Competition Improves Services. So Why Not Apply That to Schools?

Government schools now spend about $20,000 per student.

Now that Texas and South Carolina have passed school choice bills, parents will be able to choose the best school for their kids in 17 states.

Why not all states?

After all, competition improves services.

The Post Office couldn't get it there overnight. Then FedEx showed it can be done. Quickly, UPS and DHL did it, too, and now even the Post Office does—sometimes.

Consumer choice is a big reason capitalist countries outperform socialist ones.

But in most of America, parents have little or no choice when it comes to which school their kids attend. Bureaucrats decide, based on where you live.

Live in a neighborhood with lousy schools? Too bad for your kids.

Some parents, desperate to get their kids out of a bad school, are jailed for lying about where they live.

All parents should get to choose which school their kids attend.

But in most states, government school bureaucrats won't let them.

Sometimes, it's because they get big political donations from teachers unions. Unions don't want competition.

Years ago, New York City's teachers union staged a protest outside my office because I did a TV special about school choice. I'd confronted union boss Randi Weingarten about how hard it was to fire even a terrible teacher. Instead, principals sneakily transfer them to another school. "Dance of the lemons," they call it.

Weingarten just replied, smugly, "We'll police our own profession."

Her protesters then picketed ABC News headquarters, shouting, "Shame on you, John Stossel!"

"They don't want people to be able to take their kids somewhere else because they know that they're failing your children," says education researcher Corey DeAngelis in my new video. "Money doesn't belong to the government schools. Education funding is supposed to be meant for educating children, not for propping up and protecting a particular institution. We should fund the student, not the system."

Then parents can take education funding to a charter or a private school. Schools get better when they have to compete for your kids.

A recent study found that "more education freedom is significantly associated with increased [National Assessment of Educational Progress] scores."

Florida's math and reading scores were once among the worst in the nation. After they expanded school choice, says DeAngelis, "They ranked No. 1…and it's not a money issue. They spend about 27 percent less than the national average, and they're knocking it out of the park."

A study on Florida's expansion of school choice found "benefits include higher standardized test scores and lower absenteeism and suspension rates. Effects are particularly pronounced for lower-income students."

When there's choice, public schools get better, too. Twenty-nine studies looked into the impact of school choice on test scores; 26 found a positive effect.

Wait. I shouldn't call them public schools. They're government schools. They're less "public" than a "private" supermarket. Markets are often open 24/7. Anyone can enter. Try that with a government-run "public" school.

School bureaucrats and teachers unions say that "choice takes money away from public schools!"

But that's not true. Government schools now spend about $20,000 per student. School choice vouchers average just $8,200.

So, when a student leaves and takes voucher money with them, government schools are left with more money per student!

As DeAngelis puts it, "They get to keep thousands of dollars for students they're no longer educating."

Ignorant media leftists insist that schools are underfunded. "If we want our public schools to get better, we can't take money out of the system," says an anchor on The View.

But no one is taking money out of the system! Inflation-adjusted funding per student doubled over the past 40 years.

"Government schools in the United States now spend around $20,000 per student per year," says DeAngelis. "That's about 60 percent higher than average private school tuition!"

$20,000 per child. Where does that money go?

"To administrative bloat," says DeAngelis.

Since 2000, student enrollment rose by 5 percent, but the number of administrators increased by 95 percent.

"The best solution to this problem is to make the funding portable," says DeAngelis. "Let funding follow the child. Then maybe administrators will have an incentive to up their game.…Competition is a rising tide that lifts all boats."

COPYRIGHT 2025 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.

Comments

[Eeyore]

Just stop using govguns to steal money and redistribute it.

[Wizzle Bizzle]

*Competition Improves Services. So Why Not Apply That to Schools?*

Good question. I feel like the people in charge of every state with school choice have a certain something in common. Something that is the polar opposite of the people in charge of public schools, their administration and their unions.

Is it that they're tall instead of short? No, wait, they're people who think the dress is gold instead of blue. No, that's not it. Maybe dog people instead of cat people? Well, yes, but only because cat people are just as fucking retarded as the D's who run every facet of government education.

[I, Woodchipper]

You have to get the government out of the schooling game altogether.

Making public schools "compete" won't matter one bit. The schools are still controlled from top to bottom by the government.

