For best results, read this while listening
to the instrumental version of Coldplay’s The Scientist.
Disclaimer: I haven’t actually tried this.
Tell me if it worked. XD
Education is one of the few issues that is fundamentally bipartisan in
theory. Just about everyone accepts that the government has an essential role
in ensuring a good education for our students. Everyone believes that a
well-educated youth is a prerequisite to the safety and prosperity of our nation,
and that education represents a fundamental component of equality of
opportunity and the American dream.
Despite this, our educational system is utterly broken. In 1973, the
U.S. was ranked high in the world for providing quality public education. Today
the OECD ranks us 14th in reading, 25th in math, and 17th
in science out of its 34 members. This is mediocre at best and downright
alarming at worst.
Just as important is our inability to improve the worst-off among us.
Despite billions spent in education to improve our schools, the performance
among the most disadvantaged has flatlined. An enormous achievement gap exists among
races and socioeconomic classes. Racial minorities and the poor disproportionately
attend low-quality schools in inner-cities. They are also a prominent
demographic in dropout factories, where as many as 50-70% of the students
attending that school inevitably drop out. Overall, in 2010, an appalling 7.4%
dropped out of school without obtaining a GED.
The Problem
There are a myriad of structural problems in education today.
One pressing problem is the way schools are funded. Right now, federal
aid represents a tiny slice of total educational spending (even though it comes
with MANY strings attached). A greater portion of the money comes from the
states, but individual school districts shoulder most of the spending.
This creates alarming trends. Municipalities, whose principal revenue is
the property tax, will spend accordingly to the wealth of their communities; in
other words, poorer neighborhoods and inner cities will be badly underfunded
relative to their richer counterparts. State funding may or may not counteract
this to some degree, but economic performance and tax revenues vary widely from
state to state. Because both are bound by a balanced budget and cannot
overspend in the long term, there is an inherent
disadvantage in funding for the very schools that need it the most. As a
result, poorer school districts also happen to have larger student to teacher
ratios and fewer resources that can enhance an educational experience.
Just as important is the way teachers are treated under the current
system. There are two primary problems here. First, we pay teachers a
ridiculously small amount. This low salary is a monumental deterrent to the most talented individuals, who can
easily make much higher salaries by working in high-demand STEM (Science,
Technology, Engineering, and Math) jobs. It is telling that many who become
teachers come from the bottom half of a graduating college class.
The second is the issue of teacher tenure. While it gives teachers a
helpful level of autonomy and protects the best teachers, it also shields the worst teachers from accountability.
Moreover, in tight fiscal times such as now, the newest rather than the poorest
teachers are the first to go; seniority in general is a poor criterion of
overall teacher performance.
Both trends contribute to the poor quality of teachers. According to
Eric Hanushek of Stanford’s Hoover Institute, the difference between a good
teacher and a bad teacher within a single
school year can be as much as 300 percent, even after controlling for race and
socioeconomic class. Just imagine these effects compounded after thirteen years
of public education.
In her book Multiplication is for White People, Lisa Delpit
observes that bad teachers also contribute to the stereotype threat among racial minorities, where these students are
perceived to have less inherent potential than their peers and it quickly
becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whilst rarely overt, this subtle form of
racial discrimination that many teachers harbor is excruciatingly difficult to
eliminate. When racial minorities are not keeping up with the rest of the
class, these teachers usually assume it is because of their race rather than
their dire socioeconomic circumstances. They do not create a tolerant
environment where no student believes that they are inherently superiority to
one another on the basis of race, socioeconomic class, or gender. This
reinforces the poor educational performance of racial minorities.
“Reforms” That Don’t Work
- Standardized
Testing
In 1983, the Department of Education under the Reagan administration produced an article titled “A Nation At Risk.”
While perhaps a bit sensationalist, the article eschewed jargon to help the
layman understand its ideas and highlighted the need to develop national
standards in the curriculum so that schools know precisely what students are
expected to learn.
Yet, in the mid-1990s, the standards movement fell apart. A proposed
national history curriculum was embroiled in controversy and relentlessly
attacked by the far right, who preferred a utopian picture of American
exceptionalism rather than the more accurate picture the curriculum outlined:
two mixed centuries featuring hypocrisy, racial oppression, ethnocentrism, and
imperialism along with success. Politicians of all ideologies moved away from
national standards to avoid the wrath of the far right, whose influence had
dramatically increased over the past decade and a half.
Out of the ashes rose the testing movement, which is symbolized by the
No Child Left Behind Act passed in 2002 with surprising bipartisan support. Standardized
tests had some theoretical appeal: it was the most cost-effective way to measure
a student’s approximate skill, and it was believed that one’s test score
reflected on the teacher’s ability to provide a quality education.
