Interesting editorial today in The Dayton Daily News says, “Poor children need quality teachers, too.” It implies that the teachers in poverty schools are inferior to the teachers in high income schools.
There are a lot of interesting comments. Here is what Max said:
I am soooooo very tired of the poor performance of poverty-ridden districts being attributed to a “poor” teacher – there needs to be “better” teachers. Education is NOT meeting the needs of these students – there are not alternatives for disruptive students, they are left in the classroom to disrupt the educational process for all. Parents are not held accountable for sending students prepared for school. It’s an all encompassing problem – not just the teacher.
A lot of commentators at the DDN site agree with Max and make the point that there are a lot of factors that determine the overall quality of public education. I keep coming back to the theory of systems taught by W. Edwards Demings that 85% of quality issues are system issues, only 15%, at most, are people issues.
Our biggest hope to bring about the big needed leap in quality in public education is via transforming the system — it’s an 85% opportunity, compared to 15% for all other opportunities added together. We need a transformed system structure quite different from the structure we have today. In my campaign to be elected to the Kettering School Board, I made this point in my League Of Women Voters statement:
Public education needs a big leap in quality — including a big leap in cost effectiveness. We need a ten year process of transformation that will result in a 21st century system of education. Community consensus is needed. Leadership is needed. The biggest challenge for the Kettering School Board is to lead the community in creating a shared vision of the future, and, in creating a well-thought out, long-term plan to bring that vision to reality.
I’d like to think that at least some of the 4481 Kettering citizens who voted for me — to be their school board representative — agreed with the idea that Kettering needs to develop a long term plan for transformation.
The DDN headline, “Poor children need quality teachers, too,” brings up a great question: How is “quality teacher” defined? The DDN explains, “High-poverty schools, in both rural and urban areas, are avoided by many veteran teachers,”
The DDN seems to define “quality teacher” as “veteran teacher,” but that is not credible — any more than it would be credible to define “quality surgeon” as “veteran surgeon.”
It is impossible to describe the qualities of a “quality teacher,” without an understanding of what it is that a teacher is suppose to do. In American public education today, there may be a lot of rhetoric about teacher quality, but the biggest task for a teacher, in order to be considered a quality teacher, is to adjust to the requirements of the system in which he or she works. The bureaucracy has a check list, and with enough checks the teacher is considered “highly qualified.”
The DDN reports: Ohio is working on a new teacher “career ladder” that allows top teachers to move from beginner, or “resident educator,” to higher rungs of accomplishment termed “professional,” “senior professional” and “lead professional.”
The problem is, if the bureaucracy says you are a “quality teacher,” or a “professional,” it hardly makes it so. And, if the bureaucracy says your school is “excellent,” it hardly makes it so.
I am attempting to develop a vision of a transformed future and put it in a new Lulu book — “Kettering Public Education In The Year 2022: How Do We Get To A Great Future?” I am going to try to discipline myself to focus 45 minutes each day in its development.
In a transformed system of public education there would be a transformed meaning of how the term “quality teacher” is defined — as compared to how a “quality teacher” is now defined. In a transformed system, there would be transformed meanings given to all now commonly used educational terms — such as, education, school, teacher, evaluation, student, grades, and learning.
A transformed system will have a transformed meaning of “excellence” as applied to these terms and the meaning of excellence will be based on a clear understanding of the system’s overall aim and purpose.
Here are some related articles from previous blogs:
- The Kettering School Board’s Biggest Challenge Is To Gain Public Support For Transformation
- “What Is The Purpose, The Aim Of Public Education?” — Every School Board Candidate Should Answer
- We Are The Ones To Make A Better Place
- Thinking Through Purposes and Principles Needed To Guide the Re-Design of Public Education
You ARE addressing the Tenure issue? Without that, “Veteran Teachers” can quickly become the opposite of “Quality Teachers”…
Ok, Mike, let’s get to brass tacks. Deming believes that 85% of quality issues are system issues. But we have a quandry in educational systems; bad raw materials are the problem. However, those bad raw materials are bad students and bad parents. How are you going to fix that?
What will you do about disruptive students? What about students whose parents believe they can do no wrong?
Hello Rick. I disagree that “bad raw materials are the problem.” I agree with Deming that the system is the problem. The system of public education we have now is a failure everywhere, because it is the same system organization everywhere.
The idea that the system is a failure is not an idea that suburban communities, who like to display the state bureaucracy’s “excellent school” banners, would want to agree with. But consider the facts. A reliable rule is that test scores for any district can be absolutely correlated with the average family income in the district. This absolute correlation suggests that, in general, the school system itself accomplishes nothing — it simply verifies and credentials what already exists.
