School Daze

Nice that we are building public schools in Iraq, now that we are pushing to privatize our own with the euphemisms called school vouchers. It’s especially amusing to read the latest position on these slights-of-hand coming from eminent economist Terry M. Moe in an Op-Ed in the New York Times . Mr. Moe is an expert on the subject of privatizing schools, having carefully analyzed the performance the Edison School company and determined that this passively failed, once-public company teaches better than public schools.

That is not the point of his essay, entitled, “How Vouchers Will Enrich Public Schools,” however. It’s a simple fact that Edison spent more than public schools and did worse compared to them, according to various measurements of students’ achievements. You won’t find this on their web site. You’ll find Mr. Moe’s laudatory analysis. The problems with his work are simple enough to get you a “C” in basic statistics classes, at least in the less prestigious institutions I attended than the ones that litter Mr. Moe’s resume. According to the Axis of Evil lifetime member, the American Federation of Teachers, the analysis of the real numbers boils down to this: Edison and Moe tout improvement of students in their schools , but it ain’t so. And more to the point, not when measurements are matched to those of comparable public schools. When Edison schools are measured against comparable public schools, they rank lower. Thus:



“Edison’s longer-running schools performed modestly better than its newest schools, but
well below the average for other comparable public schools. Schools operating under Edison
prior to 1998-99 (first-generation schools) averaged a rank of “3.1” (on a scale of
in math and a rank of “3.8” in reading. By definition, the average rank of other public
is always a “5.5.” Third-generation schools, those opened during 1999-2000, averaged
in math and reading almost as high as the older schools—“2.8” in math and “3.5” in reading.”

Nor is this the first time Moe has played statistical sleight-of-hand to advance his ideology (which he has every right to). He’s been equally sloppy in his analysis of parochial vs. public schools. A decade ago the much-maligned Al Shanker caught him at it:

“More recently, at a conference I was attending, Chubb presented a new paper that he and Terry Moe have written. It cites data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of the Eighth Grade Class of 1988 (NELS:88), which, according to Chubb and Moe, supports their contention about private school achievement. NELS:88 tested a large group of students in eighth grade and again in tenth grade and found that the youngsters in private schools had made much greater gains than public school students. However, this turns out to be only half the story. A whopping 37 percent of students left parochial school for public school after eighth grade. Who were these kids? Nearly half--47 percent--came from families in the lowest 25 percent in terms of socioeconomic status. Since socioeconomic status (SES) correlates with student achievement, the large number of low SES students leaving parochial school in eighth grade was certain to raise parochial school scores. And the large number of these kids entering public school was almost certain to depress public school scores--exactly the opposite result from the one Chubb and Moe claimed in the Wall Street Journal article. In their recent paper, Chubb and Moe use NELS:88 data showing greater improvement in private than public school scores between eighth and tenth grade to assert the superiority of private schools. Impossible to miss but totally left out of their discussion was that the transfer of low SES students certainly elevated private school scores and almost certainly lowered public school scores.”

Now, in his piece in the Times, Mr. Moe points out that a $4500 school voucher will let a parent take a student out of the public school system, where it costs $8000 to educate him. This voucher approach is greatly favored by parents these days. Although why anyone would think that the private schools or the for-profit schools, shown so long ago to at best do no better—and often worse—than public institutions at educating children, will also be able to do it for less, is lost on me. Parochial schools, already stretched to the limit and unable to scale up, depend on gifts and donations, and great economic sacrifice by staff. Edison, basically, went broke. The once-public company went private at a great loss to investors. Let me explain what that means: They couldn’t do the job for a lousy $4500, even without teachers unions and the bloated bureaucracy of the education establishment. Guess unions and bloated bureaucracies are cheaper than MBAs and profiteers bent on exacting a return on their education investment.

Personally, as a taxpayer with no school age children, I am delighted that Mr. Moe wants to remove children from schools. He argues in his latest Op-Ed effort that: “Finally, were few children to go private on vouchers, the public schools couldn't cut back on teachers, buildings and other expenses — which become "fixed" costs — and they would be unable to realize the anticipated savings. But if hundreds or thousands of students were to leave — the Washington plan is for 2,000 students — the public schools could clearly cut back and save money. Fixed costs are not an issue when the voucher programs are sufficiently large.”

I look forward to parents taking all their kids out of public schools, and all of them shutting down, thus saving me money. They won’t find enough seats at private or for-profits schools for all those children, of course, but they can just expel them for misbehaving or flunking, the way private schools do. Then these uneducated kids will, I suppose roam the streets required more policing, wind up in even–more-expensive jail, or volunteer for the all-volunteer army.

All rational choices, compared to letting the dysfunctional public schools take care of them at lower costs to taxpayers like me, I’m sure. And hey, as long as Mr. Moe was given a chance to air his academically excellent views on the Op-Ed page of the Times, why not give Curly a shot at it, too? ¶ 12:57 PM