Grantcoulson's Blog

   Do not think about, write about or deal with  human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.

    In terms of standards, there are two aspects of supporting evidence. The first is the necessity for standards addressed in the following article. The second is the quality of the standards themselves, addressed earlier. Standards will join the two horrible errors of the 20th century, the “New Math”, which changed math teaching with an incomprehensible curriculum and the “New New Math” which changed  the teaching methods to an incomprehensible mess. None of the three mistakes is supported by evidence.

    Quoted in its entirety.

"Common Core" School Standards Roll On Without Supporting Evidence

EAST LANSING, Mi., July 21, 2010—Very little evidence supports the contention that establishing national academic standards for K-12 schools will improve the quality of American public education, and the standards push may distract attention from other vital school reforms, concludes a new policy brief, The "Common Core" Standards Initiative: An Effective Reform Tool?

The brief, authored by William J. Mathis, was released today by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.

"Without addressing both the in-school and out-of-school influences on test scores, common core standards are not likely to improve the quality and equity of America’s public schools," Mathis explains.

The Obama administration has embraced "common core" standards and has pressured states to adopt them by stating that federal Title I aid will be withheld from states that do not adopt standards such as those being developed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. In addition, states that adopt the standards have a major advantage on their Race to the Top applications.

Standards advocates argue that common standards are necessary for keeping the nation competitive in a global economy. But Mathis points out that research does not support this oft-expressed rationale. No studies support a true causal relationship between national standards and economic competitiveness, and at the most superficial level we know that nations with centralized standards generally tend to perform no better (or worse) on international tests than those without. Further, research shows that national economic competitiveness is influenced far more by economic decisions than by test scores.

Mathis also raises questions about the rapid development of the common-core standards, the lack of field testing, and the overarching need for any high-stakes consequences to be "valid," pursuant to established professional guidelines. Given these concerns, he says that the prospect of positive effects on educational quality or equality "seems improbable."”

Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies

   Do not think about, write about or deal with  human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.
   

    This is from an article by a British educator. In the part not shown here, he hypothesizes that some of the increase in the SEN (special education needs) classification is from the improved survivability of premature babies who have an increased probability of having learning difficulties. That may be true, but probably explains only a small percentage of the increase. The same things are, of course, happening in North America

Special needs is a fad that harms children
Pupils are being subjected to all manner of crank treatments in the name of helping them, says Francis Gilbert.

“Twenty years ago, when I started teaching in a tough, inner-city comprehensive, only three of my pupils were labelled as having "special educational needs". All three were extreme cases: one girl liked to throw chairs at her teachers, another had severe hearing problems, and another didn’t have a working stomach.

Today, things have swung to the other extreme: classrooms are swamped by pupils classified as "SEN", or having learning difficulties. All told, one in three of those aged between six and 16, or more than two million children, are identified as having some sort of learning difficulty. And it’s getting worse: in the past two years, the number of under-fives with learning difficulties has risen by almost 20 per cent, and the number of teenagers being diagnosed has also increased exponentially.”

……

…… “many teachers, myself included, like to "work the system", too. We realise that having a child diagnosed as SEN is greatly to our benefit because it means that we get extra resources – and it also lets us off the hook if they fail their exams.

In other words, pupils categorised as having special needs have been wrongly labelled: a government survey of teenagers classed as having SEN in 2009 showed that almost half had no such diagnosis six years earlier. A particularly worrying trend is the increasing numbers of children who are being identified as having attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a phrase which in the teaching profession is a politically correct euphemism for "being completely out of control". According to data released under Freedom of Information legislation, there has been a 65 per cent increase in spending on drugs to treat ADHD over the last four years. Such treatments now cost the taxpayer more than £31 million a year. In the US, the use of prescription drugs to "cure" learning difficulties has become a billion-dollar industry.

This "medicalisation" of SEN is deeply worrying; it promotes the lie that a child’s learning difficulties can be solved by drugs rather than good teaching. It’s meant that all sorts of self-help quacks are grabbing money from schools and gullible parents by promising to "cure" children with herbal remedies, head massages, visualisation techniques, brainwave measurement, or the chanting of mantras.

All of which makes me think that perhaps it’s time to junk the term "Special Educational Needs" altogether, along with much of the jargon that goes with it. Sadly, these terms have become excuses to hide behind rather than steps towards solutions. Instead bandying around vague pseudo-scientific terms like "dyslexia" and "ADHD", we need to demand that learning difficulties are identified simply and specifically. If a pupil has a problem with reading books aimed at their age range, let’s call it precisely that, rather than saying he’s "dyslexic" – a notorious word that seems to mean something different every time it’s used.

