I'm willing to countenance the possibility that Barack Obama genuinely believes that the DC voucher program is not helping the students who participate--indeed, I think the most hard-core voucher advocate would have to admit that its modest gains are not what we had hoped.
Here's what I don't understand though: how come the Obama girls benefit from leaving the DC public school system? Surely, if it doesn't make any difference, the Obama girls would do just as well in ordinary, democratic, thoroughly American public schools as in an elitist Quaker institution. Wouldn't it bring wonderful diversity to both the school, and the Obama daughters, to have the children of the president rubbing shoulders with the children of the district's more ordinary residents? What is it about the Obama girls that enables them, nearly uniquely, to benefit from school choice?
If you know me on this issue, you know that I am very, very upset. And that I think that there is probably a special place in hell reserved for politicians who betray our nation's most helpless children for the benefit of a sullen and recalcitrant teacher's union. There they spend all eternity explaining to their victims why they couldn't possibly have risked their precious babies' future in the public school system, yet felt perfectly free to fling other peoples' children into it by the thousands.
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There they spend all eternity explaining to their victims why they couldn't possibly have risked their precious babies' future in the public school system, yet felt perfectly free to fling other peoples' children into it by the thousands.
They'd just raise the security issue and leave the victims squabbling amongst themselves about whether that was a legitimate explanation or not.
But moving on to the real question, I wonder what Obama will donate to the fundraiser auction?
Seriously, or are you just trying to cause trouble? ;-)
'cause they donated signed magazines with the President and First Lady on the cover:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/deadlineusa/2009/apr/27/barack-obama-sidwell-friends-gift-magazines
Oh, that's weak. I was hoping for a ride in Marine One or pizza and beer at the WH bowling alley. Something cool, not something vanity-enhancing and lame.
Something cool, not something vanity-enhancing and lame.
Agree.
You know what's frightening? I'm beginning to have fond memories of George and Laura Bush. I can accept their flaws a lot easier than I can the Olympian hubris of the Obamas.
Disappointing, though he's got three or seven more chances. I remember Clinton donated a round of golf in Chelsea's final year, it went for ~$80,000, more than triple anything else had ever been sold for. I'd imagine a similar gift (hoops with Obama? Sen. Bradley donated such a gift for years) would easily fetch six figures. And worth it at that, what's the value of three hours of the President's ear?
I’m actually inclined to give any First Family a pretty wide berth when it comes to the security of their kids. There are enough whack jobs out there that if they wanted to pull their kids out of any school, public or private, and just have them tutored in the White House residence, I would fully support their decision. I wouldn’t want my kids to grow up that way but I’m not particularly worried about members of my family being a target for a kidnapping or murder either.
The Secret Service would be there to protect the kids, whether they go to a private school or public school. (Wherever they go, they are pretty much assured of having a bully-free education.) I believe Amy Carter attended a DC public school, and that was well into the era of wackos and concerns about first-family safety.
Security is a cop out. The Secret Service can protect the Obama girls in a public school setting. They've done it before.
How do you know it's a "cop out?" Have you seen the Secret Service's internal analysis on threats to the president's family? Obviously the Secret Service can protect the first children; the question is, in which setting is that protection optimized? For all anybody knows the school attended by the Obama girls is a much better fit, from a security standpoint. Also, sadly, I'd say the Obamas' race makes them a particularly tempting target for any number of wackos out there.
Oh please. They have pretty sweeping powers to make whatever changes they need for security, especially in DC where Congress actually runs everything that matters. And Obama's race makes them no more a tempting target than any president's kids. Every president has his share of wackos to worry about.
There they spend all eternity explaining to their victims why they couldn't possibly have risked their precious babies' future in the public school system, yet felt perfectly free to fling other peoples' children into it by the thousands.
Obama could argue that he wants to minimally disrupt the education of his daughters' classmates. Presumably Sidwell has unique expertise in integrating the children of high profile politicians into a class without turning it into a circus.
However, as far as I know, the Obamas have never sent their children to public school. Didn't they go to those Lab Schools in Chicago or something like that? They weren't sending their children to public school when they weren't famous so I doubt that they ever had a particular interset in public schooling. Everyone knows that public schools are only for the riff raff.
Furthermore, the costs to secure two DC public schools to meet the Secret Service's standards is not trivial. Who would pay such a cost? The school district? Wouldn't that make every DCPS student worse off? All American taxpayers? And for what? So the Obama's wouldn't have to listen to people sniping at their parenting decisions?
As a former Sidwell student and DCPS student, I understand the decision the Obama's made, Sidwell is ideally designed to meet the special needs of high-profile kids while simultaneously not making the kids themselves a big deal. DCPS just can't do this, particularly above grade school.
However, as far as I can tell, the family had never shown any previous interest in public schools. Going to Sidwell isn't a departure from their traditional attachment to the public, its a continuation of their prior behavior with regard to public vs private school. Any suggestion that security is the overriding factor sounds hollow to me given their preference for private school when they were fairly anonymous individuals.
The Secret Service would provide, and pay for, any necessary security arrangements. Let's be serious here, and not play stupid games: the Obama kids are at a private school because the Obamas want their children to have the best possible education. And who can blame them?
I don't know what you were expecting from vouchers, but getting better results at 1/4 the costs seems like a pretty good deal to me.
Private schools aren't all they're cracked up to be, you know. It's a dirty little secret they want to keep secret.
If a kid doesn't work out, they have two solutions: dope 'em or drop 'em. They are not required to meet learning needs of individual students, and students don't have the same legal protections in private schools -- the same rights -- they have public. They surrender their rights at the door.
A lot of parents who opt for private school, hope it will solve difficult learning issues their children face, find both of these things to be a huge surprise, particularly when their child does something childish and gets booted. (of course, there's the boot camp schools, just waiting to pick up the riff raff booted from the other schools. . .)
zic, the quality and accuracy of the first two paragraphs of your post would be unharmed -- possibly even enhanced slightly -- if we switched the words "public" and "private", and the third paragraph could slip quietly off into the night of understated prejudice.
Where I grew up, some of the private schools (the Catholic Academy in particular) actually did encounter some of the issues you describe in the third paragraph, but the "difficult learning issues" usually devolved to the parents having not bothered to discipline their offspring at home, so when the inevitable academic issues arose, they tried to shortcut around that mistake with "religious" education.
You must not know anything about learning styles and differences.
I speak from long, hard experience and from knowing many other parents with similar experience, in one of the "best" public school systems in the nation, a "mediocre" public system, and a private school where my spouse taught.
Public schools do not have the option to disappear children. Private schools do. Here today, gone tomorrow, and don't bother asking for an explanation of where your friend went.
In many private schools, prescriptions for antidepressants or ADHD-treating stimulants become required to keep a student in the school. Like I said, it's a dirty secret.
But isn't that good for all the other kids at the school who don't have learning or disciplinary issues?
First, you seem to confuse an argument for private schools and vouchers, with an argument against public schools. The fact that the two sometimes arrive together does not mean they are intrinsically linked.
Second, the entire basis of your objection is that private schools might not be able to handle certain cases and actually have both the power and ability to admit it, and request that the student be suitably treated in a fashion that does not disrupt the environment, or be withdrawn.
I agree with neither position, and while your experiences have no doubt been very challenging, they are still an anecdote of a few in a context of many thousands.
Actually, DC public schools can make children disappear. There's a program in place that allows principals to send children with learning disabilities to private schools at taxpayer expense. It's completely disorganized and unaudited, to the extent that DCPS can't even demonstrate that they get bulk discounts or any such thing.
I used to live in the neighborhood that fed into Lafayette Elementary in DC and the (entirely unsubstantiated) scuttlebutt from other parents was that the reason the kids there scored well was that principal never allowed the feet of kids with learning disabilities to hit the floor before they were rotated back out to an alternative school.
I made no judgement on vouchers, I suggested private schools aren't the cure-all for students some people seem think they are; and particularly for parents of children with extreme learning differences, they can be a disaster. And a very expensive disaster, to boot.
As far as parents "not bothering to discipline their children," just indicates a total lack of ignorance about the many varied ways people learn, and the many ways schools miss in addressing how people learn. At least in a public school, there are some legal requirements to meet those students needs. In my family, they meant kids who were in the top 2% in math skills, and the bottom 30% in writing skills. You don't bridge learning gaps like that with discipline; you don't fix it with drugs, either. You fix it with years of hard work, patience, and attempts to work with teachers for your child's benefit.
I made no judgement of Catholic Schools, either. I have no experience of them. I am glad that they deem it appropriate to teach real science; not the case for many private church-run schools offering whatever "science" is fashionable among the Palin crowd.
