Archive for the ‘Education and Child Policy’ Category
If Only Government Schools Would Go Extinct
I don’t know much about Texas governor and GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry, though I appreciate his resisting federal bribery in education. I can, though, say that the dustup over his remarks yesterday concerning the age of the Earth, and whether some Texas schools teach creationism alongside evolution, is not a sad commentary on him. It’s a damning commentary on public schooling.
First, let’s get the facts straight: No, it wouldn’t be constitutional to advocate creationism in public schools, though it might be acceptable to teach the religious basis for it without declaring it the truth. Even without possible legal finessing, however, it is very likely that teachers are discussing creationism in Lone Star science classes, and just about every other state’s. As a groundbreaking survey of high school biology teachers recently found, about 13 percent of surveyed teachers explicitly teach creationism or intelligent design in their classes, and about 60 percent dance around evolution, sometimes by teaching numerous views on the subject.
How could this be happening?
About 40 percent of Americans believe that roughly 10,000 years ago God created human beings as we currently exist, and they aren’t going to just let the schools for which they have to pay taxes ignore that. Nor should they: ours is a nation built on individual liberty, and government attacks that at its core when it compels people to support schools that either teach things they find abhorrent or fails to teach things they feel essential. Of course, those who oppose the teaching of creationism are equally justified in standing up for their convictions — hence the creationist black market and constant public-schooling conflict.
The solution: Let parents choose educational options consistent with their norms and beliefs, especially through tax credit programs that allow individuals or corporations to choose what kinds of schools they’ll support. And yes, many people will select options others will dislike, but that’s both a part of freedom and the key to getting coherent and transparent curricula for all.
As a side — but hugely important — note, it is very dangerous to let government declare scientific “winners.” Reality — while very hard to truly know — is not determined by “consensus,” or who can convince the most politicians of something. It simply is. As a result, letting something become officially approved thought is to be assiduously avoided. But don’t take my word for it: Just read up on John Scopes and the huge challenges he faced trying to teach kids about offically forbidden evolution.
Slate.com vs. Tea-Party/Christians/Bachmann
Slate worked itself into a lather yesterday over the insidious education policy implications of Michele Bachmann’s Iowa Straw Poll victory:
As recently as a decade ago, Republicans like George W. Bush, John McCain, and John Boehner embraced bipartisan, standards-and-accountability education reform…. Now we are seeing the GOP acquiesce to the anti-government, Christian-right view of education epitomized by Bachmann…. Against a backdrop of Tea Party calls to abolish the Department of Education and drastically cut the federal government’s role in local public schools….”
To support this narrative, Slate asked Bachmann what the federal government’s role was in education, to which she replied, “There is none; Education is a matter reserved for the states.”
Oh, whoops, sorry. Got that last quote wrong. That wasn’t Bachmann‘s answer, it was the answer of the FDR administration.
This answer rests squarely on the Tenth Amendment, which reserves to the states and the people powers not expressly enumerated and delegated to Congress by the Constitution. It was published by the federal government in 1943, under the oversight of the president, the vice president, and the speaker of the House.
Though it might come as a surprise to Slate‘s writers, our nation was not founded on state-run schooling. And, until very recently in historical terms, the idea that the federal government had a role to play in the classroom was unthinkable. It may have required some theorizing to evaluate the merits of Congress-as-schoolmarm prior to the feds getting involved in a big way in 1965, but now… now we can just look in the rear-view mirror (see chart below).
With nearly half a century of hindsight, advocating a federal withdrawal from America’s schools does not seem “anti-government.” Just anti-crazy.
Imposing National Standards
Next month, the Obama Administration will begin granting waivers to states that are not on track to meet proficiency requirements in the No Child Left Behind Act. Education Secretary Arne Duncan will be granting these waivers selectively, based mostly on states’ willingness to abide by new executive branch mandates not included in NCLB, likely including adopting national curriculum standards.
Duncan has the authority under NCLB to grant waivers, but not to compel states to jump through administration hoops in order to earn them, as Neal McCluskey has documented clearly.
