| This sort of presto-change-o logic is similar to the way that corporations bamboozle even the most sophisticated of consumers. As Doug Noon at Borderland explains, people are persuaded every day that bottled water is inherently "better" than what they can get from a tap, even when it's been proven that it is chemically no different, and in fact often is, plain tap water.
His conclusion, and rightly so, is that "the Obama administration's education reform policy is a scam, just like bottled water."
By using test scores to label schools as failing, current policies are creating a demand for things like charter schools and expensive tracking systems, but never actually improving schools at all. And just like the way that water bottling companies exploit people's misgivings about impure drinking water, Arne Duncan and Co. are exploiting people's fears for their children's future to advance an agenda for corporate "privatization of public wealth."
What is smack-dab in the rotten core of this vile form of "demand generation" is a fraudulent notion of the unequivocal validity of data, any data, in deciding education policy.
When education reformers are challenged to explain the rationale, it's always "the data" that supposedly reveal all we have to know about our schools and whether or not our kids are learning.
As the ever useful Yong Zhao reveals,
"Education has a new god: data. It is believed to have the power to save American education and thus everything in education must be about data-collect more data about our children, evaluate teachers and administrators based on data, and reward and punish schools using data."
Driving this desire to have everything based on data is this false sense that basing decisions on data alone is inherently more scientific and precise, and that only data can burn with clarity in the face of other murky sources of information like observation and experience.
Now of course, data can be very useful and should at least contribute to determining a course of action for public school reform. But what's being totally overlooked is that data can be just as subjective as any other form of information.
As the above link from Zhao details, an analysis conducted by William Peterson and Richard Rothstein looked at "the data" involved in awarding Race to the Top grant money from the federal government. What they concluded is that the entire RTTT process is "a patina of scientific objectivity," masking as a "subjective and somewhat random process." Their observations make the whole "objective, data-driven" claims of the Obama administration collapse into like a house of cards:
"What was involved in the decision to use a scale of 500 total points rather than, say, 10, or 100, or 1,000? Is there scientific support for the 'State Success Factors' being 90.6% as important as the 'Great Teachers and Leaders' factor? Should the 'Great Teachers' maximum points be 140, or maybe 163, instead of 138? And are there missing factors, such as 'Developing Techniques to Promote Creativity,' or others?"
As Zhao rightly concludes, "In essence, the analysis shows that 'the process (for RTTT reviewing) was presented as objective and scientific. However, further examination suggests that the selection of Delaware and Tennessee was subjective and arbitrary, more a matter of bias or chance than a result of these states' superior compliance with reform policies.'"
So if such an elaborate "data-driven" apparatus like the RTTT selection can be so flawed, "how much faith can we really have in the data that will be collected about students, used to determine their learning process, to evaluate their teachers and principals, and judge their schools?"
Another problem with relying on just "the data" is that people can misrepresent it, as Caroline Grannan, via edublogger School Matters catches Bill Gates doing. In a Newsweek op-ed that I also commented on here at OpenLeft, Gates claimed that 80 percent of students from KIPP charter schools ended up in college, thus proving, supposedly, the premise that charter schools will help cure our education woes. Turns out that's not quite right, and Gates overshot the correct percentage by, oh, 52 percentage points.
Instead of acknowledging his error, however, Gates has gone on a road to tout the record of charter schools, using an even higher college placement percentage of 95 percent as "evidence."
No Mr. Gates, chances are that your favorite model for school improvement is no better than a typical public school. And your ice no colder than mine.
Is Education an Entitlement?
Before I get to this week's Duncehat Award, I want to fulfill last week's promise to take a closer look at a profoundly intriguing new study from University of California, Berkeley titled "Who wins and who loses? Public transfer accounts for U.S. generations born 1850-2090".
As noted in this QuickHit from TGeraghty, the study highlights the value of public education in the context of entitlement spending. Unfortunately, the link to the full text of the study, posted by RandomNonviolence, no longer works, and I couldn't find the study anywhere on the 'net.
