Arne Duncan, Secretary of Wheel Reinvention
The final guidelines for the Administration’s “Race to the Top” education reform program have now been released. It’s a system that stimulates competition between the states to produce results that the customer (Secretary Duncan) wants, using financial incentives. Déjà vu, anyone?
It’s as though Arne Duncan recognizes the merits of free market forces, but rather than faithfully reproducing them in the field of education, he’s decided to give us his own reimagining of them.
Here’s the problem. There are already 25 years of scientific research comparing real free education markets to traditional public school systems. It overwhelmingly finds that markets do a better job of serving families. But we have no evidence at all that Secretary Duncan’s newly invented system will do anyone any good.
So why go to all this trouble to reinvent the wheel, when the Secretary’s own Department of Education has found that an on-going federal private school choice program—which gets much closer to a genuine education marketplace—is raising students’ reading ability by two grade levels after just 3 years of participation?
Cato Launches New Web Site Exposing Wasteful Government Spending
Did you know that the average American family spends $1,000 each year on the U.S. Department of Agriculture, whether or not it consumes that agency’s services? Or that the federal government annually spends $1,500 per household on net interest costs alone?
In an ongoing effort to shed light on runaway government spending and expose wasteful government programs, Cato launched a new Web site today that examines the federal budget department-by-department to see which agencies can be reformed or terminated. DownsizingGovernment.org describes which programs are wasteful, damaging and obsolete in an era of trillion-dollar deficits.
The research exposes that many public outlays—though vigorously defended by the politicians who created them and the constituencies they purport to help—are remarkably ineffective at achieving their core aims.
Here are just a few examples:
- Though the Department of Education’s annual budget has more than tripled in real dollars since 1970, that period has not been marked by any tangible improvement in student performance.
- The Department of Housing and Urban Development operates a rural subsidies program even though hundreds of other federal programs benefiting rural constituencies already exist.
- HUD has been characterized by scandalous graft and cronyism under both Republican and Democratic presidents for three decades. The rate at which senior HUD officials have been investigated or prosecuted is chilling, and government watchdogs have found dozens of instances where officials’ private-sector contacts were showered with public money for projects.
Appearing on CNBC Monday, DownsizingGovernment.com editor Chris Edwards explained more about the site:
Plus, keep track of where your tax dollars are going by following DownsizingGovernment.com on Twitter (@DownsizeTheFeds) and Facebook.
Research Shows $100 Billion Ed. Stimulus Likely Hurting Economy
Tomorrow morning, the president’s Council of Economic Advisers will release a report assessing the short and long-term effects of the stimulus bill on the U.S. economy. As with previous iterations, this report will attempt to forecast overall effects of the stimulus across its many different components and the different economic sectors it targets. In doing so, it ignores the clearest research findings available pertaining to a key portion of the stimulus: k-12 education.
The president has committed $100 billion in new money to the nation’s public school systems, and required that states accepting the funds promise not to reduce their own k-12 spending. The official argument for this measure is that higher school spending will accelerate U.S. economic growth. But a July 2008 study in the Journal of Policy Sciences finds that, to the authors’ own surprise, higher spending on public schooling is associated with lower subsequent economic growth. Spending more on public schools hurts the U.S. economy.
How is that possible? There is little debate in academic circles that raising human capital — improving the skills and knowledge of workers — boosts productivity. So an obvious interpretation of the JPS study is that raising public school spending must not increase human capital. While this possibility surprised study authors Norman Baldwin and Stephen Borrelli, it is consistent with the data on U.S. educational productivity over the past two generations.
Since 1970, inflation adjusted public school spending has more than doubled. Over the same period, achievement of students at the end of high school has stagnated according to the Department of Education’s own long term National Assessment of Educational Progress. Meanwhile, the high school graduation rate has declined by 4 or 5%, according to Nobel laureate economist James Heckman. So the only thing higher public school spending has accomplished is to raise taxes by about $300 billion annually, without improving outcomes.
The fact that more schooling without more learning is not a recipe for economic growth is confirmed by the independent empirical work of economists Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann. Their key finding is that academic achievement, not schooling per se, is what matters to economic growth.
Based on this body of research, the president’s decision to pump $100 billion into existing public school systems is likely slowing the U.S. economic recovery.
