Education

I know that I’m not alone in occasionally seeing postings or want-ads looking to fill certain positions and thinking, “they require a college degree for that”?

Charles Murray has taken that a step further with an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal (free link):

Imagine that America had no system of post-secondary education, and you were a member of a task force assigned to create one from scratch. One of your colleagues submits this proposal:

First, we will set up a single goal to represent educational success, which will take four years to achieve no matter what is being taught. We will attach an economic reward to it that seldom has anything to do with what has been learned. We will urge large numbers of people who do not possess adequate ability to try to achieve the goal, wait until they have spent a lot of time and money, and then deny it to them. We will stigmatize everyone who doesn’t meet the goal. We will call the goal a "BA."

You would conclude that your colleague was cruel, not to say insane. But that’s the system we have in place.

Finding a better way should be easy. The BA acquired its current inflated status by accident. Advanced skills for people with brains really did get more valuable over the course of the 20th century, but the acquisition of those skills got conflated with the existing system of colleges, which had evolved the BA for completely different purposes. […]

The solution is not better degrees, but no degrees. Young people entering the job market should have a known, trusted measure of their qualifications they can carry into job interviews. That measure should express what they know, not where they learned it or how long it took them. They need a certification, not a degree.

Mr. Murray’s solution is certification exams like the CPA exam (or, presumably, actuarial exams) for many professions, in lieu of a Bachelor’s degree.

I’m not sure that I’d necessarily agree with that – after all, the downside in standardized testing is that the only thing measure by the test is one’s ability to take the test – but I have frequently wondered if many professions that “require” college degrees wouldn’t be better served by more-efficiently delivered vocational education.

Yes, there is value to a Bachelor’s degree – it’s a sign of persistence and some level of intelligence.  There is value to the concept of students being exposed to the depths of new subjects, and hopefully being though to think.

But, when you look at how big the business of education has become, how many students leave college burdened with mountains of debt…especially if they’re entering a very specialized field…and if they can obtain student loans in the current credit environment… isn’t it natural to wonder “is this all really necessary” and “isn’t there a better way?”

Like last week’s post, this week’s topic is another on my list which I should have probably made a few notes on.  Like crime last week, there are many potential education sub-topics I could write about….and I will once again resort to a bullet list. 

• One of the more recent annoyances I’ve witnessed (admittedly from the outside, since I don’t have kids) in the past several years is a seeming over-reliance on standardized testing to measure kids’ educational progress.
   
  I do actually agree with the principle that if money is being spent on school programs, some proof should be required that the investment is worthwhile; but in the time that school systems have gone too gung-ho with testing, folks seem to have forgotten that the only thing standardized tests measure is the ability to take standardized tests.
   
• I do have to give President Bush some credit for seeking to prevent learning-disabled children from being left behind in the push to improve school systems.  However, from what I’ve seen and heard here in Connecticut, school systems being obliged to add support for disabled students have had to withdraw support for programs for gifted students.  This potential drag on the best and brightest of the upcoming generation seems rather counterintuitive to me.
   
• I have seemingly conflicting concerns on the subject of teacher pay.  On the one hand, the pittance we pay teachers in this country is appalling.   Personally, I’d love to be a teacher, but I’m not sure that I’d be comfortable trying to provide for my family on a teacher’s salary; thus, I became an actuary instead.  I’m sure that there are many other professionals who have similar thoughts.
   
  On the other hand, one of my recurring gripes with my local school system is the contractually-obliged annual raises that are granted with seemingly little improvement.  What is it that teachers unions have against pay-for-performance?
   
• Looking on to college — is it my imagination, or has college  become ridiculously expensive in the past couple of decades.  I was lucky enough to eke out of school without debt by scholarships, odd jobs, and finishing my degree in 3 years; however, it seems like recent graduates are coming out of university up to their eyeballs in debt.   Perhaps some thought should be given to alternative funding schemes…or perhaps American society needs to start asking if a 4-year university education really necessary for most jobs?

Seen in the San Francisco Chronicle:

A California appeals court ruling clamping down on homeschooling by parents without teaching credentials sent shock waves across the state this week, leaving an estimated 166,000 children as possible truants and their parents at risk of prosecution.[...]

