Voice For Liberty in Wichita

In the July 25, 2006 Wall Street Journal, Charles Murray has a commentary titled “Acid Tests” which describes how the way that the No Child Left Behind program uses test scores is misleading.

By adjusting what states use to measure “proficiency,” states can appear to be closing the gap between different groups of students. In Texas, the gap between the percentage of white and black students that passed a test was at one time 35 percentage points. Now it is only ten. Does that mean the gap in true student learning and performance has decreased?

The answer is we can’t tell from the data we have. Perhaps Texas made the test easier, or changed the definition of passing, or “taught to the test.” Any of these could explain the narrowing of the gap. As Mr. Murray wrote: “If there really was closure of the gap, all that Texas has to do is release the group means, as well as information about the black and white distributions of scores, and it will easy to measure it.”

The fact is that these tests, administered by the individual states, are subject to manipulation that is not in the best interests of schoolchildren:

Question: Doesn’t this mean that the same set of scores could be made to show a rising or falling group difference just by changing the definition of a passing score? Answer: Yes.

At stake is not some arcane statistical nuance. The federal government is doling out rewards and penalties to school systems across the country based on changes in pass percentages. It is an uninformative measure for many reasons, but when it comes to measuring one of the central outcomes sought by No Child Left Behind, the closure of the achievement gap that separates poor students from rich, Latino from white, and black from white, the measure is beyond uninformative. It is deceptive.

You can learn more about deceptive testing from a recent study performed by The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University. A press release titled “Testing the NCLB: Study shows that NCLB hasn’t significantly impacted national achievement scores or narrowed the racial gaps” is at http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/news/pressreleases/nclb_report06.php.

[Read more →]

A July 2, 2006 New York Times editorial titled “The School Testing Dodge” realizes that nearly all states report student achievement scores, as measured by their own tests, that are much higher than what the same students do on the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress exam. An extended quotation from the editorial:

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), a research institute run jointly by Stanford and the University of California, showed that in many states students who performed brilliantly on state tests scored dismally on the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is currently the strongest, most well-respected test in the country.

The study analyzed state-level testing practices from 1992 to 2005. It found that many states were dumbing down their tests or shifting the proficiency targets in math and reading, creating a fraudulent appearance of progress and making it impossible to tell how well students were actually performing.

Not all states have tried to evade the truth. The tests in Massachusetts, for example, yield performance results that are reasonably close to the federal standard. Not so for states like Oklahoma, where the score gap between state and federal tests has averaged 48 points in reading and 60 points in math, according to the PACE report. The states that want to mislead the government — and their own residents — use a variety of dodges, including setting passing scores low, using weak tests and switching tests from year to year to prevent unflattering comparisons over time. These strategies become transparent when the same students who perform so well on state tests do poorly on the more rigorous federal exam. Most alarming of all, the PACE study finds that the gap between student reading performance on the state and federal tests has actually grown wider over time — which suggests that claims of reading progress in many states are in fact phony.

I have written in the past about the discrepancies between state test results and NAEP test results (see No Child Left Behind Leaving Many Behind, Schoolchildren Will Be Basically Proficient, and Every State Left Behind). What is the solution to this problem? Most families don’t have much choice except to accept and use the existing public schools in their state and their fraudulent test results. With school choice implemented through meaningful vouchers, parents will have an alternative to the public school monopoly. If parents do not believe the test results the public schools report, they will be able to do something meaningful: move their children to a different school. As of now, parents have little choice and few weapons to use against the public school bureaucracy — except for the NAEP test results.

[Read more →]

Recently an Associated Press article reported how the test scores of some two million children aren’t being counted, due to a loophole in the No Child Left Behind Act. (See ‘No Child’ loophole misses millions of scores at CNN, April 18, 2006.) The Wall Street Journal (”No Child Left Behind” April 29, 2006) editorializes on this as follows:

… Last month we reported that parents and children in failing schools nationwide aren’t being notified of their school-choice transfer and tutoring options, even though notification is a requirement under NCLB. The news that [Secretary of Education] Ms. Spellings is also letting states slide on even reporting the math and reading test scores of minorities is especially disturbing because accountability is the heart of the federal law.

NCLB makes allowances for schools that have racial groups too small to be statistically significant. But states have been abusing their freedom under the law to determine when a group is too small to count. And Washington is letting them get away with it. According to the AP, nearly two dozen states have successfully petitioned the Education Department “for exemptions to exclude larger numbers of students in racial categories.” Today about one in 14 test scores overall go uncounted. Minorities, whose test scores on average lag those of white students, are seven times as likely to have their test results ignored. That’s an odd way to enforce a law called No Child Left Behind.

