The Cato Institute

New Research Shows Traditional Education Rankings Are Misleading

Traditional education rankings, such as those published by U.S. News & World Report, while well-intentioned, are unreliable and misleading…

Traditional education rankings rankings fail to provide “apples to apples" comparisons among states. By treating states as though they had identical students, they ignore the substantial variation present in student populations across states. Conventional rankings also include inappropriate or irrelevant data to the educational performance of schools, such as raw spending per pupil, graduation rates, and pre-K enrollment. 

To better measure educational outcomes, Stan J. Liebowitz, Cato adjunct scholar and Ashbel Smith Professor of Economics at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) with Matthew L. Kelly, a graduate student at UTD, compare state test scores for each of three subjects (math, reading, and science), four major ethnic groups (whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asian/Pacific Islanders) and two grades (fourth and eighth), for a total of 24 potential observations in each state and the District of Columbia. They give each of the 24 tests equal weight and base their ranking on the average of the test scores.

After adjusting for the heterogeneity of students, states in New England and the Upper Midwest who typically perform favorably fall in the rankings, whereas many states in the South and Southwest score much higher than they do in conventional reports. 

The authors also produce rankings that, unlike most conventional reports, consider states’ cost-effectiveness of education spending. Florida, Texas, and Virginia are the most efficient in terms of quality achieved per cost of living-adjusted dollar spent. Conversely, West Virginia, Alabama, and Maine are the least efficient. Some states, such as Massachusetts and New Jersey, do an excellent job educating students but also spend quite lavishly and thus fall considerably when spending efficiency is considered. 

While the authors observe a positive relationship between spending and achievement using nominal dollars, it disappears when state-level cost of living adjustments are made. This does not necessarily imply that spending overall has no effect on outcome, but merely that most states have reached a sufficient level of spending such that additional spending does not appear to be related to achievement as measured by these test scores.

The authors also briefly examine additional factors that affect student performance. They find states with stronger unions tend to get worse academic outcomes. Unions are negatively related to student performance, presumably through opposing the removal of underperforming teachers, opposing merit-based pay, or because of union work rules. Additionally, the authors’ results indicate that having a greater share of students in charter schools is positively related to student achievement.

Although this study constitutes a significant improvement on leading state education rankings, it retains some limitations. There exists substantial variation in education quality within states and disagreement about desired educational outcomes. However, state-level rankings do provide an intuitively pleasing basis for lawmakers and interested citizens to compare state education policies. The authors’ main goal is to provide rankings that more accurately reflect the learning that is taking place by focusing only on academic achievement and disaggregating scores, rather than scoring inputs and state-wide test scores.

Learn more…

Banned Books and Educational Freedom

This week is Banned Books Week. Freedom is certainly at stake in all this, but not the way most anti-banners would have you think…

The American Library Association is the primary champion of Banned Books Week, and the group’s website spells out why we are supposed to be outraged. “Banned Books Week is the national book community’s annual celebration of the freedom to read,” it says. The week’s goal is to “draw attention to the problem of censorship by mounting displays of challenged books and hosting a variety of events.”

Basically, we’re supposed to be incensed over people who say “I don’t think anyone should read that,” and then try to destroy the offending books Fahrenheit 451 style. The thing is, for the most part such outright censorship efforts don’t exist. No, most challenges are from parents or taxpayers who don’t want their kids reading or accessing material in public schools that they find offensive, or don’t want objectionable books in the libraries for which they must pay.

The real issue isn’t protecting books from those who would banish them for eternity. It is that public institutions select books in the first place. The instant such a selection is made freedom is already compromised.

Learn more…

Excessive Voucher Program Regulations Lower Quality of Education

Not all school choice programs are created equal — and well-intentioned but heavy-handed government regulations on voucher programs limit the quality of educational options available to low-income families and trap poor children in bad schools…

The expansion of private school choice programs has been accompanied by a growing call for their regulation.

Because voucher-using families use public education dollars that would have otherwise gone to government schools, officials are often highly concerned about quality. But could overregulation be trapping poor kids in bad schools?

 Ironically, while regulators hope to prevent disadvantaged families from choosing bad schools, voucher program regulations appear to limit the quality of educational options available to low-income families.

