School Choice Reduces Crime, Increases College-Attendance, and Makes Your Breath Smell Better

November 29, 2009

Well, at least the first two claims are supported by rigorous new research based on school choice lotteries in Charlotte, North Carolina. Harvard researcher, David Deming, looked at a public school choice program that allows families to rank order their preferred schools and then admits students by a weighted lottery formula.  The program is designed primarily to facilitate school integration but it also allows random-assignment designed research of the effects of choice.  In the paper, “Better Schools, Less Crime?” , Deming found: 

Seven years after random assignment, lottery winners have been arrested for fewer and less serious crimes, and have spent fewer days incarcerated…  The reduction in crime persists through the end of the sample period, several years after enrollment in the preferred school is complete. The effects are concentrated among African-American males whose ex ante characteristics define them as “high risk.”

In another paper Deming wrote with Justine Hastings, Tom Kane and Doug Staiger, they examined the same Charlotte program but this time focused on the effects of choice on high school completion and college attendance.  They found:

We find strong evidence that high school lottery winners from neighborhoods assigned to the lowest-performing schools benefited greatly from choice. Girls are 12 percentage points more likely to attend a four-year college. Boys are 13 percentage points more likely to graduate from high school but are less likely to attend a four-year college. We present suggestive evidence that changes in relative rank within schools may explain these puzzling gender differences. In contrast with the results for students from low-performing home school zones, we find little evidence of gains for students whose home schools are of average quality.

So, expanding school choice reduces the likelihood that students will become criminals (particularly among African-American males) and increases the chances that boys will graduate high school and girls will attend college.  Given previous research showing that choice increases achievement for participating students, students who remain in traditional public schools, and improves civic goals (like school integration) in addition to these new findings, maybe choice really does make your breath smell better.  It seems to do so many other useful things.

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

Ed Schools Take the FCAT

November 25, 2009

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Good gravy! Never mind the debate on using test scores to evaluate teachers. Florida is actually using test scores to evaluate teacher colleges:

It determined what percentage of graduates from each program had 50 percent or more of their students make a year’s worth of progress [on the FCAT]. USF’s College of Education — a huge pipeline for teachers in the Tampa Bay area — had 76 percent of its graduates reach that bar, putting it ninth among the 10 state university programs. Florida International University in Miami topped the field at 85 percent. The University of West Florida in Pensacola was last at 70 percent.

The only problem I can see here is that this just compares education schools to one another. All education schools are part of the problem. Still, I can see a lot of value in knowing which ones are more a part of the problem or less – not least because if they start competing with one another on the basis of results, maybe someday one of them will actually produce a radical transformative revolutionary breakthrough and actually become a value-adding rather than value-subtracting part of the education system.

62% of a hat tip goes to Flypaper’s Andy Smarick. I’m penalizing Andy by withholding 38% of the hat tip because he claims, with no justification, that Arne Duncan must somehow deserve some credit for this move. First of all, as Andy sort of sheepishly admits, a move like this must have been in the works for a while before reaching fruition.

But more important is that Florida has been the nation’s leader in this field for a long time now. Florida doesn’t follow the USDOE on this issue, the USDOE follows Florida. The only effect the USDOE has ever had on Florida’s interest in using test scores for evaluation purposes is to prevent it from going further faster.

7 Comments | higher education, school accountability | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Gloomy Required Reading

November 24, 2009

As I reviewed my 9th grader’s required reading list for English class I saw good and bad news.  The good news is he is reading some excellent literature, including Romeo and Juliet, Of Mice and Men, Night and To Kill a Mockingbird.  The bad news is that these works are remarkably gloomy. 

To Kill a Mockingbird is the most upbeat of the bunch and can at its most positive be described as a bittersweet recollection of childhood and at its most negative a horrifying tale of the lynching of an innocent man.  The other books are more consistently downbeat, featuring mutual suicide, killing an innocent retarded man, and the holocaust.

I know that the world can be a nasty place and I know that great literature tends to explore that nastiness.  But I have to wonder whether it is really such a good idea to require our moody adolescents to read a steady stream of such depressing works.

Can I suggest that we break-up the persistent gloom by substituting some more upbeat books?  Maybe students could read Measure for Measure instead of Romeo and Juliet.  Measure for Measure would appeal to youthful resistance to authority without modeling overwrought teen crushes.  Maybe schools could add some Kurt Vonnegut, which softens the gloom with absurdist humor.

Don’t get me wrong, I think my child’s reading list is pretty typical and I like everything on it.  I’m just wondering if people have thought about how downbeat the list is.

