Jay P. Greene's Blog

Brookings fellow, Michael Hansen, has a piece blaming high school sports for “distract[ing] public schools from their mission.”  It’s a curious piece because it never actually articulates what the mission of schools should be, nor does it provide evidence that sports undermine that mission.  Instead, it references a study by Marguerite Roza showing that (at least in one district) the “per-participant cost of cheerleading totaled $1,348 and $829 for football. Less than $350 per student was spent on math instruction for the year.”  He goes on to argue:

It is unclear how widespread this disproportionate spending is among U.S. high schools, but it raises the question of whether our spending in public education is consistent with our academic goals. And, from an equity perspective, the proposition of fielding a football team using scarce public resources implies the funds for a few student players comes at the expense of the many other students.

So, his evidence that sports are bad is that they cost more per pupil than math instruction and affect a smaller number of students.  Normally, when economists perform a cost-benefit analysis they consider benefits as well as costs, but in this case Hansen only mentions the costs and fails to consider the benefits.  Presumably he assumes the benefits to high school sports are small or zero, but rigorous evidence suggests the benefits can be substantial.

One analysis by Eric Eide and Nick Ronan uses an instrumental variable approach to estimate the effect of participating in high school sports on long-term outcomes, like educational attainment and earnings.  They find:

…sports participation has a negative effect on the educational attainment of white male student athletes, a positive effect on the educational attainment and earnings of black male student athletes, and a positive effect on the educational attainment of white female student athletes.  We find no effect of participation on the educational attainment or earnings of Hispanic males or black and Hispanic females.

From “an equity perspective,” as Hansen likes to frame the issue, sports seem like a real plus.  Sports may give at-risk students a reason to stay in school so that they can actually receive math and other subject instruction. An amazing randomized experiment of a Chicago program called Becoming a Man — Sports Edition, demonstrates that participating in aggressive sports is particularly effective for disadvantaged youth in improving school engagement and reducing violent crime.   Taking money from sports to increase resources for math instruction might do little good for students who have dropped out or gone to jail.  In addition, we have all sorts of other expensive programs to help black boys, none of which seem to bother Hansen, and I doubt many have been shown to be as effective at improving outcomes as sports.

Sports may also convey leadership skills, which may account for the improved long-term outcomes among white girls who participate in sports.  Again, much ink and and wealth has been devoted to building the self-esteem of girls, particularly in the sciences.  High school sports seem like an effective way to accomplish that.

The per pupil cost figures on sports and math instruction are also misleading because almost all students are enrolled in math while fewer are on sports teams.  Rather than posing a problem for equity, as Hansen suggests, this fact suggests that the total cost of sports is not that high.  I’m sure we could bring the per pupil cost down if we mandated that all students play a sport, just as we mandate that all take math, but we would also raise the aggregate cost.

Of course, programs that serve only some students will be more expensive, but offering a variety of opportunities is precisely the mission of high schools.  Every other elective activity in high school, including theater, band, newspaper, and art, also has higher costs per participating student than required courses, such as math and English.  Does Hansen want to get rid of all of those programs as well?  Does he think they also distract from the mission of schools?

Perhaps if Hansen had thought about what the mission of schools actually  is, he might realize that it involves offering students a variety of experiences rather than the thin gruel of drilling math and reading all day.  Thriving and successful adults aren’t produced by Hansen’s incredibly narrow conception of what it means to be educated.

Many of you have heard the sad news that Andrew Coulson passed away over the weekend.  I thought I would share some personal memories.

I first remember meeting Andrew and his wife, Kay, at a conference in Toronto in 2000.  I have to admit that he felt out of place.  Here was this guy without any university, think tank, or other affiliation and without any formal training presenting on the history of markets in education.  And people did not typically attend these meetings with spouses.  Who was this guy?

As it turns out, this guy was a brilliant autodidact who “retired” after being an early programmer with Microsoft to devote his time to studying and advocating education reform.  And he was really good at it.

