Assessing U.S. Education

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

An article comparing the educational performance of students in different countries has sparked some discussion on the Columbia Daily Tribune‘s Homeroom blog. The article’s conclusion, with which several of the blog’s commenters agree, is that students in the United States aren’t doing as poorly as the critics would have you believe.

I’m all in favor of staying calm about education. Politicians say we need a “sense of urgency,” then use that agitation to their advantage as they push through huge spending increases. It would be wiser to weigh the pros and cons of different policies without giving in to hysteria.

But staying calm doesn’t mean ignoring the facts. For example, this is from the first section of the article:

Only about one-third of U.S. students could read and do math at current grade levels on national tests in 2007, the most recent figures available.

I’m not reassured that a few other developed nations do comparably poorly on international math and science exams, especially given that some countries do a lot better while spending less money.

Get This Article To Jeff City, Stat!

Posted on by David Stokes

There are a few legislators in our General Assembly that could really benefit from this article in the Wall Street Journal about what happened when Maryland raised its state income tax to fill budget gaps. Believe it or not, tax revenues decreased as — get ready for the big shock — some rich people actually moved out of Maryland! Maybe Maryland can pass a law making it illegal to move out of Maryland. …

The Public Sector

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Bill Schrier blogs about public service jobs, and the belief that they’re like diamonds (i.e., that they last forever):

For one thing, there’s an expectation that government is stable and long-term in its operations and its employment. It has to be. Despite the situation with the economy at large, water and electricity have to keep flowing, streets and parks need to be repaired and cleaned, 911 calls answered, cops and firefighters dispatched.

What’s missing from this analysis is the fact that technology changes. Yes, municipalities have to provide the same services year after year, but as time goes on they should become more efficient. That means employing fewer people to provide basic services.

Answers to Charter School Criticism

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

A couple of weeks ago, David Brooks wrote about charter schools run by the Harlem Children’s Zone. The comments on his column now number in the hundreds, and several of them are suspicious of the research Brooks cites. Similar arguments can be found in the comments to a recent post of mine, “How to Compete With Charters.”

Here are a few of the criticisms of charters that come up time and again, each followed by my answers:

Charter school students’ gains are a result of their intrinsic motivation, not superior schools.

I don’t want to dismiss hard work on the part of students; obviously, learning can’t be forced on anyone and the children should rightly take credit for their own accomplishments. However, we observe that some schools allow children to succeed through hard work and others do not.

This is from an article about KIPP:

Typically students are two or three grade levels behind when they enroll at KIPP as fifth graders. A KIPP study shows that the average fifth-grade student beginning in KIPP scores in the 40th percentile in math and the 32nd percentile in reading based on norm-referenced exams, which compare a student’s performance to their peers nationally. After four years in KIPP, the youngsters tend to score in the 82nd percentile in math and 60th percentile in reading.

If KIPP’s success could be attributed solely to motivation, why were those extremely motivated students so far behind to begin with? The motivation was probably there in fourth grade as well as in fifth grade, right? So the traditional public schools could have taken that motivation and run with it, before these students ever set foot in KIPP. And not every city has KIPP schools, so we should see large groups of traditional district students making sudden, large gains during middle school in the cities where KIPP can’t siphon off the motivated children. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen.

You don’t have to take my word for it — researchers like Roland Fryer and Caroline Hoxby take the motivation problem into account. When they look at student achievement, they compare students who attend charters with other students who entered charter lotteries, but who randomly were assigned to traditional public schools. Their studies find that students who attend charters do better than students who were equally motivated to apply to charters. The only difference between the two groups is that some had the luck of the draw.

It is possible that attending a school your family chose increases your motivation over time. Maybe at the beginning of the study, the charter school kids are no more motivated than their counterparts who lost the lottery. But after a few years in a charter school, they feel a sense of ownership about their schools. They could always choose to go back to their assigned district, so there’s no attitude of “I have to be here, but I don’t have to like it.” Instead, students may think, “My family made this choice, and now it’s up to me to follow through and do my part.” If it turned out that charter school students actually have extra motivation stemming from this reason, that’s an argument in favor of more charters and choice.

Charter schools can be super-selective and set strict rules, while traditional public schools have a disadvantage in that they must accept all comers.

Charter schools are public schools, and they don’t do anything that public schools can’t do. Remember the Clyde C. Miller Career Academy? I wrote a post about how wonderful this “charter” school is, only to find out it’s a district school. If the Career Academy can make students write essays and do interviews before they’re admitted, other district schools could do that too.

Traditional districts like SLPS have the talented people they need to succeed, but political forces just don’t allow them to realize their potential.

I agree completely. As competition with the charters heats up, we’re going to see more district schools like the Career Academy that are just as good as charters. SLPS has the necessary raw materials; choice is the catalyst. The district should view charter schools as its partners in battling political inertia — they’re not enemies.

