As much as I dislike that guy, I think what he's saying is "Call a spade a spade, and improve schools because it's the right thing to do, and stop making fake threats about false consequences that aren't tied to school performance."
I happen to think what he's saying is bullshit, and that there are plenty of global and economic reasons to whip our schools in shape.
"we're worried about competing with China and India and, well, they don't bother educating their poor kids so why should we?"
Yes, by all meas let's emulate the utopias known as China and India.
Blind Shaft is a brilliant movie by a Chinese ex pat about two murderous con artists working in the illegal coal mines of China.
The amazing thing is that the two criminals send all their money home to their families so their children can go to school. At one point we see the more ruthless of the two call home to talk to his son about the son's poor grades.
Everyone in China worries about education for their children. This includes the poorest. Education has been the centerpiece of class mobility for thousands of years.
Yes, but Rob, that brilliant movie was made despite having crappy access to public schools. See, you don't need a functional public school system to have a competitive society.
Actually, the filmmaker emigrated to Germany, picked up a Dogma95 aesthetic from the European intelligentsia and then snuck back into China to make the move.
The commentators claim "You don't need a quality education system to be a global economic and military leader" is the most astonishing bit of hogwash I have heard in a long time. His only evidence for it seems to be the specious point that improving K-12 education won't immediately bring down oil prices or end the war in Iraq. Also, my 401K won't let me retire tomorrow, so I might as well scrap it.
Everyone in China worries about education for their children.
Dollars to doughnuts says that you could properly say the same thing about everyone here. I'm sure I've seen polls reflecting that, and the issue's constant prominence in policy/politics discussion suggests the same. Worrying about education for one's children isn't sufficient, and the problem seems to be that we don't know what is. Whether the Chinese or Indians have a better answer, I don't know.
and the problem seems to be that we don't know aren't willing to pay for what is.
7: Yeah, we disagree there. I don't know that we are willing to pay for it, but, given current circs., I think it's probably more true to say that we aren't willing to pay to find out what "it" is. I find arguments, which I've heard from several public school teachers, that family circumstances and other background circumstances overwhelm educational efforts pretty compelling.
Doesn't, obviously, mean that I'm right.
6: You're right, caring isn't enough, but the fact is the Chinese (authoritarian) government is responding to public concern here, and the American (democratic) government isn't.
In the last 10 years, China has gone from education 5 million college students to educating 25 million. That is the kind of growth rate you see in countries that want to be world powers.
I believe that that family and background and intrinsic motivation of the child are all crucial factors, sure. But we don't get alter those much. I believe that small classes and well-paid teachers will bring out the best in each student, even though "the best of each student" is not equivalent across students.
In the last 10 years, China has gone from education 5 million college students to educating 25 million. That is the kind of growth rate you see in countries that want to be world powers.
Maybe, but I think that's about where we are right now, as a percentage of population, isn't it?
I believe that small classes and well-paid teachers will bring out the best in each student, even though "the best of each student" is not equivalent across students.
I doubt that there is that much disagreement about that, but I'm not sure that doesn't lead to another thicket of questions.
I doubt that there is that much disagreement about that, but I'm not sure that doesn't lead to another thicket of questions.
What does it raise, besides that we're not willing to pay for well-paid teachers and small classrooms? (As a society, with proper redistribution of school funding.)
I don't care how many kids are in each classroom, I just want the classrooms to be tiny. I want to see kids piled like stuffed animals in the crane game.
12: I suppose it depends on the end goal. As you suggest in #1, we might be saying that a better education is its own end. In that case, there aren't any more questions, I suppose. Otherwise: what are we willing to pay for how much improvement? Will that improvement be enough to change social structures in the ways that we want, or will it just mean that everyone, from top to bottom, scores two points better but everything otherwise stays the same? Are the monies for such education better spent elsewhere, like on a better safety net?
Will that improvement be enough to change social structures in the ways that we want, or will it just mean that everyone, from top to bottom, scores two points better but everything otherwise stays the same?
It's my conviction that the results would be the former, not the latter. I don't have data at my fingertips.
15: I'm not so sure of that.* But education policy is an area where my suspicions run in all directions, so I'm not sure that there aren't unwelcome biases shaping my conviction or lack thereof.
* And, really, I may have phrased it badly, as I assume the results won't be homogeneous, and we'd probably need to figure out whose improvement we care most about, etc. So more questions.
I'm beginning to think that spending more an adequate amount of money can't have much more than a mitigating effect on the damage otherwise caused by unstable family and home situations -- by economic disparities, in other words.
That's not to say that we shouldn't spend more money, just that it's a bandaid approach to the fact that there's a limited amount that teachers can do.
Heebie said the magic word "redistribution." As long as we're unwilling to consider that our economic system rules our political one, no amount of good intention in the latter regard (with respect to equal opportunity and so on) will trump the massive income inequality currently in play. This goes for the current economic crisis as well.
Neither 'changing social structures' and/or 'education for education's sake' are really what those interested in national competitiveness are interested in. On that score, the outcome being sought is a workforce educated in ways that encourage investment and increase productivity and profit.
That particular goal might well be inimical to 'changing social structures'. The reason why (in the UK) lots of banks and high-tech firms located their call-centres and tech hubs in Glasgow is that, yes, Scotland has a relatively well-educated workforce but, more importantly, that workforce is cheap compared to elsewhere in the UK.
Anyway who thinks that educational policy has no effect on educational outcomes is on crack. The reason some countries have an educated technocratic workforce and some do not is pretty much all about education policy. Unless you just believe in the intrinsic 'scienceyness' of Germans, Japanese, Koreans, Finns, Irish and Scots.
Rural Minnesota also has a well-educated, low-paid work, hard-drinking work force. There's an increasing amount of light industry and call-center type stuff out here.
The intrinsic scienceyness of the Irish and Scots is responsible both for their early successes with distillation and, via their early successes with distillation, for the covering-up of their intrinsic scienceyness for some time.
the outcome being sought is a workforce educated in ways that encourage investment and increase productivity and profit.
That particular goal might well be inimical to 'changing social structures'.
Agreed.
13: If that's not a compelling reason to make heebie the Secretary of Education in an Obama administration, the possibility of her subsequent ascension to the presidency after a Cylon attack sure is.
To be fair, radio guy didn't say education policy made no difference. He said that education policy shouldn't be made at the Federal level, because when the government intervenes, it intervenes badly. The only exception he allowed was the No Child Left Behind Act, which counted as good federal intervention.
But if you stop and think a moment, you will realize that these position are basically incompatible. NCLB was not a mild intervention by the federal government which can be followed by a return to complete local control. It was a move to take over control of the management of education, setting outcomes and demanding the kind of education that will yield those outcomes.
The next president is going to make important education policy decisions, starting with whether to continue the policies of No Child Left Behind.
Great, now we need to worry about a Cylon attack too.
NCLB is absolutely terrible. But Head Start--which is a federal program, y'know--is a good thing.
26: Exactly my point. The libertarians keep trying to frame this as a debate between federal intervention and no federal intervention, but that's a total lie. It is a debate between different kinds of federal intervention.
My least charitable thoughts about libertarians and Republicans come out when I think about education policy. I swear those motherfuckers want people to be stupid so they can take advantage of them better.
27.2: I don't think you need consider this uncharitable; it's simply true. It's a strong work ethic that's wanted from people, not critical thinking.
re: 25
Some of us have to worry about it, some of us do not, iykwimaittyd.
28: If people would come clean about this goal, I could invoke the Big Monkey Reverse Difference Principle against them.
Rawls's Difference Principle assumed that equality was a good thing, but recognized that it should be sacrificed if it would benefit the worst off. Everyone would agree to such a society, even if they didn't know where in that society they would wind up.
Now lets start with the assumption, which Republicans and other authoritarians seem to make, that inequality is a good thing. They want to maximize their dominance over the lower classes. But wait, what if sacrificing some of that dominance would lead to your material well being? In other words, what if allowing some equality would benefit the best off? Clearly a clear headed authoritarian would agree to this. Wouldn't you rather be Lee Kwan Yu rather than Kim Jung Il?
To finish the argument of 30. A better educated work force will reduce inequality, it is true, but it will also raise standards of living for the best off. Both the "social transformation" goal and the "economic competition" goal will be met. Therefore, even you Mr. Authoritarian Republican Person, should promote a generous education policy.
Here is the post where I claim intellectual priority for the Big Monkey Reverse Difference principle.
23 gets it right: the main question that should be asked of any potential Secretary of Education is whether they're willing to throw someone out an airlock. All other considerations are secondary.
But wait, what if sacrificing some of that dominance would lead to your material well being? In other words, what if allowing some equality would benefit the best off?
I believe I read a report not long ago to the effect that heretofore predominantly Republican neighborhoods (in the greater DC area?) have in recent years increasingly turned Democrat, and the explanation floated was their increasing realization of just that: that they'd begun to realize that the extreme top-heaviness of economic arrangements was actually bad for them.
But Rob, this is not really the kind of reasoning we want to use on people, is it? That it's in their own self-interest to allow some equality?
I guess if it's the best we can do.
I was starting with the assumption that the government was run by sociopaths, and then figuring out how best to influence them.
34: Oh. Well, then. (I understand.)
I've held for a while now that 'they' fucked up, and let it go too far. The friend at whom I most often launch this opinion continues to demur: no, no, it's not that, not that.
Nice to see Hoover Institution fellows out there doing their job. I think of the Hoover Tower as the giant middle finger of the Stanford Campus.
If people would come clean about this goal, I could invoke the Big Monkey Reverse Difference Principle against them.
Nice. Is it possible to jury rig the argument to cover psychological comfort, on the assumption that some people want dominance for the sake of dominance, and are willing to sacrifice some of their material well being in order to get it?
Some conservatives (neocons of the Straussian type, the heirs of the Confederate elite, the theocons, and the paleocons) are especially disturbed by the uppitiness resulting from universal education, increased prosperity, and increased leisure. Culture before 1800 or so (certainly before 1700) was predicated on a thin cultivated elite sternly governing an illiterate, brutish, servile mass.
George Will is quite explicit at times about his nostalgia for the anti-democratic past. According to Michael Lind ("Made in Texas") argues that Bush is specifically a represntative of the heirs of the Confederate planter class.
To go on, these people really do think that inequality is a good thing in itself for a variety of reasons.
Economists before the Great Depression mostly believed that depressions were a good thing, because unemployment and misery kept wages down and made labor docile.
Bush represents the Confederate planter class AND the Northeastern cosmopolitan financiers like his grandfather? Amazing.
Here's the canonical post about conservatives wanting inequality for its own sake.
I believe that the elders of the Bush family looked at the demographics and political trends and assigned two of GHWB's sons to Texas and Florida. The family's been in the big time in finance and politics for almost a century.
Whether Neil was expected to become governor of Colorado is unknown to me. He's a famous fuckup. Marvin Bush must be even more of a fuckup, because you never hear about him. In GHWB's Wiki only his two successful sons are mentioned.
