One of my largest points of disagreement with the champions of reformy stuff is on the value of standardization.
For
instance, lots of folks (including some who don't like the Common Core)
will observe as an article of faith that it would be better to have
national standards than have different standards from state to state. To
them, it seems as obvious as air that this is true. To me, it seems as
obvious as dirt that it is not.
I am not in favor of some anarchic
Land of Do As You Please, but I also see nothing inherently good about a
standardized educational system. I've made my case against standardization
itself many times before. But I'm going to argue that beyond any
inherent value or lack thereof, standardization cannot help but become
toxic in any system where it is viewed as the biggest value.
Many
reformsters live by the rule, "Anything worth doing is worth doing at
scale." Arne Duncan often discusses measuring the value of an
educational program by whether it can be scaled up or not. "If we can't
make it work for everybody," he seems to suggest, "then it's not a real
success."
But if your guiding value is It Must Be Excellent, you will have to make some compromises on how easily it can be standardized for an entire country, deliver scalability, and be mass-reproduced. However, if your primary value is It Must Be Mass-Reproducable and Standardizable, then you will make compromises on excellence.
If you go to a painter and say, "Make me a painting that painters all across the country can reproduce within certain narrow tolerances," you will not get the Sistine Chapel or Starry Night. If you go to a great jazz musician and say, "Play me something, but make it one that any musician in the country could re-play on any instrument" you will not get "Anthropology" or "Two Tickets to Georgia." If you go to a great chef and say, "Make me something delicious, but make it something that can be made pretty much the same in any kitchen in the country," you do not get Gordon Ramsey's Greatest Hits.
And if you put publishers, thought leaders, politicians, and bureaucrats in a room and say, "Create a revolutionary system of education, but it has to be one that's the same for everybody and can be implemented in every classroom in America with little variation," you do not get excellence. Even if you really want excellence, if your primary value is standardization, you cannot get excellence.
Excellence is specific. It is specific to time, place and people, and it is often different, and usually at the end of a new path, and only people who have the freedom and nimbleness to adjust for ever-changing situations can hope to pursue it. And if the excellence involves providing a service for other humans, the variability increases exponentially.
Standardization does not drive the bus to The Valley of Awesome. If standardization is your primary value, your prized virtue, your guiding star, your metric for achievement, you will never achieve excellence. You can't throw out all standards, or simply flail randomly, but building an national educational system based on national standardization is a fool's game. It is not what we need, and not what our students deserve.
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Research + Politics = Bad News
At the Fordham's flypaper blog, Andy Smarick has some sobering news. Yes, Smarick is from the reformster camp, but what he reports this week is concerning to anybody who cares about education in this country.
Smarick is reporting about the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the government agency responsible for gathering and sorting the vast ocean of data related to American schools. Smarick, like most folks, has considered NCES a reliable source for accurate information about what's actually happening on the ground. But a series of events has given him pause.
In 2013, Smarick thought that a batch of data regarding large urban districts did not add up, and he further noted that "an advocacy organization that represents and serves large urban districts" was a big part of the data rollout. He wrote a piece chastising the feds.
But what happened next truly opened my eyes to the extent of the potential problem. The then-head of NCES quickly responded to my piece. He noted that his organization was only responsible for producing the data, which they do “free of ‘spin’ or partisan/political influence.” The National Assessments Government Board (which is in charge of NAEP), he wrote, is in charge of the public release pursuant to federal law.
He continued: “NAGB has interpreted this language as giving them authority over all aspects of the release event (in-person or webinar), including its title, format, and, perhaps most importantly, the policy guests whom they invite to present their interpretations of the findings.
Then another former NCES commissioner spoke up with similar issues.
It's a legitimate concern. There has been plenty of concern over the past decade or two about the degree to which political concerns are allowed to influence government-funded science and the degree to which scientists are muzzled or "handled."
But if the data about schools is being tweaked, shaded, trimmed and otherwise altered, that's not good for anybody, no matter what side of the larger argument they're on. It's hard enough to handle all the differing biases, perspectives and agendas-- the last thing we need is to discover that our facts are even facts.
Smarick is reporting about the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the government agency responsible for gathering and sorting the vast ocean of data related to American schools. Smarick, like most folks, has considered NCES a reliable source for accurate information about what's actually happening on the ground. But a series of events has given him pause.
In 2013, Smarick thought that a batch of data regarding large urban districts did not add up, and he further noted that "an advocacy organization that represents and serves large urban districts" was a big part of the data rollout. He wrote a piece chastising the feds.
But what happened next truly opened my eyes to the extent of the potential problem. The then-head of NCES quickly responded to my piece. He noted that his organization was only responsible for producing the data, which they do “free of ‘spin’ or partisan/political influence.” The National Assessments Government Board (which is in charge of NAEP), he wrote, is in charge of the public release pursuant to federal law.
He continued: “NAGB has interpreted this language as giving them authority over all aspects of the release event (in-person or webinar), including its title, format, and, perhaps most importantly, the policy guests whom they invite to present their interpretations of the findings.
Then another former NCES commissioner spoke up with similar issues.
It's a legitimate concern. There has been plenty of concern over the past decade or two about the degree to which political concerns are allowed to influence government-funded science and the degree to which scientists are muzzled or "handled."
But if the data about schools is being tweaked, shaded, trimmed and otherwise altered, that's not good for anybody, no matter what side of the larger argument they're on. It's hard enough to handle all the differing biases, perspectives and agendas-- the last thing we need is to discover that our facts are even facts.