A new Cato Institute study empirically examine school-level data from two of the most highly regulated voucher programs in the United States, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) and the Ohio Educational Choice Scholarship Program (EdChoice), to determine the quality of schools participating in regulated voucher programs.

Using tuition, enrollment, and customer review scores from the website GreatSchools (an online non-profit that reviews schools) as proxies for school quality, the authors find strong evidence suggesting that lower-quality private schools are indeed more likely to participate in voucher programs than higher-quality schools in both locations. Deregulating these programs and expanding other school choice programs would prove much more beneficial to all.

Voucher regulations are created with the good intention of protecting vulnerable families, but an unintended consequence is increased cost to participating schools. Private schools must make a cost-benefit decision when determining whether to participate in a given voucher program. The benefit is the additional voucher funding while the cost is mainly additional program regulations. These regulations vary by program, but can include random-based admissions, teacher and administrator certification requirements, prohibition of parental copayment, standardized testing, requiring schools to allow students to opt out of religious programs, and additional paperwork.

In Milwaukee, schools with higher tuition levels are significantly less likely to participate in MPCP. Specifically, a $1,000 increase in private school tuition is associated with a 2.3 percentage-point (3 percent) lower likelihood of participation in the program. Additionally, the authors find evidence that a one-point increase in a GreatSchools review score is associated with an 11.4 percentage-point (14.8 percent) reduction in the likelihood of program participation.

Similarly, in Ohio a $1,000 increase in private school tuition is associated with a 2.8 percentage-point (3.8 percent) lower likelihood of participating in the EdChoice voucher program.

This evidence is significant and suggests that regulations deter high-quality private schools from participating in voucher programs in these localities. It would be wise for decisionmakers to reduce the costs of private school participation by deregulating these two programs and expanding policies that are less likely to be regulated, such as Education Savings Accounts or tax-credit scholarships.

Heavy government regulation on school choice voucher programs raises the costs of participation, limiting the quality of educational options available to low-income families and trapping poor children in bad schools.

Instead of trying to control the decisions that low-income families make regarding their children’s schools, policymakers ought to empower these families with the freedom to make educational decisions for their own kids. This additional freedom would lead to more options for the families that need them the most and a more educated society for all of us.

Learn more…

Is Public School a “Public Bad”?

When people claim that schooling is a public good, they likely mean that schooling is simply “good for the public.” However, empirical evidence found in a new report estimates that public schooling in the United States has over a $1.3 trillion negative effect on society…

In a new report, Corey A. DeAngelis, an education policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, calculates the net effects of government-run schools on U.S. society overall, comparing the results produced by government schools to those produced by a feasible policy alternative: private schools. In order to make apples-to-apples comparisons, DeAngelis uses the most rigorous private school choice evidence available on academic outcomes, taxpayers costs, and criminal activity.

The author’s model finds a net negative externality of government schooling of over $1.3 trillion. By comparison, this would be equivalent to about 7% of the U.S. GDP in 2016. DeAngelis contends that public schooling also fails both conditions specified in the standard economic definition of a public good, and in light of his data, taxpayers should not subsidize government schooling merely on the basis that it is a merit good, or “good for the public.”

To calculate government schooling’s ability to educate the population, DeAngelis’ most significant data comes from the effects of private school choice programs on graduation rates. Studies done in Washington, D.C. and Milwaukee find that students who attend private schools through a school choice program increase their likelihood of graduating high school by 21% and 3%, respectively. By using the more conservative 3 percentage point increase in graduation rates, DeAngelis calculates that government schooling results in about 1.5 million fewer graduates, which leads to negative social effects of over $419 billion nationwide.

To calculate taxpayer costs, DeAngelis compares the average tuition and fees charged in all private schools to the average per pupil expenditure in all public schools. On average, it costs around $1,355 more to educate a child in a government school each year. When taking into account the 13 years a student spends in school and the 50.47 million students currently enrolled in government schools, this costs taxpayers an additional $889 billion.