As Neal notes in today’s Cato Daily Podcast, essentially imposing national standards – as well as other potential waiver demands – represents a large-scale assertion of federal executive power over local education:
We’ve broken any semblance of a Constitutional balance of power between the executive and the legislative branch. Now the President is just going to dictate to every school what they’re going to teach. And that is a giant threat to freedom and to the American education system.
A broader recognition that the Constitution grants neither Congress nor the President any role in education would go a long way toward fixing these problems. NCLB may be, to quote Arne Duncan, “a slow-motion train wreck,” but using that law to transfer power away from parents, states and Congress is easily a solution worse than the problem.
Here’s Where Better Schools HAVE Scaled Up…
Earlier this summer, I released a study comparing the performance of California’s charter school networks with the amount of philanthropic grant funding they have received. The purpose was to find out if this model for replicating excellence was consistently effective. The answer, regrettably, was no.
But a new study we are releasing today finds that there is at least one place where better schools HAVE consistently scaled-up: Chile. Thanks to that nation’s public and private school choice program, chains of private schools have arisen, and they not only outperform the public schools, they also outperform the independent “mom-and-pop” private schools.
For anyone interested in replicating educational excellence, this study by a team of Chilean scholars is worth a look.
Cato Unbound: Are Men in Decline?
This month’s Cato Unbound looks at the intersection of education, work, and gender, and asks: Are men in decline? As women have advanced in education, the workplace, and even politics, some fear that the emerging new economy—or perhaps some other factors—are dragging men down. We’ve all heard talk of the Mancession, and it’s well known that men are in the minority now on many college campuses. How long will the trend continue?
Lead essayist Kay Hymowitz makes the case for male decline; Jessica Bennett, Amanda Hess, and Myriam Miedzian give reasons to be skeptical. Hymowitz replies to her critics. (Men, alas, were so far in decline that I couldn’t find a single one to write for this issue.)
The conversation is just getting started, so be sure to drop by again or subscribe to Cato Unbound so you’ll never miss a post.
Colorado Court Halts School Voucher Program
Last Friday, a Colorado District Court halted the new and unique Douglas County school voucher program with a permanent injunction. School choice legislation is a little like the Field of Dreams: pass it, and they will sue–and we all know who “they” are. So there’s a tendency to dismiss legal setbacks for the choice movement as purely the result of self-serving monopolists exploiting bad laws or partisan, activist judges. There are certainly cases that fall into that category, but this Colorado ruling isn’t one of them.
Oh, the self-serving monopolists and opponents of educational freedom are no doubt cheering it, but the ruling does not read like the work of a rube or an ideologue, and not all of the state constitutional provisions on which it was based can be dismissed as outdated examples of religious bigotry. The state’s “compelled support” clause, in particular, seems to uphold a fundamentally American idea: that it is wrong to coerce people to pay for the propagation of ideas that they disbelieve. Thomas Jefferson, in his Virginia Declaration of Religious Freedom, called this: “tyranny.”
Obviously, conventional public schools have been a source of such coercion for a very long time–everyone has to pay for the public schools, despite profound objections they may have to the way those schools teach history, literature, government, biology, or sex education. That’s why we’ve had “school wars” as long as we’ve had government schools. And obviously vouchers offer the advantage of giving parents a much wider range of educational options for their children than do the one-size-fits few public schools. But despite this advantage, vouchers require all taxpayers to fund every kind of schooling, including types of instruction that might violate some taxpayers’ most deeply held convictions. That’s a recipe for continued social conflict over what is taught.
If there were no alternative to vouchers for providing school choice, perhaps it would make sense to have a debate over which freedoms should take precedence: the freedom of choice of families or the freedom of conscience of taxpayers–and then to sacrifice whichever one was deemed less worthy. But there is an alternative, and it does not require anyone to be compelled to support any particular type of instruction. I discuss this alternative, education tax credits, in a recent Huffington Post op-ed.