[Moderation4ever]

Can you really get government out of the school business? Vouchers have been around in Wisconsin since 1990 and yet only about 13% of Wisconsin children attend private schools. I have no problem with the idea of school vouchers, but I am also not naive enough to think that the public school system can be replaced.

[Idaho-Bob]

But who will teach your kids about transitioning and that white people are evil?

“We cannot continue to send our children to Caesar for their education and be surprised when they come home as Romans.”

[JasonT20]

But who will teach your kids about transitioning and that white people are evil?

Right. We need taxpayer money to send kids to schools that will teach them that being gay is sinful and they need to pray to not be gay anymore, that fossils and other evidence for evolution is Satan trying to weaken their faith in God, that the Founders based the Constitution on the Ten Commandments, and that people that don't accept Jesus Christ as their savior and Lord will go to Hell.

[rferris]

So you have zero idea of what any of the actual issues are and you parrot the cartoon view of reality you have adopted.

[JasonT20]

I was mocking the cartoon view of reality that believes that public schools are teaching kids about transitioning and that white people are evil. You missed that?

Of course, there really are religious private schools that teach young earth creationism and expel students that are LGBTQ or that have parents that are. There have been conservative Christians that have been elected to state legislatures and local school boards trying to put religion (Christianity, of course) in public schools for as long as I've been alive, and they sometimes succeed. There are plenty of evangelicals that make arguments about the biblical roots of our Founding, so it is fairly certain that those ideas are taught in at least some of the more conservative evangelical Christian schools.

And non-believers going to Hell? Well, that's pretty basic Christian theology, from everything I hear. Granted, more moderate and progressive Christians may not actually believe that, figuring that Jesus will be merciful on that come Judgement Day, if they've otherwise lived good lives (by His standards).

[JasonT20]

And the actual issues around public education and school choice have very little to do with culture wars, if anything. That is all a distraction from what matters. I address the actual issues below, if you care to consider that.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

'Competition Improves Services. So Why Not Apply That to Schools?'

Duh. Competition challenges the mediocre, confounds patronage, and defies socialist narratives. In other words, it is kryptonite to Democrats.

[Longtobefree]

"Competition Improves Services. So Why Not Apply That to Schools?"

Public school unions.
Come on, John; everybody knows that one.

[Speaking for normal people]

I don't want to give up the natural right over my children's education to defend competition as the justification. That is to give away part of the right under the guise of good and better education. But what I want for my child is ipso facto better. NOt that you are wrong. But you give jerks something to wrangle about

[Speaking for normal people]

THomas Sowell
“Whenever people talk glibly of a need to achieve educational ‘excellence,’ I think of what an improvement it would be if our public schools could just achieve mediocrity.”

That is my whole complaint

[JasonT20]

Where do I even start? This article is typical of Stossel. It uses shotgun argumentation, misleading data that compares apples and oranges, quotes extensively from interviews with someone that is clearly biased, selectively quoting people on the other side of the issue, all while not addressing any of the obvious counter arguments that could be made.

The shotgun argumentation is in how he makes so many debatable claims that it would be impossible to dig into and actually debate them all without spending vastly more time trying to refute them than it took for him to make those arguments. People do that when they want to be able to dodge the counter arguments and say, “Well, what about this other thing I said? I bet you can’t refute that!” And then they move on to the next point when you do, and continue to do that until you finally give up.

The first apples and oranges comparison he makes is with overnight delivery. That service and K-12 education are nothing alike. Overnight delivery is a convenience or something people and businesses would only need sporadically. I can’t even think of the last time I actually needed something delivered to me, or from me to someone else, overnight. Education is an essential need for all children.

The second is from this:

But that's not true. Government schools now spend about $20,000 per student. School choice vouchers average just $8,200.

The $20k figure is the national average per pupil spending “in average daily attendance.” That link Stossel uses shows the spending per pupil enrolled as $18.6k. If a private school would charge less tuition for each day a student was absent, and thus need a smaller voucher, then those values would be more comparable. Even more important though, is how the per pupil spending is the national average, but the page linked for the voucher amount is an “at a glance” view that doesn’t explain how they calculate it. Most importantly, it doesn’t compare that to the per pupil spending in the states that offer the vouchers. So, why not look at specific states? There’s different ways of calculating it, since capital spending on building and renovating schools may or may not be included along with many other factors. I see figures that range from just under $9k a year for Florida to as high as $12k. The vouchers in Florida are about $8000. So, the vouchers are less, but not nearly as much less as Stossel would have us think.

