More Money is Needed

With school choice gaining support in Texas, defenders of government schools are unleashing a media blitz. No matter the details of their articles and speeches, it always comes down to a claim that more money is needed for government schools to achieve acceptable results.

As an example, the President of the Houston Federation of Teachers, Jackie Anderson, recently said,

[Texas lawmakers] are continuing to rob the public schools and send money to private charters and are trying to privatize our schools. They are starving us to death, and then they wonder why we don’t meet certain accountability standards.

She conveniently evades the fact that government schools are financed by coercively taking money from taxpayers. If an individual coercively took money to pay for his child’s education, it would be considered robbery. The principle doesn’t change merely because government is acting as his proxy.

Anderson went on to claim that legislators are supporting school choice for financial benefits.

The only thing I can see is that they’re beholden to someone or some entity or a certain group of people because you’re basically turning your back on the majority of Texas students and Texas schools. We need a real raise.

This is a prime example of the pot calling the kettle black. The supporters of school choice are “beholden” to a certain group of people—parents and their school-age children. Anderson wants lawmakers to be beholden to a different group of people—teachers and their union representatives.

Anderson and her fellow travelers seem to believe that money is the only motive for supporting school choice. In the same breath that they are claiming that supporters of vouchers and similar policies are motivated purely by financial considerations, defenders of government schools scream that they need more money. That someone might support school choice as a matter of principle—i.e., more freedom—escapes them. I, for example, do not have children. But I do want to see all individuals—including parents and students—have more freedom.

If money is the solution for improving government schools, then Washington, D.C., should be near the top of performance assessments. The district spends nearly $23,000 each year per pupil. Only New York state spends more. Yet, the National Assessment of Educational Progress ranks D.C. in the bottom five. Students in Texas scored as well as those in New York, and considerably better than Washington, D.C.. And this result was achieved while spending less than half of what New York and D.C. spend per student.

Clearly, more money does not produce better results. Despite the facts, teachers and government school supporters continue to claim that more money is needed to achieve better results. What is really needed is more freedom.