What Does "Inferior" Mean?

John Derbyshire reacts to Obama's speech:

"Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students."

What on earth does this mean? It's true that there is widespread school segregation today. In my state, 60 percent of black students attend schools that are at least 90-percent black. From what I can see, the main reason for this is the great reluctance of nonblack parents to send their kids to schools with too many black students, which they assume are beset by all the problems associated with poorly run public schools. Do you think that they — actually we, as my wife and I share this reluctance — are wrong to think like this? How will you persuade us to think otherwise? Or will you depend on judicially-imposed forced integration of the schools?

Okay... So where Derbyshire comes from, parents assume that majority-black schools are not suitable for their children because "they assume [the schools] are beset by all the problems associated with poorly run public schools", yet he feigns confusion over Obama's use of the word "inferior"?

What does Derbyshire see as the difference between "poorly run public schools" and the public schools to which he would happily send his kids? If he measures school quality by racial composition, the only benchmark for distinction he cites, how is he not reinforcing Obama's point?

College Tuition Costs

At the Volokh Conspiracy, Prof. Ilya Somin attacks the idea of public subsidies for college tuition. His first argument, "the increasing benefits of college education are more than enough to pay the increasing costs.", is premised upon lifetime earnings of college graduates, not discounted to present value. This gives a grossly exaggerated picture of the financial returns of a college education. It's hard to imagine that this is not an intentional distortion, as the figures come from economists. I note that it also omits opportunity costs - the person who could be earning $40,000.00 per year but instead goes to college for four years (assuming they're atypical and graduate on time) adds another $160,000.00 or so to the "cost" of college.

This argument also skips over inequality of earnings (something Somin does subsequently address) to argue, "The vast majority of students can therefore afford to pay for college by borrowing against their future incomes, and still have an enormous income gain left over". This, of course, largely misses the point. In addition to the points already raised,

• For somebody from a family where nobody has gone to college, the idea of borrowing $100,000 - $200,000 to finance a four year college program is likely quite frightening. Heck - for those of us from educated families, that's pretty scary.
• The college graduate is not the only person who benefits from his college education. Employers benefit. Society benefits.
• Even assuming significant economic benefit, to cast this as a retrospective choice puts college education into the category of "shouda's" - "I shoulda gone to college." A recent high school graduate should not be presumed to be a rational economic actor - we "grown-ups" don't make these choices very well.
• Repayment of student loans begins shortly after graduation, not ten or twenty years down the road when income differentials are likely to be the most significant.

Somin continues, "What about college graduates who go into relatively low-paying professions?"

Obviously, the $1 million figure is an average that won't hold true for every college graduate. What about those who enter relatively low-paying professions? In most cases, there is good reason for income disparities between professions: the lower-paying ones are less in demand. We want the market to channel more people to higher-paying professions for which there is more of a demand and fewer people to fields where the demand is relatively low. Subsidizing the low-paying fields by having the government subsidize college tuition undermines this efficient allocation of labor and makes us all worse off by channeling too many workers into the wrong fields.

A professor is writing this? (A Volokh Conspiracy redux.) Granted, law professors tend to earn more than professors in most other colleges, but really. The government has no interest in subsidizing the education of social workers? Of public school teachers? Of college professors? Of research scientists? We want to financially squeeze students out of those career paths and into higher-paying jobs?

Here, Somin compounds his previous errors, and adds some new ones:

But what if you think there is some market failure that leads to undesirably low salaries in a particular profession? Perhaps the market generates too many accountants and not enough artists. Even if you think this "problem" really exists, general subsidies for all college tuition are not the right solution. Rather, you should advocate targeted subsidies specifically for the artists (or whatever other profession you think the market undersupplies). There is no reason to subsidize those students who don't go into the undersupplied field where you think a market failure exists. Subsidizing all students indiscriminately won't do nearly as much to raise the number of artists because it won't create as much of an incentive to choose art over higher-paying fields.

A few responses:

• Teacher salaries are not the result of market failure. Social worker salaries are not the result of market failure. They're all we're willing to pay.
• What sort of planned economy does Somin anticipate, where the government attempts to predict what educational fields require subsidy?
• What sort of distortion does he accept, as students intending to go to graduate school pick majors that are heavily subsidized, then merrily enroll in law school or business school?
• What new brand of high school graduates does he envision, who will know exactly what they wish their career to be the day they enroll in college. If they switch majors, do they have to repay the subsidy - and what type of market distortion does that create, as you financially coerce students to continue a course of studies that no longer interests them?
• What of the benefits to employers and society in having a larger pool of college graduates? Why write those benefits completely out of the analysis?

To the extent that some of these distortions could be eliminated by making the subsidy retroactive - loan repayment assistance for students who enter lower-paid or public service careers - you introduce a new level of distortion. Those least able to repay their loans, and its safe to assume that they will disproportionately be those from poor families, will enter careers that do not necessarily suit them or maximize their long-term earning capacity, because they will want the assistance with their loans. The kid from my Contracts Law class, receiving a 100% subsidy from his wealth family, who bragged that he had never seen a student loan contract? No such constraint.

It's important to remember that even income gains far below the average return to going to college are still more than sufficient to pay for tuition. For example, a college graduate who increases her lifetime earnings by "only" $400,000 (less than half the average gain) has still earned enough extra income to pay for tuition several times over.

But when reduced to present value, that "$400,000" could easily drop below the cost of a college education.

It gets even better - Somin argues that subsidies for education are harmful to the poor.

Not only are government subsidies for government tuition unnecessary, they also victimize the truly disadvantaged people in our society: those who lack the educational qualifications to go to college in the first place (usually due to a combination of poor public schooling and a flawed family environment). These people pay some of the taxes that support subsidized tuition for college students who are likely to end up far wealthier than they are.

This is nonsense at every level. First, given that college tuition subsidies come from income tax, this poor person Somin envisions as lacking any capacity for college likely contributes little or nothing to the subsidy. By any reasonable measure, any poor person who attends college will receive an extraordinarily progressive subsidy - one that vastly outstrips their past or present tax contribution. Second, there are many state colleges that offer significant remedial programs to help students from poor school districts get up to speed and get on track to college graduation. Without a subsidy, few colleges would offer that type of support. Somin again is happy to ignore benefits to society, but there are obvious social benefits in taking somebody from a community with poor schools and a family that does not support education, and immersing them in a college environment. I am hard pressed to think of anybody whose way of thinking was unaffected by the completion of even a year or two of college, whether or not they completed a degree. Third, although Somin does not appear to be aware that such a thing exists, there are also community colleges, which are a sensible alternative for a lot of people who want to try to recover from a mediocre public school education or who want to "try out" college while engaging in a much shorter course of studies.

