Arizonapocalypse

November 19, 2013

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Last week the Arizona Board of Regents released a report detailing the catastrophic failure of Arizona high-schools in preparing students for higher education.  Specifically the report traced the high school class of 2006, finding that half of the high-schools had five percent or less of students finishing higher education degrees or certificates within six years.  A mere 40 of the almost 460 schools produced 61% of Bachelor degrees in the AZ Class of 2006.

So, the news could have been much better. Here is the next shoe to drop- things are going to be getting increasingly more difficult in the years ahead.

The United States Census has produced population projections by state. Let’s see what the future has in store for Arizona. First a little context. Arizona’s current population is was about 6.5 million in 2012.

First challenge- a very large increase in the youth population.

Arizona Under 18

The Census Bureau projects a large year by year increase in young people.  The Census has projections for the 18 and under population, and also for the 5-17 population.  The 0-3 population is generally outside of the pre-school and K-12 system, meaning that the 18 and under population overstates the impact that the increase in the youth population will have on the state budget in 2030.  The 5-17 year old figure understates the situation due to 4 and 18-year-old students who will receive either preschool or K-12 assistance.

The next chart uses the Census Bureau’s projection for the increase in the 5-17 year old Arizona population, and puts it into context by comparing it to the size of the charter school and private choice populations of Arizona.  Arizona’s charter school law passed in 1994, and the scholarship tax credit program passed in 1997. The time between then and now is roughly comparable with the time span between now and 2030.

Arizona 5-17

Arizona school district enrollment is set to expand regardless of what we do on the parental choice front, just as it has for the last two decades. In the last two decades, the charter school law has produced a large number of those 40 schools that produced 61% of the BA degrees. In combination with the scholarship tax credit programs and the still nascent ESA program, they have taken the edge off of district enrollment growth in the aggregate.

Arizona does have high-quality charter operators who will continue to slowly but sure increase the islands of quality.  If the ESA program survives court challenge it may allow for a quicker pace of private choice expansion than the tax credit program. Creative destruction of the sort that might actually close dysfunctional schools, other than charters that fail to launch, is simply not in the cards.  The districts full of those 5% and under high schools will be going into the debt markets to build more dropout factories.

Or perhaps they will be running double shifts at the current dropout factories, as it will become increasingly difficult to finance new construction.

At precisely the same time Arizona will be dealing with a surge in the youth population, an even larger problem looms the growth in the elderly population. Again from the Census projections:

Arizona Elderly

For those of you squinting to read the numbers, that is an increase from 922,000 65+ year olds in 2010 to almost 2.4 million in 2030.

So let’s sum up the story so far- Arizona’s K-12 system currently does a very poor job in educating anything more than a thin slice of students.  Arizona has a vast increase in students on the way to coincide with an even larger increase in the elderly population.  Still with me? Okay, let’s keep going.

Demographers calculate age dependency ratios, and economists have found that they predict rates of economic growth. An age dependency ratio essentially compares the number of young and elderly people in a population to the number of working age residents. The logic behind the notion is that young people require a heavy investment in social services (primarily education) while the old also require a heavy investment (primarily in the form of health care and social insurance retirement benefits).  From the perspective of a state budgeting agency, young people don’t work, don’t pay taxes, and go to school. Older people are out of the prime earning years, often heavily use Medicaid. An age dependency ratio basically tells reveals the number of people in the young/old categories compared the number of people in neither category (i.e. people of typical working age).

The United States Census Bureau calculates an Age Dependency Ratio by adding the number of people aged 18 and under to the number of 65 and older and dividing it by the number of people aged 19 to 64. They then multiply the figure by 100 just to make things tidy. The formula looks like:

Age Dependency Ratio = ((Young + Old)/(Working Age)) * 100

Many people continue to work and pay taxes past the age of 65, making it inappropriate to view them as “dependent.” It is also the case however that many people above the age of 19 are still in school and thus are not yet working and/or paying much in the way of taxes. We all probably know hyper-productive 70 year olds and people in their 20s engaged in a six-year taxpayer subsidized odyssey of self-discovery that will not number “graduation” among an otherwise wonderful set of experiences. During periods of prolonged economic difficulties, moreover, it is obviously the case that lower rates of working age people will in fact be working, and thus making taxes.

Notwithstanding these important caveats, the broad idea behind age dependency ratios is to roughly assess the number of people riding in the cart compared to the number pulling the cart at any given time. People of course both benefit and pay into these programs at different stages of life, but the current ratios serve as a measure of societal strain.  What does the age dependency ratio for Arizona look like?

