America is Only as Good as It’s Public Education System
Children must be taught
how to think, not what to think.
Don’t brainwash our kids.
– Haiku adapted from Margaret Mead quote
The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expect different results. Just a little bit of commonsense folk wisdom that happens to be correct. Much of recent American federal government policy seems to fit into this paradigm. Like let’s print a whole lot of money then act surprised when you get inflation. Or stop enforcing our immigration laws and be shocked when millions of foreign people including criminals, terrorists and those who don’t share our values, flood our southern border. I hope most of would agree that hyperinflation and more drug and sex trafficking on our streets are bad things. And yet policies from the current federal crew are encouraging exactly those things. I think the rub is that they do not expect different results. They want and expect these results because they think these policies will increase their power. Now that is not insane. All people act in their own self-interest, most of the time. That logic trail traces all the way back to Charles Darwin.
And so it is with our education policy. Our public schools seem to be getting worse, or at least not better. But the cost of the bad performance has outpaced inflation for decades. Why would we let the same crew responsible for our diminishing public schools, be the ones to fix them? Any business will eliminate this systemic underperformance, or risk bankruptcy.
Teaching our kids is one of the essential things to a thriving society. It is appropriately the third highest 2018 spending category at about one trillion dollars across all levels of government, with 88 percent of that funded and spent at the local level. According to the latest data from the OECD, the US ranks fourth in annual public K-12 spending per student but is only about middle of the pack for K-12 science, math, and reading. Being middle of the pack is unacceptable. Why is this? Reforming our public education system is the Marshall Plan of our time. If we don’t get it right, we all suffer. But when we dive deep to uncover root causes, some uncomfortable facts emerge. Effective policy should recognize these facts.
Stop Indoctrinating and Start Teaching
The goal of education must be to help students develop critical thinking skills required to become productive self-sustaining citizens. However, many of our nation’s traditional public schools have deviated from this mission and now focus on indoctrinating students with alternative versions of history to suit political agendas and “dumbed-down” curriculum that inflates grades to give the appearance of meeting minimum standards. This system forces teaching to the middle and enforcement of conformity. Government aid also comes with political agendas that are often at odds with the values of the parents.
Nowhere is this political agenda more apparent than the addition of Critical Race Theory (CRT) to the curriculum of an increasing number of public-school districts. CRT teaches that America is, and has always been, a systemically racist society that can only be cured with more racism. Like telling white elementary school students that they must atone in any number of ways, for color of their skin. Parents are rising up around the nation to resist racism in all its forms, including against the 61.7 percent of the country that is white. But those that oppose teaching racism in our schools face powerful institutional foes.
At its recent convention, the largest teacher’s union, the NEA, adopted a resolution containing a to-do list whose first objective is to: “Share and publicize, through existing channels, information already available on critical race theory (CRT) -- what it is and what it is not; have a team of staffers for members who want to learn more and fight back against anti-CRT rhetoric; and share information with other NEA members as well as their community members.” The document goes on to note that “we oppose attempts to ban critical race theory and/or The 1619 Project” and also pledges to join “with Black Lives Matter at School and the Zinn Education Project” to call for “a national day of action to teach lessons about structural racism and oppression.”
As if this weren’t bad enough, no less than Attorney General, Merrick Garland reacted to a letter sent to President Biden by the highly political, National School Boards Association (NSBA), by directing the FBI and US Attorneys to work with local law enforcement to address the “disturbing spike” in “threats against school administrators, board members, teachers and staff.” The NSBA letter cited various incidents including a Michigan a man who gave a Nazi salute and shouted “Heil Hitler” in protest of masking requirements.
Disruptions at public meetings shouldn't happen and some may even be criminal, but none of them are a federal offense. They are within the jurisdiction of local law enforcement. Invoking Adolf Hitler may be stupid but it’s protected speech. Our public schools have unfortunately become the epicenter for some of our country's most divisive cultural issues from CRT, mask and vaccination policy, the use of racial quotas in elite public schools, and the Covid-19 response that kept many public schools closed for a year. Parents and all citizens have a huge stake in how these decisions are made with our kids.
