Does more regulation make for a better education? Public schools prove it doesn’t

Editor’s note: This is part one of a two-part examination of calls for more regulation of homeschooling while so many public schools are failing students.

As critics of homeschooling call for more government regulations to “protect” children from their parents, they typically point to public schools as their ideal.

Certainly the public-school habitat is highly regulated, including background checks, education verification, drug testing and more.

Yet, all that overbearing bureaucracy has failed utterly to prevent hazardous environments, dwindling enrollment, financial crises and a stunning failure to adequately educate our nation’s children. 

Further, the rates of sexual abuse, violence and other crimes in public schools – not to mention corrosive racial and gender indoctrination – have skyrocketed in recent years. 

Instead of trying to clamp down on a minority of homeschoolers, shouldn’t critics focus on improving outcomes for the majority of kids trapped in highly regulated, yet still-underperforming, public schools? 

Enrollment declines highlight bureaucratic ineffectiveness 

Government-funded institutions nationwide are only now coming to grips with low enrollment figures affecting their bottom line. 

“Most districts nationwide receive an allocation of state funding based in part on the number of students they enroll,” explains Mark Lieberman for Education Week. “Fewer students mean fewer dollars to educate the students who remain, even as many of the costs of educating those students –from teacher salaries to utility bills – don’t change when the number of students drops.” 

And that doesn’t include the financial sacrifice of private homeschoolers who never received government funding based on “enrollment” in the first place. Their costs haven’t changed, either. 

However, like most families and private institutions nationwide, they typically adjust their spending to match their current income. 

Public schools? Not so much. 

Indeed, the blizzard of “emergency” COVID-19 funding for public schools obscured the system’s financial shortfall for years and exposed massive waste within it. 

For example, one county in Utah spent $321,000 of relief funds just “to get snow to the Buckskin Hills Ski and Snow Tubing Hill,” according to The Center Square. Another county in Michigan planned to use its funding to build an $80 million sport complex, but residents raised concerns over the project’s cost – twice the county government’s annual budget. 

“When Congress throws so much money at the cities that they don’t even know how to spend it, we have a problem,” said Adam Andrzejewski, founder and CEO of OpenTheBooks.com. 

Public-school advocates usually point to more palatable items such as teacher salaries and utility bills as reasons for high spending, but much of the budget bloat often stems from bureaucratic mismanagement. 

Just look at Iowa, which saw administrative costs for public schools increase by 20% over six years. 

Public schools also enjoy further insulation from financial reality through “hold harmless” policies, which allow previous funding levels to be maintained even after enrollment declines. 

As an example, New York City is paying up to $63,000 per student each year in some districts – even as many of the remaining children in schools enrolling fewer than 100 are failing basic math and reading standards. 

“It’s a costly model that robs children of a thriving community, a robust academic program, and diverse peers,” said Donalda Chumney, member of the Community Education Council 15 in Brooklyn and a former Manhattan District 2 superintendent. 

‘Costly mistake’ 

With all these public-school failures, many families are voting with their feet. 

Although population changes account for about half of public-school enrollment declines, “roughly 20 percent of students left public school for private alternatives, and another 20 percent left for homeschooling,” according to Education Week. 

These startling withdrawals from public schools illustrate consumers’ lack of confidence in the system’s ability to improve – at least for the relatively short time children are in its care. When public schools fail to educate, the pace of change is often too slow to make a meaningful difference for many students. 

Take Detroit’s experience, which the Chicago Tribune recently covered in an op-ed. 

“The once-great Detroit public school system suffered for decades from de-industrialization, depopulation and mismanagement right up through the 1990s,” editorialists write, noting how the state took over the district in 1999. “For years, the pattern continued of state officials making cuts that diminished the schools but failed to fully shore up the finances.” 

Did such a drastic government move help reverse outcomes and begin effectively educating students? Sadly, no. 

“A comprehensive report on the 15 years when state-appointed officials ran the Detroit schools pronounced the takeover ‘a costly mistake,’ and it’s hard to argue. The sought-after turnaround didn’t happen under their watch, and the emergency managers left behind a depleted shell of a district serving a fraction of the students it did when they started.” 

Fifteen years – compared to the approximately 12 years of a child entering kindergarten until graduation. 

What happened to all those children unlucky enough to enter those schools at just the wrong time? 

Free? Or worthless? 

This highlights the irony of the so-called “right to a free public education,” which the American Civil Liberties Union trumpets on its website: If that education fails to teach reading, writing and math skills – or prepare students effectively for life after high school – doesn’t “free” equate to “worthless”? 

Public-school advocates fall increasingly silent when confronted with statistics of high-school graduates who fail basic literacy tests or struggle to solve simple math problems. 

Moreover, the system itself admits it can’t guarantee an effective education: “While educators can be held liable for infringing on students’ rights and for negligence that causes students physical harm, educators do not have a legal responsibility to educate students.” 

This stunning admission of no “legal responsibility to educate” would almost be hilarious if it weren’t so disastrous for the students, especially when critics fret over homeschooling as tantamount to “truancy.” 

Truancy from what – the dismal results we already see from many public schools? 

Meanwhile, years of research have proved homeschool students consistently perform “15 to 25 percentile points above public-school students on standardized academic achievement tests,” according to the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI). 

‘Not related to academic achievement’ 

Remarkably, these better academic outcomes occur “regardless of their parents’ level of formal education or their family’s household income.” 

Other factors, such as teacher certifications or the degree of state control and regulations over homeschooling, were found to be “not related to academic achievement” – further exposing the myth that homeschooling needs to be regulated more. 

If all these results stem from “truancy,” then playing hooky from the public-school system should be something to celebrate, not regret.  

“The parents and students of Chicago deserve better than a school system at risk of being run into the ground, Detroit-style,” the Chicago Tribune op-ed concludes. 

Let’s take it one step further: The parents and students of America deserve better than a school system failing to accomplish what it was supposed to do: educate. 

So far we’ve explored only the areas of falling attendance, financial mismanagement and dismal academic outcomes in public schools. In part two, we’ll look at sexual abuse, violence and other crimes in yet another failure of government-funded education to protect one of our nation’s most precious resources – our children.