Filed under: Education and Child Policy; Government and Politics; Tax and Budget Policy
Staid Speech Is Cold Comfort
After all of the rancor last week over his planned back-to-school address, it was predictable that in the end President Obama would offer a largely non-controversial speech about working hard and staying in school. If he sticks to the text released today, that is pretty much what he will do. Unfortunately, whether or not that was his original intent – and no one knows for sure but the President and his advisors – many Obama supporters will likely use the relatively staid final product as grounds to smear people concerned about the speech as right-wing kooks or out-of-control partisans. At the very least, such an outcome would be in keeping with a lot of the email I’ve gotten since the story first broke. But it will miss several critical points:
- No matter how innocuous the content of the speech, this could certainly be an address with very political goals, intended to cast the president in the warm glow of a man who just cares about kids. From kissing babies, to photo-op reading sessions featuring cute tikes on classroom floors, this could be just another instance of the old practice of using children as props for political gain. And how presumptuous of the president to make himself – rather than the children, their teachers, and their schools – the center of attention on what is the first day of school for millions of kids. Finally, add the parts of the speech that sound like the President patting himself on the back for overcoming difficulties as a youth, and the speech could easily have political aims.
- Many people feared, thanks to politically and ideologically suggestive lesson guides created by the U.S. Department of Education, that the speech would be an effort at indoctrination. Critically, it was only after very loud, initial outrage that the Department made changes to the guides and the White House announced it would release the text of the speech ahead of time. Yet administration defenders act like everyone knew from the outset that the speech would just be about working hard and staying in school. And who knows what the speech might have looked like had there not been so negative an initial reaction.
- Despite its generally innocuous tone, the speech does contain some controversial political and ideological assertions, including that “setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools” is the job of the federal government. Also, the things the President highlights as worthy aspirations are disproportionately government and non-profit work. And then there’s this self-aggrandizing assertion: “Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn.”
- Ultimately, no matter what happens now that the speech has been published, one thing cannot be ignored or spun: When government controls education, wrenching political and social conflict is inevitable. Americans are very diverse – ideologically, ethnically, morally, religiously – but they all have to support a single system of government schools. As a result, they are constantly forced to fight to have their values and desires respected, and the losers inevitably have their liberty infringed. In this case, reasonable people who want their children to hear the President must fight it out with equally reasonable people who do not want their children to watch the speech in school. It’s a situation completely at odds with a free society, but as we have seen not just with the current conflict, but seemingly endless battles over history textbooks, the teaching of human origins, sex education, and on and on, it is inevitable when government runs the schools. Which is why the most important lesson to be learned from this presidential-address donnybrook is that Americans need educational freedom. We need universal school choice or crippling conflicts like this will keep on coming, liberty will continue to be compromised, and our society will be ripped farther and farther apart.
Filed under: Education and Child Policy; Government and Politics
Want to Contact Your School District? Here’s How.
Since Neal McCluskey and I weighed in on the president’s planned address to public school students this morning, we’ve been getting a whole lot of calls and e-mails from parents who aren’t too keen on the prospect. They’ve been asking us how to let their school districts know that they don’t feel comfortable with the president as “Educator in Chief.”
If you’re in the same boat, here’s how to contact your district officials and (politely, of course) voice your opinion. Go to this school district search page at the Department of Education and type in the name of your district and the state that it’s in. Click the button and it will display your district’s telephone number.
I’m sure the president would approve of helping parents to become more actively involved in their own children’s education.
Race to the Takeover
With the federal takeover of health care stalled, President Obama was able to enjoy a little feeling of success today at an event celebrating the “Race to the Top Fund,” a $4.35 billion kitty of education money created under the economic “stimulus” law. Not much actually happened today — the draft state application for fund dollars was released — but that was enough to produce a full-on, Department of Education dog-and-pony show topped off with a speech by the president. The administration even had a bit of a media blitz leading up to the show, with numerous articles appearing in major papers, a Washington Post op-ed by Secretary Duncan, and the president participating in a lengthy Post interview.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing about the Race to the Top Fund actually worth celebrating. Despite rhetoric by the president about “evidence-based policymaking” and promises that “politics won’t come into play” with fund money, this is just another escalation of politicized, destructive, federal education interference. It pours more taxpayer ducats into the edu-abyss, and with new data-collection requirements and money for national (read: federal) standards and tests, further tightens Washington’s grip on our schools. And don’t expect any of this to translate into better outcomes: The people employed by government schools, who have the greatest incentive and ability to control education policy, will still be calling the shots in a soon-to-be even tighter monopoly. Heck, just ask American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten and National Education Association president Dennis Van Roekel. Both were in attendance at today’s big event, and both were singled out for praise by Secretary Duncan and President Obama.