When schools merely verify what already exists in the community, of course, low income schools will have many blatant problems, and many students and parents who act out in bad ways. You ask “How are you going to fix that?”, and I believe the answer to making the big leap in quality needed in both poor and rich districts is to make a radical change in the current organizational structure of the system. I am determined to show a practical model of what that improved system might look like and I even have a title for a short book, Kettering Public Education In The Year 2022: How Do We Get To A Great Future?
I might write it one post at a time and I would welcome your input the next few months.
“This absolute correlation [between wealth and test scores] suggests that, in general, the school system itself accomplishes nothing — it simply verifies and credentials what already exists.” Not true. The schools sytem also produces and perpetuates what will exist in the future. To some extent that is what we are organized to produce, since suburban schools concentrate on the “good” raw materialsand inner city ones the “bad” raw materials. These terms are not accurate as to the inherent potential of students, but as to the effects of the cultures of poverty or privilege respectively, which act themselves out and perpetuate themselves through the school systems but also in the communities of which they are a part. To fix the culture of poverty so that more generations are not stuck in the culture of poverty we need an internal Marshall plan where talented and concerned individuals and resources from city and suburb alike are concentrated on ending these inequities. It is not a Deming systems issue at all.
To fix the culture of poverty … we need an internal Marshall plan … concentrated on ending these inequities. It is not a Deming systems issue at all.
Deming plan-do-check-act is just the scientific method. Are you suggesting complex problems can be solved without hypotheses, tirals, observations, and assessment?
… perpetuate themselves through the school systems …
Given that judges task educators with remedying the effects of past discrimination, perpetuating those effects sounds like a catastrophic systems failure to me. Do you suggest we know what to do but simply haven’t provided the resources?
No to question 1.
As to question 2 mostly we know what to do but haven’t tried very hard or provided the resources. There would be things learned by the doing.
Judges only task educators with remedying past discrimination if the same educators did the discriminatiing. Judges allowed manipulating boundaries to avoid that responsibility, and actually did in a case involving Dayton.
No to question 1.
Then there’s a role for Deming. Ohio actually uses the related Baldrige criteria, which is a good candidate for a legally recognized standard for eduction, if judges were willing to recognize a standard of care in that field.
Judges only task educators with remedying past discrimination if the same educators did the discriminatiing.
I’m not sure how to interpret that statement in a manner I’d agree with. At best, it seems a rather loose reading of Milliken v. Bradley, assuming that’s what you intended.
BTW, any thoughts on finanical literacy for middle school students? It’s on the to-do list in Columbus…
I don’t know enough about Baldridge to comment, or understand what connection there is between these criteria and what a judge would demand as a duty of care. All of this Deming/Baldridge stuff does seem to work best when dealing with mass production situation like manufacturing cars, and less in things like education that involve so many human factors.
What I described was a loose reading of the Milliken v. Bradley cases, in that it didn’t have to be the same individual educators who discriminated, but it did have to be the successor entities in how they were organized. Thus if the Dayton schools discriminated in the old days but the suburbs where people live now did not exist or were not part of the dscrimination because no one black lived there, you can not make the suburbs participate in remedying the discrimination, even though they are the successors and beneficiaries of it. I think of it like the skin of a snake that is shed as the snake gets bigger. You can get a remedy against the skin but not against the snake. Of course the skin is lifeless and the snake lives on. This was a political choice by the court and not something that was required by policy or language.
Stan, your phrase, “culture of poverty,” suggests a thought provoking question: How do we change, or improve, or transform a culture?
One approach to transforming a culture is by transforming one person at a time. Authentic education is transformative. The hope for humanity is for every human to grow into a fulfillment of their potential and that is why authentic education is a life long process. The fulfillment of human potential far exceeds the goals of schooling. We need to get over thinking that a good definition of education is the acquisition of discrete information or identifiable skills. Authentic education involves the formation of character, the development of effective habits, self discipline, persistence, thoughtfulness, empathy, trustworthyness, etc. When so defined, most authentic eduction, as it stands now, happens outside of formal schooling.
It is easy to confuse schooling / credentialing with education, but the point is in order to transform the culture of poverty one person at a time, we need to redefine the aim / purpose of what we now call “public education.” We need to develop a system of education where authentic education is the controlling purpose / aim. We need to somehow make some version of the education that impacted John Adams available to all students.
