« Science and Belief | Main | Open Link Thread »
November 05, 2007
Vouchers in DC
Since I've been involved in this debate, I've been trying to read up on the various voucher programs that have actually been implemented. To that end, I just grabbed RAND's Rhetoric versus Reality: What We Know and What We Need to Know About Voucher and Charter Schools. RAND, it goes without saying, is no hotbed of left wingery. But their "Academic Achievement" section begins with this:
The newest experimental voucher evidence comes from the federally sponsored voucher program in Washington DC, established in 2004, known as the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program. The U.S. Department of Education released the findings of the first-year achievement impact study, led by Patrick Wolf of the University of Arkansas, in June 2007. Because the program was oversubscribed, scholarships were awarded by lottery. To examine total program impact on student achievement, the study compared the results of lottery winners with those of lottery losers (regardless of whether the winners actually used their scholarships or whether the losers attended public schools). The authors found no impact, positive or negative, on average test scores in reading or math. Similarly, they found no impact of the effect of using a voucher to attend a private school on average reading or math test scores.
Given that a lot of this conversation has actually been about the DC public school system, this data is relatively important. Again, it doesn't mean that experimentation couldn't have positive impacts -- say, under charter schools, where pubic accountability is retained -- but this intense focus on vouchers stems from a commitment to economic orthodoxy, not because the programs have any proven results.
Update: Good discussion going on in the comments here...
November 5, 2007 in Education | Permalink
Comments
But Ezra, you're totally ignoring the "equality of opportunity" these children were afforded. Their failure to use the market to their own advantage is no one's problem but their own! You're just an outcomes Nazi!
(Pre-trolled for your convenience!)
Posted by: DMonteith | Nov 5, 2007 5:52:04 PM
Since many of the same people who believe in faith-based science (no evolution, ignore facts!) and faith-based politics (no non-evangelical-Christians should be followed and all-hail the warmakers) also appear to be believers in faith-based economics and faith-based education (all market, all the time), one wonders if making, setting-up and worshipping idols has become the order of the day.
The voucher folks seem to care more about destroying the public schools and giving vouchers to enable a market approach to education than the result of this if carried out actually produces acceptable results.
I'd suggest a more modest approach since near every citizen has both a public school and a fire department. Let's give out vouchers for fire extinguishing. Let a thousand flowers bloom on marketplace firefighting. You can also opt for the firefighting equivalent of home schooling: home fire control (for the libertarians who like do it yourself solutions).
Now if your neighbor happens to have his house engulfed in flames and has selected Ideal Fire Company as a provider, and the flames leap to your house, and your provider is Stupendous Fire Control, Inc. (which has been paid by you to put out your fires) happen to disagree on which part of the total fire is their responsibility that is just a minor fault which proves that market solutions work for everything.
Let's see if vouchers really work on something really important like your house, instead of playing around with school vouchers which only deal with children and the future of the country.
Posted by: JimPortlandOR | Nov 5, 2007 6:38:24 PM
And then Floccina and others can come explain how amount of funding has no effect on the level of ability of any particular fire department to actually put out a fire, and how we should expect that we could put out just as many fires with less money.
Posted by: jmack | Nov 5, 2007 8:00:41 PM
Very good Jim, couldn't agree more--we shouldn't be having discussions over vouchers, only how to support public education better.
Posted by: Texican | Nov 5, 2007 8:01:33 PM
I don't get the reluctance of my fellow economic liberals to support injecting competition and choice into the K-12 model. I agree that libertarians have a lot of nutty ideas with respect to the role of government and the efficacy of markets (they underestimate the former and overestimate the latter). But it seems to me they're basically correct about the desirability of funding students instead of funding schools.
Now, just to clarify, I'm not some kind of concern troll here. On this and other forums I've called for an additional $600 billion in federal safety net enhancements (that's totally doable, by the way -- we'd only be looking at an additional 4-5 points of GDP, which would still leave us way south of the EU average). And I want to see this type of government funded with a rather Nordic combination of progressive income taxes and consumption taxation. Give me Denmark in America, baby. There's no question but that I'm an economic liberal of a rather robust sort.
But as long as government is willing to spend what it ought to be spending, it seems to me it shouldn't be engaged in actually owning, managing and operating the facilities that provide services (such as schools) unless there's no alternative, or unless there's some utterly compelling reason it's better to do it this way. You don't have to be a loony libertarian to like the cool things given to us by free markets. I likes me some big robust safety nettage and very free (albeit prudently regulated) markets.
It seems to me JimPortlandOR's point about fire departments is off base. I mean, I can't really imagine any circumstances where it would make sense to utilize firefighting vouchers, because it would be nonsensical to have thousands of different organizations devoted to firefighting. But why wouldn't it make sense to do this with schools? After all, lots of government benefits are portable: Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps and Social Security to name a few. I would imagine the quality of, say, grocery store services enjoyed by retirees or poor people genuinely would suffer if, instead of issuing Food Stamps and Social Security checks, we "assigned" the recipients of such programs particular stores where they were required to do their shopping (the only way out being the purchase of an expensive address in an expensive "shopping district" where they have fancier stores). Anyway, I suspect we are getting some sort of reduction in the quality of public education right now because of a similar lack of competition in public K-12. I don't think this is a liberal or conservative thing. I think it's simple human nature. Unless the possibility of failure exists (ie., losing your customers to the competition) there's simply no sufficiently powerful leverage to insure that schools -- just like, say, software companies and hospitals and law firms and universities - are constantly striving to improve their "product." The latter institutions are all capable of losing their customers. But K-12 public school mostly aren't.
I rather have the notion that school choice is for American liberalism what, say, the politics of homosexuality is for American conservatives. Surely a lot of libertarian-minded American conservatives know in their heart of hearts that, in addition to being immoral, it's simply nonsensical to base much of your platform on being nasty to gay people.
Similarly, most liberals these days are perfectly comfortable with free markets. We enjoy the better restaurants, fancy IPhones and improved coffee competition brings us. Indeed, we're quick (and rightly so) to sick the Justice Department on would-be monopolists, because we know restraint of trade harms society.
