Just the People You Want Managing Schools

November 6, 2008

Five school districts in Wisconsin have sued their investment advisors after losing $1.5 million on a $2 million investment in collateralized debt obligations.  That’s a 75% loss.  According to the lawsuit, the investment was “complex, convoluted, and opaque, and as Stifel and RBC then well knew, beyond the investment knowledge or experience of the School Districts . . . , their school board members, and their administrators.” 

Complex?  Convoluted?  Opaque? That sounds like just the thing that school officials should put the public’s money in.

But don’t worry.  It’s not their fault that they did something foolish.  It was the fault of the people who sold it to them and they are asking the courts to return the money.  And if that doesn’t work, they’ll just take it from you in future taxes.

I wonder if school officials can do the same if they select foolish educational policies.  If that faddish whole language reading curriculum didn’t work can they sue the people who sold it to them to get their money back?

This all reminds me of a great Shel Silverstein poem:

 Smart

My dad gave me one dollar bill

‘Cause I’m his smartest son,

And I swapped it for two shiny quarters

‘Cause two is more than one!

And then I took the quarters

And traded them to Lou

For three dimes—I guess he don’t know

That three is more than two!

Just then, along came old blind Bates

And just ‘cause he can’t see

He gave me four nickels for my three dimes,

And four is more than three!

And I took the nickels to Hiram Coombs

Down at the seed-feed store,

And the fool gave me five pennies for them,

And five is more than four!

And then I went and showed my dad,

And he got red in the cheeks

And closed his eyes and shook his head—

Too proud of me to speak!

Leave a Comment » | economics, scandal | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Safe Harbor Won’t Stop the Race to the Bottom

November 5, 2008

head-in-the-sand

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Charlie Barone did an excellent job unpacking NCLB’s safe harbor provision in reaction to a report by the Center on Education Policy warning of the looming 2014 train-wreck (where 100% of students must be proficient).

I co-authored a study for the Heritage Foundation also critical of the 2014 requirement. My concern is that what states will obviously do is to simply dummy down their tests in order to comply. I believe this process has already started, and will accelerate as the passing requirements escalate.

Barone however unpacked the arcane “Safe Harbor” provision on NCLB. Safe Harbor basically gives you a pass on AYP so long as you can reduce the number of children scoring below proficient by 10%. If this represents an obtainable standard, then presumably states would not feel overly pressured to drop their cut scores.

So, I decided to put safe harbor to a test- a very forgiving one. I looked at data from Florida’s 67 school districts over the past six years on 4th grade Reading and Math. The NAEP shows that Florida has been making solid progress on both subjects.

So what happens if you assume that we are at the 2014 100% requirement, an apply safe harbor to the overall performance of Florida districts? Judging them solely on 4th grade math and reading, and without judging any of the required student subgroups– like the various ethnic groups, free and reduced lunch kids, special education children, etc- Florida’s districts failed to make safe harbor 71% of the time based on the overall results alone.

I’ll leave the debate over whether public schools should be able to routinely reduce their passing rates by 10% year after year to others. The point I am making is: they don’t. I am confident that if required to break down results by various subgroups, that not a single Florida district would have made AYP during these six years under safe harbor. The number of individual schools making safe harbor is also likely to be negligible.

This, during a period of strong statewide improvement in both reading and math.

The sad reality is that, unless changed, NCLB will create a tremendous and perverse pressure on the state of Florida and others to dummy down their state accountability exams. In the greatest of ironies, a bill which aspired first and foremost to create transparency in public education contains the seeds of its own destruction in encouraging states to lower passing standards.

Gene Hickok and I endorsed Senator Cornyn and De Mint’s A-Plus concept as a way out of this looming train wreck. Under it, states could negotiate a single set of testing with the feds: preferably one better designed than a one-size-fits-all system with the mother of all perverse incentives built in. The Department would have discretion as whether to accept a state model rather than AYP, so no one is proposing to burn down the Department of Education.

The administration was not enthused. Nor, to my knowledge, have they ever acknowledged that 2014 is a problem. Nor to my knowledge have they ever embraced anything that could be considered a solution. Refusing to recognize a problem and thus failing to take action against it while it is still relatively manageable- ring any bells?

