This appeared in Harper's last year; it's a brief excerpt from Jonathan Kozol's heartbreaking The Shame Of The Nation, about the hardening of education inequality in our public schools. There's this terrific passage about money:

Perhaps in order to deflect these recognitions, or to soften them somewhat, many people, even while they do nor doubt the benefit of making very large investments in the education of their own children, somehow--paradoxical as it may seem--appear to be attracted to the argument that money may not really matter that much at all. No matter with what regularity such doubts about the worth of spending money on a child's education are advanced, it is obvious that those who have the money, and who spend it lavishly to benefit their own kids, do not do it for no reason. Yet shockingly large numbers of well-educated and sophisticated people whom I talk with nowadays dismiss such challenges with a surprising ease. "Is the answer really to throw money into these dysfunctional and failing schools?" I'm often asked. "Don't we have some better ways to make them `work'?" The question is posed in a variety of forms. "Yes, of course, it's not a perfectly fair system as it stands. But money alone is surely not the sole response. The values of the parents and the kids themselves must have a role in this as well you know, housing, health conditions, social factors." "Other factors"--a term of overall reprieve one often hears--"have got to be considered, too." These latter points are obviously true but always seem to have the odd effect of substituting things we know we cannot change in the short run for obvious solutions like cutting class size and constructing new school buildings or providing universal preschool that we actually could put in place right now if we were so inclined.

Frequently these arguments are posed as questions that do not invite an answer because the answer seems to be decided in advance. "Can you really buy your way to better education for these children?" "Do we know enough to be quite sure that we will see an actual return on the investment that we make?" "Is it even clear that this is the right starting point to get to where we'd like to go? It doesn't always seem to work, as I am sure that you already know," or similar questions that somehow assume I will agree with those who ask them.

Some people who ask these questions, although they live in wealthy districts where the schools are funded at high levels, don't even send their children to these public schools but choose instead to send them to expensive private day schools. At some of the well-known private prep schools in the New York City area, tuition and associated costs are typically more than $20,000 a year. During their children's teenage years, they sometimes send them off to very fine New England schools like Andover or Exeter or Groton, where tuition, boarding, and additional expenses rise to more than $30,000. Often a family has two teenage children in these schools at the same time, so they may be spending more than $60,000 on their children's education every year. Yet here I am one night, a guest within their home, and dinner has been served and we are having coffee now; and this entirely likable, and generally sensible, and beautifully refined and thoughtful person looks me in the eyes and asks me whether you can really buy your way to better education for the children of the poor.

That last bit always kills me.

Those beautifully refined and thoughtful people need to be smacked with a fish.

This whole topic makes me tired and sad. My experience of urban public schools is that they are often in dire need of the most basic necessities (functioning windows; working toilets; ink and paper for photocopying), but because there are so many layers between the superintendent's office and the teachers themselves that even with no malice involved, money never trickles down. And of course sometimes there is malice.

Ok, so I agree with the broad point that lots of schools in this country would benefit (maybe a great deal) from having more money, and I'm totally on board with giving them a lot more, but Kozol is being a teensy bit disingenuous, isnt' he?

Rich, educated people don't say "Is the answer really to throw money into these dysfunctional and failing schools?" because they fail to understand the relationship between money and education, but because they understand that below a certain threshold of available funds and without some structure in place outside the school system to encourage kids in their schooling, money spent on schools will make no detectable difference. To put it another way, I don't think you're a bad person if you vote against a ballot measure for a 3% increase in the school budget if you believe that it will take a 15% increase to make any difference--that extra 3% is likely just money wasted.

Maybe you're supposed to vote for the 3% now and get 4% later and so on, but it's again possible that each of those steps is simply more money wasted (this seems, empirically, to be the case).

(Anyway, totally willing to be convinced on this, as I'm no expert here by any means, but Kozol's way of framing it seems kinda facile to me.)

Doesn't the objection about money stem from the fact that the US spends a *lot* more per puil on public schooling than other countries, many of which seem to have better educational systems than we do?

I know that a lot of the private schools in the town where I grew up had tuition lower than, and spent significantly less per pupil than, the private schools in the area spent per pupil. (A few more prestigious private schools were more expensive, vastly so, but the rank-and-file religious schools were generally not.) And yet the private schools consistently churned out better educated students, by all appearances.

I suspect 4 could have been written in two sentences if I knew any economics...

I've never seen that argument made -- that lots of money would make a difference but the amount of money we're politically willing to spend won't, so why bother. I've always seen it in the form that there's no reason to think more money will make any difference at all.

There's also the problem that parents willing to shell out a chunk of change on private school correlate strongly to parents who are heavily involved in their children's education.

And for the cheap religious schools, the fact that they are also free to expel, or not admit, troublesome students.

I've always seen it in the form that there's no reason to think more money will make any difference at all.

Well, that's truly stupid.

Why don't we model our schools after other, better educated countries' schools?

I'm all in favor of throwing money at the public school system, though; don't get me wrong.

Ellen (who taught for a number of years in NYC) reports that teachers are paid significantly less in private schools than public (in NYC). But the teaching conditions are much better because of a combination of infrastructure and fewer discipline prblems.

11: Because of the sacred principle of federalism and local control of education. National standards make the baby Founders cry.

In the book, and even in the full article linked, Kozol makes it clear that even the smallest increases in funding can help. And look; he's frustrated. He's been writing about these issues for thirty years, and he's watched as the problems have steadily gotten worse instead of improving. I'll bet Kozol has heard this response not once or twice or even dozens of times, but hundreds. It's a cop-out; because we can't do everything, then we shouldn't bother trying to do anything. And meanwhile, some of these schools have a 25% graduation rate, because these kids are told early on, repeatedly, in every conceivable way, that their needs don't matter. Even a little money helps. The worst schools in New York City resemble nothing so much as the third world. It's totally fucking immoral, and if I were Kozol, I'd frame it any damn way I could in order to make my point. What would be less disingenuous? For him to provide an exhaustive list of those times in which schools got more money and it didn't do much good? So that we might feel better about the good people who voted against school funding increases? Fuck those people, honestly. The title of the book says it all; it's the shame of the nation right now. I hope Kozol does make some well-meaning liberals lose sleep at night.

14: Yeah -- my feeling is it's not just a question of how much, but also where it's going. If it's the problem is inherent in how the schools are run, then maybe more money won't do much good (though I'm all for trying).

it's

Since LB was kind enough to pick this up, let me jump in, although I'm not quite officially representing the AFT and I have to go to a meeting in a few minutes.

On public vs. private schools, the test scores are pretty identical once you control for student background. I'm having trouble making links work, but you can read about it here
http://www.letsgetitright.org/blog/2006/07/public_vs_private.html

Ogged has a point about resources. Its why one of the major school reform initiatives your seeing in urban education that works is taking your worst performing schools, putting them in a cluster and putting a very intense program in place. In NYC it was called the Chancellor's District. Rudy Crew, when he left NY, took the approach to Miami. If your school isn't bad enough to get into the chancellor's district, that's a problem. But for the kids in the effected schools there are some good results. But it is like whack a mole when looked at against the whole system.

I've got to run, but will look back in later on.

I think there is a widespread feeling, prevalent among people under 35 and common among those older, that Liberal solutions, to the degree they have been consistently advocated since the sixties at least, Can't Be Right. Hence the endless search for "new ideas."

sam k - I'm sure managerial problems abound. But more urgent is the need for classrooms to be heated in the winter and air conditioned in the summer, for rodents to be exterminated from the school buildings, for textbooks to be purchased, for broken desks to be replaced, for proper lighting to be installed, for overstuffed classrooms (40 kids or more sometimes!) to be reduced, and for nutritious and affordable meals to be available. Money may not solve management problems, but it can sure take care of those needs we've come to think of as basic.

20 -- There is a limit to how many of those problems can be solved with bad/corrupt management in place. I totally agree with you about increasing school funding but reforming management is a pretty necessary component of this.

In Obama's recent book, he advocates for good teachers to make $100,000 a year at the peak of their careers. It was one of my "fuck yeah, this guy gets it" moments reading that book.

22- I havent' read Obama's boko, but how does he propose we measure "good"? That's pretty controversial.

21 is what I'm thinking.

Perhaps a weak analogy, but it doesn't matter how much money we pump into the third world if we funnel it through corrupt governments.

23: Yeah, he admits it's controversial, and suggests a move away from simple student-test results. His best idea, I thought, was peer review. But yeah, it's certainly complicated.

I totally agree with you about increasing school funding but reforming management is a pretty necessary component of this

Obviously. But the more our discussion focuses on inept or corrupt managers, the more we can shrug our shoulders and say goodness, those poor kids, wronged by (usually black) administrators, I wish we could do something but the problem is too complicated to even begin solving, and by the way where are we having lunch?

My parents had Kozol's "Death at an early age" and I read it over and over around early adolescence. I was dazzled by it. There was a kid who has a blackboard fall on his head, and that made a very big impression on me. Uh, on both of us.

26 is probably right, too, but doesn't necessarily answer the question of where to begin actually fixing things.

Gah. This whole conversation is infuriating. An NYC superintendant compared to a third-world dictator? Honestly.

26 strikes me as correct.

28 - Here's an idea. Start by building functional school buildings.

21/24: There are clearly deep management problems ... but the sorts of problems noted in 20 can be addressed regardless of management, simply by assigning an independant body to oversee the implementation. Most of these are infrastructure issues, you need inspections done and then contract out the work. There is no technical reason you can't do this with only marginal involvement at the school or school board level.

Yay for Joe Drymala.

Sorry; this issue cuts very deep for me. No personal offense intended by my shrill commentary.

31 gets it exactly right.

Honestly, I think that the disparity of eduction options here is one of the deepest problems the country faces. *Anything* that tries to move this in the right direction is worth looking at.

And to the extent that corruption is the problem, it exists because it's tolerated. Maybe the reason urban schools are lacking necessities is that despite the fact that they're well funded, that the funding gets stolen by corrupt administrators.

So arrest the corrupt administrators. This is not rocket science; as a society we manage to run large functional organizations in other areas, why should it suddenly be impossible if the organizations are schools?

But the more our discussion focuses on inept or corrupt managers, the more we can shrug our shoulders and say goodness, those poor kids, wronged by (usually black) administrators, I wish we could do something but the problem is too complicated to even begin solving, and by the way where are we having lunch?

This nails it. What I find very frustrating about the debate is that there are lots of true things, like the fact that parental involvement and general community wealth are both good predictors of scholastic success, that are often used as excuses to do nothing about very basic problems. You get arguments that run pretty much like this: "Well, the kid's black and his parents work and didn't go to college, so there's no reason to spend the money to fix the roof or exterminate the building, and I'm sure the lack of textbooks have nothing to do with it.

That and taking bad management as some sort of given. I haven't seen a plan that says, "What we were doing failed, so let's do the exact same thing with a bigger budget." Most education reform plans involve, well, reform, too, don't they?

36 - Yes.

An NYC superintendant compared to a third-world dictator? Honestly.

Oh please. I was obviously referring to the dictator's role in filtering funds and choosing where to spend them, which is analogous to school administration's budget responsibilities. I was obviously not drawing a moral equivalence.

