Reforming American Education

[BaalChatzaf]

The best way to reform American education (i.e. schooling) is to shut down the public schools.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Selene]

The best way to reform American education (i.e. schooling) is to shut down the public schools.

Ba'al Chatzaf

You will get no argument from me. Take the D.C. system:

The Real Cost of Public Schools

Posted by Andrew J. Coulson

In yesterday’s Washington Post I pointed out that DC public schools are spending about $24,600 per pupil this school year – roughly $10,000 more than the average for area private schools. There wasn’t room to explain those estimates in the Post, so I provide the details here.

DC public schools receive funding from several sources: the District’s local operating budget, special supplementary operating funds from the DC City Council, capital funding for building improvements and construction, and the federal government. To arrive at the real total per pupil funding figure for the district, all of these funding sources must be added up, excluding funding aimed at charter schools or higher education, and the resulting total must be divided by the number of students enrolled. Here are those numbers, with sources:

The latest available version of the 2007-08 local operating budget for DC (.xls file) can be found on the website of the DC Fiscal Policy Institute. The relevant line items for our purposes are:

DC Public Schools: $806,251,000

Teachers’ Retirement System: $6,000,000

“State” Education Office: $28,753,000

Department of Education: $2,367,000

Before summing these up to get the local operating subtotal, we have to subtract inapplicable funds from the “State” Education Office item. About $5 million of that funding is for higher education programs, and the agency’s k-12 services cover charter schools as well as district schools. To account for this, I first subtract the $5 million and then pro-rate the remaining balance based on district schools’ share of local public school enrollment (.707), for an adjusted SEO value of $16.8 million. That brings the total local operating budget for district schools to: $831.4 million. [Note that the SEO was recently reorganized and renamed “the Office of the State Superintendent of Education,” but while some responsibilities have shifted from the district level to the new OSSE, bringing their funding with them, this reorganization does not change the overall combined operating budget for the two entities.]

Additionally, public school chancellor Michelle Rhee requested, and the DC City Council granted, $81 million in supplementary operating funding, as reported by the Washington Post.

Capital funding for 2007-08 is $218 million, down from $223 million last year, according to the DC Fiscal Policy Institute.

Federal funding for District of Columbia public schools (.xls), including charter schools, is $103 million according to the Department of Education’s website. Pro-rating this to exclude charter schools (a rough estimate that should understate federal funding received by district schools), we are left with $72.7 million. Under the Washington, DC school voucher program, however, DC public schools are granted an additional $13 million dollars annually (a “sweetener” added to the bill to ease its passage through the legislature), bringing the total up to: $85.7 million.

The grand total of DC public school funding for 2007-08 is thus $1.216 billion. Divide that by the OSSE’s official enrollment figure of 49,422 students, and you arrive at an estimated total per pupil spending figure of $24,606.

To estimate the total per pupil spending in DC area private schools, I began by entering the tuition data from the Washingtonian’s 2007-08 Guide to Private Schools into a spreadsheet, eliminating boarding-only and pre-school-only institutions. In schools that gave ranges of tuitions for ranges of grades from 1 through 12, I averaged the published tuitions to obtain a single figure for each school. For each school that published tuition ranges covering pre-K or K through the regular grades, I estimated a weighted average tuition that leaned more heavily on the high end of the tuition range. This was to avoid skewing the average tuition inadvertently downward by overweighting the kindergarten or pre-kindergarten tuition figures, which are sometimes (but not always) considerably lower than tuition for the regular grades.

Once I had average published tuition figures for all the schools, I adjusted them downwards to account for the fact that DC area schools offer tuition assistance that reduces the actual average tuition paid to about 89.4 percent of the average published tuition (according to a study by the Association of Independent Schools of Greater Washington). I then multiplied this real average tuition by 1.25 because in earlier research in Arizona I found that, on average, 20 percent of total private school funding comes from non-tuition sources (mainly parish subsidies and alumni donations). [This adjustment probably overstated total per pupil spending in DC private schools, because I had already eliminated from consideration all special subsidized tuition rates for members of the faith or members of the parish at religious schools, counting only the full tuitions charged to members of other religions.]

