Heightening the Contraditions in Education Reform

Conservative approaches to education reform may in the next few years encounter a fateful fork in the road. One long tradition of conservative educational theory has stressed the value of vouchers as a way of decentralizing education and providing state subsidies directly to parents (rather than routed through local school systems) for their children's education. A newer movement on the right has embraced standards-based accountability, where students and, increasingly, teachers will be evaluated according to the measures of certain standardized tests and complicated (and unproven) statistical models. At the moment, these twin strategies have been used to reorient radically local public school organizations. Louisiana has become ground zero for these twinned approaches, having recently approved a massive expansion of vouchers (HB976) and new reforms making teacher employment contingent upon student performance on standardized exams and opaque value-added modelling (HB974). However, there is an increasingly obvious tension between these two approaches. The voucher movement emphasizes pluralism; current "accountability" models emphasize uniformity. Eventually, one tendency will have to win out.

Under the old model of education funding, federal and state government provided various subsidies to various school systems based on student populations and certain legal mandates. Under this model, the case for vouchers is relatively straightforward: if the government provides $8000 for a student to go to an unaccountable public school, why not give the parents this amount to send their child to an unaccountable private school? (Yes, there are numerous interesting reasons why this may not be a good idea, but let's leave those to the side for the moment.) If not entirely persuasive, this case is at least understandable. It puts power directly in the hands of the parents and encourages competition between various scholastic enterprises in something resembling an educational marketplace.

The rise of testing-based accountability measures immeasurably complicates this argument for vouchers. Under No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, public schools have to demonstrate their performance on certain standardized measures in order to receive funding. Race to the Top further centralizes educational affairs by encouraging states to adopt a nationwide core curriculum and by emphasizing a testing-driven component for teacher evaluations. The argument on behalf of such measures is that public dollars demand proof that they will be spent in a valuable way, and standardized testing is, apparently, the best way to establish this value. (Yes, this argument may be flawed in many, many ways, but let us leave that to the side for the moment as well.) If one wants to establish a centralized, federally-run public school system, No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top provide a sturdy foundation for that enterprise.

If, however, one wants to support a pluralist, voucher-driven kind education reform, this movement toward standards-based accountability could prove much more problematic. If the premise of this accountability is that public dollars require proof of effectiveness, what is the reason for demanding that a school run as a public institution (that is, a public school) should be held to any different standard than a school run as a private institution? Both would receive tax dollars from state and potentially local and federal governments: why should they be held to two different standards?

For the moment, many on the right have chosen to ignore this pressing question. Louisiana's latest round of "reforms," for instance, specifies the standards for granting teachers tenure and for removing teachers. However, these standards only apply to public schools; they do not apply to the charter and private schools that could receive voucher money. The state is effectively giving public schools less flexibility than it provides private schools on matters of personnel.

However, the Louisiana voucher bill also opens the door to further bureaucratic burdens on private schools. This bill has a provision that mandates that the state superintendent devise an "accountability system" for students at voucher schools. This aspect of the bill suggests a tendency for the future: to start to hold out to private schools the promise of government money with an increasing number of strings attached. Once you've bought into the idea that standardized testing establishes a school's quality, it becomes harder to resist the idea that public money ought to go only to those private entities that have demonstrated their effectiveness in teaching.  Moreover, these standards for accountability will, as both Louisiana and federal reforms demonstrate, tend to come from bureaucrats working in central government offices.

Under a universalized voucher program and homogenous standards system, the federal government, which would be the engine that de facto drives education policy under this "reformist" vision, would have increasing control over private schools. Why? Over a period of years, private schools would become increasingly dependent upon government tax dollars, and he who pays the piper picks the tune. Maybe not now, maybe not a few years from now, but eventually legislators and regulators could start placing further demands upon these newly dependent private schools. After all, if education is truly in a state of crisis, shouldn't government be demanding the best from schools in exchange for the taxpayer's hard-earned dollars?

This would be a dangerous road to go down from a conservative perspective. It could lead to a near-nationalization of most of the nation's schools, private and public. A proliferation of educational models has been one of the strongest parts of American education; the conversation between these models has led to new innovations and intellectual achievements. It would be no great exaggeration to say that the American university system, envied by many across the world, is the product of this conversation between various scholastic models.

