0 Lessons for Higher Ed from Health Care

The New York Times has been running a terrific series helping to illustrate why costs of healthcare in this country are so incredibly out of control. Today's story is masterful in the way it breaks down the cost of an artificial hip replacement in the U.S. versus Belgium.  The cost in the U.S. is over $78,000, while in Belgium it is $13,660.

The main cost differences lie in variation in the surgeon's fee (about 16 times higher in the U.S.), the implant cost (more than 8 times higher in the U.S.) and the hospital room cost (about 8 times higher on a per-night basis).  These differences helped direct the reporters towards a story that unpacks the reasons for variation in impact and hospital costs, while unfortunately saying little about the differences in surgeon's fees.

Imagine what we could learn from similar analyses of the costs of higher education in this country versus in others.   Time and again I hear that costs of education students at the postsecondary level are higher here than anywhere else, and it is very hard to believe that those costs explain our high (yet declining) ranking in terms of quality.

This quote in the Times article stood out to me as precisely the sort of thing we need to explore.  When an American traveled to Belgium for a far less expensive hip replacement, he entered a hospital and was initially concerned: I was immediately scared because at first I thought, this is really old.  The chairs in the waiting rooms were metal, the walls were painted a pale green, there was no gift shop. He flashed back to his recent visit to New York Presbyterian Hospital, which has comfortable waiting rooms, an elegant lobby and newsstands -- along with much, much higher prices. But then I realized everything was new. It was just functional. There wasn't much of a nod to comfort because they were there to provide health care.

Think about the last private college or public flagship campus you visited, and then think about your local comprehensive university or community college.  They are all there, purportedly, to provide education.  Yet the former are all about "comfort"-- and their influence is leading other institutions with far fewer resources to follow that path.  The question is, at what cost?

Take a look at this recent transformation of Madison Area Technical College -- which now calls itself Madison College. What if this happened to two-year colleges across the nation, most of which rely on underpaid college instructors for the actual educating? At what cost, and at what consequence?  Of course it's always wonderful to spend your days learning new things in beautiful places, but what if it means your neighbors can't afford an education at all?

Last year

This year

Sure, buildings and amenities aren't the whole story-- we really need the Times to unpack those discrepancies in surgeon fees.  We have to get to the bottom of our American obsession with equating amenities with quality in fields and services where the amenities are immaterial to the purposes.  And then we need to engage in appropriate comparative analyses to look for better solutions to our American higher education challenges.

0 Net Price Confusion

Today's NY Times notes the importance of considering the net price families pay for college, not the sticker price, using an example from Wisconsin. Specifically, in a column by David Leonhardt, Professor Sarah Turner presents data from the College Navigator tool (which in turn draws on the 2009-2010 IPEDS information) to show that "at the less-selective campuses in the University of Wisconsin system, for example, the average net annual cost for a year of tuition, room, board and fees in 2010-11 was almost $10,000 for families making less than $30,000, Ms. Turner said. At the flagship campus in Madison, by contrast, the equivalent net cost was $6,000."

While I'm certainly friendly to Turner's primary point-- that because of institutional financial aid attending the state's flagship may be effectively less expensive for needy students than attending another public university-- the recitation of this figure gave me cause for concern.

First, as I pointed out here, $6,000 remains a darn lot of money for families making less than $30,000.  We need to stop and realize that paying (or borrowing) at least 20% (and probably more) of your income for college is beyond the realm of possibility for most low-income families.

But secondly, and more importantly this particular conclusion is outdated.  Look at UW-Madison's website for its net price calculator for 2013-2014.  There, a Wisconsin resident family with an expected family contribution of $0 (incomes usually well below $30,000) is said to face a net price of $13,635.   That's way up from 2010-2011.   So, either these numbers reflect enormous increases in net price over time at Madison, or something else is off.  Using those current numbers, the comparison for  UW-Oshkosh is a net price of $10,101 for a Wisconsin resident with an $EFC of $0 and at UW-Platteville it is $8,593.