The race to the federal takeover just keeps getting faster.
Finally, an Education Muckraker!
I’ve often complained on this blog that there are no education muckrakers – no reporters who will actually go out and investigate the misleading claims so often fed to them by politicians and public school officials. Well, it turns out there’s at least one, and his name is Ron Matus.
After being told countless times that public schools in Florida spend just $7,000 per pupil annually, Matus decided to do what no other ed reporter in the state (so far as I know) has done: check it. In a blog post today, he explains where the $7,000 number comes from, he points out that the actual total is $12,000 per pupil, and he lets readers decide which number is more relevant to them. Way to go, Mr. Matus!
I particularly enjoyed this line: “[Department of Education] officials say it’s fair to roll federal money into a per-pupil spending figure – that money does go to operational costs – but not capital outlay and debt service.”
Apparently schools don’t need buildings anymore! Wonderful news! Now that Floridians no longer have to pay for construction and renovation costs, they’ll save $6 billion a year. That is, they’ll start saving it as soon as the Department of Education gives it back to them. What’s that? They don’t want to give it back even though they say it doesn’t count? Gee. I guess it does count then, doesn’t it?
This public school emperor isn’t just naked, he’s mincing about flamboyantly and daring on-lookers to call him sartorially challenged. Well we dare, pal, we dare. If you want buildings to house all those students, and you want the billions to pay for them, then the St. Pertersburg Times, at least, is going to start counting it.
If there are any other reporters out there who have similarly tracked down the real total per pupil spending numbers, let me know and I’ll cite your work here. Or, if you’d like to try it but don’t know where to start, drop me an e-mail.
Propagandist Change
The Obama administration is taking down the “No Child Left Behind” schoolhouses in front of the U.S. Department of Education. According to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the name is just too “toxic.” Besides, he’s got his own plan to manipulate the public’s cuteness zone. As the Washington Post reports, “photos of students, from preschool to college age, are going up on 44 ground-floor windows, forming an exhibit that can be seen from outside. There are images of young people reading, attending science class and playing basketball.”
So the propaganda is changing. The disaster that has been federal involvement in education, however, keeps rumbling along. Indeed, it seems poised to get even worse. The Obama folks have been mum about what, exactly, they have planned for reauthorization of the No Child Left…er…Elementary and Secondary Education Act, but the foreshadowing has been ominous: $100 billion in “stimulus” for already cash-drenched American education; loud endorsement of national standards; dangling $350 million to bankroll national (read: federal) tests; and the smothering of DC school choice.
So meet the new propagandist, same as the old propagandist…only, quite possibly, even worse.
A Dialogue on School Choice
The South Carolina legislature is currently considering a tax credit bill intended to give parents an easier choice between public and private schools. It would do this by cutting taxes on parents who pay for their own children’s education, and by cutting taxes on anyone who donates to a non-profit Scholarship Granting Organization (SGO). The SGOs would subsidize tuition for low income families (who owe little in taxes and so couldn’t benefit substantially from the direct tax credit). Charleston minister Rev. Joseph Darby opposes such programs, and I support them. We’ve decided to have this dialogue to explain why. The next installment is here.
Rev. Joe Darby
Opening Comment, Con
My local newspaper, The Charleston Post and Courier, recently affirmed their continuing editorial suggestion that we “give School Tax Credits a Try.” I think that’s a very bad idea.
My wife is a public school teacher — and an excellent one at that. She spends much of her time either shaping young minds or preparing to do so, even supplementing meager supplies at her own expense and using creative means to reach and teach children described as “at risk.” Her school is almost 100% “free lunch,” but her students score well on state tests because she’s a good teacher. Most of her colleagues who labor under difficult circumstances are excellent teachers too. Rather than simply blaming an ominous “public education establishment,” we should note the truth — objective studies show that private education is not always a winner. A 2008 United States Department of Education study of the District of Columbia voucher program found that students in the program generally did no better on reading and math tests after two years than their public school peers.
