National Center for Policy Analysis

MONTH IN REVIEW

Education
September, 1996

THROWING MONEY AT EDUCATION

President Clinton proposes to solve the problem of elementary school students who are woefully deficient in reading skills by spending another $1.75 billion on new literacy programs. Somehow, an increase of less than one percent in expenditures on education supposedly will ensure that every American child can read by third grade.

But the U.S. already spends more on public education than almost any other nation.
More than $240 billion was lavished on elementary and secondary schools in 1994.
That amounts to $5,300 per student -- compared to $3,900 per student as recently as 1980.
Yet, 40 percent of fourth grade students fail to meet basic reading standards -- and the average reading proficiency of nine-year-olds has declined since 1980.

By contrast, Catholic schools spend about half what their public school counter parts do ($2,800 per pupil compared with $5,300) yet parochial students outperform public ones. Such results have led many educators to demand that schools be privatized -- so as to increase their quality through competition.

The problem with increasing spending at the federal level, however, is that much of it goes to top-heavy bureaucracies, not to classrooms or teachers. High funding levels, experts say, are less important than how money is spent.

Some education specialists fear Mr. Clinton's latest plan say it has less to do with boosting reading scores than with fulfilling political promises to teachers' unions. During the last presidential election, candidate Clinton promised the National Education Association, "I won't forget who brought me to the White House."

Source: Linda Chavez, "Promises Don't Help Kids Read," USA Today, September 4, 1996.

CENSUS STUDY COMPARES EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT BY RACES

About the same proportion of white students and black students receive a high school diplomas these days, according to a Census Bureau report due out today.

Among 25 to 29 year olds last year, 86.5 percent of blacks and 87.4 of whites had graduated from high school graduation.
Yet a smaller proportion of Hispanics age 25 to 29 held high school diplomas last year than did in 1992, and the proportion of Asian-Americans who had graduated from high school dropped from 85.8 percent in 1990 to 80.1 percent last year.
The percentage of all adults obtaining high school diplomas is the highest it has been since the bureau began keeping track.

Experts say the closing gap in high school graduation rates between blacks and whites belies popular images of hopelessness and despair in inner-city schools.

As for obtaining a bachelor's degree from college:

Some 23 percent of adults 25 years or older have earned at least that degree.
The proportion of Hispanics finishing four years of college has declined by nearly 20 percent since 1980.
Asian-Americans in the 25-to-29-year-old age group with college degrees slipped to 29.1 percent from 34.8 percent from 1990 to 1995.

Source: Steven A. Holmes, "Education Gap Between Races Closes," New York Times, September 6, 1996.

For more information on education, visit the NCPA's education page at http://www.public-policy.org/~ncpa/pi/edu/edu3.html

NATION'S TEACHERS GET LOW MARKS IN NEW STUDY

"States pay more attention to the qualifications of veterinarians treating the nation's cats and dogs than to those of teachers educating the nation's children and youth," according to a report by the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future. The group, a nonpartisan panel of governors, educators and business leaders, said that more than one-quarter of the nation's new teachers enter classrooms without adequate teaching skills or training in their subject.

The report, "What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future," also made these observations:

Fewer than half the nation's 1,200 teacher's colleges meet professional standards of accreditation.
In recent years, more than 50,000 teachers who lack training for their jobs have entered teaching annually on emergency or substandard certification.
More than 40 states allow school districts to hire teachers who have not met basic education requirements and more than 12 percent of new teachers nationwide begin with no training at all.
The report recommended making it easier to fire incompetent teachers and close substandard schools of education.

Among its other recommendations: set strict accountability and licensing standards for teachers and education schools, reformulate teachers' education to include a year-long internship and increase financial rewards for good teachers.

But Chester Finn, an Assistant Secretary of Education in the Bush administration, criticized the panel -- which included teachers' union representatives -- as representing the status quo and those who benefit from it. "If you put out a 10-most-wanted list of who's killing American education, I'm not sure you would have the teachers' unions or the education school faculties higher on the list," said Finn.

Source: Peter Applebome, "Report on Training of Teachers Gives the Nation a Dismal Grade," New York Times, September 13, 1996.

STUDENTS NOT MODEST ABOUT ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENTS

American students rank number one in how good they feel about their math skills, but actually rank last (behind Slovenia) in comparisons of math achievement with students in other countries, according to an article by Dr. Karl Zinsmeister in "The American Enterprise" magazine.