36: mainly because not enough people care. There are no overwhelming technical barriers to fixing this, that much is clear.

When you guys mention "corrupt administrators," are you talking about outright embezzlement--the school repair fund goes to my Swiss bank account kind of stuff? Or just spectacularly incompetant management of funds?

I don't know how much this is a real problem rather than an excuse, so I don't know what form it takes. I'd expect that the issue is in the middle -- condoned featherbedding by contractors, who get paid despite not really fixing things, that sort of thing.

Ogged had a brilliant moment the other day when he turned talk of the need for more oversight of the police into a complaint about unions and civil service job protections. I wish I could come up with a parallel jab here, though my heart's not in it, since Joe D's basic point is exactly right, namely, that worrying about what other fixes have to be in place to turn around underperforming schools should come to the fore only after the buildings work. It's not sufficient for success, but it's necessary.

You're so evil, Labs. And for the record, I do think Joe D is right: at least make the buildings work--there's no good reason we can't do that much.

I know that a lot of the private schools in the town where I grew up had tuition lower than, and spent significantly less per pupil than, the [public] schools in the area spent per pupil.

In addition to the other factors raised elsewhere in the thread (teacher pay, motivated parents), keep in mind the private schools don't have to worry about special needs children, which can be a huge drain on a district's resources. (Not suggesting that that public schools shouldn't have to educate special needs kids, but that it makes apple-to-apple dollar-per-student comparisons more challenging.)

I already said this, but I feel like I should clarify: I'm fully on board with spending more money until we figure out the other stuff.

41 -- I was mainly thinking about patronage.

41, 42: In my experience, it's less outright corruption and more overwhelmedness or lethargy bordering on inertia, and a stickiness in getting problems solved that is downright exhausting.

Example: High school kids need to be able to type their papers on computers and print them. In a high-poverty neighborhood, they don't have comptuers at home and the public library has limited access.

So they're limited to printing them at school, where one classroom has four computers and one printer. The hub that is supposed to connect them is not working, so no papers can be printed. The IT person assigned to the school is rarely present (unclear whether he is constantly being called upon by other locations or if there are less legitimate reasons). He has a phone number that has no voicemail, so you have to call repeatedly.

There are no other IT staff in school and very few teachers or administrators with "accidental techie" expertise. Outside contractors (such as nonprofit agencies) are not supposed to tinker with the district's computer equipment, and their staff are not usually qualified anyway.

When the printer begins working again, no paper or ink are available. Staff can agitate repeatedly to receive it, or just give up and buy their own. If they buy their own, it's advisible to keep it under lock and key so that other similarly desperate teachers don't appropriate it. Of course there are no working locks on the filing cabinets or desks (and in some classrooms, there ARE no cabinets), so you have to buy your own locking cabinet.

Etcetra.

since Joe D's basic point is exactly right, namely, that worrying about what other fixes have to be in place to turn around underperforming schools should come to the fore only after the buildings work

I don't even know if that's JoeD's point though (of course, I could be wrong). It seems like the argument that Kozol's dismantling is "Just throwing money at schools won't solve the problem." That's true, but not throwing more money at schools won't solve the problem, either. It's like our money is so fucking precious that we shouldn't bother spending any of it until it's going to fix everything. Meanwhile, there are real things we can do with money. So, it's not that we should fix the buildings first and worry about other stuff later, it's that at the very least, one concrete thing we can do with money right now is fix buildings. There are, of course, many other things we can do with it, too. Now.

Right.

Wow. I kind of thought I'd come over here to see if I could help spark conversation. Unfogged rocks. But I knew that already. (See http://www.letsgetitright.org/blog/2006/09/this_is_too_much.html ).

I don't think its a question of doing one thing ahead of the other. Otherwise we'll never be able to hold anyone accountable for anything. But this issue needed to be a much more integral part of the conversation in the last six years.

And part of what the report says is that we need to change the way we spend the money construction. From the union perspective that means giving the people who work in the schools more voice on issues like maintenance.

Folding this and other questions about giving kids the supports they need into the NCLB accountability requirements is one of the ways we want to create pressure for change to happen.

45- the school I'm thinking primarily about had an extensive and very well regarded special needs program, as do many private schools.

I'm not trying to be contrarian here, but I'm really not sure public schools need more money. They clearly need money to be better allocated, and more fairly apportioned among districts, but more money overall? We really do already spend a lot on primary education. That's not to say more money wouldn't help things, more that it seems likely there are other things that would do perhaps a lot more good.

That we have crumbling buildings can't possibly mean that we don't have enough money overall to afford workable buildings -- look again at the per capita student spending in the area. So it must mean that the money we're spending is being misallocated somewhere along the way.

"Unfogged is an idiosyncratic and often charming blog, that has comment threads that even Think Progress envies"

Awww. You're alright, Ed.

Re 47 -- Wikipædia has convinced me that I was not thinking of "patronage", but of "nepotism" and "featherbedding".

I'm not trying to be contrarian here, but I'm really not sure public schools need more money. They clearly need money to be better allocated, and more fairly apportioned among districts, but more money overall? We really do already spend a lot on primary education. That's not to say more money wouldn't help things, more that it seems likely there are other things that would do perhaps a lot more good.

That we have crumbling buildings can't possibly mean that we don't have enough money overall to afford workable buildings -- look again at the per capita student spending in the area. So it must mean that the money we're spending is being misallocated somewhere along the way.

It's all in the article I linked in comment 1. I've cut-and-pasted it for your convenience, Brock.

Around the time I met Alliyah in the school year 1997-1998, New York's Board of Education spent about $8,000 yearly on the education of a third-grade child in a New York City public school. If you could have scooped Alliyah up out of the neighborhood where she was born and plunked her down in a fairly typical white suburb of New York,she would have received a public education worth about $12,000 a year. If you were to lift her up once more and set her down in one of the wealthiest white suburbs of New York, she would have received as much as $18,000 worth of public education every year and would likely have had a third-grade teacher paid approximately $30,000 more than her teacher in the Bronx was paid.

The dollars on both sides of the equation have increased since then, but the discrepancies between them have remained. The present per-pupil spending level in the New York City schools is $11,700, which may be compared with a per-pupil spending level in excess of $22,000 in the well-to-do suburban district of Manhasset, Long Island. The present New York City level is, indeed, almost exactly what Manhasset spent per pupil eighteen years ago, in 1987, when that sum of money bought a great deal more in services and salaries than it can buy today. In dollars adjusted for inflation, New York City has not yet caught up to where its wealthiest suburbs were a quarter-century ago.

52: You know, that's all very persuasive, but it shouldn't be an excuse (not saying that you're making it one, just that it would be wrong to) for not fixing up school buildings. We've got two problems if you're right -- crumbling school buildings and misallocation of funds -- and I don't see why students should be held hostage to our failure to organize the school systems properly.

(I'm also not convinced that your premise is true -- I've heard it said often enough, but rarely attached to concrete numbers I could follow that seemed to compare apples to apples. It may be true, I just don't know it of my own knowledge.)

and more fairly apportioned among districts, but more money overall?

Brock, I'm afraid this is not a workable argument. If you want there to be more "fairly apportioned" money but not more money over all, then you will have to take away funds from some school districts. Is that what you're advocating?

51, 53: I'm considering changing the mouseover text to "An eclectic web-magazine for the entertainment of the labor movement. Solidarity, Brothers and Sisters!!"

That we have crumbling buildings can't possibly mean that we don't have enough money overall to afford workable buildings -- look again at the per capita student spending in the area. So it must mean that the money we're spending is being misallocated somewhere along the way.

I'm actually somewhat sympathetic to this perspective, but I would also point out three hugely important factors:

1) All schools are not equally located. If Principal X has to spend $200,000 annually in school police costs and Principal Y has to spend $0, it might mean that X is in a dangerous neighborhood and Y is not. Same level of per-capita student funding might still mean different things you have to spend it on.

2) All costs are not included in the budget. Dr. B posted extensively on her blog recently about the "free" labor donated by parents at her son's school. The dollar value of that labor is immense. If parents at Poor School X are working two jobs and can't volunteer, then the school has to pay for those aides (either directly as staff, indirectly through social service contracts funded by the state...etc.).

3) Actually there are several other factors, but this is long enough already.

I personally think that there's pretty much no such thing as spending too much money on education. It's too important.

The "you can't just throw money" thing always reminds me of a discussion I had with one of Mr. B.'s conservative colleagues once, a long time ago.

Him: "Tell me one thing that more money would do to fix education."

Me: "Well, off the top of my head, smaller class sizes would mean more individual attention for students. Lower teaching loads would mean more time for prep and to respond to student writing. More classes would provide a broader arrange of teaching approaches and curricula for different students. Higher pay would attract more qualified people to the profession, which would in turn make it easier to fire or phase out bad teachers. Better buildings communicate respect for students and emphasize social priorities like order, cleanliness, and maintenance, plus they cost less to take care of. . . ."

After I went on like this for a few minutes, he said "Those are some good points. You're the only liberal I've ever met who actually had an answer for that question."

Me: "You probably haven't talked to very many liberals, then."

49 is right. The now/later language was a mistake.

Dr. B posted extensively on her blog recently about the "free" labor donated by parents at her son's school. The dollar value of that labor is immense. If parents at Poor School X are working two jobs and can't volunteer, then the school has to pay for those aides (either directly as staff, indirectly through social service contracts funded by the state...etc

This sort of thing -- local school fundraising -- maddens me. My mom lives in what is now a very expensive neighborhood, and went to a charity auction for my old public school, and saw fifty grand raised in a night. In my current neighborhood the PTA busts their ass to raise ten grand in a year. Now, if you fund the schools at a level insufficient to reach acceptable outcomes, and allow rich neighborhoods to make up the difference while poor neighborhoods are stuck at the baseline, that's not terribly equitable, is it?

local school fundraising -- maddens me

But it's teaching your kids to be good entrepreneurial Americans, going door to door and flogging overpriced candles on a smile and a shoeshine....

You're the only liberal I've ever met who actually had an answer for that question.

God, if I had a dollar for every time I've heard this, I would be rich. I tend to reply that it helps to talk to actual liberals rather than just accepting what Rush Limbaugh tells you we believe.

I just wanted to jump in momentarily here. First, obviously, the more students in an area are provided opportunities to go to good private schools (if they're rich enough) or fancy magnet schools (if they're smart enough), the worse the surrounding public schools will be. It's painfully obvious here in Brooklyn, for example, that if you just end up going to your local P.S., chances are, by high school, you will not have a seat to sit in on one-third of the days you're in class. You will not be able to hear the teacher over the non-functioning A/C or heater, and you'll either shiver or sweat the whole time. Your teacher will never learn your name because there are just too many of you. You will never be asked to write an essay because your teacher doesn't have time to grade it.

