A Feminist Critique Double-Standard?

August 5, 2008

I recently finished reading Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali and found her story to be very compelling and well-written.  She makes a feminist critique of Islamic culture based on her own experiences growing-up in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and Kenya.  While one could wonder whether the horrible treatment of women that she describes is really inherent in Islam or just in the way Islam is practiced in certain places, she makes a powerful case that anyone interested in progress for women should consider.  Certainly anyone who would read Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, or Naomi Wolf, should add Ayaan Hirsi Ali to their reading list.

But then I wondered — given how often these American feminist authors are on high school recommended reading lists, how many of those lists also include Ayaan Hirsi Ali?

I did a quick Google search for the terms “Infidel,” “high school,” “reading list,” and “Ayaan Hirsi Ali.”  There were 158 entries after duplicates were removed.  Combing through those entries I found four high schools that had Infidel on a recommended reading list. 

I did a similar search, substituting “The Color Purple” as the book and “Alice Walker” as the author.  That yielded 575 entries (without duplicates).  After reviewing the first 158 of those entries I found 49 high school recommended reading lists containing The Color Purple in addition to statewide lists for New York and Florida.  There are also many Google entries describing efforts to ban The Color Purple or remove it from recommended reading lists, but it is clear that those efforts have largely failed.  The Color Purple is widely suggested for high school students to read by school officials.

Why is Ayaan Hirsi Ali largely absent from high school reading lists while Alice Walker is so common?  Perhaps the difference is explained by the literary quality.  Walker is read for her literary skill in addition to the themes she addresses, but I somehow doubt that literary quality fully accounts for the difference.  And I should emphasize that Infidel is very well-written.  Her detached, almost clinical tone, helps the reader grasp the horrors she describes.  And Ali writes without anger and with a fair level of sympathy, even for those who treated her very poorly.

Instead, I suspect that at least some of the difference is attributable to the fact that Walker’s feminist critique hits closer to home, while Ali describes issues that are more remote.  In part, this is reasonable because we legitimately have a stronger interest in things that are closer to us.  But in part this seems unreasonable.  If we feature only criticisms of Western treatment of women and neglect accounts of even more horrifying treatment elsewhere, we deprive students of a sense of perspective and proportion.  Students might fail to appreciate the accomplishments and progress of Western civilization because of the inability to compare it to the accomplishments and progress made in other civilizations.

Infidel contains many controversial and disturbing issues.  But so does The Color Purple.  It would be nice if we are willing to address those controversial and disturbing issues even when they don’t occur in our backyard.

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

Mascot Mania Strikes Back

August 4, 2008

 SchoolCenter Picture

In keeping with our love of summer blockbuster sequels, I have another post on school mascot names.  Just to set the stage, let’s have a flashback to my first mascot post:

“The names we choose matter.  When we name our children, or name a public school, or name a public park or courthouse — we are signaling what is important to us.  Once names are given, there is an opportunity for people to learn about the values those names represent and promote those values in the world.   

With Brian Kisida and Jonathan Butcher, I have already analyzed patterns and trends in what we name public schools.  We found a trend away from naming schools after people, in general, and presidents, in particular.  Instead, schools are increasingly receiving names that sound more like herbal teas or day spas — Whispering Winds, Hawks Bluff, Desert Mesa, etc… 

[We found] that there are more public schools in Florida named after manatees than George Washington.

Now I am turning my attention to school mascots.  I understand that mascot names aren’t taken very seriously and are often chosen without much deliberation or care.  But even something trivial, like what we name our pets or the mascot names we adopt says something about us.  Besides, this is a bit of fun.”

In a subsequent post I identified a national data set of mascot names and offered some very preliminary analyses.  With the help of Jonathan Butcher and Catherine Shock, I now have some more detailed analyses to present.  In particular, I can show a list of the most common mascot names, show that Indian or war-like mascot names are fairly common, and show that those Indian or war-like names have not become dramatically less common over time.

I have a list of 19,785 mascot names (including some private and Canadian schools), while there are about 23,800 public secondary schools in the US (some of which probably do not have mascot names).  So, my list captures a large portion of all high school mascot names in the US.