Has Kansas asked for exemptions from these reporting requirements? I spoke to an official at the Kansas Department of Education, and it appears that Kansas is not asking for exemptions like the ones reported above. That’s good news.

But Kansas school officials, like those in nearly every other state, continue to paint a prettier picture than the actual reality. This article Every State Left Behind explains how state education officials report student proficiency rates far in excess of what the National Assessment of Educational Progress test reveals.

The public education establishment tells us they are willing to be held accountable. As it turns out, being held accountable to a government agency may not mean very much.

There is a simple way to hold public schools accountable to those who matter most: simply give parents meaningful school choice. Open public schools to market competition. Give parents, through vouchers, meaningful opportunities to choose schools for their children.

With all the attention paid to schools this year in Kansas government, with all the new money about to be spent, accountability is still lacking. The education establishment insists on retaining their government-sponsored monopoly on education spending. In a few years when the impact of the increased education spending in Kansas is assessed — if we are able to get an honest evaluation — we should not be surprised to find that no progress has been made.

[Read more →]

Mary Moberly, a young woman just 15 years old, wrote this piece. She lives in Manhattan, Kansas. I have been reading her two websites for the past few months, ever since I saw that she referred to a post on this website.

If you look at her two websites, Tea and Crumpets Zine and Just Go Boil Something, you will discover her wide-ranging interests and accomplishments, both remarkable for someone so young. I particularly recommend her essay What Makes a Well-Educated Person?

I read the following article and was so impressed by it that I wrote to Mary and asked if I could reprint it here. She agreed.

A Declaration of Independence from Public Schools

By Mary Moberly

Because you have taken from me seven years of imagination, seven years of creativity, and seven years of learning,

Because you have kept me (for seven years) locked up in an artificial environment with artificial knowledge, and artificial friends, and mentors forced to be artificial,

Because you have taught me that any friends I have must be my own age, must know little more than myself, and are only for recess and small talk,

Because you have taught me that trees are dangerous, and made me climb artificial ones instead, while you sawed off all the real branches within my reach,

Because you never taught me how to walk or run for the sheer joy of it,

Because you wasted my precious time and made me stay up late, frustrated and crying, doing busywork for countless hours, forcing me to write down the answers in the book, the answers to the worksheet, and memorize the answers to the test, answers that, whether right or wrong, I had to know, to pass tests which I have no memory of,

Because you never taught me how to learn what I want to learn,

Because you never taught me how to truly express myself, and only constricted me with rules, and blanked my mind, so that I could not write,

Because you never taught me that math is beautiful, that it contains the essence of the universe, and is more than just numbers and rules,

Because you never taught me how to read music in my head, and write it, because you told me not to whistle during class, or in the halls,

Because you have imprisoned many children within your walls, and stolen their childhood,

Because the people who work for you were taught in you and do not know another way of teaching,

Because you are a monster, a Frankenstein, that good people controlled at first, but which now controls them, (they do not destroy you because they are afraid),

Because education is now considered something to “deal with” rather than something to put one’s whole heart into,

Because your very ways are un-American, because you command everyone within your walls where to sit, what to wear, what to eat, when to eat, what to read, when to read, what to write, when to write, what to draw, when to draw, even when to use the bathroom and how to learn,

I Declare Independence from you, Public Schools.

[Read more →]

Writing from Miami, Florida

An article in the March 2, 2006 Wall Street Journal by Katherine Kersten of the Minneapolis Star Tribune tells of the large numbers of African-American families in Minneapolis who send their children to charter schools or to schools in other districts, thanks to Minnesota law that allows district-crossing.

The families in Minneapolis have ample incentive to look elsewhere for schools. “Last year, only 28% of black eighth-graders in the Minneapolis public schools passed the state’s basic skills math test; 47% passed the reading test. … Today, this tradition of choice is providing a ticket out for kids in the gritty, mostly black neighborhoods of north and south- central Minneapolis.”

Does this choice work? Are parents pleased? “At Harvest Preparatory School, a K-6 school that is 99% black and two-thirds low income, students wear uniforms, focus on character, and achieve substantially higher test scores than district schools with similar demographics.” This is a school that was founded in 1992 in the home of its founders, showing that it doesn’t take a lot of money to start a good school.

My advocacy of school choice has been criticized. Some people tell me that parents, especially those with little education, will not be able to judge the merits of a school. People tell me that some parents are incapable of making a wise, informed choice, and that someone else must do it for them. Besides being condescending, it is simply wrong:

The city’s experience should lead such states to reconsider the benefits of expansive school choice. Conventional wisdom holds that middle-class parents take an interest in their children’s education, while low-income and minority parents lack the drive and savvy necessary. The black exodus here demonstrates that, when the walls are torn down, poor, black parents will do what it takes to find the best schools for their kids.

