Voice For Liberty

Tag: Education

  • A Monopoly by Any Other Name

    Writing from New Orleans, Louisiana

    This excellent article uses an amusing (but painful) anectode about service at the U.S. Post Office to drive home the point that government monopolies — the Pittsburgh Public Schools in this case — themselves may be starting to realize the public’s poor perception of their service.

    I recently had the pleasure of meeting Jamie Story, the author of this article. She is a young woman who works for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and she has written many fine articles on the subject of education. An excerpt from the article:

    What’s in a name? Apparently, to a government school monopoly, it’s everything.

    Last month, Pittsburgh Public Schools announced the district would be dropping the word “Public” from its name in order to avoid the negative connotation often associated with public schools. A paid marketing consultant helped develop the plan, which will also result in renaming the individual schools themselves.

    While a “public” outcry has caused the district to reconsider the policy, the scheme serves as a powerful reminder of the upside-down priorities of public schools — and of government monopolies in general.

    It’s no wonder why Pittsburgh’s schools suffer in public perception. While the district spends more than $12,000 per student on operating expenditures alone, only 40 percent of its high school students are proficient in mathematics. District students also perform below the national average on the SAT, ACT, and Advanced Placement tests. So one would think the best way for Pittsburgh schools to improve public perception would be to increase student’s learning, not to hire expensive consultants to rebrand the schools.

    The district’s policy is reminiscent of a decision made by the United States Postal Service in 2006. Faced with customer complaints about lengthy wait times, it came up with a novel “solution” — removing the clocks from post office walls. Rather than streamlining its processes to increase efficiency, the postal service merely tried to shield customers from the knowledge that they were receiving subpar service.

    I recommend you read the entire article at this link: http://www.texaspolicy.com/commentaries_single.php?report_id=1584

  • Adjusting the Testing Gap

    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. Actually, misleading is too mild a word. The subtitle of Murray’s article is “No Child Left Behind is beyond uninformative. It is deceptive.”

    How are the performance measures that are the yardstick of the success of No Child Left Behind deceptive? 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, Murray says, 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.

    The Charles Murray article may be read here: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008701

  • Curious Logic

    Curious Logic
    Presidential hopefuls exercise school choice, but deny it to others
    by Clint Bolick

    There’s something about our nation’s capital that converts many leading Democrats to school choice. But in most cases this extends only to their own children — not to the millions of children in failing public schools.

    Indeed, a nearly perfect correlation exists among Democratic presidential candidates who have exercised school choice for their own children and those who would deny such choices to other parents.

    When the Clintons came to Washington, D.C. in 1993, they sent Chelsea to the private Sidwell Friends School. Two years later Mr. Clinton vetoed a bill that would have allowed low-income D.C. parents to use public funds to send their children to private schools. In a speech to the National Education Association, presidential candidate Mrs. Clinton has vowed “never to abandon our public schools” — speaking apparently as a politician, not a parent.

    John Edwards decries that “America has two school systems — one for the affluent and one for everyone else.” He should know. When he joined the U.S. Senate he sent his children to a private religious school. Mr. Edwards, however, opposes private school choice for low-income families on the curious grounds that this would “drain resources” from public schools. By such logic Mr. Edwards himself “drained” approximately $132,000 from the D.C. public schools.

    There is only one candidate, Sen. Joe Biden, who has both sent his children to private school and supported school choice for others.

    The mystery man is Sen. Barack Obama, who sends his child to a private school in Chicago yet once referred to school vouchers as “social Darwinism.” Still, he says that on education reform, “I think a good place to start would be for both Democrats and Republicans to say … we are willing to experiment and invest in anything that works.”

    Well, school choice works. Every study that has examined the effect of school choice competition has found significantly improved performance by public schools.

    Given their track records it is doubtful how many candidates will agree with Sen. Obama. But as he might say, we can always have the audacity to hope.

    Mr. Bolick is president and general counsel of the Alliance for School Choice and senior fellow at the Goldwater Institute. A longer version of this article appeared in the Wall Street Journal.

