School choice works and it’s politically viable, writes Greg Forster on Pajamas Media. He’s responding to Sol Stern’s City Journal article arguing that choice is not enough to improve schools.
“Very high-quality empirical research” shows consistently that “public schools exposed to vouchers improve in response to the healthy competitive incentives they provide,” Forster writes.
Sometimes the improvements are dramatic — Florida’s voucher program produced huge gains in the state’s very worst public schools.
The only exception is in Washington, DC’s voucher program. And that’s exactly what you’d expect, because the DC program actually bribes the public schools to make up for the kids who leave, undermining the program’s competitive incentives.
The number of publicly funded voucher programs has doubled since 2002 from 11 to 22, Forster writes. The number of students participating has doubled as well to 190,000. In addition, choice is becoming a bipartisan issue: “Five new programs were enacted in 2006 in states with Democratic governors or legislative chambers.”
This ’study’ - and this post citing the study - is more an example of partisan politics than it is a serious attempt to advance research in the field.
The ‘research’ Forster cites is published by the Friedman Center for School Choice. It was published (on their website) in October, 2007. Greg Forster is the author of the research. ‘The Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation, dubbed ‘the nation’s leading voucher advocates’ by the Wall Street Journal.”
The study is actually a roll-up of ten or so studies from the Education Longitudinal Study (ELS). There are many other studies showing different results, but those were rejected, according to Forster, because of ‘problems with research metholology.’ The studies used range from 1998-2007, and sample only a small number of students.
The methodology is highly suspect. The test group is a set of students who enrolled in private schools; the control group is a set of students who applied for those schools but were rejected by a lottery process, and ended up in public schools. Consequently, the studies compare people who are satisfied with where they are with people who are already dissatisfied with where they are.
The data is also cherry-picked. When you look at the ‘results’ table, for example, on page 39 (table 2), we read things like “After four years, voucher students had math scores 8 NCE points higher than the control group. NCE points are similar to percentile points” and “After three years, black voucher students had combined reading and math scores 9 percentile points higher than the control group.”
The data is also grossly manipulated. For example, in the very very fine text on table 2, you read: “Note: Results are from an exam with a score range of 50 points (to ensure comparability of scores across student subgroups, results are expressed in standardized “T” scores, where the average student’s score is 50 and the standard deviation is 10 points, so that virtually all students’ scores will fall within the range between 25 and 75, or within 2.5 standard deviations of the mean)…” etc.
No scientist would accept such data as conclusive proof of anything, much less as sufficient data to warrant significant changes to the entire school system, especially in the face of obviously more successful school systems (such as in Finland) which are moving in exactly the opposite direction.
I’ve never understood the idea of judging the efficacy of school choice by whether or not it unleashes market forces to improve all schools. That’s looking at things through an institutional lens. As a parent and a teacher, I want the kids in my care to go to the best possible school, not five years from now, but today. That’s the reason to support choice: to give kids better outcomes now, not improve a lousy school tomorrow.
If School A is lousy, and its students are given the option to go to School B, which is great, how does it make sense to say to those children and their parents that choice has failed because School A still sucks? “Yes, it does,” they will sensibly answer. “And that’s why we stopped going there.”
I agree with Robert. If choice means that fewer children go to bad schools, that alone should be sufficient to support school choice, vouchers whatever.
I’m with Robert as well. School choice is a moral imperative. Imagine being forced, because of where you live, to go to a hospital that had a terrible track record of malpractice, say 80 or 90 percent. You know full well about this, yet you’re forced to go there when you cut your leg. You end up needing an amputation because of a preventable infection. You’ve lost your leg to a lack of choice.
Poor-performing schools are exactly like poor-performing hospitals. By failing to educate, they close off opportunities to their students left and right. By the time these kids have made it through 13 years of this abuse, many are so damaged they have little hope of a decent life for themselves. When it comes to the skills and knowledge needed to make opportunities for themselves, it’s as if these kids were running with only one leg.
Stephen, you point out Finland, but there are many differences you don’t take into account. The first is that Finnish society is much more homogeneous in terms of culture and values than are many others, and that a culture that focuses on education can go a long way to overcome the inefficiencies of a government monopoly.