One has to be quite confident — arrogant, I would say — to deny parents the choice of where to send their children to school, especially when the choice forced upon parents is to compel children to attend our present schools with their history of poor performance.

Well-to-do families have school choice. They can afford private school tuition, or they can afford to move to cities or neighborhoods where the schools are better. In most places, poor families don’t have this choice. What is it that prevents our politicians, education bureaucrats, and school boards from realizing this, and doing something to truly help those who need it most?

[Read more →]

Writing from Miami, Florida

In a recent column by John Stossel (Competition Works) we find this paragraph:

Take education. Bureaucrats like to say, you will go to this school, because we said so, and you will be taught according to this program, because we said so and we know best. Those of us with confidence in markets think you could do better deciding for yourself. Neither the bureaucrats nor the freedom lovers can judge what’s in your interest better than you can. One big difference is, we know what we don’t know, while they think they know everything.

Competition. A dirty word when applied to government and education. It’s really a simple concept. Its straightforward hope is that people should be able to make choices about what they want to do, rather than being told what to do by the government.

When applied to public education, the importance of competition and consumer (parental) choice is paramount. When children are forced by law to attend a school day after day, year after year, government imposes greatly on personal liberty. When that imposition is not fruitful, that is, when children do not learn and when they are exposed to the appalling conditions we are told are common in public schools, we greatly harm liberty and education.

What Mr. Stossel says is true: when government and education bureaucrats take responsibility for educating your children, they take on immense responsibility. Given the results of public education in recent years as written about on this website (see Lack of Literacy is Threat to Liberty, Schoolchildren Will Be Basically Proficient, and Class Warfare, for example), it is beyond belief to realize how vehemently politicians, education bureaucrats, and teachers unions insist on retaining control over education.

It is vitally important that parents be put back in control of the education of their children. Being able to freely choose where their children attend school is the first step. That means eliminating all public schools and government involvement in education. I don’t think that will happen, though, so the next best step is to empower parents through vouchers to select where their children will go to school.

Vouchers and the competition they foster will be good for all schools. Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby found that in Milwaukee, the public schools improved in response to competition from voucher schools. This was in a school system where about only 15% of the schoolchildren were eligible for vouchers:

From 1998-1999 onwards, the schools that faced the most competition from the vouchers improved student achievement radically — by about 0.6 of a standard deviation each year. That is an enormous, almost unheard-of, improvement. Keep in mind the schools in question had had a long history of low achievement. Yet they were able to get their act together quickly. The most threatened schools improved the most, not only compared to other schools in Milwaukee but also compared to other schools in the state of Wisconsin that served poor, urban students.

Milwaukee shows what public school administrators can tell you: Schools can improve if they are under serious competition.

Competition is magically wonderful and powerful. It motivates people to dream of doing things once thought not possible. Some fear competition because they think it means that we must all work harder, that we must work longer. But that’s not always the case. Competition means that businesses or schools or government agencies must serve the interests of their customers because the customers have choice. It doesn’t always mean working harder. It might mean changing just a little — or sometimes a lot — to offer what the customer really wants.

What competition means, and we can be sure of this, is that we can’t be sure of the future. Instead of government bureaucrats planning our futures for us and our children, feeding us the same things that didn’t work yesterday, we would face a future of uncertainty. That is frightening, sometimes. But it holds a lot of promise. As Mr. Stossel writes:

I can’t tell you about all the wonderful schools that would appear if students were able to bring their public funding to any school, public, private, or religious. No one individual can begin to imagine what competition would create.

He is absolutely correct. We simply do not know what would happen if the entrepreneurial creativity of America is put to work. There are some small examples: private schools, charter schools, and other semi-public experiments. But even charter and magnet schools are under the control and influence of the existing education and political establishment. They aren’t truly free, and therefore don’t benefit from all the benefits of innovation.

Some fear that unleashing free market forces on education and letting experiments happen will expose some children to schools that don’t work. That’s undoubtedly true. In Milwaukee some of the charter schools have closed for various reasons. The failure of these schools means that market forces — competition, in other words — works. Bad schools lose students and close. That doesn’t happen in the world of government. The children that had the misfortune to attend these poor voucher schools could have done better in other schools. But today children attend failing schools that slog on forever, and they don’t have any opportunity to escape.

That is what we must work to change: children trapped in schools that doom them to failure.

