Stupid in America: How We Are Cheating Our Kids:
Education reformers like Kevin Chavous have a message for these parents: If you only knew.Even though people in the suburbs might think their schools are great, Chavous says, “They’re not. That’s the thing and the test scores show that.”
Chavous and many other education professionals say Americans don’t know that their public schools, on the whole, just aren’t that good. Because without competition, parents don’t know what their kids might have had.
And while many people say, “We need to spend more money on our schools,” there actually isn’t a link between spending and student achievement.
John Stossel, the effervescent investigative journalist, put together yet another one of his trademark exposés — this time on public schools. Reminiscent to Penn & Teller’s exploits on their hit Showtime show, Stossel peppers his findings with interviews from all the players involved in the schooling industry, including teacher’s unions, administrators and both foreign and domestic students. Have a question regarding international test scores? Well, his uncanny “as-a-matter-of-fact” approach not only provides various metrics comparing scores, but also the often overlooked monetary aspects involved in operating schools and financing teachers. Readers of Mises.org will never guess what he discovered. (Video clips: 1 2 3 – ABC’s message board)
Addendum: a number of the comments have mentioned that Stossel did in fact promote “vouchers.” Unfortunately behind the smoke-and-mirrors, behind the rhetoric of independence and of choice – vouchers are yet another welfare entitlement scheme shrouded behind a rubric of free-market principles. For more on this tomfoolery: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
{ 28 comments }
I’m a jackass, I totally forgot to program my MCE to record this. Anyone have it to “share” digitally?
The lack of competition within the public school system is precisely the cause of its imperfections. Compare, for example, the quality of health care in the U.S. with quality of education in the U.S. Or consider why serious athletes want to compete against others who are better than they. The value of competition is also an important reason for supporting states rights, as I believe Supreme Court candidate Samuel Alito does. In addition to being consisent with what the founders meant in the Constitution about the relative powers of the federal government and the state governments, they allow states to compete with each other and hence the virtues of competition permit discovery and innovation to enhance the quality of the alternatives. The same can be said for competition among local governments. Given that the U.S. is at the top among economies in the world (Japan and Germany being second and third), we really have no idea of what our standard of living would be if there were more competition in every aspect of life. Without competition, you really don’t know how good the alternatives would have been. And as Yale Brozen so convincingly argued, the only source of monopoly is government.
Yet competition, though rarely emphasized or even acknowledged, is a consequence of cooperation in that all competitors are competing to cooperate with — i.e., keep or get the business of — customers, which, in a truly free society, would be no less true of education than it is of food, shelter, clothing, transportation, healthcare, or any other good.
With every passing day, however, coercion trumps cooperation, which is to say that with every passing day, state power trumps social power. And down, down, down does society go in a spiral of debt, denial, delusion, and deceit that, barring divine intervention, can only end in disaster:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/douglas/douglas12.html
Unfortunately, Stossel throws his support to vouchers, without even mentioning how that undermines private education. And not a word about the homeschooling revolution.
Too bad he couldn’t've spared a few moments to speak with any of the radical critics of America’s education system: John Taylor Gatto, Pat Farenga, Raymond Moore, Joel Spring, Sheldon Richman, Linda Schrock Taylor etc. Instead he sticks to fairly conventional thinkers, all of whom think that State involvement with education can be fixed.
I watched only the first bit there but, sure enough, it was all about vouchers, which is the surest path to smashing the best sector of American education. It’s converting a system that is part free and part socialist into one that is universally interventionist. I’m sure the rest is better though.
Sadly, even without vouchers private schools are already succumbing to the pressure to follow state and federal laws, regulations, and guidelines.
Government reach into public AND private education is sweeping. For example, the No Child Left Behind act allows for private schools to use NCLB funds.
The National Catholic Educational Association website explains:
“Under ESEA programs, services are provided to students and teachers– no money is channeled to the schools. Consequently, Catholic school students and personnel are legally permitted to participate in ESEA programs without compromising First Amendment issues regarding separation of church and state.
To ensure that private school students, teachers, and other personnel have every opportunity to participate in federal education programs for which they are eligible, private school officials should contact their local public school district and establish a positive, productive working relationship with the LEA federal programs coordinator.”
If you search google for “private schools that participate in NCLB” you’ll find hundreds of private schools taking federal money.
There’s a nice cartoon by Russmo that shows how Vouchers are not the answer.
Check it out on my blog at:
http://www.mrderrick.com/blog/?p=26
or just view the cartoon at:
http://www.mrderrick.com/blog/images/school_vouchers.gif
Is it ok to post to BitTorrent copies of the Stossel’s special like this one?
http://www.torrentportal.com/details/303424/
You can also listen to the Philip Dru and Weekend Interview Show archives for more on the NCLB or how private schools are being absorbed into the state through vouchers and federal funds.
