Are National Standards Conservative?

July 23, 2010

Checker Finn and Mike Petrilli seem to think so.  As part of their Gates-fueled pro-standards juggernaut, they have a piece on National Review Online arguing that conservatives should support the current national standards effort.  They write:

Conservatives generally favor setting a “single standard” for everybody. Setting different standards for different people — think affirmative action, for instance — is an idea most associated with the Left.

If by “conservative” we mean people who think that decisions should be decentralized, Finn and Petrilli have it exactly backwards.  National standards are a centrally-imposed, one-size-fits-none approach that would make most conservatives shudder.

Let’s be clear — national standards are being centrally imposed because states are financially punished if they don’t adopt them because they would receive lower scores on their Race to the Top proposals and almost certainly lose out on getting their share of those tax dollars.  National standards are “voluntary” in the same way that federal highway funds are voluntary.  You can disobey the federal dictate as long as you don’t mind having the tax dollars your residents pay go to other states.

Let’s also be clear that conservatives do not generally favor a “single standard” for everyone.  Conservatives do not think everyone should meet a single standard of fashion by being required to wear the same clothes.  Nor should everyone be compelled to meet a single standard of nutrition by being required to eat the same foods.  On what basis would we think conservatives would want every school child to be required to learn the same thing at the same time?  To the contrary, conservatives generally favor allowing consumers (of food, clothing, education, or anything else) to decide how best to serve their own needs by having choice among competing providers with differing products.

It’s true that there are some people who are called conservatives who tend to favor centralization over choice and competition, but those people tend to have more of an authoritarian streak than a liberty-loving streak.  It is one of the weaknesses of our language that the same word — conservative — is used to describe both Benito Mussolini and Milton Friedman.  But no one should be fooled into thinking that policies favored by a “conservative” like Mussolini would also be favored by a “conservative” like Friedman.

The real divide here is between people who think that policies are best when decisions are decentralized and choice and competition are enhanced versus people who think that there is a “right way” that should be imposed centrally and should constrain choice and competition.

Nor are Finn and Petrilli accurate when they assert that national standards are being supported broadly by conservatives except for “a half-dozen libertarians who don’t much care for government to start with.” Is the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which came out against national standards, just a handful of libertarian crazies?  Is the Heritage Foundation, which also opposes national standards, just a handful of libertarian nut-jobs?  Or how about the Pioneer Institute?  And look who’s supporting national standards — fine conservatives like the American Federation of Teachers.

Just because the education bureaucracies in a bunch of red states have signed up for national standards doesn’t mean that the idea has conservative support.  It just means that their budgets are really tight and they want to be in the running for federal Race to the Top dollars as well as gobs of Gates “planning” grant dollars.  The fact that there has not been more active conservative opposition can mostly be explained by the speed with which this is being crammed through in the midst of a severe state budgetary crisis.

But conservatives who favor decentralization, choice, and competition should take heart.  Many of those states will change their minds if they don’t get federal dollars to stay on board.  And the grand national coalition for these standards will probably fall apart as the airy-fairy standards are converted into actual practice in the form of national assessments.  We’ll see how well the Linda Darling-Hammond led national assessment, which I can only imagine involves the testing of drum-circle collaboration, suits conservatives like Finn and Petrilli who so far have supported this enterprise.  And with more time and greater imposition on actual practice, rank and file conservatives will become more mobilized in opposition.

There is a risk that the Obama Administration will link larger amounts of federal dollars, like Title I funds, to full adoption of these standards and a national assessment, in which case conservative opposition may be too little too late.  But if the Obama Administration and the AFT do triumph no one will think it will be a conservative victory.

10 Comments | school accountability | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Expert Panels are Phony Science

July 21, 2010

Education studies based on the professional judgment of experts is phony science and is usually nothing more than an exercise in political manipulation.  Unfortunately, the recent “study” released by Fordham assigning grades to state standards and the national standards proposed to replace them is an example of this kind of research.

As Rick Hanushek has carefully demonstrated in the context of education spending adequacy lawsuits, the “professional judgment” or “expert panel” method is completely unreliable:  He writes:

Indeed, no indication is generally given of the selection criteria for panelists. Were they chosen because they came from particularly innovative or high quality districts? Were they chosen because of previously expressed views on programs or resources? Or were they just the subset of a larger invited  

group representing those willing to attend a weekend session in exchange for some added pay?