Maybe the problem is that public school officials don’t think they’re accountable to parents, even though those parents pay their salaries with tax dollars. Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic candidate for Virginia Governor, recently said this out loud in a recent debate, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” Many school boards view parents as an annoyance, which can lead to resentment when people finally get a chance to be heard.
This hyper-focus on political indoctrination within the public education establishment has created dissatisfaction and frustration among parents and teachers, underachievement by students, and division in our country. It is vital that public education be fundamentally restructured outside of the current establishment and that it starts at the local level. Parents must be involved, and local communities must have the freedom to develop education in the way that works best for them. As H. L. Mencken famously stated, “The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment; it is to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.”
Student and Parent Interests Are More Important Than Teachers’ Interests
Unfortunately, there is a divergence between the interests of teachers and students in our public schools. The power of teachers’ unions to collectively bargain for more salary, more retirement benefits, less teaching time, and less accountability is at odds with student and parent interests. FDR warned us over 85 years ago of the dangers of this conflict of interest with public employee unions. As he predicted, the political influence of teachers’ unions has become a challenge that is often too much for parents and communities to overcome. Despite the claims from supporters of the status quo, teachers and administrators are not underpaid when considering their generous benefits. Public school teacher’s pension costs are crowding our local school budgets everywhere. A 2011 study, Assessing the Compensation of Public-School Teachers, by Jason Richwine, Ph.D., and Andrew G. Biggs, Ph.D., concluded that public school teacher total compensation is 52% greater than the equivalent private sector job with comparable education and skills requirements. Although salaries are comparable to the private sector, generous pension and healthcare benefits along with much higher job security make public school employment a well-paid profession. This disparity costs taxpayers over $120 billion more each year than they should pay.
And let’s not forget the incredible growth of non-teaching administrators in our public schools. According to a 2016 study by left-leaning Pew Research, the number of public school administrators per student increased by 42% from 1980 to 2012. More layers of higher compensated middle management are flooding schools with questionable value. Take for example, the case of John Beatty, a member of the Loudon County Virginia school board. In a an August 24, 2021 Wall Street Journal op-ed, Beatty describes how his school district spent “$400,000 on an “equity consultant” to analyze graduation rates and other data to determine how racist the school district was.” According to Beatty, here’s what Loudon County taxpayers got for their money:
“After breaking down the data by race, the consultant found tiny differences in the graduation rates of black high-school students and white ones. These gaps, often only 1 percentage point, weren’t statistically significant. Yet the LCPS superintendent deemed them sufficient evidence to bring in other outside groups, which declared that Loudoun County was systemically racist, and that the administration needed to embrace critical race theory’s concept of equity.”
The public school system is by far the largest expenditure in most local government budgets, and funding is often a dominant election issue. In 13 states, school employees who are unhappy with their contracts are allowed to strike, an option not available to police and firefighters. Public sector accounting practices hide the true cost of school employee compensation by allowing lower employer contributions to benefit plans than their private sector counterparts. The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics similarly lowballs compensation by excluding retiree healthcare contributions. According to the US Census, local school districts had $477 billion in outstanding debt as of 2018, mostly driven by rising retiree costs that deprive resources each year from school operating budgets. This shell game protects most public sector employees, not just school employees. As I have discussed, after a certain point, government takes on a life of its own with interests that diverge from the citizens it is supposed to serve.
I am hating myself as I write this because my dad spent 20 years as a teacher and contract negotiator for the local union. I am a product of good public schools. We desperately need them to succeed. I would love teachers to be extremely well-paid if they deliver the high-quality educations our children deserve. Many charter schools are very successful with this economic bargain. However, non-charter public school costs are out of line for the outcomes they currently deliver. Unfortunately, people who recognize this and call it out are decried as heartless skinflints at best, and harassed by the FBI at worst.
Fix immigration, Fix Public Education
Another major driver of underperformance of our public schools is our loose immigration laws. Immigrant families are flooding into this country through our southern border. The open border policies of President Biden and the Democrat party have driven more than 2 million illegal immigrants to our southern border since January 2021. This a sad national record. Many of these immigrants from all over the world, are being transported to American cities unbeknownst to their citizens where they are given generous public benefits including free education for their children. The language and culture barriers are putting great pressure on the public schools. Here are some sobering statistics from a 2017 study by the Center for Immigration Studies:
23 percent of public-school students in the United States came from an immigrant household in 2015, compared to 11 percent in 1990 and seven percent in 1980. About one-third of those public school students from immigrant households came from illegal immigrant households.
