Thursday, July 7, 2011
Education Reform and the States
Gary shared this link with me about governors implementing reforms that will increase and incentivize school choice. This is good stuff - education is a positive externality and merits public investment. What is disappointing, of course, is that many of these same governors are reducing investments in public education and the same time that they're bolstering private education through vouchers and subsidies (details here and here). I'm all for school choice, but I find this disappointing. It seems awfully perverse to decry public education but then insist that public funds be directed towards a private institution of a parents' choosing.
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The point is to make education better and cheaper at the same time. The fact is that we've poured all manner of money into public schools since "A Nation At Risk" came out to essentially no effect so I'm not quite sure what maintaining or increasing education to public schools would do for anyone - well, except for obvious interested parties.
ReplyDeleteIf you think improving public schools and pouring money into public schools are the same thing, I don't know what to say. You're not holding a position that I think most advocates of investment in public education would agree with.
ReplyDeleteThis may be of interest to people as we think about what to make of the observed differential between public and private school students:
http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-on-margins-of-comparison.html
Daniel Kuehn,
ReplyDeleteThe point is that we've tried spending lots and lots of money on public education; it failed as experiment. So let's try something different; like less is more.
In the socialist paradise of Sweden they have (a) radical school choice* and (b) they pay less per capita on education than in the U.S. Last time I looked they were spending something like 2/3rds of what is spent per pupil in comparison, while at the same time, Swedish students were doing much better based on the measures that the federal government likes to use.
*Really, only in the U.S. do progressives/liberals lose it over school choice; in the rest of the world it is either something they've advanced or something they gotten used based on its results.
Then again, Sweden is a far better run country generally than the U.S.; far lower public debt per capita; far less political corruption; greater levels of privatization than is increasingly becoming the case in the U.S.; the return on taxes paid goes basically to the taxpayer (over 90% in most cases); etc.
ReplyDeleteGary, I would have thought it would be obvious that "let's spend less money" is just as much a non-solution as "let's spend more money".
ReplyDeleteEducating children is about more than adding or subtracting zeros to checks. What do you DO?
Test scores are notoriously hard to compare across countries - but clearly Sweden is doing fine so let's accept your premise here. What do you think actually made Sweden efficient here? Do you think it was simply cutting spending on children? Of course not. You're confusing cause and effect. Sweden doesn't have to spend as much on education because it has an educational system that works - it doesn't have to spend as much. Simply deciding to spend less money hasn't made the system better.
School choice is part of that, but please don't tell me "let's try spending less money" and act like I should give you the time of day.
Daniel,
ReplyDeleteIn the U.S. every couple of years a new fad is trotted out as a means to save public education in state run schools - because public education in state run schools is the meme or whatever that most advocates of school reform work within. At the same time you've had a small group of advocates arguing (basically since Milton Friedman started off the argument back in the 1950s) that public education can be funded without the state running the schools - that group of advocates has increased over time obviously but they've always been in the minority and they remain so. Until that sort of thinking becomes the majority way of seeing things you're really never going to see improvement in the areas which need improvement - urban education, etc.
I also recommend people read this and search around for other criticisms before making broad condemnations of American education: http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411562_salzman_Science.pdf
ReplyDeleteAnd also read the link of mine above about the margin of comparison that we're interested in (which matters when we think of the composition of the population that the United States is educating vs. the population being educated in other countries). Don't accept Gary's platitudes about relative American performance at face value.
Gary - yes, I'm glad you agree with me on school choice.
ReplyDeleteYou're still making poor arguments with respect to margins of comparison, and this idea that "spend less money" is actually an educational strategy.
Daniel,
ReplyDeleteSweden never spent as much money per capita as the U.S. at any time that I know of.
Anyway, the rallying cry for a long time has actually been "let's spend more money," and that's exactly what has been done. So if indeed state governments are spending less money what exactly is the problem? That's my point. My point isn't that it is a solution; my point is to stop throwing good money after bad.
Daniel,
ReplyDeleteI never claimed that "spending less" is an educational strategy.
As for comparisons between countries, as I stated, we're looking at what the _federal government_ is using to compare nations. I never said it was a good measure; but it is the measure that the government uses - the same government that has ratcheted up spending on education year after year since ~1984. You can take their claims at face value or not, but they're the ones making claims about the need for more spending on primary and secondary education - whether it is a WH that has been recently occupied by a Democrat or a Republican.
re: "I never claimed that "spending less" is an educational strategy."
ReplyDeleteYou wrote: "The point is that we've tried spending lots and lots of money on public education; it failed as experiment. So let's try something different; like less is more".
You do this a lot - you take a broad libertarian goal and treat that goal like it's a solution.
re: "I never said it was a good measure; but it is the measure that the government uses"
Why in the world does it matter what measure the government uses? Shouldn't we argue on the basis of good measures, regardless of who does or doesn't use them? Why are you of all people invoking a government measure and justifying it on the basis of the government using it???
This is like Steve Horwitz the other day judging stimulus on the basis of the Obama administration's projections. Why the hell do you think those numbers mean anything? And if you don't think they mean anything why the hell are you and I talking about them?
"You do this a lot - you take a broad libertarian goal and treat that goal like it's a solution."
ReplyDelete"Less is more" isn't really an exclusively libertarian goal or idea (the first place I know of it coming from is a Robert Browning poem). And the less refers to lots of things - less government control of American education being one of them. Less paternalism. Etc.
