Flawed Comparison from OECD

June 28, 2011

The OECD has a report, Education at a Glance 2010, that provides a shockingly flawed comparison of the amount of time U.S. teachers work relative to teachers in other countries.  According to the report, U.S. teachers work 1,913 hours over a 180 day school year that is 36 weeks long.  And also according to the report, the average OECD teacher only works 1,659 hours over a school year of 187 days that is 38 weeks long.

So, if we believe these OECD numbers (which the WSJ apparently did in this blog post), U.S. teachers work 15.3% more hours per year than do their colleagues in other developed countries.

But if you believe the OECD comparison I have a lovely bridge to sell to you.  According to the report’s methodological appendix, the method by which the U.S. information was collected was different (and clearly less reliable)  than how it was collected from all of the other countries.  In every country except the U.S. the hours worked was derived from teacher contracts or laws.  But in the U.S. the information was drawn from self-reported responses to a survey of teachers.  (See p. 75 of the appendix).

A valid comparison would require that the information be collected in similar ways across all countries — either we rely upon self-reports in surveys of teachers for all countries or we rely on contractual hours for everyone.  But using self-reports for the U.S. and contractual hours for everyone else produces obvious distortions.  People may be inclined to exaggerate the hours they work in a survey.  And the definition of time worked is ambiguous.  If I think about my students while I am brushing my teeth or running on the treadmill am I working during that time?

We have good reason to suspect that the self-reports from U.S. teachers are over-stated.  If teachers really worked 1,913 hours over 180 days, as the report claims, they would be working 10.63 hours per day.  And the numbers I’ve provided are just for primary school students.  For high schools, the OECD report claims U.S. teachers are working 1,998 hours over 180 days, which works out to 11.1 hours per day.  I know some teachers are very conscientious and work long hours but I simply do not believe that the average high school teacher is working 11.1 hours per day.

I know this might invite the wrath of Diane Ravitch’s Army of Angry Teachers, but I suspect that the average hours worked by U.S. teachers is significantly less than the OECD says (and the WSJ repeats).  And I know that the comparison between U.S. and other countries is flawed by collecting the information from self-reports in the U.S. but from contracts everywhere else.

24 Comments | teacher pay | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Bloat? I Don’t See No Stinkin’ Bloat

June 27, 2011

An organization representing State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO) released a report a little while ago on staffing trends in higher education.  The report never names the report Brian Kisida, Jonathan Mills, and I released last year showing how administrative staff grew much more rapidly at research universities between 1993 and 2007 than did instructional and research staff.  But it is clear that this new report is meant to be a refutation of sorts to what it describes as “similar analyses of staffing patterns,” meaning our report.

Using the same federal data source, the new report comes to what appears to be a very different conclusion:

While total staff levels grew 18 percent from 2001 to 2009, the total number of FTE students grew by 29 percent, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of staff per 100 FTE students by 8 percent. “Most institutions improved their educational efficiency by educating more students with fewer staffing resources,” the SHEEO report stated.

What explains the seemingly different conclusions?  The SHEEO report does not group staff into the same categories that we do, it looks at a different and shorter time period, and it expands its scope to include non-research Associates degree and BA granting institutions, which comprise 91% of all of the sample they observe.  We focus on the other 9% of high research universities.

The most important of these differences is the way in which staff are grouped.  The point of our report was to compare growth in administrative staffing relative to instructional and research staffing.  We defined administrative staffing as a combination of the “Executive/Administrative and Managerial” and the “Other Professionals” categories, since these represent the higher-paid professionals who provide non-instructional and non-research services to students, from Deans to student counselors.  When we compare the growth of these folks to the growth in faculty we see that universities have been devoting much more of their newly obtained resources to these non-instructional and non-research services.  That is, our leading research universities are using new resources to stray further from their core missions of teaching and research and to expand into a host of peripheral services.

The SHEEO report concludes that institutions have “improved their educational efficiency” only by combining all staff into one big category.  If you dig deeper into their report where they break the results out by category, you can see that they also find that faculty staffing ratios have declined while senior executive and professional staffing ratios have grown.  In Table 4 the total ratio of Executive and Other Professional staff to students went from 5.04 per 100 students in 2001 to 5.07 in 2009, while faculty declined from 8.41 to 8.09 during the same time period.

That is, the SHEEO report confirms our basic finding.  It only concludes that higher ed has improved its efficiency by adopting the strange idea that greater efficiency means cutting faculty while growing executive and professional staff.

