Jay P. Greene's Blog

I noted this morning that the Alamo Draft House movie theater in Dallas was showing Team America: World Police because Sony Pictures had withdrawn The Interview from distribution.  I praised the Alamo for having the courage that Sony and virtually every national cinema chains lacked in being willing to mock the barbaric stone-age despot, Kim Jong Un.

Well, Paramount Pictures has joined the ranks of the cowardly cowards in their colossal cowardice by apparently refusing to grant Alamo Draft House and another independent movie house, Cleveland’s Capitol Theater, permission to show Team America. Who will stand for liberty when capitulation is so common?

Remember that these same movie companies and cinema chains are all too happy to show movies praising Julian Assange or Edward Snowden.  Perhaps they know how generally benign the US government is in that it will do little or nothing to punish them for (rightly) criticizing it  for illiberal actions.  But the really menacing forces trying to block airing The Interview or publication of images of Muhammad are appeased.

Please save us, Team America!

While national movie chains have cowered in the face of unsubstantiated threats from North Korean stooges and Sony Pictures withdrew The Interview from all forms of distribution (presumably including DVD and Netflix), the Alamo Draft House movie theater in Dallas decided to fight back by showing Team America: World Police.  OK, it features Kim Jong Il instead of Kim Jong Un, but that’s basically the same thing.  Take that, barbaric stone-age despot!

While Hollywood proves that these colors don’t run — they flee screaming in terror — Alamo Draft House proves, in the spirit of Fasi Zaka, that the defense of liberty requires a good mocking of tyrants.  And apparently only the Alamo has the nerve to do it.  America!  What I wouldn’t do to get an Alamao Draft House in Fayetteville?

Don’t worry, even if Kom Jong Un threatens Hollywood into submission, he’ll still feel very lonely all by himself in his giant palace surrounded  by millions of starving North Koreans.

TheatreSquared’s performances of Hamlet and A Christmas Carol were a hit with the student audiences that saw them.  And apparently our study of what students learned from those performances was a hit with the readers of Education Next.  It was the second most viewed article in Ed Next during 2014 despite coming out toward the end of the year.  This follows on our study of the effects of field trips to an art museum earning the #1 spot as the most read article in Ed Next during 2013.

Students are very interested in these cultural experiences.  The education policy community is very interested in these studies.  Now if only policymakers, administrators, and foundations showed similar levels of interest.

As usual, The Onion totally nails it.  Entertainment executives fall into such predictable and over-done patterns that you would think that they weren’t in a creative business.  If I have to see one more series or movie about the dark underbelly of [blank], I may fall asleep as I write to complain about it.

So, The Onion describes their vision of a new HBO series about perfectly happy and pleasant Wilmette, Illinois, where I happen to have grown up:

Speaking at an HBO press junket Monday, acclaimed writer-producer David Simon, creator of the gritty urban dramas The Wire and Treme, announced that his next project will be an epic, multilayered examination of the contented and comfortable streets of suburban Wilmette, IL….

According to Simon, the sprawling new series, tentatively titled The Township, will offer a searing and unsentimental glimpse into the happy social fabric of modern-day Wilmette, an area known for its deeply untroubled history and well-functioning political structure.

“As a writer, my mission is to tell a story that makes viewers think about how conditions in American cities are created,” Simon told reporters. “We can’t just turn our back on the staggering levels of happiness occurring in a place like Wilmette and say, ‘Well, that’s not my life.’ We have to confront this tranquility head-on and shine a light on the institutions that are responsible for it.”

Added Simon, “I want this show to be an unflinching dissection of how the system has in no way failed the people of this town.”

According to HBO sources, the novelistic series will chronicle the interconnected web of police officers, politicians, tradespeople, teachers, and ordinary families who are “all complicit” in perpetuating the cycle of institutional effectiveness that makes Wilmette the seventh best place in the country to raise children….

Of course, there are creative producers, writers, and actors out there who are trying new things and the market often rewards them for their fresh approaches.  If you are tried of the HBO formula for a series with random acts of shocking violence with a healthy sprinkling of naked breasts, you might try BYUtv’s critically acclaimed series, Granite Flats.  As the New York Times describes it, “In ‘Granite Flats,’ a Soviet spy satellite crashes into a Colorado town, a trio of teenagers become amateur sleuths, and a secret mind-control program called Mkultra is revealed.”  I’ve only read about it, but I’m excited to start watching it.

