Declining test scores and poor academic achievement in American schools are cause for alarm, frustration and anger. These declines continue despite a fourfold inflation-adjusted increase in spending since 1960. Clearly, higher spending isn’t the answer to our education failures. Yet, "more money" blares from the one-song jukebox in Washington.

Illustrating education needs, President Clinton’s last State of the Union address provided this gem: "The United States must look not only west, to Europe, but also east, to Asia." Geography teachers across America winced in unison. Asians, apparently, located Clinton without difficulty in 1996.

What is the education answer, you ask? Answer: Address the root problems. In my view, the primary root problems are government monopoly and compulsory attendance. Let’s review.

The significance of monopoly control cannot be overstated. The power to tax everyone guarantees revenue streams to public schools for which there’s no market competition or effective accountability.

Efforts to implement merit pay, competency tests, charter schools, tuition vouchers and other accountability and competition measures have been ferociously---even hysterically--- opposed by public education bureaucrats and the teachers’ union, NEA (Forbes magazine dubbed it the "National Extortion Association").

Economist Milton Friedman originated the tuition vouchers idea in 1955. His concept was to redirect funding and create a more significant "education private sector." History proves that only private enterprise can create the innovations in curricula, methods and technology that are needed to maximize results for every dollar expended. Monopolies lack the incentives (competition) to try truly innovative ideas. Ideally, public schools would adopt the best methods created and refined by the private sector.

Unfortunately, public tuition vouchers introduce an unacceptably tangible threat to private schooling: Regulatory control. Unquestionably, education bureaucrats and teachers unions would try to assert control through courts to regulate private schools who accept public money through vouchers. How would the courts rule?

With public vouchers, attacks on religious content are inevitable. Those who froth about "separation of church and state" carry their anti-religion crusade to ridiculous extremes. The separationist’s opposition to prayers at high school football games serves as a reductio ad absurdum to prove the threat to any religious content in school curricula.

Most religious schools would find such content control too oppressive and reject vouchers. Religious schools comprise 80% of private schools, so the content threat---unless neutralized---effectively kills any public voucher efforts on a broad scale.

The dedication and excellence of some public educators is beyond question. But also beyond question is that higher standards exist in most private schools---which don’t take "self-esteem" and other fads to absurd extremes. Despite the iconoclastic Huck Finn stereotype, most students prefer a disciplined and challenging environment. According to a poll by the Public Agenda Foundation, fully half of public school students believe their schools fail to challenge them to do their best; that figure is only 19% for private schools.

Compulsory attendance is another bedrock issue that’s frequently overlooked. High drop-out rates are generally viewed as a "bad" thing, but considering the alternative and the best interests of the majority, perhaps they should be higher. Education is unquestionably important but most public school teachers will confirm that their efforts to teach the willing students are greatly diluted by the time spent dealing with a few malcontents who don’t want to be in school.

Private schools avoid this problem by expelling troublemakers. Learning requires desire. The exit-door option empowers teachers to focus on willing and marginal students and avoid wasted time on others. Compulsory attendance simply isn’t conducive to effective order and discipline.

Truly effective solutions address root problems. To achieve that, we need informed parents and citizens participating in the debate and demanding action. Abundant resources are available at your library and on the Internet. Reason magazine has an excellent analysis of the school choice debate in its January 1997 issue. It’s available on the web at http://www.reasonmag.com . The Cato Institute (http://www.cato.org) offers great information, too.

Copyright Ó1997 Steve Scroggins - All rights reserved.