[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 1 (Tuesday, January 25, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: January 25, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                          QUALITY OF EDUCATION

                                 ______


                           HON. DOUG BEREUTER

                              of nebraska

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, January 25, 1994

  Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Speaker, this Member commends to his colleagues 
this editorial that appeared in the South Sioux City Star on January 6, 
1994, regarding the relationship between school quality and the number 
of two-parent families in a State.

             [From the South Sioux City Star, Jan. 6, 1994]

              Quality of Education Not Dependent on Funds

       In a 1992 book ``America's Smallest School: The Family,'' 
     Paul Barton argues that a more powerful measure of school 
     quality than the pupil-teacher ratio is the parent-teacher 
     ratio.
       He notes that in recent decades the proportion of children 
     living in single parent families rose rapidly and school 
     performance, measured by standardized tests, declined. The 
     proportions of children in single-parent families vary 
     substantially among the states, so some conclusions are 
     suggested by data such as:
       In a recent year, North Dakota had the nation's second 
     highest proportion of children in two-parent families, and 
     the highest math scores. The District of Columbia ranked last 
     on the family composition scale and next to last in test 
     scores.
       Empower America and the American Exchange Legislative 
     Council recently released a report bristling with facts 
     inconvenient for certain theories and factions:
       Between the 1972-73 and 1992-93 school years, a 47 percent 
     increase in spending on public education for grades 
     kindergarten through 12 coincided with a 7 percent decline in 
     school enrollment and a 35-point decline in SAT scores and 
     pupil-teacher ratios declined in 50 states.
       However, in 1992-93, none of the five states with the 
     highest teachers' salaries was among the 15 states with the 
     top SAT scores. And the 10 states with the lowest per pupil 
     spending included four--North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee 
     and Utah--among the 10 states with the top SAT scores.
       New Jersey has the highest per pupil expenditure, an 
     astonishing $10,561, which teachers' unions elsewhere try to 
     use as a negotiating benchmark. New Jersey's rank regarding 
     SAT scores? 39th.
       North Dakota ranks 44th in per pupil expenditures ($4,423), 
     and 49th in teachers' salaries but second in SAT scores and 
     graduation rates. South Dakota ranks last--51st--in teachers' 
     salaries ($24,125) but third in SAT scores and sixth in 
     graduation rates.
       For understandable if insupportable reasons, the public 
     education lobby has long argued for judging school quality 
     not by cognitive outputs--standardized measurements of what 
     students learn--but by monetary inputs, principally the 
     number of teachers and staff and their earnings.
       The fact that the quality of schools correlates more 
     positively with the quality of the families from which 
     children come to school than it does with education 
     appropriations will have no effect on the teachers' unions 
     insistence that money is the crucial variable. The public 
     education lobby's crumbling last line of defense is the 
     miseducation of the public.

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