TUITION fees at the
typical American state university rose "only" 9 percent this year, USA
Today tells us, down from 14 percent last year. For every single year for
over 20 years, average tuition hikes have exceeded the inflation rate. When I
entered Northwestern University in the late 1950s, it took a median-income
family less than two months' income to pay the annual tuition; today it takes over
six months' income to pay it, at a typical selective private school.
Why is tuition soaring? According to conventional campus wisdom, it's because of declining external funding: lagging state subsidies to public universities, inadequate contributions and investment income at private ones. Schools also sometimes argue that higher tuition is funding qualitative improvements.
My own research—published in a new book, Going Broke by Degree: Why
College Costs Too Much (AEI Press, 2004)—suggests that the conventional
wisdom is wrong. Tuition has been growing for decades—during periods of rapidly
rising as well as falling state and private funding. As to qualitative
improvements, it is true facilities are nicer these days and some new academic
offerings have been introduced, but at the same time the average score on the
Graduate Record Exam is lower today than in 1965; it is highly questionable
whether college kids are learning any more than they were decades ago.
The
real reason for soaring college costs is higher demand for colleges, largely
resulting from well-intended but dubious governmental policies. When demand
rises relative to supply, prices (in this case, tuition fees) go up. Demand is
rising partly for non-governmental reasons, such as higher incomes and a
growing earnings differential between high-school and college graduates. But it
is also rising rapidly because of the huge growth in government loan and grant
programs as well as tuition tax credits. Pell grants, Stafford and Perkins
loans, tax-sheltered college-saving schemes ("529 plans"), work-study
programs, etc.: All serve to increase the number of students
wanting a college education at any given price. Kids without money for college
simply borrow it.
Rising tuition and enrollments have meant surging college revenues. Real
per-student spending rose about 70 percent over the past 20 years. How have the
universities used this extra money? Financial data provided to the federal
government suggest that remarkably little of the higher spending has gone
toward instruction: perhaps 21 cents for each new dollar per student since
1976. Teaching and learning are becoming almost secondary activities at some
universities. Research has grown, but so has spending on myriad other things.
Administrative staffs, for example, have soared. In 1976, it took the typical
university about three "non-faculty professionals" to service each
100 students; today, it takes nearly six. My fairly typical university spends over
$10 million a year subsidizing intercollegiate athletics.
Awash with funds, university personnel have taken good
care of themselves too. Over the 1980s and 1990s, real average faculty
compensation (including fringe benefits) probably rose about 45 percent, and near-mid-six-digit
salaries are commonplace for top administrators and superstar faculty. A large
proportion of tuition increases has gone not for qualitative learning
improvements, but to making life better for the permanent paid members of the
academy—lower teaching loads, more travel, higher
salaries, etc. University presidents beg legislatures and big donors for more
funds "to improve student access and academic quality," but use most
of the money for fancy facilities, athletics subsidies, administrative-staff
increases, and other things peripheral to the main mission of the institutions.
How can universities get away with it? Unlike the
private for-profit sector, which faces strict financial discipline imposed by
competition and markets, the not-for-profit modern American university is
largely (although not completely) shielded from these forces. How is IBM doing?
You can get real-time changing assessments of its fortunes by following its
stock price, and at least quarterly estimates of its profits in press releases
and stockholder reports. But how did Stanford do last year? Who knows? There is
no bottom line in higher education. The closest thing to a bottom line for most
high-quality schools is privately issued rankings of universities. The most
influential, that of U.S. News & World Report, evaluates partly on
the basis of the amount spent on inputs (e.g., faculty resources): The more the
school spends, the higher the ranking.
Not only is there little financial discipline, but
political or institutional accountability is lacking as well. Unlike most
governmental agencies, state universities typically are largely operationally
independent of their funding source, with relatively little legislative or
executive oversight to ensure accountability. Boards of trustees nominally run
most not-for-profit institutions of higher education (both public and private),
but they are usually dominated by part-time volunteers with little time for
independent exploration of campus issues, and are usually co-opted by the administration
they supposedly oversee.
The sharp rise in the cost of student education
suggests that productivity in American higher education is falling, certainly
relative to the private sector, but probably in an absolute sense as well.
While productivity is hard to measure (how do you evaluate research?), under
any reasonable assumption universities are becoming relatively more costly and
inefficient.
