Yes, Vouchers Make the World Safe for Charters

February 17, 2010

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Yes, vouchers really do make the world safe for charters.

One of the follow-ups to that rockin’ IPI event in Chicago was a special-feature debate over vouchers in the Chicago Tribune.

The anti-voucher guy can’t even be bothered to rise to the usual level of non-thoughtfulness. Apparently he thinks it’s somehow a problem if taxpayer dollars even indirectly support a religious institution. Well, next time someone sets fire to a church, I guess we’d better let it burn down. Sending the fire department would be an indirect taxpayer subsidy to religion! And don’t call the cops if somebody spray-paints swastikas all over the synagogue.

But you know what’s really interesting? He gets the final word, and here’s how he chooses to end:

Is there a compromise approach? Sure. Let’s continue to expand charter school programs and try out the most innovative ideas from private schools. But let’s not give up on public education.

Vouchers make the world safe for charters.

And since vouchers are by far the best-proven way to improve public schools, it’s only a matter of time before people realize that vouchers aren’t “giving up on public education,” they’re the only serious hope for saving it.

1 Comment | vouchers | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Golf Hecklers of the Arizona Left

February 16, 2010

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

JPGB readers will of course remember the great American film Happy Gilmore in which Adam Sandler plays a hockey player who joins the pro golf tour in order to save his Grandma’s house. Happy’s nemesis, Shooter McGavin, employs a heckler to get under Happy’s dome while golfing.

Happy, easily frustrated, loses his cool and gets beat up by Bob Barker.

So taking a page from the Shooter McGavin playbook, the left has given me a stalker of my own. David Safier, a retired teacher and blogger, has taken to spending his time playing the role of “Jeering Fan” to my Happy Gilmore. Safier blogs at Blog for Arizona, a multi-author blog of the Tucson left.

Some time ago, Safier claimed that I had simply manufactured a $9,700 per student revenue figure for the Arizona public school system. Making the assumption that Safier was open to evidence, I produced links to the Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction’s Financial Report and the Arizona’s legislature’s research arm documenting the figure.

Chuck Essigs of the Arizona School Business Officials, not someone inclined to often agree with me on education policy, nevertheless had the intellectual honesty to admit that the full spending per pupil figure is around $9,500.  Sadly, the response from Safier essentially amounted to putting his hands over his ears and muttering talking points from his teacher union pals. Something about lunch money for Twinkies getting into the revenue report. No word yet on how this nefarious twinkie money made it into the expenditure report.

The Tasty Magic * of the Arizona Left- We spend $6,000 per pupil-Nothing to see here-Move along

Slowly but surely BfA references morphed from “friend of the blog” to “right wing propagandist” and such. Ah well, no good deed goes unpunished.  A little tour of the Arizona left wing echo chamber proved educational if not satisfying.

Safier has now blogged up a series about Florida, but can’t get even the most basic facts straight.  For instance, Safier tries to claim that the improvement in Florida’s 4th grade reading scores began in 1994, before the reforms. If one visits the NAEP website, however, one learns that Florida’s reading scores were 208, 205 and 207 in 1992, 1994 and 1998.  On a 500 scale point test, the technical term for that is “as flat as the highway between Dallas and Fort Worth.” Mere bouncing around with very low scores.

After 1998, however, scores increase to 214 in 2002, 218 in 2003, 219 in 2005 and 224 in 2007.  A rough rule of thumb is that 10 points approximately equals a grade level worth of learning on NAEP exams. So during the 1992-98 period, scores dropped by a point.  Between 1998 and 2007, they increased by 18 points.

So, the average Florida 4th grader is merely reading at a level almost two grade levels higher than Florida 4th graders were in 1998. Also, Florida’s minority students began outscoring multiple statewide averages back in the early aughts. Nothing to see here! Move along!

In the imaginarium of Safier, the Florida reforms are advancing at the behest of a vast right wing conspiracy foisted upon an unsuspecting Arizona at the behest of the evil Dr. Ladner.

Grade your schools or I'll blast you with my "laser"

The truth is that other states have adopted Florida reforms, still others are considering adopting Florida reforms. The vast majority of people, regardless of ideology, want to see public school improvement.  Sadly, some are so emotionally wedded to the idea that such improvement is only possible if we spend $30,000 a child that they make themselves look silly.  Hopefully this crowd will eventually put on their big boy pants and join the adult conversation.

