Category: Education

Milton Friedman’s School Vouchers Pass Utah Senate

I received an email mailing yesterday (2/9/07) from Robert Fanger, who is the Communications Director of the Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation.  He wrote:  "By a vote of 19 to 10, the Utah Senate passed the universal school voucher bill this afternoon."

On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial on the issue that is excerpted below:

 

Proving that the best reforms often pass by the slimmest of margins, Utah’s house voted 38-37 late last week to create a state-wide voucher program that will allow students to escape failing public schools.

Union opponents can be expected to mount a furious assault in the state senate, and then head to court. But the senate is likely to pass the reform supported by GOP Governor Jon Huntsman Jr., so Utah may soon become the first state with a universal school choice plan. It would offer students who attend private K-12 schools from $500 to $3,000 in tuition reimbursement based on family income.

Meanwhile, South Carolina could be next. Legislation is now being drafted to allow nearly 200,000 poor students to opt out of failing public schools by giving them up to $4,500 a year to spend on private school tuition. Middle class parents would be eligible for a $1,000 tax credit.

 

Reference for editorial:

"Choice Advances."  The Wall Street Journal  (Weds., February 7, 2007):  A14.

 

The Difference Between Being a University President and Being a Cabinet Officer

 

At a dinner last week to announce the winner of the business book of the year award, Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary, poked fun at his tenure as the president of Harvard.  . . .

Specifically, he said he was woefully naïve when he had been first asked to describe the difference between being a university president and being a cabinet officer. ”I guess I didn’t get it right in the answer I gave in my first year or two,” he said, ”because I used to say, ‘Well, in Washington, it’s so political; there’s organized opposition to everything.’ ”

 

For the full story, see: 

JANE L. LEVERE.  "OPENERS: SUITS; HARVARD EDUCATION."  The New York Times, Section 3 (Sun., October 29, 2006):  2.

(Note:  ellipsis added.)

 

Closing the Alleged ‘Digital Divide’

 One version of the laptops produced by One Laptop Per Child for roughly $100 a piece.  Source of image:  http://www.laptop.org/OLPC_files/nigeria.jpg

 

Simply giving each child a laptop, won’t much improve their standard of living.  (See Easterly’s The Elusive Quest for Growth.)  But maybe a few of the children will obtain access to information about what is possible in the outside world, and maybe that will lead them to fight for more freedom?

But at least, if they remain poor, it will not be possible to lay the blame on some sort of ‘digital divide.’  Lay the blame, instead on government economic planning. 

Note the aside buried in the article:  ‘competitive advantage’ economist Michael Porter is telling the Libyans how to develop a "national economic plan"??  (Say it ain’t so, Michael!)

 

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 10 — The government of Libya reached an agreement on Tuesday with One Laptop Per Child, a nonprofit United States group developing an inexpensive, educational laptop computer, with the goal of supplying machines to all 1.2 million Libyan schoolchildren by June 2008.

The project, which is intended to supply computers broadly to children in developing nations, was conceived in 2005 by a computer researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nicholas Negroponte.  His goal is to design a wireless-connected laptop that will cost about $100 after the machines go into mass production next year.

. . .

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January, Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman, suggested that the next generation of cellphones might be a better way to reach across the so-called digital divide.

Mr. Negroponte said Microsoft refused to sell its Windows software to the project at a price that would make it possible to include in his system.  As a result, his laptops will come with the freely available Linux operating system, which is becoming increasingly popular in the developing world.

The idea of a laptop for every schoolchild grew out of Mr. Negroponte’s experience in giving children Internet-connected laptops in rural Cambodia.  He said the first English word out of the mouths of the Cambodian students was “Google.”

Discussions between the One Laptop project and the Libyan government began as part of work being done by the Monitor Group, an international consulting firm co-founded by the economist Michael E. Porter.  It is now helping the Libyans develop a national economic plan.

. . .  

The first test models will be distributed to the five participating countries companies at the end of this November, according to Mr. Negroponte, and mass production is planned for June or July of 2007.

The computers come with a wireless connection, a built-in video camera, an eight-hour battery and a hand crank for recharging batteries.  They will initially be priced below $150, and the price is expected to decline when they are manufactured in large numbers.

 

For the full story, see:

JOHN MARKOFF.  "U.S. Group Reaches Deal to Provide Laptops to All Libyan Schoolchildren."  The New York Times  (Weds., October 11, 2006):  A14.

