In Which I Outsource to Prof. Martin Carnoy
Folks: I didn’t want to let last week’s interesting discussion about vouchers and their implications for public education drop, so I asked Stanford professor Martin Carnoy to add his two cents. Carnoy is a professor of economics and education and has done much important work on education vouchers, including some revealing international comparisons.
Here are his thoughts…enjoy:
We need to go back to basics on educational vouchers and see whether what was claimed for them was ever realized in practice. In the 1950s, Milton Friedman introduced the concept, arguing that if private schools could compete with public schools by having access to public funding (vouchers), the cost of education would fall and parents would feel better off because they would be able to choose their child’s school. Friedman advocated a voucher plan that included all families, regardless of income. That was precisely the plan he inspired to be implemented in Chile in 1981, and to be placed on the ballot twice in California, in 1993 and in 2001.
Later proponents of vouchers, such as John Chubb, Terry Moe, and Paul Peterson (and finally Friedman himself), played down the cost saving part of the argument, kept the consumer welfare argument (parents feeling better off because they had a choice), and introduced the idea that targeted vouchers aimed at low-income students would increase their learning. This would happen in two ways: (1) by allowing students to attend private schools, where they would get a better education than in public schools; and (2) by introducing competition between public and private schools, which would force public schools catering to low-income students to do a better job. The result of these two voucher-induced effects, they claimed, would be to increase greatly the academic performance of low-income students.
These ideas tap into a widely held view that markets do a better job than the public sector in just about every economic activity. So a lot of people want to believe that sending poor children to private school and increasing competition among schools should make a big difference in places where public school students are not doing well. Yet, there is only very sporadic evidence of any real educational improvement due to vouchers or to any other form of market competition in education.Studies in Colombia have shown positive effects for low income voucher students attending private Catholic secondary schools, but Chile, which has the most extensive voucher program in the world, has had no significant increase in average test scores since bi-annual national tests were made comparable starting in 1994, and a number of careful studies in that country have shown no or only very small differences in test scores between private and public schools when students family background is taken into account.
A number of high profile targeted voucher experiments organized by Paul Peterson in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Dayton, Ohio, claimed to show positive effects for black students in New York, but Princeton economist Alan Krueger successfully challenged the validity of these results. Vouchers schools in Cleveland did no better than public schools, and, in the first phase of Milwaukee’s voucher program when test scores were available for private voucher schools, students in voucher schools did only slightly better than public school students, and then only in math.
The evidence for vouchers’ positive competition effects on public schools is just as weak. This goes both for Chile, where, after 26 years of vouchers, 47 percent of students now attend private schools, and for the United States. Belfield and Levin review a whole series of studies in the U.S. and come to the conclusion that if there is a competition effect on public schools, it is very small. Carolyn Hoxby estimates sizable gains in public school test scores in Milwaukee after the Wisconsin Supreme Court decision of 1998 opened the doors to using vouchers in religious schools. But as I show in an upcoming study, this was a one-time only effect, and may or may not have been due to increased competition from private voucher schools. Milwaukee is an interesting case because traditional public schools face competition not just from lots of private voucher schools, but from charters, public magnet schools, suburban schools, and, with open enrollment, from other public neighborhood schools. After an initial jump in test scores, Milwaukee’s public school students did not make further gains in their academic performance over the next seven years even as competition increased.
The same can be said for charter schools as a “solution” for the low academic performance of low-income students. As many studies have shown, including our Charter School Dust-Up, on average, socio-economically similar students in public and charter schools achieve similar scores on national and state tests, and studies of charter school competition on public school student performance show, in the best cases, only small positive effects.
As one commentator asked on this blog, “Why don’t we just all agree that everything that has no negative effect should be on the table?” If a policy that claims to be a cure for low average academic performance of low-income children is consistently shown not to produce the claimed results, it should be moved off the table—that goes for both conservative and liberal proposals. If we believe that the problem of low academic achievement is worth solving, we need to turn to solutions that show consistently positive results and drop the ones that don’t work. That doesn’t mean we should close down existing voucher plans; we just shouldn’t support starting new ones.
Having been given a nourishing main course, one hates to be greedy and ask for dessert, as well. But it would be very helpful to some of us with an interest in this sort of thing to have, if possible,
That having been said, many thanks for the clarity of this presentation, and thanks to Jared Bernstein for persuading you to share your thoughts with us. It was a good read, and quoting Mrs. Slocumbe, I am unanimous in that.
aMike
July 8, 2007 8:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you very much for the well written post! While I would generally agree with sentiment in the last paragraph--that all effective options ought to be open--that is not the end of the discussion. When the various methods of education produce equal results in test scores, we should evaluate the systems on other factors. Which is more expensive? Which is easier to administer? etc.
July 8, 2007 9:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great article, but we may be ignoring the primary issue. In the same way that "personal/private" accounts are merely a way of abolishing Social Security, aren't vouchers simply a stepping stone to abolishing public (government funded) education?
Am I crazy here, or is debating this issue counter-productive.
July 8, 2007 9:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Amike,
I am delighted to report my own decade-long, indepth study of public and private institutions of lower learning. Over 12 years I attended a one-room school and a mega-institution where you could remain as anonymous as the average House Republican.
I am happy to report:
A. Bigger is worser
AND
B. Teachers make the difference.
Nothing else matters.
Best, Terry
July 9, 2007 2:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
Staleync:
The way I see it, it's precisely because of the apt analogy you raise that we should debate the issue. Our system of public education of course needs attention, repair, creative thought, more good people, resources, etc., but it is a national treasure.
July 9, 2007 3:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
From my experience as a parent, I have noticed that the same teachers circulate among private, public, charter, and religious schools, since an experienced and credentialed teacher is a desirable hire anywhere. The difference is in the working conditions and benefits, which can vary from one school to another. Private schools often offer free tuition for the teachers' children, a big draw, especially if the teacher has more than one child.
July 9, 2007 5:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
and studies concerning lowered class-room size, and higher quality teachers and increased numbers of teachers have I believe consistently showed positive results. but they require an actual investment.
July 9, 2007 5:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Not coincidentallly, a way of abolishing teachers' unions, no?
I wish Professor Carnoy would share some information with us that he might have about policies that have been proved effective and which should be on the table.
July 9, 2007 5:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
The implicit assumption in all of this is that the choice of school is the primary factor on how well a child does. We all know from personal observation that this is not true. There are under performing children who come from upper class backgrounds and go to elite schools (GWB?) and there are self-made men from the ghettos.
The biggest factor in determining how a child will progress is their family socio-economic background. Expecting schools to be able to rectify the injustices of society is either naive or a deliberate distortion meant to discredit public education.
Various schemes like integration have also been proxies for solving the real problem. This is that poor children go to underfunded schools. There is an article in the NY Times today about Justice Thomas thinking that integration is demeaning to blacks since it implies that they can't make it without the assistance of whites. As usual with him this is a misreading of the situation.
The reason for integration is to force local governments to equalize school funding. If more white students attend an underfunded school the parents will apply pressure to have it upgraded. This is not because white parents care more about education, but because they have more political clout.
As the Brown decision showed separate but equal was big on the separate but not very good at the "equal".
Kids attend school for about six hours per day 180 days out of the year. This is about 1/6 of their time. Where is the discussion of what they are learning or doing the other 5/6 of their lives. It is an oversimplification to think that schools can solves society's problems.
--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape
July 9, 2007 6:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree I'd like to see some of his suggestions. I don't know if I would automatically rule out voucher programs in general; I just don't think they should be marketed as a solution to educational problems.
If a community wants to go to vouchers because such a program would be philosophically consistent with free market ideology, I guess they should have the right. But vouchers, at least in their current versions, can't be marketed as a cure for low reading scores or high drop-out rates.
July 9, 2007 6:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
It would seem that one would also have to prove that a voucher system improves performance in public schools, even while decreasing their funding and resources, not just that public schools lag (as no doubt they did even before the vouchers)? It was part of Friedman's jutification, and I don't see how vouchers can be defended without it. Or that private schools would use the extra money to enhance educational programs substantially and improve their performance, even with their increasing class sizes as more students could afford them? Otherwise, we're at most helping a small fraction of students enabled and choosing to transfer while damaging the majority.
And I see little reason to expect this. The idea of being "forced" to improve sounds ludicrous. (1) Teachers are working incredible hours for far lower pay than they'd receive with comparable education in other lines of work, so their motivation seems fine. (2) Teacher salaries and resoruces are dependent on things ilke those funding cuts I mention, not on attracting more students, so they're not responsive to the market forces alleged here anyhow. (3) As the conservative education researcher Diane Ravitch keeps insisting, educational approaches (New Math, rote) keep coming and going without making a difference, so the idea of experiment producting results is not at all self-evident. (4) And again, we're setting schools up to fail that are already failing by having poor kids and no resources by giving them even poorer kids (the ones that can't afford to escape even with vouchers) and no resources.
It's all the free-market cult. Classical economics has the virtue of pointing out that failure weeds out losers, leaving room for creative growth. (Not that we want to set up a good fraction of our students for failure so that others will win.) It's only the cult that prefers Lamarck to Darwin and thinks we'll win by trying harder. Go team!
Last, I stated the fractional shift, and I should back that up. (1) Some students are already going to private school. Education gain from voucher? Surely nil, and that money effectively leaves education funding never to return. Net gain to students: negative. Net gain to society: very negative, as it amounts to income redistribution upward. (2) Many students can't afford private tuitions, which in a big city can be many, many times the cost of vouchers. They stay put. Education gain from vouchers? Barring severe Lamarckian victories, disastrous. The ghetto grows needier. (3) Some parents could make the shift with a little marginal assistance. Net gain to these students? Possibly positive, although Jared's post suggests the evidence is lacking.
Overall outcome: kids everywhere are screwed.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
July 9, 2007 7:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
I would still like to see some solid evidence that a majority, or even any substantial percentage (say 20%) of American parents are unhappy with their local school district and schools. And by "unhappy" I don't mean the usual third-glass-of-wine "all those bureaucrats are incompetent" talk; I mean unhappy enough to either move or use a voucher to send their children to a private school.
School district choice became the primary driver of house purchases around 1980 which is almost a full generation ago; presumably most parents are satisfied with their local schools. A very, very small percentage of US children attend large urban districts in the oughts and not all of those districts are failed, so the percentage who have this horror of disfunctional urban schools forced upon them is even smaller.
sPh
July 9, 2007 7:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
.> (4) And again, we're setting schools up to
> fail that are already failing by having poor
> kids and no resources by giving them even poorer
> kids (the ones that can't afford to escape even
> with vouchers) and no resources.