The consultants performing the study seldom know any of the education personnel in the state, so they obviously need to solicit nominations – frequently from the organization commissioning the study. But, since these organizations generally have a direct interest in the outcomes of the study, it seems unlikely that they will produce a random selection of educators to serve on the professional judgment panels. The nature of the selection process ensures that the judgments of any panel cannot be replicated (a fundamental concern of any truly scientific inquiry).

Why would we trust expert panels any more when it comes to educational standards than education spending.  The same basic problems exist.  The experts do not necessarily represent all or the best views on the matter and may simply be selected by the researchers for their predisposition to support the researcher’s favored conclusion.  In other words, we don’t learn anything from these analyses.  It is simply a way of disguising and making more impressive the opinion of the researchers for the purpose of political manipulation.

Anyone interested in serious education research should shun professional judgment studies, whether for spending adequacy or for education standards.

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

McCluskey on National Standards

July 20, 2010

simp_itch_trapped.jpg image by anaisjude

Checker Finn may say he’s paranoid, but Neal McCluskey really seems to be thinking straight when it comes to national standards.  The issue isn’t whether the currently proposed national standards are good (and it is likely that they are better than those in some states and worse than those in others).  The issue is who will control the national standards system in the future, once it is built.

Fordham is aware of the problem and promises that they are working on a foolproof way to keep the “good guys” in control forever, but you might think that would be something they would have all worked out BEFORE they build the national standards system.  And as Murphy’s law says: “Nothing is foolproof because fools are so ingenious.”

Building a national standards machine before you know how to control it is like every sci-fi story where the scientists build the robots before working out a plan for how to handle the robots when they go haywire.  Don’t these folks know the Elementary Chaos Theory?

Here’s Neal’s  money quote:

let’s stop focusing on whether the Common Core standards right now are good, bad, or indifferent, and talk about their future prospects, which is what really matters. Oh, wait: Most national standardizers avoid that discussion like the plague because they know that the overwhelming odds are the standards will end up either dismal, or at best just unenforced. Why? Because the same political forces that have smushed centralized standards and accountability in almost every state — the teacher unions, administrator associations, self-serving politicians, etc. — will just do their dirty work at the federal rather than state level. Indeed, those groups will still be the most motivated and effectively organized to control education politics, but they will have the added benefit of one-stop shopping!

The tragic flaw in the thinking of many national-standards supporters is not the desire to create high bars for students to clear, but the utter delusion, or maybe just myopia, that allows them to assume that they will control the standards in a monopoly over which, by its very nature, they almost never hold the reins.

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

Gates Can’t Buy National Standards — But Will Sure Try

July 19, 2010



Everyone involved in education policy understands that the Gates Foundation is the octopus with many arms (and even more dollars) pushing the national standards and assessment movement forward.  In a recent report in the Lowell Sun we learn:

The Gates Foundation since January 2008 has awarded more than $35 million to the Council of Chief School Officers and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, the two main organizations charged with drafting and promoting common standards.

In the run-up to his recommendation, [MA school chief] Chester told the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education that he would base his decision on analysis being done by his staff, as well as independent reports prepared by three state and national education research firms — Achieve, Inc., The Fordham Institute, and the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education.

Achieve, Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based education-reform organization, received $12.6 million from the Gates Foundation in February 2008, according to data provided to the Washington Post by the foundation.

The Fordham Institute has accepted more than $1.4 million from the Gates Foundation, including nearly $960,000 to conduct Common Core reviews.

Checker Finn, the head of the Fordham Foundation, oddly felt the need to tell Business Week in their profile of the Gates push for national standards that: “The Gates folks are well aware of our independence and, I think, incorruptibility.”

This sounds like Nixon declaring that he is not a crook.  If it’s true, there is usually no need to announce it.

I’ve long argued that in education policy debates we should focus on the merits of the arguments rather than the motives of the people involved in the argument.  Whatever Fordham’s motives I think their arguments have to be addressed and I have done so here, among other places.

But let me go further.  I strongly doubt that Gates money has had any serious effect on Fordham’s stance on national standards.  Fordham has always been in support of the idea, although it has often opposed specific proposals for standards that it thought were counter-productive.  Gates decided to pour a mountain of money on Fordham because Fordham was already on board for the idea of national standards.  The money would just help improve the efficacy of Fordham to advocate the view they already held.  There was the danger that Fordham would have opposed the specific national standards backed by Gates, but Fordham has decided that these are good enough standards for them.  Of course, Fordham may still change its mind (and is known for strategic reversals on policies, such as NCLB), but I have no doubt that Fordham is completely sincere in its support for national standards and assessment.

