By TERENCE P. JEFFREY
After losing to Nick Saban’s Alabama football teams for 15 seasons in a row, the University of Tennessee Volunteers finally pulled an upset this fall and beat the Crimson Tide.
This nation’s public schools, however, cannot say the same about their competition in reading and math with America’s Catholic schools.
Catholic elementary schools have dominated their competition with this nation’s public schools when it comes to student achievement in the most fundamental academic subjects.
The Department of Education posted online this past week the average scores that fourth and eighth graders achieved on the National Assessment of Educational Progress math and reading tests administered this year.
They have also posted the historical results for the math tests going back to 1990 and the reading tests going back to 1992. Since those years, the NAEP math test has been administered 14 times to both fourth graders and eighth graders. The NAEP reading test has been administered 15 times to fourth graders and 14 times to eighth graders.
In total, there are now 57 annual national averages for fourth and eighth grade NAEP math and reading scores posted by the Department of Education.
Here is how the competition on those tests between Catholic schools and public schools stands: The Catholic schools are winning 57 to 0.
In every single NAEP reading and math test administered to fourth and eighth graders since 1990, Catholic school students have achieved higher average scores than public school students.
In the NAEP math test given to fourth graders this year, the Catholic school students beat the public-school students 246 to 235. In the math test given to eighth graders, the Catholics won 288 to 273.
In the fourth-grade reading tests, the Catholics won 233 to 216. In the eighth-grade reading tests, the Catholics won 279 to 259.
As this column has noted before, there is an obvious conclusion here (that even a public-school administrator might be able to understand): If you want your child to do well in the fundamental subjects of reading and math, send that child to a Catholic school.
Some may say: Yes, but it costs money to send your child to a Catholic school.
Yes, it does.
But it also costs money to send your child — or someone else’s child — to a government-run school. The difference in the funding of Catholic schools and government schools is that Catholic schools are funded by voluntary tuition payments and voluntary contributions from alumni and other supporters while government schools are funded by compulsory tax payments extracted by the government — even from people who may never send a single child to a government school.
In the 2018-2019 school year, according to NCES, the government spent an average of $16,144 per pupil in the nation’s public elementary and secondary schools. According to the BLS inflation calculator, that works out to about $19,036 in September 2022 dollars.
According to the Education Data Initiative, the average annual tuition at a Catholic elementary school was $4,840 in 2021. The average tuition at a Catholic high school was $11,240.
Catholic schools cost less and perform better.
The competition among schools, obviously, is nothing like the competition among professional athletes.
A professional athlete who year after year outperformed another professional athlete would demand more money than his inferior rival — and he would get it. But Catholic schools do not demand more money for their services than public schools do. They just get it in a different way. The funding of public schools, as noted, is compulsory and coerced by the government. The funding of Catholic schools — and other private schools — is voluntary and provided by the free will of parents and patrons.
Catholic schools compete in an open market. Government schools are a form of socialism: They are an institution owned and controlled by the state.
The way to end the chronic poor performance of government-run schools is obvious: Put them in the open market. Make them voluntary, too.
The way to do that is for every school district in America to give the parents of every student in that district a voucher equal to the per pupil cost of the local public schools. Let those parents decide what school — public or private, religious or secular — they want to redeem that voucher at.
If the Republicans take control of Congress in the midterm elections, they should put a provision in next year’s education funding bill stating that any school district that does not provide such vouchers to local parents cannot qualify for a penny of federal education funding.
If President Joe Biden, whose parents sent him to Catholic schools, wants to veto that spending bill to stop this school-choice initiative, let him be responsible for denying federal funding to every public school in the country.
It’s a win-win.
(Terence P. Jeffrey is the editor-in-chief of CNSnews.com. To find out more about him, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.)
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