A mass exodus to private schools will weaken public schools by leaving behind parents who have the least ability to advocate for or assist their children, and remove positive peer role models from struggling students. The major beneficiaries of private school choice in South Carolina will not be poor families, for the tuition tax credits and scholarships proposed will not cover the cost of many good private schools and will leave parents to take up the slack and to provide other things like uniforms, transportation and extracurricular activity fees. The major beneficiaries will be affluent parents who will simply have more disposable income when their share of their children’s tuition is decreased.
Before we give school tax credits a “try” we should first give equitably funded, staffed and equipped public schools a “try,” for many southern states have never done so. Excellence in public education for African-Americans was frowned upon after the Post Civil War period of reconstruction. In Paradoxes of Segregation by R. Scott Baker, Charleston, SC School Superintendent A.B. Rhett touted what was Burke Industrial School in 1939 as a place to “supply cooks, maids and delivery boys.”
His views matched those of the political powers that be when South Carolina’s schools were separate and unequal. The U.S. Supreme Court outlawed segregated schools in 1954, but South Carolina held out until the 1960’s. Our legislatively ordained strategies to maintain segregation included allowing parents to “choose” their children’s public schools and giving state “scholarships” to white parents who sent their children to private schools established to maintain segregation — the same essential strategies in the present quest for school tax credits. Many predominately African-American schools were woefully underfunded, and when whites fled the public schools for private schools, public schools sank into a state of chronic neglect. We can’t label public schools as “failures” when we’ve failed our schools. When we fully and equitably fund, equip and staff all public schools, we can then “try” tuition credits, for parents can then choose between quality public and private schools — although that might be bad for the private school business.
I serve as the pastor of a church in peninsular Charleston, where architectural preservation is serious business. Homes and businesses that have been long abandoned or neglected and are all but falling over aren’t torn down — they’re rebuilt and restored in spite of years of chronic neglect. If we can do that for neglected homes, then we should also acknowledge our past failings and do the same for our public schools instead of simply tearing them apart or abandoning them.
***
The Rev. Darby is senior pastor of the AME Morris Brown Church in Charleston, and First Vice President of the Charleston Branch of the NAACP.
Andrew Coulson
Opening Comment, Pro
On paper, the United States offers its citizens a solemn promise: work hard and you can succeed here — regardless of your race, sex, creed, or family wealth. But there’s a catch. To secure a good job you first need a good education. On paper, we’ve taken care of that, too. Over the past 150 years we’ve built up a monumental system of free state-run schools that aims to ensure every child access to a quality education.
In reality, it’s all lies.
If you’re in the top fifth of wage earners, there’s just a one-in-a-hundred chance that you are functionally illiterate. If you’re in the bottom fifth or have no income at all, the odds are that you cannot understand a newspaper or follow the directions on a pill bottle. Despite the relentless efforts of generations of reformers, America’s system of public schooling has failed in its most essential duty. We are not equipping all children to succeed in private life and participate in public life. America’s meritocratic promise is a lie.
What can we do about it?
There are those who still believe that the existing system can be fixed. Having compared different kinds of school systems from ancient Greece to the modern day, and from the poorest to the richest nations on Earth, I am convinced that that effort is futile. The problems with the status quo are endemic to its design.
Public schooling hasn’t failed so many children for so long because teachers weren’t smart enough, or paid well enough, or because classes were too large, or the federal government played too small a role. It has failed because it lacks the freedoms and incentives that drive progress in every other field. Public school teachers are hamstrung by regulations and are paid based on time served rather than classroom performance. Parents are not free to seek out the public or private educational setting best suited to their children, they are extorted into the state system because of its monopoly on $12,000 per pupil in government funding.
But should we prevent people from trying to fix it? Certainly not. If they think they can bring to public schooling the same incredible progress that other human endeavors have experienced over the past forty years, more power to them.
By the same token, no one who wants what’s best for kids should stand in the way of a program that would give parents educational alternatives today. Our children cannot wait to see if the current generation of public school reformers will somehow succeed where their predecessors failed.
