A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door by Jack Schneider

Author:Jack Schneider
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2020-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Finances of Regulation and the Regulation of Finances

Regulation increases costs. Perhaps most significantly, this occurs as a result of the open-ended obligations that schools face in response to equity commitments. Mandates that students have “equal educational opportunity,” receive an “appropriate education,” and are taught in the “least restrictive” environment establish ambitious goals. And, in so doing, they burden schools with potentially exorbitant costs.

Poor children are far more expensive to educate than their more affluent peers, at least if the aim is to produce relatively equal outcomes. Educational research has shown that economically disadvantaged students benefit from costly programs like early childhood education, smaller classes, and wraparound programming that extends beyond the school environment. Were it not for legal requirements, schools could refuse to provide these services, cutting their costs dramatically. Even still, districts and states have been repeatedly sued on the grounds of failing to live up to these obligations.

Non-native speakers are also expensive to educate, benefiting as they do from trained teachers and specialized classes. Once more, the regulatory framework requires schools to act in a manner that allows for equal participation. When the Bilingual Education Act was passed in 1968, funding for programs increased from $7.5 million to $68 million. In 1974, the Equal Educational Opportunities Act was passed, requiring school districts to overcome barriers limiting equal participation by students. That same year, the Supreme Court’s decision in Lau v. Nichols ruled that “there is no equality of treatment merely by providing students with the same facilities, textbooks, teachers, and curriculum.” Program funding, in one year, doubled—from $68 million to $135 million, and steadily expanded thereafter.29

A third group of students whose education comes with a cost are those with physical and intellectual disabilities. Often twice as expensive to educate as their mainstream peers, students with disabilities can file civil suits if their needs are not being met or if they are not being educated in the “least restrictive environment” possible. And the ensuing cost of meeting their needs has vexed cost-cutters to no end. As the libertarian Reason Foundation complained, the regulatory state has “created ample provisions to protect and serve children with disabilities” without establishing “a cost-control provision in the law to protect the schools.”30

Market-oriented conservatives argue that the cost of such regulations is mostly wasted. Parents unhappy with the quality of a particular school, if provided choice, will simply move their children until they find the right fit. But what if no school chooses to spend what it takes to educate the least advantaged? In such a scenario, parents might have no particularly attractive alternatives. “Schools of choice”—charter schools and private schools—do not offer encouraging evidence that the market will provide for all young people.

Nationwide, charter schools serve fewer students with disabilities than traditional public schools. As scholar Gary Miron has observed: “There is considerable evidence that charter schools actively discourage families from enrolling disabled children and counsel them to leave when they do manage to enroll.”31 Indeed, an entire industry of advocates and lawyers

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