A new study from the Children's Health Fund finds that one in four children lacked health insurance at some point last year. It's crazy that a country as affluent as the United States doesn't guarantee health care for all its children. Children's health care is pretty cheap, and failure to identify and properly treat common childhood health problems, such as ear infections, can have serious and lasting negative consequences. This is a real issue for schools: Kids who have a lot of absences due to untreated asthma, or who can't concentrate because of an untreated toothache, are going to have a harder time learning.
The Children's Health Fund uses mobile medical units to deliver health care services to children who lack access to health care. Schools are also doing interesting things to try to help address this problem: Community Academy, a charter school in Washington, D.C., has a pediatrician on staff; Young Women's Leadership Academy, a charter school in Chicago, has an onsite clinic that provides health care, including reproductive health care, for its students. These are innovative responses to an important problem, but they're still stopgaps against a much bigger problem.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Longhorns' Lender Lists
Via New America Foundation, some pretty eye-opening documents (pdf) coming out of Texas
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
College Admission, Continued
Jay Mathews' weekly Class Struggle column focuses on college admissions, referencing the piece on the same topic I wrote for the American Prospect Online a couple of weeks ago. In short: the declining college admissions rates you read about in the newspaper every year aren't an accurate measure of whether it's actually getting harder to get into an elite college. Matt Yglesias weighs in here.
Jay raises a legitimate question in wondering whether the increase in the number of college admissions might actually be a function of colleges adjusting their policies in the face of declining yield (the ratio of enrollments to admissions). In the context of this analysis, the answer is no. During the same time period that Ivy League admissions rose by 10.6%, as noted in the Prospect article, Ivy League enrollments increased by 10.8%. (All the data comes from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, nces.ed.gov/ipeds) In retrospect, I probably should have found a way to work that number into the original piece.
I can't help but note that on the same day Jay's thoughtful column runs, the Post print edition features a brand-new article about...drumroll...how colleges are rejecting more applicants than ever before. It concludes thusly:
Jay raises a legitimate question in wondering whether the increase in the number of college admissions might actually be a function of colleges adjusting their policies in the face of declining yield (the ratio of enrollments to admissions). In the context of this analysis, the answer is no. During the same time period that Ivy League admissions rose by 10.6%, as noted in the Prospect article, Ivy League enrollments increased by 10.8%. (All the data comes from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, nces.ed.gov/ipeds) In retrospect, I probably should have found a way to work that number into the original piece.
I can't help but note that on the same day Jay's thoughtful column runs, the Post print edition features a brand-new article about...drumroll...how colleges are rejecting more applicants than ever before. It concludes thusly:
And in the end? Even after all those rejection letters, things have a way of working out. Every fall, UCLA does a national survey of freshmen.Such a contradiction. Why might that be....
Most of them say they're at their first choice college.
Truth on Teacher Quality
Nicholas Kristoff gets everything right in his Times column($) about teacher policy, which basically re-summarizes the findings and conclusions of Gordon, Kane, and Stager's widely-discussed Hamilton Project paper. Long-time Quick and ED readers know all about the report, of course, since we blogged about it on April 14th...of 2006. But better late than never, I say. To quote our post from last year:
"For decades researchers have been struggling to tease out bits of evidence pointing to the small impact of various traditional methods of categorizing teachers--certified, uncertified, alt-route, has a Master's degree, licensure exam scores, this disposition, that disposition, etc. etc. Some of these things matter a little, or somewhat; some (like having a Masters' degree) appear not to matter at all. The lack of definitive results has left plenty of room for people of different camps to comfortably keep various ideological arguments going ad infinitum, with little danger of actually resolving the issue and thus having to find something else to do.
But at the same time, research has also consistently found huge variations in teacher effectiveness within any category of teacher you care to name--old or young, certified or not, black or white, short or tall. Some teachers are just much, much better than others, regardless of external labels or credentials.
The Gordon paper simply takes these finding to their logical conclusion: instead of shaping teacher policy around things we know don't matter very much, let's shape teacher policy around things we know matter a lot. Instead of fighting a losing up-front battle to filter and sort prospective teachers based on qualities that may have a tenuous connection to success in the classroom, let's filter and sort them based on actual success in the classroom.
This would be a seismic change in the way teachers are prepared, hired, and treated as professionals. Really, an earth-spins-backward-on-its-axis, time-reverses-direction, Margot-Kidder-flies-up-out-of-a-ditch magnitude of change. It would mean taking seriously a fact that most educators know intuitively yet is largely absent from teacher policy: teaching is an extraordinarily complicated endeavor, and people find different ways to be good at it. You can train and test prospective teachers, give them knowledge and skill, and those things are important, but once they get into the classroom some teachers bring additional talents, work ethic, intelligence, drive, etc. to bear, and others don't. Those differences matter a lot to student learning.
This report has the courage to take seriously plain facts that many people know but are unwilling to act upon, because doing so would be a huge challenge to the status quo."
Also, along the same lines, see this Chart You Can Trust up on the EdSector home page today, focusing on how states have largely failed to hold teacher preparation programs accountable for preparing teachers to succeed in the classroom.
"For decades researchers have been struggling to tease out bits of evidence pointing to the small impact of various traditional methods of categorizing teachers--certified, uncertified, alt-route, has a Master's degree, licensure exam scores, this disposition, that disposition, etc. etc. Some of these things matter a little, or somewhat; some (like having a Masters' degree) appear not to matter at all. The lack of definitive results has left plenty of room for people of different camps to comfortably keep various ideological arguments going ad infinitum, with little danger of actually resolving the issue and thus having to find something else to do.
But at the same time, research has also consistently found huge variations in teacher effectiveness within any category of teacher you care to name--old or young, certified or not, black or white, short or tall. Some teachers are just much, much better than others, regardless of external labels or credentials.
The Gordon paper simply takes these finding to their logical conclusion: instead of shaping teacher policy around things we know don't matter very much, let's shape teacher policy around things we know matter a lot. Instead of fighting a losing up-front battle to filter and sort prospective teachers based on qualities that may have a tenuous connection to success in the classroom, let's filter and sort them based on actual success in the classroom.