So, when a student leaves and takes voucher money with them, government schools are left with more money per student!

This is just flat out wrong. Districts don’t get to keep the difference between the voucher and state per pupil spending. Districts only get money based on how many students are enrolled. Whether it is $9k or $20k per student, the district loses all of that funding when a student leaves to go to a private school. Now, the whole government might get to spend less overall by not spending as much per student, but the schools themselves don’t see a dime of that difference. The amount they have per student to spend, doesn't change. In fact, it will cause strains if many students leave, since they'd lose some of the way costs can be spread out.

For a source to interview, Stossel turns to Corey DeAngelis just like he did a couple weeks ago. As I noted in a comment on that one, his experience as an education policy researcher has entirely been with conservative/libertarian think tanks. The journal article Stossel cites for the claim that school choice causes test scores across the board to go up? It was published in the Journal of School Choice, with two of the co-authors that are fellows of the Education Freedom Institute, which is one of those think tanks Corey DeAngelis works for.

Bias in sources doesn’t disprove their claims, as anyone with basic understanding of logic should know. But if someone making an argument is going to cite those sources as authorities, as Stossel does, then their potential biases become relevant. As an audience, we aren’t going to be expected to examine the claims of authorities closely in real time. Their authority is being used as a substitute for a full analysis of the evidence. Stossel counters his preferred sources with one single quote taken from Randi Weingarten and only because she is an easy person to quote to paint public school teachers negatively. We are supposed to think that she is the best there is to counter their position.

[Moderation4ever]

Good analysis. Private voucher supported schools are only and will likely only remain a small part of the education system. The majority of children are now and will continue to be educated in public schools.

[JasonT20]

Right. I didn't even start with my own views on vouchers, given how much time I had to spend pointing out the critical thinking flaws in Stossel's article. That's another problem with that kind of shotgun argumentation he does. It leaves no time actually analyze a problem in a way that might lead to workable solutions.

[JasonT20]

They will always remain a small part of the education system because of what happens when it becomes really widespread. And that is because of what happens when services are left entirely to a free market: the stratification in the quality of service by price.

In a free market for a service, everyone expects that the price and quality will be directly proportional. Any business that offered poor service at a higher price than competitors wouldn't last very long. Any business that offered better service at the same price as competitors (or the same quality of service at a lower price) would see a demand for their product than their competitors. If basic laws of supply and demand apply, then you would expect that business to either increase their volume to match the higher demand, or they could inch their prices up until demand and supply were in closer balance.

Therefore, there is no reason to expect that a school where students achieve better outcomes would have the same tuition as a school with worse outcomes. If student outcomes were due to the qualities of the school, and not just differences in abilities the students have when they first walk into the school, then it is obvious that better schools would charge more tuition. Of course, that would probably happen even if it wasn't really the differences in the schools that led to different outcomes. Schools with better results will attract plenty of parents that will be drawn to the prestige of the 'better' school. There will also undoubtedly be parents that think that a school with better academic outcomes would have fewer students that are disruptive or that would be a 'bad influence' on their children. (And they would mostly be correct to think that.*)

You see it already in private schools, but it would become universal if there weren't regular public schools with the vast majority of students. Elite private schools, with tuition that dwarfs the public spending per pupil in that area, won't take the vouchers alone for more than a handful of students. Those schools always admitted some students on 'scholarships', but they still relied on most parents being able to pay the full tuition. Not to mention that high tuition serves as a barrier to entry that keeps the student demographics very low in the characteristics that are associated with disruption and low-performance, like coming from a broken home, living in a high-poverty, high-crime neighborhood, having other stresses at home like not being able to afford balanced meals, needing to care for younger siblings, and on and on.

Finally, the schools with higher tuition, that draw higher-performing, and more affluent students, simply won't get built in low-income neighborhoods. So, how are low-income students supposed to get to those better, more expensive schools?

It seems to me that this school choice vision of education intends for education to become even further stratified by socio-economic status than it already is. I don't see how they could fail to see the likelihood of this outcome unless they willfully avoid putting more thought into it besides the occasional article or set of talking points like what Stossel gives them.

