What do Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have in common? Of course, they’re all billionaires. Buffet made his money through shrewd investing; Gates as the Microsoft pioneer; and Zuckerberg in social networking with Facebook. But I’m referring to their philanthropic pursuits.
The combined wealth of Buffet and Gates exceeds $100 billion. The youthful Zuckerberg is a relative piker at just a billion or two, but his heart is in the right place. All three have dedicated a portion of their considerable resources to improving the quality of public education in America. To be sure, this is worthy goal. Buffet is partnering with Gates through the Gates Foundation, which has already shoveled about $4 billion in recent years into public education. Zuckerberg has pledged $100 million to reform one of the country’s worst public school districts, in Newark, N.J.
I’d give all three an “A” for effort and good intentions — but an “F” for process and effectiveness. Isn’t it ironic that while they’ve all made their fortunes in the private enterprise system — that caldron of choice, competition, innovation and achievement — their vehicle for education reform is exclusively in a government monopoly?
Gates apparently knows better. Attending the 2010 Aspen Ideas Festival, he heard Joel Klein, a friend of Gates and the former chancellor of New York City’s Department of Education, declare, “The [public] education system is built on the three pillars of mediocrity: lockstep pay, lifetime tenure and seniority.” Gates reinforced this, noting that this seniority system and the huge sums committed to pensions for retired teachers, what he termed an “accounting fraud,” will force as many as 100,000 younger, more motivated teachers out of their jobs over the next couple of years.
A trio of documentaries released in the last year has caught the public’s attention, especially minority parents in poor-performing schools. “The Cartel, “The Lottery” and “Waiting for Superman” all had similar themes, exposing the political stranglehold of the teachers unions on public schools and the resulting mindless bureaucracy, waste, fraud and malfeasance. Just read the voluminous work rules in a typical school district’s collective-bargaining contract.
Parents of grade-school kids don’t have time to wait for the illusory promise of public school reform. They desperately want better alternatives now. Last week in Ohio, an African-American mom was jailed for lying about her address in a desperate attempt to get her daughters into a better school in another district.
So here’s my proposal to Buffett, Gates, Zuckerberg and other well- heeled philanthropists: Break the mold! Stop throwing good money after bad at the failing government-school establishment. It already has a powerful political constituency and hundreds of billions in taxpayer funding. Follow the lead of the late J. Patrick Rooney, chairman of the Golden Rule Insurance Company, the man who pioneered medical savings accounts. In the name of parental choice, he created a private-school voucher program for low-income Indianapolis families in 1991 that inspired similar efforts across the country, now serving more than 50,000 students.
Buffet has pledged to give 99 percent of his $47 billion net worth to charity and proposes that Gates and other billionaires do likewise. Great! Why not endow $100 billion for a national voucher plan? At 8 percent per annum on that principal (what the teachers’ PERA pension fund assumes), it would generate $8 billion a year to fund a $4,000 (about half of what it costs to educate a Colorado public school student) voucher for each of 2 million students to attend the private school of their choice.
This would do more than just improve academic performance. It also would offer philosophical diversity to counter the public schools’ liberal indoctrination of impressionable young minds. You’d think successful capitalists might want to defend and encourage capitalism.
Mike Rosen’s radio show airs weekdays from 9 a.m. to noon on 850-KOA.
