Comparative Advantage in Education

Economists like to say that nations fare best in international trade when they focus on what they do well. It makes sense. None of us would be very successful if we tried to build careers around things we aren’t very good at. In America’s case one area where we have a comparative advantage is higher education. We have the finest university system in the world. Every year we produce large numbers of very well equipped graduates in all sorts of fields, ready to contribute to society to the benefit of us all. We ought to be building on that for all we are worth. But we are neglecting the input side of the equation. Our primary and secondary schools haven’t been up to the task. They have been mired in the near monopoly of government run public schools where innovation is stifled and education often takes a back seat to social engineering. Too few of our best and brightest are matriculating with the tools to succeed at the highest levels.

Lately there have been some interesting developments. Last June Newsweek published their ranking of the best high schools in America. Two of the top five were Dallas magnets. That’s great news for a school district that has been a train wreck for most of the nearly four decades I’ve been in North Texas. Magnet schools are not for everyone but their existence alone is innovative. It is encouraging to note that they are at least sometimes successful. So are charter schools. A number of them have been able to raise literacy and numeracy levels among groups of children who have traditionally lagged far behind. Voucher programs have helped some children get into better schools where they have tended to do well. More and more parents are opting for home schooling and even home school cooperatives. And the internet is making possible things like virtual classrooms with the potential to revolutionize education from top to bottom.

Last Sunday’s opinion section in The Dallas Morning News was devoted to fixing what’s wrong with the city’s schools. Incredibly they didn’t mention any of these things, preferring instead to devote space to establishment educators who promote ideas that sound distressingly obvious. We need better teachers, more accountability, inspired leadership, and social services. Well, duh! One thing they all agree on is the need to close the so called achievement gap, the unacceptably low reading and math scores that have been a fact of life in some neighborhoods and ethnic groups for generations.

There is nothing wrong with paying special attention to the neediest children. God’s preferential option for the poor is a theme of Catholic Social Teaching. It is in all our best interests to see No Child Left Behind succeed. But nowhere does it say the option is exclusive, that God cares only for the needy. The law has come with unintended consequences. It has frequently been implemented at the expense of our more talented children who need broader curricula and a faster pace in order to fully develop. It has promoted more than a few instances of fraud. Too many unqualified students have been shoe horned into advanced placement classes where they cannot succeed. We are improving performance at the lower levels too often by depressing performance overall.

It’s bad Christian stewardship. We have responsibility for all creation and that includes the society we live in. We are charged to tend it and make it productive. We are instructed to invest our talents and make them grow. To the degree that we neglect the children who have the most potential to give back to society we fail in that responsibility. We are not taking full advantage of this wonderful university system we have built and we are all the worse for it.

There is real danger in this. Few things are more important to most parents than their children’s education. If they begin to see public schools as welfare programs and laboratories for social change, if they see their own children getting short shrift, they will do whatever they can to remedy it and that will often mean flight. DISD has first hand experience here. Federal judges took control of Dallas schools in the civil rights era and implemented programs that drove middle class families out of the city in droves. We don’t want to see that again.

But there is opportunity as well. If parents have choices, and increasingly they do have choices, competition will force change despite establishment resistance. Parents also have better access to more information. A concerned mother looking for answers can find them on the internet. Parents are discussing this information among themselves and with their friends, and they are making their own decisions. That’s a good thing too, even if some of them make bad decisions. Another tenet of Catholic Social Teaching is that parents have primary responsibility for their children’s education, and after all, public school administrators are making bad decisions for them today.

I expect to see accelerating change, though I doubt most of it will come from the public sector. Entrenched interests are powerful. But so is the technological revolution going on around us. Despite a setback early in the Obama administration with cancelation of the District of Columbia’s school voucher program, voucher use is slowly growing. As districts come under more and more budget pressure vouchers will become even more attractive because they are less expensive. And as more light shines on the negative effects of disproportionate attention at the lower end of test scores, there will be demands to restore discontinued classes at the upper end, and maybe add a few new ones.

On balance I am sanguine about the future. No Child Left Behind is good public policy. We can fix the problems with it and when we do ours will be a more prosperous and more just society. And with more top level students this magnificent university system of ours will be better than ever.