Will Wilkinson - Latest Comments in Barriers to Effective Schooling

Re: Barriers to Effective Schooling

Bruce — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 19:23:26 -0000

That's not entirely fair. "Social Studies" is an institutional designation for the branch of studies that includes (most commonly) history, civics, economics, and geography, as well as--to be honest--a smattering of "wishy-washy liberal multicultural bullshit". Alex J's response to Paul Brown's comments were pertinent. Your smarmy reply, not so.

Re: Barriers to Effective Schooling

Troy — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 10:46:03 -0000

Not to mention property owners are forced to pay (money is taken through extortion) by the county) their local government schools even if they choose not to use them. I personally chose to home-school but I am forced to pay annually for local public schools and the area Vo-Tech.

Re: Barriers to Effective Schooling

wendy — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 01:18:13 -0000

check out this great article from a student who can see through the system

CHECK IT OUT!!!!

http://www.strike-the-root....

Re: Barriers to Effective Schooling

Stuart Buck — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 13:56:40 -0000

Thanks!

Re: Barriers to Effective Schooling

Will Wilkinson — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 10:09:32 -0000

Stuart, It has mysteriously disappeared. I swear I didn't do anything. It's still in my email, so here it is....

Stuart Buck (unregistered) wrote:

any remotely satisfying causal argument for why schooling systems with near-identical pedagogical techniques would have different results outside of that selection bias.

Freddie and I have discussed this point several times before, but nothing I say ever seems to sink in:

A. There is lots of evidence of perverse selection bias as to private schools as a whole. For example, Derek Neal and Jeffrey Grogger recently found [http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/br...] that “there is evidence of NEGATIVE SELECTION into Catholic schools. Relative to their public-school counterparts, urban whites who attend these schools appear to possess unmeasured traits that inhibit attainment.” They add this footnote: “Evidence of negative selection is common in this literature. Coleman and Hoffer (1987), Evans and Schwab (1995), and Neal (1997) all report evidence of negative selection into Catholic schools. A common hypothesis concerning this result is that some parents send their children to Catholic schools seeking a remedy for existing problems with discipline and motivation.”

B. No remotely satisfying reason that private schools might do a better job? Here are several possibilities:

1. Potential for stricter discipline.

2. Potential to hire better teachers and/or not to get stuck with bad teachers who have tenure thanks to a union contract. (See, e.g., http://www.tntp.org/files/T... ).

3. Potential to be more responsive to parents.

4. Because of 3, potential to inspire more parental involvement, both on an individual and community level. This is a factor that Coleman and Hoffer identified in their famous book on why urban Catholic schools were superior, at least as of the 1980s.

5. Potential to be able to use a more effective and rigorous curriculum (e.g., Singapore math) without being quashed by state bureaucrats who haven't approved the purchase of that curriculum, or by the many interest groups that get involved in the curriculum selection process.

6. Potential to impose increased academic demands more generally. In looking at the famous HSB data, Coleman and Hoffer (pp. 44-45) found that the "most striking difference between public and private school curricula is the much greater likelihood of academic program placement in the private schools." (Nearly 50% of Catholic students were in specialized "academic" programs, while only 3.3% of public school students were in such programs; most public school students were in "comprehensive" or more general programs.)

7. Potential to drastically reduce dropout rates. See, e.g., Sander 2001, p. 23. Similarly, Coleman and Hoffer found that the black dropout rate in public high schools was 17.2%, while the black dropout rate in Catholic high schools was a mere 4.6%. (p. 127). They also point out that this is not what you would expect, given that Catholic high schools also had substantially higher achievement gains for black students. Normally, you would think that a more academically demanding high school could easily have a higher dropout rate, not a rate that is nearly 4 times lower. (Coleman and Hoffer have a very lengthy passage in which they try to test for selection effects here.)

Re: Barriers to Effective Schooling

Stuart Buck — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 09:33:36 -0000

What happened to my comment here??

Re: Barriers to Effective Schooling

Rortybomb — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 21:56:33 -0000

The second and third footnote on the first point grant all of Freddie's argument; am I misreading that?

The best they can argue is that some IV-statistical dark arts can produce "including estimates from Colombia based on lottery selection of scholarships that could be used private schools", but that is incredibly limited is both scope and time and place. They certainly aren't actual controlled tests.

Jumping to the third world doesn't preclude Freddie's point - It is true in non-first world the services the government provides in education are terrible, but the same is true of sewage. One would expect the marginal effect of peer-selection (Freddie's point) to be significantly great in global-poverty areas.

Re: Barriers to Effective Schooling

tigerthink — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 22:55:04 -0000

Will, the idea that private provision of education is never worse than public provision is far from settled. In fact, the first three results on Google for "private public school effectiveness" all suggested the opposite. Since Google is more likely to provide an unbiased sample of the literature, I'm going to go with that conclusion.

The third paper on Google

http://www.allacademic.com/...

was interesting because they found that independent but publicly funded schools (I read that as charter schools) beat standard public schools.

