Imagine this, writes Terence P. Jeffrey. “Suppose there were a law that forced you to pay a government agency for apples you were supposed to feed your children.”
And suppose it turned out that some of the government apples were bad. What should parents do?
When they complained to the public-apple agencies, agency bureaucrats and their union would say: "Excuse me, the bad apples are not our fault. You need to give us more money so we can build better apple storage facilities, and so we can pay better wages to apple handlers."
But the apples still didn’t improve. Eventually we get to a federal Department of Apples. And apple quality still doesn’t improve.
You know what this parable is all about. In the matter of the education of our children we have a system exactly like the government apple system. And the price is going up all the time.
Between the 1970 and 2002 school years, average per-pupil spending in public elementary and secondary schools rose 111 percent, from $4,170 (in constant 2001-2002 dollars) to $8,802.
But the performance of the nation’s students is not going up. Only 29 percent of eighth-graders are rated “proficient” in math and reading.
What do you think we should do, fellow Americans? Increase spending? Increase federal oversight? Start criminalizing underperformance of teachers and principals?
Or shall we use the apple industry as a model, and leave the market to decide how to produce, distribute, and deliver good wholesome apples to parents and children?
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