Even if you do excel, your excellence will not measure up to even a lackluster performance at a magnet or private school. Even after being at the top of your graduating class, you are likely to find yourself at the same community college as your worst classmates the next year, where very few of you will be able to pass freshman English. You're so used to being ignored by teachers that you never ask your prof for help. You don't want to bother her. Meanwhile, your parents, who got the same shitty education you did, make snide comments about how you think you're better than them, trying to go to college, and that you'll probably just end up managing the Duane Reade you work at, if you're lucky. Meanwhile, your friends who dedicated themselves to playing sports and praying for a contract are also working at the Duane Reade, laughing at you for wasting your time on college classes you can't pass.

In Brooklyn, some of the fancy white people who don't want to send kids to private have started investing in some of the local P.S. elementary schools. Everyone anonymously contributes some percentage of what they'd normally contribute to a private school, and the PTA suddenly becomes a massively wealthy organization with the power to manipulate the administration, buy computers, hire paras, and fix building problems. Rich kids and poor kids benefit.

But -- uh, oh -- turns out all the fancy white people have crowded into that district and anyone not making 200K a year can no longer afford to live there. All that public-school do-gooding has turned into what amounts to a fancy private school, with lavish and expensive benefit events, rich classmates discussing where in Italy they went skiing over winter holiday, and where they had duck confit for birthday dinner. Some of the poorer kids still share class space with them, but they are surrounded by children of the elites. They like the computer access and the nice grounds, but the social atmosphere is becoming hostile, especially to their parents. The parents eventually have enough of not being able to get playdates because no one wants to come to their apartment. They pull the kid and put him somewhere where he'll be less socially stigmatized.

Never actually hearing liberal arguments articulated is part of it, but having a huge bias against believing that long-standing liberal positions could be right, a bias widely shared even among "progressives," as I suggested in 19, is part of it too.

63: Equitable? No. But when schools are locally funded from property taxes, that's what you get. Those with kids want to help theirs more than they want to help others (which is natural), and those without kids don't want to see a hundred thousand dollars knocked off the value of their house because it's no longer in "a nice school district".

66: My point here is that throwing money at the problem only works if it's not a localized, spontaneous throwing done by the richest people, who then take control of the educational and social atmosphere of the school. It's exactly what I hate about charity; it keeps the government from doing its fucking job and puts all social "benefit" into the hands of exactly the people who I wouldn't want making decisions about who deserves what.

But when schools are locally funded from property taxes, that's what you get.

This, absolutely. The schools here in the moneyed parts of NC are decent enough, but when you get down to the coastal and mountain counties, where 2/3 of the population is on government assistance, a lot of the school systems are utter disasters.

Ok, I totally want to have a 3-way with Jody and Leblanc.

The other big fucking obvious problem with the "mismanagmenet" argument is that that's precisely *why* we should throw more money at public schools. When you're operating on a shoestring, the least little mistake completely fucks you up. When you've got enough money, you can make mistakes and spend it on stupid crap like expensive shoes or bad administrators and there's a cushion so you can still afford groceries and school supplies. The real impetus behind the mismanagement argument is the desire to micromanage spending on public education in a way that we would never micromanage spending on anything we actually cared about.

That's why Kozol isn't, in fact, being disingenuous. The contrast is exactly the point: "enough" money means enough for mistakes and overspending (like $60,000 for public school). The "concern" over mismanagement, and the resulting question about "is money the real problem?" betrays a miserly point of view in which public education is such a low priority that we don't want to waste a single penny on anything that's not absolutely necessary.

It's a lot like the argument about Padilla's treatment, come to think of it. "We've fed him and we take him to the doctor, what are you bitching about?" "Minimally acceptable" treatment, isn't. And minimally acceptable spending on public education shouldn't be either, and we shouldn't have to point to schools where fucking blackboards fall on kids' heads to make that point.

LB, aren't you the one who thinks that wealthy/educated parents have a moral obligation tho find the worst possible public school district in the area, and send their kids to the worst school there?

I personally think 60 is crazy.

I personally think 60 is crazy.

Fortunately for you, Brock, there's no danger of anything resembling 60 coming to pass in our lifetimes.

And AWB. A 4-way.

If we stick around this school district and I get involved in the PTOs, one of my big issues is going to be trying to convince the PTO to dedicate its fundraising activities to *the entire district*, rather than just our one li'l school.

Legislatively, of course, we need to get rid of local school funding. Schools can still respond to local constituiencies--they can do it better--if their financing is provided by the state (or hell, the feds).

The difficulty, of course, is in coming up with a way to give enough money to poor districts without taking a single cent from richer districts, because any other approach can't ever pass.

75 - It passed in Vermont, when the state supreme court demanded it. But Vermont is Vermont, obvs.

72: No, that's me.

75- obviously the simple solution is forcible economic integration of society. No more rich districts and poor districts = problem solved.

Kozol spoke at my college graduation, as I think I've mentioned here before. He talked about how most of us (at a very middle-class college) had parents who sought out decent public schools for us, and that we always need to remember that our success is a product, not of insane privilege, but of privilege nonetheless, that the real divide is not between us and the Ivy League kids, but between us and the kids who never had the high school background to succeed in college at all.

At the end of his speech, most of my class stood and clapped, whooped and yelled. The ones who remained seated were pissed as hell. "He ruined our graduation! I deserve this! I got this by working hard!" etc.

77- well, good for you. I'm actually a huge fan of that approach.

And thus Brock Landers completed the journey into full-on troll mode.

75: This is kind of true. But I think you can convince enough people to accept slight-to-moderate cuts in rich districts if you point out that living in a world where more people are better educated is good for them, and will be good for their kids.

Sorta like I think you can convince rich white people to send their kids to schools other than the "best" ones if you can get them to knowing people who are something besides other rich white people is itself a form of knowledge and therefore part of the proper education for citizens in a diverse society.

Now, about that 4-way.

I think you can convince enough people to accept slight-to-moderate cuts

I think you're terribly optimistic.

But I think you can convince enough people to accept slight-to-moderate cuts in rich districts if you point out that living in a world where more people are better educated is good for them, and will be good for their kids.

Good luck, B. I really don't see it.

The ones who remained seated were pissed as hell. "He ruined our graduation! I deserve this! I got this by working hard!" etc.

OMG, that's so, so depressing.

84: Hey, people are becoming increasingly convinced that getting their kids to learn a foreign language is a good thing. Same basic premise.

But it's not just the rich whites you need to convince, it's all the people in the middle. And then you even have to convince the people at the bottom that giving up local control will be good for them, even if it means whatever their pet cause won't get addressed (being taught evolution or being put in bilingual classes, to pick two controversial ones).

84: Not remotely the same premise. It's adding something to their kids' education versus taking something away.

72: Obviously, there's an upper limit--no child needs a billion dollars spent their education. But we're nowhre near the fuctional limit, both from a himan growth/equality of opportunity perspective and from a cost-benefit analysis of the benefits to society and the economy perspective. (This is something that drives me nuts about Republicans--if we want the exonomy to be anything but a paper shell in 20 years, we ne4ed to invest in an educated workforce.)

81- huh? 78 was a joke.

Chopper's on the sauce again, guys.

Fairly obviously, more money could have been spent on my education, and then I wouldn't have made all those fucking typos. God.

You need smaller thumbs, Chop Man.

87: No you don't. Because local control isn't, and shouldn't be, dependent on local funding. And the people in the middle don't want their kids to go to the "bad" schools *because they don't think the bad schools are any good." All you have to do is point out (as Kozol does--and keep in mind, people, that his books sell really well and his primary readership is not academic; it's the same slightly-above-average middlebrow liberal readership that buys the New Yorker, a group in which I'm including myself lest Jody be offended and pull out, so to speak, of the 4-way) that poor children are children too. Honestly, the emotional appeal is more effective in the long run than wonky shit about management and so on *because* it's more accessible.

Voiceover: You don't want your kids to go to X schools because of this. (Show images of really crappy buildings, overcrowded classrooms, the worst of the worst.)

But Johnny has to go to X school. And so does Mary. (Images of cute little kids.)

Maybe we can't afford to put laptops in *every* classroom. But wouldn't you be willing to put off buying new computer equipment for *your* school in order to make sure that Mary's school can afford *books and paper* next year? Vote "yes" on statewide school funding initaitive blah-de-blah.

89: equality of opportunity says nothing about how much money should be spent on education, just that some people shouldn't spend much more than others. This is apparent in the degree to which a college degree is becoming a requirement for more and more entry-level jobs.

86 - No, they're getting their kids to learn a foreign language because they think him being fluent in Chinese by the time he's 18 will help him get into Harvard. They could give a damn about the actual culture or interacting with people from the country where the language is spoken. (Unless that interaction is hiring a nanny from another country who can teach young Chet the language for free so they don't have to shell out for lessons.)

That's the way it is in NYC, at least, if one believes New York magazine.

71: I had an architecture prof who said, "If you say, 'I met code,' what you are saying is that you did the minimum possible to avoid breaking the law."

Which, of course, applies to school funding, prisoner treatment, and construction, among other things.

It occurs to me that one way to deal with the local financing issue is to have 100% of building costs (including maintenance) covered by the state/Feds. That will take care of disparities in physical conditions real quick, and free up huge amounts of funding in poor districts for actual, you know, teaching. And, as long as the basic school building requirements are good enough, you can even allow the rich districts to fundraise for indoor pools or whatever other crap Buffy and Brad "need" to succeed. The difference between a very good school and a super-duper school is immaterial for allowing children to succeed; it's the difference between the third-world schools poor children actually attend and the mini-colleges their wealthy "peers" attend that gives the lie to American BS about egalitarianism.

BTW - in case you didn't guess, there's all sorts of concrete evidence that classroom conditions have enormous effects on student achievement. The idea that any other factors need to be addressed first is a sign of an unserious approach to the subject.

Okay, right, you people know that that third " was supposed to be a *.

People will be willing to increase funding at poorer schools, but NOT at the expense of their own kids' education. You may be able to convince a few, but you'd be hard pressed to find many parents who believe their own kids' schools aren't already underfunded.

It occurs to me that one way to deal with the local financing issue is to have 100% of building costs (including maintenance) covered by the state/Feds.

The fucked up part is that Halliburton or Bechtel would get the contract.

89- well, okay, but $1b is a facetious number that no one would actually spend. But some people do spend $30k+ on elite private schooling, and I think that's nuts. (And, in a society like ours, immoral.)

Not that $30k can't buy an objectively better education that $15k. Just that there are other things we could be doing with that extra $15k that are more important.

For the record, I'm not actually against getting some more money into underfunded public schools in poor districts, by whatever means necessary. Given the disadvantages their students face, in a just world these schools would be better financed than those in rich suburbs, to better equalize opportunities. My point upthread was just that I'm not convinced that dumping more money overall into the system is necessary, or would be necessary if our school funds were allocated and spent efficiently.

96: Chinese is the hip language now because people are thinking in terms of the global economy: I want my kid to be able to do business internationally. All you gotta do is point out that better funding for public schools appeals to the same instincts. We want America as a country to be able to stay ahead internationally; therefore, we need to invest in making sure American kids can take Chinese in public schools.

I'm reminded of a passage in C.P. Snow's Forward to G.H. Hardy's A Mathemetician's Apology:

...He knew what privilege meant, and he knew that he had possessed it. His family had no money, only a schoolmaster's income, but they were in touch with the best educational advice of nineteenth-century England. That particular kind of information has always been more significant in this country than any amount of wealth...