  • Higher Education Wants A Spending Spree

    Higher Education Wants A Spending Spree
    By Karl Peterjohn, Kansas Taxpayers Network

    Soaring spending has not been spent evenly. The six Regents universities in Kansas initially asked for $727 million to fix deeply neglected buildings at these campuses. Governor Sebelius has performed a valuable service by responding that the Kansas Turnpike have higher tolls to fund this spending.

    The value in Governor Sebelius’ proposal is not based upon its merits. Higher education and the Kansas turnpike are both state entities but are related about as much as lightning and lightning bugs. Since the Kansas turnpike is funded with tolls, so this state agency operates with very little legislative oversight and even less public attention.

    That is unfortunate because the Kansas turnpike was supposed to become a free highway when the original bond funding was supposed to be paid off well over a decade ago. Sadly, that hasn’t happened so the turnpike jobs are safe and additional bond funding has turned this temporary entity into a permanent fixture. Here is a case where one generation of politicians made promises and their successors’ successors ignored those promises. Politicians have been known not to keep their promises so it is not surprising that a former state senate minority leader now heads up the turnpike authority.

    The turnpike does generate a steady stream of income and Governor Sebelius wants an additional portion of that used for the six Regents universities initial spending plan. This is based upon the dubious notion that the universities are “under funded” and lack funds for building maintenance. That is despite the fact that these six universities are spending a combined total of over $1 billion in tax funds and tuition for their operations. Taxpayers have increased their funding 55 percent during the last decade and now totals over $9,000 per pupil and that ignores hundreds of millions more paid in tuition.

    The universities operate primarily for the benefit of administrators and senior faculty. Look at where a sizable portion of this increased spending will go. At K.U. there are two airport hangars that need $378,635 for covering their aircraft.

    The K.U. chancellor’s, home, garage, and guest house need $607,027 in repair spending. That is property tax-free housing for the chancellor. That is the largest chunk of the $1,392,547 needed to properly house the six Regents institutions’ presidents and one K.U. chancellor.

    In addition, the Regents are claiming that millions more are needed for facilities like Allen Field House, Bramlage Coliseum, and Ahearn Field House. A number of these sports complexes generate massive sums of cash in men’s sports. The universities complain about a lack of funding but their endowments have been growing nicely and that seems to be completely ignored in the public discussion here.

    The average Kansas taxpayers do not get to live in property tax-free housing. The average Kansan is not making the large salaries enjoyed by Regents institution leaders who are all making massively more in salary than even the governor. In the last few years the average student at these schools has been facing double digit annual percentage increases in their tuition while the university presidents are enjoying annual double digit percentage increases in their salaries.

    There is support from free spending editorial pages, like the Wichita Eagle, that have endorsed the Regents original spending package. Providing the Regents with a fiscal pass on how this deterioration in facilities occurred ignores responsibility for operating the university system during the last decade. In Bill Graves’ first term as governor his “crumbling classrooms” proposal was passed and was supposed to help the Regents universities and their buildings and facilities. Basically a decade later, taxpayers are spending more, students are paying higher tuitions, and facilities are still a mess.

    Needless to say, salaries for administrators and faculties as well as benefits have grown much faster than the average Kansan’s income. Ohio University Professor Richard Vedder’s “Going Broke By Degree” book outlines this problem well. The situation in Kansas is not unique and exists in many other states. The absolute real financial burden of sending a child to college has grown substantially over time. Moreover, that burden has grown faster than people’s incomes. Giving the Regents a blank check will aggravate and worsen this state’s fiscal problems while not addressing the real challenges in higher education.

  • Market forces and teacher (mis)-education

    From Dan Mitchell: “In a system governed by market forces, teacher pay would be based on how well students learn, not how many superfluous degrees teachers accumulate:”

