There is a question that should be asked of anyone who wants to make a case for increasing the amount that we spend on public schools. Usually, they just say that the amount needed is ‘more than it is now’.
But how much more? There are states that spend around $6000 per student, and get the same results as states that spend three or four times as much. And what are those results? Well, let’s put it this way: no state is currently getting the equivalent of a passing score on any NAEP test.
At the same time, we have charter schools and private schools where nearly every student reaches a high level of proficiency, which cost half as much as regular public schools that fail to get even half of their students to the lowest level of proficiency.
Over the past 50 years nationwide, and over the past 20 years in New Hampshire, we’ve tripled per-student spending (adjusted for inflation), without seeing any measurable increases in student achievement. The data strongly suggest that we could triple it again, or quadruple it, or multiply it by ten, without changing the result.
This is a strong indication that (1) we don’t understand the problem, and (2) whatever the problem is, spending more — or even continuing to spend the same amount — isn’t the solution.
But if you think that increasing spending — or even preventing cuts in spending — will make a difference, here’s the question you need to be able to answer: How much would be enough?
That is, what level of per-student spending would be required to reach a specific goal, like 90% of students reaching basic proficiency in English and math? If $15,000 per student isn’t enough, would $20,000 do it? How about $40,000? Or $100,000?
In every industry where there is competition — where people have choices about who they will give their money to — companies are constantly looking for ways, not to charge more for the same thing, but to charge less for something better. They have to, if they want to keep their customers.
But for some reason, we think that schools should operate differently, that they should be insulated from the most powerful force for improvement ever discovered by man: competition.
Which raises another question: If a private school — even a religious private school — will likely do a better job of educating a particular student, with his particular strengths and weaknesses, than his local public school, for significantly less money, what reason could there possibly be not to send him there?
The alternative is to consciously spend more to get less, and to deliberately harm that student. This is what people are asking for when they demand that kids who are horribly under-performing at public schools stay there.
Spend more. Get less. Do harm. That, in a nutshell, is the case against tuitioning kids to private schools.
And how do those companies find ways to cut their costs while improving the quality of their products? They try new things! Things that they don’t know how to do. Things that might not work out as planned. And successful companies stay successful because their owners and employees and customers understand that setting aside a small slice of the pie in order to find ways to make the whole pie much bigger is not a drain on resources, or a waste of money. Quite the opposite.
That’s what charter schools are for: To try new things, so that our school system can make the same kinds of gains in productivity (producing better results at lower cost) that we’ve seen in virtually every other industry.
That’s what school choice programs are for: To find out what works for problem students, so we can take those lessons back and apply them in public schools.
Many people seem to think that a dollar spent on a charter school or a private school is a dollar lost, or drained away, or wasted. But that’s the wrong way to look at it. Each of those dollars is a seed, some of which will grow into knowledge that will change our understanding of education in a way that ends up benefitting all students everywhere.
But only if we’re smart enough to plant them.