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Brookings Hits the Bathroom Scale
When it comes to amateurs dabbling in education, it's hard to beat the Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings. Perhaps it's inevitable that economists want to weigh in education, since economics is another area in which everybody and his brother believes themselves expert.
But Thomas Kane offers some grade A baloney with a side of ill-considered metaphor with "Never Diet Without a Bathroom Scale and Mirror: The Case for Combining Teacher Evaluation and the Common Core."
Given that title, it's only natural that the essay start with this sentence: "Given the nature of the job, school superintendents are master jugglers." So, now I'm mentally watching myself in the mirror as I juggle on my bathroom scales. Kane goes on to let us know that he knows how tough it is to implement new teacher evaluation systems because he headed up the Gates Foundation Measures of Effective Teaching Project.
Kane calls education reform "a massive adult behavior change exercise" that requires us to "change what adults do every day inside their classrooms."
Yet, as anyone who has ever tried to lose five pounds or to be a better parent or spouse knows, adult behavior change is hard work. And it simply does not happen without regular feedback. When the current attempts to implement new teacher evaluations fall short—as they certainly will, given the long history of box-checking—we must improve them.
So, the changes teachers allegedly need to make are analogous to losing fat or being a better spouse.
Teaching to higher standards involves much more complex behavior change than simply putting down one’s fork before dessert. And it will be more difficult to achieve. Those who propose “more investments in professional development” as an alternative to teacher evaluation are posing a false choice. Investing in professional development without an evaluation system in place is like launching a Weight Watchers group without any bathroom scales or mirrors.
The bathroom scale image is brave, given the number of times folks in the resistance have pointed out that you do not change the weight of a pig by repeatedly measuring it. But I am wondering now-- why do I have to have scales or a mirror to lose weight? Will the weight loss occur if it is not caught in data? If a tree's weight falls in the forest but nobody measures it, does it shake a pound?
This could be an interesting new application of quantum physics, or it could be another inadvertent revelation about reformster (and economist) biases. Because I do not need a bathroom scale to lose weight. I don't even need a bathroom scale to know I'm losing weight-- I can see the difference in how my clothes fit, I can feel the easier step, the increase in energy. I only need a bathroom scale if I don't trust my own senses, or because I have somehow been required to prove to someone else that I have lost weight. Or if I believe that things are only real when Important People measure them.
Kane envisions the Core and new evaluations going hand in hand, leading to more successful implementation of the Core (he does not address the question of why a successful Core is a Good Thing, Much To Be Desired). And his vision of how evaluation will provide a connection to standards as well as the kind of continuous feedback by people who don't know what they're doing and whose judgment can't be trusted.
First, curriculum teams will develop, in conjunction with their supervisors, a specific detailed list of instructional changes to address standards gaps. Then...
Schools should focus teacher evaluation and feedback efforts on the specific instructional changes required for the gap standards. They should schedule classroom observations for the days when the new standards are to be taught. They should focus post-observation conferences on the adjustments demanded by the new standards. And they should use student performance on interim and end-of-year assessments—especially on the gap standards—to measure progress and to identify and celebrate successes. Even one successful cycle will lay the foundation for the next round of instructional improvement.
I'm pretty sure that this requires a team of twelve administrators, none of whom spend any time doing any of the other things required to keep a school running. But there's more, predicated again on the notion that we're trying to help teachers who are absolutely clueless about what they or their students are doing. Notes. Copious notes. Videos. And let's throw in student evaluation and feedback as well (plus, of course, test scores).
Finally, the wrap-up:
The norm of autonomous, self-made, self-directed instruction—with no outside feedback or intervention—is long-standing and makes the U.S. education system especially resistant to change. In most high-performing countries, teachers have no such expectations. The lesson study in Japan is a good example. Teachers do not bootstrap their own instruction. They do not expect to be left alone. They expect standards, they expect feedback from peers and supervisors and they expect to be held accountable—for the quality of their delivery as well as for student results. Therefore, a better system for teacher evaluation and feedback is necessary to support individual behavior change, and it’s a tool for collective culture change as well.
Oh, the assumptions. The assumption that our school culture needs to be changed. The assumption that teacher autonomy is a problem, not a strength. The implication that US teachers don't like feedback or standards or being held accountable-- that's a little snotty as well.
But I am reminded of the management training that suggests that the fewer levels you have between decision making and decision implementation, the better off you are. Kane seems to be suggesting that the classroom teacher needs to be directed from on high, and his ideas are reminiscent of the worker who can't get a project done because he has to keep going to meetings about getting the project done.
My experience is that every good teacher I've ever known is involved in a constant, daily cycle of reflection and self-examination, using a rich tapestry of directly-observed data to evaluate her own performance, often consulting with fellow professionals. It's continuous and instantly implemented, then instantly evaluated and modified as needed. It's nimble, and it involves the professional judgment of trained experts in the field. That seems like a pretty good system to me.
But Thomas Kane offers some grade A baloney with a side of ill-considered metaphor with "Never Diet Without a Bathroom Scale and Mirror: The Case for Combining Teacher Evaluation and the Common Core."
Given that title, it's only natural that the essay start with this sentence: "Given the nature of the job, school superintendents are master jugglers." So, now I'm mentally watching myself in the mirror as I juggle on my bathroom scales. Kane goes on to let us know that he knows how tough it is to implement new teacher evaluation systems because he headed up the Gates Foundation Measures of Effective Teaching Project.
