New Zealand's better idea

[j]

I know the whole Education system has been debated on here many times, but I recently recieived this article that makes you think twice about education reform and how to do it.

----------------------------------------------------------

Not all ideas have to be original to be good. If they have worked for others, they may work for us too. I, for instance, am not too proud to turn to New Zealand to learn how to improve America's public education system.


The following is an excerpt from a speech by Maurice P. McTigue, a former member of the New Zealand Parliament, to Hillsdale College in Michigan.

New Zealand had an education system that was failing as well. It was failing about 30 percent of its children - especially those in lower socio-economic areas. We had put more and more money into education for 20 years, and achieved worse and worse results.

It cost us twice as much to get a poorer result than we did 20 years previously with much less money. So we decided to rethink what we were doing here as well. The first thing we did was to identify where the dollars were going that we were pouring into education. We hired international consultants (because we didn't trust our own departments to do it), and they reported that for every dollar we were spending on education, 70 cents was being swallowed up by administration. Once we heard this, we immediately eliminated all of the Boards of Education in the country. Every single school came under the control of a board of trustees elected by the parents of the children at that school, and by nobody else. We gave schools a block of money based on the number of students that went to them, with no strings attached. At the same time, we told the parents that they had an absolute right to choose where their children would go to school. It is absolutely obnoxious to me that anybody would tell parents that they must send their children to a bad school. We converted 4,500 schools to this new system all on the same day.

But we went even further: We made it possible for privately owned schools to be funded in exactly the same way as publicly owned schools, giving parents the ability to spend their education dollars wherever they chose. Again, everybody predicted that there would be a major exodus of students from the public to the private schools, because the private schools showed an academic advantage of 14 to 15 percent. It didn't happen, however, because the differential between schools disappeared in about 18-24 months. Why? Because all of a sudden teachers realized that if they lost their students, they would lose their funding; and if they lost their funding, they would lose their jobs. Eighty-five percent of our students went to public schools at the beginning of this process. That fell to only about 84 percent over the first year or so of our reforms. But three years later, 87 percent of the students were going to public schools. More importantly, we moved from being about 14 or 15 percent below our international peers to being about 14 or 15 percent above our international peers in terms of educational attainment.


That's just one of the many free-market reforms New Zealand adopted to rescue itself from suffocation by a government that was too large and expensive.

After reforms started in 1984, New Zealand reduced the size of government by 66 percent, measured by the number of employees. The government's share of GDP dropped from 44 to 27 percent. They reduced income tax rates by half and eliminated capital gains and property taxes. As a result, revenue increased by 20 percent, and government debt fell from 63 percent down to 17 percent of GDP.

McTigue for President!

Source: Ralph Bristow

[Stephanie]

I often wonder why my state of NJ never looks to other states to see why their car insurance rates are much lower than ours. I pay $1500 per year for my 2000 Honda Accord. I'm sure that alot of it is political, but if there is a REAL INTEREST in trying to solve our many problems, looking "outside the box" should be considered.

[j]

Exactly Steph....like the author says,
"Not all ideas have to be original to be good".

[mf_dolphin]

Great post J and very interesting indeed. It took a lot of courage for New Zealand to take such drastic steps. It sure looks like they hit the nail on the head

[Aslkahuna]

happen here-not as long as the Republicans and Democrats dictate who we can vote for in the elections. As I have said before those two parties are political dinosaurs that need to go the way of the real ones before we get real reform in this Country.

Steve