Fairness prompts me to direct you to this post from Matt Yglesias, who feels that my earlier response to him misrepresented his views. I’ve never been one for half apologies, and I do think that a lot of what I said was and is relevant to his points. (I really hate the “I’m sorry if he’s offended, but…” thing.) However, I do regret focusing on charter schools when he didn’t intend to be discussing them specifically.
To be as direct to his points as I can, then– there is still an assumption here that is lacking evidence. Matt argues that because of the high price of land and housing in the best school districts, poor parents lack the means to enroll their children in the best schools. That’s true. But note something here.
If you took the Washington DC metro area and somehow managed to change the current unfair situation where the low-income neighborhoods have the worst schools and instead made it that the lowest-income neighborhoods have the best schools, people wouldn’t just stay in place. Parents of means would start relocating to the places where the schools are best.
The question is, if we gave poor students equal mobility to their rich counterparts, what would the consequences be for their educational performance? If the assumption is that it would improve, I have to challenge that assumption. That is an empirical question that has to be answered empirically. I’m not sure what Matt’s preferred policy regime would look like to achieve equity in student/parent mobility. I focused on charter schools in large part because they are one of the primary mechanisms advocated by school reformers for increasing student mobility and parent choice. It’s true that this is not a perfect analog for having the money available to move to wherever you want, but along with magnet schools and private school vouchers, charter schools are a primary means of achieving this mobility. And as you are surely bored of hearing from me now, we lack credible empirical evidence that these mobility-increasing measures work to improve student outcomes.
The pessimist will point out that there’s the thorny cause/effect problem here, as several of Matt’s other commenters have done in the past. Are poor people trapped in bad school districts? Or are bad school districts bad because they house poor students? I am not a strict economic determinist by any means. (If I was, I wouldn’t be chasing the career dream that I am.) But I think that Matt is assuming a simplicity about school quality when it is an immensely complicated issue, and he knows better. I’m tempted by the half-serious old challenge: swap the students from the worst public high school in New York with the students from Stuyvesant and see which school looks good and which bad. In fact, we’ve had some evidence on that score recently, albeit obliquely.
So the same old boring critiques apply: we lack evidence that student mobility improves educational performance for the students who are falling behind. Additionally, we still lack effective metrics that, with high validity and reliability, can assess which schools are good or bad, meaning that even parents with the means to move their children lack the information necessary to do so intelligently.
If the assumption is not that increasing student mobility improves student outcomes but merely that choice is a benefit in and of itself, I’m back to a simple philosophical disagreement. I don’t think it’s responsible for government to fund different choices (of whatever kind) simply to provide choice.
Update: Commenter Roger Moore says
Watch out, though, because you’re in dangerous territory there. I’ll agree that we shouldn’t redesign our national educational system around a concept that hasn’t been adequately tested, but it’s never going to be adequately tested until somebody tries it. You have to have some kind of trial for new ideas or they’ll never get a chance to prove themselves.
Agreed. I’m an advocate of experimentation with policy, certainly. I’m not strictly opposed to charter schools, although the details (particularly in their orientation towards the teachers unions and the attendant political dynamics) matter very much. Pilot programs for increasing student mobility are important. I’m just curious what form they’ll take, and I want us to be responsible about waiting for the data.
Corner Stone
This is ridiculously easy to answer.
Seriously?
I otherwise enjoy your writing Freddie but this is some bullshit.
Corner Stone
Listen, this is easy. I hate to trumpet thought lines M-C repeats ad infinitum, but SES is THE determinant for outcomes in education.
Freddie deBoer
How is that a criticism of me? I am here arguing precisely that SES is a huge determinant of student outcomes. I’m not, however, willing to call it the only determinant.
Freddie deBoer
I mean, look, as someone who reads an awful lot of educational studies and who works on pedagogy, I can assure you that whatever else is true these issues are not easy.
Corner Stone
@Freddie deBoer: Maybe I misread your OP? Aren’t you arguing that we’re not sure if money could provide different and better outcomes for students?
ETA, otherwise I don’t know what this means:
“If the assumption is not that increasing student mobility improves student outcomes but merely that choice is a benefit in and of itself, I’m back to a simple philosophical disagreement. I don’t think it’s responsible for government to fund different choices (of whatever kind) simply to provide choice.”
Tyro
SES is not static. If everyone who can leave a poor school district for greener pastures can, then the SES of everyone left will fall off a cliff.
Freddie deBoer
I’m arguing that Matt writes as if improving student mobility in and of itself would improve student performance, and I am saying that this is an empirical question for which we lack empirical evidence. It’s true that SES is largely determinative of student educational performance, but it is not purely determinative. (For example, the persistent racial achievement gap that exists across the income spectrum.)
If you’re assuming that the major disadvantage to low SES students is their lack of mobility (not saying you are, but if that’s what you’re saying) that seems to me to be reductive. There are a whole lot of problems that low SES students face– crime, drugs, broken families, environments entirely not conducive to being educated– that would not be improved simply by moving them into different school districts.
As for my last point, I just don’t think that we should pay for student mobility if we don’t know and can’t prove that student mobility will improve performance in and of itself.
Freddie deBoer
Trust me– if it were up to me we’d shower poor students with gold. But my point is precisely that providing higher student mobility is not the same as removing them from poverty and that we don’t know if that would work.
Corner Stone
@Tyro: You’ve previously argued here that moving is a snap for people who aren’t happy with their education outcomes.
JPL
Schools depend on property taxes for funding and richer school districts have more money for improved technology.
Two decades ago while living in Dallas, I heard about an experimental elementary school in an area that was poverty stricken. The school building itself was old but the district chose to spend money hiring the best teachers and offering small classes and classes in science,languages and arts that were not offered in the other elementary schools. Students from wealthier school systems volunteered to go and what you had was a system composed of higher achievers and lower achievers. Everyone benefited. It was part of the Richardson Independent School District. I don’t know if they still do the program but it worked at the time. At the time there was a waiting list.
Jeffro
@Corner Stone: It is unless the people running those schools do something about it. There are plenty of lower SES schools in my state that are eating suburban schools’ lunch on several measures.