This authentic education is the only hope for the transformation of culture. What is less obvious is that it is not only the “culture of poverty” that needs transformation, but the culture of affluence as well, the culture of political discourse, the culture of entertainment. Authentic education should move our whole society into a positive direction — toward the fulfillment of the potential of human destiny.
School districts supposedly that use the Baldridge criteria as the basis for “continual improvement,” maybe do make marginal improvements. But these districts are stuck in the same overall organizational structure as every other district and so, according to Deming, they have not touched the 85% opportunity for improvement, but are still tinkering with the 15% opportunity represented by everything other than system organization. These Baldridge districts are also stuck in the myopic understanding of aim / purpose that encumbers other districts that define purpose almost exclusively in terms of producing acceptable scores on standardized tests. These Baldridge districts are seeking the seal of approval from the government bureaucracy that they are “excellent.” So, without a more comprehensive and meaningful aim / purpose and without a transformed system organization, these Baldridge districts are far from the transformed districts that are needed.
Milliken v. Bradley cases … was a political choice by the court
I’d advise against a loose reading. When we look at the big picture, we have a constitutional tool (Ohio’s ed clause) to ensure quality education. Federal civil rights litigation preceeded state adequacy litigation and adequacy litigation has become increasingly sophisticated–and targetted. But the Federal judiciary hasn’t rolled up these resources on behalf of remedying the effects of past discrimination. And it would be difficult for them to do so, since adequacy litigation is distributed among multiple states and civil rights cases are mostly inactive.
Example: We wouldn’t expect a SW Ohio District Federal Judge to say “‘this academic genocide must stop’ (quoting Manning from NC) therefore we order Ohio to produce experts to remedy it, and those experts must meet Daubert criteria (per Greaney in MA) as applied by this court.”
But bringing those resources to the table is what an exemplary Baldrige process would do. So we have another quandry: The power resides with the courts; the expertise resides elsewhere. Normally the courts defer to the expertise of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (owner of Baldrige, time.gov, and tech assistance for paternity testing & Help America Vote Act, etc.) But in the case of Baldrige and education, the results are gained by applicants and examiners, not NIST staff and contractors. So we lack a mechanism to utilize the considerable forensic value of the Baldrige process to ensure schoolchildren an thorough and efficient education that remedies the effects of past discrimination.
So do we work this problem, or simply bemoan a large body of precedent to be reversed if judges are to take a more active role in metro-wide school district administration? Personally, I’m all for Baldrige-aware CLE for the judges!
School districts supposedly that use the Baldridge criteria … marginal improvements … stuck in the same overall organizational structure … Baldridge districts … myopic understanding of aim / purpose … exclusively in terms of producing acceptable scores on standardized tests … Baldridge districts are seeking the seal of approval from the government bureaucracy … without a more comprehensive and meaningful aim / purpose and without a transformed system organization, these Baldridge districts are far from the transformed districts that are needed.
Translation: Baldrige districts fail to do what they’ve not been asked to do, despite Mike’s desire that it be done.
Response: We have a process for applying the scientific method to problems in public education. In other fields, failure to apply an equivalent process would breach standards of care. But because we can’t agree on the purposes of education, we don’t use Baldrige to achieve those purposes.
Eric, doing the minimum hardly seems a good definition of “excellence.” The whole point of quality methods is to produce quality — which I’ve heard defined both as exceeding the customer’s demands, and as delighting the customer.
You write, “Baldrige districts fail to do what they’ve not been asked to do,” Exactly. Baldridge simply seeks to meet the requirements of a very limited meaning of “excellence,” that fails to meet the quality standards noted above. So, yes, it’s great if Baldrige can lead to more kids meeting minimum standards in math and reading, but we shouldn’t confuse meeting those limited, but worthy, goals with meeting quality goals, with achieving authentic excellence. I think we should think twice about using the mantle of science to give credence to the current educational system. Remember, the current system needs radical improvement, not marginal change. It needs transformation, not slight modification.
Easy Fix #1: Get rid of public schools
Easy Fix #2: Expel kids that do not want to be there and fail kids that do not pass. If you fail 3 years you are expelled.
Easy Fix #3: Do some of both 1 and 2. Make education mandatory till 14, and still fail and expel kids.
Mike, you make incorrect assertions and demonstrate tendencies toward totalitarianism, although I hope that is not what you want.
