The Bedford Hillsian has a great little piece up about sex ed. Inspired by a rather frustrating radio show (though the host fact checks, which is awesome), blogger "the unbeatable kid" brings in that most stalwart of sex ed defenders: Dan Savage. I reccomend listening to both Dan Savage's bit, and then the whole radio show. Make sure you have time for the second one; it's rather long (50 minutes).
The debate is the whole abstinence debate, with a decade of implementation and studies to match it.
And it's an interesting conversation, between intelligent concerned adults with different perspectives and different data. What's interesting to is not so much the disagreements, but the agreements with qualifiers. "No parent disagrees with abstinence, they disagree with abstinence only" and "Abstinence programs do teach about condoms; they teach how condoms aren't very effective" are my two favorite qualifiers.
The immediate things that bother me: 1), abstinence programs aren't allowed to encourage condom use, and 2), there is a desire to present information about condoms with an emphasis on the flaws and shortcomings. Regardless of my stand on sex education, my general stand on presenting information to youth is that teachers shouldn't lie to them. For a humorous take on disinformation, here's a cracked.com dressing down of other pieces of disinformation targets at youth.
I had rather unpleasant experiences with abstinence-only sex education in middle school, so I am rather grateful that I was able to partake in a comprehensive sex ed program offered outside my school. The strengths of that program are many - it addresses the emotional and relational issues of sexuality, it isn't exclusively hetero-normative, and it covers STIs and contraceptives with an eye towards accuracy. More than that, however, it does a remarkable thing - it trusts that youth, given accurate information, will be able to make informed decisions about their own lives.
To restate: it trusts that youth, when allowed to, have the capacity for rational decision making.
This is huge, and this is one of the big things missing from sex education in schools, and from the debate over sex education in general. And really, it's missing from education a lot of the time - the PSAs linked to above all trust in fear and trust to force youth into acting appropriately. And frankly, that's undemocratic and unAmerican.
If we want better decisions made, and if we want essential freedoms, we as a people have to do 2 things: make sure that accurate information is provided, available, and encouraged (while making sure that people know how to call "bullshit!" when they see it), and we have to trust people to take that information and act as best they are able.
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Social Goods and Individual Exceptionalism
From Stuff White People Like:
"Though their passion for national health care runs deep, it is important to remember that white people are most in favor of it when they are healthy. They love the idea of everyone have equal access to the resources that will keep them alive, that is until they have to wait in line for an MRI.
This is a nation where the right of the individual is prized. We are "rugged individualists" and personal responsibility is listed as a defining characteristic of the American Identity. It fits this pattern that we only want the best for ourselves - the best health care, the best schools, the safest car. Certainly, we're worth it, right?
Some of us are. The best, the quantifiable and marketable best, is available to some Americans. Good healthcare insurance requires a substantial investment of wealth, or a competitive job that attracts the highly qualified and the highly educated. Good education goes to the children of those with the wealth for private school or those who have the clout to select a home based on school quality, often in detached communities far removed from the problems of urban poverty, where property taxes can be low in percentage but huge in the money they collect, and where municipal integrity against the neighboring beast of a city is a right fought-for and maintained by the diligence of neighboring lawyers on their off hours. The safest car is a fortress for the individual, with clear lines of sight, an insulating and expertly-designed body, and the latest and best-rated safety equipment; it may get into a crash, but it will come out on top, protecting the precious insides like the skillfully crafted "mars lander" egg drop contraption sitting on Timmy's lap. This is what the best is, and the crude summary of its worth can be listed as "available to those making at least six figures a year, as a bare minimum".
Income and benefits are a primitive assessment of personal worth, but in the context of entitlement to the best that can be offered, its an appropriate one. The problem with using wealth to allocate benefits is that it is impersonal and it assumes that "more wealth=more deserving". The benefit of using wealth to allocate benefits is that its a system that works, and produces immediate results. It's not a system that can easily be changed, and I'm not really going to decry wealth here. But I'll say the system is flawed for another reason: it's self-centered.
Not "self-centered" in the Ayn Rand way. Well, yes, in the Ayn Rand way, but not for the normal reasons. A focus on the individual to the exclusion of all else provides the best possible for the capable individual. This is the goal of microeconomics, of the single player in a game of scarcity. What it fails to do is the best total for everyone.
Economics is, at its core, about calculating how to use scare resources to meet the greatest number of wants. Wants range from "food so I don't die" to "an Island in the pacific". The logic that equates these wants is that the wealthy have more to spend, and so have more wants to satisfy. In arguing for this simplified system, we ignore harms caused by individual actions.
This leads to the second of the above examples. The modern SUV is a remarkably safe vehicle for the people on the inside, but the combined risk of SUV + non-SUV in a crash is greater than the risk of a non-SUV crashing into a non-SUV. The SUV driver has, in the name of individual safety, protected themself at the expense of others. The total danger of crashes involving SUVs has made driving more dangerous for everyone. This is a social negative, and it is caused something that leads to two uncomfortable solutions - the individual can buy an SUV, exacerbating a process begun in the name of the self, or government can step in and say "Cars that make driving more dangerous for everyone should be banned." Neither of these is a good proposition for people who drive or government, and so the option chosen has just been to step back, at least somewhat. The person writing in to Straight Dope was specifically asking about the safety of small cars after a federal fuel efficiency standard was imposed, and why they just haven't been banned for being unsafe. The federal government has gone on to impose other standards, requiring such infringements on the freedom of business such as requiring cars to come with quality seatbelts, and infringements on individual freedom as mandatory seatbelt wearing. Bur the furthest step has not been taken, which would be the banning of vehicles which cause greater combined risk to occupants and other drivers. There are some universal standards, but wealth and choice can still give a person more safety at the expense of the safety of others. The individuals want is satisfied, but damage is done to the community as a whole.
This leads me back to the first quote. There is an ideal and a holier-than-thou aspect to the promotion of the wonderful idea of universal healthcare, and while I am an ardent advocate, I can't say I share the same belief about the perfections of "the European way". Universal healthcare means waiting, it means delays and slowdowns, and it means an incredible step down for those have the wealth that allows them the best. This would not (will not?) be a pleasant change for the people who have the clout and the resources to make their discontent the subject of national policy. It will hopefully, however, be a step up for the people who are going without, or who are only just getting by. In terms of total wants satisfied, the number goes down, but in terms of people with wants satisfied, the number goes up. This is a social good.