I’m an engineer by training and a geek by nature. I advocate programs like the one under consideration in South Carolina because the evidence overwhelmingly supports them. Scientific studies comparing this kind of free enterprise education system to conventional public schooling favor the free enterprise approach by a margin of 15 to 1.
Others advocate school choice for more personal reasons. DC school voucher recipient Carlos Battle wrote a poem explaining his gratitude and commitment to school choice, and delivered it to the rally here last week in support of that program:
surrender me from the typical stereotype of a
black young man
one who slings rocks, smokes weed, and keeps a
gun at hand
i am a whole different guy
one who reads books and wears a tie
you see, I’m changing the perception of a young
black man
i’m climbing the ladder of success – try and stop
me, try as hard as you can….
Please don’t.
Please don’t stop Carlos or the children who would follow him up that ladder.
***
Andrew Coulson is director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, and author of Market Education: The Unknown History.
Rally to Save DC Vouchers Tomorrow. Why?
Tomorrow afternoon at 1pm, supporters of Washington DC Opportunity Scholarships will be rallying in Freedom Plaza to save the school voucher program. Why? That’s easy: Because a federal Department of Education study shows that parents are overwhelmingly more satisfied with it than they are with DC’s public schools. Because the same study shows that the program is raising student achievement above the level in the public schools. Because the children participating in it feel it is giving them a chance to realize their full potential in life — a chance that will disappear if the program is allowed to die, as they have attested in numerous YouTube videos.
The harder question is why Congress — particularly congressional Democrats led by Sen. Richard Durbin (D., Ill.) — want to kill the vouchers. Their stated reason is that it robs money from needy public schools and gives it to private schools that are already flush from lavish tuition fees.
But the voucher program not only does not take money away from DC public schools, the language of the law actually includes an extra $13 million annually for DC public schools, above their normal funding stream. As for lavish vs. needy schools, it’s true that there’s a huge gap between what is spent per pupil on public education in DC and the average tuition charged at the voucher-accepting private schools: a yawning $20,000 gap. The current year budget for the District of Columbia allocates $26,555 per pupil for k-12 education — up from $24,600 last year. Meanwhile, the Department of Education study linked to above puts the average tuition at voucher schools at $6,620. So vouchers are getting better results at one quarter the cost.
Clearly, Democrats have other reasons for opposing the voucher program, and this letter from the NEA might have a little something to do with it.
Are People Finally Seeing the Gloom?
Maybe, just maybe, word might finally be getting out, and people might finally be getting angry, about the dirty dealings in Washington, DC, that are quietly killing the city’s desperately needed school voucher program.
The story has been percolating for more than ten days, ever since the U.S. Department of Education staged a stealthy and too-late-to-matter release of a study showing that DC’s voucher program works. But the coverage has largely been restricted to the blogosphere, along with a smattering of newspaper opinion pieces.
What might be changing that? A smarmy Education Department letter released late last week telling parents who thought they had won a voucher for the 2009-10 school year that no such voucher would be forthcoming. This despite the fact that the voucher program is not scheduled to end until 2010-11. Apparently, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan – who seems to be doing all of the political dirty work against DC school choice – decided that it just doesn’t make sense to let kids have a year of private schooling if they’ll just have to go back to DC public schools. Never mind that a year of good schooling is better than no good schooling, or that the program can still be saved if Congress and the DC City Council vote to reauthorize it – barring the door to quality education right now is clearly in the children’s best interest.
The department’s letter has finally sparked some news media interest in the plight of DC school choice. Spurred by the letter, this afternoon Fox News ran what, to my knowledge, is the first non-opinion piece about the Obama administration’s quiet-but-deadly campaign against choice in DC. There is also word that voucher parents are beginning to organize a response to the assault on their children’s educational lifelines, with a strategy meeting scheduled for Wednesday night. Oh, and the opinion pieces keep on coming.
Sadly, as I and a few others have noted over the least week-and-a-half, when it comes to education it seems that President Obama’s rhetoric about putting evidence ahead of politics is just that – rhetoric. Hopefully, more people are starting to see the dim, disappointing light.
