Democratic Control of Schools

April 26, 2009

Yesterday the New York Times profiled a school district in which the democratically elected school board is dominated by a group that places its financial interests ahead of the educational interests of children in the district.  And that group easily wins school board elections because they are well-organized, have cohesive interests, and turn-out to vote in much higher numbers than parents of children in the schools.

No, the NYT hasn’t suddenly decided to publicize the money-grabbing, electoral bullying of teacher unions in large numbers of school districts all around the country.  Instead the NYT is concerned about the money-grabbing, electoral bullying of a community of Orthodox Jews in Rockland County, NY.

Well, the NYT didn’t exactly describe the Orthodox Jews as money-grabbing: “Many of the Orthodox here and elsewhere feel crushed by the weight of high school taxes and private school tuition.”

The problem, as the NYT piece suggests, is the sense that schools ought be controlled by the families that send their children to those schools: “But increasingly, others are chafing at the idea that people who don’t send their children to the public schools are making the decisions for those from very different cultures who do.”

I have to say that I am sympathetic to this concern.  There are problems with control over schools being located outside of the families whose children attend those schools.  But, unlike the NYT, I don’t restrict my concern to instances involving Orthodox Jews. 

It concerns me that President Obama, who has never sent his children to public schools, and Arne Duncan, who intentionally avoided placing his children in DC public schools, are making decisions to compel children to return to D.C. public schools. 

It concerns me that teacher unions dominate school board elections all over the country, placing their financial interests ahead of the educational interests of children.  In many urban school districts disproportionate numbers of teacher union members also don’t send their own children to the public schools.

The obvious solution is to increase control over schools by the families that attend them by giving those families vouchers.  Empowered with vouchers, schools will be responsive to the interests of current and prospective students rather than the interests of people whose children do not attend those schools is order to attract and retain the revenue those vouchers bring.

Of course, the general regulatory framework governing schools could still be under democratic control, including non-parents.  But let’s restrict the general public’s involvement in controlling schools  to the broad regulatory issues that affect the public’s interests as opposed to the operational details of individual schools.

2 Comments | civic values, teacher union | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

The Hits Keep on Coming, Extended Dance Remix

April 18, 2009

 

As hard as Obama, Duncan, and Durbin try to minimize media attention to their efforts to kill D.C. vouchers with language slipped into an omnibus spending bill and Friday afternoon sneaky political tricks, the story just won’t go away. 

Since our latest summary of greatest hits, I have an op-ed in the WSJ.  Greg has a new piece in Pajamas Media.  Shikha Dalmia has a piece in Forbes.  Glenn Beck has devoted a segment of his Fox TV show to the issue.  Senator Ensign gave a speech describing his fight for D.C. vouchers and vowing to expand federal voucher programs to include special education nationwide.  Senator Lieberman will begin holding hearings on the re-authorization of D.C. vouchers next month.

If D.C. vouchers go down, they won’t go down quietly.  Politicians who break their word to abide by the evidence,  who would deny to others the choices and opportunities they enjoy, and who try to get away with sneaky Friday afternoon political tricks will have to account for their actions. 

Greg put it best in his PM piece:

“Vouchers may lose in D.C., but that doesn’t mean they’re not winning in the long term. Every successful movement loses some battles. Indeed, the more important the cause, the more we should expect the entrenched interests of the status quo to invest in fighting it off. That will inevitably mean some setbacks alongside the victories.

Where would we be today if Martin Luther King’s letter from the Birmingham jail had just said, ‘Well, here I am in jail — I guess I’ve lost the fight’? King knew he wasn’t in jail because he was losing. He was in jail because he was winning.

And the cowards who put him in jail knew it just as well as he did.”

1 Comment | vouchers | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

You’re Locked in Here with Me!

April 16, 2009

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

The Watchmen has a great scene where one of the heroes is unmasked and sent to prison. Needless to say, the place is swimming in criminal anxious to kill him. Our hero, a rather rough-edged sort of chap, is assaulted in line by a prisoner far larger than himself and using a makeshift knife to boot.