This would be a seismic change in the way teachers are prepared, hired, and treated as professionals. Really, an earth-spins-backward-on-its-axis, time-reverses-direction, Margot-Kidder-flies-up-out-of-a-ditch magnitude of change. It would mean taking seriously a fact that most educators know intuitively yet is largely absent from teacher policy: teaching is an extraordinarily complicated endeavor, and people find different ways to be good at it. You can train and test prospective teachers, give them knowledge and skill, and those things are important, but once they get into the classroom some teachers bring additional talents, work ethic, intelligence, drive, etc. to bear, and others don't. Those differences matter a lot to student learning.
This report has the courage to take seriously plain facts that many people know but are unwilling to act upon, because doing so would be a huge challenge to the status quo."
Also, along the same lines, see this Chart You Can Trust up on the EdSector home page today, focusing on how states have largely failed to hold teacher preparation programs accountable for preparing teachers to succeed in the classroom.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Creeping Big Brotherishness
Objectively speaking, I'm sure that new tools like Edline, which gives parents up-to-the-minute information about their children's academic progress--class attendance, quiz grades, the whole megillah--are probably a good thing. Identify problems early, keep families engaged with the school community, etc.
But I can't help but think that if such a tool existed when I was a senior in high school, my 17th year would have been a whole lot less fun. Once I got accepted into college, I basically stopped going to class and instead spent all my time with my buddies and girlfriend, playing ultimate frisbee and applying all of my analytic skills to calculating the precise combination of date, time of day, convenience store location, and apathetic/bribeable clerk that would most likely result in my being able to buy beer. My parents didn't discover this until my report card accidentally got mailed home six months later. Of course, being parents, they immediately panicked and assumed that the abundance of Cs, Ds, and Fs were evidence of a debilitating addiction to LSD and/or crack cocaine, which in retrospect I feel kind of bad about. That aside, I don't regret my decision for a moment; those were good times. Whence the next generation's "Dazed and Confused" if this trend is left unchecked?
Speaking of scary Internet monitoring and beer (and really, you can't do this often enough), can it really be true that Millersville University of Pennsylvania denied a 25-year old student a teaching certificate on the grounds that her MySpace page has a picture of her drinking a presumably alcoholic beverage at a party, along with the caption "Drunken Pirate"? (Hat tip: This Week in Education)
But I can't help but think that if such a tool existed when I was a senior in high school, my 17th year would have been a whole lot less fun. Once I got accepted into college, I basically stopped going to class and instead spent all my time with my buddies and girlfriend, playing ultimate frisbee and applying all of my analytic skills to calculating the precise combination of date, time of day, convenience store location, and apathetic/bribeable clerk that would most likely result in my being able to buy beer. My parents didn't discover this until my report card accidentally got mailed home six months later. Of course, being parents, they immediately panicked and assumed that the abundance of Cs, Ds, and Fs were evidence of a debilitating addiction to LSD and/or crack cocaine, which in retrospect I feel kind of bad about. That aside, I don't regret my decision for a moment; those were good times. Whence the next generation's "Dazed and Confused" if this trend is left unchecked?
Speaking of scary Internet monitoring and beer (and really, you can't do this often enough), can it really be true that Millersville University of Pennsylvania denied a 25-year old student a teaching certificate on the grounds that her MySpace page has a picture of her drinking a presumably alcoholic beverage at a party, along with the caption "Drunken Pirate"? (Hat tip: This Week in Education)
The Kids Are All Right
Peggy Noonan's "We're Scaring Our Children to Death" op-ed in Friday's WSJ is both nauseating and totally nonsensical. The latter, because Noonan fluctuates between suggesting that the world is actually a more dangerous place for kids these days, and suggesting the "culture" is exposing kids to too much scary (and vulgar!) stuff to early. But there's a huge difference between these two potential problems, and without clarity around that, Noonan's views on the subject are meaningless.
Then there's this: "But another reason is that, for all our protestations about how sensitive we are, how interested in justice, how interested in the children, we are not. We are interested in politics. We are interested in money. We are interested in ourselves." I'm sorry, but modern Americans are living at a time of a-historical protection of children and preoccupation with children and their needs. I'm not saying we shouldn't protect kids, but for most of human history, close quarters and lack of privacy meant children were exposed early and regularly to the realities of sex, violence and death. Today's parents are spending more time with their kids than anytime since researchers started keeping track, and fathers in particular are spending more time with their kids than they did in the fabled 1950s 1960s. Educational toys and services for kids from birth on are rapidly-growing, multi-billion dollar industries. Child and youth indicators have been improving, not getting worse (although in recent years they've hit a troubling plateau). Kids are inherently vulnerable, growing up is really hard, and I believe strongly that society needs to do more to support parents and kids--but we shouldn't be nostalgic about some mythical past golden age of innocent childhood.
There is a real problem with media overhyping of threats to children, many of which are relatively rare or not as deadly as they're made out to be. Everyone from the producers of Dateline's seemingly constant airings of "To Catch a Predator," to NYT editors who feel the need to daily proclaim the difficulty of getting into Ivy League schools knows that scaring the beejezus out of parents is one of the best ways to gain readership and make a buck. But this kind of overhyping has bad consequences for parents, kids, and sometimes public policy.
But the most offensive thing is the class spin Noonan tries to employ here:
Apparently Noonan doesn't understand that TV sets don't come with a meter that requires you to pay in order to turn off the set or change the channel. More to the point, this faux concern with inequality is downright nauseating coming from someone who thinks that cutting taxes for the rich is more important than providing health care for poor kids or decent childcare for low-income working folks. Noonan's unwillingness to raise a finger or voice concern about child wellbeing other than when it's a convenient excuse to chastise (presumably, liberal) "makers of our culture" demonstrates that she is the one who really cares more about politics and money than children.
Then there's this: "But another reason is that, for all our protestations about how sensitive we are, how interested in justice, how interested in the children, we are not. We are interested in politics. We are interested in money. We are interested in ourselves." I'm sorry, but modern Americans are living at a time of a-historical protection of children and preoccupation with children and their needs. I'm not saying we shouldn't protect kids, but for most of human history, close quarters and lack of privacy meant children were exposed early and regularly to the realities of sex, violence and death. Today's parents are spending more time with their kids than anytime since researchers started keeping track, and fathers in particular are spending more time with their kids than they did in the fabled 1950s 1960s. Educational toys and services for kids from birth on are rapidly-growing, multi-billion dollar industries. Child and youth indicators have been improving, not getting worse (although in recent years they've hit a troubling plateau). Kids are inherently vulnerable, growing up is really hard, and I believe strongly that society needs to do more to support parents and kids--but we shouldn't be nostalgic about some mythical past golden age of innocent childhood.