They are also indirectly harmed by the diversion of public funds to tuition subsidies and away from other priorities that might do more to advance the interests of the truly poor.

For instance? Really. If you're going to argue that the government should be putting the tuition subsidy elsewhere, tell us of these places where the money is better spent. Don't say the word "school vouchers", because pretty much every word you use to attack college tuition subsidies applies to K-12 tuition subsidies.

This is pretty funny, although I can't say it's particularly self-serving:

In some cases, tuition has been artificially increased by government-imposed restraints on competition. In my own field of legal education, for example, tuition rates have been increased by restrictions on competition created by the American Bar Association accreditation requirement for law schools.

I suggest that Somin take a look at the infrastructure, salaries and working conditions in the largest colleges on his campus, such as the English Department. Would he still be a professor if he had to work in that setting, at a similar wage? I doubt it. But it's a quintessential "ivory tower" argument - "things would be better if we didn't have the subsidies that benefit me."

Sure, there are costs and market distortions in making sure that college is universally affordable. Sure, there are ways to help the poor attend college without subsidizing the wealthy. But c'mon.

The Consequence of Teaching To The Test

What if the "teaching to the test" approach taken by many public schools, to raise their test scores under the bizarre school rating formula of "No Child Left Behind", doesn't translate into improved academic performance?

According to the latest scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the reading achievement of eighth-graders has declined since the law was passed in 2001, and the large reading gap between advantaged and disadvantaged children - "the achievement gap" - has stayed where it was. Today's eighth-graders had recorded gains in fourth grade, but these have not led to improvements in later grades - when reading scores actually count for a student's future.

The author suggests that this means, "'Teaching to the test' does not effectively teach to the test after all." That, of course, is incorrect. The whole purpose of "teaching to the test" is to improve performance on a particular test, and that unquestionably occurs. But it's like taking practice courses for the SAT or another aptitude test - you may in fact get a higher score, but that doesn't mean your aptitude is so much as 1% higher than it was prior to your taking the prep course.

The author suggests that this problem may be overcome by using better tests.

Congress and the states should note that the best tests to "teach to" are subject-matter tests based on explicit content standards for each grade. Massachusetts's results confirm that this is the best way to measure and to achieve real progress in reading.

But perhaps the real problem is that, no matter how laudable the goals of NCLB are, its excessive use of standardized testing and its excessive reliance upon those test scores to "rate" schools will perpetuate the emphasis on short-term test score improvement over long-term academic progress.

Finding Success in Failure, II

Having shared his insights on Iraq, Gerson also shares his equally valuable insights into education policy.

Attacking No Child Left Behind is a reliable campaign applause line -- Hillary Clinton promises to "end" the law, because it is "just not working." Actually, the imposition of educational standards and testing has improved math and reading scores and begun narrowing the gap between disadvantaged and affluent students.

There is an angry backlash against NCLB among some Democratic interest groups. Suburban districts resent being labeled as failures just because some minority and disabled children aren't making progress. But that is the whole purpose of the law -- to prevent districts from hiding the poor performance of minorities behind the success of other students. Such districts should feel less resentment and more shame.

If he were to inform himself of the facts, Gerson might learn that the problem is not that the "failing" schools aren't outperforming other "successful" schools, or that they didn't have far better performance by students from minority groups or with disabilities, he would find that they were "failing" due to the fact that they were not showing sufficient "improvement" over prior years. Under the silly NCLB rating system, the best school in the state can be deemed "failing" while the worst can be deemed to be "succeeding". Also, where much of the "success" in lesser schools derives from "teaching to the test", there is a legitimate question as to whether education has actually improved along with the test scores.

Teachers unions object to standardized tests, preferring more subjective, nonacademic measures of school success. And that, from one perspective, is understandable. Failing corporations do not like accurate financial disclosures. Slow runners resent those pesky stopwatches. The unions want underperforming schools and ineffective teachers to be shielded from objective scrutiny. But testing is the only way to determine when disadvantaged students are being betrayed -- and by whom.

It would be more correct to say that teachers oppose standardized testing (not all of it, but the excessive focus created by NCLB), and that the unions are reflecting the positions of their members. This has nothing to do with teachers fearing that standardized tests will demonstrate them to be poor teachers, and Gerson should know that - part of Gerson's complaint appears to be that these tests do not affect job security. And as previously noted, if Gerson knew anything about school ratings under NCLB he wouldn't be describing the school ratings it promulgates as "accurate". Whatever accuracy might be derived from raw scores, it is lost in the system of rewarding individual school "improvement" even if it means classifying the worst schools as succeeding and the best as in need of improvement. It is noteworthy that in his attack on teacher's unions, as with everything else in his column, he omits any facts to support his slur. How worthy of a Bush Administration alumnus.

Instead of attacking a successful education reform, it would be helpful to hear some practical ideas for improving teacher quality. In the real world of failing schools, the main problem is not too much accountability; it is too few effective instructors. Why should teacher pay be determined by collective bargaining instead of teacher competence, especially in low-income schools that need to reward and retain good teachers? Why not give districts more flexibility to fire teachers who would serve children better by changing professions?

And again we have Gerson demonstrating his abject ignorance. He should pick up a phone and talk to some good teachers in the public school system, and get a sense for how NCLB has demoralized the profession, discourages good teachers from entering the profession, and has a lot of good teachers considering early retirement. Gerson's silly notion that teachers will line up to teach in failing schools because they may get a raise or bonus pay if they don't "fail" by... whatever measure he wishes to impose, be it a standardized test or the subjective assessment of a school administrator... and have no job security whatsoever? What planet is he on, where there's an abundant supply of teachers, and the only constraint against firing bad teachers and replacing them with good ones is the teachers' unions? What's he smoking?

People like Gerson also embrace a fanciful notion that no matter what else is wrong in a child's life, and no matter what educational or language deficits the child experiences, any "good" teacher can find enough time in the day to bring that child up to grade level (along with the thirty or so other kids in the class), and the only person who should face consequence for a child's lower-than-grade-level achievement is the teacher. If we assume that a teacher has six hours of classroom time per day for thirty students, and manages to pour all of that time into one-on-one mentoring... that's a whopping twelve minutes per student. Add, you know, teaching to the mix, and....

Well, Gerson likes to talk up his Christianity, so maybe he believes in educational miracles.

D.C. Education Policy - Six Of One and Half A Dozen Of The Other

Today the Washington Post presents two self-interested voices to speak about the problems of the D.C. public school system, the new Superintendent, Michelle Rhee, and the chairman of the board for a charter school, Mark Lerner.