Educators in recent years have been busy boosting students' self-esteem through inflated grades.

In 1972, 28 percent of college-bound seniors had an A or B high school average.
By 1993, 83 percent had an A or B average.

Critics point out that confronted with Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) scores which have been falling year-after-year, the College Entrance Examination Board recently responded by lowering the norms -- thereby hiding from parents and students the true plight of American education and allowing students to continue in their dreams of academic self-esteem.

Source: Walter Williams (George Mason University), "Feeling Good, Learning Little," Washington Times, September 16, 1996.

AMERICANS OVERWHELMINGLY EMBRACE SCHOOL CHOICE

A new poll shows Americans want to have a choice to send students to public, private or parochial schools, contradicting other recent polls. The new survey was conducted for the Center for Education Reform by International Communications Research. Prior polls were sponsored by the National Education Association and Phi Delta Kappa, an educators' association.

In the latest poll, 86 percent of those surveyed said they favor permitting parents to send their children to the public, private or parochial school of their choice.
Seventy-two percent said they believe state legislators should assist children in failing schools to opt out of that school and attend a school of their parents' choosing.
And 73 percent favor allowing poor children government-funded scholarships to attend any school.

The earlier Phi Delta Kappa poll found strong opposition to school choice -- although the proportion of those in support rose from 24 percent in 1993 to 36 percent when it was repeated this year. The NEA poll had reported that school choice was opposed even by 69 percent of Republicans responding.

The Center for Education Reform explains that the questions in its poll were crafted to ensure that they were unbiased and informative enough to make clear what questions ere being asked. The Center also contends that questions in the polls previously conducted were purposely skewed to elicit negative responses.

Source: Jeanne Allen (Institute for Education Reform), "What Americans Really Think of School Choice," Wall Street Journal, September 17, 1996.

TESTING YEAR-ROUND SCHOOLS

Across the nation, over-crowded school districts are testing year-round class schedules. The latest to announce such a schedule is the New York City Board of Education, which will test such a calendar in at least one district next year.

Nationwide, 2,368 schools in 39 states have already adopted a similar schedule.
Without building a single classroom, a school can expand its capacity by one-third or more by switching to a year-round calendar, proponents claim.
Most such schools divide students into two to five groups and stagger the groups' schedules so that at least one group is out of school at any time.
Some students may attend 12 weeks in a row and take off the next four; others may attend nine and take off three.

About half the schools that have adopted such a plan are in California, with others in Boston, Dallas, Houston and Baltimore.

Source: Jacques Steinberg, "Year-Round Schools: Efficient Learning," New York Times, September 19, 1996.

MICHIGAN'S READING EXPERIMENT

Faced with lousy reading scores among school children, some Michigan schools hired a private corporation to train volunteer tutors and operate a remedial reading program. The program has been so successful that it is being taken statewide.

More than half of Michigan fourth-graders and six-in-ten seventh-graders have been rated as unsatisfactory readers in state tests.
To attack the problem, over 100 schools developed community tutoring programs under contract with the HOSTS Corp. of Vancouver, Washington.
The firm trains volunteers and establishes a structured tutorial program using personalized, computer-generated learning plans.
Volunteers typically devote an hour a week, working with the same child for a semester or longer.

In Muskegon, 83 percent of students participating achieved more than a full year's gain in reading during the first four months of the program.

Major Michigan corporations have committed themselves to the campaign, frequently offering time off to employees who choose to spend an hour a week helping a student.

Source: Robert Lutz (Chrysler Corp. president) and Clark Durant (Michigan Board of Education president), "The Key to Better Schools," Wall Street Journal, September 20, 1996.

TEACHERS' UNIONS TEST CHARTER SCHOOLS

The National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers -- the two major teachers' unions -- are helping their members set up charter schools in some states. After fighting the concept for years, the NEA says it wants to study how charter schools would work in a union setting.

The NEA requires that the schools it helps be similar to regular schools in their financing, teacher-pupil ratios and percentage of students with special needs.
The first such school opened this month in Hawaii -- with five others being developed in other states.
While the union will not provide the schools with cash, it will advise on administrative, instructional and performance issues.
The aim, according to one union official, is to prove that union contracts do not stand in the way of quality education.