John, I notice that Minnesota is mostly a blue state these days. But what happened in '72?
And 1984 is truly frightening on that map. It's almost the inverse of 1932.
Oh, boy. Google Marvin Bush and you mostly get 9/11 truther stuff.
this is not really the kind of reasoning we want to use on people, is it? That it's in their own self-interest to allow some equality?
Umm, actually, in the near term, yeah. Total equality isn't possible, in the first place, and attempts to maximize equality have been demonstrated in e.g. the Soviet Union, to be big disincentives to achievement. (For various values of "equality".)
That's not to say that we shouldn't spend more money, just that it's a bandaid approach to the fact that there's a limited amount that teachers can do.
There's a limited amount that doctors and lawyers and lobbyists can do, too, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't spend the money to push the limits. (Not, that I'm suggesting you are arguing the equivalent of "Medicine won't prevent us from all dying eventually, so to hell with vaccinations.")
It seems to me a fair number of people here have taught -- and lots more have had teachers. We all know the difference it makes when a teacher can spend time really thinking about his/her subject and can spend time devoting individualized attention to students. But teachers who have excessive workloads can't devote as much time to thinking about their teaching and teachers who have overloaded classrooms can't give alot of individualized feedback and instruction.
I think these differences can be most significant in working with students dealing with unstable family and home situations, who benefit greatly from having a concerned authority figure willing to devote time and attention to their growth. Those who say increasing education spending won't do much in these situations are essentially giving up on these kids. B cites Head Start as a good example -- that's precisely the right thinking. Spending money targeted at meeting an area of critical educational need.
From 1932 to about 1960 Minnesota was the most leftwing state in the nation. Since 1960 it's been converging to the mean. In 1972 Minnesota was the best Democratic state except for Massachusetts. McGovern was doomed.
Alas, Minnesota is now a swing state tending Democratic. I blame the exurbs.
CN: Has someone developed software that automatically summarizes Holbo's posts? I bet there would be big demand.
but that doesn't mean we shouldn't spend the money to push the limits.
In fact, people argue this all the time, particularly when worrying about the extraordinary increases in healthcare costs. Specifically, people wonder if we're spending a lot of money to extend someone's life by days or weeks and then--this part's often by implication--shorting other, poorer people of much less expensive healthcare by such funding choices.
Di, I'm simply suggesting that we won't see the change in social structures that Tim originally mentioned in 14 just by doing what we obviously still must -- must, of course -- do educationally. Not unless you think that better educational outcomes across the board, but especially among the less fortunate, will result in more community organizing and a gradual upending of our current socioeconomic system.
I'd be willing to entertain counters on that last claim, and I can make them myself, but my suggestion is that as long as we're stuck to the notion that any movement toward more socialistic (!) structures is the path of the devil, we're stuck to a class system that's going to keep some heavily downtrodden and others privileged.
14 15
There is British research to the effect that equalizing schools would increase differences in performance between social classes (basically because you would no longer have lucky poor kids in good schools and unlucky rich kids in bad schools). See here .
... if all schools performed as well as the best schools. the stratification of achievement by social class would be even more stark than it is now. ...
The problem with the difference principles in both forward and reverse form is that they ignore a crucial feature of human psychology: We are motivated at least as much by relative differences in social status as we are by absolute material wealth. This is also a major problem with economics.
The importance if social status inequality varies from person to person, but it's pretty clearly wired into the wetware. There's a simple just-so story about the veldt to explain it.
The Holbo post linked in 40 is .. interesting.
52
But that's British research James.
True. So it might not apply to the United States. But it seems plausible that if school performance now is a function of family background and school quality and you eliminate differences in school quality then you will increase the correlation with familiy background.
it seems plausible that if school performance now is a function of family background and school quality and you eliminate differences in school quality then you will increase the correlation with familiy background.
This seems roughly correct, except that it's not family background, it's family circumstances. That includes neighborhood lived in, the sort of food available to the family, and related very important things.
Nonetheless, yes. Why this should mean that taking school inequality out of the picture (if that were even possible) should increase differences in performance between classes, as you suggest via 50, escapes me.
Yes, but that's not what you argued last time.
49: You're right. That wasn't really a fair response to your comment -- maybe not even to the argument in my head. Apologies.
55
... Nonetheless, yes. Why this should mean that taking school inequality out of the picture (if that were even possible) should increase differences in performance between classes, as you suggest via 50, escapes me.
The quote said stratification which I take to refer to how much overlap in performance there is between social classes. It is possible to simultaneously reduce the average difference between social classes and the amount of overlap by eliminating other sources of variance.
58: I'm missing your point. It is possible to simultaneously reduce the average difference between social classes and the amount of overlap ... uh, those aren't the same thing?
James, obviously I didn't read the thing you linked in 50 in the first place, so we can just leave it.
59: The claim seems to be that the average performance of different classes is closer together, but the variances are smaller so there's less overlap. I don't see why the latter should be true, and in any case, the former seems unambiguously a good thing, doesn't it? In general, any argument of the form "improving school quality leads to worse outcomes" seems a little suspect, to say the least....
61: Yes, I walked away and came back and saw it. Sorry about that.
I don't know what to make of it as a claim. I imagine we'd need to ask what's meant by equalizing schools in order to see why there would be less overlap in so equalizing them.
It's easy enough to make sense of Shearer's claim by way of analogy.
Think about height. Variance in height can be explained by two factors -- genetics and environment [nutrition, prevalence of disease, etc]. If everyone lived in exactly the same environment--exactly, right down to the level of the food we eat every day--then you'd find that the only source of variation was genetic.
You might find that in doing so you ended up with a more rather than less height-stratified population. You'd no longer have people with tall genes living in 'shortening' environments and people with short genes living in 'heightening' environments. So the population would naturally tend to diverge into short and tall 'classes'.
For height, read 'educational attainment' and for genetics read 'family background' and for environment read 'school'.
It's a piece of sophistry, though. It may well be true as a statistical abstraction but it's empirically a load of shite.
It's not the case that kids are randomly assorted between school environments and the number of poor kids benefiting from receiving a better than average education is statistically insignificant. Kids from educationally poor family backgrounds tend to be the ones educated in shitty schools. Kids from educationally rich backgrounds tend to be educated in better schools. We have a compounding effect going on at the moment rather than a mitigating effect.
ttaM, thank you. Your patience makes me smile. You're, um .. you're married, right?
Seriously, the claim is also shit(e) because school is not even remotely the only environmental factor in play; I mentioned earlier that it's not just family background that otherwise remains a constant, it's family or cultural circumstance, environment, in general. Many less privileged kids have to deal with poor diet and sleep, for example, which is no small thing, and is not written out of the equation with equal schooling.
I didn't follow the thread or two in which James argued about the determinative nature of IQ or just native ability or whatever it was, but got the general idea that he oversimplifies to the extent that nature and nurture are separable.
ttaM, thank you. Your patience makes me smile. You're, um .. you're married, right?
Heh, yes, I am.
I didn't follow the thread or two in which James argued about the determinative nature of IQ or just native ability or whatever it was, but got the general idea that he oversimplifies to the extent that nature and nurture are separable.
He tends to argue as if social mobility were impossible. When, in fact, countries with egalitarian policies in education tend to -- quel surprise! -- have much more equality of educational outcome, higher levels of social mobility and a lower GINI index. All the low GINI index countries are either scandinavian style social democracies, ex-communist states or EU countries with strong social democratic policy elements.
All the low GINI index countries are either scandinavian style social democracies, ex-communist states or EU countries with strong social democratic policy elements.
This is good news. We'll get our heads out of our asses over here in the US one of these days.
63
It's easy enough to make sense of Shearer's claim by way of analogy.
It's not my claim, it appeared in the source I linked. I was just explaining how it could be true.
As you know I don't believe schools vary much in the United States so equalizing schools is meaningless. And if you consider peer effects it is impossible since you can't send every kid to a school in which all the other kids are nice smart kids with good values.
65
He tends to argue as if social mobility were impossible. When, in fact, countries with egalitarian policies in education tend to -- quel surprise! -- have much more equality of educational outcome, higher levels of social mobility and a lower GINI index. All the low GINI index countries are either scandinavian style social democracies, ex-communist states or EU countries with strong social democratic policy elements.
Why do you think I believe social mobility is impossible? You can find matrices that purport to give the transistion probabilities between your parent's income quintile and your income quintile. While you can argue about the exact values I don't see any reason to believe that any of the probabilities are 0. Actually is is generally liberals who claim there is little social mobility in the United States.
And the GINI index measures inequality not mobility.
Why do you think I believe social mobility is impossible?
Because, as far as I can see, you always argue that any/all measures intended to equalise income gaps or educational achievment are essentially pointless because family/background effects are insurmountable, etc. It certainly usually reads like a type of 'fatalism' --- nothing much we can do will make any difference therefore we probably ought to do nothing.
And the GINI index measures inequality not mobility.
Yeah, I know. Which is why I wrote 'social mobility and a lower GINI index.'
At least we have well-exercised trolls.
69
Because, as far as I can see, you always argue that any/all measures intended to equalise income gaps or educational achievment are essentially pointless because family/background effects are insurmountable, etc. It certainly usually reads like a type of 'fatalism' --- nothing much we can do will make any difference therefore we probably ought to do nothing.
Ok, to clarify what I believe. You can predict how a kid will do in school from his family background and circumstances. These predictions are not terribly accurate on an individual level, a poor kid may do well or a rich kid may do poorly in school. Just as a poor kid may succeed and a rich kid may fail in life. Against the odds perhaps but not unheard of. But when considering large groups of kids (such as the entire student population of a school) the individual prediction errors tend to average out. So it is very unlikely verging on impossible for a school where most of the kids are poor to perform better (in absolute terms) than a school where most of the kids are rich. And the reasons for this have little to do with differences in the quality (within the range commonly found in the US) of the schools any effects of which are small compared to the effects produced by differences in the quality of the students. So fiddling with the schools is not going do much about the gap.
Or to put it another way the family/background effects are insurmountable on a group level but are not insurmountable for individuals.
As you know I don't believe schools vary much in the United States so equalizing schools is meaningless.
This is one of the parts that's hardest to understand. I'm not sure that anyone else believes that, or that you've ever given reasons for your belief. The arguments against it are trivial and abundant.
One of the thing that "good families" do is do what they can to put their kids in "good schools", even if they have to migrate. "Good schools" are actually an important factor in the residential real estate market. What you're saying is that these parents are being silly, and that all they'd need to do would be to converge on a bad school and it would become good. That strikes me as dubious.
Something like that may have happened in a rural Oregon district I know of, but you have local control and the parents were able toput pressure on the local school board, which isn't something that can happen in a large urban school district.
I suspect that what you're saying is that nothing can be done from the national level to improve schools, though it's OK for "good parents" to improve schools at the lowest local level. I doubt that you'd tell "good parents" putting pressure on their school district that all schools are pretty much the same.