However, the NCLB was a gargantuan failure on many levels. Its most
fundamental weakness was the inflated importance of standardized testing as a
metric for school performance. Because these test scores determined whether or
not schools would keep their current federal funding (or even stay open), it
created an obsession to “teach to the test,” which emphasized good test-taking
skills and core concepts over overall course mastery, long-term retention, other
concepts important for the true mastery of the subject but not the test, and
even critical thinking. Sometimes, things got so desperate that the teachers
and principals were complicit with large-scale cheating by giving students
extra time, writing answers on the board, and/or modifying the answers
themselves. The NCLB was also completely punitive with regards to federal aid.
By promising no rewards for the best performing schools and leaving it to the states to set their own standards, states
were encouraged to dumb down
standards rather than improve them, creating a vicious rather than a virtuous
cycle. In fact, Governor Rick Perry once lowered the difficulty of standardized
tests to inflate the passing rate and promote
his chances for reelection. Finally, to avoid the controversy that occurred
with the national history curriculum, states left the contents of their
curriculum intentionally vague instead of making it transparent to parents and
students what precisely they are
expected to learn.
That is not to say that
standardized tests don’t have any place in the educational system. They are, by
and large, still the least bad way to assess student achievement. To the extent
that they can incorporate critical thinking (much as the AP exams do), standardized
tests can assess mastery rather than good test-taking skills. However, they
have no business being the central facet of education or imposing life and
death decisions on the school
- Merit Pay
Another popular proposal that comes
along with accountability is merit pay. It certainly has theoretical appeal: it
would pay the good teachers more and encourage all teachers to improve their performance.
However, it is not the answer because it creates perverse incentives rather
than positive ones in practice. As
Dan Pink, an expert on the science of motivation, reasoned:
For starters, most proposals for "merit
pay" (sorry, I can't use the term without quotation marks) tie teacher
compensation to student scores on standardized tests. That's a disaster. It
focuses teachers almost single-mindedly on training their students to pencil in
correct answers on multiple choice tests - and turns classrooms into test prep
academies. (What's more, it can encourage cheating, as Georgia's experience shows.) So let's
knock out this approach to merit pay.
A second option is for school principals to decide who gets performance bonuses. Again, there's a certain theoretical appeal to this method. But I've yet to meet a teacher who considers it fair, let alone motivating. Teachers worry that principals don't have sufficient information to make such decisions and that "merit pay" would be based too heavily on who's best at playing politics and currying favor. So let's kibosh this method, too.
A third approach is to use a variety metrics to determine who gets a bonus. You could measure teacher performance using: standardized scores for that teacher's students; evaluations of the teacher's peers, students, parents, and principal; a teacher's contribution to overall school performance; time devoted to professional development; how much the teachers' students improved over the previous year; and so on. This isn't necessarily a bad idea. But it has a huge downside: It would force resource-strapped schools to spend enormous amounts of time, talent, and brainpower measuring teachers rather than educating students. Schools have enough to do already. And the costs of establishing and maintaining elaborate measurement systems would likely outweigh the benefits.
In short, I can't see a way to construct a merit pay scheme that is both simple and fair. What's more, it strikes me as slightly delusional to think that people who've intentionally chosen to pursue a career for public-spirited, rather than economic, reasons will suddenly work harder because they're offered a few hundred extra dollars. Truth be told, most teachers work pretty damn hard already.
A second option is for school principals to decide who gets performance bonuses. Again, there's a certain theoretical appeal to this method. But I've yet to meet a teacher who considers it fair, let alone motivating. Teachers worry that principals don't have sufficient information to make such decisions and that "merit pay" would be based too heavily on who's best at playing politics and currying favor. So let's kibosh this method, too.
A third approach is to use a variety metrics to determine who gets a bonus. You could measure teacher performance using: standardized scores for that teacher's students; evaluations of the teacher's peers, students, parents, and principal; a teacher's contribution to overall school performance; time devoted to professional development; how much the teachers' students improved over the previous year; and so on. This isn't necessarily a bad idea. But it has a huge downside: It would force resource-strapped schools to spend enormous amounts of time, talent, and brainpower measuring teachers rather than educating students. Schools have enough to do already. And the costs of establishing and maintaining elaborate measurement systems would likely outweigh the benefits.
In short, I can't see a way to construct a merit pay scheme that is both simple and fair. What's more, it strikes me as slightly delusional to think that people who've intentionally chosen to pursue a career for public-spirited, rather than economic, reasons will suddenly work harder because they're offered a few hundred extra dollars. Truth be told, most teachers work pretty damn hard already.
Moreover, merit pay pits teachers against one another, encouraging
competition rather than cooperation, and encourages them to only seek good
students. This slows the adoption and diffusion of effective teaching methods.
Yet another oft-omitted effect is that it discourages good teachers from
teaching the most disadvantaged or disabled students, which further screws them
over.