It’s time we all realised no amount of jargon, drugs or massages can solve our children’s problems. The only real solution, as it always has been, is hard graft.”

    Hard graft is a British English phrase meaning hard work. “Two great peoples divided by a common language.”

Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies

     Do not think about, write about or deal with  human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.

    “I get my money the old-fashioned way. I have people who take it from others and give it to me.” Government employee.

    This is a review of:

Zwaagstra, M.C., Clifton, R.A. & Long, J.C. (2010). What’s wrong with our schools and how we can fix them. New York: Rowan and Littlefield Education.

    The authors are to be commended for a thorough analysis of some of the main assumptions of mainstream, North American education. They give examples and analysis of discipline, inclusion, constructivism, practice, direct instruction, unions, edu-babble  and more of the usual suspects in rendering education the laughingstock it is.

    Although the last chapter has a bow to incentives, they do not pursue this topic with any deep analysis. Incentives, of course, are the linchpin of all human activity. They use such terms as urge, request, recommend, explain and etc. to chart a course of action. The only useful words are require, demand, ensure, and etc., words which mean that the person requiring, demanding and ensuring has the levers to ensure that the required demands get done. In sum, the “What’s wrong” part of the title is well done, but the “how we can fix them” misses by a wide margin.

    If government workers can get away with nonsense one may be assured that most of them will. A large body of rationalization will support this, but is nothing more than window-dressing. Economic incentives would put this Marx-like theorizing to bed, to rest and to death. You can’t change the world by describing it differently.

Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies

   Do not think about, write about or deal with  human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.

       "All this has been said before, but nobody listened, so it must be said again." Andre Gide

    An Interview with Neal Mc Cluskey: The Right Reasons Why the Teacher Bailout is Wrong

      “Michael F. Shaughnessy – The primary reason taxpayers should oppose the teacher bailout – and we’re really talking about a bailout for both teachers and other public-schooling staffers – is that we have increased public-school staffing for decades and gotten no corresponding improvement in achievement.

         1)   Neal, it seems that every time I turn around, these politicians are putting some kind of strange spin or simply incorrect explanation about things. Why SHOULD the average taxpayer oppose the Teacher Bailout?

      The primary reason taxpayers should oppose the teacher bailout – and we’re really talking about a bailout for both teachers and other public-schooling staffers – is that we have increased public-school staffing for decades and gotten no corresponding improvement in achievement. Indeed, over the past forty years public-school staffing has grown ten times faster than enrollment while achievement scores for students at the end of high school have been stagnant. If anything, then, taxpayers should demand more public-school employment cuts so that the saved money could stay with taxpayers who could put it to more productive uses.”

     That productivity thing is really pesky. More money, more government employees, same dismal outcomes–yet they still call if “investment”.

      “2)    Neal, they have this Race to the Top thing- have any REAL accomplishments been seen or are these politicians just blabbering?

      So far, Race to the Top has been much more hype than hero. Yes, some states have eliminated some atrocious barriers to some common-sense things like being able to evaluate teachers based on student outcomes, but for the most part states have just promised to plan to do good stuff. Very little of any substance has actually been done, and anyone even remotely familiar with public schooling knows that promises and plans come easy – positive results, not so much.

     At the very best, all you can objectively say about Race to the Top is that the jury is out until we can measure academic achievement and other outcomes and connect them to RTTT. Unfortunately, to put it mildly, RTTT aficionados aren’t restricting themselves to that.”

3)    If you were in charge of things—where would YOU put the money—if in fact there is any left after the War in Afghanistan and Iraq?

     It’s not so much where I would put the money as I wouldn’t take it from taxpayers in the first place. Individuals know better than government what their needs are, and collectively will meet those needs better if they are able to freely interact with each other. Moreover, even if you thought Washington could somehow attend to individuals’ needs better than the individuals themselves you would have to factor in the hugely disproportionate political power of special interests, and all the greed-driven distortions that causes. So even if government were somehow capable of micromanaging our lives better than we could manage them ourselves, you wouldn’t want to give it that power because special interests would subvert the process to enrich themselves.”

…….

     There is more.

Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies
   

     Do not think about, write about or deal with  human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.

     If it ain’t life or death or if it ain’t meat and potatoes, it don’t get done.

     From the United Kingdom.

Only 18 useless teachers axed in 40 years
05/07/2010 12:00:00 EducationNews.org

      “Only 18 teachers have been struck off for incompetence in the past 40 years, with heads simply palming under-performing staff on to other schools.

      The paltry number sits uncomfortably beside previous estimates that up to 17,000 failing teachers are working in schools.

