Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Searching for “Plan B”

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by

James A. Bacon
in

With education a topic of consideration on the blog recently, I’ll toss this into the mix:

A prominent supporter of a market-based approach to improving public schools, Sol Stern, says he no longer believes charter schools or vouchers are a “panacea.”

In an article published in the latest edition of City Journal, Mr. Stern, a Manhattan Institute fellow, portrays the libertarian approach that once inspired him as a failed experiment, and urges those who agree with him to search for a “Plan B.”

I don’t have access to the City Journal article referenced in this New York Sun piece, so it’s difficult to assess just how dispirited some in the choice camp may be these days.

But it seems rather deep, if Chester Finn’s lament is any indication:

…Finn, who has been a vocal advocate of school vouchers and charter schools, said yesterday in an e-mail message that he has “growing sympathy” with Mr. Stern’s skepticism. Mr. Finn stoked debate himself recently by declaring that one factor hurting charter schools in Ohio is “too much trust in market forces.”

I’m not sure it’s time to strike the tent and give up on school choice. I’m also not sure one can have “too much trust in market forces.”

But has the time for choice come and gone? And if it has, is there a Plan B?

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  1. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    This is a nice observation by Michael Kinsley on this point, from a recent column – he says what many of us who see the value in “market-oriented solutions” but haven’t quite finished our cup of Kool-Aid, if you get my drift.

    “There are “market-oriented” solutions to this problem, but there is a difference –often forgotten, especially by Republicans — between using market forces and leaving something to the market. The point of principle is whether the government should intervene at all. How it chooses to intervene is purely pragmatic.”

  2. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    Plan B is simple.

    It’s called Performance Standards.

    Anyone who thinks that government dollars involved in any enterprise is a “free market” is kidding themselves.

    There is a reason why the phrase Beltways Bandits exists…

    Just keep in mind.. also that the unfettered free market .. produces enterprises like payday and sub prime loans… as a consequence of being “unfettered” …

    All schools should have to meet the same curriculum and academic performance standards.

    If a private school can take the SAME kids and have to use the SAME curriculum to meet the SAME Academic Performance Standards then great…. and hopefully we do get a more competitive environment.

    But right now.. we expect the Public School System to produce loaded Chevy’s with all the gov-mandated equipment.. and we let Charter/private schools “innovate” by not held to the same standards.

    There is a certain level of intellectual dishonestly in the concept as currently practiced.

    I wondered how long it would take for the public to start to find out…

  3. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “All schools should have to meet the same curriculum and academic performance standards.”

    BARF.

    I thought the whole point is to provide an environment a kid can excel in: to whatever standard or curriculum suits his abilities.

    If all he is capable of is button sucking, so be it. If he can excel in harpsichord fine. quantum chemistry, great.

    One size fits all is the source of the problem, not the solution.

    RH

  4. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Larry, are there any charter schools in Virginia? Fairfax County, for example, has killed any attempt to open charter schools. The school board members don’t like not being in charge and then there’s the union guys and gals.

    Just as with medical care, we need some mechanism to put decisions in the hands of parents. I don’t know what the proper mechanism is.

    But if there were one, Jack Dale would be proposing staff reductions and not an overall increase in class size.

    TMT

  5. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    re: RH – PRIMARY purpose of schools:

    to produce an employable tax-paying workforce as a requirement.. Before we talk about other stuff…

    Once that job is accomplished.. we can talk about “creativity”

    Public Schools were not created because there was a need for “amenities”. They were created because we realized that an uneducated workforce was a dumb economic strategy.

    re: TMT free market “mechanism”

    yes.. completely agree.. that is why you see me supporting any/all information especially with regard to cost-effectiveness and testing results.

    Consumers of education (and health care as you also point out) need not only Choice but they need information about cost and quality.

    School vouchers without a means to determine which schools actually produce results is what?

    Well.. it’s essentially transferring tax dollars to free-market shysters through uninformed consumers…

    and that’s the essential conflict here between free-market and government-paid education and health care.

    There is absolutely no guarantee that the so-called free market will produce any better education or health care and in fact will create the sub-prime/payday loan equivalent if we do not have standards and transparency so that consumers can make choices that actually cause the marketplace to respond with higher quality products.

    I don’t buy a costly product these days without consulting Consumer Reports and if we had the Educational equivalent of Consumers Reports to go along with CHOICE then we would have the beginnings of change.. and competition…

  6. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “Once that job is accomplished.. we can talk about “creativity”

    Public Schools were not created because there was a need for “amenities”. They were created because we realized that an uneducated workforce was a dumb economic strategy.”

