Last night my wife and I watched Waiting for “Superman”, streaming via Netflix. My wife had already seen it (on a transcontinental American Airlines flight, of all places) and was eager for me to see it. It’s a documentary on the American public education system with a focus on charter programs and magnet schools, especially Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Success Academy and the Knowledge Is Power Program with drama provided by the heart-wrenching lottery system for getting into some schools achieving strong results with kids from difficult areas. Highly recommended.
I thought there were some shortcomings in the film’s editorial view. For example, it’s not clear to me how much influence selection bias has in the results that various programs have achieved. The film also completely buys into the view that the path to a bright future for Americans, particularly poor Americans and members of racial minorities, is through higher education which I believe is a cruel fraud. Ignored, for example, is the experience of Germany where significantly fewer young people attend or graduate from college but which does have apprenticeships and vocational training.
I also think that another conclusion that can be drawn from the documentary is that teachers’ unions are the primary barrier to reforming our public schools for the better with the federal system running a close second.
Something else that was unstated in the documentary but I think is important: the on-time graduation rate in inner city schools has been stable at an appalling low level for sixty years. Considering how much the racial makeup of the cities has changed over that period I think that rules out racial explanations for the graduation rate. I will also state a prejudice of mine which I won’t bother to substantiate: I think we’re doing more to educate all of the kids in the country, truly universal education, than other OECD countries. That we’re spending a lot of money with painfully little in the way of results should hardly be surprising under the circumstances.
Unfortunately, I can’t say I took a great deal of hope away from this documentary. It’s clear to me that the public education system needs substantial reform and it’s hard for me to see how that happens without tearing what’s there down and starting over which ain’t gonna happen.
For example, it’s not clear to me how much influence selection bias has in the results that various programs have achieved.
If you want better schools, get better students. It’s that simple.
You educate the kids you have with the families they have not the kids you wish you had with the families you wish they had.
We’re still treating kids as interchangeable. That was probably necessary in the old days, but it’s no longer necessary, technology gives us tools for individualizing education.
Dave, you point to the fact that we are casting our nets wide, trying to bring in 100% of all possible students. It’s a recipe for failure if we try to college-track all those kids. A certain percentage of those kids could really profit from an early introduction to a wrench or a soldering iron or a saute pan. But we are such education snobs in this country that we deny the dignity of any job that doesn’t require a college degree. (This is a particular frustration in my home.)
I don’t disagree. I honestly don’t know how to square the circle, i.e. how to maximize the opportunity for every kid without it being a recipe for failure. We could do what our European cousins do and assign kids to tracks early. Given our far more diverse population and our history I think that would inevitably produce a racial or ethnic underclass.
You educate the kids you have with the families they have not the kids you wish you had with the families you wish they had.
That’s naive. To do exactly that is why zoning commissions and school districts exist in the first place. You can be certain that the higher one goes on the income ladder the more consideration is given for how to make certain one’s own children get the best education available, and to Hell with everyone else. (I’m not actually castigating here – this is just human nature.) In point of fact, everyone knows that addition by subtraction can make school districts better, and that’s what the best schools and communities do.
Given our far more diverse population and our history I think that would inevitably produce a racial or ethnic underclass.
We don’t already have those?
The notion that we should stop trying to college educate everyone seems so self evident it doesn’t seem worth debating.
I wonder, though, if it’s educational snobbery, or dignity, issues at work. Rather, in a society that has gravitated towards an equality of outcome vs equality of opportunity mindset if the howls of discrimination might not start if the trades were being promoted.
In any event, raw economics may decide this issue. I hear more and more people questioning the cost of college.
Since that’s been the central focus of three consecutive administrations, Democratic and Republican, and appears to be the primary educational and employment policy, it’s absolutely essential that we debate it.
Dave
Maybe because I’ve just come off a vacation in sunny and golf friendly climes I’ve lost any zest for beating my head against the wall. The educational system is broken, the motives for universal college education are obviously flawed.
I’ll let you flatten a portion of your noggin until the fire returns to my belly.