"Good schools" are actually an important factor in the residential real estate market. What you're saying is that these parents are being silly, and that all they'd need to do would be to converge on a bad school and it would become good.
Depends on what you mean by converge, but it doesn't strike me as all that implausible. Local control + wealthier tax base + parents in a position to put pressure on the school board. What makes it unlikely in reality is that a) each family makes its decision on where to move on its own, so moving to a district with good schools is a better bet than moving to a district with bad schools and hoping other yuppies follow and b) a well-off family that does move to an area with baddish schools probably sends their kids to private school.
As far as the rest of Shearer's argument, it's hard to take seriously the idea that the schools don't vary much.
72: I don't know why you find Shearer's claim so incredible, Emerson. Per Shearer, "good schools" really means something about the population that attends that school, so getting your kid to a good school means living in a "good area." That seems like a pretty good description of the way that people look for housing. Shearer may be wrong--depending on the strength of his statement, he probably is--but he's not self-evidently wrong.
In the UK there has been some attempt to quantify the contribution a school makes to children's education. That is, an attempt to quantify to what extent a particular school over- or under- achieves based on the intake of students.
They produce a 'value-added' measure that takes this into account.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7180214.stm
There emphatically _are_ good schools, in the sense that there are schools that consistently do considerably better than the norm.
It's not true that it's merely about pupil intake.
I don't know why you find Shearer's claim so incredible
Well, here's what he says:
I don't believe schools vary much in the United States
And here's my experience:
- Schools vary wildly by physical condition
- Schools vary substantially in their ability to keep students physically safe
- Schools vary significantly in the factual, academic content and opportunity available to students (library, Internet access, teachers willing and able to teach science and other controversial topics, number of AP classes, availability of IB or Regents exam to make your HS diploma mean more)
- Schools vary astronomically in amount of unpaid labor from educated adults that is available to them (PTA, volunteering, fundraising, chaperones for field trips, etc. etc. etc.).
If the claim is "schools can't do much to change the non-school experiences of children," I'm in agreement. But that's not what I hear him saying.
I'm on record as saying I'm agnostic/pessimistic that spending more money on schools will fix these problems, but that doesn't mean that I don't think Shearer is just flat-out insane on this point.
The incredible thing about Shearer for me is his assertion that American schools are all about the same, which seems trivially false by almost any measure. For example, my school's weakness in foreign language and science made my first two years of college, when I was playing catch-up, really hellish, an I ended up with two Cs and a drop on my record which were pretty simply the result of bad preparation.
The other implausible thing to me is that Shearer applies his argument only to people trying to improves schools from the state or federal or even the school district level. I doubt that he'd say to the "good parents" anything like "OK, you've converged on this district, and your good students have peers who are good students. You don't need to pressure the school district to improve the schools, because that's not important". He wouldn't be listened to, of course, because one of the things good parents do, besides moving to already-good school districts, is pressure their local district to improve, to the point of militating for higher taxes.
In short, Shearer is using his argument selectively, only to the extent that it supports his opposition to any high-level attempt toward greater equality, and supports his conviction that the darker races and the lower classes are intellectually and morally defective by birth.
76: #71, which I take to be his best statement of what he's arguing, seems in line with your beliefs.
There's also no reason, as far as I can see, to think of the relationship between socio-economic peer effects and educational outcomes as linear or anything like it. Anecdotally, what seems to happen is something more like a tipping effect; once you've got a school with a very high percentage of the population in real poverty, it becomes disorderly enough that it's impossible to get a decent education there, even for kids who'd do fine in a better school.
That's a far cry from saying that a school with a lowish mean family income, but where the majority of the kids come from families that aren't under economic stress that affects the kids directly (they can go to the doctor when they're sick, they have the clothes and books and food they need and a stable place to sleep) is necessarily going to be a worse school than one with a much higher family income.
And if that's the case. this:
And if you consider peer effects it is impossible since you can't send every kid to a school in which all the other kids are nice smart kids with good values.
just isn't true. It's possible that there's no value to a school where all the other kids are 'nice smart kids with good values', so long as enough of the other kids are 'nice smart kids with good values' (or, to be less offensive, are kids who aren't under the kind of family economic and personal stress that makes them educationally disruptive). At which point it seems perfectly reasonable to believe that economically integrated schools would be a means of leveling up, letting all the kids in the country go to schools where they'd have a shot at a decent education.
BTW, Tim, Shearer's arguments are usually valid in some formal sense. It's his premises that are usually off. I don't give any points for good logic or good argumentation if there are gross errors on substantial questions.
I will refrain from annoying parsi by not saying anything about where I think that the friendliness for logically-valid arguments from grossly false premises comes from.
Tim, 71 looks like it's arguing that school differences pale in comparison to population differences, and therefore Shearer feels we should not "fiddle" with schools because it won't make much difference.
Leaving aside the truth of that contention, it's still a very far cry from "I don't believe schools vary much." It's more like "I don't care how much schools vary, because they don't have any significant effect on student outcomes."
And comments like that make me suspect the person does not actually know what conditions are like in a representative sample of US public schools.
(If I sound belligerent here it's because I am literally this morning having to fight over getting people walkie-talkies to call security when they are in immediate danger in a school. Which is not even remotely an everyday problem in the more affluent districts whose schools I have spent time in.)
72
This is one of the parts that's hardest to understand. I'm not sure that anyone else believes that, or that you've ever given reasons for your belief. The arguments against it are trivial and abundant.
I believe this because that is what the Coleman report (and later research) found. That schools in the United States don't vary much (in ways that affect student performance) and what variation there is primarily due to peer effects (rather than the physical facilities or teacher quality etc.). I have linked this account several times.
An obscure provision in the 1964 Civil Rights Act called for a study of inequality of opportunity in education "by reason of race, color, religion, or national origin." The general assumption of educators, indeed Coleman's assumption, was that the funding differences between black and white schools would be large, and that these differences would provide the central explanation for unequal achievements of blacks and whites. In 1966, after conducting what was then the second largest social science research project in history-involving 600,000 children in 4,000 schools nationally-Coleman and his colleagues issued Equality of Educational Opportunity. It became, according to journalist Nicholas Lemann, "probably the single best-known piece of quantitative social science in American history," and it contained a number of surprising findings. First, the disparities in funding between schools attended by blacks and whites were far smaller than anticipated. Second, funding was not closely related to achievement; fam ily economic status was far more predictive. Third, a different kind of resource-peers-mattered a great deal. Going to school with middle-class peers was an advantage, while going to school with lower-class peers was a disadvantage, above and beyond an individual's family circumstances.
and
Coleman's conclusion that peers mattered more than resources was considered shocking at the time, but it ultimately confirmed what most parents intuitively believe. Coleman noted that colleagues were at first surprised by the report's findings, "but then they think back to their own educational experience and about the things they consider in trying to select a school for their children, and they realize what their own criteria are for 'a good school.' And they are no longer surprised."
FFS, one study over 40 years ago.
Several points:
i) Peers mattering more than resources is NOT the same as resources not mattering at all. And it's disingenuous to run the two together.
No-one denies that family background and peer-groups are important. But that it is not the same as proving that funding differences don't matter.
ii) Additionally, the Coleman study was interested in racial differences in funding between segregated schools. The funding difference between 'black' and 'white' schools may indeed have been narrow.
The funding difference between Eton and a local comprehensive school is VERY FUCKING LARGE INDEED.
Also, assuming that equal levels of funding mean equal levels of classroom resources (teacher pay, whatever) is an unwarranted leap.
Seriously, if that single, old, very specifically targeted study is all you have to offer you should just shut up. There's a lot of variation from school to school in a lot of different ways. We've mentioned some of them.
There's probably a general methodological problem here involving taking a large body of data and trying to isolate the significant variables, define the independent variables, finding hidden variables, etc. My belief is that that kind of study, even if it's statistically state-of-the-art, needs to be taken with some amount of salt, especially in the social sciences, except when the results are unmistakable.
However, I can't state the methodological argument, so this is just part of my peasant ignorance.
Almost everyone here has agreed that schools can't solve the problems student have outside school. That's a long way from what you're saying.
81: Witt: Shearer's As you know I don't believe schools vary much in the United States so equalizing schools is meaningless is much stronger than what he says in 71. He's probably moving the goalposts. (But I expect him to keep using the argument I just cited -- just not on the rest of this thread.)
If we're going to talk about funding, let's be very clear indeed that all schools do not have the same costs.
If two schools have the same amount of revenue, and one of them has to pay for:
- 11 security guards
- Ongoing repairs to a 90-year-old building
- Energy costs for said 90-year-old building
- Rental of athletic fields, and transportation of students to them
And the other one has to pay for:
- Zero security guards
- Minimal upkeep on a modern building
- Standard, predictable energy costs for a modern building
- Zero rental, zero transportation, and moderate upkeep costs for athletic fields
Then "equal" is not the right word for their funding.
86 would be what I meant to say in 84, had I successfully managed to explain my point.
James Heckman did a lot of the work here (and has worked with Coleman for more than twenty years) and got his Nobel Prize at least partly for sorting out the knotty problems of interaction effects here. He broadly believes in the result found by Coleman, but there are several important points on which I doubt he'd agree with Shearer, of which these are the most important two.
1) I don't think it's particularly accurate to characterise the result of the Coleman study as showing that American schools were "largely equal". Money goes a lot further at Eton than it does at a comprehensive, for all the usual reasons of it being expensive to be poor.
2) It's true that most of the damage done by poverty has been done by the time the kid reaches school. But you don't cure someone with a broken leg by backing the bus over him. Heckman is one of the biggest advocates of aggressive targeting of large amounts of resources to poor schools in SureStart type programs, because he finds the return on investment to be huge.
Given that a large portion of the costs of education are low-paid labor, local cost of living has to have a giant influence over how much education bang you get for your buck.
88.2 is key.
The fact that a particular background stacks the decks against you very heavily shouldn't be taken as evidence for not bothering.
I meant to link to this last time:
See the section entitled 'Better targeting reduces under achievement'.
I quote:
"... the impact of expenditure on pupil attainment becomes increasingly important the higher the level of deprivation."
I once knew a Puerto-Rican American woman from one of NYC's worst neighborhoods who during her childhood spent most of her time after school in a public library because it was the only place she felt safe. She educated herself there, went to college, and ended up working as a registered nurse and involved in local politics.
This is a real case and it's plausible that it happens fairly often. The mechanism is plausible. Yet I doubt that a statistical study could find a relationship between public library density and success in life. I think that there's a lot to be said for trying a variety of approaches and hoping that they work, while keeping an eye out for evidence that they do.
But as we've noted above here and there, "better families and peers" are an enormous factor, but this too can be affected by public policies such as a higher minimu wage and full employment. Trying to get the schools to do everything is a common liberal-progressive error -- probably because the schools were something that it was institutionally possible to work on.
I don't think that that's what Shearer's saying at all. I think that he's saying that some people are born naturally stupid, criminal, and unsuccessful, and that their kids will mostly be born that way too.