The second, and most glaring, is the significant government barriers put up by the Finns to restrict private schools. They’re forced under all the bureaucratic red tape the state schools are, and they can’t charge tuition, yet they do exist. If the state schools of Finland were the utopia you suggest, why would there be private schools at all?
As an opponent of school choice, Stephen, I have to ask you whether you believe that students should be forced to remain in failing schools as they’re trying to improve themselves. Is the promise of better results with no proof of anything worth sacrificing months and years students could be learning?
I am not an opponent of choice. My column ‘Options and Opportunities’ should make that clear. http://www.downes.ca/post/44259
What I am opposed to is the privatization of the school system, which creates inequities in the system and leaves some people without the opportunity for a quality education.
I also oppose the move toward the privatization of learning in the United States under the guise of ‘choice’. This is a pure fabrication.
Some of them are lobbying mostly to lower teachers’ wages (and especially to combat teachers’ unions). Others are trying to divert public money to religious education, because public schools teach tolerance and other inconvenient things like that. And others are simply trying to make money off the privatization of learning.
People genuinely interested in school choice are able to promote that objective within the public system. This is what is done in other countries, as I amply demonstrate in my column. There is no need to destroy the public system or to underpay (and undervalue) teachers in the process.
My observation is that the American education system is being ruined by politically minded attempts to ‘reform’ it. In the attempt to create a system for the elite, what they are mostly creating is a much larger substandard system for the underclass. This in turn leads to one after another ‘quick fixes’ - people proposing to do something, anytghing, other than to properly fund the system and let it work as it should.
I observe time and time again shoddy and outright deceptive ‘research’ supporting these politically minded changes. Americans should be embarrassed to admit that such charlatans are treated as serious proponents of educational reform. People promoting such research, and such change, should be ashamed of themselves. They are, for purely selfish interests, destroying an education system that used to be the envy of the world.
<<< What I am opposed to is the privatization of the school system, which creates inequities in the system and leaves some people without the opportunity for a quality education.
I damn near spit water through my nose when I read this. I’m not in favor of privatizing schools either, but if this is the best argument that one can muster, well geez, privatize away. Creating inequities? If you wanted to create a school system for the exact *purpose* of creating inequities, you’d create the public school system we have right now. Arguing privatization would make it worse is ridiculous. It couldn’t possibly be worse!
At this point I’m in favor of anything that would give kids like my former students a fighting chance. Charters, parochial schools, homeschooling, online, the Lucifer School, anything. Choice within the public school system? Please. In the South Bronx neighborhood where I taught, my 5th graders could choose their middle school. And they could choose from bad, worse, and holy @#$%!.
Mr. Downes, you’re no doubt a smart, well-intentioned gentleman. I don’t doubt your sincerity for a moment. At the risk of sounding harsh, what you and I may think doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. Come to the South Bronx. Let me introduce you to Reina, Anizia, Tiffany, Anthony, Walfy, Natalie and dozens of other kids who were given all the brains in the world and none of the opportunity. Tell them why privatization will harm them. Look in their eyes and tell them what you think you know about school choice. Here’s the question they and their parents will ask you: “So you mean, I’ll get to go to a school that’s just as good as the one your kids go to?”
I hope you have a good answer.
I don’t know Stephen. You’re not against choice - except when it involves any option other then public school.
As for working within the system, I watched my mom try for almost 15 years with my brothers. The system is designed to protect the system. The surface shifts year to year so that a parent is facing different teachers, different administrations, different curriculum…So that a parent never gets beneath the surface for long.
Work within the system and meanwhile sacrifice your children to the system. Right.
> Let me introduce you to Reina, Anizia, Tiffany, Anthony, Walfy, Natalie and dozens of other kids who were given all the brains in the world and none of the opportunity. Tell them why privatization will harm them.
Robert, I’m happy to go to the South Bronx, though it may be a while, as I don’t get to New York very often. But I would not shy away from it, and I have tried to learn from as wide a range of places as possible.
