GET THAT IMAGE OUT OF MY BRAIN!

I’m still in favor of a large federal role in collecting and making data available to researchers, which is most of the cost of conducting research. I see no need for the federal government to directly fund the analyses of those data. The feds and states may indirectly subsidize that activity by generally supporting universities, where faculty have their own incentives to analyze education policies and disseminate results. I guess academics are like the pretty girl walking down the street, except they tend not to be so pretty.

If the IES has made a special contribution that greatly accelerated the ongoing process of improving methods, it was data collection. And Jay is explicitly saying that function should continue. The IES’s contribution to analytical rigor, as distinct from rigor in the collection of data, has been minor.

Your point is obvious, but nicely stated. I agree that being a public good is not a sufficient condition for a good to be provided by the government. The pretty girl walking down the street has enough of a private incentive to be pretty that we don’t really need to subsidize her.

And Jay, I agree that there are many examples of research that do not require federal funding. Indeed, there are many examples of research in education that do not require federal funding. Curriculum developers have a sufficient incentive to invest in R&D. Many large employers have an incentive to make investments in better understanding what skills their employees need and how best to develop those skills. And there are a myriad of decisions that local school district officials must make that are perhaps best informed by research they conduct themselves that applies specifically to their own context (that type of research comes close to the type of research that the RELs historically conduct — not very high quality, but of interest to local policymakers. That type of low quality research of high local interest probably should not be paid for by the federal government, and is an excellent argument, in my view, for doing away with the RELs if that were to be the RELs only focus).

But there are examples of education research that I think are best funded by the federal government. Questions of whether specific interventions actually work in a real world setting, for example, seem appropriate for the federal government to support. Curriculum developers are no more likely to share research findings with their customers that their product doesn’t work than tobacco companies were likely to share their research that nicotine is addictive. Prior to the commitment by IES to rigorous evaluations of these types of products, there was scant rigorous evidence (practically zero experimental evidence) as to the effectiveness of these types of products. There was a widespread belief among education researchers that experimental studies in education were prima facie impossible.

Now, I would never argue that it is physically impossible for the type of rigorous research into the real-world effectiveness of specific educational interventions to be funded by anyone other than the federal government. Some foundations do support this type of research, for example (although foundations are a little tricky — their tax status gives them a little bit of a hint of federal support). But the real-world experience has been that really rigorous evaluations of specific educational interventions did not happen very much prior to IES.

In light of this practical experience, I think that it is incumbent on anyone suggesting the total elimination of federal support of education research to suggest an alternative model for accomplishing the same ends. Ideally that alternative model would be well thought out and supported with practical experience.

Do you have a specific proposal for such a model?

A “public good” is a good which is (a) non-rival in consumption and (b) non-exclusive in production.
Non-rival means that my consumption of the good does not reduce the amount available to you. Non-exclusive means that producers of the good in an uncoerced market cannot charge consumers. A lighthouse in the classic example. Broadcast radio qualifies. As the example of broadcast radio indicates, producers of a public good (e.g., broadcast music) may find ways to get people (advertisers) to pay for the production of the good. A pretty girl walking down the street, radiating beauty, is a public good (she brings a twinkle to the eye of this old man, anyway), but neither State cosmetics subsidies nor State operation of beauty parlors are necessary, since women have a strong incentive (dinner, movies, etc.) to provide this good.

Why suppose that schools, textbook publishers, and education software developers would have insufficient incentive to seek education research? They do not need to compete in the comprehension (possession) of the research, but in the implementation.

Handel and Bach composed in the era before copyright.

Further, some goods are “public goods” until the State produces them. Newspapers, electronic broadcast news, and, I would argue, History and Civics instruction become public bads (State-worshipful propaganda) when the State produces them.

Finally, corporate oversight is a public good (all shareholders benefit from research that keeps executives honest). The State itself is a corporation. Therefore, oversight of State functions is a public good which the State itself cannot provide. State assumption of responsibility for the prduction of public goods transforms the free rider problem at the root of public goods analysis but does not eliminate it.

Let’s be clear that we are talking about education policy research and not education itself. It seems to me that education policy research is no different from tax policy research, health care policy research, energy policy research, etc… There are plenty of private resources available to produce research on all of these policy questions without the need for the federal government to directly fund or conduct it. And once most of the data is provided, the cost of conducting research should be quite low.

Yes, all research on policy has some qualities of public goods (no one can be excluded from consuming it and that consumption does not diminish its availability to others), but it has enough of the character of private goods that it need not be directly subsidized to exist. Besides, not all public goods require federal funding.

It seems to me that there is a distinction between private and public goods. I generally see little reason for the federal government to involve itself in the provision of private goods. There is a great deal of research that falls under the category of “private good”, and I do not think it would be appropriate for the government to fund those types of research. It’s not clear to me that education research is a private good. If you disagree, perhaps you could make an argument as to why.

To parents: trust your instincts and homeschool. You will not do worse than the current system.