Kane calls education reform "a massive adult behavior change exercise" that requires us to "change what adults do every day inside their classrooms."
Yet, as anyone who has ever tried to lose five pounds or to be a better parent or spouse knows, adult behavior change is hard work. And it simply does not happen without regular feedback. When the current attempts to implement new teacher evaluations fall short—as they certainly will, given the long history of box-checking—we must improve them.
So, the changes teachers allegedly need to make are analogous to losing fat or being a better spouse.
Teaching to higher standards involves much more complex behavior change than simply putting down one’s fork before dessert. And it will be more difficult to achieve. Those who propose “more investments in professional development” as an alternative to teacher evaluation are posing a false choice. Investing in professional development without an evaluation system in place is like launching a Weight Watchers group without any bathroom scales or mirrors.
The bathroom scale image is brave, given the number of times folks in the resistance have pointed out that you do not change the weight of a pig by repeatedly measuring it. But I am wondering now-- why do I have to have scales or a mirror to lose weight? Will the weight loss occur if it is not caught in data? If a tree's weight falls in the forest but nobody measures it, does it shake a pound?
This could be an interesting new application of quantum physics, or it could be another inadvertent revelation about reformster (and economist) biases. Because I do not need a bathroom scale to lose weight. I don't even need a bathroom scale to know I'm losing weight-- I can see the difference in how my clothes fit, I can feel the easier step, the increase in energy. I only need a bathroom scale if I don't trust my own senses, or because I have somehow been required to prove to someone else that I have lost weight. Or if I believe that things are only real when Important People measure them.
Kane envisions the Core and new evaluations going hand in hand, leading to more successful implementation of the Core (he does not address the question of why a successful Core is a Good Thing, Much To Be Desired). And his vision of how evaluation will provide a connection to standards as well as the kind of continuous feedback by people who don't know what they're doing and whose judgment can't be trusted.
First, curriculum teams will develop, in conjunction with their supervisors, a specific detailed list of instructional changes to address standards gaps. Then...
Schools should focus teacher evaluation and feedback efforts on the specific instructional changes required for the gap standards. They should schedule classroom observations for the days when the new standards are to be taught. They should focus post-observation conferences on the adjustments demanded by the new standards. And they should use student performance on interim and end-of-year assessments—especially on the gap standards—to measure progress and to identify and celebrate successes. Even one successful cycle will lay the foundation for the next round of instructional improvement.
I'm pretty sure that this requires a team of twelve administrators, none of whom spend any time doing any of the other things required to keep a school running. But there's more, predicated again on the notion that we're trying to help teachers who are absolutely clueless about what they or their students are doing. Notes. Copious notes. Videos. And let's throw in student evaluation and feedback as well (plus, of course, test scores).
Finally, the wrap-up:
The norm of autonomous, self-made, self-directed instruction—with no outside feedback or intervention—is long-standing and makes the U.S. education system especially resistant to change. In most high-performing countries, teachers have no such expectations. The lesson study in Japan is a good example. Teachers do not bootstrap their own instruction. They do not expect to be left alone. They expect standards, they expect feedback from peers and supervisors and they expect to be held accountable—for the quality of their delivery as well as for student results. Therefore, a better system for teacher evaluation and feedback is necessary to support individual behavior change, and it’s a tool for collective culture change as well.
Oh, the assumptions. The assumption that our school culture needs to be changed. The assumption that teacher autonomy is a problem, not a strength. The implication that US teachers don't like feedback or standards or being held accountable-- that's a little snotty as well.
But I am reminded of the management training that suggests that the fewer levels you have between decision making and decision implementation, the better off you are. Kane seems to be suggesting that the classroom teacher needs to be directed from on high, and his ideas are reminiscent of the worker who can't get a project done because he has to keep going to meetings about getting the project done.
My experience is that every good teacher I've ever known is involved in a constant, daily cycle of reflection and self-examination, using a rich tapestry of directly-observed data to evaluate her own performance, often consulting with fellow professionals. It's continuous and instantly implemented, then instantly evaluated and modified as needed. It's nimble, and it involves the professional judgment of trained experts in the field. That seems like a pretty good system to me.
TPM & the Anti-Core Attack Problem
Over at Talking Points Memo, Conor P. Williams uses the pushback against Campbell Brown as a jumping off point for addressing what he diagnoses as an anti-core ad hominem attack problem.
In the attacks sites, the heated rhetoric, the strong language, Williams sees an echo of the virulent opposition to She Who Will Not Be Named. And he draws a line to his own experience, in which he finds anti-core folks tend to personally attack him when they disagree, while pro-core disagreers approach him with rational responses to his arguments.
I can't deny that his experience is his experience, though I suspect his own e-mail inbox disparity reflects how he is perceived by his audience-- reformsters see him as fundamentally friendly, while members of the resistance do not. But there's no question that some of the shots at She Who Will Not Be Named as she left the playing field were just nasty, and some of the attacks against Brown have been unnecessarily personal as well.
Conor thinks that the "rhetorical imbalance reveals something about the current state of intellectual and political momentum in education." He thinks that the resistance is stuck fighting defense, and therefor resorts to ad hominems. I think there's a little more to it than that.
The Other Imbalance. Of course the resistance is mostly on defense. The resistance is not rich; the reformsters movement is rich, and well-connected. When Brown wants to hold a press conference about her cause, people show up. When Brown wants to have a local activist squeezed out of the lawsuit, she can make it happen.