Making Sure the Job Gets Done
If you’ve been reading this blog over the last week or so, you’ll have noticed that the big story in education has been the highly suspicious handling of an evaluation of Washington, DC’s, voucher program by the supposedly politics-out-of-policymaking Obama administration. The evaluation shows voucher students making clearly superior readings gains to students who applied for but did not receive vouchers, while math results were equal. In other words, vouchers seem to work. But it doesn’t matter: For all intents and purposes Congress killed DC choice last month, and throughout that murderous process this study was being held under wraps – for numerous possible, but all unacceptable, reasons – in the United States Department of Education.
Well, on Saturday the Washington Post editorialized about the whole stinkin’ mess, and in so doing revealed something new: Secretary of Education Arne Duncan decided not to allow any new students to enroll in the program for the 2009-2010 school year, despite the program not being scheduled to end until 2010-2011. And, though it is close to unthinkable politically that both Congress and the DC City Council will reauthorize the program — just as Congressional enemies of educational freedom planned when they wrote those stipulations into law – it is not absolutely impossible. But in good hitman style, Duncan is making sure the job gets done, holding the pillow over the victim’s face as long and tightly as possible to make sure there won’t be any unforeseen and inconvenient coming back to life.
Oh, and irony of ironies? According to the Post, Duncan is doing this extra bit of dirty work because [italics added] “it is not in the best interest of students and their parents to enroll them in a program that may end a year from now.”
Week in Review: Successful Voucher Programs, Immigration Debates and a New Path for Africa
Federal Study Supports School Vouchers
Last week, a U.S. Department of Education study revealed that students participating in a Washington D.C. voucher pilot program outperformed peers attending public schools.
According to The Washington Post, the study found that “students who used the vouchers received reading scores that placed them nearly four months ahead of peers who remained in public school.” In a statement, education secretary Arne Duncan said that the Obama administration “does not want to pull participating students out of the program but does not support its continuation.”
Why then did the Obama administration “let Congress slash the jugular of DC’s school voucher program despite almost certainly having an evaluation in hand showing that students in the program did better than those who tried to get vouchers and failed?”
The answer, says Cato scholar Neal McCluskey, lies in special interests and an unwillingness to embrace change after decades of maintaining the status quo:
It is not just the awesome political power of special interests, however, that keeps the monopoly in place. As Terry Moe has found, many Americans have a deep, emotional attachment to public schooling, one likely rooted in a conviction that public schooling is essential to American unity and success. It is an inaccurate conviction — public schooling is all-too-often divisive where homogeneity does not already exist, and Americans successfully educated themselves long before “public schooling” became widespread or mandatory — but the conviction nonetheless is there. Indeed, most people acknowledge that public schooling is broken, but feel they still must love it.
Susan L. Aud and Leon Michos found the program saved the city nearly $8 million in education costs in a 2006 Cato study that examined the fiscal impact of the voucher program.
To learn more about the positive effect of school choice on poor communities around the world, join the Cato Institute on April 15 to discuss James Tooley’s new book, The Beautiful Tree: A Personal Journey Into How the World’s Poorest People Are Educating Themselves.
Obama Announces New Direction on Immigration
The New York Times reports, “President Obama plans to begin addressing the country’s immigration system this year, including looking for a path for illegal immigrants to become legal, a senior administration official said on Wednesday.”
In the immigration chapter of the Cato Handbook for Policymakers, Cato trade analyst Daniel T. Griswold offered suggestions on immigration policy, which include:
- Expanding current legal immigration quotas, especially for employment-based visas.
- Creating a temporary worker program for lower-skilled workers to meet long-term labor demand and reduce incentives for illegal immigration.
- Refocusing border-control resources to keep criminals and terrorists out of the country.
In a 2002 Cato Policy Analysis, Griswold made the case for allowing Mexican laborers into the United States to work.
For more on the argument for open borders, watch Jason L. Riley of The Wall Street Journal editorial board speak about his book, Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders.
In Case You Couldn’t Join Us
Cato hosted a number of fascinating guests recently to speak about new books, reports and projects.
- Salon writer Glenn Greenwald discussed a new Cato study that exa
mines the successful drug decriminalization program in Portugal.
- Patri Friedman of the Seasteading Institute explained his project to build self-sufficient deep-sea platforms that would empower individuals to break free of national governments and start their own societies on the ocean.
- Dambisa Moyo, author of the book Dead Aid, spoke about her research that shows how government-to-government aid fails. She proposed an “aid-free solution” to development, based on the experience of successful African countries.