The resulting figures for private schools were:

Average tuition actually paid: $11,627

Median tuition actually paid: $10,043

Estimated average total per pupil spending: $14,534

Estimated median total per pupil spending: $12,534

So the average total per pupil spending in DC area private schools, some of the most elite private schools in the entire nation, is about $10,000 less than the comparable figure for DC public schools. The difference is about $12,000 when we consider the median total spending in private schools, because the average is skewed upward by a few grand institutions with lavish buildings set on forested acreage.

Despite their vastly higher spending, DC public schools are often in abysmal physical condition. If the bureaucracy cannot maintain its buildings with all these funds, and despite having caring and dedicated leadership, we should not be surprised that it fails at the more challenging task of offering a good education.

The real cost of this dysfunctional system is not measured in dollars and cents but in the hopes and futures it has destroyed. As I’ve said before, our inner-city school districts have become slaughterhouses of dreams. For America to live up to its meritocratic promises, all families must be afforded an escape from these schools, and offered the educational choice currently enjoyed only by the elites.

Adam

Post Script: What say you about the proposition Ba'al????

Resolved that all educational systems will fail because you cannot teach how to teach. Status quo being that we have existing educational systems.

[Philip Coates]

Subject: The Battle of the Books

It starts with the books you use. If they are bad, there is little likelihood the students will learn a lot.

I collect textbooks. The textbooks for a subject will give you a very good idea how that subject is taught because very few teachers will 'fight' the book. They won't develop an alternate sequence of topics or include things not in the book. Nor do they often have imagination, depth of knowledge, or time to develop an alternative approach than the one in the book to how to teach the subject. Nor, even if allowed by their school, do they often have time, money, or energy to acquire and carefully study alternative textbooks.

And that's a major problem because the many textbooks I've used or reviewed have tended to be deeply flawed.

A textbook (or a 'reader) can fail in many ways. Four broad categories: (1) Ideological slant (politicization or an exclusion of non-trendy viewpoints), (2) Omission or failure to essentialize (leaving out important topics or a failure to include, explain, concretize, develop key ones fully), (3) Overstuffing (textbooks getting bigger and bigger by trying to say at least a word or two on every possible subtopic or issue), (4) Incompetent writing (badly written, full of factual errors, uninteresting, dry, too abstract or too concrete-bound).

POP QUIZ: Which of these 4 very broad problem areas or mistakes would you guess would be the biggest failure in late twentieth century/early twenty-first century textbooks? (Hint: One of them almost outweighs the other three put together in my experience.)

Edited August 30, 2009 by Philip Coates

[BaalChatzaf]

POP QUIZ: Which of these 4 very broad problem areas or mistakes would you guess would be the biggest failure in late twentieth century/early twenty-first century textbooks? (Hint: One of them almost outweighs the other three put together in my experience.)

Overstuffing? That is likely true for technical subjects like science and math.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[anonrobt]

Would guess #2........

[Philip Coates]

"Overstuffing" is correct. Baal is the winner! He gets a lifetime supply of Phil's most wordy posts and all the oxygen he can breathe.

[ Robert, part of #2 - failure to essentialize is actually a result of the 'crowding out' caused by overstuffing, by textbook bloat which wants to, at all costs, not be accused of by any state textbook committee or ever omitting -anything-. ]

In my textbook shelves, an Algebra I book or a Biology textbook written for high school students in the 1940's is often not much larger than a modern paperback and can be held between the thumb and pinky and lifted up and down without straining those two digits. Current textbooks I have used are so thick and heavy, even for middle school, that the poor kids have to buy a wheeled suitcase to carry them around. When I was in h.s. and in m.s., we carried our textbooks to and from school under out arms atop a notebook binder. Other subjects as well: I have in front of my right now two Spanish I textbooks: "First Spanish Course", Hills and Ford & "Spanish Now - Level 1", Barron's. The first is 310 pages and is from 1941. The second is more than 540 pages (a whole section in the back is torn out)and is from 2005. But it's worse than that: Not only does it take ~560/310 = 80% more pages to teach a year's worth of Spanish, but the pages are much bigger. The 1941 textbook is 8 1/2 by 5 1/2 while the current textbook is 11 x 8. (True, the Barron's is a workbook, so some of the space is for students to write in it...but even non-workbook formats are overstuffed today.)

