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Why Isn't Education a Left-Right Issue?
March 14, 2008
Alex Usher, Vice President, Educational Policy Institute
These are curious days, indeed. Last week’s edition of the Spectator told us how the British Conservative Party – yes, the one that gave us Margaret Thatcher – was thinking of using the social democratic paradise of Sweden as a model for the development of its own education policy (Click here for the article).
Was this just a case of the Tories’ modernizing, centrist leader David Cameron “doing a Blair,” and borrowing policy from the other side of the policy spectrum? Well, no. It turns out that since 1992, social democratic Sweden actually has a highly-developed and well-functioning system of school vouchers. Any group of parents unhappy with the quality of local state schools can apply to start their own. One in eight schools is now just such an independent state school, and collectively they educate close to ten percent of the nations’ students.
How can this be? Don’t we all know that vouchers are an evil right-wing plot to destroy the public school system? Apparently not – even within the United States, where this view is most shrilly expressed, one of the biggest backers of voucher systems are blacks. According to some polls, close to 70 percent of blacks in the US support vouchers – and they hardly represent the nation’s hard-right.
So are vouchers left-wing or right-wing? The answer is that inherently, they are neither. Depending on the parameters of the scheme, different constituencies might benefit. On that basis, you might call it left-wing or right-wing but the tool itself is politically neutral.
What about educational funding? In Canada, the picture has for some time been bi-partisan at the provincial level – political parties of all stripes have come to believe that tuition fee freezes (and in some cases tuition fee reductions as well) are the answer. Whether this is because they genuinely believe this to be equitable (which, all evidence to the contrary nonetheless seems to be the position of the New Democratic Party) or because they see it as the equivalent of a middle-class tax cut (one suspects, the policy of the Alberta Conservatives) is irrelevant – fee freezes cross all party barriers here in Canada.
On student aid, party positions in Ottawa and Washington used to be predictable. The left was for more, the right was for less (or at least, “no more”). Ever since Clinton hammered Dole in 1996 on student aid, Republicans have been careful not to get too down on student aid – President Bush, for instance has staked out decent positions on Pell grants more than once.
In Canada, the politics of student aid used to be predictable – the right would only consider tax-based measures, the left would push hard on student grants and the Liberals would pacify both sides by delivering both. So what a surprise the last weeks have been, as the Conservative budget championed income-based grants while the three opposition parties proposed the most regressive policy imaginable – making contributions Registered Education Savings Plan (the Canadian version of a 529) tax-deductible.
I can’t think of another area of public policy where there is this sort of ideological promiscuity. What can possibly account for this bizarre state of affairs? I think there are a few factors at play.
At one level, this is probably quite positive. The lack of a clear gap on educational policy means that politicians – and society generally – are unified on the point that all individuals should have access to the best education possible (and, at the postsecondary level, that it should be available at a reasonable price). There is a clear societal consensus on this point, and political parties are merely competing with one another to show the public that they are best able to deliver on this point.
But here`s where it falls down: the public (and therefore politicians) are united on the point that “Education is a Good Thing.” They are also united on the point that “Something Must Be Done.” That’s ok, except there is absolutely zero consensus among the policy community about what that something is. In fact, education research is remarkably thin on ideas to improve educational outcomes, largely because we haven’t figured out how to measure them. And so, by default, politicians are often left with the simple option of “throwing money at the problem.”
Politicians genuinely don’t seem to know what works in education – and that’s probably our fault, not theirs. And while we can all bitch about that, it’s really a failure on the part of policy researchers – either we’re not finding the answers or we’re not communicating them very well. As a result, politicians of all stripes just reach for whatever policy seems to have the brightest packaging at that moment, and ideology be damned.
The only exception to this rule is with respect to PSE student funding. Here, the evidence as to the effectiveness of various policy options is overwhelming: the government can get the most bang for its buck by concentrating its resources on poor students, both in terms of financial aid, and in terms of academic support in the secondary years. The problem is that at the dawn of the 21st century, participation in PSE has become so universal in North America that it has virtually become a middle-class entitlement, which means that too many voters look at the most effective policy recipes and ask: “what’s in it for me?” And so politicians reach for their favourite nostrums – middle-class tax-cuts – and apply it to PSE. The result – in Canada at least - is increasingly wasteful policies on tuition fee freezes.
Enjoy the weekend.
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