This is what Kozol was telling AWB's class, and what we here know instinctively. We've steered our teenagers through the Chicago Public Schools, with great results, to the astonishment of our suburban connections, by using this kind of knowledge. It's an equalizer for us against the wealthy, but of course it's not fairly distributed either.

I can't speak to the schools in Landersville, but down here in NC, the problem isn't inefficiency. It's just trying to keep up with one of the fastest-growing populations in the United States. Believe me, as an active PTA member, teachers are squeezing the dollars much, much further than they ought to be required to squeeze. Hence the endless and annoying fundraising crap.

"The average household income of a New Yorker subscriber was $80,957 in 2005, while the average income for a U.S. household with a subscription to a news magazine was $67,003, and the U.S. average household income was $51,466."

School bond measures get marketed in the way you describe, and routinely go down in flames.

99: That's because most people's schools *are* underfunded. I took a box of kleenex to PK's classroom yesterday, and all the arts and music education in that school is paid for by parents (as well as the fucking library and the librarian's salary). That's why you focus on needs rather than wants: "before we move to start buying laptops for schools, which we're just gonna have to find money to keep upgraded and maintained, let's think about spending that money on making sure all the public schools have librarians." Etc.

All right, fine, you fucking pessimists. If it's impossible to convince people to support equal funding, what do you recommend?

I think you can convince people about equal funding, but it has to start with increasing funding, not simply reallocating the existing funding. This isn't an easy sell either, but it's considerably easier than asking parents to make sacrifices in their own kids' schools in order to benefit children of people they don't know.

Okay. I'll keep on with the Quixotic quest then, and you can bring in increased funding through the back door by saying "it's either me and my reasonable plan, or that crazy liberal bitch over there. Now cough up, people."

Ah, the MLK/MalcolmX strategy. Perrrfect.

It's the key to everything.

I just hope I can avoid being shot.

I think any either/or approach to the question of funding and the mishandling of funds is faulty by nature. Meaningful change to school funding will be in the form of an approach that both increases funding and increases the very public accounting for those funds. Maybe school districts do this now, I don't know, but when I was an (unsuccessful) education major I was always struck by how often people viewed the schools as corrupt money-sinks simply because they did not understand the funding cycle or have any information on what percentages of funds went into materials, maintenance, required curricula that aren't reflected in required standardized testing, required testing that in no way reflects meaningful or substantive curricula, etc. A school district that aggressively educates its taxpayers on how their money is spent probably has an easier time getting more money by explaining what is underfunded, why and how an increase in funding will be applied.

112: Good luck with that. I'ma take my chances with the "no laptops until all the black kids have books" strategy, myself.

One other problem is the tension between B's suggestion, and her 71. I had a longer comment typed out, but in short, while I agree that if you have more cash to throw around, a small mistake matters less, given that we're not working with an infinite cash supply, telling people 'we're going to raise your property taxes because while your school is efficient, this district isn't, so it needs more money' just isn't going to fly.

People are more sensitive to losses than gains. All it would take to counteract your ad is one of a cute kid, so close to getting into the school of his dreams, doomed to middle-class mediocrity because instead of getting new calculus II textbooks, the government took his money and wasted it on a contractor who failed to fix the urban school's roof (presumably while getting the prom queen pregnant so she'd have an abortion to fit into her dress.) "And their solution is to give these clowns more of your hard-earned money."

I think you can get people to pony up, but not if they think it's going away from their own kids. And even if you managed that, they'd all take off for private schools if the standards slipped, leaving you still without a district that had the crucial parental input.

Here's a question: when a student is pulled from public school to attend private school, is the loss to the public school unambiguous? Yes, the school has what was likely one of the more involved sets of parents, but the school now also has one less student over which to spread the same amount of money. And it's not like *no* poor parents (or *all* rich parents) are involved in their children's education, or help out at their schools.

I'm sympathetic to the argument that when high-achievers flee to private schools it cripples a district, but at the same time if 15 or 20% of the student body really left, the school would suddenly have a lot more money per pupil (and a higher teacher/student ratio). Is this unambiguously bad?

but the school now also has one less student over which to spread the same amount of money.

I don't think so -- aren't schools funded per student? So they've lost a student who was cheap to educate (high achiever, committed family) and with it lost the funding of the average student, if you see what I mean.

Schools are funded per student, I guess, but districts collect property taxes irrespective of whether a child is enrolled in public or private school. So I guess 115 should really be asked at the district, rather than the individual school, level. I think the question is the same, though.

so close to getting into the school of his dreams, doomed to middle-class mediocrity

I see your point, but how would you visually portray this? And isn't it equally easy to refute as ludicrous? "Because Johnny doesn't have a laptop in his classroom/can't take calculus II, Johnny didn't get into Harvard.

But he *is* going to Northwestern, and because Mary had paper and pencils, she was able to do her homework and is now going to State U. Win-win."

B- I think you overestimate how many of your fellow citizens care about other people's children as much as you do. To most people, 118 is not win-win *at all*.

B- I think you overestimate how many of your fellow citizens care about other people's children as much as you do. To most people, 118 is not win-win *at all*.

I think you underestimate people. Ask your wife how much she cares about, say, starving kids in Africa since she had a baby of her own.

Pretty much what Brock said. All you'd do is keep the focus on the failing schools, the frowning administrator, the evil contractor pocketing the money, and showing happy kids being rewarded for hard work and your voiceover talks about rewarding failure.

And there's a pretty powerful cultural narrative that says that one of the reasons you work hard is so your kids can benefit, not so that some other schmoe who doesn't work hard can take your money. It's pretty unlikely that the choice would be framed as 'Harvard vs. Michigan while Mary goes off to State.' but as 'Michigan vs. Central Michigan State' while Mary doesn't get anywhere anyway because the corrupt school district squandered the cash.

I'm not endorsing that, mind, but I think that's what you're up against rhetorically.

It's totally what we're up against, and it's already being done. That's why I'm saying that showing *the kids* rather than the frowning administrator and evil contractor is the way to go.

What evidence would convince people here that putting more money into our current public school system is not an effective way to increase the general welfare? My understanding is that the relationship between educational inputs ($, teachers, class size) and educational outputs (better test scores, child behaviour, future income) is not *at all* well understood, even on topics seemingly as "common-sensical" as class size.

The local school administrators had an open house and promised all the attendees that if we would just enroll our kids in the public school they would promise that the kids would not be bussed across town but would attend the local school. I guess they did not have enough takers because they closed the local elementary. Something like 90% of the families in the neighborhood attend private school. Bussing effectively killed public schools, and it may be impossible to bring them back.

No, racism effectively killed the public schools.

That's why I'm saying that showing *the kids* rather than the frowning administrator and evil contractor is the way to go.

If you've read me as putting forth a pretend ad advocating for your position, I must be really off my game today. I'm imagining the counterattack ad, which I think would have more force than cute kids far away (because it would be about MY cute kids.)

I mean, Brock's wife is probably a lovely human being who cares about the starving kids in Africa, but she's buying her own brockbaby diapers and toys and bottles and Boppies.

124: Not sure on the research, but surely getting the rats out of the classroom and the heating fixed can't hurt.

Same difference. Altruism ends at the tribal border. The sad fact is, in my experience, when people mix the stereotypes melt away.

124: I have a hard time imagining real world research that would convince me that the physical infrastructure of schools doesn't matter.

127: No, no, not you. And of course people will spend more of their own money on their own kids. But we're talking about public money, first, and second, the "appeal to motherhood" strategy is far more effective than people realize (or they'd use it more often).

124: The evidence that would convince me would be trying it for a decade, instead of trying to come up with reasons not to.

124, 131: Yeah, that'd do it. Give me a system with appropriately equal resources for every student for ten years, and if gaps in outcomes didn't close at all, I'd accept that resources don't make any difference.

God, this thread was going so well, too.

Yes, the gain/loss asymmetry is critical here, and it's compounded by parental fears of loss of relative position. This is just fear of falling all over again.

131 132 Here is a case where large amounts of money over an extended period of time accomplished little.

And if you read the link, it's a story about mismanagement. Sure, spending money doesn't do anything useful if it's wasted. That doesn't speak to whether money is necessary.

43 For why unions are the problem, see this.

137: `the' problem?

Unions are not *the* problem. They can be a problem, but good lord there are a lot of problems facing the public schools, most of them significantly worse.

Not sure on the research, but surely getting the rats out of the classroom and the heating fixed can't hurt.

Agreed. But *if* there are all these fixes that would drastically increase the efficiency of public education, *and* they keep not happening, does it not raise questions about the efficiency of the allocation mechanism?

The evidence that would convince me would be trying it for a decade, instead of trying to come up with reasons not to.

Ok. What would the measures be after that decade that would make us decide extra spending was/wasn't working? Could we do a pilot in one state, or one town and see if that worked?

136 see 71.

137: It's a terrible tragedy that the law requires all contracts to be drafted by unions alone, without input from management. If only there were some way to allow management to participate in the process. But as it is, I agree that unions are the sole problem.

132: I guess the focus on 'gaps' concerns me more than a little. It seems very likely to me that people will do everything they can to benefit their children. That's good. Education isn't zero sum -- we'd rather have a nation 80% competent and 20% exceptional than a nation 100% competent. The test, I would think, is whether more money in the current system yields greater absolute results.

Do we have to go back over positional goods again, baa? If people can ensure that their kids are in the 20% of the population who receives the sort of education that gives them access to further education and professional jobs by sending their kids to the right schools, that's wrong, regardless of the absolute achievement of the kids involved.

So, yeah, I'd rather have a nation 100% competent that 80% competent and 20% exceptional, if what exceptional means is that affluent parents are perpetuating access to power for themselves and their families.

And here I was trying to help you out by offering a *lower* standard for success. Closing the gap between kids raised in education-friendly environment and kids kids raised in education-neutral and education-unfriendly environemnts seems like a herculean challenge. If that's the standard every school that has ever existed is probably a failure. So I was just trying to help.

Also, it's probably worth noting that not everyone who wants to increase the quality of education in the US thinks it is morally imperative to equalize the life chances of a child born to an Ivy League-educated lawyer and the life chance of a child born to a poor immigrant from Estonia. This may be because they believe this effort is futile and utopian. Or because they believe that there are other competing values (excellence, welfare) that are equally important and need to be balanced. It seems to me people supporting either of those poisitons could still think more funding to the US public school systems is a good idea.

I'm not expecting the school system alone to close the gap in outcomes between the kid of the Ivy Leaguer and the kid from the projects. I am expecting it to act as a force that closes, rather than opening further, that gap. I don't want the school the Ivy League kid goes to to be a better school than the one the kid from the projects goes to. Now, it generally is.

I had a kid from the projects in my Ivy League freshman writing class. Great, great kid; woefully unprepared.

140: Well, there's an example of the opposite situation: spending in the California public schools pre-integration and post-integration. (This is also a very strong counter-argument to my own claim that middle- and upper-class voters would be willing to accept lowering spending on "their" schools in order to raise spending on schools for poor kids; my counter-argument would be that the racism of the 70s would, I hope, be less of a problem now.) After Prop 13 limited property taxes (which may or may not have been a direct response to the 1971 finding that broad variations in property tax based school funding was unconstitutional), we went from having one of the best--and best-funded--public school systems in the country to having one of the worst.

