A Right View of Education
Before I make the case for greater educational choice in our communities, especially the most disenfranchised ones, I must repudiate a popular leftist belief in direct tension with the view of school choice I propose here. A messianic view of American education has plagued our society for nearly a century—with grave results. We should fight for a productive, safe, and substantive educational experience for every child in a responsible, democratic society—but not because we believe education to be primary to social order or moral formation.
Schooling as a vehicle to teach reading, writing, arithmetic, logic, creativity, comprehension, and critical thinking is at the cornerstone of a proper philosophy of education. Schooling as a substitute to family life, religious life, or engagement with community is an abuse of education’s intent and proper role. The education process equips a young person to think, to solve problems, and to use resources that will drive their ability to live well. Education is more than the accumulation of facts; therefore, growth during schooling years should be more than merely academic development. Preparing young people to enjoy an abundant life means stimulating intellectual faculties and increasing moral character.
Education is a powerful tool for developing capable and content young people who become flourishing members of society, but it is not the savior for that which plagues humanity. Simply because I rigorously defend school choice for the good of the disenfranchised does not mean I believe education to be society’s messiah. Rather, it means I recognize that our present system is experiencing a widening socioeconomic chasm, and the gap in available educational opportunities is contributing to it significantly.
Helping Those Who Need It Most
Healthy competition and choice drive better results—it’s important to start with this basic normative in a free society. Fear of loss and the negative incentive of losing business or customers don’t apply to monopolies and fiefdoms. In the marketplace, no one questions the value to the consumer of choice and competition. However, when it comes to education, bizarre verbal and mental gymnastics are required to deny the value of those same basic principles. Obvious differences between consumer products and education fail to change the fundamental point: when there is no viable alternative to a given school, that school lacks the incentives for efficiency, productivity, and measurable results that it would have if there were healthy competition.
When healthy competition exists for a public school, not only do parents and students who choose a different school benefit (for their own reasons), but so do the parents and students who choose to stay in the local public school.
It’s an insult to local public schools to claim that school choice offends the legacy of public schools. If they performed well and produced the results desired by their stakeholders (parents, students, and community residents), there would be no assumption that options undermine them. The vast majority of parents want nothing but the best for their children. Sometimes a given family may have a personal reason for wanting children to attend a different school—family dynamics, geography, faith convictions, special needs, sports talents, etc. Other times they may believe their child’s unique academic situation calls for a different setting or educational approach. And yes, often the local public school simply fails to deliver the educational results parents wants for their children. Many neighborhood schools simply aren’t safe due to crime and drugs.
The reasons could be many—but the fact that a parent would even need to rationalize why they want a certain thing for their child is most peculiar. Since when did we as a society not presume a parent is acting in the best interest of their child? Since when is it the role of a disinterested third party to judge parental rationale for a school decision? From charter schools to private schools, parents might feel a different school is in the best interests of their own family. Are they not entitled to make that choice?
Here is what we do know, courtesy of the nonpartisan Alexander Hamilton Institute.31 The United States spends over $12,000 per pupil on K-12 public school education. That amount is comparable to the cost of attending many elite private schools. That amount is 30 percent higher than the average cost of primary and secondary education worldwide. And yet, American public school students rank twenty-eighth worldwide in science, thirty-sixth in mathematics, and twenty-fourth in reading. Eighteen countries around the globe outrank American students in all three categories.
This macro data in no way condemns all public schools, nor does it vindicate all private schools. It simply establishes the fact that, on a macro level, we have a serious academic proficiency problem—and it’s not caused by a lack of funding. And if that macro problem exists, it stands to reason that there must be cases on the micro level where parental choice seems abundantly warranted.
Critics might claim that using macro data is unfair. What if using national data blends the results of some underfunded states with other states that spend more on education—like California or Illinois—and, therefore, get better results? Perhaps states spending more money are seeing their stellar results hurt in the averages by the underfunded states, the critic might claim. The data tells a different story.
California pays 126.3 percent of the average national teacher’s salary, the third highest percentage in the country (behind New York and Massachusetts).32 Yet California ranks #42 out of the fifty states in the U.S. News & World Report’s “Best States for Education, K-12,” a ranking based on a composite of test scores and graduation rates. Another prominent study ranks California #40 overall, but #47 in reading and #51 in the pupil-teacher ratio.33 Is California’s education challenge one of funding and financial resources? California spent $76.6 billion on K-12 education in 2015, including federal funds. More than $45 billion from the state general fund (representing more than 40 percent of the state’s budget resources) gets spent on K-12 education, with another $15 billion tossed in from local property taxes.34 Clearly money isn’t the problem.