I'm no fan of teachers unions, I've seen too many horrible teachers have their jobs protected at children's expense. But I also fear pulling good students and money out of the public school system on the hopes private schools will do better is risky business; in some cases, perhaps its a great success for some families, in some, a failure. It depends on the family, the kid, the school. And private schools simply do not have the level of accountability public schools have; something families learn only after they have trouble. All I want is for families to better informed before they make a choice, and no private school lays that out in the brochures or the admissions visit. I know what your thinking, they have the accountability of the market. But given the small number of available private-school slots vs. the large number of children to educate, it's not really a good measure; finding students is like shooting trout in a barrel. There are enough who will work out in any school to hide the flaws.
All that said, I don't think any school makes a bit of difference if parents don't care, don't limit TV and video games, don't make sure homework gets done. Parents are 90% of the battle. And that's where you and I really disagree; because I see many parents so overwhelmed by their lack of hope and opportunity they have none to offer their children; I'd offer them some support strapping on their boots. You see a bunch of leeches and failures to scold and turn your back on. (FYI, this nations private boarding schools are also filled with rich kids who have horrible, don't-give-a-shit parents who pay to have someone else raise the brats.)
Public school students have rights? Tell that to anyone caught with an Advil.
Why do D.C. Catholic schools have far better test scores than D.C. public schools, when the Catholic schools are willing to take just about anyone -- and only spend about a third of what the public schools do per pupil?
The problem with public schools is that they put ideology ahead of teaching. Public school isn't about teaching kids, it's about 1) making sure kids think politically correct thoughts and 2) making sure teachers and educrats have no risk of job loss.
Actually, the teacher's unions put union membership and salaries ahead of teaching. The ideology is just a side effect.
The public school districts get much of their funding from out-of-district. Their policies are constrained by the funding sources. (The man with the gold makes the rules.) The schools aren't accountable to the parents.
If the teacher doesn't have to do the job to keep the job, and the school doesn't have the disciplinary tools to do the job, then the result is entirely predictable.
The elite don't put their children in public schools because then they would have to deal with the consequences of their policies.
You honestly wrote that the problem with public schools as opposed to Catholic schools is "that they put ideology ahead of teaching". Trying to decide if being this stupid makes you a product of public schools or Catholic schools.
But you're not alone. The fact that Megan indicates that an educational program doesn't really work, segues into wondering why Obama doesn't put his kids in public school, and then concludes that Obama probably hates the children makes me wonder about her education too.
Good post.
Welcome to Washington, District of Chicago.
After months of "I don't care about bankers' bonuses," I'm pleased to see that some expressions of privilege do actually get under Megan's skin. I don't care where the Obama girls go to school.
I'm not in any position to judge the DC or any other voucher program. But I've always wondered why -- beyond idealized notions of competition and hardcore hatred of teacher unions -- it ever made sense that throwing money at private schools would be more successful than throwing money at public schools?
The argument among voucher advocates and more broadly the "school choice" movement that could also encompass charter schools and open districts, is that competition for kids and the corresponding dollars will drive schools to improve so they can take on more "customers."
What this (albeit truncated version of that argument) fails to consider is the impact on the "losing" schools. If a failing school loses 20% of its enrollment and money to "better" schools, what of the 80% of kids who remain either because of parental indifference or other reasons? Unlike in business where it's ideal to let companies with bad products fail, schools with "bad products" continue to fail society long after the doors are shut.
No, that's not it at all. The simple fact is that it is very difficult to discipline, let alone fire, a poorly performing public school teacher. Private schools don't have this problem.
A school full of poorly performing teachers can only be a public school. A private school would go bankrupt and the kids would go somewhere better.
"The simple fact is that it is very difficult to discipline, let alone fire, a poorly performing public school teacher. Private schools don't have this problem."
Outside of a couple of highly-visible cities, this isn't true. Where I live, Miami-Dade County, teachers have a "no-strike" clause in their contract, and it's relatively straightforward to fire a teacher for performance or disciplinary reasons.
And despite that, our school system doesn't do any better than other similar districts who are more union friendly. Libertarians love to focus on this issue, and on principle I think they're right, but the truth is that teacher unions and the difficulty of firing teachers is simply not very important in the scheme of things.
"A private school would go bankrupt and the kids would go somewhere better."
This part always made me uneasy. If some asshole sets up a shitty school as a shell-game to get federal grants(Like the diploma mills do for pell-grants), and it takes a year to get discovered, then you might have just caused permanent damage to the earning potential of over a thousand kids.
You could argue that it's the parent's responsibility to ascertain quality and pull their kid out. But parents have full time jobs, and it's a terrible implicit tax to force parents to devote such huge portions of their time to ensure school quality. (Yes, I'm aware this is common in the public school system as well. ).
At some point, you need rather extensive federal regulations attached to any voucher system in order to prevent fraud and lower transaction costs for parents. And once such things are implemented, I have a feeling that the flexibility from private schools that you crave will disappear.
and it's relatively straightforward to fire a teacher for performance or disciplinary reasons.
They seem to get fired mostly for passing out Bibles. And they seem to have some nice books about how great Communist Cuba is.
In any case, the larger point of having a free market -- where teachers are fired because they teach poorly, thus costing their schools money -- doesn't seem to apply. The process is still more political than merit-driven.
If some asshole sets up a shitty school as a shell-game to get federal grants(Like the diploma mills do for pell-grants), and it takes a year to get discovered
The government did just that. Lots of people still haven't figured it out.
Anyways in this scenario where they are free to choose from competing schools, the parents are sending their kids to this place why, exactly? And the financial ruin (not to mention likely criminal charges) of the school founder redounds to his benefit how?
"In any case, the larger point of having a free market -- where teachers are fired because they teach poorly, thus costing their schools money -- doesn't seem to apply. The process is still more political than merit-driven."
You could say the same thing about most Corporations. Have you considered that it may have more to do with the fact that there is no reliable means of assessing "merit" in teachers?
I mean, there are standardized tests, but then how do you account for different student ability? Some complicated probit analysis? In the end, as long as a teacher follows the state curriculum, has students that don't perform abysmally below the school average on the standardized tests, and refrains from racist behavior, they won't be fired. And this is the same criteria that would be applied in private schools as well.
I do support merit pay in some form, but frankly, it doesn't seem to very important here.
The evidence that teachers are particularly important in student outcomes is thin. There seems to be evidence, looking at European countries, that the persistent low performance of our lower income students has more to do with our obscenely high childhood poverty rate than anything else. More money toward things like free breakfast and the EITC would likely do a lot of good.
"Anyways in this scenario where they are free to choose from competing schools, the parents are sending their kids to this place why, exactly? And the financial ruin (not to mention likely criminal charges) of the school founder redounds to his benefit how?"
Whenever the government starts giving away large amounts of money, fraud happens. This happened with Pell Grants, it happened with the Military contractors, and it will happen in a poorly regulated voucher system.
Remember, if you have a school with 1500 kids and get $4000 per student, that's a quick six million.
This assumes that the main problem with schools is poorly performing teachers. What however do you do about poorly performing school administrations, that, for example, don't support teachers in maintaining classroom discipline, pick disorganised textbooks? (but with lots of pretty pictures with the correct ratios of skin colours and disabilities and jogging grandmas).
I read a teacher's blog where she describes one day where her classtime was interrupted once every ten minutes on average. She may well be a poorly-performing teacher, but how would firing her help when the next teacher would presumably just be interrupted just as often?
If you have a school full of poorly-performing teachers I'd suspect a more systematic problem.
If a failing school loses 20% of its enrollment and money to "better" schools, what of the 80% of kids who remain
They are, in general, no worse off than if there had been no voucher program.
Depending on the design of the voucher program, the failing public school may actually have a little more money per-pupil to spend on them, though that doesn't seem to actually make a difference.
Well there's this possibility that the failing school will respond to the loss of enrollment and money by improving the education it supplies with the goal of winning back students, or at least stoppping the drain.
If you look at research into effective schools, there's a lot of evidence that within the range of funding that OECD countries spend on education per student, more money isn't associated with more learning. See for example page 305 of the OECD Education at a Glance report.
And if you look at more detailed work on what makes for more effective schools, you can see why. For example see this synthesis of research at http://www.nwrel.org/scpd/esp/esp95toc.html. Most of the things on this list do not require more money. For example one of the standards:
Only one of these items might require extra money - extra learning time outside of regular school hours. Other things like organising the school day better, don't.
If this happy scenario occurs, then not only do the 20% of students who switch schools gain, the 80% of kids remain also gain.
Unlike in business where it's ideal to let companies with bad products fail, schools with "bad products" continue to fail society long after the doors are shut.
This is precisely why people argue in favour of vouchers.
Yes, because there's so little evidence that the private sector is more efficient than the government.
