Arrgh, stupid computer just cleared out my whole long reply. Sigh.
Ok, I’ll have to go back through the links I provided later, but here’s one to start with: Study from the NEA shows that 11 states will–with local and state taxes–not have enough money to reduce class sizes and modernize buildings. Now, if you’re going to tell me that reducing class sizes doesn’t improve education, or that schools don’t need remodeling, then you obviously haven’t been within 2 miles of a classroom for 10 years.
As to “denying the antecedant”, I’m not–if you bothered to note what I wrote. I’m claiming that A doesn’t imply B at all, so that to prove B, you have to prove that A implies B(try Non Causa Pro Causa on for size).
According to your own numbers, scores have shown a net change of +2 over the past few decades. This is small enough that we should not count it as meaningfull, and instead say that it is a zero change in performance. Fair enough?
So, we have 6 possibilites:
Federal spending exists. Schools improve.
Federal spending doesn’t exist. Schools improve.
Federal spending exists. Schools remain the same.
Federal spending doesn’t exist. Schools remain the same.
Federal spending exists. Schools get worse.
Federal spending doesn’t exist. Schools get worse.
Now, I would imagine that we can pretty much agree that #3 is the case, simply going from the data you provided. We have federal funding, and from your numbers, schools haven’t really changed. Your problem is that you’ve provided zero evidence that if we were to remove federal funding, #4 would be the case instead of #6.
Of rather purist intentions, although to be sure quite different from Mr Helms and the idiot fringe on a good many if not most social issues.
On one hand Cato sometimes publishes interesting works. On the other hand in my professional experience one can’t trust their numbers. Much like the “progressive” think tanks / advocacy groups I have taken Kimstu to task on in certain globalization discussions for their rather baised presentation and reading of data, I have found Cato’s documentation often deficient. Interesting for ideas, for getting one to think but I would caution against basing a ** factual ** argument on Cato data for the very reasons Mandelstam evokes.
Thank you collounsbury for your assessment of the Cato Institute. To which I add, for the benefit of Libertarian’s (undoubtedly sincere) high-minded libertarian ideals, the following excerpt:
“Much of this money [going to Cato and the Heritage Foundation] comes from corporations and wealthy businessmen, with conservative think tanks increasingly acting as magnets for special-interest money. More than ever, private-sector
leaders see the dividends that come from tax-deductible donations to nonprofit policy groups. These groups put a highbrow spin on the self-interested arguments of corporate America. In effect, gifts to right-wing think tanks have become another form of political campaign donation by those anxious to roll back government regulations, cut corporate taxes and loosen labor laws. Notable examples of this trend in the nineties include the several million dollars that Wall Street firms have given to the Cato Institute and other supporters of Social Security privatization; large donations from telecommunications companies to Citizens for a Sound Economy and like-minded antiregulatory groups that worked hard for passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act; and the millions that Koch Industries, an energy conglomerate, has given to think tanks working to water down federal environmental laws. This swelling river of private money has allowed the network of conservative think tanks to grow and has enhanced the sophistication of their operations.”
From my own POV I have no problem with, to rely on the Nation description funding by “corporations and wealthy businessmen” of “conservative think tanks.” And as I said, unlike Heritage, Cato’s works are often thought provoking. If you all recall a discussion on water economics a few months ago, you will note among some citations furnished was a Cato published work, albiet as I recall by an outside researcher.
The problem is that my general experience with their materials is they spin data to serve their predetermined conclusions in much the same way that certain “progressive” tanks do, given my experience. So, I can’t fully subscribe to the full text of the Nation critique as I understand it, but on the other hand honestly I don’t have a high opinion of Cato publications handling of data.
That point, in my estimation, rather undermines reliance on their data in this case, bqssed on a direct critiqe of the same.
I don’t have an opinion on the result of federal involvement in education because I don’t think I have enough data. The following observations are only me throwing some things out there to see what other people have to say.
On the issue of private schools (I should note that I don’t believe this has much direct bearing on the impact of FEDERAL involvement in education), there’s this. I went to private high school about a decade back. I don’t know what the average spending per student in public school in the state was at the time, but tuition was something like $7K or $8K. Obviously, that’s higher than the spending per student in public high schools, but not by a factor of two or anything dramatic like that. Students from my high school who went to the state university (UW) tended to outperform students who came to UW from almost all other high schools in the state, as measured by GPA. As a whole, private school students tended to do better at UW than did public school students. I really do believe that private schools tend to better prepare students for college. (Of course, it’s also true that private schools can be selective and get the better students, but the gifted students must want to go there for a reason, right?)