11 Comments | instructional reform | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

The Case for Israel

November 23, 2009

We had a screening of the film, The Case for Israel: Democracy’s Outpost, Saturday night in the newly constructed Temple Shalom in Fayetteville, AR with comments from the producer, Gloria Greensfield.  It was a huge success.

There were nearly a hundred people there of whom about a third were from pro-Israel Christian Churches.  As certain segments of the Jewish community have gone wobbly on Israel, the support of the Christian community is becoming more important.

But the most important reason that the screening was a huge success is that it was probably the largest pro-Israel gathering in a college community dominated by the anti-Israel King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies, created with an $18 million gift from the Saudi Arabian government.  The King Fahd Center along with the Omni Center for Peace, Justice, and Ecology host a few anti-Israel conferences each year.

The oddest thing about these King Fahd and Omni Center events is their singular focus on human rights abuses by Israel.  Yes, the government of Israel along with the governments in the US and all other democracies can work on improving how they treat their own and other people.  But if we really wanted to address human rights abuses wouldn’t we be paying a whole lot more attention to the flagrant oppression perpetrated by the dictatorships governing every other country in the Middle East?

In Saudi Arabia , Iran, Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East (but not Israel) homosexuality is a crime sometimes punished by death.  Religious and political dissent is almost entirely repressed in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Gaza, and elsewhere in the Middle East (but not Israel).

Shouldn’t progressives who value freedom for homosexuals as well as religious and political minorities (as I do) be devoting much more energy protesting other countries in the Middle East?  And shouldn’t people who value democracy and human rights (as I do) praise those countries in the world where such values exist and are implemented (even if very imperfectly) rather than concentrating the bulk of their energy denouncing those countries?  It’s as if we have gone through the looking glass and up is now down.

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

States to Protect Health Care Freedom?

November 19, 2009

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

George Will wrote a column today about an effort to protect Arizonans from being forced to buy health insurance or to ban the right to privately purchase medical care by Obamacare.

If Obamacare passes, the people of Arizona may give it the proverbial single finger salute. Other states may as well.

The proposed initiative reads:

No law shall be passed that restricts a person’s freedom of choice of private health care systems or private plans of any type. No law shall interfere with a person’s or entity’s right to pay directly for lawful medical services, nor shall any law impose a penalty or fine, of any type, for choosing to obtain or decline health care coverage or for participation in any particular health care system or plan.

Clint Bolick notes that the federal protection of individual rights have always served as a floor, not a ceiling. If both Obamacare and this language passed, an interesting legal battle would ensue. Money quote from the column:

The court says the constitutional privacy right protects personal “autonomy” regarding “the most intimate and personal choices.” The right was enunciated largely at the behest of liberals eager to establish abortion rights. Liberals may think, but the court has never held, that the privacy right protects only doctor-patient transactions pertaining to abortion. David Rivkin and Lee Casey, Justice Department officials under the Reagan and first Bush administrations, ask: If government cannot proscribe or even “unduly burden” — the court’s formulation — access to abortion, how can government limit other important medical choices?

How indeed? This would all be much better if judges simply rediscovered an ability to read the 9th and 10th Amendments to the Constitution, but if you can’t “unduly burden” abortion how are you supposed to “unduly burden” an individual’s right to pay a heart surgeon or have an appendix removed?

Hopefully the Senate will kill Obamacare, but if not, the fight can be carried on by other means. If some states passed such amendments and other did not, get ready for the second great doctor migration. I had a Canadian doctor growing up in southeast Texas in the 1970s. Any guesses why?

1 Comment | politics | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Reading Osama bin Laden his Miranda Rights

November 18, 2009

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Oh.My.God.Becky! Senator Lindsey Graham demolishes Eric Holder.  Pop some popcorn and check it out here.

3 Comments | politics | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Can’t Think of A Blog Post

November 18, 2009

I apologize for my lack of a post yesterday and this lame post today.  I just can’t seem to think of a good post.

Yesterday Greg suggested that I blog about this excellent editorial in the Wall Street Journal denouncing the Ford Foundation for giving $100 million to the teachers union to spur education reform and claiming that this money would “shake up the conversations surrounding school reform and help spur some truly imaginative thinking and partnerships.”  The Ford Foundation might as well give $100 million to the city of Las Vegas to address gambling addiction. 

But the Wall Street Journal already did a great job, so it didn’t seem worth my blogging about since I really wouldn’t have anything to add.