And what I would say when I saw kids who were given all the brains in the world and none of the opportunity is that *this* is how privatization has harmed them, that they were denied the opportunity *because* of the way public school has been undermined and special privileges for the wealthy have prevailed over social equity.
Same thing with health care, which Reina, Anizia, Tiffany, Anthony, Walfy, Natalie probably can’t afford either.
Quincy,
> Stephen, you point out Finland, but there are many differences you don’t take into account. The first is that Finnish society is much more homogeneous in terms of culture and values than are many others,
Yes, but that turns out not to be relevant. Canada is much more diverse, and has education in two official languages, and education specific to many different cultures, and also performs consistently better than the U.S.
> and that a culture that focuses on education can go a long way to overcome the inefficiencies of a government monopoly.
The presumption is that governments are inefficient, while private enterprise is efficient. The evidence does not support this. Consider, for example, examples like Enron and Bear Sterns (with all the bad housing bubble loans) or even Chrysler and other bloated manufacturing companies. Or, closer to home, the fiasco that has been Edison schools. The private sector goes out of business, rips off its customers, breaks the law, and is simply dumb and inefficient. And nobody can vote them out of power.
> The second, and most glaring, is the significant government barriers put up by the Finns to restrict private schools.
But that, arguable, is why the Finns are doing *better*.
> They’re forced under all the bureaucratic red tape the state schools are, and they can’t charge tuition, yet they do exist. If the state schools of Finland were the utopia you suggest, why would there be private schools at all?
Because there’s always that minority of people, even in Finland, who think they’re better than everyone else and are entitled to special privileges.
In the U.S., such people run rampant, and the education system is ruined. In Finland (and other countries that score well), they;re reined in, and a viable education for everyone is preserved.
p.s. Every Finn also has to learn English, as well as Finnish. As if learning Finnish wasn’t hard enough.
I’ll save you the trip. You don’t have to explain it to them. Explain it to me. But let’s leave the history lesson for another time. Instead, I’d like to hear how you propose to get them into a good school right now.
OK, I’ll be fair and reasonable. This school year is over. How might you get them into a top-notch school by September?
Stephen -
You say that “The presumption is that governments are inefficient, while private enterprise is efficient. The evidence does not support this.” Then you go on to cite the exceptions to well-run, efficient business and try to hold that up as a rule. Sorry, but I’m not going to let you get away with that.
The majority of actual evidence, as opposed to anecdotes from the media, shows quite well that private enterprise is more efficient than government.
You mention the mortgage crisis, and decry the fact that Bear Stearns got whiplashed by the bad loans it put out. And you say that like it’s a bad thing. Quite frankly, if Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had been whiplashed for *their* bad financial decisions, we may well have never had a housing crisis in the first place. These two front companies for Uncle Sam kept ignoring signals from the market that credit was expanding too quickly, and it was their inflationary actions that caused the bubble that burst and took Bear Stearns with it. You call that efficiency? I certainly don’t.
Oh, and while you’re at it, remember that of all the banks in the US, no more than five are being hit with serious backlash from the mortgage crisis, and they’re the ones who made bad loans. Again, in a market economy, companies getting hit with consequences for poor decisions, up to and including complete failure, is a good thing. Incentives matter.
That said, if the mortgage market worked like public education in the US does, the companies making smart loans wouldn’t get anything while the companies that constantly failed would get budget increases. That would certainly lead to more irresponsible lending, don’t you think?
Now, you say that Finnish schools are better because they put up high governmental barriers to competition. Please find me one example, anywhere, of a highly-regulated industry that performs better than a non-regulated industry.
Airlines? Nope. All the legacy carriers in the US, born in the days of heavy regulation, are in deep trouble, while their newer competitors like Southwest and JetBlue are doing just fine. Phones? Nope. AT&T was America’s phone company for a long time and the funny thing was that the phone was pretty much the same in 1950 as it was in 1980. Break up AT&T and allow for competition, and you suddenly get a wave of innovation that leads to things like DSL and cell phones. How about banks? They’re pretty regulated and have heavy interference from government. Didn’t prevent the mortgage crisis, did it? Nope. *Caused* the mortgage crisis.
Finally, you said that private schools exist in Finland “Because there’s always that minority of people, even in Finland, who think they’re better than everyone else and are entitled to special privileges.
