The Only thing the Dept of Education should do
There are two topics to this essay: education and federalism. I am expert in neither. But, federalism is a topic everyone is free to opine upon, and one of the problems with education is that non-experts have ceded too much ground to the so-called experts.
We owe the founding fathers many debts and one of the biggest ones is federalism. Montana is blessedly different from Alabama, and vice versa. They are both blessedly different from Massachusetts, and Kansas, and California, and so on and so on. But, it is true that people in Montana can be affected by chronically bad schools in Alabama, and vice versa. It is truly in all of our interests that all of our kids get a good education. If things are as bad as some say, then the whole country might rightfully get the urge to do something about it. Well, it just so happens that I have an idea. I know what the federal government should do with its money and what it shouldn’t do.
It shouldn’t pass out a lot of money with lots of strings attached. It should pass out a lot of money with only one string attached. The string will itself cost money and the minimum the Feds should pass out is the cost of the string. How much over that minimum is not the subject of this essay.
What is the string? It is testing the snort out of our children, twice every single year. Twice? You bet. Twice. Once at the beginning of the year; once at the end. Compare the results. The difference is a crude measurement of what the student learned during the year. Not a precise measurement, a crude measurement. Not because the test is crude – the test would hopefully be the best money could buy. It would be a crude measurement because that is the best any test could do.
What should the Federal Government insist be done with all these test results? It should insist that they be made public. The only thing withheld would be the child’s name. This is a perfect use of computers and statisticians and the Internet. Any parent, at any time, could log on and find out exactly (or I should say, as exactly as crude tests can determine) how much learning is taking place in their child’s school, and in particular, in their child’s teacher’s class.
That’s right. These results will be broken down by (among other things) teacher.
Now, before answering all the whiners regarding all the defects of such a plan, I want to get back to federalism. The Feds make the money for testing available, and that is it. If a state, or a school board, wants to turn the money down, it is their choice. Let the locals explain to their local voters why they do not want free information on how the schools are doing. Don’t let them use the excuse that the test is no good. The Feds would not mandate what test to use. The locals can pick any test they want. The Feds would have only three conditions. One, there must be two test times a year. Remember, these tests are not simply to measure a student’s skills and knowledge; they are to measure the improvement in skills and knowledge over time. Two, the results must be fully accessible on-line (except for student names). Three, among the many ways the results can be sorted and displayed, one of which must be by teacher. That’s it. All the other choices regarding the tests, and there would be plenty of such choices, would be made by the locals.
This last condition is not because the identity of the teacher is the most important variable (although it probably is); it is because that is the one variable the Feds cannot trust the locals to include on their own. Simply put, the teachers unions have too much power over local school boards.
So much for federalism, now back to education. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know there are a ton of things that a teacher has no control over that affects how their students do on tests. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, therefore, it is not fair to base a teacher’s salary, or bonus, or right to keep her job, on something that she does not fully control.
I have two responses to such legitimate concerns. (Legitimate does not equal predominate.) The first is: tough. One of the things teachers should be teaching their students is that life is not fair; never was fair; never was meant to be fair. They should be teaching their students that material success in life is achieved by measurable results, not good intentions and not noble efforts. Honest hard work and honest results. That is the name of the game. Can anybody name any other occupation that would permit someone to produce bad results year after year after year without negative consequences?
The second response would be that I trust school boards’ ability to take all those other factors into account. I would have no problem with each test having a section that records any educational variable deemed relevant. The tests should note if “old math,” or “new math” is being taught; what textbooks are being used; how many students are in the class; the English-language proficiency of each student; as well as other socio-economic factors. But, bad results are bad results. If the children entrusted to a teacher do not acquire any appreciable amount of new knowledge and/or skills during the school year, the school board, and parents, should be informed.
This is sounding like I blame teachers for everything. I don’t. I only blame teachers (or more accurately, their unions) for their chronic opposition to efforts to gather objective data on how well they are doing their jobs. Education needs fixing; and gathering and disseminating objective data is central to any fix.
What should local school boards do with these test results? They should make informed decisions designed to improve education. Nothing more, nothing less. Maybe they will raise taxes to hire more teachers in order to reduce class sizes. Maybe they will give bonuses to successful teachers and principals, fire terrible teachers and principals, and identify other teachers and principals that could use help. I predict they will be forced to do these things. Teachers that know they are the best are going to demand to be paid more. Teachers that are exposed to be terrible are going to find that parents will refuse to give them control over their children for nine months. But, regardless of the accuracy of my predictions, aren’t decisions made with more information likely to be better than decisions made with less information?
This essay is not advocating bonus pay for teachers or any other particular management technique. It advocates only that truly useful data be collected, analyzed, and published. It also insists that the testing data will not be truly useful unless it is comprehensive and done at both the start and end of the school year. What happens after than I will leave to the experts.
