These stats are not from some crack-riddled war zone in Watts. According to the California Educational Attainment Survey, these are the overall figures for the 5 million kids in California's public schools. The suburbs have better ratios than the ghettos and barrios, but no matter how you slice it, 3 in 5 California kids face dismal prospects in the Information Age -- and California companies have little hope of keeping up with world class competitors.
The story is virtually the same across the U.S. Student performance levels vary from state to state, but according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), California's public schools are close to the U.S. average. Less than 40% of 17-year-olds can read well enough to interpret a typical newspaper column. Less than a third of high-school seniors know in which half-century the Civil War occurred, what the Magna Carta or the Declaration of Independence was, or that Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation. Half of all seniors cannot answer the following question: "Which of the following is true about 87% of 10? (a) It is greater than 10, (b) It is less than 10, (c) It is equal to 10, (d) Can't tell." According to the NAEP, "Only 7% of the nation's 17-year-olds have the knowledge and skills needed to perform well in college-level science courses."
Even among our best students, performance has collapsed. Between 1972 and 1988, the absolute number of seniors scoring above 600 on the verbal SAT dropped 30%. In 1988 only 986 seniors in the entire country scored over 750 -- fewer than half as many as in 1981. In international rankings of top high-school students, America's advanced science students were near the bottom in chemistry and physics. In biology, calculus, and algebra, the top 5 percent of American high-school seniors came in dead last. In fact, our top math students scored below Japan's average 17-year-olds.
Only three reasons could possibly explain this human and economic catastrophe -- and the first two reasons don't hold up. The education establishment's favorite claim is that we don't spend enough. But check out the numbers. California spends $5250 per kid per year, right around the national average, and far more than the Japanese or Germans spend on their schools. In fact, after Sweden, our spending per student-year is the second highest in the world. After adjusting for inflation, real per student-year spending quadrupled since the mid-1950s and jumped 20% in the last decade. Forty-two percent of California's budget, or almost $30 billion a year, is poured into the public schools.
The other so-called explanation amounts to a clutter of "garbage in, garbage out" excuses. According to this view, TV, drugs, and shattered families have so battered American kids that they're nearly impossible to teach. The racist corollary of this argument says that because blacks and Hispanics comprise so much more of the student population than they used to, overall performance levels had to fall. In its most pernicious form, the racist argument says that most minority parents don't care enough about their kids to see that they get a decent education.
Responses to the "GIGO" arguments are simple enough. Yes, changes in American society probably have undermined student performance. But can these changes alone account for the 60% product failure rate of the public school system? In one generation, has the social "raw material" entering U.S. schools changed that much? Besides, why are "top" students from the "best" families doing so much worse than ever before?
Furthermore, although individual IQs do vary over a wide range, no study has ever detected a statistically significant difference between ethnic or racial groups. As for caring parents, there are lousy parents in all socio-economic strata. The hard truth is that, unlike prosperous whites who choose their kids' schools by buying homes in good school districts, impoverished minority parents have no choice and no control over their childrens' education.
Here we come to the heart of the matter. The American public school system has collapsed not because of too little money or too many dumb kids and uncaring parents, but because the system's design dooms it to failure. Remember, first and foremost, in every state the public school system is a legal monopoly. Unless you're willing and able to pay your taxes plus private tuition, your kids must, by law, attend the local public school. In effect, state law grants each school a monopoly over the kids in that neighborhood. Regardless of its educational quality, kids and parents have no choice but to accept whatever that school dishes out.
Now, what do we know about the inherent behavior of monopolies, public or private? Are they efficient? Innovative? Sensitive to individual customer needs? Or are they choked by bureaucracies that offer shoddy products at exorbitant prices? Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, put it best: "It's no surprise the our school system doesn't improve: It more resembles the communist economy than our own market economy."
In the end, if we're serious about fixing our schools, we'll have to stop modelling our public school system after Soviet agriculture. We'll have to transform our schools from being local branches of a vast state monopoly into self-managed, high-performance competitive enterprises. Only the discipline of the marketplace can get organizations to perform for their customers.
For Californians, the prospects for genuine reform have never been brighter. This November, the Parental School Choice Initiative will appear on the ballot. Its provision cut right to the heart of the monopoly. Under its terms, each student will be granted a scholarship worth at least 50% of current state per pupil spending. That scholarship, about $2600 for a kindergartner, will be redeemable at any qualified public, private, or parochial school. To be qualified, a school must satisfy the regulations currently in place for California's private schools.
Is $2600 enough to pay for a quality education? Although a small number of elite academies cost over $6000, the average tuition for private grade schools in California is well under $2600. How can private schools do for $2600 what the public schools can't do for $5200? You guessed it: bureaucracy. Less than 40% of state spending actually dribbles down to public school classrooms for teachers and books. The other 60% is skimmed off by the bureaucrats. In the Los Angeles Unified District, where 2000 teachers were recently laid off for lack of funds, more than 100 top bureaucrats in central administration make over $100,000 a year.
Since private schools must perform well if they're to attract students, virtually all their resources are spent on the front lines of education -- for teacher salaries and facilities. Unlike the monopoly's schools, competitive schools don't hire paper-shufflers with job titles like "Assistant Associate Director for Curriculum Development."
By rechannelling the flow of funds, the Parental School Choice Initiative will break the bureaucrats' stranglehold and give real consumer power to parents -- regardless of their income level. For the first time, kids and parents in blighted neighborhoods will be treated with the respect offered to paying customers everywhere. New private schools and reformed public schools will attract students away from failing public schools. As in every other competitive market, good producers will drive out the bad. Even uncaring parents will have no alternative but to send their kids to quality schools. Within five years, parental school choice will utterly transform an abysmal education system.
Choose choice. Failure for 60% of California's kids is much more than an mind-boggling fact. It's an inexcusable human tragedy.