In 2015, 23 percent of American public-school students spoke a language other than English at home. This compares to 14 percent in 1990 and 9 percent in 1980.
Immigration has added disproportionately to the number of low-income students in public schools. In 2015, 28 percent of public-school students from immigrant households lived in poverty and they accounted for 30 percent of all students living below the poverty line.
Local schools struggle to deal with teaching in multiple foreign languages, which creates enormous challenges. In 315 Census areas (combined enrollment 6.7 million), 10 or more foreign languages are spoken by public school students.
There are over 700 Census areas in the country where the public schools contain at least half of their students from immigrant households. Examples include:
o 93 percent in Northeast Dade County, North Central Hialeah City, FL
o 91 percent in Jackson Heights and North Corona, New York City
o 85 percent in Westpark Tollway between Loop I-610 & Beltway, Houston, TX
o 83 percent in El Monte and South El Monte Cities, CA
o 78 percent in Annandale & West Falls Church, VA
The children of illegal immigrants attend our public schools, which usually means that those schools need to make provisions for teaching in other languages besides English. Algebra is hard enough to learn without a language barrier. This dynamic also affects kids who are citizens who suffer from resources and curriculum being diluted in order to meet the needs of an increasing non-English speaking immigrant population. With this kind of challenge, we should not be surprised at the diminishing performance of our public schools. We cannot solve the problem of underperforming public schools in the long run without also reforming our immigration laws. I am certain there are billions of people on the planet who would move to America if they could, especially if they could receive most of the public benefits citizens enjoy without paying taxes. Unfortunately, America would cease to exist if this were to occur. As our Constitution explicitly provides, solving our immigration challenge is solely the duty of the federal government. It is one the few enumerated powers outlined by our Founders. Protecting our borders, protects our schools. It’s long past time for all Americans to demand the federal government do its real job.
Charter Schools Are a BIG Part of the Solution
When we talk of K-12 education reform, we mean public education. Private schools are doing just fine with their student enrollment largely from upper-income families, but they only represent 8.8 percent of all students in our country. The vast majority of K-12 students are educated in public schools. In fact, according to the National Center for Education Data Statistics, public schools educate 86% of the school age children in this country.
There are two different flavors of public schools that are structured and funded in very different ways and generate very different student outcomes. Traditional district schools represent about 86 percent of public enrollment while charter schools represent about 5.2 percent but growing quickly. Both are publicly funded schools, but charters are organized by specific state laws and are exempt from some state and local laws. In exchange for the flexibility and autonomy, charter schools must meet the certain accountability criteria as well as abide by the same rules as public schools. These include being open to all children, not requiring entrance exams, not charging tuition, and participating in state testing and federal accountability programs.
One of the big advantages for charters is that they are not obliged to hire only teachers who are members of a union. They can hire anyone they want and create teacher performance criteria and work rules that aren’t governed by collective bargaining agreements. Also at $7,131 average per student, charters received significantly less public funding than their district counterparts at $13,187. The majority of this cost gap is due to the disparity in teacher compensation. Charters have other handicaps mostly due to the clout teachers’ unions wield with politicians. In many localities, charters are not permitted to use public buildings and must find commercial properties to rent or build on their own, which represents a significant portion of their budgets. Some cities like NYC are openly hostile to charters and create other barriers to their expansion like providing less information about city charters in relation to their district school counters in their online open enrollment process. This is society at its worst when politically motivated adults choose their interests over the interest of children.
Despite the structural handicaps of charters schools, they are growing rapidly with waiting lists averaging 220 students nationally and in the thousands in many larger cities. The demographics show charter schools overwhelmingly serve disadvantaged families of color in communities where the traditional district schools are viewed as substandard or even dangerous. In fact, over 62% of charter school students are non-white compared to 44% of non-charter public schools.
While performance can vary greatly by geography, a 2017 study by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes found that all charter schools showed statistically significant better outcomes than their district school peers on a national basis. Furthermore, the study showed that large charter school networks—such as Achievement First, Basis Schools, and KIPP—generate extraordinary outcomes compared to their non-charter counterparts. Some of these charters achieve student results equivalent to an additional 125 days of learning in math and 57 days in reading. These are incredible outcomes, which explain why there is such high demand for charter schools, especially in lower-income communities.