It's not like we had a 70-year ideological struggle over this concept in the twentieth century or something.
Once a relatively low basic level of funding is satisfied, there's no correlation at all between money and excellence in education. In California we've doubled (in constant dollars) the per-pupil expenditure over the last 30 years, and it doesn't seem to have a measurable salutary effect. The extra funds end up going for new layers of bureaucracy or more teacher pay, neither of which affects the kids.
Since private schools seem to be able to do a better job with far less money, vouchers seem like a no-brainer. And I don't find the "cherry-picking" argument compelling - disruptive students should be removed from public school classrooms as well as private.
"And I don't find the "cherry-picking" argument compelling - disruptive students should be removed from public school classrooms as well as private."
And kids with learning disabilities?
It's not about "disruptive" children, it's about kids who require more attention from administrators for various reasons. They could be deaf, they could have just come in from Haiti, etc.
And my concern is that by allowing a wide-scale shift of all the smartest kids into private schools(That would accomplish likely accomplish very little educationally), you'll leave the public school system full of nothing but the problem-children.
There are a couple problems with this. For example, if the number of smart kids in a school goes below a certain threshold, then a school will stop offering certain advanced classes since there will not be enough students who can take it. This would effectively screw over every "problem" kid who might be bright.
[I'm saying this as someone with Dysgraphia who couldn't get admitted to a single private school. They all claimed that I didn't match the academic criteria for entry, but considering that I got a near-perfect score on my SATs when I was 12, I have a feeling that none of the schools wanted to go through the trouble of providing the necessary accommodations.]
By Megan's logic, you aren't allowed to support the military unless you personally served.
Or, better yet, a politician is not allowed to vote in support of the invasion of Iraq unless said politician enlists his or her own children to fight on the front lines.
No, actually her logic was, unlike yours, pretty straightforward.
I am shocked it took someone this long to bring up the Iraq invasion. It is so clearly invoked by the topic. Better still that the concept of Chickenhawk is once again hinted at.
Troll.
Shrug. If there's one principle Obama been consistent on, it's that nothing is more important than union interests. Bondholder rights? Screw them, the unions get what they want. The state of California's going bankrupt? Screw them, the unions get what they want.
Why should education be any different?
And his decision to send his children to a school without a teachers' union instead of public school is relevant to this how?
Because the unions don't care where his kids go to school, as long as YOUR kids don't have a choice.
If a kid doesn't work out, they have two solutions: dope 'em or drop 'em.
That's absolutely true, and quite important to private school success. Many (most?) school problems are traceable to parents who don't care about discipline or homework, or who are simply absent. They make their children the school's problem, and therefore the other kids' problem, too, as teachers struggle with unruly classrooms or repeat stuff over and over for the kids who didn't bother to do the homework.
The dirty little secret of all schooling is that some children will be--must be--left behind, to allow the others to move ahead.
It's a triage operation with a very similar tripartite division as on the battlefield or disaster scene. Private schools can perform the triage; public schools can't.
Man, I have made this point over and over, and it yet gets ignored by most everyone.
But what about that favorite Republican school reform program -- no child left behind, which has resulted in teaching to tests instead of teaching critical thought?
I'm sorry, I'm a parent battered by education. And our worst experience was in private school.
I'm proud to say the kids are doing well now, one with a 4.0 grade average in college, the other working a good job at a trade he loves.
But I agree; and I'd take it a step further and say we ought to be separating kids out by skill at a much younger age, giving them some ideas about what they'll succeed at instead of assuming there all going to grow up and be investment bankers or lawyers. A few cooks, janitors, and truck drivers are necessary, too.
I'm pretty sure that more democrats than republicans voted for NCLB, so I don't think it is best defined as the favorite republican school reform program.
Additionally, the scaremongering about valuing teaching to the test over teaching critical thought have always seemed somewhat misplaced. I am sympathetic to teachers who complain about class time being wasted with continual test taking, but I've never grasped how exactly critical thinking skills are even taught and how this instilling of critical skills is more effective than teaching to a test. I'm pretty sure that performing well on tests is a pretty good indicator of underlying skills regardless of whether students are being taught to the test or gaining knowledge through the development of critical thinking skills (however that is done).
But what about that favorite Republican school reform program -- no child left behind, which has resulted in teaching to tests instead of teaching critical thought?
Oh you mean the one co-sponsored by that famous Republican hero Ted Kennedy? Please. By and large the Republicans hated it. It was Bush's effort to be "a uniter, not a divider", for all the good it did him.
Rob, I don't agree with you often, but I certainly do here. The only question is, what do you do with those kids that have to be left behind? Just leave them alone until they inevitably end up in jail and cost the taxpayers even more money?
(Note that I don't have an answer to that question)
No clue. What they need is discipline and role models; not clear how society at large can give them either one.
Land them in vocational training programs, leading to money earning jobs in 2--3 years. There is more initiative to learn when they see the money in short prospective, and also deal with hands-on stuff, not some abstraction. The hard point is to teach them to be really good cooks, plumbers, mechanics, etc., so that they have a competitive edge and become valued employees after graduation.
The most popular alternative, drag the poor souls through the high school when they have difficulty reading, is brutal, psychologically damaging for everbody involved and utterly counterproductive.
I will never understand this. In what world does it make sense to say that because an individual makes a personal decision does that automatically mean that it should be public policy? Vouchers have never been shown to significantly alter the educational outcomes of the students who make use of them. Yes in particular cases sending a child to a private school with the right program will help but those programs don't magically grow on trees.
As said up thread private schools look better because they choose who to enroll. An Ivy league school looks great on paper because they get the best students, it doesn't mean that they give the best education.
You really want to change educational outcomes. Support heavy investment in things like head start, that's where you get your effective change. Vouchers are a side show.
Vouchers have never been shown to significantly alter the educational outcomes of the students who make use of them.
Yes they have.
Also, if you want something that not only shows improvement in individuals, but also eliminates the alleged self-selection "parents who care more" effect:
http://www.givewell.net/files/Round2Apps/Cause4/Childrens%20Scholarship%20Fund/B/EPI.vouchers-full.pdf
This seems to say differently.
Not really. They cite a couple positive studies and one inconclusive study. Seems like a wash.
And some of their criticisms are pretty silly, even for a partisan policy factory. At one point they claim voucher students are only doing better because they feel better about themselves after having been accepted into the program.
How does randomly choosing from 19 APPLICANTS negate the caring parent factor? It would only do so if the study somehow incorporated those parents who didn't bother to apply.
You also belittle an extremely significant factor in education. Are you suggesting that students required to do their homework before entertaining themselves in the evening will fare no better than students allowed to doze off in the wee hours with WII remotes in hand and drag their sleepy unprepared carcasses to school the next day?
While this isn't the sole or even strongest factor in the struggles of public education, I think it is disingenuous to reduce it to the level of alleged.
Whitt, it does because the study compared applicants who were successful in a lottery to applicants who weren't successful in the lottery. Since both groups had parents who cared enough to apply in the first place, and the allocation beyond that was random, this indicates that the vouchers had benefits even taking into account the parents who care.
As for the parents who let their kids stay up all night playing WII rather than doing their homework, yes, those parents exist and are horrible. Their children are the ones who most need as good as possible education from the schools. Perhaps said kids will never do as well academically on average as those kids who have parents who care, but that doesn't mean that improving their education is a waste of time - education is not a purely relative good.
McArdle acknowledges that choice isn't a panacea. But it is the best change driver we have. Money certainly isn't that. If nothing else, choice makes parents and students responsible for making a decision. Besides, we've already seen that choice works great for college. (Pell Grants are just vouchers renamed.) Why not for all ages?
Pell Grants are nothing like vouchers because the point of Pell grants is access to higher education. Vouchers are a way of giving access to private education. Without vouchers there is still access to education.
You're missing the point. Pell grants give you greater choice (you can go to places you couldn't afford to go without them.) Public higher ed is subsidized in the same way that primary and secondary is (lots of taxpayer $) but the subsidy isn't 100%.
Vouchers can be used at public schools, just as Pell grants can be used at private colleges.
Not to defend the anti-voucher/pro-union folks, as I think such reform is seriously overdue, but I'm sure from Obama's (and likeminded people's) standpoint it goes like this--the voucher programs aren't feasible and don't work, the public schools (particularly in places like D.C.) are terrible and certainly no place that a parent should send their kids if they can possibly avoid it (and Obama can avoid it obviously), and that the real solution is pouring more cash into public schools. In that line of thinking, they're still doing the best possible thing to fix public schools for all children, but they're not going to sacrifice their own children to it in the short term.
Now, that's just the school choice oppenent's line of thinking--whether you think it's wrongheaded it's not really immoral or hypocritical, any more than a Senator who favors universal health care could accept quality health care for himself and his family while at the same time so many Americans aren't covered.
