"It was the first of many steps (former Indiana Governor) Mr. Daniels has taken as he seeks to reorganize Purdue's sometimes-antiquated systems. A year and a half into his tenure, Mr. Daniels has frozen tuition (for the first time in 36 years), cut the cost of student food by 10% and introduced volume purchasing to take advantage of economies of scale." Wall Street Journal
Since the biggest piece of a college's expenses are for salaries and benefits, it's laughable that making administrators purchase office supplies at Costco and cutting food costs will make any difference to the skyrocketing costs of college education. Freezing tuition, other things equal, just means that the endowment gets eroded to make up the difference, or the college incurs more debt. This would make perfect sense to a politician.
Having a look at my own undergraduate alma mater, one sees a huge, bloated academic and professional infrastructure, some of it mandated by Federal law and much of it mandated by empire building Presidents who are in arms races to build shiny, new facilities and to outdo their predecessors with capital campaigns.
Since university financial statements are as useful as municipal statements, with lots of funds lying around invisible to the outside eye, it is nigh impossible to subject universities to the same level of scrutiny to which corporations are accustomed. I invite readers to try their hands at their own universities and share what they come up with. One reporter in California reports that City College of San Francisco spends 92% of its budget on salaries and benefits.
We bemoan student debt loads without asking why these debt loads were incurred. Although the reasons may be manifold--duplicative and unproductive departments which grant few degrees, bloated administrative staffs, deadwood tenured staff--the universities are not delivering value to the students for all their federal and state subsidies. They are selling a subprime product at superprime prices. In most markets, like food, finance or healthcare, this would provoke outrage, but in education, it's all about the future and that's good enough.
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Monday, July 28, 2014
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Vergara vs. California Shines a Light
L.A. County Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu's decision in Vergara v. California makes for compelling, if sometimes tragicomic reading for anyone interested in the public education leviathan that consumes such vast resources with soaring costs, poor results and no accountability.
Beginning with 1954's Brown v. Board of Education Judge Treu notes its conclusion that inherently unequal facilities denied those students the equal protection required under the 14th Amendment. Education, then stated as the most important service produced by the public sector, was to be made "available to all on equal terms."
This suit focused on challenging three statues, "permanent employment," "dismissal," and "LIFO." When these are actually read in print and examined in basic terms, as Judge Treu does, they defy the notion of being being enshrined into state law by a legislature claiming to represent the best interests of students in public education.
"Grossly ineffective teachers" are found to have a disproportionate impact on schools serving predominantly low-income and minority students. A study by Harvard economist Raj Chetty is quoted where he concludes that a year with a grossly ineffective teacher costs $1.4 million in lost lifetime income per classroom.
Another study, put forward by representatives of the educational establishment, cites evidence that only about 1-3% of the total teacher population are in the class of grossly ineffective. This amounts to 2,750-8,250 teachers in total.
According to the Wall Street Journal,
School principals, under this regime, are not even in control of their own labor force, although they might be accountable for the student performance in their own schools. Even parents who clearly know from direct experience or from the parent network who the incompetent teachers are, cannot move their students from one classroom to another by request. Management of the the labor force that is the biggest factor in the production of the services that determine lifetime earnings is locked by statute into the control of teachers unions. Ever hear the slogan, "The customer is king?" Not in education.
In public education, the customer, whether parent or student, is a mushroom or a pawn. The interests of this group of students who brought the suit, with the assistance of Dr. David Welch's organization "Students Matter," are congruent with those minority parents who support school choice through vouchers, and with those minority students attending parochial schools who are not supported by the public purse. Perhaps one day, all of these interests will come together as they should through real school choice, which is the only way to real educational reform.
Beginning with 1954's Brown v. Board of Education Judge Treu notes its conclusion that inherently unequal facilities denied those students the equal protection required under the 14th Amendment. Education, then stated as the most important service produced by the public sector, was to be made "available to all on equal terms."
