Quiet Declarations

As you’ve probably heard, the Texas school board recently gave preliminary approval to a new social studies curriculum — changes that will potentially impact social studies and history curricula nationwide because Texas is one of the largest textbook markets in the nation.

Since January, Republicans on the board have passed more than 100 amendments to the 120-page curriculum standards affecting history, sociology and economics courses from elementary to high school. The standards were proposed by a panel of teachers.

“We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.”

In short, the changes were made because the conservative majority on the board believes the curriculum proposed by high school and social studies teachers reflects their left-wing bias.  And the list of proposed changes is indeed radical — see here and here.

Here’s my take:

I have no trouble whatsoever believing that the current curriculum has a left-wing bias.  History professors are most certainly biased — they vote at least 7-to-1 Democrat, just one statistic in a mountain of evidence — and high school social studies teachers learned how to teach by taking lots of classes from history professors.

That said, McLeroy and his friends clearly have little interest in teaching an “unbiased” version of history.  There’s a big difference between tempering the unwavering enthusiasm for LBJ’s Great Society, or ensuring the gold standard is explained properly, and specifically mandating a Judeo-Christian chronicling of the nation’s founding.  There’s a big difference between reducing errors of omission and rewriting history to favor your own ideological persuasions.

Okay, so at least we can all agree on the problem — that both the teachers and the school board are biased — right?  Not exactly.  The Times, for one, reliably sticks its head in the sand on this point:

It was a disturbing intervention by the board’s Republican majority into educational decisions best left to the teachers and scholars who have toiled for almost a year to produce the new curriculum standards…. [Students] deserve to have a curriculum chosen for its educational value, not politics or ideology.

I do sympathize with the teachers, but my sympathy is more in line with Art Carden’s insights:

I would suppose that being a public school teacher in the face of such controversies is demoralizing because control of your classroom is in the hands of some far-off board or bureaucrat indulging the pretense of knowledge. Theirs is a fatal conceit for everyone involved: teachers’ hands are tied, students’ options are limited, and everybody loses. I know I would be demoralized if my syllabi were handed down from a College Board in Nashville or Washington, and I’m pretty sure our students would be demoralized if they couldn’t take their business elsewhere.

Maybe there simply isn’t any solution to the problem of bias in educating future generations of leaders, but Art alludes to a more practical solution: getting out of the business of mandated statewide curricula.  As Russ Roberts explains:

Of course it’s going to a political decision instead of the one that’s best for the students. But maybe just as importantly, it imposes a one-size-fits-all solution. So while I happen to like more Hayek, I’m sure there are many things I wouldn’t like about the Texas state schoool decision. But all parents are stuck with the state-wide decisions….  [I]nstead of competition among schools over what children should learn, it’s a top-down decision. Bad idea.

Although some people will be more than a little upset at the thought that someone, somewhere, might be learning social studies in a manner they feel to be harmful, it sure beats having a small and politicized group of people decide for students all across Texas (and the nation?) decide what’s in the best interests of all concerned.

Wait, I’m confused.  If the mayor wants to close two dozen public schools it’s a good business decision, but one argument against vouchers is that parents might flee to better schools and result in some public schools closing.  What gives?

I know virtually nothing about Mayor Fenty’s plan to improve DC schools, but I applaud him for making the option of closing schools part of his arsenal.  It’s just that I have this other idea about this system where parental choice can easily show us which schools ought to be closing…

On Monday morning, Megan posted a lengthy refutation of anti-voucher arguments.  She also addressed some back-and-forth arguments if you read a little further on her blog.  I don’t necessarily support vouchers — I’m currently undecided on whether it’s the non-public method I would prefer — but her arguments against most voucher opponents are compelling.

What’s always amazed me about the voucher issue is how many people are opposed to any effort to even test the idea.  It took an amazing effort to get experimental programs in Milwaukee and Cleveland, to say nothing of the program in DC whose biggest supporters were inner city African American parents being directly affected.  And people didn’t even want to see the experiments in areas where the programs are in high demand.

But after reading many of the comments on her posts, what disturbs me even more is the thought that some people simply don’t want to hear debate.  People keep reciting arguments that Megan already refuted — does this represent error, ignorance, or indifference?  And then there are the great ad hominem attacks in lieu of real facts or discussion.  It’s almost as if some people won’t be persuaded ever but they don’t have the courage to admit it.

