There has been an interesting back and forth between The American Scene and The League of Ordinary Gentleman on the topic of education. I have some loosely held, strong opinions on the topic of education. What this means is that my mind is amenable to being changed on the topic. So far the primary things discussed have been marginal pay, unions, autonomy, and school choice.
To go in reverse order, I’m not a big fan of school choice as a central strategy to improving education. I was at one time a big fan. The reason may surprise you. The reason I’m not a big fan is that geographically a non-trivial number of places don’t have the density to support multiple school systems. If we have a town split by a river, two pedesterian bridges is not a better solution than one bridge that can support a truck. In the medical world where we have two giant voucher systems called Medicare and Medicaid, more hospitals haven’t been shown to reduce costs, and outcomes aren’t prima facie better.
In the area of autonomy, there seems to be this argument that things are fundamentally different requiring local solutions. E.D. Kain puts it thus:
Standards require uniformity, and across the country uniformity simply doesn’t exist. A lot of the new data on learning indicates that even across one school, or one classroom, countless differences exist in how students learn. Some students are visual learners, others very physical…. By forcing teachers to teach to tests we leave a lot of these kids behind.
This argument strikes me as a poor one for fighting standardization. Would we expect children in LA to be more visual learners and kids in NY to be more physical learners? Yes, standards tend to homogenize, but we are dealing with a relatively homogenous population. There may be variations in the applications of engineering principles in different parts of the country, but the principles remain the same. We can train an engineer in New York, and he should be able to design a building for Los Angeles. That there are low-rises and high-rises in both places doesn’t change the ability to set a standard.
In regards to merit pay, there seems to be the economics 101 assumption that you will get more if you pay more. I don’t get a better oil change if I pay $40 rather than $20, and economists will agree with me. Or at least they will agree that the difference in value isn’t accounted for in the oil, filter, and work. You don’t necessarily get a better engineered bridge if you pay $1,000,000 for the design or $500,000. For our attorneys, do I get better representation for my speeding ticket if I pay the attorney $300/hr versus $1000/hr? There are many areas in life where paying more doesn’t get you more. A doctorate in physics with 10-years experience in the nuclear industry is quite valuable to a physics major student. He doesn’t add much value to the 3rd grade general sciences student. In my area, teacher salaries are above the median for salaries in the county. It may even be 150% of the median. I am told that teaching positions in this area typically receive well over 100 applicants. Often schools simply stop taking applicants after a certain number rather than having a closing date. This is not an indicator of a supply shortage. In particular places, there may indeed be a shortage of teachers that can be remedied with pay. It appears that rather than getting better education for the money we are simply getting more expensive teachers. In trying to upgrade our transportation, we are getting a diamond encrusted bicycle rather than a car.
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