So, why, when there are no reasons based on technical feasibility or efficaciousness to oppose a market approach to K-12, are we so stubborn? After all, such liberal societies as Sweden and The Netherlands have apparently enjoyed pretty good success with allowing taxpayer money to follow students to the schools of their choice. And indeed in America we ourselves have enjoyed world-leading success with the way we structure post secondary education-- a sector characterized by competition, choice, and funding portability.
Posted by: Jasper | Nov 5, 2007 8:50:45 PM
1. Are test scores the only thing that matters? Do other factors matter at all? Can people decide themselves what they want to get out of a school, or do we have to collectively make that decision for them?
2. Vouchers sure don't seem to ever hurt anything, so if people want to use them (the program was "oversubscibed" so there must have been some demand), what's the problem? Why is giving people a choice so scary?
Posted by: Withnail | Nov 5, 2007 9:00:51 PM
Nice post, Jasper.
Posted by: Withnail | Nov 5, 2007 9:04:49 PM
Jasper, let me take a whack at your problem with public schools. Public schools have been, um, public, for like, forever, in the US. Some are good and some are bad. Some are well funded, and some are dramatically underfunded. It turns out that most of the good ones are well funded (think toney suburbs) and most of the bad ones are both underfunded and have to deal with problems like broken families, drug trade, racial conflicts, poor nutrition, and other ills of the city or rural areas.
The concept of public schools is a banner of the public commons - things we do together to unite us, and it is a liberal banner. The concept is not broken, but the funding clearly is. Vouchers do not fix the funding problem - in fact the vouchers pay only a part of the tuition in nearly every case (leading to the question of who will pay the balance).
Progressives do not want to resort to voucher's as a market solution because it is a red heering. It is similar to saying that Social Security should be privatized when the actual problems are relatively small and the private solution is not be suggested to fix the funding issues but to get the government out of the social safety net business. The motives of most voucher solution supporters is not to deal with the not-so-good schools by funding them, but to end 'socialism'. See GW Bush on S-CHIP. Those voucher supporters also are quite anti-union, and the teacher's unions drive them nuts, literally.
Public schools are our nation's melting pot in a institution. Giving them up is to give in to religious sectarianism, racism, and other divisive forces in society - before we have really tried to solve the funding issues that the underlying cause of poor performance.
How did our schools get off track? The funding source for schools, very largely, is local property taxes, and because the property tax is a reflection of economic inequality gone wild, the differences in revenue raised per pupil varyies dramatically.
If we want to keep property taxes for schools, let those funds be pooled at the state or national level and dispersed on a per-capital student basis based on grade level (high school does and should cost more than second grade). If our funding were equalized per student (and teacher pay equalized as well across districts and states), there is good reason to think that actual results will be better - uniformly.
Personally, I'm pretty sure I don't want Halliburton, Citicorp, Blackwater, or Rupert Murdock running our schools - and that scenario of rapidly increasing corporate consolidation is largely true today in health insurance and many other aspects of our society - including media.
Education is not a business and even it were so considered, public ownership, management and oversight is a public good that made us a great nation.
The god of 'competition' is only one way to achieve excellence and it has its limits. Some of the best educational (k-12) systems in the world are public institutions - see Japan, parts of the EU - so we know competition isn't the key ingredient of good outcomes in education.
Posted by: JimPortlandOR | Nov 5, 2007 9:27:19 PM
I don't think the question is with choice being scary... the problem is it's not realistic. Jasper's notions that economic liberalism would seem to argue for privatizing education... may explain why I'm one of those socially liberal economic conservatives.
And yet again, I'm really lost as to why Ezra keep going on the errand into this maze, as if the "argument" here is about statistics that definitively prove one thing or another. No, vouchers don't make a lot of economic sense. No, they don't seem to make a significant difference in educations or test scores either. So why are the people who cling to the still clinging to them? Mostly, I think, because they don't have much else,because the alternative would be trying to fix the schools we have, which we really haven't done (and which, Jasper, would be way more economically sensible than launching a whole new system). And again (and again) there are physical limitations on the voucher programs that can't be overcome. The best thing to do, really, would be to move on; or more to the point, to move to a discussion of improving public education, the one that already has 90% of the kids and isn't going to be done away with anytime soon. But everyone seems to want to bat this ball around endlessly... so let's see another round...
Posted by: weboy | Nov 5, 2007 9:27:25 PM
And again (and again) there are physical limitations on the voucher programs that can't be overcome.
Weboy: Such as? I honestly can't see any. (I can see political and ideological barriers, mind you, but I can't what physical limitations the Swedish and Dutch are capable of dealing with that we aren't).
Posted by: Jasper | Nov 5, 2007 9:45:35 PM
JimPortlandOR:
It is similar to saying that Social Security should be privatized when the actual problems are relatively small and the private solution is not be suggested to fix the funding issues but to get the government out of the social safety net business.
I don't see it like this at all. In fact, the status quo of how Social Security is run is just what I'd like to see done with schools. Social Security is a portable cash benefit. We allow recipients of these funds to spend the money where they see fit. It's an extremely efficient system, and it confines government to something it does very well: writing and distributing and keeping track of the checks administered as social insurance.
If we want to keep property taxes for schools, let those funds be pooled at the state or national level and dispersed on a per-capital student basis based on grade level (high school does and should cost more than second grade).
I agree with you 100% here. Indeed, I think the main problem with school choice/voucher programs as they've been implemented in the US thus far is that they tend to mirror the general disparities in funding extant with the status quo. I think for a voucher/school choice program to work well, we would need to: a) implement a centralized funding mechanism to insure all children in a given state receive funding of identical purchasing power; and b) implement the program in an area sufficiently large (ie., an entire state) to support a large number of competitors (ie, hundreds of schools). I'm not aware that any voucher program implemented in the US has enjoyed these characteristics.
Some of the best educational (k-12) systems in the world are public institutions - see Japan, parts of the EU...
School choice is widely utilized in the EU and in Japan.
FIWI, I'm not arguing we do away with public schools. I think to be remotely politically feasible, any pure school choice program in the US will (and should) be a "one way" choice program -- that is, your child would still possess the right to go the public school in his/her school district, but he/she simply wouldn't be forced to go there if it's not a good fit. I'm a fan of public schools. I agree that many (most?) are quite good. I'm a product of a good one myself. I'd just don't think it's good public policy to shield them from having to compete.