Not only does our hero quickly disable his attacker, for good measure, he smashes a plate of glass, grabs a container of hot cooking grease, and douses the bloke who dared to assault him. As the prison guards dragged him away, he growled out “You don’t seem to understand. I’m not locked in here with you…YOU’RE LOCKED IN HERE WITH ME!!!!!”

You can watch this, grisly violence and all, here: 

Now much gloom surrounds the fight over DC vouchers. Jay even seems to refer to them in the past tense in the Wall Street Journal. Could it be, however, that we’ve misread things? Perhaps we’re not locked in the prison with Dick Durbin. Perhaps he is locked in the prison with us.

Mike Petrilli writes:

Now Messrs. Obama and Duncan find themselves in a Vietnam-style quagmire. They’ve crushed the hopes and dreams of 200 low-income D.C. families while staking out the otherwise-reasonably-decent position that 1,700 youngsters already in the program should be protected until they graduate. Yet even that outcome is in doubt, as the program’s enemies strive to kill it outright. Meanwhile, both are vulnerable to personal attacks, with the President’s children in an elite private school and the Secretary admitting that he chose a (public) school outside the District for his daughter because he didn’t want to “jeopardize my own children’s education.”

The time has come for both to learn some key lessons. First: though it might look like a teapot, the D.C. voucher program is capable of causing a major tempest that isn’t going to end anytime soon. Second: if you want Congress to cough up funds to keep the program’s current students in their schools, it’s going to take a fight–an affirmative fight by you in defense of vouchers that work for poor kids! And third: don’t fear such a fight, because the facts–not to mention a compelling human narrative–are on your side.

This fight rids us of all illusions- you are either with the kids, or with the unions. Period. You either believe in evidence based education reform, or you do not. No middle ground. If you are a Democrat, you must choose whether you are a hero or a zero. If you want to be a zero, are you willing to throw 1,700 kids under the bus in order to do it?

No amount of complaining by policy wonks, of course, is going to change the political realities on this. It’s not hard to imagine, however, the DC Parents drenching the zeros in the political equivalent of hot grease.

In today’s Wall Street Journal Jay makes a lot of good points about the teacher unions and their true feelings about charter schools.  Along the way, however, he says Obama has “done union bidding by killing the D.C. voucher program.”  This is likely true, but readers should not think that all attempts to save the program have run their course.  Senator Lieberman has stated that he plans to hold hearings about the program in May.  Senator Feinstein said in March that if the official evaluation by the Department of Ed found positive results (which it did) then she too would support extending the program. Negative press and public pressure calling on Obama to support reauthorizing the program has been increasing daily. 

Congress and, most importantly, President Obama, still have an opportunity to do the right thing, stand by their stated principles, and reauthorize a program that has been scientifically proven to help disadvantaged D.C. schoolchildren improve their lives. 

DC kids would tell Jay (although certainly with less cheese):

3 Comments | vouchers | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

The Hits Keep on Coming

April 14, 2009

Arne Duncan explains to Science magazine why school choice is so important (if you are wealthy and white and can move into the suburbs with good public schools).  If you are poor, Black, and live in D.C. you should wait until we get around to improving the public schools.  It should be any day now.

“As the second education secretary with school-aged kids, where does your daughter go to school, and how important was the school district in your decision about where to live?
A.D. [Arne Duncan] : She goes to Arlington [Virginia] public schools. That was why we chose where we live, it was the determining factor. That was the most important thing to me. My family has given up so much so that I could have the opportunity to serve; I didn’t want to try to save the country’s children and our educational system and jeopardize my own children’s education.”

Anthony Williams and Kevin Chavous explain in the Washington Post why “We want freedom by any means necessary.”   Man, the Washington Post has been solid in support of D.C. vouchers.

Mary Katharine Ham has a piece on the Weekly Standard web site that explains why  “it’s clear that, when given a choice, Democrats are more petrified of unions than they are interested in doing something that works for some of the most underserved kids in the District.”