Pell Grants Best for Buying Votes
Quite simply, Pell Grants are not supposed to be for the middle class. As the U.S. Department of Education’s website makes clear, Pell is supposed to be for “low-income undergraduate and certain postbaccalaureate students.”
So why characterize Pell as a benefit for the middle class? Because lots of people consider themselves to be in that group — which federal politicians rarely define — and policymakers want their votes.
Unfortunately, as Rep. George Miller (D-CA) recently demonstrated, saying Pell is intended for the middle class also makes it a valuable weapon in waging class warfare.
“Pell is the reason they are able to go to college and get ahead,” Miller said in response to congressional Republicans purportedly looking to trim the program as part of debt reduction. “It’s a shameful excuse and an attack on middle class families.”
Other than their usefulness in browbeating those who’d dare propose education cuts, Pell Grants are, at best, of limited value. Yes, they are needed by some people to go to college, but that’s because they are largely built into college prices. Basically, give me a dollar more to pay for school and my college will charge me another buck.
Of course it’s not just Pell that influences prices — there are lots of other sources of aid, and colleges confront numerous variables that affect their costs — but subsidize something and prices will go up. And boy, do they go up in higher education!
One last consideration is crucial but rarely mentioned. One of the great political benefits of Pell is that to recipients it’s free dough — no need to pay it back. That lets politicians play Santa Claus, not the mean banker who sinisterly comes after you to return student-loan money, plus interest. But keep in mind what, in most cases, college is ultimately for: to enable attendees to greatly increase their earnings. In light of that, how can politicians justify simply giving away money from taxpayers? Quick answer: They can’t.
Were you or I to do that it would be called “stealing.” When government does it, apparently, it’s called “helping the middle-class.”
C/P from the National Journal’s “Education Experts” blog.
School Snatchers Invasion Confirmed!
The good news: Supporters haven’t been able to completely stamp out debate over national curriculum standards. The bad news: The Invasion of the School Snatchers strategy is real, and it is working!
Yesterday, I blogged about a letter from Jeb Bush reportedly causing a subcommittee of the American Legislative Exchange Council to table model legislation opposing national standards. Subsequent to my writing that, a follow-up Education Week post reported that debate wasn’t, in fact, quashed by Bush’s letter. Unfortunately, it appears consideration was postponed for another reason: Most state legislators have no idea what’s going on with national standards:
“Legislators have heard of it, but not a whole lot of states engage legislators in discussion of the common core,” said [John Locke Foundation education analyst Terry] Stoops, who describes himself as a common-core opponent. “Some wanted to know more about it, because state education agencies or state boards of education didn’t give them much information, if any, on the common core.”
If this is accurate, it confirms exactly what I’ve been saying for months: Despite being told that the national standards drive is “state-led,” the people’s representatives have been frozen out of it. Worse, it suggests that national-standardizers’ strategy of sneaking standards in is working.
Adding to confirmation of this school-snatcher strategy is a recent blog post from the Fordham Institute’s Michael Petrilli. At first I was heartened: Petrilli, a flag officer in the national standards campaign, was renouncing Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s intent to make national-standards adoption a requirement to get waivers from No Child Left Behind. Perhaps, I thought, I’d gotten my first taker in the Demand Real Voluntarism Challenge. But then it sank in: Petrilli wasn’t demanding that Washington stop perpetuating the voluntarism sham. No, he was afraid something as un-stealthy as high-profile waiver demands would suddenly direct much-unwanted attention to the school-snatcher invasion:
The only possible outcome of Secretary Duncan putting more federal pressure on the states to adopt the Common Core is [to] stoke the fires of conservative backlash–and to lose many of the states that have already signed on.
Hopefully that is exactly what will happen, and both the unconstitutional waivers, and the snatchers strategy, will get all the negative attention they deserve.