Conservatives need to be careful. George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind has done more to nationalize education than any other policy measure in recent memory. By placing impossible demands upon schools (e.g., continual progress toward perfection culminating in 100% proficiency for all students), this policy laid the groundwork for the power-grab of Barack Obama's Race to the Top and federal waivers that allow states to opt-out of No Child Left Behind's requirements if they give away further local control of education to the federal government. Purportedly "conservative" policy led to thoroughly "progressive" results. Some on the right may see a combination of standardized testing and voucher systems as a way of striking at teachers unions, but conservatives may soon find this anti-union weapon turned against themselves and small-government aims. For the past decade or so, numerous "conservatives" have chosen big bureaucracy over smaller, local government when crafting education policy. As the price of this choice becomes clearer, perhaps some on the right will change their minds. At the moment, centralized, testing-driven education "reform" seems on a collision course with educational pluralism.

Reform Continues March in LA

The Louisiana State Senate's Education Committee has unanimously approved HB974, which radically weakens local control of schools in the name of undercutting teacher tenure.  It remains to be seen how many Senate Democrats will support this measure---though this vote may be a sign of Democratic willingness to allow for a far-reaching reorganization of schools in Louisiana.

Some Louisiana conservatives are raising questions about the lack of deliberation that has gone into this bill and expressing concerns about the centralizing tendencies of this measure.  Who knows if these concerns will be heard or addressed.

A source in the Louisiana legislature tells me that the issues of local control raised in HB974 and HB976 do not even seem to be on the radar of most Senate Republicans (in his/her opinion).  Perhaps this issue will be on the radar before the Senate votes in favor of it; grassroots pressure might still change things.

But, unless it does, the education package supported by Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and his allies in the "reform" community looks to be heading in the direction of passage.

Reforming Local Control Away

Last week, the Louisiana House passed HB974, which would reform teacher tenure in that state, with a bipartisan majority.  This measure radically weakens teacher tenure: in order to receive tenure, a teacher must be rated "highly effective" for five out of six years.  If this teacher is ever rated as "ineffective," he or she immediately loses tenure.  At least 50% of a teacher's effectiveness evaluation will depend upon value-added test score data.  Republicans were not united in the passage of HB974 in the Louisiana House.  Indeed, without the support of Democrats, this measure would not have passed.  The Louisiana State Senate is due to consider this measure shortly: the Education Committee seems currently scheduled to review the legislation on Thursday.

Some "conservative" groups are celebrating the passage of this bill.  This celebration might be more than a little ironic, however, because HB974 seems a text taken straight from the annals of radical progressivism (or perhaps progressive radicalism) rather than traditional conservatism.  Rather than running schools as community enterprises, HB974 pushes in the direction of a quasi-corporate power structure---with centralized power and a preponderance of statistical diktats.

There's much more to this measure than merely redefining the terms of tenure.  HB974 weakens the power of a town or city to govern its schools.  Under old law, local school boards were the ultimate decision-makers in hiring: the recommendations of school administrators had to be approved by them (and the boards could reject the recommendations of superintendents and principals).  Not anymore.  Under HB974, boards delegate their authority to superintendents.  Rather than the superintendent being an academic advisor and leader for a public school, he or she acquires CEO-like powers.  Superintendents and principals become the ones with the authority to hire and fire under this new measure.

Moreover, the state further ties school board hands.  School boards must establish contracts with performance targets for superintendents.  If these targets are not met, the superintendent's contract must not be renewed.  For districts including at least 75% of Louisiana schools (ones that do not receive an "A" or "B" rating from the state), HB974 specifies in further detail the kinds of targets a superintendent's contract must include.  Whenever a school board decides not to renew a superintendent's contract (for the moment, school boards still have that power), it must file a report with the state explaining its actions.  If budget cuts come and staff must be reduced, HB974 offers a formula for how staff must be reduced, with the least "effective" faculty member in an academic area being let go first.  So much for local discretion.