Yes, BYUtv is a Mormon network (which you can watch streaming if your cable provider does not carry it).  And yes, Granite Flats is set in a small town in the 1960s “to make modest language and conservative social mores feel intrinsic…. ”

“Still,” the NYT observes, “’Granite Flats’ is not ‘Ozzie and Harriet.’ The characters include a father struggling with alcoholism and petty crime, a war veteran hospitalized for what would now be called post-traumatic stress disorder, and an adopted Korean girl who comes to realize that her parents have lied about their lives and possibly hers.”

The lead writer for the show is my old friend and college house-mate, John Plummer, who the NYT describes as “an observant Buddhist.”

The Times further notes:

The success of “Granite Flats” became apparent not only as its audience grew — especially with online streaming — but through its ability to attract top talent. Christopher Lloyd (“Back to the Future”) and Cary Elwes (“The Princess Bride”) signed up for recurring roles. The third season, which begins next March, includes Parker Posey, the doyenne of indie cinema.

For the most part, critical response was both positive and surprised. Glenn Garvin wrote in The Miami Herald, “ ‘Granite Flats’ is solid evidence that family entertainment need not be strait-laced or simple-minded.” David Hinckley in The Daily News called it “a cool little series from a spot where most New Yorkers might not look.”

I’d like to see more cool little series and I’m looking forward to watching this one.  Oh and also the one about Wilmette.

It is the 50th anniversary of the Moynihan Report, which warned of the challenges single-parenthood posed to the success of children, especially in the Black community.  In recognition of the 50th anniversary, Education Next is running a series of articles on what we now know about the frequency and consequences for children of growing up without their married, biological parents.

The first in this series is an article by Sara McLanahan and Christopher Jencks asking “Was Moynihan Right?”  The answer is a pretty clear yes.  You should read the entire article but here is the heart of the argument:

Was Moynihan right in suggesting that children whose parents divorce or never marry have more than their share of problems? This question has been hotly debated ever since the publication of Moynihan’s report. On the one hand, growing up without both biological parents is clearly associated with worse average outcomes for children than growing up with them. Specifically, children growing up with a single mother are exposed to more family instability and complexity, they have more behavior problems, and they are less likely to finish high school or attend college than children raised by both of their parents. On the other hand, these differences in children’s behavior and success might well be traceable to differences that would exist even if the biological father were present.

In recent years, researchers have begun to use what they call “quasi-experimental” approaches to estimate the causal impact of growing up apart from one’s biological father. Some studies compare the outcomes of children living in states with liberal versus restrictive divorce laws. Others compare siblings who were different ages in the year when their father moved out. Still others compare the same child before and after the father left the child’s household. One important limitation of these studies is that while they all focus on children who are not living with both of their biological parents, they differ with respect to their comparison group, whether it is children raised by their mother alone, by their mother and a new spouse, or by their mother and a new partner to whom she is not married. Nonetheless, when taken together these studies are beginning to tell a consistent story. A recent review of 45 studies using quasi-experimental methods concluded that growing up apart from one’s father does reduce a child’s life chances in many domains.

The review’s authors examined the effects of a father’s absence on outcomes in four domains: educational attainment, mental health, labor market performance, and family formation. Growing up with only one biological parent reduces a child’s chances of graduating from high school by about 40 percent, which is similar to the effect of having a mother who did not finish high school rather than one who did. The absence of one’s biological father has not been shown to affect a child’s verbal and math test scores, however. The evidence for other indicators of educational performance, such as high school grades, skipping school, and college aspirations, is mixed, with some studies finding that father absence lowers school attendance and aspirations and others finding no effect. Most studies find larger effects on boys than on girls.