But judging by the title and the main thrust of the PR, the study focuses mostly on challenging the widespread meme that older folks in America "get a better deal" because of all the money they get from Social Security and Medicare. The study strives to correct that thinking by putting into the equation "the value of public education relative to the recipients' lifetime earnings."
Although it seems that the only important conclusion to draw from the study is that "younger Americans - specifically those born between 1972 and 2060 - are actually getting the better deal" in the context of public spending, to me, the far more interesting idea from the study is this:
"The study marks the first time that analysts have treated public education from kindergarten through college as an intergenerational entitlement benefit, which refers to programs funded by taxes paid by generations other than the recipients."
In typical economic analyses that I've read, public education is treated as a share of the country's expenditures related to a share of future economic output. Education spending is often criticized for being a larger percentage of our government's outlays (17%) than say, France's (11.4%), yet US students don't score as high as French students on international assessments. This fact alone, we are told, is "proof" that the country is not getting its "money's worth" from education spending. Because students who score lower on assessments won't eventually be able to "compete" for the higher-paying, financially more lucrative, jobs in the global economy.
But when you put education spending in the framework of the social welfare safety net, doesn't this change the whole argument? In other words, if education spending is not a function of input/output, but instead "an intergenerational entitlement benefit," then doesn't education become the payment into the system that eventually yields the rewards of Medicare and Social Security later in life?
Now whether or not the two sides of the social welfare equation - public education spending on one side and Medicare-Social Security on the other - have to "balance" as this study seems to assume is a whole other argument. But if this framework has legitimacy, and I think it does, no wonder conservatives want to destroy public schools.
Now on to the Duncehat . . .
This Week's Duncehat Award: Katherine Mangu-Ward at reason .com
Speaking of data. Just when it seems that data might actually reveal something meaningful about the state of US public education, why is it that people who love to bash educators tend to look the other way? Which brings me to this week's Duncehat Award Winner Katherine Mangu-Ward at the libertarian media site reason.com for this bit of erroneous "analysis." (The fact that edublogger Alexander Russo gives this blather "kudos" is unfortunate and all-too typical of the education community's inability to fully understand the rightwing framework that grips education policy making.)
But back to the Reason piece, first, Mangu-Ward mockingly brands the widespread concern for teacher lay-offs and firings as "Teacherpocalypse 2010." Then she trots out a phony argument that because states "spent more than necessary" on education from 2002 to 2007, then "there's room for an awful lot of cutting." How does she define what's "necessary?" By "accounting for inflation and population growth." Hmmm, wonder if she would use the same benchmark for determining the proper amount of money that should have been spent on healthcare, or college tuition, or the military.
Her conclusion that news reports about pervasive teacher job losses are just the hyperbolic venting of reporters looking for "scarier" news stories is propped up by just a single quote from a NYT editorial:
"Everywhere, school officials tend to overestimate the potential for layoffs at this time of year, to ensure that every employee they might have to dismiss receives the required notifications."
But if Mangu-Ward could write an editorial about the number of teacher jobs at stake by actually looking at, well, some numbers, she would learn that the reasons for concern are pretty specific and real.
For example, a new study (pdf) (h/t MCH) from the nation's association of school superintendents reports that:
"More than two-thirds (68 percent) of respondents cut positions in 2009-10, and 90 percent anticipate having to do so in 2010-11.
Regardless of the much-needed ARRA dollars, which were used to save an average of 20 positions per school, school districts report eliminating, on average, 29 positions over the 2009-10 and 2010-11 school years.
One-third (34 percent) of respondents are considering personnel furloughs in 2010-11, up from 12 percent who implemented furloughs in 2009-10 and 4 percent who implemented furloughs in 2008-09.
Almost two-thirds (60 percent) of respondents are considering personnel layoffs for 2010-11, up from 33 percent in 2009-10 and 12 percent in 2008-09."
Of course, once confronted with some actual facts, Mangu-Ward would probably just dismiss them as more overwrought rhetoric about "beloved kindergarten teachers." But what if it was her child's kindergarten teacher we were talking about? |
