George Will and “Failing” schools

Here’s another letter to the editor that probably wasn’t published.  This was in response to George Will’s “Tall Order for a Few Federal Dollars”.  It was published in February 2001.  The only easily available copy I could find was from the Southeastern Missourian, 2001-02-03 at
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1893&dat=20010203&id=H60fAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ftYEAAAAIBAJ&pg=2443,4795189

The text of my letter, dated 2001-02-03 follows.

I am amazed how ideology leads a deep thinker like George Will to be as shallow as he is in “Tall Order for a Few Federal Dollars”.

At the beginning of his article, he talks about “failing schools” and how transfers to other public schools or vouchers to private schools would allow students to leave these failing schools.  He goes on to list what factors lead to students’ success but he says that schools can only influence one of those factors and that additional resources won’t change any of these factors.

He also compares the “success” of private schools to the “failure” of public schools but with a superficial assumption that the student populations are identical.

He gives a measure of the skills of public school teachers without examining whether his measure is appropriate to what the teachers are doing.  He also links that measure to a comparison of “cognition” of American students with that of students in other developed countries.

Furthermore, he uses that measure to show that class size won’t make any difference.

From his article and from a couple hours of newspaper and Web research, I see a different picture.

First, if students are allowed to leave “failing schools”, which students will leave?  The “failing” students who are most in need of “better” teaching, or the successful students who have the advantage of the five factors of
- number of parents in home
- days absent from school
- hours spent watching television
- quantity and quality of reading matter in home
- amount of homework

If the successful students leave, won’t the failing schools fail even more?  If the failing students leave, won’t they be taking their problems to other schools and lead those schools to “fail”?

Will ignores that additional resources can change four of the five factors, including the only one he says that the schools can control - amount of homework.  If classes are smaller, then teachers can give and check more homework.  Schools can influence absenteeism with truant officers and counselors, neither of which work for free.  Schools can help reduce hours spent watching television by providing more after school activities; activities like sports, music, and theatre cost money in material and staff time.  Schools can provide a quantity of quality reading matter, but books and librarians cost money.  The only factor additional resources can’t change is the number of parents.

Will writes that most failing schools serve inner-city children but inner-city Catholic schools “do better with fewer resources”.  Are the public schools and the Catholic schools serving students with the same lack of success factors?  Because some parents choose to send their children to Catholic schools, might more of the success factors be present in those families?  Will doesn’t raise this question.  Furthermore, the Catholic schools can select their students; the public schools have to take all students.

Will states that “38 percent of American teachers had college majors in academic subjects” and implies that majoring in education makes a teacher inadequately trained.  However, most schools don’t get deeply into “academic subjects” until junior high.  Many elementary teachers teach a wide range of subjects, especially in the lower grades.   In 1997 there were about 1.2 million secondary public and private teachers and about 1.85 million elementary teachers.  That means about 39% of the teachers were junior and high school teachers.  That is rather close to the percent of teachers who had a major in an academic subject.

Will relates his perception that too few teachers had academic majors to how “American students’ cognition [compares] with students around the developed world”.  Again, is he comparing similar groups of students?  The Department of Education warns in Digest of Education Statistics 1999, Chapter 6 - International Comparisons of Education (http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2000/digest99/chapter6.html)  “...international data users should be cautioned about the many problems of definition and reporting involved in the collection of data about the educational systems in the world.”  Could it be that different kinds of students are being measured in different countries?  For example, are the students being measured in some countries only those on an academic track as opposed to all students in the U.S.?  If all students are being measured in those other countries, do they have the same mix of socio-economic classes as the U.S. does?  More specifically, is there a large portion of students who lack some of the five significant success factors?

Finally, Will claims small class size “simply increases the attention each pupil gets from an inadequately trained teacher.”  The Student Achievement Guarantee in Education program in Wisconsin has shown that smaller class sizes give better results (Duluth News-Tribune, Jan. 18, 2001).  As one teacher put it, with larger classes “it's a lot of tying shoes”.

Follow up email to the Washington Post:

In today's Star Tribune I found a more factual rebuttal than mine to George Will's Feb. 1st column on education.  It is about the ACE (A Commitment to Excellence) program in Minneapolis.  [The link I had no longer works.  The article was from 2001-02-04.]  In short, it is about a program that targets at-risk black males to give them tutoring and counseling to help them succeed.  The $500,000 program is sponsored by the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis Public Schools, and Hennepin County Children and Family Services.

You can find a link to the start of the article at http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-69979742.html.

Opposition to the EPA is just a GOP plot to dismantle public education

Mercury, lead, and several other pollutants are known for reducing cognitive function. If these pollutants are kept at high levels, then many children will not perform well in school. If many children don't perform well, it will demonstrate that public schools are failing. Thus, private interests, which always do "better" will take over. Of course, they can reject those children adversely affected by pollutants.