Despite claims at our rapid tuition increases were being offset by financial aid holding the poorest students "harmless" things have rapidly changed at UW-Madison. We went from offering one of the lowest net prices for poor students in the state to being among the least affordable for those same people. This seems to be because the cost of attendance at Madison jumped from $21,617 in 2010-2011 to $24,404 in 2013-2014, increases were not nearly so substantial at the other System schools, and aid did not increase at the same rate.

Punchline: despite what the New York Times and federal data indicate, today it is not cheaper for a low-income student to attend UW-Madison compared to another in-state university. It once was, but things have changed for the worse.   The payback at Madison may be greater, but let's not pretend that simply "knowing the net price" makes this decision simple or easy.

0 What Have We Done to the Talented Poor?

Sunday's New York Times carried a front page story on a crisis in American higher education. I think that's excellent, and I'm thrilled for Caroline Hoxby and Chris Avery, whose research is featured. These economists managed to draw national attention to a major problem-- despite decades of public and private investment, barely 1 in 10 children from low-income families earns a bachelor's degree. And this isn't because they aren't smart, or aren't taking college admissions exams-- plenty of them taking many of the right steps towards college.  But they are not ending up there.

Hoxby and Avery begin to help us understand why by evaluating the merits of several urban legends, two of which are repeated by seemingly every elite college admissions officer in the country:

(1) "We don't have more Pell recipients on campus because there are simply too few students from low-income families academically qualified to get in here."  In other words, bright poor kids just don't exist in large numbers.

(2) "We don't have more Pell recipients on campus because every qualified student from a low-income family is already taken by another great college." This is just a twist on the first claim.

As I've long suspected, and have argued at my own institution for many years, the data prove both of these statements wrong.  First, there are plenty of very bright students from low-income families graduating from high school.  In fact, very high-achieving, high-income students only outnumber high-achieving, low-income students by 2.5:1.  According to the authors, "there are at least 25,000 and probably something like 35,000 low-income high achievers in the U.S."  Second, many of these amazing students aren't attending any great college. In fact, they aren't even applying.

So there's the main punchline of their new paper: high-ability low-income students do exist, and they aren't in college because they haven't applied.

Moving on from there, Hoxby and Avery stroll onto shakier ground.  The title of the New York Times article  their hypothesis about why these students aren't applying to top colleges:  "Better Colleges Failing to Lure Talented Poor."   The authors  suggest that problem resides with admissions officers who aren't using appropriate methods to recruit these students.  They go through many analyses to show why this is likely a problem, and their arguments are compelling.  Every enrollment manager needs to consider them.

But this is hardly a full accounting of every possible explanation.  I'd like to offer this headline instead: "Better Colleges Charge a Lot of Money and Scare Off the Talented Poor."

Everyone knows that a top college comes with a high sticker price.  Hoxby and Avery dismiss this by noting that the net price is often lower at top colleges because they also provide more financial aid.  But assuming that net price matters more than sticker price is a major assumption; it is guided by economic theory but rarely ever tested.  My own work suggests that one reason it may not bear out in practice is that responding to sticker price, rather than net price, is not merely a reflection of information asymmetries (e.g. lower-income families are less likely to know about the availability of financial aid), but also a reflection of differences in the extent to which families trust the major social institutions to actually help them.

Hoxby and Avery do not acknowledge this.  They frame the decision not to attend a top college as  irrational, writing that "added to the puzzle is the fact that very selective institutions not only offer students much richer instructional, extracurricular, and other resources, they also offer high-achieving, low-income students so much financial aid that the students would often pay less to attend a selective institution than the far less selective or nonselective post-secondary institutions that most of them do attend....[the students'] choices are odd because although the private match colleges might offer fewer scholarships that are explicitly merit-based, they offer much more generous need-based aid so that the student would pay less to attend and would enjoy substantially more resources. Furthermore, it is almost never sensible for a low-income student to apply to a single private, selective college: he may be able to use competing aid offers to improve the aid package he gets from his most preferred college."  Clearly, if only students from low-income families used the net price calculator, they'd opt to apply-- right?  How do we know this?