And my colleague Bob Maranto has a piece in Front Page Magazine that explains: “By voting to kill the DC OSP, the Democrats in Congress have placed themselves in opposition to the educational needs of low-income, minority, inner-city children. If they ignore, deny, or minimize the importance of this rigorous evaluation of the program’s effectiveness, they also would be pitting themselves against President Obama, who has repeatedly called for respecting the role of science and data rather than money and lobbyists in making public policy, including education policy.”

1 Comment | vouchers | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

More DC Voucher Buzz

April 7, 2009

Patrick McIlheran at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel asks, “And what happens to results showing school choice works?”  His answer: “Well, if it’s in the hands of a federal government hostile to the idea, it gets covered up… The students were tested in the spring, the results analyzed in the summer and the preliminary findings given to the team working with the Department of Education in November. Why, then, didn’t the department chime in when Congress was ending choice?”

Joanne Jacobs asks: “What did Education Secretary Arne Duncan know about the study’s findings and when did he know it? Duncan had to know during the voucher reauthorization debate that D.C.’s program is advancing students by nearly half a year, editorializes the Wall Street Journal. Why didn’t he speak up?”

Michelle Malkin writes: “It would have been helpful to know about a Department of Education study on D.C.’s school choice initiative before the Democrats — beholden to teachers unions allergic to competition — voted to starve the innovative program benefiting poor, minority children in the worst school district in the nation.  Somehow, the results of the study conducted last spring didn’t surface until now.”

As Matt has already noted, Whitney Tilson of Democrats for Education Reform has chimed in warning that charter supporters shouldn’t think they are safe if vouchers get squeezed.  As he put it: “First they came for the vouchers. I remained silent because I was not for vouchers….”

I’ve already noted, Neal McCluskey has an excellent post on the impotence of “tough talk” on education from the Obama administration when they won’t act to defend choice.

Lisa Snell argues: “Kids in the D.C. Opportunity scholarship program deserve the same chance to go to a higher quality school as President Obama’s own children. The taxpayers of the United States deserve at least one education program that actually gets results in exchange for the money.”

And this photo on “From the Pen” says it all.

“Democrats Block School Choice… Again”

Republicans made us do it! Honest!

3 Comments | vouchers | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

The Credibility of the Obama Administration Is on the Line

April 7, 2009

The gap between the Obama administration’s rhetoric and action on education policy is growing larger each day.  I’ve written previously that Obama and Duncan talk a lot about charter schools, merit pay, and getting rid of bad teachers, but those rhetorical priorities are almost completely absent as legislative priorities. 

And, as Matt has pointed out in NRO this week, Obama declared that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan “will use only one test when deciding what ideas to support with your precious tax dollars: It’s not whether an idea is liberal or conservative, but whether it works.”  Again, those lofty words do not match their actions.  When the DC voucher program produced positive results, they failed to release them in time to inform the congressional debate over killing the program, they buried the release on a Friday afternoon, and they attempted to spin the results as somehow disappointing.  Their actions were not guided by their rhetoric about ignoring ideology and doing what works.

Neal McCluskey captured the remarkable impotence of Obama’s “tough talk” on education:

So the Obama Administration is hostile to school choice. What, then, is its plan for reform? Here’s what Secretary Duncan recently told the Washington Post after dismissing DC’s voucher program:

The way you help them [all kids] is by challenging the status quo where it’s not working and coming back with dramatically better schools and doing it systemically.

Oh, challenge the status quo and deliver “dramatically better schools”! Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?” I mean, that’s powerful stuff, along the lines of how do you get to Mars? You fly there! Obviously, the important thing is howyou challenge the status quo and provide better schools, and for decades we’ve been trying sound-bite-driven reform like Duncan offered the Post, and exhibited in his recent declaration that he will “come down like a ton of bricks” on any state that doesn’t use waste-rewarding “stimulus” money effectively. And how will we know when a use is ineffective? Why, we’ll make states report on test scores, teacher quality, and other things, and then threaten to withhold money if outcomes don’t get better. Of course, we know how well that’s worked before. Simply put, tough talk from politicians has delivered pretty much nothing good for kids or taxpayers.

