Noted Without Comment (Okay, Some)

In complaining about the recent firing of 98 employees from the DCPS central office, which will save the taxpayers some $6 million per year and increase the school system's phenomenally low student-to-bureaucrat ratio from a pre-firing level of less than 50-to-1, City Councilman Harry Thomas, who voted against giving Chancellor Rhee the authority to lay off DCPS civil servants, questioned whether the employees who were let go are "the people who really affect educational outcomes."

Right... 

Obama on Education

In the New Republic, Josh Patashnik tries to find meaning in the evolution of Senator Obama's views, positions, and public statements on education policy. It's a smart, well-written piece that does a good job of summing up the politics and reform dynamics currently at play. But in the end I don't think the evidence lends itself to any definitive conclusions about Obama's instincts as a heterodox reformer generally, or what an Obama presidency will mean for education. Nor do I think Senator Clinton is quite as in the tank to anti-reform and labor interests as the article implies.

For example, after losing Iowa, Senator Clinton said "We will end the unfunded mandate known as No Child Left Behind." There two ways to do that: 1) End the mandate, or 2) End the undfundedness. When Obama won Wisconsin a few weeks ago, he said "I don't want our standards measured just by a single high-stakes standardized test, because I don't want our teachers teaching to the tests." Again, this could be accomplished by 1) Not holding schools accountable for the results of a single test, or 2) Holding schools accountable for the results of multiple tests, or a single test plus other measures.

In both cases, the ambiguity is not accidental. Clinton and Obama are using words that appeal to widespread dissatisfaction with NCLB among Democractic primary voters--"unfunded mandate," "single high-stakes standardized" etc.--without actually promising to unequivocally dismantle the law. It's not like such a position isn't available. Bill Richardson simply pledged to "Scrap No Child Left Behind." Dennis Kucinich said "My election will mean the end of No Child Left Behind as a way of achieving the education of our children."

There's simply no way that a Democrat in the middle of the tightest primary fight in decades is going to wade into the swamp of school reform politics at this point. But that doesn't mean they can't, or won't, once elected. Patashnik quotes Fordham's Mike Petrilli saying "The old rule in politics is that, if you want to get something done, you need to campaign on it." Haven't the radical policies of the current adminstration definitively refuted that notion?

Grover Norquist is Right

So I'm sitting at home last night catching up on Tivoed episodes of The Daily Show, and come upon Tuesday night's interview with uber government-hater Grover Norquist, who was flogging his new book. He tried to be funny--a fatal mistake when you're a guest on a comedy show--and then offered a bunch of lame generalities about how government steals our liberty etc. etc. blah blah. His one example of bad government: The DC Public Schools.

And here's the thing: Grover Norquist is wrong, spectacularly so, about a great many things. If there was a modern Mt. Rushmore of wrongness, his bearded, roundish mug would be on it. He's a living example of how, if you push your wrong ideas with sufficient zeal and bad faith, one man can make the world a worse place for all of us. He also knows nothing about education--he thinks we should "simply" voucherize the schools, and in denouncing government monopolies, he says that DC has only one system of public education, when in fact 30 percent of all public school students in DC, where he lives, are enrolled in an alternate system of public charter schools.

BUT--he's entirely correct to say that the DC Public Schools spend a great deal of money, $14,000 per student, and don't spend it well. If you take a close look at the system, you'll find that every Norquistian cliche about incompetence, bureaucracy, and wasted resources is more or less true. He's not exaggerating. Which just goes to show that low-performing schools are not just a waste of money and a profound moral failure given the high stakes for disadvantaged children. They also undermine public education generally, indeed they undermine public everything generally.

This seems like a pretty reliable test: if Norquist is right, something is really, really wrong. All the more reason to hope that Mayor Fenty and Chanchellor Rhee's efforts to finally turn the DC schools around bear fruit.

Learning Communities

Kingsborough Community College is a typical two-year institution of higher education, in the sense that it enrolls a lot of students (nearly 15,000), most of whom are eligible for need-based financial aid, it's mission of helping first-generation and working students is tremendously important, and unless you happen to live nearby (Brooklyn, in this case), you've probably never heard of it before.

According to a new report from MDRC, Kingsborough is also doing some interesting work to improve the quality of education it provides. Researchers randomly assigned 1,500 students to either regular classes or "learning communities," in which students are assembled in small groups (25 in this case) and take a sequence of multiple courses together. The idea is that students greatly benefit from having academic relationships with other students, which often doesn't happen when you commute to school, sit in class, and then leave for your job or family. The study found that the students in the learning communities were more engaged, were more likely to pass developmental English courses, and more likely to earn credits and pass courses in general. The positive effects faded, however, when they went back to the normal regime. Two- and four-year colleges have been experimenting with learning communities for a number of years and the results have generally been positive, but I'm not sure there's been any evidence this definitive and grounded in randomized assignment design.

