Thinking versus feeling
Guess which side I'm on. (Note: I don't claim to be good at it.)
posted by Kate Marie | 8:52 PM | Permalink
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23 comments
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23 Comments:
From the piece:
"Why do people who claim to be concerned for the poor so often support or go along with policies that are obviously and predictably bad for society and especially the poor? Why do they support government schooling..."
Wow, public schools. So obviously bad for the poor!
As a matter of fact, poor minorities are precisely the people who get shafted by public schools. That's not very controversial, Alex.
Here's a sample of places to look regarding the public school/school choice issue:
http://www.cato.org/current/school-choice/
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/jeffjacoby/jj20040531.shtml
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/jeff/jacoby071202.asp
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/greene.htm
Or here:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_1_how_i_joined.html
[This is a particularly chilling portrait of the state of public schools in D.C., where per pupil spending is the highest in the nation.]
And you might want to look at the article from which the quotation you cited actually came:
http://www.ratio.se/pdf/wp/wp_dk_tpr.pdf
"As a matter of fact, poor minorities are precisely the people who get shafted by public schools. That's not very controversial, Alex."
A non sequitur. No doubt public schools in poor areas are worse than public schools in rich areas; the question is, whether public schooling is good or bad for the poor. Not whether public schools benefit the rich more than the poor.
Its pretty freakin obvious that public schools benefit the poor compared to a system with no public schooling at all.
Compared to a voucher system, the issue is complicated. Turning over education to private companies may be problematic: the interests of these companies would necessarily be to make a profit, not to benefit the students. Government could try to police them (for example, give them money proportional to their students' test scores, inversely proportional to their dropout rate, etc) but its difficult to see why it would be succesful. Companies could always game the political process (by making contributions to campaigns and such) to get the policy they want. Which, by the way, is why government took over in most municipal matters in the first place.
But the thing you link to says its all obvious! The collectivists aren't thinking, they're feeling! They're engaging in an intricate tribal dance!
Score one for a low level of discourse.
Alex,
It's clear to me (and it's clear from the long paper from which that quote was taken -- you'll note it's not from the author of the editorial I linked to), that the reference to government schooling being bad for the poor implied that it's bad compared to other options for schooling the poor. If you want to take it exactly literally, however, it's still correct, as the quotation doesn't compare government schooling with no schooling at all, but simply states that government schooling is generally bad for poor people (which it is).
In any event, I suggest you read the entire paper that the quotation comes from if you want to deal at a "high level of discourse" with this issue.
"Turning over education to private companies may be problematic: the interests of these companies would necessarily be to make a profit, not to benefit the students."
-- The thing is, Alex, some schools are already run by "private companies" and most of the evidence shows that they do a better job of educating poor minorities than public schools -- as some of the additional articles I linked to will attest. As for an interest in making profit, that's one of the reasons that those schools do a better job. Economics 101, Alex -- market forces, competition, etc. The public school system, in its current form, is in the stranglehold of very powerful teachers' unions, whose main interest is to benefit teachers, NOT students.
"Companies could always game the political process (by making contributions to campaigns and such) to get the policy they want."
-- Which is EXACTLY what the N.E.A. does, Alex.
As for a low level of discourse, I'm not very impressed by your method of picking out a single phrase within an article (which was, in turn, a quotation from a different paper by a different author), construing it to suit your purposes, and claiming that that somehow invalidates the writer's entire point and engages in a low level of discourse. I have no idea what kind of discourse you engage in about the state of education, but the level of discourse coming from those who chant the collectivist mantra ("public schools are good; don't take money out of public schools") IS quite low. If that bothers you, why not try to raise the bar?
Again, you might want to look at the paper from which that quotation came:
http://www.ratio.se/pdf/wp/wp_dk_tpr.pdf
"As for a low level of discourse, I'm not very impressed by your method of picking out a single phrase within an article (which was, in turn, a quotation from a different paper by a different author), construing it to suit your purposes, and claiming that that somehow invalidates the writer's entire point and engages in a low level of discourse. "
I don't understand your complaint here.
- When an article contains a myriad of bad arguments, I am justified in picking one and addressing it. The blogger comment box character limit is simply not big enough to encompass a refutation of every bad argument offered by Kling. Not to mention that even if it would, anything so long would make for tedious reading, and even more tedious writing.
- To do this is not to claim that wrogness on that one point invalidates the entire article. Rather, I picked this point because, in my opinion, its rather symptomatic in its badness of the arguments offered.
- That it came from a different paper is irrelevant. Kling endorsed the point.
" Economics 101, Alex -- market forces, competition, etc."