Moreover, tenure under HB974 ain't quite what it used to be.  Tenure protections are radically weakened by HB974, in ways that might to make traditional conservatives nervous (and not only traditional conservatives, either).  Consider the legislative language describing how a tenured teacher may be dismissed under HB974 (the numbers are line numbers in the bill text):

A teacher with tenure shall not be removed from office
4 except upon written and signed charges of poor performance,willful neglect of duty,
5 or incompetency, dishonesty, or immorality, or of being a member of or contributing
6 to any group, organization, movement, or corporation that is by law or injunction
7 prohibited from operating in the state of Louisiana, and then only furnished with a copy of such written charges and given the opportunity to
9 respond. The teacher shall have seven days to respond, and such response shall be
10 included in the teacher's personnel file. At the end of this seven-day time period, the
11 superintendent may terminate the teacher's employment. A teacher shall not be
12 terminated for an "ineffective" performance rating until completion of the grievance
13 procedure established pursuant to R.S. 17:3883(A)(5) if a grievance was timely filed.
14 Within seven days after dismissal, a teacher may request and upon request shall be
15 granted a hearing by a panel
16 composed of a designee of the superintendent, a designee of the principal or the
17 administrative head of the state special school in which the teacher was employed,
18 and a designee of the teacher. In no case shall the superintendent, the principal or
19 state special school administrative head, or teacher designate an immediate family
20 member or any full-time employee of the school system by which the teacher was
21 employed who is under the supervision of the person making the designation.

The key detail about this language is that a tenured teacher need not be found guilty of these charges of poor performance, willful neglect of duty, incompetence, dishonesty, or immorality in order to be dismissed (as current Louisiana law requires).  Instead, HB974 only requires that the teacher be given the charges in writing and be given the opportunity to address these charges.  The charges could be completely mendacious, and the tenured teacher could still lose his or her job at the superintendent's whim.

Current Louisiana law gives school boards the power to review appeals for tenure dismissal.  As it does with many other traditional local powers, HB974 strips the school board of this authority and instead gives the superintendent the ability to review the teacher's case.

If the teacher wishes to appeal the superintendent's decision, he or she enters a kind of kangaroo court, where three people review this ruling: a designee of the superintendent, a designee of the principal, and a designee of the teacher.  Under HB974, the principal serves under the superintendent, so the panel called to review the superintendent's decision would be stacked 2-1 with people either appointed by the superintendent or someone under the superintendent's control (the principal).  So much for due process.  (Conceivably, the teacher could then try to appeal to a court to reverse this decision, but this appeal could place considerable costs upon a teacher.)

The superintendent under HB974 basically has the ability to hire and fire at will---regardless of tenure.  Checks and balances are effectively removed.  It's hard to see how this radical power is in accord with conventional Republican and conservative principles of diffusion of public power and an emphasis on local control.  (And, yes, public schools are public institutions, and these schools are in part funded by local tax dollars.)

Moreover, in enshrining value-added testing performance for teacher evaluations, HB974 idolizes bureaucratic instruments in a way that seems utterly divorced from conservatism.  As New York City's recent value-added testing data dump shows, the results of value-added teacher evaluations can be totally arbitrary as well as disconnected from reality.  Conservatives have made a lot of conceptual and political headway since the 1960s by pointing to the absurd results that centralized bureaucracies could lead to; it seems a rather sad turn, then, for purported conservatives to be embracing such bureaucracies.

Measures that deify value-added testing would seem to give power to the ultimate unelected bureaucrats: those who design these tests and create the complex (and quite possibly flawed) equations used to determine value-added knowledge.  HB974 would seem to accelerate the tendency in Louisiana to wrest control of schools from the local community and transfer it to an appointed (in the case of superintendents) and unelected few.

If someone were interested in centralizing schooling in Louisiana, HB974 combined with HB976 (which expands the power of charter schools and certain central state agencies) would be a good way to do it.  It's no surprise that some Tea Party groups in Louisiana are beginning to mobilize against this measure.  HB974's tendencies would seem to go against the small, localized government that many Tea Partiers claim to support. In the days ahead, perhaps Louisiana will witness the unlikeliest of odd couples: teachers unions and Tea Partiers coming together to defend the tradition of local governance.  Some solid conservatives in the Louisiana House opposed this bill due to their skepticism about big-government schemes.  Republicans hold a much stronger hand in the state senate; perhaps traditional conservatives will collaborate with union allies to halt or slow this move toward centralization.

Deflecting Blame

David C. Levy attempts to blame faculty salaries at universities for rising tuition costs and suggests that most university faculty are not working hard enough:

But I disagree with the next assumption, that the answer to rising college costs is to throw more public money into the system. In fact, increased public support has probably facilitated rising tuitions. Overlooked in the debate are reforms for outmoded employment policies that overcompensate faculty for inefficient teaching schedules.
Through the first half of the 20th century, faculties in academic institutions were generally underpaid relative to other comparably educated members of the workforce. Teaching was viewed as a “calling” in the tradition of tweed jackets, pipe tobacco and avuncular campus life. Trade-offs for modest salaries were found in the relaxed atmospheres of academic communities, often retreats from the pressures of the real world, and reflected in such benefits as tenure, light teaching loads, long vacations and sabbaticals.
With the 1970s advent of collective bargaining in higher education, this began to change. The result has been more equitable circumstances for college faculty, who deserve salaries comparable to those of other educated professionals. Happily, senior faculty at most state universities and colleges now earn $80,000 to $150,000, roughly in line with the average incomes of others with advanced degrees.