Mobility isn’t the answer: parents, particularly lower SES income parents, don’t know about schools’ performance measures and don’t act accordingly anyway. What DOES matter is that schools in lower SES areas are a) funded well enough, even if it requires that a state use an equalization formula (add more state $$$ to districts that are not as well funded locally) and are b) held to a high standard (students, teachers, admins, and parents).
It’s no wonder that’s a hard argument. You have to combine a call for the necessary taxes, some redistribution of said taxes, and then put the responsibility on everyone to do their part. Soshulist in the ex-TREME ;)
Corner Stone
@Freddie deBoer: Money is the silver bullet to education outcomes.
Provide a child guaranteed meals and safe transport and we’ll see improved educational outcomes. Regardless of the parental involvement.
Take the same child from any ISD with funding/safety issues and drop them in West University ISD in Houston. They will improve.
Shlemizel - was Alwhite
Tyro
@Corner Stone: For all but the poor, that’s true, and it’s why the middle classes tend to be happy with their local schools. And it’s what hollowed out cities in the past 40 years: middle class people didn’t like the schools, and they left, and the entire economy of the cities imploded, making everyone, including the local schools, worse off.
Corner Stone
@Jeffro:
I don’t know how you can argue this line of thought. Lower SES households have no way to mitigate their circumstances, much less change them.
I’ve seen families by the boat load register their child in an ISD using an Aunt, Uncle, etc’s address just to give their kid a chance.
Sam Houston
I cannot describe to you how awful our inner city schools are even though my son goes to one. There are not words hopeless and terrifying enough. The urban charter schools only excel at having fewer cockroaches.
The differences in urban/suburban schools mirrors the income equality gap.
My family is an anomaly in intelligence and education and if we weren’t blessed by that then our son would have had no real education. We refused to homeschool him because we believed socialization was paramount for a child’s development. So basically for 10 years now he goes to school to learn how to get along with many angry under-educated kids with no hope and quite a few catatonic teachers. Then he comes home and learns the three Ms – Math, Multiplayer Mayhem, and Monologica.
Want to make a graph that will make you cry? Chart the lifespans of these kids by school neighborhood wealth.
Every day I wake up and notice our backwards southern metropolis isn’t on fire and I’m amazed.
Corner Stone
@Tyro: Wake up and smell the 21st Century amigo.
Shlemizel - was Alwhite
BTW – money could make a difference. The Randian assholes are fond of noting that school funding has increased 180%; since 1976 but fail to note that the rate of inflation since then is 378% so schools have half the money today they had in 1976.
The classroom in our local elementary school were designed to hole 20-25 kids but have 35 now. Art, music are gone completely, phys ed is a joke; everything is designed as test prep to try and save the school from being sodomized by no child left behind.
keestadoll
Many mobility programs do not require more funding but rather effort by the parent. I know that in San Diego for example, there was an Open Enrollment program which was HUGELY in demand by parents (including myself many years ago now). So I’m not sure what commentators mean by “paying for student mobility” beyond what programs currently exist such as PISC and VEEP (again, I’m using San Diego schools as an example) that are targeted for the lowest income families who, by virtue of the fact that they are seeing a need but cannot do it themselves due to financial issues, are very invested (read: desperate) to give their children a good education. It just seems to me that if a parent is at least TRYING to use these programs it negates the notion that these programs are a waste of time and money.
Ugh. I’m rambling. School starts tomorrow. Thank God!
Corner Stone
@Shlemizel – was Alwhite:
Sodomized, ha!
Yep, ask any kid in elementary what happens after the TAKS testing occurs. They watch movies for 4 weeks.
glasnost
Good to see you and M.Y. exploring empirical questions without the assumption of malice. My take on the matter is that anything that creates pressure on any aspect of the system creates pressure on all the rest of the aspects one way or another, and pressure is a good thing when the empirical outcomes are bad, so increasing the pressure on schools to create better students, by any means neccessary, is a good thing. Schools who face that pressure can start pressuring students and parents. That’s the only way cultures ever change, assuming that some of this, as Fred suggests here, has to do with something other than socio-economic status, and something other than the behavior/effort level of teachers and administrators themselves at the given instituion.
By the way, doesn’t it sort of weaken your argument that there’s an evidentiary problem re mobility and school outcomes if there’s an evidentiary problem re school outcomes and, well, everything?
I think MY – and this is not entirely on topic – makes a fairly good point when he says that if institutional personnel behavior/structure has no effect on student outcomes, this not a good thing for anyone attempting to argue on behalf of compensation, job security, or anything else on behalf of those personnel. The good news is that I don’t really believe it to be true.
Freddie deBoer
@Corner Stone: I believe you’re mixing two very different concepts, socioeconomic status of students and funding of schools. The socioeconomic status of students is highly determinative, but as I will say again, not purely determinative. There are many other factors which affect student performance. (On a simple logical level, there are higher and lower performers from the same socioeconomic backgrounds across the spectrum.) But, yes, high correlation between being poor and testing poorly is seen across a considerable academic literature.
School funding and student performance is a different beast. The literature is far less clear on that question. From the data I’ve seen– and please take all of this with a grain of salt– school funding has a measurable but small impact. Additionally, the source of the funding makes a difference. I can’t give you any easy answers as to what the consensus position is on school funding and performance but I think it is fair to say that there is far less unanimity on the question than there is on SES.
That’s a good gloss on the larger point: you might be able to increase student mobility in a way that makes poor students have equal mobility to rich students, although it would be hard to really accomplish that, but we need evidence before we can say that doing so would eliminate the SES performance gap. I’m skeptical. I think there’s just too much cause/effect noise in the signal and I think that being poor has far more negative effects on children than just on student mobility.