In fact there is a live experiment (of the type that is now banned in medical research due to moral considerations) available in Kansas City's voluntary desegregation program: the kids with the most motivated parents transferred to the suburban schools leaving the public district in even worse shape.
sPh
July 9, 2007 7:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think you're right about this. It reminds me of another instance of the same phenomenon. Americans have a very low impression of Congress...what is it now, about 75% disapproval? But, most Americans make an exception for their Congressman. Congress is terrible. My Representative is the exception.
aMike
July 9, 2007 7:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
I am aware of studies suggesting that small classroom size is beneficial in the eariest grades, but with the benefit dissipating as children become older. One of the difficulties, of course, is how you define "small classroom size". I suspect that you would find vastly improved performance at all grade levels if the student-teacher ratio is 5:1 or lower, but it's harder to pinpoint a threshold at which a change can be expected to occur. (Is it 15:1? 20:1? 25:1? 30:1?) It's reasonable to assume that the ratio would be affected by factors including student age, subject matter, and teacher quality, as well as by how well prepared the students are for the classroom setting and the subject(s) being taught.
July 9, 2007 7:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
.> I suspect that you would find vastly
> improved performance at all grade levels
> if the student-teacher ratio is 5:1
Perhaps my viewpoint is affected by having grown up in one of those horrible, evil urban districts where average class size was 38 (42 in my 4th grade class) and the rooms were set up with six rows of ten desks bolted to the floor, but IMHO there is a point where classes are too small. At 5:1 not only would you lose diversity of children but there would be no way/place for a child to "hide", zone out for a while, or just think a bit. and I don't think that would be positive. UK university students don't meet with their tutors 30 hours/week after all.
sPh
July 9, 2007 8:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
And then there are bigger teachers. :-) At 6'7", I'm one of those, I guess.
I have to say it is heartening for someone who is heading into his 35th year in the classroom in another six weeks to see so many nice things said about teachers in this thread. It doesn't happen all that often.
aMike
July 9, 2007 8:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Corvid
I wonder whether performance in schools is somehow connected with globalization.
I've read that in Germany, high schools have absolutely superb programs for kids who don't plan to go to college--the majority of kids, just as here in the States. The students and teachers, therefore, can see a direct connection between a rigorous education at the high school level and what type of work the kids will be doing when they graduate.
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Here, we treat non-college-bound kids as, basically, losers. And this all the moreso because so many of the jobs they might have taken up after high school are being outsourced or offshored under globalization. The prevailing attitude is that these kids (and it's not some weird, tiny minority--70 percent of Americans don't end up with a 4-year college degree) will just have to somehow fend for themselves.
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Our economy, in the space of about 3 decades, has gone from one where a majority of our wealth was generated by manufacturing to one in which U.S.-based manufacturing is a niche item, an afterthought at 9 percent of GDP. This pretty much tracks with our collective (and accurate) estimation of the worth of a high-school diploma.
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What made us an economic powerhouse after WWII had a lot to do with the fact that American capital was invested here. An American ditch digger could accomplish far more in a day than an Elbonian ditch digger because the American had a backhoe while the Elbonian had a shovel.
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Now, I can't draw any direct connection between our lousy public education system and globalization (which I wish we could all agree to label more truthfully as disinvestment). But I get the strong sense that we adults aren't really doing very much to look out for our kids in any kind of broad-spectrum way. And by that I mean way beyond shelling out megabucks for a college education for the lucky 30 percent (which may well be far too many, by the way) to an urgent sense of responsibility and an eagerness to invest in and employ the 70 percent who don't get those degrees.
July 9, 2007 8:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
What is the purpose of public education? I think it is two-fold.
The first, of course, is to provide the three R's.
The second, is to train future citizens. This is especially important in a democracy where citizens are expected to help guide the direction of their government. So creating informed citizens means exposing children to a variety of viewpoints and other socio-economic and ethnic groups. This type of exposure has been shown to increase tolerance and diminish prejudice.
Now what is the purpose of private schools? It is to restrict contact with other groups and to limit ideas to those favored by those running the schools. In the extreme cases you end up with the Amish or the Hasidim who not only restrict their children in school but in their communities as well.
What sort of person favors restricting information to their children - those who believe they are an elite and if they can't run the country can at least control their communities. It is by its very nature anti-democratic.
Personally I think every child should have to go to public school. Any special instruction that parents want their children to receive should take place after school, on weekends or in the summer. We are all in this together and should learn to get along with each other.
--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape
July 9, 2007 8:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree citations would be helpful to those of us who continue the effort to provide accurate information to a public that has been fed anti-public school information for political, racial, economic and religious reasons for decades and especially since A Nation at Risk. The comments were helpfully concise. One issue that is not addressed in the vouchers debate is the basic economics of a system, which duplicates educational bureaucracies in “private” and charter schools instead of using the resources in truly effective ways in public schools. Nobody denies that public schools can be better managed. Why is it assumed that other institutions are? I can site from personal experience well and efficiently run public school districts and wasteful private and charter schools.
July 9, 2007 8:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
According to one report I found 80.8% of the US population is considered living in an urban setting. I don't think this squares with your remarks. Of course what "large urban districts" means is somewhat vague. But in my area of suburban NYC the number of children in all the suburbs together doesn't even come close to the number of children in the in the NYC, Yonkers, and Newark systems.
I imagine that this is true in many other areas as well. Because of the small state rural bias to the way congress is apportioned these areas have a much greater influence on social spending than their numbers would indicate. In fact 18% of the population controls 50% of the seats in the senate. Only two of these 25 states can be considered urban (MD and RI) and they are only in the list because they are so small.
The result has been a continual underfunding of urban schools and other urban social programs. The fancy educational philosophy discussions avoid looking at the reality of American apartheid. Katrina should have demonstrated to everyone once and for all that inequality is rampant in this country.
--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape
July 9, 2007 8:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
(I just have to say how impressive it is to read the comments on this and many other TPMCafe threads. I am heartened by the thoughtful intelligent discussion where ideas are considered for their merit, veracity is valued, and even the occasional silly neocon trope is given a brief moment before it is mercifully snuffed out. It's precious because it is so rare.)
As for education, for all the ostensible (paltry) merits of vouchers, I think they function as a Trojan Horse for conservatives hoping to strike a blow to government-run social welfare programs, including public education. The performance of voucher programs is a minor concern to voucher supporters. It makes them happy to see a program that weakens the state's monopoly on education.
So, no matter the effectiveness of vouchers, the government-haters support them. And it seems that policymaking and governance across the board has now been brought to this level of argument (which is why it's so heartening to read this thread).
I would argue that given the sad state of the entire public education infrastructure all this hair-splitting on how to ration out limited resources is a waste of time. What we really need is a national campaign that highlights the principles of good husbandry of our children, and redirects generous government resources toward that priority.
1) Public education is an expression of our national commitment to all our children. Our public schools need to demonstrate to our children that they are of primary importance to us as a nation as they are to us as parents. A country that spends nearly half its budget on military adventure but whines when it's time to pony up for schools needs to learn a lesson.
2) Teachers need to be affirmed as some of the most important members of society. They need to be paid well and they need to be supported in their Herculean efforts on our children's behalf.
3) The idea that schools can do anything to better a child's performance without the full support of parents is ludicrous. One of the most despicable ways that government-haters undermine parents' faith in public schools is to insist that the schools should cure what are societal ills that afflict the entire family. No child will thrive in school without adequate food, shelter, security, without a parent or two cultivating love of learning at home. Parents must be involved in their children's education. The greatest policy challenge for educators is to find a way to engage parental assistance in the noble endeavor of their children's education. Without parents school becomes a babysitter, with no possible hope of education, and that's what we have now. We as a nation need to decide between babysitting and education.
4) Make television, video games, and other mind numbing (and thus infinitely popular, addictive) activities contingent on, or subservient to, education. I know this sounds proto-fascist or prohibitionary, but while study after study tries to establish a link between violence, bad morals, etc. and TV, the real problem is how spending so much time in video-land diminishes children's appetite and aptitude for learning. TV is the equivalent of prenatal alcohol syndrome for the postnatal set. It quashes childhood development and displaces educational (and relational) experience.
Nuff said.
July 9, 2007 8:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
Most European systems do something like this, and it seems to work fairly well. EXCEPT...in the case of Bavaria (and maybe other German states, I only know that one because my nephew was raised over there while my brother was singing opera), the tracking begins at the fourth grade level and at that point one is placed on a track to prepare for gymnasium (which leads to college) or hochschule, which doesn't. I'd be uncomfortable with a system which decided whether or not one was college material at the age of 10.
aMike
July 9, 2007 8:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
.> According to one report I found 80.8% of
> the US population is considered living in an
> urban setting.
"Urban" now includes suburbs and exurbs out to a certain density.
New York City, bless its collective heart, is utterly atypical of the rest of the United States. But even so the 2005 Census Bureau estimates are 8.2 million for NYC and 18.8 million for the New York Metropolitan Statistical area so the core city is not even a majority of its own region.
sPh
July 9, 2007 8:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Personally I am uncomfortable with a system that irrevocably decides that a person is college material at 17 much less 10. I have worked with too many people (esp. in factory settings) who have decided at 30 or so to retool their lives and either gone back to school at night or just taken the risk and started full-time college at that age , and then gone on to be very successful in professional or semi-professional careers, to think that the results of an SAT at 17 can determine one's fate.
That said, Germany has also taken great pains to try to keep substantial numbers of jobs available for people who like to work with their hands, have no desire to go to college, etc. Those types of perfectly decent and honorable jobs (well, decent when unionized anyway) are as noted being driven out of the US economy.
sPh
July 9, 2007 8:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Is it too late to point out that Friedman was wrong? If private schools are being subsidized by public funds, then they are not "competing" with community schools. The only way to make the schools competitive is for private schools to offer free education or public schools charge tuition.
What voucher proponents want and what they've always wanted is subsidation for private schools and the opening of a back door to make tuition costs tax deductable or a tax credit.
One argument used by proponents of vouchers is that private schools spend more on instruction than they do on administration - which in Ohio is perfectly correct. The reason for that is lower salaries for teachers, free transportation for students, free psychological testing and counseling, free special needs therapy and therapists, (not to mention matching federal funding, church contributions and private fund raising) at the expense of the local public schools. If private schools had to fund transportation, special needs and therapy for students they could not afford to operate.