Stuff White People Like draws a parallel to public education, and this is a worthy point. There was a time, not long ago, in American public education where a system that functioned for a limited class of people was opened up, and the system broke. The event in question? Desegregation.
This is not to say that desegregation made schools worse. White people were afraid that it would, but those who had been attending the second class schools finally had a chance up, into the effective system that existed alongside the dysfunctional one. The opportunity existed for more peoples wants to be satisfied, even if it meant a change in the number of wants satisfied for the individuals. So, a shot at college for every student, instead of the segregated schools more rigid delineation between the group who were more guaranteed spots, and between those who had little option. This was a social good, but it came at the cost of individual entitlement.
People reacted to this in an unsurprising but disappointing manner. Suburban schools, which were accessed by moving out from the city (expensive), commuting to work in the city (expensive), and being part of a separate municipality (not expensive, but required work to prevent incorporation) to avoid national education mandates. A multiple-tier system re-emerged, with private schools the pinnacle, and then suburban schools the standard bet for those who could afford it. The individuals certainly acted in their best interests, and it is hard to fault people for that.
It is easier to fault people for that when one looks at the harm caused by the white flight. They took incomes with them, and with those incomes they took away the tax base that had made schools once highly functioning. I am not putting the whole public education crisis on this, but certainly this is responsible for some of the harm. Vouchers have gained popularity as a way to provide the option of flight to more people, and this will directly hurt the public education system, thereby greatly increasing the incentive for those still in it to leave, and hurting the education of those who cannot, even with vouchers, hope to go elsewhere.
A friend of mine said to me yesterday that he thinks public education is dead, that it is in its last days and that, because it is so messed up, people won't stand for it much longer. He's a lifelong Louisianan, who grew up across the lake from New Orleans and who went, like most white Louisianans I've met at college here, to a private school. This state is consistently one of the worst in education, trading places withMississippi and New Mexico regularly. Private schools, in the form of Catholic schools, have a long tradition of providing education in this state. The education is generally quality and reasonably priced. It's not the exception of the uber-wealthy, as I've stated most exceptions are. But it is an exception borne of some wealth, and it is an exception that allows for money that would go into public education to go elsewhere.
I think of universal healthcare and public education especially as social goods. I think of safe driving conditions as a social good. I'm generally a big fan of that which incurs a universal fee for a universal benefit, and feelings will not change when I'm on a long waiting list for vital surgery, or when my children have to compete with a larger group of brilliant youths for college applications, or when I buy a car that isn't the safest individually but that does little to increase the risk and danger to others. It's selfish, in both the affirming "I Matter!" way and in antisocial the "I think I Matter more than everyone else!" way to do otherwise, and while it is an easy sentiment to sympathize with, I still cannot justify it as rational, beneficial action.
Social goods are those which benefit the whole of society, and they do so at a cost applied universally, so that no segment of the population feels an undue burden or is entitled to an undue benefit. Highways are awesome, and I'm perfectly happy with the ones paid for by taxes being a bit worse than the one's with tollbooths that I am inclined to avoid. Yeah, the product is inferior than one that would be produced by a free market, but this allows those without the means to derive the same benefit from those with means. This reduces individual exceptionalism, which is fine for houses and for luxuries but is harmful for education or healthcare or a myriad of number of factors which are unified by a simple fact: they help society be a meritocracy.
A given individual will want all the benefits in society that then can accrue for themself, and a parent will want all the benefits they have accrued in their life to be transferable to their children. This is understandable, but it combines poorly with a society where wealth is commonly accepted as a standard of ones character. The children of the poor are responsible for their poverty only so much as the children of the wealthy are responsible for their wealth. Social goods aim at providing the same benefits to all citizens, and so in a world where public school was the only option, rich children and poor children would have the same quality of education at school. At home, things would be different, as this is outside the sane reach of law, but in the educational system each child would be given more or less a fair shot at the same goal. When in need of medical attention, each person would have the same chance as anyone else at that needed kidney, or at an MRI. When on the road, everyone would be about as safe as everyone else, and no one would endanger anyone else unduly at the expense of personal safety. The social goods would be a leveler, an attempt to acknowledge that everyone is created equal in the eyes of the law and the state, if not with regards to economic status.
I'm a big fan of inherent worth and dignity. I think that alone should be what entitles people to the benefits of society, and that wealth shouldn't allow one to assume and act as though they are more valuable than anyone else. It violates every notion I have of social justice.
~
Qualifier - I am not opposed to wealth per se. I think wealth is wonderful, and I am fully aware of the benefits that being in a free market society affords me. For a defense of the free market I have written, see the comment thread here (hint: I'm "the boy"). But I feel that the affect of wealth should be limited in some areas of society, and the big one omitted here is on the votes and actions of politicians. Lawrence Lessig is using this as the focus of his latest initiative, and it looks to be pretty effective. I support democracy, and I support the free market, but there is the potential to cause significant harm that most cost calculations ignore. John Fleck has a good bit about the social costs of fossil fuel here, and the potential harm caused by global warming is a big example of something left out of the supply/demand cost-benefit determination that is in place (or hypothetically could be - oil is a commodity that often has a value determined by factors other than the invisible hand of the market).
So, wealth - I think that capital and the further investment of capital into the economic system is good, and I think that some of the wealth that goes to individual exceptionalism should instead go into improving the quality of social goods. Yes, this means that those who were benefiting from exceptionalism now have to settle for inferior goods at a similar cost, but it means the quality of the good goes up for those who didn't have the option of paying more anyways, and this is why its a great leveler, and I think a benefit on the whole to society. The rest of the wealth that would be spent on things like healthcare and private school is freed up for plenty of other things, so long as the other things don't cause undue additional harm to the rest of society. This "undue additional harm" is the other half of my justification for universal healthcare and public schooling - taking monopolizing healthcare resources and taking money out of public schools (in cities, I should add) both cause harm to many at the expense of the few.
~
Disclaimer - I'm a straight white male benefiting from a middle (probably upper-middle) class upbrining, and I'm attending a private college. And yet somehow I am saying these things and probably mean them. The cynical explanation is that I don't have the greatest opinion of my peers. The optimistic explanation is that I believe everyone is as worthy as fine individuals such as myself, and that I am no more worthy than they are, for the benefits I have received. I am not, as I have hopefully established, a selfish jerk. (Not that you are if you think or act otherwise.)//for those not sarcastically inclined, this last section, and this last section only, has a dash of sarcasm.