Ms. Rhee speaks positively of the school district's ability to overcome some pretty standard obstacles, such as hiring new teachers, dealing with unexpected staffing shortages, fixing up school buildings, and improved textbook delivery. She describes problems with student registration, and the need for significant improvement in the current system. The editorial closes with the suggestion that although "the first week of school was the best yet ... there is much more work to do, and we have many more changes to come."

Student success is our highest priority, and with the support of parents, guardians, teachers and principals, our schools will be among the best.

If you were to judge this editorial by its omissions, I would note that the crumbling school infrastructure (a significant problem in most large cities) and corruption aren't mentioned. I don't mean to be unfair to D.C. by suggesting that it has problems of corruption in its school administration, but I doubt that there is a major urban school district without significant problems of fraud, corruption and waste. There's also no mention of student safety issues, an unfortunate but necessary issue that must be tackled by any school district which encompasses "inner city" schools.

Mr. Lerner does not expect the D.C. schools to overcome their bureaucratic problems and "dilapidated school buildings". Instead, of course, he lauds charter schools:

Charter schools, fighting for their lives to find facilities in the costly D.C. commercial real estate market, do not operate in buildings where the bathrooms are falling apart and water fountains do not work. You do not find paint peeling from walls and air conditioners that do not cool. And these schools are safe.

Obviously a new charter school is not going to seek out space in a crumbling building. A charter school has the benefit of being able to set its own maximum enrollment, lease as much (or as little) space as it wants, expect its students to travel to its location, and abandon that space or even shut down completely at the end of its lease. Public schools have none of those luxuries.

If you wish to offer neighborhood schools, or something reasonably approximating them, you need to have specialized school buildings throughout the city, and although in theory you can talk about privatizing that process (calling upon third parties to build and own schools while leasing them to the school district) you can expect that to both substantially increase cost and create a risk that an owner will decide at the end of a lease to find a different use for the property - with no realistic options available for a school board that wants to move to different premises. If the tax base is insufficient to pay for upkeep, maintenance, and building obsolescence, you will inevitably see students in crumbling schools.

Even if you abandon the notion of neighborhood schools, you need money for new buildings, increase transportation costs, and create commute time for every school child. Even assuming new school buildings somehow build themselves, I doubt that there would be a cost savings over replacing neighborhood schools, and there may in fact be a cost increase.

Lerner argues that a profit motive leads charter schools to offer a better product,

The power of ownership provides strong incentives to invest time and money into these schools. The power of school choice results in strong incentives to provide a product better than the one down the street.

Which, of course, is why charter school students so consistently outperform public school students, right? Except they don't. (I recognize that Lerner's school is for the performing arts, so perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that he so capably dances around the facts.)

Instead of trying to fix the D.C. public school bureaucracy, we should turn all of these schools into institutions of choice. With all the money we allocate to educating kids in the city (through DCPS, charters and the Opportunity Scholarship Program), we could provide each student with a $12,000 scholarship to a private school. Or, for a lot less money then we are currently spending, we could convert every school to a charter.

This is doubly duplicitous. First, there isn't room for every D.C. school student in a private school. Second, although average spending per pupil may be $12,000, that does not mean that spending is equal for all students. If Lerner has any students with special needs - academic or physical - I am sure his school already gets additional support, resources, and perhaps even staff provided out of the public school budget. Private schools do not have to accept students with learning disorders or behavioral problems - two classes of student for whom per pupil funding is vastly above the $12,000 average. Public schools have to serve any kid who makes it through the door.

Yes, working day and night, Rhee and the mayor may have some limited success. Then they will move on, and their replacements will take their eye off the ball. And then the children of the nation's capital will be back to square one.

Here, unfortunately, he's probably correct. While I attribite it to self-interest, not naievete, that he pitches privatization and charter schools as the answer to all of D.C.'s problems, it is exceptionally unlikely that Ms. Rhee will be able to achieve the magnitude of reform necessary to truly transform the D.C. schools. I sincerely wish her luck.

"Labels Aren't What Kids Need"

A week ago the Washington Post ran a peculiar editorial about education written by Patrick Welsh, a high school teacher, complaining that gifted kids have it too good. Really. Describing a fifth grader who isn't sufficiently challenged at school, the author writes,

"It's an ongoing comedy trying to get the school to challenge him," she says. "The school keeps saying, 'Don't worry. Your child's needs will be met.' Then his teacher says she can't give him challenging work because 'We were told not to assign above-grade-level work to anyone who isn't labeled TAG.' "

That's TAG as in Talented and Gifted. And who is and who isn't - or at least who's designated such and who isn't - has been one of the most contentious issues in Alexandria since the school system raised the bar for the TAG program two years ago. The new rules have cut out about two-thirds of the students who once qualified: At George Mason, the size of the fourth-grade program went from 17 to six last year.

Which means that a substantial number of students will now be relegated to the "regular" curriculum, where the emphasis is on ensuring that lower-income children who lag far behind in basic skills will pass the Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) exams. In Alexandria, the first group is mostly white, the second mostly black and Hispanic. Some white parents at George Mason are now demanding a special class, between regular and gifted, for the "nearly gifted" -- as they call the children who missed the TAG cut.

The problem appears to be that in its zeal to "bring up the bottom" (can you say "No Child Left Behind"?), Alexandria slashed its "Talented and Gifted" program and implemented an absurd, dare I say brain-dead policy that children who aren't "Talented and Gifted" should never work above "grade level". Is the solution to this, as some parents have suggested, offering enriched education for the near-gifted? Welsh answers, certainly not....

But of all the labels that we so-called educators give students, none seems more absurd -- and few more destructive. When we apply this tag to a tiny group of children in third, fourth or fifth grade, we are in effect saying that the rest are ungifted and untalented. We're denigrating hard work and perseverance, telling children that no matter how much effort they put forth, they just can't measure up to their special peers.

Just as bad, we're telling those on whom we deign to bestow the coveted label that they have it made; we're giving them an overblown sense of their intellectual abilities and setting them up to fall short when they face real challenges later.

So the solution is to throw gifted kids back into the same classes and programs as everybody else, where they too can enjoy the privilege of being denied permission to work above grade level?

What schools need to do is not to single out a small group as special, but push all kids to work to their fullest potential.

Which in reality means boring TAG kids out of their skulls so as to minimize the likelihood that they will reach their potential. Nice.