Arizona Age Dependency Ratio

Note that Arizona’s age dependency ratio in 2010 was already among the highest in the country. A social welfare state with 86 people riding in the cart for every 100 pushing it will not compute. In 2030, the Class of 2006 will be squarely among those expected to push the cart of the Arizona social welfare state.  How alarming and unfortunate then that many of them dropped out of high-school, and many more of them dropped out of college. The most immediate way Arizona can help address the looming crisis of 2030 is to get more students educated now.

I’m not sure how this plays out. I am certain that we have been thinking too small given the size of our challenges.

 

4 Comments | charter schools, Education Savings Accounts, school funding | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

New Review of Interventions that Improve Character

November 18, 2013

Nobel Prize winning economist, James Heckman, has been urging people to consider the importance of what are sometimes called “non-cognitive” attributes, like self-control, persistence, delayed-gratification, etc…  As it turns out, these qualities seem to be at least as important as traditional measures of academic achievement in predicting success in life and are things that schools can teach.

Now Heckman and fellow University of Chicago economist, Tim Kautz, have a literature review on NBER about how these important aspects of character might be measured and altered.

Here’s a taste from the abstract:

The literature establishes that achievement tests do not adequately capture character skills–personality
traits, goals, motivations, and preferences–that are valued in the labor market, in school, and in many
other domains. Their predictive power rivals that of cognitive skills. Reliable measures of character
have been developed….

Character is shaped by families, schools, and social environments….

High-quality early childhood and elementary school programs improve character skills in a lasting
and cost-effective way. Many of them beneficially affect later-life outcomes without improving cognition.
There are fewer long-term evaluations of adolescent interventions, but workplace-based programs
that teach character skills are promising. The common feature of successful interventions across all
stages of the life cycle through adulthood is that they promote attachment and provide a secure base
for exploration and learning for the child. Successful interventions emulate the mentoring environments
offered by successful families.

The more that the education field narrows its focus to standardized achievement test scores, the more it detracts from these other essential aims of education.

4 Comments | Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Can Mike Petrilli Get a “Hell Yeah”?

November 15, 2013

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Mike is now auditioning to be the Stone Cold Steve Austin of education reform; since the Mr. T slot is already taken by George Clowes, I suppose that’s not a bad move. I’ll leave it to others to explain to Mike that there are other positions besides favoring no change and favoring centrally controlled change (backfill on that here and here, for starters). What I want to stress is that I am the sole author of “if you like your curriculum, you can keep your curriculum,” and Jason Bedrick can have it when he pries it from my cold, dead fingers.

2 Comments | National Standards | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Epic Fail in Arizona

November 14, 2013

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

The Arizona Board of Regents put out a tracking study on the High School Class of 2006.  Arizona Republic reporter Ann Ryman lays out the relevant data in the first couple of paragraphs:

Half of the state’s public high schools saw 5 percent or fewer of their graduates from 2006 earn bachelor’s degrees, a new study finds.

And 62 percent of the college degrees earned by the high-school Class of 2006 went to students from just 40 of the state’s 460 high schools.

The report out today from the Arizona Board of Regents is the first in the state to provide a snapshot of college-completion rates for individual high schools. For six years, the regents tracked 53,392 Arizona students who graduated from high school in the 2005-06 school year, regardless of whether they moved or attended college out of state.

Using data from colleges nationwide, the report found that 57 percent of the Arizona students who graduated from high school in 2005-06 went on to college, but only 19 percent graduated from a four-year institution within six years.

An additional 6 percent graduated from a two-year college or trade school.

So after six-years we are looking at 25% getting some sort of credential. Half of Arizona high-schools get 5% or fewer of their graduates to earn a BA.  These results, while shocking, are actually consistent with the very low reported completion rates at Arizona’s three universities and the even lower rates reported by community colleges.

Where does one even start with this?

Perhaps with higher-education itself. This study takes aim at Arizona’s incredibly dysfunctional K-12 system, and rightly so. Let’s not however divert our attention from the role that higher-ed plays in all of this. The universities do not require the use of a college admissions exam for students graduating in the top quarter of, oh yes, those Arizona high-schools they just so effectively bashed.  Community colleges have even lower admission standards, some exercising an “open door” policy that don’t even require trivial little things like a high-school graduation.