Could we do a pilot in one state, or one town and see if that worked?

We've already got such experiments all over the place, and the evidence is pretty strong that better-funded public school systems do better.

See, e.g. figure six in this article, which shows that public spending overall has dropped since integration. And then try to tell me that people's reluctance to spend money on public ed is morally neutral.

148- I don't think we have the evidence you think we do. I don't know a great deal about educational finance, but this is one of the things I do know. Carolyn Hoxby at Harvard has made her career on these studies. There's little to no correlation we can find between better funding and test results (or other measures of performance) in American public schools.

150 -to follow on: once you properly control for other factors like parental income and education, etc.

146: I think equality of schooling is going to be awfully hard to arrange, and should not be the standard by which public schools are measured. My goals are more modest: I just want a school system that educates effectively. Public schools could be that system, but I think it's eminently reasonable to think that more $ into the current system shouldn't be the only option on the table. I find it depressing that when I ask for evidence that would make you change your mind, you (and Bphd) basically say "try it my way for ten years." I imagine you would find this a manifestly preposterous reponse from a comprehensive voucher advocate to the same question. And right you would be.

Okay, baa, what other options do you think should be on the table?

I've seen those results cited and I mistrust them. I really suspect special pleading, stacked questions, and cherry-picked data. Her results are repeated as gospel by libertarians and freemarket ideologues, which makes me immediately suspicious.

The worst-funded schools are mostly in the South, and lo! Bad schools. The well-funded schools presumably are a mixed bag, because money isn't a magic wand. There are places where poorly funded schools get pretty good results (Utah and North Dakota), but there are local factors there which couldn't be duplicated in California. You can't treat money as the single-factor cause of wverything, but I'd be very, very surprised if a serious study found no relationship at all.

NCLB would have made a lot more sense as NSLB

Following further on 150/151: I don't mean to imply that money alone can't help, although her results have often been interpreted to say exactly that (by Hoxby herself, for instance). I think it's possible that we simply don't have a clean enough experiment for us to see anything in the data, which as you can imagine is quite messy with confounding variables. So something like your 10 year test proposal might turn up more encouraging results. But what I was getting at is that it's not at all true that "[w]e've already got such experiments all over the place, and the evidence is pretty strong that better-funded public school systems do better."

Also, it makes me sad that no one responded to 117.

I think it's eminently reasonable to think that more $ into the current system shouldn't be the only option on the table.

Interestingly enough, it's not what the post is about. The post is about bringing public school infrastructure up to standard. The conversation has followed the following track:

(1) There are many public schools in America in terrible physical shape. They should be fixed, it's important.

(2) But spending more money on the schools is difficult to justify -- spending is misallocated. The problem with the infrastructure may not be not enough money.

(3) Still, it's a problem that needs to be fixed, and money can fix it. We can look into misallocation, too, but while we're doing that, let's bring the schools physically up to standard, 'kay?

(4) But there's no evidence that equalizing resources has any effect on outcomes. So what's the point?

(5) I'm not convinced that it has no effect, and I'd like to see it tried.

(6) Why is the only option on the table throwing money at the schools?

I have strong views about equal educational resources being available to all children. I have strong views about all children being allowed to attend schools that meet reasonable physical standards. If you wanted to argue that total educational spending in the US is already sufficient, I might be convinceable -- it's perfectly possible that we don't need more resources, just better management. But that has nothing to do with unequal distribution of the resources we're using now.

Also, it makes me sad that no one responded to 117.

Sorry, but at the district level I don't know the answer. State aid in most states is still going to be per student, and what the district does with local property taxes is going to be a case by case decision. So I don't think you can say that having students leave for private schools will increase funding for the remaining students, but you also can't really say the reverse -- it's a local mess of a question.

But *if* there are all these fixes that would drastically increase the efficiency of public education, *and* they keep not happening, does it not raise questions about the efficiency of the allocation mechanism?

Indeed, but the solution to that is to change or fix the the allocation system, by knocking some heads if necessary, not to conclude that adequate funding couldn't do anything if properly allocated.

150 -to follow on: once you properly control for other factors like parental income and education, etc.

I've been thinking that even if this is true, it's rather besides the point. I can control how much of my income will go to schools. I can't control the other factors. "Hey, kid, get new parents" is unlikely to be workable, even if it would be the simplest solution.

It's rather like [redacted.] It's one thing to say that it's likely, even with adequate funding (or the max we can squeeze out of a town), a working infrastructure, smaller classrooms, &c, that some kids are still going to be disadvantaged due to their parental income and education. But it seems wrong to jump from that to saying that those are good reasons not to bother to fix the infrastructure.

Does anybody dispute the notion that cutting funding to a school system by, say, 20% would have a direct and observable negative effect on the quality of education those students receive?

160- I think Hoxby would, yes.

117: part of the problem is as someone mentioned upthread, that the high-flyin' superachiever students often have parents who donate a significant amount of time to the school, and sometimes it's also cash (for music and arts.) When those parents leave, you might not lose the local taxes, but chances are the parents aren't donating time and money, which either means that the taxes go up, or the programs get shut down.

Then I'm officially declaring Hoxby full of shit.

154 is what I meant by saying we're already trying the "pilot program" scenario.

Look, the problem with the "effective schools" argument is that it really puts a lot of pressure on what you consider "effective." Is it "effective" to have schools that educate the children of the poor to get service jobs, but not well enough to go to college?

150: There are also studies that show that a *lot* of those differences can be addressed with services (which require additional funding): Head Start, after-school programs, arts and music programs, lower teacher turnover, smaller schools, and so on.

162: That's (I think) a huge cofounding variable -- there's an awful lot of local fundraising that correlates strongly with the income of the parents in a given school. I wonder if Hoxby and similar treat School A that receives $X in gov't funding but no money from parents and School B that receives $X in gov't funding plus $Y from parents as being equally funded?

160 yes, I dispute this.

What would you cut, James?

It seems to me that if you looked at a bunch of schools which had just had sharp cuts, in most cases education would decline. Likewise, if you had a bunch of schools which received singnificantly increased funding, in many cases education would improve, but the correlation would be much weaker.

On the other hand, if you compared various schools in various areas with various histories and compared them dollarwise, you might not be able to find any correlation.

Test scores also don't catch everything. For example, if a school went from four years of foreign language to two, and from two years of calculus to one, or cut out the music program, test scores might not show any significant change.

If Hoxby's giving a political interpretation of her results, that scores against her. She's in economics and not education, I think, and she loses more points there. And she's affiliated with the Hoover Institute, which also counts against her. I suspect an agenda.

166: You're wrong.

And Apo's right. It really is unconscionable to try to make arguments about school funding into pure abstractions when there are obvious and inexcusable problems that could obviously be fixed by throwing money at them, yes. Fix up the old buildings, equalize the student:teacher ratio everywhere, make sure all the schools have up-to-date textbooks and music and arts programs and are small enough that there's only *one* principal and she knows all the kids' names, and *then* we can talk about whether or not adding more money might not be necessary.

she's affiliated with the Hoover Institute [...] I suspect an agenda.

That's a tautology, I think.

165: well, I don't have time to dig through all her papers right now, but I know her work is generally very well regarded. (Not by Apostropher, though, so keep that in mind.) Here's a list of some of her papers available on the web--feel free to dog through yourself. "How Much Does School Spending Depend on Family Income? The Historical Origins of the Current School Finance Dilemma" sounds relevant to the present discussion, as do several others. Although neither of the two papers of hers that I've read are on that list, unfortunately.

172: well regarded by economists, or by people with expertise in education?

*dog* s/b *dig*.

I'm curious: what does it mean in this context to say she 'has an agenda'? She clearly favors school vouchers and would like to see them implemented -- does that mean she has an agenda? Moreso than someone who clearly opposes school vouchers? (I'm not sold on school vouchers, I'm just asking the question. I don't really understand your attacks, unless they boil down to "she disagrees with me.")

If I took 20% of Caroline Hoxby's income away, would her standard of lliving decline?

174: I suspect that they mean the Hoover Institute is not well regarded -- more particularly, is known for presenting disingenuous arguments.

The problem with having an agenda would be if it means the researcher's prior ideological stance caused them to do something like cherry-pick the data to show what they want to show. Not that Hoxby's done this.

I'm really not very openminded about this. My son and my nieces and nephews attended public schools in three different states and a province of Canada where the well-funded schools perform well, but these schools still have to fight for funding and defend themselves against attacks from people with agendas (lower taxes, deunionization, and Christian education.) The national noise about "failing schools", often based on data from inner-city schools, is used to attack all schools, all teachers, and especially the teacher's unions.

Someone else will ahve to read Hoxby's papers. I'm not an economist or a statistician, but what I saw did not increase my trust of her. I'm sure she's a competent economist, but that's not enough.

173- by economists. I don't know about educators -- you tell me. What do they think of her?

But the point is that she's mostly a statistician, at least insofar as we're discussing her work here. Is there or is there not a correlation between school funding and student performance, once other factors are controlled for? Unless they too are statisticians with some valid criticism of her work, I don't see how the opinions of educators on that question matter any more than yours or mine.

I've had lunch with Hoxby on several occassions. I'm not sure she's right about everything, but I do think she's honestly trying to get to the truth of things, and better our educational system.

173 Was certainly nt meant as an `attack', I'm curious what you meant by `well regarded' because it is often used in different ways.

*wasn't

I really can't decide if I should be outraged by 171 or not. Help me out here, apo: is it a double entendre?

No.

179: looks like we're cross-posting. I don't know about educators, either. I don't have an opinion on her work, as I haven't read it (I will try to get to it). It's a difficult thing to measure in any sort of sensible way, so inasmuch as her results seem to disagree with others it is plausible there is difficulty with the `controlled for' part, or the basic metrics, but I'm not going to venture a guess one way or another. Barring evidence to the contrary, I'm perfectly willing to believe she is having an honest go at the problem.

"Has an agenda" should be an easy concept to easy to understand. Basically I mean that her opinions about unions, vouchers, and education are part of a preexisting ideology, and that her research is tuned and trimmed to reinforce the conclusions given by her ideology -- presumably freemarket ideology.

If she says that there's no correlation between spending and results, that has to be an overstatement and it makes me distrust her entirely. If she sorted out the cases in which there was a correlation and those in which there wasn't, people in education might be able to use her conclusions, but when she states it flatly like that it makes it seem likely that she's on the familiar anti-tax anti-union privatization bandwagon and is finding the best data to support her preferred policy.

Well, heavens forfend I should stray from "what this post is about" LB! Here I imagined threads like these existed in order to spark other discussions which might even diverge from the original topic...

As I (briefly) read the thread, there was broad discussion of underfunding in our current system, as witnessed by crumbling buildings. Bully for shoring up crumbling buildings, of course. That's (to me) a lay-up.