There are 1,566 unique mascot names, but the more common 182 names account for 88% of the total.  Below is a list of the 60 most common mascot names, which account for 79% of all mascot names.  As you can see, animal mascots predominate.  Human or humanoid (like devils) mascots are about 36% of all names.  The remaining 64% are almost all animals, with a sprinkling of weather names (e.g., blizzards, hurricanes, tornadoes). 

Eagle, which suggests both patriotism and ferocity, is by far the most common mascot name, accounting for 6% of all names.  The next most common names are tigers, bulldogs, panthers, and wildcats.  The most common “person” mascot is warrior, which ranks 6th and accounts for 3% of all mascot names. 

Rank         Name          Frequency

1 eagle 1223
2 tiger 914
3 bulldog 816
4 panther 804
5 wildcat (or kit) 706
6 warrior 630
7 lion 507
8 cougar 469
9 knight 466
10 indian 435
11 hawk 424
12 mustang 400
13 raider 399
14 bear 387
15 trojan 387
16 viking 362
17 falcon 361
18 devil 336
19 wolves 325
20 ram 322
21 cardinal 299
22 spartan 288
23 pirate 268
24 hornet 264
25 patriot 241
26 crusader 210
27 rebel 188
28 bobcat 182
29 yellowjacket 164
30 angels 155
31 wolverine 146
32 dragon 143
33 huskie 143
34 titans 140
35 saint 137
36 jaguar 134
37 charger 126
38 braves 116
39 rocket 111
40 chief 107
41 pioneer 102
42 cavalier 88
43 bronco 77
44 ranger 75
45 redskin 72
46 cowboy 71
47 owl 71
48 gators 70
49 longhorn 69
50 hound 66
51 tornado 66
52 royal 66
53 bruin 63
54 bluejays 61
55 hurricane 55
56 buccaneer 55
57 highlander 55
58 colt 55
59 irish 54
60 buffalo 53

Indian mascots, including chiefs, braves, and specific tribal names, are about 4% of all mascot names.  The warrior is sometimes represented by a Native American, but I have not included warriors among Indian mascots. 

Indians are not the only ethnic/national group featured as mascots.  There are also a fair number of Highlanders, Irish, and Scots as mascot names.

War-like names, including anything with “fighting” in it or warriors, raiders, pirates, bombers, etc…, are about 19% of all mascot names.  Excluding animal mascots, war-like mascots account for about half of the remaining “people” mascots.  Respect for a martial spirit is represented in a very large portion of all mascot names.

This interest in ferocity has only declined slightly over time.  Repeating a technique that I employed in the study of school names, I used the age of school buildings as a sort of “time machine.”  If schools built more recently have mascot names that are different from schools built a long time ago, then we could observe a trend in mascot selection over time.  Of course, there are problems with this technique.  For example, old schools might change their mascot names.  I can’t observe old schools that have closed.  I only have building age for a limited number of schools in a limited number of states.

With all of these confessions out of the way, I still believe that if there were a big change in mascot names, newly built schools should have very different mascot names than old schools.  I do not find a big change. 

I looked at mascot names for schools built before and after 1970 in Arizona, Florida, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Wisconsin.  There appear to be some modest trends.  Schools seem to be less likely to have a “person” mascot over time.  Animals are becoming somewhat more common as mascots.  And Indian mascots in these five states are becoming less common, but by no means have disappeared.  Lastly, there has been a modest decline over time in schools having war-like names. 

  Before 1970 After 1970
“Person”    40.0% 35.6%
Indian    8.1% 6.5%
War-Like    22.2% 19.2%

It’s possible that flaws in the analysis are understating the trends, but even if that were the case the changes are unlikely to be large.  The shift away from “people” mascots, away from Native American names, and away from war-like names is happening, but it is happening gradually. 

My guess is that the appeal of tradition in mascots is likely to be very strong.  Change can only occur gradually, as old schools are closed and new ones opened.  We occasionally hear news stories about schools changing mascots, but those stories may account for almost all of the instances of such shifts actually occurring.  When a school changes mascots it tends to make news.

Curiously, the change in mascot names over time is much less dramatic than the change in school names.  Perhaps school boards increasingly avoid naming schools after people because they wish to avoid fights over who should be honored, but are less politically sensitive about mascot names because they provoke less conflict.  Maybe our commitment to the values of fierce mascots has not changed much over time, while our commitment to honoring great presidents, educators, and other people has declined.