The question I ask about this is why it is that private schools can do better than public schools. Do people believe that if the average spending per student at public schools was raised to the average tuition per student at a good private school, the results would be about the same?
The other thing is this. My parents both went to public high schools some 30 or 40 years back, and they both claim to have been taught algebra before they even started high school. Now I TA at a public university, and the poor math skills of so many of my students is truly appalling. I admit, as a physicist, my standards of adequate math skills is fairly high, but is it expecting too much for a college sophomore to be competent at algebra? I don’t ask my students where they went to high school, but assuming that my students are a fairly representative of the student body as a whole, the vast majority of them went to public schools. Those who’ve come to me for help all mention that their parents were able to help them with algebra in high school; why is it that the parents were competent in algebra and the children weren’t? Okay, part of that is that some (probably most) of the parents went to college, but if you need a college education to understand algebra, the world is truly a sad place.
Is the lack of math skills due to federal involvement? I couldn’t say. But at least it’s suggestive. What do people think?
I say that most private schools have sources of income beyond tuition.
I say that nothing in your post in any way ties math skills to federal involvement in education.
I say that you are correct to note that private schools can be selective in admissions.
I say that unless someone cares to actually supply the causative element between receiving federal funds and specific policies/procedures/curriculum choices then there really is not a debate. The dollar doesn’t know whether it was taxed as income by the Feds or property by the community.
I say that those who point to private school results and compare them to public school results need to address issues of open admission, student::teacher ratios, number of hours/year spent in classroom instruction, boarding schools vs. day schools, etc. Otherwise they are comparing apples to oranges.
I also say that I went to DoD schools for most of my life and I learned algebra in 7[sup]th[/sup] grade.
Just for the record, here in Alberta we start Algebra in grade 8, and students in the ‘matriculation’ track have to take differential calculus in grade 12. BTW, all through Canada property owners can choose whether to have their school taxes go to public or private schools. Around here, private == Catholic. I don’t know about the rest of Canada.
One other comment about comparing private schools to public schools: I’m in favor of a voucher system, but even so I think you have to be very careful when comparing educational performance between private and public schools. First of all, we know that there is a high correlation between academic performance and a stable home life where parents take an interest in the kid’s education. And that describes the majority of kids in private schools. So a direct comparison between the two is dubious at best.
Hmm. Good point. Does anyone know how much is spent per student at a typical private school? I realize that number has to vary considerably, but if one wants to debate about the efficiency of dollars spent on students in private schools vs public schools, it might be worth knowing. On the other hand, I think that’s straying just a bit far from the OP, yes?
Nor was it meant to. My admittedly unstated question was meant to be taken as “if math skills aren’t generally being taught as well as they were thirty years ago, why is that and is there a connection to federal involvement in education or not? If so, what is it?” I hope that’s relevant to the current debate; I’m not quite convinced it is. And in any event, one can certainly take issue with the premise.
Amen to that! If someone is trying to argue either that federal involvement has had X effect on education, some evidence and a plausable causal relationship would be quite helpful. As it is, all I can say is that my gut feeling is that the effect hasn’t been great one way or the other, but I can’t back that up because I haven’t heard much convincing evidence that it’s been beneficial or deleterious.
Why? An education is an education. If private schools provide more intellectually stimulating peers, a better student::teacher ratio, etc, isn’t that just part of the private school experience? Aren’t these often the reasons parents might want to send their kids to private school to begin with? Sam’s point is well taken; you’d have to try to compare kids with similar homelives in some way, but I don’t see why the fact that private schools provide different environments from public schools means you can’t compare the results assuming you can find appropriate controls for things like family life and general aptitude. If you want to say that something about the concept of privately funded education makes private schools better or worse than public schools, then you have to control for the other things. Otherwise, I don’t see why.
Ah – my mistake. I should not have assumed that you meant to propose shifting students into private schools as a mass solution to the ills of public education. That is often the case in education debates when someone starts to compare performance metrics. Certainly, if your point is simply to argue that private schools offer something of value under the current system it is valid to make the comparison. The need to correct for admissions standards, etc. only becomes important when arguing for a shift in public policy.
Oh, if you must know, I’m in neither (having gone to college in California and grad school in Florida, just for variety’s sake). But I grew up in Washington. Why?