[Read more →]

Writing from Miami, Florida

A few months ago I wrote how most states, when testing their schoolchildren, post results such as “80% of our state’s students are proficient in reading or math,” but when tested by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the number judged proficient falls to 30% or so. (See Every State Left Behind.) It was noted that local education officials are eager to tell parents and taxpayers that students are doing well. The NAEP test hasn’t felt such pressure.

Now a commentary in the February 27, 2006 Wall Street Journal by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Diane Ravitch tells us that under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which uses the NAEP tests — not the state tests — to measure student progress, there is pressure to water down the NAEP test so that more students test at the proficient level.

This movement to weaken the standards of what has to this point been an objective, nation-wide measure of student progress will let politicians at the federal level claim that students are doing better, just as politicians at the state and local level do with the dumbed-down state tests.

Politicians, education bureaucrats, and teachers unions will claim victory, citing “proof” that increased funding for schools has been successful in increasing student achievement. But with the standard of proficient slipping to what has been until now called basic, will the students even be able to understand how they’ve been harmed?

This is more evidence of why we need to take control of education away from the government.

[Read more →]

Writing in a recent commentary, Stephen M. Lilienthal of the Free Congress Foundation expresses concern over the literacy skills of recent college graduates. The findings of some recent studies are quite troubling.

A recent study by the American Institutes for Research (”AIR”) contains what should be very unsettling news. The study, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, surveyed the literacy skills of graduates of four-year colleges and two-year community and junior colleges. The ability of the students to analyze newspaper stories, comprehend documents and balance a checkbook was assessed. Over half the graduates of four-year colleges and three-quarters of the graduates of junior and community colleges could not be categorized as possessing these “proficient” skills. A link to the press release announcing the study is at http://www.air.org/news/documents/Release200601pew.htm. Here are a few of the findings:

More than 75 percent of students at 2-year colleges and more than 50 percent of students at 4-year colleges do not score at the proficient level of literacy. This means that they lack the skills to perform complex literacy tasks, such as comparing credit card offers with different interest rates or summarizing the arguments of newspaper editorials.

Students in 2- and 4-year colleges have the greatest difficulty with quantitative literacy: approximately 30 percent of students in 2-year institutions and nearly 20 percent of students in 4-year institutions have only Basic quantitative literacy. Basic skills are those necessary to compare ticket prices or calculate the cost of a sandwich and a salad from a menu.

Students about to graduate from college have higher prose and document literacy than previous graduates with similar levels of education; for quantitative literacy, differences between current and former college graduates are not significant.

There are no significant differences in the literacy of students graduating from public and private institutions. Additionally, in assessing literacy levels, there are no differences between part-time and full-time students. No overall relationship exists between literacy and the length of time it takes to earn a degree, or between literacy and an academic major.

The AIR study is not the only source of bad news regarding adult literacy. As Mr. Lilienthal reports:

The AIR Study follows the release last November of a study by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (”AACU”) which reported a disparity between what students believed they were learning in college and national studies that measure their writing, mathematical and critical-thinking skills. An AACU press release issued in conjunction with the report states, “While 77 percent of students report significant improvements in their writing skills in college, standardized tests show that only 11 percent of seniors scored at a ‘proficient’ level in writing. Standardized tests results indicate that only 6 percent of seniors graduate at the ‘proficient’ level in critical thinking skills, while 87 percent of students believe that college contributed a great deal to improving their skills in this area.”

A significant point of the AIR study is that “rapid changes in technology make it necessary for adults of all ages to use written information in new and more complex ways.” Higher levels of literacy are needed to enable workers to adjust to increased demands.

Some conclusions that we may make:

First, what does this tell us about the state of our schools, especially public schools and universities? When the majority of college graduates — presumably having learned at least something more than what they knew when they graduated from high school — aren’t considered proficient at basic intellectual tasks, how can we have confidence in the quality of our schools? For those who believe our schools are performing well, I would ask what they make of these findings.

Second, it is not surprising that people who can’t balance a checkbook have trouble with other financial matters. Things like understanding a credit card offer and agreement, what it means to be in debt, understanding the implications of different types of mortgages, understanding the powerful effects of compounding over time, or how to save and invest for the future seem to be beyond the grasp of someone who has trouble with a checkbook.

Third, we should also not be surprised that people fail to understand, or even to be interested in, the policies of our various governmental bodies and how they impact our lives. That is, how these policies really impact us, rather than how politicians say they impact us. This is what I see as the greatest threat to liberty. A society with more liberty, which is to say one with less government, places greater responsibility on individuals to provide for themselves and their families. In order to defend our liberty, we must be on the alert for false arguments and faulty reasoning. This requires citizens who care about liberty and are equipped to defend it.