My god, you're saying that the school choice opponents are flat-out dead stupid. The hypothesis that pouring more cash into public schools will fix them has been tested and has been disproven again and again and again.
See for example this article from heritage with some figures on school funding.
I don't know of any data that supports the idea that increasing school funding, at the levels that OECD countries spend, is a good way of fixing public schools.
Now, that's just the school choice oppenent's line of thinking--whether you think it's wrongheaded it's not really immoral or hypocritical,
Actually I think it is immoral to support wasting government funds on the mindless task of pouring more and more government money into failing schools. These people are elected to govern wisely, and instead according to this story they're whipping into it blindly. How is that not immoral? If you're that much of an idiot, don't run for public office in the first place.
I don’t think that the fact that the First Family doesn’t send their kids to a public school is a very good argument. First because there are enough legitimate security concerns that I’m inclined to give every President, whether it was Clinton or Obama, with school age children the benefit of the doubt about the steps they take to protect them from the untold number of whack jobs who would try to murder or kidnap a member of their family. Also I think the disruption and cost of trying to secure a public school so that their kids could attend versus a private school that may already be accustomed to this sort of thing mitigates in favor of the private school.
I don't know, perhaps the presence of Secret Service in the hallways and classrooms might have a good effect on discipline in those two schools...
Her point is that choice is good, and that Obama is a hypocrite, taking away DC students' already-made choice, while maintaining his own. She wants choice for all...
I don't see the issue here. There are tons of things people with money, influence, or power buy that we don't buy for everyone. Why do we get outraged by politicians spending their own personal money at schools other people couldn't afford, and not when they spend their personal money at fancy restaurants that other people can't afford, large houses that other people can't afford, vacations that other people can't afford, etc?
If a politician took a trip to Europe, would he be a hypocrite for not supporting vacation vouchers for all?
If the country was already paying to send the kids to the park down the street, but spending more money for that trip than it costs to send them to Europe, then maybe.
I'm pretty sure Sidwell (tuition: almost $30K/year) costs more per student than public schools do.
If Obama was sending his kids to a school that a typical voucher student might realistically attend, then there might be a case to be made for hypocrisy here. But there's no voucher program imaginable that would send significant numbers of students to places like Sidwell.
Well, let's keep in mind that there are actually at least two voucher kids at Sidwell Friends:
http://togetrichisglorious.blogspot.com/2009/04/stat-of-day_23.html
The voucher kids at Sidwell are either very lucky, very well-connected, or very talented, or most likely more than one of these. There aren't enough spots at elite schools such that a Sidwell voucher student will ever be considered as having a "typical" voucher experience.
I think what people are upset about is the fact that DC had a voucher program, which the Democrats killed when they came to power. It's more like a politician killing an existing vacation voucher program and then taking a long vacation in Europe.
This is a little different. It's like the government handing out foodstamps that can only be used at grocers who sell only USDA "Canner" grade beef and other similar quality products. And someone comes along and says, hey, let's let those foodstamps be usable at any grocery store. And then some other guy comes along and rescinds that policy because of the deleterious effect the policy has on grocers who only sell crappy-quality foods. And then you find out that that same guy insists on eating only Grade Prime steaks at every meal.
Man, I have made this point over and over, and it yet gets ignored by most everyone.
Well, duh, considering you're a sock puppet of mine, or vice versa, or something. And hell, I've been making the point about the centrality of output in planning for boomer retirement, the point about medical care needing to be a budget line item like food, and the point about all savings having the substantive form of debt, and nobody pays attention to me, either.
Too bad SoV's not here, he agrees with me/us, too.
According to my spies, SoV is still in the process sighing painfully at the simplistic, right-wing mindset embodied in the MT new-user registration form. Next week, a spirited argument with the form on how it fails to adequately identify and filter out conservative wingnuts.
A discovery that the form operates by known and immoveable rules that cannot be changed or driven away through willful, stamina-powered debate may come within the month, however.
But what about that favorite Republican school reform program -- no child left behind, which has resulted in teaching to tests instead of teaching critical thought?
You can't teach critical thought. Or perhaps more precisely, you need a heck of a lot of actual, factual, knowledge before critical thought becomes meaningfully possible. And frankly, while there are many wonderful teachers out there, there are also a fair number of morons who wouldn't know a critical thought if it bit them on the ass.
But yeah, NCLB sucks in about 1000 different ways. Mind you, I don't see the Democrats proposing anything better...
"But yeah, NCLB sucks in about 1000 different ways. Mind you, I don't see the Democrats proposing anything better..."
Right you are. That's really the core of the issue, isn't it. I think it's mainly just being a really hard problem that there isn't a clear answer to.
Megan, your obvious anger has led you to write a somewhat irrational post. It's quite clear that sending the Obama girls to public school would not only be a constant media event but a drain on taxpayer money and a disservice to all the other kids in that school. And for what? So he can use his own daughters as a symbolic gesture about the value of public schools? It was a poorly-conceived publicity stunt when Carter did it and it would be now as well.
I don't have a well-formed opinion as to vouchers or school reform, though I will say Obama has certainly pissed off the teachers' unions at many points, and for all the ones he's in bed with you really can't claim this is one of them. How many Democrats do you see calling for merit pay and stricter teacher standards? But regardless, the "why won't he send his girls there if he likes public schools so much" is one of the dumber arguments I've heard you make in some time. It's like asking why he won't fly commercial coach everywhere if he's really trying to restore fiscal solvency. I expect better from you, Megan.
We now he's with the union because he's cutting off the DC voucher program. That's what McArdle is upset about. She wants choice for all, not just the elite, not to take choice away from those who, for whatever reason, already have it.
"What is it about the Obama girls that enables them, nearly uniquely, to benefit from school choice?"
To be fair, the Obama girls are almost certainly of well-above average intelligence, purely by having someone as smart as Barack Obama as a parent.
To the extent that schools merely allow children to reach their potential, with bad schools letting you reach less and good more, the Obama girls do benefit more than the average district resident would by attending Sidwell.
Of course, this leaves the poor but above-average district child SOL, which leaves your hypocrisy allegation standing, but to your question about what makes the Obama girls uniquely able to benefit from good schools, the answer is nothing that doesn't also make anyone much, much smarter than average "uniquely" able to benefit from good schools.
I'm in favor of school choice but I don't think we should pretend that if we could somehow have every child in the district attend Sidwell friends that this would make the average child in the district as smart and capable as the average Sidwell student.
Indeed, as Rob Lyman and others have pointed out, this is part of what makes private schools look so much better than public schools: their student body is selected (either self-selected or by the school) to be above average. Having above-average kids perform better than the average is no special trick.
To be fair, the Obama girls are almost certainly of well-above average intelligence, purely by having someone as smart as Barack Obama as a parent.
I can't tell if that's sarcastic or not. Where has Obama shown any evidence of intelligence? It's hard to imagine someone making more mistakes in his first 100 days.
Perhaps graduating from several ivy league schools, becoming editor of the Harvard law review, then becoming a professor at University of Chicago, and then being elected president.
That is a fairly good indicator of intelligence, no?
Now if we can just get American society to acknowledge that degrees from Harvard and Yale, flying an especially dangerous fighter jet, running a major business, and being elected Governor and President was also a good indicator of intelligence.
Seriously, can we stop calling democratically elected heads of government idiots already? They can be petty, ambitious, pigheaded, corrupt, fundamentally wrongheaded and all manner of other flaws, but stupid?
That is a fairly good indicator of intelligence, no?
No, not really. Anybody with average intelligence can do all that, especially with a leg-up in the form of race-based quotas. We would get a better feel for his academic work if it wasn't more or less sealed in its entirety. Grades, papers, you name it. He was an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and yet apparently never authored a single article. Did he do anything as editor, or was it some kind of ceremonial position?
And again, he was almost certainly helped by his skin color when applying for the University of Chicago position. It's interesting he was never actually a law professor - his most senior position was something like "senior lecturer".
My guess is, as in Kerry's case, years from now we'll find out he was a mediocre student with low standardized test scores. But I don't have to look at his academic career to know he's not the sharpest tooth on the saw. He seems to have no understanding of the long-term consequences of his economic plans. He doesn't seem to understand trying to force the Israeli nuclear arsenal into the open is going to make nuclear war more likely instead of less likely. He thinks he's going to be able to talk the Iranians out of the bomb. Et cetera.
"Anybody with average intelligence can do all that, especially with a leg-up in the form of race-based quotas. "
That is so wrong, so very wrong. A person with truly average intelligence (i.e., 50th percentile on a standard IQ test) would never get anywhere near Columbia, Harvard Law School, or a professorship at U of C Law School. The race of the person would not get them past the various "do not pass" barriers to entry. The SAT, LSAT, and various college-level tests over the years would produce such low scores relative to other applicants--including affirmative action pools--that the person with the 50th percentile would never get in or graduate from those institutions.