How might we reconcile the fact that a father’s absence affects high school graduation with the lack of evidence that it affects test scores? The answer appears to be that a father’s absence increases antisocial behavior, such as aggression, rule breaking, delinquency, and illegal drug use. These antisocial behaviors affect high school completion independent of a child’s verbal and math scores. Thus it appears that a father’s absence lowers children’s educational attainment not by altering their scores on cognitive tests but by disrupting their social and emotional adjustment and reducing their ability or willingness to exercise self-control. The effects of growing up without both parents on aggression, rule breaking, and delinquency are also larger for boys than for girls. Since these traits predict both college attendance and graduation, the spread of single-parent families over the past few decades may have contributed to the growing gender gap in college attendance and graduation. The gender gap in college completion is much more pronounced among children raised by single mothers than among children raised in two-parent families.

Over at Education Next, Jason Bedrick has one of the most devastating take-downs of an editorial I’ve ever seen.  The Sun-Sentinel recently published an editorial opposing the state’s scholarship tax credit program.  Almost everything in the editorial was a factual error or grossly distorted.

Given that journalists and newspapers are supposed to trade in facts and accurate information, it is a wonder that the editorial writers at the Sun-Sentinel could be so incredibly awful at their jobs.

Brian Kisida, Cari Bogulski, Anne Kraybill, Collin Hitt, Dan Bowen, and I have a new piece in Education Week about our studies measuring the effects of culturally enriching art experiences on students.  The piece summarizes our research on what students learn from going on field trips to an art museum as well as to see live theater.  It also goes into greater detail on how those experiences affect critical thinking and the desire to become cultural consumers (people who go to art museums and the theater when they grow up).  This article is part of a special section Education Week has published on arts education.

But the main thrust of our new Ed Week article is the argument that arts education badly needs funding for quality research on how the arts affect students.  We write:

None of this research will occur, however, until defenders of the arts recognize the need for it. Arts advocates can no longer rely on weak studies that simply compare students who participate in the arts with those who don’t. Such studies are pervasive, and the claims they make are likely overblown. Skeptics can correctly wonder whether the research truly demonstrates that the arts make people awesome, or if awesome people are simply attracted to the arts. To convince skeptics of how the arts can influence a student’s trajectory, future studies will have to adopt rigorous research designs that can isolate causal effects.

Art collectors are bidding up prices, and enormous fortunes are devoted to acquiring and displaying art. It makes little sense for arts patrons to spend a fortune acquiring and commissioning masterpieces, while failing to demonstrate the benefits of the arts with quality research. To determine whether there are important social benefits derived from arts activities, money should be invested in funding rigorous research, which can be expensive.

If the arts and culture are to remain a vibrant part of children’s education, arts patrons will need to step forward to help pay for the kind of quality research that shows not only what those benefits are, but just how significant they can be.

I finally got a chance to watch The Lego Movie and it was great fun.  I particularly enjoyed the movie’s description of a “think tank.”

The villain, President Business, has imprisoned almost all of the Lego Universe’s master builders, including Superman, Green Lantern, William Shakespeare, and Shaquille O’Neal, in his think tank.  In the think tank the captured creative heroes are forced to “come up with all the instructions for everything in the universe.”  That is, they are supposed to develop a plan for how everything is supposed to done from which no one may deviate.  And the perfect order of the plan will be made permanent once Preisdent Business can use the Kragle (Krazy Glue) to freeze everything in place.

I’m glad the folks at Lego are aware of how the scourge that is known as PLDD has infected many of the nation’s leading think tanks.  And if this is the impression that popular culture has of think tanks, no amount of web hits, Tweets, or donor dollars will restore their policy influence.  Think tanks had better find the Piece of Resistance before it’s too late.

[The music festival, day 6. The crowd has grown so big the camera has to pull back a loooong way to get it all into view. The boys are again present with the college hippies. The band is playing reggae music.]
Driver: Wow, this band is so crunchy. Dude, I need more weed.
Stan: So it seems like we have enough people now. When do we start taking down the corporations?
Man 1: [take a deep drag from his joint] Yeah man, the corporations. Right now they’re raping the world for money!
Kyle: Yeah, so, where are they. Let’s go get ’em.
Man 2: Right now we’re proving we don’t need corporations. We don’t need money. This can become a commune where everyone just helps each other.
Man 1: Yeah, we’ll have one guy who like, who like, makes bread. A-and one guy who like, l-looks out for other people’s safety.
Stan: You mean like a baker and a cop?
Man 2: No no, can’t you imagine a place where people live together and like, provide services for each other in exchange for their services?
Kyle: Yeah, it’s called a town.
Driver: You kids just haven’t been to college yet. But just you wait, this thing is about to get HUGE.

