Protecting Our Prosperity by Embracing Competition
Our Founding Fathers believed in a civic education for our children, preparing them for the requirements of self-government. The founders thought this public education was fundamental to the future prosperity of America. They were right. Jefferson wrote that his aim for a public education system was to ensure that all children could become “worthy and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens.” In advocating for a civic education, Noah Webster wrote that its purpose was to “promote unity and create a sense of national spirit.” Madison, perhaps most succinctly espousing the crucial purpose of public education, wrote “the diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.” How disappointed these men would be to see how poorly and unfaithfully we have performed our duty to safeguard liberty in the area of public education. Over the past 40 years, we’ve simply failed.
If the education of a society is determined by how well it transmits true and time-honored values from generation to generation as the former US Secretary of Education, William J. Bennett has suggested, we have some serious character flaws to address. A lot of public school testing data has shown us just how little students know about our collective past. Without an understanding of the unifying ideals of freedom and equality that unite us as Americans, how can the next generation comprehend our nation’s greatness? We, as Americans, are at our greatest when we celebrate our common (shared) principles. Peoples from all over the globe have been attracted to America because they saw a country bound together not by a common ethnicity, but by loyalty to a principle. Our founding fathers understood that the education of our children is one of our civilization’s most critical tasks. We are failing and liberty is in jeopardy as a result. We must not allow a failing system to remain insitu. We must reclaim the public institution of education. It is our civic obligation. What’s more, from a purely pragmatic perspective, successful public schools are an economic necessity. Any growing and prospering community, whether local, regional or national, requires excellent public schools.
The current K-12 system is not an American one. It has become an autocratic, anti-competitive bureaucracy of the highest order. In a country founded uniquely upon the simple yet powerful ideal of “We the People,” we must return the power of education back to the people. The current business model must change. It is the only way we can remain competitive in the world. Every liberal, every public education lobbyist, every education union leader and incumbent education apologist will claim our problem is simply a matter of funding. This is not only a ridiculous and fatigued hypothesis; it is patently false based on decades of empirical data. The scientific evidence is overwhelming. There is no correlation between spending and educational achievement. In fact, the US spends more on education than any other nation in the world. Since 1960, federal spending on education has more than tripled while our aptitude has remained constant (using standard test scores).
Perhaps our biggest failure has been allowing the public education system to become a de facto function of the federal government. Since when does education power rest with the feds? The US Constitution does not authorize the federal government to control, manage or finance education. It wasn’t until the Carter Administration that we even had a Department of Education. The current White House Administration is encouraging (actually bribing) states to adopt a national education standard. In my view, nothing could be more counter productive than states, counties, communities, teachers and parents ceding their control and responsibilities to a centralized, bureaucratic, “standardized” department in Washington, DC. By the way, what happened to federalism? How did the constitution get completely ignored while the feds usurped the states’ rights to establish standards, tests and curriculum? There has been no public debate. There has been no vote in Congress. Not only is the process an assault on our founding principle of federalism, it is destined to fail because it ignores the customer in the equation. In a free market system, the schools would answer to the parents for the quality of the product. In the present scenario, the states have to answer to the federal government - devoting time and resources to fill out federal grant applications versus providing a better education to our children.
When public education works well, and it does in many places in our country, there are some important common denominators. The best and most productive schools are a result of local people, local leadership, community commitment and parental values. These “high performance” schools are not a result of federal tutelage. What makes an effective school? According to Ron Edmonds, formerly the Director of Urban Studies at Harvard, there are seven attributes:
1) Clear School Mission
2) High Expectation for Success
3) Instructional Leadership
4) Frequent Monitoring of Student Progress
5) Student Time On-Task
6) Safe and Orderly Environment
7) Home – School Relations
So, if we really want our public schools to work well, what should we do? The answer is simple. Take a look at what works in our business economy. Centralized, top-down, multi-layered management is not the answer. High performance companies move fast, are responsive to their customers and continually improve efficiency. Successful businesses empower their employees to solve customer problems at the local level because they understand that customers are the reason the company exists. If we want to dramatically improve our public education system, we must being the forces of competition to work in the education industry. Schools and school districts need to assure local control, empower parents, invite new and different people into school management and let good old fashioned competition drive out the weak, poorly performing and/or failing schools. We need to let all schools compete for tax-payer dollars. We need to de-construct the government-run monopoly. In a free market system, those who produce goods and services are ultimately answerable to the consumer. So it must be in our education system. No one cares more about the future of a child than his/her parent. We must give parents the power to choose and teachers the power to teach.
The Bill of Rights, specifically in the Tenth Amendment, limits the powers of the federal government by ensuring that states retain all powers not specifically delegated to the feds. This protects our liberties. It ensures the most vital and personal issues remain close to home. As citizens of the republic, we have an obligation to restrict federal power and to preserve a system of “We the People.” If we want to reverse the steady slide in our public education of the past 40 years, we need to heed the words of Madison, Jefferson and Webster. We need to take responsibility for the character of our society and for our competiveness in the world. We must adopt a system of accountability to measure the results of students, teachers and principals. Parents must be given the choice to send their children to schools they know will provide the best value. Our future prosperity and our liberty are at stake…and they are inextricably linked.
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