(Much more to be said here. This topic is about -far more- than textbooks. It has implications for much else that is going on in the world today, to how to have our ideas succeed, to psychoepistemologies, to how to spread Objectivism...... but the coin I need to be paid in on these boards is substantive replies of some length or detail.... so perhaps I'll simply bail out here.)

Edited August 31, 2009 by Philip Coates

[jeffrey smith]

I would have said incompetent writing, on the theory that if the textbook is overstuffed, the teacher can tell the class to ignore whatever sections seem ignorable, and as far as essentializing--well, that's what teachers are for: to make sure the students get the essentials, either from the text, or from in-class lectures (do they still do that?) or supplementary activities (do they still do that?).

Ideology would be a problem in history and other social sciences, but I'm not sure it would have much of an impact in math and hard sciences. Unless maybe in the wording of the problems students are supposed to solve. "To avoid la Migra*, Pablo travels five miles out of his way, at a speed of fifteen miles an hour. Pedro travels ten miles an hour, at a speed of twentyfive miles an hour. Assuming they start and end at the same place, which one will arrive first?"

*in Gringo talk, the INS

[Selene]

I would have said incompetent writing, on the theory that if the textbook is overstuffed, the teacher can tell the class to ignore whatever sections seem ignorable, and as far as essentializing--well, that's what teachers are for: to make sure the students get the essentials, either from the text, or from in-class lectures (do they still do that?) or supplementary activities (do they still do that?).

Ideology would be a problem in history and other social sciences, but I'm not sure it would have much of an impact in math and hard sciences. Unless maybe in the wording of the problems students are supposed to solve. "To avoid la Migra*, Pablo travels five miles out of his way, at a speed of fifteen miles an hour. Pedro travels ten miles an hour, at a speed of twentyfive miles an hour. Assuming they start and end at the same place, which one will arrive first?"

*in Gringo talk, the INS

Jeff:

I do not agree "...hard sciences..." ummmm 1) global warming [geology, astrophysics]; 2) economics; 3) abortion/late term infanticide [medicine, embryology]...

lots more examples of marxist ideology agenda items wherein the actual facts and experiments are shaped and changed.

Adam

Edited August 31, 2009 by Selene

[Dragonfly]

It seems to be a dogma that a public school can only be bad. That is not true.

[BaalChatzaf]

It seems to be a dogma that a public school can only be bad. That is not true.

There can be good tax-funded schools, but in the U.S. the system has degenerated into a quasi-egalitarian morass. Excellence is not pursued. The U.S. public school system at one time served a useful purpose: it helpt to integrate the children of immigrants into the life of the nation. Those days are long gone. Now, U.S. public school are in overwhelming numbers, pap mills designed to turn out functional illiterates, innumerate folk, who do not know how to reason well or think critically.

This trend in U.S. public schools was noticed in the 1950s. That is when Rudolf Flesch published his book, -Why Johnny Can't Read-. Well, Johny still can't read.

I made sure my kids could read. I taught all of them myself. Everyone of them (all four) could read phonetically before they ever went to school. My youngest son has repeated the procedure for his kids. My grandson Nick could read phonetically at the age of three and half. Now when we go to a restaurant we just hand him the menu. He also reads the newspapers every day. I think he understands the comic and the sports sections pretty well, but the political news leaves him confused.

Our schools are egalitarian alright. Every child is left behind.

