Any undergraduate labor economics course analyzes the seemingly paradoxical relationship between education and earning potential.  It may come as a surpise to many non-economists, but the prevailing view taught in such courses does not conclude that the formal schooling process increases the productivity--thereby increasing future earnings--of the student.  Mainstream economic dogma depicts education only as a signaling mechanism of future productivity.  "Sheepskin" levels of educational attainment (such as a high school or college diploma) purvey information about the worker's qualifications to potential employers.  The thinking is that if one succeeds in school they provide employers with a signal of their future capacity for "smart" work.

   I've never been very satisfied with this explanation.  The theory is essentially educational Calvinism cloaked in technical terms.  It assumes the productivity differences among workers exist since birth, and have nothing to do with how much schooling a particular worker receives.  Much as profits signaled one's predestination to heaven for the early Protestants, many Neo-Classical economists view high marks and degrees in school as signals of a worker's true (read: innate) productivity.

   Both the idea of spiritual and productivity predestination are outdated.  They don't account for the malleability--and implicit potential for improvement--in the human character.  Surely there must be some alternative explanation for the high correlation between education and earnings.  Tyler Cowen supplies such insight in his argument that the value of education ultimately lies in self-acculturation.  He writes:

Men are born beasts.  But education gives you a peer group, a self-image, and some skills as well.  Getting an education is like becoming a Marine.  Men need to be made into Marines.  By choosing many years of education, you are telling yourself that you stand on one side of the social divide.  The education itself drums that truth into you.

Similarly, if you become a Mormon or a Protestant in Central America, your life prospects go up.  It is not that Mormons have learned so much more, but rather they have a different sense of self.  They have a positive self-image about their destiny in life and choose a different set of peers.  They also choose not to drink.  

   Although education appears to be a mere signaling mechanism from the perspective of an economist haunted by memories of biology class, formal schooling holds transformative features significant to future productivity.  We learn invaluable lessons about success, failure, and persistence at school.  As we practice how to transcend our inner "beasts" of ignorance and lassitude, the educational process endows us with the esteem necessary to achieve in the workforce.     

   I find it hard to believe Bill Gates would have been capable of his present accomplishments if he never spent four years at Seattle's most prestigious private school (where he studied mathematics with Paul Allen) and nearly three at America's most prestigious university (where he studied computer science with Steve Ballmer). 

   Although not relating to education whatsoever, this posting at Wonkette is too funny to pass up.   

Just watched the State of the Union Address.  Initial reactions:

A) I can't believe Bush mentioned Hamas by name.  I thought he would just refer to the "Palestinian elections" being a great success, throw out the 77% voter turnout, and be done with it.

B) Was there a possible Nixon-in-China moment for Bush vis-a-vis American energy independence?  What I found most fascinating was the fact that domestic exploration for oil was NOT mentioned.  (Seems he's finally given up on the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve as the cure-all pill!)  Still, we'll see if Bush can walk the walk.

C) The education stuff was OK, but vague.  Yeah, it's great to train AP teachers, but if there's no movement in math and science achievement in middle schools, there won't be kids who are qualified enough to take such courses.  Yeah, getting 30,000 mathematicians and scientists into schools sounds good...but how are you going to do it?  Increase funding for programs like NYC Teaching Fellows?  Teach for America?  The devil is in the details.

D) The rest of the speech was empty rhetoric and false dichotomies.  "Either you support my tax cuts, or you support economic decline...either you support absolute power for the executive branch to wiretap, or there's no way for us to listen to terrorists."  It's all BS, but the sad part is that's how he's gotten elected twice...

 

Not specifically ed-related, but interesting article about "Euro-Optimism" and the welfare state from the Boston Globe.

I haven't posted here in a while.  I've been really busy with my day job.

One reason that I've been so busy is that my school recently had its  "mid-year review."  The mid-year review, so far as I can tell, consists of a high-level member of the New York City Public School system coming in and critiquing things about the school. 

The things that we're judged on are mostly aesthetic, and seemingly mundane.  For example, the New York City public school system places a high degree of importance on classroom bulletin boards being "up to standards."  Our bulletin boards have to follow strict guidelines--student work has to be up, grading rubrics have to be posted, work has to have student comments on it, etc. 