The first person to post a comment identifying the schools and mascot names represented by the three images at the top wins a prize!

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

Pass the Popcorn: City of the Dark Knight (Issue #2)

August 3, 2008

 

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Okay, and now for something completely different! Today we’re going to talk about Bat Gear.

What was the one thing in The Dark Knight that just didn’t work? So far, everyone I’ve talked to has the same answer, even if you don’t ask them the question – it’s the citywide “sonar.” Lame.

The first time through, it was really obtrusive – for a few minutes. One of the greatest innovations in storytelling in the last ten years is that movie and TV people have learned the value of throwing a lot of story at you and trusting you to keep up; among many other virtues, this means badly done moments in the narrative get left behind more quickly.

The second time through, I didn’t really mind. That was partly because dumb plot elements are always less obtrusive the second time around, because you aren’t being hit with the shock of recognizing their stupidity. This, for example, is why it is possible to watch the Lord of the Rings movies repeatedly without their being spoiled by a bunch of friggin’ elves marching into Helm’s Deep, or the army of the dead effortlessly wiping out the beseiging force at Minas Tirith (which means all those Rohirrim who gave their lives on the Pelannor died for nothing).

But it was also partly because the second time I saw how it was supposed to fit into the movie. Somehow, the first time through, I totally missed the “like a submarine” gag. You remember, when Lucius comes out of the evil corporation’s building in Hong Kong and shows Bruce the sonar readout:

“Sonar? Just like a . . .”

“Like a submarine, Mr. Wayne – just like a submarine.”

It just flew by and I missed it completely. (How am I supposed to catch all these little things when they throw so much at you and expect you to keep up with it all?)

Obviously they were thinking that we would buy the “sonar” because sonar fits with the bat theme. And it’s not a crazy theory. When a plot element fits the theme of the movie, artistic liberties with reality are much less obtrusive (a subject I’ve had occasion to discuss at greater length before).

But it didn’t work. And that got me thinking about the gadgets in this movie. F’rinstance, does the Bat Cycle (apparently to make it seem less fruity they’re telling us to call it a Bat Pod) belong in this movie? I mean, honestly – doesn’t it just look like the suits in the marketing department demanded that they throw in something new that would sell toys? After all, the twelve year old boys of America – who should never be permitted to see this movie under any circumstances whatsoever – are not going to shell out for another Batmobile unless it’s different from the last one.

He’s prob’ly fighting for freedom! Buy all our playsets and toys!

And the skyscraper-assault gadgets (in the Hong Kong scene and again in the assault on Fortress Joker) feel artificial, too.

But that’s not what you’d expect, is it? Gadgets belong in a Batman movie. They’re an integral part of the franchise – even more so than in the James Bond franchise.

Consider the first Batman movie – well, okay, not absolutely the first, but the first one that counts. The Tim Burton one. (The Tim Burton one that counts.) That movie doesn’t get its propers anymore, in large part because we now take for granted so much of what Burton did to define the modern comic book movie. Much of what was radical in Burton’s Batman is now so expected that it’s not even noticed.

It was a much more uneven movie than Nolan’s Batmans are – parts just didn’t work, but parts worked brilliantly. And that movie was just brimming with gadgets. The Batmobile actually did stuff – and no, going really fast and changing the driver position from Standard Seated Position to Lying Down for No Reason Position doesn’t count as doing something. Yes, okay, in the first Nolan movie the Batmobile jumped rooftops. But Burton’s Batmobile did so much more. And Batman himself used gadgets more often and it felt more natural. One of those brilliant moments that really worked was when Batman swooped in, foiled one of the Joker’s plans, and swooped out on one of his flying wires (or something) and the Joker was just so impressed that he didn’t even think about how badly he’d been beaten – he just stood there and asked: “Where does he get those marvellous toys?”

Or consider what must be the best gag ever done in a comic – from the Batman/Planetary crossover.

(If you don’t know what Planetary is . . . well, how are you even alive?)

Anyway, the Planetary crew are in Gotham chasing a man whose mind keeps opening dimensional rifts, and of course they run into Batman, who of course is chasing the same guy. But every time the guy opens a dimensional rift, they shift to an alternate reality where Batman is slightly different:

     

     

HT Planetary. How many can you identify? How many will you admit you can identify? (No fair peeking at the URLs!)