75
Apparently the value added measure you cite is not actually of much use in selecting a school. See here for a critique. And it adjusts value added for some student characteristics but if an important student characteristic has been omitted in the model the difference in schools will be over estimated.
Trying to get the schools to do everything is a common liberal-progressive error -- probably because the schools were something that it was institutionally possible to work on.
this isn't always an error. If you have something to work on institutionally, then you work on that. As long as it has any effect at all (and Heckman certainly believes it does), then you can get your results that way.
It wasn't a simple error. It was faute de mieux, and a lot of good has been done. But some well-intentioned people are blind to the other things -- as long as the word "socialism" is the kiss of death, what's possible remains severely limited.
Shearer, could you please explain to me why I would not have been better off if my high school had offered calculus and four years of French (instead of two)? Please?
I can't open the file you linked.
Basically, Shearer, when you use statistical studies to prove to me that differences I can see with my own eyes at the ground level don't exist, I doubt the statistics.
Heckman's 1995 review of The Bell Curve offers some indication of his views in this area. It's interesting. Among other things, he clearly believes that there's reason to think that intensive early intervention can make a difference, and, even more, says that what little we know indicates that IQ is not fixed in the very young. But I don't think he would read Shearer out of bounds: it's a cost-benefit question, and he acknowledges that interventions might be too expensive in some cases.
that interventions might be too expensive in some cases.
Well, sure, but this doesn't say anything unless you're talking about some very specific intervention.
Well, sure, but this doesn't say anything unless you're talking about some very specific intervention.
Right. And the same again on the benefit side. For example, for whatever reason, Heckman thinks Head Start is useless. All of which, I suppose, advances us no farther than "It's complicated." Which is why it's not clear to me that Shearer's wrong (or, perhaps, "badly wrong") in #71. Neither is it clear to me that he's right.
In 71 he's waffling, but in 67 he said:
As you know I don't believe schools vary much in the United States so equalizing schools is meaningless.
That's a claim that intervention generally, without looking at the specifics, fails the cost-benefit test.
Obviously, for any category of social program, there are going to be some possibilities that aren't cost-effective. This doesn't in any way support claims like Shearer's, that the whole concept of trying to affect social outcomes through the schools is meaningless.
the whole concept of trying to affect social outcomes through the schools is meaningless.
Why should it be a goal of public school to affect "social outcomes"? Shouldn't the goal be education, and let the social outcomes grow from there? Or more to the point, trying to affect outcomes is more problematic than affecting opportunities.
There is some interesting, if inconclusive work being done that suggest that #71 may be mostly wrong.
Their conclusion is roughly that it's the 0-5 age group that you need to concentrate on, not the 5-18's. And the only way to do that effectively is through the parents, particularly through changing they way they interact with their kids.
It's pretty radical stuff, and in some sense amounts to writing off the parents generation as far as poverty goes while concentrating on their kids. In other words, forget the job-training programs, adult education, etc., and concentrate on how these parents raise their kids. The idea being that given a solid background, these kids will manage fine, even in the face of chronically under-resourced schools, etc.
Its promising though, the first standardized tests have this group of inner city youth testing at or above (in some areas, well above) NYC averages, from an area that historically test near the bottom.
If these guys are right, it refutes ideas like:
the family/background effects are insurmountable on a group level but are not insurmountable for individuals.
(but doesnt' claim it's easy).
95
I can't open the file you linked.
I linked to a power point presentation. Here (pdf file) is a short paper with much of the same material. And here is what looks like a press release about the above paper. From the last:
The key finding of their research, however, is that when it comes to choosing a school, what matters is the future performance when those about to start secondary school will take their GCSE exams - some 6 years later. When these 'predictions' are taken into account it turns out that less than 5% of schools could be significantly separated from the average or from each other.
TLL, as everyone here has been saying, a change in social outcomes might be necessary before education is possible. That's why.
Or more to the point, trying to affect outcomes is more problematic than affecting opportunities.
There are reasons to be suspicious of that distinction.
101: There's not really any point in equality of opportunity if it doesn't have any effect on outcomes, right? In a counterfactual world where we could literally know that no students in a high-poverty school could possibly pass calculus, it would be silly to offer calculus in high-poverty schools.
So, the only reason to worry about opportunities is that opportunities affect outcomes. I doubt we disagree about this substantively, we're probably just using different terminology.
Heckman specifically doesn't like Head Start because he thinks it's half-assed and not expensive enough. He is a big fan of a program called "Perry Preschool". Kathy wrote about this (bonus! She did so in the context of having a thump at a very bad opinion journalist we all know!)
The idea being that given a solid background, these kids will manage fine, even in the face of chronically under-resourced schools, etc.
What's funny is that I take that to be a claim that you're more likely to find in Shearer's mouth than that of most people in this thread. Indeed, I think that's roughly the departure point of the argument. It also sounds like what Heckman would prefer as policy.
105. SCMT- I get that. Separate but equal, etc. It's just that social engineering on such a large scale does not have a very good track record.
104. JE, I only skimmed, so forgive me. You may be right. I remember hearing an education reformer speaking out against vouchers who said that if you really wanted kids to do well in school just make sure that they had two college educated parents living together at home, with books in the bookshelves. The rest takes care of itself. For those who don't have those resources, the outcome could not be guaranteed, just mitigated.
What's funny is that I take that to be a claim that you're more likely to find in Shearer's mouth than that of most people in this thread.
Except that he's been consistently arguing that there's no point to interventions to give kids that sort of solid background, because it won't work.
if you really wanted kids to do well in school just make sure that they had two college educated parents living together at home, with books in the bookshelves. The rest takes care of itself.
I meet those criteria and I dropped out of high school. So there.
108: I think it's a more first order vs. second order effect, thing.
Suppose for the sake of argument that throwing money at school years a-b isn't an effective policy (for whatever reasons). There is a world of difference between taking that outcome and saying `Ok, where should we be putting the money in for more effect' and `So we shouldn't waste it that way (and look, I've got a favorite non-educational project that needs funds)'.
Equalizing school resources is important, and should be done as much as practical --- but if it's not enough (and it looks likely) more has to be done. The `more' may take precedence.
I meet those criteria and I dropped out of high school. So there.
I don't meet those criteria and dropped out of middle/high school too. But I've also got a ph.d. Individual cases don't mean all that much.
James, I looked at the PDF and it seem that once again you have taken a specific study done for a specific purpose and generalized it.
I meet those criteria and I dropped out of high school. So there.
But you are computer literate with enough free time to comment on a blog, so something went right. So there. Nyahh.
Except that he's been consistently arguing that there's no point to interventions to give kids that sort of solid background, because it won't work.
Yeah, this is key. A lot of people want to write off chunks of the population because `you can't do anything', or more perniciously `it's too expensive to do anything'. This is a bullshit answer when you're considering that precious little has actually been tried seriously.
110: I took him to be arguing that in the absence of a solid background, school equalization (or whatever term was being used) wouldn't have much effect. Maybe he'll respond, but I'd wouldn't be surprised to find out that he's fine with early interventions that are effectively prior to schooling insofar as they yield the preconditions to effective schooling even in the absence of school equalization. Or, at a minimum, his objections would be ideological rather pragmatic, or self-interested rather than pragmatic.
Tim, I think that you're overestimating Shearer's flexibility. His mind is like granite.
I was raised by one parent who didn't read. If it weren't for that, I'd be accepting my second Nobel right about now.
116: I think this is what I'm really arguing against. I think that it's often true that people are just looking for an excuse to not do anything. I don't think that's true in Shearer's case, and I don't think you can infer it from only his opinions on education policy. (That is, if he's a neocon or southern conservative, I'm happy to believe that it is fair to infer that he actually thinks intervention works, and is only anti-intervention because it will help him kill America. But he hasn't announced himself as either in this thread.)
I was raised by one parent who didn't read. If it weren't for that, I'd be accepting my second Nobel right about now.
So, do you punish that illiterate parent by not visiting, and going to the in- laws at the drop of a hat?
121: I'm not attributing any position to Shearer, myself. I was reporting a program that is both a bit unusual and seems to be working (unusual, in this area) but is hardly sorted out yet. It contradicts a statement Shearer made up-thread, is all I put on it.
So, do you punish that illiterate parent by not visiting, and going to the in- laws at the drop of a hat?
Wouldn't you?
But you are computer literate with enough free time to comment on a blog, so something went right. terribly, terribly wrong.
You had a parent?!?!?
WE HAD TO MAKE OUR PARENT OUT OF STICKS AND MUD.
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So, unfoggedetariat: should one be embarrassed or chuffed to resemble this list exactly?
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more perniciously `it's too expensive to do anything'
I do that that accommodating the differently abled has been very expensive to public schools. Which is not to say this shouldn't happen, just that mainstreaming has been more expensive than anticipated. Anecdotally, I know wealthy family whose developmentally disable child is the only one going to public school, where she is basically schooled by a private tutor at the district's expense.
115: enough free time to comment on a blog
Except I don't have that. I should be studying chinese radicals right now, but I'm not. I'm procrastinating as we speak. My very being refutes you!
Evidence of procrastination: I found this.
Further evidence: I have decided that should Obama, God forbid, lose this election, he should, immediately after his concession speech, release an album entitled It Takes a Nation of Morons to Hold Me Back.
121: Seriously, I think speculating about what Shearer actually believes in terms of social justice and the pragmatic policies best advised to create social justice is kind of pointless, given that he doesn't seem to be interested in talking about his positive positions in that regard. I think most people here are signed on to some version of "I think all children should have the same opportunities to achieve their full academic potential from birth, and that social policy should be shaped to remove obstacles placed in their way by socioeconomic inequality," and are arguing about what policies are cost-effective to reach that end. I've got no idea what Shearer thinks along those lines.
what Shearer actually believes
Emerson says he's a bot, so I guess it would be up to the programmer.
128: As in, you can do all or most of that crap? Chuffed, obviously. Although I'd quibble with some individual items (if you need "13. Escape a sinking car", you're doing it wrong), overall it seems like a decent effort.
133: Right, it's not a bad list, barring things like giving yourself credit for being able to handle tornadoes (like, go to the basement? I know to do that, but it's not like it comes up often.)
Also, splitting wood with a maul? Harder than it looks. One of those annoyingly techniquey tasks.
Shearer apparently reads every thread and waits for something to disagree with. I don't believe that he ever states a positive position. It's really quite bizarre. I'm willing to speculate, though, based on his pattern of posts, that he's radically and unshakably anti-egalitarian and feels a real animus against the debtor class.
No. 100- feeler gauges sound vaugley dirty
There's a correct corner of the basement to go to during tornadoes -- NE I think. I used to know.
real animus against the debtor class
How unpatriotic. The Founders were very specific about not having debtor's prisons and the like. Bankruptcy is every American's right, and soon every American's privilege.
radically and unshakably anti-egalitarian and feels a real animus against the debtor class
Which, given that he is among them, adds a tone of parody to each comment he deigns to share with us.