    I’m not talking about creativity or amenities: I’m talking about educating each person to his employable limit and ability.

    I once helped out in a sheltered workshop. It employed people of very kimited abilities, but it stll had to run at a profit (break even).

    Even among those people there was a widely differing ability to learn and aptitudes for different skills, such as they were.

    If the sheltered workshop can figure that out, our schools ought to be able to.

    “School vouchers without a means to determine which schools actually produce results is what?

    Well.. it’s essentially transferring tax dollars to free-market shysters through uninformed consumers”

    That’s one way to look at it. But by your criteria the school that produces results is the one whose students get jobs and earn the most money.

    So, where is the high school in Virginia that can teach a 22 year old how to get a $122 million dollar hockey contract? You gonna waste that talent on the 3R’s?

    Do we need public schools with classes in professional skateboarding or underwater welding? No. But if some parent finds themselves saddled with the next Shirley Temple and no way to play that card, whose fault is it?

    Vouchers offer the parents a choice: we don’t have to like the choice or measure the results.

    That is up to the market. And it should be the second thing we teach kids: it is your life, don’t screw up (and don’t say we never gave you a chance or a choice.)

    If you had enough kinds of schools some kind of consumers choice thing would spring up. As it stands now, the choice is between frick and frack, even assuming you could move to the district of your choice.

    OR

    you can teach basic canned stuff to everybody with SOLS determining success or failure. (Of both the student AND the teacher. Now there’s a bad idea.) I think SOLS, SATS, and tests in general are irrelevant. What they tell you is what the test score is, and nothing more.

    A workforce that is educated out of a can? Now there’s a dumb economic strategy. If we need more transportation “Options” then why not more education options?

    RH

  7. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    “I’m not talking about creativity or amenities: I’m talking about educating each person to his employable limit and ability.”

    that is pretty ambitious. Most educators feel that the goal is to have them accomplish their learning potential.. the rest is up to the kid.

    there is no guarantee that any level of education will enable one to achieve the limits of their employability but you can bet the farm that if they do not graduate or if they graduate and are functionally illiterate that they won’t.

    “If the sheltered workshop can figure that out, our schools ought to be able to.”

    ummm… maybe… but take something simple like a young fella transferring between schools. How does the new school know where he is on that continuum if there are no test results? Grades themselves are not comparable between different schools.

    …free-market shysters through uninformed consumers”

    “That’s one way to look at it. But by your criteria the school that produces results is the one whose students get jobs and earn the most money.”

    It’s not about the most money. It’s about basic education.. literacy for the 21 century.. that enables kids to read about and understand the technological world that is the world economy.

    “So, where is the high school in Virginia that can teach a 22 year old how to get a $122 million dollar hockey contract? You gonna waste that talent on the 3R’s?”

    first.. I don’t think it is the job of schools to “teach” hockey and second, what if he ruins his knee and needs to make a living the more conventional way and he is functionally illiterate?

    “Do we need public schools with classes in professional skateboarding or underwater welding? No. But if some parent finds themselves saddled with the next Shirley Temple and no way to play that card, whose fault is it?”

    RH –
    Reading and Writing are basic BEFORE anything else and it is basic reading and writing that enables a kid to compete for the typical workforce jobs available in a world economy that is the promise and duty of public schools.

    The rest is up to the parents and the kids.. to build upon those basics.. not other taxpayers.

    Vouchers offer the parents a choice: we don’t have to like the choice or measure the results.

    yes we do. That is tax money taken from other taxpayers for very specific purposes intended to benefit the public – and those purposes are for every kid to have an opportunity at a basic education that will afford him the ability to pursue employment and other higher level opportunities that require the basic building blocks as a minimum.

    We do not use taxpayer money for acting school or hockey school.

    We use it so that the kid that wants to go to acting school or hockey school is not functionally illiterate and can read the acting scripts or understand the game diagrams.

    “That is up to the market. And it should be the second thing we teach kids: it is your life, don’t screw up (and don’t say we never gave you a chance or a choice.)”

    you cannot tell a 7 year-old to “not screw up”. If they don’t learn to read and write then by the time they can understand the advice to “not screw up”.. it is too late.

    “If you had enough kinds of schools some kind of consumers choice thing would spring up. As it stands now, the choice is between frick and frack, even assuming you could move to the district of your choice.

    OR

    you can teach basic canned stuff to everybody with SOLS determining success or failure. (Of both the student AND the teacher. Now there’s a bad idea.) I think SOLS, SATS, and tests in general are irrelevant. What they tell you is what the test score is, and nothing more.