There is a real problem with media overhyping of threats to children, many of which are relatively rare or not as deadly as they're made out to be. Everyone from the producers of Dateline's seemingly constant airings of "To Catch a Predator," to NYT editors who feel the need to daily proclaim the difficulty of getting into Ivy League schools knows that scaring the beejezus out of parents is one of the best ways to gain readership and make a buck. But this kind of overhyping has bad consequences for parents, kids, and sometimes public policy.
But the most offensive thing is the class spin Noonan tries to employ here:
I am not sure the makers of our culture fully notice what they are doing, what impact their work is having, because the makers of our culture are affluent. Affluence buys protection. You can afford to make your children safe. You can afford the constant vigilance needed to protect your children from the culture you produce, from the magazine and the TV and the CD and the radio. You can afford the doctors and tutors and nannies and mannies and therapists, the people who put off the TV and the Internet and offer conversation.
Apparently Noonan doesn't understand that TV sets don't come with a meter that requires you to pay in order to turn off the set or change the channel. More to the point, this faux concern with inequality is downright nauseating coming from someone who thinks that cutting taxes for the rich is more important than providing health care for poor kids or decent childcare for low-income working folks. Noonan's unwillingness to raise a finger or voice concern about child wellbeing other than when it's a convenient excuse to chastise (presumably, liberal) "makers of our culture" demonstrates that she is the one who really cares more about politics and money than children.
Who I'll Be Rooting for May 5
This month's ESPN The Magazine may have Floyd Mayweather on the cover, but I was more interested in the article profiling Oscar De La Hoya, who'll be fighting Mayweather on PPV May 5.
The article focuses on De Lay Hoya's efforts to become not just a fighter but also a major boxing promoter and in the process to transform the business to make it a respectable part of mainstream American sports. I couldn't help but see a resemblance between De La Hoya's efforts to take on powerful promoters and change some of the seedier--and unfair to boxers--aspects of the industry, and his support for public charter schools that challenge the status quo and powerful interests in education to try to deliver a more equitable education for disadvantaged kids.
In ads for the fight
The article focuses on De Lay Hoya's efforts to become not just a fighter but also a major boxing promoter and in the process to transform the business to make it a respectable part of mainstream American sports. I couldn't help but see a resemblance between De La Hoya's efforts to take on powerful promoters and change some of the seedier--and unfair to boxers--aspects of the industry, and his support for public charter schools that challenge the status quo and powerful interests in education to try to deliver a more equitable education for disadvantaged kids.
In ads for the fight
De La Hoya narrates street scenes from his hometown of East Los Angeles: "Life was a struggle -- for myself, for my family, for those who need someone to believe in, like I did. I can give back. I'm living the American dream. Estoy viviendo el sueño Americano."One of the ways that De La Hoya has given back is by putting up bank to support the founding of the Oscar De La Hoya Animo Leadership Public Charter School, an East LA charter high school (mascot: The Boxers) operated by Green Dot Public Schools. ESPN The Magazine describes him as "a natural-born politician," and his promoting efforts as "his most ambitious campaign yet," but if De La Hoya's looking for a real challenge, I'd love to see him put more of that political talent to work on behalf of charters and other promising education reforms. In any case, I know who I'll be rooting for this Cinco do Mayo.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
The Be-All End-All College Credential
M.I.T. Dean of Admissions Marilee Jones was fired after revelations that she lied about having a college degree 28 years ago when she first applied for an entry level job that didn't require a college degree. Everyone at M.I.T. seems to think she was doing a fantastic job and will be sorely missed.
If that's the case, why fire her?
Misrepresenting credentials is dishonest and obviously a serious offense. But people do a lot of stupid things when they're younger and trying to make their way in the world. One could say she should have come clean before, but she probably knew that if she did, M.I.T. would demonstrate the same degree of forgiveness they're demonstrating now--namely, none.
This shows how rigid the credentialing mentality has become in higher education, trumping three decades of undisputed good work. It wasn't always that way. When Ludwig Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge in 1929, they simply accepted his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus as a doctoral thesis. The knew that forcing him to go through a formal course of study to earn a credential would be absurd. They were acting in their role as certifiers of learning, which is (see yesterday's post) not necessarily the same thing as being a provider of learning.
At the modern university, that distinction doesn't exist--you have to be certified by the institution that taught you. Indeed, since degrees aren't based on any objective, verifiable evidence of learning, that's all they're certifying--that you've been taught. So I wonder if in addition to deterring future resume-fudgers, M.I.T. wasn't exactly comfortable with the idea of employing someone who is living proof that you don't need a university degree to be really good at a complex, challenging, difficult job--particularly one at a university.
If that's the case, why fire her?
Misrepresenting credentials is dishonest and obviously a serious offense. But people do a lot of stupid things when they're younger and trying to make their way in the world. One could say she should have come clean before, but she probably knew that if she did, M.I.T. would demonstrate the same degree of forgiveness they're demonstrating now--namely, none.
This shows how rigid the credentialing mentality has become in higher education, trumping three decades of undisputed good work. It wasn't always that way. When Ludwig Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge in 1929, they simply accepted his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus as a doctoral thesis. The knew that forcing him to go through a formal course of study to earn a credential would be absurd. They were acting in their role as certifiers of learning, which is (see yesterday's post) not necessarily the same thing as being a provider of learning.
At the modern university, that distinction doesn't exist--you have to be certified by the institution that taught you. Indeed, since degrees aren't based on any objective, verifiable evidence of learning, that's all they're certifying--that you've been taught. So I wonder if in addition to deterring future resume-fudgers, M.I.T. wasn't exactly comfortable with the idea of employing someone who is living proof that you don't need a university degree to be really good at a complex, challenging, difficult job--particularly one at a university.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
How Much is That Degree Really Worth?