Despite the pro-voucher stuff, I thought it was amazing any mainstream network would let Stossel on the air exposing the teacher unions by simply showing them in action. It was a big contrast to the pro-government/pro-union propaganda you see on the Merrow Report and PBS in general.
I’ve been reading Stossel’s work for about a year now, great stuff. I can’t believe someone at ABC hasn’t had him taken out yet.
Fine comments…accuraate and reasonable
But…How do you get the message to lawmakers,administrators,parents and students ???
prehaps the “students themselves” can take on the responsibility of CHANGE…ONE CAN ONLY HOPE !
Bob K.
Bob,
I think the message will fall on deaf ears for “lawmakers” and “administrators”.
I think Bastiat summed it up succinctly in 1848:
Changes in education just merely reflect the ideology of the political party in power (i.e.: vouchers, charter schools, NCLB, etc.).
The “lawmakers” will always want to control education. In fact, there is an “Office of Non-Public Education” within the US Department of Education that has a mission statement that states “Our mission is to represent the interests, activities and needs of the private elementary and secondary school community at the U.S. Department and to consult with the private school community on the participation of students and teachers in programs and initiatives of U.S. Department of Education.”
So, I think the best hope is to get the message out to parents and push for tax credits for private education. However with more private schools taking federal money, tax credits might be undermined as well.
Hmm…maybe the answer is homeschooling! As the homeschooling movement grows a “message” will certainly be sent.
The best line of the show was the school administrator saying, “Competition is not for humans,” Or something along those lines. The shots of the union drones were pretty frightening as well.
I saw Stossel on the Colbert Report the other night. He blasted the government monopoly in education but then suggested that there are good government monopolies, for example in money.
Great post. I think one of the big problems with getting people to take the more radical critiques of public education seriously is that most people think the public schools are pretty good and give most students a pretty good education. That especially happens when you talk to someone who went to a pretty good (relatively speaking) public school and thinks it gave them a fine education. Non-libertarians in the education debate tend to think that libertarians have lost perspective and have an unrealistic idea of how bad public schools are. Stossel’s mainstream, so messages like his may be a good start.
Great program. Like others on here, I think a completely free market is the optimal solution. However, I would support vouchers as a better system than our current system. I mean, think about grocery stores. If offered a choice, would you rather be assigned a public grocery store, or would you like private grocery stores plus food stamps for some people? The smaller the number of food stamps, the closer we are to a free market.
So, my order of preference, from worst to best, is:
The status quo
Voucher program at federal level
Voucher program at state level
Voucher program at county level
No vouchers or public schools
Once you have a voucher system, you no longer need to argue that competition would make the school system better; adopting the voucher system means we already won that issue. All we have to do at that point is argue that our welfare state is too big (i.e. we have too many vouchers). So, we say to our opponents: How about the vouchers only go to those “in need”? That would cut government spending. Also, instead of $3000, how about $1000? $500? $50? $0? If we can’t get freedom right away, I say we try to get it step by step…
The problem with vouchers is that they will lead to all kinds of riff-raff getting into the private schools, mucking up the atmosphere that was formerly enjoyed by the more civilized families’ children.
(And, no, I’m NOT being sarcastic.)
Keith G. Derrick:
Tax credits, especially of the refundable variety, are government giveaways that would be used to control private education as much as direct vouchers. (Tax *deductions*, on the other hand, actually cut taxes and are less prone to be manipulated to achieve specific State-sought effects.)
We can’t look to the State to help fix education. What we need is to get the State out of the business of learning. That’s the simple and correct message that needs to be put out there. All that other stuff — charter schools etc. — is diversion that wastes the energy of good people and creates false hope that the State is reformable.
Dewaine:
I wouldn’t put it so undiplomatically as you, but you’re certainly onto something. The voucher schemes, such as they’re promoted (and, in a few urban underclass areas, implemented), deny private schools the authority to select their own admissions.
Aside from denying students and their families the basic human right of freedom of association, such a policy makes it impossible to have schools that effectively specialize in teaching particular kinds of students, and provides a disincentive for students and their families to get their acts together to become eligible for a greater variety of schools.
The frightening thing is that voucher boosters don’t even try to resist such controls. They all seem content to take whatever crumbs the State serves up. Not only is voucherism a catastrophic idea, but the whole movement behind it has the backbone of a jellyfish when it comes to fighting for freedom.
In India, the State has just decided that unaided private schools will have to reserve 25% of their seats for “underprivileged” students. One would think there is no private sector in India. Only Govt ventures run by private capital.
In another news, minister of social justice (yeah, we have that here) Meira Kumar has reportedly said that the government would be forced to enact laws to ensure reservation in the private sector, if the latter failed to institute job quotas voluntarily. What part of “voluntary” doesn’t she understand?