As an illustration, recently I wrote how an advocate for increased spending on schools in Kansas (I was going to say increased spending on education, but given the findings of the above studies, I am hesitant to call it that) made a misleading argument. (See Kansas Families United for Public Education (KFUPE) on State Aid to Schools.) To show how it is misleading, I had to perform some calculations to convert nominal dollars to real dollars, that is, spending adjusted by the rate of inflation. Now I wonder if many people understand the difference and its importance, much less whether many people could analyze this evidence in the way that I did. Converting nominal dollars to real dollars, I should mention, is not very difficult to do.

If converting nominal dollars to real dollars appears difficult, then what about more thoughtful analysis of our economy and government policies? Analyzing policy means looking at the obvious effects, but also seeking to discover what might not be obvious: the unseen effects. Frederic Bastiat, in his pamphlet titled “That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen” http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html said this:

Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference — the one takes account of the visible effect; the other takes account both of the effects which are seen, and also of those which it is necessary to foresee. Now this difference is enormous, for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favourable, the ultimate consequences are fatal, and the converse. Hence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good, which will be followed by a great evil to come, while the true economist pursues a great good to come, — at the risk of a small present evil.

The economist Walter E. Williams summarizes the broken window fallacy that Bastiat recognized in his article:

Bastiat wrote a parable about this that has become known as the “Broken Window Fallacy.” A shopkeeper’s window is broken by a vandal. A crowd forms, sympathizing with the man, but pretty soon, the people start to suggest the boy wasn’t guilty of vandalism; instead, he was a public benefactor, creating economic benefits for everyone in town. After all, fixing the broken window creates employment for the glazier, who will then buy bread and benefit the baker, who will then buy shoes and benefit the cobbler, and so forth.

Those are the seen effects of the broken window. What’s unseen is what the shopkeeper would have done with the money had the vandal not broken his window. He might have employed the tailor by purchasing a suit. The broken window produced at least two unseen effects. First, it shifted unemployment from the glazier, who now has a job, to the tailor, who doesn’t. Second, it reduced the shopkeeper’s wealth. Explicitly, had it not been for the vandalism, the shopkeeper would have had a window and a suit; now, he has just a window.

As Professor Williams also brought to our attention, even educated people such as Princeton economist Paul Krugman failed to take into account all factors — the broken window fallacy that Bastiat illustrates — when he wrote in The New York Times that the destruction of the World Trade Center “could do some economic good.”

By failing to perform a little analysis on our own, we are liable to fall for whatever arguments politicians may make. But given the state of adult literacy, literacy that is a product of our public schools, how can we expect to be any different?

[Read more →]

Separating School & State: How to Liberate America’s Families

Sheldon Richman
The Future of Freedom Foundation, 1994

Public schools are a great intrusion on liberty. Attendance is compulsory, as is paying for the public schools. Could the government devise a better way to expand its influence? “Despite the claim of moral neutrality, public education is linked to a particular set of values, namely, the values of the modern welfare, or social-service state. Those values include moral agnosticism (erroneously called tolerance), government activism, egalitarianism, ‘welfare rights’ to taxpayer largess, collectivism, and a watered-down version of socialism that looks much like the economic theory of the 1930s known as fascism.

“Liberty is more precious than education,” said the Voluntaryist Richard Hamilton. “We love education, but there are things which we love better.” This is an important theme of this book, and one that seems lost on most members of the public, and most politicians too, for that matter. Because a person is opposed to the near-monopoly that government has on schools, it does not follow that the person doesn’t value education.

Many people propose vouchers as a way to let parents send their children to private schools. But Richman warns against relying on vouchers as a solution to the problem of government control of education. It is likely, he says, that private schools will have to meet many of the standards that public schools do, thereby regulating private schools like public schools. Further, vouchers don’t change the fundamental problem in education, which is government financing of it.

What should be done, Richman says, is to end all government involvement in education. End all taxes that pay for education. Repeal all compulsory attendance laws. Open education to the creativity of the market and entrepreneurs. We do not know what would happen if this were to take place. But that’s part of the magic of markets and competition: new ideas and products are invented that are beyond the imagination of the present.

[Read more →]

Education Myths: What Special-Interest Groups Want You to Believe About Our Schools and Why it Isn’t So

Jay P. Greene
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005

Education policy, says Jay P. Greene, is dominated by myths. Myths aren’t lies. They’re intuitive, they seem to be true, and we want them to be true. There is probably some evidence supporting the myth. But if the myth isn’t true, if it isn’t accurate, and we make policy decisions based on the myth, we create disastrous results. As important and expensive as public education is, this means we need to examine myths and discard those that don’t truthfully describe the world.

