Reform’s Missing Ingredient

Building a High-Quality Support System for Education

By James J. Gallagher

Suggestions for reforming America’s education system have been plentiful of late, underscoring a widespread dissatisfaction with current practice and operation. Yet few of those offering such reforms have examined the large enterprises in our society that do operate successfully to see how they differ from education.

A list of the three largest public expenditures of funds in this country may contain a surprise for most citizens. Based on statistics for the 2006 fiscal year, the No. 1 ranking goes to health expenditures, which come in at $1,700 billion. The second-largest expenditure is for the U.S. Department of Defense, at $534 billion. No real surprise there. But the third-largest expenditure is elementary and secondary education, at $511 billion. (Higher education is more than $300 billion a year.) This surprises most people because the national figures on education are rarely presented.

Another surprising statistic for some is the number of elementary and secondary teachers employed in this country: 3.1 million in public schools, and another 400,000 in private schools. This means that if you walk down the street and pass 75 adults, the odds favor one of them being an elementary or secondary school teacher. It’s just one indicator of how...