Perhaps the answer isn't more subsidation in the form of vouchers, but no subsidation in the form of public monies - then we can see how well they "compete."
As an aside, one major contribution to public schools would be a national ban on property tax abatements for companies and corporations who depend on community goodwill to promote their businesses, yet fail to contribute to public education - the source from which they claim to draw their employees whom they complain are abysmally ill-educated.
July 9, 2007 9:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
You're so right about this. What I also admire is that there seems to be less loss of status in choosing a profession which involves working with one's hands. My sample is pretty small, and no doubt there are hoity-toity Germans hanging around placed I didn't hang around in my years of visiting there...but I don't think parents would mumble under their breaths when asked what their children did if they had to reply mechanic or plumber.
One year when I was on sabbatical I camped out on my brother's couch in Passau, where he was in the Opera. While I was there I sang with the Community Choir, the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde Passau. It was community in every sense of the word. The membership ran the gamut from Bavarian farmers in lederhosen to college professors (not just this college professor). After rehearsal groups went out for beer and munchies without regard to profession or status. We could learn something from that.
aMike
July 9, 2007 9:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Much as I argued for putting our community efforts and community moneys into the public schools that truly serve the community, I'm not totally of the "we're all in this together and let's all go private" mode. For one thing, why speculate? We'll never abolish private schools. But anyhow, I think every kid deserves to be challenged. If some can't get challenged in public school and can afford to go elsewhere, as I could, I'm cool with that.
I'd have preferred to go to a competitive public junior high, but there wasn't one. (Bronx Science started at 9th grade, and Hunter was then girls only.) But whether I or another could have competed for those few slots in the present, we still deserved the challenge we got. I suppose I was still mostly self-educated, from what I read. But anything helps. I know how much I envy the kids from Stuyvesant High who got exposed to abstract math (not just calculus) at an age when it made a huge impression on how their mathematical reasoning developed, as my supposedly superb private school didn't supply. And as this note about mental development suggests, no, sphealey, you do have to start changing young minds by age 17.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
July 9, 2007 10:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Another thought. Most private schools do not require that teachers are certified by the state, at least initially. That makes a difference in teacher salary and recruiting, I think.
July 9, 2007 11:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
Conservatives have been attacking the public schools with great success since 1964, with the Coleman report on the public schools. Their attacks have contributed to the diminished respect in the US for teachers, and have led to great danger for teachers and other school personnel. We did not have the problems of public schools until the conservative attacks began, but today, after 40 years of continual assault, conservatives have greatly damaged the schools and the respect that teachers are held in.
July 9, 2007 12:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Corvid
And it's your second point I was trying to get at. I, too, oppose tracking. Self-selection by students probably works better. In my small-town high school here in the States, we didn't have tracking but did have a modest assortment of electives beginning around 9th grade, so students pretty much decided on their own what they could handle academically.
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But, as you say, the key thing is having the work available, and that would require investment to provide the kind of US-based industries and jobs that would make it possible for many more high school graduates to build a decent, fairly stable life with just that much education or a bit more in the trades. If that prospect were on the horizon, I think the schooling might follow.
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But it sounds like a pipe dream, doesn't it? Oh, if only we could suddenly reverse the entire economic and political thrust of the past 30 years and, just on the side, completely overhaul the entire ethic of education as it has developed in that time, we'd be just fine. I wouldn't know where to start.
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So I guess my point was a despairing one.
July 9, 2007 2:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yep. There is one thing interesting about that and I think the negatives and positives about it probably breaks even in the long run. Many college students don't know this, and I'm not sure that Departments (and Schools) of Education broadcast it very much. BUT there at least are two kinds of students for whom this knowledge is really useful.
It is useful for those who aren't really sure they want to each, and hesitate to make a commitment to a program which obligates so much of their undergraduate curriculum. Students who major education at my institution must take a major in a discipline as well, and wind up with two or three free electives in four years.
It is also useful for those who decide they really really want to teach but make that decision to late to complete the undergraduate education program. MA. Ed. programs usually are available on a part time basis, and I counsel students in both these categories that one option for them is to compete their B. A. or B. S., taking whatever else tickles their fancy, then seek work in the private school sphere. Two or three years of part-time study will qualify them for the M. Ed., and through it, certification. To boot, they'll have an advanced degree, which means their starting salary in public schools will be higher.
aMike
July 9, 2007 4:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Don't despair! The change begins with a vision like yours. Now we just have to get down to work and actualize it. The old saying, "Without a vision the people perish." is true, in my book. I remember when George Sr. admitted being short on what he called "the vision thing"...but he never realized how handicapped he really was. So pipe dreams are as good a place to start as any.
aMike
July 9, 2007 4:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
The success of vouchers has already been proven effective in providing students flexibility in obtaining an appropriate education. The GI Bill and Pell grants, established years ago, have provided college students with public monies to attend the school of their choosing, whether it is public or private.
Whether we use vouchers, tax credits, or scholarships, we need to provide needy students a vehicle to get out of failing public schools and give them a real choice. For more information, visit www.paths2choice.com.
July 9, 2007 4:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Interesting that you mention anti-public school information. I found a good article a couple months ago talking about the quality of private vs public schools, "Why Johnny Can Read: Simpson’s Paradox and the Greatly Exaggerated Death of American Public Education".
The article explains a report produced by the National Assessment of Educational Progress which states, "the average private school mean reading score was 14.7 points higher than the average public school reading score... After adjusting for selected student characteristics, the difference in means was near zero and not significant."
Basically, if you compare equivalent public and private school students, you end up with similar test results between the two. Private schools look like they're doing better than public schools because they have a higher percentage of the students from better backgrounds, students who do well regardless of their environment. Private schools don't actually teach any better than public schools.
Interestingly enough, these poor statistical methods also explain why American schools appear to perform poorly in the international arena. The US places all of its students in public high schools where attendance is compulsory, a fairly rare setup internationally. Other countries do things differently, such as splitting their students into separate tracks and pushing only their top students toward high school. When the US compares all of its high school students against the top 50% of other countries, then of course we don't compare and of course our education system looks bad. That is the result of comparing apples to oranges.
July 9, 2007 5:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
You are right that we must emphasize the importance of good parenting, but at the same time we must give parents greater control over their own children's education. School choice programs offer a good way to do just this. For example, GI Bills and Pell grants have offered college students public monies to attend the school of their choosing, whether it is public or private. These kinds of programs have been successful since their inception and should be expanded to include K-12 students. For more information, visit www.paths2choice.com.
July 9, 2007 5:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
The stature of our public schools, and in turn the stature of our teachers, have been diminished primarily due to the politics of teachers' unions. It has been clear for many years that the unions do not put children first, although it is children who are the primary consumers of our public schools. For a great read on the effect of unions on public schools, try "The War Against Hope: How Teachers' Unions Hurt Children, Hinder Teachers, and Endanger Public Education." Notice how teachers are acknowledged separately from the unions - teachers are not harmful, unions are.
July 9, 2007 5:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just what we need another undocumented smear against teacher's unions. I find that most people who have bad things to say about unions have had no direct experience with them and get their opinions from the right wing noise machine.
If unions are so bad then why do the police, fire, teachers, sports figures and even entertainment industry figures belong to them? Who gets shafted by lack of union protection? The poorest workers like those at Walmart.
Every teacher I've ever had dealings with has gone out of their way to help their students and has also pressured their unions to demand better facilities and resources. Teachers don't like working in underfunded schools. Put the blame where it belongs on our society for discriminating against those areas with the highest needs and the lowest economic base upon which to draw.
If you want to see better schools adopt a national or at least state-wide funding plan which is not subject to the whims of the local real estate market.
Perhaps you should also do a little research as to how much teachers get paid. In many parts of the country it's under $30K per year. Remember this means a college education and usually extra course work in education or a master's degree.
--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape
July 9, 2007 5:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
at the same time we must give parents greater control over their own children's education.
I don't see this as an imperative. Having choice is a choice itself. From another standpoint, we might say that it is the duty and right of communities to determine how children will be educated. In any case, with the way most school districts work, people have a lot of choice on which school to attend since they can often buy a house in the district of their choice. Anyway.
Tell me why you think individual parents should be able to choose their particular school.
July 9, 2007 5:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with Mr. Bernstein here as well, you do bring up a very important analogy. And even though you likely did not intend it too, I think it highlights the importance of discussing this issue!
July 9, 2007 5:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, MY Congressman (Adrian Smith, NE-03) is far worse than Congress. And I don't think all that much of Congress.
July 9, 2007 5:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
I still do not understand why we can not take something that is so obviously vital to our nation's future and remove profitability from it. We as a nation can spend $12 billion a month on our two Global Wars (to promote) Terror and we can not find it in our infinite wisdom to supply our children across this land with up-to-date text books or enough reasonably paid teachers? Astounding...
It reminds me of a line from the Quiet Man in an argument between John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara in which he says to her "money, I'm sick of the talk of it..." That's just how I feel these days because it seems that nothing else matters in this entire country BUT money. It takes center stage in every single discussion or argument and it seems at this point to be more nationally defining than the words liberty, justice or democracy ever were.
July 9, 2007 5:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
BTW Jared -
ZOMG! You are OUTSOURCING your own job! Be careful or you may soon get a pink slip and miss out on all those luxurious exotic fluid filled hot tubs I've been reading about on this site lately!
July 9, 2007 6:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't want to abet the hijacking of this thread into a pro/anti union battle, but this simply can't be left unchallenged. That "Great Read" as Ms. Smith calls it, is by none other than Rod Paige, George W. Bush's Secretary of Education in his first term. Paige, who once called the National Education Association a "Terrorist Organization".
Paige, like that other pillar of virtue, Alberto Gonzales, came with Bush from Texas. There, he burnished his credentials as an educational miracle worker by fudging the figures in Houston, where he was Superintendent of Education.
But as I said I don't want to help hijack this thread, and I apologize for answering Ms. Smith at all. I'll close with a link to a teacher's take on Mr. Paige and his book. Mine is probably a little more severe, if not as eloquent.
aMike
July 9, 2007 6:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
I could be wrong, but one (usually unstated) goal of school privatization that is seldom mentioned -- and from which it derives a great deal of its support from the right -- is that it often works out to be a clever way to subvert integration. Wonder what the numbers are on that?
July 9, 2007 6:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
yeah, human behavior doesn't change much...
To boldly go...
July 9, 2007 6:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
it is for this reason that I support vouchers: let the kids and their parents decide what they want do after 8th grade.
To boldly go...