The resistance is financially outgunned by a factor of giant whopping money piles.And they have not sought dialogue or conversation or equal exchange of ideas for most of the reformy cycle, because it didn't suit their needs and besides, they had all the money and the power and they didn't need to bother.
I learned something about running meeting and organizations years ago-- people want to be heard, and if they don't feel heard when they're talking, they will just keep raising their voices louder and louder until they think somebody is hearing them. The reformsters didn't think they had to listen to anybody. Result: a bunch of people screaming at them.
Nor have reformsters been free of ad homniem. Ravitch has been accused of all manner of personal shortcoming. Arne Duncan took to calling everyone who disagreed with him silly. For a while every opponent was labeled a tea party kook. And just this week we got the idiot granddad video.
Facts aren't ad hominem. It is ad hominem to attack a person, well, personally. But you don't get to cry "personal attack" just because somebody pointed out an inconvenient fact. Attacking a person because of their race or gender is unconscionable, inexcusable. But pointing out that the person said something stupid, or advocated a policy that doesn't hold up, or behaved abominably in the performance of her duty-- those are not ad hominem attacks.
"Pro hominem" attacks. Why is Campbell Brown leading the New York attack on tenure? Is it because she is an educational expert, an experienced thought leader, a person with standing in the world of New York Schools? No-- she's leading the attack because she is a famous celebrity. And when you start out with a stance of "Pay attention to me because of who I am personally," your pushback will necessarily be personal in nature. If you want to discuss your point of view on its merits, then garner attention for its merits, not your personal celebrity.
Motives matter. Conor charges that opponents suggest "Brown’s message shouldn’t be heard—because of who funds her efforts. Brown’s claims can’t be correct—because her husband manages a hedge fund." (He also accuses opponents of dismissing her for being Republican, but given the huge number of anti-reform GOP folks out there, that just doesn't hold water.)
Motive matters. If somebody announces that he wants to devote millions to debunking claims that cigarettes cause cancer, it matters if all his funding is coming from R J Reynolds. If someone wants to fix public schools, and all their backing is coming from people who want to dismantle public schools and profit from the pieces, that matters.
Policy is personal. I'm often bemused that reformsters can be so taken aback by teacher response to some of their policy ideas. "I don't understand," they say. "All I did was suggest that you are lazy and ineffective and probably a liar and certainly have no professional expertise worth consulting, and all I want to do is make it ten times harder for you to pursue your life work as a career. Why are you taking this so personally??"
Maybe it's that policy makers are usually better-insulated from the people affected by their policy ideas, like button-pushers who don't ever have to actually see the people they drop bombs on, or like business school students who are told to live fifty miles away from their company so that they never have to see the people whose employment they affect.
But they need to understand something-- these policy changes and reformy initiatives affect teachers in their students in profoundly personal ways. Teachers and parents and students who become the lab rats for these grand ideas do take it personally.
I completely and absolutely get the value of keeping discussions about policy focused on policy. But when you punch somebody in the face, their first response does not tend to be "Let's have a discussion about the uses of violence in civilized society." I can believe that many reformsters simply don't get that they are figurative face-punchers (though I think She not only knew it, but relished it, and that's what made her such a lightning rod). But that doesn't make anybody's figurative face feel better.
Useful policy discussions are possible. I frequently manage to have civil, respectful, interesting, illuminating conversations with persons with whom I disagree. But the first step in having such conversations is to check yourself-- ask yourself what conversation you are starting, and what does your side of the conversation look like. There will always be whack jobs on the edges of conversations (on the internet, you can find people who are violently opposed to cute puppies). But if the bulk of your conversation is ugly and unproductive, your next step is to take a good look in the mirror. Even if you are famous.
In the attacks sites, the heated rhetoric, the strong language, Williams sees an echo of the virulent opposition to She Who Will Not Be Named. And he draws a line to his own experience, in which he finds anti-core folks tend to personally attack him when they disagree, while pro-core disagreers approach him with rational responses to his arguments.
I can't deny that his experience is his experience, though I suspect his own e-mail inbox disparity reflects how he is perceived by his audience-- reformsters see him as fundamentally friendly, while members of the resistance do not. But there's no question that some of the shots at She Who Will Not Be Named as she left the playing field were just nasty, and some of the attacks against Brown have been unnecessarily personal as well.
Conor thinks that the "rhetorical imbalance reveals something about the current state of intellectual and political momentum in education." He thinks that the resistance is stuck fighting defense, and therefor resorts to ad hominems. I think there's a little more to it than that.
The Other Imbalance. Of course the resistance is mostly on defense. The resistance is not rich; the reformsters movement is rich, and well-connected. When Brown wants to hold a press conference about her cause, people show up. When Brown wants to have a local activist squeezed out of the lawsuit, she can make it happen.
The resistance is financially outgunned by a factor of giant whopping money piles.And they have not sought dialogue or conversation or equal exchange of ideas for most of the reformy cycle, because it didn't suit their needs and besides, they had all the money and the power and they didn't need to bother.
I learned something about running meeting and organizations years ago-- people want to be heard, and if they don't feel heard when they're talking, they will just keep raising their voices louder and louder until they think somebody is hearing them. The reformsters didn't think they had to listen to anybody. Result: a bunch of people screaming at them.
Nor have reformsters been free of ad homniem. Ravitch has been accused of all manner of personal shortcoming. Arne Duncan took to calling everyone who disagreed with him silly. For a while every opponent was labeled a tea party kook. And just this week we got the idiot granddad video.