    Thirteen teachers in England have been struck off for gross professional incompetence, three in Wales and two in Scotland. None has gone in Northern Ireland.

    A BBC Panorama investigation found heads are often too fearful to report incompetent staff because it could damage their school’s reputation.

    Instead, they offer good references in exchange for them looking for work in other state schools. It has led to a ‘pass-the-parcel’ system where bad teachers are simply ‘ recycled’.

     But as few as 300 every year go through such a review  -  just 0.07 per cent of all teachers.

……
      “Mr Woodhead says an incompetent teacher is someone who cannot control a class, has a lack of understanding of their subjects or dislikes children.”

   ……

      “Experts warned that the difference between a child being taught by a bad teacher or by one who is simply average could be the difference between getting to university or into a job or ending up on the dole.”

    This is just part of the hysterical rhetoric of those who hold that education solves all problems and lack of it causes all problems.

Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies

      Do not think about, write about or deal with  human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.

    There was the Central Falls fiasco with everybody fired–everybody rehired, covered in this blog. Just search Central Falls. The results were dismal, everyone was fired–they promised to do better–they were rehired.

     See how they lie. It’s awful. Wait, not so bad. OK, it’s fine.

Shrinking Teacher Layoff continues.
30/06/2010 00:17:00 EducationNews.org

* Oceanside, California – “OUSD to rehire at least half of laid off teachers”

* Ann Arbor, Michigan – “The board recalled all 191 laid-off teachers…”

* Chicago, Illinois – “…only 1,200 teachers will be laid off, instead of the 2,700 originally projected…”

* North Carolina – “State budget saves 1,600 teacher jobs, cuts spending”

…….

In this flurry of job-saving activity, the U.S. Census Bureau yesterday released its annual report on public education finances. The figures carry us through the 2007-08 school year, and the two-year-old statistics show in stark relief how we reached this point.

Enrollment dropped nationwide by more than 45,000 students, and there was virtually no inflation in 2008. Nevertheless, per-pupil spending rose 6.1 percent to $10,259.

That year, 21.3 million people worked in the public sector at all levels of government. Six million of them worked in the public school system.

We spend more than a half-trillion dollars annually on public education, and school districts hold an additional $377 billion in debt.

Contrary to the belief of some, that money doesn’t come from a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. It amounts to $3,635 a year from the paychecks of each and every working American.

    And there’s this, from:

http://biggovernment.com/acoulson/2010/06/05/the-u-s-economy-needs-fewer-public-school-jobs-not-more/

     A 7% increase in enrollment and 100% increase in employment. 0% increase in accomplishment.

Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies

   Do not think about, write about or deal with  human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.

    Well I never. Employment is up a lot, costs are up a lot,  enrollment a little and production not at all–it could only be a public enterprise. The following is from an article by Andrew J. Coulson, no relation.

The U.S. Economy Needs Fewer Public School Jobs, Not More
by Andrew J. Coulson
      …..

     “Over the past forty years, public school employment has risen 10 times faster than enrollment (see chart). There are only 9 percent more students today, but nearly twice as many public school employees. To prove that rolling back this relentless hiring spree by a few years would hurt student achievement, you’d have to show that all those new employees raised achievement in the first place. That would be hard to do… because it never happened.

       Student achievement at the end of high school has been flat for as long as we’ve been keeping track—all the way back to 1970. But we did get something in return for all that hiring: a great, big, fat, BILL.

      “If you graduated from high school in 1980, your entire k-12 education cost your fellow taxpayers about $75,000, in 2009 dollars. But the graduating class of 2009 had roughly twice that amount lavished on their public school careers. The extra $75,000 we’re now spending has done wonders for public school employee union membership, dues revenue, and political clout. It’s done a whole lotta nothin’ for student learning (see chart).”

……

     “In the private sector, jobs are created and retained only if they are believed to add value to the enterprise—if their salary and benefit costs are outweighed by the revenue they generate. By contrast, we know that the millions of new government school positions added over the past four decades have not added measurably to student knowledge or skills at the end of high school. So instead of boosting the U.S. economy, these jobs have actually been a drain on it. Returning to the staff-to-student ratio we had in 1980 would save taxpayers about $142 billion every year.”

……

      “Throwing billions more at the system would only worsen the problem and delay the solution, which is to help ease the transition of these workers from their current unproductive employment back into the productive sector of the economy.”

   Any enterprise funded with public money is a political enterprise and will become ever more expensive and increasingly ineffective. The incentives here are easy to see–more power and money.

Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies

     Do not think about, write about or deal with  human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.

