Peter Levine on School Reform

Introducing economic competition in education is a serious alternative. As for thought-out, how much thinking do you need to do, to see the downside of a government-enforced monopoly?

We don’t need official “inspectors” to tell us what goes on in public schools. Anyone who cares can find out. The news is full enough of horror stories. Then there are blogs:

I tutored a grade 12 student this summer. He was weak in basic algebra, so we spent some time going over the basics. I went through one linear equation step-by-step, and then pointed to the last line and said, “So – x equals five times two,” and paused.

“Holdonasec,” said my student, and darted upstairs. I waited for two minutes until he returned with his backpack. He threw the bag on the floor beside him, opened it, and withdrew a pencil case. Slowly, he opened the pencil case, and pulled out a fucking graphing calculator. He then keyed in, 5, x, 2, = before triumphantly declaring, “Ten.”

Okay, so that’s in Canada. You want similar stories from the US, check Joanne Jacobs. I notice the top item on her site this morning is about improvement in public schools, which seems to have resulted from (choke) economic competition and intelligent resource allocation.

dipnut,

you misunderstood my use of the term “conservative”. Peter and I both include various forms of privatisation and using market forces among what I call the “current battery of reform ideas”, as is quite clear in his post. (I’ve written a book about choice, myself, so seriously do I take the idea). But markets and choice are the paradigm case of reforms that treat schools as black boxes. To some extent (as I should have said above) that is unavoidable, because the information is so hard to get.

Horror-story anecdotes are helpful if you are trying to eliminate particularly bad practises in individual schools. But they don’t constitute the kind of information that a responsible policymaker concerned with improving the quality and efficiency of the education system needs.

In my state, Gov. Goodhair Perry has decreed that all school districts must spend 65% of their budget on “expenses directly related to classroom instruction” (whatever that will turn out to mean), despite the fact that there are no studies that show any value to this particular number.

A few people have looked into what other states spend, on average, and have found that there is no correlation between this number and school quality. Some states spend more, some less, and some (most) have better schools, some worse, but it has nothing to do with the percentage of budget spent on classroom instruction.

It’s stuff like this that makes me think that most conservatives aren’t interested in reforming education, they’re just interested in the appearance of doing so.

…you misunderstood my use of the term “conservative”.

Yes, and you also caught me out not reading the linked item. In my defense, I suggest “defenders of the status quo” might be just as correct, and much less subject to misinterpretation.

“data” is not the plural of “anecdote”.

Good point. It’s easy to forget that, when the anecdotes are so many and all fit the same pattern. Anyway, such data as we have looks as bad as the anecdotes.

Perhaps I don’t understand what this post is about. There is all the evidence anyone could want, of malfeasance and incompetence in public education. Suppose we had more information, better organized. Then we could squabble over the motives of the data-gatherers, and argue over the way things should be, and cast about in vain for someone with the authority and merit to do anything about it.

Might as well trust the invisible hand.

This may be obvious, but it seems there are at least two key variables to the education issue that are interrelated. Of course, quality education requires quality educators. But it also requires students who are willing to learn. Ideally, good teachers can help to facilitate the latter variable. Communities, however, have to be part of the solution.

With regard to teachers, I’m strongly against much of the, as I perceive it, anti-teacher rhetoric that comes from some Republicans these days. But, the fact remains that there are many, many inadequate teachers out there. Democrats can’t get around that fact. Neither can teachers (and many don’t want to, either).

But teachers are in a bind. How do the good teachers assist in weeding-out the sub-par teachers (or at least minimizing their damaging effects) without inadvertently assisting a blatantly political attempt to crush the teacher’s union? After all, good teachers today are underpaid, if anything. And, despite economists soothing claims to the contrary, market forces don’t act in such a way as to ensure that the good teachers would be remunerated near as well as they should be – and maybe not even as well as they are today – if current protections were eliminated.

