School Days
There has been an interesting back and forth between The American Scene and The League of Ordinary Gentleman on the topic of education. I have some loosely held, strong opinions on the topic of education. What this means is that my mind is amenable to being changed on the topic. So far the primary things discussed have been marginal pay, unions, autonomy, and school choice.
To go in reverse order, I’m not a big fan of school choice as a central strategy to improving education. I was at one time a big fan. The reason may surprise you. The reason I’m not a big fan is that geographically a non-trivial number of places don’t have the density to support multiple school systems. If we have a town split by a river, two pedesterian bridges is not a better solution than one bridge that can support a truck. In the medical world where we have two giant voucher systems called Medicare and Medicaid, more hospitals haven’t been shown to reduce costs, and outcomes aren’t prima facie better.
In the area of autonomy, there seems to be this argument that things are fundamentally different requiring local solutions. E.D. Kain puts it thus:
Standards require uniformity, and across the country uniformity simply doesn’t exist. A lot of the new data on learning indicates that even across one school, or one classroom, countless differences exist in how students learn. Some students are visual learners, others very physical…. By forcing teachers to teach to tests we leave a lot of these kids behind.
This argument strikes me as a poor one for fighting standardization. Would we expect children in LA to be more visual learners and kids in NY to be more physical learners? Yes, standards tend to homogenize, but we are dealing with a relatively homogenous population. There may be variations in the applications of engineering principles in different parts of the country, but the principles remain the same. We can train an engineer in New York, and he should be able to design a building for Los Angeles. That there are low-rises and high-rises in both places doesn’t change the ability to set a standard.
In regards to merit pay, there seems to be the economics 101 assumption that you will get more if you pay more. I don’t get a better oil change if I pay $40 rather than $20, and economists will agree with me. Or at least they will agree that the difference in value isn’t accounted for in the oil, filter, and work. You don’t necessarily get a better engineered bridge if you pay $1,000,000 for the design or $500,000. For our attorneys, do I get better representation for my speeding ticket if I pay the attorney $300/hr versus $1000/hr? There are many areas in life where paying more doesn’t get you more. A doctorate in physics with 10-years experience in the nuclear industry is quite valuable to a physics major student. He doesn’t add much value to the 3rd grade general sciences student. In my area, teacher salaries are above the median for salaries in the county. It may even be 150% of the median. I am told that teaching positions in this area typically receive well over 100 applicants. Often schools simply stop taking applicants after a certain number rather than having a closing date. This is not an indicator of a supply shortage. In particular places, there may indeed be a shortage of teachers that can be remedied with pay. It appears that rather than getting better education for the money we are simply getting more expensive teachers. In trying to upgrade our transportation, we are getting a diamond encrusted bicycle rather than a car.
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The reason I’m not a big fan is that geographically a non-trivial number of places don’t have the density to support multiple school systems.
I’m skeptical that this is really right (just as I would be skeptical if someone argued that a lot of places didn’t have the density to support multiple grocery stores and so the government had to step in and run them). Even if this were right, though, it would only be an argument against having school choice in particularly low density areas. Since fights over school choice tend to focus on urban areas (and since, whatever ones wishes, the public school system isn’t going anywhere anytime soon) the objection would seem to be academic.
In the medical world where we have two giant voucher systems called Medicare and Medicaid, more hospitals haven’t been shown to reduce costs, and outcomes aren’t prima facie better.
Medicare and Medicaid aren’t voucher systems.
With regard to the effectiveness of school vouchers, the evidence seems to be mixed. Some studies show that kids in voucher programs do better than their non-voucher peers, some show that they do about as well. No study that I’m aware of, however, shows that voucher kids do worse than their equivalent non-voucher peers, and it’s uncontroversial that parental satisfaction and cost per student are better with vouchers. I’m inclined to credit the studies showing an educational improvement from vouchers (if private schools weren’t any better than publics from an educational standpoint, I doubt you’d have so many rich and well educated people shelling out their own money to send their kids there). But even assuming that vouchers are a wash educationally, the differences in cost and parental satisfaction would be a strong argument for adopting it.
I was briefly looking in Canada where they allow the Catholic schools to run their own school districts, and it seemed the sweet spot was about a city of 20,000. I can’t think of any places regionally with a Catholic HS and a sub-20K population.
Medicare and Medicaid pay the facilities directly and you have your choice of facilities.
Your and my reading of the effectiveness of vouchers is similar. I’m not sure how cost per student is being measured. In the cases of many urban students, the tuition or tuition-equivalent is indeed lower for private schools than for public schools. I would expect that would equalize over time except for the elite private schools.
Medicare and Medicaid pay the facilities directly and you have your choice of facilities.
True, but that’s not quite the same as a voucher system (or, rather, it’s not sufficient for a voucher system).
I don’t think you’re characterizing the merit pay discussion. Merit pay isn’t primarily about ensuring teachers get paid more, it is about ensuring that teachers’ pay has something to do with their performance. It’s not saying “we’ll give them $20K more and see if they do a better job” it’s saying if reviews (or test scores or whatever) indicate some teachers are performning really well, then we’ll reward them.
What do you consider school to be for? What is their end goal?
Depending on what you about that question, should guide what I would say in response to your questions. Here are some preliminary things:
Having studied education at the level of policy, pedagogy, and theory for some years now, I find that most of these polemics are largely distraction from the heart of the matter in educational reform. It boils down to what we think the school is for, which happens to align itself (most of the time) to what we think the state is for. Following that up with what we seem to have right now the next step.
One last thing: What do you mean by a “homogeneous population”?
One last thing: What do you mean by a “homogeneous population”?
The student bodies between school districts are sufficiently similar so as to be interchangable. There will be exceptions, exceptionally poor and exceptionally smart districts, but as implied in the adverb, they will be exceptional.
It boils down to what we think the school is for, which happens to align itself (most of the time) to what we think the state is for.
I don’t get the sense in which you think this question is difficult. The present goals of the schools systems are to get kids to read at an 8th grade level and be able to perform basic algebra so that they can go to college, tech school, or least preferably into the general work force.
it is about ensuring that teachers’ pay has something to do with their performance.
And this is something we don’t really have the capacity to measure well. Even if we did have the capacity to measure it well, it may not be something we desire to keep if we have to pay for it. I should probably add that at least once and maybe twice I have been taught by award winning teachers. The one may have even been a national award. She didn’t seem much better than my other teachers in math over the years.
I don’t think that you can have an honest discussion about education in modern america if you don’t acknowledge that one on the primary purposes of schooling is the provision of government subsidized childcare.
Largely, I think that it is the issue of free childcare that moves conservatives to back vouchers instead of working to eliminate the government’s role in education alltogether. It would be too unpopular for them to suggest that most of the work of raising children shoud be done by the parents instead of a government worker.
“The present goals of the schools systems are to get kids to read at an 8th grade level and be able to perform basic algebra so that they can go to college, tech school, or least preferably into the general work force.”
Not really. You should read the founding ideas of the common school reformers in the 1830′s to the almost identical notions of schooling in the policies of today.
Yes, there are broader goals. The presence of broader goals doesn’t remove the basic goals. I’m assuming you are at least referring to Dewey, which is fine.
I don’t know if the cynicism of this view will appeal to you or not, but in regards to standardization my thought would tend to be that in a fairly complex problem like how to provide a good education, one may rely upon most people to get it wrong most of the time.
Thus, if one has a highly standardized national set of standards, it’s likely that no one will get a good education. If one allows every school or even every teacher to come up with their own methods, one may imagine that at least some percentage of them will get it right.