To quantify the effects of government schooling on social cohesion, DeAngelis looks at a study that finds private schools reduce the likelihood that male students will commit felonies by 4 percentage points in Milwaukee. Assuming these benefits only accrue to the half of the student population that is male, we should expect around 1.01 million fewer felons. Combining this number with a report by researchers McCollister, French, and Fang in 2010 that finds that the social cost of a felony is around $23,242, a 1.01 million increase in the number of felons produced by government schools leads to over a $23 billion increase in social costs.

DeAngelis concludes that “instead of simply throwing more money at failing government schools, we should make better investments by allowing families to customize their own children’s educations.” He recommends that states fund education directly – rather than schooling – through a universal Education Savings Account (ESA) program, that allows families to opt out of their failing government schools and take their education dollars to the private schools that work best for their children.

Learn more…

School Inc. – A Personal Journey with Andrew Coulson

School Inc. takes viewers on a worldwide personal quest for an answer to the question — if you build a better way to teach a subject, why doesn’t the world beat a path to your door?

Why doesn’t education use innovation to grow like a successful business?

School Inc. – A Personal Journey with Andrew Coulson, follows the late Andrew Coulson, series creator/writer/host and Cato Institute senior fellow, as he sets out on a worldwide personal quest for an answer to this question.

This three-part, three-hour documentary series reveals many unfamiliar and often startling realities: the sad fate of Jaime Escalante after the release of the feature film Stand and Deliver; Korean teachers who earn millions of dollars every year; for-profit schools in India that produce excellent results but charge only $5 a month; current U.S. efforts to provide choices and replicate educational excellence; and schools in Chile and Sweden in which top K-12 teachers and schools are reaching large and ever-growing numbers of students. 

Throughout the three-part, three-hour series, Coulson examines the role of innovation, the universal search for educational excellence and – for better or worse – the application of the profit motive.

With its beautiful visuals, surprising twists, and energy, School Inc. takes you on a personal, highly insightful journey.

Learn more about School, Inc and how you can watch it…

On Twitter? Join the conversation with #SchoolInc.

Live Free and Learn: Scholarship Tax Credits in New Hampshire

In 2012, the Live Free or Die state launched a bold initiative to advance educational freedom: scholarship tax credits. The New Hampshire Opportunity Scholarship Act grants tax credits to businesses worth 85 percent of their contributions to nonprofit scholarship organizations that fund low- and middle-income students to attend private or home schools. The scholarship law then faced both a repeal effort in the legislature and a bitter lawsuit that went to the state’s highest court. 

Live Free and Learn: Scholarship Tax Credits in New Hampshire, the short film above, details the struggle over New Hampshire’s scholarship law and some of the families it has touched.

Want to learn more? Watch this discussion of the film and the law. 

Is it Time to Downsize the Department Of Education?

The Department of Education operates a wide range of subsidy programs for elementary and secondary schools. The aid and related federal regulations have not generally lifted academic achievement. 

The department also subsidizes higher education through student loan programs. Unfortunately, that aid has fueled inflation in college tuition and is subject to widespread abuse. 

The department will spend about $103 billion in 2015, or $837 for every U.S. household. It employs 4,000 workers and operates 120 different subsidy programs.

Learn more…

The Evidence on Universal Preschool

Calls for universal preschool programs have become commonplace, reinforced by President Obama’s call for “high-quality preschool for all” in 2013. Any program that could cost state and federal taxpayers $50 billion per year warrants a closer look at the evidence on its effectiveness.

A review of the major evaluations of preschool programs—including both traditional programs such as Head Start and those designated as “high quality”—does not paint a generally positive picture. 

Before policymakers consider huge expenditures to expand preschool, much more research is needed to demonstrate true effectiveness.

The most methodologically rigorous evaluations find that the academic benefits of preschool programs are quite modest, and these gains fade after children enter elementary school. Meanwhile, most contemporary “high-quality” preschool programs have been evaluated using a flawed, non-experimental methodology that fails to account for children who drop out of treatment groups, thereby biasing outcomes upwards. Furthermore, these evaluations cannot assess the fadeout problem because all children studied—both treatment and control—have taken preschool.

Two “high-quality” programs have been evaluated using a rigorous experimental design, and have been shown to have significant academic and social benefits, including long-term benefits. These are the Abecedarian and Perry Preschool programs. However, using these two studies as the basis for policy is problematic for several reasons: the groups studied were very small, they came from single communities several decades ago, and both programs were far more intensive than the programs being contemplated today.