I think people overrate President Obama's intelligence, and he likely did get a boost from his race at several key points in his decades-long trip through academia and government-sponsored career, but dumb he ain't. That said, I would be more impressed with him, however, if he had also spent ten years slogging it out in the private sector running a business not seeking minority-owned preferences.
"Perhaps graduating from several ivy league schools, becoming editor of the Harvard law review, then becoming a professor at University of Chicago, and then being elected president.
That is a fairly good indicator of intelligence, no?"
You are correct - the answer is no. In the absence of anything else, one might agree. However, I've been observing this person for 2 years now, and have yet to notice any traces of brilliance yet, other than in the area of public speaking (as long as a teleprompter is handy) and self-promotion. We saw this already, during the Clinton years. Same cries of "Genius!", same lack of any display of genius.
I guess I'd have a lot more respect for the anti-voucher arguments, if they didn't seem to always be paired with a de facto policy of just leaving the horrible schools in DC (and Baltimore, and....) in place, to wreck another generation of mostly poor, mostly black kids.
The way it looks to me is that, in political terms, properly managing the school system would upset a lot of people, take away a lot of patronage, etc. Getting rid of incompetent teachers would upset a lot of people. Even internal stuff like splitting out kids by ability and sending disruptive kids to different schools would upset a lot of people. All those have high political costs. By contrast, screwing a whole lot of poor black and brown kids out of an education, pretty-much damning them to a lifetime of bottom-tier jobs at best, that doesn't have much political cost. What the hell, not like we're hurting real people or something.
Gee, Ms. McArdle, you are right... President Obama is an elitist hypocrite. The only way for him to save his soul is to send his girls to public school, have Mr. Obama ride the public buses, and for him to start driving a 1993 Ford Escort.
Look - the man is a millionaire (he can afford the private school), and has kids in a special situation. Can you imagine the security issues surrounding two little girls in a public school? We've already had one nutjob shoot up a building hoping to start a revolution of Conservatives killing Liberals. I am a big fan of public schools, and I would send my kids to private school in that situation.
Liberals cannot grasp simple logic. Megan isn't taking issue with Obama for sending his daughters to a private school; she has a problem with him sending them to a private school while simultaneously terminating the DC voucher program to curry favor with the teachers' union. It is the combination of those two actions that she is criticizing. Get it?
The security issue is laughable. How was the University of Texas campus any less dangerous for Jenna Bush than a (probably) self contained public school building in DC? Obama's decision has nothing to do with security and I doubt it has anything to do with the supposed quality of Sidwell Friends (I know several Sidwell grads and they aren't exacty the sharpest tools in the shed). Obama is sending his daughters to this exclusive Quaker school because that is what entitled, leftist, elitists do.
I think it's even worse that he is paying the tuition with his taxpayer provided salary and he is only a millionaire because the liberal elite promoted his books in advance of their promotion of his candidacy. After all, he worked at a crappy little law firm in Chicago for all of a year or two and the first printing of "Dreams of my Father" barely sold (it apparently sold 15,000 copies in its nine years in print 1995-2004). "Dreams" only started to sell in 2004, after his election to the US Senate and his DNC speech. That coincided with his second book deal for "Audacity of Hope" for which he received a reported seven figure advance from his liberal sychophants in the publishing industry. Obama's wealth, his mansion, his daughters' elitist education, his wife's 300% raise in 2005, and her $540 tennis shoes are all the product of the Obama's favored status in the political class. He has never produced anything besides his two auto-biographies and the first nine years of tepid sales for "Dreams" proves that no one really cared until the political class latched on to him as their favored son. That favored status is predicated in part on his willingness to do things like terminate the DC voucher program, intervene in the Chrysler bankruptcy on behalf of the UAW, appoint fanatics to liberal cabinet posts, give Congress a few hours to pass the non-stimulating "stimulus" bill, etc.
Megan is right. If there is a hell, it is reserved for people who do things like this.
150,000 sales for the autobiography of a nobody? It's no Harry Potter, but that seems like good sales to me.
Alsadius, check your reading glasses. jt007 said it was 15,000 copies sold over a nine year period (which is peanuts), not 150,000 copies sold. jt007 is right - prior to his run for the Senate and his DNC speech, nobody knew who Obama was, nor did they care. His wealth has been completely generated by his political career.
Here is the link
Isn't it amazing how liberals cling so doggedly to their fantasies? I wrote 15,000 and Alsadius saw 150,000.
Obama is truly a figment of the liberal imagination. I had this argument with some of his clueless supporters who were attempting to prove that he really knew what he was doing with the economy. Obama is a human rorshach test. Liberals see what they want to see. Obama is proving P.T. Barnum correct.
I did read it this year, and I must say it is very well written. Being no thriller to sell by truckload, it describes interesting chacters and scenes. The language is superb, it is rich literary English, both precise and rich in metaphor.
"Liberals cannot grasp simple logic."
I'm a little bit of a liberal, so please forgive me my uncertainty, but is that something you incisive, conservative logicians might term a sweeping generalization?
Also, is there any way you could sprinkle in some really vicious ad hominem and ad populum attacks, stir in a smidge of oversimplification and a bit of old-fashioned name-calling, because, intellectually weakened as I am by my liberality, I struggle with those too.
This post is silly. The main problem with the DC schools is the kids not the school facilities or the teachers. Kids do better when their classmates are rich and smart. You can help a few poor and stupid kids by putting them in classes where most of the kids are rich and smart but it is obviously impossible for all kids to attend schools where their classmates are richer and smarter than they are.
You can also disadvantage a lot of kids who are neither rich nor dumb by requiring them to share classroom space with a limited number of troublemakers who cannot be forced out. The argument cuts both ways. Rub two cloths together without the benefit of soap and water, and the cleaner of the two usually gets dirty without meaningfully improving the condition of the other.
It's not rich and smart that matters. It's future-oriented and disciplined. See David Brooks' NYT column for today.
I agree that a lot has to do with peer groups. Allowing teachers and students to exit bad situations is almost as effective and less objectionable than getting rid of the bad apples directly. I.e., there's nothing wrong with "creaming", if what you're really doing is allowing motivated students to escape places that consider them to be loser freaks.
But if "creaming" is all that is going on you could easily accomplish the same thing by tracking and the like within a public school system even with its teacher's union. Part of the reason teacher's unions are sullen is the likes of McArdle are constantly blaming them for things that aren't their fault like the fact that poor stupid (or if you prefer undisciplined and non-future-oriented) kids don't do as well as rich smart (or disciplined future-oriented) kids. Good schools and bad schools are determined by the student bodies not the teachers or physical facilities.
I think this is incorrect. During high school (not so many years ago) I remember being extremely frustrated in my public school where, inexplicably, the district continued to employ the most ridiculously ineffective teachers. I was a fast learner, but I don't know how anyone could have learned from these people. Why were they not fired and someone suitable hired? The union rules in the district don't allow.
The alcoholic who did nothing but banter with the kids and hand out an occasional 8th grade level work sheet? Stayed until he retired years later. The black power advocate? Loquacious to be sure, but we learned nothing about history in that class. Stayed till he retired years later. Teachers at my high school tell me when I visit that it costs over $100,000 to fire teachers, so it simply isn't done.
My friend, is now a teacher in the same district. Great teacher, laid off, so that someone less qualified in terms of skill and dedication but who had been employed longer could have the position. His school apparently is also filled to the brim with ineffective teachers who can't be fired. The district needs to put extra effective teachers in this low performing school, but because they are not allowed to pay extra to entice good (and I don't mean employed the longest) teachers to go to this school, I can't see any way out of this situation.
In conclusion, down with teachers' unions. Their interests do not coincide with kids' interests, and I care more about the kids.
Talk about firing ineffective teachers depends on being able to judge teachers easily. In fact it is hard because student performance depends much more on the students than on the teachers.
I don't particularly care for the teacher's unions. Teachers are overpaid and it is too difficult to get rid of teachers guilty of gross misconduct like dealing drugs. Nonetheless teachers unions have very little to do with differential performance between schools (within the range of conditions commonly found in the United States).
Tracking screens based on perceived ability, not motivation. There is no track for those who are average, but determined. That's the missing element.
I agree that the student body is the primary issue. Why not let motivated students go find student bodies that welcome them? Because the unions stand athwart history, screaming "NO!"
You can allow movement between tracks so the motivated student who excels in a lower track can move up.
I believe there are public school systems that allow consider freedom to students to enroll in the school of their choice. Don't think this has anything to do with unions.
