Despite Federal Largesse, Educational Performance Remains Unchanged

On May 16, President Obama traveled to Memphis, Tennessee to deliver the commencement address for graduates of Booker T. Washington High School. The school has had notable improvements in academic performance, and won the administration’s Race to the Top Commencement Challenge. The president seemed to use the opportunity to arrogate some credit for the students’ accomplishments:

…ever since I became President, my administration has been working hard to make sure that we build on the progress that’s taking place in schools like this. We’ve got to encourage the kind of change that’s led not by politicians, not by Washington, D.C., but by teachers and principals and parents, and entire communities; by ordinary people standing up and demanding a better future for their children.

While the students and faculty of Booker T. Washington High School should be commended for their achievements, their success is not indicative of increasing academic performance at the national level. Despite the fact that federal spending on education has experienced prodigious increases over time, national academic performance has largely remained stagnant. According to Heritage Foundation data, although per-pupil expenditures more than doubled during the period from 1970-2004, reading scores hardly fluctuated in either direction.

In fact, when it comes to the federal government’s role in education, the Department of Education (DoED) has a long history of waste and duplication. When the department was created in 1979 by President Carter, it had a budget of $14 billion. By fiscal year (FY) 2000, the department’s budget had increased to more than $38 billion and the most recent data list an (FY) 2010 budget of nearly $47 billion. A March 2011 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found multiple areas of duplication, inefficiency, and waste. GAO analyzed 82 teacher quality programs and 47 separate job training programs, scattered across 9 different federal agencies, including the DoED. Of the 47 job training programs, 44 overlapped with at least one other program. Approximately $18 billion in taxpayer funds were allotted to these 47 job training programs in 2009.

Despite spending more per student on K-12 education than any other country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), America has slipped to the middle of the pack in academic performance. The OECD’s 2010 rankings placed the U.S. at 14 out of 34 in reading, 25 in math, and 17 in science. According to the Agence-France Presse, “Currently, 18 percent of U.S. 15-year-olds do not reach an OECD-set level of reading proficiency, compared to 10 percent in China-Shanghai and Hong Kong, which are compared with countries because of the size of their populations.” Furthermore, “Only eight OECD countries have a lower high school graduation rate than the U.S., and in college education, the United States slipped from second to thirteen between 1995 and 2008.”

During the first session of the 112th Congress, multiple hearings have been held on the role of the federal government in local educational systems. House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) has introduced the Setting New Priorities in Education Spending Act, which would eliminate 43 profligate federal education programs and begin rooting out unnecessary funding of duplicative and ineffective initiatives. Many of the programs eliminated under the bill, such as the Even Start Family Literacy Program and the National Writing Project, which from (FY) 2008 to 2010 received $199.5 million and $73.5 million, respectively, were identified as ineffective or redundant by the Office of Management and Budget many years ago. Although this legislation would be a good step toward reforming the U.S. educational system, any serious education reform must shift greater control from Washington to the states and parents.

American children are trapped in an educational system that facilitates waste and fails to educate. The president was half right when he suggested that successful schools are the product of direct, consistent involvement by parents and teachers. If he ever realizes that doling out billions of dollars in federal money is not part of the solution, the U.S. will finally get back on the right track towards efficient, effective government spending on education.

– Luke Gelber