The European experience is quite different from the U.S. experience.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Philip Coates]

(continuing on the four problems of bad books in the schools)

> I would have said incompetent writing, on the theory that if the textbook is overstuffed, the teacher can tell the class to ignore whatever sections seem ignorable, and as far as essentializing--well, that's what teachers are for: to make sure the students get the essentials, either from the text, or from in-class lectures (do they still do that?) or supplementary activities (do they still do that?).

Jeffrey, the writing is not superb but at least it is clear in textbooks that want to be adopted in school systems all across the country. It is written and rewritten with that in mind. As for it being up to the teacher to correct the overstuffing and lecture on the essentials, etc. -- that would be what I called 'fighting' the textbook in my post #28 and, while some better teachers can do this, I explained why in practice the vast majority of teachers simply are unable to do this. Which leads to the characteristic problem across the face of American education I alluded to.

This is why, even though there are many, many problems in American education, getting good books would make a truly massive difference, not just for the teachers who have to struggle with them, but for the students and their ability to learn from them. There used to be **superb** textbooks in this country in every subject some decades ago. I have some of them.

> Ideology would be a problem in history and other social sciences, but I'm not sure it would have much of an impact in math and hard sciences.

When I first started teaching, I was surprised to find that the books I used (and many prominent books since) indeed had some bias and politicization issues, but they were not as pronounced or universal as the conservatives were claiming. The right made it seem as if history textbooks in primary to secondary education had, in some wholesale way, thrown out the founding fathers, the constitution, the search for freedom.the greatness of america and made it all about blame America, the oppressed, minorities and the plight of the Indians. While Keith Windschuttle, Dinesh DeSouza, et al have a point, to -universalize- it is simply a large overstatement and weakens your case due to irresponsible 'hype'.

(Also, the conservatives are, sometimes, talking about -college- history textbooks, and I can't speak to that point with as much knowledge.)

The textbook publishers have to get their books adopted in Texas as well as California (the two largest states, whose choices tend to be influential), so they have to watch out for things that outrage textbook selection committees from conservative states as well. Objectivists have to read both sides critically. They can find exaggeration in National Review or the WSJ just like they can in the NYT and Mother Jones. Admittedly, it's probably a lot less on the Right in many ways.

And this is where "overstuffing" comes in! Conservatives dominant in the South say "put in more pages on W and X", while the liberals say "every educated person should know about Y and Z." Or in science, "I'm a biochemist and I want forty pages on topic A and B, not just ten pages."

Edited August 31, 2009 by Philip Coates

[Philip Coates]

> the teacher can tell the class to ignore whatever sections seem ignorable, [Jeffrey]

A lot of the non-essential, overstuffed crazy quilt of material is mandated. It's in the state standards that they must 'cover' ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP. Not to mention QRSTUVWXYZ all in one cours. So the 'accelerationists' can claim, our kinds have covered all these subjects. They simply rush them through. And after the test, it's all forgotten.

It's actually the opposite mistake from progressive education. Dewey wanted them to not learn all kinds of facts and details, not memorize or do rote, not build a storehouse of knowledge. Today, there is often a tendency to try to cram in as much information as possible to prepare for tests, to be able to take 'advanced' courses in college....

This is not dominant everywhere, but it's surprisingly widespread especially for those in college prep programs.

Edited August 31, 2009 by Philip Coates

[Selene]

Phil:

Why did you go into teaching?

Adam

[anonrobt]

[ Robert, part of #2 - failure to essentialize is actually a result of the 'crowding out' caused by overstuffing, by textbook bloat which wants to, at all costs, not be accused of by any state textbook committee or ever omitting -anything-. ]

I would have thought not essentializing or being systemic, was why the overstuffing, not the other way around...

[Philip Coates]

> I would have thought not essentializing or being systemic, was why the overstuffing, not the other way around...

Robert, the biggest failure in current textbooks I've seen is that they (and the rush, rush curriculum based upon them) attempt to cover too many points, resulting in too much memorization, and if in doubt, add another chapter or two.