It's also worth noting that one hardly ever hears news of such education-focused research or results coming from selective four-year institutions, because--unlike community colleges--they have other, apparently more important things on their minds.

Sharia-Compliant Student Loans

Let me start off by saying that I know very little about Sharia (Islamic religious law) and how it applies to lending, except pretty much what I heard on this NPR Marketplace segment. But a concept in Sharia-compliant lending caught my attention, a concept that could be usefully applied to the student loan market: equitable risk.

From the Wikipedia entry on Islamic banking, the idea is described like this:

Mudaraba is venture capital funding of an entrepreneur who provides labor while financing is provided by the bank so that both profit and risk are shared. Such participatory arrangements between capital and labor reflect the Islamic view that the borrower must not bear all the risk/cost of a failure, resulting in a balanced distribution of income and not allowing the lender to monopolize the economy.

Or, as described in the Marketplace segment,

Islamic finance, the essence is not geared towards debt. It is more geared towards equity, partnership…So the future, we could see Sharia student loans that work like venture capital. The lender would get a cut of the student's future earnings. If the student does well, the bank does well. Equitable risk.

Currently, there is no risk to the bank unless a student fails completely in paying back their loan—until the student defaults. And even then, the student cannot discharge his debt in bankruptcy. There is no middle ground; either the student does well enough to pay the loan back, or the student fails and defaults on his loan.

And there is one party that is almost entirely absolved of risk in this situation—the institution. Currently, the price for an education is disconnected from its actual value in the marketplace. A college that does a good job of graduating students and placing them in jobs can easily cost the same or less than a college that fails to graduate a high percentage of students or has a low job placement rate. But those factors are not calculated into how much debt students take on for their education, leaving the student with nearly all the risk for the loan, and the lender and institution with little to no risk.

Say a private college graduates a student with $80,000 in loans and a declared major in journalism. The student will struggle to pay off the loan and pursue a career in journalism, but these struggles are no skin off the institution’s back—the institution has the money, even if the value of the degree wasn’t worth the debt load. But under a system of equitable risk, the debt available for the degree would be more closely pegged to the actual earnings of the student after graduation, potentially leading to a more rational pricing system.

Clearly, a national system like this would have big problems—institutions that did a good job of graduating journalism majors, even if the students were successful, would have less debt available to their students because of the lower salaries in that career path. This could hurt institutions whose primary mission is to graduate students into lower paying, public service careers—some form of government-financed debt and risk-sharing would still be critical to ensuring that students can get loan money to finance their education.

While an entirely Sharia-compliant system is unlikely to work in the U.S. student lending system, some of these concepts could help bring rationality to the current tuition-pricing system, and also ensure that student lending sticks its original purpose of helping students, not making big profits for banks or institutions.

The Wire Finale

In which everything comes full circle, and Baltimore remains the same. 

Summary: Dukie becomes Bubbles, while Bubbles comes up from the depths into--and onto--the Sun. Michael becomes Omar, while Omar passes into myth. Carver becomes Daniels and/or Bunny, while Daniels decides he can't be part of the lie that destroyed the job.  Sydnor becomes Lester, while Lester retires to a happy life making miniature furniture and a family with Shardene, the stripper from Season One. Chris becomes Wee-Bey, and the two of them of hang out at the prison fence reserved for guys who took all the weight. Marlo sells the crown and tries to become Stringer, only to find that he misses the taste of blood. Cheese sums up the nature of the Game and then gets got by Slim Charles, in the most deserved execution of the year. Carcetti becomes governor, and takes Rawls and Lester the jester along for the ride. Prez finally becomes Prez. Some stuff happens with the newspaper too, but that's not important right now. 

Others have noted that the first three seasons of The Wire function like a self-contained whole. In retrospect,  seasons four and five feel a little like the world's longest prequel, set in post-script continuity, telling the stories of how many of the major characters came to be. The finale lacked the emotional punch of episodes eight and nine, mostly because by the end all the major events had occurred and decisions made, leaving the last 90 minutes to square the circle and tie it in a bow. It was more optimistic than I had anticipated, having made his point about all the major forces corrupting Baltimore--the drug suppliers, lawyers, politicians, and media corporations all escape unscathed--David Simon seemed content to give viewers a measure of closure with the characters they'd come to know. For that--and much more--I say thanks. More tomorrow.