Free to Choose Chapter 6: What's Wrong with Our Schools - The Problem

Your child goes to a school you did not choose. The teachers follow a curriculum you had no say in. The building may be falling apart or it may be beautiful – that depends almost entirely on your zip code. If you are wealthy, you can move to a better district or pay for private school. If you are not, you are stuck. And the people who run the system have very little reason to care what you think. That is the state of American education. How did it get this way?

This is post 9 in my Free to Choose retelling series. This chapter is split into two parts.

Schools Were Private First

Most people assume public schools have always been the default in America. They have not. In the early days of the Republic, schools were mostly private. Parents paid fees. Towns and villages had schools everywhere – not because the government forced them, but because families wanted their children to learn.

It was not a perfect system. Slaves were excluded entirely. But for white families at every income level, schooling was widely available. Even before any state made attendance compulsory, nearly every child between five and sixteen was receiving some form of instruction. The superintendent of New York’s common schools reported as much back in 1836.

Government’s role started small – helping pay fees for children whose parents could not afford them. Then something changed. Starting in the 1840s, a movement grew to replace the private, fee-based system with “free” schools paid for by taxes. The most famous leader of this movement was Horace Mann, who became the first secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education in 1837.

Mann argued that education was too important to leave to parents. Schools should be secular, open to all backgrounds, and run by professional educators. His arguments sounded noble. But the researcher E. G. West found that the push for government-run schools did not come from unhappy parents. It came mainly from teachers and government officials who wanted more secure jobs, guaranteed salaries, and greater control.

By the mid-1800s, Mann’s vision had won. Most children attended government schools. The private system that had educated nearly everyone was replaced by a public system – not because the old one was failing, but because professionals wanted to be in charge.

The Centralization Trap

For a long time, the public school system worked reasonably well. The reason was simple: it was local. The U.S. Constitution said nothing about education, so the federal government stayed out. States left control to towns and small cities. Parents knew the school board members. If they did not like something, they could show up at a meeting and be heard. Local control was not as good as the freedom to choose your own school, but it was a decent substitute.

Then centralization crept in. Before the Great Depression, school districts were already being consolidated and professional educators were gaining more authority. After the Depression, when faith in big government was at its peak, the shift became a landslide. Power moved from neighborhoods to cities, from cities to states, from states to Washington.

The numbers tell the story. In 1920, local funds made up 83 percent of all public school revenue. The federal government provided less than 1 percent. By the time Friedman was writing, the local share had fallen below half. The state provided over 40 percent. The federal share was still small but growing fast.

As money came from farther away, control followed. Parents lost influence. Professional educators, administrators, and union officials gained it. Schools were given new missions – promoting social mobility, achieving racial integration, solving problems that had nothing to do with reading, writing, and arithmetic.

More Money, Worse Results

Here is where Friedman introduces a powerful idea he borrowed from a British doctor named Max Gammon. After studying the British National Health Service, Gammon proposed a theory: in a bureaucratic system, spending goes up while output goes down. The system acts like a black hole – it sucks in resources and produces less and less.

American public schools fit this pattern perfectly. Between 1971 and 1977, the number of professional staff in U.S. public schools went up 8 percent. Cost per pupil rose 58 percent in raw dollars, 11 percent after adjusting for inflation. More people, more money.

And the results? The number of students dropped 4 percent. The number of schools dropped 4 percent. Test scores on standardized exams kept falling. More input, less output.

The bureaucracy itself was growing fastest of all. During one five-year stretch, when student enrollment barely changed, the number of teachers grew 14 percent – but the number of supervisors grew 44 percent. Nearly half the growth in staff was not people who teach children. It was people who supervise people who teach children.

Size Is Not the Problem – Power Is

Friedman makes an important distinction here. Size by itself is not bad. In business, large companies can be very efficient. Mass production brought down the cost of cars, appliances, and everything else. So why does bigger mean worse in schools?

The answer is not about size. It is about who has the power. When consumers are free to choose, a company grows only because people prefer what it offers. If a big company makes a bad product, customers leave and the company shrinks or dies. General Motors thrived because people chose its cars. W. T. Grant went bankrupt because they did not.

But in government-run schools, parents are not free to choose. The “customers” are assigned to schools by geography. If the school is bad, parents cannot take their business elsewhere – at least not without paying twice, once in taxes and again in private tuition. The producers – teachers, administrators, unions – have the power. The consumers – parents and children – have very little.

In small communities this was less of a problem. People could influence local politics, or even move to a different town. But when power shifted to distant city halls and state capitals, even that option shrank. The people with the least power are always the poorest. Wealthy families can move to suburbs with good schools or pay for private education. Inner-city families cannot. They are trapped.