Many of of the rhetorical points made by Obama and Duncan have been great.  But now it’s time to prove that those words can be matched by action.  The credibility of the Obama administration is on the line.

1 Comment | vouchers | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

DC Voucher Buzz

April 6, 2009

Here’s a summary (with my comments) of what people are saying about the new DC voucher study as well as the manipulation of its release:

Wall Street Journal — There is a great editorial this morning.  It condemns Duncan and the U.S. Dept. of Ed. for failing to release the positive voucher results in time for the congressional debate on killing the DC program last month: “Voucher recipients were tested last spring. The scores were analyzed in the late summer and early fall, and in November preliminary results were presented to a team of advisers who work with the Education Department to produce the annual evaluation. Since Education officials are intimately involved in this process, they had to know what was in this evaluation even as Democrats passed (and Mr. Obama signed) language that ends the program after next year.”

The piece also condemns the hypocrsiy of the Obama administration declaring that they will make education policy based on evidence, not ideology, while hiding and spinning the positive DC results: “Opponents of school choice for poor children have long claimed they’d support vouchers if there was evidence that they work. While running for President last year, Mr. Obama told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that if he saw more proof that they were successful, he would “not allow my predisposition to stand in the way of making sure that our kids can learn . . . You do what works for the kids.” Except, apparently, when what works is opposed by unions.”

And the WSJ has a quote from yours truly about how the DC results are consistent with evaluations of other voucher programs, where students initially suffer from transition difficulties but benefits compound over time.

National Review Online — Our very own Matt Ladner has a piece this morning in NRO that contains many of the same themes as in the WSJ piece described above.  In addition, Matt emphasizes his Rawlsian argument about the justice of vouchers: “If you have any doubt as to whether this program should exist, ask yourself a simple question: Would you enroll your children in violence-ridden D.C. public schools with decades-long records of academic failure? Bill and Hillary Clinton didn’t. Barack and Michelle Obama didn’t. Members of Congress don’t.  What about you? Would you enroll your children in those schools?”  And Matt notes that vouchers in DC produced superior results for a fraction of what is spent on students in DC public schools.

Washington Post — The Post objected to Secretary of Ed Arne Duncan’s rush to shut down the DC voucher program in the face of positive results.  “We had hoped that Mr. Duncan, who prides himself in being a pragmatist interested in programs that work, would have a more open mind…. So it’s perplexing that Mr. Duncan, without any further discussion or analysis, would be so quick to kill a program that is supported by local officials and that has proven popular with parents. Unless, of course, politics enters the calculation in the form of Democratic allies in Congress who have been shameless in their efforts to kill vouchers.”

Cato— Andrew Coulson emphasized the positive results results at a fraction of the DC public school spending per pupil. 

Eduwonk— Andy maintains his beltway credentials by dismissing the importance of evidence in deciding the fate of vouchers.  So, is Andy saying that Obama lied when he declared that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan “will use only one test when deciding what ideas to support with your precious tax dollars: It’s not whether an idea is liberal or conservative, but whether it works”?  Maybe I’m naive enough to believe that evidence makes a difference in public policy.  If it doesn’t at all, then let’s shut down the universities and think tanks and leave public policy to the brute force politics of organized interest groups, since that is apparently all that matters.

Andy does correctly identify how determined voucher opponents are to crush the DC program and suppress the evidence ir produces (by releasing it on a Friday afternoon and not having the study available in time for the congressional debate):  “For voucher opponents the program is like that scene in “Saving Private Ryan” where the Germans keep shooting the runner to make sure the message dies with him.  As long as the voucher program lives it carries a message, they must stop that.”