And the bulletin boards are but one example: During the mid-year review, teachers (and administrators) are judged largely on how well their rooms and schools conform to rigid standards set out by the board of education.  I've been unable to post recently because I've been extraordinarily busy staying late after school, making sure that my room conforms to aesthetic standards.

Such seemingly arbitrary loads on teachers is presumably why New York's teacher's union recently opened a charter school in Brooklyn.  The charter school will be remarkable for giving teachers autonomy to do with their students what they like, without having to conform to rigid district standards.

I'm of a mixed mind on this one.  On the one hand, it's certainly true that teachers are forced to comply with overly rigid district standards.  Sometimes, this can certainly be to the detriment of teaching:  Because the district mandates that "original, creative student work" (read: no worksheets) be posted on the bulletin boards, for example, math teachers are forced to stick mini-art assignments into the curriculum so that they can have something to put up on the boards.  I find it difficult to believe that our numerically-challenged kids are better served making symmetrical snowflakes than they are getting some more practice with quadratic equations.

On the other hand, I feel like teachers sometimes use district standards as an excuse for their own laziness.  Let's be honest here--it doesn't take that Hurculean of an effort to make sure that your bulletin board is up to district standards.  True, aesthetic standards may be overly rigid, but I do think it's possible (in most cases) to conform one's own teaching preferences into those standards.  It might be a little bit harder or more awkward, but I think it can be done.

It'll be interesting to see how the union-run charter school turns out.  My guess is that the school will attract two types of teachers: Those that will welcome the freedom from district stanards so they can freely choose a creative, exciting course for their students--and those that will welcome the freedom from district standards because they are basically lazy teachers.  In other words, the charter school will encompass top-notch, motivated teachers, as well as unmotivated, lazy teachers who look to put in the least amount of work possible.

A demographic mix, it might be said, which probably tracks New York City teachers in general.

  Protect Our Public Schools (POPS), an organization based in Washington state, exhibits the classic hypocrisy of teacher's unions.  Given the name, you would think the interest group to be primarily focused with upholding the interpretation of the Establishment Clause that prohibits public funds from flowing to private schools.  This is not the case.     

   POPS has nothing to do with the relationship between public and private schools.  The group is not concerned with protecting public schools per se, but with safeguarding union interests against competing public charter schools.  On their website, POPS argues that, "charter schools have been plagued by mismanagement, failure of direction, and poor academic results." 

   Does this not sound a tad familiar?  The last time I checked, the demand for charter schools emerged because of the mismanagement, failure of direction, and poor academic results of mainstream public schools.  Besides, no student is forced to attend a charter school, so why should POPS worry?  Why would parents choose to send their children to horrible charter schools over the supposedly superior traditional school?  If charters were really so awful, nobody would choose to go to them.       

   The truth is that POPS spends millions railing against charter schools because they are not unionized.   Whereas teacher's unions support self-serving reforms (higher salaries, smaller teacher-student ratios, and increased per-pupil spending), they consistently rebut any movement to empower parents or allow non-union schools to compete on a level playing field for students.  Charter schools present a threat to the comfy monopoly unions hold over public schools. 

   Hence the name and the push for referendums (or preferably abolishing) capping such alternative schools.  POPS can't compete with charter schools if parents have a choice between them.  With open competition, charter schools would expose unionized schools in all their comparative ineptitude.  Parents would "vote with their childrens feet" by removing them from the stagnant schools that habitually make a mockery of academic rigor, service, and efficiency.  Because parents care more for their kids than inflating the pensions of those teaching them, unions must turn to those with statutory power and without a direct interest in the quality of the public schools: the electorate.  Unions have no shot at surviving on an open playing field so they stack the odds in their favor with political obfuscation.          

   This explains the name "Protect Our Public Schools."  I speculate that POPS chose their particular nomenclature to make voters associate them with the improvement and sanctity of public schools.  They want to obscure their primary motivation of killing competition among public schools.  The name has strong connotations to many political causes wholly unrelated to the actual organization.  I can picture my Progressive Seattlite parents reading the POPS name and thinking:  "Yeah, I think we should protect public schools... so that everyone has a right to an education... free from the private schools of right-wing religious fundamentalists...Bush sucks!" 