In the anecdotal evidence department: There's a private high school across the street, and the kids I've talked to don't seem to like it much. Quote: "The teachers are bitches."

Re: Barriers to Effective Schooling

TGGP — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 21:48:01 -0000

I used to be very gung-ho about vouchers and privatization of education. Then starting about when I read Freakonomics I decided that it probably wouldn't give much better results education-wise, just as with medicine. It would, however, result in more pleasant places to force kids to spend a huge chunk of time.

One problem voucher plans will have to deal with is parents trying to avoid schools with poor kids. We saw this problem earlier with integration, white flight and bussing and even today with many zoning laws.

On a final unrelated note: whenever I try to use the search bar for this blog, it brings me to Will's twitter page. I don't care about twitter, I just want to search.

Re: Barriers to Effective Schooling

JB — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 01:13:45 -0000

Having the state involved in the brain-washing ('education') of children is a crime against humanity.

Re: Barriers to Effective Schooling

JB — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 01:12:07 -0000

You can't deny that the Democrats' hatred of children is a driving factor behind the Democrats screwing over children to protect their corrupt buddies in the teachers' unions.

Re: Barriers to Effective Schooling

Murali — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 22:29:04 -0000

Actually, vouchers or bursaries are a good idea. But one idea which nobody seems to take into consideration is a school ranking system. If we rank the high schools according to SAT scores, international baccalaureate (I-Bac) or GCE A level results, performance in sports, math olympiad or any other specialisation, and publicise these rankings, the demand for the better schools will increase. Schools will also compete for ranking and increase their methods and efficiency in order to obtain better scores. They will also adopt selection criteria for students by either implementing a test,based on the score of which they will choose to accept or reject applicants or selecting from the score of a state/nationwide test. Students, then have to compete for good schools, and will study harder in order to meet entry requirements. Parents will now hound both the school and their children in order to maximise their child's results. This improves student performance, school quality etc because it incentivises strong student performance and competitive testing where schools have to set highly selective tests in order to identify desirable students.

Or, have a statewide exam and publish all the students' results in the newspaper. There will be considerable pressure on students not to screw up. It would be incredibly embarrassing if the whole state knew of you as the dumbest guy in the state.

Re: Barriers to Effective Schooling

Richard Pointer — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 17:51:58 -0000

I always thought that Bismarck decided on public provision of education so as to socialized docile citizens. Isn't that true?

Re: Barriers to Effective Schooling

x_trapnel — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 16:43:39 -0000

Really, the only two sentences you need to read from the paper are these:

"First, to all other disciplines, as well as common sense, it is obvious that education, of which schooling is one element, is a process of the socialization of youth and their preparation for their economic but also their social and political roles as adults.
[and from earlier]
"But this bias against choice is not an actual mystery, just an unnecessary disciplinary puzzle created by the economists’ narrow framing of the outputs of education."

The rest is of interest to economists, but those focused on schooling would probably get more out of history. In particular, historical accounts of the clashes between coercive assimilationist public-schooling forces and immigrants / periphery-dwellers / religious dissenters / etc. Not my area, but I hear Eugene Weber's Peasants Into Frenchmen is one classic text in this area.

Re: Barriers to Effective Schooling

Will Wilkinson — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 16:39:29 -0000

Freddie, Please feel free to read the linked paper and the studies cited therein on school performance in both rich and poor countries.

Re: Barriers to Effective Schooling

LorenzofromOz — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 16:34:14 -0000

It the owner or board of a major football club said "we have a great idea: we will take over the running of the code, appointing the umpires and setting the rules" everyone would laugh or wonder what they were on. Having a participating club run the entire sport is an obviously stupid way to run a sport. The conflict of interest is patent and glaring.

Apparently, however, it is great way to educate children.

Actually, clearly it is not. The problem is not merely public provision in a monopoly/dominant provider sense (though that is a problem). The real problem is the profound conflict of interest involved in the main provider setting and enforcing the rules.

That is a problem if you want high quality outcomes. If, however, you want to control the socialisation of children, then the "conflict of interest" is no conflict at all: it is precisely what you want. Haven't read the paper yet, but it seems likely to be spot on to me.

Re: Barriers to Effective Schooling

Adam W. Cohen — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 16:01:31 -0000

My mother tried to start a secular private school (elementary-through-junior high) and was thwarted by a coalition of local politicians, teachers and, amazingly, local parents. The bureaucrats and teachers union threw one absurd obstacle after another in her path. They simply weren't ever going to let her get her school started, despite her extensive teaching experience, her ambitious curriculum (which would have included economics classes!), the fact that she had secured adequate capital to hire teachers and lease to a lovely building with great big windows and a logical layout. Parents were told that the existence of the school would hurt the public schools, which they assumed would lose their best students and possibly even their better teachers. My mother received threatening mail and phone calls. I was quite young at the time (first or second grade), but I remember that this was an emotionally crushing experience for her. She and her business partner finally gave up because the demands of political committees, which involved things like changing the sinks in the bathrooms and adding doors in between classrooms, were prohibitively expensive or not allowed by the owner of the property. This was back in the early 1980s, but she still trembles with rage when the subject comes up.