It's not as if a biology text will never mention that the cell and evolution are the two central concepts in modern biology (everything is made out of one; everything arose because of the other). But those points need to be developed and the history of how those concepts were struggled toward needs to be made central. In the case of evolution, how the evidence from a variety of perspectives accumulated step by step. But if your book is already overstuffed, what often gets cut is the chronological and cumulative development of science. You would think if you are going to pack in everything, that would be included and even stressed, but no. There is a vocal, specialized constituency for adding chapter 36 on biochemistry and chapter 37 on biophysics and chapter 38 on new developments in optical therapy (I'm exaggerating), but not really for the history.

Sticking just with my science courses: I was required to use an AP physics textbook last year which had this bloat problem. I had to choose a general science textbook two years ago for middle school. It was impossible to find a good current one. I ended up going back to a textbook published in the 1950's which did not have the bloat problem.

For an analogy outside of education to the temptation to 'overstuff', think of 'featuritis' in technology products. Example: Microsoft Windows or Microsoft Word. They want to be able to brag that they can do everything. So they keep adding new features. The result is that the products become more confusing to use. (Also they crash or freeze, which is what happens to a student's mind in a sense when overloaded with too much junk science or junk history or junk literature.)

Overstuffing is an epistemological problem and a cultural one, much wider than education. But that is outside the scope of this post . . . I can address it if there are questions. It's not (precisely) the same as being concrete-bound. But it's related.

Edited September 1, 2009 by Philip Coates

[jeffrey smith]

Jeff:

I do not agree "...hard sciences..." ummmm 1) global warming [geology, astrophysics]; 2) economics; 3) abortion/late term infanticide [medicine, embryology]...

lots more examples of marxist ideology agenda items wherein the actual facts and experiments are shaped and changed.

Adam

1)brain fart moment--totally forgot about global warming!

2)does economics rate as a "hard" science? Also, is it even taught at the secondary level? My only classroom exposure to economics occurred in my junior year of college, and that was thirty years ago.

3)abortion is not a scientific issue, it's a moral issue. The question is not how to do it, but whether to do it.

"lots more examples"... possibly. Not having any kids of my own, my direct contact with the current education system is extremely minimal.

Edited September 1, 2009 by jeffrey smith

[anonrobt]

3)abortion is not a scientific issue, it's a moral issue. The question is not how to do it, but whether to do it.

actually, it is a biological issue - and when 'nature' does it, it is called a miscarriage - but when humans do it, suddenly the miscarriage issue is forgotten [eg. the reasons behind] and the mythology of 'soul' is imposed...

[Selene]

Jeff:

I do not agree "...hard sciences..." ummmm 1) global warming [geology, astrophysics]; 2) economics; 3) abortion/late term infanticide [medicine, embryology]...

lots more examples of marxist ideology agenda items wherein the actual facts and experiments are shaped and changed.

Adam

1)brain fart moment--totally forgot about global warming!

2)does economics rate as a "hard" science? Also, is it even taught at the secondary level? My only classroom exposure to economics occurred in my junior year of college, and that was thirty years ago.

3)abortion is not a scientific issue, it's a moral issue. The question is not how to do it, but whether to do it.

"lots more examples"... possibly. Not having any kids of my own, my direct contact with the current education system is extremely minimal.

Jeff:

No problem. I wondered as I was typing about economics - it is an interesting question as to whether it would qualify as a hard science as we may define it.

As to abortion, my argument would be and has been made on other threads that it is a factual, scientific issue as to whether or not that embryo is a "human" life or not

at various stages of its existence.

If it is a human life, then abortion is the taking of a human life. If that "taking" is premeditated, then we have some serious legal as well as scientific issues of serious import.

Adam

[Philip Coates]

Subject: Becoming a Teacher - One Man's History

> Phil: Why did you go into teaching? [Adam]

It was sort of a gradual process - I moved more and more into it over time. I started out studying and working in math, science, and computers [not as a teacher]. During the many years this was my professional choice, people were constantly telling me "you should be a teacher" because of how passionate I was about knowledge and explaining things. (My other passion was writing, first letters to the editor and term papers and then manuals and commentary and articles.) In my business and computer profession, the parts that I loved and would volunteer for while others would shy away were to write the manuals and documentation and to teach the courses and workshops. I also taught some courses outside of work which were technically related.