For instance, your assertion that “A reliable rule is that test scores for any district can be absolutely correlated with the average family income in the district” is absolutely false. I can remember when I was studying educational issues and came across references to the “Effective Schools Movement.” There were people in the US and Europe who would compare schools with similar demographics but vastly different academic achievement levels. The found that the schools that did better had: a) a dynamic, involved principle, b) high expectations for teachers and students, c) invited involvement of the parents, d) sufficient order to allow education to happen.
Even if I had no knowledge of the research, I am (and you should be) aware of groups that have immigrated, been poor, but put great value on education. Their kids achievements were way out of proportion to their parents income. Jewish kids in New York City and children of Asian immigrants come to mind. So your assertion is incorrect.
You state, “Authentic education involves the formation of character, the development of effective habits, self discipline, persistence, thoughtfulness, empathy, trustworthyness, etc. When so defined, most authentic eduction, as it stands now, happens outside of formal schooling.” Whoa! that is way more power than I wish to give to the government. Remember the Hitler Youth? Will you have the Obama Youth? The Mike Bock Youth? (Now if it were the Rick Youth that would be okay!)
By the way, I do agree that the suburban schools are not really success stories and they need systematic change. However, they do better now because they do have better raw materials. Your assertion that bad raw materials are not the problem for big city schools is incorrect. That is certainly part of the problem. I ask you again, How are you going to fix that? What will you do about disruptive students? What about students whose parents believe they can do no wrong?
bad raw materials … How are you going to fix that?
Governor Strickland’s plan:
Engage students with 21st century student-centered learning environments. Hire a school business manager so the principal can serve as the building’s instructional leader. Create a career ladder to recognize leadership among teachers. Hire a community engagement specialist to engage the community…
What’s already on the books (or so we thought):
Coordinate with county social services, juvenile justice, and other organizations (e.g. volunteer organizations, churches, etc.) to promptly address issues with students.
Baldrige districts fail to do what they’ve not been asked to do
Mike, you’ve twisted the meaning of my statement.
When Lee Hamilton and Sandra Day O’Connor write:
our schools’ failure when it comes to civic education is especially stark in communities most in need of civic engagement.
The Baldrige framework can address their concerns–but only if someone reads what they’ve written and adds it to the to-do list.
Eric, sorry if I misunderstood your comment. But what did you mean when you wrote, “Baldrige districts fail to do what they’ve not been asked to do, despite Mike’s desire that it be done.”
My point is, if a district is supposedly using TQM, via Baldridge methods, then it should be centered on producing quality results, not marginal improvement. Isn’t that the point of using quality methods? It’s not just my desire, it’s a matter of truth in advertising. Districts want to be known as “quality” districts, but don’t have the moxie or vision needed to attempt the hard and controversial work needed to actually become quality districts. I’ve not read the Baldridge criteria, but I imagine they are useful, but I imagine, they are focused on such things as raising the 7th grade math scores. I think it is good to remember that the whole idea of management by data sort of contradicts Deming’s idea that the most important things cannot be measured. We need theory to identify the most important things and we need effective strategies to identify effective indicators of those most important things. I doubt Baldridge attempts anything so ambitious.
But, if Baldridge is only seeking to improve the 15%, it could still have a lot of value. You’ve done the research. Why not post a comprehensive article about your research — about the promise of Baldridge, about what you would like to see happen at the state level, etc.?
Rick, a quick google shows these two articles:
Income, test scores strongly linked in Ohio schools says, “The median income for its 610 school districts strongly correlates to their ‘performance index scores,'”
Parental Income Linked to Students’ Standardized Test Results reports there is a .97 correlation between family income and a student’s SAT and ACT test score. That’s only 3% away from an absolute correlation.
Would you really object to a school program that sought in students, “the development of effective habits, self discipline, persistence, thoughtfulness, empathy, trustworthyness, etc.” ? Many schools already say they seek such development — they just haven’t found a way to do it very well.
I agree that the “raw materials” — the “culture of poverty” Stan speaks of, or the “bad children” you speak of — are part of the problem. I just don’t think “raw materials” are the central problem. The system itself is the central problem. The examples you give of the poor working hard, to educate themselves and eventually making a good life for themselves, is the story of immigrants coming to America. A story of grit and determination, a story of character. Throughout history, the determining factor for success has been character. But, if character is not formed at home or in the community, as it now stands, then what is the system that will make positive character formation possible? You ask “how do we fix it?” It seems clear that character formation must be a big part of any solution. Arguably, a system of public education must be more comprehensive, and must address not simply what happens from 8:00 to 3:00 in a building somewhere, it must involve the entire community in some positive way. I’ve never read the book, but I like Hillary’s title, “It takes a village.”