You should learn economics 102. You know, where you stop to consider if your models of perfect competition, utility-maximizing agents are all that realistic. In particular,it follows from the Glaesar paper I linked to above that government takeover of municipal functions (utilities, services) made them more efficient.
""Companies could always game the political process (by making contributions to campaigns and such) to get the policy they want."
-- Which is EXACTLY what the N.E.A. does, Alex."
Whether the NEA would be better or worse at it than a well-funded industry is unclear. Moreoever, the interests of the teachers (small class size, good school environment) line up better with the interests of the students than the interests of private companies.
"...most of the evidence shows that they do a better job of educating poor minorities than public schools."
Not true. For a survey of the studies that concludes exactly the opposite of what you claim see here. As far as I am concerned, whether charter schools perform better or worse in practice is an open question with no definitive answer yet.
What is low-level about this is that it takes a complex issue, with much to be said for each side, and reduces it to "obviously the liberals are wrong." There are issues where you can do this sort of thing - I personally do it all the time - but this is not one of them. I don't claim that the anti-voucher side doesn't make bad arguments. But nothing that quite compares to this.
Having lived in D.C. for more than a decade now, I sometimes think that many poor kids would be better served--or at least equally served--by not being forced to attend the District's horrible public-school system. Many of them would end up in the same place in life if they were simply allowed to sit home and watch TV all day. We're spending more per pupil than anywhere in the United States--$11,269 annually--and our adult illiteracy rate is 37 percent, which is probably around half of all black adults. Our high-school drop-out rate is a depressing 41 percent.
As a public-school kid myself, I really want to be able to get behind the system, but I can't anymore. Where I grew up, in suburban central New Jersey, the system still works, more or less, mostly because the towns are socioeconomically diverse. But here, in a 90-percent Democratic city where you're a heretic if you don't pay lip service to the ideal of the public school, the wealthy white folks all send their kids to fancy private schools while poor black folks languish. Many of them drop out, and half of them don't even learn how to read. It's a heartbreaking waste of human life.
That's why I'm gung-ho for vouchers and charter schools for D.C. The current school system here in the city is irredeemable and a failure by any reasonable standard. I don't claim to have any grand vision, but I figure the first thing we can do, and the least we can do, is provide parents and kids who care about education with a chance to escape the educational ghetto.
Great points, Jeff, especially this:
"But here, in a 90-percent Democratic city where you're a heretic if you don't pay lip service to the ideal of the public school, the wealthy white folks all send their kids to fancy private schools while poor black folks languish. Many of them drop out, and half of them don't even learn how to read. It's a heartbreaking waste of human life."
-- Referenda for school vouchers have been defeated in California and Michigan largely because middle-classs white parents can't be bothered to consider the disparities between their children's public schools (which probably aren't really as good as the parents think they are), and the schools in which poor black parents are forced to send their children.
Alex, Kling's editorial is not an argument about public schooling versus "school choice." If you think it's NOT obvious that government schooling is bad for poor children, you haven't made your case. And I agree with Jeff that it's not even obvious that government schooling (for poor minorities) is better than no schooling at all.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Kate Marie,
Of course I've made my case that its not "obvious" that government schooling is bad for poor children. I've provided you links to both statistical data that demonstrate there is, at the very least, no clear consensus on the performance of charter schools; and I've given you theoretical reasons for why one cannot say competition among charter schools will outperform the public school system.
Kling's editorial is not an argument about public schooling, but the claim that it's "obvious" that public schooling is bad for the poor is typical of the level of argumentation Kling employs.
Jeff,
Don't get me wrong, I support some experimentation with vouchers/charter schools - perhaps in a few school districts like DC to see how it works out. What I am objecting to are claims that its "obvious" that because one system does a poor job, another system will do a better job. This is an example of muddled thinking. The charter system would not have the shortcomings of our public school system, but it would have shortcomings of its own. The statistical data are ambiguous and theoretically different models will predict different results. The only way to find out is to do a series of experiments by adopting the system in several districts and see how they go.
"Of course I've made my case that its not "obvious" that government schooling is bad for poor children. I've provided you links to both statistical data that demonstrate there is, at the very least, no clear consensus on the performance of charter schools; and I've given you theoretical reasons for why one cannot say competition among charter schools will outperform the public school system."
-- I provided a lot of links to articles which suggest just the opposite, but that's not really the point. Proving that "charter schools" MIGHT be no better than government schools does not constitute proof that it's not obvious that government schooling is bad for the poor. You might also want to remember that "charter schools" are not the only other option for parents who want a choice about their childrens' schooling (private and parochial schools are also an option).