July 9, 2007 6:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Tell me why you think individual parents should be able to choose their particular school.
because many-- but not all parents, want what's best for their child.
To boldly go...
July 9, 2007 7:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
That makes a difference in teacher salary and recruiting, I think.
not really. in Rochester, MN-- where the Mayo Clinic is, the school district wanted nurses to come into the schools and teach nursing.
because of the union, the nurses decided to stay in nursing because of the pay differential.
private schools, w/o union rules, can experiment with who they hire and decide salaries on an individual basis.
To boldly go...
July 9, 2007 7:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm sure they do. It'd be nice to not have to send our children to school with the blacks, the wops, and the Jews, wouldn't it?
I'm sorry, but school choice is often a cover for racism. Some one else said that conservatives have been fighting against public schools since 1964. I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't 1954.
The overarching point of this post and the general discussion on vouchers is that providing choice does not improve performance among school children. If you can't prove it's better to have choice, then why do you want choice?
July 9, 2007 7:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is a great conversation!
Re teachers unions, my pal Ezra Klein has an interesting post up today on this very point: http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2007/07/elites-and-teac.html
Thanks for the warning, mcboo, but I'm as vulnerable to globalization as the next guy. And, heck, they can't lower my TPM paycheck...
I appreciated all the questions for Prof Carnoy and will nudge him again to step up.
July 9, 2007 8:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
You don't appear to have read what I wrote. Private schools aren't better than public schools. Students don't get a better education there despite paying through the nose for the privilege. Private schools in general as well as vouchers are a waste of money that would be better spent improving public schools.
July 9, 2007 10:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let them choose away, but don't penalize the public schools to do it.
July 9, 2007 10:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know what kind of school Debbie Smith attended, but vouchers have pretty much been shown to be ineffective at improving education. That is what the article above says. Perhaps she didn't major in reading.
(They may have been successful at promoting racial segregation).
Improving education is a legitimate taxpayer-government concern. (Promoting segregation is not.)
July 9, 2007 10:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not the first to mention this, but when Bush came into office there was supposedly no room in the budget for extra spending. However, we found money to pay for increased security after 9/11. We found money to pay for a war in Afghanistan. We found money to pay for a war in Iraq. We found money to pay for a lot of things that weren't around in 2001, despite that budget and every budget since then being "airtight".
If we value something enough, we can find money for it. If a politician says there isn't enough, then they're lying. What they're saying is what you care about isn't important enough for them to find you the money.
July 9, 2007 11:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Haha, no problem and I can understand, globalization is indeed an temptress.
For a question to pass on, why not throw a wrench in the economic conversation and suggest that we simply remove economics from the conversation? Has that been tried here? Has that even seen the tabletop? I'm going to guess no.
If we can not remove it, then there has to be a valid argument within the "economic circles" that suggests the concept of treating education like we do drug research or any other corporate R&D that the taxpayers subsidize with our taxes every year and then get charged for when something is finally discovered. Why can't we simply treat educating our youth as a similar sort of business "investment"?
July 9, 2007 11:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
RE: Various postings by "Debbie Smith"
This issue really angries up the blood, so to speak.
I am rather proud of my public education--all the way from Kindergarten through law school. It's mind blowing to me that people fall for the right wing tropes on education--that public schools are failing; that competition will build better schools. The one that gets me the most, however, is this bullshit and often unstated assumption that private education is inherently better than public education. As if having pretentious WASPs running a class room makes it better.
Debbie is brand spanking new here, but I can't tell what to make of her. She signed up today. So, it's entirely possible that she's a wingnut just here for the fun of it. I took a look at her website, though, and it doesn't contain any obvious craziness.
There is a limit to what education can do and there comes a point where education is not worthwhile. That applies to everyone regardless of intelligence or background. It may sound cruel, but a lot of children in our schools systems need to be prepared to work in factories, to work as car mechanics, and to build houses. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
For a lot of other people, education in itself isn't valuable because its not necessary. I'm sure we all remember the good old days of high school. Can anyone honestly say they learned anything in high school? I didn't learn much. I read some crappy books in English class. I mangled a little German. I studied a lot of math, a little chemistry, and a very little physics. A lot of the history was stuff that I had already learned or would have picked up anyway.
The reality is that for the "best and brightest" children, primary and secondary education does not exist to provide them with a set of information that they can draw on. Rather, it is designed to exercise their talents, provide them opportunities to succeed, and most crucially to socialize them properly.
We need to start realizing that the same education cannot be forced on the populations of children who may not benefit from it in the same way, particularly in secondary education.
To put it another way, we do need to create educational choices, but it should be no surprise that we can create good kinds of choices and bad kinds of choices. It seems the Debbie Smith and a lot of people on the right want there to be a single type of education and assume that some schools are just better at that type of education. In that case, it would make sense to have a sort of lateral choice. Parents would have several high schools set out before them, they could check the stats, and then choose to send their children to the best schools.
But what we see here in the post of Prof. Carnoy is the bankruptcy of that conception. I recognize the limitation of this qualification, but in the aggregate, there are not large differences between schools. Thus, having a market for better schools doesn't make a difference in the educational outcomes of the children in the school.
Instead of this horizontal choice, we need to create a system with vertical choice. We need high schools that provide vocational training. We need high schools that intensely focus on academics. We need high schools for talented artists and musicians. In short, we need to provide a choice to students. That choice should operate to serve all students in the way that traditional education serves the "best and brightest." Namely, it should exercise their talents, provide them opportunities to succeed, socialize them, and importantly, prepare them to get by in our world.
It's not enough to provide choices between different schools doing the same thing, we need to provide choices between schools that do different things. And the choice should be the student's so that they may freely move as their interests change and develop. Horizontal choice by parents is open to abuse in a lot of ways, especially as I and others have pointed out, it can be used to sort out people of different backgrounds based on prejudice rather than on quality of the school.
Finally, we need to realize that a lot of problems in our educational system are rural problems. There is a vast space between the East Coast and the West Coast where millions of people live. It's called the country. In many rural communities, no conception of choice is really viable. If you live in a town of 50,000 people, there is going to be at the most two high schools. I grew up in a town of 150,000. We had five public high schools, one Catholic high school (with a very low enrollment), one Catholic elementary school, and one private but secular school.
In these situations, there is no effective choice. All the public high schools were essentially the same though two were definitely richer. The Catholic high school had maybe 60 kids per class, and was often used by parents as the school of last resort for children who kept getting thrown out of the public schools. If you gave us vouchers, it wouldn't have made a damn bit of difference.
So, as it turns out, in a lot of places throughout the country, what we really need is greater investment in education itself. To that end, we need to design funding systems that ensure an equitable distribution of money among schools. Property taxes just don't cut it.
It's late and I'm tired. So, I'm just going to end this rant here.
July 10, 2007 12:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
It seems the average American who hasn't spent an adult day in a classroom assumes teachers are the problem with underperforming low income schools.
I've spent some time doing a bit of subbing and in the midst of getting a teaching credential currently, and I believe that students are the problem.
There is a saying among the teaching profession that in low income schools, students are the problem. In high income schools, parents are the problem. From a teachers' perspective, in terms of the students and parents "behavior."
I'm not saying that I don't believe all people are created equal. I'm saying that how we are raised after we are created is an issue. Some is nature for sure, but then some is nurture for sure, through no fault of the child's - children can't pick their parents.
The solution in my opinion is to throw money at the low income schools. Not to beef up teacher salaries to attract "better" teachers. To pay for after school tutors and/or to lower classroom size in low income schools.
These tutors can be retired teachers who want to supplement their pensions, or teachers in training who are working on their credential. Or credentialed teachers who only want to work part time - or who perhaps can do enough tutoring to be additional full time teachers.
Teaching low income students is three times harder than teaching middle and high income students from what I've experienced. That is why smaller classroom size (more teachers) also makes sense in low income schools. Money from Uncle Sam I would think.
After school tutoring would also help to keep urban kids out of trouble. I would imagine someone could do a cost analysis and conclude that the money saved in reduced crime would pay for the tutors.
Since I've moved to the boonies, chances are I'll end up teaching low income students, so I'll know more from direct experience over the coming years.
I would also say that I think competition is a good idea, but competition between students, not competition between teachers. The students should have an incentive for winning test score competitions, not the school and not the teachers. Ideally this could be done intrinsically - just wanting to win. But maybe there could be some trips to theme parks and what not for the winning school students. I think the teachers are already doing as much as they can, with the possible exception of not donating extra time after school to tutor - which is probably asking a lot of already stressed professionals who have their own familes to deal with after work.
July 10, 2007 12:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'd just like to point out that the U.S.
already has school choice. People can choose
which school to send their kids to by choosing
where to live (much easier for middle class
parents). Of course it's not much of a choice
since just about all publics schools follow
the philosophy of all students in the same grade
going at pretty much the same pace. Also all
public schools have to deal with "No child left
behind". So if a parent wants anything more
exotic such as Waldorf, or Montessori, etc
they either have to find a charter school,
voucher school or pay for private school.
Also, for over a hundred years Belgium
has supported school choice, and as far as
I know they haven't turned into a right-wing
hell-hole.
http://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=44&story_id=1430
For what it's worth, I don't believe that the
problems with the U.S. school system is the
fault of the public schools. Instead the problem
is that kids are watching (on average) over
four hours of TV per day. Of course they
are going to find school and studying *boring*.
Also since TV has usurped reading as a main
form of entertainment in the home, reading
skills are quite naturally deteriorating.
Just imagine if we had a real national push
to reducing TV watching by kids. There would no
longer be a need to turn kids into little homework machines, and teachers could actually concentrate on teaching instead of just trying to survive
the day.
For a comparison of TV versus reading see:
http://www.tvsmarter.com/
July 10, 2007 5:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
Indeed, "choice" is often a cover for racism, as well as for general distaste for government run programs, which tend to try to pull diverse (racial) communities together on principle. Conservatives have been sowing the seeds of mistrust since the '50s certainly, demanding that "choice" to not send kids to public school and not pay for it is a public right.
America has been arguing about choice for decades when what we should be discussing is how to make our public schools an embarrassment of riches. Imagine if we had the attitude toward schools and the kids who attend them that we have toward our defense budget. Every hare-brained 25-billion school program would get funded, then we'd say nothing as the costs balloon toward a hundred billion, we'd just be happy we were throwing our money away into the education industry.
What do you prefer, a bloated defense industry that uses tax monies to build weapons no one in their right mind would ever want to use, or which are so poorly designed no one would ever risk using them, or a bloated education industry, where schools are overstuffed with hardware, books, food, lovely facilities, well-paid staff, gardens and support programs?