Considering the clout and power of the state’s public education union, no one should be surprised at the massive financial resources poured into public education. The California Teachers Association (CTA) boasts a stunning 325,000 members. Their political clout is no small matter, since this one union from one state has “spent more in political campaigning over the last decade than the pharmaceutical industry, oil industry, and tobacco industry—combined.”35 Not surprisingly, the CTA has repeatedly defeated various school choice endeavors in the state of California. It successfully prosecuted the passage of Proposition 98, mandating that more than 40 percent of state resources (with annual escalations) be spent on public education (thereby eliminating the opportunity for positive incentives or results-oriented mandates). Teachers are impossible to fire in California (only 0.03 percent are let go after three years on the job).36 The union has created enough fiscal insanity to warrant its own book, but it’s their detrimental actions toward students that is most disturbing.
But, one might counter, what if a parent happens to be unconcerned about the data points I’ve shared or the widely disseminated school rankings? Indeed, many California parents and students have a wonderful school and school district and wouldn’t want to change schools. Great! That’s a rather obvious beauty of choice—they are free to choose to stay right where they are! But all taxpayers pay into the education system. In those instances where a parent feels the need for a different educational option for their own kids, why shouldn’t they have the freedom to choose the best opportunity as they see it?
No one is suggesting states pay more for that parental choice than they are already paying for every other student. School choice need not, and should not, cost the state more. Nor am I suggesting that a voucher or credit should be made available for families like mine who have the financial means to fund their own education choices.
There is, however, a belief implied in the rejection of school choice for lower- and middle-income
families. It is the same belief driving the present state of cultural angst: lower-and middle-income families do not deserve the same educational opportunities that higher-income families have, nor do they want them. It is the textbook definition of elitism—the belief that people on the bottom half of the economic strata are intellectually inferior. This has caused much of the resentment and alienation we see in culture today.
In the face of such elitism, school choice proponents know there is overwhelming evidence that many students and families of lesser means earnestly desire to learn and crave greater educational opportunity. Time and time again, the ability to cross-pollinate wealthier, bright students with lower-income and middle-income bright students results in an economically agnostic result. All students have thrived together in such a scenario with no regard for the financial status of one student over another. Why then are private schools often perceived as exclusive dens for the elite? Because the lack of school choice has guaranteed it to be so! Introducing school choice alternatives would compress that economic delta and provide opportunities, where parents deem it necessary, for those who need it most.
Tax Credits and Vouchers
I’m not one to shy away from a granular policy debate about school choice, because details do matter. Many states and individual districts have performed well with robust charter initiatives allowing expanded educational options. “Trigger laws” have enabled parents to convert schools deemed to be failing into an independent charter model. Although cherry-picked cases of poorly performing charter schools can be found, the positive data points provide a stark contrast to the alternative. When it comes right down to it, a child attending a charter school represents a choice made by stakeholders, parents exercising their moral authority as parents.
Charter schools are funded by the massive resources of the tri-funded school districts (local property tax receipts, state funding, and federal budget disbursements). But another tool for providing greater academic freedom is the use of tax credits and tax vouchers. I favor tax credits because the funds pass directly from the state to the taxpayer, not from the state to the school. While a tax voucher program would vastly improve the present lack of choice, it could also push the state down a slippery slope. We’d end up with the same problem we have now if the state believed the funding subsidy empowered its bureaucracy to make various management decisions, such as curriculum, agenda, or personnel.
History has already demonstrated this to be a valid concern. In states where voucher programs exist, we have seen a small but greater likelihood for increased regulatory burden, whereas states where tax credit programs exist have been virtually free from such interventions.37 Tax credits have been deemed fully constitutional and offer a tested program that avoids government interference while opening educational opportunities to all families and students.
Where the Need Is Greatest
I call school choice a civil rights issue because the sociological data demonstrates that higher concentrations of minority students, particularly Hispanics and African-Americans, are forced to attend underperforming schools. Successful, well-educated families contributing to society, putting their kids in great schools, and seeing those kids become successful, well-educated members of society is a self-fulfilling prophecy. But it should not be a process monopolized by the rich and elite. Through school choice, families who have known adversity and impoverishment can access extraordinary educational opportunity. School choice directly impacts minority and working-class white neighborhoods where the need is clearly greatest.
School choice keeps the education of our kids local, as it should be. School choice empowers parents to make a change. Parents who fear humanistic indoctrination, failing high-crime schools, or standards imposed by bureaucrats in Washington, DC, can make a change—for the good of their children. If school choice were to become the battle cry of the present populist rage, we would see a truly righteous transformation. Instead of chasing alleged bogeymen such as Goldman Sachs or a Chinese trade pact, we could end the lack of policy innovation in education and do good for many who are truly disenfranchised.