Finally, I just think that you are asserting power in student mobility that is not backed up by evidence. For example, private school vouchers certainly increase the student mobility of those who have them, but broadly speaking, they have not been proven to improve student outcomes for those who use them. That’s not nearly determinative that student mobility wouldn’t have positive impacts, but I can’t say that it’s encouraging.
jcgrim
Yglesis’ assumptions (not facts) are coming from ignorance about effective education in general, and quality learning communities specifically. He fails to note that the policies he espouses as ‘saving” poor kids, exemplified by Arne Duncan in Chicago and in New Orleans after Katrina, are total failures and their success stories are mythological.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/29-10
Freddie deBoer
Which is not at all to say that I don’t want more school funding! I do. I want much, much more. But I think we need to be modest about the gains here.
By the way, doesn’t it sort of weaken your argument that there’s an evidentiary problem re mobility and school outcomes if there’s an evidentiary problem re school outcomes and, well, everything?
It definitely does weaken it. I’m just not sure that there’s a policy outcome that makes sense given evidentiary weakness across the board.
Shlemizel - was Alwhite
@Corner Stone:
I only have experience with my wifes school – after the test a lot of remedial work goes on there. It is focused on teaching more than the damned test subjects.
BTW – a 13 YO ex-student of my wive was shot & killed last week on the street near his home. Police say it was not random & he was not an innocent by-stander. These are the kids they have at the school. The principal once told my wife to tread cautiously on discipline as he was aware some of these kids either were or soon would be ‘gangstas’ and he could not protect her.
El Cid
There is an interesting work by sociologists focusing on class & race on a particular program which recruited poor black children into a program to send them to the same elite, upper-class private boarding schools which are the farm team for America’s upper classes.
America’s upper class depends not only on economic wealth and political elite influence, but a social upper class production mechanism — i.e., to make sure the next generations know how to act properly and how to look at the world and their social connections, and to breed them properly.
One function is to prepare them academically and of course socially / psychologically for the nation’s elite Universities and colleges which are famed for their upper-class-promotion networks as well as intellectual heft, whether or not that latter route works for a particular younger member. (Look at the George W. Bush Jr. trajectory.)
One of the alumna was Tracy Chapman, who still supports the organization (“A Better Chance”) today.
El Cid
Also, I say we experiment and make sure schools in the poorest and minority areas are the best funded and best staffed and best managed, and worry about being wrong when it turns out that way.
It doesn’t mean that that many more people would get good jobs, because there may not be that many good jobs any more.
But what the heck? Worth a shot. Even despite the crying need for more money for billionaires and corporate executives.
Roger Moore
@Freddie deBoer:
Watch out, though, because you’re in dangerous territory there. I’ll agree that we shouldn’t redesign our national educational system around a concept that hasn’t been adequately tested, but it’s never going to be adequately tested until somebody tries it. You have to have some kind of trial for new ideas or they’ll never get a chance to prove themselves.
Freddie deBoer
I should stress– I’m not a nihilist. I believe that there are positive steps to be taken to improve student performance, and I certainly believe that we can find better metrics than our current ones. I firmly support more funding for all public schools, and I think that certain charter school practices are worthy of examination. I also think that working to make teaching a better compensated position could result in a lot of net positives for our educational outcomes. But I also think that we have to be realistic about the genuinely difficult problems of class and racial divides, and I think solving these problems will require us to check our deductions against data.
El Cid, thanks very much for the cite, looks fascinating.
Freddie deBoer
@Roger Moore: That’s true. That’s why the policy details matter so much; what kind of regime are we talking about to achieve student mobility?
Sam Houston
@El Cid: Thank you! Amazing! Exclamation Marks!
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Shlemizel – was Alwhite: That’s so incredibly sad that your wife’s principal had to advise her he could not protect her. And we bother to wonder whether this society is fvcked?
BTW, best wishes for a comfortable treatment and full recovery.
Stepping out of the thread before Freddie’s stalker shows up to raise my BP.
Corner Stone
@Freddie deBoer: I’m going to have to read this a few times because you’re using a lot of words.
Corner Stone
@El Cid:
If there’s one thing I’ve heard here in wingnut central more than abortion funding topics, it’s “Robin Hood” funding for schools in McAllen TX. Where the god damned dirty spics steal money and funding from the appropriate white majority ISDs across the state. More specifically, the white (wingnut) ISD where I live.
For some reason, the spics down South have caused us here to revolt against tax increases and therefore approve reducing pretty much every program except HS Football.
Freddie deBoer
I’m just saying that you are making a pretty big claim, and I haven’t seen the evidence to support it. If you’d care to provide a link or citation, I’d be happy to read.
Corner Stone
@Freddie deBoer: Where would I find one? You think there’s a study about poor people movin’ on up? To the deluxe apartment?
Corner Stone
We have 60+ years of evidence of poor educational outcomes in lower SES bounds. Charter schools are not the answer.
Freddie deBoer
@Corner Stone: Yes, I agree. Lower SES corresponds with lower educational performance. Charter schools appear very unlikely to me to be the answer. I don’t think we disagree, there.
Tyro
Lower SES corresponds with lower educational performance.
It’s called socio-economic status for a reason. And school policies can have a tangible effect on the “socio-” part.
We have 60+ years of evidence of poor educational outcomes in lower SES bounds.
All using the pre-testing, pre-charter school policies of the last 60+ years. If the school systems before the advent of charter schools and other school reform agendas were so smart, how come they did such a piss-poor job with the low-SES students? It’s not that I totally blame the teachers and schools in poor urban districts, it’s that they had their chance and they have a poor track record, so I’m disinclined to listen to their complaints about charter schools.
Cranky Observer
Seems to me a very fertile ground for research would the Kansas City and St. Louis voluntary transfer programs, where suburban [public, some unionized] school districts – many of them very high performing – took in students from the utterly failed St. Louis and not-so-great Kansas City public schools. Those programs are now ending (unfortunately), but there are many low-income and disadvantaged transfer students still working their way through the suburban systems (and controls in the form of siblings and cousins who stayed with the city schools).
Cranky
Freddie deBoer
If the school systems before the advent of charter schools and other school reform agendas were so smart, how come they did such a piss-poor job with the low-SES students?
But surely the question then becomes whether charter schools in fact do a better job. We’re still figuring it out– which is why we need to continue experimentation– but if the answer were to be no, we have to ask a) what else could work better and b) if in fact such a solution exists.