"Though their passion for national health care runs deep, it is important to remember that white people are most in favor of it when they are healthy. They love the idea of everyone have equal access to the resources that will keep them alive, that is until they have to wait in line for an MRI.
This is very similar to the way that white people express their support for public schools when they don’t have children."
From The Straight Dope:
"Which gets us to the heart of the issue. Ban small cars? Don't be ridiculous, CAFE advocates say. We'd all be safer and use less gas to boot if we banned SUVs. A 2002 study of 84 cars, trucks, SUVs, and minivans conducted for the U.S. Department of Energy concluded that SUVs and pickup trucks had the highest combined risk of any vehicles — that is, risk to both their occupants and occupants of other cars. True, the average SUV protected its occupants better than the average small car. However, some midsize cars protected their occupants just as well as SUVs without unduly endangering the occupants of other vehicles. The study also found that the safest compact and subcompact cars were as safe for their drivers as the average SUV, and safer from a combined-risk standpoint."
~This is a nation where the right of the individual is prized. We are "rugged individualists" and personal responsibility is listed as a defining characteristic of the American Identity. It fits this pattern that we only want the best for ourselves - the best health care, the best schools, the safest car. Certainly, we're worth it, right?
Some of us are. The best, the quantifiable and marketable best, is available to some Americans. Good healthcare insurance requires a substantial investment of wealth, or a competitive job that attracts the highly qualified and the highly educated. Good education goes to the children of those with the wealth for private school or those who have the clout to select a home based on school quality, often in detached communities far removed from the problems of urban poverty, where property taxes can be low in percentage but huge in the money they collect, and where municipal integrity against the neighboring beast of a city is a right fought-for and maintained by the diligence of neighboring lawyers on their off hours. The safest car is a fortress for the individual, with clear lines of sight, an insulating and expertly-designed body, and the latest and best-rated safety equipment; it may get into a crash, but it will come out on top, protecting the precious insides like the skillfully crafted "mars lander" egg drop contraption sitting on Timmy's lap. This is what the best is, and the crude summary of its worth can be listed as "available to those making at least six figures a year, as a bare minimum".
Income and benefits are a primitive assessment of personal worth, but in the context of entitlement to the best that can be offered, its an appropriate one. The problem with using wealth to allocate benefits is that it is impersonal and it assumes that "more wealth=more deserving". The benefit of using wealth to allocate benefits is that its a system that works, and produces immediate results. It's not a system that can easily be changed, and I'm not really going to decry wealth here. But I'll say the system is flawed for another reason: it's self-centered.
Not "self-centered" in the Ayn Rand way. Well, yes, in the Ayn Rand way, but not for the normal reasons. A focus on the individual to the exclusion of all else provides the best possible for the capable individual. This is the goal of microeconomics, of the single player in a game of scarcity. What it fails to do is the best total for everyone.
Economics is, at its core, about calculating how to use scare resources to meet the greatest number of wants. Wants range from "food so I don't die" to "an Island in the pacific". The logic that equates these wants is that the wealthy have more to spend, and so have more wants to satisfy. In arguing for this simplified system, we ignore harms caused by individual actions.
This leads to the second of the above examples. The modern SUV is a remarkably safe vehicle for the people on the inside, but the combined risk of SUV + non-SUV in a crash is greater than the risk of a non-SUV crashing into a non-SUV. The SUV driver has, in the name of individual safety, protected themself at the expense of others. The total danger of crashes involving SUVs has made driving more dangerous for everyone. This is a social negative, and it is caused something that leads to two uncomfortable solutions - the individual can buy an SUV, exacerbating a process begun in the name of the self, or government can step in and say "Cars that make driving more dangerous for everyone should be banned." Neither of these is a good proposition for people who drive or government, and so the option chosen has just been to step back, at least somewhat. The person writing in to Straight Dope was specifically asking about the safety of small cars after a federal fuel efficiency standard was imposed, and why they just haven't been banned for being unsafe. The federal government has gone on to impose other standards, requiring such infringements on the freedom of business such as requiring cars to come with quality seatbelts, and infringements on individual freedom as mandatory seatbelt wearing. Bur the furthest step has not been taken, which would be the banning of vehicles which cause greater combined risk to occupants and other drivers. There are some universal standards, but wealth and choice can still give a person more safety at the expense of the safety of others. The individuals want is satisfied, but damage is done to the community as a whole.
This leads me back to the first quote. There is an ideal and a holier-than-thou aspect to the promotion of the wonderful idea of universal healthcare, and while I am an ardent advocate, I can't say I share the same belief about the perfections of "the European way". Universal healthcare means waiting, it means delays and slowdowns, and it means an incredible step down for those have the wealth that allows them the best. This would not (will not?) be a pleasant change for the people who have the clout and the resources to make their discontent the subject of national policy. It will hopefully, however, be a step up for the people who are going without, or who are only just getting by. In terms of total wants satisfied, the number goes down, but in terms of people with wants satisfied, the number goes up. This is a social good.
Stuff White People Like draws a parallel to public education, and this is a worthy point. There was a time, not long ago, in American public education where a system that functioned for a limited class of people was opened up, and the system broke. The event in question? Desegregation.
This is not to say that desegregation made schools worse. White people were afraid that it would, but those who had been attending the second class schools finally had a chance up, into the effective system that existed alongside the dysfunctional one. The opportunity existed for more peoples wants to be satisfied, even if it meant a change in the number of wants satisfied for the individuals. So, a shot at college for every student, instead of the segregated schools more rigid delineation between the group who were more guaranteed spots, and between those who had little option. This was a social good, but it came at the cost of individual entitlement.
People reacted to this in an unsurprising but disappointing manner. Suburban schools, which were accessed by moving out from the city (expensive), commuting to work in the city (expensive), and being part of a separate municipality (not expensive, but required work to prevent incorporation) to avoid national education mandates. A multiple-tier system re-emerged, with private schools the pinnacle, and then suburban schools the standard bet for those who could afford it. The individuals certainly acted in their best interests, and it is hard to fault people for that.