This sets the tone for K-12 and in so doing sets up many Arizona children to fail. The universities and colleges have no problem taking money from unprepared kids and flunking them out in droves, but (call me crazy) it might serve them better by setting some minimum standards for entry and communicating those standards forcefully down to the K-12 system.

As you might expect in a state with half of the high-schools getting 5% or fewer of their kids to graduate from college after six-years, the K-12 system is just a mess. Most of the few bright spots are among schools of choice in the state, but on the whole we are looking at a catastrophe.  Defenders of the system will be quick to claim that it is Arizona’s relatively low spending per pupil that is to blame, but this won’t do for two broad reasons. First Arizona schools spend beyond the dreams of avarice of their predecessors from previous decades.  Second the state is relatively poor with wealth concentrated among retirees who came here from somewhere else with housing standing as the state’s main industry. You can guess where that winds up in terms of residential property tax rates for a state whose main industry is keeping retirees out of the cold.  Finally the state has a large number of old people and a large number of young people- translating to one of the highest age dependency ratios in the country. More than is normally the case around the country, Arizona taxpayers are either not working age yet, or past their prime earning years.

Finally even if the state had a huge amount of money burning a hole in its pocket (it doesn’t) it isn’t remotely clear that Arizona’s districts deserve anyone’s confidence in doing good things with the money. Better to create incentives for improvement and deliver additional funding upon the documentation of that improvement, which is the path that Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has endorsed.

The state’s accountability system jumped the shark a decade ago.   The initial AIMS test was a rigorous exam that told Arizonans information that they didn’t want to hear, especially those working in the system. This brought on to the biggest dummy down in cut scores in the recorded history of the United States.  The testing system devolved into a bad joke- rampant item exposure and drilling to individual test items.  Our kids got better and better at taking a dummy downed AIMS exam while our NAEP scores flat-lined and very few students make it through college.

This is what is so sad about Arizona activists spending their time fighting Common Core. Um, guys, Arizona is not Massachusetts.  I have no idea how Common Core will turn out or even if it will stick around but it would boggle my mind if it somehow turned out worse than the status-quo here in our patch of cactus.  Arizona has a huge problem regardless of what happens next on standards, and btw, our current set of tests and standards did approximately nothing to prevent this problem.  Simply being against Common Core without any thought about what should be done to replace AIMS is a luxury that Arizona cannot afford.

Arizona adopted A-F school grading a few years ago, but in 2012-13 61 percent of schools received an A or a B grade.  Some cruel person could have a great deal of fun cross listing the Arizona Republic’s data base on college graduates with the school grades, but let’s resist such temptation for now. I will simply note that the NAEP exam shows very low percentages of Arizona students reading with full grade level proficiency and the Arizona Board of Regents has now found catastrophically low college completion rates. We would do well therefore to set challenging standards for school grades rather than throwing around A and B grades like beads at a Mardi Gras parade.

In short, I believe that Arizona needs a coordinated effort at the K-12 and higher education levels to toughen up what is an incredibly soft system.  Arizona’s educators policymakers are not bad people, and it was not wicked motivations that got us in to this mess. It seems nice not to require high-school students to do much of anything to graduate from high-school. It feels egalitarian and democratic to have open door policies in higher education. We can hope against hope that the handful of Arizona schools getting C grades will strive to get A/B grades, but it feels kinder and gentler to rig the game in such a way that profoundly mediocre results can get you a good grade. The road to hell-in this case backwater status- is paved with good intentions.

The problem with the delicate approach is that it systematically puts a higher priority on the comfort level of adults rather than the needs of Arizona’s children.  You can’t paper over illiteracy and the consequences of all this softness is a system that is failing to prepare students for the future.

9 Comments | higher education, instructional reform | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Parents Value “More than Scores”

November 12, 2013

(Guest Post by James P. Kelly III and Benjamin Scafidi)

More and more American parents are being given the opportunity for school choice, including through the Georgia K-12 tuition tax credit scholarship program.  Through this program, Georgia taxpayers may contribute up to a statewide total of $58 million annually to student scholarship organizations (SSOs) that provide scholarships to students to attend private schools.

Why are parents actively seeking these scholarships for their children?  Why are they looking to move from a public to a private school?

Our study, sponsored by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, “More Than Scores: An Analysis of Why and How Parents Choose Private Schools” is available at www.edchoice.org/MoreThanScores

More Than Scores analyzed voluntary survey data compiled from parents of 754 private school students who received financial support from the Georgia GOAL Scholarship program, the largest SSO in Georgia.