Until then, I guess they can continue to heckle from their self-imposed exile on the sidelines. In the end, Happy wins the tournament, gets the girl and saves Grandma’s house. The heckler gets stood up by Shooter McGavin at the Red Lobster.

9 Comments | instructional reform | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Lunch With Max and Warwick

February 15, 2010

I had lunch today with Max Brantley of the Arkansas Times and Warwick Sabin of the Oxford American (and formerly of the Arkansas Times) as well as my colleague, Josh McGee.  I have to say that I really enjoyed it. 

Max can be harsh and opinionated but I have a soft spot for harsh and opinionated folks, sometimes being one myself.  And at least with Max you always know where he stands. 

I also think all four of us agreed much more than we disagreed.  We agreed in deploring the lack of quality opportunities in education, particularly for disadvantaged students.  We agreed that some people working in our schools need to find a different profession.  We agreed that we should figure out ways to get rock star teachers with high pay.  We agreed that schools ought to have high standards and offer rewards to students for meeting those standards. 

We disagreed about expanding choice and competition in education.  Max and Warwick seem to view education as a zero-sum game where some schools can do better only by taking away kids from other schools, which are made worse as a result.  I think there’s a good amount of evidence to support the view that schools rise to the challenge and improve when they are faced with greater competition from an expanded set of choices.

I also agreed with them in admitting that I have lost my enthusiasm for merit pay.  I still think there are some positive effects from merit pay, or as I put it in a report that Max links to on his blog: “The evidence that is available, however, provides some grounds for moderate optimism about merit pay.”  I just don’t think the moderate benefits are worth the enormous energy that the policy consumes as well as the potential for cheating or other undesired effects.  As, I told Max, Warwick, and Josh at lunch, the most effective form of merit pay is getting rid of bad teachers.  That would make a much bigger difference than the potential to earn a 1% or 2%  bonus.

I don’t know why I’ve been so slow to learn this lesson, but it is generally a good idea to sit down with people with whom you’ve had public disagreements because you may discover that your disagreements are less than everyone thought.  Yes, they are still there and still important, but we can also make progress by focusing on the ideas we share.

1 Comment | charter schools, teacher pay | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Greg in PJM Keeps ‘Em Honest With Choice

February 14, 2010

Greg has a great post today on Pajama’s Media about how school choice is the secret sauce that keeps all other reforms honest.  Think of it as a love letter to education reform. : )

Here’s a highlight:

… the biggest political winner in education by far in the past year has been charter schools. I’ll admit I was skeptical at first, but the Obama administration’s pro-charter rhetoric has been more than just talk. Charter caps are being lifted because the administration really does support charters.

Why? I think it’s mainly because a critical mass of their political base on the left has embraced the principle that parents should be put in charge through choice, and I think that has happened precisely because they want a reform that will keep the system honest. More and more people on the left are sick and tired of the empty promises they’ve been peddled for decades: that this time, throwing another huge chunk of money at the blob will fix the schools — and this time, we really, really, really mean it, cross our hearts and hope to die.

The social justice folks on the left just don’t buy it anymore. They now see that the blob has been pulling the wool over their eyes for generations. You can imagine how they’re feeling about that right now. And woe betide you if the wrath of the social justice folks falls upon you; they’re not known for being gentle with those whom they perceive as enemies of social justice.

Case in point: Did you know that the same team of scorched-earth, take-no-prisoners, scruple-at-nothing propagandists who produced An Inconvenient Truth has now made a hard-hitting documentary bashing teachers’ unions and advocating charter schools? And it was the very first film picked up for distribution at the Sundance Film Festival?

… The recent surge in the political fortunes of charter schools has been fueled by the less dramatic but steadily growing success of private school choice: school vouchers and similar policies that allow students to attend private schools using public funds. There are now 24 private school choice programs serving 190,000 students nationwide, up from just five programs in 1996. And private school choice is continuing to gain ground every year with the creation of new programs and expansion of existing programs, even in tough years like 2009.

As my friend Jay Greene likes to put it, vouchers make the world safe for charters. That is, it’s because of the more modest success of vouchers that charters have exploded. As long as vouchers are on the march and are thus a credible threat, triangulating legislators who need the blob’s support can embrace charters without paying too high a price for doing so. If the blob cuts off its support for legislators who back charters, it won’t have anyone on its side when vouchers are on the agenda. Because vouchers are out there, the blob has no choice but to suck it up and pretend to be OK with charters.