Freddie deBoer
@Cranky Observer: Yes yes yes.
Corner Stone
@Tyro:
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!
Are you for real dog?
Cranky Observer
> Yglesis’ assumptions (not facts) are coming from
> ignorance about effective education in general,
> and quality learning communities specifically.
> He fails to note that the policies he espouses
> as ‘saving” poor kids, exemplified by Arne
> Duncan in Chicago and in New Orleans after
> Katrina, are total failures and their success
> stories are mythological.
It isn’t that he “fails to note” – he consistently and willfully refuses to acknowledge that the vast majority of US children do NOT attend failed urban schools, and that the vast majority of US public schools (some unionized, some not) do an excellent job of educating their students. He is willing to join with the Radical Right to destroy public schools on the assumption that some “better” private-market substitute will arise without bothering to define what better means for the majority of US children.
Cranky
Corner Stone
@Cranky Observer: Cranky, that sounds fascinating. Any pre-lim opinions?
Samara Morgan
Look you dishonest lying gasbag.
i have fucking had it with your cheesy self.
Matt SAID NOTHING ABOUT CHARTER SCHOOLS.
SEVERAL PEOPLE POINTED THAT OUT!
dig this comment you stone bulshytt talker.
Huzzah! improve the PUBLIC SCHOOLS you fucking spinner.
Now you can resume your scheduled program of ankle biting bloggers higher up the food chain like TNC and Matt, and continue your kangaroo slap fighting with the Sully borg.
This has a been a PSA from Balloon Juice Glibertarian Watch.
Samara Morgan
@Freddie deBoer: THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT CHARTER SCHOOLS IMPROVE EITHER STUDENT PERFORMANCE OR SCHOOL PERFORMANCE.
so enough experimentation already.
I thought you read Jim’s Paradox of Glibertarianism?
this is the usual bulshytt glibertarian line– its too COMPLEX so we have to experiment.
but experimentation in society led to Distributed Jesusland™ , experimentation in economics led to the Econopalypse, and experimentation in education led to NCLB and Americas 25th place standing in science and 30th place standing in math.
And experimentation with “charter schools” will lead to for profit schools and Klan schools and Creationism schools, and virtual segregation academies.
Samara Morgan
@Freddie deBoer:
all glibertarians are….as long as they have no skin in the game.
yeah, right. WTF was your whole attack on MY for?
pageclicks?
jayackroyd
I don’t have time right now to construct this argument fully, but do note that one reason that poor people don’t get to send their kids to schools in expensive suburban neighborhoods is because they aren’t allowed to live there. The zoning rules don’t permit multifamily dwellings, or houses with small lots.
When Matt talks about market values for land, he is glossing over the very much non-market mechanisms that are used to keep poor, and middle-income, people out of the elite school districts.
Corner Stone
@jayackroyd:
I’d like to expound on this because of course it deflates a lot of arguments regarding SES bounds, and mobility.
jcgrim
Here’s a call to action for Aug 29 by parents after 6 years of New Orleans school choice. They tell the story better than Yglesis’ hypothetical musings on school “choice”:
http://parentsacrossamerica.org/2011/08/join-parents-across-america-nola-aug-29-to-save-our-public-schools/
Corner Stone
Just as an example, in Houston, TX HISD is notoriously bad. Bad outcomes, bad students, bad teachers, bad everything.
But wait…HISD also serves an area known as West University.
And I’d need to sell my current house about 4 times over just to by one house zoned into West U. And it would still be a “tear down” at $600K+.
Guess the educational outcomes for children in HISD that attend West U schools. C’mon…guess.
Cranky Observer
> Corner Stone @45
> Cranky, that sounds fascinating. Any
> pre-lim opinions?
AFAIK there haven’t been any formal studies, so I can only go on the anecdotal evidence from family members involved as teachers, parents, and students.
The results are essentially what you would expect given the discussions upthread on resource imbalance and socioeconomic status: if the transfer students get to the well-funded, well-organized, high-performing districts in kindergarten and stay though graduation they do quite well. Not as well children whose parents have been focused on their intellectual development since birth but, given that I am aware of several cases of mothers who have to get their children out of the cot at the homeless shelter and onto the bus every morning, pretty well.
If they arrive by second grade they can usually be brought up to passing level by high school, with a correspondingly higher discipline and dropout rate. If they arrive after second grade, well…
Of course while the suburban district that I am familiar with [unionized!] has had to tighten its belt a bit the last two years as property taxes have caught up (down) with falling house prices it still has teachers, support staff, and facilities that are very good by any standards. In fact it continued to accept transfer students for three years after the program officially ended on its own dime. Meanwhile the urban district from which we take the students with the most motivated parents has undergone wage cut after wage cut, layoff after layoff, facility closing after facility closing… But hey, we all know it isn’t resources that makes the difference; it is the ability to fire teachers arbitrarily and to layer on more and more standardized tests!
Cranky
Jeffro
@Corner Stone: Um, I can argue it ’cause it’s called data…we’ve had choice in all its variations for over two decades and by and large, even in “bad” school districts, most parents don’t take advantage of school choice.
Just a fact.
Jeffro
Data: http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/918174-196/nashua-parents-pass-on-choice.html
Corner Stone
@Jeffro: Link it up dog. Let’s peer review that mofo.
ETA, oooo, beaten to the linking punch!
Jeffro
Horrendous data: up to 97% of parents don’t take advantage of school choice…
http://www.ncspe.org/publications_files/OP106.pdf
Peer review that ;)
Jeffro
Corner Stone, we’d like to think that parents would ‘choice’ their kids all over the place to get into the best schools, but the truth is:
a) much as voters like their own Congresspeople, they tend to think their local schools are better than they really are
b) ‘choice’ often means b1) doing the research to find a better school and b2) finding a way to get the kids there/get ’em home
c) ‘choice’ also means that they’re not with their neighborhood kids, who they play with at home, etc etc.
Parents want their local school – their very nearest school – to be of high quality. THAT is where to focus the effort. It is most certainly NOT like a regular consumer good or service for a ton of reasons.