I think this is powerful evidence that educational outcomes are not as much a function of money as school choice opponents contend. It’s about methodology, accountability, and empowering teachers. Kids are sponges and will emulate good or bad examples in society. Parents are the first role models, and millions of low-income minority families are showing the courage to vote with their feet and enroll their children in charter schools to increase the odds of success. On the other hand, if kids see teachers constrained by poor curriculum and work rules that prioritize teacher interests over a student’s interests, they will be less motivated to do their best work. Great teachers are inspiring and can change lives. I have witnessed this several times with my own kids. But there is more than ample room to raise the bar for all our teachers. The unfortunate result is that many underperforming kids in public schools are simply passed on to the next grade, where they will be another teacher’s problem. I’ve witnessed this more frequently than the life-changing teachers unfortunately. Competition makes us all better, including schools.
I realize that there are still many great district public schools and plenty of underperforming charter schools. We need to share and learn best practices for great education no matter where they come from. There is no more important common good in the US than improving our public schools. There are so many societal problems that get fixed by simply reforming our public secondary education system.
Some tangible recommendations for K-12 Education
Here are some double bottom-line suggestions for improving public secondary education:
Cut the current federal education budget of $100 billion federal education budget by 10 percent, then increase the federal transfer from 55 to 98 percent. The additional 43 percent of the federal budget going to public school districts ($42 billion), would mean an average of $416,000 extra money for the 98,700 school districts in the US. The twist is that half of this extra money will go to public charter schools to increase competition and quality. The additional money would come with new rules that would prohibit local school districts from unfairly obstructing the growth of charter schools.
Allocate some of the federal education transfer to support online learning organizations such as Khan Academies, Coursera, and Udacity. These massive open online course (MOOC) organizations take some of the brightest college professors and put them online so their teaching can reach tens of thousands of students instead of just those lucky enough to be in their classroom. This is a great example of using technology to improve quality and access and bend the cost curve in higher education.
Build more vocational and trade high schools. In a 2017 paper by the Brookings Institution, author Brian Jacob cites research of a 12 to 17-year-old national cohort of students that tracked education outcomes over time. The research suggests that “Vocational school participation is associated with higher wages, with the increase driven entirely by upper-level coursework…in more technical fields.” Other findings suggest that vocational students are more engaged with their coursework than they otherwise would have been attending a traditional public high school.
Higher Education
American colleges and universities are the envy of the world. Today, the United States remains the country of choice for the largest number of international students, hosting 25 percent of the 4.6 million enrolled worldwide in 2017. The growth of foreign college students in the US has gone from 1.5 percent in 1975 to about 5.2 percent of US college enrollment in 2017. It’s well known that having a college degree has become, for better or worse, the most important variable in career earnings prospects. It has become nearly a necessity, with 70 percent of all high school graduates attending a two- or four-year college, albeit at a lower graduation rate than it should be.
Like healthcare, education is a “must have” for students, and parents go to extraordinary lengths to get their kids into what they consider “the best schools.” Sometimes those efforts turn into criminal behavior as demonstrated by the 2019 college admission scandal where a consulting company arranged fake college profiles for students of wealthy parents. This included bribing college coaches to grant athletic scholarships to students who never played the sports and falsifying standard testing scores. This scandal has reached into the halls of the most elite schools in this country, and it is probably just the tip of the iceberg. And for decades, private sector businesses have also been a key driver of demand by increasingly requiring a college degree as basic table stakes for many jobs that probably don’t require it.
What do you think happens to a product that is considered a necessity and there is an enormous amount of government subsidy available? If you answered “price increases” you’d be correct. Healthcare is another product with similar characteristics. Do you know which product in America whose cost has increased faster than healthcare? If you answered “college education” you’d be right. The cost of attending a four-year college has increased eight times faster than the rate of inflation since 1986. At $1.5 trillion, student loans represent the largest chunk of non-housing debt in America. By the way, over 20 percent of student loans are delinquent as of 2018, up from 10.4 percent in 2014. Keep in mind that, in 2009 the Obama administration shut down the private student loan industry and now the federal government guarantees most student loans. These and other “agency obligations” are excluded from the official $27 trillion in federal debt outstanding.