I mean really, let's talk about choosing between weapons and education, not between underfunded public schools and private schools.
July 10, 2007 7:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
I've been living in Germany for a while, and the schools seem quite good to me, but you have to know that at the age of eleven, the children are sorted. The academically gifted, I think that is around a quarter of them, go to gymnasium and then almost free university. What determines if they are academically gifted is, apparently, social class. Germany was recently assessed as having the least socially mobile school system in Europe. The second level goes to an advanced trade school which trains engineers and other practical professions, and the the bottom level is reserved for Turks and other immigrants. Germans are shocked that America has so many "do-overs."
July 10, 2007 8:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's great that my brief summary generated so many comments. Some of you asked for further material on this debate, especially material available on line. A lot of articles get posted at the National Center for the Study of the Privatization of Education: http://www.ncspe.org. This is not an advocacy group, so you can see all kinds of articles there, such as Belfield and Levin's review of competition research.
To get Friedman's original argument, which is really worth reading, you have to get his 1960s book, Free to Choose, where it was reproduced.
A lot of the papers supporting vouchers can be found at Paul Peterson's site at Harvard's Kennedy School:.” http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/pepg/.
You can find Alan Krueger's devastating critique of Peterson's New York City voucher experiment analysis by going to Google Scholar and scrolling down to about page 3 of his vast production.
And, if you are so inclined, you can order a little book I did for EPI in 2001 that reviews the evidence on U.S. vouchers to that point. It is at www.epinet.org under education publications.
A number of you wrote about the fundamental importance of good teaching to higher student performance. You are right, and even conservative economists agree now that we cannot improve student learning without somehow recruiting a lot more good teachers. But there is a lot of disagreement as how to do that. The bottom line is that it's probably going to cost more money and a new kind of commitment to education for low-income students. This includes the kind of commitment outlined by Rothstein in Class and Schools, as well as more and better public pre-school education.
In many states such as California we have the makings of an education/social crisis because right now about half of the students in K-12 are Hispanics, mostly of Mexican origin, and their four-year college going rate is very low. Sure, we can try to fill the high level jobs by importing our skilled labor, but the result will be a totally polarized society. Potentially big problems down the road, and not much is being done about it.
MCarnoy
July 10, 2007 8:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm sure that all the intelligent people in NE- 03 agree with you. (Of course that tells us something about the need to import a few more intelligent people into NE - 03) <grin></grin>
aMike
July 10, 2007 9:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
We can't afford to reinvent the wheel with every new generation. Continuity in the flow of information has to be assured not only horizontally across society but vertically down the generations from older to younger.
In a system as complex as ours it is essential to have redundancy. Thus we don't need just a few engineers, we must have high-level experts in reserve to step in in case of need. We also need a high degree of scientific, literary, artistic and historical understanding among those who may not be directly employed in these fields, but who serve as policy makers and/or support for policy makers.
Thus, as Reece has said, education is a matter of community (government) concern, not simply of individual preference.
July 10, 2007 9:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
I read what you wrote but why not let the people decide what's worth it or not? If parents want to spend more than they get from vouchers, I say: "let them borrow it and take the risk!"
To boldly go...
July 10, 2007 12:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wonder how many of us have ever talked with our parents or our grandparents about their school days? I don't mean the parent-generated kind of thing used for moral lessons: "When I was your way I walked to school, barefoot, in the snow, uphill, both ways." I mean a walk down memory lane. I'm hypothesizing that many, if not most individual parents, given the choice, would choose the kind of school they remembered their own school to be. If they went to public school, they'd choose public school, parochial school--parochial school.
Our society is so much more mobile now than it was sixty years ago when I started first grade--at the same elementary school my father attended. I even had one of the same teachers he did. He taught me the poem his generation used in 5th grade: "Miss Stickel is a pickle and she ain't worth a nickel". Several of my peers knew the poem from their fathers and mothers. WE were allowed to chant this on the school playground, but heaven help anyone in Mrs. Green's fifth grade class who dared badmouth OUR teacher. I can remember something about every teacher from kindergarten up, and 90% of the memories are pleasant. I wonder if I'm excessively strange in that? It probably explains why I decided I wanted to teach, oh, sometime around 2nd grade, when I had Miss McLaughlin.
aMike
July 10, 2007 12:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
the thing I haven't seen mentioned is the daily student to teacher ratio.
if a teacher has 5 classes of 40 students, then he/she has to deal with the problems and issues of 200 students.
universities have larger classes because they hire assistants. and over 50% of those who go to college, drop out without a degree.
I didn't go into teaching because I found it silly to believe that I could honestly guide, direct and teach 180 to 200 students a day.
To boldly go...
July 10, 2007 12:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think your strange in this at all. And I think the point you bring up about mobility is a dynamic aspect to our nations education system today that should be considered more.
You see I also have mostly fond memories of my very small and rural education. There was no Kindergarten when I was of age, they had a summer Head Start program (which I also have fond memories of). My grade school was very small and I and about 6 other students in my classes were in what they called the "Blue Group". We were advanced and worked on daily assignments pulled from - you guessed it - a blue box. The teacher taught the rest of the class around us as we worked away individually (thought we could always ask the teacher for assistance if needed). Not ideal certainly but we were small school district and that's all we had. And I too had several teachers throughout grade school and high school who had taught my mother which was both scary and nice!
There is a cozy hominess to this kind of community relationship with it's schools. And despite the "nostalgia " factor I think there is more openness in this type of situation with teachers and parents both more involved and informed in what is occurring within the school and with the students. With the mobility you mention this kind of relationship seems to be lost or at least very difficult to maintain. Sadly we seem to lose that community connection between parents, teachers and ultimately the students. I'm not really sure how this could be addressed today. Life in this country is very different than it was 15-20-25 years ago and there is no going back. But it does strike me as an important element to the education process that might get overlooked amidst the other more volatile points we often see discussed.
July 10, 2007 1:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Make television, video games, and other mind numbing (and thus infinitely popular, addictive) activities contingent on, or subservient to, education. I know this sounds proto-fascist or prohibitionary, but while study after study tries to establish a link between violence, bad morals, etc. and TV, the real problem is how spending so much time in video-land diminishes children's appetite and aptitude for learning.
Actually......video games provide a rich learning experience. But it's a different kind of learning. It's experiential, not the formal, read-a-book and take-a-test kind of learning.
Check out this essay, by Will Wright (creator of Sims). (I also did a post on this topic here, last year.)
If you know any kids that play games, you know that their appetite for problem-solving is anything buy diminished. If you've ever played any video games, you know just how incredibly difficult they are to "solve."
"Thank God George Bush is our president." -Rudy Giuliani
July 10, 2007 1:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
True confessions time: I'm an addict of on-line games... not the shoot-em up kind, but the problem-solving kind, and I love the Sims, though I was always too soft hearted when the dinosaur smooshed the little neighborhoods. I haven't quite adjusted to soduku yet, being numerically challenged, but I do crossword puzzles and the hidden object puzzles I find great fun.
Of course, I've watched zero television in better than three months. The games are interactive--and I have to think before I act. Not entirely unlike TPM Café. <grin></grin>
aMike
July 10, 2007 1:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
"In many states such as California we have the makings of an education/social crisis because right now about half of the students in K-12 are Hispanics, mostly of Mexican origin, and their four-year college going rate is very low."
Like I say, we don't need better teachers, we need more teachers. Lower classroom size is the key - and after school tutoring for those that are behind good test score pace. Simple (and expensive) as that.
A classroom of forty boisterous and unmotivated students won't learn any better if you have a teacher with a 3.0 or a teacher with a 4.0 GPA. It'll be the same. The 4.0 teacher will proclaim their salary needs to be boosted. Instead, hire an after school tutor for the slower kids and you have a real solution. Or cut the classroom size in half ideally, but even from 30 to 40 makes for more learning. Granted teachers do need to be trained, but they already are in California anyways. You can't squeeze blood from a turnip. How you define "better teacher" is a bit fuzzy as well. Classroom (behavior) management is half the battle in low income areas. So if by better teachers you mean those who can manage low income kids I would agree with that. Oddly, there is no classroom management course in my teaching credential program. Nor in the masters program. Only diversity, english language learners, special ed, two strategies courses, and a reading course. Although the 3 months of student teaching is when you get feedback and pointers in classroom management - I think there ought to be a course (or two or three) dedicated to classroom management. None of the strategies work if you can't manage the diverse children.
July 10, 2007 2:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
This motivation should not be under-estimated as a factor accounting for how, and why, most Republican elected officials at the national level are pro-voucher.
Were it not for the activism of many local and state teachers' unions, we would see even many more school boards run by the book-banners and anti-evolution folks, and more state legislatures supporting vouchers, than we already have.
The National Education Association, the largest teachers' union with around 3 million members (one in a hundred Americans is an NEA member) is regularly criticized by Republicans for supposed "partisanship" as reflected by its support for mostly Democratic candidates.
The reality is that support for public education used to be a bipartisan issue in this country. This was before the national Republican party saw support for vouchers as supporting the agendas, and therefore eliciting the support of, several groups:
*would-be entrepreneurs (there has been considerable interest in education as a possible lucrative investment opportunity in recent years)
*its socially reactionary wing
*its "crush the unions" advocates
*anti-government ideologues, the *privatize-everything" sub-species in particular
Teachers' unions are, if not enemy #1 of the national Republican party and several right-wing interest groups, pretty darned close to it.
July 10, 2007 3:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Totally agree re classroom management courses and find it surprising that they're not offered and required. Do all teachers' programs have that shortcoming?
July 10, 2007 7:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not sure how classroom "management" can be taught outside of the classroom...rather like a course in public speaking without opening one's mouth. The education department at my institution approaches this through classroom observation and practicum sessions throughout the curriculum.
One problem, even at the university level, and not just with poor kids (we don't have many poor kids) is that theory goes out the window when real live students enter the door. Each class is different, and what never ceases to amaze me, can be different from day to day. So I guess the first rule of management is close attention to the people with whom one is working on any given day. The names may be the same but the personas may change like the seasons.
I learned this a long time ago in my career when I had a class of students I liked unusually well. Normally they fed me adrenaline from the moment I entered the room. One day nothing worked: zero, zilch. After class one of the kids came up to me and said "sorry--we had three false alarms in the dorms last night".
aMike
July 10, 2007 7:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
In Michigan, free tuition wouldn't even come close to making up the difference in wages and benefits from public to private.