Hoxby and Avery also dismiss the idea that sticker shock explains the lack of low-income students at expensive colleges because they observe few income differences in the behaviors of college applicants.  As in other studies, among students who apply to college, low and high income students behave similarly.

So what? This simply means that the effects of sticker shock may affect the application decision but not the enrollment decision, and this makes utter sense.  Trust in schools plays a major role in families' educational decisions.  The fact that over the last 30 years the sticker price at most top colleges and universities has skyrocketed, rising more rapidly than inflation, and making headlines, leaves little reason for people with little financial strength to trust in them.  Moreover, those sticker prices rise even after their kids enroll, their financial aid packages change from year to year, the FAFSA must be refiled again and again, and grants are often replaced with loans once a school has lured the student in the door.  Why would anyone trust these places?  Why would smart students who've watched their families suffer in an exceedingly wealthy society like this one trust the system to give them the money required to make attendance at an elite college possible?  Especially when they won't be "shown the money" until after they have applied, been accepted, and are on the brink of enrollment?  Furthermore, we have the gall to expect them not only to trust these schools but to believe that it's possible to negotiate with them?  The act of applying is an act of trust and faith in what's widely understood to be a highly rigged system, so looking at the behaviors of applicants post-application makes little sense.

The Hoxby and Avery view of the world is pervasive among researchers, and leads many economists to suggest that raising tuition is no big deal if you can simply "hold students harmless" with financial aid. We suffered through a regime of that leadership here at UW-Madison several years ago, and while many departments are enjoying the extra revenue from the tuition, the representation of first generation students on campus is falling.  None of our institutional reports examines the impacts of our tuition hikes on applicant behavior.  By solely comparing our figures to college applicants, or worse yet enrolled students, you can convince yourself that tuition hikes do no harm. But when you see such clear evidence that talented poor students stay out of the applicant pool, you really have to wonder.  Do they simply not know that your college exists, or how to apply?  Or might they actually believe that they cannot afford it?

They aren't wrong to feel this way. Let's take the case of UW-Madison, where most professors and students on campus suggest that our price is still affordable because we distribute financial aid.  Consider the net price of college attendance, taking the sticker price and subtracting all grant aid. (My team's research in Wisconsin reveals that students do not think of loans as financial aid, do not feel they are 'help' and endure quite a bit of stress from them.):

My graduate student Robert Kelchen produced these figures for the 3,487 first-time, full-time, degree-seeking freshmen who are in-state students. The first thing to note that we can only calculate net price  for the 1,983 students receiving Title IV aid. This means that just under half of all in-state Madison freshmen do not file the FAFSA.  Is that because they aren't qualified for aid, or because they do not know they can or should? Second, look at the net price faced by students according to their family income:

$0-$30k:          $6,363 (n=212)
$30L-$48k:    $10,098 (n=232)
$48K-$75k:    $15,286 (n=406)
$75-$110k:     $19,482 (n=542)
$110+k:          $20,442 (n=591)

Ok, so now you look at these numbers and think, hmm. Is $6,363 a good deal for a year of college?
Well, let's consider that relative to their family income. Here is the cost burden relative to the midpoint income in each bracket:

0-30k:  42%

30-48k: 26%

48-75k: 25%

75-110k: 21%

110+k: 18% or less

There you have it.  At UW-Madison we expect the poorest families to contribute far more of their family income to attend college than we expect from the richest families.  Yes, the poorest folks get more aid, but it's far from proportional to their need.  Why would we expect them to buy into such a system?