C E Sutton
We owe the founding fathers many debts and one of the biggest ones is federalism. Montana is blessedly different from Alabama, and vice versa. They are both blessedly different from Massachusetts, and Kansas, and California, and so on and so on. But, it is true that people in Montana can be affected by chronically bad schools in Alabama, and vice versa. It is truly in all of our interests that all of our kids get a good education. If things are as bad as some say, then the whole country might rightfully get the urge to do something about it. Well, it just so happens that I have an idea. I know what the federal government should do with its money and what it shouldn’t do.
It shouldn’t pass out a lot of money with lots of strings attached. It should pass out a lot of money with only one string attached. The string will itself cost money and the minimum the Feds should pass out is the cost of the string. How much over that minimum is not the subject of this essay.
What is the string? It is testing the snort out of our children, twice every single year. Twice? You bet. Twice. Once at the beginning of the year; once at the end. Compare the results. The difference is a crude measurement of what the student learned during the year. Not a precise measurement, a crude measurement. Not because the test is crude – the test would hopefully be the best money could buy. It would be a crude measurement because that is the best any test could do.
What should the Federal Government insist be done with all these test results? It should insist that they be made public. The only thing withheld would be the child’s name. This is a perfect use of computers and statisticians and the Internet. Any parent, at any time, could log on and find out exactly (or I should say, as exactly as crude tests can determine) how much learning is taking place in their child’s school, and in particular, in their child’s teacher’s class.
That’s right. These results will be broken down by (among other things) teacher.
Now, before answering all the whiners regarding all the defects of such a plan, I want to get back to federalism. The Feds make the money for testing available, and that is it. If a state, or a school board, wants to turn the money down, it is their choice. Let the locals explain to their local voters why they do not want free information on how the schools are doing. Don’t let them use the excuse that the test is no good. The Feds would not mandate what test to use. The locals can pick any test they want. The Feds would have only three conditions. One, there must be two test times a year. Remember, these tests are not simply to measure a student’s skills and knowledge; they are to measure the improvement in skills and knowledge over time. Two, the results must be fully accessible on-line (except for student names). Three, among the many ways the results can be sorted and displayed, one of which must be by teacher. That’s it. All the other choices regarding the tests, and there would be plenty of such choices, would be made by the locals.
This last condition is not because the identity of the teacher is the most important variable (although it probably is); it is because that is the one variable the Feds cannot trust the locals to include on their own. Simply put, the teachers unions have too much power over local school boards.
So much for federalism, now back to education. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know there are a ton of things that a teacher has no control over that affects how their students do on tests. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, therefore, it is not fair to base a teacher’s salary, or bonus, or right to keep her job, on something that she does not fully control.
I have two responses to such legitimate concerns. (Legitimate does not equal predominate.) The first is: tough. One of the things teachers should be teaching their students is that life is not fair; never was fair; never was meant to be fair. They should be teaching their students that material success in life is achieved by measurable results, not good intentions and not noble efforts. Honest hard work and honest results. That is the name of the game. Can anybody name any other occupation that would permit someone to produce bad results year after year after year without negative consequences?
The second response would be that I trust school boards’ ability to take all those other factors into account. I would have no problem with each test having a section that records any educational variable deemed relevant. The tests should note if “old math,” or “new math” is being taught; what textbooks are being used; how many students are in the class; the English-language proficiency of each student; as well as other socio-economic factors. But, bad results are bad results. If the children entrusted to a teacher do not acquire any appreciable amount of new knowledge and/or skills during the school year, the school board, and parents, should be informed.
This is sounding like I blame teachers for everything. I don’t. I only blame teachers (or more accurately, their unions) for their chronic opposition to efforts to gather objective data on how well they are doing their jobs. Education needs fixing; and gathering and disseminating objective data is central to any fix.
What should local school boards do with these test results? They should make informed decisions designed to improve education. Nothing more, nothing less. Maybe they will raise taxes to hire more teachers in order to reduce class sizes. Maybe they will give bonuses to successful teachers and principals, fire terrible teachers and principals, and identify other teachers and principals that could use help. I predict they will be forced to do these things. Teachers that know they are the best are going to demand to be paid more. Teachers that are exposed to be terrible are going to find that parents will refuse to give them control over their children for nine months. But, regardless of the accuracy of my predictions, aren’t decisions made with more information likely to be better than decisions made with less information?
This essay is not advocating bonus pay for teachers or any other particular management technique. It advocates only that truly useful data be collected, analyzed, and published. It also insists that the testing data will not be truly useful unless it is comprehensive and done at both the start and end of the school year. What happens after than I will leave to the experts.
C E Sutton