(Note:  ellipses added.)

 

  MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte.  Source of image:  online version of the NYT article cited above.

Gym Classes Promote Sports, Not Healthy Exercise

 

Here is more evidence that public school physical education classes should be turned over to private sector firms like "24 Hour Fitness."  

Ms. Jackie Lund, who is quoted below, is the President of NASPE, which the article identifies as "an association of fitness educators and professionals.  Note well that she as much as admits that fitness is not the purpose of gym classes.

 

Researchers report that in the typical high-school gym class students are active for an average of 16 minutes.

The report by Cornell University researchers also found that adding 200 minutes more of physical-education time a week had little effect. (See the report.)

"What’s actually going on in gym classes?  Is it a joke?" asked John Cawley, lead author of the study and a professor of policy analysis and management at Cornell.

. . .

The rest of the extra gym time is likely spent being idle — most likely standing around while playing sports like softball or volleyball that don’t require constant movement, Mr. Cawley said.

. . .

. . . , Ms. Lund says merely counting how many minutes students are moving may not be a fair measure of a gym class.  "It’s not supposed to be aerobics class.  The activity level is going to vary depending on the sport they’re learning," she said.

 

For the full story, see: 

"High-Schoolers Get Scant Exercise in Gym Class."   Wall Street Journal  (Weds., September 20, 2006):  D4.

(Note:  the online version of the article has the title:  "Is High-School Gym Class An Exercise in Futility?")

(Note:  ellipses are added.)

 

Internet Reduces Elite Universities’ Competitive Edge

With professors spending so much time blogging for no payment, universities might wonder whether this detracts from their value.  Although there is no evidence of a direct link between blogging and publishing productivity, a new study* by E. Han Kim and Adair Morse, of the University of Michigan, and Luigi Zingales, of the University of Chicago, shows that the internet’s ability to spread knowledge beyond university classrooms has diminished the competitive edge that elite schools once held.

Top universities once benefited from having clusters of star professors.  The study showed that during the 1970s, an economics professor from a random university, outside the top 25 programmes, would double his research productivity by moving to Harvard.  The strong relationship between individual output and that of one’s colleagues weakened in the 1980s, and vanished by the end of the 1990s.

The faster flow of information and the waning importance of location—which blogs exemplify—have made it easier for economists from any university to have access to the best brains in their field.  That anyone with an internet connection can sit in on a virtual lecture from Mr DeLong means that his ideas move freely beyond the boundaries of Berkeley, creating a welfare gain for professors and the public.  

For the full story, see:

"FINANCE & ECONOMICS: Economists’ blogs; The invisible hand on the keyboard; Why do economists spend valuable time blogging?"  The Economist 380, no. 8489 (Aug. 3, 2006):  67. 

 

The full reference to the paper by Kim et al, is:

* “Are Elite Universities Losing Their Competitive Edge?” by E. Han Kim, Adair Morse and Luigi Zingales. NBER working paper 12245, May 2006.

(Thanks to Carolyn Diamond for giving me a copy of the article from The Economist.) 

 

Exercising to Win, Hurts Lifetime Fitness

Source of image:  online version of the NYT article cited below.

 

(p. E1)  The dirty secret among former high school and college jocks is that many don’t remain active as adults.  In their glory days they were the fittest among their peers.  But as adults many are overtaken by nonjocks who embrace fitness as a commitment to health, forget the varsity letter.

Onetime elite athletes often languish once organized competition is over and a coach isn’t hounding them, sports scientists and exercise physiologists say.  Many are burned out.  Others become discouraged when their lackluster fitness can’t compare to their highlight reels.  Running on a treadmill in a sea of anonymous gym-goers doesn’t compare to the thrill of being an m.v.p. on campus.

"Basically, they’ve been to the mountaintop and now they’re on these little hills, and that is difficult to deal with," said Dan Gould, the director of the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports at Michigan State University in Lansing.

Extrinsic motivation is tricky business, said Dr. Gould, a professor of kinesiology.  He said he has found that athletes who played for trophies (p. E8) or attention are more at risk of becoming sedentary as adults than people who have taught themselves to get off the sofa and exercise, those with "intrinsic motivation."

 

For the full story, see:

JILL AGOSTINO.  "Once an Athletic Star, Now an Unheavenly Body."   The New York Times  (Thurs.,  July 6, 2006):  E1 & E8.

