxes with some sales tax revenue is at the heart of America's problems with government schools.

"Our nation suffers from a troubled and class-stratified system of primary and secondary schools, which in effect means our public schools, since a full 89 percent of American K-12 students attended public schools in 1999," write Halstead and Lind.

The two authors see a split between suburban government schools, which they view as mostly high quality, and urban government schools, which they see as frequently suffering from dysfunctions.

"The problem with American schools is not with overall school funding," the two authors write. "To the contrary, we spend a greater share of our national income on K-12 education than any other advanced industrial democracy, with the exceptions of Canada and Denmark."

Instead Lind and Halstead see the main problem with American government schools as being the dramatic disparities in funding found among states, cities and even neighborhoods.

They propose federal funding as a way to decrease these disparities. Halstead and Lind emphasize they were not proposing massive new federal funding in addition to present levels of state and local funding. Instead, they say they are proposing a change in the source of government school funding, while keeping today's overall amount of education spending at a similar level.

Having Washington, rather than states or localities, fund government education would mean a more equitable distribution of financial resources, say Halstead and Lind. They argue that lawmakers in Washington would distribute more taxpayer money to poorer districts.

An issue they failed to address: how private schools offer better educations than government schools while spending less.

Franciosi's report is an examination of the hundreds of reports issued in recent years on government education, and not a specific recommended agenda, says George Pieler, director of IPI's Center for Educational Freedom.

Pieler, an education specialist at the think tank, says that parents concerned about the education provided in government schools should investigate choices available. "The first thing anyone should do if they're concerned about their child's education is know all the options," he says.

Realtors report that many parents with financial resources move to ensure their child a better education, says Pieler.

Copyright 2001 by United Press International.

All rights reserved.

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