It is easier to fault people for that when one looks at the harm caused by the white flight. They took incomes with them, and with those incomes they took away the tax base that had made schools once highly functioning. I am not putting the whole public education crisis on this, but certainly this is responsible for some of the harm. Vouchers have gained popularity as a way to provide the option of flight to more people, and this will directly hurt the public education system, thereby greatly increasing the incentive for those still in it to leave, and hurting the education of those who cannot, even with vouchers, hope to go elsewhere.
A friend of mine said to me yesterday that he thinks public education is dead, that it is in its last days and that, because it is so messed up, people won't stand for it much longer. He's a lifelong Louisianan, who grew up across the lake from New Orleans and who went, like most white Louisianans I've met at college here, to a private school. This state is consistently one of the worst in education, trading places withMississippi and New Mexico regularly. Private schools, in the form of Catholic schools, have a long tradition of providing education in this state. The education is generally quality and reasonably priced. It's not the exception of the uber-wealthy, as I've stated most exceptions are. But it is an exception borne of some wealth, and it is an exception that allows for money that would go into public education to go elsewhere.
I think of universal healthcare and public education especially as social goods. I think of safe driving conditions as a social good. I'm generally a big fan of that which incurs a universal fee for a universal benefit, and feelings will not change when I'm on a long waiting list for vital surgery, or when my children have to compete with a larger group of brilliant youths for college applications, or when I buy a car that isn't the safest individually but that does little to increase the risk and danger to others. It's selfish, in both the affirming "I Matter!" way and in antisocial the "I think I Matter more than everyone else!" way to do otherwise, and while it is an easy sentiment to sympathize with, I still cannot justify it as rational, beneficial action.
Social goods are those which benefit the whole of society, and they do so at a cost applied universally, so that no segment of the population feels an undue burden or is entitled to an undue benefit. Highways are awesome, and I'm perfectly happy with the ones paid for by taxes being a bit worse than the one's with tollbooths that I am inclined to avoid. Yeah, the product is inferior than one that would be produced by a free market, but this allows those without the means to derive the same benefit from those with means. This reduces individual exceptionalism, which is fine for houses and for luxuries but is harmful for education or healthcare or a myriad of number of factors which are unified by a simple fact: they help society be a meritocracy.
A given individual will want all the benefits in society that then can accrue for themself, and a parent will want all the benefits they have accrued in their life to be transferable to their children. This is understandable, but it combines poorly with a society where wealth is commonly accepted as a standard of ones character. The children of the poor are responsible for their poverty only so much as the children of the wealthy are responsible for their wealth. Social goods aim at providing the same benefits to all citizens, and so in a world where public school was the only option, rich children and poor children would have the same quality of education at school. At home, things would be different, as this is outside the sane reach of law, but in the educational system each child would be given more or less a fair shot at the same goal. When in need of medical attention, each person would have the same chance as anyone else at that needed kidney, or at an MRI. When on the road, everyone would be about as safe as everyone else, and no one would endanger anyone else unduly at the expense of personal safety. The social goods would be a leveler, an attempt to acknowledge that everyone is created equal in the eyes of the law and the state, if not with regards to economic status.
I'm a big fan of inherent worth and dignity. I think that alone should be what entitles people to the benefits of society, and that wealth shouldn't allow one to assume and act as though they are more valuable than anyone else. It violates every notion I have of social justice.
~
Qualifier - I am not opposed to wealth per se. I think wealth is wonderful, and I am fully aware of the benefits that being in a free market society affords me. For a defense of the free market I have written, see the comment thread here (hint: I'm "the boy"). But I feel that the affect of wealth should be limited in some areas of society, and the big one omitted here is on the votes and actions of politicians. Lawrence Lessig is using this as the focus of his latest initiative, and it looks to be pretty effective. I support democracy, and I support the free market, but there is the potential to cause significant harm that most cost calculations ignore. John Fleck has a good bit about the social costs of fossil fuel here, and the potential harm caused by global warming is a big example of something left out of the supply/demand cost-benefit determination that is in place (or hypothetically could be - oil is a commodity that often has a value determined by factors other than the invisible hand of the market).
So, wealth - I think that capital and the further investment of capital into the economic system is good, and I think that some of the wealth that goes to individual exceptionalism should instead go into improving the quality of social goods. Yes, this means that those who were benefiting from exceptionalism now have to settle for inferior goods at a similar cost, but it means the quality of the good goes up for those who didn't have the option of paying more anyways, and this is why its a great leveler, and I think a benefit on the whole to society. The rest of the wealth that would be spent on things like healthcare and private school is freed up for plenty of other things, so long as the other things don't cause undue additional harm to the rest of society. This "undue additional harm" is the other half of my justification for universal healthcare and public schooling - taking monopolizing healthcare resources and taking money out of public schools (in cities, I should add) both cause harm to many at the expense of the few.
~
Disclaimer - I'm a straight white male benefiting from a middle (probably upper-middle) class upbrining, and I'm attending a private college. And yet somehow I am saying these things and probably mean them. The cynical explanation is that I don't have the greatest opinion of my peers. The optimistic explanation is that I believe everyone is as worthy as fine individuals such as myself, and that I am no more worthy than they are, for the benefits I have received. I am not, as I have hopefully established, a selfish jerk. (Not that you are if you think or act otherwise.)//for those not sarcastically inclined, this last section, and this last section only, has a dash of sarcasm.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Back into the Fray: Vocational Style
Today I received in physical mail an article published in the Albuquerque Journal on November 7th. The article is short, but I'm not a big fan of the journal online, so I'll just quote the meaningful bits here.
"We've created an environment where we want every child to go to a four-year collegiate program," she said. Cole said there's a stigma attached to students who don't. But recognizing that all don't want the same future "allows students to choose a nondegree track if they wish and have that be an honorable decision."
I talk a lot about education, and an idea I've voiced in class that has yet to make it to the blog is that the notion of "every student can go to college!" is wrong and flawed. First qualifier - the big deal here is the use of "every". If it was just "any", that would be fine, and it would make sense for resources to be provided. After all, no one wants to be told that their kid can't make it to college. That will lead to all kinds of nasty territory, and that is not really a productive use of energy.
But to say that every student can go to college is wrong. It is a lie, and in a school district with a dropout rate close to 50% (under, but close), it seems to me criminal.
