I just finished a superficial analysis of the
historical budget information for the Federal Department of Education. The results? The President Bushes were the most profligate spenders since 1980.
- On average, Ronald Reagan requested increases of 8% per year, and the Congress (consisting of a Democrat House and a vacillating Senate) appropriated 6% per year.
- George H. W. Bush requested increases of 10% per year, and the Democrat Congress appropriated 9% per year.
- Bill Clinton requested increases of 3% per year, and the mostly Republican Congress appropriated 4% per year. That includes two years in which he requested no change in the budget (1996 and 2000) and three years (1994, 1997, and 1999) when the president's budget actually requested decreases in funding, one of which the last Democrat Congress gave (a whopping 17% decrease, which was restored (19%) the next year by the Republican Congress).
- George W. Bush requested increases of 9% per year, and the mostly Republican Congress (always Republican House, temporarily Democrat Senate) appropriated 17% per year. His last two budget requests (2006 and 2007) have been for decreases. Congress responded to the 5% reduction request in 2006 with a 20% increase. The Department spent $88 B in 2006, more than twice the 2001 appropriation of $42 B.
(These are current, not inflation-adjusted figures, and they don't account for the increases in students. I've written about this before, and found that real, per student federal spending was flat from 1972 through 1988, and has been increasing since then (through 2002, anyhow).)
Note: the Y-axis in the chart is the fractional increase over the prior year (delta); 0.1 represents a 10% increase, -0.1 is a 10% decrease. Blue is the President's request, maroon is the appropriation. Click the chart for a large version. The data start in 1981, no request was available for 1981, no appropriation numbers were available for 2007. All other 0's are a 0% increase.
Democrats refuse to give Bush any credit for education, but when you look at these numbers, and apply their stated standards, Bush is much better on paper than Clinton. Republicans, on the other hand, refused to give Clinton any credit for holding the line on federal spending, while continuing to believe that the current Bush believes in small government and federalism. Now that's "faith-based".
Federal spending on education, in fact, is but a drop in the bucket compared to state and local spending. In 2003 (the last year in the latest Statistical Abstract), Federal spending was $35.6 B, state was $212.9 B, and local was $185.3 B (that's "billion" with a "B") for elementary and secondary education, or just 8.2% of the total. But those federal dollars always come with a string, and the string may not make any sense in the social and cultural context of the local system. I once read that 50% of all federal dollars went to administrative requirements rather than to classrooms, and No Child Left Behind has been just the latest string.
So what?
The public education system spends too much money on too little result. Based on the spending of private and parochial schools in places like New York, our public system spends about 3x more than is necessary to provide a good education ($10k/pupil public vs. $3k/pupil private in 2000). The fact that the real, per student spending is going up with no improvement in outcome should be an indicator that something is wrong with the status quo.
Let's separate two things that desperately need it, eh? Funding is an input. Student/teacher ratios are an input. Teacher pay is an input. All of these things are indirectly related to the outcome and all have been increasing at the federal, state, and local levels. The outcome - education, ability, understanding, knowledge, however you want to measure it - has been flat or declining for years. Inputs up, outputs down: there is a disconnect that nobody on the Left wants to acknowledge. Their response, "more money", has been tried and found wanting.
If more spending is not the answer, then what is? I see two possibilities: one is to inject some competition and the other is to test outcomes. There may be others. Simply calling for "better administration" is naive; who is to say that we aren't getting exactly what we actually want, as revealed in our voting patterns?
The American Left is stridently against private schooling. Despite a cosmopolitan view on almost every other topic, on this they seem unaware that other parts of the world have well-developed private school systems. Something like 17% of all schools in India
are private, 2/3 of poor students attend
them, and the concurrent growth in India's tech sector has been impressive. The Japanese rely on private schools to prepare their children for the intensely competitive university exams. With the collapse of communism in East Europe, many of those countries rely on a predominantly private school system.
In this country, there are three alternatives to public schooling. One is to send your child to a private or parochial school, an option available mainly to wealthy parents (or to parents lucky enough to find a private school with a sizable endowment to allow them to offer means-tested grants, like the
Albuquerque Academy has). Public school teachers consistently say in polls that they would prefer to send their children to private schools. Another alternative is to be lucky enough to live in the two or three districts in the country with a voucher program. Surprisingly, urban blacks are the most pro-voucher voters in the country despite being pro-Democrat on almost every other issue. Finally, parents unlucky enough to live somewhere else, unable to afford the existing private schools, or unwilling to tolerate the religious doctrines of the existing parochial or religious schools have increasingly turned to homeschooling. In 2003, 2.2% of all children were home-schooled. Home school parents, on average, have lower incomes than public school parents, but higher educational attainment.
I'm not even totally opposed to local and state involvement in education; I think
Thomas Jefferson's proposal was pretty good:
Jefferson proposed a system under which land for the buildings of the schools would be provided by the local government. The first three years of school would be provided gratis. The next level - grammar school - would be provided free only to those too poor to afford it themselves. Furthermore, not every student would be allowed to attend: only "some one of the best and most promising genius and disposition, [would] proceed to the grammar school of his district." They would then be required to appear before the Aldermen, who might or might not appoint them to go to grammar school. All those would then attend grammar school for one or two years, "save one only the best in genius and disposition, who shall be at liberty to continue there four years longer on the public foundation, and shall thence be deemed a senior."
What I like about this is that it provides an education for all, and incentives to excel, but requires payment of those who can afford it. The
status quo is a system in which the wealthy send their kids to public school, where they make sure that the best facilities are in their neighborhoods, while the poor, who have no more power to influence politicians than they do to influence other aspects of their lives, get what's left over. I don't like Jefferson's idea of creating a multi-tiered system based on testing: that's what they have in Germany, where it is subject to gaming (the wealthy make sure their less bright students get into college prep despite their test results) and punishes those whose early disposition doesn't give a full accounting of their potential. I do, however, like the idea that good performance has immediate benefits, like a scholarship to the next year of school. Means-testing for all, and merit-based scholarships means that good, poor students might actually make money going to school!
However, we have to admit that schools have become warehouses for our children largely because there is no accountability. Parents are frequently unable to determine the quality of education their children are getting, especially if they had poor educations themselves. An excellent indication of the quality of outcomes is that the fastest growing classes at the college level have been remedial math and writing classes. Despite its drawbacks, No Child Left Behind attempts to introduce some accountability into a system that has none.
I oppose federal funding for schools, in part because it brings such ill-advised strings with it. The Left opposes No Child Left Behind because it was signed by George Bush; they don't acknowledge its pedigree (it was written by Ted Kennedy), the problem it attempted to solve (the lack of accountability), and they offer no alternatives. Their most coherent complaint is that Bush, whose average budget increase requests have been 3x Clinton's, has not spent enough money on it.
The response from the Right has not been much more helpful. Creation science is not science. We don't need prayer in schools, we need school in schools. Vouchers are not the solution, they are but one possible means to a solution. Likewise, testing is a means, not a solution; while it introduces accountability, the question is - accountability of whom to what? Teachers not only teach the test, but are having "ethical lapses" (helping students to cheat or outright falsification of results).
These are difficult problems that the
tribalism between the two dominant political camps is not helping to solve.
Labels: education, politics