This suit focused on challenging three statues, "permanent employment," "dismissal," and "LIFO." When these are actually read in print and examined in basic terms, as Judge Treu does, they defy the notion of being being enshrined into state law by a legislature claiming to represent the best interests of students in public education.
"Grossly ineffective teachers" are found to have a disproportionate impact on schools serving predominantly low-income and minority students. A study by Harvard economist Raj Chetty is quoted where he concludes that a year with a grossly ineffective teacher costs $1.4 million in lost lifetime income per classroom.
Another study, put forward by representatives of the educational establishment, cites evidence that only about 1-3% of the total teacher population are in the class of grossly ineffective. This amounts to 2,750-8,250 teachers in total.
According to the Wall Street Journal,
"L.A. spent $3.5 million between 2000 and 2010 to fire seven teachers for poor performance. Yet only four of the seven were ultimately dismissed. Two received large settlement payouts, and one was retained. Chief of Human Resources Vivian Ekchian testified that the district employs 350 grossly ineffective teachers it hasn't even sought to dismiss."The 0.001 percent of grossly ineffective teachers dismissed is a tiny fraction of the 1 percent dismissal rate of state workers in general and a multiple of the 8 percent rate in the private sector
School principals, under this regime, are not even in control of their own labor force, although they might be accountable for the student performance in their own schools. Even parents who clearly know from direct experience or from the parent network who the incompetent teachers are, cannot move their students from one classroom to another by request. Management of the the labor force that is the biggest factor in the production of the services that determine lifetime earnings is locked by statute into the control of teachers unions. Ever hear the slogan, "The customer is king?" Not in education.
In public education, the customer, whether parent or student, is a mushroom or a pawn. The interests of this group of students who brought the suit, with the assistance of Dr. David Welch's organization "Students Matter," are congruent with those minority parents who support school choice through vouchers, and with those minority students attending parochial schools who are not supported by the public purse. Perhaps one day, all of these interests will come together as they should through real school choice, which is the only way to real educational reform.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Cronyism and the Educational Establishment
Luigi Zingales is Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance at Chicago Booth School of Business, and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. I just finished his book, "A Capitalism for the People: Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity." It's written from the perspective of of an adult Italian immigrant who remembers well the cronyism, corruption and limited opportunity in his native Italy. America offers him limitless vistas of opportunity, as he earns his Ph.D. in economics from MIT and goes on to begin a career as a teacher, academic researcher, and author. It is a good read.
Professor Zingales talks about "regulatory capture," which has been evident recently in the battle between the SEC and global Wall Street banks over regulating money market mutual funds. Corporate lobbyists have been pleading to sustain inefficient domestic sugar manufacturing and favoring the ethanol industry, which has been an economic and environmental albatross. Examples abound in the book.
When the educational sector is discussed in the media, the word "lobbying" is always replaced by "activism," or "advocacy." Their regulatory capture is nothing different or nobler: it is just lobbying. As Zingales writes,
I think that it's a lot more complicated than giving every student an iPad. Meaningful competition would be the best medicine to improve the public schools.
Professor Zingales talks about "regulatory capture," which has been evident recently in the battle between the SEC and global Wall Street banks over regulating money market mutual funds. Corporate lobbyists have been pleading to sustain inefficient domestic sugar manufacturing and favoring the ethanol industry, which has been an economic and environmental albatross. Examples abound in the book.
When the educational sector is discussed in the media, the word "lobbying" is always replaced by "activism," or "advocacy." Their regulatory capture is nothing different or nobler: it is just lobbying. As Zingales writes,
"...the most destructive cronyism that uses lobbying to extract money from the American people in exchange for a product that doesn't meet their needs is the public school system.Some of the causes identified by researchers include inefficient teaching methods, and technology is the next large topic identified as something which can increase both efficiency and student performance.
In the 2007-2008 election cycle, the National Education Association, the union representing public school teachers was the biggest lobbyist in America spending $56 million.