An interesting debate about the value of a college education starts here, on the Becker-Posner blog, Richard Posner's response here, and then follow-up from Richard Vedder here. In summary: Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker says that all the evidence points to the fact that a college education is worth more today than ever before. Posner and Vedder are skeptical, wondering if colleges are merely selecting and certifying smart people, and that smartness is actually what's more valuable than ever before.
It's a legitimate question, but Posner and Vedder don't offer any evidence to support their skepticism. I hear this point made fairly often, and in every single case it's made by an older white guy with multiple college degrees. That doesn't automatically make them wrong, but there's an unavoidable elitism to people who benefit from a hugely valuable privilege like higher education questioning whether other, less fortunate people would benefit from the same thing.
Moreover, higher education isn't just for the Top 10 percent anymore. Most college students are somewhere in the middle of the smartness distribution, and all the statistics pointing to a high return on education apply to them too.
The reason this debate even exists, of course, is that there's very little good data out there about how much colleges actually increase student learning between students arrive as freshman and leave at seniors. That data void is what keeps debates like this in the realm of informed speculation, rather than something that can be resolved empirically.
The debate also highlights an under-appreciated fact about contemporary higher education--universities have effectively merged two functions that are conceptually and historically distinct: education and certification. There's no particular reason that the institution that provides you with a curriculum and teachers has to be the same institution that grants you a degree certifying that you've mastered a certain body of knowledge and skills. In other higher education sectors--like IT certification--they're handled separately.
Because there's no hard data about how much students at a given institution actually learn, the job market values the degree in ways that are logical given that lack of information. If you get a degree from a selective college, the degree's primary value is a signal that you were smart enough to get admitted. If you (like most students) went to a non-selective school, the degree says that you had the work ethic and discipline necessary to accumulate 120 or so credits. Those qualities have value, which is why employers care about degrees. But the lack of data about learning creates distortions in the labor market that work to the detriment of the students who learn the most, particuarly at non-selective colleges.
It's a legitimate question, but Posner and Vedder don't offer any evidence to support their skepticism. I hear this point made fairly often, and in every single case it's made by an older white guy with multiple college degrees. That doesn't automatically make them wrong, but there's an unavoidable elitism to people who benefit from a hugely valuable privilege like higher education questioning whether other, less fortunate people would benefit from the same thing.
Moreover, higher education isn't just for the Top 10 percent anymore. Most college students are somewhere in the middle of the smartness distribution, and all the statistics pointing to a high return on education apply to them too.
The reason this debate even exists, of course, is that there's very little good data out there about how much colleges actually increase student learning between students arrive as freshman and leave at seniors. That data void is what keeps debates like this in the realm of informed speculation, rather than something that can be resolved empirically.
The debate also highlights an under-appreciated fact about contemporary higher education--universities have effectively merged two functions that are conceptually and historically distinct: education and certification. There's no particular reason that the institution that provides you with a curriculum and teachers has to be the same institution that grants you a degree certifying that you've mastered a certain body of knowledge and skills. In other higher education sectors--like IT certification--they're handled separately.
Because there's no hard data about how much students at a given institution actually learn, the job market values the degree in ways that are logical given that lack of information. If you get a degree from a selective college, the degree's primary value is a signal that you were smart enough to get admitted. If you (like most students) went to a non-selective school, the degree says that you had the work ethic and discipline necessary to accumulate 120 or so credits. Those qualities have value, which is why employers care about degrees. But the lack of data about learning creates distortions in the labor market that work to the detriment of the students who learn the most, particuarly at non-selective colleges.
Charters and Fenty's Mission
A front page Washington Post story yesterday looked at the large and growing share of District of Columbia students served by public charter schools. One-in-four D.C. students currently attends a charter, and slots for thousands more charter students are expected to come online in the next few years--even as the number of students in District of Columbia Public School (DCPS) system continues to decline.
The growth of D.C.'s charter schools reflects the very real dissatisfaction of parents and many city leaders with years of poor performance by DCPS--the same dissatisfaction that led the council to vote last week to give Mayor Adrian Fenty control over DCPS. Not all of the charter schools are an improvement: several have been closed due to poor performance, and several others are struggling or mediocre. But research shows that parents in general are happier with their charter school choices, and the fact that bad charter schools are being closed stands in sharp contrast to DCPS, which continues to operate schools that are unsafe, underperforming or dying a slow death of attrition. And D.C. is also home to a handful of really wonderful charter schools. As Mayor Fenty faces the daunting challenge of figuring out how to fix education in the District of Columbia, he should learn from the city's best charter schools and use charter schooling as a tool to address the desperate educational needs in many of our city's neighborhoods. "Fixing DCPS" is an important goal, but it's NOT how Fenty should define his mission. His real mission should be ensuring that all of D.C.'s kids can attend, free of charge, a high-quality school--DCPS, charter, or private--that prepares them to become a contributing citizen of the District of Columbia.
The growth of D.C.'s charter schools reflects the very real dissatisfaction of parents and many city leaders with years of poor performance by DCPS--the same dissatisfaction that led the council to vote last week to give Mayor Adrian Fenty control over DCPS. Not all of the charter schools are an improvement: several have been closed due to poor performance, and several others are struggling or mediocre. But research shows that parents in general are happier with their charter school choices, and the fact that bad charter schools are being closed stands in sharp contrast to DCPS, which continues to operate schools that are unsafe, underperforming or dying a slow death of attrition. And D.C. is also home to a handful of really wonderful charter schools. As Mayor Fenty faces the daunting challenge of figuring out how to fix education in the District of Columbia, he should learn from the city's best charter schools and use charter schooling as a tool to address the desperate educational needs in many of our city's neighborhoods. "Fixing DCPS" is an important goal, but it's NOT how Fenty should define his mission. His real mission should be ensuring that all of D.C.'s kids can attend, free of charge, a high-quality school--DCPS, charter, or private--that prepares them to become a contributing citizen of the District of Columbia.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Blame the English Department
Over at the National Review Online's higher education blog, Phi Beta Con, Carol Iannone speculates that the Virginia Tech English department is to blame, on the grounds that (A) Cho Seung-hui was was an English major; (B) English departments are awash in postmodernism; and (C) postmodernism teaches students that there is no absolute truth, and thus no right or wrong.
