Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 5, 1992 TAG: 9202050395
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CAL THOMAS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
SINKING SAT SCORES
PRESIDENT BUSH, in his State of the Union address, hammered away again at a subject he considers vital to the future of our country - education. Yet almost lost in the flurry of coverage of his speech was the fact that, just days before, the Senate killed a Bush proposal to provide federal aid for disadvantaged families that choose to send their children to private, including parochial, schools.The debate over school choice is really about who will control the minds and values of the next generation. The National Education Association, which won a federal Department of Education from President Carter in exchange for the union's support of his 1976 candidacy, has an agenda that is pro-abortion and favors sex clinics that dispense birth-control devices to minors, multiculturalism and the rest of the liberal laundry list. If parents were to opt out of a such a system, could liberalism, without a constant supply of new recruits, survive?
Numerous polls have shown Americans favor school choice, including private and religious schools, and by large margins.
Respondents to these polls believe that education choice would make schools more accountable to parents, limit increases in spending because schools would become more efficient, better assist low-income and minority students and motivate teachers, providing them with greater freedom to teach effectively.
There are two major reasons education choice continues to grow in popularity with the public, though not with Congress, which is largely beholden to the education lobby and the money it raises for re-election campaigns. One is that most people believe an education is incomplete unless it instills a moral code and a value system in each child. A majority believe this is better accomplished in a private or religious school.
The second reason is that parents notice that although more money is being spent on education, it is producing less satisfactory results.
Latest SAT national verbal scores are at their lowest level in history, while spending on education, according to federal figures, reached a record $413.8 billion last fall. About $248.6 billion of that total is going to public primary and secondary education. That makes the average per-pupil investment just under $6,000.
The education department's latest "Back to School" forecast shows that per-pupil spending in public schools increased nearly $3,000 in the last 10 years.
For this increased spending, the national verbal SAT score has fallen to an all-time low of 422. That is 44 points below its 1967 high of 466. In math, the latest SAT score was 474. In 1967, the math score was 492, an 18-point difference.
In state after state, increased spending has generally paralleled decreased achievement. At the same time, private religious schools recorded a combined math and verbal score of 909. That is 13 points above the national average. Independent private schools registered a combined score of 994, 100 points above the national average.
There appears to be no connection between the amount of money spent by states and improved test scores. Utah spent $2,629 per student in its schools last year, but achieved one of the highest SAT scores in the nation: 1,031. Washington, D.C., spent $7,550 per student and achieved the second lowest SAT score in the nation: 880.
Choice is the answer. Arguments about separation of church and state are bogus. If the government accepts money from the religious and the non-religious, why shouldn't that money be allowed to follow a child to the school he and his parents want him to attend, particularly if those schools turn out a product that is intellectually superior and morally and ethically sound?
Los Angeles Times Syndicate