Researchers, and especially economists, need to get out in the world and talk to real families and students who do not enjoy the benefits of tenure and stable incomes. Only 16% of parents nationwide will ignore the cost of tuition when helping their kids choose a college, according to a new survey, and I'm betting this is even less common among poorer families. The survey also shows that one in five parents refuses to take on any debt for their kids to go to college, and among families earning less than $3,000 a month, 25% aren't sure if they'd take on any debt, and only 28% are willing to borrow $20,000 or more. Barely one in five of these poor families think it's reasonable for their child to accumulate even $20,000 in debt over four years.

Yes, there is a fair bit of financial aid out there, but it increasingly comes in the form of loans or scholarships with strings attached which can be easily lost, creating financial instability.   An alternative interpretation of Avery and Hoxby's results is that rather than taking a chance on expensive institutions they can't trust, many high ability low-income students are revealing a preference for lower-priced institutions.  They might occasionally apply to one pricey dream school, but it's more likely reflecting a quick momentary aspiration, rather than an actual plan.   They live in the 21st century where affordability is an indicator of quality, not the 1980s where the pricier the college or restaurant, the better it must be.  They know they are living proof that the nation isn't a meritocracy; they see their families work hard every day and get nowhere.  Ignoring their savvy and discounting it as irrational, providing them with net price calculators rather than investing in high-quality free public options-- well, it's actually sort of insulting.  It's time to consider the possibility that getting smart striving young people in search of upward mobility to apply to and attend good colleges will require transforming our system to focus public investments on ensuring real access and opportunity for all Americans, rather than subsidizing the choices of the middle class.  The current system of voucher-provided financial aid is now decades old and according to this study, it may be failing. It's time to consider a restart.


Note: I thank Zakiya Smith for a helpful clarifying Twitter conversation that led to some revision.

Postscript.  As it turns out, Hoxby and Sarah Turner have been conducting a very important randomized trial on the effectiveness of several intervention strategies aimed at helping more talented poor students enroll in college, and I've finally gotten a look at the forthcoming results.  They show that a combination of better information about college graduation rates, information on the net price of various colleges, and fee waivers for applications is effective at boosting application and enrollment rates of the talented poor substantially. Moreover, their strategy is cheap!  This is wonderful news. But what does it tell us about the importance of sticker shock-- the topic of this blog? Unfortunately, not much.  In this case, the intervention most clearly aimed at addressing sticker shock is a net price calculator.  That sort of intervention assumes that the "problem" of sticker shock is mainly informational.  As I said above, I think that the issue of sticker shock involves more than information, it also involves trust.   Being told that a college is likely to give you aid is not the same thing as getting the aid.  In their trial, the authors find that the impacts of the net price calculator are significant but not as important as the other interventions.  Again, it would be wrong to interpret this to mean that sticker shock is unimportant, since this is not a test of sticker shock.  It is a test of a net price calculator.  In contrast, the fee waiver information they provide is real money, on the table, with a high probability of receipt. They find that this has larger effects than the net price calculator, and I think that supports the idea that a real concern about money actually being available is inhibiting the actions of these talented poor students.  For sure, it's not the only factor affecting their behavior, but it's worth attending to since even with this entire package of Hoxby/Turner interventions, a substantial fraction of the income gap in college behaviors remains among talented students.  Moreover, a large income gap persists among less-talented, but nonetheless very important, students who aim to attend and graduate from college.

Postscript 2. The numbers I quoted above are clearly out of data based on UW-Madison's website. The situation seems to have worsened.

0 The MOOC Industrial Complex

These days, every education reform movement seems to generate profit for multiple partners.  Take No Child Left Behind, the latest testing and accountability regime. As many scholars have documented, billions of dollars have flowed to corporations providing the tests, textbooks and "supplementary education services" required by that federal policy.  Advocates say this is appropriate since it means the market is functioning freely to provide high quality services, while critics note that absent government regulation (carefully limited under the law) public goods are quickly becoming private ones.

In recent blogs about MOOCs, I questioned their business model, asking why supposedly cash-strapped universities (like mine) would choose to engage with them when there is no evident monetary return?  I received little response from MOOC advocates on that question. But the answer is becoming increasingly clear.