The Democrats will run the department and Congress, and powerful constituencies in their coalition want to vastly increase federal funding and replace testing with “portfolio assessments.” Now would be an outstanding time for all who believe in public school transparency-Democrats and Republicans- to pull their heads out of the sand on this issue. Safe harbor is not a solution. If you don’t like A-Plus- fine, propose another solution. Pretending like there isn’t a problem is a recipe for disaster.

7 Comments | NCLB | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Looking Abroad for Hope

November 5, 2008

hope

HT despair.com. Looking for a Christmas idea to suit the new reality? Why not a despair.com gift certificate – “For the person who has everything, but still isn’t happy.”

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Looking around for something to give me hope this morning, I find the best place to turn (for today, at least) is outside the U.S. Specifically, I turn to the recently released study in Education Next by Martin West and Ludger Woessmann finding that around the world, private school enrollment is associated with improved educational outcomes in both public and private schools, as well as lower costs.

Well-informed education wonks will say, “duh.” A large body of empirical research has long since shown, consistently, that competition improves both public school and private school outcomes here in the U.S., while lowering costs. And the U.S. has long been far, far behind the rest of the world in its largely idiosyncratic, and entirely irrational, belief that there’s somthing magical about a government school monopoly.

And private school enrollment is an imperfect proxy for competition. It’s OK to use it when it’s the best you’ve got. I’ve overseen production of some studies at the Friedman Foundation that used it this way, and I wouldn’t have done that if I didn’t think the method were acceptable. However, that said, it should be remembered that some “private schools” are more private than others. In many countries, private school curricula are controlled – sometimes almost totally so – by government. And the barriers to entry for private schools that aren’t part of a government-favored “private” school system can be extraordinary.

That said, this is yet another piece of important evidence pointing to the value of competition in education, recently affirmed (in the context of charter schools, but still) by Barack Obama. Who I understand is about to resign his Senate seat – I guess all those scandals and embarrasing Chicago machine connections the MSM kept refusing to cover finally caught up with him.

Leave a Comment » | competitive effects, methodology, money myth, politics, research reports, vouchers | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Why I Vote on Election Day

November 4, 2008

 

A bunch of my friends and family have voted early.  Not me.  I’m voting on election day.  Why?

Look, let’s be clear that it doesn’t make any sense to vote if your goal is to determine the outcome of the election.  The probability that the outcome would be tied in the absence of your vote is so remote as to not be worth your time bothering.  And even in the extremely unlikely event that the margin in a presidential election were 1 vote, the outcome would almost certainly be decided by a handful of unelected judges rather than your vote.  We’ve already seen that even if the margin is a few hundred votes, there is enough imprecision in the casting and counting of votes that the courts will really determine the outcome. 

I know, I know, you can say that if everyone thought that way, no one would vote.  But that’s entirely beside the point.  The self-interested rational thing to do if you are only concerned with determining the outcome is to urge everyone else to vote and save yourself the effort. 

So why vote if it is irrational to expect that your vote will be the deciding one?  Rational people don’t vote to break what they otherwise expect to be a tie.  They vote because it is part of a social, communal experience. 

And that is exactly why I am voting on election day and not early.  I want to go to the polling place, visit with my neighbors, and drink some bad coffee.  Voting is like doing the wave at a football game.  It almost certainly has no effect on the game.  It’s purpose is to participate and enjoy the social feeling of being part of something.  It makes no more sense to vote early than to do the wave while watching the game at home on your TV.  Voting, like doing the wave, is a social experience whose benefits depend upon context.

Besides, politics is becoming more like sports everyday.  People choose teams and root for them, even if there is no obvious benefit to them for doing so.  They watch the returns like looking at the boxscore.  So, I want to be at the game when I vote, just like I’m going to be at Bud Walton Arena, the basketball palace of mid-America, to watch the Razorbacks.  I want to call the Hogs with the crowd.  I want to see them raise the Arkansas flag banner behind the pyramid of cheerleaders (it brings a tear to my eye, everytime).

