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What $17.4 Billion
Can't Buy (A Good Education)
By
Matthew J. Brouillette
There are few things in Pennsylvania that $17,438,840,000 cannot buy. Yet in
signing the 2003-04 Budget, Governor Rendell told Pennsylvanians that $10,400
average per-pupil revenue is simply not enough to adequately educate
Pennsylvania's children.
In an effort to regain political leverage at the bargaining table with the
General Assembly, Governor Rendell line-item vetoed the $4 billion basic
education subsidy stating that we must “significantly increase the insufficient
amount the Commonwealth contributes to the education of our children.”
Unfortunately, Governor Rendell's belief that more dollars will produce more
scholars is not supported by the ever-growing body of evidence that reveals
little to no correlation between increased spending and improved academic
achievement.
Today, Pennsylvania spends more per student than 47 states and the District of
Columbia, when adjusted for the cost of living. Indeed, public school
expenditures in Pennsylvania increased more than 131 percent faster than the
rate of inflation over the past seven years.
Yet despite generous infusions of taxpayer cash, the Class of 2003 still placed
46th out of 50 states and the District of Columbia on the SAT college entrance
exam. On the state's academic achievement test, more than 1 out of 2 seniors
scored so low on the math portion that they were eligible to take it again,
while 41 percent and 30 percent of test takers scored so low on the reading and
writing portions, respectively, that they also qualified to retake the test.
In fact, between 2000 and 2001, Pennsylvania experienced a 10 percent increase
in the number of school districts spending above the average state per-pupil
expenditure and scoring below the average state test results. While 99
districts share this unflattering distinction, there are 129 school districts in
the state with below-average per-pupil adjusted spending and above-average state
test results. So much for the theory that better education can be bought.
But Governor Rendell plans to improve our schools' performance by “targeting
resources to programs that we all know will improve student achievement.”
Apparently, the reading, writing, and arithmetic programs taxpayers have been
funding for years are well-known failures.
One program at the top of Governor Rendell's wish list is expanded kindergarten
and preschool. His support for the expansion of government's role in these
areas is based on the notion that our children are not ready to learn when they
enter school. In reality, however, our children do quite well in their early
years of schooling. Sadly, their academic performance only starts to decline
the longer they stay in public schools.
Indeed, Mr. Rendell's wishful thinking is as nonsensical as the Commonwealth
giving an under-performing construction firm more money to remodel the first
floor of the Governor's mansion after they already completed a sub-par job on
the second and third floors. Yet the Governor wants us to believe that
improving the “second and third floors” of Pennsylvania's K-12 school system can
only occur by paying the same inept carpenter significantly more money to
remodel the first floor of kindergarten and preschool.
Real, long-term solutions to the high cost and poor performance in our public
schools will require more than just shifting and increasing school taxes and
tinkering with old and creating new programs. Dramatic improvements in public
education in Pennsylvania will occur only when parents can start choosing their
children's schools and schools start competing.
After all, it is choice for consumers and competition among providers that
incessantly spurs innovation and improves our quality of life on a daily basis.
It is the marketplace--not government control and manipulation--that has
provided the world with everything good from desktop computers to life-saving
medicines. In education, it will be parents who can exercise choice among
competing schools that will finally fuel the engine that drives the continuous
quality improvements that currently elude Pennsylvania's public school system
today.
Pennsylvania has already tried--and failed--to buy better education for our
children. Instead of doing more of the same and expecting a different outcome,
Governor Rendell and the General Assembly should use this opportunity to
implement the proven and powerful incentives of parental choice and school
competition to improve the quality of life for Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania's
children.
# # #
Matthew J. Brouillette, a former teacher, is president of The Commonwealth
Foundation, a free-market public policy research and educational institute based
in Harrisburg. For more information, visit
www.CommonwealthFoundation.org.
(Editor’s note:
Kentucky is
largely in the same boat. Instead of throwing more money at a program that has
had very disappointing results, we need to become more creative. It’s time to
trust the judgment of parents and to put control back into their hands.)
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