Many universities have stated that MOOCs are the kind of innovative activity that donors would like to support, and that we would gain new donors if we engaged in creating them.  University foundations, including UW-Madison's, seem quite confident in this-- to the point that they are putting in their own dollars for the initial investments to get MOOCs off the ground.  While it's possible that this is sheer altruism, it's doubtful-- their leaders always expect a return on investment.

Where will it come from?

Why, the industry that supports the MOOCs of course.  For example, today's New York Times  documents the growing testing industry associated with online proctoring, helping colleges "keep an eye" on online test-takers. Unfortunately that article failed to investigate the money involved in this effort, focusing instead on the quality of the services provided to prevent cheating. This is unfortunate, since tracking the dollars created by the work of educators, ultimately benefiting the corporate bottom line is exactly what the "paper of record" should be doing.

What other entities will benefit from the instructional activities provided by public and non-profit universities?  Write in and let's start a list.  And while we're at it, let's think hard about the likelihood that these corporations will eventually constitute those "benevolent new donors" our universities are counting on.


ps. I keep meaning to direct my readers to this excellent commentary in the Chronicle of Higher Education. I highly recommend reading it in full.

0 Title Your Study with Care

Today's New York Times features an article on a new study on residential segregation by Edward Glaeser of Harvard, and Jacob Vigdor of Duke University.  I'd like to draw your attention to what the study actually finds, and how it's being pitched to the national audience.

The study is produced by the Manhattan Institute's Center for State and Local Leadership. The Institute is widely recognized as a conservative research organization. 

The title of the report, as written by its authors, reads: "The End of the Segregated Century."


The NYT's headline reads: "Segregation Curtailed in U.S. Cities, Study Finds."


The NYT's tweet reads: "Nation's Cities Almost Free of Segregation"


So it seems, the study must tell us that segregation has ended, or is about to-- right?


Nope.  What it tells us, points out Doug Massey of Princeton University, a nationally recognized expert on the topic, is that segregation has declined substantially in metropolitan areas with few black residents.   I wish I could say more, but this study-- despite being covered in the New York Times-- does not currently seem to appear anywhere on the Web!


So why not title the study "Shifting Patterns of Segregation"and the headline "Segregation Declines in Some U.S. Cities, Study Finds?"


Hmmm.  Think it'd get as much attention?  Fuel as much conservative fire? Yeah, that's what I thought.


PS. Want a more nuanced take on the changing face of segregation? I recommend this study.

0 Things That Make Me Go Hmm....(Part 1)

Sincerest apologies for the silence on our blog. The summer has wound down, school is starting, federal grant deadlines are approaching--and most importantly, our son just started 4-year-old kindergarten! All in all, it's a very busy time of year. So with that, I'm beginning a new series, intended to highlight and raise a few questions about news that intrigues me. Perhaps Liam will pick up on this too, and we'll make a series of it.

(1) Why am I so cranky/ out of shape/ exhausted / or otherwise morose? Sometimes I wonder. And the day I read the New York Times Magazine's brilliant piece on the perils of too-much decision-making I felt a tad bit better--and then a whole lot worse. Because it seems that people who are asked all day long to pick or choose, often on high-stakes tasks, tend to put decisions about themselves last. So when the question is: what will I eat tonight? the answer is often "who cares? just feed me." Where's the solution, New York Times? I really don't see one.

(2) As I send our kid off to the phenomenal Madison Waldorf School each day, I feel a pending twinge of hypocrisy. What will we do next year, when there are public school options? Will we continue to invest in private school, even though we--the Education Optimists--are deep believers in public education? Then I read an article like today's New York Times cover story on the uninhibited spending on technology in classrooms that is eating up money we could otherwise spend supporting teachers-- and without a shred of evidence to support it. I hear tales that here in Stoughton, Wisconsin my kid's kindergarten will have a Smartboard and plenty of laptops, for his focused "reading time"...and I want to run screaming in the other direction. The last thing I want to raise is a glazed-eye kid who stares at screens all day (like I do), who develops back and posture problems from the classic "slump" and who would rather listen to someone say something cool than say it himself. I suppose this makes me a Luddite. My iPhone, iPad, and Mac might say otherwise. But what I want most is for schools to invest in what we know pays off-- and that's child-human contact. Give my kid teachers who feel appreciated and well-supported, please. Forget the laptops.