Texting While Driving

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

There’s more justification for a law against texting while driving than for helmet or seat belt requirements. A driver who doesn’t wear a seat belt is risking his own life in the case of an accident; a driver who writes text messages may endanger the lives of others.

However, if the state deems this activity too dangerous to permit, it should be illegal for everyone, not just for young drivers. We wouldn’t say that people can’t drive drunk unless they’re at least 21 years old.

Too Much Information

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Information is a scarce resource: There’s a cost to gathering it, analyzing it, and promulgating it. Human attention is also scarce. Not even Stephen Wolfram can process all of the information that’s out there.

That’s why requiring businesses to provide data to consumers isn’t always sound policy. It’s like a tax. Well-established businesses will be able to pay upfront and pass on the cost, in the form of higher prices, to its customers. Businesses with fewer resources will be forced to close. And those that would like to enter the market will have to meet this additional expense besides all the usual costs of entry.

This analysis applies to calorie posting requirements, including the one proposed in New York state. A posting requirement would limit entry into the chain restaurant business, restricting consumers’ choices. People might even have fewer healthy options as a result of the law, if new chains that would have offered healthier menus can’t break into the market.

Then there’s the question of what consumers do with the data. Calorie counts by themselves aren’t that informative if people don’t understand what they mean or how many calories they need a day. And healthy eating involves more than just calories; consumers would also have to consider variables like protein and vitamins to make good choices.

For some people, being bombarded with calorie information could actually hurt their health. For example, Harvard discontinued its practice of posting calorie counts in dining halls over fears that it could exacerbate students’ eating disorders.

The following argument would be amusing if it weren’t marshaled in support of a potentially destructive policy:

Studies show that most people find it difficult to guess the calorie counts of typical restaurant meals; one study showed that less than 15 percent of New Yorkers could guess the lowest or highest calorie menu items at any chain restaurant in the survey.

I’m reminded of those surveys they do every now and then, that find most people can’t name the vice president or a member of the Supreme Court. People are generally bad at identifying things for surveys, and we shouldn’t conclude from a survey that they have no idea fast food is unhealthy.

There will probably be more debate about this policy here in Missouri, too. This is the bill that our state legislators proposed for calorie counts.

Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

An article in the Springfield News-Leader reports on a labor law that has more to do with retaliation than with sound economic principles:

Twenty-two states including Illinois, Iowa and Oklahoma, have laws that restrict Missouri laborers from working on public works projects in those states during high unemployment.

Accordingly, Missouri Law states that during such periods, public works projects may only employ Missourians or workers from nonrestrictive states.

The other states that have restrictions in place are hurting their own taxpayers through protectionism. Missouri shouldn’t imitate them.

The first reason is that Missouri shouldn’t waste its tax money just because other states are doing it. Second, beyond the adverse effects of the policy itself, this kind of retaliation makes it less likely that other states will do away with their protectionist laws. If we ignore another state’s bad law, the citizens of that state might eventually learn from our example and realize that their policy is short-sighted. If we instead copy them, they’ll take it as validation of their unwise law. Even worse, states can get locked into a protectionist arms race in which no state will reform its labor laws unless other states act first.

The War on Cuteness

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Ever since Maine banned novelty cigarette lighters last year, some lawmakers in other states have been eager to follow suit. The bill introduced in Missouri didn’t go anywhere, but I’m sure the idea will return in future sessions.

As you can guess, the rationale for a ban is increased safety. Kids like to play with things that look like toys, so they’ll play with novelty lighters and start fires.

The Missouri bill would have limited the ban to novelty lighters that would appeal to children younger than age 18. To achieve their goal of lighter safety, legislators would have to ban all lighters that would appeal to anyone, adults included. Toddlers think anything small and movable is a toy; they don’t check to see whether it looks like something from Toys”R”Us before playing. And that’s why parents shouldn’t leave any lighter, novelty or otherwise, within the reach of children.

It takes a lot of legislation to substitute for a little bit of common sense.

Single-Sex Charter Schools

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

Missouri has no single-sex charter schools yet, although a few charters do offer single-sex classrooms. So we haven’t run into the legal dilemma single-sex charters in Illinois may face. The Illinois charter school law prohibits charters from discriminating in admissions based on gender, as does Missouri’s law. This article (link via Edspresso) mentions a possible situation that administrators in Illinois are anticipating:

The School Board’s administration said Tuesday the school can’t, by law, discriminate against female applicants, and if a girl applies and is chosen by computerized lottery, she’d be a student there, too.

It seems that the charter schools don’t expect students of the opposite sex to apply. The two single-sex high schools in Chicago have been open for several years without problems. I doubt any teenage boy would want to attend the Young Women’s Leadership Charter School of his own initiative, but it could be that adults will decide to challenge the schools’ legality.

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