Children's Education Suffers in Government Schools

Two unrelated articles show how the education of children comes last when dealing with the government education bureaucracy and the labor unions representing teachers. In San Diego, the unions and the district struck a deal yesterday to avoid 1,481 layoffs, according to the U-T.

Representing 7,000 teachers, the San Diego Education Association agreed to extend furloughs for a third and fourth year — once again shortening the school year for 118,000 students and cutting pay for educators.

The preliminary agreement includes a one-time financial retirement incentive in an effort to nudge the most senior teachers off the payroll this year. It also lays the groundwork for shaving 14 more days off the 2012-13 academic year should Gov. Jerry Brown’s tax-hike initiative fail in the November election.

This is no bargain for children's education. The teachers are getting paid less because they are working less. Further, we don't know how many of the jobs saved are teacher positions. We could continue this trend and have children have zero days of school but still end up with a huge tab from the government school system. Neither the district nor the union have the courage to address the real problem, the large number of non-teachers on the payroll in the form of administrators. My research from 2010 showed that the ratio of teachers to other staff in San Diego schools was about 1.25 to 1. Chicago Catholic Schools have a ratio closer to 7 to 1. The reason we don't get much for our education dollar is the huge number of non-teaching staff members. Further, reducing the number of days in school reduces learning for children as is documented in Malcolm Gladwell's book, The Outliers. The government and the unions seem intent on rigging the education system against children.

Meanwhile in New York, Governor Cuomo is ready to sign EMERGENCY legislation to prevent government teacher's evaluation scores from becoming public knowledge, in spite of the fact that they are paid by the public.

Cuomo and the state's powerful teachers' unions have tried to limit the evaluations' release to parents of children in a teacher's class, without further dissemination. The bill also would prevent parents from seeing the evaluations of teachers they might want to avoid in future years, which could be more useful to parents than seeing an evaluation of their child's current teacher, who they can't change.

Of course they can't. Unions want to protect poorly performing teachers from the consequences of their performance. Parental involvement in education improves childhood learning; but the government school system is rigged to deny parents meaningful influence. But any attempt to give parents a voice in the system will be vigorously opposed by the government employees unions.

I think widespread vouchers and privatization of the government run school system is the fastest way to fix education in the United States. But government run schools can work. In San Diego, we often hear of the Poway school system being highly desirable. In San Francisco, a series of reforms that give parents more choice and principals more authority, including budgeting and hiring, has greatly improved schools there. San Diego schools could vastly improve, by imitating reforms that have worked elsewhere and reducing non-teaching staff size.

Promises, Promises

Governor Jerry Brown's budget promises to cut public education by $4.8 billion if his tax increases aren't passed next November. Promises, promises. That we could get some cuts in the bloated state educracy would be welcome indeed. The California school system is not performing that well, despite spending about $8,452 per pupil per year, although I think that number is low, it is the official state budget number from 2009-2010. The shock of some budget cuts would be welcome as it might force us to evaluate why we allow the government a near monopoly in delivering education.

In a previous post on Douglas County, CO I laid out why outsourcing public education at 75 cents on the dollar would still save the state money.

Let's look at the situation in California. According to the state of California's data, there is a total of approximately $50 billion spent on K-12 education. (I am approximating, because the exact total seems a little squishy depending on the source.) This results in per pupil spending of $8452 per year. A voucher to parents of about $6300 would save the state $2100 per pupil. If only one million of the approximately 5.5 to 6 million students, the state could save $2.1 billion dollars. The more parents take advantage of the program, the more the state saves. At the state level these kinds of savings shouldn't be ignored. It might have the additional impetus of encouraging a mass exodus from failing public schools. I also note that in the review of literature for this article that only 61% of spending in California's schools goes to classroom education. That means the schools have an overhead rate of 63%. It seems obvious that parents could get a more value from 75 cents of every education dollar than they get from the public system.

[ed. note: For those doing the math the overhead rate is calculated by taking the percent of dollars not spent in the classroom divided by the percent actually spent on the classroom (like teacher's salaries), 39%/61% = .639 or 64%, a ridiculously high overhead rate.]

Defeating the tax hikes should be the number one priority of the tea party movement in California this year. Gerrymandering has essentially neutered partisan politics, but large numbers of Democrats seem willing to vote for the conservative position on ballot measures, including voting against tax increases and against gay marriage in 2008, while Obama was sweeping the state. I think the public instinctively knows two things. First, California taxes are too high. Second, when politicians threaten favored programs if they don't get their way on tax cuts, they are bluffing.

Rethinking Public Education

I have always been a supporter of a voucher system to improve the performance of education for those afflicted with the ills of the inner city school system. Now, a fairly wealthy county in Colorado provides another compelling reason for providing vouchers to parents to spend on educating their youth, saving money. From the WSJ:

Nationally, most voucher programs are run by states. Qualified students receive a voucher that is accepted as full payment at local private schools.

Douglas County does it differently, acting as middleman between state and student—and taking a cut. The state sends the district $6,100 per pupil; the district forwards 75% to each voucher recipient and keeps the rest. Even after administrative costs, the district expects to make what amounts to a profit of $400,000 this year on the 500 students in its pilot program.

Of course, there are complaints from the usual suspects. Predictably the ACLU is arguing against the horror of allowing parents to use the money to pay for religious schools. Interestingly, parents who have kept their kids in public schools are upset.

Opponents, however, fear kids in traditional public schools will suffer. If a high school loses 10 freshmen to vouchers, for instance, it loses more than $50,000. In response, the principal may lay off a math teacher and distribute his students among other instructors, raising class size. The district says it will help the hardest-hit schools, but acknowledges some class sizes may increase.

That enrages parent Cindy Barnard, who says it isn't fair that her son's education in public schools may be diminished so her neighbors can use tax dollars to pay private-school tuition.

What I don't understand is why she should complain, because there will be money left over for her kids education under this plan, as the school system is already making an extra $400K this year.

This could result in huge savings. Let's look at the situation in California. According to the state of California's data, there is a total of approximately $50 billion spent on K-12 education. (I am approximating, because the exact total seems a little squishy depending on the source.) This results in per pupil spending of $8452 per year. A voucher to parents of about $6300 would save the state $2100 per pupil. If only one million of the approximately 5.5 to 6 million students, the state could save $2.1 billion dollars. The more parents take advantage of the program, the more the state saves. At the state level these kinds of savings shouldn't be ignored. It might have the additional impetus of encouraging a mass exodus from failing public schools. I also note that in the review of literature for this article that only 61% of spending in California's schools goes to classroom education. That means the schools have an overhead rate of 63%. It seems obvious that parents could get a more value from 75 cents of every education dollar than they get from the public system.

Cost savings and better education? A massive voucher program for every child in school seems like an easy way to save.