I wouldn't be surprised if Shearer's mattress is stuffed with $100 bills or Krugerrands. I doubt that he owes much.
Hear about the Princess and the Pea? A single pea under 17 quilts kept her awake all night, but a Krugerrand under one quilt helped her sleep soundly.
/Tripp
102
There is some interesting, if inconclusive work being done that suggest that #71 may be mostly wrong.
Their conclusion is roughly that it's the 0-5 age group that you need to concentrate on, not the 5-18's. And the only way to do that effectively is through the parents, particularly through changing they way they interact with their kids.
I fail to see how this, even if correct, contradicts 71 in any way. 71 stated schools don't make much difference in the aggregate. Schools presently in the US work on the 5-18 age group which you appear to agree is ineffective.
Now as it happens I also believe that 0-5 interventions won't accomplish much either but this is different from my claim in 71 which was about the current US school system.
I doubt that he owes much
I remember a stand up bit about yelling a a homeless guy who had asked for spare change, "Dude- you try living with $15K of credit card debt and a $250K mortgage. You're not broke, homeless guy, you're even".
Now as it happens I also believe that 0-5 interventions won't accomplish much either but this is different from my claim in 71 which was about the current US school system.
You should look at the Heckman review I linked in '97, Shearer. Insofar as you believe him to be a careful scholar in a manner to your liking, it complicates things. By, for example, decoupling the benefits of education from ability (which itself he notes may be decoupled from IQ).
I doubt that he owes much.
It is exceedingly difficult to live in 21st century America without any indebtedness. I know, for I have done it. You have to cut yourself off from every institution: banks, utilities, ISPs, etc... and use cut-outs to get the services you need. And not use credit cards to get you through the short patches. And not use those things that one needs loans for: cars, home-ownership, etc... I have done these things. My total debt is zero, and has been for many years.
Yet I'm still on the hook for my share of the $700 billion. By virtue of that alone am I a member of the debtor class.
"I put all my investments in rent and food" is another way to put it.
I imagine Shearer living on root crops and day old bread and roaming the neighborhood looking for scrap.
135
... I don't believe that he ever states a positive position. ...
I think we should get out of Iraq immediately. I think the military budget should be cut a lot. I think the US should reduce immigration of unskilled workers.
re: 134
The list has a few dubious ones on it. It reminds me of the Heinlein list that circulates sometimes.
77. Take the perfect portrait
Yeah, right. Who crowned you Richard Avedon? Taking good portraits is hard, taking perfect portraits is harder. And listing it as a 'technical' skill is even sillier.
And
70. Drive a stick shift
In the UK that's the equivalent of giving yourself credit for being able to walk or pee standing up.
James, you never seem to say anything when you agree with us. That's the thing I find weird.
Also, splitting wood with a maul? Harder than it looks. One of those annoyingly techniquey tasks.
Yup. There's loads of that stuff. My somewhat idiosynchratic youth and upbringing means I've actually done nearly all of the things on that list (many for jobs), and been at least trained/shown to do the others (e.g. some first aid stuff). Some of it is not exactly hard, but harder than it first looks.
146: Pretty much. Where I really put my money is helping my folks' home not get foreclosed on. That money remains unstolen. How's your portfolio doing?
In the UK that's the equivalent of giving yourself credit for being able to . . . pee standing up.
That's pretty much the way it is here too: superficially, it seems easy, but it's curiously gendered.
I fail to see how this, even if correct, contradicts 71 in any way.
James, it contradicts exactly the statement quoted as being something that it contradicts.
You said:
the family/background effects are insurmountable on a group level but are not insurmountable for individuals.
And their result suggest, at least, that it is in fact surmountable on a group level. They also suggest that you are perhaps wrong about this:
Now as it happens I also believe that 0-5 interventions won't accomplish much either
But as I noted, it's hardly conclusive yet. Which was my original caveat.
How was this difficult to follow?
In the UK that's the equivalent of giving yourself credit for being able to walk or pee standing up.
But here it's not even that unusual to find someone (a younger someone, anyway) who has never been in a stick shift car.
feeler gauges sound vaugley dirty
Often oily. You don't want them dirty though, they won't work correctly.
re: 153
It's not gendered here. I just chose 'pee standing up' because the list was called 1000 Skills Every MAN Should Know.
In fact, I've only ever known two people who could only drive automatic cars, and they were both men.
re: 155
Almost completely the opposite here. An old boss of mine drove automatic cars, and a guy I knew learned to drive in his neighbour's car [an automatic] so only had an automatic license. Apart from that, I don't think I've ever been in automatic.
Almost completely the opposite here.
Yeah, that's my experience too, from time spent there. Growing up, we always had standards and later all my social group had them either mostly for performance reasons or because they're easier to fix yourself. But even then the total population skewed to automatics, and no it's even moreso.
Hey, ttaM,
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Thanks for the guitar tips! There was a Meatloaf concert on yesterday and I actually got the six string down and plunked along. I think I may have it looked at, to make sure the strings are not too high, cause it takes a fair amount of pressure to stop the buzzing.
Still I worked on the muscle usage and trying more of the big muscle and less of a squeeze. Also I tried, a little, to get some of the touch back, the feel of the correct placement and pressure.
I am very rusty but starting to give it a go again. Thanks for your help!!
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128: Well of course you should be impressed with yourself. Sheesh.
I knew a couple people in high school and college who had manual-transmission cars. They were perpetually annoyed that nobody else could drive their car, so for example they had to stay sober all the time because nobody else could drive them home, and had to move their own car if it was in the way, and if we were going somewhere in their car they had to stay awake to drive for the entire way instead of switching off with other drivers. I haven't been in a manual car for about five years now.
It's not gendered here. I just chose 'pee standing up' because the list was called 1000 Skills Every MAN Should Know.
It's more like saying you should be proud of yourself for knowing how to ice skate. If you grow up in an ice skating family or with ice skating friends, you probably know how to ice skate. Otherwise, you probably don't.
131
Seriously, I think speculating about what Shearer actually believes in terms of social justice and the pragmatic policies best advised to create social justice is kind of pointless, given that he doesn't seem to be interested in talking about his positive positions in that regard. I think most people here are signed on to some version of "I think all children should have the same opportunities to achieve their full academic potential from birth, and that social policy should be shaped to remove obstacles placed in their way by socioeconomic inequality," and are arguing about what policies are cost-effective to reach that end. I've got no idea what Shearer thinks along those lines.
Well I tend to tune out appeals to social justice the same as I would tune out appeals to natural justice or Christian justice as being made by people trying to privilege their view of a good society as somehow more legitimate than other people's views.
My view of a good society tends to be pragmatic. If Singapore is a pleasant place to live I am not going worry too much about the uncompetitive elections. Of course I value free speech so I might not find Singapore that pleasant. And also there is an issue of how stable a Singapore type system is in the long run.
From a pragmatic point of view society should attempt to educate children to be good citizens and productive workers. And my sense of justice is that, given a public education system, the government should spend about the same amount on each student. So the system should be designed to do the best for each student consistent with spending the same amount on each. I believe this will involve some sort of sorting or tracking in which some students are pushed down an academic path and others are not.
If you grow up in an ice skating family or with ice skating friends, you probably know how to ice skate. Otherwise, you probably don't.
Are ice rinks one of the "things that have to go" under the new, no cheap energy future? Cuz that would be too bad.
It's more like saying you should be proud of yourself for knowing how to ice skate.
Sure, but the point of any such list has to be breadth, right? To whatever degree it's useful anyway, that helps average out the inherent flaws.
Are ice rinks one of the "things that have to go" under the new, no cheap energy future?
Pretty location dependent, I'd guess.
I haven't been in a manual car for about five years now.
manual transmissions A) give you more acceleration for your money -- you can get as much torque from an old manual 4-cylinder junker in first gear as you can from a six-cylinder automatic, and B) save you from maintenance problems related to the auto transmission. Just replace hte clutch once somewhere around 110-120K and you're fine.
No more top Olympic skaters from SoCal, then.
NHL teams in the south are definitely in the category of one of the "things that have to go" under the new, no cheap energy future.
160, 161: No, if you can't drive stick, you should think badly of yourself. I say this as someone who couldn't drive stick at all until his early twenties, and couldn't really drive stick until years after that.
154
And their result suggest, at least, that it is in fact surmountable on a group level. They also suggest that you are perhaps wrong about this:
In context, I meant (clearly I thought) insurmountable by going to a "good" school.
Shorter Shearer: A tyrannical society is perfectly acceptable as long as it keeps its citizens from feeling tyrannized.
In context, I meant (clearly I thought) insurmountable by going to a "good" school.
But they are going to a `good' school. It's part of the program. It's just not the only part of the progam.
One peculiarity of this debate is that it zeroes in on "low-SES" "minorities" and often relies on hints that these minorities are genetically unfit. In actual practice, Special Ed for those who are actually genetically unfit is much more important a factor than racial quotas and affirmative action, but the intensity of feeling is much less. I think that this is because minorities are felt to be no only hereditarily inferior, but also hereditarily lazy, criminal, and immoral.
A ton of money is spend on Special Ed, and not very effectively.
Sometimes in Minnesota it gets too cold to skate. Fact.
manual transmissions A) give you more acceleration for your money -- you can get as much torque from an old manual 4-cylinder junker in first gear as you can from a six-cylinder automatic, and B) save you from maintenance problems related to the auto transmission. Just replace hte clutch once somewhere around 110-120K and you're fine.
Yeah, but if I get one nobody I know except my grandfather and my friend Craig who lives 3,000 miles away will be able to drive my car.
Are they significantly cheaper for both maintenance and purchase price? That could outweigh the factor I just stated.
Anyway, James, I'm not trying to quibble about that, I'm sure I read you more broadly than you intended.
If your position is that we should target most effectively whatever eduction money we have for the under privileged districts so long as we don't spend a penny more on them than we do on kids in a privileged suburb, I don't think (but won't check) that contradicts anything you've said. I think it's a deeply flawed position for a couple of reasons, but it seems least consistent so far...
Are they significantly cheaper for both maintenance and purchase price? That could outweigh the factor I just stated.
They should be. Market price is a bit wonky on them here now, sometimes, due to low demand.
Fun fact- the Zamboni was invented in Southern California. Ice skating movie star Sonja Henie wanted a reliable ice cleaning device to go with her on tour. Mr. Zamboni, who owned an ice house in Paramount, Ca. rigged up an old jeep, and an industry was born.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonja_Henie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_J._Zamboni
Sure, but the point of any such list has to be breadth, right? To whatever degree it's useful anyway, that helps average out the inherent flaws.
Yeah, although I still think the 'perfect portrait' thing is silly. I say that as someone who has a fair degree of interest in photography: if you think taking a perfect portrait is the sort of skill you just chalk off on a list your just showing you know fuck all.
The same no doubt applies to other things on the list (for those people who have an interest in 'em).