July 10, 2007 8:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Because vouchers redirect money from the public schools that they need to operate. They are like a business. They cannot operate at a loss, or raise revenue whenever they feel like it.
July 10, 2007 8:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
MI schools are state funded and every student is worth the same amount of money per head. NO supplemental money (property tax) can go to the schools for anything but construction/building. It has been this way for at least 20 years, and the schools in poor communities still suck. As the poster said,
Public schools have become the scape goat for the effects of poverty.July 10, 2007 9:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
As one commentator asked on this blog, “Why don’t we just all agree that everything that has no negative effect should be on the table?” If a policy that claims to be a cure for low average academic performance of low-income children is consistently shown not to produce the claimed results, it should be moved off the table—that goes for both conservative and liberal proposals.
Three points:
1. If one really believes that an educational policy should be supported only after it's been proved beyond dispute that it causes massive rises in test scores, then a whole lot more than vouchers is going to be off the table.
2. Would you argue that students shouldn't be able to use vouchers [that is, Pell Grants] at private colleges if it can't be proven beyond a doubt that they thereby get higher test scores? If not, why not?
3. Do you mean to suggest that a educational policy is to be judged solely based on test scores? If not, then what's wrong with the other progressive benefits of vouchers, e.g., making poor people happier with their child's school?
July 10, 2007 10:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
The point is that voucher proponents are the ones who claim that private education is more effective in producing higher test scores and that competition from private schools with public funding raises test scores in public schools. This is not a comparison benchmark created by voucher opponents.
Yes, the argument is also that choice makes parents happier, and most studies show that parents who send their kids to private voucher schools and charter schools are pretty happy about it, at least for a while. A new study about charter schools in Washington, DC by Mark Schneider (current director of the National Center for Educational Statistics) shows that after a few years, parents with children in charter schools are just as dissatisfied (or satisfied as public school parents.
Interestingly enough, I have not heard an argument that low income families should receive vouchers equal to the cost of public university education to be used in private universities. This would certainly promote the rise of more private universities. But again, no one seems to be arguing that, once controlling for socioeconomic background, private universities do a better job than public in producing high quality graduates. Rather, the big struggle is over what the conditions should be for admitting students to both public and private universities (affirmative action, etc).
MCarnoy
July 10, 2007 11:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
While I'm pleased to pay taxes sufficient for my neighbor's children to attend public school, I have no wish to pay a private school for someone else's children.
I want public money to be spent on public institutions. Private enterprise should be able to fend for itself.
July 11, 2007 5:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
As to your first paragraph -- there are plenty of education reforms that have been promoted by liberals with the promise of improved academic achievement, but that never seem to produce the academic benefits that were promised. Nothing is more common than for a liberal politician, for example, to deliver a speech in which the only thing he or she says about education is that we need to give schools the money they need. But the evidence on school spending is as ambiguous as the picture you paint of vouchers -- a few studies do show an academic benefit, but other studies going back to the Coleman Report suggest that spending doesn't explain much (if any) of the variance in achievement. As Howell and Peterson point out, "A handful of studies show clearly positive effects of expenditures on test scores, but others show negative effects, and the vast majority show no effect at all.” (p. 91 of The Education Gap). And of course, even the positive studies have to be viewed in light of the massive backdrop of spending trends in the United States: real spending more than tripled between 1960 and 2000, without any corresponding increase in achievement. (See pages 15-17 here.)
So by the standard that you've erected for vouchers -- unambiguous evidence of significant test score increases, not clouded by any opposing studies -- any increase in school spending should be "off the table."
But wait a minute -- wouldn't it perhaps be wiser to investigate some more specific questions before ruling out increased educational spending? Perhaps one should think carefully about such matters as (1) whether particular schools could use more money, even if more money isn't the answer for every school; (2) whether the effect of spending in certain needy schools is being impeded by corruption or incompetence (which should be addressed first); (3) whether it makes a difference how the increased funding is spent (it does); (4) whether increased funding needs to be coupled with other incentives to attract better teachers to schools that are currently low-quality; and so forth.
So too, perhaps it would be wiser to consider (1) whether vouchers are more likely to "work" (in terms of test scores) in particular geographic areas or under certain circumstances (i.e., depending on the characteristics of the local public and private schools that are pre-existing in a city); (2) whether vouchers are more likely to "work" at certain levels of funding, or if certain strings are attached; and so forth.
In any event, as I've said all along, the stronger case for vouchers is equity. And freedom of choice, for that matter. If we gave people national health care, I think most people would agree that people should be able to choose the doctor that they happen to like, not be forced to choose from a list of government-employed doctors (even if it can't be proven that people who choose their own doctor have life expectancies 5 years longer than everyone else -- having a choice is a good thing in and of itself).
July 11, 2007 7:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
There'e already freedom of choice to the same extent there is freedom to live where one wants--all it takes is money. Would supporters of vouchers like the recipents to move to their neighborhood?
If my money is being used by someone, I have some grounds for saying how it is used. This also includes what is being taught. I have no wish to see my tax contribution used to further insular religous training and unscientific propositions.
I would bet that if the voucher program were taken to its conclusion, with all public-school students trying to get into the various private schools, they would limit their enrollment. It's one of those deals where it only works if not everyone uses it.
It is the parenting that makes the difference. So we have to decide if we care enough about having educated children to make up the lack. This will take money. Schools servicing populations lacking good parenting will need disproprtionate funding. The property tax base is weaker in those areas where parenting means better-prepared students to begin with. An unfortunate irony is the suburbs with more available money need it less, since students are better-prepared by their parents.
A voucher system is more likely to reward the families that can easily jump ship for suburban private schools, with more family income and reliable automobile transportation. The family that gets a voucher but doesn't have the difference and lacks a good car can't really use it for a secular private school. So it really means supporting religious schools with public tax money, and removing funding for existing schools. It is likely to yield the self-fulfilling prophecy of poor performance in the struggling remnant of public schools, exactly like installing incompetent but loyal hacks in government agencies ensures government will be a problem, not a solution.
No thanks.
July 11, 2007 7:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
there will be a few growing pains for sure, but that's the price of change. I tend to think that school choice, through vouchers, would be worth the pain... that way, resources would be allocated across the board to home schoolers as well as educational institutions of various flavors.
To boldly go...
July 11, 2007 9:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
A few examples would be very useful to those of us who are in this business and know the research. For example, studies on early childhood education and preschool education, dear to the hearts of liberals, have demonstrated their usefulness, though a number of critics critics agree that Head Start needs better study and improved administration. So it would be good to know your point of reference here. Cf. http://www.america-tomorrow.com/bracey/EDDRA/EDDRA20.htm There area number of interesting articles at Educational Disinformation and Detection Reporting Agency, EDDRA, from the liberal point of view.
aMike
July 11, 2007 9:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know, mcs. To me, that sounds like the end of public schools. If we want to support "educational institutions of various flavors," why not get rid of public schools and just give people their $5000 to educate their children? Either we have a public education system, or we don't. Since we do have one, let's keep the money in it!
July 11, 2007 11:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
I already gave one example. You are providing me with another. Even your own link -- which tries to make the best of a bad case -- is forced by the evidence to concede that, in previous studies, the supposed positive effects of Head Start "faded within a year or two of the time children entered the schools," and more recent studies found "no long-term effects on the school achievement of black students" and "four-year-olds attending Head Start scored on average only slightly above the twentieth percentile on tests of vocabulary, letter recognition, early writing, and early mathematics."
Add to that these two papers:
Is Full Better than Half? Examining the Longitudinal Effects of Full-Day Kindergarten Attendance. ("Attending full-day kindergarten is found to have no additional effect on students in families with income below the poverty threshold, despite claims by some advocates that full-day programs are beneficial for the most disadvantaged students.")
And
Is Early Learning Really More Productive? The Effect of School Starting Age on School and Labor Market Performance ("Using a rich data set for the entire Swedish population born 1935-84, we find that children who start school at an older age do better in school and go on to have more education than their younger peers. Children from families with weaker educational tradition have more to win from starting school later.").
So, isn't this very much like the picture that Mr. Carnoy paints of vouchers? A few tentative studies showing a very mild positive effect (that then disappears), and other studies showing no effect. Unless someone can point to some show-stoppingly good evidence that the success of one or two tiny and expensive preschools can be replicated on a large scale, the conclusion is clear: "off the table."
UPDATE: That's not my conclusion, to be sure; I'm not the one insisting that educational reforms have to be "off the table" if they haven't been proven beyond a doubt to raise test scores. To the contrary, I'd be willing to try other pre-school reforms, especially in inner cities, and see if we can find something that works on a larger scale.
July 11, 2007 11:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
Not necessarily. The appropriate conclusion is to locate and explain the discrepancy between the anticipated outcomes and the outcomes themselves. The "further research" section on most academic papers points to this. For example, take the paper Is Full Better than Half? If, indeed, there are significant gains in kindergarten but these gains do not persist through first and second grades into third, (or more tellingly, persist at different rates for math and reading,) what does this tell us about what's happening in first and second grades? One thing longitudinal studies always suggest is that positive changes need to be reinforced if they're to be retained. So what's wrong with pedagogy in reading and mathematics in the early primary grades? Ditto the issue of behavioral problems, which strikes me as even more telling. "The relationship between fullday attendance in kindergarten and external behavioral problems, while insignificant in first grade, is significant in third grade." So what's happened between kindergarten and third grade to make little boys act out more in third grade?
My hypothesis in both these instances is that the kids are bored because the improvements gained have been left to stagnate.
aMike
July 11, 2007 11:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
The evidence of "Head Start's" positive effects are not weak but have been shown again and again.
The two papers that Stuart Buck cites add nothing to the discussion. The first shows not that early education does not work, but that more per day (full instead of half day) is not necessarily better. If two asprins are good, why take six?
The second paper states that the Scandinavian experience shows that there is not much to be gained by starting academics earlier. It does not say that early learning (through play) is not valuable. It just so happens that the Scandinavian countries have a very strong program of early childcare comprising cooperative play activities and music. Moreover, in Scandinavia, early childhood workers are highly valued and respected members of the community and are well compensated by society.
The preparation they offer lays a very solid foundation for academics but is not the same as "early learning" or "academics" (reading, writing, counting, the alphabet) as we understand the term. We could learn from the Scandinavian experience.
