Forty-six years ago a plaintiff named John Serrano sued the State of California, asserting that the capacity of school districts to raise money was grossly unequal, hence unconstitutional. The quality of education in property-poor districts was said to be diminished by the resulting disparities in spending per pupil. Students had a right to a more rational and fair distribution of money.
As in most litigation the claimants had to prove some real injury. The disparities in spending were colossal, ranging, at the extremes, from a few hundred dollars per pupil in property-poor districts, to several thousand in freakishly wealthy industrial centers and top-rank suburbs. The injury seemed self-evident.
But it wasn’t. By whichever measure of outcome – graduation, test scores, reputation – there was no pattern linking spending to actual quality. In addition, surprisingly, there was little or no evidence that children from poor families were systematically getting less spent on their schools. The lawyers for Serrano et al. could not credibly assert that money was the key to quality education or indeed, that it affected the success of schools in any way – except one. It was obviously true that the richer districts could buy more stuff. They could hire more teachers, administrators and superintendents, at higher salaries, build fancier buildings and secure the most up-to-date supplies, books and equipment. The trial judge decided this was injury enough. His judgment for the plaintiffs was affirmed by the California Supreme Court. As yet, however, 40 years later, no one has succeeded in establishing a clear link between spending per-pupil and the benefit for the child.
Nevertheless, spending has skyrocketed in succeeding generations across the nation for reasons political – principally the monopoly power of public-service unions. But the apparent disconnect between spending and quality of education remains. This reality has conflicting implications for the school choice movement. It reduces the political significance of the consistent discrimination in spending against today’s charter schools; we are not at all clear that it really affects outcome. On the other hand, it is plain to anyone who knows the facts that, whatever it is that does make a school successful, it can be had without exploding the cost. In short, if school choice supporters are willing to accept and even exploit politically the cheaper regimes now in place, they have a more powerful case.
The opportunity is clear. Both the public charter school and 95 percent of private schools are much less costly per pupil than the schools of the State serving similar children. In the current political environment this chance to reduce spending without injury to these schools is a potent weapon left largely unexploited by school choice enthusiasts. On a macro scale – over time – the national investment might be reduced by a hundred billion a year while maintaining, and, hopefully, increasing, the excellence of the outcome through choice.
Any campaign for such a future would need to address two sorts of objections about cost. The first asserts that the departure of students from the traditional public schools entails new fiscal burdens on the old system. Having to reduce personnel, close buildings, maintain pensions and so forth impose difficult and costly decisions and would entail a studied and gradual withdrawal from the old-style regime – one that will take years. The obvious response to this is that the necessary costs of shrinking should, indeed, be recognized and supported for however many seasons it takes to stabilize the natural market shares that parental choice produces between charter and private schools on the one hand and P.S. 99 on the other.
The second objection is also about cost and appears the more imposing. If comprehensive school choice winds up supporting the eight or nine per cent of all students now in those private schools that would participate, the new cost to the State could be substantial. Union spokesmen have very naturally emphasized this possibility which, however, is a wholly unrealistic outcome that is easily avoided with injury to no one.
There are two types of funding techniques that, separately or together, would stabilize and even reduce total cost. First, the eligibility for subsidy could be limited for a time to students now in public schools for, say, a year or more, or those entering kindergarten then advancing grade by grade. Such restrictions could be relaxed over time. Second, the subsidy could be sufficiently less than the per-pupil cost in public school so that, over time, the total cost to the State would be whatever the political culture preferred; each transfer from public school could be made a saving to the public system, diminishing the cost effects of subsidizing children who are already in private school. Several of the state voucher systems now in operation incorporate some version of these options.
It is, thus, wholly responsible and highly promising politically for school choice supporters to claim the opportunity for frugality in the design of a family-friendly system. This is what we are getting now in charter schools and could expect on a grander scale from a wisely structured extension to all schools.