Here’s the gadget gag: Jakita Wagner, a superpowered female hero, is about to throw down with one of the badass Batmans. Then a rift opens and suddenly it’s not a badass Batman, it’s the Adam West Batman from the supercamp sixties TV show. And . . . he would never hit a girl!

So when she rushes him, he avoids compromising his honor by whipping a spray can out of his utility belt and dousing her in the face. (I always suspected the Adam West Batman was really a sucker-punching bastard.) She falls back, clutching her eyes, and Batman drops the can and springs away to chase after the rift-opening guy. As she curses him, we see the can roll into the frame.

The label on the can reads: Bat Female Villain Repellent.

I swear I Googled for probably half an hour looking for that panel, so I could share it with you. I guess you’ll have to buy the crossover instead.

But back to our subject. Gadgets not only belong in Batman, they ought to belong in Chris Nolan’s Batman. After all, this is the first movie version to include Batman’s “Q”, and he’s used to outstanding effect in both movies. What are the most memorable moments in the first movie? Liam Neeson blathering on about destroying Gotham? Dr. Crane attacking people with his fear drug? No, that movie had some of the least interesting villains ever to appear in a comic book movie. (Not a criticism – that movie was about Batman, not about them.) What you remember is: “Oh, the tumbler? You wouldn’t be interested in that.” And: “Just don’t think of me as an idiot.”

And Chris Nolan clearly knows how to get the best out of Morgan Freeman, because he’s used just as well in the new one. That “your plan is to blackmail this person?” speech is priceless.

Come to think of it, in the first movie Batman used a “bat caller” gadget to produce a swarm of bats where he needed it. It was ridiculous, of course – but it fit the theme of the movie, especially in that it was trying to explain why Bruce Wayne chose to dress up like a bat when fighting crime. Being attacked by a swarm of bats would tend to put the fear in you.

So why didn’t the gadets work in this one? The first thought to occur to me was that they were trying to force the citywide sonar to perform an awkward plot function – they wanted to abruptly set up a little mini-debate between Batman and Lucius on the whether it’s OK to spy on the whole city. But frankly, I don’t really think that’s it. I think citywide sonar would have failed even without that scene. (Speaking of which, when I first saw it, I thought that Lucius’s position was “This is wrong, but I’ll do it just this once,” which of course is a contemptable position. But that’s not what he says, as I discovered upon seeing the scene a second time. I think his position is really “This is OK as a one-time deal, but it would be wrong to use it on an ongoing basis.” I’m inclined to think that if it’s OK as a one-time deal, it’s hard to justify throwing it away, especially in a city that seems to attract supervillains like a magnet – but it’s not a contemptable position.)

Maybe – and I’m not sure about this – maybe it’s just that they obviously could have accomplished the same thing with less tampering with reality. Batman could have simply set up a computer to scan all phones for the Joker’s voice. And they could still have worked in the bat/sonar theme by equipping the Batsuit with its own sonar, which he could then have used in the Assault on Fortress Joker scene.

Like I said, I’m not sure. Theories?

(Oh, and I’m still hoping somebody can help me with the tally on Dent’s body count. I’m one cop short.)

2 Comments | Pass the Popcorn | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

PJM Column on the Education Agenda

August 2, 2008

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

I have a column up on Pajamas Media noting that education just flared up in the presidential race recently, and then asking (and answering) the question: Just what can a president do about education, anyway, given that it’s primarily an area of state authority rather than federal?

It’s a question worth asking, because education is going to come up again before this campaign is over. Well, here are five things the next education president (they’re all “education presidents” these days) can do to improve the nation’s schools without expanding federal authority over education beyond its current level.

Leave a Comment » | NCLB, politics, teacher pay, teacher quality, vouchers | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Pass the Popcorn: Baron Munchausen Turns 20

July 31, 2008

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

The Ladners spent time this July in Prescott to escape the summer heat of Phoenix. The Raven coffee bar has been showing the films of Terry Gilliam on Monday nights, which meant that I had a chance to visit an old friend: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

Released in 1988, Baron Munchausen was one of the greatest film fiascos of all time. Budgeted at $23m, it cost more than $46m. Worse still, Columbia pictures was being sold at the time of release, meaning that they only got it out onto a handful of American screens, which translated into an $8m American box-office take, $15m worldwide.