    …scores of studies show no ties between graduate studies and teacher effectiveness. Even among researchers who see some value in some master’s programs, many urge dramatic reforms and an end to automatic stipends. “If we pay for credentials, teachers have an incentive to seek and schools have an incentive to provide easy credentials,” said Arthur Levine, a researcher who once headed Columbia University’s Teachers College. “If, on the other hand, we only pay for performance, teachers have an incentive to seek and schools have an incentive to provide excellent training.” …A roundup published in 2003 by The Economic Journal, a publication of the international Royal Economic Society, unearthed 170 relevant studies. Of those, 15 concluded that master’s programs helped teachers, nine found they hurt them, and 146 found no effect. One of the largest such studies began a decade ago, when the Texas Education Agency and the University of Texas at Dallas began offering researchers continuing access to millions of student records. That effort, a part of the Texas Schools Project, has found no correlation between master’s degrees and student achievement. “They’re worthless. Case closed. Next question,” said Eric Hanushek, a senior project researcher who also works at Stanford University. …school districts have long paid premiums for teachers with master’s degrees. And the premiums have led to a large increase in the share of American teachers with the degrees, from 26 percent in 1960 to 56 percent in 1995. In much of the nation, salary premiums for master’s degrees exceed $5,000 a year… that money could make a tangible impact elsewhere, buying student laptops, tutoring sessions, field trips or additional courses. …”America has 3.2 million teachers who together make up the nation’s most powerful political lobby, and more than half of them hold master’s degrees. They’ll fight for that money,” said Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, a Washington-based nonprofit that funds and reviews education research. “The universities will fight, too,” she said. “Master’s programs are cash cows. Schools charge thousands a year in tuition for programs that cost little to run. Ever wonder why ed schools don’t publicize this research?”

    — Dallas Morning News

  • Rhonda, markets are the answer

    Writing from New Orleans, Louisiana

    An editorial in the October 13, 2006 Wichita Eagle by Rhonda Holman expresses disgust with the Kansas State Board of Education, and praises Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius’s criticism of the board.

    (I am a little ashamed to admit that I am in New Orleans, but still reading The Wichita Eagle.)

    Now it is no secret that Ms. Holman disagrees with some of the actions the board has taken the past few years. I am quite certain that if she agreed with what the board has done, she would have not written this editorial, and the governor would have not criticized the board. After all, both are in favor of expansion of government, as long as they agree with what the government is doing.

    That illustrates the problem with government-mandated solutions: everyone has to accept what government decides to provide, or pay doubly to decide in favor of something else. Few families can afford to do that when it comes to the education of their children.

    Ms. Holman, if we were to reduce the government’s role in the supplying of education, we wouldn’t have to worry about what the Kansas Board of Education is doing, as there would be no such board, or their power and influence would be greatly diminished. Instead of everyone accepting what politicians and government bureaucrats decide we should have, everyone would be free to choose the type of education they want for their children. No matter how specialized your requirements or uncommon your preferences, market-based provision of education would almost certainly supply what you desire.

    Wouldn’t that be a wonderful! No more fretting about what the Board of Education is doing, as people would be free of its power over their lives.

    Similarly — and most refreshing — we would be free from Kathleen Sebelius’s authority and Rhonda Holman’s influence. But that’s something I don’t think they want.

  • The Kansas school lawsuit that makes sense

    Recently The Wichita Eagle editorialized on the recent school finance lawsuit in Kansas, quoting USD 259 (Wichita) school board president Sarah Skelton as pleased with the “great return” on the district’s investment in funding the suit. As much more money as the public schools will be receiving, it is not as much as was asked for, and USD 259 is preparing to ask for even more spending from a bond issue. Public comments by lead attorney Alan Rupe hint at another lawsuit, perhaps in federal court.

    Lawsuits like the one in Kansas are commonplace in America. The standard remedy sought is more money. In Kansas, the legislature was sternly told to “do their job” and find more money to, as school board vice-president Lynn Rogers said, “to do what was the right thing for the kids.”

    Evidently it doesn’t matter that we have been spending more and more on public schools for a long time. Public schools seem to be getting worse and worse. Here’s some evidence. From the National Academy of Sciences report “Rising Above the Gathering Storm” published last year:

    Fewer than one-third of US fourth grade and eighth grade students performed at or above a level called “proficient” in mathematics; “proficiency” was considered the ability to exhibit competence with challenging subject matter. Alarmingly, about one-third of the fourth graders and one-fifth of the eighth graders lacked the competence to perform basic mathematical computations.

    A recent study by the American Institutes for Research contained this:

    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.