 James Joyner and Robert Farley take issue with Levy's estimates of how much college faculty actually work.

But I'd like instead to look at Levy's implicit claim that faculty salaries are disproportionately contributing to tuition inflation.  Nowhere does Levy really address the fact that colleges and universities are increasingly using part-time faculty members (with much lower rates of pay and usually without benefits) to teach classes.  Tenured and tenure-track faculty now only constitute 25% of faculty members in the US (compared to over 45% in 1975), according to the American Association of University Professors.

Moreover, full-time faculty salaries are not exactly skyrocketing.  Adjusted for inflation, the average rate of tuition growth was about 6% a year between 1989 and 2005.  During that same period, the average full-time faculty salary never increased above 2.2% a year adjusted for inflation (according to the AAUP).  During most of those years, the salary growth was either negative when adjusted for inflation or under 1%.  So it's hard to blame faculty salaries for skyrocketing tuition costs.  Nor can the growth in faculty numbers be blamed (since faculty hiring is well behind administrative hiring).

Administration, however, has seen considerable growth in salaries and college expenditures.  As an email from an AAUP official explains:

1. You can't blame faculty salaries for increases in tuition and costs. Faculty salary increases have been well below increases in tuition and well below increases in senior administrators' salaries, which have increased disproportionately....Between 1995-96 and 2005-06, presidential salaries increased by 35 percent, adjusted for inflation, compared to 5 percent for average faculty salaries (figure 3, 2006-07 Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession ); from 2005-06 to 2007-08, the two-year increase in senior administrators' salaries outpaced both inflation and the increase in average salary for full professors (figures 1 and 2, 2007-08 Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession).
2. You can't blame increases in faculty numbers for increased tuition and costs. Full-time tenure-track faculty numbers have increased at a far slower rate than have numbers of other professionals and administrators. Between 1976 and 2005, full-time tenure-track positions in the United States increased by only 17 percent, compared to a 281 percent increase in nonfaculty professionals and a 101 percent increase in administrators (see figure 3 in the 2007-08 Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession).
3. Spending on instruction has declined in all sectors of higher education, while spending on administrative costs has increased. Between 1995 and 2006, overall spending increased, but the share of instruction was down in all sectors (for example, in public master's institutions it was down from 53.9 to 50.8 percent; in private master's institutions it was down from 45.0 to 43.0 percent). The share of student services increased (from 9.9 to 10.9 percent in public master's institutions and from 13.9 to 15.6 percent in private master's institutions), as did that of administration and other support (from 36.2 to 38.2 percent and from 41.1 to 41.4 percent, respectively...)

It's true that increasing teach loads might cause the amount a university spends on instruction to go down.  But it is not clear that those savings would be passed on to students (rather than being captured by another group within the university).  Nor is it clear that this action would not harm the quality of instruction and research done at American universities.

Testing the Testing

Gary Rubinstein has a great series of posts exploring the recently released evaluation data for New York City teachers.  His analysis has some bad news for the value-added testing metrics of the city: these metrics might not necessarily mirror real-world qualities, suggesting that analyzing teacher performance through these metrics might be a problematic enterprise at best.

Consider this finding: based on New York's assessment methods, there is hardly any correlation between a teacher's success in teaching a subject at one grade level and his or her success at teaching that same subject in the next grade level.  So a teacher who is supposedly successful teaching sixth-grade math could easily be one of the supposedly worst at teaching seventh-grade math.  Does that seem particularly plausible?  It might happen for some teachers, but Rubinstein finds almost no correlation for all teachers taken as a group.

Moreover, Rubinstein finds relatively little correlation between how successful a teacher is one year and how successful he or she is the next year.  With such variation, this testing regime might have a few methodological problems.

Testing the Testing

As a consequence of its teacher "accountability" initiatives, New York City has released performance reports on each teacher in the system.