Posted by: Jasper | Nov 5, 2007 10:01:34 PM
Jasper,
Much of what follows can be solved if you throw money at the problem, and I know that your position is predicated on that premise, but the existence of these objections poses a large obstacle to said increases in spending, so here goes.
Kevin Drum has pointed out that government funds will require government oversight, adding a layer of bureaucracy and regulation that would eliminate much of the efficiency gains that a market might provide and pose a barrier to market entry. The classic conundrum along these lines is the question of government funds going to religious schools. There is no guarantee that a thriving market in private schools will spring up if the process of qualifying for voucher dollars is burdensome.
Also, educational infrastructure is inextricably linked to geography and population distribution, so there will always be logistical difficulties associated with "school choice" that will inevitably fall hardest upon lower income families unless a large (read: expensive and inefficient) amount of redundancy is built into the current infrastructure. Where, in short, will people go and how will they get there? Are two schools per neighborhood adequate for competition? Three?
And finally, I would argue that the efficiencies of the Scandinavian public/private model that you so admire owe much to: 1) a much more profound social consensus concerning what and how to teach than we have here in the states; 2)a linguistic, cultural, historical and ethnic homogeneity that we lack in the states; and, 3)a far smaller gap in the incomes of the rich and poor than we currently have in the states.
Again, throw enough money around and many of these problems could be solved, and markets could be utilized to solve some of them. But the fundamental solutions require more money, and "more markets" is no substitute for more money.
Posted by: DMonteith | Nov 5, 2007 10:03:20 PM
ok, so this is completely off topic for this post, but this is the site I go to for health care wonkery, so thought people might like this website:
http://projecterin.com/
29 year old single female with no insurance and two neurological disorders needs 2-4 surgeries. Doesn't have the money, needs about 10K after the various discounts she gets for being poor. Sets up a link where MegaUploads will pay her if enough people download a text file.
Is this a scam? Eh, you can't get a virus from a .txt file, and many people have downloaded it safely (supposedly). I did, and didn't find any viruses.
Posted by: Dan | Nov 5, 2007 10:04:20 PM
"How did our schools get off track? The funding source for schools, very largely, is local property taxes, and because the property tax is a reflection of economic inequality gone wild, the differences in revenue raised per pupil varyies dramatically.
If we want to keep property taxes for schools, let those funds be pooled at the state or national level and dispersed on a per-capital student basis based on grade level (high school does and should cost more than second grade). If our funding were equalized per student (and teacher pay equalized as well across districts and states), there is good reason to think that actual results will be better - uniformly."
Just a suggestion, Jasper and Jim, but it seems to me you could both be happy if we adopted a *single payer* educational system; reductive logic applied to the second paragraph of Jim's that I quote here leads right to that design.
Thus, we could maintain provider competition by having multiple schools available to all who wish to attend, yet make the funding equitable. It seems to work for other public goods like defense (though I admit that a $hitload of pork creeps in there). It may have its problems, but just an idea...
Posted by: Lewis Carroll | Nov 5, 2007 10:08:13 PM
For good schools, you need good teachers and good administrators, and it also helps to have good resources and facilities. I'm sympathetic to vouchers in principle, because I went to a non-traditional school I'm very fond of. However, every large voucher proposal I've seen in practice has been rubbish, complete non-solutions which would make things worse.
Since good teachers are the guts of a good school, anybody who thinks you can get better schools by "getting tough" with teachers or their elected reps. . .well, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Everybody wants to get tough, nobody wants to be gotten tough on.
The best education proposal I've seen lately is John Edwards's proposal to fund a West Point for teachers. I also think Nicholas Lemann's proposal for the feds to adminster a voluntary federal test in various subjects would be good, too.
Posted by: roublen | Nov 5, 2007 10:35:05 PM
Ezra, I think you err in quoting just that graf, from page 80. Read to the conclusion of the section, p. 94, and you'll see that "small-scale programs" are "promising for low-income African-Americans," though there is still a lot to learn, and there's a lot of contention about the various studies. If vouchers bring up results 1/3 of a standard deviation, that's meaningful.
I'm a Democrat, public school guy and AFT member, so I am not grinding an ax here. But I do think educational research is very tricky, and results are often counterintuitive.
Dan Tompkins
Posted by: Dan Tompkins | Nov 5, 2007 10:45:53 PM
another point perhaps worth making: any large-scale voucher plan would be a large tax cut for parents currently paying to send their kids to private school. So any honest voucher plan must involve raising taxes substantially on everybody not currently paying to send a kid to private school.
Posted by: roublen | Nov 5, 2007 10:52:32 PM
I should say that I am not the Dan above who is trying to infect you with a virus. Also, Jasper,
"Unless the possibility of failure exists (ie., losing your customers to the competition) there's simply no sufficiently powerful leverage to insure that schools -- just like, say, software companies and hospitals and law firms and universities - are constantly striving to improve their "product."
as hairpullingly infuriating as it is to see a subset of badly underfunded schools failing a specific subset of children - largely that is, those who have lost out on the American inequality sweepstakes - it seems an even worse thing to build school failure into the system. Wouldn't you agree?
Of course, as we keep pointing out, most public schools do pretty well (certainly room for improvement, but . . .) without needing to constantly fret that their mid-middle class and up student's families' will pull them out and/or move away.
Oddly enough, it would seem the only schools who need the lash of potential failure to be whipped into competitive shape are those which are staggering along with drastically unequal local funding (topped off with often absurdly stingy state and federal contributions- and the stories of how resentfully those are given, to say nothing of how much it's taken, in a few lucky places, to push the system even slightly towards equality, will make you want to beat people with a heavy ruler), staffed with a high proportion of inexperienced and underqualified teachers, and desperately trying to help kids who write essays about how much they look forward to seeing their daddy when he gets out of jail, or who might not have an actual meal between school lunch on one day and school breakfast the next, or whose parent/s would love to help them with homework, except a) they don't know the material their kid's learning, b) they don't know general study strategies, and c) they're not there, because they're working two jobs - Or because they're a crack whore, or they don't speak English, have little familiarity with school and school culture, and may come from a culture with little tradition of basic literacy. Or etc, etc., etc.
Funny, that.