    According to the report “Reading Between The Lines” issued by ACT earlier this year, only “51% of ACT-tested high school graduates met ACT’s College Readiness Benchmark for Reading, demonstrating their readiness to handle the reading requirements for typical credit-bearing first-year college coursework.”

    There is little doubt that schools need a lot of improvement. The problem with the recent school lawsuit is that the remedy it asked for — more spending — is probably not going to produce the desired results, if your goal is to produce better-educated children. (If your goal is a larger education bureaucracy, more spending will produce that.)

    The lawsuit I would like to see pursued in Kansas would ask for a meaningful remedy. In July, a case titled Crawford v. Davy was filed in New Jersey. This case asks for two remedies: “elimination of compulsory attendance zones that prevent children from attending better-performing public schools outside of their districts, and provision to the students’ families their children’s pro rata share of state and local educational funding so they may attend a functioning public or private school.”

    In effect, Crawford v. Davy asks for school choice and vouchers as the remedy. No extra spending is asked for. No additional layers of bureaucracy. Just the power of choice.

    We desperately need to rely on the power of markets and individuals, instead of bureaucrats and politicians, to improve public education in Kansas. Consider this: if it is true that Kansas schools are underfunded, they have been since 1999, the year the present suit was filed. (Presumably they were also underfunded for some years before that.) The legislature resisted the full remedy that the Kansas Supreme Court ordered, and what was passed was not funded in all years. The Wichita Eagle editorializes over and over about the legislature “not doing its job” and “playing games on schools.” It now seems possible that a child who entered public school at the time the problems with funding were noticed will have graduated from high school (maybe even college) by the time things are “fixed,” and that assumes the state will continue to apply the fix that’s been mandated, and that the fix works.

    Past experience shows that spending more money on schools won’t help. We must try something else.

  • Kansas Board of Education election demonstrates one thing

    A New York Times article said: “The races have been hard-fought.” Yes, they were.

    Looking at some of the comments left on various discussion forums in the state of Kansas, the victors are joyously gleeful in their win and vindictive towards the defeated. I would hazard to guess that the victors were more interested in victory for its own sake, and more motivated by hatred for their rivals, than for the substance of what they were fighting for.

    The two most-read (my guess; I could be wrong) blogs in Kansas exist, solely in one case and primarily in the other, to promote their authors’ personal agenda of whether to teach evolution in Kansas public schools.

    The substance of this fight is over something relatively minor in the overall picture of a child’s education. Unless one majors in the biological sciences, evolution — no matter what side you take — is a chapter or two in a course that many students never take. Even for those working in the field of science it may not be that important. I spoke to a veterinarian friend of mine and asked what role the study of evolution played in her professional training. The answer: none. I imagine if I asked my physician I would get the same answer.

    While this scuffle takes place American students continue to fall behind other nations in skills as basic as reading and mathematics. As reported in other articles published on this website, adult literacy, even for college graduates, is embarrassingly low.

    From both left and right, political combatants fight to force others to bow to their view of what Kansas children should be taught. They have to fight. We have one system of government schools that everyone must use (or pay doubly to escape). The victors, then, have great power over the minds of children, and everyone must bow to their will.

    This election vividly demonstrates that we are foolish to leave the responsibility for the education of children to politicians. Combining this election with the controversy over Kansas school finance provides ample evidence that politicians and education bureaucrats are more interested in their own power, their ability to force others to submit to their vision of the world, than they are about the meaningful education of children.

    During the past few years there has been little discussion of what would really improve education in Kansas: simply give parents control over the education of their children. By implementing school choice through vouchers, let parents decide whether schools — public or private, secular or religious, large or small — are doing a good job for their children. By letting markets, rather than government, provide schooling, parents can choose what type of school they want for their children. They wouldn’t be subject to the whims of what elected politicians, education bureaucrats, and teachers union bosses believe is best for them.

    Let the government of the State of Kansas relinquish its monopoly on the financing and production of schooling — the very type of monopoly power that, if wielded by private enterprise, would be condemned as unjust and immoral.

    But the public education lobby in Kansas works very effectively to protect its monopoly. In the meantime, schoolchildren fall farther behind.

  • Adjusting the testing gap

    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.