Annenberg's 'Challenge' Is a Bust

Not likely. Average per-pupil expenditures (excluding capital expenditures) in U.S. public schools increased, in constant dollars, from $2,153 in 1960 to $6,123 in 1995 without improved performance. By contrast, private schools, which tend to provide more rigorous programs with better results, charged an average tuition of $3,116 in 1993-94 (the most recent data available). The tuition for Catholic schools was only $2,178.

The Annenberg Challenge simply increases the money flow to a system that diverts grants to serve the interests of politics and bureaucracy. By reducing the need for tax revenues that might have been allocated to similar projects, the challenge enables administrators and nonteaching personnel to fill their pockets with the largess of school reform.

Veteran school reformer Theodore R. Sizer, who in 1996 quit as director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, admits problems with Annenberg's approach: "If I had been king, I would have spent a lot less time negotiating through the system as it was and is and much more time in funding "different' systems," Sizer told Education Week. "I just don't think that putting the control in the hands of the existing hierarchy is going to do it."

Not surprisingly, the challenge has kept silent about its poor results. Annual evaluations of the challenge's progress promised in 1993 have never been completed.

But the public can see the results. Providing large sums of money to a top-heavy, inefficient system is not going to improve learning. Only reforms that apply external pressure on public schools, such as unfettered competition from private schools through parental choice, are likely to make a difference.

Philanthropists who want to make their mark on America's schools should follow the example of investors Theodore Forstmann and John Walton, who each gave $3 million last year to a scholarship program for low-income children in Washington. At least 1,000 children will be able to receive a good education at private schools, putting pressure on District of Columbia public schools to improve.

Competition: that's where the true challenge to reform begins.