What is more interesting to me is the broader question of what structural changes we should seek as we put in more money. I think the current misallocation we see is good reason to believe that more money in without structural changes is a recipe for results we don't want. Per teo's question, structural options I'd like to see include more choice, more local control, more opportunity for schools to have idiosyncratic "missions", more merit pay, reduced barriers to teacher firing, reduced barriers to teacher credentialing, dollars that follow the student, and competition between schools. Above all, I'd just like to see more *experimentation.* More people trying things that might work better, and measuring the results.

Since I got the sense (maybe falsely) that people on this thread were associating problems *mainly* with underfunding, I wanted to know what people would think would be evidence against this. It turns out Bphd doesn't actually believe we should try it on faith or 10 years, bu thinks instead we have studies that support this conclusion more or less decisively. This is just not my understanding of the state of our knowledge, but I would be pleased to be informed. The STAR program in Tenessee is the best example I know, but even there the data (on class size) are in conflict with other class size studies, and the overall magnitude of effect is not what one would hope.

...following on: I assume she asked experts for input on the metrics?

186: Interestingly, most of the other options you've mentioned have indeed been tried in various places over the past ten years or so, with mixed results.

186: I didn't have the sense at all that people were assuming the main problem was underfunding --- I read it as pointing out that regardless of the other issues, some of the infrastructure issues are falling so far below any sort of rational acceptable minimum, that it should be held as a general shame and fixed without getting bogged down in other issues.

I haven't been reading this thread, but I've been hanging out in urban public schools lately and there are rats in them.

Like, I've seen the rats. Or it was something furry, at any rate.

183: Crap, I was really hoping for the Hoover/vagenda twofer.

It turns out Bphd doesn't actually believe we should try it purely on faith or 10 years, but thinks instead we have studies that support this conclusion more or less decisively.

Depends what you mean by decisively: obviously pretty much anything can be argued about. But I think that the basic correlation between higher spending and better schools is pretty damn clear, and I really do think that the impetus behind arguing against it is way more driven by ideology and unrecognized prejudice than people realize or admit. Really, given the importance of public education to the nation, there's absolutely no reason whatsoever not to be willing to spend a lot more money on it than we do, other than some kind of niggling suspicion that "public" means "for poor people" and an associated linking of "poor people" with "wasting money."

One thing that's come up in Minnesota is school choice within the public school system. Any student can attend any school in the state regardless of where they live. The student's family is responsible for transportation, and schools can refuse students if they're at capacity, and there are safeguards to minimize sports recruiting, but basically it's a choice system.

This does encourage schools to improve and my home-town school has taken steps to attract outside students.

I think that there's less political enthusiasm for this than for charter schools because it threatens segregation by neighborhood, which is a very common system. Ambitious black families could send their kids to predominantly white schools, whereas the existing system was designed to keep that from happening.

167 Well if you make me dictator I would eliminate all restrictive union and civil service rules. In many cases (such as the New York City school custodians see 137) I expect this would save at least 20%. I would change the pay structure for teachers so that experience mattered less (especially after the first few years). This would mean significant cuts for older teachers. I would eliminate all extra spending on "special needs" children. Spend the same amount on every child and do the best you can for him or her. Bar truly disruptive students from regular classes. Reduce non classroom staff. Eliminate fringe programs and concentrate on basic skills reading, writing and mathematics. Put more emphasis on learning things of practical value. Reduce bussing particularly for older children. No public bussing for private schools.

193: Seattle, at least, was doing this too (dunno about the state of Washington). Of course, they're also now having their system, which included tie-breakers based on race among other factors, challenged in front of the Supreme Court. But my sense was that it was working really well.

194: Making public education about producing only wage laborers and ensuring that non-conforming students end up in jail and kids with learning disabilities on the streets would be pretty dictatorial, yup.

194: I'm curious, James. Presumably you are suggesting that such measures would improve the education system in some validateable way. Given that, what sort of metric of performance are you envisioning, and what sort of empirical analysyis do you base your suggestions on?

Some years ago the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the state of California, alleging that the state underfunded public schools in certain areas. The allegation was not so much that underfunding is directly linked to performance, but that underfunding itself is an evil. I toured some schools while working on the case, and some of the things I saw were indeed pretty terrible -- lots of schools where there weren't enough desks or books to go around, so that kids would have to share books and sit on the floor. There were schools where there weren't enough teachers, so that the kids would have short-term subs for an entire year.

I don't think that underfunding and poor performance are *necessarily* directly correlated. But that isn't a persuasive argument for not improving conditions. Is it likely that eradicating the worst conditions will improve performance? I think so. To my mind, every kid in school should have a book and a desk, because it's preposterous to expect them to learn without them.

194: If you take away union protection, I think you'll find that it's a lot harder to keep schools staffed with good teachers.

Shearer's suggestions were mostly cost-cutting measures. Only a few might improve education. "Eliminating fringe programs" would make education worse.

193/195: okay, I said "vouchers", but I think that was wrong -- I just meant "choice", and I'm pretty sure these are Hoxby's proposals in action. So see, she's not so bad.

I'd like to see good teachers make a lot *more* than they do now. So anytime someone talks about saving 20% of their budget by busting up the teaching unions I get a bit uneasy. The union may at this point be counterproductive, but I don't think teacher salaries are where we want to save money.

I'd also like to see teaching become a high-status profession. I fancy this related to the first point, though that may not be all of it. I also think we have a big problem with our colleges of education. I don't know how to say this other than directly: almost everyone I've ever known who has been an education major in college has been relatively stupid. I know there are very gifted teachers out there, and raw acedemic intellectual horsepower and teaching ability aren't perfect correlates anyway (as anyone with a few "genius" college professors probably knows), but teaching is a skill and mental aptitude does matter. And people who are pasionate about academic subjects like literature or mathematics (the kinds of people we'd like to see as teachers) don't want a watered-down concentration in these subjects combined with a bunch of fluffy education classes. I really think colleges of education ought to be done away with altogether. Just let prommising college graduates teach in their fields of specialization. Have a few dedicated teaching/child devlopment courses as part of certification if you want, but nothing like our current system.

To my mind, every kid in school should have a book and a desk, because it's preposterous to expect them to learn without them.

Yet (and this is why I think Hoxby is perhaps not insane) there are a lot of other countries where exactly these sort of resource deficiencies are rampant, and yet plenty of learning takes place anyway. Moreso even, in some cases, than in our average schools, and certainly moreso than in our poorer schools.

eliminate all restrictive union and civil service rules. In many cases [...] I expect this would save at least 20%.

I really, really doubt it.

Brock, I think that 202 is ridiculous. Some poor countries have some pretty good schools which are badly funded by our standards, but those countries in general don't generally have good educational results but in any case, the results are not exportable. There may be great schools in India which pay teachers $500 a month, but this isn't India. If you go around looking for heroic exceptions you'll find them, but we're talking about what the norm should be for a country of 300 million.

I might repeat that I don't think that American schools are failing the way people say, and I get tired of hearing the same cherrypicked bad examples over and over again.

202: I don't disagree with your premise. My own high school was pretty shitty -- I remember occasions when we had to sit on the floor, or share books, and there were a couple of celebrated instances when ceiling tiles fell down and hit students during class. Yet, my high school performed fairly well -- at least, a relatively high percentage of the students graduated to four-year colleges.

But I would hate to hear that success story used as a reason why we *shouldn't* get a book and a desk to every student. My high school surely would have been more pleasant if the place hadn't been such a dump, and it just makes sense that students will find it easier to learn in an environment that makes learning comfortable. Where at least part of the problem is a lack of basic amenities like books and classrooms and unleaky ceilings, I say throw money at the problem, by all means.

I'd like to see good teachers make a lot *more* than they do now. So anytime someone talks about saving 20% of their budget by busting up the teaching unions I get a bit uneasy. The union may at this point be counterproductive, but I don't think teacher salaries are where we want to save money.

I'd also like to see teaching become a high-status profession. I fancy this related to the first point, though that may not be all of it.

This is, I think, a huge issue. Teaching is a terribly undesirable job (it is wildly more laborious and less pleasant than the alternative office jobs that someone with a similar education would likely have) and it's not paid nearly enough to attract good people into it. The good teachers out there are teachers because they're saints -- they see it as a vocation. Changing salaries wouldn't work fast, because it's also a job that's heavily dependent on experience: while I applaud the Teach for America kids, most of them are doing terrible jobs. But I think it would work longer term.

I suspect 201 is right. I know that some of the reasons I'm not going into, say, public high school is because 1) the teacher-certification process is widely said to be a stupid costly waste of time, 2) teachers get shat upon from parents, administrators, and public officials, and 3) teaching HS is famously underpaid. I'd probably be a decent HS teacher though; I'm certainly (over)qualified enough.

202: I'm with Emerson here. I taught in a school with no resources, and it sucked, and the kids didn't learn, and enough chairs and desks and an unleaky roof and books (oh, and masking tape. Man, I bought a lot of masking tape those years) would have helped a great deal.

Let me reiterate that I definitely do think we should be doing anything and everything in our power to help get more money into underfunded schools. There are several conversations happening at once here (sort of... I think one conversation is settled -- does anyone disagree that we ought to give more money to crumbling schools? Maybe Shearer, but he doesn't count), and I think that's maybe throwing some people off.

199 201 I am skeptical that there is much difference between "good" teachers and "average" teachers. It seems to me that teaching (especially of young children) is a low skill occupation that many people can do adequately and for which there is little payoff for hiring "superior" people. So I see no reason for it to be a high status high pay occupation.

210: No offense, James, but that's crazy.

One change I would agree with would be a complete restructuring of education programs, and a requirement that all teachers have a BA or BS in a content field. No ed majors. I would also support steps to allow highly-educated or -experienced people teach without ed courses, with safeguards of course.

There are three agendas in education, one of which I share. One is simple cost-cutting. One is conservative, Christian, and segregationist dissatisfaction with the content of public education. The one I agree with is improving education. When I believe that people are actually talking about that, I'm less closed-minded. But usually #1 and #2 are presented disguised as #3.

Yeah, see, you're simply wrong about that. What is probably leading you astray is that the academic information the teacher needs to have in elementary school, and really in almost any secondary school, is nothing special. Anyone can read, can do arithmetic, why should teaching be such a big deal.

What you are ignoring is that the process of teaching, rather than the content of what is being taught, is a difficult and highly skilled operation. Holding the attention of 20-30 children for six hours while giving each the individualized help they need is not trivial, and you need to be intelligent and experienced to do it well.

213, obviously, to 210.

I also think we have a big problem with our colleges of education.

Agreed. Also agreed that this is related to the problem of poor teacher pay (and poor teaching conditions). But that's not the only cause. Another cause, and I think it's the really intractable one, is that we simply need a *lot* of teachers. How do you fill classrooms without essentially making a credential something that almost anyone can get?

I'm sympathetic to 207 and LB's support of Teach for America, but I'm also aware that teaching *well*--and remember, in public education we expect teachers to be able to teach *everyone*--requires more than specialized knowledge of a subject area. There's a reason why the credentialing process was put into place, and a reason why we should retain it. I agree that it needs fixing (and that teaching conditions, including lack of classroom autonomy and poor pay need fixing too, in order to get people like JM and me into public schools), but getting rid of credentialing isn't the way to do it.