The Ed Next article by Robin J. Lake, Ashley Jochim and Michael DeArmond on the challenges facing school choice in Detroit has led to a resurgence of chatter about Portfolio Districts.  The authors write:

Detroit is a powerful illustration of what happens when no one takes responsibility for the entire system of publicly supported schools in a city. Parents struggle to navigate their many, mostly low-performing options, and providers face at best weak incentives to improve academic quality. As a result, large numbers of failing district and charter schools continue to operate.

And in an accompanying blog post Lake concludes: “What Detroit needs is a portfolio manager…”

The idea that we need a Portfolio District to decide which schools of choice are allowed to open, which must shut-down, and what regulations should govern all of them has gained some traction in reform circles ever since New Orleans adopted this approach.  Now folks want to bring that same idea to Detroit and choice systems everywhere to make sure bad actors don’t get to operate schools, that failing schools are forced to close, and that a heavy regulatory framework avoids other problems.

I’ve never understood how Portfolio Districts are expected to perform these regulatory functions any better than regular old school districts.  The whole thing reminds me of the exchange quoted above from the South Park Hippie Drum Circle episode.

Portfolio District Advocate: “Yeah, we’ll have one guy who like is a Portfolio Manager, who like can close down bad schools.”

Me: “You mean like a superintendent?”

Portfolio District Advocate: “No, man, this guy will work for an independent board that makes rules for schools to make sure they don’t do bad things.”

Me: “You mean like a school district?”

Portfolio District Advocate: “You don’t get it, dude, the Portfolio District is there to make sure that only good schools open and to provide information and reduce chaos.”

Me: “Isn’t that what school districts are already supposed to do? How is a Portfolio District any different other than that you gave it a new name and believe that good people will be in charge?”

Ed reform is plagued by people not thinking like social scientists.  School districts have institutional incentives to prevent new good schools from opening, propping up bad schools that too few parents want, and imposing an excessive regulatory framework on the entire system.  Those same institutional incentives will inevitably come to dominate Portfolio Districts.

If you want to create real change, you have to change the system of incentives — not just create new institutions that will be governed by the same perverse incentives.  Choice and market competition can accomplish the same goals without being subject to the same destructive incentives as school and portfolio districts.

Yes, I know that Robin Lake and her co-authors find continued low achievement in Detroit schools and quote several people who complain about a lack of information and other challenges.  But keep in mind that the big expansion in choice in Detroit is only a few years old and that the city is starting from an extremely high level of dysfunction.  Lake and her colleagues have not used a rigorous analysis to determine whether charter schools are having a positive effect in Detroit, they just show trends in urban NAEP scores.  And the few studies on Detroit charters they do cite — the CREDO and  Mackinac studies — both find positive results for Detroit charters.  It just isn’t fast enough and dramatic enough.

Beware ed reformers in a hurry.  Real and enduring improvement takes time.  Happily it is possible, if we have the patience to let it happen.  A new study by Patrick L. Baude, Marcus Casey, Eric A. Hanushek, and Steven G. Rivkin examines the evolution of charter school quality in Texas over time.  Here is their abstract:

Studies of the charter school sector typically focus on head-to-head comparisons of charter and traditional schools at a point in time, but the expansion of parental choice and relaxation of constraints on school operations is unlikely to raise school quality overnight. Rather, the success of the reform depends in large part on whether parental choices induce improvements in the charter sector. We study quality changes among Texas charter schools between 2001 and 2011. Our results suggest that the charter sector was initially characterized by schools whose quality was highly variable and, on average, less effective than traditional public schools. However, exits from the sector, improvement of existing charter schools, and positive selection of charter management organizations that open additional schools raised average charter school effectiveness over time relative to traditional public schools. Moreover, the evidence is consistent with the belief that a reduction in student turnover as the sector matures, expansion of the share of charters that adhere to a No Excuses philosophy, and increasingly positive student selection at the times of both entry and reenrollment all contribute to the improvement of the charter sector.

Rather than imposing a Portfolio District that is likely to re-create the dysfunction and failure of traditional school districts, let’s change the system of incentives and allow choice and competition to improve school quality over time.