Subscribing to many of these myths benefits groups other than schoolchildren. These special interests that benefit from sustaining these myths are politically powerful. Those with the least power — the schoolchildren — don’t count for much at all.

The myths:

1. The Money Myth. “Schools perform poorly because they need more money.” The reality is that spending on education has been increasing, and increasing rapidly. In 1945 spending per student was $1,214. In 2001, it was $8,745. These figures are adjusted for inflation. In spite of this we are told every year that schools are dangerously underfunded, and if we don’t spend more and more, our children will not even be able to make change from the cash register at McDonald’s when the power goes out.

2. The Special Ed Myth. “Special education programs burden public schools, hindering their academic performance.” This myth says that we must spend so much on education because more students are being classified as needing special education, and this education is very expensive. What really has happened, though, is that “the standard for what counts as a disability has been lowered.” There is also an incentive to classify students as learning disabled, as schools get more money for these students.

3. The Myth of Helplessness. “Social problems like poverty cause students to fail; schools are helpless to prevent it.” But some schools are able to succeed despite disadvantaged students, so success is possible. School choice can help here, as it lets poor students escape schools that would otherwise take them for granted.

4. The Class Size Myth. “Schools should reduce class sizes; small classes would produce bit improvements.” It seems intuitive that smaller classes are better for students. Educators rely on the Tennessee STAR project for proof. But there are many doubts about this project’s findings. It is interesting to note that the participants in this project knew they were being studied, and that if the project were a failure, the small class sizes would not continue. This introduced an element of competition. Also, reducing class size even by small steps is very expensive.

5. The Certification Myth. “Certified or more experienced teachers are substantially more effective.” Good teachers are very important to learning, but there is a lot of research that fails to find that more education leads to teacher success. Curiously, most teachers are paid based on how much education they have, and the way to earn more is to get more education.

6. The Teacher Pay Myth. “Teachers are badly underpaid.” But when considered in light of the number of hours worked, teachers are in fact paid quite well, more than accountants.

7. The Myth of Decline. “Schools are performing much worse than they used to.” But most measures, such as NAEP tests and graduation rates, have remained constant over the years.

8. The Graduation Myth. “Nearly all students graduate from high school.” Most states employ methods of counting that let them claim high graduation rates. Greene, however, uses different methods that are more reliable. With these methods, he estimates a nationwide graduation rate of 69 percent for the class of 2000. The National Center for Education Statistics figure is 86.5 percent.

9. The College Access Myth. “Nonacademic barriers prevent a lot of minority students from attending college.” The evidence is that minority students are less likely to meet the qualifications to apply to college.

10. The High Stakes Myth. “The results of high-stakes tests are not credible because they’re distorted by cheating and teaching to the test.” When properly implemented these tests are accurate measures of student performance.

11. The Push-Out Myth. “Exit exams cause more students to drop out of high school.” Evidence says otherwise.

12. The Accountably Buren Myth. “Accountability systems impose large financial burdens on schools.” Schools often exaggerate the costs of administering tests and record keeping. The costs are quite small compared to other reforms.

13. The Inconclusive Research Myth. “The evidence on the effectiveness of vouchers is mixed and inconclusive.” “The highest quality research consistently shows that vouchers have a positive effect for students who receive them. The results are only mixed with regard to the scope and magnitude of vouchers’ benefits. The evidence for these benefits justifies a high level of confidence, especially when compared to the much weaker evidence supporting most major education policies.” “Every one of the eight random-assignment studies finds at least some positive academic effect for students using a voucher to attend a private school.”

14. The Exeter Myth. “Private schools have higher test scores because they have more money and recruit high-performing students while expelling low-performing students. But the facts are that private schools spend much less per student than public schools, and private schools accept almost all students and expel few, compared to the public schools.

15. The Draining Myth. “School choice harms public schools.” Evidence shows, however, that school choice improves the performance of public schools.

16. The Disabled Need Not Apply Myth. “Private schools won’t serve disabled students.” But when vouchers give private schools the same resources as public schools, the private schools provide the needed services, along with better education.

17. The Democratic Values Myth. “Private schools are less effective at promoting tolerance and civic participation.” Again, evidence shows otherwise.

18. The Segregation Myth. “Private schools are more racially segregated than public schools.” “The bulk of those studies find that parental choice in education contributes to racial integration rather than promoting segregation.”

When considering these myths, the author sees a pattern called the “meta-myth.” This myth says that education is different from almost everything else in that in education, behavior doesn’t respond to the same types of incentives that almost everything else in life responds to. We want to believe that the education of children is special, and that usual rules don’t apply. But that is false.

