Voodoo Educational Economics

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By Ernie Rothkopf

The National Center on Education and the Economy has given us a paper that places the burdens of the competitive economic future of the nation on the shoulders of our educational system and offered a number of confidently written proposals to strengthen our ailing schools. Their booklet Tough Choices or Tough Times (2007) has been prepared by the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce. It does not dwell in detail on the analyses which led to their various proposals but the publication is well supplied with testimonials from distinguished public figures and with vignettes of school systems in action. The consequences of their recommendations are portrayed in an imaginative scenario which speaks about expected future consequences as if they were observed facts. The situation which the Commission attempts to portray is simple. American schools do not produce enough students with high science and mathematics skills, who can communicate well, are inclined to work with others, and who are ingenious problem solvers. Therefore our economy will loose out to countries that educate their children better than we do.

According to the report, our schools will produce more well-prepared students and our economy will flourish if we do the following: 1) make good pre-school facilities widely available; 2) establish a standardized examination for the end of the tenth grade, partially to serve as an incentive and partially to determine who will continue highschool or to be switched to a vocationally oriented community college system; 3) administer a standardized examination at the end of highschool to determine whether students will be admitted to universities; 4) change how teachers are trained and pay them a lot more money; 5) have teachers form private professional guilds which will offer their services to communities under contract. The recommendations are fairly flexible about students’ path through the system and they suggest substantial cooperation among states with respect to curriculum and testing. The need for empirical investigations of the knowledge and skill demands of the work place is briefly mentioned. . .

[edit] Comment

The report contains several sensible, although not very novel, suggestions but they are overshadowed by much Voodoo. Some of the black magic would be more at home in a real estate sales brochure than a scholarly policy report.

The recommendation which is best supported in the scientific literature is strong pre-school education, for which we can thank our own Lynn Kagan. Other strong features include recommendations for higher teacher salaries, the centralization of curriculum and exams, and recognition of the need for multiple educational paths. The proposal of teacher groups contracting with school systems may have the interesting property of enhancing teachers’ interest in science-based instructional instructional efficiency. Also interesting is the notion of a bifurcation in the educational path after grade ten, although I think it should be earlier.

The report tends to underestimate the impact of student variability in public education and has a very simple-minded view of the sources of creativeness and enterprise in the general working population.

[edit] Dark and Perhaps Malicious Voodoo

Voodoo #1: The paper offers an imaginative projections of the expected impact of their recommendation as if they were observed facts. This is done stealthily and with few signals to the reader. The past tense is sometimes used in describing what might happen. The style would be more appropriate to a real estate developer’s brochure about a gated retirement community in a Florid swamp, than a research-based policy paper.

Voodoo #2: Some loosely-written calculations are offered about how savings brought about by the proposed educational changes will be used to finance other aspects of the plan. I am not prepared to comment on these but it is clear to me that they deserve careful scrutiny and detailed explication.

Voodoo #3 (and the biggest voodoo of them all): ToughTimes-Tough Choices blames the schools for the nation’s economic malaise and lack of competitiveness. Salvation is to be the burden of our schools. This is patent nonsense. It represents an attempt to off-load malignant consequences of systemic attributes in our business system on others . The future of the U.S. economy may be influenced by our educational system but the schools are small sinners. Good science and mathematics teaching is valuable to our society but it is difficult to steer our gifted into those educational channels against the strong currents that prevail in our businesses and, broadly, in our culture. Furthermore the demand for knowledge in our so-called knowledge economy is widely misunderstood — but that may be the subject for another little essay.