From Avoiding the National Curriculum Debate, to Smothering It, Just When We Need It Most
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush cares about education. He made major education reforms in the Sunshine State, including many centered on private school choice. He has established the Foundation for Excellence in Education, and dedicates much of his time to education reform. Unfortunately, when it comes to national curriculum standards, it seems his genuine caring has led him to avoid—and now attempt to quash—critical debate on both the dubious merits of national standards, and the huge threats to federalism posed by Washington driving the standards train.
As I’ve complained on numerous occasions, it’s clear that supporters of national standards have employed a stealth strategy to get their way: back-room drafting of standards, content-free Language Arts, and, especially, employing the maddening mantra that national standardization is “state-led and voluntary.” Sadly, you can now add quashing debate to that, even among conservatives and libertarians with longstanding and crucial federalism and efficacy concerns. And according to Education Week, it appears that Jeb Bush—whose foundation just a couple of years ago invited me to participate in a panel discussion on national standards—is taking point on the smothering strategy:
In this space, we’ve been telling you about a few efforts in state legislatures to complicate adoption or implementation of common standards … A move that had the potential to involve many states unfolded last week in New Orleans, but was stopped in its tracks. And none other than former Fla. Gov. Jeb Bush, revered by many conservatives, was involved in stopping it.
The Education Week report links to a letter that Mr. Bush sent to a subcommittee of the American Legislative Exchange Council that was slated to simply take up discussion of model legislation opposing national standards. Mr. Bush urged members to table the proposal. In other words, he urged them to not even talk about it, because apparently even considering that the Common Core might have dangerous downsides should be avoided, even among people who believe in individualism and liberty.
Unfortunately, quashing debate arguably wasn’t the worst aspect of Mr. Bush’s letter. No, that was the fundamentally flawed pretenses he offered for why Common Core should be embraced without debate.
Want an Amateur Doing Your Splenectomy?
You’re on the operating table, trying to remain calm. The anesthetist holds the mask over your face with her left hand, while adjusting the flow of gasses with her right. Just before you slip under, she says: “Your splenectomy will be performed by Dr. Killdare, who received his degree in Surgery Appreciation from MSU. He’s never actually operated on anyone, but he knows everything there is to know about the way surgeons think about surgery.”
According to software architect and former Department of Education adviser Ze’ev Wurman, that’s essentially the way the national “Common Core” standards treat science:
This framework does not expect our students to be able to do any science, or to be able to solve any science problem. [It] simply teaches our students science appreciation…. It expects our students to become good consumers of science and technology, rather than prepare them to be the discoverers of science and creators of technology.
After reading through the document (twice), Wurman was deeply distressed to discover only a single mention of algebra, a single equation, and no mention of calculus or trigonometry. Most people would not want to be cut open by someone who has only studied Surgery Appreciation. Similarly, a student who has only learned to appreciate science, rather than to actually do it, is not well equipped for a career in research or engineering.
This is one of the utterly obvious problems with homogenizing educational standards at the national level: get them wrong, and you ruin education from sea to shining sea.
The other utterly obvious problem is that children learn different subjects at different paces. Some are ready to study algebra in elementary school, while others might have to wait for high school. And, as demonstrated by Khan Academy and others, it is easy to allow each child to learn as fast as they are able.
The fact that many intelligent people have nevertheless convinced themselves that uniform national standards tied to age/grade are a good idea bears witness to the impressive human capacity for self-deception.
Yes, math is the same from Connecticut and Colorado (as national standards advocates are so eager to point out), but children vary dramatically in their aptitudes and interests even within a single family. In generations to come, people will marvel at our inanity for plunking every student down on the same conveyor belt moving through every subject at a pace determined by their age. Current efforts to elevate this travesty from the state to the federal level, through national standards, will no doubt elicit the fiercest scorn and most profound incomprehension.
Look Out, Voluntarism! Here They Come Again!
Anyone who’s paid really close attention to the national curriculum standards debate – alas, not many people — knows that many standards-hawkers are guilty of one, unacceptable thing. It’s not just pushing for national standards, which though unsupported by meaningful evidence can still be endorsed by reasonable people. No it is constantly asserting that standards adoption is “voluntary” for states. Today, that lie is being exposed once more — if you know the code, that is.
