A growing number of middle-and upper-middle class parents living in the suburbs are abandoning the public school system. While they are dissatisfied with class sizes and their children's test scores, they also worry about inadequate teaching and the growing focus on students with special needs -- not to mention drug use and violence.
Surprisingly, many of the public schools are far from the nation's worst, and, in some cases, even highly rated, according to experts.
Until about 15 years ago, the typical private school applicant came from a wealthy family in which at least one parent had attended a private school.
But that is changing rapidly:
Although more than 70 percent of parents with children in public schools rate their schools "good" or "excellent," nearly 6 in 10 say they would send their children to private schools if they could afford to do so.
Parents rank private schools higher in 11 or 13 categories -- including preparing students for college, safety and discipline. Public schools only get higher marks in serving students with special needs and teaching children to deal with people of diverse backgrounds.
Source: Jonathan Kaufman, "Suburban Parents Shun Many Public Schools, Even the Good Ones," Wall Street Journal, March 1, 1996.
Recently, the Congressional Research Service was asked to identify every federal program that claims to have an educational mission. The list it compiled is an eye-opener.
Congressional experts identified some rather far-out activities being labeled "educational."
Meanwhile, schools devoted less than 1 percent of their budgets last year to purchasing text books. One-quarter of elementary and secondary school teachers report they are using textbooks at least a decade old. And 40 percent say they don't have enough books for all their pupils.
Source: Tony Snow, "'Baywatch' Educational?" USA Today, March 4, 1996.
Disgusted with unresponsive, tradition-bound education bureaucracies and uninspired student performance, parents and some educators are turning to charter schools.
The first charter school opened five years ago in Minnesota, but the concept spread quickly to 250 schools in 20 states this school year. Sixteen more states are interested.
According to some educational experts, evidence shows they are as innovative as their founders envisioned.
Contrary to some critics' views, charter schools don't skim off the best students -- more than half teach dropouts and minority enrollment is proportionally higher than in public schools at large.
Charter schools are only one of a number of educational alternatives being implemented to revitalize American education. Milwaukee and Cleveland are experimenting with the voucher system, under which parents are provided with vouchers to pay for educating their children at private, competitive schools.
Source: Editorial, "Charter Schools Reach Kids, Reform the System," USA Today, March 11, 1996.
The movement to reform education by giving parents a choice of schools to which they may send their children is growing, and the approaches to the problem are diverse. Today,
Finally, a growing number of school districts are contracting out the provision of instructional services to private companies.
Source: "The Education Reform Movement: An Interview with Jeanne Allen," Alternatives in Philanthropy, January 1996, Capital Research Center, 727 15th Street, NW, Suite 800, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 393-2600.
Educational vouchers are often proposed as an alternative to failing public school systems, but even in communities with good public schools, educational choice can make them better. That's because a privatized system of universal education will out-perform one that is centrally planned and monopolistic, just as the marketplace does with other goods and services.
Both are subject to the same organizational and economic principles:
For these reasons, competition produces stronger organizations, whereas monopolies produce unresponsive bureaucracies, and the free market produces better goods and services, although it is impossible to predict exactly what those innovations will be.
Source: Karl J. Borden and Edward A. Rauchut, "Educational Choice: Making Even Good Schools Better," December 1995, Constitutional Heritage Institute, P.O. Box 540787, Omaha, NE 68154, (402) 333-5193.
Public schools in Michigan are delivering poor education at a very high cost, according to an education researcher there.
Between 1980 and 1992, school spending in Michigan rose an average of 8 percent a year. The state currently has the highest teacher salaries in the country when adjusted for the cost of living. Yet many districts continue to deliver poor education at a very high cost.
However, Michigan has enacted some reforms during the past two years addressing issues of quality, finance and management.
Another reform stopped the union practice of automatically deducting dues for political contributions from their members without their consent.
Source: Lawrence W. Reed, "Education Reform: Lessons from Michigan," Dialogue No. 11, February 1996, Pioneer Institute, 85 Devonshire Street, Boston, MA 02109.
A new study by the National Association for Scholars reveals that the rigorous educational standards which once characterized America's best colleges and universities are things of the past. The study focused on course offerings and graduation requirements at 50 premier schools and compared them with standards at various points over the past 80 years.