James Shearer should be kept away from anything having to do with education. Period.

you need to be intelligent and experienced to do it well.

And well-trained. Experience can substitute for training in a lot of ways (but not all); but since there are always going to be new teachers, you can't rely on experience alone.

210: You obviously either don't have kids, or don't care about them very much.

I don't know about training, having gotten very little, but I'm sure it would have helped. I do share Brock's and Emerson's worries about education programs, though -- I've had a couple of friends go through them in the last few years and they've been uniformly contemptuous.

There should be monitoring of non-credentialed teachers, but they shouldn't be excluded.

Ed people even end up telling me that mastering the material isn't terribly important, and that teachers are experts at teaching itself, and that's just BS.

Agreed that teaching colleges are teh lame. My experience of training, though, is that the workshops and seminars I took that were explicitly focused on methods, as well as the reading I've done on pedagogy, are vital to my most successful classroom methods.

FWIW, I also think that they (especially the reading) have made a positive difference in how I parent, too.

My mom recently got her masters in education, and she was not impressed with the kind of training teachers get in schools of education. There's definitely a problem there.

220: I think there should be exceptions, certainly. But I think all teachers should be occasionally assessed/monitered.

209 Actually I think schools in poor physical condition should be fixed. However I don't think giving more money to the school districts is a sensible way of doing this. If you reflexively see crumbling schools as conclusive evidence that the district is underfunded and throw more money at it you are just providing a powerful incentive to neglect maintenance. If the school infrastructure is in unacceptable condition have the state take the district over and cut everybody's salary 20% to fix the problems. This would provide more rational incentives.

I think that unaccredited teachers would be especially good in advanced and enrichment areas where spoonfeeding, motivation, and crowd control are less important.

If the school infrastructure is in unacceptable condition have the state take the district over and cut everybody's salary 20% to fix the problems. This would provide more rational incentives.

To... whom, exactly? It's not as if all those teachers whose salary you just cut were in a position to stop the building from falling into disrepair.

Shearer should be kept away from education and everything else of any importance. Apparently he thinks that pay cuts are the solution to every single problem.

226: By god, with the proper incentives they'd be out there spackling on their own time.

Good point, 228!

If the school infrastructure is in unacceptable condition have the state take the district over and cut everybody's salary 20% to fix the problems

...of finding money to pay the people hired by the state to run the school district.

I have to say, this guy can bring the crazy in some new and refreshing ways.

Clearly when James Shearer's car breaks down, he simply asks for a salary cut to incentivize himself to replace or repair the car before it develops further problems.

213 said:

"What you are ignoring is that the process of teaching, rather than the content of what is being taught, is a difficult and highly skilled operation. Holding the attention of 20-30 children for six hours while giving each the individualized help they need is not trivial, and you need to be intelligent and experienced to do it well."

So what percentage of new hires do schools wash out for not being able to handle this difficult job? I am under the impression it is approximately 0%.

I do share Brock's and Emerson's worries about education programs, though -- I've had a couple of friends go through them in the last few years and they've been uniformly contemptuous.

From a few friends who have gone through it, it seems that if the program is good and the student is exceptionally motivated, they learn a lot. Problem is, that teaching doesn't attract an overwhelming amount of motivated, sharp people. I'm not saying that you'd want or need a bunch of Ph.D. types teaching third grade, but surely it shouldn't be a majority B and C students going into teaching because it's a soft option.

And the claim that a good teacher can't make a difference seems laughable. On the other hand, if people buy that, it should be easy to convince them to send their kids to the failing schools, since the overworked, overwhelmed teachers are probably mediocre-to-adequate. Problem solved.

If the school infrastructure is in unacceptable condition have the state take the district over and cut everybody's salary 20% to fix the problems. This would provide more rational incentives.

I don't see this doing anything except causing the competent teachers to flee the district.

And once the states run all their own districts, the federal government can take over all the state systems and we'll reap the benefits of economy of scale.

232: To begin with, a lot of poor teachers leave the profession because they can't manage their classrooms.

So what percentage of new hires do schools wash out for not being able to handle this difficult job? I am under the impression it is approximately 0%.

Because, you see, people of greater ability aren't lining up for the job -- they're off doing something else easier and more lucrative. See, that would be the point of raising the status and pay, to attract better teachers.

So what percentage of new hires do schools wash out for not being able to handle this difficult job?

In the Teach For America program, it's quite high; they've found it's hard to retain good teachers because they're talented kids who can do a lot more and make more money without having to put up with the bullshit.

I think the selection pressure you're seeing happens earlier. No one who isn't either a) out of other respectable options or b) driven to educate is drawn to the profession. They don't wash anyone out because there's no one to replace them with, as someone who is a talented instructor is probably good at other things that are related to it probably isn't interested in making $23K a year.

It's strange that you seem to think that incentives work backward for education. Does your company recruit the best workers by offering lower pay or poorer work conditions?

235: And this -- being a really poor teacher is horrendously unpleasant.

So what percentage of new hires do schools wash out for not being able to handle this difficult job? I am under the impression it is approximately 0%.

In Oregon it takes several years to get hired full-time permanent. There's practice-teaching and substitute teaching, and some people travel to districts which have trouble getting anyone. Once you're hired as a permanent teacher there's still a probabtionary period. So I'd say that you're 100% wrong.

The districts which never fire new hires are presumably multi-problem districts which are having problems getting anyone at all to work there. Perhaps pay cuts would make it easier for them to recruit.

232: Is this impression based on anything more meaningful than being pulled out of your butt?

Seriously, you've made a number of assertions & positions in this thread that seem pretty much devoid of any connection with the real world. So do you know anything about the education system in this country or are you making this up as you go along out of some half-baked mixture of think-tank blather and half-remembered hearsay?

So what percentage of new hires do schools wash out for not being able to handle this difficult job? I am under the impression it is approximately 0%.

When I was an education major, I got washed out before graduation. At the time, NC teachers were on a form of probation for the first few years of their career; this meant they got an older, tenured teacher to mentor them but it also meant they were extremely easy to can if they just couldn't hack it. The result was not common but neither was it approaching 0%.

Of the first dozen or so fellow educators-in-training I can think of whom I knew at the time and with whom I've kept up since, I can name three who still teach. All the ones who don't left it of their own volition, but there is definitely a gauntlet not every teacher makes it past. This is, in fact, one of the main reasons why education majors do student teaching.

I suppose if you define `wash out' as after training but not of their own volition, it keeps the numbers low (but not even 0% to an approximation)... but misses the point as most attrition is voluntary, or prior to being placed.

I know a number of people who have taught grade school at some point; the overwhelming majority have left it for other things. Most of them because they could get better pay for less work.

It takes a special person to teach HS. You have to be energetic, very well-organized, on top of the material, have great social skills in dealing with loopy and sullen kids, have great bureaucratic skill dealing with the paperwork and administration. I couldn't hack it.

During my year on site as an aide, I ended up estimating that 33% of the teachers were burnouts trapped in their jobs, 33% were marking time on their way to some other career, and 33% were superhuman beings. And this was a good school in a non-failing district.

Good teachers are underpaid.

I should just be honest: all my friends left it because the pay was too high by about 1/5. It's impossible to feel like the district gives a shit about you when all they do is give you more money. Only a 20% pay cut really shows they care.

197 I was responding to a question about where I would cut costs. Therefore I expect my suggestions would improve things by saving money.

Improving student performance is much harder and I am unaware of any plausible way of obtaining substantial improvements on a large scale which is why I am reluctant to spend a lot of money trying.

As for performance metrics I would use test scores. Of course the easiest way to improve test scores is to cheat so you have to take appropriate precautions.

Yeah, speak truth to power, Pants!

Some of the people I knew decided they didn't want to teach, but as far as I know they were encouraged in that opinion by the fact that nobody was very enthusiastic about their work. Very few people ever got permanent jobs within the first couple-three years after graduation.

245:

First off, the issue wasn't cost cutting. Even if it were though, you are implicitly claiming that your savings measures, if indeed they would reduce costs, would not have a negative effect on education quality or even `test scores'? Should we have any reason to believe this is true?

233 said:

"And the claim that a good teacher can't make a difference seems laughable. On the other hand, if people buy that, it should be easy to convince them to send their kids to the failing schools, since the overworked, overwhelmed teachers are probably mediocre-to-adequate. Problem solved."

Parents care about the other kids who do make a difference.

But they certainly couldn't mind having the funding for their own children's schools cut severely so that the excess could be diverted to failing schools that educate bad children, so long as their children didn't have to associate with the bad children, right?

The basic equation--pictures of rats crawling on children who have to sit on a leaky floor sharing books = more school funds--does provide incentives to produce pictures of rats. It's a variant of the Washington Monument strategy.

It's not even necessarily bad, if the extra money winds up making the school better, but it does make one cynical about actually getting buildings fixed.

James steps off from this into the realm of madness.

242 is actually a bad mischaracterization, upon re-reading, so I'll fix it.

Most of the people I know who left grade school or HS teaching are now better paid. Most of them didn't leave teaching because of this, though. At least one left because of the hours.

251: that's true, but I think dealt with long ago in this thread. LB at least made a point to note that it is not organizationally or technically implausible for the schools to be fixed. Certain methods of distributing funds for this might indeed act as a dis-incentive to actually do the work --- but that is irrelevant to the basic truth that it could be done properly.

[One quick factual point: Jonathan Kozol has actually been writing about these issues (and providing data to support his conclusions) for nearer 40 years than 30.]

Okay, all the Shearer stuff is stuff and nonsense, but I just have to ask: Have you ever heard of accounting? I would wager that even the most fiendishly corrupt school administrator would have an extremely difficult job of it if he or she wanted to drain money from the Buildings & Grounds account and put it into the Ski Vacation for The Administrator account. By the same token, it would be almost impossible, without a great deal of legislative action, to take money from Salaries or Basketball Games or some other account, and siphon it into the infrastructure accounts in anything like the numbers you're talking about.

Anyhow, as a product of the Minneapolis Public Schools (who can spot ridiculous rightist arguments with ease) here's what I think we could do to change the way education works in this country, without recourse to absurd assumptions of fiat:

Funding:
1. Apportion funding at the state level, and make school funding the sole expenditure for which property taxes can be used.
2. Make teachers state employees who would fall under the same HR and benefits structure as other state employees, with corresponding pay grades, seniority schedules, etc.
3. Equalize sports and other extracurricular funding, statewide.
4. Abolish all vouchers, charter schools and similar cash-grabs by the truly corrupt (take a look at the history of charter schools here in the state that originated them for a real education in how to rip off tax money and use it to line your own pockets).
5. Replace charter schools with distinct programs and sub-programs in regular schools -- an idea which has a long and successful tradition in Minneapolis.

Non-funding:
1. Agonizingly reappraise various methodolgies of tracking. Appoint a state ombudsman or commission to make sure that students tracked into various lower-achieving tranches are receiving an equivalent education to both higher-achievers and each other.
2. In conjunction with (1), take a long hard look at the question of racism in education -- at the respective levels of student, teacher, administrator, school board member, community member, legislator and curriculum creator.
3. In conjuction with (2), the same thing except with sexism and other gender-based discrimination.
4. Give students an official forum for airing concerns about their schools and instruction, also with an ombudsman to follow up.