Find full-length videos to all Cato events on Cato’s events archive page.
Also, don’t miss Friday’s Cato Daily Podcast with legal policy analyst David Rittgers on Obama’s surge strategy in Afghanistan.
Filed under: Education and Child Policy; Foreign Policy and National Security; General; Government and Politics
What’s the Job of the Institute of Education Sciences?
I don’t have much to add to Andrew’s post on Russ Whitehurst’s defense of Arne Duncan. Even with what Whitehurst wrote, I simply don’t buy that Duncan didn’t know of the D.C. voucher evaluation’s results, or even its very existence, while Congress was debating the program’s fate a little over a month ago. But, unfortunately, the reality is that neither I nor anyone else will probably ever get a clear look inside the black box of who really knew what, when, in the Department of Education.
So suppose the secretary really was totally clueless. What does this say about the value of the Institute of Education Sciences, the division of the Education Department responsible for the report? IES received the evaluation results in November and released the report on April 3. Clearly, it had the results well in advance of congressional action on the program. That leaves only a few reasons why it wouldn’t have released the findings — or even something characterized as “expedited” or “preliminary” — in time to inform congressional debate:
- IES employees hadn’t sufficiently scrutinized — or perhaps even looked at — the report several months after they had received it.
- IES had scrutinized the report and couldn’t push out the results because of strict adherence to rigid bureaucratic procedures.
- For political or other reasons, IES purposely sat on the results.
None of those, quite simply, are acceptable answers given the job of IES as stated clearly on the Department of Education’s website:
The mission of IES is to provide rigorous evidence on which to ground education practice and policy.
Mission disturbingly not accomplished, IES.
The Bloom Could Not Survive
“Among several outstanding nominations made by President-elect Obama, I believe Arne Duncan is the best.”
That’s what Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) said of now-U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan at his confirmation hearing. Alexander thought that Duncan was a man who truly embraced reform and could work with anybody, and who, like his boss, seemed to really want to get beyond politics.
That was before reality set in.
With the Department of Education’s media-dodging, Friday-afternoon release of a study showing that Washington’s voucher program is outperforming DC public schools at a fraction of the cost, and Duncan’s galling failure to report these results as Congress debated the voucher program’s fate last month, it has become clear that Duncan is far from above playing politics. Of course, he isn’t necessarily calling the shots. He works for President Obama, whom you might recall announced that his children would attend posh, private, Sidwell Friends on a Friday afternoon.
It’s not only on choice that Obama and Duncan are playing the game. They are great at reform-y talk about such things as accountability and high standards, but talk is all they’ve delivered. Oh, that and tens-of-billions of dollars to bail out public schools from which parents should never be allowed to take their kids and money, and which aren’t good enough for the president’s children.
So is the public starting to see that the administration might not be delivering the great change it has promised? It’s hard to tell, but some journalists and education wonks are catching on.
Ed. Feds to Reinvent Wheel, Ignoring Pi
Education secretary Arne Duncan testified before Congress today on the president’s 2010 budget for the Department of Education. One of the first things he said was this:
We also plan to work very hard at scaling up success in our education system. Under our 2010 budget, the Department would continue to use the Innovation Fund created by the Recovery Act to identify and replicate successful models and strategies that raise student achievement. We know that there are many school systems and non-profit organizations across the country with demonstrated track records of success in raising student achievement, and our 2010 request would help bring their success to scale.
Duncan and President Obama are so, so right to focus on this challenge. Sadly, their efforts will so, so utterly fail, just as those of all their predecessors. Here’s why:
For a long time, observers of U.S. public schooling have wrung their hands over a pernicious problem: there are many isolated and transitory examples of excellence within the system (think “Stand and Deliver“), but efforts to scale these models up on a lasting, nationwide basis have always failed.
One early and notorious example was the federal Follow Through experiment of the late 1960s and early ’70s. At a cost of over a billion dollars, it demonstrated that one instruction method, “Distar,” clearly outperformed 21 others. Distar was #1 not just overall, but in each of the subcategories of reading, arithmetic, spelling and language. It placed a close second in promoting advanced conceptual skills, and was even the most effective at boosting students’ self-esteem and responsibility toward their work. Nothing else came close.
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