Welsh, though, is happy to substitute his own labels for "talented" or "gifted":

For a fairly bright child, the SOL exams aren't much more than a minimum-competency test. To allay parental anxieties, Superintendent Rebecca Perry has said that the students at the top of the regular classes - i.e., the white kids who didn't get into TAG - will help to "challenge, mentor and coach" the students struggling with the SOL material.

I see. We'll save children from the "stigma" of being told that they aren't "Talented and Gifted" by instead telling them that they aren't very bright, and need to be led by their bright and even their "fairly bright" peers. (To his credit, though, the author does see the Superintendent's cop-out as just that, describing a parent's reaction, "What else could these students be doing instead of reviewing material they already understand as they challenge, coach and mentor their classmates?")

Alexandria's school administrators are caught in a political and moral trap. They have to assure mostly white middle-class parents, who provide most of the tax dollars for the schools, that their children can progress academically without being held back by lower-income kids. At the same time, the school system cannot create exclusive schools-within-schools for upper-income students.

Beyond the question of why "gifted" is an elitist, destructive label and "bright" is not, for an author who doesn't like to label kids, we sure are seeing a lot of socio-economic and racial labeling in this piece. Once you accept that kids can be classified as "bright", "fairly bright" and implicitly "not so bright", you've given up any ground that you once had for attacking the "TAG" label. What you're left with is the objection that "TAG" kids are disproportionately white, a recurrent theme in this editorial.

Research shows that KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) charter schools are the most successful in the country at closing the gap between low-income black students and middle-class white students. But the philosophy of these schools is geared to the needs of poor children. The schools operate on the belief that to close the learning gap, children from poor homes need an education that's not just equal, but superior, to that of middle-class whites.

No "school within a school" for "upper-income" and "white middle-class" kids, but maybe separate, superior schools for "low-income black students"? But no labeling.

The funny thing is, I don't think Welsh recognizes the contradiction in his editorial. He truly seems to believe that if you don't tell a child, "You're 'Talented and Gifted'", the child won't figure out that he's (to use Welsh's word) bright. It doesn't seem to occur to him that even the "fairly bright" kids who yearn to work above grade level are implicitly able to see that (in some or all subjects) they are academically ahead of their peers. And Welsh believes that if you tell kids that they're "talented and gifted" you will destroy their motivation to learn, citing a single 1998 study to support his thesis.

Dweck conducted an experiment in which she gave two evenly matched groups of elementary school kids the same nonverbal IQ test. When one group of children did well, they were told that they must have worked very hard to get their results. The students in the other group, meanwhile, were told that they must be very smart to have done so well.

Dweck found that as time went on, the kids who were told that they were smart "fell apart when they hit a challenge. They lost confidence in their abilities. Their motivation dwindled and their performance on the next IQ test dropped." By contrast, the children in the group praised for working hard tended to seek out challenges and persist at difficult tasks and ultimately learned more.

The primary lesson to be drawn there would seem to be, "Don't lie to kids about their abilities, and don't mislead them about the work they must do to succeed." There is, of course, no evidence provided that this holds true of the Alexandria "TAG" program, save for one anecdote:

I've seen Dweck's theory proved time and again in my AP English classes. When an Asian student who has spoken English for only four or five years gets an A on a test and an American kid labeled gifted gets a D, the American will often do one of two things: denigrate the Asian's grade because it was achieved through hard work, or bring in his mother to argue that the test was unfair and that I should change his grade because I "know how smart he is."

Funny... I went to high school with a lot of kids who had been labeled "gifted and talented" and, even when they hit a class in which they struggled, didn't once see that happen. (I grant that there have since been some changes in how students and parents approach schoolwork and teachers, but those are hardly unique to smart kids.) Welsh is missing the most obvious explanation - the kid didn't need to be told he was smart, because he was able to coast through school and get A's without ever working. The "D" comes as a surprise because, lo and behold, he thought the AP class was going to be "more of the same". It's the consequence of never challenging a smart student, not a consequence of his being able to figure out that he's smart.

A counter-example? The author of the cited study had a sixth grade teacher who seated her class in order of IQ, highest to lowest, and overtly discriminated in favor of the higher IQ kids. (Really... some things you can't make up.) Yet she somehow managed to survive being told she was smart, and even managed to get a Ph.D. Go figure. The teacher's tactics left the smarter kids "scared of taking another test and not being at the top anymore," which explains why Ms. Dweck is so interested in this subject, but cuts agains the thesis that if you're told you're smart you become a slacker.

Welsh also cites to a student who didn't like being conspicuously pulled out of class to participate in the TAG program, and felt "set apart from other kids". There's a surprise - after all, it's so rewarding in public school to be known as "the smart kid". That's a problem of implementation, but also one that inevitably results from growing up smart in a society that doesn't much value intelligence. If Welsh has his eyes open he will have seen, time and time again, smart kids who intentionally blow tests in at least one class so that they don't suffer the stigma of... having "straight A's". Welsh's other student voice?

Shep Walker, a T.C. graduate about to enter the College of William and Mary, says the problem is that "gifted-and-talented programs get filled with white kids who have pushy parents, leaving a lot of black and Hispanic kids out in the cold and creating de facto segregation in the classes."

It's like Thomas Friedman interviewing a taxi driver - somehow Walsh managed to find a student to quote, whose views miraculously mirror his own.

Welsh has a "solution" to all of this:

But the solution isn't to mark fewer students as gifted and talented. It's to challenge all our kids, all the time.

Right. Except for the smart ones.

At least Welsh makes sense when he attacks the absurdity of Virginia's approach to its SOLs (cute name?), its standardized "Standards of Learning" tests.

When Priscilla Goodwin complained that her third-grader was bored, the principal of George Mason told her that the mandate from the central office was to get all students to pass the SOL exams. "Principals are running scared," Goodwin says. "Their reputations and promotions depend on the SOLs; they think that as long as bright kids pass these simple tests, they're doing fine. They're giving kids worksheets on facts that most children already know because they go at the pace of the slowest kid in the room. TAG or regular classes, kids aren't being challenged."

It seems that everybody in the system is SOL.

Hot Off The Presses - No Child Left Behind Isn't Good For Smart Kids!

The Washington Post, or at least a guest columnist, has finally noticed. It's been more than three years since it was observed that NCLB was resulting in the defunding of programs for gifted students, and more than two years since I stated the obvious:

... when we make No Child Left Behind the mantra of our national drive toward academic mediocrity, we consistently ignore, underfund, and underutilize initiatives that might let the best students get ahead.

so I am impressed by how fast the Post was to pick up on this story.... Is it in fairness to the Washington Post that they observed almost three years ago that it was not the children most in need of services who were transferring out of "failing" schools, or is that in fact indicting them for failing to notice the implicit effect of NCLB on smart kids?