[quote]
*Originally posted by Libertarian *
**Some Department Of Education observations from the Cato Institute:
[li]“As measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests administered over the past two decades, high schoolers’ reading scores have climbed only one point, from 286 to 287 out of 500; writing scores fell from 290 to 283; and mathematics scores rose slightly from 299 to 307. All told, American taxpayers have pumped $550 billion through the department for no tangible benefit.” **[/li][/quote]
No tangible benefit? That money didn’t, then, pay new teacher salaries, or fund the building of extensions, new schools, repairs to existing structures? Note also that when scores fall 7 points, they just fall: when they rise by eight points, they do so “slightly”. Looking at the scores, we might wonder if any factors other than the presence of Federal funding would influence them. And wondering just that, we come to:
[quote]
**
[li]“From 1980 to 1999, the price tag for a public school education adjusted for inflation rose from roughly $5,000 to $8,000 per child, an increase of 60 percent. During the same period, student scores on a range of tests remained flat or increased by a paltry one or two percentage points. Even with the modest increases, ACT and SAT scores are still significantly lower than they were 10 years before the Department of Education was established, when spending was only $4,200 per pupil.” **[/li][/quote]
So, during the 20 years of the DoE scores remained flat. Yet, they are still well below where they were 30 years ago. This suggests, to me at any rate, that scores were falling when the DoE was established, and have now levelled off. I, personally, would be inclined to count this as a tangible benefit. Equally, we might ask what other changes in e.g. the size, welfare, family life of the pupil population, the number of teachers, overall funding, have occured in the past 30 years, whether there were any significant changes in these trends c. 1980, and whether the DoE can take any credit for such changes.
[quote]
**
[li]"[Since] 1990 nearly 100 public and private scholarship programs have given children from low-income families the chance to trade in their government education for a private one, resulting in significant, measurable gains on achievement tests… A Harvard University study of Parents Advancing Choice in Education, a private program in Dayton, Ohio, investigated parental satisfaction on a wide range of matters including student respect for teachers, teacher respect for students, teacher communication with parents, moral values, safety, discipline and academic quality. On every measure, these parents were more satisfied than parents of students in government schools." **[/li][/quote]
So, a group of parents who are in favour of “choice” i.e. private education, report themselves as being very satisfied with private education. Good Lord. Of course, private education is better than public education, but I’ll come on to that later.
[quote]
**
[li]"Twenty years after its founding, what has the Department of Education achieved? Although its advocates promised that a cabinet-level department would be leaner and less expensive than the previous federal education programs scattered through many agencies, the department’s budget has continually increased, from $14.5 billion to $34.7 billion. **[/li][/quote]
Note that this does not answer its own question. So, a government department’s budget has increased over the past 20 years. Wow.
[quote]
**
[li]“A survey released in the fall of 1995 found that U.S. students are woefully ignorant of American history. Results of the 1994 National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that 57 percent of high school seniors scored below the ‘‘basic’’ level of history achievement. To achieve the ‘‘basic’’ level, students had to answer only 42 percent of the questions correctly.” **[/li][/quote]
That’s a terrible thing, but again we come back to the basic question: Without federal funding, would these results be a) better, b) worse, or c) the same? If Federal funding were removed tomorrow, would that 6% be made up somehow? As 94% of funding that wasn’t from the government also failed to instil a basic knowledge of American history, shouldn’t we be even more concerned about how that source is tainting education?
**
This is of course the only facet of American life in which there is a “significant gap between the races”. “Under the deparment’s watch”: does this mean that the DoE is not only totally responsible for the education of US kids, it also has total, absolute control over every aspect of the education system? There is really no one else to blame? And yet they only contribute 6%. Weird.
Private education
As has been pointed out, private schools outperform public schools because they a) have more money and b) can cherry-pick students. There is a third reason: they can also cherry-pick teachers. By virtue of having more money, and being a minority they can hire the most talented teachers to work for them. The iniquity of this is that it leaves the majority of pupil’s without access to the best teachers. However, if private education were to be wildly expanded, the average quality of teachers at private schools would consequently decrease, and it would cease to hold this significant advantage.
It’s unclear to me why Federal funding is held to be a bad thing. If it were removed, the overall education budget would either a) drop 6% which is unlikely to be beneficial, or b) be made up, in which case the schools have the same amount of money as heretofore, and the parents, or the state, pay for it in some other fashion. No big difference.
But I grew up in Washington. Why?