These lists always serve to reify a particular concept of manhood, or womanhood or personhood or whatever. Sometimes that can be the fun thing about them but they always end up the same. Everyone end up like Kris Kristofferson.*
* who is/was a singing guitar-playing song-writing movie-star Rhodes scholar boxing blue helicopter pilot army ranger.
who is/was a singing guitar-playing song-writing movie-star Rhodes scholar boxing blue helicopter pilot army ranger.
As an aside, a jaw-dropping thing I saw on TV was a documentary about Kristofferson in which Joan Baez talking ex-recto thoroughly patronised him as an ignorant bumpkin.
"Of course Kris doesn't understand the issues, but he's the kind of guy that if you tell him the benefit gig is for the damned Mexicans he's happy to help."
171
Shorter Shearer: A tyrannical society is perfectly acceptable as long as it keeps its citizens from feeling tyrannized.
And governs effectively and doesn't fall apart in the long run.
Apologies, but long jeremiad to follow.
180: That one bothered me too. There are a number of kind of silly things on the list that at best operate as proxies for a broader skill-set, which I suppose wat the tend.
btw, you and I seem to have a convergence of interests.
Are they significantly cheaper for both maintenance and purchase price? That could outweigh the factor I just stated.
They might be a bit cheaper for purchase price, but I think that for maintenance it's more or less a wash, especially with the length of new car warranties these days.
The mileage penalty for automatics is going away, as they are starting to have more gears than manuals and are getting smarter about selecting the right gear.
173
A ton of money is spend on Special Ed, and not very effectively.
I would get rid of that. It is the same impulse trying to equalize outcomes without regard to natural ability.
175: Unless all you do is short stop city driving, it's also a lot more fun. And, in today's cars, dead easy.
Manual shifts are also more fun to drive.
I remember when manuals were called "standard shift" to distinguish them from the exotic automatics.
Things that should be on the list but aren't:
Automotive:
Change a tire, for fuck's sake.
Handling Emergencies:
Use long-distance communication within 2 minutes could use a shout out, though I guess it's easy now everyone has cell phones. It's such a broad category, it's hard to pick nits.
Home:
I could go off here: season a wok! Make a roux! I've got opinions about the degree of cooking skill the platonic man should have. Make an omelette aux fines herbes! Make a pico de gallo! But they are unlikely to be shared.
Medical Myths:
This section needs to be way bigger. It's all well and good to be able to treat frostbite, but if we're going by the "38. Sweat copper tubing" standard the ideal man should be able to:
a)relieve shock. b)splint up broken bones. c)know how to tie a tourniquet, and when not to. d)how to clear an obstructed airway. if we're really going by that standard, he should be able to e)reset a compound fracture. Enough, for now.
Military Know How:
Fuck the Troops, this is gay.
Outdoors:
Surprisingly sensible, if by no means comprehensive. I'd only add: treat a sprained ankle.
Primitive Skills:
Again, they get the basics right. Nothing to add,
Surviving Extremes could be deleted with no bad effect. Each of us is good at surviving our hometown's disasters and no one else's.
Teach Your Kids:
Again, pointless. "Throw a spiral"? Racist.
Technology:
Heh. Replace all of this with "Reinstall windows and return the machine to its previous configuration." Do that, and you'll be way ahead of Popular Mechanics' readership.
Master Key Workshop Tools:
Pure tool porn.
184: mileage penalty is disappearing (and if that's your worry, there are better ways to address it) but afiacs the maintenance cost isn't a wash yet, and never really likely to be. Unless you mean it in the sense that if you're a typical middle/upper-middle class American, you're not going to own the car for long enough to worry about the transmission. Auto transmissions are expensive to rebuild.
185: These are pretty deep and basic disagreements about what fairness looks like, and they're unlikely to get hashed out in blog comments.
Also, splitting wood with a maul? Harder than it looks.
But so very, very satisfying.
Drive a stick shift
I fear that automatics are getting good enough to make our insistence on stick shifts a bit crankish. But what the hell, I'm getting old enough to be crankish about something, and unlike sports cars or teenaged blondes, stick shifts generally save you a few bucks.
ah well, I survive foolishmortals addendums, too. Otoh, I can't say I think much of the list. Doubtful I'm quite what pop. mech. had in mind, regardless.
Should have refreshed before posting. I'm probably multi-pwned.
re: 190
That's probably right.
I'm a big 'equality of outcome guy', I think 'equality of opportunity' guys are mostly coming at things half-arsed. That puts me probably in some incommensurably different universe from Shearer's view.
Also, natural ability is over-rated.
Also, natural ability is over-rated.
Overrated and inexactly understood & measured. Pretty useless as a criterion, really.
SCMT is right though, there are some deep waters here --- unlikely to be compassed by a few cock jokes.
Auto transmissions are expensive to rebuild.
What does the rebuild cost come out to per mile, though? My four-wheeled transportation tends to be of the junker variety, but the transmission I had to get rebuilt (hooray for Dodge trucks!) didn't cost that much in terms of total operating costs for the vehicle...
185: See, that's silly. Special Ed isn't one thing. Some kids in Special Ed have learning disabilities and normal or superior intelligence, and just need additional support to thrive. Some kids are more severely disabled, but need some kind of education for whatever independent functioning they're capable of. "Get rid of" Special Ed doesn't mean anything useful unless you have something specific in mind.
At one time I was a qualified first aider. So I probably meet all of those criteria.
For a number of other things on the list, though, it'd just be, "no, I don't know how to do it, but I'm not a total physical incompetent and I can follow instructions, so, if I ever absolutely have to that thing, I will."
What does the rebuild cost come out to per mile, though?
Quite a bit more than a manual, which is the relevant number here.
From his own mouth! People should link to 181 whenever someone makes the mistake of imagining Shearer espouses any basic American or humanist values.
197: True, but also true that special education is a huge resource suck for the public schools, both in dollars and in management time (which is an under-appreciated resource). Much of it is important and valuable work, but IMO a decent-sized chunk of what's now done by the public schools should belong to some other institution.
The piling on Shearer has gotten pretty over the top. Sometimes he says interesting things, and when he doesn't, the situation is not improved by ad hominems.
ah well, I survive foolishmortals addendums, too
It's addenda, thank you very much. If expose my ego to the degree that I assume that unfogged readers actually want the full 9 inches of screenspace I provided, I'd appreciate it if you'd use proper fucking pluralization while mildly deriding it. End rant.
201: Sure, it's a significant cost, and it might not make sense to do everything that's now done through special ed in the public schools, but saying "get rid of it" without some idea of what's going to replace it and serve the same needs doesn't make any sense.
the situation is not improved by ad hominems.
That would be true, but for the fact that there is no hominem to ad. Mr. Shearer has painted himself as a caricature, and show little inclination to be treated as otherwise. In a sell-out quote I hate to use, there's no "there" there.
194: I tend to think that equality of opportunity is all that's required for justice, but that at least rough equality of outcomes is a necessary diagnostic to see if you've come close to equality of opportunity.
Special Ed is an umbrella term. Some of it, though, involves spending tons of money on kids with enormous problems who probably can't be fixed -- sometimes a fulltime staff member for one kid. Sometimes its tied to litigious parents. I know several people who work in the field, and all of them have stories that they themselves regard as horror stories about costly, wasted efforts.
Some principles also unnecessarily assign kids to special ed or bilingual ed because of the subsidies the school gets.
In the big picture education is a very good thing, but there are specific problems not addressed by the political supporters of education. As long as it's a political football I suppose that won't change.
I do not agree with Shearer's principle of equal dollars for every student, though.
205: Eh, arguing the point would be self-defeating, so I won't, except to reiterate that I sometimes find his comments interesting and don't have too much trouble filtering out the ones that aren't.
204: Agreed. But special ed does need to be part of the conversation about what we want public schools to do with the additional resources we need to give them.
re: 206
To be more precise, I think that aiming for equality of opportunity gets you equality of nothing much, most of the time. Equality of opportunity is often a way of weaseling out of hard thinking about the issues.
There can be substantive forms of equality of opportunity, of course, and really my talk of equality of outcome is mostly a way to get at that, but the substantive form is not what seems to be going on most of the time when people talk about it.
Considering everything, I think we've been pretty nice to Shearer. He hijacks threads, never participates except as an adversary, posts pretty good rational argument while refusing to engage others' arguments, and reiterates weak points indefinitely. I'm OK with the status quo (argument + ridicule), and I'd also be OK with asking him to leave.
210: I'm not out to protect his feelings--apparently he's OK with the response he gets or he wouldn't keep posting--but the volume of ridicule sometimes crowds out more interesting parts of the conversation.
209: Can't disagree with any of that; I just wanted to flag that in principle, where there is real equality of opportunity, there's nothing wrong with differing outcomes. But that's an argument about what justice demands as between two kids growing up in the same class, going to the same schools, one of whom wants to be a surgeon and the other of whom wants to be a ski instructor.
On a social level, you're right.
Equality of opportunity is a specifically American way of weaseling out of the issues via "fair competition". Both fair competition and equality of opportunity are moving targets.
If you analyze individualistically, everything that you give to one person that you don't give to a second person is as though taken away from the second. Freemarketers and social choice theorists specialize in this argument.
NPH: I notice you're not the one arguing with him. But I'm glad we can at least provide a suitable backdrop against which you can enjoy his bon mots, even if we still have room for improvement.
210 seconded or thirded, or whatever it takes to express my intense agreement.
It should also be noted that I earlier exhibited myself as a procrastinator. I am that, but I have learned 40 chinese radicals now, which might undercut my earlier argument. Go ahead, test me. Not that I'm not a fuck-up or anything.
It's addenda, thank you very much.
Well, you read my grammatical error correctly, if not my meaning (at all).
If you analyze individualistically, everything that you give to one person that you don't give to a second person is as though taken away from the second.
JE one does not have to be a free markets devotee to know that resources are limited, and therefore prioritized. All we are doing is discussing those priorities.
217: I thought you just meant that my vertically overbearing post stepped on your prosaic, but enlightening posts. I was just giving you shit because you gave me the opportunity.
218: Sure, resources are limited, but it's also overly simplified to believe that any benefit to one person must be an equal injury to someone else. "Resources are limited" doesn't mean "every social issue is zero-sum". Emerson is accurately stating that not every problem is zero-sum.
206
I tend to think that equality of opportunity is all that's required for justice, but that at least rough equality of outcomes is a necessary diagnostic to see if you've come close to equality of opportunity.
This assumes everybody is inherently roughly equal which I don't believe when it comes to academic ability (especially evaluated on the curve as it generally is).
TLL, freemarketers frame every bit of public expenditure as taking money out of one individual's pocket and putting it into some other individual's pocket. That's different than setting priorities; it pretty much denies the possibility of setting public priorities. In other words, you did not respond to what I said.
On "equality of opportunity" and "equality of outcomes" -- I've become increasingly dissatisfied with that entire way of framing the issues. It's a social engineering language that presumes you get people to sign onto an abstract principle and then some removed group of rulers / administrators implements it. This isn't how societies work, even mass societies, and the language is in some sense a distraction.
