Libertarian, The Cato Institute–just for those who don’t know it–is a far rightwing think tank. It would, perhaps, be too prejudicial to say that the Cato Institute is in the business of publishing fabrications; but they are in the business, as you will see, of cooking numbers and putting on a rightwing spin on everything, particular on questions of government policy. Here are just a few problems with the link you provided.
According to the link’s hyperbolic rhetoric, “Vice President Al Gore would saturate the department with $115 billion in new spending” and “Bush would increase spending less than Gore, but would have Washington’s bureaucrats dictate everything from achievement tests to core curriculum.” Reality check: Al Gore’s “saturation” would have raised education spending to adjust for the growth in population: i.e. spending per student would have remained constant under the Gore plan. Bush’s plan doesn’t even do that; so that, in effect, government spending on each child will continue to be less than in the past. Notice too that the Cato Institute is even to right of George Bush on this issue, arguing that government spending on education should be eliminated entirely.
Myrr21 has already suggested that test scores are hardly the only or the best way to measure achievement. Let’s, however, assume for argument’s sake that it was. According to Cato’s own data test scores have remained flat or have risen by a few points between 1980 and 1999. Since that was precisely the period during which economic condition of the bottom 10% worsened, one could easily argue that education (including government spending on education) has helped to offset what would otherwise be a decline in testing as a result of rising inequality.
(Note: for information on rising inequality see the Pit thread on “Tax Rebates”)
Based on this data alone, Cato then jumps to this outlandish conclusion: “If money could solve the problems of American schools, surely it would have begun to do so by now.”
Really? Since student/teacher ratio has been proven in study after study to be the single most important factor in increasing educational effectiveness, I think it’s a bit too soon to conclude that money doesn’t matter. Indeed, I’m willing to bet that if I had an unlimited pool of money to lavish on the education of any single individual–let’s say december–I could not only increase his test scores but teach him how to conduct a rational argument on a message board ;).
Seriously, isn’t it strange how the same people who are ready to conclude that money spent in education doesn’t matter also send their kids to expensive private schools and will choose a six-figure education at Yale over the local community college any day of the week? Perhaps what they’re really saying is that money does matter a great deal; so long as the money is spent on themselves or their kids rather than someone else’s.
Here’s another “fact” from Cato: “From 1980 to 1999, the price tag for a public school education adjusted for
inflation rose from roughly $5,000 to $8,000 per child, an increase of 60 percent.”
Really, where? Here I am in 2001 (the Cato article was written last year), and I know for a fact that in the large and prosperous city I live in spending per student is just over $7,000.
Here, in contrast, is an excerpt from an essay written by a Berkeley economics professor in 1995:
"The per-worker wealth of the nation has grown by twenty-two percent since 1969… If we spent the same share of our economic resources on primary and secondary education today as we as a nation spent in 1969, we would be spending some $7,100 a year per pupil on education. Instead, in California we spend what? $4,840–a rich state spending sixteen percent below the national average, and only two-thirds of what we “should” be spending if primary and secondary education got the same share of our national resources now as they did then.
Source:
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/OpEd/firstlessonsfromkindergart.html
Putting aside the importance of the argument he is making, what is clear is that Cato is wrong again: for California is seen to spending less on education in 1995 than Cato claims all public schools were spending in 1980.
Clearly Cato has found some way to cook it’s numbers and come up with misleading figures.
Cato’s solution is to privatize education. What’s their evidence that private schools will have better results?
“…since 1990 nearly 100 public and private scholarship programs have given children from low-income families the chance to trade in their government education for a private one, resulting in significant, measurable gains on achievement tests.”
“Signifcant”? “Measurable”? Figures to back this up? Zip. Moreover, as everyone knows, public schools, unlike private schools, cannot selectively admit certain children and exclude others. As a result public schools devote a lot of resources to meeting the special needs of students that private schools are free to reject. In addition, many private schools spend more per student than do public schools. Did these 100 private schools admit students with special needs? Did they spend more per student to achieve their mysterious but “significant” results? Thanks to Cato’s obfuscations, we will never know.
Please Libertarian, the average decent post on the SDMB has more hard evidence to back it up than this flimsy electronic puff piece from the Cato Institute. If I were you I’d have been embarassed to post it without serious disclaimers as it’s thinness of evidence. It hardly even qualifies as an Op Ed.
december, I’m afraid, therefore, that your opponents haven’t yett been vanquished. You’re going to have to work a little bit harder before you can gloat. While you’re at it you can start by answering my replies to your assertions about tenure and government employment in the Pit thread. Or is that a tennis match you’d prefer to forfeit?
