School Choice to Cure Nevada Education

Sean Whaley over at the Nevada News Bureau reports that Gov. Sandoval will propose an amendment to the Nevada State constitution to allow public education funds to be used for school choice, including religious schools.  No action by government as regards education is better calculated to improve education while empowering the people.  I had my doubts about Sandoval in the primaries and was pretty much forced to vote for him in the general election because his opponent was Harry Reid's little boy, Rory, but this move by Sandoval makes me want to stand up and cheer.

Here in Nevada we spend about $8,300.00 per pupil on education each year K-12 - it is probably less per pupil in the earlier grades and more per pupil later on.  In comparison, the average per year tuition at a Catholic elementary school is about $3,400.00 per year; for secondary school it runs to $8,200.00.  Given that the average public school expenditure is higher than the most expensive part of Catholic education, we can see that Catholic schools cost less and are more efficient than public schools.  But what about results?  Does the more lavish expenditure in the public school system produce a better product?  Hardly.

Catholic schools graduate more than 99% of their students, and sent nearly 85% of them on to college, according to the National Catholic Education Association.  Meanwhile, here in Nevada, we graduate only a bit more than 47% of our kids.  And don't think that Catholic schools only rake off the cream of the crop thus making themselves look better - Catholic schools take in all sorts of poor and otherwise disadvantaged kids.  But even if you want to believe that Catholic schools are choosey and thus make life easier for themselves, that doesn't explain a discrepancy of 52 percentage points in graduation rates.  Differences in the type of kids might make for a few percentage points difference in graduation rates, but can't account for absolute success for Catholic schools and abysmal failure for Nevada public schools.  The answer, then, isn't that we aren't spending enough money, nor is our population one of kids just too stupid to graduate.  The answer must be elsewhere.

And the answer is that the system doesn't work.  Kids want to learn because kids are just like that: they want to know what to do in the world and look to people to tell them what they need to know. Of course kids can be stubborn in school and make life all kinds of miserable for teachers, but kids have been like that since the very first time a parent send a child off to learn his letters outside the home.  And the teachers want to teach:  my step-daughter is a Nevada public school teacher and her whole desire is that the kids learn.  With kids who want to learn and teachers who want to teach, everything should be manageable.  But we still fail because the education system we've built up doesn't allow for success.

There is just so much wrong with the education system.  We have far too many administrators:  there are 37,000 employees of the Clark County School District according to District data.  In 2006, there were about 14,500 teachers in the district.  While the number of teachers may have increased from 2006 until today, we have to assume that at least 50% of the District staff is doing something other than teaching kids.  We have far too many rules which make it difficult to remove incompetent teachers.  We do not reward the good teachers nearly as much as we should.  We clog up the school year with assessment tests (some of this is federally mandated, of course).  We don't discipline the kids firmly enough, nor do we properly hold parents accountable for bad behavior from their kids.  All these problems could be fixed except for one thing:  the teachers' union doesn't want it fixed.  A group of corrupt, ossified hacks running the union ensures that no internal efforts to fix the problem goes forward.  And this for the simple reason that if we, say, got rid of the bad teachers it would be that many fewer dues-paying teachers, and that means less campaign donations to politics, and that means it can't be done.

And, so, the solution is to break the power of the union by taking away the education monopoly enjoyed by the public school system.  By allowing State funds to go to whatever school is out there, pressure will be put on the public school system to either improve, or die.  Right now, the private schools don't really provide competition because most parents, already taxed to pay for the public schools, simply lack the additional money necessary to send their kids to private schools. But if we, say, allowed a parent to take a child out of the public school and attached half the per-pupil public funding to the transferred child, just about any parent could afford some sort of private education - and by taking only half the per-pupil money out, we actually increase the amount of money available to educate the remaining kids.  That  money, in turn, could be used to pay the good teachers more, improve school facilities, provide books, etc.

For far too long we have allowed an education bureaucracy to determine what will happen in education.  This bureaucracy, over time, completely lost sight of the reason for it's existence:  to educate kids.  From year to year we have seen our education results grow ever worse, in spite of plan after plan to fix it, and after lavishing taxpayer dollars upon the system.  We cannot rely upon the broken education system to fix itself.  We also can't rely upon the politicians in Carson City to fix it.  Not only did they go right along with the education bureaucracy in wrecking education, they also are deathly afraid of crossing the teachers' union.  The only way we can fix this is if we, the people, take charge - and that can only happen if we are allowed to take the money and the kids out of the failed system, and put it in to other education options.  This is not a call to dismantle public education, but a call to force reform upon it by threatening it with extinction unless it changes. 

An educated population is the key both to the preservation of American liberty as well as the prosperity of the United States.  Fixing our broken education system is thus a matter paramount importance.  Governor Sandoval's proposal will allow us to start fixing it and we should press this with determination.  Nothing else will do, and our future is at stake.  So, let's get to work.