The thing that struck me most about Andrew was his incredible optimism and quirky sense of humor.  Liberty-oriented education activists tend to be on the losing side of policy battles.  It can be downright discouraging.  But Andrew never seemed discouraged or became bitter.  It was a long game and he maintained a sunny optimism that freedom worked better and people would eventually gravitate towards what worked.

He didn’t mind standing apart from the crowd.  Just because donors, policymakers, and other scholars were drawn to test-based accountability didn’t make Andrew feel like he had to join them.  He even expressed serious reservations about certain methods of expanding school choice, including charters and vouchers, that he thought would invite excessive government regulation.  I confess that I paid little attention to Andrew’s warnings back then but I wish I had.  The experience and wisdom he obtained from studying history made him more sensitive to these dangers than my narrow practice of social science.  The autodidact had quite a lot to teach highly trained people like me.  As it turned out, choice reforms less prone to excessive regulation, like tax credit funded scholarships and ESAs, are now spreading rapidly — just as Andrew had expected and advised.

His humor often seemed to involve plays on words.  For example I once posted to Facebook a photo of what I (incorrectly) captioned as a “Golden Lion Tamarind.”  He made some sort of joke about how the dish was prepared.  Some people of faith find small typos and errors in language interesting because they think they can be unintentionally prophetic.  I don’t know if that was Andrew’s motivation but the thought of me secretly wishing to eat a small monkey is pretty funny.

I will miss that quirky humor, but more importantly I will miss his wise counsel and good cheer.  It’s a long game that must go on but something will be missing without Andrew as part of it.

(Guest Post by Greg Forster)

Choice Remarks carries my article on the government school monopoly and religious hatred:

For decades, we’ve heard opponents of school choice claim that the government school monopoly is our only protection against “jihad schools” that will teach children to hate and kill. In all that time, you know what we haven’t seen? Jihad schools, operating in any of the nation’s 59 private school choice programs across 28 states. In fact, the government school monopoly doesn’t protect us from religious division, and it can’t do so.

Partly we’re talking about good old fashioned bigotry that doesn’t want to believe highly religious minorities can support democracy and pluralism. But there’s more to the story.

We demand that highly secularized institutions should have a monopoly on education because we think such institutions are “neutral” with regard to religion. This fails for two reasons.

First, it incentivizes schools to marginalize and alienate religious minorities in order to legitimize the secular monopoly on education. Religious minorities must be seen as dangerous, or the interests of the monopoly will be threatened.

Second, highly secularized institutions are inherently less effective at inculcating the values and practices essential to democracy and pluralism:

This is because a secular institution can tell you to be good (be tolerant, respect diversity, etc.) but it can’t tell you why. It can’t connect the rules of right behavior to deep sources of meaning, purpose, and identity. It ends up just spewing a lot of sentimental gas, and then wagging its finger at you if that doesn’t work, and then punishing you. Or it offers utilitarian, mercenary reasons to be good. None of that helps students form either a deep attachment to moral rules or the self-discipline to carry them out.

As always, your comments are very welcome!

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

OCPA’s Perspective carries my article on ESAs as the new frontier of school choice. I point out how ESAs are an improvement on vouchers:

But vouchers have a hitch. They create a perverse incentive for private schools to jack up tuition to the maximum voucher amount. While they create a marketplace for education, they take out half the equation of any good marketplace. With vouchers, schools compete to attract students, but they compete only on quality, not on price.

That may sound good if you have romantic notions about money having no place in education. But, as Milton Friedman would be the first to tell you, prices are a critical source of information that we need to be good stewards of our resources. They tell us about the scarcity of things relative to the demand for them. High prices cry out to providers, “devote more resources to providing this service!” Low prices say, “this isn’t needed as much.”

Part of me is sad to see Milton’s idea eclipsed by something better. Milton himself, of course, would have been delighted. He knew that he didn’t know everything, and that the whole point of freedom is for better ideas to nudge out worse ones.