As the cost of conventional higher education rises,
people seek out other options. For-profit institutions such as the Apollo
Group's University of Phoenix use about one-third the resources of the typical
not-for-profit to educate a student, and are both rapidly growing-and extremely
profitable (with pretax profit margins approaching 30 percent in some cases).
Owing to their relative efficiency, their tuition costs are not much greater
than those of some highly governmentally subsidized state universities.
There are other options. Computer whizzes are
sometimes foregoing degrees in computer science to become certified in major
computer tasks by Oracle, Microsoft, or Novell. Some kids are heading overseas
for college, or to the relatively lower-cost community colleges instead of the
more expensive state universities. In time, universities may grudgingly get serious
about cost-cutting, raising teaching loads, ending tenure, slashing
administrative bureaucracies, and leaving peripheral businesses (such as food
and lodging operations or sports teams). But it has not happened yet – because
the incentives to do so are still largely missing.
A compelling case can be made that government should
get out of the higher-education business. Two arguments are used to defend
public subsidies: Universities have positive externalities (spillover effects
that benefit non-attendees as well as those getting degrees), and public
funding expands access for lower-income students. As to the
positive-externality argument, I have actually observed a negative correlation
between state-government spending on universities and economic growth,
controlling for other factors. Universities literally lower the incomes of
non-participating citizens. And in the case of the second argument, there is
only the very weakest of positive correlations between government spending on
universities and the proportion of students either attending or graduating from
college. (Another scandal: Over 30 percent of entering four-year-university
students do not graduate within six years.) The recent reduction, in
some states, in government support for universities is thus sensible public policy.
One worthwhile approach is Colorado's: Allocate more money directly to students, rather than to institutions. Give scholarships (vouchers) to students who are poor, to increase their access to education – but limit the funding to those with decent academic performance (in other words, stop subsidizing party-loving mediocre students). As for the rest, let them pay their own way: They are the ones who benefit, so they should pay the bill.
Education 2
CLINT BOLICK*
THE year 2004 will be
remembered as a pivotal year for the school-choice movement for multiple
reasons, not least of which is that this was the year the president of the
United States endorsed school choice.
Not George W. Bush – he's been a backer for years. Rather, it was Jed
Bartlet, the liberal president on TV's The West Wing, whose grudging
endorsement of school choice in Washington, D.C., was symbolically significant.
If even Hollywood recognizes the importance of this educational reform, can the
rest of the nation be far behind?
The West Wing episode was a case of art imitating life. In
September, more than 1,000 D.C. children were able to attend private schools
using publicly funded vouchers. The program resulted from an impressive
coalition, one that joined the Bush administration and congressional
Republicans with D.C. mayor Anthony Williams, City Council member Kevin
Chavous, and school-board president Peggy Cooper Cafritz. In the coming year,
school-choice legislation will be in play in more states than ever before.
Depending on state election results this fall, serious efforts could be mounted
in a dozen or more states.
Predictably, teachers' unions have shifted into high gear to defeat the one reform that threatens their monopoly vise-grip on public education. Earlier this year, the National Education Association announced new partnerships with ACORN and MoveOn.org—two of the nation's most sophisticated grassroots organizing groups—in a campaign to "protect" public schools.
At its
most recent national convention, the NEA introduced a $l-per-member increase in
dues for each of the next five years, which will generate $40 million for
political activity. (By contrast, the Alliance for School Choice, the leading
national pro-school-choice organization, has an annual budget of $6 million,
which must be raised from voluntary contributions.) In Washington state,
unions are trying a new tactic: bankrolling a referendum to repeal the state's
newly enacted charter-school law. If it passes, expect similar ballot efforts
to become a staple of the anti-school-choice arsenal.
Despite
the validation of school choice two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court in Zelman
v. Simmons-Harris, union-backed legal challenges continue to vex
school-choice programs. This year, the Colorado supreme court struck down that
state's voucher program for poorer children under the state constitution's
local-control provision. Meanwhile, a Florida appeals court invalidated a
similar program under the state's Blaine Amendment, which forbids direct or
indirect aid to religious schools. (So far, the U.S. Supreme Court has ducked
the issue of whether state-court decisions that discriminate against religious
options violate the First Amendment's guarantee of religious liberty.)