In any event....

These parents are fleeing public schools not only because, as documented by a recent University of Chicago study, the act pushes teachers to ignore high-ability students through its exclusive focus on bringing students to minimum proficiency. Worse than this benign neglect, No Child forces a fundamental educational approach so inappropriate for high-ability students that it destroys their interest in learning, as school becomes an endless chain of basic lessons aimed at low-performing students.

These predictable problems were reported as early as 2003, when the Wall Street Journal warned that schools were shifting their focus overwhelmingly toward low achievers. Expressions of concern from distressed parents and educators of gifted children have come in increasing numbers ever since.

And I again congratulate the Post for being so quick to get on top of this story.

The column also notes one of the absurdities of vouchers:

Ironically, the private schools to which President Bush and his allies are so anxious to hand public funds are also exempt from the standardized testing these politicians declare to be the critical measure of educational success. Private schools need not impose upon their students the drudgery of preparing for and taking weeks of standardized tests and can offer an enriching curriculum beyond the basics without worrying about No Child sanctions. Given these one-sided constraints, no one could honestly claim that vouchers do anything but drain resources from the public schools this act was supposed to improve.

Cynics, of course, argue that this is part of a larger scheme to undermine and defund public education. I might be convinced to extend NCLB standards to any school which accepted vouchers... except first I would want NCLB's standards to be reformed such that they did not reward "teaching to the test", or have absurd definitions of a "failing school" such that high quality schools can be deemed "failing" because their average test scores aren't improving at an acceptable rate.

No doubt the Bush Administration, which seems to favor benchmarks for everything except it's own political and military actions, would complain that such reforms would undermine NCLB's benchmarks and thus remove accountability.

Taking A Moment To Be A Bit Unfair....

Professor Bernstein, who spent a year collecting a paycheck from the University of Michigan Law School, bleats about UM's reaction to the Michigan proposal banning affirmative action:

President Coleman, in the midst of lengthy remarks expressing her dedication to "diversity," added, "Of course the University of Michigan will comply with the laws of the state." Her devotion to a cause she believes just is admirable, but I think it would have been appropriate for her to recognize, even if briefly, that out of a student body of 40,000, and an alumni body of hundred thousands, there are many thousands of people of good will who disagree. The actual remarks, however, suggest that the only good member of the Michigan community is someone who supports "diversity" policies.

It does? Well, it's pretty clear that Prof. Bernstein isn't in favor of "diversity" policies, but he's not really part of the Michigan community.

I'm assuming that he didn't have access to UM Law's admissions records, but still I have to ask: Was his experience with UM Law's minority students really so bad? (And where can I read him lament that his children will have an advantage getting into Yale, as the children of an alumnus?)

Affirmative action, at least as presently defined, has to end sometime - that is, at some point you have to recognize that it has passed its point of effectiveness or, if it is effective, that it is no longer necessary. I personally believe that many (perhaps most) affirmative action programs are deeply flawed as administered. Funny, though, I can't recall the last time I saw an opponent of affirmative action make a cogent case against the need for affirmative action, or even the manner of its administration. I can't recall the last time I heard an opponent argue for reform and improvement as opposed to abolition. To the extent that a plausible case can be made that affirmative action is no longer helping to achieve progress for targeted groups, I don't recall hearing that argued, either.

No Child Left Behind, eh?

Let's see.... If you combine the following elements:

• A big government solution which uses conditions on federal funding to restrict local options;
• The imposition of a set of options which are not scientifically validated; and
• The exclusion of options and existing programs which are scientifically validated

while simultaneously lining the pockets of government insiders.... Well, you have "business as usual" for the Bush Administration. But if you actually care about childhood education and literacy, the Bush Administration's application of "business as usual" to elementary school reading programs should give you pause.

Unfocused Education Reform

Somebody commented that I was being unfair to David Brooks in my last post, because at least Brooks is tossing out some ideas. I think that assessment is far too generous to Mr. Brooks, as his ideas were weak and sorely lacking in specifics (e.g., bank accounts for newborns), reflected his lack of knowledge and possibly a sexist bias (making single men eligible for the earned income tax credit - they already are), contradicted his prior positions while failing to address costs he had previously suggested were unaffordable (high quality daycare for the poor), or, again without respect to cost, something that sounds good in concept but would be exceptionally difficult to achieve (tailoring education to each individual child). Oh yes, and the notion that you can "strengthen the family" or "strengthen marriage" by cutting a (small) check to people who aren't necessarily even married.

I know where Brooks is coming from with his proposal for individualized education, particularly given his implicit biography of his own high school experiences. He feels, quite rightly, that a smart, well-behaved kid who has been resistant to the temptation of marshmallows since toddlerhood is underserved by an education system that focuses on teaching kids to sit still, be quiet, and behave, and which more than ever is focused on bringing undreachievers up to average. The kids who operate at a level well above average, as I assume Brooks did (despite his often obtuse columns) are assumed capable of taking care of themselves. And if they can't, who really cares - they sit quiety and behave, and do better than average on standardized tests. Under "No Child Left Behind" schools don't fail for declining to help the smart kids get ahead. They fail if they don't focus on the lowest common denominator.

Meanwhile, people who should know better present such arguments as, "We'll just import engineers from China" or "It doesn't matter if our public schools are bad, because Americans have a lifetime of educational opportunity".

Up to a point, you can complain that this system is hugely wasteful. We're often teaching kids in college what they should have learned in high school -- and in graduate school what they might have learned in college. Some of the enthusiasm for more degrees is crass credentialism. Some trade schools prey cynically on students' hopes and spawn disappointment. But these legitimate objections miss the larger point: The American learning system accommodates people's ambitions and energies -- when they emerge -- and helps compensate for some of the defects of the school system.

And we can make up for that by buying books from the "For Dummies" series, or getting a dipoma from a community college or private diploma mill? Seriously - if we look at the leaders of commerce and industry, review inventors on patent applications, or look at the best and the brightest in any given profession, we're going to find large numbers of late bloomers who overcame weak public school educations by getting Associates Degrees at the University of Phoenix or reading "Excel for Dummies"? Or we hear arguments for meaningless or counter-productive reforms, such as same sex schools or eliminating teacher certification.

Don't get me wrong - I think it is important to make education available to people who, at some point after they leave high school, realize that they want or need more education in order to pursue their personal or career goals. But having those options available, or having huge self-help sections in bookstores, does not make up for dropping the ball in elementary and high school education, or for the economic and social pressures which are diminishing the value of a college education.