College isn't for everyone. 25% of Americans graduate from college. Public school serves more than 25% of Americans, and while it is realistic to expect that number to increase, it is unrealistic to expect it to increase that dramatically. College is not for everyone, and in a state where cost is increasingly becoming, if not a non-issue, much less of an issue, we should be content with the job already being done on this front, and focus on other problems.
The drop-out rate, say.
A solution to this, and a solution that the Great Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce (source of the quote above; and yes, I can hardly believe I agree with them) is to provide more vocational education, and to work with the city's secondary and post-secondary institutions. This makes lots of sense, and while the GACC may well want this to create a greater pool of skilled workers to attract investment, I see this as a way to make school meaningful for kids who don't see the point to taking math up to calculus, or the point of taking algebra 2/trig at all. Or even for the kids who see no point to history. Doesn't matter - if they don't think the college prep course is meaningful, they won't find the watered-down college prep (in path not quality) regular education system meaningful. And, well, vocational school, the trades and what not, they are more immediately meaningful. They're useful. And they're useful and meaningful for the youths who hear all this praise of college, know that college isn't for them, and don't know where to go next, except straight into the job market.
It's rather pathetic to not devote any resources to them.
~
Image by Esther
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Education Reform on the Soviet Extreme
The New York Times today has a story about failing school ins California on its front page. Short column, little above the fold. The story reads, more or less, like the stories the Journal has put out, talking about how no one is really in any way satisfied with the state of things. Follow the law, repeal the law, allow transfers, have more schools that are succeeding to transfer students to, let schools take advantage of free tutoring provided after three years of failure, reorganize school radically after five years of failure (two years of allowing students to transfer out, two years of providing them with tutoring), blah de blah blah.
The problems that go into this are many, the approaches to fixing it varied. In this very space, I've discussed New Orleans, and the varied solutions New Orleans itself is pursuing. It's all well and good, but today, a different approach.
Every city, every single American city that has more than one elementary school, that has more than one middle school/junior high, that has more than one high school would have to adopt this reform.
Build one campus. One vast, vast campus, a beast of a thing, and ideally located in such an inconvenient place that every student has to be bussed in. Every student, of course, will be bussed in. No driving and dropping students off, and no student parking lots. This is to be a monolithic, homogeneous entity.
Every grade will have a building, large enough to accommodate the reasonable fluctuations in a cities population, and large enough to deal with a significant amount of expansion. In fact, each grade building, just to make this whole thing more towering, should have double the capacity expected of it. Every grade will have teachers who commit to that grade for five years or so, and an administration that has no opportunity for reassignment until ten years, at the least, have passed. Monetary recompense will be available so that advancement need not mean giving up a job one is doing well; gross negligence, high crimes, and treason will be valid reasons to get rid of people. Staff will need to be committed to this job, but at the same time there must be some form of pressure, so that this is not a guaranteed job whose performance is irrelevant to pay.
So, we have now 13 schools on a vast stretch of land, serving the entirety of a city, and each committed to a single grade, K-12. Add a 14th school, to allow for pre-k (and to allow for a lucky number of adventurers). There is no flexibility between grades for teachers, and a good deal of versatility in the education system is lost. Now every student can be reasonably expected to be educated the same. There will be no grade skipping, and there will be no honors tracking. If the school decides to have an honors system, it will have to provide a full array of educational specialty, assignment being made at a given year based on IQ test scores taken at the beginning of the year. Arbitrary, certainly, but with annual re-evaluation. Students will not be held back, and will advance with their peers, even if the class they go into is at a grade level or two lower. This hyper-tracking may be as inadvisable as no tracking, but the important thing is that the decision is made once, for the whole nation, and no greater deviance is allowed.
Test scores will be taken twice each year - once when kids enter the grade, and once when they exit. Test scores, for evaluation of teaching ability, will come from two set-ups. One will be end learning over beginning learning. The second will be from last years end learning to this years end learning, based not on "last years fourth graders were better than this years fourth graders", but based on "this years fifth graders show significant improvement over last years fourth graders". At an annual conference for all the teachers and administrators, the people who created the tests will come in and explain what the test results mean, as will knowledgeable critics. Test scores will be shown to teachers in such a way that, while individual teachers need not be implicated and blamed for having a disproportionate number of challenging students, deficits in what these kids are learning will be identified, and this knowledge can be passed on from the teachers who had the students to the 6teachers who will have the students.
The ideal here, the goal of this leviathan of education, is to create such a beast of homogeneity that as many variables are humanly possible can be controlled. This in universal nationwide so that the affluent don't flee to different cities, and that should be combined with a full shutdown of all private school, so that option is gone as well. Given nothing else, no other alternatives, people will make the public education system work, will have to make the public education system work, and inherent flaws will be dealt with and worked through by all parents and students, not just those with no other options.
This is not really an idea I endorse, but I fervently believe in giving every radical notion the full inspection that rational ideas are afforded. "Like the good archer, we aim to high, so that falling short, we still hit our goal"
And with Machiavelli paraphrased, I think it is time for me to go off to work. Tutoring, in a New Orleans school.
The problems that go into this are many, the approaches to fixing it varied. In this very space, I've discussed New Orleans, and the varied solutions New Orleans itself is pursuing. It's all well and good, but today, a different approach.
Every city, every single American city that has more than one elementary school, that has more than one middle school/junior high, that has more than one high school would have to adopt this reform.
Build one campus. One vast, vast campus, a beast of a thing, and ideally located in such an inconvenient place that every student has to be bussed in. Every student, of course, will be bussed in. No driving and dropping students off, and no student parking lots. This is to be a monolithic, homogeneous entity.
Every grade will have a building, large enough to accommodate the reasonable fluctuations in a cities population, and large enough to deal with a significant amount of expansion. In fact, each grade building, just to make this whole thing more towering, should have double the capacity expected of it. Every grade will have teachers who commit to that grade for five years or so, and an administration that has no opportunity for reassignment until ten years, at the least, have passed. Monetary recompense will be available so that advancement need not mean giving up a job one is doing well; gross negligence, high crimes, and treason will be valid reasons to get rid of people. Staff will need to be committed to this job, but at the same time there must be some form of pressure, so that this is not a guaranteed job whose performance is irrelevant to pay.