There's another, field-tested way to help poor kids, that's Direct Instruction. See the summary of the research in Project Followthrough.
We have known for decades how to educate disadvantaged kids. Why aren't we applying it?
A few comments:
1) The Obamas have never sent their kids to public school, and obviously won't now, regardless of security concerns. Does anyone believe that they might be in public school if Obama were merely a con law professor at Georgetown?
2) Jimmy Carter sent Amy to public school, so it can obviously be done.
3) I don't advocate this, but I will note that the one way you could *possibly* save DCs schools would be to pass a law that said that the President, Cabinet Official, Supreme Court, all of Congress, and all federal lobbyists were required to send their kids to a DC public school, each of which would be randomly picked for them. My guess is that at *that* point, the schools would improve rapidly.
I don't advocate this, but I will note that the one way you could *possibly* save DCs schools would be to pass a law that said that the President, Cabinet Official, Supreme Court, all of Congress, and all federal lobbyists were required to send their kids to a DC public school, each of which would be randomly picked for them. My guess is that at *that* point, the schools would improve rapidly.
And my guess is you're wrong. I happen to be that rarest of creatures -- a liberal who enthusiastically supports school choice. And yet my reading of the literature leaves me with the sad conclusion that it's becoming ever clearer that it is the socioeconomic status of the family that predicts whether or not a student does well in any given educational setting. I support reform of public education because it's the right thing to to -- especially from the perspective of the modest number of (poor) kids likely to benefit. But I'm not getting my hopes up that a nation that tolerates the levels of child poverty visible in the United States is likely to substantially improve educational outcomes merely via the application of market forces.
I lost you at the "pass a law" part. No law like that would ever get passed. Now if the US had voter referenda...
Can someone explain how one would go about teaching "critical thinking."
That's just something teachers say when the kids haven't learned any actual facts: "Hey, I teach critical thinking skills, not rote learning." Since it's not something you can measure, you can't dispute it.
And yet you supported him, despite knowing he was going to do exactly what you think should send him to hell.
Interesting.
I know I am going to get flamed for saying this, but the real answer is to end government-run schools. We don't have the government feed our kids, house our kids, or clothe our kids, so why do we rely on them to educate our kids? (and yes, I am aware of public housing, food stamps and welfare, which are an absolute last resort for most people)
Government hardly does anything well, why should we trust them with children's education?
The obvious counter-argument is that this will condemn lots of kids to a lousy life if they have parents who don't care to send them to school. Well, the reality is that if the parents don't care that the kids are condemned to a lousy life anyway.
This is completely politically infeasible but I think we should end government-run schools and make people pay for the education of their kids. With education off the table government would have to cut or eliminate property taxes (which is a sucky tax anyway, in that it can force people to leave gentrifying neighborhoods).
This would open up more competition in education and likely drive down tuition costs. It would also be nice to see trade schools start up for kids at an early age. Too much of K-12 is spent on college prep. Many -- maybe most -- kids who go to college are wasting their time there. We could probably use more people that are good with their hands at jobs such as mechanics, electricians, plumbers, etc., which also can't be outsourced.
As for the debate at hand, there is simply no good argument against vouchers. Even if you love public schools, consider the fact that vouchers are worth far less than the per capita cost of educating a student at a public school. For every kid that uses a voucher the government saves around $6K I believe, if not more. So the more kids that leave the system the more money there is for the kids that stay.
That said, money isn't the problem, as the experience with the St Louis (or was it Kansas Ciy?) schools show where the judge forced billions to be spent improving public schools to no avail.
Flame away.
Colin,
Not flaming you precisely... but the government already *does* pay for food (free school breakfast + lunch + food stamps), housing (section 8), medicine (SCHIPS), clothing etc (via EITC which is higher for those with children) etc. Basically, if you can't afford kids, no big deal, the government will pay for them for you.
Actually, the government now provides breakfast and lunch in many elementary schools. "Feeding" is well on the way into vogue, mainly because many children are coming from backgrounds where they will not reliably receive complete morning care before hitting the school bus.
I was a big fan of public schools. With five kids, we were very involved parents and I thought I knew a lot about the schools. Wanting to be even more involved, I ran for, and was elected to the local school board. In that position, I learned a lot more about the schools. I learned that most of the teachers were great. They loved what they did and were mostly good at it. The administrators were not so good, but that's another subject.
The elementary and middle schools were great. The problems started in high school.
The big problem was the "students" and their parents. Too many of the "students" were not only uninterested in school, they applied peer pressure against anyone who was interested. And the parents simply did not support the schools.
I offered my kids the chance to go to private school. The two oldest, who were near the end of high school decided to stay. The other three opted for private schools. One chose a catholic parochial high school, the other two a prep school.
As you might guess, I did not run for reelection to the school board.
You can teach critical thinking by stretching/motivating the student to solve problems that are outside of their comfort zone. Can this be done in an elementary school setting with 20+ kids simultaneously? I don't know.
This reminds me very much of the distinction between what I tend to term
"Read and understand" learning
and
"Demonstrate understanding" learning.
In fields like physics, chemistry, mathematics, etc... you read something, and then you work out problems, lots and lots of problems, and you don't really know the stuff till you can demonstrate proficiency with it.
In fields like most liberal arts, etc you read something, come to believe you understand it, but never really have to demonstrate any proficiency in any real way.
It's interesting to observe later in life how folks steeped in the two traditions approach new knowledge. The 'Read and understand' crowd read something and seem to think they know something. The "Demonstrate Proficiency" crowd read something and immediately begin to test their understanding against the world, and aren't happy till they can reliably apply the understanding.
As you might expect, there is a profound difference in the quality of the outcomes...
I would say that 'Demonstrate Proficiency" is about as close as you will find to 'Critical Thinking', but I don't think most 'teachers' are up to that kind of learning themselves, much less teaching it.
I like your clever characterization of two types of learning. I disagree, however, that the liberal arts do not lend themselves to "demonstrating understanding." Essays and even oral replies in the classroom can show who has gained a demonstrable understanding of a subject, such as history or English. Do I detect a bias toward the "hard" sciences?
I found that "most teachers" (my own & my two kids') loved their work, and did a good job. My wife and I tried to support our kids, their schools, and (with rare exceptions) their teachers. I did encounter a few poor teachers, of course, and was less than supportive of them. (I am thinking of a math teacher whose "teaching method" was mostly intimidation. What field does not have a percentage of poor performers? Not that I found this acceptable.)
It seems to me that educational achievement is the result of many deep and complex issues, perhaps too easily listed. For example, "cultural background" is meaningful term, but is hugely difficult to deal with in the classroom. Etc. Etc.
And, BTW, not you -- but others above have a need to return to school for spelling and grammar lessons. I don't mean mere typos.
You can teach critical thinking by stretching/motivating the student to solve problems that are outside of their comfort zone.
My guess would be that this is damn near impossible to do with any but the very brightest 9-year-olds. The best you can hope for is that they learn their times tables and sit quietly in class.
You can start thinking about "comfort zones" in high school.
In general, I agree with you. However, there is something about education that is hard to measure. Singapore routinely does very well on the tests, but I read a comment from a Singapore official who hedged when compared favorably to us, noting that the students in Singapore can do math tables very quickly and accurately, but the Americans are more flexible/innovative (?? I don't remember the actual term he used).
I think there is much to this, and some of it must come early -- but I don't know how much is from parents/culture and how much from school.
Looking back (way back) on my own elementary school experience, I know that I was not challenged by my school (a small excellent public district in the SF Bay Area near Berkeley). I also did not get good grades, which I assume translated to the tests at some level. I specifically remember the teachers harping on math tables, which I thought were stupid -- I could do it all fast & accurate enough, why do more? My mom even got some pressure to hold me back in 5th grade.* I continued in grade, and in the end I graduated top 10% of school with Ivy-like selectivity and went on to success in technical R&D.
So I think there is a place where elementary students get enough tools & past that point teaching the test diminishes in value. I believe this is where much of the NCLB criticism stems from (those who were already getting more than the basics being forced into extra basics).
The tricky parts:
(1) each student hits the "got enough" at their own pace
(2) How does a teacher know when they've got enough?
(3) Extra-curricular issues -- parents, culture, language
* Mom recently moved out of my elementary school home and delivered my elementary school report cards to me (among other treasures). Upon reviewing them, I noted with some satisfaction that my 5th grade teacher wrote with atrocious grammer and spelling!?!
Americans have always been innovators. They didn't use to graduate from high school without basic literacy. Our welcome for innovation has deep cultural roots. Our young people's scorn for education is of much more recent vintage. We may hope that its roots are shallow and that we can pull them out.
Hmmmm. How about "grammar" for spelling?