Roger Moore
@jayackroyd:
There are many valid criticisms of Matt’s ideas, but that isn’t one of them. He spends a lot of time bitching about anti-density zoning regulations and how they keep more people from living in good areas. I’m not sure if he’s ever explicitly made the connection with the ability to move into better school districts, but he’s definitely an advocate of ending suburban policies that prevent multi-unit dwellings.
jayackroyd
@Roger Moore:
Yes, he does indeed do that. But not in the post we are referring to. And do note that there is some incoherence going on here–with this post vs posts where he bitches about zoning. There isn’t a market mechanism operating here–so he would’ve been better served to remind us of that.
Ohio Mom
Aways enjoy reading Cranky Observer’s take on public education. Too bad Matt Y never listened to him, he could have learned something.
Corner Stone
@Jeffro: Yes. I’ll duly read and interpret the results from the “National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education”.
Jeffro
Can I just say that nonsense about land values and density as it relates to education strikes me as a charade of contrarian/”outside-the-box” thinking?
Just. Help. Local. Schools. Get. Better.
There is no magic bullet, there is no way to rezone urban land use that will magically make math scores shoot up, there is no way to do it on the cheap, and there is no way to do it by just shoving money at schools.
There is a baseline of decent facilities and teacher salaries/support that needs to be met. And then there are expectations to be placed on everyone involved. It is a labor-intensive process that involves the widest variety of “inputs” imaginable (which it’s why that NCLB is FINALLY starting to focus on growth, not proficiency). But after that, it is a process of getting better every day. Makes for boring headlines, but you know, there it is.
James E. Powell
You’re kidding, right?
I taught at a ‘failing’ high school in Los Angeles for three and a half years. 80% of the students lived in the projects. We had the highest number of foster-care children in the district. I don’t recall the exact percentage of English learners, but it was among the highest in the district. I also cannot tell you the exact number of my students who were the first in the history of their families to graduate high school, but the number was very large.
Can you really believe that those students’ low test scores were the result of ‘bad’ teachers at a ‘bad’ school?
Do ‘good’ schools and ‘good’ districts have student bodies like these?
Poor people in the U.S. are not so much trapped as seriously limited in their options. The only option that I see the corporate school reformers offering is to have their children go to schools where the teachers make less money and work longer hours.
‘Bad’ schools and ‘bad’ districts are those where America’s poorest and most academically disengaged students are concentrated.
Freddie deBoer
@James E. Powell: Yes. That was my point. It was a rhetorical question meant to indicate that I thought the latter. I thought the rest of the post made that clear. Jesus.
Jeffro
@Corner Stone: Shorter Corner Stone: “When even the title of something offends my preconceived notions, I surrender my critical thinking skills and revert back to ‘well, I just KNOW I’m right’ and can disregard it.”
And even stranger, something is inherently wrong or biased about “nationally” having a “center” to “study” “privatization in education”? Help me out here. Assuming some study, SOME place managed to produce data that challenged your assumptions. What would that study or center have to be called to slip past your brush-off and actually, you know, be evaluated on its merits?
Walker
Bear in mind the closest thing we ever had to a success story was the economic integration of Wake County schools. Which the Republicans promptly destroyed this past year.
Corner Stone
@Jeffro: I said I was reading it. What’s your problem?
It’s 41 fvcking pages.
Jeffro
@Freddie deBoer: Freddie, do a quick Google search on “credo study charter schools” – it’s as close to an apples-to-apples comparison of charter vs. public as we’ve got so far.
Ok, don’t Google it, here’s the link:http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/MULTIPLE_CHOICE_EXECUTIVE%20SUMMARY.pdf
Basically, apples to apples, 17% of charters do better than public, 50% do no better/worse, and 33% actually do worse. This is macro data – individual school comparisons, districts, etc, may vary.
But to tout charters, or to say the “data’s not in” – it’s in. Charter means squat.
Jeffro
@Corner Stone: I think it was the “duly” that made me think you were not taking it seriously. If so, my bad.
Cranky Observer
> Jeffro @58
> Corner Stone, we’d like to think that parents would
> ‘choice’ their kids all over the place to get into
> the best schools, but the truth is:
>
> a) much as voters like their own Congresspeople,
> they tend to think their local schools are better
> than they really are
I’ll note again here that a very large percentage of US public schools are quite good, so the parents may be correct in so assuming. Particularly when your point (c) on value of localism is factored in.
I think you left one out, however:
d) they lack the life skills to do so.
I’ll point again to the voluntary interdistrict transfer program I am familiar with, where parents could apply to transfer their children out of a failed district to some pretty good suburban schools. As I noted I am familiar with cases where parents in terrible circumstances (living in homeless shelters, drug addicts, etc) managed to get their kids enrolled in the program and down to the bus stop every day; the amount of courage it takes to do that is staggering to me.
But consider just the “ordinary” disadvantaged mother: she has to find out about the program, understand what it means for her child; take a day off work to go to school district office and fill out the paperwork; understand what the paperwork means; possibly use a computer to complete and submit the paperwork [1]; pick up the information from the suburban school district about dress code, school supplies, etc.; find out about and apply for scholarships from the suburban district for supplies, class fees, activity fees, etc.; and on and on with an endless cycle of cultural assumptions, requirements, and paperwork that she doesn’t understand and doesn’t have any help dealing with.
And of course she has to accept that she is sending her child to a distant district with a different culture where she will seldom if ever be able to participate in school activities or even see her child in class [extra buses and even taxis were provided for students as needed, and teacher conferences were held at a city library in the transfer zone, but it was virtually impossible for transferee parents to get out to the suburb for any school events].
That’s just not something that many disadvantaged parents are going to be able to do, even if they want to (and are able to swallow their pride concerning the many cultural slights and humiliations built into the process).
Cranky
[1] Our state unemployment office, facing budget cuts, just laid off all its computer tutors. Apparently a very large percentage of those applying for unemployment in our state over the last two years had /never used a web browser/ or other computer software, and of course have no access to computers or the Internet. Something for those making their living as A-list bloggers to think about.
