Jay P. Greene’s Blog

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation recent presented a study of the future of inner city Catholic schools reached mostly dreary conclusions. Catholic schools face a number of problems, but there is a bright spot that Fordham missed where Catholic schools are flourishing, even the inner city schools: Arizona.

I began to investigate the state of Catholic schools in Arizona when Education Next published the article “Can Catholic Schools Be Saved?” This article posed the provocative question: Will charter schools finish off inner city Catholic private schools? Preliminary evidence suggests that charter schools are actually threatening to help close inner city Catholic schools. A RAND Corporation study focusing on the impact of charter schools in Michigan found that private schools were taking a bigger hit from charter school competition than public schools on a student for student basis. “Private schools will lose one student for every three students gained in the charter schools,” the study concluded.

Ronald Nuzzi, director of the Alliance for Catholic Education Leadership Program at the University of Notre Dame asserted that charter schools “are one of the biggest threats to Catholic schools in the inner city, hands down. How do you compete with an alternative that doesn’t cost anything?” Inner-city Catholic schools are in a deep and tragic crisis, especially in Michigan. Sadly, Michigan’s constitution essentially forbids private school choice of any sort, and the Diocese of Detroit has witnessed a 20 percent decline in enrollment since 2002 and currently faces another round of school closures. Overall, 29 Diocese of Detroit schools have already closed.

A fully scaled system of charter schools for inner-city areas may represent an existential threat to inner-city Catholic schools already struggling with the loss of religious staff and the movement of parishioners to the suburbs. In many inner city areas, Catholic schools have been the only high performing schools for decades. Catholic schools have an especially strong record in successfully educating disadvantaged students and sending them on to college. It would be tragic and absurd to help drive these schools out of business by publicly funding student attendance to both public and charter schools, but not to private schools.

Writing in the Journal of Catholic Education, I detailed a more hopeful example than Michigan: Arizona. Total charter school enrollment is 12.5 percent higher in Arizona than in Michigan, despite the fact that Michigan’s population is far larger than Arizona’s. Arizona, however, has two factors working for it that Michigan does not. Arizona has both a growing student population and private school choice programs (two tax credit programs and two voucher programs).

Catholic education is anything but wilting in Arizona. Between 2004 and 2006, schools in the Diocese of Phoenix saw a two percent increase in enrollment against a national decline. Two new Catholic schools opened in the 2006-2007 school year, with four more scheduled to open. Marybeth Mueller, superintendent of Catholic schools for the Diocese of Phoenix stated that the tax credit program has been “critical to keeping financially struggling families in the Catholic school system.” The tax credit programs provide about half of the states Catholic school students limited financial assistance.

Arizona private school attendance has increased outside of the Catholic schools as well. Despite the opening of hundreds of charter schools, the percentage of Arizona children attending private schools increased by 23 percent between 1991 and 2003, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Parents must pay public school taxes even if they do their fellow taxpayers the service of placing them in a private school at their own expense. If parents decide to seek an education they find a private for their children, they effectively pay twice- once when they pay taxes, another when they pay tuition and fees. Both tax credits and school vouchers can reduce this double payment penalty, expanding access to private schooling. In the process, competition will improve the performance of public schools by expanding competition for students, and (in states like Arizona) reduce public school overcrowding.

Arizona and Michigan have both enjoyed the large benefits of charter schools. The starkly different trends in private schooling suggest strongly that choice supporters must redouble their efforts on the private choice side.

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Recently, a lot of people linked to this story:

A substitute teacher in Pasco County has lost his job after being accused of wizardry. Teacher Jim Piculas does a magic trick where a toothpick disappears and then reappears. Piculas recently did the 30-second trick in front of a classroom at Rushe Middle School in Land ‘O Lakes. Piculas said he then got a call from the supervisor of teachers, saying he’d been accused of wizardry. “I get a call the middle of the day from head of supervisor of substitute teachers. He says, ‘Jim, we have a huge issue, you can’t take any more assignments you need to come in right away,’” he said. Piculas said he did not know of any other accusations that would have led to the action. The teacher said he is concerned that the incident may prevent him from getting future jobs.

Quite a few bloggers and (especially) their commenters used this as an opportunity to bash their favorite targets: Parents are stupid, conservatives are stupid, Christians are stupid, stupid people are stupid, etc. A handful of people even managed to ask whether maybe the school officials bear just a tiny fraction of the responsibility.