I just think they are wrong.

3 Comments | higher education, politics | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Education in an Era of Austerity

July 18, 2010

Let’s face it.  The economy stinks and may continue to stagnate for a while.  And the financial picture stinks even more for local and state governments who are not only continuing to experience shortfalls in revenue, but are finally beginning to pay the tab for irresponsible and not easily changeable spending commitments.  The pensions of public employees, including teachers, may bankrupt a number of states and localities even if the economy picks up soon.  The huge and unfunded liabilities from healthcare reform will also begin to hit state budgets hard.  I’m not sure why public employee unions, including teacher unions, backed the bill so enthusiastically because it will inevitably come at the expense of state spending in other areas.  Since health and education are the two biggest state budget items, a big increase in state health spending without rapid economic growth driving up public revenues will result in enormous pressure on education budgets.  Thing are going to be very tough for education spending going forward.

But there is a silver lining to this very dire situation:  tight budgets improve the odds for serious education reform.  Traditionally, education reform has been “purchased” with big spending increases for traditional education interests.  The DC voucher program was won only after promising to pour even more millions into the traditional public schools than were poured into vouchers.  Merit pay in Denver was only won after a huge increase in education spending and salaries.

Unfortunately, the price of reform has almost always been too high.  Public schools could almost always get a ton more money without having to make any concessions to reform, so it would take truck-loads of money to get public schools to grudgingly tolerate even the weakest reform.

Those days are over and the price of reform has just come down a lot.  State and local politicians who have no interest in vouchers or charters, per se, will suddenly become very enthusiastic about any proposal that helps them figure out how to pay pension obligations without huge layoffs, giant tax increases, or bankruptcy.

Check out how localities are taking extraordinary actions, like out-sourcing the police department, just to make ends meet.    A similar desperation will soon hit education policy as state and local officials realize that the economy will not pick up fast enough and the feds will not come to their rescue.

2 Comments | politics | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Journalist Errors

July 14, 2010

Anyone who follows print and broadcast news knows that journalists make a ton of mistakes.  I don’t mean factual errors, although there are also plenty of those.  I mean reporting mistakes, like failing to frame the question properly, failing to put the issue in context, failing to gather information from the right sources, failing to treat received information with the proper skepticism, focusing on an analysis of motives rather than of facts, etc…  You especially notice this when the news is about something with which you are more familiar.

In case you have any doubts about the astounding frequency and magnitude of journalist errors, consider the claims that Toyota cars automatically and uncontrollably accelerate.  There were hundreds of news reports that repeated these claims as if they were credible, promoting a mass hysteria about runaway cars.  Toyota sales plummeted, they became the target of SNL ridicule, etc…

Now we hear that the Department of Transportation has investigated more than 2,000 cases of alleged automatic acceleration and could not find evidence to support any one of these claims.  In these cases the throttle remained fully open and the brakes were not engaged.  In other words, people were mistakenly pressing the accelerator while thinking it was the brake.

Anyone with half a brain and a reasonable amount of skepticism would have suspected that the driver was likely the least reliable part of a modern car and would have guessed that people were mistakenly pressing the gas.  But very, very few of the news reports on this issue emphasized this likely explanation.  Instead, most acted as if we lived in a John Grisham novel where evil corporations knowingly hide the defects of their products as they killand maime their customers to maximize profits.  This does happen, but it is very, very rare.  To treat these claims as evidence of real safety issues with cars was simply mistaken reporting.

This raises the question why reporters make so many mistakes like this.  Is it that reporters:

a) lack the necessary critical faculties

b) are more interested in sensational stories than reliable information

c) have an ideology that makes them irrationally inclined to a John Grisham view of corporations

d) all of the above

(correction:  Toyota was the one to investigate more than 2,000 cases, but their findings are so far the same as the US DOT from a smaller set of cases, which found: “The U.S. Department of Transportation has analyzed dozens of data recorders from Toyota Motor Corp. vehicles involved in accidents blamed on sudden acceleration and found that the throttles were wide open and the brakes weren’t engaged at the time of the crash, people familiar with the findings said.” )

18 Comments | journalism | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Blaming Special Ed — Again

July 12, 2010

When times get tough, school systems and their enabling reporters blame special education.  Regular readers of JPGB and and Education Next have seen this argument debunked before, but I feel compelled to do it again in response to a sloppy and lazy article in the Wall Street Journal.