But
school-choice forces are growing more sophisticated. Several organizations
merged in May to lead the national school-choice effort, forming the Alliance
for School Choice and its sister lobbying group, Advocates for School Choice.
Together with the Black Alliance for Educational Options, the Hispanic Council
for Reform and Educational Options, and the Milton and Rose D. Friedman
Foundation, the national groups are pumping resources and lobbying acumen into
states to create school-choice programs and protect them against attacks from
unions and groups such as People for the American Way.
The
movement has also developed a political arm. Two national groups, All Children
Matter and LEAD, are carefully targeting state elections to improve legislative
prospects for school choice. The groups scored impressive wins in primaries
this year in South Carolina, Missouri, Florida, and elsewhere. But their
biggest win was in Utah, where Gov. Olene Walker, who had vetoed a
school-choice program for disabled children, was defeated for the Republican
nomination by Jon Huntsman almost entirely on the issue of school choice. The
teachers' unions can't point to a single candidate for office who was defeated because of support for choice.
Still,
politicians and political parties lag behind on the school-choice issue. Only a
handful of Republicans, such as Tommy Thompson and Jeb Bush, recognize that
school choice is a powerful way to attract minority voters. Most Democrats,
beholden to unions, cannot match what Republicans have to offer on the issue of
most tangible concern to inner-city families: the chance for a decent
education for their children.
Likewise,
only a few Democrats, such as Sens. Joe Lieberman and Dianne Feinstein and
former Milwaukee mayor John Norquist, recognize that their party is in danger
of losing education—one of its most important issues—if Republicans ever get a
clue about the political potential of school choice.
Sadly, the best thing going for the school-choice movement is the
abysmal and declining quality of public education, particularly for minority
children. Fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, the racial
academic gap suggests we are nowhere close to achieving true equality of
educational opportunity. Nearly 50 percent of black and Hispanic students drop
out of high school, and 27 percent of all 20- to 29-year-old black men who
dropped out are in jail. Despite high attrition rates, the average black
high-school senior achieves at a level four academic years behind the average
white senior—a gap that has increased by one-third over the past decade.
School-voucher programs have shown the potential to close the racial
academic gap by between one-fourth and one-third over four years. Perhaps more
significant, competitive pressure from school-choice programs forces public
schools to buck union pressure and adopt long-overdue reforms. Harvard economist
Caroline Hoxby has found that public schools consistently improve when faced
with competition from viable school-choice programs.
The
best case in point is Florida, where public schools that earn an "F"
grade from the state for two years face two consequences: state intervention
and an opportunity-scholarship program that allows students to transfer to
better-performing public schools or receive scholarships to private schools. In
the program's first year, only two public schools qualified for the program
(factoring in grades from previous years), but approximately 75 other schools
had one "F," meaning that another failing grade would trigger
vouchers.
Over
that year, every failing school in the state lifted itself from the
"F" list, taking steps they should have been taking for years:
spending more resources in the classroom, moving to year-round schooling, and
hiring tutors for failing students. Records obtained by the Institute of
Justice through the Freedom of Information Act revealed that school-board officials
referred to the threat of vouchers as a motivation for adopting remedial
measures. Researcher Jay Greene found improved test scores state-wide for the poorest-performing
students.
Right now, children in publicly funded school-choice
programs account for fewer than 0.2 percent of American schoolchildren. Yet the
potential is boundless. School choice is the nation's most urgent civil-rights
issue. We cannot tolerate, or afford, the current racial gap in education if we
are to continue to be a great nation.
Education 3
The Limits Of Money
FREDERICK M. HESS*
JOHN KERRY has
repeatedly denounced the Bush administration for promoting an ambitious
education agenda but refusing to foot the bill. Kerry charged in his campaign
book, A Call to Service, that the administration has "undermin[ed]
education funding as part of a larger strategy of directing every available school
dollar toward tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans." Kerry has
particularly attacked Bush for not spending enough money to support the federal
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act. In a July speech to the American Federation of
Teachers, Kerry accused the administration of "[breaking] their promise by
shortchanging the law by S27 billion. Millions of children have been left
behind— left with overcrowded classrooms, left without textbooks, and left
without the high-quality tests that measure what they are learning."