Posted by: Dan S. | Nov 5, 2007 10:56:09 PM
John Edwards's proposal to fund a West Point for teachers
What does this mean? Don't we already have a bunch of universities that offer education degrees? How would a "West Point" be different?
Posted by: Tom | Nov 5, 2007 10:57:01 PM
"So, why, when there are no reasons based on technical feasibility or efficaciousness to oppose a market approach to K-12, are we so stubborn? "
Fixed that for ya . . .
Posted by: Dan S. | Nov 5, 2007 11:04:12 PM
Tom, here's the link:
". . .Create a National Teacher University: While there are some successful education schools, many future teachers graduate without the skills and knowledge they need. In one survey, more than 60 percent of graduates said their education school did not prepare them. Because having great teachers is a national priority, Edwards will create a national teachers' university – a West Point for teachers – to recruit 1,000 top college students a year, train them to be excellent teachers, and encourage them to teach where they are needed most. The school will waive tuition for students who go on to teach in schools and subject areas facing shortages. It will also lead improvements at education schools nationwide by developing and sharing model curriculum and practices and serve as a forum to promote shared certification and licensing requirements across states. [Levine, 2006] . . ."
Posted by: roublen | Nov 5, 2007 11:05:17 PM
I think Jasper makes a lot of sense here, both in logic and tone. As a voucher advocate, I don't see it as a replacement to the current system nor do I see it as a panacea to solve all the problems that exist in our more troubled schools. But I do think it’s a good idea because it gives those with no options a choice and it can provide a lot of soft benefit beyond test scores.
Posted by: DM | Nov 5, 2007 11:05:59 PM
I wonder what % of people who insist on school vouchers had bad personal experiences at public schools while growing up.
I can certainly remember, some years during elementary school, feeling quite rebellious towards the government for forcing me to attend such a ridiculous institution. And I did go to private high schools when the opportunity became available (on scholarships and need-based aid).
I'm not a huge voucher proponent -- I think the solution to current problems with schools begins with a drastic increase in teacher pay in order to attract a bunch of young, brilliant people to teaching as a career. Also, smaller class sizes.
But I also think there are two different conversations to be had about changing the school system: (1) what's the ideal system, and (2) what changes should we make to the one we have now that might be politically feasible. To the extent we're having a conversation about the ideal system, I do think that substantial vouchers (enough to pay full tuition) and a diverse range of private schools would exist in an ideal system. Because I remember that it sometimes sucks to be a kid and feel like you have no choice but to be funneled through some stupid, one-size-fits-all institution. It feels nothing at all like the idealized expression of the American melting pot that voucher opponents sometimes evoke. It feels more like a prison, or a really dull office where you have a job you can't quit. The ideal system should have more choices.
Of course, whenever you try to debate libertarians, you have to resign yourself to talking about some ideal world, in terms like the above. Meanwhile, in the here and now: Screw vouchers. There doesn't seem to be good evidence that they work; they don't provide enough money to do what they're supposed to do; and many of their supporters appear to be motivated by a desire to promote religious schools and/or undermine organized labor.
I'd love to see a grand bargain whereby school funding was doubled and equalized across districts, in exchange for the creation of a federal voucher program. But I expect to see that when Republicans' love of poor children overcomes their hatred of taxes, i.e., never.
Posted by: Tom | Nov 5, 2007 11:22:14 PM
Dan Tompkins makes a good point -- you can't stop with the study by Pat Wolf's team, which just looked at seven months of a federal voucher program in DC. If you continue to page 83:
Although we do not address all of the technical points here, our bottom-line conclusion is that the New York voucher experiment provides fairly strong evidence that the voucher offer benefited the achievement of many participating African-American students.And on page 84:Similar randomized voucher experiments have been conducted in three other cities. In Dayton, Ohio, and Washington DC (in 1998), and in Charlotte, North Carolina (in 1999), nonprofit organizations distributed tuition scholarships to low-income students, allocating the scholarships by lottery in imitation of the New York program. . . .
Averaged across the three cities, the effect was equal to approximately one-third of a standard deviation—fairly large in terms of most educational interventions, equal to about one-third of the average racial gap in achievement in the country.
Meanwhile, in Charlotte, Jay Greene used the voucher lottery to examine achievement after one year and found statistically significant advantages for voucher students in both reading and math. This positive voucher effect corresponds to 0.25 standard deviation. The Charlotte results are not disaggregated by ethnicity, but the overwhelming majority of participants were African-American. In sum, the experimental voucher findings are largely positive for African-American children (although no effects have become apparent after one year of participation in the federally funded voucher program in DC).After discussing some concerns (such as attrition in the programs), the RAND report concludes:
Despite these concerns, the findings from the experimental studies constitute the most compelling evidence available on the achievement effects of vouchers (for voucher students).If you're going to cite the RAND report, you have to acknowledge that it deems the "most compelling evidence" on the subject to be the many studies showing significant achievement gains for black students.
Posted by: Stuart Buck | Nov 5, 2007 11:28:01 PM
There's a lot of talk about how vouchers will or won't help poor kids in awful schools. I think there is plenty of reasons to think they will help, but there will be a limit on how much you can do for kids who's parents don't care about education.
But let's not forget about middle and upper-class kids in the good public schools.
I went to high-school at Rio Americano in Sacramento, one of the best public high schools in the whole state of California. And it was... really good.
But...
... can I imagine a school being even better? Yes.
... can I imagine areas where there might be ways to make a school like that one much cheaper to run? Yes.
... can I imagine ways that a school might take advantage of radical changes in information technology, such as eLearning, that I'm sure my old school is still not doing? Yes.
... can I imagine a school that was better suited to my interests? Yes.
... can I imagine a school that better prepared me for college? Yes.
... what if I didn't want to go to college, can I image a school that better prepared me for a career? Yes.
And I'm just one dude who's prone to spend time day-dreaming about ways to make education better. Imagine if there were thousands or millions of people trying to figure this out. Imagine if they had a financial motive to figure this out.
I think schools can be better. For everyone.
Posted by: Withnail | Nov 5, 2007 11:57:57 PM
" As a voucher advocate, I don't see it as a replacement to the current system nor do I see it as a panacea to solve all the problems that exist in our more troubled schools."