The WSJ piece by Barbara Martinez is entitled “Private-School Tuitions Burden DOE.”  The DOE in this case is the Department of Education in New York City, which the article points out “last year spent $116 million on tuition and legal expenses related to special-education students whose parents sued the DOE on the grounds that the public-school options were inadequate. That’s more than double the number of just three years ago, and the costs are expected to continue to rise in coming years.”

As I’ve pointed out before, the trick to writing an article blaming special education is to mention a high cost for educating certain special education students (or even a high-sounding aggregate figure) without putting in perspective how much money that is relative to the entire school budget.  True to form, this article states: “The tuition payouts range between $20,000 and more than $100,000 per child and have been used for schools as far away as Utah.”  Wow, that sounds like a lot of money.  And going all the way to Utah sounds extravagant.

But let’s put this issue in perspective, which even a minimal amount of effort by the reporter could have done.  If private school tuition really is a “burden” as the title asserts, the cost of private-placement should be a significant portion of the New York City school budget.  It isn’t.  If you look at the NYC education budget you see that schools spent a total of $17.9 billion in 2009.  The total cost of private placement is only $116 million, which is about .6% of total spending.  This is close to rounding error for NYC.

To put it further in perspective, the NYC education system spent $151 million last year on pollution remediation to address lead paint, asbestos, and contaminated soil at its properties.  Imagine if there had been a news article entitled “Pollution Clean-Up Burdens DOE.”  People would have dismissed that as ridiculous, noting that the total amount spent on pollution is a very small part of the total budget and could hardly be considered a burden.  What’s more, people would have acknowledged that cleaning up pollution is important and the schools need to do it.

But this article on private tuition for special education “burdens” is even worse because the burden on the district isn’t the total cost, but the cost for private placement in excess of what the district would have spent if they had served these disabled students in traditional public schools.  We know from the article that there were 4,060 students who sought private placement for an aggregate cost of $116 million.  That works out to $28,571 per student.

We also know from the NYC DOE budget that schools spent a total of $17.9 billion for about 1.1 million students, which works out to $16,263 per student.  But wait, NYC spends more on its special education students than on the average student.  If we look at the NYC DOE budget (which any education reporter worth his or her salt could easily do), they identify additional costs associated with special education.  From that we can calculate that NYC spends an average of $24,773 on its special education students.

The “burden” on NYC DOE from paying private school tuition is the difference between the average tuition and legal costs associated with private placement ($28,571) and the average cost for a disabled student in the traditional public schools ($24,773), which works out to $3,798 per student.  An extra $3,798 per privately placed student over 4,060 students constitutes an additional expense of $15.4 million for NYC DOE.  That amounts to less than .09% of the NYC DOE education budget.

Calling this a “burden” on the district is irresponsible and just distracts people from the true and large areas of waste burdening the school system.

15 Comments | special ed | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Real Enemies of Liberty — Episode 1

July 8, 2010

In case you ever get confused about where the most serious threats to liberty are coming from, we’ve started this helpful series on the Real Enemies of Liberty.

Today’s featured enemy is Iran, where the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance has issued a decree on what haircuts are acceptable.  No free expression like the photo above.  Just handsome fellas like those featured below.

Fashion rules: An Iranian official shows pictures of hairstyles authorised by the Ministry of Guidance at an official hairdressing show in the capital Tehran

(HT: Patrick G.)

Leave a Comment » | civic values | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Israel: The Front Line in the Fight for Liberal Pluralism

July 6, 2010

I recently returned from a wonderful trip to Israel.  One of my overall impressions is that being in Israel really felt like being on the front line in the fight for liberal pluralism.

I know that may not be your image of Israel, but try this little experiment:  Try Googling for images of the Israel Gay Pride Parade.  You’ll find hundreds of photos like the one above of people freely organizing and expressing themselves.  Then try finding photos for the Gay Pride Parade in Gaza, Damascus, or Tehran.  You won’t be able to find them because there are no open Gay Pride Parades in any majority Muslim country other than Turkey (and if things keep going the way they are, there probably won’t be any such parades there in the future).