Kerry's
signature education proposal is a new National Education Trust, a pool of funds
supporting federal education mandates. Kerry promises to draw on those dollars
to "fully fund" NCLB, give a $5,000 pay increase to teachers in
troubled districts or hard-to-staff subjects, pay for a costly reauthorization
of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and fund a $24.8 billion
school-facilities-modernization bond drive. All told, analysts have calculated
that Kerry's increases would amount to $200 billion over ten years.
The
administration has not responded by insisting that money be spent more
responsibly. Instead, it has bragged about its own largesse, pointed to a GAO
study explaining that No Child Left Behind isn't technically an "unfunded
mandate" (since states can opt out), and berated states for not having
spent a backlog of $6 billion in previous aid rapidly enough.
President
Bush's campaign website trumpets the administration's success at enacting
"historic levels of funding" on its watch, including a 49 percent
increase in total K-12 spending, $139 million for reading programs totaling
four times the anount spent in FY 2001, and a 75 percent increase in
special-education funding. Bush has highlighted school spending on the campaign
trail, telling a West Virginia crowd, "Listen, we've increased the budgets
out of Washington by 49 percent since 2001. That is a healthy increase." A
Department of Education official later publicly boasted, "Funding has
gone up 49 percent under President Bush. Let me repeat that: 49 percent. That's
a huge, historic, gargantuan increase in federal education spending,"
The
administration is correct. In its first three years, elementary- and
secondary-education spending increased by more than it did during the entire
Clinton administration. Between 2001 and 2004 federal education appropriations
nearly doubled, from $29.4 billion to $55.7 billion. Moreover, the GAO has
concluded that the new requirements actually imposed by NCLB—testing every
child, for example—are relatively inexpensive and are more than adequately
offset by federal education dollars.
The problem is not with the particulars of the defense offered by the
administration, but with its basic assumptions. Conservatives have permitted
the debate to proceed on the dubious assumption that Americans are
shortchanging our schools and that promising new dollars is de rigeur for those
who would promote serious school reform. The current debate has obscured the
fact that, by any reasonable standard, American schools are exceptionally well
funded.
The truth is that, between 1960 and 2000, after-inflation education
spending more than tripled. Harvard's Caroline Hoxby has found that real,
inflation-adjusted spending grew from $5,900 per pupil in 1982 to more than
$9,200 in 2000. In its most recent figures, the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimates that current U.S. education spending
is over $10,800 per child.
In
fact, some may be surprised to leam that the U.S. ranks at the top of the
international charts when it comes to education spending. In 2000, the most
recent year for which international comparisons are available, the OECD found
that the United States spent significantly more per child than any other
industrial democracy, including those famous for their generous social
programs. In primary education, on a per-pupil basis, the United States spent
66 percent more than Germany, 56 percent more than France, 27 percent more than
Japan, 80 percent more than the United Kingdom, 62 percent more than Finland,
62 percent more than Belgium, and 122 percent more than South Korea. At the
secondary-school level, the figures are similar, with the U.S. outpacing
Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and South Korea, among others, by
more than 40 percent per pupil.
Despite all this spending, the U.S. ranked 15th among the 31 countries
that participated in the OECD's 2000 Program for International Student
Assessment reading exam. Ireland, Iceland, and New Zealand were among the
nations that outperformed the U.S. while spending far less per pupil. The
results in math are equally disquieting: In the international 1999 TIMSS study,
which assessed mathematics and science achievement at the eighth-grade level,
the U.S. ranked 19th out of 38 countries.
Not only are we spending education dollars without much payoff, we are
spending more than we think. The accounting guidelines in schools would bring
smiles to the former executives of Enron or Tyco. Unlike private-sector
businesses, school systems exclude several major costs when computing
"current expenditures." Among those excluded: property acquisition
and construction.
UCLA
business professor Bill Ouchi has calculated that in New York City, during the
2001-2 academic year, the cost of debt service, school construction, and
renovation added $2,298 to the $11,994 in reported current expenditure—meaning
the district actually spent $14,292 per student. In Los Angeles, the true
per-pupil cost in 2001 -2 was $ 13,074. A reasonable estimate is that the
per-pupil spending figures you see in your local paper represent only about 70
to 80 percent of what is actually being spent.