It is an unfortunate effect of Sesame Street that misconceptions about what and how to teach the youngest children abound in the United States
It is unfortunate, too, that program "Head Start" was understood to mean "Head Start" in academics -- as though learning were a race. Both programs were pitched as exceptionally "American" and capitalist and competitive (rather than like those wicked Nordic social democratic cooperative early childhood programs they have over in Europe) in order to get funding from a reactionary Cold War congress that was and is reluctant to see Federal money committed to any sort of educational endeavor particularly one that would help the poorest segment of society.
http://www.nber.org/papers/w8054http://www.nber.org/papers/w8054
http://www.amazon.ca/Nordic-Childhoods-Early-Education-Philosophy/dp/1593113501
http://ideas.repec.org/p/van/wpaper/0426.html
http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/Home.portal?_nfpb=true&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED110157&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=eric_accno&_pageLabel=RecordDetails&accno=ED494211&_nfls=false&objectId=0900019b8015d26f
You could argue that Scandinavian chidren are better prepared because they have had MORE early childhood experiences to prepare them when they do start academics at seven years of age.
July 11, 2007 12:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't disagree with any of that. But do note that you're taking quite a different approach from Mr. Carnoy. You're saying, "Hmm, let's look at whatever tiny gains there might be, and consider how to maintain or even improve them." He's saying, "Since there are only tiny gains, let's forget about looking at where and why such gains might emerge, let alone how to improve the gains. Instead, let's sweep the idea off the table."
You raise an interesting point about misbehavior. My hunch would be that, over time, little kids show more misbehavior because of the cumulative effect of having spent less time with adults and instead being socialized primarily by their immature and ignorant peers. Peer effects 101, so to speak: More time with immature peers = less gain in maturity.
July 11, 2007 12:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
You don't get a Pell grant so you can avoid a state school. Pell grants are given because without them people wouldn't be able to go to any college.
Public primary education is already free.
Why don't people who support vouchers, also support socialized medicine, I wonder?
Wouldn't guaranteed medical coverage help lower costs for Parochial schools and hence make them better able to "compete" with public schools?
July 11, 2007 12:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yep, I'm a hmm let's look kinda guy. I'm also a shameless promoter of the Westinghouse Effect:
I couldn't believe how hard it was to find an online reference to this. Someone at Wikipedia has been asleep at the switch. :-)
aMike
July 11, 2007 12:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Are you thinking of the Hawthorne effect?
July 11, 2007 12:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
First, as a broader point that's not just in reply to Mr. Culpepper, I'd like to point out how refreshing it is that commenters are starting to link to and cite external sources of evidence.
Now to the reply:
The evidence of "Head Start's" positive effects are not weak but have been shown again and again.
What you say does NOT apply to test scores, which is what I was talking about (and which is what certain people seem to think is the sine qua non for any educational intervention, or maybe that's just for vouchers). Your links are about putative effects on criminal behavior and health.
The paper on health effects of Head Start does a nice job of constructing a family-based fixed effects model, but I'm really rather baffled as to what the causal mechanism is supposed to be for all of the seemingly random facts that are spewed out -- kids who experienced Head Start as preschoolers are "17.4 percent" less likely to smoke as adults, but "in black families, the eldest child who attended Head Start is 36.3 less likely to have health insurance." How does Head Start cause a 3-year-old to grow up into an adult who is less likely to have health insurance (if he's the older sibling in a black family), but also less likely to smoke? That's why the term data-mining springs to mind: throw a bunch of data in the hopper and you'll find a few interesting correlations, but they're not necessarily meaningful.
Why not meaningful? Because the very mechanism that is proposed -- greater education leads to greater health benefits down the road, see page 27 -- isn't consistent with what the authors themselves admit at the beginning, which is that the educational benefits of Head Start mostly disappear by age 10 (pages 5-6). If the educational benefits are mostly gone at age 10, how are they going to reappear in an adult for the purpose of causing him not to smoke?
UPDATE: Anyway, all of this is rather beside the point. For the sake of argument, grant that Head Start has many benefits outside of permanently raised test scores. But the same is true of vouchers -- they make parents happier; they allow students to attend more racially integrated schools; and they provide choice and a greater degree of autonomy to poorer citizens (in any other context, liberals believe that this is a good thing). Even so, Mr. Carnoy says that vouchers are "off the table" because they haven't been proven to raise test scores to a sufficient degree. So if unambiguous proof of test scores is the sine qua non, Head Start should be "off the table" as well.
July 11, 2007 1:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
honestly, I'd support the $5000 per child idea but I would probably go with $10,000 per child.
I have friends who think that home schooling is great too and they'd love their school districts to find room under the tent for them.
I understand the strength of branding and being able to say things like "I graduated from a public highschool" but I also know 'self-made' individuals too.
To boldly go...
July 11, 2007 1:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Vouchers make parents (not children) happy (at least at first). This is not in dispute. So would many other things, but that is not a sufficient argument to do these things with taxpayer funding.
Mr. Conoy tells us that it is proponents of vouchers who argue that they raise test scores.
With the exception of Stuart Buck, proponents of vouchers do not argue for them because they make parents happy, but because they raise test scores.
Stuart Buck concedes that vouchers do not raise test scores and argues dubiously that short-term parental happiness is worth subsidizing at taxpayer expense.
Proponents of state-funded early childhood programs, high quality ones, argue that they prepare children for school AND predict a better quality of life in adulthood (result happiness, long term). They also raise test scores, at least at first.
It would seem that it would require a comparable investment in high quality primary education to keep the early gains in test scores -- and then in high school. You don't get anything for nothing (especially when it comes to long-term satisfaction).
Nevertheless, it has been shown repeatedly that there are still life-long gains accrued by participating in a high quality play kindergarten (even for half a day). The Finnish experience shows that full day schooling is not necessary even as late as age seven, provided children's need for physical and mental nurturing and for healthy recreation are being met.
July 11, 2007 1:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
<senior moment>yup</senior moment>
Guess I wasn't the only one who dredged his memory and confused Western Electric with Westinghouse. :-)
aMike
July 11, 2007 4:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Typos, sorry.
"In the pre-revolutionary British colonies of North America and in the early post-Revolutionary US, more (p)oities subsidized education through per-pupil contributions to Church-operated schools than directly operated schools."
"As institutions take from parets the power to determine for their own children the choice of curriculum and the pace and method of instruction, overall system performance (falls)."
"Tuition vouchers are not my recommendation, since tuition vouchers are to(o) respectful of current institutions."
Homeschool if you can.
July 11, 2007 9:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
But most can't, especially these days. Beyond elementary grades real expertise becomes necessary.
July 11, 2007 9:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
All homeschooling parents need is love, and basic literacy and numeracy. Homeschooling parents do not need to know everything; there are these amazing resources called "books". There are also tutorial services and private teachers (e.g., of instrumental music and voice).
Homeschool if you can.
July 11, 2007 9:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why is the State (government, generally) in the education business? This "Why?" question has three interpretations:
1) The historical "why?"
2) The political science "why?"
3) The welfare-economic "why?"
1) Religious indoctrination, initially (see Massachusett's "That old deluder, Satan" Act of 1647). In the pre-revolutionary British colonies of North America and in the early post-Revolutionary US, more polities subsidized education through per-pupil contributions to Church-operated schools than directly operated schools. Anti-Catholic bigotry provoked the switch from what was, in effect, a voucher policy to a State-monopoly school system.
2) Assuduous lobbying by current recipients of the taxpayers' $500+ billion per year K-12 education subsidy has created a positive feedback loop: more money => more lobbying => more money, etc.
3) The education industry is not a natural monopoly and, beyond a very low level, there are no economies of scale at the delivery end of the education industry as it currently operates. Education only marginally qualifies as a public good as economists use the term, and the "public goods" argument implies subsidy and regulation, at most, not State operation of school.
Lack of money is not the problem with the US school system, so more money is not the solution. The world's top-performing countries (as measured by TIMSS) are not the world's top-spending countries. The top-performing US States (as measured by NAEP 4th and 8th grade Reading and Math percentile scores) are not the top-spending US States. Across the US, within States, the coefficient of correlation (enrollment, $/pupil) is positive in all but three or four States with five or more districts over 15,000 enrolment (or 20,000, depending on which year of the Digest of Education Statistics you use). Across the US, within States, the coefficient of correlation (%minority enrollment, $/pupil) is positive in every single State with five or more districts over 15,000 enrollment (or 20,000...). The myth of the under-funded, inner-city minority district (Kozol's Savage Inequalities) is a lie. Taxpayers give those urban minority districts more money, per pupil. Dilapidated buildings and obsolete textbooks are not due to insufficient taxpayer generosity, the bureaucrats steal taxpayers' money and poor kids' life chances.
Neal McClusky on corruption in schools
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa542.pdf
Eric Hanushek on Education markets
http://edpro.stanford.edu/hanushek/admin/pages/files/uploads/research%20observer.pdf
No Voice,No Exit: The Inefficiency of America's Schools
http://www.ipi.org/ipi/IPIPublications.nsf/PublicationLookupFullText
http://www.ednews.org/articles/3721/1/The-Reality-of-School-Corruption/Page1.html
It does not take 12 years at $10,000 per pupil-year to teach a normal child to read and compute. If "public education" is not a make-work program for dues-paying members of the NEA, AFT, and AFSCME, a source of padded contracts for politically connected insiders, and a venue for State-worshipful indoctrination, why cannot any student take, at any age, an exit exam (the GED will do) and apply the taxpayers' age 6-18 education subsidy toward post-secondary education or toward a wage subsidy at any qualified (say, has filed W-2 forms on at least three employees for at least the previous four years) private-sector employer? If it is fraud for a mechanic to charge for the repair of a functional motor, and if it is fraud for a physician to charge for the treatment of a healthy patient, then it is fraud for a teacher to charge for the instruction of a student who doesn't need our help.
Several lines of evidence support the following generalizations:
1) As institutions take from parents the power to determine for their own children the choice of curriculum and the pace and method of instruction, overall system performance falls.
2) Political control of school harms most the children of the least politically adept parents.