Facts aren't ad hominem. It is ad hominem to attack a person, well, personally. But you don't get to cry "personal attack" just because somebody pointed out an inconvenient fact. Attacking a person because of their race or gender is unconscionable, inexcusable. But pointing out that the person said something stupid, or advocated a policy that doesn't hold up, or behaved abominably in the performance of her duty-- those are not ad hominem attacks.
"Pro hominem" attacks. Why is Campbell Brown leading the New York attack on tenure? Is it because she is an educational expert, an experienced thought leader, a person with standing in the world of New York Schools? No-- she's leading the attack because she is a famous celebrity. And when you start out with a stance of "Pay attention to me because of who I am personally," your pushback will necessarily be personal in nature. If you want to discuss your point of view on its merits, then garner attention for its merits, not your personal celebrity.
Motives matter. Conor charges that opponents suggest "Brown’s message shouldn’t be heard—because of who funds her efforts. Brown’s claims can’t be correct—because her husband manages a hedge fund." (He also accuses opponents of dismissing her for being Republican, but given the huge number of anti-reform GOP folks out there, that just doesn't hold water.)
Motive matters. If somebody announces that he wants to devote millions to debunking claims that cigarettes cause cancer, it matters if all his funding is coming from R J Reynolds. If someone wants to fix public schools, and all their backing is coming from people who want to dismantle public schools and profit from the pieces, that matters.
Policy is personal. I'm often bemused that reformsters can be so taken aback by teacher response to some of their policy ideas. "I don't understand," they say. "All I did was suggest that you are lazy and ineffective and probably a liar and certainly have no professional expertise worth consulting, and all I want to do is make it ten times harder for you to pursue your life work as a career. Why are you taking this so personally??"
Maybe it's that policy makers are usually better-insulated from the people affected by their policy ideas, like button-pushers who don't ever have to actually see the people they drop bombs on, or like business school students who are told to live fifty miles away from their company so that they never have to see the people whose employment they affect.
But they need to understand something-- these policy changes and reformy initiatives affect teachers in their students in profoundly personal ways. Teachers and parents and students who become the lab rats for these grand ideas do take it personally.
I completely and absolutely get the value of keeping discussions about policy focused on policy. But when you punch somebody in the face, their first response does not tend to be "Let's have a discussion about the uses of violence in civilized society." I can believe that many reformsters simply don't get that they are figurative face-punchers (though I think She not only knew it, but relished it, and that's what made her such a lightning rod). But that doesn't make anybody's figurative face feel better.
Useful policy discussions are possible. I frequently manage to have civil, respectful, interesting, illuminating conversations with persons with whom I disagree. But the first step in having such conversations is to check yourself-- ask yourself what conversation you are starting, and what does your side of the conversation look like. There will always be whack jobs on the edges of conversations (on the internet, you can find people who are violently opposed to cute puppies). But if the bulk of your conversation is ugly and unproductive, your next step is to take a good look in the mirror. Even if you are famous.
Choice Finance Fantasies (Part II)
I love the internet. In particular, I love the way it allows for conversations to break out between people who would never meet or interact in real life. This is one of those conversations.
First, I wrote this piece about what I see as some fallacies in the ideas behind choice financing. Soon afterwards, Neerav Kingsland wrote this response at the blog Relinquishment. Kingsland is the former CEO of New Schools for New Orleans, so it is safe to say that we come at these issues from widely different perspectives. But here I am responding to his response, because, yay, internet.
Kingsland suggests that I've fallen into "accounting like a state," in which "finances are viewed through the lens of government program solvency, not outcomes." Or, if I understand correctly, institutions can become more worried about their own continue existence than about making sure their missions are accomplished. I agree that's a thing.
Kingsland restates my argument thus:
Here are Kingsland responses:
1. I didn't consider academic outcomes. If charters do a better job with less funds, that's something. Kingsland suggests there's evidence that they do, and a mountain of problems with what anybody means by "better." I'm unconvinced that the evidence is even sort of conclusive.
2. Kingsland observes that state pension systems are a fantasy fueled mess verging on insolvency. This is, in many cases, the result of serious state level mismanagement, and in other cases, the result of mis-stating the actual level of crisis.
3. Schools have fixed costs. So do lots of businesses. Schools should develop business plans that keep students from jumping ship. That assumes that schools can best compete by doing a good job.
4. Accountability can be achieved many ways, including non-profits providing school services under the control of an elected board. I don't disagree with this.
Kingsland (and a couple of writers in the comments section) help crystalize for me where one of the big conflicts between choice fans of economic school reforminess clash with (for lack of a better word) traditionalists. Both want to operate inefficient systems. Both insist that their inefficient system will work just fine as long as they can have access to That Pile of Money Over There. But Kingsland et al want the pile of money to include tax dollars that are already being spent on other things; in particularly, they would like the pile to include money that is being spent on teacher salaries and pensions. Traditionalists want access to tax revenues.
Kingsland makes the point that charters have to balance their books (as if traditional public schools somehow do not). The implication is that charters are more fiscally responsible or efficient, but charters balance the books by transferring expenses back to the public school system, including the expenses of educating more costly-to-educate students and even, in cases like the Moskowitz schools, the costs of owning and maintaining the building itself. Charters are, at times, like a college student who is proud of supporting himself and Living Within His Means while his parents are still paying all his tuition, room and board bills.
