In a landslide, 3 members of the San Francisco School Board were recalled in yesterday’s election. Glenn Youngkin’s victory in the Virginia Governor’s race relied upon support from a large number of parents upset by school closings, the inclusion of Critical Race Theory in the curriculum, and a host of other Progressive education policies. Conservatives in other States are removing books from the reading lists of young children that they believe are age-inappropriate or a type of political indoctrination.
These battles are inevitable and an indelible part of the way tax-payer-supported education (TPSE) is administered in the United States because the primary method for delivering education for children between the ages of six through eighteen is through government-owned, operated, and funded schools that we call Public Schools. And these Public Schools are governed through the elected representatives on School Boards and State-Level Superintendents.
First Principles of Public Education
Let’s return to first principles. Why do we have public education? If the benefits of education are privately consumed in the form of higher-paying job opportunities, then what is the public interest in supporting it with tax dollars?
The first rationale is based upon Civic Participation. A well-informed electorate needs to be able to read, write, do math, and understand how government functions before it can fully participate in the democratic process. Disseminating these skills to the entire population is an investment in a healthy democracy with an engaged citizenry.
The second rationale is one of fairness. Lower-income families could not make adequate investments in education so their children would be less likely to have social mobility, to participate in elections, and ultimately, would have less commitment to upholding the civic order if they aren’t full participants.
The third rationale is one based upon Indoctrination. The public has an interest to ensure that children are inculcated with the values that extol the virtues of the nation and denigrate ideologies that are contrary to its core principles. This rationale has been used to justify everything from banning The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, Maus, The Communist Manifesto, and The 1619 History Project. This is the rationale most important for Communist tyrants, Religious Zealots, and our own domestic brands of thought-control advocates.
Surprisingly, Public Schools and local school boards are not required or a necessary condition for fulfillment of any of these three rationales. Below is an alternative approach:
Grade Level Examinations
The State’s education experts should create criterion-referenced tests that compare a student’s knowledge and skills against a pre-determined standard. These tests should be “high-stakes” tests where the test-takers have skin-in-the-game, and are motivated to do their best. Ideally, their scores should determine whether they are promoted to the next grade level.
These tests should have quality similar to the Advanced Placement Examinations in various subjects. They shouldn’t be merely multiple-guess formats, but should allow for showing the work on math problems, and writing essays about passages from literature. These should be tests of reasoning and not mere memorization.
These tests should be a written expression of precisely what a well-educated citizen should know at different stages of their development. The cut-off scores will define the minimum requirements for participation in the modern economy and in civic events like elections.
These Grade Level Examinations (GLE) will be controversial, as are use of the SAT, ACT, and other written examinations for admissions into public universities. Nevertheless, like any legislation, tests would have to developed by political consensus to secure majority support. Politicians will be forced to define the outputs of public education rather than focusing on the inputs like teacher compensation, class size, school buildings, textbooks, and other factors that go into the production of education.
In an ideal world, taxpayers and their elected representatives should be indifferent about the means for producing the outputs. Paying for Performance and focusing on results should produce less controversy than micro-managing the inputs of education.
Scholastic Achievement Grants for Education
Almost every public school in the United States was built by a private contractor, not by government employees. The same is true for most roads, bridges, sewers, and other public infrastructure. In each case, the government defined specifications and standards, and usually opened the projects up to competitive bidding. However, when it comes to TPSE, the government relies upon its own employees to do the job.
Once the GLE is established, then the Government has another option to offer the public. It could outsource the production of education for children to their parents by paying them a Scholastic Achievement Grant for Education (SAGE). Parents would receive the SAGE only if their child did not attend a public school, and they received a passing score on the GLE required of their peers in the public schools who are promoted to the next grade level.
This way parents who are dissatisfied with the quality of the services provided by their public school could utilize a non-political channel to select an alternative rather than fighting the political apparatus dominated by teacher and administrator unions who donate the largest amounts to school board members. This would reduce the severity of political conflicts, and it would promote far greater diversity in education options. Imagine if parents had access to the SAGE while many Public Schools remained closed during COVID while schools in other States and in Europe were open. The ability to seek an alternative would have limited the reputational damage endured by these Public School systems that created severe hardships upon working parents with few childcare options.
Contrasting the SAGE with Vouchers
A competing alternative supported by Conservative activists are Private School Voucher Programs. Voucher payments are directed by parents to utilize public funds to compensate a “qualified” private school based upon a child’s seat time attending that school.