[T]he appeals court said state law has been clear since at least 1953, when another appellate court rejected a challenge by homeschooling parents to California’s compulsory education statutes. Those statutes require children ages 6 to 18 to attend a full-time day school, either public or private, or to be instructed by a tutor who holds a state credential for the child’s grade level.

“California courts have held that … parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children,” Justice H. Walter Croskey said in the 3-0 ruling issued on Feb. 28. “Parents have a legal duty to see to their children’s schooling under the provisions of these laws.”[...]

“A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare,” the judge wrote, quoting from a 1961 case on a similar issue.

Even though I am uncomfortable with the motivations of at least one stereotype of a typical homeschooler, I find this ruling rather disturbing on several grounds.

First, given how bad some public schools can be (especially if a student has special needs or is gifted), I’d be very concerned if a parent didn’t have as a fallback option the ability to homeschool his/her children. If the best option available is homeschooling, and if some reasonable minimum standard of education and a common curriculum are being verfiably met, then virtually nothing should be held aside as an avenue for a parent to provide the best education they can for a child.

Second, I have from time to time considered becoming a teacher. The low pay and the amount of B.S. required in getting fully credentialed have been the factors that have kept me from heading down that path. To require that everyone who teaches a child be encumbered with that B.S. is very troubling to me.

Third, on general principle, I object to unnecessary intrusions of the government into citizens’ private lives. It seems to me that part of that includes accepting that parents have broad latitude in deciding how they will raise their kids. I may disagree with some of the choices they make…but I’m OK with that, within reason, if it means that the same lassiez-faire attitude is adopted about how I might raise my hypothetical/future kids.

And finally, while the attitude is understandable especially given the era in which it was formulated, that last quoted paragraph above just seems creepy to me. A public education should not have as a primary purpose the indoctrination of possibly blind loyalty to the state. It should be limited to providing a common base from which a child can eventually become a productive member of society.

Presumably a part of such an education would involve exposure to quite a bit of information about our country’s government, history, and society…the good and the bad. If done right, I’d like to believe that a child would come to appreciate the U.S., have a healthy respect for its advantages, an awareness of the blemishes in our past, and have some opinion about the pros and cons of different ways we can move forward.

But the state’s promulgation of loyalty and patriotism indoctrination seems just a little too totalitarian for my tastes.

While waiting in a doctor’s office Monday, my wife showed me an article in Time that seems worth sharing (despite my decade-long annoyance with Time. It attempts to discuss the challenges the country faces in educating the brightest students:

To some extent, complacency is built into the system. American schools spend more than $8 billion a year educating the mentally retarded. Spending on the gifted isn’t even tabulated in some states, but by the most generous calculation, we spend no more than $800 million on gifted programs. But it can’t make sense to spend 10 times as much to try to bring low-achieving students to mere proficiency as we do to nurture those with the greatest potential.[...]

In a no-child-left-behind conception of public education, lifting everyone up to a minimum level is more important than allowing students to excel to their limit. It has become more important for schools to identify deficiencies than to cultivate gifts. Odd though it seems for a law written and enacted during a Republican Administration, the social impulse behind No Child Left Behind is radically egalitarian. It has forced schools to deeply subsidize the education of the least gifted, and gifted programs have suffered. The year after the President signed the law in 2002, Illinois cut $16 million from gifted education; Michigan cut funding from $5 million to $500,000. Federal spending declined from $11.3 million in 2002 to $7.6 million this year.

I agree wholeheartedly with the notion that school systems need to ensure that no child is left behind, but I also think that as implemented, that extra emphasis is coming at the cost of average and gifted students.

Growing up, I was often frustrated at having to slow way the frig down, and I did on occasion actually get in trouble for working ahead. Heck, I effectively had to retake Algebra I and Geometry since my junior high wouldn’t accept the notion I had covered that material in 6th grade in independent study.

The Time article makes a big deal about the alleged need to break down resistance to the idea of grade-skipping. I’m not so sure about that, personally for social reasons, but I’ll admit that it would be one way to improve the situation without requiring significant additional resource.