Ohio Mom
Here’s a nice summary of these issues, titled “Don’t ask schools to fix society’s problems.”
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2011/08/dont-ask-schools-to-fix-societys.html
Shlemizel - was Alwhite
@James E. Powell:
Exactly this! Every study ever done has shown that education performance is directly correlated to economic status. If you moved every kid from the well-to-do suburb to the inner city school & every kid from the poor city to the well-to-do suburban school you would find the exact same percentage of ‘failed’ schools but they would be the opposite ones from those that had ‘failed’ previously.
That does not mean that every poor kid will fail or every middle to upper class kid will succeed but the odds are that way. More money would go a very long way to fixing much of this but even a huge increase in funding could not overcome the underlying problems.
Freddie deBoer
First, James, sorry I snapped at you.
Second, Jeffro– I’m a charter skeptic. I also want to echo Cranky in saying that the idea of a broad educational crisis is simply unsupportable given how many American public schools work very well. I do think that in those instances where charter principles are attempted with the blessings of the local teachers unions, there are some opportunities for study.
But, yes, certainly. The data is not encouraging, which is why I have been writing posts skeptical of charter schools for a long time.
Corner Stone
@Cranky Observer:
And friends and birthday parties and activities and…
Tyro
Basically, apples to apples, 17% of charters do better than public, 50% do no better/worse,
So 2/3rds of charters do as well or better than regular public schools, along with increased parent and student satisfaction (because they would leave if they preferred the alternatives). That sounds like a decent deal as long as the poorly performing charters are held accountable for their shortcomings.
Corner Stone
@Shlemizel – was Alwhite:
I think you’d see some riki tik changes post motherfucking haste amigo.
James E. Powell
@Freddie deBoer:
The question that I have been exploring, personally and with my limited data sets, is whether there is anything that a classroom teacher can do to change those outcomes.
My district has completely adopted the dubious proposition that scores on the state’s standardized tests are the only valid measure of a student’s education. They now want to make it the only valid measure of a teacher’s skills.
Every conversation that is not about classroom management (i.e., discipline) is about test scores. Nothing else matters. No suggestion or proposal for curriculum or extra-curricular activities will be considered unless it can be shown to improve test scores.
The big question there is, are higher test scores all that we want? Because that’s all that we are working to accomplish. But this question is never up for discussion.
Freddie deBoer
I should point out again that Matt isn’t talking about charter schools. He is talking about some kind of public school mobility policy scheme. I maintain my complaint that we don’t have evidence that such a thing would improve student performance.
Alright time for me to do some homework, great talking to you guys.
Tyro
And friends and birthday parties and activities and…
And tough fucking luck. Being serious about education isn’t a game. If you think attending birthday parties within walking distance is a priority, then you’re not serious about your children’s education.
But most people aren’t serious about their children’s education, and that’s why we have to prioritize improving schools on the local level. And because most people aren’t serious about education, that’s a reason why hyper local control of school districts is a bad idea.
School choice across school districts and charters are great for motivated parents and students, but parents and children who don’t know any better deserve safe schools with good teachers as well.
Corner Stone
@Tyro: You’re an idiot. Please answer me, do you have any children?
Because parents make decisions across a spectrum, not in your perfect little sphere. Some people have to deal with real life circumstances.
Jeffro
Or if you prefer, (Tyro @ 76) 83% do as well or worse than regular public schools (and where are you getting the “increased parent and student satisfaction” data from, other than perhaps charter parents boasting that their kid is in ‘charter’) so why in the world would anyone switch?
So I have this focus group of six parents in front of me…I tell them, “You can pick charter for your kid instead of your local public school if you want, but only 1 of you will have a better outcome for your kid, for 3 of you it will make no difference to your kid, and for 2 of you it will actually make things worse. That’s just macro data, of course…”
Nickel bet says that 5 parents opt for public, and 1 drills down into the micro data, which would then (on average) show a strong tendency towards the local public schools…
…I never thought I’d say this, but the world clearly needs more focus groups!
Tyro
Jeffro, presumably the parents tried the local public school first and switched to the charter school because there were aspects of it that they preferred. The flip side of my broadside against parents who care more about their kids being able to go to classmates’ birthday parties over getting the best possible education is that, all things being equal, parents prefer that they and their children be happy in their school, even if their test scores are no different.
Living in a city, I am concerned with keeping families living in the city limits, contributing their tax dollars and the stability their continued presence provides. And if a charter school or the ability to choose another school across town or in a different town makes them happy and keeps them in the city, then I support that.
Samara Morgan
lookie lookie
de Bore is a “top” commenter.
bottom feeder.
one way to improve real estate values is to improve the local public school.
use public funds to add languages, music, arts, athletics, drama, afterschool programs, smaller class sizes, etc….all the things private schools offer.
instead of busting the teachers unions to lay teachers off, hire MORE teachers. class size is a simulacrum for parental involvement…not as good, but better than nothing.
Jeffro
@Tyro: Tyro, my limited (14-year) experience has been that half the time charter-choosing parents get irritated with some aspect of having their kids in a public school (I dunno…dress code, scheduling, etc) and half the time they just buy into the charter “mystique”. ‘Panacea’ is probably a better word than mystique, but if there’s a word that combines both I’m game.
Yes, parents just want their kids to be happy…safe, challenged, and happy. And for such a minimal change in what/how schools do things, plus a minimal change (addition) in parent involvement and teacher communication, the results can be quite astounding.
Also as a future city-dweller-wannabe, I hear you about keeping families in-city, and not just for the tax base ;)
Roger Moore
@Tyro:
That would be the foolishly optimistic way of looking at it. The other way of looking at it is that a charter is about twice as likely to make things worse than it is to make things better. That’s too big a disadvantage to make up for increased parent satisfaction.
Now it’s certainly possible that there are systematic differences between the good charters and the bad ones that we can look at when figuring out how to make charters work. But my guess is that the big difference will turn out to be money. On average charters that get big foundation grants will turn out to do better, and ones that are run by for-profit companies will turn out to do worse.
Samara Morgan
@Tyro: sure they can do that, and pay out-of-district fees and drive their kids.
or they can send their kids to private school.
there is no reason to channel public fundage into charters.
just improve the local public schools.