Mike, you ask, “Would you really object to a school program that sought in students, “the development of effective habits, self discipline, persistence, thoughtfulness, empathy, trustworthyness, etc.” ?” Yes! I plan to open “Rick’s School for facist, uncaring barbarians who write bad checks.”
Seriously, the question is who defines those terms and how is such education implemented? Does it mean coures for acceptance of homosexuality? Sex out of wedlock? Post Modernism? Graffiti? Class envy? I suspect some of the readers of this forum (and certainly a great of many of liberals in general) would say, “Right on, and if those hateful conservative Christians don’t like it, too bad. We will shut down their schools and force them to have this education.” There was a school district in California that REQUIRED its students, in the name of diversity, to wear Arab dress, assume a Muslim name, and memorize Muslim prayers. Not surprisingly there was a lawsuit and the school district was upheld.
So you see, Mike, when I hear liberals talk in generalities, I get nervous. It’s sort of like 3 sheep and four wolves debating over what’s for dinner and wolves proposing democracy!
As to income versus the parents’ desire for education. I think the cause of achievement of education is the high expectations of parents. Parents with higher incomes have achieved, demonstrated discipline in their own lives, and expect it of their children. It is not the parents’ money but rather their high expectations, that are the root cause for success. Indeed, with some parents working so hard, I have heard anecdotal stories about such parents having kids who are not performing so well in school. The parents are too busy to pay much attention.
Unless we have a totalitarian state, something I certainly don’t want, I think we should be humble and admit there are certainly some problems we simply cannot solve because the cure would be worse than the disease.
Easy Fix #1: Get rid of public schools
And replace them with what? Private schools? Something like we do with hamburgers perhaps, a series of private franchises all competing? The problem is that there is not enough profit in schools to make it work. Lower costs by paying teachers less? Why do we expect that to succeed? In theory (not necessarily in practice) we pay more for things we value.
Easy Fix #2: Expel kids that do not want to be there and fail kids that do not pass. If you fail 3 years you are expelled.
Then what happens to them? This isn’t 50-100 years ago when people could go out and do manual labor, maybe even a skilled job in a factory which, if it were unionized, paid decent wages. Kids who don’t want to be there may come from cultures where education is not valued, or have learning disabilities or both. Let them go to the penitentiary? That’s where lots of them are now.
Easy Fix #3: Do some of both 1 and 2. Make education mandatory till 14, and still fail and expel kids.
What do you do with the 15 year olds who have been expelled? What is their future?
Rick: you are spreading lies about California Public Schools. Please apologize.
http://www.snopes.com/religion/islam.asp
Robert Vigh: if you had a more thorough knowledge of history, you might understand that public schools were implemented in the latter 19th century because private schools were failing. True, the private schools of the 20th century were generally more successful than inner-city public schools…then again, let me pick only students who I think will succeed, and I will be wildly successful as well. Perhaps you’ll appreciate that, as private schools accept more and more public money, there will eventually be a call for greater “accountability” and oversight and access, and the unique advantages of the current private schools will evaporate.
And for all of you who are calling for Baldridge (and inaccurately suggesting that it’s the same as Deming)–please read “Management Fads in Higher Education”. While it’s not directly applicable to K-12, it shows a consistent trend: (1) New management fad pops up in government or corporations: zero-based budgeting, “excellent”, TQM, whatever. Its proponents tout it as the magic pill that will cure every ailment. (2) The other sector–corporate or government–quickly adopts it. (3) It fails to deliver–and the original proponents claim that the failure was caused by incompetents who didn’t implement it correctly. (4) After it’s mostly abandoned by government and corporations–higher education adopts it.
Brief pause for derisive laughter, especially since now in higher education, administrators outnumber full-time faculty. It’s the administrators, not the faculty, who adopt the alphabet-soup programs.
No, citizens, Mike has a better idea than most. The problem is not bad teachers, despite what all the labor-union haters keep claiming; if you survey parents, 98% of them consider their children’s teachers as good or excellent. And considering that 2% of teachers nationally lose their jobs each year, it seems like it really is possible to fire bad teachers in the proper numbers. (Experience, incidentally, suggests that administrators (a) usually don’t know good teaching from bad (b) would more often fire teachers for petty personal reasons (c) often do not fire due to their own incompetence–pause to remember the Loretta Cephus case where she’d have been off the faculty years earlier if administrators had not fumbled their duties.