I’d like to believe there are very few things in this world that I would refuse to change my mind about in the face of a consistent, persuasive, sound argument presented over time.  I hope my opponent wouldn’t hold it against me if it took some time; after all, it’s typically a weak mind that acquiesces without some degree of consideration.  But it seems like it’s the weaker mind that refuses to cede at all, or at least pending the discovery of new evidence.

The most discouraging argument I ever pseudo-lost went something like this: I was debating a person who I respected both for his intelligence and his command of the issue at hand, and I utterly demolished his position.  It wasn’t even close — he admitted as such — but he then replied that even though he couldn’t personally defeat me, smarter people than him retained his view, and therefore he didn’t have to concede as long as those people still held his position.

I’m afraid I don’t know how to defeat the appeal to phantom intelligence, but I fear it’s a systemic problem; it’s got to be pretty reassuring to hold whatever beliefs you feel like supporting as long as someone, somewhere, believes it too and they haven’t been completely discredited.  Am I just being cynical?  I dunno — it’s a disturbing thought though.

Today’s Times describes the challenges Los Angeles faces in implementing the No Child Left Behind law.  It’s worth reading because it does a good job of looking at many of the factors that prevent children from learning.  I also like the article because it doesn’t necessarily blame NCLB so much as it shows all of the problems that come to light in a very real way when accountability is imposed.  Which is not to let NCLB off the hook, though it has to be clear to anyone with real knowledge of the issue that “unfunded mandate” is a patently false talking point and a distraction from the real problems.

This article covers many of the bases.  You’ve got overcrowded schools, you’ve got screwed-up staggered school years, you’ve got no place to put students if you shut down their school, you’ve got deadbeat parents, you’ve got unions that won’t allow teachers to see their scores because it fears teachers could be evaluated based on performance, you’ve got activist groups that are fighting NCLB instead of helping children, etc.  With Los Angeles as a case study, it’s a wonder that any poor student gets an education in public schools.

Continuing in my series of returning to old subjects, I thought I might look at what John Stossel has been doing since his “Stupid in America” special on education on which I commented at length a while back.

According to a recent column of his, it turns out that — to everyone’s surprise, I’m sure — the teachers’ union wasn’t too happy at Stossel’s assertion that some teachers are lazy. They retaliated by inviting him to teach a class so he could see just how hard it is, and he accepted. However, according to his column, after jumping through hoop after hoop the invitation was rescinded at the last minute. This isn’t surprising at all for a number of reasons, not the least of which is I can’t imagine Stossel could teach a course without violating a whole lot of regulations. But I also buy his not-too-subtle suggestion that somebody didn’t want him — and the 20/20 cameras — in the classroom.

I bet Stossel would be an awesome teacher for the duration of the experiment, for all sorts of reasons. For one, the experiment was practically designed for him to succeed, with the school system giving him training and putting him in a great classroom and surrounding it with hype. But perhaps more importantly, I have long believed that the most important attributes to successful teaching are a relentlessly positive attitude and enthusiasm for both the subject and the students. Could Stossel keep that attitude up for the duration of a school year in a normal classroom? I don’t know, but you can bet a primetime broadcast professional could step it up for the class or classes he would be asked to teach.

I don’t know if Stossel is right about the lazy teachers, but I definitely believe Stossel’s right that the union made a really really dumb bet and then backtracked to avoid seeming even stupider than he already made it look.

This week 20/20 aired a special called Stupid in America: How we Cheat our Kids. The crux of John Stossel’s argument is that the problems facing American public education are systematic, and that calling insufficient funding the primary obstacle to improvement is not only wholly incorrect but in fact destructive to improvement efforts. Stossel also revised his argument for a Reason Online preview as well as a follow-up piece on the subject. Not everyone likes Stossel’s style — I for one wish you couldn’t tell his side of every issue simply by the tone of his voice — but his special did a great job of touching on nearly all the major components of this extremely complex problem.