Well, that's reasonable. Would you - for example - support a well-designed proposal to meaningfully increase funding for our most troubled and heavily-burdened schools, specifically directed at a) reducing class size, esp in the lower grades, b) attracting and retaining high quality teaching talent, as well as increasing funding for neighborhood services, in or out of school, including prenatal care, parenting skills, family literacy, etc., etc.?
_____
roublen - I'm a fan of Edwards, but I really don't think a "National Teacher University" is at all the way to go. I'd prefer raising the status and quality of education programs within colleges and universities, although yes, establishing a fancy ghetto would be easier.
Posted by: Dan S. | Nov 6, 2007 12:19:32 AM
"Imagine if there were thousands or millions of people trying to figure this out.
Yes, imagine that. It seems so oddly real, doesn't it?
Posted by: Dan S. | Nov 6, 2007 12:23:12 AM
Jasper, on the Dutch front: I love many things about the Dutch system, but not everything is perfect. Dutch government funding for private and religious schools is a legacy of the powerful religious divides in Dutch society when universal education was instituted in the late 19th century, which the Dutch solved through "pillarization" -- separate social and political systems for Catholics, Dutch Reformed (Protestants), secular-labor, etc. This recipe for tolerance through separation, while it largely disintegrated in the '70s and '80s, lasted just long enough to have a profound influence on the Dutch approach to handling Muslim and Caribbean immigrant communities, to profoundly bad effect.
Posted by: brooksfoe | Nov 6, 2007 5:20:46 AM
I'm sympathetic to Ezra's viewpoint here, but I think disproving the pro-voucher claim is going to take a bit longer than the few years these studies appear to have run for.
Bear in mind that one of the main reasons why private enterprise with freedom of choice is supposed to be superior over a government monopoly is the process of survival of the fittest; That would require time for the good voucher schools to succeed and grown and the bad ones to fail and shrink or go bust.
If the average outcome, before natural selection, is broadly equal to the outcome achieved by the government monopoly, free-market theorists would presumably expect the market solution to outpace the government after a certain number of generations. You could imagine needing a trial to last 10 to 20 years before the successful approaches were replicated on a large scale and the unsuccessful ones died out.
Having said that, while it's too early to draw firm conclusions and I hope these trials continue, if you're trying to decide where to put most of your effort in improving the education system overall you probably don't want to focus too much on a method that so far has shown virtually no useful results.
Posted by: Edmund | Nov 6, 2007 8:28:38 AM
Edmund -- Do you think that the possibility of significantly narrowing the black-white achievement gap in school isn't "useful"?
Posted by: Stuart Buck | Nov 6, 2007 9:12:46 AM
Why doesn't teaching attract the most talented candidates now? Is it the money, lack of opportunity, or something else? Couldn't a voucher system be designed that addressed those issues? Most of the voucher/charter programs I have seen where so strictly regulated there was little or no freedom to differentiate from the public school system. If you look at the money involved already there is no reason this shouldn’t work. The national average per pupil spending in 2003 was $9136. The NEA says the ideal class size is 13-17. That means we are already spending $118,768 to $155,312 for an ideal class.
We should let teachers compete for their students and run their own “schools” at least at the lower grade levels. After rent for a class room, supplies, insurance and other cost they should be able to pay themselves more then the average pay of $46,752. This will also give 100,000s of teachers the power and freedom to do what they should know better then anyone else, how to educate kids. Instead of riding the bus for a half hour or longer each morning smalls schools in the neighborhood would keep kids close. By involving parents in selecting a teacher and hopefully taking their kids to school get them more involved in their education.
You would still need standard national test to gauge performance and the quality of the teachers. If such a program was tried for even a small group of students in the worst districts is there anything to lose? Wouldn’t it b better to help a small percentage of the students then none of them? I often hear teachers complain about the administrators and district establishment, if they are freed from it they might be able to turn around education in some of the worst cities.
Posted by: Nate O | Nov 6, 2007 9:55:22 AM
Nate, that proposal may rank as one of the nuttiest I've heard.
The reason people don't go into teaching are threefold - low pay, the byzantine system of teacher training and certification, and the sense that it isn't reqrding long term (depending, of course, on what one values - those who find teaching rewarding have a passion for it). This also has to do with the historic notions that teaching is "women's work," and really changing that perception alone - the idea of teaching as the waiting room for brides - would probably help a lot to end the stigmas, raise the pay and highlight the rewards (also major reforms of elemntary and secondary educational programs would do a lot, too). Again, these crazed economic schemes where capitalistic competition is emphasized really aren't necessary and can't really fly under the structures we have in place. And again, we'd be better off working on the schools we have, not these fantasies of schools, to achieve the results we want.
Posted by: weboy | Nov 6, 2007 10:13:37 AM
Couldn't a voucher system be designed that addressed those issues?
You see, the reason someone might be compelled to support vouchers would be because the very nature of a voucher system resolved those problems. If you need a "special" voucher system to address those issues, then most people would likely just choose to design a public school system that addressed those issues. Your reasoning implies that you want a voucher system for the sake of it, which few people are interested in.
If voucher systems are good, then they should work. If this involves, "we need to tinker with a voucher system in just the right way to ensure that it works," then you're mired in starting out with a prefered solution (vouchers) and trying to set a policy around how vouchers could be justified.
Posted by: Tyro | Nov 6, 2007 10:14:14 AM
Also, NateO, the prospect of a voucher system where my tax money would go to any random person who hung a sign outside an office that said "School!" is precisely the sort of waste of taxpayer money that everyone is worried about and skeptical of.
Plenty of teachers make good money by "striking out on their own." It's called being a tutor.
Posted by: Tyro | Nov 6, 2007 10:17:37 AM
After rent for a class room, supplies, insurance and other cost they should be able to pay themselves more then the average pay of $46,752.
Yeah, cause all the teachers I know have plenty of free time to purchase insurance, budget overhead costs, negotiate purchasing contracts with suppliers and do all the countless other things required to run a small business. It's shocking to me that teaching classes, grading papers and preparing lessons really only amounts to a 4 hour work day. We really could get a lot more work out of these lazy people with your plan, Nate.
I'm certain, by the way, that the best teachers will also just happen to be the those with best business acumen. After all, academic success and skill in teaching and caring for children is usually accompanied by preternatural entrepreneurial instincts, right?