This idea is so transparently foolish that even the other Phi Beta Con bloggers quickly knocked it down. The larger question is why someone smart enough to string words together into coherent sentences would say such things in the first place. The answer, I think, lies with the intersection of hard-line conservatism and Internet-age intellectual combat.
The type of conservatism espoused at NRO Online is founded on a small number of foundational, easily-understood truths, such as:
1) "Liberalism is bad."
2) "Moral relativism is bad."
3) "People need to know their place."
The upside to this approach is that it gives you a handy, wallet-sized set of intellectual principles that can be applied to any situation. The downside is that you quickly run out of new things to say. One solution to that problem is to locate new arenas in which to fight your ideological battles--thus, Phi Beta Con, which is really not a higher education blog at all. It's just an excuse to give principles 1,2, and 3 above a new spin--for #1, railing against the professoriate; for #2, mocking postmodernism; and for #3, nodding with approval at Charles Murrayesque arguments that we're sending too many kids to college who really don't have the intellectual chops for it and should, for their sake and ours, resign themselves to domestic servitude instead.
But even this strategy runs its course after a while--there are (thankfully) only so many Ward Churchills out there to be made of fun of. The only thing left is the popular news cycle. Once Virginia Tech was beset by tragedy, it was just a matter of time before someone at Phi Beta Con connected the familiar dots. The narcissism of the truth-teller also comes into play here--I imagine Carol Iannone believes she's the only one brave enough to speak what others only dare to think.
In reality, the logic of ideological warfare and the constant need to say old things in new ways simply drove her to espouse ideas that are not just facile, but indecent. This is real moral relativism, a kind much more damaging than anything taught in the English Department at Virginia Tech or anywhere else.
Update: In another example of tasteless, tenditious hobbyhorse-riding, a different Phi Beta Con poster offers an alternate culprit : the fake boys crisis that Sara Mead debunked last year.
This idea is so transparently foolish that even the other Phi Beta Con bloggers quickly knocked it down. The larger question is why someone smart enough to string words together into coherent sentences would say such things in the first place. The answer, I think, lies with the intersection of hard-line conservatism and Internet-age intellectual combat.
The type of conservatism espoused at NRO Online is founded on a small number of foundational, easily-understood truths, such as:
1) "Liberalism is bad."
2) "Moral relativism is bad."
3) "People need to know their place."
The upside to this approach is that it gives you a handy, wallet-sized set of intellectual principles that can be applied to any situation. The downside is that you quickly run out of new things to say. One solution to that problem is to locate new arenas in which to fight your ideological battles--thus, Phi Beta Con, which is really not a higher education blog at all. It's just an excuse to give principles 1,2, and 3 above a new spin--for #1, railing against the professoriate; for #2, mocking postmodernism; and for #3, nodding with approval at Charles Murrayesque arguments that we're sending too many kids to college who really don't have the intellectual chops for it and should, for their sake and ours, resign themselves to domestic servitude instead.
But even this strategy runs its course after a while--there are (thankfully) only so many Ward Churchills out there to be made of fun of. The only thing left is the popular news cycle. Once Virginia Tech was beset by tragedy, it was just a matter of time before someone at Phi Beta Con connected the familiar dots. The narcissism of the truth-teller also comes into play here--I imagine Carol Iannone believes she's the only one brave enough to speak what others only dare to think.
In reality, the logic of ideological warfare and the constant need to say old things in new ways simply drove her to espouse ideas that are not just facile, but indecent. This is real moral relativism, a kind much more damaging than anything taught in the English Department at Virginia Tech or anywhere else.
Update: In another example of tasteless, tenditious hobbyhorse-riding, a different Phi Beta Con poster offers an alternate culprit : the fake boys crisis that Sara Mead debunked last year.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
If you're not the lead dog...
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports($) this morning that the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA), the trade organization for financial aid officers, will ban lenders from sponsoring events at their national conference. This news comes only two weeks after a Wall Street Journal report($) on close financial ties between lenders and NASFAA.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Admission Impossible?
Over at The American Prospect Online, here's my take on why it's not actually getting harder and harder for high school students to get into a good college, despite what you read in the newspaper every year.
Making Nice with Newsweek
Over the past year or so, you could sort of say that a significant share of my work has focused on criticizing Newsweek: Andy and I wrote a paper questioning their ranking of "America's Top High Schools," a Newsweek cover story on the "boy crisis" got me to look into the issue and eventually write a paper that challenged that article's take on the issue, and the zero-to-three hype I criticize in a recent paper grew in part from a late-1990s Newsweek article. It's not something I planned, but I do seem to have created an odd little subgenre for myself here. But I'm pleased to report that my latest paper on the overhyping of the first three years got a positive mention in a recent Newsweek story on the same topic. Since Newsweek played a role in sparking this hype, I'm glad to see them play a role in correcting some of the misinformation parents and the public have received about the first three years. You can also hear me discuss the topic further for Newsweek on Air.
An Important Day for D.C. Schools?
Washington, D.C., Mayor Adrian Fenty will sign legislation today adding him to the ranks of mayors who have taken control over their cities' public education systems. The D.C. Council passed the legislation last Thursday. Congress must also approve the law before it takes effect, but is expected to do so with no problems.
I want very much to believe Fenty and his team can bring meaningful improvement to my city's public schools, which so desperately need it. And there are reasons to be hopeful: The team Fenty has assembled to work on this is good. And the hearings that led up to this legislation gave voice to public and political leader frustration with the city's schools that I hope can translate into political will for reforms.
But public education in the District of Columbia faces serious challenges, and the city has a history of failed reform initiatives and governance changes that failed to deliver promised improvement. And the hard work only begins when Fenty takes the reigns. I have two main causes for concern right now.