...as the teachers union defends the status quo in education, it is killing the American dream for much of the population.
...the U.S. spends more per capita than almost every other country, with little to show for it. Between 1980-2005, public spending per U.S. student increased 75% in real terms, with little or no impact on performance."
I think that it's a lot more complicated than giving every student an iPad. Meaningful competition would be the best medicine to improve the public schools.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Public Education Can't Be Reformed
The ideology that drives our system of public education has deep roots, going back to the French Revolution and the Jacobins. The philosophical foundations were articulated by Jean Jacques Rousseau in his "Social Contract." Rousseau had the notion that education had little to do with books, but with inculcating into all students core ideas about the "commonweal."
These ideas had a great influence on Horace Mann, the first Commissioner of the Board of Education in Massachusetts who went on to serve in the Massachusetts Senate and House of Representatives. His influence on American public education has been profound. Charles L. Glenn's book, and its copiously footnoted sources, provides the best exposition of this history.
Mann felt strongly that the "common school" was to be the preferred instrument for eliminating idiosyncratic local cultural practices among immigrants of different national and religious origins, levelling them into one identity. The large Irish influx in Lowell, MA came to work in the new factories. Catholic religious orders set up schools to educate, as best they could, the large influx of new immigrants.
Meanwhile, as often happens in American society, there was another background social struggle among competing elites. From Mann's earliest days at the Board of Education in 1837, educational discussions were dominated by the property holding classes. With the flowering of Rousseau and Danton's ideas, a new elite arose to dominate the discussion about the "common school." Glenn describes this group as being comprised of lawyers, Protestant clergymen, journalists and self-styled commentators who saw the French ideals as a fertile new area in which to expand their influence by championing these quirky ideas.
When Horace Mann began his career, he was a relatively obscure lawyer, with few social connections. Mann found worthy allies in this new elite, and they would propel his ideas and career. Together, they concocted the notion of a necessary state monopoly on education so that citizens could be educated about virtue, the need to combat indolence, intemperance, and even prevent the spread of crime among the new immigrant populations.
The new ideas of the "educational reformers' also picked up support from Protestants in Massachusetts who were worried about the large Irish Catholic influx into Lowell's burgeoning industrial center. They feared a conspiracy to take away a supply of new students from public schools. Fearing the growing influence of what they libelously called "papists," they too joined the new educational elite to support the common school movement.
From these deep roots in the American educational psyche, we had to pass through the debilitating effects of the Sixties and Seventies, where the common school became a giant, impenetrable, self-sustaining machine, stronger than the any corporate industrial machine. Even the most powerful American corporations--pick your favorite example--can easily be felled by bad management, the business cycle, or by changes in their business paradigm. The educational establishment is truly bullet proof because of its ties to the State and its tax and regulatory powers.
It may make you laugh or it may raise your blood pressure, but go and find a catalogue from your local College of Education, whether in a private or public university. Read the course descriptions. Courses on teaching mathematics talk about how to connect to local resources, design assessments, integrate technology and plan lessons. Courses in Human Relations will challenge students to produce environments in which diverse learners can experience learning which is "multicultural, gender fair and disability aware." I know that elite schools in China are not spending any time with their students on these objectives. Then, we complain that we are behind Country X in math and science and therefore we need to spend more money with the failing public system.
There are many good teachers in public schools, but there are many more mediocre teachers who are merely punching the clock, and there is the other end of the curve which should be removed. The teachers, however, don't operate in a vacuum. Today's public school teachers have to deal with an administrative bureaucracy whose sole job is to monitor the incoherent and unattainable mandates put upon the school by the state and federal educational bureaucracies. I have yet to meet a public school teacher who expresses respect, let alone enjoyment, at working for their district administration.
What these teachers are asked to do is totally ridiculous. Andrew Coulson's recent article cited the disproportionate growth in the teacher population versus the student population nationwide. I don't know if this is the real problem. I believe that it is relentless growth of educational mandates which teachers have to fulfill, which takes them away from the tasks which they enjoy and for which they joined the profession, namely to help young people succeed.