El Cid
If we made students pray every morning in the good American Christian manner, and stopped trying to teach them wrong and immoral stuff in the classrooms, we wouldn’t have this problem.
Keith G
Oh pshaw. Wrong characteristics being measured. Poor and non poor can be significant demarcations, but I would argue that there is a level of internal coherence, social functionality, and pro-education ability and focus that each discrete family unit needs to have in order for the children in that unit to be successful learners. These issues do tend to track with poverty, but there are other strong correlates as well.
School buildings that serve many student lacking in the above have a tremendous amount of work to do before the first student shows up on day one. Buildings with fewer of these students are fortunate indeed as they can rather quickly get to the traditional business of american style public ed, with out having to re-mediate lacking edu-social skills for many of their students and families.
In whichever setting, these students (and often the families too) need a lot more intensive adult contact to negotiate their social-cognitive development. I have seen adequately funded neighborhood school do fine work in this area. I have seen no evidence that charter schools can be scaled up to be as effective dealing with the needs that I have mentioned above.
Keith G
@Jeffro:
And the third half of the time, these parent have a conception of a type of student that they want to keep their children away from.
Roger Moore
@Keith G:
Change that to “give their kids a good chance to be successful learners” and you’re probably correct. There are obviously some kids who have real problems with learning that no family situation can fix. And there are some kids who manage to succeed in spite of incredibly negative family situations. I have sympathy for the former and enormous respect for the latter.
Keith G
@James E. Powell:
Consistently? Not so much. Teachers are creatures of the bureaucracy that employ them. They rely on a small army of support staff that help them create an edu-friendly and professional environment. I meant this in the best way.
Sadly, it is far easier for an individual teacher to temporarily sabotage a student’s development than to pull a Welcome Back Kotter.
Keith G
@Roger Moore: Indeed.
Chet
Again I read both MY’s response and this post in fairly short succession, and I was once again amazed by how thoroughly Freddie has missed the point.
It’s a fairly simple proposition that MY is making – where ever the good schools are, for whatever reason they are “good”, wealthy people will use their wealth to move there and crowd out lower-income people. Wealthy people want good schools for their children, and they can afford to pay a housing premium to get it. And the housing market in a “good school area” will respond to wealthy people clamoring to live there by pricing out everybody else – that’s just what happens when limited resources (like houses in a given geographical area) are subject to increased demand.
That doesn’t have anything to do with charter schools and it’s not any kind of argument that student mobility somehow increases educational outcomes. Freddie keeps responding to an argument that MY is not and has never made. For my own part I don’t see any way around the paradox as long as effective education is a geographically-limited resource.
Chet
No, he’s not. He’s not talking about any kind of policy at all! He’s talking about what happens when a given school becomes a “good school” – rich people move in and price out all the poor residents. Poor students just get shuffled around to the poor schools because those are the only places their families can afford to live.
How can you be misreading him so completely? Amazing.
Samara Morgan
@Chet: dude.
freddie is only interested in the pageclicks he gets from attacking the A-listers.
And hes just filling the BJ glibertarian rent boi slot recently vacated by Erik Kain.
Keith G
@Chet:
Really? I have not yet seen it unfold in that way. Schools tend to reflect the social and financial health of the community. I have not seen a superb inner city school that nobly serves its stigmatized population get over-run by the better off. Usually the inner city school is underfunded and under staffed for the Herculean task which it is assigned.
Susan S
From 1996 to 2006 I devoted many, many pennies to improving ML King Elementary in Seattle..the physical experience, not the teaching. We replanted the gardens; put blinds on all the windows [purchased at cost from Macys.] We bought prints and desks at auction..rugs in the Principals office..graduation gifts for the six graders.. I let the school use my Office Depot account up to $500/mth..for the extra supplies the teachers wanted. We bought books in mass from Tacoma Bookstore..again, at huge discounts and gave them directly to the kids, to take home, to keep. We [and this included a very active community association] begged to use the existing school lunchroom..to serve hot meals cooked on site..the District said No. The roof leaked..the District let it. When children went for counseling their parents were told King was going to close. Test scores improved 30% thanks to a brilliant and dedicated young principal..and the District closed the school. I saw eager, nice children who were sent to school by parents who wanted them to learn and they did learn. But the District wanted to close that school..and the ten year effort came to naught. That school was assigned students who were homeless; the rich public school a few blocks away wasn’t. King got pupils who literally had to be restrained; the wealthy Seattle schools..no. And one more teeny, tiny item; I got involved with King because my children had gone to a private school nearby. That private school has a budget of almost $60,000 per child..starting in pre-school. Give me $50,000 to address the specific learning needs of each child at King Elementary..I bet we could come pretty close to the exit scores of the private school. Money matters..parents matter..but as a nation, do we really want to discard every child who isn’t blessed with an education oriented parent? We can do better..but as a bruised and battered volunteer, I believe school administrations are far more pernicious than parents or teachers’ unions. If you own a business, try the office supply acct. The teachers loved it, the money directly affected the students, and both students and teachers knew my family cared.
James E. Powell
@Chet:
Is there an example of a school system that was ‘good’ before the educated (and not coincidentally wealthier) people moved into the district? I don’t know of that happening. Rather, the children of wealthier and more educated parents, especially the latter, make better students.
As Keith G notes, above, it isn’t poverty, along, it’s all the stuff that we find in the same places: uneducated parents, no parents, unstable family situation, poor health, and yeah, plain old poverty.
If I understand what you are saying, then if Jordan High School in Watts was a better school, people with money and education would move to Watts. Really?
Tyro
Test scores improved 30% thanks to a brilliant and dedicated young principal..and the District closed the school.
Surely this is impossible because the only thing that determines test scores is the socio-economic status of the students!
Corner Stone
@Tyro: And again. How many children do you have?
jefft452
‘So 2/3rds of charters do as well or better than regular public schools…”
If we had a new drug to treat a disease, and half the time it worked the same as the old treatment, but the other half the time it was twice as likely to kill then to cure,
Would you describe it as “2/3rds of the patients do as well or better”?