In individualizing education, can we assume that Brooks is not speaking about kids who qualify for special education, as they already receive individualized learning plans? Can we assume he isn't complaining about the kids who fall into the great center - the pool of kids who, by virtue of their interest or aptitude, are adequately served by the present system? That is, isn't he really talking about gifted education - while avoiding that word to avoid its "elitist" implications? If so, he should take note of the fact that post-No Child Left Behind, budgets for gifted education are being slashed. I don't personally have a problem with expressing that some kids demonstrate a lot more aptitude than others, sometimes for particular subjects and sometimes across the board, and that yes, we as a nation would benefit from fostering their gifts and interests. But it's not going to happen. We're not going to hire more teachers. We're not going to change teacher certification in a manner which increases teacher salaries. We're not going to invest in significant infrastructure improvements for public schools. We're not going to fund voucher programs in a manner which would significantly benefit secular private schools.

Meanwhile, in the real world, there are schools in this country for which a fresh coat of paint would be a marked sign of progress. The problems can be significant, and the sources of the largest problems may be external to the school.

Those [Baltimore] teachers [who overcame bureaucratic obstacles and taught the author's children] were real gems, and we were grateful to be working with them. Some other teachers seemed burned-out and disinterested, unable to muster even a smile or a greeting for visitors. We also encountered a phenomenon we'd often heard about but hadn't seen firsthand: The spectacle of white (usually young) female teachers totally ill-equipped to deal with preadolescent black boys who, we often discovered, were being raised by adults who had no detectable interest in their children's education.

When my wife held her first meeting as president of the PTA at our former school in Montgomery County, Md., so many parents attended that their cars filled the parking lot and several surrounding blocks. When she held the same event as the president of the PTA at our Baltimore school, eight parents showed up. Most of them formed the tiny but critical core of involved parents who helped organize school events throughout the year.

When will Brooks, or any other columnist of similar prominence, call in unambiguous terms for the investment of money, resources and political will necessary to turn around even a single inner city school? (And no, their sputtering, "But I support No Child Left Behind" isn't quite what I'm proposing here.)

Investing in Human Futures?

When I read the headline to the latest Brooks piece, Investing in Human Futures, I half expected to read something about a futures market for humans. Instead I found his formula for how to beat inequality - he proposes the "socially conservative" model of throwing money at the problem.

He opens with a false dichotomy:

[I]magine we could get every kid in that classroom to graduate from college, and that we could get every kid in every classroom to graduate from college. Don’t you think that’s the most important thing we could do to make America a richer and fairer place?

Some people, actually, don’t think that. Some people don’t think wage stagnation is mainly about education and skills. They think the economy is so broken, the Republican Party so malevolent and all-controlling, that almost all the gains would go to the top 5 percent or 1 percent anyway.

I may be a sucker, but I think they’re wrong.

So the solution Brooks proposes is that every American get a college education, even if they aren't interested in college, even if they're not academically suited for college, and even if they will end up in jobs which do not require college degrees. In fairness to Mr. Brooks, perhaps he envisions a future America where every citizen has a white collar job and every other task necessary to the continued function of society is performed by... guest workers? Robots? Well, perhaps he'll tell us in a later column. I'll be sure to tell one of my former employers, a college drop-out who made $millions in business, or my wife's uncle, who never attended college yet has made $millions as a builder, how they have been left behind by the U.S. economy due to their failure to obtain college degrees.

Mr. Brooks lists five proposals that he believes will cure inequality.

Mr. Brooks first proposes "strengthening the family". This, it seems, he will achieve exclusively by raising the child tax credit to $5,000.

His second proposal is "strengthening marriage". He notes that there are "many cultural ways to strengthen marriage" but endorses only one financial step: "the government could extend the earned income tax credit to single males". This, he tells us, would induce more men to work, and make them more attractive as marriage partners. (Does he mean increasing the tax credit? Would he also have his changes extent to single women? If so, why didn't he mention them?

His third proposal is to make people "think about the future". This he will achieve by creating a $1,000 savings account for every child at birth. (I think the going rate on money market accounts with a $1,000 balance is... a bit under 1%. At 1% interest, and assuming no bank fees, kids can see that amount grow to a whopping $1,250 or so by the time they finish college. Using Chase as a guide, if bank fees of $12/month apply, they can watch the account shrink to nothing by the time they're nine. Hey - maybe we can make growth a sure thing by giving them $1,000 in U.S. Treasury Bonds, and....)

His fourth proposal is for giving "quality preschool" to children "from disorganized homes" so that they can learn to resist marshmallows by the age of three. David Brooks sees a problem with this - "Small, intensive preschool programs yield tremendous results, but realistically, they cannot be done on a giant scale" - but fortunately, as it turns out, David Brooks doesn't see that as a problem. (???) As David Brooks isn't satisfied with Head Start, he's presumably suggesting something much more ambitious (and thus almost assuredly much more expensive).

Finally, he argues that "schools need to be tailored to the way children actually are":

Different human beings have radically different learning styles. So long as diverse individuals are forced to sit in the same classroom and endure uniform teaching techniques, they’ll underperform. It doesn’t matter whether the school is public, charter or administered by Martians.

The necessary investment to achieve this personalized learning environment will be in the hudreds of billions, with vastly increased education budgets required nationwide to sustain it. But apparently that's not a problem when you characterize your proposals as "socially conservative and economically progressive".

But this debate is not going to be won either by the free-market fatalists or by the angry but amorphous populists. It’ll be won by the human capital reformers, the alliance of progressive conservatives and conservative progressives (like the Clintonites) who believe that the market fundamentally works and that social mobility requires what it has always required, skill and effort.

It almost makes you wonder why Canada's "Progressive Conservative Party" changed its name....

Oops - I missed an element

I had previously described the David Brooks path to a successful life:

The wealthy of our society are able to hire nannies, who can love their children and teach them how to resist the temptation of marshmallows before the age of three. Children of privilege, having both the love of an nanny and the power of self-distraction inculcated within them by the age of three, will be all-but-guaranteed that a suitable personality in high school, and success in their future lives. Unfortunately, this may leave the nanny too busy for her own children, who will succumb to the temptation of marshmallows and thus fail to achieve the American dream. Because, darn it all, good child care is just too expensive to provide to people who can't afford to pay for it themselves.

The missing element, filled in by Brooks a couple of days ago, is that the love of a good nanny raises the child's oxytocin levels. So I guess we can fix all of society's problems pretty easily, as oxytocin is injectable. Apparently oxytocin also makes school more interesting:

The dropout rates are astronomical because humans are not machines into which you can input data. They require emotion to process information. You take kids who didn't benefit from stable, nurturing parental care and who have not learned how to form human attachments, and you stick them in a school that functions like a factory for information transmission, and the results are going to be horrible.