But Chester E. Finn, Jr., an educational expert with the Hudson Institute, said that the single most important form of freedom for charter schools is to hire and fire employees, and pay them as they see fit -- unconstrained by union contracts. Otherwise, he said, the union's schools would be pale imitations of other charter schools.

Source: "Teachers' Unions Joining Experiment With Charter Schools," New York Times, September 22, 1996.

FOR-PROFIT SCHOOL RILES DETROIT EDUCATION BUREAUCRATS

A cash-strapped Michigan school district opened a for-profit school in midtown Detroit yesterday with the explicit purpose of making money -- infuriating Detroit school officials who call it "educational piracy."

The school district of Romulus, Michigan, plans to collect $5,300 a year in state education aid for each student taught in Detroit.
It has hired a small private company, Baron Schools, Inc., to run the school for $4,240 per student -- and will pocket the difference.
Baron, in turn, will pay students who dropped out of Detroit high schools as much as $900 a year in transportation and lunch money to attend.

Furious Detroit school officials may seek a court ruling to shut the school down, charging that Romulus is "treating students as cash cows without any interest in their educational development."

Romulus school district officials say they are only trying to raise money for their own school district -- 11 miles to the southwest of Detroit -- in ways which would be legal and would not hurt Detroit. Teachers at the school, which is geared to attract drop-outs, are not unionized.

Source: Keith Bradsher, "A New For-Profit School Sets Off a Turf Battle in Detroit," New York Times, September 27, 1996.

TEACHERS UNIONS AND EDUCATIONAL QUALITY

Student drop-out rates are higher in areas where teachers' unions predominate than in areas which are not unionized, according to a study by Caroline Hoxby of Harvard University. The study, entitled "How Teachers' Unions Affect Education Production," appeared in the August 1996 issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Starting with some background on the teachers' union movement:

As teachers' unions have gained power over the past three decades, the proportion of students enrolled in unionized public school districts has grown from 1 percent in 1963 to 43 percent in 1992.
In 1960, collective bargaining by teachers was illegal in many states.
By 1970, 23 states had granted teachers the right to engage in some form of collective bargaining.
Nine more states had done so by 1980 and an additional five by 1990.

Agency shops (in which unions collect dues from all teachers regardless of union membership) or union shops (where all teachers must join the union) were explicitly permitted in two states by 1970, 12 more by 1980 and another seven by 1990.

Now for the findings:

Unionization is estimated to raise per pupil spending by about 12 percent -- three-quarters of which goes for higher teachers' salaries and lower student-teacher ratios.
With unionization, salaries rise by about 5 percent.
And student-teacher ratios fall by about two students per teacher.
Using the student drop-out rate to measure school quality, Hoxby found that unionization raises the drop-out rate by about 2.3 percentage points.

In nonunionized schools, lower student-teacher ratios and higher teachers salaries lead to reduced drop-out rates. However, in unionized schools, neither student-teacher ratios nor teacher salaries have a detectable effect on drop-out rates.

Free market analysts contend unions divert extra school resources into the things they care about -- higher teacher pay and the reduced effort required to deal with fewer students -- rather than into better student performance.

Source: Robert J. Barro (Hoover Institution), "Teachers' Unions Don't Deliver Quality," Wall Street Journal, September 27, 1996.

WHEN DICK AND JANE CAN'T READ

With hard-pressed taxpayers wondering why school children can't read, President Clinton says the answer is more money for education: $2.75 billion over five years to ensure that third graders are sufficiently proficient in reading skills. But frustrated parents contend they are already paying for something their children aren't getting.

Over the past 25 years, inflation-adjusted, per-pupil spending for grades kindergarten through 12 has climbed 88 percent.
In 1994, 40 percent of fourth graders failed to demonstrate basic reading skills -- with just 30 percent testing as proficient.
Yet public-school teachers' pay rose 7.4 percent after inflation from 1970 through 1993 -- compared to a real gain of only 1 percent for all private-sector wages.
While enrollments were falling, the number of teachers rose 24.2 percent from 1974 to 1994.

Nonproductive growth aside, concerned experts say that an educational establishment which cannot resist faddish and damaging educational experiments -- ignoring spelling, stressing self-esteem over basics -- bears a large share of the blame for illiterate third graders.

Source: Editorial, "Public Schools: Change or Die?" Investor's Business Daily, September 30, 1996.