Unfortunately, when describing the story, most bloggers and even most media outlets failed to include this information:

Local education officials, however, deny that Piculas was sacked for wizardry, citing a number of other complaints made against the teacher, such as not sticking to lesson plans and allowing students to use school computers.

Oops.

His dismissal form and the formal letter informing him that he would not be hired again also state that he used inappropriate language in class and put a student in charge of the class. And that reference to letting students “use school computers” turns out to mean that he allegedly let kids wander away from class and use the computers when they were supposed to be at their desks working.

Always click through those links before posting!

Nor did many people mention that the same school district that allegedly fired a substitute teacher for performing one magic trick has been hiring a professional magician to come in and perform for the kids for years, and after this story broke, they’ve reassured him that they still want him to come do his show. That tends to discredit the storyline some are peddling that Pasco County has been taken over by crazy right-wing extremists.

It’s not even clear whether any parental complaint about wizardry was actually filed. Most media reports I’ve seen have reported as fact that a parent complained to the school about wizardry, but the only evidence for this “fact” seems to be the claims of the fired substitute himself.

Tampa Channel 10 initially reported that the district claimed that the reason for the firing wasn’t “just” wizardry. That’s better than most media outlets, which didn’t report the district’s side of the story at all. But the claim that the problem wasn’t “just” wizardry didn’t come from a quote; the reporter put that word into the district’s mouth. As noted above, other outlets reported simply that that district denied wizardry was an issue. All the direct quotes and documents from the district seem to back that interpretation rather than the characterization in the initial Channel 10 report. And when Channel 10 did a follow-up report, the district said performing magic tricks is not against school policy, and the teacher’s magic trick was “insignificant.”

It is, of course, theoretically possible that there really was a parental complaint about wizardry, and that a dim-witted local school official decided to fire a substitute based on one parent’s crazy complaint, and that the district made up a bunch of accusations against the substitute after the fact in order to cover up what had happened (all of which is alleged by the fired substitute).

If so, I can only say that the schools in Pasco County are amazingly responsive to their parents. Do you suppose they have a big phone bank to call every parent at home every night and get approval for the next day’s lesson plan and lunch menu?

Kudos to Tampa Channel 10, which seems to have done the most follow-up work on this story, and to the few other media outlets doing their jobs.

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

A couple of weeks after Greg Anrig proclaimed the death of the school choice movement we see an expansion of the Step Up for Students program pass with strong Democratic support in Florida, and today, the Governor of Georgia signed a similar tax credit into law, and a voucher program for New Orleans passes with a large bipartisan majority 60-42 in the LA House.

Don’t look now, but a choice bill is out of committee in New Jersey.

Andy Rotherham predicted that Anrig would regret writing the article. Let none doubt the prophetic powers of the Eduwonk.

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue has signed the legislation sent to him last month creating a tax-credit scholarship program in Georgia. It’s the nation’s 23rd school choice program.

I said it before, and I’ll say it again: Further proof, if further proof were necessary, that school choice is politically more successful than ever.

One thing that’s really gratifying about this program is that it has no demographic restrictions at all. Any student enrolled in Georgia public schools (K-12) is eligible for a private school scholarship. The days of limited choice are numbered.

Having swung from a win in Louisiana to a win in Georgia, all eyes now swing back to Louisiana, where a legislative vote today will determine whether a voucher bill moves forward. Gov. Bobby Jindal recently signed into law an education tax credit in the state.

Details on the new Georgia program, as they will soon appear on the Friedman Foundation’s online program guide:

GEORGIA

Tax Credits for Student Scholarship Organizations

Enacted 2008

Georgia provides a credit on both personal and corporate income taxes for donations to Student Scholarship Organizations (SSOs), privately run non-profit organizations that support private-school scholarships. Individual taxpayers contributing to SSOs may claim a dollar-for-dollar credit of up to $1,000, and married couples filing jointly may claim up to $2,500.  Corporate taxpayers may claim a dollar-for-dollar credit worth up to 75 percent of the taxpayer’s total tax liability. The program is capped at $50 million in tax credits per year.

FAST FACTS

·         All Georgia public school students eligible

·         Both individual and corporate taxpayers may donate

·         Program capped at $50 million

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

In Team America: World Police Hans Blix shows up at the palace of Kim Jong Il. Blix demands to inspect North Korean nuclear facilities, “or else.” Kim Jong Il asks or else what, and Blix threatens to send “a very angry letter” from the United Nations. Kim proceeds to open a trap door, dropping Blix into a shark tank.