The Gates Foundation recently sponsored focus groups with dropouts. The former students knew how detrimental dropping out would be. Most were convinced they could have graduated if they wanted to. But their descriptions of school amounted to a portrait of emotional disengagement: teachers were burned out and boring; discipline was lacking; classes weren't challenging; there weren't enough tutors and wasn't anyone to talk to; parents were uninvolved.

Brooks also notes, "In humans, oxytocin levels rise during childbirth, breast feeding and sex." Hm. I wonder if Brooks would nominate this gal for a teacher of the year award - she seems to be three for three.

Our Schools Lag Behind Those In [Insert Asian Country of Choice]

Today, behind the firewall, Nicholas Kristof warns us that our schools lag way behind those in Japan... I mean, China.

But kids in the good schools in Chinese cities are leaving our children in the dust. ... Yet, there isn't any magic to it. One reason Chinese students learn more math and science than Americans is that they work harder at it. They spend twice as many hours studying, in school and out, as Americans.

He also describes the intense pressures that Japane..., er, Chinese students face to succeed in school.

Yet if the Chinese government takes math and science seriously, children and parents do so even more. At Cao Guangbiao elementary school in Shanghai, I asked a third-grade girl, Li Shuyan, her daily schedule. She gets up at 6:30 a.m. and spends the rest of the day studying or practicing her two musical instruments.

So if she gets her work done and has time in the evening, does she watch TV or hang out with friends? "No," she said, "then I review my work and do extra exercises."

A classmate, Jiang Xiuyuan, said that during summer vacation, his father allows him to watch television each evening - for 10 minutes.

The Chinese students get even more driven in high school, as they prepare for the national college entrance exams.

Even more driven? I guess that means no more music lessons, and the end of the ten minute daily television interludes during the summer break? Kristof relates all of this to the U.S.:

I don't think we could replicate the Chinese students' drive even if we wanted to. But there are lessons we can learn - like the need to shorten summer vacations and put far more emphasis on math and science.

Oh, that's helpful.

By now you've figured out that, at least in my opinion, we've heard this all before, back in the 1980's when Japanese schools were described as superior to U.S. schools, with Japanese businesses on the verge of dominating the world. We didn't learn much then, so we won't learn much now. Our more recent education "reforms", such as mandatory homework policies, create more busy work for kids but I have yet to see even the slightest evidence that they improve school performance - is there any? Shortening summer vacations means a number of things - air conditioning buildings in the hottest months of the year (some of which don't even have air conditioning systems installed), paying to keep schools open additional hours, paying teachers to teach additional classes.... One of the reasons for the shrinking U.S. public school academic year is cost-savings.

Putting an emphasis on math and science ? That's not a new theme for Kristof. Yet between the Sebastian "We don't need no stinkin' science" Mallabys of the world, and the fact that we (as a nation) don't really care about maths and sciences (and cutting them from a school's curriculum can also save money), don't count on it.

Just look at another of the latest "school reform" bandwagons - capping funds which can be spent on administration. The astroturf organization which is spearheading that initiative classifies expenses to support the football team as educational - just like classroom instruction. A school library, librarian, library books? Isn't it obvious - administrative expenditures. Keep the football team but cut the library, and you're on the right track for education in today's America.

Same-Sex Schools

All the rage among some in Michigan who know (and perhaps also care) nothing about education, but nonetheless control the state legislature? Same-sex schools. Meanwhile, what do studies suggest?

Teaching girls in single-sex schools, long an obsession of many parents worried about their daughters being distracted by boys, makes no difference to their educational attainment according to one of the most comprehensive studies of the way children learn.

Go figure.

The Value of a High School Diploma

Back in the 1980's when I was hiring entry level food service workers on a regular basis, whether or not they had a high school diploma could be an important factor in whether or not they got an interview. I never asked about GPA, areas of study, or... well, really anything about the academic side of their diploma. The diploma correlated in my experience with a better set of core competency skills (for example, I would not have to explain to the employee how to measure 1/4 pound on a digital scale), and during times when there was a large stack of applications it was an easy way to narrow the pool of applicants under consideration.

Really, in today's era, what sort of job do you get on the basis of a high school diploma alone? If you choose employment over college, the range of job opportunities available to you narrows each year. Now yes, a prospective employer should be able to anticipate that a high school graduate will be able to translate fractions to decimals when selling sliced meats or cheese in the deli, but how many jobs which are available to high school graduates expect much more than that?

I started to write this before I saw Mike's post over at Crime and Federalism describing the abuse of accommodation of disability by law school students, which in turn leads to Walter Olson's implication that somebody will suffer harm if students who have successfully completed all of their coursework, but fail a standardized graduation test, get their diploma. The thing is, a high school diploma isn't worth much on the job market beyond signifying that you have successfully completed all of your coursework. The last time I saw an application form for a fast food restaurant, at the time Burger King, they included a math test for all applicants. Even in a different era, when a high school diploma was a requirement to get into a union job that could potentially pave your way to a solidly middle class lifestyle, you had to get through the interview. So who, exactly, is hurt if these kids get their diplomas?

(If it needs saying, I'm not arguing in favor of the status quo, and I favor improving schools to the point that it wouldn't occur to people that such a test were even necessary.)

The Consequence of Social Promotion

It seems that the effect of social promotion policies in California, the state has imposed a standardized test on graduating seniors to see if they really deserve a diploma. A lawsuit has been filed, complaining that if students pass all of their classes they should get a diploma even if they fail the test. TChris at TalkLeft suggests that kids in poor schools, where the failure rates are the highest, probably don't get the same level of educational opportunity as kids from afflluent schools.

To me, the test and lawsuit highlight two problems: First, the problem of social promotion. Second, catering to the lowest common denominator. It may well be that students in poor schools need even more academic support than they presently receive - and if the state is serious about making a high school diploma mean something, it should seek to provide that support such that kids have the opportunity to do well - and fail kids who lack the aptitude or initiative to succeed.

"Oh," the lament goes... "if you fail kids you'll stigmatize them and make them more likely to drop out, then they won't get their diploma." Is it supposed to be better to have kids who function far below grade level sit through class after class, get "socially promoted", and then fail a standardized final examination such that they don't get their diploma anyway?

In relation to those who are advancing this lawsuit, is it better that a functionally illiterate kid be "socially promoted' and never tested in any meaningful way before he or she receives a high school diploma?