Posted by: DMonteith | Nov 6, 2007 11:20:16 AM
Ezra,
Why isn't this a huge win? The voucher students got $7500, got an equal education measurably and were more satisfied. (I'd assume satisfaction is a good sign for future success.) DC public school average per-pupil spending in 2003 (from Parents United for DC Public Schools) was $10,000--plus embedded capital (already-owned buildings).
So for 75% of the money, the voucher students got an equal education and better satisfaction. To me, that sounds like a good deal.
Posted by: SamChevre | Nov 6, 2007 11:53:04 AM
For decades now the same system has been operating the same way with decreasing results but DMonteith, Weboy and Tyro insist on building from it. Maybe the problem is the existing system?
The current system is failing in many areas of the country, why do you insist we stick with it? I want a voucher system to change an institution that won’t change otherwise. Sending more money to the Cleveland, DC, LA or other school district will not change the fact they are failures. It’s natural that businesses fail, political parties fail, entire nations fail but the three of you seem unable to admit that maybe there is a school district incapable of accomplishing its job as it exist today. Are you saying there is no such thing as a mismanaged school district incapable of a rebound? Sometimes things need scrapped in order to fix them. Are school districts the only entity incapable of failure?
If we need “special” schools to address academic problems why not design a public school that already does? Vocational schools, satellite schools on college campus, prison/schools with the barb wire fence around them, why isn’t the omnipresent public school designed to handle all of these “special” needs?
If you support vouchers your automatically only interested in vouchers and your argument is in fact only in their support not on improving the education system as a whole. Yes if you support the current system your concern is for the good of the kids?
To turn your argument around; “If public school systems are good, then they should work. If this involves, "we need to tinker with public school system in just the right way to ensure that it works," then you're mired in starting out with a preferred solution (public school systems) and trying to set a policy around how public schools could be justified.” One thing we all seem to agree on is the current system isn’t working and needs fixed, but you immediately rule out anything but tinkering with the current system?
Couple other random thoughts, why are the best teachers those that get a degree in teaching? I think successful business owners could be great teachers. But all the discussion seems to start with the premise that only some with an education degree is capable of teaching. Early retirees from professional careers could be a great source of educated and experienced teachers.
DMonteith if all the teachers you know are anything like you that explains the problem with the system right there. You think maybe sometime during the 3 months off they could spare 1-2 hours to purchase their insurance policy for the year and plan their supplies? Normally your books and supplies are ordered before class even starts. All of us business owners now how much time we waste each day dealing with that 3 year lease we signed last summer. The other aspect to consider is if these teachers aren’t capable of handling something as easy as the basic planning and running of a small business maybe they shouldn’t be teaching. The current system has no procedure for eliminating or removing from the workforce poor teachers. Once you get your college degree your in for life. It’s foolish to think anyone that gets the piece of paper will be a good teacher.
Posted by: Nate O | Nov 6, 2007 12:29:52 PM
On one of the interminable Megan McArdle threads many voucher supporters claimed to support only means-tested vouchers. A Georgetown University study interviewed parents in the DC voucher program and discovered the following concern about means-testing:
The single greatest concern among parents is that they will earn out of eligibility for the Program and thus be forced to remove their child from the school they have chosen. Earning out of the Program was the dominant issue of the second year. Earning out was spontaneously brought up by parents in 63% of the focus groups. Parents spoke not only about concern over earning out of the Program but also about specific steps they felt they had to take in order to avoid losing their child’s scholarship. These steps included turning down job promotions, cutting back on work hours, or forgoing better housing options in more affordable areas immediately surrounding the District of Columbia. These parents were poised to be more entrepreneurial, to fully embrace a consumer mentality and engage in the sorts of activities that held the promise of producing greater upward mobility for their children; but they encountered an obstacle in the form of the earn-out threshold - a common component of government programs with which participants must manage.
In 2006, the means-test threshold was increased from 200% of the poverty level to 300% of poverty level - presumably to address this issue.
Posted by: ndm | Nov 6, 2007 12:32:03 PM
Sorry to come to the party late.
I've read a lot of this book, and I think a main conclusion was that voucher results were "mixed to marginally better for the voucher schools".
However, the effects of these voucher programs are that they are extremely limited in scope. It is not difficult to see these voucher schools having increasing returns to scale, not only in class size but in terms of number schools. So these small schools in these small cities, available to a limited number of students don't really reflect the potential of what the competition from vouchers can accomplish.
Posted by: Stan | Nov 6, 2007 12:56:16 PM
Stan writes:
So these small schools in these small cities, available to a limited number of students don't really reflect the potential of what the competition from vouchers can accomplish.
Stan correctly points out that these programs "don't really reflect the potential" of vouchers. In fact, these small-scale targetted programs probably demonstrate the upper limit to the success of voucher programs.
Posted by: ndm | Nov 6, 2007 1:01:54 PM
God, they just never stop, do they? It's victory by attrition, as everybody who knows what they're talking about eventually collapses from burst blood vessels or cumulative *headdesk*ing or utter disgust.
"But all the discussion seems to start with the premise that only some with an education degree is capable of teaching. Early retirees from professional careers could be a great source of educated and experienced teachers."
Of course, many, many districts - especially poverty-stricken urban ones - have special programs to recruit and certify such folks.
"Couple other random thoughts, why are the best teachers those that get a degree in teaching?"
I'm gonna make up a teacher-hatin' bingo card one of these days, but the underlying idea here is that teaching is an easy, rather simple job that any reasonably-competent person could excel at. Why on earth bother with actually getting a degree about it? (as noted above, part of this comes from the identification of teaching as a "woman's job".
Now, we do have a situation something like this at the college/graduate level, where professors generally have little actual ed. education, besides TA'ing. And as everyone with some college on up knows, the quality of instruction can vary wildly, despite all the profs being pretty intelligent and well-educated folks. At best, some of them have a natural facility combined with a great deal of conscious work, reflection, etc. At worst, you have folks who may be absolutely brilliant, but appear to lack basic social skills, ability to speak intelligibly, understanding that there are students in the same room, etc. And remember, the students here are self-selected., often highly motivated young adults - 18+ - who had the intelligence, disclipline, education, and background to graduate high school and get into college - not, say, 30 12 year olds from a violent and impoverished neighborhood who may be quite varied in ability, education, serious emotional problems, etc.