What really intrigues me about the article is the discussion surrounding the Davidson Academy, a small school focused on the upper echelon of gifted students, where it sounds like students are encouraged at their own pace, and where there seems to be tolerance for the fact that even gifted kids are better at some subjects than others.

From a NYT article discussing lessons that can be learned in America from school systems overseas:

“What have all the great school systems of the world got in common?” he said, ticking off four systems that he said deserved to be called great, in Finland, Singapore, South Korea and Alberta, Canada. “Four systems, three continents — what do they have in common?

“They all select their teachers from the top third of their college graduates, whereas the U.S. selects its teachers from the bottom third of graduates. This is one of the big challenges for the U.S. education system: What are you going to do over the next 15 to 20 years to recruit ever better people into teaching?”

That from Sir Michael Barber, formerly an advisor to Tony Blair, who’s now consulting for education policymakers in the states.

As seen in the Courant:

Connecticut has resisted joining the list of states requiring high school students to pass exit exams to graduate, but the State Board of Education may be warming to the idea.[.]

Many states require high school exit exams, and Gov. M. Jodi Rell has supported the idea. But Connecticut lawmakers and educators in the past have opposed efforts to require tests. This year, two bills that would have required such exams failed to make it out of the General Assembly’s appropriations committee.

Still, [Education Commissioner] McQuillan urged the state board to review the idea and come up with a modified exam proposal that could be considered by the legislature next year.

I don’t mind the idea of requiring some comprehensive testing as a prerequisite to receiving a high school diploma, even though I do have a healthy skepticism of any standardized exam. (Most standardized exams, IMO, test one’s ability to take the test, which is not necessarily the same as mastery of the material.)

However, I do have three concerns:

• In the past few years, there seems to have been a glut of standardized testing required in the schools. I would hope that any sort of “exit testing” or even “testing for promotion” scheme could be blended with other testing “requirements”, rather than just adding more testing on to what already seems to be a busy school calendar.
   
• Don’t standardized tests cost money to administer? In some Connecticut towns, the education budget already seems like a runaway train.
   
• I’m under the impression that, as a whole, Connecticut’s public schools are among the best in the country. Does the state have such a problem with “worthless” diplomas that exit testing is so desirable? If so, what does that say about other parts of the country, where schools have a less-stellar reputation?

For the “what the.” file, from the Daily Mail:

Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a [British] Government-backed study has revealed.

It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.

In the U.S., in most jurisdictions there isn’t a significant problem with teaching evolution in science classes, even when a nontrivial portion of the population denounce the concept, in the name of religion You’d think it would be a no-brainer to teach about perhaps the greatest atrocity in history even if it steps on the toes of one or two folks.

If there’s a concern about offending sensibilities, perhaps balancing the holocaust in the curriculum could be remembering to discuss the Palestinians’ point of view in the founding of the State of Israel, background that is very useful to understanding a nontrivial part of the current political situation in the Middle East .

With term paper season upon us, it seems that the media is awash in stories about educational institutions battling the plague of plagiarism made possible by the rise of the internet, including the use of anti-cheating services. The Washington Post includes an op-ed on the subject suggesting that plagiarism isn’t necessarily all that bad:

The proliferation of sites like these leaves teachers with an even more vexing problem: how to test what students really know. The time-honored paper now teaches students a very different skill set, one that appears to be unintentional and largely unrecognized — but one that’s much closer to what I do at work these days. One university professor, writing anonymously on his “concernedprofessor” blog, notes that students today create “hyper-plagiarism which becomes harder and harder to catch. While these chimera-esque papers can, most of the time, be easily spotted through the mixing of language styles, clever students can pass these off throughout their academic careers with little worry.”

My transfer from education to the world of business has reminded me just how important it is to be able to synthesize content from multiple sources, put structure around it and edit it into a coherent, single-voiced whole. Students who are able to create convincing amalgamations have gained a valuable business skill. Unfortunately, most schools fail to recognize that any skills have been used at all, and an entire paper can be discarded because of a few lines repeated from another source without quotation marks.

