MLLG

Abolish Government (Public) Schools

Government schools are a destructive force incapable of significant reform.

Abolish Government (Public) Schools

By: George Noga – November 13, 2022

This post destroys the final school choice myth, i.e. that public schools are necessary. We advocate universal school choice with the money following the child. Up to now, we assumed choice would force public schools to become competitive. We now conclude government schools are a destructive force incapable of significant reform and should be abolished. First, we recap other myths propagated by teachers’ unions.

  • Choice drains money: Vouchers always are for less (usually far less) than per pupil spending in public schools. Hence, vouchers increase spending per public student.
  • Some children are left behind: This is analogous to asserting that because there are not enough lifeboats for everyone, then no one should be saved.
  • Choice Balkanizes education: Students already are highly stratified by income and race. School choice, rather than compulsion, does much more to bridge divides.
  • Segregation would increase: Public schools already are highly segregated based on where people live. Voluntary integration under choice is better than forced integration.
  • The rich benefit under choice: The wealthy already have choice based largely on where they choose to live. The poorest among us need choice the most.
  • Poor families make bad choices: Not only is this insulting to low-income families, but empirical evidence from existing voucher programs dispels this myth.
  • Voucher schools are unaccountable: Private schools are immediately and directly answerable to parents, government schools only indirectly to school boards elected every four years. There is no force more powerful than parents armed with a voucher.
  • Voucher schools are unregulated: Regulating private schools would turn them into the monstrosities families are desperately escaping. Parents are the best regulators.

 

The Case for Abolishing Government Schools

Abolishing public schools will reduce school shootings. As gun free zones, public schools are easy targets. They create hordes of disgruntled and disaffected students who are held there involuntarily; it is not shocking some of them turn to mass violence. With school choice, parents could select schools that provide strong security. No child would be there involuntarily, and troublemakers could be summarily expelled.

Because private schools are non-union and have few administrators, they cost roughly half that of government schools. The county where I live (Seminole) has 60,000 students and 125 administrators making $100,000 per year plus many more making less. In sharp contrast, the Catholic Diocese of Orlando has 15,000 students and only 3 administrators. Eliminating unions and unneeded administrators not only saves money, but it does away with all the mindless bureaucracy that stifles learning.

Abolishing public schools would result in better schools at half the cost

Schools should adapt to the needs and capacities of its students. For less capable students, public schools impede learning, while for bright students the incredible slow pace is a form of torture as they sit year after year in an inescapable miasma. Every student needs a school at his/her level taught by teachers at the same level.

Then there is the issue of values. Families should be able to have their children attend schools that reinforce, rather than contradict, parental values. Parents should not have children taught CRT, the 1619 Project and gender dysphoria without their consent. They needlessly scare the bejesus out of kids about the environment and climate change. Public schools take in carefree, joyous and eager children living in the most well-off, healthy and multicultural society ever known and indoctrinate them to believe they actually inhabit a horribly oppressive country of which they should be ashamed.

That public schools are necessary for maintaining American democracy is a canard that no longer exists and is actually perverse. Eons ago, it might have been possible for a laborer’s daughter to marry the banker’s son, but today there is no way they would attend the same school. Data show private schools produce superior civic outcomes. Public schools do not foster unity from diversity; they exacerbate diversity.

Government schools are a jobs program for adults; children be damned. They resemble public housing; only people with no other choice go there. Public schools, teachers’ unions and the blob of administrators suck the sustenance out of our children. Government schools are a destructive force that can’t be significantly reformed and that cause far more harm than good. America will be much better off without them.

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Next up on November 20th is our special Thanksgiving posting.

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The True Cost of Public Schools

Public schools spend as much or more per student than even the most elite
and expensive private schools. This post presents a fair and correct analysis.
By: George Noga – April 1, 2016

   This is not an April Fool although teachers unions and school administrators (“educrats”) wish it were. It is a fair comparison of spending between elite private schools and public schools. It compares Trinity Prep and Lake Highland Prep to a typical Orange County, Florida public high school. Note: Trinity and Lake Highland are the creme de la creme of elite Central Florida preparatory schools offering small classes, top notch facilities, individual attention and every possible tool for success.