From 1914 until the mid-1960s, standards did not greatly diminished -- but began to fall apart swiftly thereafter. Here are some of the disturbing findings:
So what courses are the students taking? According to the researchers, a veritable smorgasbord of elective subjects -- many of which range from the silly to the irrelevant. Students at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., can enroll in "History/Theories of Sexuality," or "Women, Revolution and the Media," rather than taking Shakespeare. In fact, one can now receive an English degree at Georgetown without studying Shakespeare.
Then there is the shortening of the school year. The average number of class days in the school year has decreased from 204 in 1914 to just 156 in 1993.
Source: Rita C. Zurcher (National Association of Scholars), "Hoops Over Hamlet," USA Today, March 19, 1996.
A recent national poll indicates Americans are more concerned about education than any other area of public policy. Yet while only 22 percent of respondents gave high marks to the nation's public schools, 70 percent awarded high marks to the school their own children attend.
This "retail complacency" on the part of education consumers is one of the factors making it difficult to cure weak academic performance in the public schools. Other obstacles to reform are:
Reforms to remedy these problems should include school choice to enable families to select from diverse alternatives, thus ending coercive assignment of pupils and rewarding schools and teachers who perform well. Also, clear academic standards need to be formulated and student progress monitored.
Source: Charles E. Greenawalt II, "Returning to Education Reform," Issue Brief, February 1996, Commonwealth Foundation, 3544 North Progress Avenue, Suite 101, Harrisburg, PA 17110, (717) 671-1901.
Historical evidence indicates that state compulsory school attendance laws aren't necessary to achieve a highly literate society, and actually diminish the quality of education received by students who want an education. When Massachusetts became the first state to adopt a compulsory school attendance law in 1852, the United States already had a higher level of literacy than it has today.
Evidence suggests that the purpose of compulsory school attendance may not be improving education, but social engineering, including protecting children from the bad choices of parents.
Yet, others in the education field have begun to realize the shortcomings of compulsory education.
Although 82 percent of American students are in public schools, many are there because their parents cannot afford private schools. Such families are forced consumers of public education, without the protection against bad schools that freedom of choice and competition would bring.
Source: Sheldon Richman and David Kopel, "End Compulsory Schooling," Issue Paper #1-96, January 10, 1996, Independence Institute, 14142 Denver West Parkway, Suite 185, Golden, CO 80401, (303) 279-6536.
Faced with the declining education provided by inner-city public schools, parents may move to another district or place their children in nonpublic schools. However, if they can't afford these options, parents may send their child to live with a relative so that they can attend a different school.
A study of Indianapolis public schools used court records to establish how widespread is the use of this third option. Court records were used because it is only when children run afoul of the law that an official determines where a child lives, with whom, whether there is a parent living at a different address and where the child attends school.
Enrollment in Indianapolis public schools has declined by more than 50 percent in the last 25 years to 46,000 in 1995. The suburban school districts in the same county have about 69,000 students.
Indiana does not have school choice, which would allow students to attend any public school, regardless of residency. It requires that children attend the school where their parents (or a custodial parent) lives.
Source: William Styring III, "Urban Government Schools Are Prisons for Poor Children," Indiana Policy Review, Winter 1995, Indiana Policy Review Foundation, 320 North Meridian Street, Suite 904, Indianapolis, IN 46204, (317) 236-7360.
Experts suspect that federal educational regulations, mandates and other costs imposed by Washington are acting as a drag on states and local school districts. Four states -- Alabama, New Hampshire, Montana and Virginia -- have already opted out of the federal "Goals 2000" program and others are considering following, because the federal money involved is less than the burden of associated regulations and mandates.
Payments to nonteaching personnel in U.S. school systems are significantly higher, on a percentage basis, than for systems in most other industrialized nations. Reformers believe this is due in large part to the costs of complying with federal rules and regulations. Indeed, Virginia Governor George Allen and others believe the federal government spends less money aiding schools than it imposes in mandates and regulations.
From another perspective, America's public secondary and elementary schools employ 2.6 million people who do not teach and three million teachers. By contrast, the ratio of teachers to nonteachers is two-to-one in U.S. private schools -- about what it was 40 years ago in the public schools.
Some of the federal programs requiring additional local costs are: special education, gender-role discrimination education, asbestos removal, school recycling programs, an arbitrage rebate on local bonds, and safe drinking water tests. According to the National School Boards Association, these mandates alone cost schools more than $15 billion annually.
Source: Gregory A. Fossedal (Alexis de Tocqueville Institution), "Help for Schools? Try Deregulation), Wall Street Journal, March 27, 1996.