Jay P. Greene's Blog

Michael Kinsley famously quipped that a gaffe is when a politician accidentally tells the truth — or at least what he or she believes to be true.  Gaffes cause a stir because they are seen as windows into the inner-thinking and motivations of political causes that are normally disguised by carefully “messaged” political discourse.

Paul Reville made just such a gaffe during a pro-Common Core event last week when he declared: “the children belong to all of us.”  Reville, the former Massachusetts education secretary and  current Harvard Ed School professor, is a pillar of both the Left education establishment and Common Core advocates.  He was trying to dismiss Common Core critics as a “tiny minority,” arguing that the state should ultimately control how children are educated since children do not belong to those few parents, but to “all of us.”

Reville’s indelicate phrasing stoked a bit of a political storm because it was reminiscent of last year’s gaffe by a MSNBC host, who said “we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to their communities.”  Many parents recoil at the notion that their children belong to others, especially the government, even if that idea is actually at the core of efforts to centralize control over education.

The view that children in some sense “belong to all of us” has a long pedigree.  Almost thirty years ago, Amy Gutmann tried to articulate and defend the collective interest in children and an active government role in education in her book, Democratic Education.  And here is my brief rebuttal from a recent book chapter:

Amy Gutmann, among others, has used the observation that children are not “owned” by their parents to assert the need for a sizeable role for the state, at least in the education of children. Since the future liberty and autonomy interests of children may be distinct from the plans and preferences their parents have for them, she argues in Democratic Education, the state needs to play a significant role in ensuring that parents do not infringe upon the interests of their children.

But it is revealing that advocates of this view restrict this significant role of the state to education. If they really believed that the state needs to play an active role in ensuring that children’s interests were being protected, then the government’s involvement wouldn’t end at 3:00 in the afternoon. They should want the government to make unannounced visits to children’s homes to ensure cleanliness, adequately stocked pantries, and an enriching environment. The fact that most of us would consider such actions by the government to be unnecessary for children and unreasonable to parents if they occurred after 3:00 in the afternoon indicates how unnecessary and unreasonable they are in education as well. And the fact that Amy Gutmann and others are unwilling to be consistent in advocating an active government role 24 hours a day suggests that they are not so much concerned with safeguarding children’s interests as with rationalizing the status quo in education.

Unlike Gutmann, I am willing to be consistent in deferring to parents in the raising and education of their children. In my ideal vision, we would treat the dominant parental role in education the same way we treat the dominant parental role in raising children generally. In the absence of demonstrated gross parental negligence or malevolence, parents should assume responsibility for educating and raising their children. The state should only intervene if there is evidence of serious neglect or abuse, with respect to education in particular and with respect to child-rearing in general.

And if you’d like to read a broader critique of Gutmann’s book see pp. 85-88 of this book chapter I wrote on civic education more than a decade ago.

Today AEI is hosting an event featuring new pieces of proposed legislation by Senators Lamar Alexander and Tim Scott.  The bills would empower states to “voucherize” much of federal education spending.  The legislation drafted by Sen. Scott would allow federal funds for students with disabilities to flow directly to students and follow them to the school of their choice.  The bill from Sen. Alexander would do the same for the funds for 80 other federal education programs.  States would get regulatory relief and flexibility and money would follow children to the places that their families believed best served their needs.  Sounds like win-win.

I can support this type of federal legislation because it reduces federal control over education and devolves more power to states and families.  You can watch the event unveiling the legislation live right now and it should be available as a recording later.

Here are summaries of the Alexander bill that I’ve seen:

A Bill introduced by Senator Alexander to enable states to use nearly $24 billion in existing federal education funds to expand school choice options and empower low-income parents

What the Bill Does:

 Enables states to use nearly $24 billion in existing annual federal education funds to follow students to the public or private school or educational program that they attend.

 This would provide, on average, $2,100 in annual federal support for each of 11 million students from families living in poverty that their parents could use to pay private school tuition and fees, supplement their public school or public charter school budget, attend a public school outside their assigned school district, or purchase tutoring services or homeschooling materials.

 Allows low-income students in participating states to choose a better or different school instead of waiting for their school to improve in order to have access to a quality education.

 Allows states to use federal education funds to support their own efforts to expand school choice for low-income families, including the 16 states with private school choice programs and 42 states with inter-district public school choice programs.

 Provides states that opt to participate in this program with relief from burdensome mandates and requirements of No Child Left Behind.

Background:

 There are 54 million students in elementary and secondary schools in the U.S., including 11 million school-age children (5 to 17 years old) from families living in poverty.

 In 2011, states spent more than $604 billion on public K-12 education, receiving $75.5 billion from federal resources (approximately12.5% of total expenditures).

 Since 2001, total expenditures for elementary and secondary education have increased by nearly 39%, but have produced only modest increases in student achievement.