[Okay, one more Shearer rebuttal, to the twin idiocies of "Bar truly disruptive students from regular classes." and "eliminate all extra spending on "special needs" children." The shorter Shearer here is of course "Are there no workhouses, no jails?" Perhaps James, you are too young to remember it, but there was a time in this country, memorialized and excoriated in Titticut Follies (Frederick Wiseman, 1967) when just such a regime was in place. It led to the worst sorts of abuses being perpetrated by the state against the most vulnerable members of society. It was not pleasant. It was not even humane. It was an abomination.]

Parents care about the other kids who do make a difference.

Is there anyone on earth who doesn't know what this statement really means?

No? Didn't think so.

"Titticut" s/b "Titicut"

237 said:

"It's strange that you seem to think that incentives work backward for education. Does your company recruit the best workers by offering lower pay or poorer work conditions?"

My company, like most, does not try to hire people who are more skilled than they need to be to perform the job adequately. In most jobs there is little difference between the performance of an average employee and the performance of a superior employee so it is not cost effective to raise salaries past a certain point.

What would be better to double teaching salaries or to keep them the same and hire twice as many teachers? I think doubling the number of teachers would be preferable although I doubt it would actually make much difference in student performance.

Teaching is a nightmarishly difficult task - anyone who thinks it's easy was obviously not paying attention in school.

It's not enough to simply present the material. That gets through to the two or three people in the class who actually care about what they are studying. Teaching is coaxing a bunch of fidgety, hostile, undermotivated little people* to pay attention to what you're doing in front of the class long enough to learn something.

In addition teachers must cope with a truly absurd bureaucracy as well as parents who think teaching is easy and are also convinced that their (fidgety, hostile, undermotivated) child can do nothing wrong. Teachers are also fortunate enough to work in an organization that expects they will supply out of their own paycheck any shortfalls in materials for the children under their care.

Teachers should be heroes in our society. Failing that, they should at least be paid commensurate with the difficulty and importance of their work. Let's cut the defense budget by 20% and use that money for education. 80 billion dollars should certainly do something for education. I now re-ban myself.

* I think it should be obvious why I am not a teacher.

255 requires the addition of something to address the problem of well-off parents raising money privately for *their* school while voting to cut property taxes.

Parents care about the other kids who do make a difference.

Not quite sure what this means.

But if it means 'parents can make a difference in their kids' education' or even 'parents are one of the primary predictors of kids' educational success', I don't disagree. (Indeed, I've even asserted it on this very thread!) But if you don't think the quality of the teachers makes any significant difference, then like I said, one should expect hordes of parents lining up to send their kids to Failing School.

He means parents won't send their kids to Failing School because Failing School contains lots of Those Kids.

Which is why the school is failing.

Portland OR used to have a Failing School. They still have a Going Street.

257: "In most jobs" s/b "at Taco Bell."

C'mon, isn't this getting a little hard to sustain, even for someone with monumental impediments to both compassion and common sense? At most jobs, (and of course, the code in use here is "most jobs=the private sector, which can do no wrong") employees who perform above expectations are granted raises and promotions. Employees who perform only at expectations keep their jobs, and in a positive economic climate, often get raises in excess of inflation. In public education, overachieving teachers are lucky if they are hired back after being laid off for the summer. Overachieving teachers, as well as under-achieving and merely average ones, are likely to have their pay cut, or benefits costs increase, any time the school district or state suffers a temporary downturn in revenues. Their unions are pressured into accepting contracts which reduce real wages during a slump and never make up the difference when times are better. Anecdotal evidence: Here in Minneapolis, it costs over 40% of a new teacher's salary to provide health insurance for the teacher and one dependent. That kind of ratio (and the actual hourly wages that it implies) only exists at the lower levels of the service sector in private industry.

Minneapolitan, the problem with your response is that you fail to realize the genius of JBS's argument. There are no teachers who overachieve; a trained monkey could teach, and it wouldn't make any difference. By definition, therefore, the problem of bad teachers isn't a problem, and there's no need to even *consider* raising pay; we should probably cut it to the point where the trained monkeys will do it for a banana a day.

Indeed, the only problem in public education is the presence of monkeys who are untrained, i.e., "those" students. We wouldn't spend any money on them at all, except that we need our garbage collectors to be able to pass a driving test.

254 said:

"... Have you ever heard of accounting? I would wager that even the most fiendishly corrupt school administrator would have an extremely difficult job of it if he or she wanted to drain money from the Buildings & Grounds account and put it into the Ski Vacation for The Administrator account. ..."

Many school districts have poor financial controls so there is in fact a lot of embezzlement. However the superintendent doesn't have to embezzle money, he just doesn't allocate enough for maintenance in the first place. Public agencies often underfund maintenance because the employees have unions and the infrastructure doesn't. Cut salaries and you have a lot people mad at you immediately, cut maintenance and the worst problems won't show up for years when they will be someone else's problem.

Cut salaries and you have a lot people mad at you immediately, cut maintenance and the worst problems won't show up for years when they will be someone else's problem.

And the problem with funding both salaries and maintenance is... ?

Many school districts have poor financial controls so there is in fact a lot of embezzlement.

Backup here. You're making this claim about the current state of affairs on the ground, vague though it is - where's your evidence for this statement?

I call liberatarian troll shenanigans.

I second the shenanigans call. Shearer isn't bringing anything to the table but assertions, some of them utterly ludicrous.

Seriously, y'all, I just read this whole damn thread, and I've reached only one conclusion: James B. Shearer is a magical-thinking small-hearted member of the Schmibertarian Dipshitterati.

268 School board members generally lack accounting training. So why it surprising that financial oversight and controls are often inadequate. A recent massive embezzlement scandal in New York State occurred in the Roslyn school district. Here is a press release from the state comptroller with a link to a report which details the breakdown of internal controls and school board oversight. Here is a news story pointing out the relation to poor maintenance.

One thing I forgot to mention during the foray through reverse libertarian incentiveland; a young undergraduate friend I ran into a couple years ago mentioned that he was becoming a teacher after having graduated from Ivy U. I professed surprise: surely, he was of the class more likely to become doctors and lawyers or i-bankers, how did he get interested in teaching. As it turns out, not only did he have a passion for teaching, but there was a new pilot program in a nearby town that through some sort of funding, was starting beginning teachers at $60K a year.

Wish I knew more about it, how workable it would be, how it was funded (I want to say half-public half-private philanthropist moving to public over time...) or how many of the young teachers stayed in it, but anecdotally, at least, if you pay more, you get more bright people considering teaching. (How this translates in the classroom is a separate story, of course.)

267 The problem is there are always limited funds and maintenance tends to get short changed since the buildings can't go on strike.

272 No one as far as I know is denying that if you pay more you get higher quality applicants. If pay janitors more you get higher quality janitors. But what is the point? Better to hire more average quality janitors. Even so there are obvious diminishing returns.

James, some of the things you say might have some interest if you had a less adversarial attitude toward teachers and schools, and if we believed you cared at all about the non-fiscal aspects of education. Even so, however, I think that you vastly overestimate the degree to which the basic problem is mismanagement, overpaid teachers, and graft.

And most of us basically tuned you out forever when you asserted that teaching is a low-skilled job that should be low-paid.

But what is the point?

For starters, there's a rather large shortage of teachers, and if, as seems to be plausible, at a higher salary, more students who would otherwise do something else with their lives decide to teach, one point would be to attract new teachers. And that shortage isn't going to dissipate by slashing salaries 20%. (In my hometown, a relatively affluent district, that would mean that a beginning teacher would make about $26K a year.)

If you honestly think that equating teachers and janitors makes sense, I don't really see a point in continuing the conversation, because it seems very unsubstantiated, especially coming from someone who presumably had access to reasonable schooling that nurtured his talents.

....presumably had access to reasonable schooling that nurtured his talents....

You may have put your finger on the problem there.

271: Accountants need training. Teachers, not so much.

Mmhm.

Wow. I can't believe James got so many substantive responses, and so few requests for pastries and other baked goods.

232 was hilarious dipshittery.

275: Don't forget the evil of unions.

No one as far as I know is denying that if you pay more you get higher quality applicants. If pay janitors more you get higher quality janitors. But what is the point? Better to hire more average quality janitors. Even so there are obvious diminishing returns.

Disregarding your "unions always bad" perspective for a while, this point makes no sense when you extend it to teachers. Sure, you can hire as many janitors as you want for a low salary, because you can hire any random 8th-grade dropout or non-English speaker as a janitor. Some janitor jobs can be done by people with Down syndrome.

This is not true of teachers. Anyone qualified to be a teacher is likely to actually have their choice of other jobs to do, and to be able to choose their job based on such factors as salary and benefits. Therefore, reducing salary and benefits might actually decrease the number of people who want that job!!!!!!!!!!!!

Maybe in the ideal economy every employee would be completely replaceable and not make a single dollar more than they need to fulfill their basic biological needs (because if they made more, they would be fired and replaced by a more desperate person). But we don't live in that perfect world yet. Some jobs (even in developing countries, let alone the US) still require certain qualifications that aren't possessed by 100% of the population.

275 said:

"... Even so, however, I think that you vastly overestimate the degree to which the basic problem is mismanagement, overpaid teachers, and graft. "

I don't agree that there is a problem, I think the schools are doing a reasonable job. Of course there is waste but some inefficiency in the public sector is inevitable. I just don't want to see more money thrown away for no good reason.

Someone remarked once that schools have bake sales, but for some reason the military doesn't have to. Why is that? When it comes to military spending, no idea is too crazy or too obscenely expensive to throw money at (see missile defense). But spending money to air-condition schools -- like the rest of the damned buildings in the country? Nah, we can't waste money like that. I recall what that pinko Dwight David Eisenhower said:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

One more thing, my comments above should be read in the context of "what could be done to reform public education without radical changes in other parts of society." Ideally, I would like to see the abolition of state-controlled, compulsory education, and the rise of new educational models along the lines of those proposed by Ferrer, Montessori and A.S. Neill. Basically, I want to see a free association of free individuals in a collective community of scholars. Not simply a "Black Mountain for kids" but a vital, integrated system of learning that included perspectives from individuals and communities who are now marginalized or totally shut out of the educational/pedagogical discourse. Obviously this would require major social change, to the point of revolution. But that doesn't mean we can't work toward it. On the contrary, the realm of childhood and education ought to be one of the major fronts in the battle to create a consensual, humane society.

A note on the "pay for performance" issue: "paying teachers to teach" is the most talked about, but not the most direct way to align incentives here. Those who've truly sold their souls to the Chicago school prefer paying students to learn.

Incentivize me, baby!

There is a third way that I don't think has been proposed -- we could pay the ideas to infiltrate students' minds. A lot of the trouble with education is a result of stuff just being too difficult to understand -- if we incentivize the stuff to be easily understood, I think a lot of the problem will just go away.

Also, we could use PGD to select for literacy.