An Education on Education

In America

My dear readers, welcome once again to the asylum. We are again in the back-to-school season, and it makes me angry every year. I get mad for several reasons. One point of contention is that public schools are vastly over-funded. Yes, you read that right. I know we are constantly bombarded by the mainstream media and professional “educators” talking about how public schools are so underfunded. I would argue that, objectively, public schools are overfunded, and by a significant amount. To support my point and provide some standardization to the numbers, I am using the K-12 average per-student spending. I am also using the most recent numbers I can find for both public and private sectors. Public or private lower grades cost less to educate, but since we are taxed to support K-12 education most directly, it is the fairest comparison I can think of. In America, the average annual cost per student is just over $18,000 (here). At the same time, private schools, many of which operate at a profit, charge an average of just over $12,000 per student (for a K-12 education). Please note that there is a wide variety of private schools, including many more expensive boarding schools, and the average of all of them is still significantly lower than that of public education. If we were to remove the boarding schools, the average drops below $10,000 nationally, and in many places, even below $7,000 (here).

Making matters worse, even with an average of $120,000 more per class of 20 students, public schools consistently provide a significantly inferior education compared to private schools, despite their inflated price tags. By all metrics, private schools turn out much better-educated children (here and here). Some research has shown that family, more than school, plays a significant role in a child's success, and this may indeed be true. I don't think it is the defense of public schools it is presented as. In states like Indiana, which have a voucher program, students from all socioeconomic backgrounds are free to attend private schools. Those lower-income children using vouchers were slightly less successful than those who were attending without a voucher. Still, they were also less likely than traditional public-school students ever to fail a course or be suspended in high school, and they scored better on standardized tests. Additionally, they were more likely to enroll in college within one year of high school graduation (here).

One of the things that makes me angriest is that my children are trapped in the public education system, and due to the taxation used for its funding, I can’t send them to a private school. I am taxed from all sources (property, sales, and others) around $12,000 a year to support public education in Oklahoma (here). I couldn’t find a national average because state funding methods vary widely. Still, I am willing to bet that Oklahoma is among the lower states in terms of education tax collections. Essentially, I can’t afford to pay for both public and private education for my children, and I pay for public education, at least in part, regardless. We had tried homeschooling in the past, but with my wife's inability to drive due to her vision impairment, my working full time, and the volume of children, it wasn’t a tenable solution for our family. We had to abandon it after two years of effort.

Notice that I am taxed in Oklahoma less than enough to cover the average cost of one student per year. This is because the way public education is currently structured, it can’t be paid for by individual families, so all of society must pay. Education is a public good, right? More on that in a moment. That changes when we examine a fairly typical private school (at least for Oklahoma) and see that even before considering multiple enrollment discounts, the same amount of money could fully cover the tuition for several children (here). As a result of the exorbitant amount of funds spent on public education, the entire population must be taxed regardless of if they have children in school or not.

Despite all this spending, our education system consistently ranks in the middle of the pack, most recently 18th in the world (here), while spending significantly more on education than the countries that surpassed us, in some cases nearly double (here).

Essentially, we spend much more on education than most countries, more than it takes private schools to educate children, and we often end up with far worse results.

The typical response, as supported by the media, is to throw more money at it. While education is a prerequisite for national success, that isn’t essentially what public schools do. Increasingly, our K-6th-grade schools have become indoctrination centers for the personal ideologies of their staff, with significant amounts of time and money being spent on social issues rather than focusing on reading, writing, and arithmetic. Schools should refrain from commenting on social problems of any kind and leave moral lessons to parents and faith leaders, beyond the generic ‘keep your hands to yourself’ and ‘don’t say mean things to each other.’ Except, they don’t in American public schools. They normalize adult sexual entertainers for drag queen story hour (here) and hide serious mental health issues (while encouraging delusion) from parents (here, here, and here). Districts have even gone so far as to try to cover up the rape of students to support their preferred narrative, ultimately resulting in further sexual assaults by the offender (here, here, here, and here). All of this while still pushing for policies that allow biologically male students into intimate spaces previously reserved for biologically female students.

Public education has two distinct problems. The first is an inverse incentive system. Private schools are motivated by money. The better education they provide at the lowest cost, the more money they make. This is made more difficult because they are not only competing against other private schools, but also public schools, which are a no-cost option for their customer base. Unfortunately, public schools operate on an inverse incentive mechanism. The worse they perform, the more money they get. If they provided a quality education and operated within their allocated budget, or even under it, they would quickly face budget cuts. The advantage of government-run public schools over private schools is that failure doesn’t mean closure; it means more money. As such, we would not achieve better results if we spent $1,000,000 per year per public school student, as the reward mechanism hinders success (here, here, and here). One of the most significant ways to increase costs while still delivering a subpar product is for schools to increase the number of non-teaching staff and administrators. While student populations have grown 101% and teachers have grown by 247% (more than 2:1 for students since the 1950s), non-teaching staff and administrators have grown by 758% in the public school system, a ratio exceeding 7:1 for new students added (here). I imagine that if we could reduce those ratios to a more 1:1 level, we might see some significant cost reductions.

The second major issue facing education and many public sector jobs is Unions. I don’t think any public sector position should be allowed to unionize because far too much power resides in the hands of the union for there to be fair negotiations. A public sector union with tens of thousands of members can and has shifted the results of elections because they didn’t get what they wanted, and the elected officials charged with the negotiations are aware of this. So, they typically get their way even if it bankrupts the city or state (here). The teachers' union isn’t any better, and since it puts our children at risk, it is probably worse. The teachers' union prohibits the firing of poorly performing and dangerous teachers, creating situations where teachers can’t be fired, but also can’t be allowed access to students, so they remain on the payroll doing nothing (here, here, here, here, here, and here). This creates an environment that costs more money and can potentially put students at risk of abuse.

I am not addressing the issue of teachers' pay because it really is entirely separate. If the amount of money spent on education were more wisely managed, it probably wouldn’t be an issue. There is a solution. First, we need to remove the federal government entirely from education and reserve it for the states, preferably the city or county in which the schools are located. Second, we need to do away with the teachers' union specifically, and all public sector unions generally. Lastly, we need to issue a no-strings-attached certificate good for the full public educational spending for each student to their families. No strings, meaning redemption of the certificate doesn’t entitle the government any say or control over non-public schools. Public School funding also needs to be entirely restricted to the certificates it redeems. This way, they can use the certificates to send their children to any school they want, public or private. This is the only way to flip the reward mechanism and improve public education while removing stumbling blocks to becoming more efficient.

Proverbs 1:2-7

2 To know wisdom and instruction,

to understand words of insight,

3 to receive instruction in wise dealing,

in righteousness, justice, and equity;

4 to give prudence to the simple,

knowledge and discretion to the youth—

5 Let the wise hear and increase in learning,

and the one who understands obtain guidance,

6 to understand a proverb and a saying,

the words of the wise and their riddles.

7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;

fools despise wisdom and instruction.

God bless you,

-Sam