To serve all these mandates, there are way too many administrators, and specialists in all kinds of unnecessary endeavors, from cultural norms to bullying. The state of Texas, one of the largest school systems in the country, is said to have a 1:1 ratio of administrators to teachers. Thees positions have higher salaries and therefore much higher pension liabilities than do teacher positions.
None of this can change, though because as long as states and the federal government can created new unfunded mandates, there is no choice. Don''t comply and your school will be decertified or closed.
Have you ever gone to a local school board meeting? Go with a Costco sized bottle of Tylenol. It is even more inane, cynical and boring than the Senate. Reform can never penetrate into this closed system.
Private groups like Teach for America have contributed to better outcomes for students in troubled schools. When they entered the Minneapolis market, the union funded PR guns fired out accusations about elitist outsiders who were unqualified to teach and doing nothing but padding their resumes. They certainly didn't care for "the kids."
Former Medtronic CEO Bill Hawkins wrote a letter to the local paper counteracting the propaganda:
"...the schools are getting new teachers from a talent bank that has never been richer. They come from the Ivy League, from the best colleges in Minnesota and from states around the country, with a grade point average of 3.6 (on a 4.0 scale) and majors ranging from industrial engineering to music. Sixteen percent of graduating seniors at Yale this year applied to teach with Teach for America, as did 450 seniors from schools in Minnesota, including the University of Minnesota, Macalester and Carleton.
Teach for America's expansion to the Twin Cities is funded with a $2.7 million grant from local businesses, including Medtronic and General Mills, as well as leading area foundations. This reflects our respect for the results achieved by the program in other cities and our commitment to addressing the alarming rate at which our state is failing to ensure a proper education for far too many young Minnesotans.
In a state renowned for academic prowess, it should concern us that one of our largest school districts is falling behind the rest of the country. A national study published last spring rated Minneapolis 45th among America's 50 largest cities when it came to our high school graduation rates. Equally troubling is what young people aren't learning while they're still in school. Less than half the students in the city school system are proficient in reading, and only 40 percent in math. The numbers are particularly discouraging if you single out math and science, the two areas most crucial to the future of our children and the future of the nation.
This is unacceptable. It's time to do something different"
I admire Teach for America and its objectives and achievements, I don't think that it is the best model, and I certainly don't believe that it is the only model for really making education deliver on its mission.
No educational model delivers comparable outcomes at a lower cost, especially for inner city minority populations, than the system of Catholic schools. I spent twelve years in a New York City Catholic elementary school and high school. I've volunteered in these schools most of my professional career. Many of their students are not Catholic, and many of them can't afford to pay the very modest tuition; but, no student is turned away.
I agree with Bill Hawkins that it is time to do something different. Americans have a common interest in producing the next generation of educated, informed citizens and productive taxpayers. Any educational system that produces this output should be funded with public funds, since the future benefits attached to creating this citizenry accrue to all.. Parents and students should have choices. If certain systems are overburdened with bureaucracy and inefficiency and can't adapt, then they need to wither, just like W.T. Grant or Digital Equipment. That is the only kind of real reform which will work: competition and choice.
These ideas had a great influence on Horace Mann, the first Commissioner of the Board of Education in Massachusetts who went on to serve in the Massachusetts Senate and House of Representatives. His influence on American public education has been profound. Charles L. Glenn's book, and its copiously footnoted sources, provides the best exposition of this history.
Mann felt strongly that the "common school" was to be the preferred instrument for eliminating idiosyncratic local cultural practices among immigrants of different national and religious origins, levelling them into one identity. The large Irish influx in Lowell, MA came to work in the new factories. Catholic religious orders set up schools to educate, as best they could, the large influx of new immigrants.
