Matt Ygelsias recently wrote on class, geography and education in response to E.D. Kain’s review of two education movies (one pro- and one anti-reform). My immediate response to this was slight indifference. Education is such a complex issues, and it seems like it might be impossible to get any sort of agreed upon solution, that I often tune out the debate. What eventually grabbed my attention in the Ygelsias article are the implications it has for the role that federalism has, and should have, when we think about education.
The majority of America’s children are not living in predominantly urban or poor districts. But much of the education reform movement is motivated by concern for this very group. The focus on these children makes sense. Achievement scores for poor, urban, districts are generally much lower than other school districts. It is completely natural to try to craft a solution to help those who are underserved.
What does strike me as problematic is that we often treat education in dichotomous terms. We seem to say that education for all districts ought to have this type of testing, or it ought not to. Standards should be the same in New York regardless of whether a district is in Ithaca or Buffalo. Partially, this arises because we like to think of ourselves as being fair. Why should we treat a poor district any differently than a rich district? I also believe that this is a side effect of the pro-reformers’ focus away from home life, which they cannot control, and onto what goes on when they have stewardship over students.
The problem with this of course is that all students are not the same. When I worked as an AmeriCorps Vista one of my jobs was to speak to graduating college students who were student teaching. There were a number of points that I tried to convey to these students, but the most relevant talking point for this discussion deals with class and language. Todd Risley, in his book Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children, writes about studies showing a major correlation between income/class and children’s verbal skills. For example, a child in a high-income household is likely to know 20,000 words by the age of six. A six-year-old in a household receiving welfare is likely to have a vocabulary about one-third of that size. The question that both pro- and anti-reform groups have to answer is: Should we treat both of these children the same way?
Jeremy and I recently had a talk about how federalism, and how I am generally mistrustful of it because of segregation, small groups’ propensity for pettiness, and the volatility it can create due to the fact that change is much easier on a smaller scale. One of the points he brought up, and that Ygelsias also brought into focus, was the positive effect it could have on education. Letting communities have more autonomy at the local level would seem to at least partially address difficulties state and national governments have in dealing with the vastly different needs of their communities.
Now this is not an argument against testing. Nor is it an argument against the federal government having any role in education. In fact, in some ways I think the federal government needs to be more involved, particularly in funding. It seems backwards to me that we leave the funding of schools up to communities that often have very different means, and then argue for nationalized standards.
In arguing for more federal funding I do not expect that the average amount spent per child for every state will go up. As states receive federal dollars, it is far more likely that they will cut their own funding, essentially maintaining the status quo. The groups that would hypothetically be impacted the most are those that at the moment do not spend what the government would provide per child. In that way, if a smaller community wanted to add more, it could. But every child would meet a minimum standard, with stipulations as to how competencies are tested and the role communities are to play in education.
This isn’t a proposal for a clear course of action. I think it’s important to note that there are differences between communities and that we shouldn’t be embarrassed by these differences. I am afraid of a movement towards homogeneity and the deifying of test scores in our education system. I much prefer our education system to that of China’s (a subject for another post) and I think that acknowledging the shades of gray in this debate will help us avoid some major pitfalls. As we move forward in the debate about how to shape our school systems, it seems incredibly useful to articulate the inefficiencies of a one-size-fits-all solution.
-Bo
As a teaser, I just wanted to let you know that Jeremy and I have asked our friend Veronica to guest blog on some education issues. She has graciously agreed, so expect to see some much more nuanced takes on this specific issue in the future.
Here's my thoughts on education. I’m just finishing up Friedman’s “The World is Flat” so it’s had some influence on my current thinking.
ReplyDeleteStandardized tests are stupid, unfortunately there is no other metric currently existing to measure the “goodness” of teachers. At the same time, teacher accountability is almost nonexistent. I believe there needs to be some kind of complete overhaul in the education system, and No Child Left Behind isn’t it, as NCLB merely caters to the lowest common denominator. Here’s my idea, and Bo, you can poke holes in it.
The federal government starts up a system of schools which are administrated, staffed, and attended by residents of the state they are in. You start small, maybe only a few schools per state, obviously more in states with a greater population concentration. A national board of teachers, possibly from the Department of Education, determines the curriculum which is standardized but with a specific emphasis in science and engineering (I’ll get into this in a minute). They also determine a specific, more rigorous certification process for teachers including periodic continued training and recertification (possibly as often as annually). This is a key point. There is no standardized testing, the certification process is simply rigid enough that the system determines the acceptability of teachers on their own merits. In compensation for this considerably more stringent level of qualification, teachers at these schools make bank.
Students that attend the schools go for free. Admittance is chosen through a lottery with a certain number of slots reserved for low income households (as much as 50-75%). Students are also held to a very high standard and failure to maintain the standard results in dismissal.
In addition to the schools themselves (which I am thinking you have go up all the way through undergrad and maybe even higher) you also initiate a series of specifically tailored research facilities (remember the science/engineering push?) that graduates of the schools are automatically eligible for employment through. Here’s where the tricky part comes in.
Historically, the majority of innovation comes from science and engineering. These are the disciplines that give patents and technology increases which significantly determine a country’s place in the global hierarchy. These research facilities are a brain dump for innovation. Upon entering employment, the former students agree that patents they create belong to the company. Profits from the sale of patents are in turn used to pay their salaries (with the option for significant bonuses in the case of awesome ideas)and fund the research facility itself, in addition to a set percentage returned to the federal and state governments. This last percentage is divided between federal and state governments based on the proportion that each provided funding for the specific school that student attended. This in turn gives states incentives to help fund the schools in addition to the federal funding (avoiding the one for one swap that you mentioned.)
The notion, of course, is that the system self-perpetuates due to the constant cycle of putting out quality students whose innovations are then reinvested in the founding of new schools. Ultimately this system would no longer be populated by lottery but by whoever wanted to attend. It would also be possible to create a parallel system whereby dropouts of the school due to academic deficiencies would merely be absorbed into another system of trades rather than simply stagnating in unemployment and helping perpetuate a welfare state.
I'll be honest I don't think there's a right answer, and interesting ideas ought to be tried. This qualifies. I would say that I'd want an oversight board of teachers and non-teachers. The reason for the non-teachers is the same reason why you don't just want engineers solely managing an engineering company, clearly the skillsets are different for designing a product (teaching) and making a profit (producing a comprehensive evaluation system).
ReplyDeleteA book I'd recommend is Tyler Cowen's The Great Stagnation. It's an argument about how we shouldn't continue to expect the monumental growth we've seen over the past couple centuries. One thing it touches on is the low-hanging fruit of educating persons who in past generations would not have gone to college. We've pretty much tapped out this resource. I'm not sure you'd agree with him, but I think you'd find it interesting and I'd be curious to see what your response is.