 More than half of the nation’s 4 American students continue to be outperformed by many of their peers around the world.

Points to consider:

 The U.S. has the best system of higher education in the world, due to autonomy, high standards, and competition for the approximately $140 billion in federal grants and loans that follow more than half of students to the college or university of their choice each year.

 Federal support for K-12 education has taken the opposite approach – with opposite results.

 These federal dollars typically fund schools or federal programs, rather than individual students, provide limited choices for parents, and are often governed by complicated rules and regulations that restrict how they can be spent.

 Poor and minority students are most likely to attend their assigned public school and are often stuck in schools that fail to meet their educational needs.

 Allowing federal funds to follow students to the school or educational program of their choice would inject competition into the system by letting low-income parents decide how best to meet their child’s educational needs.

The “Scholarships for Kids Act” would:

 provide flexibility to States by consolidating over 80 federal education programs into one $24 billion funding stream to support the education of low-income children; and

 give each state the freedom to use those funds to offer scholarships that follow low-income students to whatever school or supplemental educational program they attend, consistent with state law.

States would receive the same amount of funding regardless of whether they create a “Scholarships for Kids” program. But states creating a “Scholarships for Kids” program would be relieved the burdensome mandates and compliance requirements of No Child Left Behind and have significant flexibility as to how their scholarship programs are administered.

States that create a “Scholarships for Kids” Program would:

 Provide the Department of Education with a declaration of intent to create a “Scholarships for Kids Program” and a description of how the program would be administered.

 Decide the range of schools and programs at which eligible students would be able to use their scholarships. This could include at the state’s option:

o the public school the student attends through a public school choice program (including

o accredited private schools approved by the state to participate in the program;

o other educational programs like supplemental educational service programs, afterschool

o or even simply the public school the eligible student would otherwise attend, in which

 Ensure in all cases that scholarship funds participating schools and programs receive are in addition to any non-federal funds the school or program would receive in the absence of the Scholarships for Kids program.

 Ensure that any private schools participating in the Scholarships for Kids program do not discriminate against eligible students but retain control over discipline policies and teaching mission, including religious instruction.

 Continue to comply with federal civil rights requirements, student privacy protections, and protections for students with disabilities.

 Continue to maintain challenging academic standards, test students in public schools annually in grades 3-8 and once in high school, and report on student achievement by school and student subgroup.

 No longer be required to comply with federal mandates on how they determine whether public schools are succeeding or failing and the specific strategies they use to improve schools identified as low-performing.

 

It’s amazing how some very smart people can commit billions of dollars and  untold human effort to something like Common Core without having thought the thing through.  How exactly did they think this was going to work?  Didn’t they have meetings?  Didn’t someone have to write a paper articulating the theory of change?  Didn’t any of them ever take political science classes or read a book on interest group behavior?

As I have repeatedly said would eventually happen, the teacher unions are turning against Common Core in New York and threatening to do the same in other states if high stakes tests aligned to those standards are put in place.  And the unions are more powerful, better organized, and even better-funded than the Gates Foundation and their mostly DC-based defenders of Common Core.  So Common Core will either have to drop the high-stakes tests meant to compel teachers and schools to implement the standards, or Common Core will become yet another set of empty words in a document, like most sets of standards before them.

Here is what I expected would happen and I believe is coming true:

As I have written and said on numerous occasions, Common Core is doomed regardless of what I or the folks at Fordham say or do.  Either Common Core will be “tight” in trying to compel teachers and schools through a system of aligned assessments and meaningful consequences to change their practice.  Or Common Core will be “loose” in that it will be a bunch of words in a document that merely provide advice to educators.

Either approach is doomed.  If Common Core tries being tight by coercing teachers and schools through aligned assessments and consequences, it will be greeted by a fierce organized rebellion from educators.  It’ll be Randi Weingarten, Diane Ravitch and their army of angry teachers who will drive a stake through the heart of Common Core, not me or any other current critic . If Common Core tries being loose, it will be like every previous standards-based reform – a bunch of empty words in a document that educators can promptly ignore while continuing to do whatever they were doing before.

This is the impossible paradox for Common Core.  To succeed it requires more centralized coercion than is possible (or desirable) under our current political system and more coercive than organized educators will allow.  And if it doesn’t try to coerce unwilling teachers and schools, it will produce little change.

How did the political strategists at Gates and their DC advocates think this doom would be avoided?  Did they imagine that teachers and schools were starving for a good set of standards and would just embrace them once they were issued from the DC Temple in which they were written?  Did they think teachers and their unions wouldn’t politically resist an effort to compel compliance to Common Core through high stakes tests?  Did they think they could sneak up on teachers and unions and implement the whole thing before anyone would object?