Re: Barriers to Effective Schooling

Vladimir — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:49:03 -0000

The state took education away from the church doubtless with similar goals in mind i.e. the correct (?)socialization of children. However we should not that the firms for screening purposes would either likely insist on a common core curriculum or state administer test to provide a basic indication of competence even in a mixed educational system. The final point I would make is that learning largely reflects ambition of the parents and the student and therefore its not that the private sector does a better job of educating but rather that the transaction costs it imposes attracts only those most interested in learning.

Re: Barriers to Effective Schooling

Freddie — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:46:45 -0000

For a longer form of my argument, you could look here:

http://lhote.blogspot.com/2...

Selection bias is not some noise to be removed from the signal. It is the signal. Poor kids do badly in school, rich kids do well, private schools overwhelmingly teach rich kids. I'm sorry that this is true, but it is true; voucher proponents confuse cause for effect.

Re: Barriers to Effective Schooling

Glen Raphael — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:45:33 -0000

There are diseconomies of scale too. If public schools are larger than the optimum size - which they are, due to political incentives towards centralization - then making schools smaller will give you more "bang for the buck".

Re: Barriers to Effective Schooling

Freddie — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:44:28 -0000

The second argument being that there is neither a) anything resembling meaningful data that isn't corrupted by selection bias and b) any remotely satisfying causal argument for why schooling systems with near-identical pedagogical techniques would have different results outside of that selection bias.

Private schools overwhelmingly teach students with vast statistical advantages compared to their public counterparts. That is the beginning, middle and end of explaining the difference, and for that reason vouchers will not work.

Re: Barriers to Effective Schooling

anonymouse — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:30:49 -0000

"Yet as with any endeavour, there are economies of scale in schools. "
That's a common, and often unexamined assumption. I believe many of the proponents of vouchers, and indeed some in the education establishment itself actually think that smaller schools are better. I don't know myself, I went to a school that was large, but good, and I think you do need a certain critical mass in a high school to be able to provide its students with certain opportunities, but at the same time, it's important not to lose students in a bureaucracy. I think there's another factor too, that needs to be acknowledged, which is that in some cases, a troublesome student's presence in a class or school may be not just useless for him/her, but also have a negative influence on everyone else in the class.

Re: Barriers to Effective Schooling

Paul G. Brown — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 18:25:21 -0000

How do "vouchers" create more "choice" than the current system does? Think about this from an economic perspective. Vouchers can't mean there will be any more schools of the same quality. Under a voucher system, the state will provide each parent with a check out of tax revenue. The idea is that parents then choose the school at which they spend that check.

Yet as with any endeavour, there are economies of scale in schools. Given that the voucher stipend is fixed per parent, and given that there are the same number of parents with or without a voucher system, all other things being equal, why would there be any more schools to choose from? If you want more schools, then you need to concede that these new smaller schools will all be worse choices--from a bang-for-buck point of view--than the original system provided. (Assuming the existing system is moderately efficient - but then, there's no reason to believe the replacement would bring any improvement. )

To put it another way, I don't see how changing the mechanism by which money moves from tax revenues to teacher's salaries can, by itself, create choice. This has always bothered me about "vouchers". It's seems just as likely that we would arrive at a false choice. By analogy, a dozen brands of gasoline or laundry soap, all the products of identical industrial processes.

OK. No fewer schools then. Perhaps more choice because existing schools try to differentiate in other ways. Different schools trying to attract students by emphasizing different programs. Art & Music, or Math & Science, or Sport, etc.

And what I am pointing out is that 'the system' is responding in precisely this way. It's evolutionary change; tentative and highly conservative. But it is responding. Public schools are specializing in the manner I described. Magnet schools, open school programs, athletics programs. Parents have access to more information about schools, and aren't (at least in my school district) compelled to make zone based choices. This seems to me to be improving school choice while at the same time getting the same bang-for-buck out of taxpayer dollars.

And no, John. Bringing in your own cleaning crew is not the same as simply choosing to eat somewhere else. But schools aren't restaurants.

Granted, the education system is not adapting fast enough. I've chosen my daughter's school (in part) because the state stipend is the same everywhere, but at least there I get to pool my money with other parents who've choosen what we wish to emphasize in our kid's education.

Re: Barriers to Effective Schooling

Cascadian — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 18:10:32 -0000

The market just needs to improve. Obviously, at the upper end, there are competitive services, private schools. If you can't beat the public system on its own merits, you don't deserve the funding.

Re: Barriers to Effective Schooling

alphie — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 18:01:14 -0000

You can't deny that the Republicans' hatred of teachers' unions is a driving factor behind the push for vouchers, John.