We know that anything that becomes a necessity, risks creating monopolies, and I fear that’s what the university education establishment is becoming. However, there are some signs of hope. Former Indiana governor and current Purdue University president Mitch Daniels has implemented effective innovations in his short tenure. With his deep experience as a private and public sector executive, he asked a basic question: “Why can’t we make the cost of our product fit the budgets of our customers rather than the other way around?” He found an answer to the questions, and the result is that he has controlled costs to the point where Purdue tuition has not increased in constant dollars since 2012.
Even more impressive, Daniels implemented an income-sharing program as a way of financing student costs. Students who exhaust federal loans can pay the balance of tuition with an agreement to pay between three and five percent of their income for up to 10 years after they graduate. Repayments are capped at 2.5 times initial costs. In a September 2018 interview with Forbes magazine, Daniels said, “If you want indentured servitude, it’s the student-loan program. With Income Sharing Agreements, the risk shifts entirely to the lender, since grads who don’t find work pay nothing.” American universities could use more Mitch Daniel types.
And who decided all American kids needed a college education anyway? When I was growing up, we had vocational high schools for kids who knew they weren’t going to attend college and they learned a trade instead. Vocational training has been declining for decades as states began mandating increases in core curriculum of math, science, language, and social studies. Not that there is anything wrong with everyone learning more core curriculum, but education is not one size fits all. We currently have over 10 million unfilled job openings in an economy with a 4.8% unemployment rate. Most of those jobs don’t require a college degree. Do you think those jobs are attractive to a kid who just graduated from college with $75,000 in student debt? As a society, we have raised our kids to think they are a failure without a college degree, and there is certainly plenty of evidence showing an advantage in average lifetime earnings for those with a college degree. But life is not lived on the average, and the supply and demand for college-educated labor varies greatly depending on the field of study. Nothing is immune from the laws of supply and demand. The educational priorities over the past couple decades have misallocated human resources and need to be rebalanced.
Let me provide a little illustration of career math. According to the website Tradingeconomics.com, the median hourly wage for manufacturing is about $24.24 per hour. This equates to $48,000 annually. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the median annual wage for someone with a bachelor’s degree is only slightly more at $51,000 annually. A bachelor’s degree student graduates with an average of $30,100 in student debt. The $3,000 annual earnings advantage for the college graduate disappears over a 40-year working career because, discounted for inflation, the college degree job is only $28,763, not enough to pay back the student debt. Obviously, there are plenty of jobs not requiring a college degree that pay far less than the manufacturing wage, just as there are many jobs that require a college degree that pay much more than the $51,000 average. However, the point is that young citizens need to think more seriously about what they want to do for work and weigh the costs/benefits of attending college. With the astronomical rise in costs, the old credo of “Just get a college education and all will be well” no longer applies automatically.
Reducing Number of Foreign Students and The Cost of College
Students from around the world beat the doors down to attend American universities. However, the percentage of foreign students has more than doubled since 1980 so that that they represent over 5 percent of total college enrollment. Some of the top schools in the US have over 10 percent foreign students. About 35 percent of these students are from China, by far the largest country in the mix. China’s government is an adversary that doesn’t respect human rights, cheats on international trade rules, steals intellectual property, and seeks to undermine US interests. The bottom line is that the influx of foreign students has made it more difficult and expensive for American kids to attend college and is a big contributor to rapidly rising college costs. This is simply an issue of a fixed supply of university seats being chased by an increasing number of students. If schools are accepting more rich foreign students that don’t receive financial aid, it follows that there are fewer seats for American citizens. Basic math.
By providing nonprofit status to universities, we expect the priority to be educating American citizens, especially given the huge endowments many of the schools have. There are 100 universities with endowments exceeding $1 billion. Harvard tops the list with $36 billion followed by Yale and the Texas University system at $27 billion each. Total endowments at American universities were $537 billion as of 2015. That’s a lot of money. According to the 2018 U.S. News & World Report annual college and university ranking, 27 percent of the 512 schools on their list have foreign student populations greater than 10 percent with some as high as 40 percent. Fewer foreign students at elite schools would both open opportunity for more American kids and put downward pressure on tuition costs. There’s plenty of fat that can and should be cut at these institutions of higher learning.