It is also worth noting that the SHEEO report does not go back to 1993 as we did.  We covered the years 1993 to 2007 because they were the earliest and most recent years for which data were available at the time we wrote the report.  If SHEEO had gone further back they would not have found the improved efficiency they claim to find since 2001.  In our report we found overall staffing levels increased from 31.4 full and part time staff per 100 students to 35.5 in 2007, an increase of 13.1% in overall staffing levels.  We also observed an increase if we look only at full time staff.  SHEEO is only able to find greater overall efficiency (defined strangely by them as cutting faculty even more than growing non-faculty professionals) by starting their analysis in 2001 rather than 1993.

This spin-job by SHEEO hasn’t gained much traction, so I hadn’t even noticed it for more than a month after its release.  But I’m sure that it is being waived around in meetings of boards of trustees if they begin to ask about administrative bloat as a result of our report last year.  Trustees shouldn’t be fooled.


									


				

				 Leave a Comment »				|  higher education				 | Tagged: , 				 |  Permalink

 Posted by Jay P. Greene				

			

			

		
			

				
Why America Needs School Choice — Pre-Order Now

				June 8, 2011



				

					


I have a mini-book making the case for school choice coming out on June 28.  You can pre-order it now at Amazon.

									


				

				 Leave a Comment »				|  tax-credit scholarships, vouchers								 |  Permalink

 Posted by Jay P. Greene				

			

			

		
			

				
Special Ed Voucher Research

				June 7, 2011



				

					
Marcus Winters and I have done a few studies on the effects of Florida’s McKay voucher program for disabled students.  These studies were published as Manhattan Institute reports:


“How Special Ed Vouchers Keep Kids From Being Mislabeled as Disabled,”  Manhattan Institute, Civic Report No. 58, August 2009.


“Evaluating the Impact of Special Education Vouchers on Public Schools,”  Manhattan Institute, Civic Report No. 52, April 2008.


It took a while, in fact a couple years, but a revised version of those two studies combined into one article has been published in the peer-reviewed journal, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, which is the leading empirical publication sponsored by the American Educational Research Association.


You can read the full article on the EEPA web site here.


And here is the title and abstract:


Public School Response to Special Education Vouchers


The Impact of Florida’s McKay Scholarship Program on Disability Diagnosis and Student Achievement in Public Schools


Marcus A. Winters, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs


Jay P. Greene, University of Arkansas


Abstract


The authors expand on research evaluating public school response to school choice policies by considering the particular influence of voucher programs for disabled students—a growing type of choice program that may have different implications for public school systems from those of more conventional choice programs. The authors provide a theoretical framework to show that special education vouchers could influence both school quality and the likelihood that a school will choose to identify the marginal child as disabled. Using a rich panel data set from Florida, the authors find some evidence that competition from a voucher program for disabled students decreased the likelihood that a student was diagnosed as having a mild disability and was positively related to academic achievement in the public schools.

									


				

				 2 Comments				|  special ed, vouchers								 |  Permalink

 Posted by Jay P. Greene				

			

			

		
			

				
The Limits and Dangers of Philanthropy in Education

				June 6, 2011



				

					


It’s hard to criticize people who generously give away money in the hopes of improving outcomes for other people.  But it is also important to recognize the limits and dangers of philanthropic activity.  Non-profits can help alleviate particular suffering and they can help promote beneficial ideas, but they cannot effectively substitute for markets.  Foundations, like the government, may try to engage in central planning, picking winners and losers in the market, but quite often they may end up perpetually subsidizing losers.  The only difference is that at least foundations do not back losers with money they have forcibly taken from others. Even so, a common pitfall for foundations is to fantasize that they know what works and what doesn’t rather than encouraging market forces to sort that out.  


This point is nicely illustrated by a new report released by Andrew Coulson at Cato today.  Andrew examines academic progress by students in different charter school networks in California.  He then looks at which charter networks receive the most financial backing from philanthropies.  He finds:


The results are discouraging. There is effectively no correlation between grant funding and charter network performance, after controlling for individual student characteristics and peer effects, and addressing the problem of selection bias.


For example, the three highest-performing charter school networks perform dramatically above the level of conventional public schools on the California Standards Tests, but rank 21st, 27th, and 39th in terms of the grant funding they have received, out of 68 charter networks. The AP results are worse; the correlations between charter networks’ AP performance and their grant funding are negative, though negligible in magnitude.


The problem is not that foundations need to be smarter in their giving, although I have written a book chapter on how they could be smarter.  The problem is that foundations are no substitute for market forces in identifying what works and what doesn’t for kids.  Rather than focusing on picking winners and losers, foundations should focus on pushing the idea that we need stronger market forces.  In particular, foundations could back the idea that we need a broader set of options for students (including charters); that whatever public subsidies exist for schools should be equal across all schools in this market; and that schools should be allowed to compete on price as well as quality.  The last item could be achieved with something like educational savings accounts that were recently passed in Arizona, where families could keep any savings between the state subsidy and school costs in an account to be used for future educational needs.  Another option is to allow families to top-off the state subsidy with their own funds.