Also, on their own terms they are a bit silly. "Equality of opportunity" is incompatible with the centrality of the private family in childrearing. "Equality of outcomes" is so at variance with human diversity as to be almost undefinable, and inevitably leads to a round of sophomoric libertarian attitudinizing.
The salvageable part of "equality of opportunity" emerges from peoples' sense of fairness and giving an equal shot, and the salvageable part of "equality of outcomes" comes from simply pointing to the ridiculous and unjustifiable material inequalities in American life. So let's just appeal directly to those.
not every problem is zero-sum
True, but if the district is spending money in for example Special Ed then there are no funds left for a music department. The budget is zero sum, even if the benefits are not.
197
See, that's silly. Special Ed isn't one thing. Some kids in Special Ed have learning disabilities and normal or superior intelligence, and just need additional support to thrive. Some kids are more severely disabled, but need some kind of education for whatever independent functioning they're capable of. "Get rid of" Special Ed doesn't mean anything useful unless you have something specific in mind.
I gave an alternative, spend the same amount on everybody. If that is too rigid for your taste say never spend more than 2 times (or 5 times or 10 times) the average on a single student. I object to an infinite entitlement regardless of benefit. Just as I object to any requirement to spend unlimited amounts on a single patient regardless of benefit.
That's different than setting priorities; it pretty much denies the possibility of setting public priorities.
I don't think so at all. Redistribution of wealth, or resources, or however you want to frame it is all about setting priorities. Remember the Golden Rule: Them with the gold sets the rules.
222: No, it doesn't assume "everybody" is roughly academically equal. The surgeon and the ski bum who went to the same high school probably ended up on different career paths because of different academic aptitudes, capacities, and tastes.
It does assume that you can't predict someone's innate academic potential from their socioeconomic class, their ethnicity, or their gender -- that the differences in outcomes between rich and poor kids are at least largely the result of differences in opportunity rather than innate capacity. I don't have proof of this -- I have suggestive evidence that I find convincing. I've never seen evidence disproving it that I found convincing.
226: I object to an infinite entitlement regardless of benefit.
Bold of you. Who were you arguing with on this one?
Who were you arguing with on this one?
I would personally like an infinite benefit regardless of benefit, if you don't mind. Thanks.
200
From his own mouth! People should link to 181 whenever someone makes the mistake of imagining Shearer espouses any basic American or humanist values.
Feeling free from tyranny, effective government and stability aren't basic values?
And don't some lefties claim America just provides the illusion of freedom, the iron fist in the velvet glove?
Eh, rearrange that so it makes sense, and, if you don't mind, funny.
230: Labs will be showing up with your infinite fellatio any moment now.
229
Bold of you. Who were you arguing with on this one?
Current law regarding special ed I believe. At least for ratios of 10 or below.
that the differences in outcomes between rich and poor kids are at least largely the result of differences in opportunity rather than innate capacity
What outcomes, though? Admission to college, "success" in life? Some people are late bloomers. Have the schools failed them because the weren't ready to learn?
Part of the problem with public schools is that it is a factory model in what is basically an artisianal craft. Good enough fails most. Outside of the socialization aspects I wonder if more kids couldn't be more effectively taught remotely via internet, with specialized programming. We are dealing with an outmoded delivery system.
234: That's an awfully loose usage of the word "infinite" for a mathematician, isn't it?
Seriously, if you have a plan for managing special education better than it's managed now, that's ducky. There are all sorts of things that are screwed up about special ed. But an offhanded "get rid of it" doesn't solve anything.
Feeling free from tyranny [isn't a] basic value?
I have never seen "feeling free from tyranny" named as a basic principle or value. It sounds like something from "1984".
228
It does assume that you can't predict someone's innate academic potential from their socioeconomic class, their ethnicity, or their gender -- that the differences in outcomes between rich and poor kids are at least largely the result of differences in opportunity rather than innate capacity. I don't have proof of this -- I have suggestive evidence that I find convincing. I've never seen evidence disproving it that I found convincing.
If you mean differences in opportunity in the form of unequal schools there is lots of evidence you are wrong regarding class and ethnicity. For example the evidence shows Chinese and Hispanic students don't perform differently in the LA school system because of unequal schools.
If you mean differences in culture this probably does handicap some groups but how far are you willing to go to equalize culture. The Amish culture is probably very bad as far as allowing academically talented students achieve their full potential, but what are you willing to do about it?
I have never seen "feeling free from tyranny" named as a basic principle or value
This has some thing to say about tyranny and tyrants.
http://www.ushistory.org/Declaration/document/index.htm
237
I have never seen "feeling free from tyranny" named as a basic principle or value. It sounds like something from "1984".
This is the whole what's wrong with Kansas thing. If the citizens of Singapore feel free who are you to tell them they are wrong. How are you going to evaluate freedom from tyranny?
I have never seen "feeling free from tyranny" named as a basic principle or value
This has some thing to say about tyranny and tyrants.
http://www.ushistory.org/Declaration/document/index.htm
It does assume that you can't predict someone's innate academic potential from their socioeconomic class, their ethnicity, or their gender -- that the differences in outcomes between rich and poor kids are at least largely the result of differences in opportunity rather than innate capacity.
I don't think I disagree with you generally, but isn't the line of thinking that the best predictor of one's scholastic success is the educational achievement of one's parents, offered, e.g., as a reason that one could in fact put EmmaJacob in the public elementary school rather than the competitive snooty kindergarten, etc.?
Whether the talent is 'innate' here is a red herring; I don't think anyone has the evidence to establish that. The question is, or should be, to what extent the opportunities can be equalized (or, maybe better, at least brought above a floor), and how much influence a school system can have in that. Witt's breakdown up above of where the money might go was also very good.
I'll also put forth my tired critique on these points: there's a lot of room between 'poor child no one can help at all because of a broken home full of drugs and sin and violence' and 'every poor child who is smart enough will get into Harvard.' A lot of good can be done just by increasing high school graduation rates, perfect as enemy of the good, etc.
Are Chinese and Latino students treated similarly within (and outside) the LA schools, whether or not they're attending the same schools? Just because they're in the same building doesn't mean they're being given the same opportunities.
And 'equalizing culture' is a weird way of putting the sort of social support I'd like to see made available to everyone who's in need; the sort of thing happening in the Harlem Children's Zone project.
Americans - okay, many Americans - simply don't value academic education.
A friend of mine persists in believing that graduating from Harvard Law School isn't the sort of experience which might be relevant preparation for being president. If pressed he'll agree that knowing something about the constitution might be relevant to a job that requires defending the constitution, but after about fifteen minutes he's back to "no experience."
That list from 128 is a fine example. What about skills such as:
- build a paragraph from common words found around the home;
- identify common logical fallacies in their native habitat in political discourse, including such common types as the ad hominem and affirming the consequent;
- read and understand an instruction manual.
The American ideal is Forrest Gump, so of course it's pointless to spend public money on education. Schools teach culture, and they're doing a very bad job: crappy public schools simply re-inscribe the belief that education isn't important.
236
Seriously, if you have a plan for managing special education better than it's managed now, that's ducky. There are all sorts of things that are screwed up about special ed. But an offhanded "get rid of it" doesn't solve anything.
I would put a dollar limit on any special education requirement.
That list from 128 is a fine example. What about skills such as:
While it's true you clearly can't list anything, what such lists leave off is as telling as what they include, I think.
Just because they're in the same building doesn't mean they're being given the same opportunities.
Amen. And from personal experience, they often aren't.
240 is part of Shearer's defense against People should link to 181 whenever someone makes the mistake of imagining Shearer espouses any basic American or humanist values.
Tyranny is OK with Shearer if he doesn't feel it. That strikes me as a good statement of authoritarian values, but not of American values except to the degree that the US has actually become an authoritarian state.
243 to 238.
242: I don't mean 'innate' to be a red herring -- I'm trying to make the point that however you do it, it seems clear to me that equalizing a poor kid's experiences and opportunities, within and without the classroom, with a richer kid's, can allow them to develop their academic potential to the same extent as the richer kid.
The question is how to go about it and what can we as a society afford; rather than Shearer's flip assumption that there's nothing to be done because poorer, or Latino, or whatever kids are as a class going to do badly in school.
I would put a dollar limit on any special education requirement.
Special education is a topic like the McDonalds coffee case. Often used for political purposes with very little in the way of actual facts discussed.
Tyranny is OK with Shearer if he doesn't feel it.
I can't tell if this is a tree falling in the forest or the Nazis coming for the communists. What's on tv tonight?
243
Are Chinese and Latino students treated similarly within (and outside) the LA schools, ...
Obviously not for outside, the Chinese students generally go home to Chinese families embedded in a Chinese community with Chinese cultural values while the Hispanic students generally go home to Hispanic families embedded in a Hispanic community with Hispanic cultural values.
TLL, are you trying to make a point?
Yeah, part of the problem is that 'education' and 'assistance for the caregivers of a mentally disabled person' are put in the same box, funding-wise. My brother-in-law is in his forties, with cerebral palsy and a severe mental disability. He goes to a daily program which my in-laws call school, although I'm sure that it's not funded through a local school board. But it's not terribly different from what he did as a child, and at that point it was, I believe, literally funded as 'special ed'.
Something of the sort is absolutely necessary -- it wouldn't be possible for my inlaws to care for him 24-7 -- and I'm sure it costs the state a lot. In his particular case, though, there's no real reason that it should, either now or when he was a child, have been paid for out of an education budget.
If this is going to turn into how those damn IrishItaliansPoles Hispanics don't understand the good American values of education, I declare this discussion meaningless. Yglesias linked a study a while back that shows that social mobility seems to be alive and well, even among Hispanics, when one factors out high levels of immigration.
249: I'd agree except that 'outside the classroom' may be practically harder to obtain. Money buys a lot. But again, I don't think the standard should be rich vs. poor but middlish vs. poor.
the Hispanic students generally go home to Hispanic families embedded in a Hispanic community with Hispanic cultural values.
Careful- big difference in recent immigrant/ first generation and second. Or is second generation no longer Hispanic cultural values and now normal American, whatever that would be.
257: Doesn't matter. `Hispanic' and `Chinese' are far too crude partitionings to have much meaning here. Unsurprising, in this case.
TLL, are you trying to make a point?
My point , JE is that while making an example of Shearer you are restating a truism. Most people don't care about "tyranny", so it is like the tree that falls in the forest and isn't heard. But also, by not caring about "tyranny", it slowly creeps upon us, so that when we do care, it's too late. So we watch tv, and hope there's money in the bank account tomorrow.
Charles Murray, to Deborah Solomon in the NYT Magazine 9/21/08:
"The last thing we need are more pointy-headed intellectuals running the government. Probably the smartest president we've had in therms of IQ in the last 50 years was Jommy Carter, and I think he's the worst president of the last 50 years"
If we cared about academic education we'd be talking about maximizing the benefit to each student, not equalizing. If we cared about academic skills we wouldn't have elected GWB (twice), or Ronald Reagan, or be seriously considering Sarah Palin and John (bottom of his class) McCain.