6 Comments | politics | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Two Days Later…Pain Still Raw

November 3, 2008

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

The Houston Chronicle called it “one for the ages” and it is hard to disagree. The Texas Tech vs. Texas game was an instant classic- plenty of drama and late game heroics.

I’ve discovered that I like classic games better when my team wins. C’est la vie.

Tech deserves a ton of credit. Their coaches out-coached ours, and their players were lights out. Texas starts three defensive ends on the d-line (all the better to sprint through big spreads on the offensive line and crush the qb) so Tech ditched their line splits and (shocker) ran the football down our throat and controlled the clock. Golf clap for strategery!

It would be nice if the multi-million dollar Texas coaching staff would

A. Teach proper kickoff coverage technique.

B. Not call a slow developing run play from the end zone.

C. Milk as much time off the clock as possible on what is certain to be your last offensive drive.

D. Have your offensive linemen hold when the refs absolutely refuse to enforce the penalty.

E. All of the Above

If you answered “E” give yourself a gold star- not that I’m bitter or anything.

Despite all of that, Texas took the lead with 1:26 to go in the game, and came within a dropped interception and single tackle on the games final second of somehow prevailing. Congrats Raider fans- see you in Austin next year.

5 Comments | college sports | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

PJM on Candidates’ Education Flip-Flops

November 3, 2008

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Over the weekend Pajamas Media carried my column on how Obama and Palin have flip-flopped on education:

Suppose I told you Candidate A has supported rigorous academic standards, has stood up to the teachers’ unions — even been booed by them at their convention — and proclaimed the free-market principles that schools should compete for students and better teachers should get higher salaries. On the other hand, Candidate B says that competition hurts schools, that kids should be taught a radical left-wing civics curriculum, that we should throw more money at teachers’ unions — excuse me, at schools — and that rigorous academic standards should be replaced with the unions’ old lower-the-bar favorite, “portfolio assessment.”

Candidate A is Barack Obama. So is Candidate B.

Meanwhile, Candidate C has made an alliance with the teachers’ unions, opposed school choice, thrown money at the unions — excuse me, at schools — and even helped undermine a badly needed reform of bloated union pensions. On the other hand, Candidate D has broken with the teachers’ unions, demanded that schools should have to compete for students, and endorsed the most radical federal education reform agenda ever proposed by a national candidate, including a national school choice program for all disabled students.

Candidate C is Sarah Palin. So is Candidate D.

Important disclaimer:

None of this implies anything about the overall merits of any of these candidates. One can love a candidate overall while hating his or her stand on education, and vice versa.

1 Comment | competitive effects, money myth, politics, school accountability, social promotion, special ed, teacher pay, teacher quality, teacher union, vouchers | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Want to Pass A Local School Tax Increase? Open Charters

November 3, 2008

Here’s a neat piece of research posted at Heny Levin’s National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education.  The study is actually by Arnold Shober and it examines whether the presence of charter schools in a district affects the likelihood that voters will support a local school tax increase. 

It has been getting more and more difficult to obtain local support for school tax increases.  But, Shober wonders, might it be easier to pass a school tax referenda in communities that have more options paid by tax dollars?  Maybe people more satisfied with the quality and diversity of publicly-financed schools, including charter options, are more willing to provide extra tax dollars for all schools.

As it turns out, Shober finds that they do.  He analyzed data from 1,111 school tax referenda in Wisconsin between 1998 and 2005.  He concludes:

“Adding one charter school to the district that has none increases the likelihood of passage 4.1 percent; increasing the number of charter schools from 0 to 8 (the maximum for these data) increases the likelihood of passage 30.2 percent second only to the effect of a college-educated electorate (below). This suggests that charter schools do have some bearing on how votes perceive a school district’s responsiveness to active-parent demands. Indeed, authorizing charter schools is the only variable in this analysis that a school district’s administration could directly manipulate (save the actual ballot request).”

It seems that restricting families’ options and forcing them to attend dirstrict schools whether those schools serve their kids well or not is not the best strategy to get those same families to cough up more dough for the public school system.  People are more likely to be supportive of a public school system that helps them find schools that work for their kids — even if those schools are charters.

2 Comments | charter schools, competitive effects | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

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