"What I am objecting to are claims that its "obvious" that because one system does a poor job, another system will do a better job. This is an example of muddled thinking."
-- Kling makes no such argument.
The fact, though, is that it IS possible to argue that the system of school choice works better than the public school system for poor minorities. Look at the CATO address I provided earlier. The muddled thinking comes from those who are opposed to school choice because "it takes money out of public schools" or because "they support public schools." When there is so much evidence that public schools are failing the children who are most vulnerable and most in need of a good education, it's muddled thinking, at best, and crass political pandering to special interests like the NEA, at worst, to keep chanting "I believe in public schools" and to oppose ANY kind of voucher/school choice system. It IS obvious that the public schools we have now are not working for the poor, especially poor minorities; do you have some evidence that they ARE working?
Here is a lot more.
"Proving that "charter schools" MIGHT be no better than government schools does not constitute proof that it's not obvious that government schooling is bad for the poor."
First, you are wrong in saying my position is that market solutions "MIGHT be no better." My position is that market solutions MIGHT be worse.
Secondly, of course it constitutes the proof I need. The two statements,
1. X is obvious
2. X might be false
cannot simulataneously be true. If you prove one, you prove the other is false. Letting X be the statement "government schooling is bad for the poor," you see that I've brought irrefutable evidence for 2. This is a proof that 1 is false.
Is my evidence really irrefutable? Yes: the threshold for saying something might be true is far weaker than the threshold for saying it actually is true. Specifically, the examples in Glaeser's paper of market failures in local government functions demonstrate quite clearly how corporate influence on the political process can lead to gross inefficiency.
""What I am objecting to are claims that its "obvious" that because one system does a poor job, another system will do a better job."
-- Kling makes no such argument. "
Indeed. I was responding to Jeff.
"The fact, though, is that it IS possible to argue that the system of school choice works better..."
I'm not sure why you are saying this. I've been making a very concrete argument: not that school choice works better, or that it works worse, but that the answer is not obvious. As I said, it IS possible to argue this either way.
You've also given quite a few links supportive of the school vouchers, but its not clear to me that they add to your position. Indeed, my position - that the answer is unclear - involves believing good arguments can be brought on both sides of the spectrum. Once we have established that, finding more and more essays that suppor either side of the spectrum does not change anything.
Alex, where exactly have you provided irrefutable evidence that X (government schools are bad for the poor) might be false? The single article you linked to makes no argument about schools, and, if I'm remembering correctly, says that it's unclear that privatizing education would result in the inefficiency described. I'm also a bit baffled by the notion that the efficiency/relative merits of private schooling hasn't been tested. Private and parochial schools have existed right alongside public schools for many, many decades. Are you suggesting that the jury is still out on whether private schools are subject to the gross inefficiencies described in the article (none of which, by the way, pertain specifically to the subject of schooling)?
Is it your contention that one cannot say that government schools are bad for the poor if other schools might (for the sake of argument) be worse? If I say it's obvious that hell is bad, are you going to come back with "That's muddled thinking. You can't say it's obvious that hell is bad -- purgatory might be worse"?
You're expending a lot of effort on a point that, in the end, is negligible to Kling's argument, a statement that is made in a quotation from another paper (and one which has its own context within that paper). Why? Since you seem to believe that the problems with Kling's main argument are numerous and obvious, why not attack his main point? In other words, if I conceded that it's not obvious that public schools are bad for the poor (which I won't), what exactly have you proven?
"You're expending a lot of effort on a point that, in the end, is negligible to Kling's argument...Why?"
My original comment was one line. Your continuing denial of something that in my opinion is trivially true forces me to expend effort to prove to you that it is true.
"Since you seem to believe that the problems with Kling's main argument are numerous and obvious, why not attack his main point?"
In order to attack an argument, there must be an argument. On reading Kling's essay, I could not detect an argument being made. That is, I could not detect a sequence of logical propositions. I saw a series of generally unrelated non-sequiturs (all tied together by the imaginary collectivist which presumably uttered them), few of which made sense even on a stand-alone basis. I picked one that seemed particularly silly to me.
"In other words, if I conceded that it's not obvious that public schools are bad for the poor (which I won't), what exactly have you proven?"
That Kling writes bad essays?
"The single article you linked to..."
I linked to two.
"The single article you linked to makes no argument about schools, and, if I'm remembering correctly, says that it's unclear that privatizing education would result in the inefficiency described."
It sounds like you are talking about the Glaeser article here. That one provides the theoretical and historical justification for saying a market solution may be less efficient than government ownership. A short summary: if a market needs regulation of some sort to function, and market participants are able to exert influence on the political process, one can expect inefficiences to occur, in magnitude directly proportional to how much political influence the market participants have. Moroever, the are plenty of examples of such stuff happening in real life.