(3) On a somewhat related note, that "esteemed" publication Newsweek/Daily Beast just named UW-Madison the third least rigorous university in the nation among those serving students with average test scores of 1250 or higher (SAT). While I've written about my concerns regarding the institutional focus on teaching and whether we deliver everything we're capable of, let me be the first to say: THESE RANKINGS SUCK. Look at their "methodology"--Are you kidding me? Using "College Prowler" and "rate my professor" to develop metrics? Did the writers have NOTHING better to do with their time than to craft this worthless drivel? Puhleeese.

(4) Can Scott Walker read? Survey says: No. In a recent press release, Walker claimed that the new Wisconsin-Minnesota tuition reciprocity deal, which ended some of the subsidy provided to Wisconsin students who chose to attend college out-of-state, "make college more affordable." Um...no... this kinda reminds me of someone else's recent claim that privatizing the university and jacking up tuition would make UW more affordable. Listen, I served on the legislative committee that developed this reciprocity change last summer, and the purpose was to save Wisconsin some money, and perhaps provide a little disincentive for Wisconsin students to leave the state for college. Nothing to do with affordability. My question is this--how much are you paying those staffers of yours, Governor?

That's it for today. Stay tuned for a busy year, as UW-Madison searches for a new chancellor and Wisconsin works to recall Scott Walker...and of course now that I'm tenured, I'll tell ya what I REALLY think!

0 A View from the Right in a Left-Leaning Tower

What follows is a GUEST POST by University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student Robert Kelchen. I have had the privilege of working with Robert since 2008; we have co-authored two articles, including this one on the effects of financial aid. Upon reading John Tierney's take on the dominance of liberals in academe, I asked Robert for his thoughts-- and here they are. SGR

************

My name is Robert Kelchen, but many students and faculty who know me at the University of Wisconsin-Madison often introduce me as "the conservative guy" or "my Republican friend." I am used to this sort of introduction after being in Madison for four years; after all, I can count the number of conservative or libertarian doctoral students who I know on two hands. I have been told several times in the past by fellow students that I am the first right-leaning person with whom they have ever interacted on a regular basis. Prior to the passage of Act 10 (the law that restricted collective bargaining), I was one of the few students at the university to request a refund of the portion of the Teaching Assistants' Association dues that went toward political or ideological activities. This also meant that I had to give up my right to vote on issues germane to collective bargaining (the primary purpose of the union), but it was a sacrifice that I was willing to make. During the protests at the Capitol throughout the spring semester, I did my best to stay out of the fray and keep very quiet about my personal opinions.

Sara asked me for my thoughts on the recent New York Times article about why there are so few conservative students in graduate school. I had to consider the offer for a while, as making this post would make my political leanings more publicly known and could potentially affect my chances of getting a job in two years. However, I just could not pass up the opportunity to comment on this article in the newspaper of record for American liberals--and the same paper that ran a front-page article about Sara being one of a new generation of less politically-oriented professors.

My initial reaction to the article was to try to think of a conservative or libertarian professor in the School of Education at UW-Madison. To the best of my knowledge, there are no professors in the entire school, let alone my home department (Educational Policy Studies) who publicly identify as being right of center. However, this does not mean that there are no conservative faculty. A likely explanation is that faculty (and students) who do not identify with the liberal majority stay quiet about their political beliefs. The reaction of the majority of the faculty and graduate students during recent political events makes speaking out as a conservative a lonely proposition. It also means that there must exist other "elite" institutions that have a higher proportion of conservative faculty.