Meanwhile, as often happens in American society, there was another background social struggle among competing elites. From Mann's earliest days at the Board of Education in 1837, educational discussions were dominated by the property holding classes. With the flowering of Rousseau and Danton's ideas, a new elite arose to dominate the discussion about the "common school." Glenn describes this group as being comprised of lawyers, Protestant clergymen, journalists and self-styled commentators who saw the French ideals as a fertile new area in which to expand their influence by championing these quirky ideas.
When Horace Mann began his career, he was a relatively obscure lawyer, with few social connections. Mann found worthy allies in this new elite, and they would propel his ideas and career. Together, they concocted the notion of a necessary state monopoly on education so that citizens could be educated about virtue, the need to combat indolence, intemperance, and even prevent the spread of crime among the new immigrant populations.
The new ideas of the "educational reformers' also picked up support from Protestants in Massachusetts who were worried about the large Irish Catholic influx into Lowell's burgeoning industrial center. They feared a conspiracy to take away a supply of new students from public schools. Fearing the growing influence of what they libelously called "papists," they too joined the new educational elite to support the common school movement.
From these deep roots in the American educational psyche, we had to pass through the debilitating effects of the Sixties and Seventies, where the common school became a giant, impenetrable, self-sustaining machine, stronger than the any corporate industrial machine. Even the most powerful American corporations--pick your favorite example--can easily be felled by bad management, the business cycle, or by changes in their business paradigm. The educational establishment is truly bullet proof because of its ties to the State and its tax and regulatory powers.
It may make you laugh or it may raise your blood pressure, but go and find a catalogue from your local College of Education, whether in a private or public university. Read the course descriptions. Courses on teaching mathematics talk about how to connect to local resources, design assessments, integrate technology and plan lessons. Courses in Human Relations will challenge students to produce environments in which diverse learners can experience learning which is "multicultural, gender fair and disability aware." I know that elite schools in China are not spending any time with their students on these objectives. Then, we complain that we are behind Country X in math and science and therefore we need to spend more money with the failing public system.
There are many good teachers in public schools, but there are many more mediocre teachers who are merely punching the clock, and there is the other end of the curve which should be removed. The teachers, however, don't operate in a vacuum. Today's public school teachers have to deal with an administrative bureaucracy whose sole job is to monitor the incoherent and unattainable mandates put upon the school by the state and federal educational bureaucracies. I have yet to meet a public school teacher who expresses respect, let alone enjoyment, at working for their district administration.
What these teachers are asked to do is totally ridiculous. Andrew Coulson's recent article cited the disproportionate growth in the teacher population versus the student population nationwide. I don't know if this is the real problem. I believe that it is relentless growth of educational mandates which teachers have to fulfill, which takes them away from the tasks which they enjoy and for which they joined the profession, namely to help young people succeed.
To serve all these mandates, there are way too many administrators, and specialists in all kinds of unnecessary endeavors, from cultural norms to bullying. The state of Texas, one of the largest school systems in the country, is said to have a 1:1 ratio of administrators to teachers. Thees positions have higher salaries and therefore much higher pension liabilities than do teacher positions.
None of this can change, though because as long as states and the federal government can created new unfunded mandates, there is no choice. Don''t comply and your school will be decertified or closed.
Have you ever gone to a local school board meeting? Go with a Costco sized bottle of Tylenol. It is even more inane, cynical and boring than the Senate. Reform can never penetrate into this closed system.
Private groups like Teach for America have contributed to better outcomes for students in troubled schools. When they entered the Minneapolis market, the union funded PR guns fired out accusations about elitist outsiders who were unqualified to teach and doing nothing but padding their resumes. They certainly didn't care for "the kids."
Former Medtronic CEO Bill Hawkins wrote a letter to the local paper counteracting the propaganda:
"...the schools are getting new teachers from a talent bank that has never been richer. They come from the Ivy League, from the best colleges in Minnesota and from states around the country, with a grade point average of 3.6 (on a 4.0 scale) and majors ranging from industrial engineering to music. Sixteen percent of graduating seniors at Yale this year applied to teach with Teach for America, as did 450 seniors from schools in Minnesota, including the University of Minnesota, Macalester and Carleton.
