Rothstein and Hess on fixing schools

In just about any industry you can think of, improvements in the quality of output are normally obtained by increasing the quality/quantity of the resource inputs that are used to produce the output. It is a truism that also applies to the education industry.

Unfortunately, very few of those who pontificate on the topic of education recognize that the single most important resource that educators require in order to improve the quality of results in their classrooms is TIME. With additional time, teachers are able to spend more of it with students who need special attention, with the parents of children who need special attention, on putting together improved lesson plans/projects, on evaluation methods that marginal students benefit from, but which are time intensive.

Teachers in wealthy suburbs do not need this resource (time) as much as teachers in poorer neighborhoods. Suburban schools have a higher percentage of ‘good students’ who are typically ‘low maintenance’ students (in the view of their teachers). That’s easy money. It’s the teachers in inner-city schools that need much more TIME in order to improve the quality of output in their classrooms.

The way to provide teachers with more of this crucial resource is by shrinking classroom sizes. That means that ‘challenged’ school districts need to spend more money on additional teachers/classrooms/etc. Perhaps a teacher/student ration of 1/8 would be required in some of those districts that are struggling the most to improve educational outcomes. Simply “demanding better results” from teachers who need more TIME to invest in their marginal students is managerial incompetence of the highest order.

More money –> More time for teachers –> Improved quality in educational outcomes

one of my minor betes noir is the frequency with which NPR, when it wants a right winger to comment on an education policy issue, goes to Heritage or Cato, rather than to the AEI

I can’t imagine what empirical tendencies might have influenced NPR to discriminate in this sort of way.

How much of that increase is merely Baumol’s cost disease in a highly labor-intensive endeavor? Also, for sure much of it is not going to one of the few things that’re known to make a difference- attracting and retaining higher-quality teachers, as opposed to overpaid administrators, and also as opposed to the multitude of costly mandates that politicians love to pile on schools.

I think you’d have to spend at least as as much to do it right, just allocate it rather differently. The enthusiasm of the right for twisting the data to justify cheaping out leaves me cold.

and in 1960 gas cost $0.31/gallon, average new homes went for $21,500, a first class stamp went for $0.05 and a dozen eggs for $0.53 so a 3x raise in per pupil spending may not be very much

billcinsd,

Tripled in constant dollars is what Rothstein said.

Does either of those guys have a veterinary medicine background? Or you?

There are at least two meanings to the phrase “fixing schools.” My experience in business and government suggests that when people start talking about “money wasted” in education, they are using the vet’s language on “fixing schools.”

[Which may give a whole new meaning to Gary Larson’s cartoon of one dog talking to another excitedly, about going to the park, and then to the vet to get “tutored.”]

Ooh, what I wanted to say was that advantaged kids can learn those things (history, music) at home, but not maths or reading.

If advantaged kids can learn anything at home that is missing in the curriculum, then it doesn’t matter whether it is history or maths that is cut.

Steve,

The corresponding teacher/student ratio change (25:1 in 1960, 8:1 today) and the increase in administrators relative to teachers (anecdotal evidence only), would make me think that Baumol’s Cost Disease (hereafter, BCD for short) is a relatively small contributor. Wouldn’t BCD say that the proportion of total resources going to the sector increases as relative productivity falls; here, it’s the actual resources, not the proportion, that is going up.

Harry,
Teacher salaries have gone down relative to those of doctors; stayed about constant with those of average college grads; gone up relative to those of median full-time workers. For my purposes, the last is the key point. (The fact that a median family can’t buy a median education is problematic for a wide variety of political questions.)

I agree that the loss of a captive female workforce has hurt the school system, as has being asked to take over a large variety of functions previously done by mothers. It seems to me, though, that the impact on the school system would be more focused on quality than on cost. (To maintain quality would have increased cost.)

Where do you get those teacher-ratio figures from? Even if confirmed, they really point to administrative bloat (which I’ve already agreed is a significant factor), because you certainly don’t see such ratios in classrooms. A lot of large districts have a platoon of dubiously useful desk jockeys who are still technically classified as “teachers”.

BCD simply says that labor-intensive fields in which large productivity gains are not possible must, in order to continue to attract workers, pay wages that track at least reasonably well with wages in the general economy whose level is driven much more by increasing productivity. It would be difficult to see how a field like education could fail to exhibit a significant degree of BCD.

My comment stands. Show me the 15-student classrooms.