Learn by example

It has long been a tenet of conventional political wisdom that the provision of basic education—like the provision of roads, armies, health care and financial markets—cannot be left up to the whims and wishes of individuals. The voluntary arrangements that would spontaneously result from such an approach to these goods would be wholly insufficient, the argument goes, and thus an imposition of rigid order from the top down is most desirable. This idea has been especially on display in the area of education over the past several years, as several state governors have clashed strongly with teachers’ unions and, most recently, some teachers have even gone on strike. For the most part, however, the opposing parties in these debates have agreed as to the basic premise of state-run education, and have quibbled mostly over the specifics of its implementation.

There is evidence emerging, though, to suggest that perhaps this assumption itself is well worth examining, and even overturning. Overshadowed by the news of the union strikes in Chicago this month, a paper entitled “Why the Denial? Low-Cost Private Schools in Developing Countries and Their Contributions to Education” by Pauline Dixon was quietly published in Econ Journal Watch. The paper reads as a summary of several studies of low-cost private education conducted by various researchers across India, Africa and Pakistan over the course of the past decade and provides a strong case for reevaluating our own national commitment to public education.

For one thing, the related studies have all but overturned the widely held assumption that private education is a luxury reserved only for middle- and upper-class families. In Lahore, Pakistan, for example, it was found that about half of the children from families living on less than $1 a day were attending low-cost private schools despite access to cost-free government-run schools. In certain Indian slums, 65 percent of school-going children attend private schools. In the slums of Lagos, Nigeria, that number is even higher, at 75 percent. This, of course, is partially due to the fact that these schools have found ways to be relatively cost-effective. Many of them operate on the basis of monthly fees, with such fees representing between 4.2 percent and 13.5 percent of the monthly wage for a minimum-wage earner across these regions. They also offer differing degrees of scholarship and reduced fee options for students who are particularly in need.

As if this was not enough, the data go on to dispel the next myth surrounding low-cost private education, which is that poor students attending relatively inexpensive private schools would get nothing more than some mediocre, bargain-bin education. As it turns out, however, it is just the opposite: Even when controlling for family background, innate ability and school and teacher characteristics, students at these low-cost private schools tend to perform to a higher degree than their peers in government-run schools. In rural India, the gap between a low-cost private school student and a state-run public school student at the same nominal level of education is close to an extra year. In Pakistan, the difference is even greater, with public school students between 1.5 and 2.5 years behind their low-cost private school counterparts.

The low-cost private schools were found to be superior to the cost-free public schools according to a number of other criteria as well. The most essential of these, perhaps, has to do both with the cost and quality of teaching at these schools. Summarized studies noted that teachers in the low-cost private schools, despite working for only a fraction of the cost of their unionized public school counterparts, were more committed to their jobs and spent a larger percentage of their time actually teaching. In addition, though, there was also evidence to suggest that low-cost private schools have been successful in overcoming gender gaps in education, and were able to provide students with better access to nicer facilities, running water and electricity than their cost-free state-run competitors.

Unfortunately, as Dixon notes at length, these impressive findings were not met with the sort of relieved excitement that would be expected of those interested in erasing socioeconomic barriers to quality education. As a matter of fact, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has largely responded by doubling down on its commitment to placing students in state-run schools of lesser quality, overlooking the obvious alternative of allowing these children to pursue low-cost private education instead. The problem seems, however, to be fundamentally one of paradigm: UNESCO views student and family preference for these private schools “as a negative response to perceived—and usually real—failures of the public system,” rather than as a definitive expression of preference for the low-cost private schools. This, in fact, is no less ridiculous than saying that in-state students chose Duke not because they were attracted to it by any of its positive qualities, but simply because they were so appalled by the unfailingly abysmal athletic and educational programs of the University of North Carolina.

It is a strange adherence to our chosen politics indeed that allows us to denounce the attainment of goals we have spent so long seeking, simply because they were not attained by the method we first thought was best. I know few people who want anything other than better access to high-quality education for the less privileged, and yet I know many who will be unwilling to accept the results of these studies. In our contemporary political discourse, positions on issues such as public education or universal health care have started to become synecdoches for our life views in general, making it less and less fulfilling to follow the results, and more and more important to follow the program. To doubt public education—or Medicare, or Social Security—has become tantamount to doubting the Democratic Party, the progressive movement and, generally, one’s self as well. It seems that it is no longer enough, on either side of the aisle, for a job to simply be well-done. Instead, it must be well-done, but only according to the exact methods and guidelines laid out and advocated for it beforehand.

Meanwhile, of course, real solutions pass by unimplemented and real people go on without the basic improvements they would have brought. Let’s certainly hope, without holding our breaths, that this won’t be the case here.