Ooops. The only equivalent brilliant move I’ve seen was Miramax releasing The Grindhouse slasher-zombie flick during the Easter season, giving them a total box office take of me going to see it twice.

Looking back at the film now, I can only wonder: how in the world did Gilliam make this movie for only $46m? It’s many times more visually interesting than several films I could name with far larger budgets and supposedly superior technology available (yes, I am looking at you George Lucas).

Fiasco though it may have been for the studio, for a viewer, the Baron is a pure delight. I’ve seen the film included on lists such as “Cool movies no one saw” and “Children’s Films That Adults Will Love.” It’s all that, and more.

I’ve always loved the film, as the main character reminded me very much of my grandfather: German, very charming, sometimes grouchy, a flirt with the ladies, full of tall tales, and always in search of adventure. Oh, and I suppose that the massive crush I had on Uma Thurman 20 years ago didn’t hurt.

The Baron, a character out of German folklore, finds himself disgruntled to be living in “The Age of Reason.” The Baron sets forth to save a city from the armies of the Grand Turk by finding his former extraordinary servants, encountering gods and monsters and literally cheating death along the way.

The movie had an all-star cast, including small parts by Robin Williams and Sting. Columbia’s loss is your gain: Netflix it now, and did I mention that Gilliam reenacted a certain famous mythological painting?

Yeah, well, the movie is better than the painting.

 

2 Comments | Pass the Popcorn | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Where Did You Get That Marvelous Datum?

July 31, 2008

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

NRO blogger Jim Geraghty has a good post today about Obama and school choice. But what I particularly want to point out is this, which he notes in passing:

These numbers from the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics for the 2003-2004 school year put average tuition paid by private elementary school students at $5,049

It looks to me like the word “these” was supposed to have a link, but there’s no link. I wasn’t aware NCES had collected any private school tuition data since 1999. And that figure looks a whole lot like the figure NCES was reporting back in 1999. Did Geraghty find the tuition number and assume it came from the most recent iteration of the Private School Universe Survey? (Actually the PSS has just released its 2005 data, but we’ll overlook that for the moment.) Or does NCES still collect private school tuition data, and somehow I missed it?

I’m not sure which outcome to root for.

2 Comments | journalism, vouchers | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

Should You Redshirt Your Kindergartener?

July 31, 2008

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

“Redshirting” children (having children start school at an older age) has become a fad. Some parents have held children back from entering kindergarten with the idea that their child will benefit academically from being older and/or more mature. According to research by Sandra E. Black, Paul Devereux and Kjell G. Salvanes at Vox (an interesting hybrid between a blog and an academic journal for economists) this fad is like many previous education fads: intuitively plausible but actually worthless.

The researchers were able to isolate the impact of late school starting from those of mere age by comparing Norwegian military IQ tests of students born on December 31 to those born on January 1st :

The administrative rule in Norway is that children must start school the year they turn seven. Children born on 31 December start school a year earlier than those born on 1 January – even though they are almost exactly the same age. This provides an exogenous separation between age and school-starting age.

Result: age matters but not school-starting age. Would-be redshirt parents can relax, or more likely, seek an edge some other way.

4 Comments | instructional reform | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Teacher Contracts: Blame States, Too

July 30, 2008

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

The National Council on Teacher Quality has published a new report on the sausage-factory process behind teacher contracts. (HT EIA, or as I like to call him, ALELR.)

Readers of Jay P. Greene’s Blog will probably not need to be told that reformers have long identified teacher contracts as one of the most important root causes, if not the single most important root cause, of the system’s ills. It is because of these contracts, for example, that pay scales, quality control and disciplinary procedures in education resemble those of a factory (even a factory circa 1965) more than those of a profession.

Defenders of the system sometimes argue that teachers should recieve the deference that is due to professionals. Personally, I’d love to see that – but not until they’re compensated and held accountable like professionals.

When that day comes, teachers will be able to say, “Now we have freedom and responsibility. It’s a very groovy time!”