Charles Murray has a pretty good book called “What It Means to Be a Libertarian” that eloquently explains how a society comes to organize itself but the whole book wrecked by his transition plan, the centerpiece of which is his voucher chapter. The way he presents it, the federal government would spend hundreds of billions of dollars that it is not currently spending in order to “introduce competition” to the school system. It is really a plan for complete nationalization, and in the name of liberty. It is far worse than anything Friedman ever called for. At minimum, and as a general rule, a libertarian transition plan to anything should not involve increasing government control over anything.
R.P. McCosker:
Point well taken on the tax credit issue. However, are tax credits a transfer program for those who actually pay taxes? It certainly is for those who don’t? Just a thought.
The problem is with the word, “education.” At least since Dewey the purpose of govt schools has been to provide docile labor for the local job market which is why (it is said) that a third of govt school teachers send their children to private schools.
The USofA is self segregation on the basis of intelligence and ambition into a worker class and a leader class. Thanks to the computer revolution, we no longer need a large middle class. We need wage slaves to serve the machines.
Vouchers are a disaster.
First, they depend upon having ones money taken _first_, they given back in some small quantity.
The private schools will see another revenue stream that they don’t have to work for.
Once money is being provided “by” government, government will ensure that it “is spent wisely”, thereby taking over the private schools with micromanagement just as has been done to the public schools.
“You have vouchers, the only reason you would want to homeschool is if you are some kind of deviant.” Expect an expansion of the war on homeschooling, this time backed up by the private schools who, again, know which side of their bread the butter is on.
I am very pessimistic toward vouchers for these practical reasons, beyond the principle that government must not tell me what to do when I harm no one.
Oh, there’s another tactic. Defining “home schooling” as child abuse. The meme is already being spread, by the mass media portraying home schooled kids as socially inept, ignorant, “uneducated in anything other than the bible”, or just plain neglected. Catch the first few minutes of _Mean Girls_ for a perfect example.
As others here have already written, I also think vouchers are being used, and will continued to be used to bring the private education industry under the control of the state- this is already happening.
To my mind, the great hope for destroying the state monopoly on education may be virtual home schools, either interactive across the web, or simply run in the home on the ever more sophisticated software- virtual teachers. I can envisage a group of neighbors bringing their children of like age together in a home with. One or two parents could supervise the group as they learn together on the computers.
However, Curt Howland does make an important point- homeschooling is under intense attack by the state, and mental/developmental child abuse is the tool being used. The leftists in our society intensely despise homeschooling, and many on the right don’t trust it.
That should have read “I can envisage a group of neighbors bringing their children of like age together in a home with the learning occurring on computers directed by software.”
Yancy, thank you for reinforcing what I was trying to say. If I may, tt’s not “like age”, it’s “like interests”. I know that’s really what you were trying to say, but it’s important to state explicitly that grouping children by age is artificial. It is one of the ways used by the education bureaucracy to crush the individual.
One of the reasons the “one room schoolhouse” works so amazingly well is that, once the quicker kids are finished, they then tutor the slower kids. If that happens to be younger tutoring older, that’s fine too, and is completely flexible by subject. Why can’t a student be “grade 3″ in math, “grade 4″ in reading, “grade 2″ in grammar (trust me, reading well does not equate to being able to spell. I’m a case in point!) &etc, yet there be NO STIGMA to that occurrence? We expect physical development to be individual in nature, mental development no less so.
I finally got to watch the 20/20 segment in question. (thank you Bittorrent) While he indeed does come down entirely on the side of vouchers, ignoring home- and non-schooling, he does allow the fact that vouchers would break the teachers union to become clear.
That would indeed be one really big step forward. It’s only a partial answer, but it would be a fantastically BIG step on the way to Separation of School and State.
To see what problems k-12 vouchers can cause, look at education at the university level. The national and state governments put many restrictions on these schools. Out of all the colleges and universities in the US, how many don’t accept government funding? Maybe about 5, maybe a few more. (I would like to put togethor a list if any of you can think of all of them.)
I believe the best way to give people alternatives is to fight government spending on education (much of it at the local level). This will allow parents to more easily afford alternatives. My school city spends over $10,000 per student per year, much of it is in tearing down sutable buildings and building new ones. They claim it is going to save money in the long run. State funded education isn’t going to go away until enough people remove their children from the state schools. If there are vouchers in existence for use among the state funded schools, it is better than what we have now, a little better. But I don’t want them going to private schools, those that can’t afford the private schools could be funded by a private scholarship system.
Too bad no one reminded the viewers that schooling is not equivalent to education. Schooling is formal education, and formal education is only one facet of education. The distinction used to be made because education is something you get by living, and the extent of your education is limited by your pursuit of it.
After 40 years on this planet, i am finally getting an exposure to Aristotelian logic via my private studies of material on the internet. And i came upon it only through my interest in economics. Does that seem right to you that a person can go through public school and five years of science and engineering at college and never obtain a grounding in or an appreciation for such an important area of knowledge? Whatever schooling is, Charles is right, it is not education.
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