However, as The Call has pointed out, these reports are not exactly the most exacting:

The Teacher Data Reports were compiled for three school years between 2007 and 2010, and were never meant to be made public, although the DOE used them as a tool to make tenure decisions. The data are supposed to reflect a teacher’s ability to affect fourth through eighth grade students’ progress on standardized tests. But the UFT argues the scores are misleading and based on questionable data. The average margin of error for English teachers is 53 percent, and 35 percent for math. That means a teacher with a score of 50 percent may really have scored anywhere from a 23 percent to a 77 percent. The breakdown compares teachers based on their amount of experience and takes into account gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status - among other things - to try to show how teachers in similar situations are helping students improve.

These huge margins of error would seem to be a big problem for assessing a teacher's competence---assuming that you believe that standardized testing performance is a good vehicle for this assessment (a questionable assumption at best).

Takers v. Makers, or Our Choices Have Consequences

Over at the WSJ, Stephen Moore laments the rise of government employment:

Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government. It gets worse. More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined. We have moved decisively from a nation of makers to a nation of takers...

Surveys of college graduates are finding that more and more of our top minds want to work for the government. Why? Because in recent years only government agencies have been hiring, and because the offer of near lifetime security is highly valued in these times of economic turbulence. When 23-year-olds aren't willing to take career risks, we have a real problem on our hands. Sadly, we could end up with a generation of Americans who want to work at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

It's worth noting that we have created an economic structure that incentivizes working at the DMV. Moore bemoans the state of 23-year-olds not wanting to take career risks, but 23-year-olds, just like corporations, have every right to make decisions that are in their own economic best interests.

Consider manufacturing: the de facto federal consensus over the past twenty years has in many ways been that manufacturing workers should accept lower wages. Indeed, much of the right's anger with manufacturing unions in Detroit and elsewhere focuses on the fact that these unions have won generous pay and benefits for their members. Our trade and regulation policies have, over the past few decades, further shrunk a manufacturing employment sector already diminishing due to gains in technology.

Or construction: this field has already taken a hit due to the collapse in the housing market. Moreover, construction jobs have also witnessed a significant wage decrease due to a flood of illegal immigration.

Or hi-tech fields: many large companies are perpetually lobbying to employ more and more foreign-born workers through mechanisms such as the H1-B visa. Or they are outsourcing programming work. Both of these mechanisms have hurt employment prospects and the wage growth for Americans in these sectors.

There are still plenty of opportunities in these sectors of the American economy, true. But while many economic sectors were hollowed out, government employment, under George W. Bush and Barack Obama, has boomed. Government jobs are harder to outsource or close down due to foreign subsidies. And with youth unemployment at exceedingly high levels, the young people of America are going to take any opportunity they can get.

I think our energies would be better spent not on attacking working for the government but on improving the economic conditions for the private sector. Destroying teachers unions will not turn around our economy and is not even a certain recipe for improving public education.

The weakening of many parts of our economy has in turn strengthened government, but a half-dead economy cannot indefinitely support a perpetually-growing government. Revising some of our public policies and making targeted investments in the future can be a way forward. Supporters of a vital free-market economy and of effective government are no doubt hoping that such a way can be found.

UPDATE: It's worth adding that government entities, particularly at the state and local level, are already feeling the pinch of economic hardship. State and local governments have cut tens of thousands of jobs over the past year or so. Meanwhile, the federal government is still hiring, but even its numbers are down and do not seem to be making up for the cuts in state and local workforces. So employment in state and local governments may be a more challenging prospect in the months to come. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the sectors of the economy to gain the most over the past year were "administration" and "health-care" (though much of the US's health sector is driven by government spending).

(Thanks to David Frum, who rightly noted that government employment in the US has become less of a growth industry.)

Educational Arguments

Austin Bramwell has an interesting piece up on educational reform. He explores some of the underside of "accountability" measures for teachers:

Except that the school accountability movement is almost certain to achieve the very opposite of what it intends! Suppose that you are an aspiring teacher. Suppose, further, that you are one of those saints who would to prefer to teach in a high-crime, poverty-stricken area than, say, in a wealthy suburban district where students gobble up AP credits and compete for admission to elite colleges. Would you in fact choose to teach the most underprivileged? All else being equal, under school accountability, you would not. For, if you do end up serving the underprivileged, there is a good chance that you or your school will ultimately be demoted or punished as “failing.” School accountability tells teachers to avoid potentially under-performing schools.

More at the link.