Choice + Testing << Market-Based
Yesterday, NPR ran a segment on Diane Ravitch and her new book,
"She says one of her biggest concerns is the way the law requires school districts to use standardized testing."
"The basic strategy is measuring and punishing," Ravitch says of No Child Left Behind. "And it turns out as a result of putting so much emphasis on the test scores, there's a lot of cheating going on, there's a lot of gaming the system. Instead of raising standards it's actually lowered standards because many states have 'dumbed down' their tests or changed the scoring of their tests to say that more kids are passing than actually are."
I don't disagree with her yet. High-stakes testing is a means to an end -- the ultimate end is evaluation and assessment of school performance. But there are plenty of ways to evaluate and assess that don't include standardized testing, let alone the strange mix of non-standardized testing that we have observed with NCLB.
But then she picks the wrong fight. Continuing from the segment:
"There should not be an education marketplace, there should not be competition," Ravitch says. "Schools operate fundamentally — or should operate — like families. The fundamental principle by which education proceeds is collaboration. Teachers are supposed to share what works; schools are supposed to get together and talk about what's [been successful] for them. They're not supposed to hide their trade secrets and have a survival of the fittest competition with the school down the block."
Competition and collaboration are not mutually exclusive. Far from it -- almost everywhere you look in nature, the winners of "survival of the fittest competition" are the entities that found ways to collaborate and succeed. (Cue Richard Dawkins.
It is in fact a mistake to think that choice and accountability by themselves will be enough to improve performance, without the other elements of a competitive marketplace. The most important of those elements is freedom of entry by any producer who thinks he can do a better job than the current producers. Consider Ravitch's disappointment with NCLB to date, as quoted in Chapter 6 of her book:
But what was especially striking was that many parents and students did not want to leave their neighborhood school, even if the federal government offered them free transportation and the promise of a better school. The parents of English-language learners tended to prefer their neighborhood school, which was familiar to them, even if the federal government said it was failing. A school superintendent told Betts that choice was not popular in his county, because "most people want their local school to be successful, and because they don't find it convenient to get their children across town." Some excellent schools failed to meet AYP because only one subgroup — usually children with disabilities — did not make adequate progress. In such schools, the children in every other subgroup did make progress, were very happy with the school, did not consider it a failing school, and saw no reason to leave.
Schools have many characteristics. So-called performance, as measured by standardized tests, is only one such characteristic. What the paragraph reveals is that location is important as well. And in most cases, the school district has not allowed an alternative provider to come into the market and match the existing school on all of its non-performance characteristics while improving performance. There is, in most cases, still a local monopoly on enough of the characteristics that matter. Unless you break that monopoly, until you do in fact allow direct competition with "the school down the block," you should not expect to be treated to service that is any better than what you typically get as a member of a captive audience.
There were a number of interesting reactions to the NPR story. Here are a few.
Argh
"But what was especially striking was that many parents and students did not want to leave their neighborhood school"
This is intuitively obvious . . . why does the author find it "striking"?
Poor people have trouble getting to work, let alone getting their kids to the "better" school 25 miles away! Even when transportation is "provided" it often requires a 1-2 hour bus ride, and switching buses. When it's below zero, and your kid doesn't have a warm jacket or good boots, how well does that work?
That one line blew the author's credibility.
The biggest problem with NCLB is "one-size-fits-all"
It was a sign of the Republican apocalypse that they so gleefully embraced a single, Washington-based methodology for all schools across the country rather than depending upon the states to run education. I fully agree that there are times when federal intervention is necessary (see Little Rock, 1957) but when it is, it should be targeted at the schools with problems, not all schools.
When the law was first passed, I was flabbergasted that the federal ed bureaucracy planned to use the same methodologies for rural Vermont schools (best in the country...don't fix what ain't broke) as for awful inner-city schools. We would be forced to spend mucho-$$$ (all going to Texas based testing companies...what a shock!) to go through a dumber assessment exercise than those we already did, simply because some communities can't get their act together. In other words, a governmental over-reach of, well, Democratic proportions.
Strangely enough, the Obama folks are focusing on the 5,000 worst schools in their plans...are the parties reversing themselves?...which is the right thing to do. The original law wanted us to look more like Texas, when in fact failing schools should look more like successful ones. Idiots.
We need better humans, not better economists?
It's never the fault of economists when their half-baked analyses fail to cohere to actual society, is it? It's always due to the failure of humans to understand and apply *all* the brilliant insights that economists have lavished upon us, unworthy though we are.
NCLB is an almost unmitigated disaster for any number of reasons, including some absolutely fundamental things such as those pointed out by Ravitch. These were intuitive.
Perhaps the most fundamental problem of all is that the accountability movement is predicated on the unexamined assumption that lousy schools are lousy because, rather than despite, their teachers. The idiocy is highlighted by the recent decision to fire all the (apparently well respected and hard working) teachers in the depressed, dangerous, and highly transient Central Falls high school. Cheerleaders for that decision, like Arne Duncan, neglect to mention that reading proficiency test scores in CF rise dramatically from 7th to 11th grade. But hold those damned, successful teachers accountable by all means. That'll teach 'em a thing or two.