So, I recommend that there be reasonable limits to the number of foreign students (5 percent feels about right), with far less accepted from adversarial countries like China. The nonprofit status of universities that violate these limits should be subject to revocation.
Invest in Youth Public Service, Reduce College Costs, Strengthen Our Military
I propose modifying and expanding the post-9/11 GI Bill signed into law in 2008 that pays for college costs for active-duty service members and honorably discharged veterans. The law provides three years of education benefits for attending accredited colleges, including 100 percent tuition and fees for public in-state institutions and up to $22,805 for private/foreign institutions, a monthly living/housing stipend, up to $1,000 a year for books and supplies, and more. The eligibility requirements start at 100 percent for three or more years of service to 40 percent for six months of service. Currently, over 30 percent of the 2.1 million active-duty and reserve military personnel are enrolled in the program. The GI program is beneficial because it produces active, engaged citizens who understand the value of the freedom they are defending, which just increases the number of young adults with a better chance of moving up the economic ladder.
Here are some compelling economics for doubling down on the GI bill. A new high school graduate who serves four years earning an average of $34,750 over that four years and lives in free military base housing should be able to save at least 8 percent of his (or her) income and have $11,000 saved at separation in year four. This veteran now earns a degree with minimal out-of-pocket costs worth over $88,000 while his non-GI buddy starts his post-college career with $88,000 in student debt that must be paid back over 10 years. The GI starts his post-grad career four years later than his civilian counterpart now saving at the same five percent rate of net income, but without the $11,417 annual debt service cost. This represents 28 percent more savings than his civilian buddy with the same degree and post-graduate job. This math must be explained to young adults so they can understand the opportunity before them.
Some Final Thoughts
Investment in education is an investment in our future. It’s the essential raw material to our American machine that has done more to raise average living standards than any other country or empire in history. At $1.7 trillion annually or 8.5% of our GDP, the money our nation spends on education reflects its importance.
There is no question that there is plenty of money sloshing around in the halls of our schools to achieve better outcomes than we get now. The problem isn’t “not enough money”. The problem is that we are paying too much for the quality we receive as our schools become more distracted by adult politics. As parents and citizens, we must demand better. Unfortunately, entrenched power centers don’t give up easily. Follow the money. Parents need to push back hard to reclaim their natural right to control how and what their kids learn and how their tax dollars are being spent. I feel like most Americans of goodwill understand this, which gives me hope. The next question is how to get involved. I will be talking more about “the how” in later episodes. For myself, I am seriously considering running for school committee in Indian River County in 2024, not because I think the current school committee is necessarily bad. But most of them have been part of the educational establishment in one form or another, for years. They are not the right people to confront the difficult challenge of fundamental change that must be undertaken. It’s gonna get messy.
I apologize for not posting as much but I am trying to do at least once per month. I’ve started a new project that doesn’t let me blog or podcast as often as I would like. Then again, I think it only makes sense to do this when I have something important to say. Wish more people in the media tried this. Full-disclosure, a lot of the content in this piece is taken from my book, Locally Grown: The Art of Sustainable Government, which was published exactly two years ago today, so that’s why some of the dates behind the data I present are a little dated. However, in writing this, I checked for more current sources and I replaced those when I found them.
In retrospect, I think the things I talk about in my book and in blogs and podcasts over the past two years, are as relevant today as they were 4 years ago when I started writing. In fact, the problems of centralized power, in all it’s forms, whether government or mega-corporations, have gotten demonstrably worse. Authoritarians are very clever about how they keep power. It starts with soft coercion like government goodies but eventually ends up with the truncheon as citizens finally recognize the false promises. It’s an ancient playbook that is obvious to any who read history.
Liberty is our birthright, and history teaches that democracy is the exception rather than the rule. Our founders created a Constitution that defined the primary role of government as protecting the individual freedom of its citizens, not apportioning that freedom when, and to whom, it sees fit. No more negotiating away our rights. It’s time to fight, and we need to use every means possible, short of violence, to restore the balance within our three-tiers of government. Only in this way can we be a truly diverse, self-sustaining and strong nation. In my opinion, there is no better place to start than our public schools.