It's not that I believe public school systems are a model of financial efficiency for all the world to follow. It's that I think choice systems are almost always going to be worse. If you could run turn a public system into a public/non-profit hybrid system without having to spend a single dollar more or cut a single service, I would not squawk a bit. And I believe that such a system is probably theoretically possible in a select few places. But mostly it can't be done, and even Kingsland and his boosters are saying they could totally do it-- if you just gave them access to that pile of money over there. And that desire to drain salary and benefit funding in order to make the system work means you must now convince me that you can somehow maintain a quality teaching force with a fast food style compensation structure. That's an argument for another day, but I'm more likely to become convinced that rainbow-pooping unicorns exist.
More importantly, I'm pretty sure that financial efficiency is not a worthwhile goal for a school system. Not that I think it should be disregarded. But it can't be the goal. Efficiency is not excellence.
Kingsland suggests I'm laboring under four fantasies.
#1 is beside the point. Public schools must educate all students who show up. The moment you accept that as part of the mission, you can kiss efficiency goodbye. Kingsland says productivity is important in figuring efficiency, and that's true, but some students will always really hurt your numbers-- they still get an education. Providing a one-size-fits-most product is also good for efficiency, but it's not what schools are for.
#2 Unfortunately, state teacher pension funds are based on political buffoonery, and currently they are still suffering the effects of the economic crash that all those sober economists and bankers and regulators saddled us with six or seven years ago.
#3 No. It's a good reason to prevent fake competition. The charter systems being tried around the country are not anything like a real free and open market, even if they start with the premise that every student is a customer with a cost-per-pupil stipend to "spend" at the school of his choice (a premise that my first essay was written to address). There are other big problems with market forces in education, but we're already running long here.
#4 Probably not. But what charter and non-profit (which, c'mon-- "non-profit" just means "we don't have to share our income with shareholders) seem to want is a system without any such oversight. Remember Reed Hastings explaining that schools would work so much better if we did away with school boards? That would seem to be the choice ideal.
Elected school boards are ugly and messy and political (unlike corporate boards which never have those problems). And they are often forced to respond to exactly the community concerns that make schools less efficient. But that's the gig.
This is another area where we find some pretty fundamental differences of opinion about schools. I believe that schools are meant to represent the will of the entire community, and to educate each child as best they can without breaking the bank, but without writing off any children either. I don't believe that they are meant to be engines of business-style efficiency, because that creates a host of economic pressures that run counter to the mission and are eventually bad for students. And I believe that, even though their intentions may in some cases be pure, choice advocates are not being honest about the true costs of a choice based system.
First, I wrote this piece about what I see as some fallacies in the ideas behind choice financing. Soon afterwards, Neerav Kingsland wrote this response at the blog Relinquishment. Kingsland is the former CEO of New Schools for New Orleans, so it is safe to say that we come at these issues from widely different perspectives. But here I am responding to his response, because, yay, internet.
Kingsland suggests that I've fallen into "accounting like a state," in which "finances are viewed through the lens of government program solvency, not outcomes." Or, if I understand correctly, institutions can become more worried about their own continue existence than about making sure their missions are accomplished. I agree that's a thing.
Kingsland restates my argument thus:
- Public education benefits from economies of scale; specifically, charter schools are highly inefficient and they end up reducing teacher salaries and pensions to make up for these inefficiencies.
- Public school districts have a high fixed costs, so when funds “follow” the student, districts often lose more in revenue than they can save in costs.
- Public accountability over taxpayer funds for education is best accomplished through elected school boards (where all citizens can vote for societal ends) rather than choice (where public school parents pursue their own individual ends).
Here are Kingsland responses:
1. I didn't consider academic outcomes. If charters do a better job with less funds, that's something. Kingsland suggests there's evidence that they do, and a mountain of problems with what anybody means by "better." I'm unconvinced that the evidence is even sort of conclusive.
2. Kingsland observes that state pension systems are a fantasy fueled mess verging on insolvency. This is, in many cases, the result of serious state level mismanagement, and in other cases, the result of mis-stating the actual level of crisis.
3. Schools have fixed costs. So do lots of businesses. Schools should develop business plans that keep students from jumping ship. That assumes that schools can best compete by doing a good job.
4. Accountability can be achieved many ways, including non-profits providing school services under the control of an elected board. I don't disagree with this.
Kingsland (and a couple of writers in the comments section) help crystalize for me where one of the big conflicts between choice fans of economic school reforminess clash with (for lack of a better word) traditionalists. Both want to operate inefficient systems. Both insist that their inefficient system will work just fine as long as they can have access to That Pile of Money Over There. But Kingsland et al want the pile of money to include tax dollars that are already being spent on other things; in particularly, they would like the pile to include money that is being spent on teacher salaries and pensions. Traditionalists want access to tax revenues.
Kingsland makes the point that charters have to balance their books (as if traditional public schools somehow do not). The implication is that charters are more fiscally responsible or efficient, but charters balance the books by transferring expenses back to the public school system, including the expenses of educating more costly-to-educate students and even, in cases like the Moskowitz schools, the costs of owning and maintaining the building itself. Charters are, at times, like a college student who is proud of supporting himself and Living Within His Means while his parents are still paying all his tuition, room and board bills.