Now, there’s the material up above about whether a veteran teacher equals a good teacher. Well, maybe not–but would you bet your house that it’s often the other way? Here’s a notion: an inexperienced teacher is likely to struggle. We don’t allow new medical school graduates to perform heart surgery immediately–they must do internships and get more education before they practice on their own. Strickland’s proposals for teachers will, if implemented, give them more support in the early years of their careers, and trust me, it’s badly needed.
But if we want to address the system, here’s what’s needed. We need to sort out our “raw material”.
Currently we sort out special needs students, and we have excellent procedures for their education. So that’s not part of the problem.
We ought to sort out the students who are in the top percentiles intellectually and emotionally, and give them self-paced instruction in a more open environment. We might remember that New York Times report, about three years ago, where high school dropouts were surveyed and most said that the main reason they dropped out was boredom.
The remaining students–the 80% or so who are normal statistically–are the worst-served. They need KIPP-style schools where direct instruction is the pedagogical technique and mastery learning is built into the schedule. They need a system of rapid rewards in the early grades because, unlike the emotionally mature students, they’re just not capable of delayed gratification.
And we need to re-institute discipline in schools, in part by having our legislators implement for schools a provision they seem intoxicated about providing for irresponsible industries, namely, tort reform.
Doing these changes properly will be costly. The alternative, ignorance, will be far more costly.
Eric:… there’s a role for Deming. Ohio actually uses the related Baldrige criteria…
truddick: inaccurately suggesting that it’s the same as Deming
While “same” is a specific type of relation, not all “related” concepts are the “same.” In this particular case, they share epistemological cores: the classic scientific method from fifth grade. It’s trendier to users of that core “learning organizations,” after the related Kolb Learning Cycle.
Will your state senator and representative be taking your thoughts of effective education forward, or are you content simply knowing that many Ohio schoolchildren are doomed to substandard education, resulting in a permanent national recession?
Truddick, I dont think your version of history is as accurate as you assume.
What is the dropout rate of inner city shools? Answer 60%. Why pay for them?
I know I live in a fantasy world of freedom, one that the state does not control. But, I absolutely think that free market principles could fix most of education. It would also stop giving incentive and subsidy to poor people to not perform. Sure, have more kids and work less. Society will pay for them.
Working within the system, I think that all schools should receive 0 funding from the state. Lower state taxes in turn and make it ok for schools to charge a fee for students to cover the difference. Also, get rid of teachers licenses. Thats my middle of the night start.
But overpaying (near what 15k per kid) for 13 years for a system that has a 77% graduation rate seems like a failure. It is a failure because it is government run. Just like every other business entity the government tries to run, it is terrible. So, stop funding it with public dollars.
truddick, you have got to be kidding me. Even the liberally minded Snopes generally verified my post, there were dressing up in clothes, play acting, simulation (could include saying prayers. Snopes concludes the school erred appallingly on the liberal side of multiculturism ( I am paraphrasing). I urge everyone to visit the url site provided by truddick and you can reach your own conclusion.
Furthermore, public schools were not started because of failing private schools. Rather, public taxpayer dollars were used to send kids to private, protestant oriented schools. When the Catholic church started its own private schools, public, protestant oriented schools were started because they refused to give money to the Catholic schools. Anti-Catholicism is the nexus of public education, a sentiment shared by you know who.
When the Catholic church started its own private schools, public, protestant oriented schools were started …
Rick, I’m sceptical. Weren’t the big city public schools already pan-Protestant before the rise of parochial education?
If you have a sound citation for your claim, it could show up in an amicus brief. The anti-Catholicism of the pan-Protestant public schools does become an issue in voucher cases.
Some huge errors:
1) “There is not enough “profit” in “schools” to make it work.”
Any idea how much money private schools have in endowments? Here is a brief list for you to review: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment
What do you think creates an endowment fund? Why do you think that this is unique to higher education?
I guess we should start at the beginning. What do you think profit is? “An economic profit arises when revenue exceeds the opportunity cost of inputs, noting that these costs include the cost of equity capital that is met by “normal profits.” A business is said to be making an accounting profit if its revenues exceed the accounting cost of the firm.”*
So the pertinent questions are:
How much are we spending on education now? What is the economic value of the education we are receiving for the cost? How much would we be spending on education if we weren’t forced to do so? What would be the economic value of the education we would be receiving for that cost?
How do you know, without capitalism, what the price of education should be? Have you ever heard of the Economic Calculation Problem? Questions about what education is overly “cheap” in terms of how we pay teachers (i.e. why are teachers “under paid”?) The obvious answer is that we have a surplus of teachers and education. We take away valuable resources from areas that need them and redirect those resources to an area that has less demand than we are forced to supply.