Learn more….

The Teachers’ Union vs. D.C. Children

There is no disputing that the Washington, D.C., school system is one of the worst in the nation. Although D.C. schools spend nearly $30,000 per student each year, more than a third of students fail to graduate. In a test to determine whether high-school students were college ready, only 10 percent of D.C. students met proficiency standards in math, and just a quarter met the reading standards. The story is even worse for black students; only 4 percent met the math standards.

In response, President Bush established the Opportunity Scholarship Program in 2004. The program provides scholarships (vouchers) that low-income D.C. families can use to send their children to private schools in the District, including religiously affiliated schools. The scholarships are targeted to those students most in need. The average household income for families participating in the program is under $21,000. More than 83 percent of those families are African-American, and another 14 percent are Hispanic/Latino.

But despite a record of success, the omnibus budget deal failed to reauthorize the program beyond this year. President Obama, having defunded the program once, is expected to oppose reauthorization once again. D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton is unalterably opposed to the program. Why do so many Democrats seem to favor the teachers’ union over poor minority students?

In order to preserve the program for the 2016–17 school year, Congress will have to either push through a stand-alone funding bill in the face of ferocious opposition from Democratic lawmakers and the teachers’ unions, or hope to include the funding in some future budget deal. It’s really a simple choice: poor, minority children, or wealthy, powerful unions. Where do we stand?

Learn more….

Taking Credit for Education: How to Fund Education Savings Accounts through Tax Credits

Every child deserves the chance at a great education and the American dream. Unfortunately, decades of student achievement data reveal that the increasingly costly U.S. district school system does not provide an excellent education for all students. 

In a new study, Cato scholar Jason Bedrick, with coauthors Jonathan Butcher and Clint Bolick, explains how funding Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) through tax credits is a constitutionally sound method of providing every child with the chance at an excellent education.

In their new policy analysis, Taking Credit for Education, Jason Bedrick, Butcher, and Bolick contend that Education Savings Accounts (ESAs)—when properly designed and regulated through tax credits—can empower families with more educational options.

In order to make ESAs available to children from diverse backgrounds, the authors lay out a series of policy recommendations for legislators that would allow flexible spending while minimizing spending fraud and mitigating constitutional concerns that may arise. These Education Savings Accounts will enhance accountability and free taxpayers from being forced into paying for ideas they oppose by providing funds through voluntary tax-credit contributions.

States such as Arizona, Florida, and New Hampshire have experiences with both privately and publicly managed ESAs and tax-credit scholarships that support the use of ESAs funded through tax credits. Policymakers can combine models from these three states to create tax-credit funded educational savings accounts. ESAs funded by charitable donations that are eligible for tax-credits would blend tax-credit scholarships and flexible spending accounts, increasing liberty for both families and scholarship organizations. For example, scholarship organizations can serve as educational advisers to parents and oversee ESAs, while parents have more spending flexibility with the restricted-use debit cards that accompany these accounts.

Although completely eliminating fraud is impossible for any program, private or public, policymakers can take reasonable measures to minimize fraud without unnecessarily burdening ESA families or education providers. Currently, some programs use a reimbursement method to avoid the misuse of funds, but this can be troublesome for families who don’t have money to use upfront. Tax-credit funded ESAs would mitigate this problem by letting parents access ESA funds through a debit card that could be restricted by vendor or by product or service.

While the constitutionality of school choice has been affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court, Blaine amendments exist in about 36 state constitutions that generally restrict the use of public funds for religious or sectarian schools. However, scholarship tax credit laws have a perfect record in courts since Blaine amendments usually apply to appropriations of public funds, and tax-credit eligible donations are private funds. Policymakers can also design legislation for these savings accounts in ways that can increase the likelihood of withstanding constitutional scrutiny. For example, lawmakers can fund ESAs through tax credits rather than legislative appropriations, thus making it neither an appropriation, nor a form of aid limited only to religious or private schools.

“Education savings accounts empower families to customize their children’s education,“ the authors conclude. "They are an improvement on traditional school-choice programs because they enhance the freedom of parents to purchase a wide variety of educational products and services and save for educational expenses in future years, including college.”

Read the research….