It's not that I believe public school systems are a model of financial efficiency for all the world to follow. It's that I think choice systems are almost always going to be worse. If you could run turn a public system into a public/non-profit hybrid system without having to spend a single dollar more or cut a single service, I would not squawk a bit. And I believe that such a system is probably theoretically possible in a select few places. But mostly it can't be done, and even Kingsland and his boosters are saying they could totally do it-- if you just gave them access to that pile of money over there. And that desire to drain salary and benefit funding in order to make the system work means you must now convince me that you can somehow maintain a quality teaching force with a fast food style compensation structure. That's an argument for another day, but I'm more likely to become convinced that rainbow-pooping unicorns exist.
More importantly, I'm pretty sure that financial efficiency is not a worthwhile goal for a school system. Not that I think it should be disregarded. But it can't be the goal. Efficiency is not excellence.
Kingsland suggests I'm laboring under four fantasies.
- School districts are efficient because they use economies of scale to deliver a strong educational experience for students.
- States funded teacher pension systems are based on sober predictions of market returns.
- The high fixed cost of operating a school district is a good reason to prevent competition.
#1 is beside the point. Public schools must educate all students who show up. The moment you accept that as part of the mission, you can kiss efficiency goodbye. Kingsland says productivity is important in figuring efficiency, and that's true, but some students will always really hurt your numbers-- they still get an education. Providing a one-size-fits-most product is also good for efficiency, but it's not what schools are for.
#2 Unfortunately, state teacher pension funds are based on political buffoonery, and currently they are still suffering the effects of the economic crash that all those sober economists and bankers and regulators saddled us with six or seven years ago.
#3 No. It's a good reason to prevent fake competition. The charter systems being tried around the country are not anything like a real free and open market, even if they start with the premise that every student is a customer with a cost-per-pupil stipend to "spend" at the school of his choice (a premise that my first essay was written to address). There are other big problems with market forces in education, but we're already running long here.
#4 Probably not. But what charter and non-profit (which, c'mon-- "non-profit" just means "we don't have to share our income with shareholders) seem to want is a system without any such oversight. Remember Reed Hastings explaining that schools would work so much better if we did away with school boards? That would seem to be the choice ideal.
Elected school boards are ugly and messy and political (unlike corporate boards which never have those problems). And they are often forced to respond to exactly the community concerns that make schools less efficient. But that's the gig.
This is another area where we find some pretty fundamental differences of opinion about schools. I believe that schools are meant to represent the will of the entire community, and to educate each child as best they can without breaking the bank, but without writing off any children either. I don't believe that they are meant to be engines of business-style efficiency, because that creates a host of economic pressures that run counter to the mission and are eventually bad for students. And I believe that, even though their intentions may in some cases be pure, choice advocates are not being honest about the true costs of a choice based system.
Monday, September 15, 2014
Efficiency vs. Excellence
We've all been discussing efficiency lately, thanks largely to the release of the GEMS report on educational efficiency, and while there's one critical point that has appeared tangentially in much of the discussion (including the original GEMS paper), I think it's worth pulling it out and looking at it by itself.
Efficiency and excellence are not the same thing.
In fact, excellence and efficiency generally cannot go together (unless you are the kind of person who defines excellence as efficiency).
Here's another way to understand efficiency. The point of highest efficiency in any business is a point that meets the following two requirements:
1) If we create higher quality, it will require a greater proportional dedication of resources.
2) If we devote fewer resources, it will result in a proportionally greater drop in quality.
Efficiency is the not the best possible result we can achieve, But to get a little bit closer to Best Possible Result would require a whole lot of time and money.
In the business world, this is somewhat related to our old favorite, Return On Investment. This is where I could make the product better, but I would be spending an additional $10 on the product and getting only $10 or less value out of it. This is when you're going to sell your house and you realize that it would cost you another $1,000 to fix the bathroom, but fixing the bathroom would probably only get you another $500 on the selling price.
Past a certain point, it lowers efficiency in your operation to improve the quality of your product. This is how car companies end up saying, "We could fix that flawed feature, but it would cost us $10 a unit and we couldn't charge more for it. So let's not fix it."
The pursuit of excellence and the pursuit of efficiency are two different things. Top ivy prep schools, like the Philps' academies, are grossly inefficient. Philips Exeter seats students at Harkness tables, limiting class size to twelve, which is grossly inefficient. Faculty could handle classes of double the size with no notable drop in quality.
Well, maybe they could. The thing about quality is that it's perception. Efficiency can go hand in hand with marketing. If we drop resources by a quantity of X, quality will drop by Y-- but can we get the customers to think that the new normal is just as good as the old one? In schools, can we convince people that a class of three hundred taught by one teacher on the other end of a computer link-up is just as good as one teacher in a room with only twelve students?
The pursuit of excellence is expensive-- usually prohibitively so. But if we use efficiency as our guiding star, we will be led inexorably to the Land Of Just Good Enough, a place that almost nobody wants to send their children to. It does make sense to discuss efficiency in education-- how to make the best use of finite resources. It does not make sense to make efficiency our goal, certainly not to make it our very definition of excellence. McDonalds is efficient. But nobody goes there strictly for excellence.
Efficiency and excellence are not the same thing.
In fact, excellence and efficiency generally cannot go together (unless you are the kind of person who defines excellence as efficiency).
Here's another way to understand efficiency. The point of highest efficiency in any business is a point that meets the following two requirements:
1) If we create higher quality, it will require a greater proportional dedication of resources.
2) If we devote fewer resources, it will result in a proportionally greater drop in quality.
Efficiency is the not the best possible result we can achieve, But to get a little bit closer to Best Possible Result would require a whole lot of time and money.