In
California, a state beset by yawning budget problems, personnel costs
outstripped revenue growth in 13 of the 20 largest school districts between
1996 and 2002. Sacramento enjoyed revenue growth of 33 percent and saw
enrollment grow by just 4 percent in that period, yet even then found a way to
boost its personnel costs by 41 percent. This summer's state budget, passed
after a contentious legislative session, included a 5 percent increase for K-12
education and devoted $49.2 billion of the $78.7 billion education budget to
K-12 schooling. Were the educators elated by their good fortune? Hardly. Education
Week reported that state superintendent of public instruction Jack
O'Connell was "disappointed" by the budget and that educators were
simply relieved "the numbers were not as bad as they could have
been."
The
endless flow of money has allowed schools to avoid cutting fat even as other
organizations have slimmed down. Between 1949 and 1999, the number of
non-teachers employed by American schools increased from one for every 2.36
teachers to one for every 1.09 teachers. In New York City, for instance, the
public-school district employs about 25,000 central-district personnel to
manage the affairs of the district's 1 million students. The New York
archdiocese, which enrolls about 110,000 students (approximately a tenth of
what the city's public schools enroll), makes do with a district staff of 22.
For
decades, we have poured money into shrinking class sizes and reducing teacher
workloads. Between 1960 and 2000, the ratio of teachers to students fell from
one teacher for every 26 students to one for every 16.1 students, meaning that
today's teachers instruct only about 60 percent as many students as teachers
did 40 years ago. Meanwhile, the amount of time teachers spend with students
each day has actually shrunk, from an average of 4.5 hours in 1980 to 3.9 hours
in 1998.
In
short, we're spending more to hire more non-teachers and more teachers
(each of whom spends less time teaching fewer children). The result is that,
while total spending on teachers has rocketed, individual teachers have seen
limited increases and feel underpaid. Additional personnel have soaked up
dollars that could have rewarded accomplished practitioners, been invested in
technology, or used for effective professional development.
It is indeed possible that we do not spend enough on schooling. However,
until we start wringing out inefficiencies and rewarding educators for finding
ways to do more with (ess, there's no way to know. Until we make that effort,
more spending is an excuse for lethargy and for ducking hard decisions.
Leading
conservative voices in Washington and in the state capitals have allowed
themselves to be backed into a corner where their credibility as serious
education reformers rests on their willingness to first promise more money for
the schools.
New spending inevitably yields new initiatives tossed
atop old inefficiencies. Buying off the status quo is no way to focus the
education debate on accountability, competition, parental choice, flexibility,
or results. Rather than brag that they too can spend like drunken sailors, serious
reformers should instead insist that educators show them the money—and
the results. The truth is that our schools should be doing a lot better for the
money we spend. Elected officials should remember that—-and run on it.
Education 4
Sparing Rods, Spoiling Children
The impossibility of school discipline
RICHARD ARUM*
LAST November in Las Vegas, ten students on the Cheyenne High School
football team were involved in a melee with the opposing squad immediately
following a game. The incident was broadcast repeatedly on local television and
led Jerry Hughes, the executive director of the Nevada Interscholastic
Activities Association, to suspend the team from participating in the upcoming
regional playoffs. "It was a brawl, an outright brawl," Hughes noted.
"We hate doing these things, but we felt it was a very serious situation
that occurred."
Within
48 hours, however, parents of the suspended players had contacted lawyers and
brought suit in Clark County District Court to overturn the Interscholastic
Association's decision. Before the end of the week, county judge Jackie Glass
issued a restraining order requiring the association to permit the Cheyenne
football team to participate in the playoffs as their due-process rights had
apparently been violated and the suspended players would suffer irreparable
harm if denied the ability to play. "Right now ... we don't have any
ability whatsoever to enforce the rules," responded Hughes. It is a
sentiment echoed by many teachers and administrators across the country. How
did we get to a point where courts increasingly intervene to prevent schools
and related organizations from exercising traditional disciplinary authority?
What have the consequences of these changes been for students, schools, and
communities?
Between
1968 and 1975, students gained the right to due-process protections for the
most minor aspects of day-to-day school discipline. The most significant
Supreme Court case during this era was Goss v. Lopez, which held
that students facing short suspensions must be provided with
"rudimentary" due process—an ill-defined concept that included such features
as a right of students to know the charges against them. Other features of due
process—such as the right to a formal hearing, the right to legal counsel, and
the right to call witnesses—were mandated for more serious disciplinary infractions.
After Goss v. Lopez, however, even low-level punishments (e.g.,
in-school detention or lowering a grade) were subjected to student and parental
challenges in court.