So, we have now 13 schools on a vast stretch of land, serving the entirety of a city, and each committed to a single grade, K-12. Add a 14th school, to allow for pre-k (and to allow for a lucky number of adventurers). There is no flexibility between grades for teachers, and a good deal of versatility in the education system is lost. Now every student can be reasonably expected to be educated the same. There will be no grade skipping, and there will be no honors tracking. If the school decides to have an honors system, it will have to provide a full array of educational specialty, assignment being made at a given year based on IQ test scores taken at the beginning of the year. Arbitrary, certainly, but with annual re-evaluation. Students will not be held back, and will advance with their peers, even if the class they go into is at a grade level or two lower. This hyper-tracking may be as inadvisable as no tracking, but the important thing is that the decision is made once, for the whole nation, and no greater deviance is allowed.
Test scores will be taken twice each year - once when kids enter the grade, and once when they exit. Test scores, for evaluation of teaching ability, will come from two set-ups. One will be end learning over beginning learning. The second will be from last years end learning to this years end learning, based not on "last years fourth graders were better than this years fourth graders", but based on "this years fifth graders show significant improvement over last years fourth graders". At an annual conference for all the teachers and administrators, the people who created the tests will come in and explain what the test results mean, as will knowledgeable critics. Test scores will be shown to teachers in such a way that, while individual teachers need not be implicated and blamed for having a disproportionate number of challenging students, deficits in what these kids are learning will be identified, and this knowledge can be passed on from the teachers who had the students to the 6teachers who will have the students.
The ideal here, the goal of this leviathan of education, is to create such a beast of homogeneity that as many variables are humanly possible can be controlled. This in universal nationwide so that the affluent don't flee to different cities, and that should be combined with a full shutdown of all private school, so that option is gone as well. Given nothing else, no other alternatives, people will make the public education system work, will have to make the public education system work, and inherent flaws will be dealt with and worked through by all parents and students, not just those with no other options.
This is not really an idea I endorse, but I fervently believe in giving every radical notion the full inspection that rational ideas are afforded. "Like the good archer, we aim to high, so that falling short, we still hit our goal"
And with Machiavelli paraphrased, I think it is time for me to go off to work. Tutoring, in a New Orleans school.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Letting Schools Fail
This is brief, and with luck I'll get to expand on it later. Education in New Orleans is in an experimental stage right now, and lots going on that I keep finding out about is worth taking note of.
I'll go with something that is a little bleak. School are now getting closer and closer to a business motive, not yet attached to a true profit motive, but getting close . Money is linked to tests, schools that produce kids who do well on tests continue to get money, and in New Orleans, there are a few dozen different approaches being presented as to how these schools work. The Cowen Institute is emerging as a big player, and Cowen (while president of Tulane) is a business man. His ideas and his input for how to make things work come from the world of business, and so we are seeing an interesting new direction. At its best, schools function like franchises, and are given enough freedoms to fix problems, initiate new programs, and act quickly. At its worst, schools can fail to the point of what would be bankruptcy, at which point in the business world the failed model is culled from the herd, and the customers go elsewhere.
In order for this new experiment of New Orleans schools to succeed, the best has to be differentiated from the worst by some sort of culling process, and the end result of this is two-fold - A new, functioning system is designed, and some students who had the misfortune to go to failed schools are screwed. For the business model to work, this has to be present, and at the moment I'm looking at both a capitalist dream and a civic failure, that may well look like a success for both in eighty years, but it will take the death of every student screwed over to leave this as a clean slate.
//angst
I'll go with something that is a little bleak. School are now getting closer and closer to a business motive, not yet attached to a true profit motive, but getting close . Money is linked to tests, schools that produce kids who do well on tests continue to get money, and in New Orleans, there are a few dozen different approaches being presented as to how these schools work. The Cowen Institute is emerging as a big player, and Cowen (while president of Tulane) is a business man. His ideas and his input for how to make things work come from the world of business, and so we are seeing an interesting new direction. At its best, schools function like franchises, and are given enough freedoms to fix problems, initiate new programs, and act quickly. At its worst, schools can fail to the point of what would be bankruptcy, at which point in the business world the failed model is culled from the herd, and the customers go elsewhere.
In order for this new experiment of New Orleans schools to succeed, the best has to be differentiated from the worst by some sort of culling process, and the end result of this is two-fold - A new, functioning system is designed, and some students who had the misfortune to go to failed schools are screwed. For the business model to work, this has to be present, and at the moment I'm looking at both a capitalist dream and a civic failure, that may well look like a success for both in eighty years, but it will take the death of every student screwed over to leave this as a clean slate.
//angst
Saturday, July 28, 2007
New to Plastic Manzikert?
Here is a rough and quick guide - the tags are below, and everything I've blogged will fall there somewhere.
I recommend the education posts, as they seem to be the most relevant. Or at least, I can act the most authoritative in them.
I recommend the education posts, as they seem to be the most relevant. Or at least, I can act the most authoritative in them.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
No Child Left Behind
I've finally got around to signing up for my Tulane classes. As of this writing, I've signed up for exactly one, called "No Child Left Behind". The class aims to take advantage of New Orleans as a city that has consistently some of the worst public schools in the nation, and see how NCLB is affecting that. It also means doing volunteer grunt work in the schools, which will hopefully be as worthwhile as it is frustrating.
While I had to turn down a Graphic Novel class to take this one, I will still probably benefit in being able to look at APS with comparison to something worse. (Too much Burque Babble hurts the optimism)
While I had to turn down a Graphic Novel class to take this one, I will still probably benefit in being able to look at APS with comparison to something worse. (Too much Burque Babble hurts the optimism)
Friday, June 22, 2007
Private Education Conundrum
I'm going to start this off in a very unusual direction for me - a Milton Friedman quote, which is now third-hand, from a newspaper editorial to me "Government excels at getting money and throwing it at a problem - government fails at spending that money efficiently"
Government money, allocated to private schools, would most likely be able to replace the public education system at similar cost, and would do so in a way that probably made schools, on the whole, better, and in a way that allowed poor performing schools to be ended and replaced with schools that could do better. The private sector is really, really good at eliminating what doesn't work, and so long as school performance was tied to school accountability, the system would self-correct and improve itself.
The problem with this is that even the fastest-moving industries take time to establish themselves and become efficient, and even given a perfect system at the end of ten years, any given school system will have failed a huge amount of kids. In a good-sized city, quite possibly in the tens of thousands.