    A workforce that is educated out of a can? Now there’s a dumb economic strategy. If we need more transportation “Options” then why not more education options”

    yes.. an educated workforce gets it’s basic education out of “can”

    talk to ANY grade school teacher in Virginia, any state – and you will find that what is taught is very specific and very scripted and kids are evaluated often to see what they “got” and what they need more work on. In Virginia it is called the Standards of Learning and it’s part of what is referred to as Curriculum Mapping to meet the goals of the SOLs.

    It’s really very specific stuff like do they know certain words.. can they spell them.. do they know what they mean.. can they use them in a sentence.

    Kids do not come out of the box knowing this stuff…you know..

    It is backbreaking, thankless work for most teachers and the satisfaction is measured in ..literally baby steps for many kids – and heartbreak for others.

    When we say “at risk”, we’re not talking about a 15 year-old aiming to get a College scholarship for basket weaving… we’re talking about a 7 year old who does not get regular meals at home, comes to school in winter without a coat and whose “parents” may be 22 year old high school drop-outs… who just lost their job at McDonalds…and got a reckless driving ticket on the way home…

    That’s the harsh reality when we talk about the need for at risk kids to get a basic education.

    In many of our urban areas, we are LUCKY if more than half the kids actually graduate and half of them are having kids without two parents.

    virtually every single one of the kids who do not grow up with a basic education.. have little hope for anything other than the most basic, menial unskilled job.. and more than likely will need welfare, housing subsidies, food stamps, medical care, and even then may end up getting sucked into the criminal justice system.

    Do you know which government agency in Virginia has the most employees?

    If you guessed VDOT – you’re wrong. It’s the prison system – 13000 employees.

  8. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “We do not use taxpayer money for acting school or hockey school.

    We use it so that the kid that wants to go to acting school or hockey school is not functionally illiterate “

    We are talking different things here.

    Sure you need to have basic stuff, but, if the kid is functionally illiterate after grade six, you need a plan B. More of the same won’t cut it.

    You would hate to pass up the taxes that hockey player, or actor pays, just because no one had the sense to see his talent.

    But with vouchers, you can pass that responsibility off to the parents. Yep, some will blow it. They will send their kids to Aryan Nation school or something.

    But the kinds of kids you are talking about are the ones that need something other than the canned curriculum most of all. something they MIGHT take an interest in. And if lunch is included, fine.

    My father taught those kind of kids, I know the story, and I know the kids. For some its a real trap, for some its a warehouse, a few get lucky and have a teacher like my father.

    —————————-

    Schools can compete for the dollars and be done with it. It used to be, that if you wanted to learn, you found a teacher and hired him. I had a close friend who was tutored through school and made up his own curiculum, but, he had plenty of money. Vouchers make sure at least some money is available. It won’t get you through Julliard, but if you are leaning that way it won’t stop you.

    I knew a master shipwright who couldn’t read or write, yet the drawings of the boats he built were perfectly clear to him. The schools failed him completely, yet he was not without talent, and not a loser.

    I’ll take four guys like him any day, compared to some PhD’s I know.

    When you say we can’t tell where a kid is when he switches schools it tells you how bad the measures and standards are. I transferred in my senior year of college, and it cost me 30 extra credits: neither school would graduate me with credits from the other, and they were both good schools.

    They couldn’t agree on standards, I guess. If they can’t agree at that level, what hope is there fo kids?

    Why did I do it? The transfer came with a good paying job that paid my tuition. Oh well, I got a lot of graduate school classes out of it.

    —————————–

    So, why do you suppose the prison system has the largest number of employees?

    Is it because the school system is a disaster, or is it because we throw too many people in jail?

    RH

  9. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    ….”But with vouchers, you can pass that responsibility off to the parents. Yep, some will blow it. They will send their kids to Aryan Nation school or something.”

    this is why the idea of letting the “free market” .. compete is totally disconnected from the realities and why any school that receives a voucher needs to be fully accredited and certified whether it be public or private or a hybrid.

    Some folks will quite easily be financially irresponsible with their own money.. not to mention vouchers and the “free market” will innovate ways to get their hands on the voucher money without providing the services they’re supposed to be for.