Within
a year of the case, the Supreme Court also decided Woodv. Strickland, which
found that if public-school teachers or principals knowingly violated a
student's due-process rights, they could be held personally liable for
financial damages. Predictably, there has been a chilling effect on school
personnel's willingness to monitor student behavior. The intoxicating
combination of extending rudimentary due process with Goss v. Lopez and
personal liability in Woodv. Strickland also gave birth to a cottage
industry of professional services. Today, public-school teachers and
administrators can typically expect to receive periodic mailings from insurance
companies offering supplementary personal-liability protection over and above
what their union or professional associations offer. In addition, it is
increasingly common for local school districts to maintain legal counsel: In
1974, prior to Goss v. Lopez, the National School Boards Association's
Council of School Attorneys had 250 members; today it has over 3,000.
The
emergence of student rights and a field of law limiting professional discretion
in the exercise of school discipline has had dramatic effects on our capacity
to prepare youths for productive roles as adult citizens. Court challenges have
undermined assumptions that school discipline occurs in the best interest of
students. Recent public-opinion polls of teachers and administrators have
revealed widespread concern about the threat of legal challenges. In a Public
Agenda poll taken this year, 78 percent of teachers noted that students were
quick to remind them that they or their parents could sue. According to a
Harris poll, no fewer than 85 percent of teachers and principals believe that
reducing the availability of legal challenges to day-to-day management and
disciplinary decisions would help improve the quality of education in their
schools.
The
growing concern about deteriorating student climates in public schools is not
just an academic problem, however, as student and teacher safety is also a
pressing public-policy issue. By the end of the 1990s, an average of 30
students per year were killed on public-school grounds, and, consequently, many
parents—from at least a quarter to a half in opinion polls, depending on how
recently the media had reported on school shootings—have come to fear for their
children's safety at school. This fear is not irrational: Shooting rampages
emerged as a recurring phenomenon in the last decade; and 14 percent of urban
public-school teachers were threatened with injury by students while 6 percent
were subjected to physical attack annually. In addition, 34 percent of urban
high-school seniors reported that street gangs were present in their schools,
and 10 percent of high-school boys admitted carrying weapons on school property
during the previous month.
While
problems of student behavior and disorder are widespread, inappropriate
disciplinary climates have had particularly devastating consequences for black
students, who are often concentrated in high-poverty schools where discipline
is especially dysfunctional. Black students are disproportionately represented
in schools where discipline is not working, but when students report that
discipline is both strict and fair, black and white students demonstrate equal
progress on cognitive tests. Legal challenges to school discipline—which were
intended by liberal legal reformers to ensure equal educational
opportunity—have had a terrible impact on black students in particular.
In
recent years, student and parental challenges to school discipline have risen
sharply, with the number of appellate cases more than doubling from 1990 to
2000. This growth has occurred simultaneously with the continued erosion of
teacher and administrator professional discretion on these issues.
Appropriate
and responsive school discipline has been limited in recent years by
regulations mandating zero tolerance and enhanced protections for students with
behavioral disabilities. With the number of incarcerated young adults tripling
since Goss v. Lopez, much needs to be done to restore the moral and
legal authority of school officials charged with the responsibilities of youth
socialization. While conservatives might be tempted to endorse authoritarian
measures to restore order in our schools, one must recognize that some of the
protections to students in the student-rights contestation period were indeed
warranted. Students may well be entitled to full due-process protections when
facing school discipline for, say, some objectionable expression. Students should
also have full due-process protections when they face expulsion or long-term
exclusion from public education. But in minor day-to-day discipline—such as
restrictions on participation in football games—due-process protections deny
educators the ability to teach students the importance of adhering to societal
norms, values, and behaviors. Here, students could use fewer rights.
With
the number of incarcerated young adults tripling since Goss v. Lopez,
much needs to be done to restore the moral and legal authority of school
officials charged with the responsibilities of youth socialization.
* Mr, Veelder teaches economics at Ohio University and is an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
* Mr. Bolick is president and general counsel of the Alliance for School Choice, and author of Voucher Wars: Waging the Legal Battle Over School Choice.
* Mr, Hess is director of education-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and author of Common Sense School Reform.
* Mr. Arum is author of Judging School Discipline, and is a professor of sociology and director of educational research at New York University.