What is the value that people are willing to pay for their child to attend kindergarten? Answer…it is different for every person and varies based on the level of education that would be provided.
Based on this fact, how can you expect a system to work where people who want good education for their children are forced to share resources with people who do not want good education for theirs?
2) “Expel kids who fail or have learning disabilities?”
We should continue to use resources on kids who don’t want to or can’t learn? How does indiscriminately spending more resources on those people decrease the likelihood that they will not end up committing a crime? Based on your description, they don’t want to or can’t learn the material. How are you going to force kids who aren’t capable of learning basic skills to do other than manual labor? The idea that public education takes kids, or has the capability of taking kids, who can’t learn and makes them into engineers, scientists, or entrepreneurs is among the oddest I have ever seen used to justify the existence of the institution.
The answer is that those kids have to find a way to provide value or have people who will support them. In the occasion that people can’t provide enough value to earn a subsistence then they must rely on the charity of others or they will die. That doesn’t change until reality changes. Either you support yourself, others support you, or you don’t have support. No political system can change that reality. Making it mandatory that we support others doesn’t change the fact that we are supporting them. All it does is removes the word “charity” (voluntary donations to those who may or may not need them), and replaces it with the word “slavery” (mandatory donations to those who may or may not need them).
3) Expelled 15 year olds are not to be “done something with”. You understand that these are people? They are not cattle. They are individuals who can choose to become educated and productive, or they can become charity cases, or they can choose to violate the rights of others; they can make their own choices. The job of “society” is to protect the rights of individuals. Therefore, if the individual makes a bad decision and chooses to violate the rights of others then they must be punished. It is not the job of “society” to do anything to an individual until they have violated the right of another. Otherwise you end up invading the lives of people and wrecking havoc because some study says that it will cost “society” less to do so. Invasiveness isn’t a thing to brag about, it is a thing to abhor.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_(economics)
Eric: the Baldridge people are rather adamant that Deming, while similar, is not “related”.
http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/baldfaqs.htm
I begin to suspect you don’t know what you’re talking about. Deming, unlike Baldridge, was a statistician and thus understood how to collect and analyze data; Baldridge OTOH was a self-made business manager and, coincidentally, a rodeo cowboy. Baldridge himself noted that his CQI techniques were not nearly the most important contributors to business success; in particular, “nexus decisions” like hiring were more critical.
Rick: Snopes verifies you? No, it says that the internet screed’s status is “not quite”. Would you hire someone whose resume was not quite true? Pay your auto mechanic if your car was not quite fixed? OK, then quit fudging the facts; you are, and Snopes verifies this, spreading falsehoods promulgated by a group dedicated to religious intolerance. Of course, that’s your right as an American–and if you and Mike Huckabee succeed in turning this nation into a theocracy, I hope you all will appreciate how you’ve turned western culture back a full millenium.
Robert Vigh: why pay for inner city schools? Because even if the dropout rate is 40%, that’s 2 out of 5 students who will be educated–as compared with perhaps 2 out of 20.
But OK, you think that the unrestricted marketplace will solve all of our problems. We’ve trended sharply toward deregulation, free markets, and low taxes since Reagan. When will that work?
I’ve concluded that no economic theory is universal in scope. Your capitalist, free-market theories, as Adam Smith acknowledged when he created them, apply only to a marketplace where the consumer may choose freely (including choosing not to purchase) and where the suppliers are perfectly competitive. Educating our citizens is not one of those situations, it is more similar to providing such essential services as law enforcement, public health, firefighting, and the military.
If you think, for example, that firefighting could be provided better by a free market, you need (again) to disabuse yourself by reading the history of fire services in this nation; the free market was the first model for fire protection, and it failed abysmally.
Again: the historical fact is that in the 1800s we had primarily private grammar and high schools in this nation, and the system did not work. Public systems were founded to remedy that problem, and they continued to work rather well until the 1970s–which is when legislators started to slash their funding, when school boards started playing politics by turning over superintendents several times per decade, and when university departments of education quit concentrating on having future teachers master their subjects in favor of unproven hypotheses (improperly called ‘theories’) and a foolish dedication to random innovation.