Education is not our messiah. Education is a building block of our society, not the complete building or even its foundation. Expanding educational opportunity makes it possible to reverse course, but by no means guarantees it. Nevertheless, those who care for the forgotten men and women in our society should embrace school choice as among the lowest hanging fruit imaginable, the easiest way to dramatically improve their opportunities for success in our new global economy. When we see educational opportunity improve, we will see the disenfranchised empowered in ways never imagined by the social warriors of our time.
8
WHERE CULTURE TRUMPS
GREEN CARD
Patriotism, Immigration,
and Nationalism
Our patriotic fervor was the result of the old and widespread belief in the idea of American exceptionalism, the idea that America was a new thing in history, different from other countries. Other nations had evolved one way or another: evolved from tribes, from a gathering of the clans, from inevitabilities of language and tradition and geography. But America was born, and born of ideas: that all men are created equal, that they have been given by God certain rights that can be taken from them by no man, and that those rights combine to create a thing called freedom.
–PEGGY NOONAN
Democracy, immigration, multiculturalism—pick any two!
–JAMES C. BENNETT
I cannot imagine a more divisive and controversial issue in the present political spectrum than immigration. It divides the Left and the Right—and thus the two major political parties—and frankly, it splits the conservative Right, as well.
Many people had significant concerns about illegal immigration long before 9/11, primarily in southern border states where cheap labor from immigration was perceived as having a negative impact on the economy. Over the years, the primary driver of illegal immigration angst has shifted on occasion—national security concerns, economic fairness, and concerns about drugs and gang violence. Regardless of the driver, it has remained a politically toxic issue. Not being perceived as “tough” on immigration has been lethal for Republican candidates in the last two election cycles. On the other hand, taking the lead as the hawkish anti-illegal immigration advocate became political gold for candidate Trump, particularly in the Republican primary.
It can be challenging to sort through the varying viewpoints on the subject because many outspoken voices share the same conclusions, but for completely different reasons. The American tradition has certainly been pro-immigration. Thus, to associate pro-immigration sentiments with a form of anti-patriotism is either misguided or could be a reflection of a significant shift in circumstances. It is futile to evaluate the immigration conversation in a vacuum, divorced from broader concerns about economic nationalism, labor protectionism, national security, the rule of law, and—the most controversial of subjects—multiculturalism.
There is no point in bemoaning the political heat that exists around immigration. I spoke to Gov. Rick Perry at a private dinner in New York City, in January 2015. I asked about his messaging strategy for a nuanced view on immigration in the pending political season. His take was that the issue had calmed down. The public was ready for a more palatable policy response that included a little bit of discourse and a lot of understanding. He ended up being one of the first candidates to drop out of the race, despite being one of the most qualified and recognizable. Governor Perry can be forgiven for overestimating the public’s patience. He was not alone. By late 2015, it was abundantly clear that much of the public believed illegal immigration to be…
*a risk to national security
*the source of economic angst for the labor force’s lower end of wage earners
*a threat to America’s identity and culture
*or a combination of two or all of th
e above statements
The general distrust each side has for one another has made it even more difficult to work through the complexity of the issue. If one side questions the wisdom of not enforcing present immigration law, they’re often assumed to be xenophobic or even racist. On the other hand, if one side favors an easier legal immigration process and questions the wisdom or practicality of deporting fifteen million people, they’re accused of being anti-American or opposed to the rule of law. We’re not going to achieve clarity without a commitment to more charitable discourse about our legitimate disagreements, sans toxic rhetoric and accusations.
I address the topic of immigration here in this book on our cultural addiction to blame because illegal immigration is often accused of contributing to the economic plight of the American worker. Just as we evaluated economic reality and the logic involved in the difficulties with free trade and automation in chapter 5, we will do the same here with a candid look at the economic reality and logic of immigration and labor.
The Economic Mythology of Illegal Immigration
There is a plethora of reasons to desire strong borders, chief among them being national security. However, my thesis is simple: the notion that hardworking American citizens are being denied a chance to make an honest wage by illegal immigrants is economic mythology.
Furthermore, it is multiculturalism, not illegal immigration, that has altered the national immigration conversation from the days when the tired and weary flocked to Ellis Island, “yearning to be free.” Our patriotic and proud American identity is threatened now, not because white Americans need protection from cheaper labor. It is threatened by a hideous multiculturalism, incompatible with American ideals, that has snuffed out our once proud understanding of the distinctive and exceptional American experiment.
Crisis of Responsibility Page 10