The first is with the "let's all get along" attitude Fenty's projected throughout this process: offering the City Council increased control over the school budget, the press conference he had Friday with school board chair Robert Bobb and current superintendent Janey, at which they all expressed a desire to hold hands and work together. Now, obviously this approach makes sense if you're trying to pass legislation giving you the right to take over the schools. And there are ways in which Fenty's willingness to play well with others on this is admirable. Too often efforts to improve urban schools get killed by personal and political feuding among individual elected officials trying to advance their own agendas. Fenty's efforts to make nice with the council, the current board and Janey suggest he's rejecting the dictatorial and polarizing approach NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg has taken in running that city's schools. BUT, one of the major challenges to improving education in D.C. has been that too many entities and individuals--the superintendent, the school board, the council, the chief financial officer, the mayor, Congress--have both an agenda and a say in how the schools are run, and that mess of competing forces has made it virtually impossible for the school system to get sustained focus on a coherent reform agenda. One of the major benefits of mayoral control would be to give the system a single ultimate point of authority and accountability, but that benefit disappears if Fenty lets himself get pulled in a bunch of directions trying to keep all those groups on board with his reforms. So far, the only people who've really had a lot at stake here have been the school board, Janey and a handful of home rule activists. But what happens when the Mayor needs to do something that's controversial and counter to the interests of significant groups within the school system, and they get their councilmembers involved? Improving the city's schools will require the political will to do difficult things even in the face of serious political opposition. What Fenty's encountered in the takeover ain't got nothing on what he could face when it comes time to actually take action: Does he have the will to stand up to that?
But that's nothing compared to my second concern: What is Fenty's team going to do? I don't believe there's anyone on this earth who can honestly say that they know how to fix the mess that is DCPS today. I've got some thoughts on things that might be beneficial; so do a lot of other people. But no one's ever fixed an entire system like D.C. to the point where we can honestly say we're happy with the outcomes it's delivering for most kids. There are no guarantees any of these things people might propose will actually work. When I think about what this all means forthe futures of kids in this city--which is what really matters here--that's what really worries me.
Two things worth reading this week if you're interested in this issue:
Rick Hess on Mayoral Control
Andy Smarick on Urban Superintendents
I want very much to believe Fenty and his team can bring meaningful improvement to my city's public schools, which so desperately need it. And there are reasons to be hopeful: The team Fenty has assembled to work on this is good. And the hearings that led up to this legislation gave voice to public and political leader frustration with the city's schools that I hope can translate into political will for reforms.
But public education in the District of Columbia faces serious challenges, and the city has a history of failed reform initiatives and governance changes that failed to deliver promised improvement. And the hard work only begins when Fenty takes the reigns. I have two main causes for concern right now.
The first is with the "let's all get along" attitude Fenty's projected throughout this process: offering the City Council increased control over the school budget, the press conference he had Friday with school board chair Robert Bobb and current superintendent Janey, at which they all expressed a desire to hold hands and work together. Now, obviously this approach makes sense if you're trying to pass legislation giving you the right to take over the schools. And there are ways in which Fenty's willingness to play well with others on this is admirable. Too often efforts to improve urban schools get killed by personal and political feuding among individual elected officials trying to advance their own agendas. Fenty's efforts to make nice with the council, the current board and Janey suggest he's rejecting the dictatorial and polarizing approach NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg has taken in running that city's schools. BUT, one of the major challenges to improving education in D.C. has been that too many entities and individuals--the superintendent, the school board, the council, the chief financial officer, the mayor, Congress--have both an agenda and a say in how the schools are run, and that mess of competing forces has made it virtually impossible for the school system to get sustained focus on a coherent reform agenda. One of the major benefits of mayoral control would be to give the system a single ultimate point of authority and accountability, but that benefit disappears if Fenty lets himself get pulled in a bunch of directions trying to keep all those groups on board with his reforms. So far, the only people who've really had a lot at stake here have been the school board, Janey and a handful of home rule activists. But what happens when the Mayor needs to do something that's controversial and counter to the interests of significant groups within the school system, and they get their councilmembers involved? Improving the city's schools will require the political will to do difficult things even in the face of serious political opposition. What Fenty's encountered in the takeover ain't got nothing on what he could face when it comes time to actually take action: Does he have the will to stand up to that?
But that's nothing compared to my second concern: What is Fenty's team going to do? I don't believe there's anyone on this earth who can honestly say that they know how to fix the mess that is DCPS today. I've got some thoughts on things that might be beneficial; so do a lot of other people. But no one's ever fixed an entire system like D.C. to the point where we can honestly say we're happy with the outcomes it's delivering for most kids. There are no guarantees any of these things people might propose will actually work. When I think about what this all means forthe futures of kids in this city--which is what really matters here--that's what really worries me.
Two things worth reading this week if you're interested in this issue:
Rick Hess on Mayoral Control
Andy Smarick on Urban Superintendents
Friday, April 20, 2007
Why Choice Alone is Not Enough
NACSA's Greg Richmond has a terrific Education Week op-ed about what the charter school movement must do to build quality at scale. You should read it. Conveniently for me, it's also directly applicable to the point I made in the previous post. Richmond's key graph:
If we are to establish high-quality charter schools at scale, it is not sufficient to simply knock down barriers and get out of the way. We must create new systems of support based on innovation and flexibility.As Richmond explains: "The prevailing 1990s philosophy was that the best role for government was to eliminate barriers and get out of the way," but that approach led to serious quality problems in states like Texas and Ohio. As charter school leaders and others who care about both improving outcomes for poor students and improving choice in education think about how to expand choice, we need to take seriously the lessons of the charter movement to date that removing barriers and increasing choice alone don't solve the problem: We need accountability and concerted effort, by a diverse coalition of private, public, and community organizations, to build and support quality schools at scale
More arguing with libertarians!
I'm pleased that Cato's Adam Schaeffer agrees with me that special education voucher programs, like Florida's McKay program, are a bad idea. Still he feels compelled to make a few feeble defenses of the program: there are already perverse incentives for overidentification in the current system (my response: yes, but programs like McKay exacerbate those incentives), and choice makes a lot of parents happier (Schaeffer seems to misunderstand my point that an uptick in the number of parent challenges to district special education decisions means McKay isn't providing recourse for parents unsatisfied with district special ed offerings--if it were we'd see a reduction in challenges as families opted for McKay rather than cumbersome due process).
More significantly, Schaeffer seems to misunderstand, or willingly mischaracterize, the nature of my concerns with vouchers and other pure free market reforms. He presents the issue as if the only choice we face were a choice between a pure market and the status quo. That's obviously bullshit. There are lots of ways to increase choice and customization and inject more market incentives into the system. Since I believe the goal should be to increased choice and competition in a way that has the best outcomes for kids and leaves the fewest behind, rather than simply to dismantle the existing system of government run schools, I don't think simply handing parents a check and saying "go find a school" is good enough.