I would include a youtube link, but this is a family blog.

So just to sum up what I have gathered on Reading First: we have decades worth of high quality evidence showing that public schools are using terribly ineffective reading methods. When the Bush administration finally tries to do something about it, with serious money involved, lobbyists water down the bill language and the program administrator is subjected to a witch hunt. Essentially the schools take the billions and barely implement the program. When the program is evaluated, it “doesn’t work.”

The next time one of my fellow reformers suggests that they can fix things once they get to be the ones with their firm grip on the ship wheel, I’ll humbly suggest that they have the phrase “READING FIRST” tattooed to their forehead to serve as a constant reminder of how education policy actually works. Meaningful education reform can be done, but it works best when there is pressure from both the top down and the bottom up.

What went wrong with Reading First?  Don’t blame the evaluation.  Its regression discontinuity design approximates a random assignment experiment — the gold standard of research designs.  It allows us to know with confidence the effect of Reading First on the marginal adopter’s reading achievement.  We can’t assess the effect of Reading First on the first adopters or those who were rated as most in need, but a broadly useful program should have effects beyond those most eager or most desperate.  Reid Lyon is correct in noting that the evaluation did not address everything that we want to know.  And it is always possible that the program needs more time to show results.  But so far we have a null result.

We’re left with two possible explanations.  Either Reading First is conceptually mistaken or it was improperly implemented.  We have good reason to believe that it is the latter.  The science behind Reading First is pretty solid.  A greater emphasis on phonics seems to have a particularly beneficial effect on students from disadvantaged backgrounds. 

Reading First is probably the right idea but as with almost every instructional reform the devil is in the implementation.  The problem is that educators have few incentives to embrace and properly apply new instructional ideas.  It’s not that educators are uninterested in improving instructional approaches.  The problem is that they have often developed approaches from their own experience and training that they think works and are very skeptical of the latest great thing thrown their way.  Any theory of reform that is based on the assumption that educators are eagerly awaiting being informed of what works and will gladly do it once they are told is incredibly naive. 

Even if we could find the right techniques, the difficulty is in getting educators to adopt it and implement it properly.  This is so difficult because teachers don’t experience any meaningful consequences if they properly implement an instructional reform or if they don’t.  And since most teachers have developed routines with which they are comfortable and that they believe are effective, getting them to do something else without any real carrots or sticks is like getting children to eat spinach merely by suggesting it.  You can tell them that it’s really good for them, but they’d rather stick with the familiar mac and cheese.

The evaluation helps confirm that the problem was in implementation.  The differences between the treatment and control groups in time spent on phonics were very small.  And the treatment group was doing far less than the program has planned.  Similar problems have plagues other instructional reforms.  For example, see Mathematica’s evaluation of technology in the classroom, where usage of the technology by the treatment groups was only marginally greater than the control group.  Or see SRI’s evaluation of Following the Leaders, where the treatment group similarly barely used the intervention.  It should come as no surprise that the medicine doesn’t work if people won’t take their pills.

The solution that is usually offered when educators fail to implement an instructional reform is that we need to improve professional development so that they learn better how wonderful the intervention is and why/how they should use it.  Call it education disease — the solution to all problems is more education.  It’s an infinite regress.

Instead the obvious solution is that we have to address the incentives that educators have to adopt and properly implement effective instructional reforms.  Either the direct incentives of accountability with real consequences for teachers (like merit pay or job security) or the indirect incentives of market-based reforms (like school choice) would sharpen educators’ efforts in this regard.

This is why instructional reforms and incentive reforms have to go hand-in-hand.  Educators need to have effective ideas of what to do and they have to have the proper incentives to adopt and implement those effective ideas.  That’s also why pitting instructional reform against incentive reform makes no sense.  We need both.

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Former mayor and current D.C. Councilman Marion Barry endorsed the school voucher program today in the Washington Post:

I was fortunate that I could afford the right school for my son. As I have been in years past, I am focused today on those who most need help. We need to give the same opportunity to the District’s low-income parents, and this package would help ensure that all parents in our city have choices about where their children attend school.