As for your own narrow but exceptionally confident solution, I have to wonder whether you'd hold yourself accountable if it too (inevitably) makes matters even worse? Anybody who's taught actual kids could tell you that lousy students often are lousy because they have no academic ambitions and their parents often don't stress academics either. So if you suceed in breaking the "monopoly" of local schools, what you'll achieve (if anything) is to siphon off the academically ambitious students and leave the public schools with the unambitious. It would be a downward spiral then for the public schools. But perhaps that's what you're really after - the destruction of public schools, or their relegation to something like Division Four of education?
Competition Gives You an Open Playing Field
The question is whether you will get in the game. Under your scenario, the public schools have been left with unambitious students. You imply that you care about them. There is nothing that I have proposed that prevents you from establishing a school that gives them a better education. Whatever ideas you thought the public schools should have been implementing, you can now implement. Whatever outcomes you want them to achieve, you can work directly to help them achieve. All you have to do is establish or support a school that focuses on the population and the problem you would like to address.
If I were to anticipate your reaction, and perhaps return our dialogue to a more constructive tone, I share the concern that the "siphoning" of the ambitious students in the scenario you propose would leave the population remaining in the public schools with fewer resources per student. I would not propose that the vouchers that follow each student be equal in dollar value or, if they are equal, that they fully exhaust the school district budget. Some money has to be allocated based on differences in the required cost to educate different populations of students. Is there any scenario under which such a scheme would be appealing to you?
Where do our interests overlap?
My interest is in maintaining a viable system of public education, as mandated by law. It's vital to the health of our democratic society and constitutional government...and that more than ever before what with the rise of modern mass media, sophisticated and omnipresent propaganda, and global corporatisation.
Your interest appears to be in dismantling public education. Certainly that seems to be the most likely effect of the reforms you support.
I have no interest in siphoning public funds to subsidize any private or parochial educational institutions. So no, vouchers of any size coming from public educational funds are anathema. If you'd like taxpayers to subsidize private educations, why don't you try to sell the public on the idea of paying altogether new, additional taxes to send their neighbor's kid to a private school?
I also happen to believe that the public-school-haters' confidence in private schooling and more abstractly in competition generally is grossly misplaced. Many private schools, as well as charter schools, are thoroughly second rate. That's partly because any school that lives or dies by its bottom line is highly prone to playing up to the whims, desires, and self-images of their students and their parents. Although that's often portrayed as a good thing by definition, across the board, it is not. Quite often the pressures of such competition lead very directly to a dumbing down of education and even to an infantilization of the educational institution. And then there's the regular cutting of corners.
Another large problem that the voucher crowd rarely confronts is that students and parents are very poorly positioned to understand their choices. Almost all their most important decisions are based on inadequate information about institutions and programs. They also typically have little real expertise or insight into education in theory or practice. They make choices based on things like their gut feeling, or what so and so says about school X, or on (massaged) numbers for 'outcomes' like employment/income, or endowment, or difficulty of admittance...all poor guides to what one is getting into. There are few things more depressing than to hear undergraduates or even graduate students describe their reasons for choosing one institution to attend. I myself stumbled into not one but two graduate schools for not the best of reasons, however much research I did before making those choices.
So the notion that most students and parents will make choices in their best interests if only the government pays to open as many doors as possible, is rather overblown.
Achieving one's interests...
My interest is in maintaining a viable system of public education, as mandated by law. It's vital to the health of our democratic society and constitutional government
So presumably this description of how the nation's largest public school system works, as described by a NYC public school teacher, is something you'd really want to improve upon. (In part updated in The New Yorker.)
Your interest appears to be in dismantling public education.
When did "monopoly" (not to mention "government union monopoly") become the defining trait of public education?
Of course voucher schools and charter schools *are* public schools. (See "Sweden".)
Are Sec. 8 housing vouchers not a public housing program? Is not Medicare, which sends govt dollars to the doctors that individuals choose, a public health care program?
Would these be better programs if the tax dollars sent through them could be spent only on a monopoly govt housing provider, or govt monopoly employer of doctors, with you being assigned, no choice?
Another large problem that the voucher crowd rarely confronts is that students and parents are very poorly positioned to understand their choices. Almost all their most important decisions are based on inadequate information. They also typically have little real expertise or insight into education in theory ...
Yup. And, unfortunately, seniors unquestionably know much less about medical science, and all its theories, than parents know about what makes a good school. You can't deny that. (And their very lives are at risk!) That's why there's such a flood of them taking Medicare dollars to witch doctors and spiritual healers.
Do you know a lot about auto engineering? Are you qualified to pick your own car? Maybe the government should make your choice for you and issue you a Trabant.
Quite often the pressures of such competition lead very directly to a dumbing down of education
More than as in those first two links? I'd like to see a real-world example of that.
Here's the real situation: If you say you are for the best public schools then, as the NY Times reported, here in NYC charter schools do better. There you are.