In the U.S., such people run rampant, and the education system is ruined. In Finland (and other countries that score well), they;re reined in, and a viable education for everyone is preserved.”
A great piece of wild speculation, but utterly worthless in countering my point. Given the barriers to their creation and operation, I have a hard time believing it’s simple elitism at work. Something more has to be driving it, and I’d be interested to find out what.
Moreover, your bit about these folks in the US “ruining” the education system is bunk. If they’re doing it with their own money, HOW are they ruining public education? Truly private schools aren’t taking one red cent from public schools, and pay teachers less, yet you claim they’re ruining public schools. I really want to hear what you think on this one because right now I don’t see any way your claim can make sense.
Oh yeah, Stephen, Dawn brings up a great point. In your little world where private schools don’t exist to ruin education, just what choice is there? And no, state school number 1 vs. state school number 2 isn’t a choice since I’d still be dealing with the same monopoly.
To Quincy:
> you go on to cite the exceptions to well-run, efficient business and try to hold that up as a rule.
9 out of 10 business ventures fail.
http://www.webcopyplus.com/content/view/190/62/
> The majority of actual evidence, as opposed to anecdotes from the media, shows quite well that private enterprise is more efficient than government.
Sorry, there is no such evidence. There is a good amount of propaganda. But the putative ‘evidence’ we see cherry-picks and panders to prejudices.
> … we may well have never had a housing crisis in the first place.
It is ridiculous to say that the housing crisis is the result of one or two companies. It is well documented that the entire industry is in crisis - which is why it is pulling the entire economy down with it.
It is also worth noting that there was more than a little dishonesty involved - for example, the buying of very poorly rated credited which was then rolled up and represented and sold as very good rated credit.
> if the mortgage market worked like public education in the US does, the companies making smart loans wouldn’t get anything while the companies that constantly failed would get budget increases.
Unfounded speculation. And incorrect, as it turns out. Government lending in Canada - the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, for example, or the Business Development Bank - make loans, but the result is nothing like what you describe. http://www.ocol-clo.gc.ca/html/bdc_e.php
> Please find me one example, anywhere, of a highly-regulated industry that performs better than a non-regulated industry.
Depends on what you mean by ‘performs’ - since a lot of the regulation is in place to protect customers, not ho help businesses ‘perform’ better.
But if you define ‘performs better’ as (say) ‘not poisoning customers’ then the regulations in the food industry are effective (and necessary). Or if you define ‘not crashing into each other’ then the regulations in the transportation industry (including the enforcement of traffic laws) are effective.
Again - the arguments that purport to show that unregulated industries ‘perform’ better are cherry-picked. No industry at all could survive in anything like an effective manner without a good deal of regulation - and in fact, for precisely this reason, all industries are regulated.
> Truly private schools aren’t taking one red cent from public schools, and pay teachers less, yet you claim they’re ruining public schools.
I love the weasel word ‘truly’ in this argument.
In fact, as we all know, there is an ongoing campaign on the part of proprietors of private schools to channel money away from the public system and into private schools. What do you think the charter school system is supposed to be? Or school vouchers?
And even where they do not directly channel money - are ‘truly’ private, as you say, they lobby against public investment on the grounds that it’s “unfair competition”. This is exactly what we saw, for example, in Britain, as private interests lobbied to shut down BBC efforts to provide free learning materials to all Britons.
And we see the same lobbying effort in the United States. Telecom companies, for example, taking municipal governments to court in order to prevent them from providing free civic wireless internet access. The mere existence of a private school system results in a large and well-funded lobby advocating against public support for the public school system. The fruits of which are sham ‘research’ like the subject of this discussion.
To Richard:
> How might you get them into a top-notch school by September?
This is of course a ridiculous requirement.
First, it supposes that if I can’t solve society-wide systemic issues overnight, my argument is a failure. Which is ridiculous.
Second, it is an instance of fawning for the ‘quick fix’, rather than genuine reform.
And most importantly, third, there’s nothing a private school could do that could not be done in a public system.
