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The accusation that school choice proponents want to dismantle or "privatize" public education is a good sound bite and has served the anti-choice Left very well.  But when weighed by the evidence — their own evidence — it does not hold.

Bulletin Board

  • Attend the Civitas Institute’s Free Market Academy on Thursday, June 21 from 7:00 to 9:00 pm at the Edenton Public Safety Building in Edenton, NC. This workshop is designed to equip attendees with a better understanding of why the most compelling case for free enterprise is not merely economic efficiency, but rather its consistency with moral principles.  Register online at http://www.nccivitas.org/events/ or call 919-834-2099.
  • The Civitas campaign training program is focused on giving participants the knowledge and practical skills they will need to build a winning campaign from the ground up. Whether you are interested in managing a campaign, running for office, or simply interested in how campaigns work, the class will lay out the groundwork for an effective campaign strategy.  The next training session will be held on June 26 from 1:00 to 6:00 pm at the Brownstone Doubletree Hotel in Raleigh, NC.  Register online at http://www.nccivitas.org/events/ or call 919-834-2099.
  • The North Carolina History Project would like educators and homeschool parents to submit lesson plans suitable for middle and high school courses in North Carolina history.  Please provide links to NC History Project encyclopedia articles and other primary and secondary source material, if possible.  Go to the NC History Project website for further information.
  • JLF’s research newsletter archive never gets old.

CommenTerry

Last week, the Budget and Tax Center (BTC), a project of the NC Justice Center, published a report that pans a bipartisan tax credit scholarship bill, House Bill 1104

The researcher claims that the bill would "decrease available funding for public education" in North Carolina.  She does not calculate how North Carolina public school funding would fare if the NC General Assembly approved House Bill 1104.  She does, however, identify one report that found that the Arizona tax credit operated at a "net cost to the state."

In a short review of the study, I outlined the shortcomings of the report, including the author’s failure to pay sufficient attention to key issues — marginal cost, the elasticity of demand for private schooling, and existing studies that conclude that tax credit scholarship programs provide a net savings to states.  By no means did I expect the author to embrace the findings of the eight or so studies referenced in my review.  At a minimum, I did expect the BTC researcher to acknowledge them.

But those issues aside, there was one part of the report that was particularly telling. According to the BTC report,

…school data over the implementation of these credits shows that 4 of the 7 states with tax credit scholarship programs experienced steady growth in public school enrollment between FY200708 and FY201112…all but one state (Indiana) experienced a drop in estimated private school enrollment between FY2006-07 and FY2008-09. (Emphasis added.)

This passage suggests that there is no significant relationship between the private school population and tax credit scholarship programs.  But this begs the question — if tax credits do not expand private schooling significantly, then what is the supposed threat to public schools exactly? 

Indeed, their own researchers concluded that tax credits do not privatize public schools in states that already offer these options to poor families.  Tax credit scholarship programs in other states did little to expand private schooling there, so there is no reason to expect North Carolina to be any different.  It sounds like the public schools in these states are doing fine despite the presence of large-scale tax credit programs.

But what would happen if the North Carolina legislature allowed public education funding to follow students to the schools of their choice?  Would such a measure dismantle or destroy the North Carolina public school system as we know it?

Of course, there is no way to know for sure how parents in either state would respond to such an enlightened proposal. Yet, I doubt that North Carolinians would react differently than those who live in Alberta, a province in western Canada that maintains one of the most liberal school choice programs in the world.

Since 1994, the Government of Alberta has supported a school choice program that allows public funds to follow students to over 2,100 public, private, francophone [French-speaking], charter, alternative, and separate [parochial] schools operating in the province. 

Despite near universal school choice, approximately 70 percent of Alberta’s nearly 600,000 students still opted to attend a traditional public school this year. For nearly two decades, families in Alberta have voted with their feet, and the vast majority of them choose traditional public schools.  The presence and public funding of private schools has done little to discourage that preference.  (Note: In a forthcoming report, I will explore the issues of market share and school choice in greater detail.)

The research — including their own — debunked the well-rehearsed rhetoric of the anti-choice Left. But that has not stopped groups affiliated with the NC Justice Center, as well as their allies, from continuing to declare that the "sky is falling" on public schools.

Random Thought

Beans, blueberries, broccoli, oats, oranges, pumpkin, salmon, soy, spinach, tea, tomatoes, turkey, walnuts, and yogurt have been called "superfoods."  It is time to add bacon to the list.

Facts and Stats

In 40 of the 50 states, the public school market share increased between 2001 and 2010.  Only ten states had a net increase in the percentage of students attending a school of choice (private, charter, or home school).  The magnitude of those increases was trivial — between 0.2% in Kansas and Maryland and 3.3% in Nevada.

Mailbag

In response to the June 5 newsletter, State Board of Education: Virtual charter schools need not apply:

People seem to demand complicated answers to complicated questions. However, in many cases simple answers exist. In the main, U.S. K-12 public education, as with N.C. K-12 public education, is a collectivist based model delivered through monopoly. More succinctly, public education is a late-stage collectivist based model delivered through monopoly.

Bill Harrison, chair of the State Board of Education, is merely displaying attributes of a power purveyor of a late-stage collectivist based model. The classic observation of late-stage collectivist based models is that the model suffers from rampant shirk and ever declining output with ever increasing input. However, a lesser-known observation, as discussed by Harold Demsetz and his book From Economic Man to Economic System, is that late-stage collectivist models enrich the power purveyor. How so?

The ever increasing input with simultaneously declining output has another dynamic: the spongy conduit. That is, the ever-increasing input is captured by the power purveyors (in this case public school administration) and they enrich themselves (high salaries/retirement/benefits). The reason the spongy conduit exists in the particular case of public schools goes back to Milton Friedman’s classic 1955 essay, "The Role of Government in Education." Friedman makes the grand observation that the resources (taxpayer money) are bestowed upon the institution rather than the student. That bestowing the money on the institution creates the environment for shenanigans (the ability to create the spongy conduit). 

The spongy conduit, in the public school example, makes grand sense, as a general complaint is that the money never reaches the classroom. How many times have parents commented that on the first day of school each year the teacher asks for school supplies for the classroom e.g. tissues, hand sanitizer, etc.? The school supplies sought is merely a marginal reflection of a greater situation of money never reaching the student (the end consumer).

Occam’s Razor regarding the enrichment of the power purveyor: the money is bestowed upon the late-stage collectivist model, the model acts as a spongy conduit, and the money never reaches the classroom/student. That simple.

Hence Harrison is acting rationally in that he is protecting his and his constituency’s self-interest. That the spongy conduit must perpetuate so the power purveyors can continue to enrich themselves. In the final analysis, Harrison is not arguing for the consumer-student, he is arguing for his constituency, not the student.

-W.E. Heasley, Denton, NC

Education Acronym of the Week

TSIF — The Sky Is Falling

Quote of the Week

"The perception that this measure is part of a right wing, anti-public school agenda is not the case.  Low income parents don’t care what the educational model is, whether public or private. They just want a school that works. And the sad reality is that far too many of the schools that they are zoned to are not working."

– Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina (PEFNC) June 12, 2012 press release

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