*This brings up something I never see school choice advocates address. Parents won't just be looking for schools that have better teachers, better curricula, better facilities, better test scores, etc. They will be looking for schools that have better students for their children to be around. What some parents want to escape isn't the public school that is "failing" because it is run poorly or has bad teachers. They want to escape the other children at those schools that create a bad environment regardless of the quality of the school and its staff.

That is an absolutely understandable, natural, and justifiable reason for a parent to choose a school. But let's not pretend that school choice will do anything to solve the problems of poor behavior, let alone crime, gangs, drugs and so on that plague urban public schools in impoverished neighborhoods. It will just let some students escape those schools and leave others behind while draining the resources and political will to do much about it.

[Get To Da Chippah]

The first apples and oranges comparison he makes is with overnight delivery. That service and K-12 education are nothing alike. Overnight delivery is a convenience or something people and businesses would only need sporadically. I can’t even think of the last time I actually needed something delivered to me, or from me to someone else, overnight. Education is an essential need for all children.

That's not the point of the comparison. The point is that a government provider of a service didn't have to provide anything more than a basic form of that service while it was a monopoly. It was only when private competition showed the same service could be done better at a reasonable cost that the government made improvements. And it seems we are seeing similar results with K-12 education.

The $20k figure is the national average per pupil spending “in average daily attendance.” That link Stossel uses shows the spending per pupil enrolled as $18.6k.

Stossel said "about $20k". 18,600 is 93% of 20,000. He also said the vouchers were "on average" $8200. He is speaking in very broad terms, not doing a state-by-state analysis here.

Districts don’t get to keep the difference between the voucher and state per pupil spending. Districts only get money based on how many students are enrolled.

Enrollment is indeed a factor in how much money districts receive, so it's deceiving of Stossel to make it seem otherwise.

[JasonT20]

That's not the point of the comparison. The point is that a government provider of a service didn't have to provide anything more than a basic form of that service while it was a monopoly.

Or maybe the demand for overnight delivery wasn't sufficient to justify offering that service? Like, maybe they thought that they couldn't fit in with the way USPS functioned in a way that would be cost effective. The primary purpose of the USPS is to be able to deliver mail and small packages to every person in the country. FedEx and UPS and DHL don't do that. They won't deliver to places where it isn't profitable. USPS eventually did start offering overnight delivery, probably even due having competition. (USPS is cheaper than FedEx or UPS from what I found when I tried to get the price for a 5lb package sent between the same two zip codes, and for all delivery time frames, not just overnight.) Basically, I'm betting that the history of those companies and the USPS and comparing their services is a lot more complicated than Stossel is making it seem.

Maybe it is a better analogy than I thought, given that public schools have to serve all children, whereas private schools can choose to serve neighborhoods, families, and types of students in almost whatever way they want.

It was only when private competition showed the same service could be done better at a reasonable cost that the government made improvements. And it seems we are seeing similar results with K-12 education.

According to some of the research, maybe there is some overall improvement in regular public schools due to competition with charters and private school voucher programs. But not all of the research shows that, from what I can find. Stossel's claim that this effect is proven is only supported by a paper in an extremely low impact journal. A paper authored by people active in promoting school choice, and a journal that, from its title alone, seems to exist only to study (and probably promote) school choice, rather than K-12 education generally. So, the results are questionable, and extrapolating whatever positive effect there might be to greatly expanding school choice is not justified.

Stossel said "about $20k". 18,600 is 93% of 20,000. He also said the vouchers were "on average" $8200. He is speaking in very broad terms, not doing a state-by-state analysis here.

He should be doing it state by state. Or at least use the figures from one state as an example, since it is statistically invalid to compare a national average to a figure that is not derived from the whole country. That is because voucher programs are much more common and include more students in states with Republicans in control of the legislature and usually the governor's office as well. Those states tend to spend considerably less per pupil than states controlled by Democrats. Also, if he's going to say that the average voucher is $8200, then the figure he's comparing it to should have the same precision. If he reports the voucher figure to the nearest $100, then the per pupil spending should be reported to the nearest $100, if the data he is citing has that level of precision. Which it does. The actual figure on the table he linked was $19,999. He didn't say $20,000 because of rounding. He used the higher statistic that was based on attendance rather than enrollment on purpose, I believe, because it was higher.

[NCMB]

Providing an endless litany of excuses for failure rarely, if ever, results in success. There’s probably no better example of that axiom than public K-12 education outcomes.