This is a very well researched book that will help anyone interested in education policy understand schools and what works to increase positive outcomes for students. I think that members of the education establishment, that is the teachers unions, schools administrators, school board members, and politicians interested in the status quo, will not enjoy reading this book.

[Read more →]

There are two aspects to the Paul Mirecki matter that I haven’t seen discussed, or discussed only in passing.

First: What if Professor Mirecki had made condescending and hateful remarks about “protected” or “favored” minority groups such as Jews, blacks, Hispanics, women, even Muslims? I am having trouble imagining what would have happened, but being insensitive to groups like these carries a much harsher penalty than insulting Christians, I am sure.

Second: Shouldn’t we be concerned that a professor (a department chair no less) at the flagship university of our state, educated at the finest university in the world, writes so poorly? A writer, who seems to know what he (or she) is talking about, one who uses words like “puerile” and “dude” in the same post, analyzed the email on the Wichita Eagle Editorial Blog. (The link is http://blogs.kansas.com/weblog/2005/11/mythological_do.html#comments.) This writer noticed errors such as, and I quote from the post:

Those were some of the errors that I understood. There were more. This writer concluded: “This was not written by a Ph.D. at major university. If it were (note the correct use of the subjunctive mood, found so rarely these days), he should be fired for multiple violations of grammar rules.” That was the point of this writer’s post: that the email was not authentic, that it was not written by a university professor, because no university professor could write so poorly. Later, it was determined that the email was authentic.

Why are Professor Mirecki and the University of Kansas not embarrassed about the correctness of the grammar and usage in this writing? Why is the whole state of Kansas not concerned about this? Does this send the appropriate message to schoolchildren? For this alone I am ashamed that I graduated from this university. I doubt that I will react positively to its fundraising requests from now on.

[Read more →]

In Kansas, according to Standard & Poor’s Statewide Education Insights, about 60% to 70% of students are proficient in reading, as evaluated by the Kansas state reading test. But on the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests, only 33% to 35% of Kansas students are proficient. A similar discrepancy exists in the math test scores.

Diane Ravitch, in the New York Times on November 7, 2005, writes “Idaho claims that 90 percent of its fourth-grade students are proficient in mathematics, but on the federal test only 41 percent reached the Education Department’s standard of proficiency. Similarly, New York reports that nearly 85 percent of its fourth graders meet state standards in mathematics, yet only 36 percent tested as proficient on the national assessment. North Carolina boasts an impressive 92 percent pass rate on the state test, but only 40 percent meet the federal standard.” So this problem is not isolated to Kansas. “Basically, the states have embraced low standards and grade inflation.”

Ms. Ravitch tells us that the reasons for the huge gaps in proficiency rates include the fact that local education officials and politicians want to present good results, so that we will believe our local officials are doing a good job and that the ever-increasing funds sent to schools are wisely spent. The federal testing program hasn’t faced these pressures.

What is the danger of these local tests that show fairly good results, when in fact the picture is quite bleak? “The price of this local watering-down is clear. Our fourth-grade students generally do well when compared with their peers in other nations, but eighth-grade students are only average globally, and 12th graders score near the bottom in comparison with students in many European and Asian nations. Even our students who have taken advanced courses in mathematics and physics perform poorly relative to their peers on international tests.”

Further: “Last month, the National Academy of Sciences released a report warning that our nation’s ’strategic and economic security,’ as well as our leadership in the development of new technologies, is at risk unless we invest heavily in our human capital; that is, the education of our people. The academy report made clear that many young Americans do not know enough about science, technology or mathematics to understand or contribute to the evolving knowledge-based society.”

Having produced results like these, the education establishment in Kansas insists on keeping their monopoly on education tax dollars and the minds of young Kansans. We need to rethink the wisdom of this.

[Read more →]

Class Warfare
Besieged Schools, Bewildered Parents, Betrayed Kids and the Attack on Excellence
J. Martin Rochester
Encounter Books 2002

In Lake Wobegon, “every child is above average,” Garrison Keillor says. In my personal experience, I can’t think of any parents I know who don’t have children who are not gifted or doing much better than average. After learning about the theory of Multiple Intelligences in chapter four of this book, I now know why all children are gifted.

Multiple Intelligences is a theory, just over 20 years old, that says that besides the traditional areas of intelligence — linguistic and logical-mathematical — there are these additional areas to consider: spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. To this list might soon be added naturalist intelligence, and maybe others.

On the surface, this seems reasonable. Not everyone is good at the same things. We generally believe that besides the three Rs, it is also good to learn about physical fitness, the arts, and music. What MI does, however, is to treat all abilities as equal. If a child is not good at writing or math, they may possess some other of these intelligences, and that’s just as good.

