A grassroots organization of Providence area teenagers, Young Voices, recently came out with a study on the state of the city's public schools. The group surveyed 1,700 students, about a fifth of the city's high school population, and 149 teachers. A consultant was hired to help interpret the results, which showed that only 30 percent of student respondents rated teachers as "motivating." Some of what students heard from their instructors included "Why don't you just drop out?" and "I don't care if you graduate - I still get paid."
Information Works!, a database created by the Rhode Island Department of Education and the University of Rhode Island, serves as the official state report card of Rhode Island's public education system. A letter from Education Commissioner Peter McWalters opens the 2008 report, which touts improvements in math and reading proficiency as measured by state standardized tests.
Perhaps Mr. McWalters knows something I don't, but little in the data he presented in the letter gives cause for celebration. The reading proficiency of third graders did improve by nine points - from 51 to 60 percent! Eighth grade math proficiency stayed at 48 percent. Eleventh grade test results were equally discomforting. In fact, not one grade passed the 70 percent threshold in either math or reading.
Something is definitely wrong with Rhode Island's public schools, but the problem neither begins nor ends here. America's public education system is severely flawed and in need of comprehensive reform. Yet state bureaucrats and entrenched special interests, primarily teachers' unions, continue to do everything in their power to prevent meaningful change.
They portray themselves as selfless crusaders for student welfare, but simultaneously stand in the way of initiatives to simplify procedures for firing bad teachers, introduce merit-based pay to reward effective teachers and allow per-pupil education spending to be attached to students instead of schools through voucher and scholarship programs. A 1996 study by Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby, "How Teacher's Unions Affect Education Production," concluded that unionization raised dropout rates by 2.3 percent.Whereas higher teacher pay and lower student-teacher ratios had a discernable effect in reducing dropout rates in nonunionized schools, the same was not true for their unionized counterparts.
School choice through vouchers is perhaps the most important of the reform initiatives. Per pupil spending by state governments has skyrocketed. New York spends upwards of $20,000 per pupil, with the cost for Washington, D.C., reaching almost $25,000. Rhode Island, according to U.S. census data, was already spending $10,000 per pupil back in 2004.While officially considered per-pupil spending, the money is actually attached to schools, not students. That is the main reason why costs keep rising, independent of any improvement in student performance.
Vouchers correct this problem by making the money follow the students. Schools, public and private, would be forced to compete. Schools with severe personnel problems, like those the Youth Voices respondents complained about, would go out of business.
Competition yields efficiency and lower costs. Children with legitimate special needs could attend schools that specialize in learning disabilities. Gifted children could attend high-quality prep schools. Vouchers level the playing field for minority and low-income students who are currently locked into broken inner city public schools by inflexible and convoluted school board regulations. Economist Carlisle Moody of the Virginia Institute for Public Policy estimated in a 2003 report that Virginia taxpayers spent $6,400 to educate one child in the public school system, even though tuition at the average state private school
costed $4,500.
What about charter schools? They are public schools, but with greater independence in developing curricula and dealing with personnel than the current system. Why not let parents save financially and send their children to places where teachers are incentivized to experiment and take risks?
President Obama has no problem with choice when it comes to his two daughters. After moving to Washington, the first family sent both to an elite private school. Since D.C. public schools are among the worst-performing and costliest in the country, his decision is understandable. Yet in a speech last year to the American Federation of Teachers, one of the country's two largest teachers' unions, Obama said, "We need to focus on fixing and improving our public schools; not throwing our hands up and walking away from them." Talk about a study in hypocrisy.
The situation in Rhode Island is rather bleak. It has the third-weakest charter school law in the country according to the Center for Education Reform. Its one significant voucher-like program is a corporate tax credit, capped at $1 million, which funds a maximum of 10,000 private school scholarships for children. State education guidelines emphasize centralized monitoring, arbitrary standards and flawed assumptions about student performance rates. As Newt Gingrich would say, real change requires real change. Let's sideline the special interests, really put students first and push for wide-ranging school choice for Rhode Island families.
Boris Ryvkin '09 is a political science and economics concentrator from New York City. He can be reached at boris_ryvkin (at) brown.edu.