Until then, you can’t expect to have one without the other for very long. The universe doesn’t work that way.

Reformers have long argued that the fundamental problem is disproportionate union influence on school boards. Union members have a much stronger motive to vote in school board elections than anyone else, especially when the elections are held separately and require a special trip to the polls. Thus, at contract renewal time the union ends up “negotiating with itself.”

However, the NCTQ report’s main argument seems to be that we should be griping less about the actual bargaining process between districts and unions, and more about the laws passed by state legislatures mandating certain provisions in those contracts. The unions find it easier to extract what they want in the statehouse, NCTQ argues: “As unions have matured, their leaders have realized that it is more efficient to lobby state legislatures on particular provisions than to negotiate district by district every few years as contracts expire.”

The report collects a lot of useful information on the subject, and any contribution to knowledge on this badly understudied subject is valuable. And clearly NCTQ is right when it observes that bad state mandates ought to be deplored alongside bad district/union negotiations, and they currently aren’t.

But if I may play devil’s advocate (“When don’t you?” the unions may ask), I think NCTQ overstates its case on the importance of state mandates vis-a-vis district negotiations.

The report’s opening concedes that “the teacher contract still figures prominently on such issues as teacher pay,” but asserts that “on the most critical issues of the teaching profession, the state is the real powerhouse,” citing how teachers are evaluated, when they get tenure, their benefits, and the notorious issue of firing procedures. But are benefits really that important as an obstacle to reform, so long as compensation is structured on a factory-worker scale? And does the procedure for evaluating teachers matter as an obstacle to reform so long as evaluations play no role in compensation – again because compensation is structured on a factory-worker scale? When teachers get tenure and how hard it is to fire the bad ones are obviously important as obstacles to reform. But are they really so much more important than the factory-worker scale? Whether teachers get tenure early or late is less important than the fact that they get it. Disciplinary procedures only affect a small number of teachers. Even if we include the absence of a more widespread deterrent effect, we’re still not talking about something that affects all or even most of the profession.

I also think NCTQ is barking up the wrong tree when it argues that lobbying the state for goodies is more “efficient” than fighting for goodies district by district. As Hamilton, Madison and Jay (the “Three Founderos”) observed in the Federalist Papers, selfish interests will always find it easier to extract goodies from the public fisc in a whole bunch of little local places than in one big place. While centralization does provide one-stop shopping, it also creates more intense scrutiny and greater opporutnities for opposition.

In fact, in the case of the teachers’ unions, I’m not even sure why it would take more resources to extract goodies on a district-by-district basis. They have to “negotiate district by district” anyway. They get coerced dues payments from millions of teachers precisely to pay the costs of negotiating in every district. And conditions on the ground in those districts are more favorable than those in the statehouse.

Moreover, the old saying goes “the crime is what’s legal.” In this case, the big obstacle to reform is what the teachers don’t have to bother negotiating for: the factory-worker structure of compensation. It’s not like they have to go back and win that all over again every time the contract comes up for renewal.

Finally, it’s not clear that state-mandated and district-negotiated provisions can be separated all that clearly. For example, check out this chart from the NCTQ report, illustrating how the process for firing teachers is mandated by state law in California:

Pretty nice graphic! But check out the contents of the first box:

School district must document specific examples of ineffective performance, based on standards set by the district and the local teachers union.

And the third box:

If the school board votes to approve dismissal . . .

And the fifth box:

School board must reconvene to decide whether to proceed . . .

And the seventh box:

. . . and persons appointed by the school board . . .

And the ninth box:

If . . . the school district appeals the decision . . .

See what I mean? The larger reality of the union/school board relationship will influence the board’s behavior in discipline cases. And the standards for documenting misconduct are subject to union/board negotiations.

I don’t mean to diminish NCTQ’s important contribution here. We should absolutely be paying more attention to state teacher contract mandates. But I think NCTQ goes too far to argue that they’re more important than the dysfunctional school board system.

4 Comments | politics, research reports, teacher pay, teacher union | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

NCLB: Less Than Meets the Eye, More Than Nothing

July 29, 2008

Given all of the wailing and gnashing of teeth, one would think that NCLB was a crushing burden on the school system.

