Education Matters US

Ralph Martire has an article in Saturdays Chicago Sun-Times where he tries to explain why schools need more money. The problem is his argument is seriously flawed. First his argument.

Now, onto the problem with his argument.

Now you know the fatal flaws in his argument. Let’s take them 1 by 1:

1. Public schools are a good business model

Public Government Schools are a monopoly and thus they have no competition. A monopoly is not a good business model. The government admits as much by creating laws to prevent monopolies. They are bad for consumers. Public Government Schools are no exception. They have become bad for their consumers. Here are a couple of quotes by Neal McCluskey, a policy analyst with Cato’s Center for Educational Freedom in a debate at edspresso.com on No Child Left Behind about monopolies.





Now, what does a monopolist do? He tries to control as many customers as he can. That’s a problem for Mike: The history of American education shows that public schooling has been driven by a relentless effort to expand the public school monopoly, ultimately to the federal level. This was not the case at first. Until about 1830, education was pretty much market-driven and educational attainment grew steadily, despite the fact that America was still primarily a wild, unsettled land. What changed? Immigrants arrived, industrialization started, and people with political power resolved to “assimilate” the new and the poor. As time went on the monopolists expanded their power and schools became assimilation factories designed to mold students into obedient industrial workers and good “Americans.” By the end of the nineteenth century, the progressive educators whom Mike and others blame for so many of our current woes took control of the increasingly monolithic system and forced their ideas on captive parents and children.

2. High demand for high quality public schools

There is a high demand for high quality education. That is not the same as high quality public schools. Parents want the best education they can for their kids. Unfortunately for most they have no other option than the Public Government school monopoly. Competition would help solve this problem.

3. School administrators and teachers do a superior job because of all the advanced degrees

Businesses hire the best person for the job, not the person with the most degrees. A degree does not mean you can do the job. A business also the choice to fire inept workers whenever the need arises. Government schools cannot because of all the union rules. If they decide to follow those rules, it will sometimes take more than 1 school year to remove a bad teacher. Other times, schools allow the bad teachers to continue to work and then do not bring them back the following year. How many students has the bad teacher now affected? How many of these kids will stay behind the learning curve because a teacher could not be removed immediately as in the business world?

Here is another quote by Neal McCluskey stating very clearly what makes a good business model successful and why expert control is a failure.




What does make sense is to look at systems outside of public schooling that work and see what makes them tick. Thankfully, we have abundant examples to examine. Consider the computer industry, where the cheapest machines, affordable to almost anyone, vastly outperform even the greatest computers of a decade or two ago. Or look at consumer electronics like iPods and DVD players, which advance technologically at remarkable rates. Imagine if education improved so quickly. What drives these industries’ success? Free market accountability imposed by millions of consumers making individual decisions, not “experts” who presume to know what’s best for everyone. Expert control has been an utter failure, and free choice a resounding success, which leaves Mike with just one weak argument: The market can’t “guarantee…high student achievement.” On an individual level, it’s true: With choice some people will make bad decisions. For the vast majority, however, results will be excellent, while with “expert” control the only things we’ve been “guaranteed” are pitiful academic results and the imposition of bad choices on everyone.

You can read more or the article if you wish. I will stop here and summarize. Ralph thinks schools are under funded and that at least $2 billion more dollars are needed. There is a simple solution that Ralph does not want to consider. Make all public school charter schools, thereby eliminating the 880+ school districts we have in Illinois. This alone will save over $3 billion dollars. See the The Extreme Wisdom Plan for an Illinois Renaissance for this and other data. I am not totally convinced about this plan either, but it is more viable than Ralph’s solution of just keep giving a broken system more money.

We have to defund the bureaucracy and start funding the child. It is imperative. Spending more money on the current system will not work. Until Ralph and others finally see this we will continually have to spread the work and fight the bloated, self serving public government school monopoly.