Posted by: Dan S. | Nov 6, 2007 1:02:45 PM
*Rimshot please
But really, what is your argument?
Posted by: Stan | Nov 6, 2007 1:03:40 PM
NDM -- Jeffrey Smith, an economist at Michigan who has co-authored about 20 articles with Nobel winner James Heckman, said this in a comment at Marginal Revolution:
I am consistently puzzled by the interpretation of the school choice literature. There are some positive estimates and some zeros but not any negative estimates as far as I am aware. All refer to small and/or short-run programs that one would not expect to have much, if any, effect on the industrial organization of the education market. If zero is the lower bound, we are still better off, because parents always report greater satisfaction even when the impacts are zero. More generally, a market-wide system that was "permanent" would change the industrial (and labor) organization of schools in ways almost certain to improve student learning. Also, parents and children would learn to use the system better over time (and information producing intermediaries would arise in larger and more permanent systems). It seems to me that, if you think about is being evaluated - short, small programs - relative to a permanent complete implementation of the policy, the results are very encouraging as we should be getting a lower bound.Do you any rationale for taking the opposite view?
Posted by: Stuart Buck | Nov 6, 2007 1:08:32 PM
Do you have any rationale . . . .
Posted by: Stuart Buck | Nov 6, 2007 1:09:22 PM
Couple other random thoughts...
Gee, NateO, what a fascinating collection of ideas that no one has ever raised before in the entire time education reform has been discussed.
As one of the best teachers I know (who, I might add, didn't have an Ed. degree or even a certification) said with a certain amount of contempt, "Everyone thinks they can teach."
But, truly, the idea that any idiot should be able to hang a shingle outside their door and get access to thousands of dollars of taxpayer money through teaching vouchers is, in my mind, a touchstone of loonytarian craziness. I saulte you, sir!
Posted by: Tyro | Nov 6, 2007 1:30:52 PM
Existing voucher experiments are small-scale and involve self-selected parents who are presumably interested in making the experiment a success. A larger scale program would involve less interested parents - indeed the very parents responsible for failures in the current system - and it is INEVITABLE that the success of the program would diminish. If the best that small-scale voucher programs can manage (charitably) is "some positive estimates and some zeros" then voucher advocates are asking us to undergo a radical change to a system which even on a small scale barely provides any discernable benefit.
If voucher advocates genuinely cared about the education market the rational policy to push for would be open enrollment in public schools. Open enrollment would demonstrate the power of market forces without disrupting public education across the nation. The reality is that voucher advocates are not really interested in improving education for everyone but they are really interested in destroying public education.
And frankly, I do not care that Jeffrey Smith, is "an economist at Michigan who has co-authored about 20 articles with Nobel winner James Heckman." None of this hides the fact that he is wrong when he writes "[i]t seems to me that, if you think about is being evaluated - short, small programs - relative to a permanent complete implementation of the policy, the results are very encouraging as we should be getting a lower bound."
Posted by: ndm | Nov 6, 2007 1:40:54 PM
"The reality is that voucher advocates are not really interested in improving education for everyone but they are really interested in destroying public education."
This is entirely untrue. First of all, it's bad form to disparage your opponents motivations. Only a small fraction of voucher advocates favor abolishing public education, and they are mostly the ones who home-school their kids and teach them the benefits of global warming.
Second, Milton Friedman, who is considered the "grandfather" of school vouchers since he came up with the idea, wrote the opposite of what you say in "Free to Choose". His largest concern when he wrote the book in 1981 was the dismal level of education in our inner city schools. He said vouchers would increase the quality of education for the poor the most, the middle class moderately, and have a negligible effect on the upper class.
I love to debate, and I know I probably won't change your mind, but please be polite in discourse and comment when you know what you are talking about.
Posted by: Stan | Nov 6, 2007 2:30:36 PM
Quick question: was James Mill a good model of how to educate one's kids?
After all, when it comes to outcomes, he did a pretty damn good job. John Stuart Mill probably knew more as a six-year old than I'll ever know in my life. Yet it was also a mode of education that was emotionally harrowing, socially isolating, and, I would argue to some extent, cruel.
I think that the message that our current education system sends to kids -- "you have to go to this school -- selected on the basis of your neighborhood -- until you're 16, with a bunch of other kids who may or may not like you." -- is disempowering and kinda depressing. I think kids would feel a lot better about their education generally if they could tour various schools with their parents at their sides, talking to them about the advantages and disadvantages of various options, before eventually trying to influence their parents into making the decision they want. Does this improve outcomes? There doesn't seem to be any evidence that it does. Does this degrade outcomes? There doesn't seem to be any evidence that it does. I think, though, that if you were to compare lottery winning kids against lottery losing kids, you'd find the lottery winners happier about their experience. I don't know it, but I think that having some control is better. It won't give students as much of a feeling of being trapped in a school, possibly in terrible social circumstances.
Posted by: Julian Elson | Nov 6, 2007 3:05:10 PM
Tyro stop beating straw men, i never said nor implied that anyone could hang a shingle. Licensing would still be required. My statement that someone with degrees or education other then that of primary education should be considered for teachers. Someone wih a business degree that runs a company for 30 years then retirees and wants to teach should be given as much consideration as a recent college grad. Read the stats on average IQ and class ranking of teachers, we are not getting the best and the brightest.
Posted by: Nate O | Nov 6, 2007 4:07:39 PM
NateO, it's not beating a straw man when you Actually use the argument and Actually raise ideas that have been dealt with 100 times before.
In any case, new college grads and longtime professionals are on the same footing when it comes to teaching-- both can avail themselves of alternative-certification paths in order to get a teaching credential that allows them to teach in public schools. It's just that teaching has such a high burnout rate that few people stay in it beyond the indefatiguable and those who manage to find a "punch-in/punch-out" groove.
Combine this with the fact that in many foreign countries, teaching is a "profession" that parents want their children to go into while in the USA it doesn't, by and large, attract the same status-seeking/professional crowd, and we have a recipe for a lot of problems.