The next question, though, is whether charters alone are going to be sufficient to keep the system honest. Charters have ridden to success with the help of a lot of new supporters, but those supporters are a demanding constituency. The social justice folks expect results.

4 Comments | charter schools, vouchers | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Coulson on Brookings Report

February 14, 2010

Over on the Cato blog, Andrew Coulson has a thoughtful post on the recent Brookings report on school choice which I  helped craft.  For the most part I agree with what Andrew has to say.  I agree that there is considerable international and historical evidence that could have been included in the Brookings report but was not.  I also agree that certain compromises on school choice can be counter-productive, particularly over the long run.

The disagreement I have with Andrew is that he is treating the Brookings report as if it were a piece of scholarship rather than the political document that it really is.  I do not say this to disparage the report, which I helped craft and endorse.  We self-consciously viewed our task in writing the report as trying to present policy options on school choice that would be viable in the current political climate and potentially attractive to the Obama administration.

Once you understand that, it is easier to understand why we would leave out most international evidence — it is generally considered irrelevant or unpersuasive by most current policy elites.  They may well be mistaken in dismissing this set of evidence, as Andrew argues, but that is their view so we didn’t waste their time or ours by reviewing that evidence.

It is also easier to understand why we didn’t advocate unregulated education markets.  That simply isn’t going to happen in the current political climate, so we didn’t bother with it.  Instead we advocated for a variety of compromises on expanding choice and competition within a regulated framework.

Of course, then we are left vulnerable to Andrew’s point that these compromises may be counterproductive, particularly in the long run.  My only response to that is that incrementalism is our only feasible strategy for getting the kind of choice and competition we really need.  While we must always be vigilent about the dangers of certain compromises, I think we have no choice but to try to build on incremental reforms.

1 Comment | charter schools, vouchers | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

College Football Chaos

February 12, 2010

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Frank the Tank, an Illini attorney and sports blogger, lays out an index of expansion targets for the Big 10.

The Big 10, which has had 11 teams since the inclusion of Penn State, has started a cable network and is seeking to expand. Frank does an admirable job of looking at the real issues in such an expansion (mainly money, followed by academics as a distant second). Frank ranks the teams on the Big 10 hit list: Texas first, Notre Dame second. Everyone else ranks as a “meh” addition.

The PAC-10 has announced an interest in expanding as well. Currently, however, the Pac 10′s television contract is weaker than the Big 12 contract. Possible PAC-10 targets include Utah and Colorado. Colorado and Texas came close to joining the PAC 10 in the 1990s.

The Big 12 has been good to Texas. Texas generates more athletic revenue than any other school and has established itself as a national power in all the major sports. The status-quo isn’t bad. Having graduated in 1990, I still remember getting our heads handed to us by teams like Baylor and the University of Houston on a regular basis.

Texas must compete with the SEC and Big 10 schools, however, and currently receives less than half the Big 10 television take. If there are going to be super conferences (Big 10, SEC) then Texas must consider an invitation to join. What they cannot allow is for Colorado and Mizzou to bolt with the largest only tv markets in the Big-12 North to other conferences and languish in a diminished leftover conference.

Quite frankly, Notre Dame must either get a much more lucrative tv contract from someone, or they would be crazy not to join. Despite the deal with NBC, Notre Dame currently ranks third in the state of Indiana behind U of I and Perdue in tv revenue. If the Big 10 schools can’t figure out how to use $10 million in additional revenue per year for each school to leave the Domers behind from a competitive standpoint, ummm, let’s just say there would be some athletic directors who need to be fired. Notre Dame enjoys a unique national following, but no brand can endure the beating of losing indefinitely. Notre Dame may be able to keep their status as an independent, but it will not be by getting paid $9m per year by NBC. 

Speculation is already running rampant. Let the games begin…

1 Comment | college sports | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Lost for Life

February 12, 2010

This time I really think I’ve figured something out.  Really.  I mean it.

The Island has two particularly strange characteristics (among several others):  babies can’t be born on it (with important exceptions) and dead people walk around on it.  We know that one of those dead people, Locke, is actually Esau (Smokey).  I’m willing to bet that all dead people we have seen walking around on the Island are in fact Smokey, including Christian, Claire, Boone, Harper, Ecko’s brother, etc…  Smokey is death.

I’m also willing to bet that babies born on the Island, including Aaron and Alex, are somehow connected to Jacob or are Jacob.  Jacob represents life.