I also thought about blogging about how the Race to the Top criteria issued this week hardly demand meaningful reform from states.  But I’ve already written several times on how little we should expect from Race to the Top, such as here.  The bigger surprise is that anyone is surprised.  Besides, Jeanne Allen did a fine job critiquing the Race to the Top criteria here.  And on top of all that, I’ve probably been beating up on Obama and Duncan about education reform too much.  The reality is that at least they are saying a lot of the right things, which has had a big effect on education reform battles at the state and local level.  It’s a big deal that a Democratic Administration has (at least rhetorically) thrown its weight fully behind expanding choice and competition (if only via charters), merit pay, weakening teacher tenure, etc…

I also thought about blogging about a bunch of local issues.  A state school board member was featured in an article in the Northwest Arkansas Times explaining why she opposed every newly proposed charter school in Arkansas this year.  She helpfully explained that she had visited a predominantly Hispanic school in Springdale, AR that was making AYP with its ESL students and “that helped convince her Springdale’s services were sufficient for their students.”  There’s no need to let those families decide if the quality of their education is sufficient.

But some of my friends who write the excellent blog, Mid-Riffs, were already working on something to address this.  I saw no need to duplicate.

In short, I’m sorry, folks.  Maybe I’ll think of something fresh soon.  Or maybe I can just keep writing about all the things that I was going to write about but didn’t.  Or did I?

17 Comments | charter schools, teacher union | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Senator Meeks vs. CTU

November 18, 2009

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

“Chicago Public Schools have a gang problem. The gang, however, is not the BDs (Black Disciples), the gang is not the GDs (Gangster Disciples), the gang is not the Vice Lords and the gang is not the Four Corner Hustlers. The gang is the Chicago Teachers Union.”

— State Sen. James T. Meeks, D-Chicago, chair of the Illinois Senate’s Education Committee, Oct. 17, 2009.

Wow- Meeks is not only a state Senator and chair of the Illinois Senate Education Committee, an African American minister and long time friend of Obama. Read more about his unfolding war with the Chicago teacher union in the Chicago Tribune.

Leave a Comment » | teacher union | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Stop the National Standards Train

November 16, 2009

As I’ve said before (here, here, and elsewhere), I can’t understand the enthusiasm of education reformers for national standards and testing.  Advocates for the status quo and/or pure nonsense are much better positioned to control the process of national standard-setting and test-writing than are advocates for meaningful reform grounded in evidence-based approaches.

In case you had any doubts, the current round of national standards and testing craze is once again being hijacked by the Dark Side.  My colleague, Sandra Stotsky, has an excellent piece in the current issue of City Journal ringing the alarm bells:

A distinct lack of interest in allowing mathematicians a major voice in determining the content of the high school mathematics curriculum isn’t confined to educational research publications or presentations. A new effort is under way to develop national math standards for K–12. The two organizations running the effort—the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, with support from both the Department of Education and the National Education Association—have not yet invited a single mathematical or science society to ensure that the high school mathematics standards and “college-readiness” standards they propose in fact prepare American high school students for the freshman calculus courses that serve as the basis for undergraduate majors in engineering, science, and mathematics (as well as other mathematics-dependent majors and technical/occupational programs). The effort, which is being pushed very quickly, seems determined to do an end run around the country’s mathematical and scientific organizations and the panel’s recommendations on the major topics for school algebra.

Who controls this process?  Advocates of “constructivism” and  “cultural-historical activity theory” do.  If you don’t know what this gobbledy-gook means, Sandy helpfully explains: 

Two theories lie behind the educators’ new approach to math teaching: “cultural-historical activity theory” and “constructivism.” According to cultural-historical activity theory, schooling as it exists today reinforces an illegitimate social order. Typical of this mindset is Brian Greer, a mathematics educator at Portland State University, who argues “against the goal of ‘algebra for all’ on the grounds that . . . most individuals in our society do not need to have studied algebra.” According to Greer, the proper approach to teaching math “now questions whether mathematics as a school subject should continue to be dominated by mathematics as an academic discipline or should reflect more fully the range of mathematical activities in which humans engage.” The primary role of math teachers, constructivists say in turn, shouldn’t be to explain or otherwise try to “transfer” their mathematical knowledge to students; that would be ineffective. Instead, they must help the students construct their own understanding of mathematics and find their own math solutions.

We need to stop this national standards train before we all go off the rails.

12 Comments | instructional reform, school accountability | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Disruptive Technology in Treating Autism

November 13, 2009

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Check it out: cool stuff! Affordable online tools to allow parents to do therapies for autistic children from a company called Rethink Autism on the national ABC News broadcast.

The whole “isn’t this like getting a manual on how to take your appendix out” stuff is just hilarious. If you don’t have access to a hospital or doctor, getting such a manual beats the living daylights out of not getting a manual.

Isn’t that the sort of thing that print journalists used to say about bloggers, back when we still had print journalists?

Leave a Comment » | special ed | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

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