Just think of it this way: If we created vouchers or tax credits today to the full extent Schaeffer wants, most of the kids who are in bad public schools today would still be in bad schools. That's because there's nowhere near the supply of quality schools--public, private, charter, what have you--to serve all the kids who need them. Increasing choice without a concerted effort by public, private, philanthropic and community groups to increase the supply of high quality schools serving poor kids is a marginal reform and little improvement over the status quo.
****
Briefly, on the sex-ed question, which I agree with Schaeffer is small bore: Schaeffer says that the seemingly contradictory support of conservative groups for both abstinence only requirements and school choice reflects the fact that, absent choice, the only way to get the sex ed you want for your own child is by forcing schools to provide that type to everyone. I'll give you that at the local level; it's one reason I'd rather the task of sex ed be eliminated from schools altogether and handed off to community-based groups that are really more equipped for this anyway. But when you are supporting federal policies that impose abstinence-only education on the wide diversity of states and communities across the country the only reasonable conclusion is that you really do believe it should be an important federal policy to force other people's children to receive the kind of sex education you prefer.
More significantly, Schaeffer seems to misunderstand, or willingly mischaracterize, the nature of my concerns with vouchers and other pure free market reforms. He presents the issue as if the only choice we face were a choice between a pure market and the status quo. That's obviously bullshit. There are lots of ways to increase choice and customization and inject more market incentives into the system. Since I believe the goal should be to increased choice and competition in a way that has the best outcomes for kids and leaves the fewest behind, rather than simply to dismantle the existing system of government run schools, I don't think simply handing parents a check and saying "go find a school" is good enough.
Just think of it this way: If we created vouchers or tax credits today to the full extent Schaeffer wants, most of the kids who are in bad public schools today would still be in bad schools. That's because there's nowhere near the supply of quality schools--public, private, charter, what have you--to serve all the kids who need them. Increasing choice without a concerted effort by public, private, philanthropic and community groups to increase the supply of high quality schools serving poor kids is a marginal reform and little improvement over the status quo.
****
Briefly, on the sex-ed question, which I agree with Schaeffer is small bore: Schaeffer says that the seemingly contradictory support of conservative groups for both abstinence only requirements and school choice reflects the fact that, absent choice, the only way to get the sex ed you want for your own child is by forcing schools to provide that type to everyone. I'll give you that at the local level; it's one reason I'd rather the task of sex ed be eliminated from schools altogether and handed off to community-based groups that are really more equipped for this anyway. But when you are supporting federal policies that impose abstinence-only education on the wide diversity of states and communities across the country the only reasonable conclusion is that you really do believe it should be an important federal policy to force other people's children to receive the kind of sex education you prefer.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Gadgetry
Fellow blogger Erin Dillon and I are at SAS headquarters in North Carolina today, visiting with value-added guru Bill Sanders. Why is this worth noting? Because it's an excuse to blog from my new Blackberry. As someone who preceded the cell-phones-and-flip-flops generation, I find this to be inordinately cool.
The Great Child Care Cost Shift
Special all-libertarian day here at quick and ed!--No, not really.
Kerry Howley makes the case in the recent issue of Reason that illegal immigration is particularly benefical to women because the supply of cheap, undocumented domestic labor makes child care more affordable, helping women balance work and family. It's an interesting argument, but I think overstated, considering that only 4% of children under 5 with working mothers are cared for by domestic workers in their homes, and fully 45% are cared for by relatives.
This ties into something I've been thinking about lately. The opening of employment opportunities to women and resulting shift of women from home to market labor over the past few decades has also shifted traditionally female labor into the market. Rather than being unaccounted for economically and therefore appearing "free" (despite the enormous cost it carried for women), that work is now visible, quantifiable, and has a clear cost attached to it--a seemingly new cost that families and society must bear. This is particularly the case for childcare. When we talk about childcare quality, cost, and "work-family" balance, what we're really talking about is who--society, families, women only, children themselves--should cover the costs that emerged when society could no longer assume that women, having few other options, would bear that entire cost themselves. As Howley shows, illegal immigration helps postpone reckoning on this question, because it imports another class of women who have few other options and will therefore provide childcare at an artificially low cost. But this stopgap clearly has its own limitations. The reckoning is still coming, and no one seems ready for it.
Kerry Howley makes the case in the recent issue of Reason that illegal immigration is particularly benefical to women because the supply of cheap, undocumented domestic labor makes child care more affordable, helping women balance work and family. It's an interesting argument, but I think overstated, considering that only 4% of children under 5 with working mothers are cared for by domestic workers in their homes, and fully 45% are cared for by relatives.
This ties into something I've been thinking about lately. The opening of employment opportunities to women and resulting shift of women from home to market labor over the past few decades has also shifted traditionally female labor into the market. Rather than being unaccounted for economically and therefore appearing "free" (despite the enormous cost it carried for women), that work is now visible, quantifiable, and has a clear cost attached to it--a seemingly new cost that families and society must bear. This is particularly the case for childcare. When we talk about childcare quality, cost, and "work-family" balance, what we're really talking about is who--society, families, women only, children themselves--should cover the costs that emerged when society could no longer assume that women, having few other options, would bear that entire cost themselves. As Howley shows, illegal immigration helps postpone reckoning on this question, because it imports another class of women who have few other options and will therefore provide childcare at an artificially low cost. But this stopgap clearly has its own limitations. The reckoning is still coming, and no one seems ready for it.
More On Why Having a Hammer Doesn't Make Everything a Nail
Cato's Adam Schaeffer takes issue with my post earlier this week about the incredible tediousness of pro-voucher groups' assertion that choice is the solution to every imaginable educational problem.
He actually has a somewhat reasonable point. To the extent that increased choice and customization in education can make the entire educational system more effective and efficient, then yes, we should expect that "rising tide" to "lift all ships" (to offend Adam with yet another cliche), with positive impacts for groups of students we're concerned about. But this is different from some voucher supporters' recent tendency to recommend choice as a targeted solution to specific educational problems that are gaining national attention.