I’ve been able to wrestle with these issues some in grad school and in my workplace, so while I’m no expert I do think I understand the basics, and what upsets me the most about this “debate” is that it’s not really a debate so much as a special interest shoutdown in which the sides were chosen before the facts were considered. The issues are “underfunded” vs. “unaccountable” more than test scores or reading levels or graduation rates or preparation for college and life. Whether or not a citizen believes “No Child Left Behind” is well designed — or even well intentioned — is more closely correlated with one’s opinion of the President than one’s opinion of the problem. Why do partisan legislators and career lobbyists get to create a world where you have to choose between improved teacher pay and improved accountability? And still worse, why do we have to make that choice exclusively at the ballot box once every two years, at best?

Many of my friends are public schoolteachers — among the best, brightest, and most dedicated by every indication I have — and I suspect they’ll agree that the problems Stossel cites definitely exist. Over the years I’ve heard them say that the public school system doesn’t pay teachers enough, makes class sizes too big, forces them into boilerplate rituals for curriculum and student development, strips them of time and resources, has no clue how to manage special education, and hamstrings their ability to do what they do best with debilitating administration or legislation at every level of the system and the government. But what my friends, and every expert I’ve ever heard, disagree on is how to actually fix the problems. It seems there’s no one person, no committee, no board, and no legislative body in the world that can figure out how to provide everything needed to educate all types of children in every way demanded by parents and society while simultaneously providing for its hard-working educators and being efficient stewards of their allocated funding.

So, if no person or team has the capability to devise a solution to such a complicated problem, can American schools ever dream of even approaching this optimal level of service to their constituents and society at large? And if not, how in the world do we prioritize? Well… I do have one suggestion: isn’t this exactly the kind of scenario in which the concept of choice is most useful? Is it possible that, when we let parents prioritize for themselves, we can look at the aggregation of their choices and get a real sense of the kinds of classrooms and schools are most important to them? And while nearly anyone willing to be a public school teacher under the current system is clearly caring, hard-working, and dedicated, wouldn’t teachers and students alike benefit if their administrators have to provide teachers with the resources necessary to compete for the parents’ satisfaction and respect?

Now, when I say choice, I should clarify that I’m not necessarily referring to a particular boilerplate solution. We’re still missing a lot of data. With few exceptions, education research can’t even find weak associations between particular variables and educational improvement, let alone correlations. As a result, I’m extremely sympathetic to the argument that we don’t have enough reliable data to make a case for a wholesale switch to vouchers, charter schools, or even private schools. But these would seem to be arguments in favor of getting the data, not stifling the debate — but for some reason that’s never an allowable compromise. (read: NEA)

Are there counter-arguments worth discussing? Sure there are — it’s extremely relevant to discuss the impact of a closing school on the local community, the financial and social costs of transition, the need to retain accountability of our tax dollars, and whether we can trust parents to make the best decisions for their children, to name a few examples. But we should wage the serious arguments — deriving an intrinsic and, heaven forbid, productive value from educating about education — and not resign ourselves exclusively to the reductio ad absurdum. I don’t have the answers, but I do resent that there are people or organizations out there who don’t even want to have the conversation.

And this brings me to what I like best about John Stossel: he’s not afraid to ask the hard questions in front of what is often a hostile national audience. He’s good enough at his job to warrant a soapbox, and he’s willing to fight the good fight without having to resort to Michael Savage-ian or Nancy Pelosi-esque tactics. If you can get ahold of Friday’s special I recommend watching it, if only to get a different perspective than the average sound byte — and in fact making 20/20 a part of your weekly TV viewing wouldn’t be such a bad idea in general.

(And now we see how many of those internet trollers will come along and prove my point with a random insult about burning in hell for abandoning teachers and minority students, or a lengthy tirade against the Bush administration that nowhere in this soliloquy did I support or defend. It’s not inevitable, but it’s certainly not unpredictable. Please, if you should happen to grace me with your internet presence I prefer attempts at sound reasoning minus the ad hominems.)

[Update 1/19/06: As an afterthought, I did a cursory Google search of the top 200 articles that mentioned the special. Most of the citations were complimentary, but to be fair, I hope you’ll check out a few of the dissenting posts: AS STOSSEL DOES! Stupid is as John Stossel does. on The Daily Howler; Looks Like Stossel Is “Stupid in America” on Tomorrow’s Media Conspiracy Today; Attention in America: Your Children Are Dumb on Daily Kos; A Nasty Title on The SLJ Blog.]