"Private and parochial schools have existed right alongside public schools for many, many decades. Are you suggesting that the jury is still out on whether private schools are subject to the gross inefficiencies described in the article..."
Yes. The problem is that different schools have different levels of incoming students, different commitments by parents, etc. Controlling for this is difficult. One way to do this is to study what happens when a charter school takes over public school students. The results have been at best mixed.
"Is it your contention that one cannot say that government schools are bad for the poor if other schools might (for the sake of argument) be worse?"
Of course, what is obvious is that government schools are good for the poor. Even if the amount of learning that goes on the worst high school is low, its not zero. One may absorb shockingly little from 12 years of lectures, but one cannot absorb a negative amount of knowledge from the experience. On the other hand, if these kids spent the same time on the street, a lot more would take up drug dealing and such.
In my previous comments I've been addressing the more respectable idea that government schools are bad for the poor relative to charter schools. I've done so because you brought it up. If you want to argue that the very existence of free education hurts the poor, I'll be happy to take on that claim.
"if I conceded that it's not obvious that public schools are bad for the poor (which I won't)"
Glad to see your mind is made up.
On the other hand, I suggest the following question: when is a statement obvious? How do I distinguish between an obvious statement and one that is merely likely to be true?
Here is my suggestion: in order for a statement to be obvious it is necessary (but not sufficient) for there not to exist evidence that makes you doubt its conclusion.
The statistical data, which generally does not clear large gains when charter schools take over( see the above linked Gerald Bracey Paper); and historical experience, which shows plenty of examples of market solutions being much less efficient than government ownership; and theoretical economics (for both of these, see the Glaeser paper or my summary of its aguments) ought to make you doubt that charter schools would perform better than public schools.
You keep citing an article that doesn't deal specifically with public schools, and in one passage warns against the conclusions you seem to be drawing. Glaeser says the case for government ownership and control of schools is "less clear." He says that schools are not a natural monopoly, and that the Hart, Schliefer, and Vishny model doesn't apply, since it is "hard to argue that public ownership and control improves school quality."
For someone who didn't want to make the tedious effort that was required to refute Kling's obviously stupid points, you've expended a ton of verbiage on a point that he himself is not even making. [I would have thought, for instance, that you'd deal with his discussion of the putative "right" to health care.] If it is so urgent that you prove to me that government schools are not OBVIOUSLY bad for the poor, why not read and respond to the essay that Kling links to, the one from which the quotation is taken? [Then you can really sink your teeth into the "imaginary" collectivist.]
I continue in my pig-headed belief that public schools are obviously not good for the poor relative to private schools (private, parochial, and charter) and to systems which accomodate parental choice. Your criterion for obviousness (that there not exist ANY evidence that would make one doubt its conclusion) would pretty much preclude the use of the word with reference to ANY public policy issue, as there will always exist contradictory evidence. My criterion for obviousness is a preponderance of evidence; the mound of studies that I linked to on the CATO site, as well as numerous other studies, sufficiently (for my purposes, at least) suggest the obviousness of the proposition.
How would you define sophistry, by the way?
"You keep citing an article that doesn't deal specifically with public schools, and in one passage warns against the conclusions you seem to be drawing. Glaeser says the case for government ownership and control of schools is "less clear.""
Oh come on!!!!!!!!!
Let me paste some snippets from my previous comments on this thread.
-Compared to a voucher system, the issue is complicated.
-As far as I am concerned, whether charter schools perform better or worse in practice is an open question with no definitive answer yet.
-The statistical data are ambiguous and theoretically different models will predict different results. The only way to find out is to do a series of experiments by adopting the system in several districts...
-I've been making a very concrete argument: not that school choice works better, or that it works worse, but that the answer is not obvious. As I said, it IS possible to argue this either way.
Seriously, Kate Marie. It's been 18 comments. By this time, you should have realized the position you just claimed is not my position (i.e. what Glaeser says) IS actually my position: its completely unclear, either theoretically or statistically, which is better.
Can we please have no further misunderstandings over what I am arguing? Please don't reply to this with something that assumes I am taking an anti-voucher stance.