The point is that foundations need to beware of the corruption that frequently follows the concentration of wealth and power, just like governments.  There is a danger that foundation officials will begin to imagine that they know what people should want, just like government officials, academics, and D.C. pundicrats often do, rather than allowing people to figure out what works for them.  Foundations, like government, can play a useful role by trying to create sensible rules for markets so that they can function efficiently.  They can also alleviate particular suffering and misfortune.  But if they start focusing the bulk of their money on picking winners and losers in the educational marketplace, they are very likely to get it wrong.  Central planning doesn’t work any better for foundations than it does for governments.


I should add that profit-seeking corporations are as prone to corruption as they concentrate wealth and power as are non-profits and governments.  The difference is that, absent government protection, corporations suffer the consequences of this hubris.  If they stray from their mission and become swollen with power-seeking administrative bloat, they tend to lose in the marketplace to leaner, more focused organizations.


The danger for non-profits (and governments) is that there is no similar mechanism of accountability.  If they back foolish ideas or suffer from administrative bloat, they never have to stop as long as they can continue to extract funds without demonstrating effectiveness.


Gigantism in the foundation world is a real problem.  Organizations, including Gates, Ford, Carnegie have the funds to keep foisting foolish ideas on people for a long, long time without any accountability.  And as they get big financially, they get even bigger in their staffing so that they become a self-perpetuating power-seeking bureaucracy, much like the government (except without taking funds by force).


For example, it is interesting to note that over the last decade the Gates Foundation doubled its assets, but it increased its staffing by almost ten-fold.  Empire building afflicts the non-profit and university world almost as much as government.  Wise foundations avoid building empires and focus on promoting sensible rules for efficient market operation as well as the alleviation of misfortune that occurs within markets.

									


				

				 3 Comments				|  charter schools, economics								 |  Permalink

 Posted by Jay P. Greene				

			

			

		
			

				
Walmart Shareholder Meeting 2011

				June 3, 2011



				

					


Today is the Walmart shareholder meeting.  I’ll blog later today about the event, as I have done in the past.


In the meantime you can read some of those posts:


Walmart Shareholder Meeting 2009


Union Busting — Good for the NYT, Bad for Everyone Else


The People’s Front of Judea Merges with the Judean People’s Front


You Mean Wal-Mart Isn’t Evil?


Walmart Shareholder Meeting


When All Politics is Personal


P.S.  Thanks to Eduwonkette for the photo.  I miss her sock-puppetry in the blogoshpere as well as her deficient photo-shopping skills.  But discredited bloggers don’t go away (I’m looking at you Diane), they continue as university professors and NYT op-ed writers.


You can pay African-American ministers not to encourage their parishioners to vote, like Ed Rollins, and then come back as the campaign manager for Mike Huckabee.  You can serially cheat on your spouses, like New Gingrich and then run for president.  And you can make false allegations against public officials, like Diane Ravitch, or use your anonymous blog to promote your own research, like Jennifer Jennings, and nothing happens. Oh well.

									


				

				 Leave a Comment »				|  economics								 |  Permalink

 Posted by Jay P. Greene				

			

			

		
			

				
Creative Destruction in Education

				June 2, 2011



				

					


I don’t have time to write a post as long as the topic deserves, so let me just start a discussion by making a claim…


For the most part, organizations are incapable of innovating.  Most organizations are founded with a particular mission and method for pursuing that mission.  If circumstances require that the mission or method be changed, organizations generally can’t do it.  They’ll just keep doing what they were initially established to do until they can no longer continue operating.


Progress occurs not by turning around failing institutions, but by replacing those organizations with new ones that have a better mission and/or method.  Of the original 500 companies included in the S&P 500 in 1957 only 74 (15%) exist today as independent companies.  In the private sector, innovation primarily occurs by replacing or fundamentally re-organizing organizations and not by “reforming” them.


And while U.S. real GDP has nearly quintupled since 1970, education achievement of 17 year-olds and high school graduation rates have remained basically unchanged over the same time period.  Perhaps the reason for progress in the economy but not in education stems from our willingness to allow new organizations to replace old ones in the private sector, but not in education.


Public school systems almost never close and the creation of new ones is highly constrained.  Plenty of our public schools are failing, but we almost never admit that they have failed and allow that organization to be replaced with new ones.


Let’s stop trying to fix Detroit, LA, or Chicago public schools.  Let’s let the reality of their failure become official.  They, like most organizations, cannot innovate.  They need to be replaced with new organizations with new missions and new methods of education.  That’s how we can reform schools — by replacing them.