The fact is, if you were willing to invest the resources and staff, it would not be a difficulty to provide a top-notch education for these students.
But it would involve investment contrary to the interests of a well-funded business lobby. It would involve not such school programs, but nutrition programs, housing programs, policing, lunch-hour and after-school programs, health programs, and more.
Because you can’t just change the education of a person and expect it to work. You have to change the life of a person - and that takes an investment the United States has never been prepared to make in its people (unlike, say, Canada or Finland).
To Quincy again,
> And no, state school number 1 vs. state school number 2 isn’t a choice since I’d still be dealing with the same monopoly.
You simply haven’t read my column. Go read that.
–
This concludes my discussion of these issues. You can have the last word; it doesn’t signal a ‘victory’ of any sort. I’ve made my point; I see no value in continuing to engage with the privatization lobby.
<<< In fact, as we all know, there is an ongoing campaign on the part of proprietors of private schools to channel money away from the public system and into private schools. What do you think the charter school system is supposed to be?
We didn’t all know this. Indeed, I was blissfully unaware. All this time, I had the naive impression that the operators of KIPP, Achievement First, Uncommon Schools et al. represented an effort to give kids in communities like the one I worked a chance at a decent education. Now I come to learn it’s a cynical attempt to enrich themselves by dining at the public trough! I feel so naive. They sure fooled me.
Ah. If it’s simply a privatization lobby issue then I guess that lets you off the hook of discussing matters of choice?
Stephen -
Fine. We’ll agree to disagree on this one, but writing off the last hundred years of economic study as propaganda is mighty funny if you ask me.
And I must congratulate you on your talent for writing many words and completely avoiding the issue of choice. It’s perfectly clear that, since your vision of choice is the state schools or the state schools, that you are an absolute opponent of choice. It is totally dishonest for you to say otherwise. What part of the fact that all state schools are part of the same monopoly is so hard to understand?
Anyway, I don’t want to know, since I really don’t want the displeasure of further debating the nationalization lobby.
“It is ridiculous to say that the housing crisis is the result of one or two companies.”
Just an FYI, when the two companies are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it is absolutely not ridiculous to pin the housing crisis on them. Here’s a little insight into the way mortgage markets work. Put simply, there’s the consumer-level market where individuals make deals with companies like Countrywide, and then there’s the back-end market, where lenders lend to banks.
The housing crisis started when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac started flooding this back end market with money beyond what lenders were seeking. Realizing that all this extra money was now there to be had, consumer-level lenders began loosening their lending standards. For Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, this was a great thing, since their reason for being was to increase the availability of credit to every American.
This government-driven lending bubble caused housing prices to increase as people had more money to play with, pushing housing prices well beyond wages and making more of the population dependent on sub-prime loans to buy the overpriced houses. Fast-forward to 2007 and the first rate adjustments on these sub-prime loans and you’ll find a rampant increase in defaults. In response you’ll find a tightening of the credit market, and in response to that you’ll find a decrease in home prices as buyers can’t borrow as much. Now you have people stuck in mortgages for more than their homes are worth.
So yes, had Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac not existed to flood the mortgage markets with money, the housing crisis would not have occurred. The market was trying to signal that lenders’ standards were too loose well before the bubble burst, but that signal was lost to the static introduced by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
In fact, as we all know, there is an ongoing campaign on the part of proprietors of private schools to channel money away from the public system and into private schools. What do you think the charter school system is supposed to be? Or school vouchers?
I didn’t know charter schools were considered “private.” Maybe the Canadian system is different.
And even where they do not directly channel money - are ‘truly’ private, as you say, they lobby against public investment on the grounds that it’s “unfair competition”. This is exactly what we saw, for example, in Britain, as private interests lobbied to shut down BBC efforts to provide free learning materials to all Britons.
What information do you have about the lobbying activities of public school proprietors? I’d be interested…I didn’t think any private schools were large enough to have that much clout.
And we see the same lobbying effort in the United States. Telecom companies, for example, taking municipal governments to court in order to prevent them from providing free civic wireless internet access[…]
Obviously this is not just about public vs. private schools, but about the public vs. private sectors in general. At least the Friedman Foundation is up front about its objectives.