   These are exactly the type of irresponsible (but tempting) inferences that hand-deliver legislative victories to the unions and defeats to American children.  If POPS chose a less ambiguous name (i.e. Protect Our Union From Parental Choice), it would be much more difficult to stimulate the liberal proclivities of Seattle latte-sippers.  On the other hand, it would be much easier for parents to provide their student with a decent education. 

      

     

   A nice lady named Laura cut my hair this weekend at Supercuts.  During the course of the haircut, we spoke about a number of different things--NYC nightlife, the weather, Florida, and the Supercuts operation.  The latter subject piqued my interest.  Laura told me that Supercuts essentially rents out their booths and brand to hair stylists.  Customers enter the store and patronize any available booth or select a specific stylist.  The franchise charges a base fee and customers presumably tip according to the quality of service received.  Stylists receive the entire gratuity and approximately half of the baseline fee, with Supercuts taking the other half of the cut (pun intended).  Thus, to earn more money, hair-cutters have an incentive to please the customer to the greatest degree within reason.

   Customers have a wide range of choice with this system.  The foremost option constitutes the decision to solicit Supercuts or any of the other substitutes for similar grooming (mom, Flowbee, Great Clips, etc.).  Upon deciding to enter Supercuts, one then selects which available stylist and service suits their preference.  After the transaction occurs, the freshly shorn takes a look in the mirror, observes the ensuing pattern of growth, and evaluates whether the trim sufficiently pleased them to return or make recommendations to others.    

   In my case, I initially wanted to get a hair cut at a small shop close to my apartment in Harlem for the sake of convenience.  Irrationale (my friend and Class Context blogger), however, persuaded me to head down to the Supercuts on 103rd and Broadway.  He cited the consistency of the chain and his positive experience at this particular location from a previous cut.  Convinced, I chose the basic trim from a random Supercuts-certified employee and asked Laura to clip the top and use a number 3 razor cartridge to shape up the sides.   She did a terrific job, as my students more prone to brown-nosing told me, so I gave her an $8 tip and plan on enlisting her services in the future.  Choice characterized this endeavor from start to finish.

   Fully satisfied, I started to think about extending the spirit of the Supercuts model of choice to education.  The corporate, centralized organization of most schools--public and private--diminishes the feedback mechanism of the market utilized successfully by Supercuts.  Even if funded entirely on tuition, the majority of schools operate as a bureaucracy.  Unlike the differentiated payment and service scheme of Supercuts, the central organism of a school receives and distributes income in a top-down fashion.  Teachers earn nothing more from their office than a fixed salary.  They are prohibited from accepting piecemeal remuneration based on the quality or quantity or attractiveness of their classes.  

   It is my speculation that a school would achieve great gains in efficiency if they lease classrooms to teachers of a certain quality like Supercuts leases booth space to certified hair-cutters.  Bound by the interplay of market forces, different professors can charge different prices for different classes.  The incentive structure of such a model will push them to meet the needs of students as best they can.  The better they teach, the more students in attendance and money they earn.

   The benefits of the Supercuts organization spreads beyond enhanced incentives for teachers to enhanced opportunities for their pupils.  Students, with private or public (i.e. vouchers) funds, can choose among different schools, teachers, and subjects.  Furthermore, they can differentiate their spending by paying certain teachers more than they pay others.  If one wanted to become a mathematician, for example, they could allocate more money to superior math teachers and classes than to others.  This system would replace the inefficient political infighting present in big government and big business with an entrepreneurial drive. 

   David Friedman writes about such a development applied to a university in Chapter 13 of Machinery of Freedom:

(A free-market university) would include one or more businesses renting out the use of classrooms, and a large number of teachers, each paying for the use of a classroom and charging the students who wished to take his course whatever price was mutually agreeable. The system would be ultimately supported by the students, each choosing his courses according to what he wanted to study, the reputation of the teacher, and his price...The essential characteristic of this scheme is that, like any market system, it produces what the consumer wants.

   Indeed, a model that unbundles the educational experience has potential to save the benefits lost in the top-heavy structure of modern schools.  Perhaps we should enable students to select and compensate schools, teachers, and subjects like I did with Supercuts, Laura, and my handsome hairdo. 

   At around 8:20am each morning at school a voice booms over the loudspeaker reciting the pledge of allegiance.  Students sluggishly rise from their seats to face the flag, place their right hand across their chest, and vocalize their commitment to the United States of America.  Ah, the rites of patriotism.  I always presumed these daily undertakings are intended to unify, inspire, and re-affirm our duty to "ask what we can do for our country."  Surely the pledge is a harmless, quaint characteristic of American life...right?