In the conversation on the beach between Jacob and Esau in the final episode of last season, Esau says that it always ends the same way.  I think he means that we all die.  He repeats this theme when he tells Ben that only Locke understood how pitiful his life was — perhaps all life is.  In Smokey’s view life is futile ending in death.

Jacob agrees that it always ends the same way (we all die) but there is progress.  Jacob believes in the purposefulness of life.

Remember that Ben brings Juliet to the Island so that they can have babies, perhaps expanding Team Jacob.  Widmore, on the other hand, wants to kill baby Alex and ultimately does through the mercenaries.  Widmore is part of Team Esau.

Also, the dead Alex appears to Ben under the Temple scaring him into doing whatever Locke says, but Locke is actually Smokey at that point.  Alex has to be dead so that Smokey can appear as her and trick Ben into following Locke’s orders to kill Jacob.

I don’t know what the “infected” people, Sayid, the new Claire, and Rousseau’s colleagues, really are.  Perhaps they are being drawn into Team Esau.  Remember that Rousseau’s colleagues went under the Temple, where Smokey attacked them, and Rousseau did not.  Perhaps Smokey infects people there, maybe because they went into a spring like Sayid did.

We also know that Ben summoned Smokey to kill the mercenaries by draining a spring, again suggesting that Smokey and the spring are connected.

I don’t have it all figure out — not by  a long stretch — but I’m pretty confident that this death/life theme will help tie the plot together.

3 Comments | Lost | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Sowell Points Out What Is, in Fact, Funny about Peace, Rawls and Understanding

February 11, 2010

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Over on NRO, Thomas Sowell lays out one of the many underlying problems with Rawlsianism: the information problem. The traditional rules of interpersonal justice, which Rawls called “formal fairness” – don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t defraud, fulfill contracts, etc. - are a feasible basis for policy because they only require knowledge of a limited number of discrete acts. Within reasonable limits we can usually get a pretty clear idea of who did what to whom. But Rawls’s desire for a more comprehensively “fair” society presupposes that we have information on the whole state of facts across all reality, and not just in a snapshot but dynamically over time, and not just in the actual course of events but also in all possible anticipated courses of events depending on what policies we enact. This fallacy was also identified by Hayek as “the fatal conceit.”

Required reading for those tempted by the Rawlsian fallacy.

14 Comments | politics | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

RiShawn Biddle on the Coming Teacher Pension Crisis

February 11, 2010

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Speaking of things we can’t afford…check out this excellent piece from RiShawn Biddle.

Leave a Comment » | school funding | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Mismatching Students and Institutions is a luxury Arizona can no longer afford

February 11, 2010

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has been encouraging the universities to develop lower cost alternatives to getting a four-year degree. But, the state is bankrupt and will not be able to find additional money to help create such options.

I have an idea that would help, and it will not cost a dime.

A consulting firm recently presented a report to the Maricopa County Community College District Governing Board with disturbing information about completion rates. The report found that 82 percent of community college students aim to get a degree, but only **11 percent** of them have done so after three years. This completion rate puts MCCCD in the bottom 12 percent of all community college systems nationwide, the report says.

When we go to the university level, the results are little better. The Education Trust’s database of university statistics reveals the four-year graduation rates of Northern Arizona University, the University of Arizona, and Arizona State University to be 28.4 percent, 32.7 percent and 27.7 percent, respectively.

Arizona’s system of higher education is doing an extremely poor job in matching students with colleges. There is a fine line between giving students an opportunity to seek an education despite previous academic failure, and simply using students as financial cannon fodder. Arizona obviously went screaming past that fine line many years ago.

We are not doing students any favors by encouraging them to run up thousands of dollars in debt to pay for school, only to flunk out. In addition, taxpayers should not subsidize six-year odysseys of self-discovery that half of the time fail to result in a university diploma

Arizona’s community colleges and universities should raise their admission standards for new students. Some, perhaps most, of the students flunking out of ASU, UA and NAU ought to be attending community colleges. Community colleges traditionally focus on remediation and are less costly to students and taxpayers.

If we would properly match students to institutions, our higher education system would both save taxpayers money and serve students better.

Those in higher education often are quick to point an accusing finger at the K-12 system for not preparing enough teenagers for college, and rightly so, but no one is forcing them to admit utterly unprepared students.

While we are at it, we might want to do something about K-12 to lower the flood of unprepared students heading to failure in higher education. High-schools, community colleges and universities should all raise their standards.

3 Comments | higher education | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

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