I posted the above as a comment to "The Latest G.O.P. Temper Tantrum", Robert B. Semple, Jr., New York Times, 2013-05-09.  Temper tantrum is the description Semple gave the walkout by some G.O.P. Senators from the hearings for the confirmation of Gina McCarthy as the head of the EPA.  See also "Lead and 'failing' schools".

E. Nowak of Illinois responded to my comment with

"And the closer people live to factories, the more toxins they breath in. The rich, always live far, far away from the industrial centers."

But we don't even have to live close to factories to be introduced to toxins.  What are all the pesticides used in agriculture doing to us.  What are the neoniconitides used to "kill aphids and other crop-destroying insects" doing to us?  These are nerve poisons that disrupt neural activity.  They are put into seeds and "become incorporated in the tissues of the adult plant".  If we eat these plants what's to guarantee that the neurotoxins won't be affecting us?  See "Honeybee die-off brings 'Silent Spring' back to mind", William Souder, Star Tribune, 2013-05-12.  In other words, are these neurotoxins affecting the performance of school children?

I'm sorry if you think I'm a scold about free markets and Adam Smith's "invisible hand", but we really have to hold to account those who corrupt both ideas to hide their own self-interest against the public good.  Please tell your friends about

"The Invisible Adam Smith" and "Humpty Dumpty and Free Markets".

Lead and "failing" schools

Public school critics blame "failing" schools on the teachers, but consider what the teachers may have to work with, especially with large classes.  Not only are there the cultural issues of not being interested in school, peer pressure not to perform, and homes where books are few or non-existent, but there is also the problem of too much lead in the environment.

"Too much lead can harm developing brains and can mean a lower IQ."

"Lower levels can reduce intelligence, impair hearing and behavior and cause other problems." "Lower levels" meaning lower than those leading to "coma, convulsions, and death".

And higher concentrations of lead are found in older or dilapidated houses.  And there are higher concentrations of older or dilapidated houses around "failing" schools.

See "More than half a million young children have lead poisoning under revised standard", Associated Press, 2013-04-04, published in the Washington Post and others.

If CEOs get incentive pay to turn a company around, why not give teachers incentive pay to turn schools around?

Who's to blame for "failing schools"?

Several weeks ago, Robin Washington, editor of the Duluth News Tribune, emailed me that he was helping on the Duluth Budgeteer and that they needed some letters.  He wrote that it should be about something in the Budgeteer.

I looked at the Budgeteer again and didn't see anything that I could write about.  I thanked Robin and wrote that I didn't have anything in mind.  Of course, later I did.  Bill Gronseth, Superintendent of the Duluth Public Schools had written a column, and I came up with the letter below.

However, somebody else did write a letter that was published.  This week I emailed Robin that if my letter had not been published this weekend, I would post it here, which precludes it being published in the Budgeteer according to its rules about prior publication.

My submission was:

A Duluth school superintendent and board decide that a major investment should be made in school buildings.  The decision is contentious with much opposition to its scope and funding.  A private company makes a nice profit from the project.

Some of the money for the project has to come from the classroom costs.

The Minnesota Legislature decides that it can't pay all the local school aid that has been scheduled.  Now there is even less money for classroom costs.

Many of those who show up to vote on a school funding referendum turn down any increase.  The additional property taxes would have made up some of the costs.

Now the Duluth Public Schools have to figure out how to provide some instruction with the funds they do have for operation.  To do so, they are increasing class sizes, lengthening class periods, and cutting out music and art which have a proven record in helping boosting learning skills.

The net result will be that fewer students will do as well in school.

Who's to blame?  The teachers, of course!

Nerd is not a dirty word at these schools

After I wrote "Nerdy words that aren't dirty" and "Blaming the schools for what they can't control" I found out that I had an article on my coffee table that sort of tied the two blog entries together and went even further.

Wired 17.09 contains "Making Geeks Cool Could Reform Education" by Daniel Roth. Several schools have found that by breaking the kid culture, by plenty of adult supervision and by having students work in teams, that kids will do much better academically and more likely to go on to college. This can even happen in schools with mostly lower-income families.

I would say that good education is going to come from the bottom up with many experiments and not from the top down with one size fits all.

If anything is going to come from the top down, it should be the President highlighting a school or a group of schools every month. No money, no laws, just a little bit of publicity.

Blaming the schools for what they can't control

Laura Rowley wrote that self-control is a better predictor of grades or other successes than IQ. See “Why I Canned the Cable”.

College students who multitask heavily fare worse than those who multitask less. See "Multitasking Muddles Brains, Even When the Computer Is Off", Brandon Keim, Wired, 2009-08-24.

If a kid lives in a two-room apartment where the TV is always on and there is at least one conversation going, will he or she do as well in school as someone who has his or her own bedroom in a reasonably quiet house?

Only the most dedicated and clever teachers can work successfully with children with little self-control living in a "busy" home. Especially when there are 30 or more kids in the same room.