   Not until reading Rex Curry's criticism did I realize that the pledge of allegiance is not an innocuous ritual, but a disturbing remnant of American militant socialism.  The pledge was created by one of the Bellamy brothers and expressed their favor for totalitarianism.  It was ordained as an oath of solidarity at the expense of individuality, compelling students to believe their "value" exists only to the degree they submit to the state.

   The original hand gesture is even more frightening.  As it turns out, the placement of the hand over the heart is a modern phenomenon.  Curry writes:    

   The original pledge used a straight-arm salute beginning in 1892. As the nation's leading authority on the pledge of allegiance, RexCurry.net made the historic discovery that the salute of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazis) originated from the military salute in the USA, and from the original flag pledge (as written by a socialist), and not from ancient Rome...
   Because of the Bellamys, children used the "sieg heil" gesture for flags flying over racist government schools through the rise of Nazism (the hand-over-the-heart spread in 1942).  The bizarre practices served as an example for three decades before they were adopted by the National Socialist German Workers' Party.  The U.S. practice of segregation even outlasted the horrid party, into the 1960's and beyond.  That is why the Bellamys are known as the "American Hitlers." 

   Take a look at some of the pictures on Rex Curry's website for proof of the militaristic undperpinning.  Needless to say, I won't feel very comfortable asking students each morning to stand and submit any longer.  Does drilling this practice into vulnerable adolescents every day not disturb others?  It has far too much of a "Big Brother" quality for my taste.  Of course, I hear meow mix is quite palatable.       
 

   The Wall Street Journal offered a stinging criticism today of American teaching unions here.  The article comments on two recent union endeavors to subvert school choice programs in Milwaukee and Florida.  I've already discussed the Florida decision, and think the issue in Milwaukee bears similar consideration. 

   Backed by the leveraged and entrenched unions, Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle has fought to limit enrollment in Milwaukee's Parental Choice Program to 15% of public school enrollment. I have no idea how Mr. Doyle can justify such a position in terms of enhancing educational equality or quality.  The Journal's Review & Outlook reads:

There's no question the (Parental Choice Program) has been a boon to the city's underprivileged. A 2004 study of high school graduation rates by Jay Greene of the Manhattan Institute found that students using vouchers to attend Milwaukee's private schools had a graduation rate of 64%, versus 36% for their public school counterparts. Harvard's Caroline Hoxby has shown that Milwaukee public schools have raised their standards in the wake of voucher competition.

   This is another example of unions and politicians brazenly stifling a systemic cause of the achievement gap.  The Parental Choice Program has been an unequivocal success that receives as much bi-partisan support as one can expect.  Why cap such a fruitful and truly "progressive" piece of legislation?  Why deprive destitute children of the opportunity to choose a better education and a brighter future?  If we understand the implications of school choice programs on the fate of unions, we can begin to grasp the ugly answers that plague our public schools.  These school choice issues (appropriately) force us to choose between the welfare of unions or that of America's youngest generation.        

 

This from the NY Times. The Republican congress has decided that the Federal secretary of education ought have unprecedented powers to influence high schools in low-income areas. While I have no real ideological quibbles with some degree of federal oversight of education, this is a form of coercion that I think is going to lead to problems. A few immediate ones: 1) No clear definition of "rigor." This means that a major funding option, and one that is going to be very popular with lots of individual parents is going to be intimately tied to the opinions of the administration (and perhaps more to the point, in a department that seems unlikely to ever be the deciding issue for many voters in any given presidential race, decreasing the amount of democratic accountability that the Department of Education faces.) 2) There is almost no way for a large, quantified list of high schools to adjust itself for specialty programs, or other strengths of schools (one of the problems with college rankings in general.) 3) In large part because of these two questions, the result of this program is going to be coercive: schools will have to conform to an artificial scheme for standards in order for students to take advantage of the program. This will not only limit local controls over curricullum (less of a problem to my mind than to some other contributors on this blog, perhaps,) but will also provide a decreased incentive towards innovation and experimentation in both curricular fields and pedagogical methods. Closing the marketplace of ideas is probably not a good idea in general, and it's certainly a bad idea now.