Gateway Features artdiamondblog.com

Source of graphic: online version of The Gateway article cited below.

 

The Gateway, the student newspaper at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, ran a nice feature article on artdiamondblog.com on July 18, 2006, as the first installment of a projected series on blogs created by members of the campus community.

 

If you click the citation below, you will arrive at the online version of the feature:

Reed, Charley. "Meet the Blogger: UNO Professor Art Diamond." The Gateway (Tues., July 18, 2006):  3.

 

For your convenience, the text of the feature also appears below.

Continue reading “Gateway Features artdiamondblog.com”

When Public Schools Fail, Give Parents a Refund

Writing on Weds., July 12th, libertarian litigator Clint Bolick, seeks to improve failing schools by using the courts to increase parental choice:

 

A world of education reform will change tomorrow when a group of families files a class action lawsuit in Chancery Court in Newark, N.J.  They are asking for an immediate and meaningful remedy for 60,000 children trapped in failing schools — by transferring control over education funds from bureaucrats to parents.

Seeking to vindicate the state constitutional guarantee of a "thorough and efficient" education, the plaintiffs in Crawford v. Davy ask that children be allowed to leave public schools where fewer than half of the students pass the state math and language literacy assessments that measure educational proficiency; and that the parents of these children be permitted to take the pro rata share of the public money spent on their children, to seek better opportunities in other public or private schools.  Supporting the families are three prominent New Jersey groups:  the Black Ministers Council, the Latino Leadership Alliance, and Excellent Education for Everyone.

The remedy these parents seek is fundamentally different from the one established by more than three decades of litigation across the country.  Courts in states like New York, Texas and California have ordered massive increases in school funding to fulfill state constitutional mandates for educational "equity" or "adequacy," all on the belief that more money will boost school quality and student performance.  The funds have produced new programs and bureaucracies, but too often they fail to trickle down to the students by way of improved educational quality.

In any area other than education such a remedy would be considered bizarre.  Suppose you purchased a car whose warranty promised "thorough and efficient" transportation, and it turned out to be a lemon.  If you sued to enforce the warranty, would a court order a multibillion dollar payment to the auto maker in the hope that someday it would produce a better product?  Of course not:  It would order the company to give your money back so you could buy a different car.

 

For the full commentary, see:

CLINT BOLICK. "Remedial Education." The Wall Street Journal  (Weds., July 12, 2006):  A16.

“giving individual schools more autonomy”

(p. A1)  SAN DIEGO — When San Diego’s school district began overhauling its science-education curriculum five years ago, it wanted to raise the performance of minority, low-income and immigrant students.

But parents in middle- and upper-income areas, where many students were already doing well, rebelled against the new curriculum, and a course called Active Physics in particular.  They called it watered-down science, too skimpy on math.

A resistance movement took hold.  Some teachers refused to use the new textbooks, which are peppered with cartoons.  They gathered up phased-out texts to use on the sly.  As controversy over the issue escalated, it played a part in an election in which the majority of the school board was replaced.  Now, further curriculum changes are under consideration.

. . .

(p. A11)  Mitz Lee, a parent activist at Scripps Ranch High, also a high-achieving school, continued quietly organizing opposition and eventually made it a cornerstone of her 2004 campaign for a seat on the school board.

Opposition to the program remained sharp among some veteran science teachers.  Tom Deets, who teaches at Patrick Henry High, argued that freshman who hadn’t passed eighth-grade algebra weren’t ready for physics.  Rather than teach the new course, he switched to math until the district offered him an administrative job.

Aiming to keep their hands on alternative teaching materials, an active underground sprang up, with teachers squirreling away old physics textbooks to make sure the district couldn’t collect them.  "At one time, I probably had 400 books," says Hal Cox, a retired submarine commander who teaches physics at Hoover High School.  "I put them in lockers, everywhere I could find."

The opposition came to a head with the school-board elections of 2004, when three critics of the district’s overall curriculum changes, including those in math and reading, were elected to its five-member school board.  The winners included Ms. Lee, who had campaigned for an end to "fuzzy" science and was elected by the widest margin of the new board members.  She has lately been pushing for giving individual schools more autonomy on course choice.  "I don’t want any more central mandates," Ms. Lee says.

  

For the full story, see:

ROBERT TOMSHO.  "Textbook Battle; Top High Schools Fight New Science As Overly Simple; San Diego’s Physics Overhaul Makes Classes Accessible, Spurs Parental Backlash; Test Scores Barely Budge."  The Wall Street Journal  (Thurs., April 13, 2006):   A1 & A11.