    We need a system like we have for government funding of institutions that provide care and that is..a system that has standards and payments are reimbursements AFTER compliance has been confirmed.

    so.. government bureaucracy…

    but what is the alternative?

    if you give the money with no strings bad stuff will happen.

    the “free market” will figure out how to grab the voucher money…

    .. and the kid who was supposed to be educated.. will not and more tax money will be needed to give him the education he was supposed to get.

    re: prisons

    I admit to being pretty ignorant on most issues and that includes prisons… but it would seem to me that putting non-violent folks in prison at about 30K per offender per year to house them with professionals who will essentially train them on how to become even better at crime and then releasing them… is not the smartest system…

    but many kids who get to be 21 without an education and very limited options for employment.. will eventually run afoul of the law and get drawn into the system..

    this is, why.. even if the moral aspects of the imperative to have a better education system that produces employable folks does not snap your socks.. then the economic aspect ought to.. because if you sit down and think of all the costs associated with “taking care” of folks who not only can’t take care of themselves but cause economic harm to others.. that aspect ought to grab you.

    For one thing.. crime and the fear of it has a huge impact on settlement patterns and schools…

  10. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    ….”But with vouchers, you can pass that responsibility off to the parents. Yep, some will blow it. They will send their kids to Aryan Nation school or something.”

    Two comments:

    (1) If people want to teach their kids the principles of the Aryan nation, they can go the home-school route. Or they can form their own private academies anyway, just like some of the Muslim groups are doing.

    (2) If the state goes the vouchers route, it can easily limit payments to schools that have been certified as having met state-specified standards.

    The state has two legitimate functions in education: setting minimal performance standards for schools, and ensuring that every child can get an education. The only reason to preserve the existing public school system is to protect the interests of the educational establishment. The failings of the existing system are manifest. I don’t see how anyone can seriously argue that providing poor/working class people more freedom of choice can hurt.

  11. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “The state has two legitimate functions in education: setting minimal performance standards for schools, and ensuring that every child can get an education. The only reason to preserve the existing public school system is to protect the interests of the educational establishment. The failings of the existing system are manifest. I don’t see how anyone can seriously argue that providing poor/working class people more freedom of choice can hurt.”

    Agreeded. The education system does a good job with the middle 80%the population.

    The lower AND upper 10% would be better served elsewhere. Most charter schools that focus on the lower 10% that are successfull work because there are smaller class sizes, longer hours, and/or fewer distractions. Basically more instruction time per student.

    For the upper 10% most charter schools (mainly magnets at this level) work because they have a completely different curricullum than the traditional college prep model since the students have an extremely different learning capacity.

    NMM

  12. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “If the state goes the vouchers route, it can easily limit payments to schools that have been certified as having met state-specified standards.”

    Agreed. Now what happens when some Aryan Nation school (or any other school with an agenda) manages to meet the standards?

    How is that any worse than a public school (with an agenda primarily of conformance, and minimum expectations) which DOESN’T meet the standards?

    I think NMM is right. “The failings of the existing system are manifest. I don’t see how anyone can seriously argue that providing poor/working class people more freedom of choice can hurt.”

    If there is ANY public agency more ripe for privatization than the schools, I can’t think of it. Let’s get past where the money comes from, and figure out how to spend it better.

    RH

  13. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Interesting post article today that seeks to measure the effectiveness of different education initatives

    “Table 9-1. Interventions that Demonstrably Raise the High School Graduation Rate

    (Intervention — Extra high school graduates if intervention is given to 100 students)

    1. Perry Preschool Program (1.8 years of a center-based program for 2.5 hours per weekday, child-teacher ratio of 5:1; home visits; group meetings of parents.) 19 extra graduates.

    2. First Things First (Comprehensive school reform based on small learning communities with dedicated teachers, family advocates and instructional improvement efforts.) 16 extra graduates.

    3. Chicago Child-Parent Center program (Center-based preschool program: parental involvement, outreach and health/nutrition services. Based in public schools.) 11 extra graduates.

    4. Project STAR: class size reduction (4 years of schooling in grades K-3 with class size reduced from 25 to 15.) 11 extra graduates.

    5. Teacher salary increase (10 percent increase, K-12) 5 extra graduates.”

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/15/AR2008011501323_pf.html

    NMM

  14. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    That’s the kind of data I keep harping on. It IS possible to deconvolute mixed data if a) you have enough data, reasonably well collected, and b) you are willing to listen to what the data says, especially if it comes back with an answer you don’t like.

    I suspect we have pretty good estimates as to what a high school degree is worth, on average. Too bad the table did’nt tell us what each of these remedies cost, and how long they take to act.

    For example, option one is equal to 6.5% more instruction, plus other additional work. So, it might cost almost as much as option 5 (for one grade, not k-12). But, you are going to spend that money and then wait a long time to see the results.

    RH

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