Because Private Schools are not controlled by Elected Officials, they are not accountable to the voters for the tax dollars they receive. This creates a myriad of problems:
Church-State Entanglements and Fringe Schools
Most State Constitutions prohibit payments to sectarian schools —the bulk of private educational options available today. Voters are uncomfortable sending tax dollars to schools operated by witches’ covens, the Nation of Islam, the Oath Keepers or other fringe groups outside the mainstream. However, under the 14th amendment, they could not be excluded any more than a Catholic school.
In contrast, the SAGE program pays parents who fulfill a public purpose the same way that the government pays any contractor that completes a project. No one cares if the building contractor donates his earnings to a Church after he completes the job, any more than anyone objects to Social Security recipients or public school teachers who donate their earnings to a Synagogue. Paying for performance rather than seat time (outputs instead of inputs) avoids the Church-State Entanglement and fringe group problems.
Discrimination
Private schools don’t accept all applicants, and that is a feature, not a bug, that enables them to offer niche educational programs. Most voters oppose offering tax dollars to institutions that discriminate on the basis of religion, sex, scholastic aptitude, and other factors for children in K-12.
In contrast, the SAGE is paid to a natural person — the child’s parent or guardian. The SAGE is not paid to a private school so there are no discrimination issues.
Level Playing Field
Public Schools have to accept all students: rich and poor, bright and dull, believers and non-believers. Public Schools operate with regulations and strings attached to how their money is spent. Most voters believe that Private Schools should not be receiving vouchers with less-stringent terms than Public Schools.
In contrast, the parents receiving a SAGE only receive payments when their child has demonstrated their child has passed the examinations. Public schools receive money regardless of whether or not their children are learning. The SAGE recipients have greater accountability than Public Schools.
Market Failure and Incompetent Parents
Voters worry that “fly-by-night” private schools, providing an inferior education, could abscond with tax vouchers. They also worry that many parents will not be wise consumers, especially in a situation where new schools will be opened that don’t have a reputation.
In contrast, the SAGE does not expect taxpayers to trust the market or the wisdom of parents. The SAGE is a cash-on-delivery system where payments are only made after the passing scores are delivered.
Freedom and Innovation
Many private school operators and supporters oppose private school voucher programs. They predict the inevitable intrusion by government regulations that will accompany receipt of public funds. Most voucher plans limit the universe of private schools eligible to receive vouchers to ones that are accredited by some kind of body that ultimately must receive approval by the government. Also, the intrusion of labor regulations and other rules would restrict the freedom of private educators to continue their mission.
In contrast, the SAGE is agnostic about how children are taught. They could be taught at home by parents, view lectures on the internet, taught by tutors or other parents pooling their resources and children together in small neighborhood groups, attend a private school, or a combination of these methods. There are no inputs to regulate. The SAGE program is based on outputs — performance on examinations.
Therefore, the SAGE would encourage a wide range of educational methods that could be customized for each child. Voucher programs cannot match this diversity of options without being open to waste, fraud, and abuse.
Dangers of Using Examinations As A Tool for Indoctrination
Critics could charge that the need to study the topics covered by the examinations will constrain the variety of subject matters that could be covered so you are still getting government-intrusion into the private market. However, this intrusion is far more benign than input regulations. While some students might have to spend 60% to 70% of their time studying subject matter covered in the examinations, they probably would have studied most of these topics, anyway. The remaining time could be devoted to pursuits outside the core curriculum.
The problem arises when the State adopts something like The 1619 History Project and forces the child to learn material that many parents believe is false or opinionated. However, these critics should remember that public school students will be forced to learn this, too, and it’s unlikely that the minimum scores will be set where half the public school students are flunking the History Test. Hopefully, the writing, mathematics, geography, and civics tests will be less problematic.
Conclusion
Debates about Public Education have intensified during COVID. The introduction of Critical Race Theory, Transgender topics, and other controversial subjects has engendered more conflict and vitriol in the body politic.
One way to release this pressure and minimize these conflicts is to adopt policies predicated upon the outputs, rather than the inputs, of taxpayer-supported education. Adopting a system of Grade Level Examinations and outsourcing the responsibility of educating children outside of Public Schools to their parents can lower political conflict while increasing the level of accountability for how taxpayer dollars are spent on education.