Please don’t contradict me again unless/until you’ve corrected the shortcomings in your own knowledge of history.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tina-dupuy/firefighting-in-the-1800s_b_247936.html
I suspect that this is what you are referencing when you say that firefighting can’t be provided by the free market. I think what you mean is that public officials weren’t able to do the things that they are supposed to be doing. What you see evidenced is the inability of the government to provide “essential services” such as law enforcement. The sabotage of a competitor? Sounds like a crime to me. Probably the destruction of property, possibly the unlawful detainment of individuals. What does this article say to you? How was this dealt with by the government? Poorly apparently. It is also an argument from quite a while ago…lets see how privatization has worked more recently.
In comparison:
“In 1976 a team of researchers from the California-based Institute for Local Self-Government made a detailed study of the cost and performance of the fire protection system in Scott~dale.~ Comparing Scottsdalels fire service with that of nearby Glendale, Mesa, and Tempe (which have conventional government fire departments they found that (1 response time was best in Scottsdale, even though it is the largest in land area 2) the insurance rating of the fire departments is comparable–homeowners’ rates, in particular, are the same in all four cities, (3) average annual fire loss is comparable in all the cities except Tempe (where it was nearly twice as high as in the other three little between Scottsdale and the other three cities, the per capita cost over the 1971-75 period averaged $6.48 in Scottsdale compared with $12.62 in Glendale 11.43 in Mesa, and $10.68 in Tempe. In other words, by contracting out, Scottsdale was receiving comparable fire protection at only 56 percent of the cost in a city such as Mesa While the quality of fire protection differed William Pollak Pricing Fire Protection Services ,I1 in Selma Mushkin ea Public Prices for Public Products (Washington, D.C The Urban Institute, 1972).
Capitalism understood as Adam Smith understood it is a straw man argument. It is like me arguing against Communism by arguing against Stalin or Mao. Please understand that perfect competition is not a necessary part of capitalism. See this article http://mises.org/etexts/valuefreedom.pdf by Walter Block, Chair of the Dept of Economics at Loyola.
Also, this link might be beneficial to the education discussion. http://mises.org/etexts/enterprisingedu.pdf
You think that funding for education is down? This chart, http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/pupil.gif, shows that average education expenditures per pupil (for fall enrollment) rose from $3,400 in 1965 to $8,745 in 2001.
“By the end of the 2004-05 school year, national K-12 education spending will have increased an estimated 105 percent since 1991-92; 58 percent since 1996-97; and 40 percent since 1998-99. On a per-pupil basis and adjusted for inflation, public school funding increased: 24 percent from 1991-92 through 2001-02 (the last year for which such data are available); 19 percent from 1996-97 through 2001-02; and 10 percent from 1998-99 through 2001-02.” http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/index.html
This isn’t an issue of underfunding education. http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1500338
Your conclusion that no economic theory is “universal in scope” is a confusing one. What does this mean? Was the last review of capitalism that you conducted centered around Adam Smith? I would suggest more recent thought might provide you a more “universal” understanding of a system that, to the best of my knowledge, is the only one that doesn’t automatically violate the rights of those upon whom it is imposed.
I begin to suspect you don’t know what you’re talking about. Deming, unlike Baldridge, was a statistician and thus understood how to collect and analyze data
Malcolm Baldrige’s name appears on the award to gain political support for an American equivalent of Japan’s Deming Prize. Secretary Baldrige was dead before the award (and its criteria) was created. The Baldrige family takes great pride in being the namesake of an American equivalent of the Deming Prize.
Please don’t contradict me again unless/until you’ve corrected the shortcomings in your own knowledge of history.
Please take your own advice.
Eric, see http://www.cny.org/archive/ft/ft070600.htm
In some of the other stuff I found on the net, it referred to “public schools” as already existing and having a Protestant bent. However, this site makes clear that those “public schools” were publically funded but privately owned.
[Bishop] John Hughes walked into an even bigger battle in June 1840 when he took on the Public School Society, a private organization, funded by the state, which ran all of the city’s public schools. Catholics complained that the schools had become nondenominational Protestant schools where their religion was mocked and vilified. At the suggestion of Gov. William Seward, the Catholics of New York asked for a share of state funds for their own schools. Hughes took up the cudgels on their behalf and waged a battle with the Public School Society that lasted almost two years.
Thanks. Looks to be more accurate than some of the “authorities” cited by public school “supporters.” One wonders if the new social studies will be as misleading a history as their court filings.
Other citations from that era:
no school can be common unless all the parents of all religious sects…can send their children to it…without doing violence to their religious beliefs.
That will certainly pose a challenge for Dr. Ruddick’s fellow travelers.
Hey Truddick,
I think Jesse just jumped off the top rope and smashed your face. Do you want to be a condescending goober again, if so, please post below.