SACRAMENTO, CA - Perhaps the most daunting challenge facing California (and, indeed, all of America) is the continued academic underachievement of students from economically and socially disadvantaged backgrounds. In an increasingly information-based, high-tech economy, the low test scores and high dropout rates of these students will end up condemning them to a bleak life in society's underclass. What to do?

Many in the education establishment still believe that more money and more government programs will solve things. As former U.S. assistant education secretary Diane Ravitch reports in a recent Forbes magazine article, however, Title I, the main federal education program designed to assist disadvantaged students, has been a colossal failure. Created in 1965, Title I pours federal tax dollars into local school districts in order to narrow the gap between poor and non-poor students. Currently, Washington spends $7.2 billion on Title I, with California receiving $719 million. Yet, despite all this spending, Ravitch notes that a new study commissioned by Congress has found that poor children in schools receiving Title I money do not perform any better than poor children in schools that do not receive these federal funds.

This should not be a surprise to anyone who has read Pacific Research Institute's California Index of Leading Education Indicators. One of the Index's key points is that what counts is not how much money is spent on education, but rather how it is spent. Dumping dollars into ineffective programs such as Title I and the vast array of state categorical programs only guarantees taxpayer frustration that they aren't getting bang for their buck (note the failure of many school bond measures in last week's local elections).

If more government spending and programs aren't the answer, what is? In a riveting speech at a recent PRI co-sponsored dinner, UC Regent Ward Connerly said that school choice (i.e., vouchers) was perhaps the most important way to improve the achievement of disadvantaged youngsters. By giving these children the opportunity to attend better performing schools in the private sector, the way would be opened up for more of these students to attend the state's universities and colleges.

Ward Connerly's prescription is supported by a growing body of empirical evidence. The Milwaukee voucher program has so increased the academic performance of its low-income student recipients that Harvard researcher Paul Peterson says that over time the program would result in the disappearance of virtually any performance gap between black and white students in math and reading. Another Harvard professor, economist Caroline Minter Hoxby, has found that competition from private Catholic schools improved student performance at both Catholic and public schools (reading and math scores would improve by about 10%). Hoxby says, "A $1,000 voucher would improve performance across the board."

Such data has convinced even Washington Post columnist William Raspberry and the New York Times editorial staff to come out in support of vouchers. Isn't it time for others, especially in California, to heed Ward Connerly's sage advice?

- Lance T. Izumi