Education

Tonight I decide to re-listen to a podcast by Diane Ravitch on Education. She starts by discussing the two latest fads in Education reform: accountability and choice. I've also started her book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System.

Accountability 

Accountability gave us No Child Left Behind, utopian goals, merit pay, standardized testing, and the idea of "failing schools". It has also created perverse incentives that encourage schools to focus more and more attention on the basics like reading and math.

Schools, and states, doctor their results; because the goals are unachievable. This isn't surprising. Their funding is at stake. Their livelihoods are at stake.

They'll tell poor preforming students to stay home. They'll change testing standards. That's human nature.

During the Great Leap Forward Chinese bureaucrats over reported grain reserves. Consequently Beijing continued to sell grain overseas in exchange for much needed currency, Communists don't believe in running up a debt. Millions of people died including my mother-in-law's youngest sister.

They starved. Some bureaucrats too.

Grade inflation? Doctoring test results? Not a problem--for them. But someday we as a nation will pay the price.

Worst of all, judging by the only test Diane Ravitch trusts, we've achieved limited improvements in Mathematics and no improvements in Reading.

We can't even teach the basics.

Choice

Choice is the other fad. Charter schools the hot idea. Vouchers too get mention. But only 3% of children in the public education system attend charter schools. During the national debates public education was ignored. There's no other word for it; ignored.

Even worse, charter schools aren't improving results. Our evaluation of them is distorted. When we think of charter schools, we think of inspiring stories. There are plenty of heartwarming stories to be had. These are the exceptions. Charter schools do not outperform public schools in the one test Ravitch trusts.

And it turns out vouchers aren't a viable solution either. Why? Because of legal challenges. And a lack of supply.

Plus in many states vouchers can't be used to send students to faith-based schools. This is a worse problem than you might think. Faith based schools are denied voucher money. And their students are poached.

Parents withdraw their children from faith-based schools. They send their children to secular schools.  In doing so, they become eligible for voucher money.

Conclusion

The real solution to our education woes is getting qualified teachers into the classroom. But as Arthur C. Clarke says, I paraphrase, if a teacher can be replaced with a computer, they should be replaced.

Programs like Kahn Academy come to mind. Maybe Kahn Academy can't teach everyone math, but it can teach a lot of people. That frees the teacher to focus on students requiring the most assistance. Technology isn't the answer; we still need flesh and blood teachers, but technology will play a part.

The larger point is this: we don't know the answer to our education problems. We need to experiment responsibly. Our task isn't to abolish all inequalities. We must accept the odds don't favor the poor. Our task is simply to improve the odds. Something we've been failing at for quite a while.