Flypaper has a few posts on the topic.  Mike Petrilli has some excellent comments: “Releasing bad news on a Friday afternoon is a time-honored tradition among governments of all political leanings. (The public is distracted by weekend plans; few people read the Saturday paper.) The Obama Administration is showing itself to be no different; it’s no coincidence that the latest (very positive) findings about the D.C. “Opportunity Scholarship Program” were released this afternoon. It creates a conundrum for Team Obama and its allies on Capitol Hill, all of whom want to kill the program (some sooner than later)… Keep in mind that, as Education Week just reported, almost every “gold-standard” study in education finds “null” results. So the fact that researchers could detect such dramatic impacts for reading is a very big deal. (And it’s not too surprising that the same can’t be said about math.)”  And he concludes: “President Obama has saidthat he will support vouchers if they are proven to work. Now’s his opportunity to show his commitment to pragmatism and post-partisanship, and go to the mat for this unusually effective experiment.”

Andy Smarick correctly notes that the Obama administration has failed in their attempt to bury the study results despite their best efforts of releasing them on a Friday afternoon.  He also comments on how odd it is that people are focusing all of this energy to kill a voucher program that costs a tiny fraction of what has been newly committed to education spending by the Obamites. 

But Andy also had an unpersuasive post suggesting that we should focus on shutting down the bad schools that can be found in both the public and private sectors rather than on allowing people to switch between sectors.  What’s strange about this argument is that it doesn’t describe the mechanism by which one identifies and replaces bad schools with better ones.  Isn’t that what choice does?  Saying that we should just get rid of the bad schools doesn’t explain how they get to be bad and how new ones are likely to be better.

There’s more out there, and more will come, but this is some of the buzz so far.

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

The Professional Judgment Un-Dead

March 25, 2009

It’s time we drive a stake through the heart of “professional judgment” methodologies in education.  Unfortunately, the method has come back from the grave in the most recent Fordham report on regulating vouchers in which an expert panel was asked about the best regulatory framework for voucher programs.

The methodology was previously known for its use in school funding adequacy lawsuits.  In those cases a group of educators and experts was gathered to determine the amount of spending that is required to produce an adequate education.  Not surprisingly, their professional judgment was always that we need to spend billions and billions (use Carl Sagan voice) more than we spend now.  In the most famous use of the professional judgment method, an expert panel convinced the state courts to order the addition of $15 billion to the New York City school system — that’s an extra $15,000 per student.

And advocates for school construction have relied on professional judgment methodologies to argue that we need $127 billion in additional spending to get school facilities in adequate shape.  And who could forget the JPGB professional judgment study that determined that this blog needs a spaceship, pony, martinis, cigars, and junkets to Vegas to do an adequate job?

Of course, the main problem with the professional judgment method is that it more closely resembles a political rather than a scientific process.  Asking involved parties to recommend solutions may inspire haggling, coalition-building, and grandstanding, but it doesn’t produce truth.  If we really wanted to know the best regulatory framework, shouldn’t we empirically examine the relationship between regulation and outcomes that we desire? 

Rather than engage in the hard work of collecting or examining empirical evidence, it seems to be popular among beltway organizations to gather panels of experts and ask them what they think.  Even worse, the answers depend heavily on which experts are asked and what the questions are. 

For example, do high stakes pressure schools to sacrifice the learning of certain academic subjects to improve results in others with high stakes attached?  The Center for Education Policy employed a variant of the professional judgment method by surveying school district officials to ask them if this was happening.  They found that 62% of districts reported an increase in high-stakes subjects and 44% reported a decrease in other subjects, so CEP concluded that high-stakes was narrowing the curriculum.  But the GAO surveyed teachers and found that 90% reported that there had not been a change in time spent on the low stakes subject of art.  About 4% reported an increase in focus on art and 7% reported a decrease.  So the GAO, also employing the professional judgment method, gets a very different answer than CEP.  Obviously, which experts you ask and what you ask them make an enormous difference.