- School
Vouchers and School Choice
Recently, the Republicans and a
handful of moderate Democrats have been enamored by the concept of school
vouchers and school choice. This idea, again, has theoretical appeal. When a
student is stuck in a bad inner-city school, they should have the proper
financial incentives to relocate to a better one. Indeed, it has the potential
to give thousands of students a better educational opportunity. What can
possibly be wrong with that?
Much, unfortunately. The concern, as illustrated
by Diane Ravitch, is that it would “allow thousands of flowers to bloom” but makes
life even more miserable for the students left behind in these bad schools and
can’t afford to make a switch. When the best students leave a poor school,
those remaining lose another incentive to do well in class and cast optimism
for their futures. This will most likely offset or even outweigh any positive
benefits associated with the school’s recognition that it must increase its quality
to retain its students.
Vouchers also
disproportionately benefit the wealthy and the middle class, who are allowed
lucrative discounts on something they could already afford. The fundamental
problem behind vouchers is that it will remain unaffordable to the poorest
people who would benefit most from such a transition: families simply cannot
move because they cannot find employment in a different district (particularly
in current economic conditions) and their health coverage goes completely out
the window, so they cannot pay for the costs they must shoulder.
Consequently, vouchers actually reinforce
the association between socioeconomic class and quality of education rather
than the other way around.
The priority of
public education is not to
simply shift the quality of education around, but to improve the system as a
whole. Vouchers are only truly effective if they are targeted towards the
poorest segments of the population and if they do not crowd out spending in other areas of public education (there
is a substantial risk that they will).
- Charter
Schools
The final major policy proposal for improving education is the charter
school. This particular reform is a favorite for businesses and “genius playboy
billionaire philanthropists.” Just like all the other “reforms,” there is
theoretical appeal to running a school like a business. Deplit states that “they
are intended to develop models for working with the most challenging
populations. What they discovered was to be shared and reproduced in other
public school classrooms.” They were “to be beacons for what could happen in
public schools.”
However, the incessant proliferation of charter schools has had mixed
results and tangible harms towards the public schools. “Special education
students, students with behavioral issues, and students who need any kind of
special assistance are excluded in a multiplicity of ways because they reduce
the bottom line-they lower test scores and take more time to educate properly.”
Delpit even states that these charter schools weed out disadvantaged students
by “counseling” their parents and telling them that the charter schools are
unable to meet the needs of their disadvantaged students and, astonishingly, telling parents that
these students are better off in the public schools! In New Orleans, so-called “lottery
systems” gave preferential admission
to those who have attended an affiliated private preschool, which cost $4,000
or $9,000. In other words, these charter schools attempt to siphon off the most
gifted students and leave behind “excess baggage” to the public schools, where
the decrease in gifted students produces a truly stagnant school environment.
Even when charter schools produce innovative methods that increases the
educational performance of their students, they are discouraged from sharing
these ideas to public schools or other charter schools because doing so would
allow “competitors” to “win” the race to give the best education. That is an unconscionable
market failure whose negative externalities are directly borne by the students
stuck in public schooling.
Finally, when there are successful charter schools (Geoffrey Canada’s
Harlem charter schools are a famous example), the success is attributed towards
the type of school (charter) rather than the most fundamental criterion,
teacher quality. The prominence of effective charter schools also masks the
fact that other charter schools have mixed results and a handful are even worse
than public education. This creates a vicious cycle where businesses and
philanthropists lavish attention on charter schools rather than public schools;
when combined with “choice,” this again leaves the most disadvantaged students
behind.
Reforms That Do Work
As highlighted above, neither party has been accountable for providing a
robust public education system for our students. You might also be
disillusioned because this post harps excessively on the failings of education
and is cynical in nature. Does a solution to this extremely complex problem
exist?
Thankfully, there are many practical solutions.
Preschools, which accelerates cognitive development and is empirically proven
to aid students later in their educational career, should become part of the
public education system. It would be a good idea to force charter schools to
disclose their teaching methods. The negative incentives behind standardized
testing need to be eliminated and used more as a guideline rather than a
determinant for funding and compensation; in addition, it should incorporate
more critical thinking rather than rote memorization. A “nutrition” food stamp
should be introduced so that students in poverty don’t come into class hungry
or with malnutrition. Student-to-teacher ratios should be reduced, particularly
among the most disadvantaged students. The school year should be lengthened so
that students don’t completely forget everything over the summer.
The funding available to schools should be
delinked from the overall wealth of the district. It might be more appropriate to set a
federal guideline on the necessary level of funding for a school to function
efficiently, and incentivize States to provide sufficient funding for all schools. Optimally, schools should have
the same amount of money per student to spend, but let’s not be socialist here.
XD
The single best way to fix our broken educational system is to improve the quality of our teachers.
