Tenure: Really?

The stated purpose of tenure is to protect teachers' academic freedom. But is academic freedom really an important issue for public school teachers? Yes, it is. You may remember the story of the high school algebra teacher denied promotion to pre-geometry because of his subversive views on the commutative theorem. Or the middle school PE teacher passed over for chairpersonship of the committee to study installing a roof over the bike rack because he included a two-week course on Ultimate Frisbee, even though the roof was his idea to start with.

Teachers at high school and below are not like professors. They don't do research, they aren't expected to advance their fields. They are supposed to get information from their own heads (and textbooks) into the heads of students. Furthermore, those students are generally minors, which means the true consumers of the services provided by schoolteachers are parents. And when the school in question is a public school, those consumers are taxpayers, as well. So somebody, please, explain to me the benefit to those taxpayers of granting tenure to public schoolteachers.

Protecting academic freedom is not a compelling argument. In fact, the opposite is more true: local parents and taxpayers should control curriculum, not teachers. Let's save the academic freedom talk for college.

The other argument you hear is that tenure protects teachers from arbitrary firing by school boards and principals. Maybe so. But what makes public schoolteachers so special? Those of us in the private sector are subject to arbitrary firing decisions every day. Should we have tenure for accountants? Golf pros? What about tenure for fast-food restaurants? Once you buy a cheeseburger at McDonald's you have to go on buying them there forever.

This is not complicated, people. Tenure is just another example of a special interest group using high-minded language to justify government intervention in a way that benefits that group at the expense of the public.

Down with tenure!

Two cheers for the AFT!

The head of the second-largest teachers' union, American Federation of Teachers, has agreed to discuss using standardized tests to evaluate teachers. Of course, the devil is in the details. We'll see what the evaluation that comes from this looks like before we declare victory. But this strikes me as a major concession and a significant step in the right direction, where "right" is defined as the direction opposite the interest of the NEA.

The question is Why would the union do this? The teachers' unions have been monolithic in their rejection of virtually any meaningful evaluation of teacher performance. Perhaps it is key that this concession came from the second-largest union. Is this an example of the benefit of competition? In other words, maybe the AFT figured that one way to become the largest teachers' union might be to collaborate with management. Since there is no management in public education, the next best strategy is to collaborate with the standardized testing crowd.

How will this benefit the teachers' union? I don't know, specifically; maybe somebody who knows more about how AFT might expand its membership could comment. It seems clear, however, that being the union favored by the pro-testing crowd, which includes many teachers, by the way, could be an advantage.

Perspective

Sometimes it's worthwhile to just step back and take an outside view. This chart, from the Cato Institute, offers just such a view with respect to education and spending. As you can see, it shows that over the last 30 to 40 years per-student spending has more than doubled in real terms, while students' performance has been flat.

There must be a million possible objections to this, but the prima facie case is awfully compelling: we're not getting our money's worth when it comes to spending on education.

There's a reasonable argument to be made for emphasizing education and even for funding it publicly. But at what point to we start to ask questions such as Have we reached the point of diminishing returns? Can we plausibly argue that the return on the last dollar of education spending is positive?

As I have pointed out before, while this kind of cost/benefit calculation is done routinely in the real world, where non-performance is punished by bankruptcy or unemployment, it seems never to happen in public education. We are asked to take on faith not only that some spending on education produces worthwhile positive externalities, but that every dollar spent on education produces the same return.

Picking your poison

It strikes me that a lot of the arguing that goes on about education boils down to one question: how do you value equity relative to excellence.

I suspect that differences of opinion on questions such as, Do we spend enough on education? Should we have national standards? What is the role of government in education? Are vouchers and charter schools a good idea? are really about the trade-off between equity and excellence.

The fundamental disagreement can be seen this way. The graph below shows two hypothetical distributions of educational "goodness." Both options are represented by Gaussian curves, but they could be any shape. Option 1, the "Unfair but excellent" distribution, has a higher average, but more extremes at the high and low ends. Option 2, "Fair but mediocre," has a lower average but a tighter range.

If you could wave your magic wand and select either distribution for education in America, which would you choose?

There's no wrong answer, here. There's an argument to be made for either being better. The one you'll choose depends on whether you think equity or excellence is more important. I suspect that much of the educational establishment (can I use that term?) places more weight on equity -- ensuring that no child is left behind. Somebody like Charles Murray, who believes educating the future elite is critical, would disagree.

So? What would you do?

Maybe we can revoke their citizenship

Can this possibly be correct? Surely there's more to the story...

Oh, for...

Look, I know this doesn't have anything to do with education, but then it has about as much to do with education as it does with anything else.

PETA has taken a stand against one of the most popular tourist attractions in Seattle - the fish market at the Pike Place Market that tosses salmon.

I'd respect PETA more if they were protesting the fact that the Pike Place fish market murders innocent fish and sells them as food to omnivores who could just as easily be eating tofu or hummus or something else that doesn't have a face. Dudes! The fish are dead! They're in fishy heaven enjoying the benefits of eternal bliss and all the worms you can eat without hooks. Or they're waiting in line to be re-incarnated as, I don't know, otters or something. At any rate, they're not in any pain. I don't think -- I'm not really an expert on fish theology.

It's gotten to the point where it would be impossible to satire PETA. (Can satire be used as a verb? Can fish be used as a projectile?) Anything you made up about them would be less outrageous and silly than whatever it is they were actually doing at that moment. Here's what I mean.

PETA has begun a campaign to improve the public's perception of man-eating tigers. The organization has developed a web-site, targeted to children, suggesting that man-eating tigers be referred to as "jungle goldfish."

In an effort to make life a little easier for sheep, PETA has sent a copy of "Babe" on VHS to New Zealand. Said a PETA spokessheep, "Baah, we just want the dogs to stop being so gosh darn mean all the time." It is not certain whether the island nation, located to the south of Australia, has made the switch to DVD...


PETA is trying to get everybody to stop eating tortilla chips because one of the group's members was in Tijuana for a bachelorette party and she saw a diorama with actual stuffed frogs playing in a mariachi band...

Update: Seriously.

Pity the SAT people

A nice summary of the trials and tribulations of the SAT, from the Weekly Standard.

Those poor SAT guys, they’re doing their darndest to square this circle. You want a test that will highlight the diamonds in the rough? No problem, we’ll give you an aptitude test. Ah, you want a test that shows that all races and classes and sexes and “others” are equal? Okay, how about if we give you a string of random numbers (or, better, chicken entrails!) and you can use that for admissions. You want both? Hm... Well, we, uh... We may have to get back to you on that. Meanwhile, how about if we change the "A" in "SAT" to stand for "African American" as a sign of goodwill?

(I exaggerate slightly.)

What makes me shake my head is that some people are actually surprised that SAT scores correlate with "socio-economic status." Or, rather, they’re acting like they’re surprised. Really? Smart people tend to get rich and then have smart kids? Huh. I did not know that. Sounds like racism to me. Sounds phallo-centric. What if the parents are both pre-op transexuals, one of whom is a recovering heroin addict? What then? And what if one of them is Cambodian?

Listen, it's time to consider -- just consider -- the possibility that we're not all alike. Some of these variations, like skin color and whether your hair is straight, are not terribly relevant. Others, like footspeed and cognitive ability, matter more depending on the situation. We can't go on pretending that any test that suggested differences among races is necessarily biased. Psychologists and test-writers are just like the rest of us. If they could devise a test that both a) tested cognitive ability in meaningful way and b) showed no differenct among races, don't you think they'd have done it by now? I mean, the profit potential for the creator of a test that separated the smartest from the less smart and did so in racially proportional way is practically infinite.