In relation to proponents of this test, is it better to avoid setting any intermediate standards which might identify the problem sooner, as opposed to testing kids on their way out the door when you no longer have to take any responsibility for the failure of the school system by bringing the low performers up to standard?

What if Kristof Wanted To Teach Journalism?

Today, behind the NY Times firewall, Nicholas Kristof offers Teachers Without Pedigrees, a proposal that we should reduce or eliminate teacher certification requirements to increase the pool of candidates for public K-12 education. Kristof doesn't mention accelerated certification programs already available, perhaps because he deems an additional nine to fifteen months of schooling and student teaching to be too much of an impediment to somebody whose interest is more transitory.

Suppose Colin Powell tires of giving $100,000-a-pop speeches and wants to teach high school social studies. Suppose Meryl Streep has a hankering to teach drama.

Alas, they would be "unqualified" for a public school. Elite private schools would snap them up, of course, but public schools that are begging for teachers would have to turn them away because they don't have teacher certification.

Why are we dreaming up these hypotheticals, involving celebrities with no apparent interest in taking over a public school classroom? Why isn't Mr. Kristof describing his own desire to teach, and how he is unable to do so by virtue of his lack of a teaching certificate? Because that's the heart of the issue - the best teachers aren't people we wish were in the classroom due to their celebrity, but are people who want to be in the classroom. Kristof notes,

The other problem is that the quality of teachers is deteriorating, mostly because — fortunately! — women have more career options. A smart and ambitious woman graduating from college in 1970 often ended up as a third-grade teacher; today, she ends up as a surgeon or senator.

So the problem is that most people, given a choice between being a K-12 classroom teacher or a different career, choose a different career? And the solution to this is to make it easier for people who have chosen other career paths to dip their toes into the water of public education, without making any real commitment to that career path?

It's not that I'm enamored with teacher certification programs - I'm not. It's also not that I disagree with the idea that people who do not have teaching certificates should be able to experience what it is like to try to teach in a public school classroom - in fact, I've seen some people who wanted to be teachers find out during student teaching or their first year of teaching that they really don't want to be in a classroom or simply don't have the aptitude for classroom management. I wouldn't mind seeing more students get some classroom experience before they are accepted into public education programs, but suspect that such an initiative might in fact further reduce the pool of graduates from teaching colleges.

Kristof suggests giving principals the option of hiring highly qualified, thoroughly screened, but uncertified teachers:

That's the situation in some of America's most elite private high schools. Phillips Exeter Academy, for example, says that 85 percent of its faculty have advanced degrees but probably only a handful are certified. (Since it is private, it doesn't worry about certification or even keep track of which teachers are certified.)

At Exeter, for example, biology is taught by a former doctor. Japanese is taught by a former businessman who worked in Japan. And a history teacher arrived with no teaching experience but has published five books.

Hoo boy.... We're going to pretend that the experience of Phillips Exeter Academy, with day tuition and fees approaching $30,000 per year, would be shared by public schools? Why not make a comparison to parochial schools, which are also at liberty to hire uncertified teachers, but which often pay less and offer fewer benefits than public schools? Who knows? Maybe somewhere in the Catholic school system there's a former doctor teaching biology classes.

I have some personal experience from "way back when" working as a substitute teacher. (In most public school districts you can serve as a substitute teacher if you have a bachelor's degree, or possibly if you have completed certain undergraduate coursework.) I recall a subsequent law day when I gave a number of presentations in public schools (something that is, by the way, much easier than teaching) followed by a presentation in a Catholic middle school. The difference was striking - well-behaved, well-groomed kids, sitting quietly in their desks? It isn't that their teachers are paid more or are better qualified. It is that the kids' parents have a different attitude toward education, with different overall attitudes both to the teachers and to their own kids, and their school can decline to accept them back (or even expel them) if they fail to comport to expected standards of conduct.

Kick that same concept up to a level where the tuition is higher than most of those Catholic schoolkids' parents were taking home on an annual basis, and you're going to not only have a much more enjoyable teaching environment, but one which can pay teachers very well. Public school teachers aren't lining up to take a cut in pay or benefits to work in a private school, just as Meryl Streep, Colin Powell, and Nicholas Kristof aren't lining up to teach in public school, but I doubt that Exeter has any shortage of highly qualified applicants.

Kristof also mentions a program which places college graduates in inner city classrooms,

One superb initiative for young college graduates is Teach for America, which last year had 17,000 applicants for 2,000 spots teaching in low-income schools. Among those who applied were 12 percent of Yale's senior class and 8 percent of Harvard's and Princeton's.

Sure. They make a two-year commitment to teach in the inner city. With the ability to reject 88% of the applicants the program should have no difficulty selecting applicants who have the necessary interest and aptitude to complete the program. Program participants come in with a new college graduate's energy and enthusiasm and are gone long before they burn out. Teach for America indicates that 60% of those who complete the program remain in education as "teachers, principals, education policy advisors and leaders and staff of education reform organizations", but provides no figure for how many remain in inner city schools.

For Kristof, the essence of teacher qualification isn't training or intelligence - "Maybe it helps to be brilliant and to have studied teaching, but mostly it is personality." So it is his own reflections on his personality which keeps "math geek" Kristof from teaching high school calculus?

You know what? We're not going to get a significantly increased pool of highly qualified teachers (with or without sparkling personalities) without making some changes to our attitudues toward teaching, without being willing to increase teacher pay, and while we continue to drive good teachers out of the profession with standardized testing requirements which drive the fun (and real learning) out of a good classroom.

A Note to the Educational Establishment

Hearing Rep. Rahm Emanuel argue in favor of "universal college education" reminded me of why undergraduate college degrees are diminishing in value, and why the culture of "it's cool to be dumb" is becoming prevalent on college campuses.

We pretend that everybody is equal in aptitude.

We simultaneously accept that everybody should have the opportunity to do well.

As a result we create a system which caters to the lowest common denominator. In high schools and increasingly in colleges, mediocrity not only earns a passing grade - it can earn an "A".

Our society should try to ensure that everybody has educational opportunity which helps them achieve their maximum potential. But we need to stop pretending that everybody is equal in their potential, or that vocational training is somehow less worthy than a college degree.

I'm not arguing for trying to force people into particular academic or vocational tracks based upon their aptitude. Individuals should still be able to choose the academic or training path they desire. But if somebody is unable or unwilling to do the work necessary to justify a passing grade based on merit, that person should receive a failing grade.

Failure can be stigmatizing, but we exaggerate that effect by creating a system in which virtually nobody fails. A system in which we pretend that if people try hard (even if we really know that most of them aren't really trying) almost everybody can earn an "A".