School reform was a failure; try vouchers - the lack of improvements in public school education since the 1983 report 'A Nation at Risk' - Column

Insight on the News, July 5, 1993 by David Boaz

Ten years ago the National Commission on Excellence in Education issued its report A Nation at Risk, which declared that "a rising tide of mediocrity" had engulfed our public schools. The nation reacted in shock to the new crisis; there were presidential speeches, cover stories in Time and Newsweek, heated political debates.

The nation's governors were particularly receptive to the report, seizing upon it not as an indictment of their performance but as a justification for new taxes and state spending. More than 290 state task forces were created, and many states adopted "comprehensive" reform packages. Almost all involved higher taxes.

A year after its big report, the national commission issued a euphoric progress report that declared, "The response to the announcement that American education is in trouble has been nothing short of extraordinary."

Sure, there were many reforms in school inputs: stricter attendance rules, minimum grades required for permission to participate in extracurricular activities, longer school days, more competence testing, more homework, higher teacher pay, a longer school year -- and of course more money.

But what about school outputs? Scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test remained stagnant through the decade and actually fell four points in 1991. American students ranked 13th on a 1992 international science test taken by students from 15 countries. Of eight industrialized countries, the United States is the only one where people over 55 do better at geography than recent high school graduates.

The problem is that we let those in the education establishment tell us how to reform the very schools they had been in charge of for years. And what did they tell us? That they needed more money. Once again, they got it.

Total U.S. spending on education rose from $24.7 billion in 1960 to $165.6 billion in 1980 to $425 billion in 1992. Adjusted for inflation, education spending for each pupil has risen about 35 percent in the past 10 years. Per-student expenditures are now about $6,000, or $150,000 per classroom. Lack of money is not the problem with today's schools.

Only one reform will really improve American education: competition. If we could buy automobiles from only one company, how good would its products be? If one company ran all the grocery stores in town, what kind of service and choice could we expect? We rely on competition to bring us better goods and services in most areas, but we expect a monopoly education system to give us better education.

We need to give parents a choice. If the public schools in their neighborhoods aren't good enough, they should be able to send their children to better schools. Then the schools -- public and private -- would have to offer a decent education or go out of business.

An educational voucher program would provide every parent with a coupon representing the sum the city or state government spends on each child's education. The parent could spend that voucher at the local public school or present it at any other school as payment.

Fortunately, the choice idea is gaining ground. In Milwaukee, thanks to Democratic state Rep. Polly Williams and Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson, up to 1,000 low-income students can receive vouchers to attend private schools. The parents are delighted with the improvement in their children's learning.

Businesses are providing vouchers to low-income students in cities such as Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Atlanta and San Antonio, Texas. An initiative to give vouchers to all families will be on the ballot in California, and perhaps other states, in 1994.

Right now, the United States actually has a more socialist school system than Sweden, Russia or the Czech Republic, all of which have recently implemented voucher plans.

How many more generations of American children, especially in our inner cities, are we going to condemn to a poor education, while politicians and school administrators proclaim their good intentions?

Ten years after A Nation at Risk, "reform" has failed. It's time to give competition a chance.

David Boaz is executive vice president of the Cato Institute and editor of Liberating Schools: Education in the Inner City.