More Spending, Worse Results: Federal School Choice Tax Credits as the Remedy for America's Declining Education
Source: https://www.facebook.com/americanspectator/. "America’s Education Crisis: All Expense, No Excellence | The American Spectator | USA News and Politics." October 17, 2026. spectator.org
The Gist
The author says America is spending more than ever on schools while students score worse than ever, especially compared to China, which hurts the country's future economy and security. He blames teachers' unions and an unaccountable school system, and says a new federal tax credit for private school, homeschool, and tutoring scholarships is the fix. He urges Pennsylvania voters to pressure their governor to join.
Conclusion
America's public education system is failing despite record spending, which threatens national competitiveness and security, and expanding school choice, such as the Education Freedom Tax Credit, is a needed solution that states like Pennsylvania should adopt.
Premises
- American education spending is at record highs, yet American 15-year-olds posted their lowest PISA math and reading scores in more than a generation, with declines across income, geographic, and racial groups.
- Chinese students are rapidly outperforming American students (up 21 points in math since 2018 versus a 15-point U.S. drop; 54% of Chinese students are top math performers versus 8% of U.S. students).
- A nation cannot sustain leadership in AI, quantum computing, aerospace, and defense technology without producing enough mathematicians, scientists, engineers, and technicians, so weak student achievement is a national security threat.
- The education establishment, especially teachers' unions with leftist ideology, is more accountable to bargaining units than to children and families, and resists a focus on test scores, which explains the poor results.
- The Education Freedom Tax Credit (effective 2027) would fund scholarships for private school, homeschooling, and tutoring through donations to Scholarship Granting Organizations, projected to support millions of scholarships and enjoying broad public support, which would empower families and help students compete globally.
Assumptions
- Declining PISA scores reflect failures of the public school system and its governance rather than other causes such as demographic, economic, or technological change.
- Higher spending should produce better outcomes, so the lack of improvement shows that money is not the problem and the system is.
- Teachers' unions and their political ideology are a primary cause of the decline, not merely a correlate.
- Private school, homeschool, and tutoring options funded by scholarships will produce better academic outcomes than current public schools.
- Comparative PISA performance between the U.S. and China is a valid measure of national human capital and competitiveness, and the Chinese data are comparable.
- Pennsylvania's non-participation in the program is a policy failure that voters should hold the governor accountable for.