The school year is almost over, but the year’s debate over education reform has only just begun.
President Obama, who has opted out of DC Public Schools by sending his children to Sidwell Friends, is trying to end funding for Washington D.C.’s Opportunity Scholarship Program, which provides scholarships to 1,600 low-income students to attend schools of their choice.
A similar 2011 attempt was blocked by Republican House Speaker John Boehner.
In contrast, last Wednesday Governor Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, announced his support for school choice before a group of Hispanic leaders at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C. “Imagine if your enterprise had a 25 percent to 50 percent failure rate in meeting its primary goal,” Romney said. “You would consider that a crisis. You would make changes, and fast. Because if you didn’t, you’d go out of business. But America’s public education establishment shows no sense of urgency. Instead, there is a fierce determination to keep things the way they are.”
And New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan, speaking at the Manhattan Institute‘s Alexander Hamilton dinner last week, cited society’s problems of crime, unemployment, homelessness and despair, and pointed to Catholic schools as “the one gritty institution that has shown to be effective in ameliorating these ills.” Although his schools have to struggle for every dime, he said, “we do it twice as good at half the price.”
The graduation rate for private schools averages between 98 percent and 99 percent for Catholic schools. But the graduation rate for public school children who started high school in 2006 was 75 percent in 2010, the latest year available. Data for 2011 will be announced next month.
Upward economic mobility is now more strongly tied to the quality and quantity of Americans’ education than at any time in history. While there have been large increases for spending for public education, many segments of American society still have low academic achievement. Schools are failing to give children the education they need, and American children lag behind their international counterparts on many standardized tests.
The key to economic mobility is to improve students’ academic performance, both in elementary and secondary school, so that they can embark upon and complete rigorous high-return college programs, or even vocationally oriented community college credentials.
With the importance of education to economic mobility, why don’t more parents send children to schools of their choice? One reason is that they cannot afford to do so.
Vouchers are opposed by public school teachers unions, which spend large sums lobbying against school choice.
The National Education Association, the largest teachers union at 3 million members, and the American Federation of Teachers, with its 1.5 million members, make a vociferous case against vouchers. Required filings of these unions with the Labor Department reveal that these unions spent at least $127 million in 2011 on political activities and lobbying, and $110 million on contributions, gifts and grants.
Their officials are paid well to protect public school teachers’ interests. Union bosses are enriching themselves from taxpayer dollars, through union dues extracted from teachers’ paychecks. NEA President Dennis Van Roekel received 2011 compensation of $460,000, and Vice President Lily Eskelsen received $372,000.
Teachers unions have consistently used their power to protect poorly performing teachers and schools, to the detriment of children. They’re against merit pay, they make it difficult to fire incompetent teachers and they’re against allowing parents to choose the best schools for their children.
By sending his kids to Sidwell, the president hasn’t allowed teachers unions to control his educational choices. He should not be stopping other parents from having the same opportunity.
Examiner Columnist Diana Furchtgott-Roth ([email protected]), former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.