MI leads to teaching exercises where, for example, to help learn punctuation symbols, the students might form punctuation marks with their bodies. That’s using bodily-kinesthetic intelligence. Or students might assign an animal sound to each symbol, thereby using naturalist intelligence. If the only way that some students might learn the punctuation symbols is to engage in exercises like these, I can see how that would be good. But with MI, all students must do these things, even if they already understand.

As an example, the author’s son, for studies in Greek mythology, was assigned a project where he was to “produce a cut-and-paste collage that consisted of pictures, newspaper clippings, or any other items they could cull from newspaper sources that contained references to ancient Greek culture and showed the relevance of that culture to today’s society.” This was the “capstone project in a high school class whose subject was English and which was an honors class no less.” Evidently exercises like these have replaced the written essay or term paper, even for motivated students.

Other examples: “Choose a chemical element and write two paragraphs telling why it is your favorite. Be creative.” “For homework in the science class, students created collages and drew pictures of scientists.” “… the Clayton High School English teacher who had students produce bright yellow Cliff Notes covers and the CHS history teacher who had students draw a picture of any structure in their neighborhood that had meaning for them” “… required her students to do a project expressing their feelings about prejudice, using any ‘communication’ medium they wanted. This was classical progressive education — note the emphasis on personal affective, emotive learning; the social, ideological agenda of combating prejudice; and the child-centered license to express oneself even if it is not really using language as such.”

At a time when American students are being outpaced in math and science by students in other countries, when many young people have difficulty composing a coherent sentence, when large numbers of college students must complete remedial work in writing and math before taking regular college courses, this is the present and future of American K-12 education.

I learned a lot from this book, although I did not read every page of it due to time constraints.

Does the theory of Multiple Intelligences influence Wichita public schools? It appears that it does. Quite a few schools mention it on their websites. Here is a portion of the Mission/Vision statement from Wichita’s McCollom Elementary School: “Staff will enhance students’ performance using research-based instructional strategies that include multiple intelligences, hands-on and real world experiences.”

Supplementary reading: Reframing the Mind.

A joke, the source of which I do not know:

A Logger Sells a Truckload of Lumber

1960: “A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of this price. What is his profit?”

1970 (traditional math): “A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of this price; in other words, $80. What is his profit?”

1970 (new math): “A logger exchanges a set L of lumber for a set M of money. The cardinality of set M is 100, and each element is worth $1. Make one hundred dots representing the elements of the set M. The set C of the costs of production contains 20 fewer points than set M. Represent the set C as a subset of M, and answer the following question: What is the cardinality of the set P of profits?”

1980: “A logger sells a truckload of wood for $100. His cost of production is $80, and his profit is $20. Your assignment: underline the number 20.”

1990: “By cutting down beautiful forest trees, a logger makes $20. What do you think of this way of making a living? (Topic for class participation: How did the forest birds and squirrels feel?)”

[Read more →]

In the October 14, 2005 Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger wrote about an elementary school in Little Rock, Arkansas that experienced a remarkable turnaround in student achievement. This poor school, where 92% of the students live at or below the poverty level, was able to increase its scores on an achievement test by 17% in one year.

What did Meadowcliff Elementary School do? Did it build new buildings and hire new teachers to reduce class size? Did it implement new curriculum? Did the local board of education hire an extra assistant superintendent to oversee the school? Did it increase teacher pay?

It’s the last that the school did, although not in the way the teachers unions would dictate. Instead, the school was able to implement a bonus system, whereby teachers would earn extra money based on student performance. Mr. Henninger reports the results: “Twelve teachers received performance bonuses ranging from $1,800 to $8,600. The rest of the school’s staff also shared in the bonus pool. That included the cafeteria ladies, who started eating with the students rather than in a nearby lounge, and the custodian, who the students saw taking books out of Carter’s Corner, the ‘library’ outside the principal’s office. Total cost: $134,800. The tests cost about $10,000.”

The bonuses were funded by a private donor, which allowed the school to bypass the teachers union. The teachers union opposed the second year of the bonus program because it was to be paid from the school district’s regular budget. The union insisted that the teachers at Meadowcliff vote for a contract waiver, and 100% of the teacher voted for the waiver. The fact that the teachers union would oppose something that was demonstrably beneficial for the students gives us another clue as to the union’s true constituency.

This experience shows that sometimes little, simple things can make a huge difference.

More information: PEF Announces Student Achievement and Teacher Reward Project, LR elementary scores bonuses for test gains.

[Read more →]