Nice point QG -- you gotta love the irony, eh?
"Feeding" is well on the way into vogue, mainly because many children are coming from backgrounds where they will not reliably receive complete morning care before hitting the school bus.
Remind me again what the argument is for letting "parents" like this retain custody of their children and their reproductive organs. How expensive are generic oat mini-bagels and powdered milk?
Because their children are the major justification for continuing to provide income assistance to the parents?
That's the "land of the free" part. There's no little irony in that those who are best equipped to produce babies (the young) are the least prepared to raise them.
Because foster-care doesn't work very well...
But yes, this is one of the better arguments for abortion and birth control, even if it's one that isn't often said.
Why would they get a worse place in hell than people who claim our health care system is fine, but wouldn't send their kids to County General if they came down with leukemia? I don't see why punishing liberals who make an indictment of the system and who honor that indictment, selfishly, by keeping their kids away from it, is more justified than punishing conservatives who deny the indictment but act as it were true in their own decisions?
That's not the analogy. The Obama's are telling desperate parents "Get thee to County, even though last year you went to this other hospital that did better for you. We're shutting that one down because our crazy auntie Nea can't get a job there."
Larry, I've evaluated your comment and come to the conclusion it is full of win.
Megan --
The "modest gains" are nothing to sneeze at, actually. From the recent study on the DC program (http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20094050/pdf/20094050.pdf):
1.5 to 2 years of additional learning for the cohort that had vouchers the longest . . . you will have to look far and wide to find any other educational reform that has so significant an impact in just a few years.the only people that michelle and barak have to answer to regarding their children's education is sasha and malia. as parents who are obviously committed to their children's education they choose a school where they thought sasha and malia would prosper. megan needs to stop and realize that there are probably a ton of details that the obama's took into account before deciding upon sidwell friends. for example, let's say sasha had already learned algebra (this is hypothetical), but in the public school the kids in her grade weren't up to that level. what good would it have done her to go to that school?
and the other thing...is megan going to persecute the obama's if the kids themselves told their parents, i don't want to go to that school i like this one...
If the Obama's get to take such things into account, why can't other DC residents? Especially since they already have it?
They can. Provided that they have millions of dollars. That's how the world works.
Here are my observations:
1) I don't see why we can't treat primary and secondary school like we treat college. There are public ones and private ones and if you get a Pell grant (which is a voucher, don't you know), or a loan, you can use it at any of them. I.e., the student decides.
2) The biggest reason that schools have stopped working is that students have decided they don't need to learn. This problem is worst in the high schools, but it percolates down. The second-worst problem is that the education system is frozen in time, because the unions and the bureaucrats want it that way. These are generalizations of course.
Universities are changing much more quickly, driven by competitive economics. Thus the rise of the lecturer and the fall of the tenured professor. Many more such changes will come, mostly driven by the technology of distance learning. Another hopeful note is the partnerships between Kindle and the textbook publishers, which should empty the backpacks of some pioneering students this fall. Boy is that overdue.
"The Obama Girls Aren't Like You and Me"
If memory serves, you didn't go to public schools when you were growing up either.
Oh, snap!
Oh, by the way, neither did I. Catholic School girl.
Private citizens organized, funded, and created a private school. If you have money to pay the $30,000 per year tuition and have social distinction to lend the school a stronger reputation, then you can send your child to the institution. If you have neither the money nor the social status, then you can send your child to a public school. Basic, publicly funded education is a right. Privately funded, elite educational services is a privilege. If Bill Gates hired the most excellent personal tutors to "home school" his children, then that's his business. I don't have the right to bang down his door with a congressional delegation and demand my children be given the same education.
If you want to send your kids to Sidwell Friends, you know the rules: money, power, fame. If you don't have these because you're unlucky, you've opted out, or are lazy, not smart, or indifferent, then your children will do fine with public education. And your effort should be on improving the public education system.
If you want to send your kids to Sidwell Friends, you know the rules: money, power, fame. If you don't have these because you're unlucky, you've opted out, or are lazy, not smart, or indifferent, then your children will do fine with public education. And your effort should be on improving the public education system.
Except, that's simply not true. The entire problem with DC public schools is your children will NOT do fine with them.
Furthermore, public education is a goal, not a system. We should focused on how best to achieve that goal. Government-run schools don't appear to be the solution.
Megan, I can't agree more. The unholy alliance of the Democratic Party and the teachers' union is the most immoral thing in all of American politics. Sacrificing the future of children for political and economic gain deserves worse than hell.
I live in DC and just got back from a toddler b-day party. As often happens at kid events in the District, the conversation eventually turned to schools. Usually, the District residents either have their private school in place or have an exit plan to get out of the city once the kids are school age. Sometimes, they hem and haw about how they love to live in the city and are really thinking about trying their local public elementary school which is often "actually pretty good" (always, "better than you would think"), but might find it necessary to move out to Virginia or Maryland. And no one, and I mean no one, thinks that they'll be sending their kids to a public DC high school. Naturally, the people who actually live in NoVa or Maryland nod their heads sympathetically, but don't have much to add to the conversation.
At today's party, I talking with another parent about how my local elementary school is "actually pretty good," something that I attribute to the young, energetic, no-nonsense principal. "But," I said, "I worry about how fragile that might be. I mean, what happens if she leaves?" A guy who had been listening in said, "Actually, I have to respectfully disagree. In DC, the principal doesn't make that much of a difference." Turns out, this guy is a high school teacher in the DC public schools. Regardless of how energetic/innovative/etc. the principal happens to be, he or she will always run into the hurdles put up by the DC teachers' union. Specifically, it is not only impossible to fire anyone, no matter how incompetent, but it's impossible to get many teachers to do anything that "isn't in the contract." Want someone to stay late to help with a project? Not in the contract. Want someone to check in on the neighboring classroom while that teacher runs a student to the nurse's office? Not in the contract.
"Boy," I said, "I was apprehensive before, but this makes me feel even worse." To change the schools, he said, you have to clear out the deadwood. A principal can't do it, no matter how good he or she might be. Michelle Rhee is trying, and he said that it might work. She probably has the best shot because even after throwing so much money at the DC school system, the schools are still so bad that (almost) everyone agrees that something must be done.
This is a travesty. How can anyone agree that the status quo labor arrangement in DC is defensible at all? I'm not even talking about vouchers, although I'm all for them, especially in a place like DC where the existing public school options are so abysmal. I'm just saying that there must be someone who is able to fire incompetent and uncooperative teachers.
No, it's worse than a travesty - it's borderline evil. The teachers' union in DC is holding these kids hostage. They're playing with kids' lives. Of course, I, and everyone at this party, have options. We can leave the city. Send our kids to private schools. Hell, we all live in Northwest, which is the only quadrant of the city that actually has decent public elementary schools. But it fills me with such rage that this system is utterly failing those who are weakest and least able to find alternatives.
Security is not a cop out. This is a pointless argument. The girls woudl not be safe in a public school. It would cost too much money to protect them in a public school system, which let's face it, damned if they did, damned if they didn't. This is a different. This is the first African-American president. Why in God's name are you dragging his children, who didn't chose their lives, into some political agenda that has nothing to do with them? This is why journalism is dead. I mean, really? Are you kidding me? The president, should put his kids life and education at risk to prove a point and to satisfy you?
SHAME ON YOU. THEY ARE LITTLE GIRLS. 10 and 7. The fact that you use their photographs to get attention for your "non-article" says more about you, then it does about their parents!
Sweden has had a 100% voucherized school system since the 1990s,
everyone supports it, including the teachers union(!), and it has delivered exactly the results proponents predicted.
So we don't have to argue hypotheticals. We have the real-world actual results for an entire nation ... Sweden!
Sweden has private accounts in Social Security too. Yes, Swedish social-economic policy is too extremely right-wing for US Democrats.
Vouchers in the US in fact have generally been found to improve both student perfornmance and competing "old" public schools too -- surprise considering both logic and the Swedish example. But I won't bother to try to get more links about that through the comment filter here, because even if the worst case argument against US voucher programs were true --- that voucher students do "no better" but just as well as public school students, at at substantially lest cost ... that's a no-brainer reason to support them too.
"Support your teachers union-run urban public schools: Just as good at twice the price!"
I was going to blast you further on this issue, on how you would have a politician use his children as a political tool despite their safety and how if Barack Obama were a private citizen, say a lawyer, that he would be well within his rights to send his children to whatever school he wanted to as long as he could afford it, but then I decided, what is the point? This is not a real article. You really don't even believe what you are writing, if you are really a parent. You know in you're heart of hearts, that you would send your kids to whatever school was the best school you could afford. So in my eyes, that makes you even more dispicable, because you would use someone elses kids as a reason to get in your 250 or 500 words to justify your pointless paycheck. And to get at your title, Sasha and Malia are still African American females. And if you think that life is different for them just because their father is president, then you should be fired!