   The all-inclusive (books, transportation, etc.) cost of attending Trinity and Lake Highland currently is $19,000. The spending per student from the Orange County education budget is $11,000; however, that figure fails to include education spending elsewhere in the county budget and off the budget. It does not include federal funds (average 10%), grants from governments and other organizations (5% estimate) and funds paid by parents and students (5% estimate). These items increase public school spending by $2,200 per student to $13,200 – but wait – we are only getting started.

   There is other off budget spending including: (1) proceeds from bonds and other debt; (2) health care including retirees; (3) pensions; and (4) debt service on school and/or mixed purpose bonds. The county budget does not break out these items; therefore, estimates are necessary. A fair guess is this spending adds another $2,200 or 20%, raising the spending to $15,400 per public school student. Note: A CATO Institute national study found public schools spend an additional 44% that is not contained directly in the education budget; herein we have added 40% which is less than the CATO average.

   There is even more chicanery in public school budgets; they artificially inflate the number of students to make their numbers appear better. They accomplish this by counting students who may attend as few as one class per year. For an apples-to-apples comparison, we must decrease the number of students 12%. This raises the spending of public schools to $17,500 per equivalent student. Finally, high schools on average spend at least 10% more per student than lower grades. This final adjustment raises the per student spending of Orange County public high schools to $19,250.

   There you have it! Public high schools spend about the same or even slightly more per student than the most elite private schools; they spend more than double that of the top Catholic high school in the area and 300+% more than the average private school.

   It is not accidental that no human being knows the true spending on public schools. Educrats and unions intentionally make the data as opaque as possible to prevent anyone from doing what I tried in this post. This is similar to Lynx buses which have intentionally painted over windows so citizens can’t see how empty they really are.

   We need independent audits of county public school systems so citizens will know the true amount of spending. Until that happens (phat chance) I stand behind my analysis that public schools spend about the same per student as the most elite private schools. Ponder the ramifications. Every student now attending public school could have an education equivalent to the most elite, exclusive and expensive private school. School choice truly is the civil rights issue of our lifetime and that is no April Fool!


The next post on April 10 pillories Democrats’ Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinners.
MLLG

School Choice: The Civil Rights Issue of Our Time

By: George Noga – December 1, 2014
        In seven years of authoring this blog, I  wrote about school choice only one other time – once in 300 posts. I have shied away from that subject despite (perhaps because of) having been deeply involved in the school choice movement for ten years from 1994 to 2003. I started the first school choice program in Florida, and only the fourth in the entire USA, in 1995. The program I began (now called Step up for Students) funded 68,000 scholarships this year with a budget of nearly $300 million. During much of that time I also served on the board of the leading national school choice organization, Children First America, which began school choice programs in 100 US cities. This subject is not a new one to me.
“Imagine many kids died because ambulances drove right past private hospitals and would take seriously injured kids only to a public hospital.”
        It is not hyperbole or overstatement to assert school choice is the civil rights issue of our time. Actually, it is far more than that. Although people of color suffer most from the current educational paradigm, everyone is victimized. Imagine there was a terrible accident involving a school bus full of kids and there was a private hospital nearby ready, willing and able to provide high quality care. Now imagine the ambulances would not take the severely injured children to the nearby private hospital – insisting they could only be taken to a more distant public hospital that provided inferior care. Imagine some kids died as a result and imagine the ensuing public uproar. That is precisely what is happening in our schools; poor and middle class kids are dying educationally (and some literally) – yet there is little or no public outcry.

       Never have I seen an issue so demagogued and so rife with downright lies and with those promulgating the lies knowing full well they are lies. In the following parts of this post, I address many of these canards.