I do not put any stock in the Gross et al experiment mentioned in the article, which sent out letters asking for information about top graduate schools and included whether a fictional student worked for the Obama or McCain campaigns. Working on a presidential campaign does tell something about a student's political beliefs, but a student's GRE score and college performance (in addition to ability to pay) matter much more than that information. Additionally, the study only used male "prospective" applicants, a potentially serious limitation. (Not to mention that John McCain is a fairly liberal Republican who partnered with ex-Senator--and Madison hero--Russ Feingold on campaign finance reform. He is much more palatable to the left than someone like Michelle Bachmann.)

This leaves several possible explanations for why conservative students are less likely to go to graduate school and stay in academia later in life than liberals. A potential explanation mentioned in the article (and is echoed by several of the comments on the article) is that conservatives do not have the mental abilities to go to graduate school. That is entirely bogus, as noted in the article. I do not put much stock into the hypothesis that conservatives are less likely to be in academia due to discrimination on the acceptance (graduate students) or hiring (faculty) side, although this very well may be true in isolated institutions and departments.

The argument of self-selection, in which conservatives choose not to pursue a career in higher education, is the likely culprit for why I know only one other conservative graduate student in the entire School of Education. Much self-selection occurs because of how attending graduate school delays one's ability to make a reasonable salary. In "red" states, adults are more likely to get married at a younger age than those in "blue" states; the need to support a family can detract both women and men from spending an additional six or more years in school. The claim made by Peter Wood from the conservative National Association of Scholars, that conservatives choose not to pursue a graduate degree because of the perception of liberal bias, is likely responsible for part of the attendance gap. I would say that, holding all other factors constant, it is easier to be a majority liberal than a minority conservative. However, the common perception that conservatives know all other Republicans in the area or that we're always expected to engage in political discussions at the drop of a hat (or that we agree with everything that Sarah Palin says) probably do not cause many students to shun away from graduate school. The perception of liberal bias likely drives away many more students than the actual amount of liberal bias.

In closing, I would like to thank Sara again for the opportunity to post my thoughts. Next time you talk with a conservative, please realize that we are not bad people because we have different political viewpoints. Most of us, regardless of ideology or partisan affiliation, believe in the importance of public education even though we disagree on the best ways to improve the current system.

Robert

0 A Must Read

A huge public thank you to Paul Krugman for his outstanding defense of academic freedom in Monday's New York Times. As an untenured professor and regular blogger, I am eternally grateful that he -- at least -- gets it.

He is absolutely right about the risks of letting this kind of behavior go by--

"... less eminent and established researchers won’t just become reluctant to act as concerned citizens, weighing in on current debates; they’ll be deterred from even doing research on topics that might get them in trouble.

What’s at stake here, in other words, is whether we’re going to have an open national discourse in which scholars feel free to go wherever the evidence takes them, and to contribute to public understanding. Republicans, in Wisconsin and elsewhere, are trying to shut that kind of discourse down. It’s up to the rest of us to see that they don’t succeed."

Now if only UW-Madison Administration would take such a stance.

0 Unintended, Unforeseen Consequences

The challenges surrounding the U.S. Department of Education's (ED) plan to replace principals at underperforming schools across the nation (New York Times: "U.S. Plan to Replace Principals Hits Snag: Who Will Step In?") reminds me of the unintended consequences of California's class size reduction policies during the 1990s.

As the New York Times reported yesterday about the ED's $4 billion plan to radically transform the country’s worst schools by installing new principals to overhaul most of the failing schools, "[T]here simply were not enough qualified principals-in-waiting to take over."