The survey results indicate that low and middle income tax credit scholarship recipients valued a wide variety of factors when trying to move their children from traditional public schools into another learning environment.

Parents were given a list of 21 possible reasons for choosing a private school.  The top five reasons these 754 parents selected private schools were better student discipline (50.9%), better learning environment (50.8%), smaller class sizes (48.9%), improved student safety (46..8%) and more individual attention (39.3%).

When asked to name the top five reasons, test scores were named on 10.2% of surveys.  When asked to select just one most important reason, test scores were selected by 0.0% of parents.

When one considers the academic, social, and cultural challenges so many young people and their families in America are facing, it is easier to understand why parents are far less concerned about standardized test scores as a simple form of accountability. In terms of academic goals, parents—especially low income and other traditionally disadvantaged parents—care more about school and classroom conditions that will lead to graduation from high school and success in college.

Offering more parents school choice would significantly increase the transparency and accountability of private schools.  Low and middle-income GOAL Scholarship parents are willing to take several time consuming steps to obtain information about private schools.  Further, 79 percent of parents said that if a private school declined to provide them with any specific information they desire that it ‘would’ impact their school choice decision; another 20 percent said that it ‘might’ impact their decision.  This is powerful evidence that private schools—without any prompting from government—will have to be transparent with prospective parents or else risk losing students and their tuition funds.

Based on our survey results and the results of similar studies, we conclude that a “spontaneous education order” would arise if state governments provided all families with school choice.  Civil society would create crowd-sourcing platforms like www.greatschools.org and other tools to aid families in their school choice decisions.

School choice advocates should stop imposing standardized tests on students who attend private schools for reasons of expedience or accountability.  There are a number of schooling factors that satisfy a child’s educational needs and development.  The low and middle income parents who receive GOAL scholarships are capable of holding schools accountable.  States should create school choice programs that empower all parents to hold public and private schools accountable.

More About Georgia GOAL:

From 2008 through 2012, GOAL received $54.254,528 in contributions and awarded 8,681 scholarships to 5,220 students, totaling $33,161,165.  As of December 31, 2012, GOAL had obligated an additional $17.8 million, earmarked for future scholarship payments and awards.  In 2012, GOAL awarded 3,366 scholarships.

[Note from Jay: I accidentally jumped the gun and posted this before the study was released.  I’ve taken down the URL that goes directly to the report, but will restore that tomorrow after the study is publicly available.  My apologies.]

[Another note from Jay: The report is now available and I have updated the link]

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

What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Rawls and Understanding Update on RedefinED

November 11, 2013

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

I updated the “forced reincarnation with the chance to pick your state” thought experiment with NAEP 2013 data over at RedefinED.

Bonus Elvis C:

Leave a Comment » | school accountability, tax-credit scholarships, teacher quality, teacher union, vouchers | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

“You shall not deny the Blogger.”

November 8, 2013

Strongbad using technology

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

T.S. Eliot and I would like to welcome a new blog, launched by my colleagues at the Friedman Foundation. They’ve decided to start out with something relatively simple and uncontroversial: the foundation’s stance on Common Core. Robert “The Barbarian” Enlow lays it out:

School choice is a far more effective way to improve educational outcomes than centralized standards imposed from above. A main concern with Common Core is that it could restrict entrepreneurship in education, so that parents will have fewer and less diverse choices. By contrast, universal school choice can provide a more vibrant system of schooling so that parents will have numerous and more varied high-quality options.

Check the blog next Wednesday for Friedman’s new report on how private schools use standardized tests in response to parental demand: “More Than Scores: An Analysis of Why and How Parents Choose Private Schools.” As Robert comments:

Do we need to ensure our children are competitive in a global economy? Definitely. Do we need to test our children to help parents understand their proficiency and growth? Most parents think so, and that’s why virtually all private schools use privately developed, voluntary standardized tests.

And keep your eyes on the blog for regular updates on the latest data, developments and derring-do. Embarrassing childhood photos are a free bonus.

Leave a Comment » | blogging, National Standards, tax-credit scholarships, vouchers | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

I’ll Have What Florida Charter Schools are Having

November 7, 2013

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Florida’s charter schools totally crushed the ball on the 2013 NAEP Reading test- an 11 point gain in 4th grade reading and a 5 point gain in 8th grade reading. As the number of charter schools in the state has gone up, the ability of NAEP to reliably sample them has improved.