									


				

				 4 Comments				|  economics								 |  Permalink

 Posted by Jay P. Greene				

			

			

		
			

				
The Physics of “My Little Pony”

				May 27, 2011



				

					
									


				

				 1 Comment				|  random pop culture								 |  Permalink

 Posted by Jay P. Greene				

			

			

		
			

				
VideoGate on NRO

				May 26, 2011



				

					




I wrote-up the whole VideoGate saga for National Review Online, which you can read here.


I’ve now said just about everything I have to say on this issue.  Unless something changes I think we’ve established a few things about Diane Ravitch if you didn’t know them already.  First, it appears she fabricated (or imagined) serious allegations of misbehavior against a public official.  That combined with her inaccurate and selective treatment of empirical evidence should make us doubt her credibility as a scholar.


Second, she is behaving like a classic bully.  She hurls insults and allegations against others on a continual basis, but as soon as she is challenged she tries to shut-down the opposition, punish her critics, and deplores the meanness of public discourse.


And let’s be clear — Ravitch is a huge source of meanness.  In just the last week (including after her call for an end to meanness) here are some of the missives she has hurled:



This is just a sample of her meanness within the last week.  Her bizarre tirades go on and on and on.


In exposing her false allegation against Deborah Gist and ridiculing her thin-skinned swollen ego I am not primarily seeking to be mean (although I should add that I have nothing against meanness when properly used to defeat bad things).


I have done all of this because respectable people — people who should know better — have been treating Diane Ravitch as if she were a serious person.   She isn’t.  I don’t know whether she has experienced a mental breakdown, has become intoxicated by her new celebrity, or was never a serious person.  Respectable people should be wary.


There are far more serious people out there who have concerns about the influence of wealthy foundations on education policy, who doubt the benefits of school choice, accountability testing, and merit pay, and who would be willing to be interviewed to say as much.  I’m not saying these views are ridiculous.  I am saying that the unsupported, unthoughtful, and hypocritical way in which Diane Ravitch expresses these views is ridiculous.  And ridiculous things are deserving of ridicule.



									


				

				 10 Comments				|  politics								 |  Permalink

 Posted by Jay P. Greene				

			

			

		
			

				
VideoGate, Day 7

				May 24, 2011



				

					
To her credit, Diane Ravitch has offered an apology to Deborah Gist for having accused her of gross misbehavior.  Here is what she wrote:


… I reflected on a blog I wrote recently about my visit to Rhode Island. In that blog, I wrote harsh words about state Commissioner Deborah Gist. On reflection, I concluded that I had written in anger and that I was unkind. For that, I am deeply sorry.


Like every other human being, I have my frailties; I am far from perfect. I despair of the spirit of meanness that now permeates so much of our public discourse. One sees it on television, hears it on radio talk shows, reads it in comments on blogs, where some attack in personal terms using the cover of anonymity or even their own name, taking some sort of perverse pleasure in maligning or ridiculing others.


I don’t want to be part of that spirit. Those of us who truly care about children and the future of our society should find ways to share our ideas, to discuss our differences amicably, and to model the behavior that we want the young to emulate.


While this is a very positive development, it does not fully address the issue.  The main issue at this point is not Deborah Gist’s hurt feelings for having been accused (apparently wrongly) of exceptional rudeness and incivility; the main issue is Diane Ravitch’s credibility.  It is not enough for Ravitch to say that she is imperfect if the imperfection is about the very thing that makes everyone pay attention to her — her authority as an accurate chronicler of events.


To maintain her credibility Ravitch needs to give permission for the videotape of her meeting with Gist to be released.  Even if she is sorry or believes that she wrote in anger, she has still not spoken to the basic accuracy of her account.  If the video confirms her account, she could still be sorry but also be vindicated as a reliable source.  If the video does not confirm her account, she would be sorry and unreliable.  We still need to see the video and Ravitch should agree to release it.


In addition, there is something self-serving and potentially insincere about Ravitch’s generic denunciation of “the spirit of meanness that now permeates so much of our public discourse” coming only after she is potentially caught in making inaccurate allegations against others.  Ravitch’s meanness toward “the billionaire boys,” Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, etc… has existed for some time without any concern from her about the nature of public discourse.


My concern about the sincerity of her newly expressed opposition to meanness is compounded by her use of the phrase:  “[t]hose of us who truly care about children…” by which I can only imagine that she includes herself and excludes her opponents.  Self-righteousness does not normally accompany contrition.


But perhaps Ravitch has turned a new leaf and is truly sorry for her own role in the meanness of public discourse.  The credibility of that contrition will have to be determined in light of her future writing and speaking, just as her credibility as a chronicler of events will have to be determined when she agrees to release the video.

									


				

				 29 Comments				|  politics								 |  Permalink

 Posted by Jay P. Greene				

			

			

		
		

			
« Previous Entries

			
Next Entries »