In actuality NCLB demands very little. It only requires that states wishing to receive Title I funds have to establish goals for student success, select tests for measuring progress towards those goals, and report results from those tests broken out by subgroups.

The sanctions for failing to make progress toward those goals are almost non-existent. Schools failing to make progress have to offer tutoring or allow students to transfer to better-performing public schools in the same district (if one can be found). But, as we have previously discussed on this blog and in this article, there is widespread non-compliance with even these minimal sanctions. Too often schools fail to inform parents properly of their options under NCLB or direct students into their own tutoring programs, resulting in very few students taking any resources out of their local school, let alone district. Without placing school funds in jeopardy, the only possible sanction is public embarrassment. And that plus $4 will get you a latte at Starbucks.

I do not believe that a single tenured teacher out of the more than 3 million teachers currently working in public schools has been fired, experienced a pay-cut, or otherwise been meaningfully sanctioned because of NCLB. I do not believe that a single student out of the 50 million enrolled in public schools has been held back a grade, been denied a diploma, or otherwise been meaningfully sanctioned as a result of NCLB. (Some states have retention and graduation requirements as part of their state accountability systems, but those policies are not required for NCLB.) Yes, chronically failing schools might eventually face “restructuring” but that is likely to be yet more bark and no bite. Next they’ll be put on double secret probation.

So what supports complaints about “pressure cooker NCLB testing,” or “NCLB-post traumatic stress disorder,” or other “NCLB outrages”? If NCLB has almost no real consequences for teachers or students, what is all of the fuss about? The overwrought reaction seems to have more to do with a political campaign over the future direction of education policy than the actual effects of the current policy.

The most important future policy that the higher volume of squealing is meant to influence is increasing education spending. A center-piece of the complaints about NCLB is that it is an unfunded mandate. Let’s leave aside the fact that federal spending on education has increased 41% since passage of NCLB. And let’s leave aside that NCLB is not actually a mandate, since states do not have to comply with NCLB if they do not want Title I funds (which have increased 59% since 2001).

Besides neither being unfunded nor a mandate, the argument that NCLB is an unfunded mandate is especially odd because it makes one wonder what all of the funding that schools received before NCLB was for. It’s as if the unfunded mandate crowd is saying: “The $10,000 per pupil we already get just pays for warehousing. If you actually want us to educate kids, that’ll cost ya extra.” Remember, that NCLB just asks states to establish and meet their own goals. Didn’t they have goals before NCLB?

While NCLB demands much less than the overwrought rhetoric about it suggests, it does not demand nothing. Most importantly, NCLB entrenched the idea that we should take regular measures of student achievement and report the results, including results for subgroups. Even this is a smaller thing that it may seem at first glance since 37 states had already adopted state testing and accountability systems before passage of NCLB. But NCLB brought the laggard states on-board to this growing national consensus that we ought to have some systematic measures of how our students are doing. It also made reversal of this growing testing and accountability culture more difficult by placing it in federal as well as state law.

Greg Forster has already made the case for why this shift under NCLB has been important, so I will not repeat it here. I would just emphasize that the controversy over NCLB is not really about what NCLB does, but about the broader policy shift that it represents and the extra funding that folks hope they may get as they acquiesce to that policy shift.

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

Broader, Bolder — Bigger Budget

July 28, 2008

Check out Ken DeRosa’s critique of Broader, Bolder (the union backed plan to improve the struggling education system by doubling-down the bet and expanding the responsibilities of those struggling schools to include health care and other social services). 

Here’s my favorite bit of his post:

“Let’s take Ravitch’s defense first:

I care as much about academic achievement as Checker or anyone else in the world, but I don’t see any contradiction between caring about academic achievement and caring about children’s health and well-being.

The issue isn’t about who cares about children’s health and well-being. The issue is whether public schools, who are by and large failing at their primary task of education, should take on the additional responsibilities of caring about children’s health and well-being. You could care very much about the health and well-being of children and NOT think it’s a good idea to hand these services over to our public schools.

The argument seems to be that since children attend school every day (cough, cough) that social services could be easily provided at school. Then why not hand over these responsibilities to the post office. After all, they make house calls six days a week regardless of the rain, snow, heat, or gloom of night. They could give the kids a quick vision screen and drop off any drug prescriptions.”

4 Comments | myth of helplessness | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

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