“My Merit Is My Caste; What Is Yours?”

NEW DELHI, May 22 — The problem of caste prejudice here is as ancient as the Hindu texts. The efforts to redress it date from the formation of modern India nearly 59 years ago. Today — as India enjoys awesome rates of economic progress and confronts the challenge of spreading the benefits to its needy majority — the nation faces a polarizing totem of public policy: a government plan to extend college admission quotas to certain "backward" castes.

Affirmative action is in some ways an even more emotional issue in India than in the United States. In recent weeks, a proposal to extend quotas for admission to some of the country’s flagship, federally financed universities has caused fresh turmoil.

Protests — particularly by medical students who say merit should be the only basis for admission to India’s intensely competitive medical schools — have spread across the country and, here in the capital, hobbled public health services. Advocates and opponents of the measure have exchanged often ugly rants.

. . .

Medical students have been particularly outraged because the plan would further restrict the limited number of seats. Medical education in India begins with a five-year undergraduate program, and the proposal could affect students’ chances of completing their training.

The central lawn of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, the pre-eminent public hospital, was occupied Friday by medical students on the fifth day of a strike that began last week and continued on Monday. "My merit is my caste. What is yours?" read one T-shirt.

. . .

The opponents say set-asides would diminish the quality of India’s best universities and divide students along caste lines.

"Why after 55 years are we still thinking in terms of caste-based reservation?" demanded Poojan Aggarwal, a third-year student at Safdarjung Medical College here. "We should talk now of total meritocracy. We know on this issue none of the political parties will support us."

 

For the full story, see:

SOMINI SENGUPTA. "Quotas to Aid India’s Poor vs. Push for Meritocracy."  The New York Times  (Tues., May 23, 2006):  A3.

(Note: ellipses added.)

Leonard Read’s Comparative Advantage


When I was a student at Wabash College, Ben Rogge arranged for Liberty Fund to finance my attendance at a couple of weekend seminars at the Foundation for Economic Education in New York.  The seminars were taught by Rogge, Edmund Opitz, and Leonard Read.  I remember upon returning to Wabash after one of the seminars, Rogge asking me what I thought of Read.  I said something along the lines that I didn’t much like his presentation style.  I remember saying that he expressed himself in a way that I associated with used car salesmen.  (So unlike Rogge’s low-key, witty, intensity.)

My memory is that Rogge did not respond directly to my comment, but (perhaps with a hint of a smile) mentioned that among many audiences, especially in business, Leonard Read was an extremely effective speaker. 

I do not doubt that, and I also do not doubt that Read belongs in the pantheon of free market defenders.  His essay "I, Pencil" is by itself sufficient for admission.  But he did more than write and speak; he nurtured and called attention to others who had wisdom to offer.  For one small example, many of us learned about Albert Jay Nock’s "The Remnant" through Leonard Read’s The Freeman.

I believe that the last time I saw Read was at the memorial service at Wabash College for Ben Rogge.  I ended up sitting near Read and Opitz, who had flown in from New York.  I introduced myself as a Rogge student who had attended FEE seminars. 

I remember Read looking very sad, and depressed, and almost lost.  I also remember that he expressed some mild indignation that more of Rogge’s students hadn’t made it back for the memorial service. 

But as a serious reader of "The Remnant," Read on further reflection probably realized that the attendance at a memorial service is not a good measure of a teacher’s influence on his students.

Apparently one student, whom Read himself influenced, was Charles Koch:


(p. A8) Whereas the bookshelves of most of America’s leading CEOs are stocked with pop corporate management and "how to succeed" books, Mr. Koch’s office is a wall-to-wall shrine to writings in classical economics, or, as he calls it, "the science of liberty." The authors who have had the most profound influence on his own political philosophy include F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Simon, Paul Johnson and Charles Murray.  Mr. Koch says that he experienced an intellectual epiphany in the early 1960s, when he attended a conference on free-market capitalism hosted by the late, great Leonard Read.

 

For the full commentary, see: 

STEPHEN MOORE. "THE WEEKEND INTERVIEW with Charles Koch; Private Enterprise." The Wall Street Journal (Sat., May 6, 2006):  A8.

(Note:  In the quotation above, I have corrected the WSJ’s misspelling of Read’s last name.)