(Guest Post by Reid Lyon)

“How did scientific research become influential in guiding federal education ‎policy given the field’s historical reliance on ideology, untested ‎assumptions, anecdotes, and superstition to inform both policy and practice?‎”

It has not been an easy journey. In fact it’s like getting a root canal every other week.  What makes it tough is that you are always bumping up against the anti-scientific thinking that has had a misguided influence on the perceived value of research throughout the history of education and increasingly in the past two decades. Many researchers have tried to infuse scientific research into education policy over the years but it never gained political traction. Jeanne Chall gave her career to this cause, but the political will was never there.  Many at the policy level rarely listened to her, much less took her advice.  Chall would tell me frequently that by not basing reading instruction on research we do grave harm to the students education seeks to serve. I repeated her wisdom every time I testified before congressional committees. I also repeated myself time and again that education like other sectors that serve the public, must have reliable information about what works, why it works, and how it works. The alternative was to basically throw mud against a wall and see what sticks – a practice in place for a very long time.  I would argue that scientific research and dissemination of reliable information to the educational community is non-negotiable given that all sectors of a productive society depend on an educated workforce. To be sure, many in the education community sure got medieval on me for holding to this position.

But logic, congressional testimony, research syntheses, or policy papers were not going to change the culture in education which had reinforced an “everything and anything goes” spirit for the past century. Infusing research into policy and practice was going to take strong  support from  a senior  member or members of congress who could argue the need in a compelling way.  Bill Goodling, past chair of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, did just that and in 1996 began to support the concept of “research-based education”.  Goodling was a past educator and was floored when he began to delve into the fact that millions of kids could not read.  His staff learned that the NIH had been studying reading development and reading difficulties since 1965 so they called me in early 1996 to brief the chairman on what we knew about reading from a research standpoint.  At that time, I directed the NICHD Reading Research program at the NIH. During the briefing, he was literally taken aback to learn that NICHD/NIH had studied over 40,000 good and not so good readers, many of them over time, and we had a good idea of what it took to learn to read and what to do about reading difficulties. He could not understand why there was such a massive gap between what research had demonstrated vis-à-vis reading development and instruction and what was actually taught to teachers and  implemented in schools. 

1996 turned out to be a pretty important year in bringing the massive reading failure issue before the public and mobilizing some scientific efforts. It was also an important year for laying the foundation for research-based education policy as it is reflected in federal legislation today.  President Clinton called attention to the tragedy of reading failure in his State of the Union address that year.  His attention to the issue clearly put the problem on congressional radar screens.  In the same year, the Department of Education and the NICHD supported the convening of a National Research Council (NRC) panel to synthesize and summarize research on the prevention of reading difficulties.  Interestingly, at the same time, state leaders were becoming interested in the “research to policy and practice issue”.  Interestingly, in 1996, then Texas governor George Bush asked me and members of several strong research teams in Texas and around the country to brief him on how scientific research in reading could help reduce reading failure in Texas. In one of the meetings he asked a pretty prescient question about how scientific research could help kids whose first language was Spanish to learn to listen, speak, read, and write in English.  This question actually gave birth to the NICHD national “Spanish to English” study carried out in multiple sites across the country.

 But during that year it was Goodling and his staff who went to work on the specifics and the need to educate other congressional members not only about the drastic need to address the reading issue, but to emphasize the role of scientific research in solving educational problems.  He and his staff devoted substantial time in 1996 reviewing the NICHD reading research. In early 1997, he and his counterparts in the senate held hearings on literacy development and the role of scientific research in developing and implementing effective instructional practices. It came as a surprise to me that in my testimony that year before both House and Senate committees, members asked about research on reading and how it could help guide policy and practice.  Their interest in using scientific research to guide  practice and policies would later extend to other education programs beyond reading as I was asked to cover the issue in testimony on Title I, Head Start, and IDEA re-authorizations which took place over the next 9 years.  And Goodling was the first legislator to formally infuse scientific research in reading into a federal education program.  In 1998, He sponsored the Reading Excellence Act, which for the first time required that federal funding be contingent on states and local districts using scientifically based programs.

To further underscore the interest and commitment that congress had in using research to guide federal education policy, Senator Thad Cochran and Representative Anne Northup asked the NICHD in 1998 to convene a National Reading Panel (NRP) to build on the findings of the 1996 NRC panel on preventing reading difficulties in young children.  The NRP was tasked to undertake a review of research on reading instruction that would identify the types of programs and principles that were most effective in improving reading proficiency.  While the NRC and NRP reports were initiated and published during the Clinton administration, the Bush administration used the findings not only to craft Reading First but to serve as an example of the overarching principle that educational policy and instructional practices should be predicated on research.  From this principal evolved the established of the Institute of Educational Sciences, the NRC Report on “Scientific Research in Education”, the Partnership for Reading which served as a resources to disseminate scientific research findings, and the What Works Clearing House.  Private groups such as the Council for Excellence in Government, which established the Coalition for Evidence Based Policy,  began to contribute to this effort as well.