Nobody will even ask you to consider that the NYC charter schools have a waiting list of 40,000 (1.33 per charter student, most in Harlem, nearly all in low-income communities) -- as you've already dissed parents as being too dim to know a good school from a bad one. (Though it is curious that nonetheless the experts and the parents rate the schools the same way.)
A final thought: when even the Village Voice, a newspaper as left as you can find, is running major stories urging "It's time to roll the teachers' union" ... it is.
siphoning off
Siphoning off is the BIG problem for public education. People send their kids to elite IvyLeague schools because students do not JUST learn from professors, they learn from each other as well. Educators know this. One year, a class can have a good group dynamic with all the students engaged and pushing each other to learn more. Another year, can have the same classroom, same content, same teacher, but a different set of students who underachieve because of bad group dynamics.
In our public schools, siphoning off happens in a variety of ways. Number one is the choice of parents of means to locate in areas with good public schools. Housing values can be 10-25% higher in a good school district than a mediocre one. In areas with bad schools, parents send their kids to private schools. This depletes the public schools of some of the best potential leaders and those students who are most capable of teaching their peers. This dynamic is a HUGE factor in failing schools and one that is nearly impossible to reverse. What parent would sacrifice the education of their own child to try to correct a social ill that may not be correctable? In areas where public schools are poor and the wealthy use private schools, support for public school funding is eroded and the public schools are underfunded and understaffed. This is a downward spiral that is not easily reversed.
As a graduate of a high school in a poor rural area, I am aware of the disadvantage that students from poor schools face when they reach the university. Students from poor high schools that have so little equipment that chemistry lab experiments must be done in groups of six are suddenly thrown into college labs to compete with students from private and elite suburban schools who have already done most of the experiments in their high school. That is just one example. The best students can succeed in spite of the school quality, but may not reach their highest potential. It is everyone else who is left behind.
There is NO easy fix to these problems. Part of the tragedy are the politicians who pretend that there are easy solutions I agree that there needs to be accountability. However, punishing underfunded schools with poor students who underperform because they are poor further punishes the poor rather than fixes the problem.
Vouchers make no difference -- internet does
The largest voucher experiment in the country (Milwaukee) is turning up interesting results:
http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/41868652.html
It is easier than ever for students to succeed today with the internet . . . a student who wants to learn can find courses and materials in the largest library in the world at their fingertips. Our outstate high school students can take University courses online! I would have died for the internet when I was a kid. My rural town didn't have a public library, and the town board wouldn't pay for access to the public library 15 miles away. Summers were horrible.
Forget the voucher crap. Give every student a laptop and internet access, and it will be the great equalizer.
Tom C - I have to laugh
NCLB was a joke from the get-go -- driven by a political agenda, it was a colossal waste of taxpayer dollars.
True story: My daugher's high school went on the "failing schools" list (or whatever they called it at the time) due to a subgroup (extremely small, something like 5 kids in the group, so when one of them failed it took them down) failing to pass the standardized test. The list of "bad" schools was in the paper the same week my kid interviewed at Carleton (a fairly good private college out here). So we went into the admissions office with this achiever (National Merit Scholar, had taken 8 AP courses at that same "failing" high school and received top score of 5 on all the AP tests). I said to the admissions person, "Look, I know she comes from a "failing" high school. Will that count against her?"
The admissions counselor laughed. "You think we put any stock in that? That's a great high school!"
That same high school was subsequently rated as one of the top 100 public high schools in the nation (I think it was Time magazine or US News, it was noted in the local paper), based on the AP program and number of students who successfully compete in that program.
Yup . . . a great high school rated as failing under the Bush NCLB program. People wonder why Obama and Dems won so handily in 2008. It's no mystery to me.
rural areas?
Competition can work in urban areas with high population densities. We see elite private schools. Those schools are considerably more expensive than the taxpayer funded public schools. Many private high schools charge tuition that is higher than tuition at state universities. They compete for the dollars of those parents who can afford them.
Competition ain't gonna happen in rural areas that lack critical mass for the consolidated schools already in existence. There are not enough students in many areas to have competition.
What is tragic is efforts to force the public to adopt private schools by underfunding our public schools. We have political elites who have spent their entire education in private schools. They hate our public schools and are trying to destroy them by cutting their budgets. They see education as a means of perpetuating a plutocracy. The scions of the wealthy get a good education and everyone else gets second rate. This two-tiered "separate but equal" system was abolished by the supreme court. However, the efforts of the wealthy to give their legacies a leg up by limiting access to quality education has never gone away. They want to return to the plantation economy.
Successful reform everyone overlooks
Unless you break that monopoly, until you do in fact allow direct competition with "the school down the block," you should not expect to be treated to service that is any better than what you typically get as a member of a captive audience.
Of course, monopoly is monopoly. Why is it not bad only with schools?
Interestingly, Sweden has a fully voucherized school system -- anybody can create competition for the status quo by starting a new school -- everybody supports it (including the schools unions), and it has produced the results its proponents promised.
It's remarkable how seldom this proof-in-practice is mentioned.