I suspect that their thinking was something like the Underpants Gnomes from South Park whose business plan for  profiting from stealing underpants from kids’ drawers during the night is lacking: “Phase 1 — Collect underpants  Phase 2 — ?  Phase 3 — Profit.”  The Gates/Fordham/College Board plan must have been: Phase 1 — Write standards  Phase 2 — Incentivize states with federal carrots and sticks to engage in the empty gesture of adopting standards Phase 3 — ?  Phase 4 — Learning improves.

Even now I’d love to hear someone try to articulate Common Core’s theory of change.  And it is not sufficient to say that this is just the “hard work” of persuading teachers and schools.  It is also hard work to jump to the moon — so hard that it is impossible.  And I don’t want to hear “Remember: Undoing the #CommonCore would require 46 separate, state-led actions…”  That’s true, but states have many worthless pieces of legislation that do little to change the world.  Thirteen states still have anti-sodomy laws despite the fact that the Supreme Court struck down that type of law .

I don’t think Gates, Fordham, or anyone else really developed a plausible theory of change for Common Core.  Instead, I think they just had the type of magical thinking too common among smart DC policy analysts that if only they had good enough intentions and “messaged” the issue just right, all problems would be overcome.  Tell that to the ObamaCare folks who thought that good intentions and artful “messaging” would somehow repeal the law of adverse selection in who would sign up for the risk pools.  Our technocratic minds cannot control the behavior of other people, just by thinking about it hard, wanting good things, and talking about it a lot.

(Guest Post by James Shuls)

Back in December, the Fordham foundation put out a clever parody video of “What Does the Fox Say?” Playing on Fordham’s moniker, The Education Gadfly, the video was entitled, “What Does Gadfly Say?” More recently, Fordham released a paper that calls for private schools in state sponsored school choice programs to be subject to state accountability tests. We have listened to what the Gadfly has to say. Maybe Fordham should listen to what many private schools and parents have to say. What I’m hearing is…“Don’t test me, bro!”

I recently surveyed private schools in St. Louis and Kansas City, Missouri regarding their participation in a potential state sponsored private school choice program. I found that many schools, 88% to be exact, are already administering some form of standardized tests. Nearly half of the schools said they would not participate in a school choice program if they were forced to administer state accountability tests. Aside from upholding admissions criteria and allowing students to opt out of religious services, this was the most important factor for Missouri private schools.

The Fordham Foundation conducted a similar survey among private schools in states with private school choice programs. In total, there were seven items that were similar between the Show-Me Institute’s survey and Fordham’s Survey. A rank ordering of the survey items shows the responses in the two were quite similar. Germane to this conversation is the requirement to participate in state testing. A quarter of schools in the Fordham study said this was “Very Important” or “Extremely Important” to their participation in a school choice program. That figure was higher, 37%, among non-participants.

Is this reason enough to excuse private schools from being required to administer state tests? No, but private school leaders aren’t the only ones saying, “Don’t test me, bro!” This cry is also ringing out from many parents and students. Last September, the AP reported on the growing movement to opt out of standardized tests. Only a fraction of parents are participating in this form of “civil disobedience;” but many others simply don’t value standardized test scores. Indeed, recent reports by the Friedman Foundation and the Fordham Foundation note that parents care about a lot more than test scores.

The Fordham report, What Parents Want, categorized just 23% of parents as “test-score hawks.” More parents, 24%, fell into the “Jeffersonian” category. These parents are inclined to choose a school that “emphasizes instruction in citizenship, democracy, and leadership.” Still more, 36%, were categorized as “Pragmatists”; meaning they valued vocational and job-related training.  “Multiculturalists” were just behind the “test-score hawks” with 22%. What Parents Want makes the same point found in a recent paper by the Friedman Foundation; parents value “more than scores.”

The real question behind this debate is: Who should be the arbiter of school quality? In other words, what is the purpose of school choice? The Fordham Foundation suggests private schools that accept students receiving state support should be held accountable to the taxpayer. This means, Fordham argues, they should be subject to state tests. In essence, Fordham is saying that the state is the arbiter of quality. The state has selected the standards, the state has chosen the state tests, the state will set performance standards, and the state will not allow low-performing schools to participate.

If you believe the ultimate goal of school choice is to improve student achievement, as measured by state accountability tests, then you should agree with Fordham. If, however, the goal of school choice is to afford parents the ability to choose the school that meets their needs; you should probably disagree with Fordham. That is, if parents are the arbiter of school quality; Fordham is wrong.

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James Shuls is the Director of Education Policy at the Show-Me Institute. He earned his doctorate in education policy from the University of Arkansas’ Department of Education Reform. You can read his full paper, Available Seats: Survey Analysis of Missouri Private School Participation in Potential State Scholarship Programs, here.