Eric Hanushek believes that if we let go the worst 6-8 percent of our teachers,
our OECD scores would be on par with Finland.
While I personally believe that is an exaggeration, teacher quality is
incredibly important. Good teachers smartly incorporate different resources to
help students learn, create a nurturing and tolerant environment that minimizes
the devastating stereotype threat, and emphasize course mastery and critical
thinking over good test-taking skills.
One prong to increase the quality of our teachers is to dramatically
increase teacher compensation and give them the status they enjoy in South
Korea or Finland. The exact salary is debatable, but I think teachers should at
least have a six-figure salary. This keeps the issue of money off the table and
also provides a competitive salary with other STEM fields. While giving different
teachers different salaries is controversial (see merit pay), it might also be
a good idea to give an extra bonus for teachers who decide to educate the most disadvantaged students.
On the flip side, teacher tenure will have to be weakened significantly.
While it does protect the best of the best, it also shields the worst teachers
from even basic accountability, and these are the ones who destroy the
aspirations of their students. It is optimally done with the cooperation of
teacher unions, but should they refuse they may have to be destroyed with an
iron fist. Otherwise, those massive campaign contributions to the Democrats
will effectively block change indefinitely.
Again, the details of these reforms are elusive and need to be hammered
out and produce strong consensus. Basic employment protections should still
exist: teachers should not be discriminated on the basis of race, gender,
sexual orientation, religious affiliation, etc. Giving principals too much
power to fire teachers makes the system extremely arbitrary. Providing detailed
evaluation systems would be costly and crowd out money spent on other resources
designed to help out students.
Ultimately, I think that this question should be left to fellow teachers
and should be structured like a trial. This referendum on the teacher would
optimally take place during a weekend. Students within the class will testify
their experiences for and against the teacher, and other staff will be allowed
to give their own personal views. Then, the teachers acting as a jury will hold
a vote, and the principal will be allowed a somewhat weighted vote. Because
firing a teacher is a big deal, the vote will have to be anywhere from 55% (a
strong majority) to a supermajority in order to successfully “impeach” the
embattled teacher. To avoid disruption, this teacher might be allowed to teach
for the remainder of a particular unit or even the semester, but should not be
fired before a replacement is found.
Unfortunately, there is no evidence suggesting the efficacy of my theory.
Because I do not have extensive knowledge about the educational systems of
South Korea or Finland, I cannot cite case studies there. However, one thing is
clear: teacher tenure must be weakened in some way; its exact implementation can
be debated.
Better teachers would go hand-in-hand with national standards in
education. In order for education to function best, expected results should be
centralized, but the process should be
decentralized. This would give teachers the autonomy to teach however they
see fit and encourages innovation; the only requirement is that students must
learn the specified concepts for a given year.
Finally, with regards to
college admissions, some degree of equality of results is necessary to facilitate
equality of opportunity. When the difficulties of students in poverty or
in poor schooling are taken into account, they are given the opportunity to
attend a university that closely matches their educational potential. The chance given to one generation to
overcome its socioeconomic classification can provide better opportunities for
subsequent generations.
However, affirmative action programs should be minor or moderate at most and should be based on socioeconomic class and overall school quality (what happens in
preschool, elementary school, and middle school are all shape what happens in
high school) rather than race. The stereotype threat that so adversely affects
racial minorities is the symptom of a structural problem (low teacher quality)
that is perfectly within the teacher’s
control.
On the other hand, socioeconomic class is completely outside of the teacher’s control. Students in
poverty are more likely to attend poorer school districts with less competent
teachers, which will always happen regardless of structural reforms because
of the inherent inequality in funds and the stigma that teachers harbor against
poorer school districts. Families in poverty cannot afford private schooling or
other useful resources to such as SAT prep programs to aid the educational
achievement of students outside of
public schooling. Students in poverty do not have the luxury of taking the SAT
a million times to get the optimal score. Moreover, because racial minorities
are more likely to be in poverty or poorer schooling, socioeconomic class solves for race.
---
Contrary to popular belief, there are many sensible and practical
solutions towards fixing our broken educational system. However, politicians,
businessmen, and philanthropists alike have been pushing the wrong reforms.
Should this continue, it wouldn’t be long before our public education system
entered a state of deep disrepair.
As I will outline in a future post, the prevalence of special interests
in our government has blocked the necessary reforms and promoted the incorrect
actions. Until special interests no longer have a disproportionate say in
public policy, it will take mass, sustained outrage before the effective
reforms will be implemented.
Further reading:
Multiplication is for White People, by Lisa Delpit
The Death and Life of the Great American School System, by Diane Ravitch
Chapter 6 of Republic, Lost, by Lawrence Lessig
http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~jon/Econ230C/HanushekRivkin.pdf
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