"Why in the world does it matter what measure the government uses?"
Because they are the ones making the spending decisions obviously; I'm not. I'm just saying by their own measure of performance they've failed.
Gary,
ReplyDeleteYou can't tout Sweden as some shining example of how their system works without mentioning that a country like Sweden is homogenous. Unlike the United States where the most impoverished(which is correlated with academic success) happen to be minorities(African-American & Hispanic) do the worst. For the record, Finnland is often heralded as the worlds educational success story and it's heavily socialized.
The problem of education is a lot more nuanced than you're making it out to be.
re: "Because they are the ones making the spending decisions obviously; I'm not. I'm just saying by their own measure of performance they've failed."
ReplyDelete?!?!?!?!!?!?!
Who cares if they fail or succeed by their own measures if their own measures are meaningless?
Octahedron -
ReplyDeleteThat's one of the points that the Salzman paper makes.
International education is a tough thing to talk about and compare all around, and it's usually best to ignore people who insist the sky is falling in the U.S.
Daniel Kuehn,
ReplyDeleteBecause they were the ones with the decision making power regarding spending and for the most part the media, etc. all buy into those measures. Sometimes the ground you play isn't determined by you. Plus, it makes a powerful rhetorical, etc. point - by your own measures you are failing and have been failing, so give my ideas a try. You really have never worked in government have you?
Agreed Daniel. I'll have to do a post in the future about it sometime since I'm of the opinion that the problem it's more of a institutional problem than it is an educational since results can be broken down into income level and race to form a coherent picture.
ReplyDeleteOctahedron,
ReplyDeleteNo doubt; that's why it is called "Club Sweden."
Gary -
ReplyDeletere: "Plus, it makes a powerful rhetorical, etc. point - by your own measures you are failing and have been failing, so give my ideas a try."
OK, but why are you talking about it here? It makes a weak rhetorical point if I'm not one of the ones that has used those measures.
If you agree it's a bad measure and I agree it's a bad measure and nobody that thinks it's a good measure is commenting in this thread, then don't you see how using the mutually agreed upon bad measure to try to demonstrate your point makes you entirely unconvincing and deeply confused about the issue at hand?
re: "You really have never worked in government have you?"
Not a day of my life, unless you count six dollars an hour as a research assistant at a public university.
You have to understand, Gary, a huge part of my job for the last five years has been to tell the government (1.) the standards and appropriate counterfactuals on which we should judge public programs, and (2.) whether or not programs have met this standard. I do this because I am firmly of the opinion that often government is not well placed to make these evaluations.
ReplyDeleteThey pay me to do it for the same reason that I pay a dentist to work on my teeth: I feel like I have some sense of what's going on in there, but I wouldn't trust myself to do a detailed evaluation - much less serious work on it.
You come across as a dentist talking to another dentist and saying "even though we both agree that the patient is wrong or misled, let's consult with each other on the condition of his teeth under the pretense that what the patient thinks is reasonable".
That sounds really, really dumb to me.
Keynes said that "if economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid". Indeed it would be.
Daniel,
ReplyDeleteThe issue at hand is convincing the government that they're wrong; the best way to do that is to say "Yo, by your own means of testing success you're wrong." BTW, the reason why the government adopted these standards is in significant part because a bunch of experts told them it was a good idea (probably it also made sense because it produces easy to digest numbers, makes things seem legible, etc.).
Your analogy would make sense _if_ someone else besides the government were the decision maker. Anyway, ultimately a dentist has to make some sort of credibly story about what is going on with a person's teeth - otherwise the person is likely to walk out of the office.
Gary -
ReplyDeletere: "The issue at hand is convincing the government that they're wrong"
Then you are wasting your time here. I doubt anyone of any consequence in the government reads this blog. My understanding was that the issue at hand was trying to understand education and the effects of education policy. If you want to go on a political crusade we're talking past each other.
And I'd still argue that you're better served correcting their misunderstanding than adopting their misunderstanding and using it against them. But that's just me.
re: "the reason why the government adopted these standards is in significant part because a bunch of experts told them it was a good idea"
Please read that Salzman paper if you're going to make claims like this. The producers of these test scores heavily caveat these measures and standards and absolutely don't endorse their use for a lot of the claims that others cite these measures to make.
re: "Anyway, ultimately a dentist has to make some sort of credibly story about what is going on with a person's teeth - otherwise the person is likely to walk out of the office."
Precisely why I think you should explain the issues with the measure rather than adopt it as your own.
That's why I give to Cato; they're ones who do the crusading.
ReplyDeleteSo all of the producers of these test scores make these caveats?
I guess I am just more cynical about the way politicians think.
Speaking of test scores: http://www.ajc.com/news/investigation-into-aps-cheating-1001375.html
ReplyDelete"Educating children is about more than adding or subtracting zeros to checks. What do you DO?"
ReplyDeleteWe use the threat of force to send to a socially dysfunctional prison complex to be commanded by complete strangers, so they can be told to regurgitate material that they will
a)likely never use
b)forget
and will:
c)never experience real learning through hands on experience, which is how you learn most efficiently through trial and error.
d)endure thirteen years of opportunity cost and government propaganda in social studies class so that the students can come out with no job skills or preparation for the real world, but hey! Atleast they will have the privilege of repeating high school through university 1, and taking more mandatory courses that has nothing an individual's career options.
Yeah, that smells like signalling model to me.