Besides, if we really wanted to know about whether high stakes narrow the curriculum, shouldn’t we try to measure the outcome directly rather than ask people what they think?  Marcus Winters and I did this by studying whether high stakes in Florida negatively impinged on achievement in the low-stakes subject of science.  We found no negative effect on science achievement from raising the stakes on math and reading.  Schools that were under pressure to improve math and reading results also improved their science results.

Even if you aren’t convinced by our study, it is clear that this is a better way to get at policy questions than by using the professional judgment method.  Stop organizing committees of selected “experts” and start analyzing actual outcomes.

5 Comments | methodology, school accountability, vouchers | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Obama Hearts Wall Street Fat Cats, TLF

March 24, 2009

We had spring break last week, so I’ve been a bit absent from the blog.  No fears, we’ll make up for it. 

I know much ink has already been spilled on the AIG bonuses, but let me add just one thought.  AIG had contracts with executives to pay them bonuses even though many of those executives made catastrophically bad decisions.  AIG also had derivative contracts with other financial companies, including Goldman Sachs, even though those companies never fully considered the risk that AIG would be unable to pay.  Of course, if AIG went bankrupt, then all of its contracts would be nullified and everyone would have to get in line to see if they would be paid anything.  But we didn’t want AIG to break its contracts with Goldman, et al for fear that it would spread a panic, so the public assumed AIG’s obligations and guaranteed Goldman, et al every penny. 

Why should Congress be any more outraged over AIG keeping its contracts with its own executives to pay bonuses than keeping its contracts with Goldman et al to pay for bad mortgage bets?  The bonuses only cost us $163 million while the Goldman et al contracts cost us tens of billions.  And the Goldman et al executives were as guilty of gross miscalculation in failing to properly consider counter-party risk as the AIG executives were guilty of writing bad derivative contracts.

As much as I hate to say it, I have to agree with Paul Krugman that the Obamaadministration appears to love Wall Street fat cats.  They love those fat cats at least as much as the Bush Administration. 

Let’s take a look at the new Geithner plan to count the ways.  The plan creates as many as 5 entities in which the Treasury and private investors put in an equal amount of capital, totalling about $150-$200 billion.  Those entities can then borrow as much as 6 times that amount, or a total of  about $1 trillion, from the FDIC (another branch of the government).  Those would be non-recourse loans, meaning that private investors would have no more than $75 to $100 billion on the line and could not lose more.  Meanwhile they get to buy $1 trillion of assets with highly subsidized loans and almost no down-side.    No wonder the stock market loved this.  It’s a great big smooch from the Obama administration.

One of the supposed benefits of this plan is that it will create a “market price” for the currently illiquid “toxic assets.”  But of course the price that this will establish will be a phony one from a market with five selected bidders playing with the government’s money at highly subsidized rates.  This mechanism sets market prices about as well as handing my kids ten bucks and letting them loose at a flea market. 

And if this whole deal is fair, how about if they let me and other individual investors buy shares in these 5 joint ventures.  I’d like to own a piece of a game where I gamble with the government’s money and can experience 1/12 of the losses.

1 Comment | economics | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Get Lost — The Pause that Refreshes

March 21, 2009

In the most recent episode, Namaste, Jack comes to Sawyer to figure out what they are supposed to do next.  Sawyer, who is reading a book, says that he is going to think.  The problem, he says, with Jack’s previous leadership was that he was always reacting and not really thinking about what to do.  Sawyer was going to read his book and think.

It almost felt as if this was a discussion among the writers.  One asks, “What are we supposed to do with the plot now?”  The other replies, “I have no idea how to unravel this mess.  The writers have just been reacting, making stuff up as they go.  But I’m going to have a pause in the plot so we can think about where to go with it next.”

So, not too much happened in this episode but perhaps the writers are pausing to figure out how to make sense of everything.  Don’t get me wrong.  I still really enjoy Lost.  The characters are well-written and engaging.  The drama within each episode is exciting.  And the overall mystery cries out for resolution.  I just hope that the writers take some time to read a good book and think about where to go next.

5 Comments | Lost | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

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