If you take all of this together, the recent influx of educational science into policy came about through a concerted effort to solve a national reading problem. Using research to guide educational policy and program development has now been extended far beyond reading.   A number of actions such as congressional hearings, funding of research reports on science in education, requiring federal funds be contingent on the use of research-based programs and approaches, passing legislation such as the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002, and building a federal infrastructure which, by its inclusion of the Institute of Educational Sciences and the What Works Clearing House, explicitly sent the message that research-based policies and programs were the rule, not the exception.  It is the case that much of the integration of actions and events was strategic and designed to provide a role for scientific research in education.  A research to policy and practice culture had to be strengthened through federal legislation and in the scientific infrastructure within the Department of Education. 

Time will tell if the gains made in using research to guide education policy will last.  History tells us that education is impatient and subject to fads, superstition, anecdotes, and the next magic bullet.  To be sure, education is more political than scientific and subject to all the negatives that the political world brings but few of the positives. And many do not understand that by its cannons, evidence is apolitical.  There is a tendency to forget that research is not only essential for informing policy but critical for improving policies and programs once in place. But trial and error has become a habit in education and it will take real courage and persistence to overcome that.  In a sense, the world of education policy is  like a slinky–it can expand to take new steps, but it ultimately recoils back to its original configuration.   All this said, I am optimistic.

Too much of what is in education journals is drivel.  But to disguise that nonsense and obscure how “research” resources and time are wasted, the field has developed important-sounding jargon.  Anyone who uses fancy terms, like “neoliberal,” “epistemological pathways,” and “discourses,” has to know something.  Right?

So, I am proposing a little game of Buzzword Bingo.  In the table below are actual terms taken from leading education journal article titles. 

Here’s how you play.  The first person to spell Bingo by making a vertical, horizontal, or diagonal line by finding those terms in education journals wins!  Just send an email or post a comment with citations to where you found the words.  The prize is the respect of all that you managed to sift through a bunch of education journal articles.

While collecting these terms I’ve learned a handy rule of thumb for interpreting education jargon.  If something starts with “neo” it is bad.  If it starts with “post” it is good.  For example, “liberal” would normally be fine.  But make it “neoliberal” and then it is bad.  Neoconservative is also bad, but so was plain old “conservative.”

Even though the prefix “post” has a meaning similar to “neo,” it has a totally different effect within the world of education buzzword bingo.  For example, “materialism” is bad, but “post-materialism” is good.  “Modernity” is good.  “Post-modernity” is even better.

I think the idea is that “neo” suggests a rehashing of an old, failed concept.  “Post” means moving beyond and improving upon the old.  So I would have to guess that “neotracking” is bad, just a rehashing of old tracking ideas.  “Post-tracking” would be good –  moving beyond the old idea of tracking.

Here’s another simple trick. Just add “socio” to any word.  It doesn’t seem to add much meaning, but it does sound impressive.  I know that we’ve had socioeconomic for a long time, but now we have sociocultural, sociohistorical, and socio-political.  I’m thinking about introducing socio-social.  Or how about socio-materialism?  Socio-modernity?  Socio-narratives?  Once you start you see how easy it really is!

Now you can invent your own jargon at home!  Enjoy!

UPDATE

We have a winner!  Congratulations to Matt Ladner for managing to find:  meganarratives, counter-narratives, narratives, mindfulness, and phonocentrism in education publications.  I would say that now he can get a PhD but he already has one.

Another reader suggested that we change the name of the game to Lingo Bingo.  I don’t know.  It’s a tough choice between rhyming and alliteration.

Also, can someone come up with the best word for something bigger than meganarratives?  Mega is the prefix that means “million.”  A billion would be giga, so how about giganarratives?  This is almost as much fun as adding socio to words.  How about socio-giganarratives?

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Michael Lewis’ book The Blind Side tells a fascinating story about poverty and education through the lens of football. Lewis focuses on two main stories. First, on the legendary coach Bill Walsh’s struggles in the 1980s to overcome the most fearsome defensive force of the era. Second, on an incredibly disadvantaged young man who beat the odds.