Still, it’s important to honor the great men of the past, and so:

It’s not every day someone outsmarts Milton Friedman; indeed, people tangled with his brains at their peril. When he argued against mandatory peacetime military service in a public hearing, he was confronted by a general who said, “I don’t want to command an army of mercenaries.” Quick as a wink, Milton replied, “Would you prefer to command an army of slaves?”

That general’s experience was not unique—in fact, it was the opposite experience that was literally unique. When Milton’s wife, Rose Friedman, died, we at the Friedman Foundation included the following sentence in our list of her accomplishments: “She is the only person ever known to have won an argument with Milton Friedman.” Rose was a formidable economist in her own right, but we all considered this her most impressive achievement.

As always, would love to hear what you think!

PS Proof that Milton would be glad!

(Guest Post by Jason Bedrick)

Don’t miss Dmitri Mehlhorn’s wickedly funny and brilliant takedown of Rich Kahlenberg’s “opposite day” logic on mandatory union dues:

Although Richard Kahlenberg is an acclaimed progressive scholar, I had no idea of his wicked brilliance until I read his recent 5000-word opinion piece on the Supreme Court case Friedrichs v. CTA. At first, I thought he was defending the respondents, the California Teachers Association. But as I read his column, I realized that every single point he made was the opposite of reality — often in ways that would be obvious to a well-read high-school student, let alone a Century Foundation Senior Fellow.

Suddenly, it dawned on me that Kahlenberg was engaging in devilishly clever satire.

By setting forth the criteria by which the Friedrichs case should be judged, and then using “opposite day” logic, he was subversively making the strongest possible case for Rebecca Friedrichs. Since his prose is so sincere and subtle, I almost missed it. This column is a public service for those of us who are literal-minded enough to want the actual facts associated with each element of Kahlenberg’s framework.

Here’s a taste of one of the many claims Mehlhorn eviscerates:

“Schools for Democracy”

Another Kahlenberg headline, that public unions are “Schools for Democracy,” is doubly satirical. The teachers unions are well known to be antidemocratic as both models and actors.

• Only a small percentage of teachers, roughly 20% and often less, actually vote in internal union elections;
• Teachers use their political power to push for school board elections to be off-cycle from high-turnout elections, depressing voter engagement so as to ensure their members’ influence over school boards;
• The unions promulgate codes of conduct, pushing their members not to criticize union stances and often bullying pro-reform teachers;
• The California Teachers Association, in particular, is known as the 800-pound gorilla of Sacramento, bullying legislators and other interest groups.

See what Kahlenberg did there, by calling them “Schools for Democracy,” when the unions produce terrible results for democracy? They are bad schools! Get it? This guy is a genius.

This guy is a genius indeed — Mehlhorn, that is. Check out the rest of his post over at Citizen Stewart’s “Citizen Ed” blog.

And on a related note, over at The Seventy-Four, Mehlhorn provides a very thoughtful and thorough analysis of the Friedrichs v. CTA oral arguments earlier this week. In short: the unions were dejected and for good reason. The strongest argument that the pro-mandatory union dues side could marshal to peel Chief Justice Roberts or Justice Kennedy away from a pro-Friedrichs majority was that it would overturn a precedent set 40 years ago (Abood) and upon which tens or even hundreds of thousands of contracts rely. However, the Friedrichs petitioners responded convincingly that there is also a mountain of First Amendment jurisprudence that conflicts with Abood, and that siding with the unions would also entail overturning longstanding precedent.

Moreover, as Mehlhorn points out, even a pro-union lawyer conceded during oral arguments that there may be a “need to adjust” where the line is drawn between what counts as political or non-political activities (under Abood, the unions can charge non-members for the latter but not the former), and the need for such judicial tinkering further erodes the case for stare decisis.

Of course, the justices could change their minds between now and when they issue a decision, so the Friedrichs petitioners shouldn’t break out the champagne just yet, but the unions might want to start thinking seriously about how to persuade workers to financially support them in the absence of government compulsion.