The Bitter Irony

This is the part that should make everyone uncomfortable, regardless of political leanings. The public school system was built on a beautiful ideal: give every child, rich or poor, an equal shot at education. Break down barriers. Create one nation out of many backgrounds.

In practice, the system does the opposite. It locks in inequality based on where you live. Per-pupil spending in inner-city schools is often as high as in wealthy suburbs. But the quality is vastly different. In the suburbs, almost all the money goes to actual education. In the inner cities, much of it goes to maintaining discipline, preventing vandalism, and repairing damage. Some inner-city schools feel more like prisons than places of learning.

The people who were supposed to benefit most from public education – poor families, immigrant families, minority families – are getting the worst deal. And they have the fewest options to escape.

The Voucher Idea

Friedman’s proposed solution is simple. Instead of giving money to schools, give it to parents. Here is how it would work.

The government currently spends about $2,000 per year per student (in 1978 dollars). Instead of sending that money to a public school, give the parents a voucher – a piece of paper worth that amount, redeemable only at an approved school. The parents then choose where to send their child. It could be the local public school. It could be a private school. It could be a religious school or a specialty school or a brand new school started by a group of teachers who are tired of bureaucracy.

This is not a radical new idea. The GI Bill works exactly the same way. Military veterans get vouchers for education and can use them at any college they choose – public, private, religious. Nobody calls that a problem.

The voucher plan would not reduce taxes. It would not eliminate government funding of education. It would simply give parents the power to choose. And it would force schools to compete for students. Schools that do a good job would attract more families. Schools that do a bad job would have to improve or close.

Friedman points to real examples that prove this can work. In one of the poorest neighborhoods in the Bronx, a Catholic school called St. John Chrysostom’s was spending less per pupil than the nearby public schools – yet its students were two grades ahead of their public school peers. The difference was that parents chose to send their children there, and the school was free from bureaucratic control.

In Harlem, after the riots of the 1960s, groups of parents and teachers used private funds to start “storefront schools” in empty shops. One of the most successful was Harlem Prep, which took in dropouts and misfits and sent many of them to top colleges. It worked brilliantly – until it ran out of money and had to accept control from the Board of Education. After the bureaucrats took over, it declined. The founder, Ed Carpenter, saw it coming: “A school like Harlem Prep would certainly die, and not prosper, under the rigid bureaucracy of a Board of Education.”

Answering the Objections

Friedman tackles several common objections to vouchers head-on.

The church-state question. Would vouchers at religious schools violate the First Amendment? Maybe, maybe not. But a voucher plan that excludes religious schools and covers everything else would still be a huge improvement. And Friedman argues that the current system already violates the spirit of religious freedom – public schools teach their own set of values, and parents who disagree are forced to pay for that indoctrination while also paying for an alternative.

The cost question. Would vouchers cost more because the government would now be paying for the 10 percent of children already in private schools? Set the voucher amount slightly below the current per-pupil cost and total spending stays the same. Private schools already deliver better results at lower cost.

The fraud question. Could parents divert the money? The voucher can only be redeemed by approved schools. That does not prevent all cheating, but it keeps it manageable.

The race question. Some southern states tried voucher-like plans to avoid integration. Those were struck down. A real voucher plan can require participating schools to be non-discriminatory. Friedman believes vouchers would actually reduce segregation – because the current system, which assigns children to schools by neighborhood, is one of the most segregating forces in American life.

The class question. Critics worry that wealthy parents would “add on” to vouchers and send their kids to expensive schools, creating even more inequality. Friedman responds bluntly: the current system already has massive inequality. Vouchers would improve things enormously for poor families, moderately for the middle class, and hardly at all for the rich. Blocking a plan that would help the poor because some rich people might also benefit – that is, Friedman says, putting an abstract ideal of equality above the real welfare of children.

The “where are the new schools?” question. Would alternatives actually appear? Friedman points out that the government spends close to $100 billion a year on elementary and secondary schools. That is a third more than Americans spend on restaurants and bars combined. The restaurant industry provides incredible variety at every price point. Even a fraction of the education market would attract plenty of entrepreneurs, teachers, and organizations eager to start schools.

Key Takeaway

American schools started private and worked well. Government took them over – not because parents demanded it, but because educators and officials wanted control. As power moved from local communities to distant bureaucracies, spending went up and quality went down. The people hurt most are the poorest families, who cannot escape to suburbs or private schools. Friedman’s voucher plan would not end government funding of education. It would simply give parents the power to choose where their children go to school. Competition would do what bureaucracy cannot: force schools to serve students instead of serving themselves. The idea is not complicated. It is the same principle that makes every other part of the economy work – let the customer decide.

Book: Free to Choose by Milton and Rose Friedman | ISBN: 978-0-15-633460-0

Previous: Chapter 5 - Created Equal

Next up: Chapter 6 Part 2 - Higher Education and Obstacles - Why the voucher plan faces so much resistance.