The author has a point - the ability to compile, distill, and organize information is an extremely handy one to have in the business world. Within my team at work, we regularly plagiarize each other’s work in the name of efficiently communicating useful information. Because it’s understood that we’ll do this, and it’s a sign of mutual respect, it’s not a problem, and we’re better for the experience.

However, I thought the term paper traditionally sought to teach not only the ability to accumulate, organize, and distill information.but also to think logically and critically, and to express those thoughts.

Plagiarism sucks in part because it’s tantamount to theft of intellectual property. True, in this information age, the line between plagiarism and sharing interesting information encountered online can be extremely fuzzy.but if you’re capable of communicating original thought and/or creativity, you at least deserve to be credited for that.

However, where plagiarism is particularly insidious in an educational environment is, I think, that it circumvents the goal of students learning for themselves how to think and to communicate, two skills that are woefully lacking in American society today.

There’s nothing wrong with referencing the ideas and thoughts of others. However, claiming their concepts as your own in lieu of actual critical thought on your part when the task is to learn how to engage in such thought is unfortunate enough that I’m not completely intolerant of schools’ measured use of anti-cheating technology.

I admire the chutzpah of the students mentioned in this Washington Post article:

Two McLean High School students have launched a court challenge against a California company hired by their school to catch cheaters, claiming the anti-plagiarism service violates copyright laws.

The lawsuit, filed this week in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, seeks $900,000 in damages from the for-profit service known as Turnitin. The service seeks to root out cheaters by comparing student term papers and essays against a database of more than 22 million student papers as well as online sources and electronic archives of journals. In the process, the student papers are added to the database.[.]

The article mentions that the four plaintiffs (two at McLean High, and two in Arizona) obtained copyright registrations for their papers, and that at least one of the papers was transmitted with explicit instructions to not be archived.to no avail.

I can empathize with educators seeking ways to combat plagiarism given the havoc Al Gore’s internets have wrought. However, the students have a point as well, that they’re both assumed to be cheaters, and then they have a commercial entity making money in part off the efforts of their labors.

This sounds like a stunt I would have loved to pull in high school.

Via RedState, I came across this Wall Street Journal editorial (subscriber link) which comments on Governor Rell’s plan to raise the income tax to support education:

Governor Rell says a tax increase is necessary to fund more education spending. But Connecticut already spends more money per student on public schools than all but three states. According to the latest Census data, which is from the 2004 school year, Connecticut’s per-pupil spending is $10,788, or more than 30% above the national average of $8,287. In such urban districts as New Haven and Hartford, the state is spending well over $13,000 per student, and the state’s teachers are among the highest paid in the nation.

All of which suggests that Connecticut’s problem isn’t too little education spending so much as how current expenditures are being used. For instance, public charter schools in the state, such as New Haven’s Amistad Academy and Bridgeport’s Bridge Academy, spend thousands of dollars less per-pupil than surrounding traditional public schools. Yet student test scores in math and reading far surpass those of neighboring schools and often match the scores of students in wealthier towns such as Greenwich. Perhaps money isn’t what really matters in education achievement.

That last sentence is, I think, key. While ensuring a supply of skilled teachers, adequate facilities, and good programs is useful, I’ve been under the impression that the single-most important aspect in ensuring a good education is parental and community support.

In some towns in Connecticut, plus with the charter schools, you have families who have made a conscious choice that education is important. Naturally, students will thrive in such an environment.

Contrast that to neighboring communities where the solution seems to be government throwing money at the problem, while the community seems to not really care.

Maybe I’m being too harsh with that assessment from my armchair. But it is what I think.

I would be remiss, however, if I didn’t note that part of the Governor’s plan is for the increased taxes being used to support education to reduce the property tax burden on homeowners in the towns across the state. If the state chips in more, the towns don’t have to chip in quite so much.

Sounds like a decent idea.

Of course, I wouldn’t hold my breath on towns actually carrying out the property tax reduction implied by the Governor’s idea. Either it will be too politically sensitive to reduce flow of the property tax - to - school pipeline, or towns will find something else to waste the tax money on.