Posted by: Tyro | Nov 6, 2007 6:14:53 PM
DMonteith if all the teachers you know are anything like you that explains the problem with the system right there.
Oh Yeah! Well...Neener, Neener Nate's a weiner!
If you're gonna go ad hominem, dude, just freaking go for it! As for the rest, I refer you to the smoking ruins of your arguments left by Dan S. and Tyro.
Posted by: DMonteith | Nov 6, 2007 8:44:34 PM
can't speak for the rest of the country but Vegas has a huge teacher shortage, there have been numerious articles and interviews with professionals attempting to get this "alternate certification" that complain about the difficulty. CCSD got special visas to bring in 120 teachers from outside the country but numerous willing teachers from in the state or other states can't get licensed.
Posted by: Nate O | Nov 7, 2007 2:09:05 AM
Don't know about the Vegas situation - sounds like a bit of a gamble, though.
Wikipedia has details on
Teach for America, and
The NYC Teaching Fellows program (" the program aimed to raise the quality of education in New York City public schools by attracting professionals from other fields into the classroom as teachers. Many accepted Fellows have almost no teaching experience, and accepted Fellows include recent college graduates, former accountants, nurses, chief executives, secretaries, artists, journalists, and retirees.")
These folks are indeed given as much consideration as similarly untrained college grads - they all have the option to try to get accepted into an alternative certification program, followed by intensive training (including coursework, certification workshops and student-teaching); they then land in the classroom with transitional certification and a year of mentoring, and are meanwhile working towards a masters degree to be completed within 3 years. (with much of the tuition being subsidized).
Which is pretty cool - unless one was hoping that random professionals would get to waltz into a classroom and just start teaching.
And I should note that - without disputing their ability, etc. - such folks - when they're starting out - don't tend to be snatched up by the affluent districts which luckier,wealthier folks choose to move their children to. Indeed, they are generally used in impoverished urban districts that have serious staffing problems.
Anyway, I've spent the last few hours resume-updating and applying to actually, well, work with children, but let me just paste a bit or two in from a study and lit review about teacher attrition.
The lack of resources in a school also contributes to teacher job dissatisfaction, which then can lead to attrition. In interviews with public school teachers in New York City, a large percentage of new teachers said they did not have access to adequate basic supplies. Most teachers had to use their own money to equip their classroom. Of the teachers interviewed, 26 percent report spending $300 to $1000 of their own funds on classroom supplies over the year, 14 percent spent $100 to $200, and 12 percent $50 to $75. In addition to this,
most teachers report that they do not have enough textbooks or that the textbooks they do have are in poor condition. In turn, photocopying materials becomes a considerable part of their tasks, but school copy machines are frequently broken, and teachers have to rely on family, friends, or other private resources to reproduce the materials (Tapper 1995).
"Another important factor in the retention decision may be the social status of the teaching profession in the broader community (Tye and O’Brien 2002). In
interviews with rural Australian teachers, for example, a primary source of their anxiety about the profession was dealing with a misinformed community. Teachers report that they have to repeatedly battle public stereotypes that their professional day begins at 9:00 am and ends at 3:00 pm, that they enjoy high salaries and numerous vacations, and that their jobs are easier than most other professions. All the teachers in the sample report being alienated from people in non-teaching professions. Overall, teachers find a professional paradox—their
community has great expectations from education, but teachers are accorded low social status and held in low esteem (Jones 2001).
and also:
"Another area in which research has linked school facilities to teacher performance is thermal comfort. Lowe (1990) found that the best teachers in the country (winners of State Teachers of the Year awards) emphasized their ability to control classroom temperature as central to the performance of both teachers and students."
What do teachers want? Among other things - along with a few less kids and a bit more money (though some might well trade that for better working conditions), some basic supplies, enough textbooks (and not with the back couple of chapters ripped off), working photocopiers, the ability to control the temperature in their classroom, and a little respect (or at least not open scorn). It's a list of such meek and unambitious demands that it's almost a shame. What's a real shame, though, is that they don't get them.
Posted by: Dan S. | Nov 7, 2007 2:48:37 AM
Without a doubt, NateO's latest proposal to have teachers go into business for themselves is the craziest idea I have heard yet. And I can almost hear him now saying to himself, "it's crazy enough that it just might work."
"Someone wih a business degree that runs a company for 30 years then retirees and wants to teach should be given as much consideration as a recent college grad."
Brilliant! Then we can bring business ethics into the classroom. And what exactly should these business people teach? Physics, Chemistry, Calculus? How about English or History or Art? There are reasons that teachers go through specific content area programs as well as education classes; it's so they actually know the material and how to teach it to a certain age group. Just "living it" (no matter how you will try to define "it") doesn't cut it.
I also wonder why it is so difficult to attract and hold on to quality teachers? After all, it's not like the average teacher pay doesn't compare well to other professions with comparable education levels. It's not that conditions in school districts vary so widely by socio-economic conditions that it makes doing the job difficult. It's not like schools' funding, and therefore working conditions, are dependent on local tax levies on communities that frequently have 60-70% of their populations without children. And it's not that teachers have to listen to self-proclaimed experts on teachers and education prattle on about the topics even though those experts' only experience with education is that they went to school. Oh wait, it is these things (among others).
Posted by: jmack | Nov 7, 2007 6:48:12 AM
Sigh. Jasper, your assertions are not based on any identifyable mechanism. In other words, they are faith based, and as such, you don't belong in a party that desires social justice. Assuming that education is a "product," how can consumers accurately evaluate the quality of that product? Certainly not test scores; those are so closely linked to SES and parental involvement that the scores tell us very little about the quality of the classroom education. Well, what else? Personal evaluations? Sorry; unless you hold a post-graduate degree in education, you likely know very little about the mechanisms of the classroom, and the methods used to control and manipulate those mechanisms. Thus, we have a situation where consumers lack objective criteria to evaluate the quality of a product. Its likely that much of the consumer "preference" is not ctually based upon evaluative analysis of the quality of educational instructino, but rather on pernicious variables, such as the race of the student body, etc. Thus, it seems plausible that your faith-based assertions justifying the destruction of public education are really pretext for pernicious discrimination. Gosh, why does the left dislike your policy preferences?
Posted by: Michigander | Nov 7, 2007 2:18:04 PM