Teaching shouldn’t be volunteer work, and when some excellent teachers get paid twenty or thirty thousand a year, it practically is. However, for the lousy teachers out there, it’s not difficult to argue that they’re overpaid. Nonetheless, the lousy teachers can easily call to their defense the fact that they’ve met the “standards” for a teacher. This is correct, considering the low standards they must meet. (Anyone who takes a cursory glance at the paltry number of courses in history, political science, and sociology a “social studies” education student must pass to obtain his or her teaching certificate can attest to the fact that it’s hardly a rigorous program. And, worse, it’s not necessarily atypical. )

I would argue that increasing standards for teachers – particularly those of middle-school and high-school teachers, levels at which knowledge of the subject matter becomes just as important as, if not more important than, pedagogy – is a must. (Perhaps requiring an M.A. in the teacher’s primary subject?) But, as a “market” incentive, there must be increased pay to complement the increased standards. Current teachers who are already excellent will fit-in to any new system, regardless of whether they have advanced degrees or not. As for lousy teachers, there could either be a messy (and probably ill-advised) round of mass firings. More likely, they will simply age-out of the system, retire, and become relics of a bygone era.

When it comes to students, community involvement in schooling does seem to be part of the solution. There has to be movement on both sides, between the schools and the community, to decrease the antagonism between teachers and parents that often pervades many schools today. Of course, no professional wants to be told how to do his or her job, but community involvement in schools doesn’t have to resort to a perpetual tug-of-war.

Some of the suggestions Peter and Harry outline get at the cultural issues that must be viewed as part of the larger problem. Community participation would signify to students that the community values education. After all, education has to be “sold” to (admittedly immature/maturing) students. And, at least part of that sale must be based on the now-unfashionable understanding that education must be viewed as more than just a way to get a job.
Currently, any argument based on the equation “X-amount of education equals Y-quality job” is dubious at best. And students, particularly as the reach high school, know that. If they can realistically state that they will never “use” calculus, history, or whatever later in life, which passes as a sound argument in our current, career-oriented vision of education, who’s to stop them from simply dismissing whole subjects as worthless? But once education becomes more than just a means to get a job and is instead viewed as part of a larger development process – a transition in attitude that cannot be made without the assistance of parents and communities – those “arguments” will no longer have any substance.

I don’t mean to suggest that students will simply accept that education is more than a means to get a job and will then pick-up copies of “The American Political Tradition” or “An Introduction to Political Philosophy” en masse, but if students can’t be sold on the fact that education is a necessary component of becoming a well-informed citizen, we’re doomed.

dipnut, there are days when I agree with your final comment, but I reject it ultimately, for all sorts of reasons such as concern about the distribution of educational opportunities, worries about the inevitable market imperfections, and the pragmatic judgment that full-blown markets are not politically feasible. My book on school choice (not the one Peter is discussing) is, in part, a defence of regulated markets as part of an egalitarian strategy in education. Yes, I shouldn’t really use “conservative” in that misleading way, but I do so to tease my friends on the left in ed schools and teacher unions who endorse the basic structure of an education system which is both highly inefficient (I’m sure you agree) and deeply unjust (you may not agree but they should) for their unwilliningess to entertain serious reforms (including choice and market based reforms).

I’m lso not so sure how bad schools are. Most people are pretty satisfied with the schools their children attend (probably, I’d agree, complacently). We do incredibly badly by poor kids, but so does everyone; if you have large swathes of children living in poverty and concentrate them into schools together, you need ideas about how to teach them; no-one in history has cracked that. If you doubt that, go and volunteer in some elementary classrooms in high poverty schools, and after a few months get the teacher to agree to let you run the class for a couple of hours.

I completely endorse what Peter says, and although there are left/right issues about values and details in reform, both the technocratic concerns and their dangers should be considered carefully.

I’m tempted to discourage tracy w from reading my book on school choice which, I’m pretty sure, reveals all sorts of errors like those you mention in your interesting comment. I hope I’ve learned enough in the past 7 years to avoid the most egregious such errors.

dipnut,

I guessed you weren’t a strong egalitarian (can’t think how!). My view of justice is (as you’d guess) much more expansive than yours, but it includes the concern you have, and I think your concern is probably the most urgent justice matter on the table in education.

I understand the impulse, and as I say I sometimes share it. We might disagree about who to blame (or perhaps about how to share out the blame), and if I thought pure privatisation were feasible I’m still worried that it would end up rewarding many of the people who are to blame, and not helping those who suffer most. But I don’t think it is feasible, even in the quite long term, in the US or the UK (my 2 countries), just as I don’t think a purely egalitarian “state” system is feasible. So all policy reform is bound to be messy. Because the ed school world (in which I’m an outsider, but which I have much more to do with than the policy world) is relatively hostile to choice, markets, and incentives, I spend a fair amount of time countering that hostility. Hence my teasing nomenclature. Peter’s post is a (right-headed) warning not to think exclusively about choice, markets and incentives.