The "riddle" Lindsey purports to solve is why low-income people are less likely to graduate from college. It is not, says Lindsey, because the government isn't doing enough to help them. Shocking to hear this from Cato, I know. He frames the specifics thusly:
As of 2003, 80 percent of high school seniors from families in the top 20 percent of income enrolled in college the fall after graduation, while only 49 percent from families in the lowest 40 percent did so. That class divide translates directly into big disparities along ethnic lines. In 2006, 34 percent of white Americans aged 25- 29 held college degrees, compared to 19 percent of African Americans and only 10 percent of Hispanics.
Note that in pivoting from class to race, Lindsey switches from a measure of college enrollment to one of college completion. Why? Perhaps because if he had kept his measures consistent, they wouldn't be so dramatic. According to this table, the rolling three-year average rates of immediate college going (which are preferable given small sample size issues with the Census data from which these numbers are derrived) in 2003 for white, black, and Hispanic students were 66%, 60%, and 58%, respectively. This U.S. Department of Education study of high school sophomores found (Table 34) that the white / black difference in college-going expectations varies by less than three percentage points. Black students are more likely than white students to aspire to achieve a PhD, MD, or other advanced degree. It turns out that, despite the allegedly pernicious "acting white" stigma, etc. etc., minority students want to go to college pretty much just like everyone else.
Lindsey acknowledges that the differences that do exist are rooted in different levels of high school achievment. He also acknowledges that low-income and minority student go to worse high schools--before asserting that two aren't connected. Yeah, quite a coincidence, that. As evidence, he cites the Coleman Report. For the non-education wonks in the audience, let me offer some advice. Anytime you read the words "As we have known since the 1966 Coleman Report...." or some variation thereof, immediately discount the likelihood that the author is arguing in good faith by 50%. I'm not talking down Coleman, who was quite a social scientist, but it's been 42 years and we've learned some things since then. Conservatives and Cato types will constantly tell you that "money isn't the answer" just before they drive home and write a $25,000 check to the private school where they send their kids, or to mortgage company to pay for the house in the wealthy suburbs with the good schools.
Lindsey concludes by conceding that because poor children don't have the capacity to act as autonomous agents, "government intervention to improve [their] circumstances could actually expand the scope of individual autonomy." Programs like "preschool enrichment programs along the lines of Head Start, but more intensive and beginning with even younger kis." That's an interesting endorsement from the vice president for research of an organization with the stated goal of destroying public education as we know it, but okay. Must be Sara Mead's influence.
Lindsey is not wrong to say that culture matters. Of course it does. It just doesn't matter as much as he thinks, relative to the influence of schools. This is just the latest in a long history of agenda-driven arguments against the efficacy of public education. Cato makes it because public education is expensive and popular; people like to pay taxes to support government schools, and Cato is against taxes and government. Others make similar arguments from the left, because they're worried that a belief that schools can help poor students will undermine efforts to make fewer students poor. It's all of a piece.
It's too bad that on the relatively rare occasion that putatively left-leaning magazines like TNR and others decide to write about education, they don't have much to say other than it's not important. It really is.
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