Then I started to realize that my spare time, my reading, had moved steadily toward areas outside of science and technology: history books, literature were two favorites. I got some chances to tutor in math and science but also for a whole year of AP American History. I poured tremendous effort into complete (unpaid) mastery since it was a new area for me to instruct. I did far more than just "stay ahead" of a high school student. Whenever I taught or tutored a new subject from this time forward, I often put in perhaps two or three hours for each hour I was instructing.

I loved it - especially in the humanities (not math or science). I was being paid to learn...or relearn what I had forgotten from high school. I was able to incorporate all my knowledge of Objectivism, of essentializing, of thinking and writing and communiction skills - as well as the direct subject I was teaching. It slowly became clear that this was a higher and more challenging use of my mind, that I was very, very good at it because of the unstinting effort I put into every task and lesson (just as I had done as a student in high school).

I tutored students from middle school on up through college and graduate school. I liked the higher grades less because they usually wanted me to teach math (based on my two degrees in that field). Having scored in the 99+ percentile in both verbal and math SATs, I also taught that. But again, not so enjoyable.

I now knew that I would love to teach in the classroom (not just as a tutor and not just in a summer classroom) and leave my profession of computers completely behind. A breakthrough into the humanities came when I was hired by a private school to teach literature + history + composition + logic to middle school kids using high school level textbooks. Because of the multiple subjects **I never worked harder in my life**....and I went on from there to specialize in the humanities across different subjects and grade levels (once again, I've also taught at college level but not 'out of my credentials or field').

By the time of my transition to the humanities, I had read so much and become so steeped in that area that I had become massively knowledgeable compared to what I knew in my school days. And I was really ready to teach in those areas, starting in m.s. and working my way up to h.s.

The great part of teaching the younger kids is you are not teaching them specialized stuff and are not building on non-existent foundations. You get to teach them in effect to think like an Objectivist and you -build- those foundations. In many, many ways.

I was slow to realize that this career track fit me (as long as I could also be a writer). I somehow had the idea that doing math and science and computers were automatically more intellectually demanding than teaching or than the humanities [they're not]. Or that the highest level: being a professor at a university would necessarily be more challenging and interesting and be engaging with the best minds as opposed to being a high school teacher [it's not, if you can teach fundamentals and develop a rational, essentialized curriculum]. I was slow to realize how much this kind of work would spur my writing and give me insights (especially into epistemology and psychology, two areas where my interests tend to center).

This is really an ideal profession for an Objectivist who has an infectious passion for ideas and a subject he loves and understands (history, math, english, science, economics, logic, music...whatever) and loves it enough to put in a lot of work. If you become a great teacher [and trust me, you are not yet if you've never done it and thought hard about pedagogy] you will literally have your students shaped by you, put on the right track, and remember you for a lifetime. Caveat: You have to be willing to devote a time to bootstrapping yourself into being a 'great communicator'. If you are not ambitious enough to want to be a GREAT teacher, you won't be happy in this most demanding profession.

It is also an ideal -second- profession. And it does not matter what age you are...if you are willing to start at an entry level teaching or tutoring for a couple years to build your credibility.

I am very selective about what and how I teach. I don't mind tiny little private schools, avoiding public schools with poor discipline. I try to avoid the college or junior college level or being an adjunct, unless I really need the money and am willing to surrender curriculum or textbook or syllabus control. The choice between getting very well paid as a computer consultant at a high billing rate and making a fraction of that has been remarkably easy to make.

I'm now moving toward a book writing phase and so will probably not sign on for a full time teaching thing for a certain period. But I'll come back to it. Maybe overseas.

Edited September 2, 2009 by Philip Coates

[Selene]

Phil:

Thank you.

Adam