Immediate self interest will work against any major changes in education, and while the long-term benefits everyone, the short term hurts too many people for it to be politically feasible.
Except, say, in a city like New Orleans, where the system itself was already terrible, and the opportunity exists for it to rebuild in stratling new directions. Charter schools ,not private or public mainstream, but still...
(Blog Post inspired by a segment from NOW that will be online sometime in the next week)
Government money, allocated to private schools, would most likely be able to replace the public education system at similar cost, and would do so in a way that probably made schools, on the whole, better, and in a way that allowed poor performing schools to be ended and replaced with schools that could do better. The private sector is really, really good at eliminating what doesn't work, and so long as school performance was tied to school accountability, the system would self-correct and improve itself.
The problem with this is that even the fastest-moving industries take time to establish themselves and become efficient, and even given a perfect system at the end of ten years, any given school system will have failed a huge amount of kids. In a good-sized city, quite possibly in the tens of thousands.
Immediate self interest will work against any major changes in education, and while the long-term benefits everyone, the short term hurts too many people for it to be politically feasible.
Except, say, in a city like New Orleans, where the system itself was already terrible, and the opportunity exists for it to rebuild in stratling new directions. Charter schools ,not private or public mainstream, but still...
(Blog Post inspired by a segment from NOW that will be online sometime in the next week)
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
The United States Public Service Academy
This, when it is completed and effectively exists as its own institution, is going to be a boon for the nation.
I can see nothing wrong with this proposal and really it seems to be an incredible repository of good. Civil service is often the least-gloriously of work for the government, but elevating it to at least the position of military service is a good idea. This is a beautiful thing, and I can only hope it makes it through congress quickly and safely.
I can see nothing wrong with this proposal and really it seems to be an incredible repository of good. Civil service is often the least-gloriously of work for the government, but elevating it to at least the position of military service is a good idea. This is a beautiful thing, and I can only hope it makes it through congress quickly and safely.
Sunday, May 6, 2007
Revised Public Education Entry, Part 2
A meaningful education should, as its very goal, have everyone leaving high school with a knowledge set that would be valuable to the individual. Knowing, however the very basics of an intended field of college study would do a great amount of good to a college-bound student. Having the vocational skills necessary for entering the job market at a pay level where a small family could be sustained (until further education or promotion) would be an immensely valuable situation for the many people who leave high school with no intention of going on to higher education (a segment of the population seemingly ignored by most education officials). A system that forces the job-bound student to take college prep classes instead of vocational ones robs that student of the promise of public school, and forcing a college-bound student to take nothing but vocational skills would be a handicap in future educational endeavors. Both students have distinct needs with little overlap, and if they are going to be in the same system, they will both need a way to make that system work for their own benefit. The foundation of a system that encompasses these two needs (and the other diverse needs public school systems aim to satisfy) is valid, meaningful choice.
Schools are limited by funds, and public schools especially are limited on the amount of funding they get per student. Classes in subject areas that can sustain large class sizes are guaranteed to exist, and classes that cannot attract forty students (out of a student body of between one and three thousand) consistently, year after year, are not going to be offered. Every spring, students are handed course catalogues with many, many interesting options, only to find out that their chosen class didn’t make it, and so they will, instead, have to settle for an overflow option.
Language classes are a good example of this. Having German, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, French, Italian, and Latin offered at public school make sense, but not every school can offer every language, and so by some students everywhere are disenfranchised by this. APS has already seen the potential problem this could pose, and so some language classes (Chinese and Japanese) are available to all of APS high schoolers at CEC. This is a good use of resources, and helps to ensure that the classes are sizable, and the students can take the languages they want. It's a step in the right direction.
Now, the right direction, the huge, sweeping change, is fun. With something close to 90,000 students, surely a class can be drawn for almost every conceivable subject. With eleven high-school campuses, there is enough room to house all the classes that could be formed. And really, with the tax base of a sizable city, the resources of a university, and the experience with dual-credit programs at the local community college, it should be entirely possible to change the
My vision is this - a vast, multi-campus school, where upperclassmen especially (and maybe lower classmen) are allowed to either pursue the standard educational path, a more specialized course that will let them graduate with some college credit, to the point even of maybe a minor degree, or to get job training and job experience that will make dropping out foolish, because the kids would be paid and improving while attending school.
This system, this education-by-choice, would allow students with drive to specialize, students without it to go through high school as before, and students as a whole to be allowed access to the education they want. Giving people what they want, in ways that allow for a more productive society, can hardly be something wrong.
Revised Public Education Entry, Part 1
Here's my thinking, more fleshed out.
Like anyone who has spent any significant time in High School, I’ve had my fair share of dealing with inefficiency and the slow, unproductive toiling of bureaucratic organs. Certainly, the capstone of most peoples public education should be a good, valid system, and in this entity exists the potential for a better, more meaningful system – choice. Any system that is not custom-tailored to a specific person needs to have a degree of choice inherent to be useful, and this is built on a very simple premise - there is no ideal solution for everyone. Totalitarianism works really well for the dictator, and gets progressively worse as you go down. Since not everyone can be the dictator, the only path that makes sense is one that empowers all people to make choices equally (sure, being emperor would be fun, but it makes much more sense to manage one's own affairs, and let others manage theirs).
Currently, high schools offer electives, a limited variety dependent on the resources available at a given school. In theory, every class taken by a high school student is taken by choice. In reality, this is less true, as the credits from all classes are to be matched with required credits, classes in topics that have been deemed necessary (generally by the school board) for people to know to function in the world. While this certainly makes sense, it's both a nanny-state and a totalitarian model. It offers choice, and then co-opts most of that choice and replaces it with state-chosen options, so that we don’t go around willy-nilly taking classes in computers and art without having spent any time doing the respectable schoolwork of factoring polynomials. What is deemed required skills for proficiency in society at large is often a poor match to what actually is required for proficiency in society at large.
It’s easy enough to see how requirements can veer from reality. I, me, myself, am of the opinion that everyone should know who the identity of Gavrilo Princip before graduating from high school. This information affects only those who would go on to be history majors, which, of the general population, is not going to be a large number. This requirement would be deemed absurd, and no one would benefit from it being in place.