California experienced a similar human capital problem when it reduced class sizes statewide in grades k-3. An unintended consequence of its state policy was the hiring of more emergency-credentialed and unqualified educators as a result of the additional teaching positions needed to enable smaller class sizes. As this Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning report noted, "[T]he implementation of class size reduction ... dramatically increased the shortage" of fully qualified teachers. In addition, the Public Policy Institute of California reports that it exacerbated educational inequality and disproportionately affected schools that served low-income and minority students:

CSR led to a dramatic increase in the percentages of inexperienced and uncertified teachers. In 1990, there were few differences in these characteristics by racial/ethnic and income groups. Even as late as 1995–1996, the year before CSR, schools with high percentages of nonwhite and low-income students were only slightly more likely
than other schools to have inexperienced teachers who lacked full certification and postgraduate schooling. By 1999, large gaps in teacher qualifications had emerged between schools attended by nonwhite and low-income students and other schools. For black students in schools with more than 75 percent of the students enrolled in subsidized lunch programs, nearly 25 percent had a first- or second-year teacher; almost 30 percent had a teacher who was not fully certified. At the other extreme, for white students attending schools with 25 percent or fewer of the students enrolled in subsidized lunch programs, only 12 percent had a first- or second-year teacher, and only 5 percent had a teacher who was not fully credentialed. These differences reflect the varying levels of difficulty that many schools experienced in attempting to attract and retain teachers following the implementation of CSR.

With all the current hullabaloo about wanting to fire more underperforming teachers as a chief reform strategy, the critical question is: "Who will replace them?" The belief that 'we can do better' does not necessarily make it so. We've got to attend to and recognize such human capital challenges before we put forth such policies, however well intended.

0 Don't Let The Door Hit You On The Way Out

Gail Collins' (New York Times) political obituary of -- now lame duck -- U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut is well worth reading. She nails it with this line: "If you’re continually admiring yourself as you walk away from your group, eventually people are going to feel an irresistible desire to trip you."

Yep. I've always thought of 'sanctimonious' as the word I would choose if the name 'Joe Lieberman' came up in a word association game. Not one of my favorites, that's for sure.

Given his role in watering down health care reform and opposing a public option, I wouldn't be surprised if a cushy job in the insurance industry is in Lieberman's future. To his credit, he did actually vote for the final health care bill, however.

You can view Lieberman's version of his record on education policy here.

0 Democrats, Poverty, and Schools

Renewing the War on Poverty clearly needs to be one of President Barack Obama's main objectives during the coming years. As Barbara Ehrenreich and so many others are documenting, the deteriorated safety net is failing poor people during this recession, leaving them in dire straits.

So when Nick Kristof decided to pen a column for the New York Times urging the Democrats to again lead a fight against poverty, his heart was in the right place. But his aim was way off. On Thursday, he wrote that the Dems must focus on public schools, since they "constitute a far more potent weapon against poverty than welfare, food stamps or housing subsidies. " Huh?

Social science researchers across the nation are scratching their heads. Where in the world did Kristof get this one? For decades, solid analyses have demonstrated that while aspects of schooling can be important in improving student outcomes and alleviating the effects of poverty, the effects of factors schools cannot and do not control are much greater (for a place to start, read Doug Downey's work). Kristof emphasizes teachers and improving teacher quality by taking on the teachers' unions because he reads the data to mean that "research has underscored that what matters most in education - more than class size or spending or anything - is access to good teachers." Simply put, wrong. Access to good teachers is the most important factor affecting student achievement that is under schools' control (or as many put it, the most important school-level factor). What matters most in educational outcomes is the poverty felt by students' families. And to my knowledge, no study has ever rigorously compared the effectiveness of interventions based on cash transfers, housing subsidies, and teacher quality improvement-- what's needed to reach the kind of conclusion with which Kristof drives his argument. At the same time, a simple glance at the relative effects of programs like Moving to Opportunity, New Hope, etc which target poverty itself rather than how adults interact with children from poverty (the aim of improving teacher quality), should convince anyone than his target is misplaced.

Experts who think daily about how to end poverty could, and undoubtedly will, inform the next steps taken by Democrats. Dems should listen to them, and not to Kristof. With that approach they will undoubtedly begin not with teachers' unions but rather by connecting job seekers to work that pays, installing strategies to promote stable families, making quality housing affordable and safe, and of course guaranteeing access to good health care.