Getting about as close to an “apples to apples” as you can get in the NAEP data by comparing only low-income general education students still shows huge gains and a big advantage for Florida charters to Florida district schools.

Florida charter 2013 NAEP

 

8 Comments | charter schools, NAEP | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

DC, Tennessee and Indiana Crush the Ball on 2013 NAEP

November 7, 2013

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

The National Center for Education Statistics released the 2013 NAEP this morning for 4th and 8th grade Reading and Math. I will be crunching the numbers for some time to come, but here is a quick look at the net results by state jurisdiction (combined 2013 scores minus combined 2011 scores).

2013 NAEP Gains

Quick takes: DC and TN crushed the ball with gains four times larger than the national average. These look to be truly historic gains with both DC and TN scoring statistically significantly higher in all four tests.

Indiana scores big with gains almost three times the national average. Florida gets back on track with gains more than twice the national average.

More number crunching to follow but a

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!

for top gainers DC, TN and IN is already in order.

22 Comments | NAEP | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

And the Winner of the 2013 “Al” is… Weird Al Yankovic

November 6, 2013

We had many excellent nominations for this year’s Al Copeland Humanitarian Award.

I nominated Penn and Teller for their efforts in combating bullshit.  But this year’s winner also combats bullshit and does so in a more gentle and perhaps effective way.

Greg nominated Kickstarter, the crowd-funding platform.  Whatever its merits, Kickstarter is not a person and is not eligible.  We aren’t Time Magazine, which has awarded person of the year to such non-persons as “The Computer” and “The Endangered Earth” as well as to collectives, such as “The Peacemakers,”American Women,” and The Protester.”  Having personally won the 2006 Time Magazine Person of the Year Award I can tell you that we can’t stoop to the standards of a magazine like Time.

Matt nominated Bill Knudsen, the American businessman who marshaled the might of American industry to defeat the Nazis.   Beating the Nazis is always worthy of praise, but I worry that some of the PLDDers might get the wrong central planning message from a Knudsen victory.

So, the 2013 winner of the Al Copeland Humanitarian Award is Pat Wolf’s nominee — Weird Al Yankovic.

Like Al Copeland, Weird Al may not have changed the world, but he has certainly improved the human condition.  He’s done so by making us laugh at the the absurdity of many who think highly of themselves.  My favorite Weird Al song is a little dated, but it is his song Headline News, featured at the top of this post.  Anyone who doesn’t recognize how ridiculous our news obsession with the faux-celebrity of petty scandal hasn’t read Fahrenheit 451.  The news chatter about missing pretty white girls, “accidental” sex tape releases, and the like seems to be as much a distracting sedative from the real issues of life as “The Family” TV show in Fahrenheit 451.  Weird Al, in his gentle and entertaining way, reveals the BS of this faux-celebrity worship.

Last year’s winner of Al Copeland Humanitarian Award was George P. Mitchell, the natural gas entrepreneur who commercialized fracking and horizontal drilling techniques that have made cheap, clean natural gas plentiful.

A common theme in past Al honorees is how they improved the human condition through individual freedom, not government control.  Earle Haas liberated women from several days of confinement each month by developing the modern, hygienic tampon.  This expanded women’s economic and political power by given them full access to public life.  This advance in civil liberties came from a private businessperson, not from a government mandate.  And the fact that he and the Tampex Company made a fortune in the process in no way sullies the benefits they produced for women.  In fact, that profit motive made the advance possible by incentivizing them to develop and market it.  And contrary to the vaguely Marxist critique of advertising as creating false and unnecessary desires, the marketing of the tampon was an essential part of making women aware of the tampon’s benefits and helping women overcome the ignorance and stigmas that hindered widespread use of tampons.

Similarly, Wim Nottroth’s improvement to the human condition came from his embrace of individual liberty.  He stood up to an Orwellian government edict that denouncing killing was the equivalent of hate-speech against Muslims.  As I’ve argued before, the most serious threats to liberty come from small-minded government officials and their enablers surrendering our freedom in the name of promoting something good, not the big scary dictators whose threats are self-evidently menacing and more easily resisted.

And Debrilla M. Ratchford, the inventor of the rollerbag, was recognized for how important the quirky inventor of something useful could be to improving the human condition.

Now Weird Al joins this illustrious list of honorees.  It’s almost something he’d want to mock in a song.

7 Comments | Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

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