The problem becomes more muddled when topics like math are brought up. Math is a vital skill, and this is not really a point of contention. What math should be taught, the little detail of “Should everyone take Algebra 2 or statistics?” is a valid issue. Fortunately, schools have a way around this, by simply having a requirement for years of math, with a starting point for what years of math will count. In theory, everyone who wanted to take statistics instead of Algebra 2 (quite possibly reasoning that understanding the numbers presented to us on a daily basis is more likely to be useful in most careers than the knowledge need to go on into higher math) would be able to, so long as the class was provided.
Algebra 2 teachers are required at high school. Statistics teachers are a budgetary luxury, available only to the few, if any. Choice, being in theory presented, is not offered in substance itself. Choice, the very essence of both democracy and capitalism, should be present in a public education system in a democratic and capitalist land. Any attempt at reforming education systems should be made with choice at the very forefront of everyone’s mind, radical changes should be necessary to allow for more productive use of resources, so that allowing people to study what they themselves deem worthwhile (who, of all people, should know what they need/want to study) is not only possible, but is commonplace.
Sunday, February 4, 2007
Public Education
This is the result of just about thirteen years in public school (because yes, Kindergarten counts), and almost one year of some community college. Also, a life spent trying to figure out the point of school, and a good chunk of time spent trying to make education seem meaningful. Enough disclaimers.
There is no ideal solution for everyone - totalitarianism works really well for the dictator, and gets progressively worse as you go down. Once that is accepted, the only path that makes sense is one that empowers all people to make choices equally. Sure, being emperor would be fun, but it makes much more sense to manage one's own affairs, and let others manage theirs.
Currently, high schools offer electives, a limited variety dependent on the resources available at a given school. The credits from these are to be matched with required credits, classes in topics that has been deemed necessary (generally by the school board) for people to know to function in the world. While this certainly makes sense, it's both a nanny-state and a totalitarian model. You must have four years of English and two and a half years of history and three years of math to be considered proficient in this world. now, I personally believe that everyone should know who Hamilcar Barca is, but I can't force that as a standard upon people. It isn't necessary for life, and who am I to say that it is?
A meaningful education would, instead, have everyone leaving high school with a knowledge set that would be valuable to the individual. Now, knowing about Hamilcar Barca would make sense if the student was going on to study, in depth, ancient history, with an emphasis in Carthage. Given the millions of high schoolers, I think that as a requirement something like that would make absolutely no sense. Knowing, however, the very basics of an intended field of college study, or having the vocational skills necessary for entering the job market at a pay level where a small family could be sustained (until further education or promotion) would be an immensely valuable situation. Likewise, having German, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, French, Italian, and Latin offered at public school make sense, but having them offered at every school is a waste of resources. APS has already seen the potential problem this could pose, and so some language classes (Chinese and Japanese) are available to all of APS high schoolers at CEC. This is a good use of resources, and helps to ensure that the classes are sizable, and the students can take the languages they want. It's a step in the right direction.
Now, the right direction, the huge, sweeping change, is fun. With something close to 90,000 students, surely a class can be drawn for almost every conceivable subject. With eleven high-school campuses, there is enough room to house all the classes that could be formed. And really, with the tax base of a sizable city, the resources of a university, and the experience with dual-credit programs at the local community college, it should be entirely possible to change the way High School works in Albuquerque.
My vision is this - a vast, multi-campus school, where upperclassmen especially (and maybe lower classmen) are allowed to either pursue the standard educational path, a more specialized course that will let them graduate with some college credit, to the point even of maybe a minor degree, or to get job training and job experience that will make dropping out foolish, because the kids would be paid and improving while attending school.
It'd be a huge undertaking, and a transportation nightmare, but it's the dream...
There is no ideal solution for everyone - totalitarianism works really well for the dictator, and gets progressively worse as you go down. Once that is accepted, the only path that makes sense is one that empowers all people to make choices equally. Sure, being emperor would be fun, but it makes much more sense to manage one's own affairs, and let others manage theirs.
Currently, high schools offer electives, a limited variety dependent on the resources available at a given school. The credits from these are to be matched with required credits, classes in topics that has been deemed necessary (generally by the school board) for people to know to function in the world. While this certainly makes sense, it's both a nanny-state and a totalitarian model. You must have four years of English and two and a half years of history and three years of math to be considered proficient in this world. now, I personally believe that everyone should know who Hamilcar Barca is, but I can't force that as a standard upon people. It isn't necessary for life, and who am I to say that it is?
A meaningful education would, instead, have everyone leaving high school with a knowledge set that would be valuable to the individual. Now, knowing about Hamilcar Barca would make sense if the student was going on to study, in depth, ancient history, with an emphasis in Carthage. Given the millions of high schoolers, I think that as a requirement something like that would make absolutely no sense. Knowing, however, the very basics of an intended field of college study, or having the vocational skills necessary for entering the job market at a pay level where a small family could be sustained (until further education or promotion) would be an immensely valuable situation. Likewise, having German, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, French, Italian, and Latin offered at public school make sense, but having them offered at every school is a waste of resources. APS has already seen the potential problem this could pose, and so some language classes (Chinese and Japanese) are available to all of APS high schoolers at CEC. This is a good use of resources, and helps to ensure that the classes are sizable, and the students can take the languages they want. It's a step in the right direction.
Now, the right direction, the huge, sweeping change, is fun. With something close to 90,000 students, surely a class can be drawn for almost every conceivable subject. With eleven high-school campuses, there is enough room to house all the classes that could be formed. And really, with the tax base of a sizable city, the resources of a university, and the experience with dual-credit programs at the local community college, it should be entirely possible to change the way High School works in Albuquerque.
My vision is this - a vast, multi-campus school, where upperclassmen especially (and maybe lower classmen) are allowed to either pursue the standard educational path, a more specialized course that will let them graduate with some college credit, to the point even of maybe a minor degree, or to get job training and job experience that will make dropping out foolish, because the kids would be paid and improving while attending school.
It'd be a huge undertaking, and a transportation nightmare, but it's the dream...
Thursday, February 1, 2007
Public Education
I'd been developing this idea for a while, and the fully-fleshed out version will be here soon as I'm rested. The basic premise is this - change APS from 14 separate high schools with a lot of redundancy into one 14-campus high-school system, that could function more as a very large-scale community college, and less as a high school.
Feedback would be appreciated, but that'd require both readers and probably the full post.
Feedback would be appreciated, but that'd require both readers and probably the full post.
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