In the business world, this is somewhat related to our old favorite, Return On Investment. This is where I could make the product better, but I would be spending an additional $10 on the product and getting only $10 or less value out of it. This is when you're going to sell your house and you realize that it would cost you another $1,000 to fix the bathroom, but fixing the bathroom would probably only get you another $500 on the selling price.
Past a certain point, it lowers efficiency in your operation to improve the quality of your product. This is how car companies end up saying, "We could fix that flawed feature, but it would cost us $10 a unit and we couldn't charge more for it. So let's not fix it."
The pursuit of excellence and the pursuit of efficiency are two different things. Top ivy prep schools, like the Philps' academies, are grossly inefficient. Philips Exeter seats students at Harkness tables, limiting class size to twelve, which is grossly inefficient. Faculty could handle classes of double the size with no notable drop in quality.
Well, maybe they could. The thing about quality is that it's perception. Efficiency can go hand in hand with marketing. If we drop resources by a quantity of X, quality will drop by Y-- but can we get the customers to think that the new normal is just as good as the old one? In schools, can we convince people that a class of three hundred taught by one teacher on the other end of a computer link-up is just as good as one teacher in a room with only twelve students?
The pursuit of excellence is expensive-- usually prohibitively so. But if we use efficiency as our guiding star, we will be led inexorably to the Land Of Just Good Enough, a place that almost nobody wants to send their children to. It does make sense to discuss efficiency in education-- how to make the best use of finite resources. It does not make sense to make efficiency our goal, certainly not to make it our very definition of excellence. McDonalds is efficient. But nobody goes there strictly for excellence.
Granddad Learns About The Common Core
[Update: As you can now see, the video has gone away. The Youtube account "Common Core," a group of filmmakers from around the country, has shut down after only three days. Probably their best move, all things considered. If I can find a link to the video anywhere on the interwebs, I'll be sure to repost.]
[Update: We'll see how long this lasts, but God bless stlgretchen for preserving this piece of video idiocy. So now, you, too, can enjoy this piece of self-defeating PR]
[Well, that was fun while it lasted. But Six One Seven is apparently determined to bury this!]
As your grandad would not say, "OMG!"
The media group 617 has produced a video in support of the Core that is apparently intended to embarrass its opponents into silence. It has decidedly not worked out that way-- you will have a hard time finding the video, which seems to have suffered its own attack of embarrassment, but you can read about the reaction over at Missouri Education Watchdog. They were not pretty.
The video features a Cartoon Old Guy, who's insulting on so many levels. He's dismissive of the kid. He is wrapped up in his own stupid stories. He can't remember the teacher's name (aging brain function-- hilarious). He's ethnic. He's an ignorant war vet of some war-- he looks like a stereotypical WWII vet, but that would make him ninety-ish. Could be Korea, which would make him seventy-ish. He thinks Gates runs Apple (har!) and he measures the value of his grandson's ability to "figure" in how it can calculate money. Oh, and he plays the lottery.
He's worried about the Common Core stuff he's heard about on TV, and I'm wondering where on TV he's hearing bad things about the Core, because Core proponents have that media pretty well locked up.
The message here? Common Core critics are uninformed fools. Note that the nice teacher lady does not actually offer a single piece of fact-based data about the Core to contradict Old Bat-brained Granddad. She doesn't have to (though she might have mention that Hector will have to put a stop to figuring out math problems in his head). He's so obviously a dope that we are meant to simply discount his complaints because, well, he's a dope. He is truly the most wondrous animatronic straw grampaw ever.
This is not much of a coup for whoever hired Six One Seven Studios, a production company located just outside Boston and dedicated to "providing our clients with the most innovative, engaging and authentic visual content. We combine our artistry with the latest technology and a deep understanding of your work to create powerful stories"
The video broke over at Politico, and one has to assume that someone associated with the video sent it to politico hoping for some buzz. According to Politico, the firm made this epic video all on its own:
Executive Producer Bryan Roberts said the firm self-funded the video after learning about the Common Core debate through work with clients including the New York and Rhode Island state education departments and EngageNY, a website that provides curriculum resources to New York teachers. “Too many of the pro-Common Core videos were PowerPoints and talking heads,” Roberts said. “So we put out this video to help folks see the power of telling a fun but simple story with real people.” He has more planned.
More? The mind reels.
The studio has many swell clients. You know who one of those clients is?
The Massachusetts Teachers Association.
Yup. An almost-as-hilarious video of exTREMEly earnest teachers (wait-- is that Miss Jenkins??!!) produced by the company is featured on the MTA website in their promo for the Teacher Leadership Initiative. My favorite part-- the very last teacher, who says "Teacher" and then pauses (Wait a beat. Waaaiiiit a beeeat) and finally lands on "Leading." Though I enjoy the part where several of the teachers appear to have been jolted to life by cattle prods.
I don't know who really prompted Bryan Roberts to create this masterpiece of terrible. Maybe it was one of the reformy conversation changers. But we've sailed way past "hugely insulting" all the way to "ridiculous." I hope Roberts didn't pay himself much, and I hope it hasn't taken up too much time to scrub the negative comments off their various pages. I look forward to more entries in the Granddad series, such as "Granddad Learns About Fluoridation," "Granddad Sets The Clock on His VCR," "Granddad Finds Out Where Grandma Went When She Went For Groceries Forty Years Ago and Didn't Come Back," and "Granddad Finds Out About That Those Gay Fellas Won't Give Him Cooties." There's no limit to how ignorantly patronizing this could get.
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