"....you've expended a ton of verbiage on a point that he himself is not even making. [I would have thought, for instance, that you'd deal with his discussion of the putative "right" to health care.] If it is so urgent that you prove to me that government schools are not OBVIOUSLY bad for the poor, why not read and respond to the essay that Kling links to, the one from which the quotation is taken? "
I have read it, actually. I'll be glad to respond if you'd like me to. As for why I have not - well, if I can't even convince you that
i. statistical evidence that shows no clear gains when charter schools take over
ii. theoretical models that explain how corporate influence of the political process may make market solutions grossly inefficient
iii. historical examples that illustrate (ii) happening
imply that charter schools (which are a particular market solution) are not obviously superior - I consider it to be trivial deductive inference - then theres no sense in initiating a discussion on the other stuff.
"My criterion for obviousness is a preponderance of evidence; the mound of studies that I linked to on the CATO site, as well as numerous other studies, sufficiently (for my purposes, at least) suggest the obviousness of the proposition."
So, let me get this straight. Your position is not just true, its obviously true...because there are a lot of studies supporting your position!
Of course, there are a lot of studies opposing your position. Which I am sure you know from reading the Bracey paper I linked to a few times in the comments above. Two of the ones I consider particularly important are the study of charter schools in california by the rand corporation - which concluded that charter school students have "comparable or slightly lower" test scores; and this study of charter schools in Michigan, which concluded "students attending charter schools in Michigan are not reaching the same levels of achievement as students in traditional public schools in the same districts". I consider them important because they have pretty large sample sizes; and because the rand study comes from a politically neutral actor that does not have a dog in the fight; and because both of them went through quite a bit of effort to control for student quality.
In summary. There are studies that say charter schools are good. There are studies that say charter schools are bad. My opinion: which side is right is unclear. Your opinion: the mound of studies supporting your position makes it obvious.
Which one of us is thinking and which one of us is feeling?
1) We have to stop meeting like this.
2) Are you a vampire?
3) What you can't convince me of is that the statement that appears in the Daniel Klein paper that Kling links to is an example of muddled thinking.
Here's what Klein says:
"Many people, particularly ones who in the American context would tend to vote Democrat or Green, are inclined to support economic restrictions such as union privileges, occuptational licensing, the minimum wage, housing market-controls, the postal monopoly, and import restrictions. Yet knowledgeable economists agree that these restrictions are bad for humankind. Perhaps their support arises because TPR requires, as Bukharin and Preobrazhensky put it, that activities be statified. What seems primary is not often how well the program or policy achieves stated goals of improving education, mobility, opportunity, and so on but instead the collective endeavor itself.
Why do people who claim to be concerned for the poor so often support or go along with policies that are obviously and predictably bad for society and especially the poor? Why do they support government schooling, antidevelopment land-use policies, rail transit projects, and policies to discourage the use of the private automobile? TPR provides an explanation: these policies bind people together (like a bundle of sticks)."
These two small passages appear in the context of a long paper about collectivist thought, which Klein dubs The People's Romance. He is not making specific arguments about public schools, minimum wages, etc., but as an economist, he has studied those things and formed an "expert" opinion about their effectiveness. It is, in my unexpert opinion, rather absurd to seize on a single word in a claim that is tangential to the point of the paper and to claim that it represents muddled thinking. But, hey, man, that's, like, just the way I FEEL.
4) The Glaeser article doesn't argue that "its completely unclear, either theoretically or statistically, which [type of schooling] is better." He doesn't make schooling part of his study at all, and what he considers "less clear" is not which kind of schooling is better but why -- given the models he uses -- government ownership/control should pertain, especially since -- in his own words -- "it's hard to argue that government ownership and control improve school quality." Glaeser's article argues that government ownership and control of some industries (natural monopolies, for instance) is more efficient. But since he makes no claims whatsoever about the implications of his model for government schooling, I'm finding it hard to understand what you think Glaeser's article proves with respect to schooling specifically.
A quasi-vampire, perhaps. I'm only up some nights. Maybe a werewolf?
Perhaps instead of "muddled thinking," I should have said "bad argumentation" (though I think the two are nearly identical). And I mean on the part of Kling, not Klein. "Look the collectivist is so obviously wrong - let's psychoanalyze him!" Of course, the collectivist is not obviously wrong.
Its bad argumentation, even apart from the "obviously false" part being itself false. If you already knew the literature on charter schools, you'd know that the off-hand reference grossly misrepresented the debate. If you didn't, you'd form the false impression that the matter has been settled.
As for the Glaeser paper - it completely demolishes the most common rationale used for charter schools (you know, markets, economics 101, all that). It does all this without having to refer to schools at all.
Whether this model applies to schools is unclear. But then whether the simplistic perfect competition econ 101 model applies to schools is also unclear. The lesson to take away from the Glaeser paper is that there are no theoretical economic reasons to be certain that charter schools will improve things; it all depends on which economic model will more accurately describe the actions of the schools and the politicians.
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