  1. School choice takes money from public schools: Let’s stipulate there are one million students in a particular school district and spending is $12,000 per pupil; total spending therefore is $12 billion. If 20% are given vouchers for $6,000 (50%) and total spending remains the same, the per pupil spending on the remaining 800,000 kids in public school now is $13,500 – an increase of $1,500 per pupil. Yet educrats and teachers unions want you to believe public school funding has been cut when it actually increased $1,500 per student or 12.5%. If every student had a voucher we could slash spending on education by 30% to 40% and improve school quality to boot.
  2. Private schools are not accountable: This is the biggest lie of all. If a parent has a problem with a public school, it is nearly impossible to seek redress. Public schools are accountable only to stultified bureaucracies and unresponsive school boards and not to students or parents. Private schools are directly accountable to students and parents. A consumer armed with a free choice is the most potent force on earth – recall New Coke and Blackberry.
  3. We don’t spend enough on schools: Real (inflation-adjusted) spending has doubled or even tripled in recent decades while schools got much worse. The US spends more per pupil than nearly any other OECD country while test scores in math, science and reading are in the middle of the pack. Actual public school spending is much higher than reported because much of it is hidden, i.e. off the school budget in capital budgets, pension plans, health care, debt service and grants. Often, real spending is double that shown on the education budget. Washington D.C. in 2010 spent $30,000 per pupil and had the worst schools in America. Sidwell Friends, one of the most elite private schools in the USA and where the Obamas send their children, spends only slightly more. Moreover, there is no proven correlation between school spending and any measure of educational output.
  4. Teachers unions and educrats care about students: The educational blob is nothing more than a jobs program for adults. New York state (population 19 million) has more school administrators than all of Europe with a population of 700 million. The head of the teachers union once said he would begin to care about students once they started paying union dues. Out of over 100,000 teachers in California, an average of 2.2 are fired each year for poor performance. Union tenure and seniority rules are nothing but a union racket.
  5. Private schools skim the best students: Every study published shows this is false. Voucher students in private schools are indistinguishable from public school students in every demographic. There is absolutely no skimming of the best students. The popular movie, Waiting for Superman, depicts the cri de coeur  from ordinary, anguished parents facing long odds to save their kid’s life by securing a voucher in a lottery.
  6. Teachers are underpaid: If this ever was true in the past, it has not been true for a long time. When accounting for hours worked and all benefits, teachers are overpaid by more than 50% per a study by the American Enterprise Institute. A typical teacher with a $50,000 salary will receive another $52,000 per year in benefits compared to $20,000 in benefits for a worker in private industry. Teachers have great pay, outstanding benefits, light work loads and ironclad job security despite graduating in the bottom two quintiles of their class.
  7. Vouchers favor the rich, resegregation, scare tactics: With all the facts against them, the education blob (educrats, unions, politicians) resort to scare tactics. They play the class warfare card by asserting vouchers favor the rich. News flash: the rich already have school choice by controlling where they live and via private schools. The blob then says the “rich” could add to the vouchers and send their kids to even better schools. Their argument is they don’t want to help poor kids just because some rich kids might possibly do even better. Race baiters play the race card claiming private or charter schools are more segregated – an argument shot down by the Supreme Court.
         In addition to the above myths, many other significant facts favor school choice. Foremost among these is the matter of values. Public schools teach a vapid, secular, valueless orthodoxy. School choice permits parents to select schools that reinforce, rather than contradict, parental values. Another issue is child safety. Public schools require metal detectors and a perpetual police presence and for good reason. Public schools, particular those in inner cities, have become petri dishes for social dysfunction and breeding grounds for behavioral pathologies. The blob is holding the kids hostage.
“Inner city schools are petri dishes for social dysfunction and pathologies.”
         The favorite story from my time in the school choice movement concerns Tommy. When he attended a failing public school, he continually feigned illness and did everything possible to avoid going to school. In utter desperation, his parents applied for a voucher from our organization for Tommy to attend a private school. After a few months at his new school, Tommy awoke one morning with a fever and obviously was ill. Nonetheless, Tommy insisted on attending school that morning. When his astonished mother asked him why, Tommy replied, “Because my teachers are counting on me.”
        There are millions and millions more Tommies in America and we are killing them educationally just as surely as the ambulances that would not take dying kids to a private hospital. The ones we don’t kill, we doom to lives of dysfunction and desperation. Shame on educrats, teachers unions, politicians, NAACP and their enablers. And yes, shame on unionist public school teachers too, for they are part of the problem. All these people are standing in the schoolhouse door, just like Orval Faubus in 1957, blocking desperate children from leaving. School choice is the civil rights issue of our time!