End Them, Don’t Mend Them
It’s time to shutter America’s bloated schools.
BY P. J. O’Rourke

      P.J. O’Rourke has a take on public schools with which I agree completely. Public schooling has become a bloated bureaucracy (actually hundreds of bloated bureaucracies) that is the inevitable result of an unending supply of money funneled to an organization which has no responsibility. O’Rourke wants to eliminate the system. He gives a number of reasons for this–high costs and inefficiency. Either one could be fatal to any but a public enterprise.

     O’Rourke points out that, according to official statistics, an average of $11.749 is spent on educating each K-12 child per year. Of course, that number is a lie and O’Rourke points this out.

       “But if throwing money is what’s needed, American school kids are getting smacked in the head with gobs of cash aplenty. That $11,749 is a lot more than the $7,848 private school pre-K through 12 national spending norm. It’s also a lot more than the $7,171 median tuition at four-year public colleges. Plus $11,749 is much less than what’s really being spent.”

    “In March the Cato Institute issued a report on the cost of public schools. Policy analyst Adam Schaeffer made a detailed examination of the budgets of 18 school districts in the five largest U.S. metro areas and the District of Columbia. He found that school districts were understating their per-pupil spending by between 23 and 90 percent. The school districts cried poor by excluding various categories of spending from their budgets—debt service, employee benefits, transportation costs, capital costs, and, presumably, those cans of aerosol spray used to give all public schools that special public school smell.

     Schaeffer calculated that Los Angeles, which claims $19,000 per-pupil spending, actually spends $25,000. The New York metropolitan area admits to a per-pupil average of $18,700, but the true cost is about $26,900. The District of Columbia’s per-pupil outlay is claimed to be $17,542. The real number is an astonishing $28,170—155 percent more than the average tuition at the famously pricey private academies of the capital region.”

     “The Digest of Educational Statistics (read by Monday, there will be a quiz) says inflation-adjusted per-pupil spending increased by 49 percent from 1984 to 2004 and by more than 100 percent from 1970 to 2005"

     “National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test scores remained essentially the same from 1970 to 2004. SAT scores in 1970 averaged 537 in reading and 512 in math, and 38 years later the scores were 502 and 515. (More kids are taking SATs, but the nitwit factor can be discounted—scores below 400 have decreased slightly.) American College Testing (ACT) composite scores have increased only slightly from 20.6 (out of 36) in 1990 to 21.1 in 2008. And the extraordinary expense of the D.C. public school system produced a 2007 class of eighth graders in which, according to the NAEP, 12 percent of the students were at or above proficiency in reading and 8 percent were at or above proficiency in math. Many of these young people are now entering the work force. Count your change in D.C.”

    Aside from increasing costs (which are lied about) and stagnant scores, the school system is just fine.

    One of the arguments about abolishing public schooling is that the infrastructure is not available, but, at these prices, it would be.

    So each of us could take a few of these little rascals for about 200 days a year. They have to have summer off to help with the harvest. At most we’d get them 7 hours a day. Kick in an extra 2 hour per day and that’s 1800 hours per year by actual calculation. We’d need to provide shelter, maybe a computer, some supplies such as paper, blackboard (greenboard). Now the pressure’s off because the students wouldn’t have to learn much. If we worked in Los Angeles we could take 5 kids, one for overhead and four to pay our salary and have an even 100K per annum as our salary. It’s even better in the District of Columbia where one could get 112.60K per annum for not teaching a whole lot. That’s only $62.00 per hour. I know I could do it because I have and I’m sure enough others could also do it. Never made the $62.00.

Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies

    Do not think about, write about or deal with  human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.

      The quotes below are from Wolf, A. (2002) Does Education Matter? Myths about education and economic growth. London: Penguin Books. They are self-explanatory.

    Education, in one of the many unexamined, intuitive and incorrect assumptions of politics, has been held to be an engine of economic growth. Wolf challenges this assumption and maintains that, a) Average education and economic growth are unrelated except that b) Richer nations spend more on education than poorer ones. Egypt went from the forty-seventh poorest country to the forty-eighth poorest while increasing its educational participation rates substantially.

    “….the countries which have done most to increase the education levels of their population have, on average, grown less fast than those which have devoted fewer resources to education. What can be going on here?” (p. 39)

    “As Ron Dore has explained this is far less about education than about providing the world’s most ‘enormously elaborated, very expensive, intelligence testing–and elite selection–system.” (p. 208).

    Wolf points out that there are two assumptions at the base of government policy….”the belief in a simple, direct relationship between the amount of education in a society and its future growth and the belief that governments can fine-tune education expenditures to maximize that self-same rate of growth. Neither is correct.” (p. 244).

Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies