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Reducing Poverty in America: Views and Approaches

Michael Darby, editor

In a trenchant essay the late Albert Shanker dispels the myths of private schools producing better academic performance.

A cursory look at NEAP tests given to twelfth graders suggests that private school students perform only slightly better than public school students, not accounting for factors that public schools have going against them—tenure, bureaucracies, discipline problems, larger schools, larger classes, poorer parents, less educated parents, less selective entrance, less selective eligibility, less rigorous course offerings, fewer students taking courses in tune with the NEAP and interference by vile interest groups such as lawyers.

“81% of private school seniors and only 56% of the public school seniors in the NEAP sample were on an academic track.” He writes, “71% of catholic high schools cite student discipline as their chief admissions criteria... 71% require an entrance exam,” and “50% more private school youngsters... have college graduate parents.” In 1991 31 percent of public school students came from families with less than $15,000 in income, versus less than 12 percent of private school students.

When only one factor, parental educational level (partly a genetic factor), is compared across schools, we find nearly identical NEAP performance, and that ignores the fact that the public school numbers are held down by students private schools do not want, students who are too poor to attend private schools and numerous other factors.

Given all the factors that public schools have going against them, the big questions are why don’t private school students leave public school students “behind in the dust[,]” and why do private schools produce nearly identical results as public schools when they have better students in better circumstances?

Examining voucher programs in Milwaukee, Shanker finds that they had almost no impact on academic performance, that 11 of 23 eligible private schools in 1994 refused to accept voucher students and those that did were extremely restrictive in the students they accepted. The parents of students who were accepted were happier with the private schools, but perhaps this is because of the things that undermine safety and discipline in public schools. The solution is to change those factors. Embracing vouchers as the reform model wastes time, money and students.

“Public and private schools by and large have the same textbooks, the same curricula, the same internal organizations—and the same mediocre academic standards.” The voucher movement merely provides rhetorical ammunition for ultra-conservatives to tout their ersatz universalist credentials. The problem, to rephrase something I once read in Atlantic Monthly, is that ultra-liberals are opposed to anything with the word standards in it, ultra-conservatives are opposed to anything with the word national in it—and good standards.

Shanker argues that the near exclusive emphasis on private schools as a reform proposal wastes effort that would be better spent increasing the performance of students in all schools. The problem with vouchers is that if they are beneficial, they offer only minor benefits. The bulk of school improvement has to come from good standards and good enforcement of those standards. Energy spent on vouchers is energy that would be better spent elsewhere.

Students, he claims, know what the incentives are. Students know that a high school transcript has almost no value in the adult world, except for the handful of students headed to elite colleges. For most students, decent paying jobs depend on height, charisma, seniority, attractiveness, resourcefulness, job performance.

Undaunted lack of academic evidence favoring vouchers, John E. Chubb and Terry M. Moe try a curious tactic. They argue that private schools are better at mediocrity, er, equality, arguing that a child is more likely to be tracked in a public school than a private school. Tracking is assumed to be evil by Moe and Chubb because they make no effort to argue that it is. The list of factors they use to account for differences in tracking looks suspiciously incomplete. I can think of at least a dozen potential reasons for the differences that they did not mention, many of them character factors such as parents seeking SSI “crazy” money. Moe and Chubb fail to mention that the students who undermine equality get kicked out of private schools or are not permitted to enter private schools.

The editor claims lower-income living standards are higher than a generation ago because of a potential overstatement of inflation due to discounting of quality improvements and other factors such as an increase in government non-cash benefits, but this overstatement claim has never been adequately supported and probably amounts to horse manure. You can read my arguments about living standards elsewhere.

He does not mention factors that lower living standards over time:

· Greater requirements for autos, childcare, education, professional work attire, professional personal care expenditures, longer commutes and more traffic congestion.

· Recipients get little of the value of non-cash benefits. The benefits primarily go to the medical industrial complex and other interest groups. They are not worth the dollar value the government spends to the recipient. Many lower-income workers receive almost no non-cash benefits from the government anyway and taxes have increased taxes on lower-income workers.

Douglas J. Besharov gives an overview of social and economic trends. He relies heavily on correlations that give little indication of cause. He makes this important point: “We often hear that about half of all new [welfare] recipients are off the rolls within 2 years. This is true but only because of the high turnover among short-term recipients. At any one time, about 82% of all recipients are in the midst of spells that will last 5 years or more.”

Examining Latinos, David Hayes-Butista finds low-income despite high work rates. James Q. Wilson tells us about the neighborhood he grew up in, then delivers a bunch of terrible conclusions, none of which are supported by his story. A few of these essays are worth reading.

— Book review article by J.T. Fournier

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