Keith G
@Tyro: Ah…Who said that?
Robert Waldmann
There is solid experimental evidence on mobility meaning uh moving as in people moving out of public housing to areas with low poverty rates
The experiment is called the “Moving to Opportunity” experiment (a Jack Kemp project initally). People in public housing who wanted section 8 vouchers (to pay part of rent somewhere else anywhere else) participated in a lottery. One outcome is back to the line waiting for a voucher, another was you get a voucher, the interesting one was you get a voucher you can only use in a suburb (def census track with poverty rate below … means a suburb).
Children of parents (mostly single mothers) with the special vouchers
therefor went to better performing schools. The educational outcome measured was basically just finishing high school.
The result was that this move is good for girls and bad for boys (both statistically significant and for lots of things besides finishing high school).
Overall I’d say the results would disappoint Yglesias (they certainly disappointed people who dedicated a lot of effort to the experiment).
They are published in the top number one economics journal
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/katz/files/mto_ema_jan07.pdf
By the way, if one wants to be reality based, http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/katz
is a very useful site.
Hbin
@Freddie deBoer:
I think you are sailing close to the “some kids are just too stupid to be properly educated, and no amount of money spent will change their educational outcome, so why waste any money” argument
Hey, maybe you are not as leftier-than-thou as you think, closer to conservative thoughts maybe.
Kiril
@Chet: I don’t know, but it does seem willful, doesn’t it, especially when you consider that he has pointed out–repeatedly–that poor kids can learn just as well as wealthier kids given the right programs and enough spending to do it, and that’s what he wants.
In addition, MY also believes in wealth redistribution through highly progressive taxation to pay for more services, including universal pre-K, school breakfasts and lunches, and higher teacher salaries. Hell, he believes in changing land use patterns to reduce the cost of housing so more people can afford a place to live and using every lever available to government at all levels to assure full employment. He wants a social safety net that includes single payer and affordable college, changing voting laws to increase participation, affordable public transportation everywhere it is feasible, and he firmly believes that the tepid response to climate change will be our generation’s greatest failure.
For all this, people take a blog post out of context, ascribe views to him he doesn’t have, and call him a right-winger. Jesus Christ.
Kiril
@Freddie deBoer: That entire paragraph could easily have been written by MY anytime in the past five years.
Freddie deBoer
No, he’s not. He’s not talking about any kind of policy at all! He’s talking about what happens when a given school becomes a “good school” – rich people move in and price out all the poor residents. Poor students just get shuffled around to the poor schools because those are the only places their families can afford to live.
I’m not interested in policy consequence-free navel gazing. Also, I’m not aware of any situation like the one you’re citing. Got any newspaper stories to share with me?
I don’t know, but it does seem willful, doesn’t it, especially when you consider that he has pointed out—repeatedly—that poor kids can learn just as well as wealthier kids given the right programs and enough spending to do it, and that’s what he wants.
That’s exactly what is at issue: can poor kids learn just as well as wealthier kids given the programs and spending he wants? And what I insist on saying is that he, and many other ed reformers, make claims like that without adequate evidence.
In addition, MY also believes in wealth redistribution through highly progressive taxation to pay for more services, including universal pre-K, school breakfasts and lunches, and higher teacher salaries. Hell, he believes in changing land use patterns to reduce the cost of housing so more people can afford a place to live and using every lever available to government at all levels to assure full employment. He wants a social safety net that includes single payer and affordable college, changing voting laws to increase participation, affordable public transportation everywhere it is feasible, and he firmly believes that the tepid response to climate change will be our generation’s greatest failure.
He also believes– quite emphatically and stated many times– that SES determination of student performance is overblown. He has been consistently hostile to teachers unions. He has been consistently hostile to critics of education reform. And he has consistently trafficked in reform ventures that haven’t shown to actually achieve the ends he claims that they do. The question isn’t whether he cares about poor students. The question is, will his reforms work? I don’t know why this is so hard for you to understand.
I think you are sailing close to the “some kids are just too stupid to be properly educated, and no amount of money spent will change their educational outcome, so why waste any money” argument
No, I’m not. I’m saying that the consistently asserted position around here, that student poverty effects can be ameliorated with focused social programs, has not be proven. Whether more money in schools can overcome the lack of money in the home is a very contested question. I’m sorry if that isn’t warm and fuzzy enough for you, but if we’re going to solve problems, we have to understand them soberly first.
Giving schools more money is something I completely support. But people keep saying that raising school budgets is the same thing as saving students from poverty, and it just isn’t.
Cranky Observer
> In addition, MY also believes in wealth redistribution
> through highly progressive taxation to pay for more
> services, including universal pre-K, school breakfasts
> and lunches, and higher teacher salaries.
Well, he says he is. In practice he is in favor of destroying public schools, busting unions, canceling regulations, privatizing government services, etc _first_, then explaining that Presidents and liberal activists are helpless to prevent Republicans from making the tax code less progressive, raising taxes, or actually undertaking any concrete steps necessary to actually, you know, redistribute wealth.
Cranky
jim egan
The definitive answer is the parents.Most urban districts permit choosing the school with very limited success.The Thernstrom’s book No Excuses analyzes all factors and parents account for most of the. variance.
Bob
Yglesias has been a hack of the first order on education reforms.
He refuses to work in data or believe the data now that it’s out. Worse, the criticisms of his schemes existed when charter schools were first proposed and the data bear out those criticisms.
Paul in KY
Probably already stated, but poor schools are generally bad because they don’t get the property taxes that the schools in richer neighborhoods do.
More money means better facilities, wider variety of programs, better teachers, etc.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
Rather than trying to reform schools, why don’t we require low income housing be constructed in high income areas? More economically diverse areas would be the logical goal if if income and its disparity are the primary reason for poor performing schools.
Paul in KY
@Freddie deBoer: Socioeconomic status & funding go hand in hand (for public schools). The main way a public school is funded is from property taxes. I don’t see how there could be a majority of students from poor homes in a well funded school. Unless George Soros’ home happens to be just in the district.