In Hawaii, juvenile arrests for assault, drug possession, and drug promotion fall in summer, when school is not in session. Juvenile hospitalizations for human-induced trauma fall in summer. Reported burglaries fall in summer. Schools don't prevent crime; they cause it.
http://new.photos.yahoo.com/malcolmkirkpatrick/album/576460762329410123#page1
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/malcolmkirkpatrick/detail?.dir=735dscd&.dnm=e37bscd.jpg&.src=ph
Tuition vouchers are not my recommendation, since tuition vouchers are too respectful of current institutions. I prefer a policy I call Parent Performance Contracting: http://harriettubmanagenda.blogspot.com/2005/12/proposal.html
Please read this one page Marvin Minsky comment on school. http://www.rru.com/~meo/hs.minski.html
Please read this article on artificially extended adolescence by Ted Kolderie. http://www.educationevolving.org/pdf/Adolescence.pdf
Here is Milton Friedman's voucher proposal...
http://www.friedmanfoundation.org/friedman/friedmans/writings/1955.jsp
Friedman on Privatization
http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp-023.html
E.G. West, "Education Vouchers in Principle and Practice: A Survey", The World Bank Research Observer. http://www.worldbank.org/research/journals/wbro/obsfeb97/educate.htm
Angrist, et. al., "Vouchers for Private Schooling in Colombia", AER
">http://econ-www.mit.edu/faculty/download_pdf.php?id=737>
Joshua Angrist, "Randomized Trials and Quasi-Experiments in Education Research",___NBER Reporter___, summer, 2003.
http://www.nber.org/reporter/summer03/angrist.html
Special Education and vouchers (international)
http://www.policyreview.org/APR01/holland.html
Economic study of vouchers in Sweden
http://www.friedmanfoundation.org/schoolchoiceworks/swedenstudy0103.pdf
James Tooley on independent schools...
http://www.libertyindia.org/pdfs/tooley_education.pdf
http://www.educationnext.org/20054/22.html
Caroline Hoxby's papers on the web.
http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/hoxby/papers.html
Caroline Hoxby on class size
http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/hoxby/papers/classsize_oct2000.pdf
Caroline Hoxby on sorting in choice programs
http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/hoxby/papers/hoxby_2.pdf
Eric Hanushek on teacher quality
http://www.nctq.org/nctq/research/1112806467874.pdf
Andrew Coulson's massive site. Useful links.
http://www.schoolchoices.org
Karl Bunday's site
http://learninfreedom.org/Nobel_hates_school.html
Milton and Rose Friedman's site.
http://www.friedmanfoundation.org
Myron Lieberman's site.
http://www.educationpolicy.org
Pierce versus Society of Sisters
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=268&invol=510#t1%7C
Preschool is detrimental...
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5525
http://www.freedomworks.org/informed/issues_template.php?issue_id=2727
Teacher education programs add nothing to teacher competence... http://www.policyreview.org/APR02/andrews.html
http://www.pacificresearch.org/pub/sab/educat/study_credentialing.pdf
I recommend the following works...
Chubb and Moe
Politics, Markets, And America's Schools (Brookings, 1990)
http://www.brookings.edu/press/books/politicsmarketsandamericasschools.htm
C. Eugene Steuerle, et. al
Vouchers and the Provision of Public Services (Brookings, 2000)
http://www.brookings.edu/press/books/vouchers.htm
Eduardo Zambrano
Formal Models of Authority: Introduction and Political Economy Applications
Rationality and Society, May 1999; 11: 115 - 138.
"Aside from the important issue of how it is that a ruler may economize on communication, contracting and coercion costs, this leads to an interpretation of the state that cannot be contractarian in nature: citizens would not empower a ruler to solve collective action problems in any of the models discussed, for the ruler would always be redundant and costly. The results support a view of the state that is eminently predatory, (the ? MK.) case in which whether the collective actions problems are solved by the state or not depends on upon whether this is consistent with the objectives and opportunities of those with the (natural) monopoly of violence in society. This conclusion is also reached in a model of a predatory state by Moselle and Polak (1997). How the theory of economic policy changes in light of this interpretation is an important question left for further work. [Eduardo Zambrano, "Formal Models of Authority", Rationality and Society, V.11, #2. May, 1999].
Homeschool if you can.
July 11, 2007 10:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
My sister schooled her daughter, for behavioral reasons, up to 9th grade. Her husband has a good civil service job at NSF, so it was financially possible. Not for most.
July 11, 2007 10:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
What makes homeschooling unaffordable "for most"? In Hawaii, at least, there's nothing in the law which requires that homeschooling instruction occur between 8 a.m. and 2:30 p.m., so it's legal to extend daycare to age 18 and homeschool in the evening.
July 11, 2007 10:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
(Jhaber){ "1) Some students are already going to private school. Education gain from voucher? Surely nil, and that money effectively leaves education funding never to return. Net gain to students: negative. Net gain to society: very negative, as it amounts to income redistribution upward. (2) Many students can't afford private tuitions, which in a big city can be many, many times the cost of vouchers. They stay put. Education gain from vouchers? Barring severe Lamarckian victories, disastrous. The ghetto grows needier. (3) Some parents could make the shift with a little marginal assistance. Net gain to these students? Possibly positive, although Jared's post suggests the evidence is lacking. Overall outcome: kids everywhere are screwed."
Gerard Lassibile and Lucia Navarro Gomez, ["Organization and Efficiency of Educational Systems: some empirical findings", pg. 16, __Comparative Education__, Vol. 36 #1, 2000, Feb.]
"Furthermore, the regression results indicate that countries where private education is more widespread perform significantly better than countries where it is more limited. The result showing the private sector to be more efficient is similar to those found in other contexts with individual data (see, for example, Psucharopoulos, 1987; Jiminez, et. al, 1991).
This finding should convince countries to reconsider policies that reduce the role of the private sector in the field of education".
I reason axiomatically, here. 1). Most parents love their children and want their children to outlive them. 2) If you live among people there are basically three ways to make a living: i) you can beg, ii) you can steal, iii) you can trade goods and services for other peoples' goods and services. 3) Most parents accept #2 and prefer 2.iii for their children. 4 )Therefore, most parents want what taxpayers want from any education system: that children be educated to be contributing members of society.
A well-designed tuition voucher propoal would not reduce per-pupil allocations in government schools. Imaginae a dstrict with a stable population. Let E be current enrollment in State schools. Let I be current enrollment in independent schools and homeschooled children. Let n be the number of students currently in State schools who depart with voucher money. Let B be the current total budget for State schools. Let c be B/E (average cost per enrolled student in State schools). Let the fraction of c given as a voucher be some number between zero and one. Suppose all students in I apply for voucher assistance. The district gains when the budget that remains behind, (B-
(ac/b)(n+I), divided by the number of students who remain, (E-n), is greater than c.
We know that B=EC. so the district gains when c is less than ((Ec-c(a/b)(n+I))/(E-n). Multiply by (E-n)/c and you get E-n is less than E-(a/b((n+I). Ths implies (a/b)(n+I)is less than n, so the district gains when (a/b)is less than (n/(n+I)).
There is another reason to recommend a retreat by the State from the education industry: the State is in a conflict of interest when it simultaneously operates and regulates schools. State operation of schools is as much a threat to democracy as State operation of broadcast news media and newspapers woul be (are, in totalitarian States).
"The terrifying thing about modern dictatorships is that they are something entirely unprecedented. Their end cannot be foreseen. In the past, every tyranny was sooner or later overthrown, or at least resisted because of "human nature," which as a matter of course desired liberty. But we cannot be at all certain that human nature is constant. It may be just as possible to produce a breed of men who do not wish for liberty as to produce a breed of hornless cows. The Inquisition failed, but then the Inquisition had not the resources of the nodern state. The radio, press censorship, standardized education and the secret police have alterted everything. Mass suggestion is a science of the last twenty years, and we do not know how successful it will be." --George Orwell-- Review of __Russia under Soviet Rule__ by N. de Basily" (__Essays__,George Orwell, Knopf, 2002).
"One has only to to think of the sinister possibilities of the radio, State-controlled education, and so forth, to realize that 'the truth is great and will prevail' is a prayer rather than an axiom." --George Orwell [Review of __Power; A New Social Analysis__ by Bertrand Russell].
July 12, 2007 1:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Malcolm: "State operation of schools is as much a threat to democracy as State operation of broadcast news media and newspapers would be (are, in totalitarian States)."
The BBC is as much of a threat to healthy democracy in Britain as the "news" dissemination empire of Rupert Murdoch is to healthy democracy in the US?
Do we live in a totalitarian state in the United States, or one that is, in anything other than the fantasy world of right-wing ideologues, in danger of veering into one on account of government influence over our public schools?
July 12, 2007 2:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
You're suggesting a parent put in an 8-hour day and then another 4 or so in the evening teaching? Have you done either parenting or teaching? (I've done both.) And who pays for the day care until said parent comes home?
July 12, 2007 6:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Carnoy didn't mention the study of vouchers in Sweden by Sandstrom and Bergstrom (to which Malcolm Kirkpatrick points above). It's available here. The conclusion:
* * * The present study confirms the finding that greater competition improves the standards of public schools. The wide scope of reform of the system for financing primary education makes the Swedish experience particularly interesting. Sweden has left a system with virtually no parental influence over school choice, and an almost complete dominance of public schools. A voucher system, where parents are allowed to choose any school approved by the National Agency for Education, has been put in its place. Independent schools receive funding on close to equal terms with public (municipal) schools.
A widespread concern among opponents of school choice is that competition will hurt the public schools. The present study shows this fear to be without foundation.This sort of finding is a good counter to histrionic claims that vouchers somehow "harm" public schools.
July 12, 2007 8:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
OK, I see the blockquote function doesn't work correctly on this website. I'll try again:
Mr. Carnoy didn't mention the study of vouchers in Sweden by Sandstrom and Bergstrom (to which Malcolm Kirkpatrick points above). It's available here. The conclusion:
* * * The present study confirms the finding that greater competition improves the standards of public schools. The wide scope of reform of the system for financing primary education makes the Swedish experience particularly interesting. Sweden has left a system with virtually no parental influence over school choice, and an almost complete dominance of public schools. A voucher system, where parents are allowed to choose any school approved by the National Agency for Education, has been put in its place. Independent schools receive funding on close to equal terms with public (municipal) schools.
A widespread concern among opponents of school choice is that competition will hurt the public schools. The present study shows this fear to be without foundation.
This sort of finding is a good counter to histrionic claims that vouchers necessarily "harm" public schools.
July 12, 2007 8:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
I was a teacher for ten years. Currently I tutor.
I'm suggesting that once a child learns basic reading and Math (through addition and subtraction of fractions), s/he is capable of independent work; the day-care operator need only provide a safe place and an occasional pat on the back. "Day care" for 6-18 year olds wouldn't be much more of a chore. Get five families together, pay one reliable neighbor to take eight or so kids into her home, and pay that person, say. $25/child-day. "Evening instruction" is just a cover for the requirement that parents homeschool if their kids aren't in an accredited school.
"It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. To the contrary, I believe it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to force the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry, especially if the food, handed out under such coercion, were to be selected accordingly.
"Autobiographical