From a political point of view, it's understandable why voucher supporters would propose small, targeted voucher programs that purport to solve very specific or narrow needs, in response to public attention focused on those needs. But from a policy perspective such programs are often much more problematic than wider voucher programs. Take, for example, Florida's McKay Scholarships for children with disabilities and the programs like them that are springing up around the country. They're appealing because no one wants to be seen opposing increased choice and customization for kids with disabilities, and they seem to be working ok as school choice (despite an abundance of shady operators, at least in Florida, that are taking advantage of vulnerable kids and stealing taxpayer and parent $$). But they kind of suck as special education reform. As Andrew Rotherham and I have shown, they don't seem to be solving the problem they ostensibly were intended to solve--parent difficulties getting needed services or out-of-district placements for their children--as evidenced by the fact that parent appeals of district special education decisions have increased rather than decreasing since the program was created. Further, they create perverse incentives for parents and schools that could exacerbate one of the biggest problems in special education: overidentification of students with disabilities.
Voucher supporters promote these targeted programs because they know that there's not political support in most places for the larger universal programs they'd prefer. But it's disingenuous to pretend that these targeted programs solve the problems they purport to when they're really just a strategy to get a foot in the door for larger voucher programs. If they're going to be forced to traffic in incrementalism anyway, why don't libertarians like Schaeffer spend a little bit more time talking about other ways--such as elimination of teacher certification or of building codes that make it expensive to build schools--where libertarian views might have bearing on educational debates? I'm not saying I'm on board with those ideas, but it would be more interesting.
There's a larger difference of opinion here, of course, and that regards the adequacy of school choice as education reform. There's a compelling case that building an education system more premised on choice will have significant benefits, in terms of efficiency but more so in terms of customization and parent and student satisfaction and engagement. But, just as economic policies that improve economic growth overall leave some workers behind, it's also likely that educational policies that improve student achievement on average will end up leaving some children behind. Libertarians like the folks at Cato tend to think this is ok: it's the price of a well-functioning market that ultimately benefits everyone, and the people who are most deserving will eventually get ahead anyway. Like most progressives and centrists, I don't accept that argument, but believe society has a collective obligation to prevent or redress the harms that accrue to specific individuals as a result of collectively beneficial policies: Particularly when those individuals are children. That's why I think increased choice needs to be accompanied by both some form of public accountability to set a floor for school performance and an ambitious set of public, private, charitable and community-based initiatives to build the supply of high-quality schools in underserved neighborhoods.
Btw, at the top of his post Schaeffer makes an odd comment about my noting that some pro-voucher groups think choice is awesome except when it comes to sex ed. Counter Schaeffer's assertion, I'm not remotely confused about what choice means. He, on the other hand, seems to be unaware that there are a lot of non-libertarian conservative organizations--The National Review, Heritage Foundation, and IWF, the organization my original post was about--that do endorse educational "choice" in the form of vouchers while also arguing that schools should be required to restrict sex ed to "abstinence only," which, as he suggests, is a somewhat inconsistent position.
He actually has a somewhat reasonable point. To the extent that increased choice and customization in education can make the entire educational system more effective and efficient, then yes, we should expect that "rising tide" to "lift all ships" (to offend Adam with yet another cliche), with positive impacts for groups of students we're concerned about. But this is different from some voucher supporters' recent tendency to recommend choice as a targeted solution to specific educational problems that are gaining national attention.
From a political point of view, it's understandable why voucher supporters would propose small, targeted voucher programs that purport to solve very specific or narrow needs, in response to public attention focused on those needs. But from a policy perspective such programs are often much more problematic than wider voucher programs. Take, for example, Florida's McKay Scholarships for children with disabilities and the programs like them that are springing up around the country. They're appealing because no one wants to be seen opposing increased choice and customization for kids with disabilities, and they seem to be working ok as school choice (despite an abundance of shady operators, at least in Florida, that are taking advantage of vulnerable kids and stealing taxpayer and parent $$). But they kind of suck as special education reform. As Andrew Rotherham and I have shown, they don't seem to be solving the problem they ostensibly were intended to solve--parent difficulties getting needed services or out-of-district placements for their children--as evidenced by the fact that parent appeals of district special education decisions have increased rather than decreasing since the program was created. Further, they create perverse incentives for parents and schools that could exacerbate one of the biggest problems in special education: overidentification of students with disabilities.
Voucher supporters promote these targeted programs because they know that there's not political support in most places for the larger universal programs they'd prefer. But it's disingenuous to pretend that these targeted programs solve the problems they purport to when they're really just a strategy to get a foot in the door for larger voucher programs. If they're going to be forced to traffic in incrementalism anyway, why don't libertarians like Schaeffer spend a little bit more time talking about other ways--such as elimination of teacher certification or of building codes that make it expensive to build schools--where libertarian views might have bearing on educational debates? I'm not saying I'm on board with those ideas, but it would be more interesting.
There's a larger difference of opinion here, of course, and that regards the adequacy of school choice as education reform. There's a compelling case that building an education system more premised on choice will have significant benefits, in terms of efficiency but more so in terms of customization and parent and student satisfaction and engagement. But, just as economic policies that improve economic growth overall leave some workers behind, it's also likely that educational policies that improve student achievement on average will end up leaving some children behind. Libertarians like the folks at Cato tend to think this is ok: it's the price of a well-functioning market that ultimately benefits everyone, and the people who are most deserving will eventually get ahead anyway. Like most progressives and centrists, I don't accept that argument, but believe society has a collective obligation to prevent or redress the harms that accrue to specific individuals as a result of collectively beneficial policies: Particularly when those individuals are children. That's why I think increased choice needs to be accompanied by both some form of public accountability to set a floor for school performance and an ambitious set of public, private, charitable and community-based initiatives to build the supply of high-quality schools in underserved neighborhoods.
Btw, at the top of his post Schaeffer makes an odd comment about my noting that some pro-voucher groups think choice is awesome except when it comes to sex ed. Counter Schaeffer's assertion, I'm not remotely confused about what choice means. He, on the other hand, seems to be unaware that there are a lot of non-libertarian conservative organizations--The National Review, Heritage Foundation, and IWF, the organization my original post was about--that do endorse educational "choice" in the form of vouchers while also arguing that schools should be required to restrict sex ed to "abstinence only," which, as he suggests, is a somewhat inconsistent position.
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