Teach for America's expansion to the Twin Cities is funded with a $2.7 million grant from local businesses, including Medtronic and General Mills, as well as leading area foundations. This reflects our respect for the results achieved by the program in other cities and our commitment to addressing the alarming rate at which our state is failing to ensure a proper education for far too many young Minnesotans.
In a state renowned for academic prowess, it should concern us that one of our largest school districts is falling behind the rest of the country. A national study published last spring rated Minneapolis 45th among America's 50 largest cities when it came to our high school graduation rates. Equally troubling is what young people aren't learning while they're still in school. Less than half the students in the city school system are proficient in reading, and only 40 percent in math. The numbers are particularly discouraging if you single out math and science, the two areas most crucial to the future of our children and the future of the nation.
This is unacceptable. It's time to do something different"
I admire Teach for America and its objectives and achievements, I don't think that it is the best model, and I certainly don't believe that it is the only model for really making education deliver on its mission.
No educational model delivers comparable outcomes at a lower cost, especially for inner city minority populations, than the system of Catholic schools. I spent twelve years in a New York City Catholic elementary school and high school. I've volunteered in these schools most of my professional career. Many of their students are not Catholic, and many of them can't afford to pay the very modest tuition; but, no student is turned away.
I agree with Bill Hawkins that it is time to do something different. Americans have a common interest in producing the next generation of educated, informed citizens and productive taxpayers. Any educational system that produces this output should be funded with public funds, since the future benefits attached to creating this citizenry accrue to all.. Parents and students should have choices. If certain systems are overburdened with bureaucracy and inefficiency and can't adapt, then they need to wither, just like W.T. Grant or Digital Equipment. That is the only kind of real reform which will work: competition and choice.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Schools Can't Force Better Choices on Students
Schools have been enlisted into the vanguard of society's fight against obesity, by revamping their cafeteria lunches. Cafeteria managers are being told to eliminate "fast food options" and to substitute healthy alternatives, whatever that means. The first problem has been that the customers don't like the changes. Newspapers report of students rebelling against their tofu wraps with Swiss chard. They taste "yukky," and students don't eat the stuff. Those with cars head out to Subway and smuggle in contraband. The costs for the new menus are, of course, higher, since the food service companies have developed their lowest cost options around the traditional fare, which has been in place since I went to school. A chicken nugget is a chicken nugget. Pizza continues to be a "go to" alternative, because it is the number item in "food away from home," even though we all know it has too much fat, too much salt, and too many carbs for a balanced diet.
Now comes the worst news from social science research: exposure to nasty foods like sugar-sweetened colas, candies and snacks during middle school has a statistically weak and insignificant relationship to weight gain among these populations, regardless of ethnicity, gender or income, in a longitudinal study.
Students are already taught in a variety of courses--nutrition, health science, biology, conservation--about the costs of our food system and about the perils of too many calories from sugar, fat and meat. Regulating their food over the relatively small number of food interactions the students have over a calendar year apparently doesn't have a discernible effect. Let's stick to the academic route, improve the alternatives without putting off the customer, and hope that the current generation starts to make better choices when they are out of school.
Now comes the worst news from social science research: exposure to nasty foods like sugar-sweetened colas, candies and snacks during middle school has a statistically weak and insignificant relationship to weight gain among these populations, regardless of ethnicity, gender or income, in a longitudinal study.
Students are already taught in a variety of courses--nutrition, health science, biology, conservation--about the costs of our food system and about the perils of too many calories from sugar, fat and meat. Regulating their food over the relatively small number of food interactions the students have over a calendar year apparently doesn't have a discernible effect. Let's stick to the academic route, improve the alternatives without putting off the customer, and hope that the current generation starts to make better choices when they are out of school.
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