| Wednesday,
June 3, 2009 I get a number of notes like this, although this is the first one I
have that links to the particular essay.
The Biggest Mystery in American History
http://tcsdaily.com/Article.aspx?id=052609A
"I submit that all of these facts taken together are
paradoxical; one might say, impossible. It's as if I told you that an
ordinary man consumed 5000 calories a day and lost weight. So this, I
submit, is the greatest mystery in our history.
But why have our educators allowed this decline to
take place? Or is "allowed" a trick word, and they have actually abetted
this failure? Ah, mystery on top of mystery. This is a puzzle that
academic historians should be trying to solve.
For starters, can't we all agree that genuine
experts, making a sincere effort, would have our schools functioning at a
higher level? Why, oh why, don't our educators do a much better job?"
Possibly a bigger mystery is why, faced with obvious
signs of failure, we think the solution is more of the same.
Graves
The mystery is why, given that the US spends more on education than
anyone else, and increasingly more every year, the results are from poor
to mediocre. The essay says without exception, but that's wrong. There are
some good schools, but generally they are so despite the national system,
not because of it.
What there aren't is exceptions to the rule that half the population is
below average.
On that score: I am thoroughly aware that in the real world the mean --
the arithmetical average of whatever variable you choose to measure -- is
often different from the median -- the middlemost score -- and thus you
may have the result that half are not below average -- or, more likely --
that far more than half are below average. Think, for example, of a sample
that includes 1000 people chosen randomly; we determine the mean income of
that group. Chances are pretty good that the number we calculate will be
pretty close to the national average income, and that half those in the
sample will have incomes above that average and half below it. Now add
Bill Gates to the sample, and things change a lot. But then we all know
that. As a tool for discussion of the real world, "half the children are
below average" is a useful abstraction. It can also be misleading, and we
can get to that later.
The No Child Left Behind goal is to see that all children get some
agreed upon minimum score on national achievement tests. When that doesn't
happen -- and it can't, for reasons that ought to be obvious to anyone but
a hopeless romantic -- then the goal changes to raising the average score.
It turns out the best way to do that is to concentrate on the students who
are just below target so that they go to just above the target score. This
will slightly raise the mean score, so there's a moving target here, but
that's called overall improvement. Scores go up, numbers with that score
rise, and congratulations and praise are distributed. Of course the
practical effect of all this is pretty low, and the return on investment
lower still.
We've covered all this before, of course. There's no real mystery here.
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy is sufficient explanation for the
failure of the school system. The remedy is pretty much the remedy to most
situations stalemated by bureaucracy: what Jane Jacobs called transparency
and subsidiarity, which is to say, to the best we can manage it,
institutions ought to be paid for by those who control them, and their
costs and results should be freely and openly available. Local control of
schools will inevitably result in some very bad schools controlled by
silly people who get elected to the school board; but if those are truly
local (not monstrous bureaucracies like LA Unified), some will be very
good, and serve as examples.
It's transparently obvious that nationalization of the school system
(through Federal Aid to Education, which came about after Sputnik -- it
surprises many to discover that until Sputnik there was widespread
opposition to Federal aid to Education on both Constitutional and
pragmatic grounds) has not worked. It may not have failed as badly as some
assert, but it's pretty grim, largely because the goal is wrong. Instead
of trying to give every child in the country "a world class university
prep education" we ought to be trying to identify those who can benefit
from a university prep education and see that they get it, while devising
something more appropriate for the 60 to 85% who ought not be in a
university prep high school program.
But doing that requires admitting that many of the assumptions of
modern education experts are nonsense.
The remedy here is obvious. Congress has the power to do what it will
with the DC school system. I suggest they put the education experts in
charge, and give them most -- I dare not say all -- the resources they day
they will need. Olympic swimming pools? Tutors? Anything. Spare no
expense. At present I believe that average expense per child in DC is
about $12,000. Double that. Treble it if need be. And let's see the
results.
And when that fails to raise the averages much, and leaves a great
number of children behind, perhaps we can denationalize the school system
on the theory that the experts don't know enough, and go back to
transparency and subsidiarity. Give local school boards local control over
both the schools and the school tax. (You can subsidize the really poor
districts, but those who elect the school boards should pay a substantial
part of the costs.)
Well, I can dream, can't I?
=================
But what if they CAN all benefit?
"Instead of trying to give every child in the
country "a world class university prep education" we ought to be trying
to identify those who can benefit from a university prep education and
see that they get it..."
Well, but there it is. You're taking it as given
that NOT every child in the country will benefit from a university-prep
education. Not everyone agrees with you. I do agree with you, actually,
but you have to bear in mind that many of the people out there believe
that if a child does not grow up to be Einstein then it's because she
was taught wrong...
-- Mike T. Powers
We haven't, and it hasn't been for want of trying: but as I have often
said, try it. Do it. Try in the District of Columbia, where Congress has
the undoubted power. If every kid in DC benefits from a world class
university prep education then it's a lead pipe cinch that everyone else
can, and we will all cheer. As I have said, we have many studies
showing the enormous national benefits we would have if we can raise
national IQ by 5 points! That point is made with lots of numbers in The
Bell Curve. No one I know is against Head Start -- but no study can three
years later differentiate a Head Start kid from one who didn't get Head
Start. We all think Head Start ought to work, we all want it to work --
and nobody can show that it does any good at all.
Whatever system you want to use, try it in DC. Try some here and some
there and some in other parts. Try Charter Schools, paid tutors to assist
home schools, tutors in public schools, free laptops, -- go from $12,000
per year per student to $24,000 per year per student. Raise teacher
salaries for those who succeed.
It won't work, but I will cheer if it does, and I'll sure support
trying. But not nationally. The evidence is just too convincing.
Half the children are below average, and average won't benefit from a
world class university prep education -- and trying to give every child a
world class university prep education generally results in fewer kids
getting the world class university prep education because the teachers
have to spend so much time just getting the lower half of the class
through something that looks like a passing grade that they haven't much
resource left for the brighter kids who should be taken from above normal
to way above normal. But I've said all that before.
===============
If the point above is that it is politically difficult to impossible to
fix the school system, then the option is what? Despair? Well, we will run
out of money fairly soon now.
=============
In a few hours the President will give his speech to the Muslim world.
Of course it is difficult to identify the Muslim world, but perhaps Obama
will be able to do so.
==========
And a friend points out that Harvard University is a huge hedge fund
with a university attached: that it managed to lose huge amounts of money
and now owes about as much as its endowment is worth; and that much of
this happened during the presidency of a brilliant economist who left
Harvard to become financial advisor to the United States.
It should be interesting to see what happens next, and who bails out
what. Incidentally Harvard is no longer hiring junior faculty. And many of
its financial managers earned more, a few years ago, than any of its
professors.
http://business.theatlantic.com/
2009/05/how_harvard_university
_almost_destroyed_itself.php
It's not clear that we have seen all of this story.
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/
articles/drew_gilpin_faust_and_
the_incredible_shrinking_harvard/page6
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