All this noise about equality of opportunity and budgets and limited resources is a smokescreen. The commentator linked in the post wasn't worried about any of that. He wanted local control so that Kansas could teach Creationism, because by God Kansas values piety and values ignorance and doesn't want pointy headed coastal intellectuals telling it that they's kids is dummer than dirt.
Sorry, I'm just feeling a particularly strong hatred of America today. Carry on.
249
The question is how to go about it and what can we as a society afford; rather than Shearer's flip assumption that there's nothing to be done because poorer, or Latino, or whatever kids are as a class going to do badly in school.
For something like commuter rail we know enough to sensibly estimate how much it would cost to provide a specified level of service. So it makes sense to talk about cost and benefits.
We have absolutely no idea how to for example bring Hispanic students up to Chinese levels of achievement in the LA school system. Many of the proposed plans for improving school performance are based on empirically unfounded premises. You can't really talk about what we can afford when what you want to buy doesn't currently exist in any believable form.
For the record, President Carter is getting more and more respect. His ranking is rising higher and higher.
258
Doesn't matter. `Hispanic' and `Chinese' are far too crude partitionings to have much meaning here. Unsurprising, in this case.
So you don't think data like this has much meaning?
259: The point was that if we take Shearer at his word, he is completely unaware of, or uncaring of, said truism.
If the citizens of Singapore feel free who are you to tell them they are wrong.
Someone's been reading Unfogged, and I be we're not even in the footnotes.
http://www.omnivoracious.com/2008/10/red-blue-roun-1.html
264
The point was that if we take Shearer at his word, he is completely unaware of, or uncaring of, said truism.
I am well aware of slippery slope arguments like if we let the liberals take our assault rifles the next thing you know we will be trying to cut our steak with plastic knives. They are subject to abuse.
In the case at hand I specified that the society had to be stable ie not sliding down any slippery slopes. Tyranny looks better if you specify that the tyrant is a good man but in practice this has proven difficult to ensure.
Tyranny looks better if you specify that the tyrant is a good man but in practice this has proven difficult to ensure.
Whatever you do, James, don't suggest that a tyranny be ended by an invasion, cuz that is right out. "Sucks to be you" is the only proper response to some one else's plight.
254 gets it exactly right.
366: Since we're treating Shearer as if he were human: Again, I refute you by being me.
NPH: I notice you're not the one arguing with him.
There's a reason for that. Which is not to say that the rest of you can't argue with him if you want to. I'm not the boss of anyone.
Seems appropriate
http://www.american.com/archive/2008/september-october-magazine/inequality-and-the-sergey-brin-effect
We have absolutely no idea how to for example bring Hispanic students up to Chinese levels of achievement in the LA school system.
James, even spotting you the crude use of racial language here, it very much does look like you are blowing off all the evidence from Heckman and Coleman about, eg, the Perry Preschool program. This makes it considerably less attractive an option to continue arguing with you in good faith.
Outside of the socialization aspects I wonder if more kids couldn't be more effectively taught remotely via internet, with specialized programming.
No, they couldn't.
They could be more effectively taught if class sizes were smaller, though. And if there were the support services that far too many kids and their families need.
Outside of the socialization aspects
outside of the oxygen aspects, I wonder if we wouldn't all be better off living under the sea.
273
James, even spotting you the crude use of racial language here, it very much does look like you are blowing off all the evidence from Heckman and Coleman about, eg, the Perry Preschool program. This makes it considerably less attractive an option to continue arguing with you in good faith.
If you know how to raise Hispanic achievement in LA public schools to that of the Chinese students why don't you let us in on the secret?
As for the Perry program if I recall correctly it was a small experimental program over 40 years ago which may or may not have achieved marginal gains for poor black Chicago kids. This sort of result is pretty meaningless unless it can be reproduced which as far as I know it hasn't been. Nor has it been shown that it can be successfully implemented on a large scale. And in any case the gains were marginal. But perhaps I am remembering wrong. What do you think it showed?
If you know how to raise Hispanic achievement in LA public schools to that of the Chinese students why don't you let us in on the secret?
No longer prepared to spot you this use of language - fuck off, you tu'penny-ha'penny racist.
As for the Perry program if I recall correctly [...] as far as I know [...] But perhaps I am remembering wrong
You don't, you don't know far enough, you are.
What do you think it showed?
No. Do your own fucking homework. I'm not even going to consider writing a summary of al the published work on Perry, CPC and the other intensive intervention programs until you've apologised for your racist use of language, and even then I will take quite a lot of persuading that you're arguing in good faith. If all you have is a load of "I seem to recall" on this subject, you've got absolutely no business making such definite statements.
I mean really James. If you think that resources spent on education can't make any difference to five year-olds if their culture and values are too ignorant and antisocial, why the hell do you think I'm going to waste time and effort on an intensive education programme for you?
I mean really James. If you think that resources spent on education can't make any difference to five year-olds if their culture and values are too ignorant and antisocial, why the hell do you think I'm going to waste time and effort on an intensive education programme for you?
Touché!
Shearer,
You can start here:
http://www.highscope.org/Content.asp?ContentId=219
But dsquared has a point ...
275 is fabulous.
I do find formal elementary education kind of dispiriting, though I know that it's necessary. So many of the teachers are illiterate, and I'm talking about the ones in the really good public schools--even ones who graduated from "good" colleges.
re: 280
Most people are illiterate if you set the standard for literacy high enough.
tu'penny-ha'penny
I've only run across this expression once before, in an Elvis Costello song. Does it mean "of little worth" or something similar?
Yeah, something that's worth two and a half pence - old pence, presumably, so about 1 new penny. Cheaper than a two bit whore, anyway.
Hey, Shearer: here's a RAND summary of research that's been done showing the benefits of early childhood interventions.
More generally this:
This sort of result is pretty meaningless unless it can be reproduced which as far as I know it hasn't been.
seems to be you trying to pull a fast one. In the hard sciences, one researcher does an experiment, and then other researchers try to do exactly the same experiment. If other researchers can't reproduce the results, you dismiss the first researcher's work as erroneous or fraudulent.
That model doesn't translate well into social science research. If we're talking about setting up a program and following participants in it for years, obviously it's going to be very, very unusual for another set of researchers to set up a precise duplicate program in a duplicate environment for logistical and funding reasons.
If you're, as the quoted language suggests, going to dismiss any research into early childhood interventions because no one study has been 'reproduced' to your satisfaction, you're applying a standard that makes no sense in context, and which effectively dismisses all of social science.
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Hey, Shearer: here's a RAND summary of research that's been done showing the benefits of early childhood interventions.
Ok, I may have overstated things a bit (or at least omitted some nuance).
My basic contention is public schools (K-12) don't vary much in the United States in ways that affect student achievement compared to the effects of variation in the students themselves. And the variation among schools you do see is primarily due to peer effects. As a result the effects if any of things like teacher qualifications are difficult to detect statistically. Another way of saying this is that a model to predict how well students will do academically will work better if it predicts based on characteristics of the students themselves rather than on characteristics of the school they will be attending. This is what the Coleman report and later work showed.
Let me note what this is not saying. We are only considering academic achievement so US public schools could vary significantly in other important ways. For example in how well they instill good citizenship values like obeying the law. Also we are only considering the range of school conditions currently commonly found in the United States. Schools with conditions outside that range might have more effect.
In particular no school at all is outside the range. The Perry Preschool study (and I presume others in the Rand report) was comparing preschool to no preschool at all and I have no strong reason to doubt this would have some effect just as I expect public schools generally do better than no school at all.
I will note the Perry Preschool project primarily claimed benefits other than improved academic achievement. And as they acknowledge:
It is true that the High/Scope Perry Preschool program had a statistically significant effect on children's IQs during and up to a year after the program, but not after that. This pattern has been found in numerous other studies, such as those in the Consortium for Longitudinal Studies (1983). ...
and the Rand report says:
The magnitudes of the favorable effects can often be sizable. The size of the effects tend to be more modest for cognitive and behavioral measures, and, as noted, the favorable gains in these measures often shrink in size over time. The effects are more substantial and long-lasting for outcomes such as special education placement and grade retention, as well as some of the other outcomes in adolescence and adulthood. At the same time, it is important to note that the improved outcomes realized by participants in targeted early intervention programs are typically not large enough to fully compensate for the disadvantages those children face. Thus, while early intervention programs can improve outcomes over what they otherwise would have been, they typically do not fully close the gap between the disadvantaged children they serve and their more advantaged peers.
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Regarding school science research I do have doubts about a lot of it. One problem is there is I believe a strong publication bias in favor of studies which show significant effects. This gives an unduly optimistic picture as negative studies (particularly small scale negative studies) are less likely to be published. And it puts great pressure on researchers to find effects even when they don't exist.
Social science researchers tend to use statistical significance in a binary manner (less than 5% chance of occurring by chance is a real effect, more than 5% chance of occurring by chance is not a real effect). But this is unrealistic. In particular if you look at many possible effects some will individually test as significant just by chance. You can then cherrypick those results for your papers. It is not clear from the Perry Preschool web pages that they have avoided this pitfall. Certainly the positive IQ result (at age 5) is a lot more prominent than the negative IQ results (at age 8+). And a lot of the effects seem somewhat arbitrarily defined.
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I noticed the Perry Preschool cost/benefit analysis appears to be computing the social benefits incorrectly (also the benefits should be computed with error bars which would be large). They appear to be assuming that if 60% of the treatment group are employed as opposed to 40% of the control group the extra 20% of employed workers are pure social gain. But this assumes these jobs are all new jobs. If instead the treatment group is just able to compete more effectively for a fixed number of jobs the social gain is much less as each gain in employment for the treatment group will be largely offset by a loss in employment for someone else. The same applies for high paying vrs low paying jobs. Of course the economy is not pure zero sum so there will be some social gain but it will not as large as they are estimating.
The main claimed social benefit is in crime reduction for which the above effect is less important. However for certain crimes like drug dealing for which there is a market demand you may just be displacing crime from the treatment group to everyone else. Certainly arresting low level dealers doesn't seem to be a very effective strategy for reducing the number of drug sales as they can be replaced.
This effect seems to undercut liberal hopes for more education as a general social leveler. Individuals may escape poverty by obtaining more education than their peers and thus standing out as more desirable employees but this is not possible for all poor people at once.
So, if we stipulate that education is useless other than as a means of sorting out who will receive what from a fixed set of vocational outcomes, we find that education is useless other than as a means of who will receive what from a fixed set of vocational outcomes.
Glad you cleared that one up for me, Shearer.
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Just saying if society needs 1 million doctors the economic benefit to society of training 2 million doctors is not twice the economic benefit to society of training 1 miilion doctors and any cost benefit calculation that assumes otherwise is wrong. You don't have justify education in cost benefit terms but if you choose to do so you should calculate the benefits correctly.
This is related to lottery occupations.