Yes, Israel contains illiberal elements — as does the U.S. or any other tolerant and diverse society.  Yes, Israelis have to compromise their freedom more than people in other liberal societies, but that is part of the price they pay for being on the front line that we don’t have to pay.  When our national security has been threatened in much less serious ways, the U.S. has sacrificed far more freedom.

Perhaps it is precisely because Israel is encircled by authoritarian enemies that the exercise of liberty there seems especially sweet.

4 Comments | civic values | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

What’s In A Name? Sometimes Electoral Victory

June 15, 2010

Greg posted yesterday about the puzzling victory of Alvin Greene in the Democratic primary for Senate in South Carolina.  Greene, an unemployed military veteran with no campaign staff, no funds, no advertising, no speeches, etc… soundly beat an experienced Democratic state legislator who had plenty of staff, money, etc…  How did that happen?

Several prominent Democrats are claiming that there must have been fraud in Greene’s victory.  U.S. Representative James Clyburn thinks there must have been tampering with the election computers.  According to Fox News: “Without citing evidence, Clyburn said the voting machines could have been compromised. ‘I believe there was some hacking done into that computer,’ Clyburn told Fox News, suggesting that somebody at the state could have deliberately bought those machines so that the system would be vulnerable. South Carolina uses a machine called the iVotronic. ‘Maybe somebody wanted the machines that were easily hacked into … We had no business with those machines in South Carolina,’ he said.”

It’s amazing to me that people immediately jump to grand conspiracy theories rather than accept the less exciting but far more likely scenario that democracy is a messy business where voters have low information and can easily make collective mistakes.

I know this from personal (and embarrassing) experience.  The very first time I voted was in the 1986 Democratic primary in Illinois.  Keep in mind that I was a political junky as a kid.  I prided myself on being a well-informed voter.  But even with my high level of motivation, it was impossible to follow every election contest, know every candidate, and make informed voting decisions, especially in a primary election where there are no party labels offering cognitive shortcuts.

At the time the Democratic Party of Illinois, in its infinite wisdom, separately chose gubernatorial and lt. governor candidates in the primary, even though they had to run together as a ticket in the general election.  Adlai Stevenson III was the favorite for the party nomination for governor and he was polling ahead of the incumbent Republican, big Jim Thompson, in the general election.

I was all excited about Stevenson and enthusiastically voted for him, but when it came to lower contests I found myself standing in the polling booth not knowing everyone and having to make guesses about how to vote.  For Illinois Secretary of State the candidates were Aurelia Pucinski and Janice Hart.  I (correctly) guessed that Aurelia Pucinski was the daughter of Roman Pucisnki, a powerful figure in the Cook Country Democratic political machine.  At the time, I hated the machine and so I decided that I would vote against Aurelia Pucinski.  Janice Hart had a nice sounding name and she was running against the machine candidate, so I figured she had to be good.

I made an enormous mistake.   Janice Hart was actually affiliated with the crazy Lyndon LaRouche movement.  The LaRouchies have a political view that is so conspiratorial and convoluted that I don’t think I can explain what they actually stand for — other than that they think there is some malicious plot involving the Queen of England, the IMF, the pentavarite, and some other crazy stuff.

I couldn’t believe it.  I had actually voted for a LaRouchie.  But I wasn’t the only one.  Janice Hart actually won the primary vote.  And Mark Fairchild, the LaRouche candidate for the Lt. Governor Democratic nomination also won.  Rather than being forced to run with a LaRouchie on the ticket, Stevenson left the Democratic Party and quickly formed the Solidarity Party.  The disruption and lack of Democratic Party resources ended up costing Stevenson the general election, which he probably would have otherwise won.

Back in 1986 no one went to the news claiming that some conspiracy foisted Hart and Fairchild on the party.  We just accepted that democracy is messy and that we had made a collective mistake.  Stevenson paid the price, but we moved on, having a better understanding of how imperfect voting is as a measure of true popular will — even though it is better than all other imperfect methods for ascertaining the popular will.

In 2010, however, we have Democratic party officials accusing Greene or others of engaging in some sort of voter fraud, with no evidence whatsoever to support their claims.  Back in 1986 the electorate made a mistake in nominating a few conspiracy theorists and Democratic Party officials disassociated from those conspiracy theorists by temporarily jumping to a newly formed party.  In 2010 the conspiracy theorists are the Democratic Party officials.

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

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