They still deserve the BEST EDUCATION OUT THERE!
SHAME ON YOU!!!!
A provate school may have left you with better reading comprehension. Megan is complaining that it's hypocritical for Obama to take away the ability of thousands of black parents in DC to send their kids to better schools while keeping that privilege for himself.
Facts! Final performance results for the DC voucher program, plus a couple other relevant points...
Reason to kill! A program that produces such results is a threat! But don't take my word for it... And Obama did.Something else really rubs me the wrong way about Sidwell. "Elitist Quaker" school?
If you know anything about Quakers, they aren't elitist. Quite the contrary.
Quakers have no business running an elitist school. It goes against their core identity. It's a free country, they CAN do it, but it seriously compromises the Quaker brand.
Just out of curiosity, does anyone know why there are about 5 really good elementary schools in NW DC?
I'll answer my own question: they are in neighborhoods with better educated, more affluent parents. And they are the recipients of hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations over and above the official budget, received from parents, for additional staff and resources.
What about the next tier of good schools? Those would be charter schools, where motivated parents can take public funding and turn it into schools outside the direct control of the DCPS hierarchy.
The underlying reason for the voucher program? I doubt that it was any real interest in the fate of children who were not in Murch, Lafayette, and the like, or the charter schools, or in the totally unsupervised program to farm out learning disabled kids to private schools with no oversight. I strongly suspect that a Republican Congress saw the opportunity to develop vouchers as a wedge issue with African Americans by trying to get a successful program in a majority African-American city. Both sides are completely willing to play politics with children's education.
But vouchers don't change the fundamental problems of DCPS, which take the form of the population (a bifurcated distribution of income and educational achievement at the family level) and the organization itself (broadly unable to organize a piss-up in a brewery). Hell, never mind the bad test results, we're talking about a school system run with such epic incompetence that a school board election a couple of years ago included a couple of candidates with commercial real estate management experience whose platform was making DC schools habitable. Like, doors on the toilet stalls, no creeping mold habitable.
It seems to me that attempting to blow up DCPS with a voucher program is to put a couple of M-80s under the Grand Coulee dam. Chancellor Rhee is going about it in a more comprehensive fashion that, if allowed to work, would benefit all students. I don't see that the decision of the Obamas to opt out of public education changes anything about that.
By the way, I'm a total hypocrite too. But I decided to be honest in my hypocrisy - rather than sending my kids to a massively parent-supported elementary school far better than anything on offer in Ward 8 and then act like I was supporting public education, I moved out of DC to Montgomery County MD. What I got was a school system that is actually well run, such that they can produce national-class results across a huge range of student profiles, without allowing internal distortions in the form of school specific donations, with a teachers' union, and without vouchers. In fact, MoCo high schools take students from DC whose parents pay tuition, but aren't voucher eligible. Maybe if DC parents were able to use vouchers to send their kids to schools in the suburban counties around DC, we'd get the double benefit of children in better schools and parents learning exactly what decent school systems look like.
Wasn't this one of those things where McCain was on the libertarian side of the issue and Obama--the guy all the smart people were voting for--was on the government side?
If the evidence shows vouchers are good for kids in DC public schools, I'm for 'em. There is a familiar "correlation vs. causation" problem with the data showing kids with vouchers are reading better than those without. But if that's not a bar, then vouchers seem like a good idea.
That said, the DC public school system spends about $13,000 a year per K-12 student. Sidwell costs upwards of $30,000. No voucher system is going to pay for a Sidwell education, and if you decided to increase public school expenditures by 250% you'd probably have a better public system too.
I went to school at Lafayette, the excellent rich-parent-supported NW DC public elementary school cited above. It was great. I'm also familiar with the "fully voucherized" school system in the Netherlands. (It's not actually fully voucherized, but achieves the equivalent with massive state support to private schools; essentially cost is not much of a bar to where kids go to school.) I have to confess that as an American, I find it confusing to deal with the Dutch system because the markers of elite vs. non-elite schools are harder to understand when there's no money involved. Dutch society, like Swedish society, involves much less use of the educational system to reproduce class stratification than American society. I find that situation to be disorienting and, I admit to my shame, somewhat discomfiting. But while I am more comfortable in more stratified educational systems because that's how I grew up, I am trying to force myself to be morally honest enough to vote, in principle, for non-stratified educational systems. I'm not sure how many upper/upper-middle-class Americans realize just how disorienting it would really be if we lived in a country with no Sidwells and no Harvards. We should try it.
Sorry, 150%, duh. Maybe Lafayette wasn't so great.
Smart kids in public schools, even good suburban ones, self-educate to a large extent. Someone has to teach them how to read. Once that is done, someone has to leave a lot of good reading material around. And the environment has to be good enough to promote study -- physical security and absence of distractions are key. Bad public schools fail in one or more of these areas, but most public schools do manage these basics.
Sure, an adult has to give feedback from time to time, especially when it comes to the student's output (writing, speaking a foreign language, solving math problems). But smart kids learn early to manage their own input. In big public schools, they may be working months or years ahead of their classmates.
And, because they don't get to discuss their interests with people at the same level very often, they often end up as unpolished nerds.
What students in good private schools get, and what I would have killed for as a child, is individual attention and the chance to communicate one-on-one about academic subjects. They know what to do with the knowledge they have, even if it is no better than what a public school student picks up by reading ahead. They have polish, they interview better, and they seem to move into jobs that actually use their educations (as opposed to the food service and retail jobs that many young people take) much earlier. These are huge advantages in life.
I have no idea how you provide them in schools with 2,500 students. And that's before you get to the questions of learning disabilities, disruptive classmates, poverty, and all the other ills of urban schools.
The District of Columbia spent approximately $13,700 per student in 2006.
Sidwell Friends school charges $28,400 for elementary school tuition.
My question is this: Is Ms. McArdle advocating for a doubling of DC's per-pupil expenditures, or is it Ms. McArdle's position that Sidwell Friends outright wastes half of the money they receive?
Because if it were my kids, I'm pretty sure I'd go with the school that has twice the per-pupil resources. Not a tough call.
Nice try. Per the Washington Post, the DC Public school system spends $25,000 per pupil. To the contrary, it is the teacher-union-controlled DC public school system that wastes the money it is given by tax payers. Again, you are missing the obvious point. We can stipulate that it is advantageous for the Obama's or anyone else to send their children to the private school. I would send my own children there over the horrible public schools in DC.
However, Obama is the leader of the Democrat party which just eliminated the voucher program from the District's budget. Given that Democrats are in the pocket of the teacher's union and given that they are more than willing to sacrifice the futures of poor children in consideration for the political patronage they receive from the union, and given that they sanctimoniously hold themselves out as the caring and compassionate defenders of the poor, it is hypocritical for them to send their own children to private schools while taking affirmative action to deprive the District's poor of that same opportunity.
You have a citation for that WashPost article?
What an odd objective. I'd go for the school that has the data showing that it's the most effective, or in the absence of such evidenece, I'd go for the cheapest one. When it comes to education, I care about outcomes. If you have to spend more to get more that's one thing, but spending more for no output strikes me as crazy.
And you're only judging money here - you're not judging the school curriculum, you're not judging how well the principal backs up discipline, you're not judging how enthuasistic the teachers are about their subject, you're not judging how nice the kids you are. You're looking at an incredibly limited definition of resources if you only look at money.
I went to public schools, and I know several people who transferred from private schools for a better education. And, another case, my mother's business partner's daughter was going to a public school in a low socio-economic area, where her two older siblings had also gone. The school called my Mum's business partner up and said "Your daughter has a reading problem." Mum's business partner went "aarrrghhh!" and instantly hauled her daughter out of that school and off to a flash private school. Two years later the private school calls Mum's business partner up and said "Your daughter has a reading problem". An extra who-knows-what a year and two years later they were at the point that the public school was to start with.
Furthermore there's a remarkable lack of evidence that private schools on average do provide a significantly better education than state schools once you control for the socio-economic characteristics of the pupils. I suspect that if such data did exist it would be trumpted from the rooftops of the private schools, which makes me even more cynical about private schools' value.
Now this is a general statement, it may be that in any particular case a private school is a better option than the state school, I am not equipped to second-guess any particular parent's choice on this topic. But I do think if you just assume that spending more money will get your kids a better education you're failing your kids.
I am kind of impressed at anyone hating the Obamas so much they want their kids to go to schools that have half the per-pupil resources, though. That's some high quality hate, extending down to the children.
So how much does Obama hate the DC kids attending Sidwell on vouchers, that he wants THEM in public schools?