It is being widely reported this morning that in September U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will publish criteria states will have to meet to be granted waivers from the No Child Left Behind Act. (A gross violation of the Constitutions’ separation of powers, by the way, but that is a slightly different debate.) And the administration is signaling that, among other things, it will force all states that want relief from NCLB to adopt national curriculum standards, better known as the Common Core.
But wait: At least based on this morning’s media reports, the Department isn’t actually saying that states will have to adopt the Common Core.
Ah, but it is saying that, only using the smoke-screen euphemisms that national-standardizers constantly employ to mask Washington’s foisting of a de facto federal curriculum on every public school in the nation.
Let’s clear the haze.
The Washington Post notes that “administration officials said they will grant waivers to states that adopt standards designed to prepare high school graduates for college and careers.” “College-and-career” standards means the Common Core, because it is the only multi-state standards regime that purports — dubiously, in the eyes of some experts — to represent adequate preparation for both college and work.
Bloomberg News corroborates this conclusion both by noting that the Obama administration has already pushed for “national standards,” and by quoting White House domestic policy adviser Melody Barnes, who said that ”low expectations, uneven standards and shifting goals are unacceptable. Those days are numbered.”
Why, however would the federal government flatten “uneven” state standards?
As Bloomberg suggests, this is not new. But again, you have to know the subtle cues. The federal ”Race to the Top” shoved states into national standards, but using the crafty verbiage of “adopting internationally benchmarked standards and assessments that prepare students for success in college and the workplace.” President Obama’s proposal for reauthorizing NCLB speaks similarly; it would require states to adopt “college- and career-ready” standards. And in case that’s not enough proof for you, Washington is spending $350 million on two consortia that are developing tests to go with the Common Core, one of which just released draft curriculum “frameworks.”
All of this leads me to reissue a challenge I offered a few months ago to purveyors of the voluntarism ruse: If you really want this to be voluntary, loudly and publicly condemn federal coercion, declaring it unacceptable.
So far, the response has been thundering silence. But the Obama administration is poised to offer yet another opportunity to make things right.
Kudos to Carnevale!
About a month ago, Anthony Carnevale and his associates at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce released a report that, in my estimation, significantly oversold the value of college degrees. As I wrote, it focused too much on median earnings by educational attainment, and made some considerable leaps of faith about the value of degree-holding people who have jobs that do not require college degrees.
Today, in contrast, I’m grateful to Prof. Carnevale for producing a new report that goes a long way toward correcting the first flaw in his June offering.
The College Payoff: Education, Occupations, Lifetime Earnings, released today, does nice work breaking earnings down by both employment category and educational attainment, and showing the significant overlaps in earnings that result. Overall, for instance, Carnevale and company found that 14 percent of workers with no more than a high school diploma earn at least as much as the median Bachelor’s holder. Especially striking, 1.3 percent of people with less than a high school education rake in more than the median possessor of a professional degree (think doctors and lawyers), the highest-earning educational category.
Looking at specific job categories, The College Payoff identifies some of the major occupations you can go into with lower educational attainment that out-earn job categories with higher ones. For instance, driver/sales workers and truck drivers who maxed out at a high school diploma earn an average of $1,531,000 over their lifetimes. That beats the earnings of secretaries, retail sales managers, accounting and auditing clerks, customers service reps, retails salespersons, and nursing and home health aids with some college under their belt. It also beats secretaries, customer service reps, retail salespersons, and accounting and auditing clerks with Associate’s degrees.
There’s a lot more data than that in the report, of course, and it would reward perusal.
Unfortunately, the report’s concluding section starts with this:
No matter how you cut it, more education pays.
As the report itself reveals, there are in fact lots of ways to “cut it” that enable you to earn more with less formal education. Alas, old habits die hard for Carnevale. But just for providing these data, he and his team are to be thanked.
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