As head coach of the San Francisco 49ers Bill Walsh had one big problem: New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor (LT). Attacking from the left–the blind side of a right-handed quarterback–LT humiliated linemen and punished quarterbacks with bone-crushing sacks.

Lewis’ tale becomes truly fascinating when he goes inside the world of the NFL’s talent search for born left tackles–a rare combination of size, speed and agility. These rare men would rise to become the second highest paid positions in professional football for their ability to protect the quarterback from men like LT. This is where the story intersects with education.

Michael Oher grew up in inner-city Memphis. In and out of foster care, Michael’s lucky break came when his dying grandmother extracted a promise from a family friend to get Michael into a private school.

Michael was enrolled in a private Christian school called Briarcrest. On a cold day, a parent of another Briarcrest student found Michael breaking into the school to stay warm. The parent, Leah Anne Tuohy, a successful interior designer and wife of a Memphis businessman, took Michael in. Despite the fact that Michael scarcely spoke, a bond developed between the Tuohys and Michael and they eventually adopted him.

Although he had never played sports Michael was a natural athlete and was identified immediately by college scouts as a potential NFL left tackle. If Michael could get to college and play football, he was very likely to win a multimillion dollar contract to protect a quarterback’s blind side.

The Tuohys and the faculty at Briarcrest engaged in a Herculean effort to make Michael eligible for college. When Michael came to Briarcrest he had only erratically attended school, could scarcely read and knew little about anything.

Lewis skillfully explains the role of poverty in education, writing, “Michael wasn’t stupid. He was ignorant, but a lot of people mistook ignorance for stupidity, and knowingness for intelligence. He’d been denied the life experience that led to knowingness, which every other kid at Briarcrest took for granted.”

Michael was not unintelligent, but he was profoundly uneducated. Leah Anne would, for example, take Michael to an Italian restaurant and order multiple meals in order teach him the difference between different types of pasta dishes.

The implications of Michael’s story for public policy are profound as well. Lewis writes, “Michael Oher was in possession of what had to be among the more conspicuous athletic gifts…and yet, without outside intervention even his talent would likely have been thrown away…If Michael Oher’s talent could be missed, whose couldn’t? Those poor black kids [in the inner-city] were like left tackles: people whose values were hidden in plain sight.”

With a committed family, school, and private tutors, Michael was accepted to college.

Today he is approaching his senior year at the University of Mississippi, made all-conference as a sophomore and junior, and carries a 3.7 grade point average.

Michael made it. But he is very much the exception. For every six inner-city Memphis public school kids with the athletic ability to play college sports, only one qualifies academically to attend college. This says something about the state of inner-city public education.

“Pity the kid inside Hurt Village [in Memphis] who was born to play the piano, or manage people, or trade bonds,” Lewis wrote. The success of Briarcrest in helping Michael exemplifies the hope that school choice can give to troubled youngsters.

The hole Michael dug himself out of might not have been so deep if not for the dysfunctional Memphis public school system. One cannot help but wonder if Memphis public schools would be so completely indifferent if every student had the opportunity to attend private schools.

Our current education system limits school choice to parents who can afford to buy homes in good neighborhoods or pay private school tuition. Our best teachers often flee the classroom in frustration, or cluster in suburbs far from the students who need them most.

Kids should not require Michael Oher’s incredible luck to make it. Neither should they be stuck in inner-city schools run for the benefit of the adults rather than the kids in the system.

So how does Charles Murray fit into this?

Murray knows far more about IQ testing than I do. I know next to nothing. From what I’ve read of Murray’s works, it does seem obvious that everyone has an upper threshold for academic achievement, a ceiling if you will, and that those ceiling vary from person to person.

It also seems obvious to me, however, that these ceilings are of little practical importance for many inner city children who have never attended a decent school, and who often have parents and grandparents who have never attended a decent school.

In other words, children like Michael Oher have been operating so far below their ceilings that we have every reason to radically improve our education system, especially in the inner cities. I’d even be willing to bet, despite Murray’s characterization of the academic literature on the subject, that if we had before and after adoption IQ tests on Oher, that there would have been substantial growth. I could be wrong about this, and I’d welcome correction, but Michael Oher’s experience begs the question in my mind exactly what it is that IQ tests are actually measuring.

Regardless of such concerns, however, it seems clear to me that efforts to make much more effective use of the huge and tragically mismanaged resources put into inner city schooling should be accelerated.