On Saturday in the Wall Street Journal I explored a theme I've also written about for PSI, namely that state and local government worker downsizing needs to be viewed within a decades long growth of public sector employment in America. As I point out, by historical standards the number of public workers in various categories is still high relative to the population, belying any claims that most communities will witness a great reduction in public services thanks to layoffs.
Naturally, some public workers, especially teachers, are aggrieved. Bloggers and e-mailers raised the typical objections to my piece, claiming I wasn't being fair with the facts. We've heard many of these before. Keep reading....
Naturally, some public workers, especially teachers, are aggrieved. Bloggers and e-mailers raised the typical objections to my piece, claiming I wasn't being fair with the facts. We've heard many of these before. Keep reading....
One typical response from the education establishment is that my figures from the National Center for Education Statistics showing a steep decline in student to teacher ratios don't account for an apparently vast influx of special ed. students, who require much smaller classes and additional staff help. But as education professor Jay Greene points out in his book Education Myths, this vast influx has actually been a mere reclassification of students that years ago were in public schools but placed in regular classrooms, and are now classified as special ed. students. As Greene points out, despite a vast increase in funding for these students, there has been no significant increase in outcomes for special ed. students, much as there has been none for students in general.
The special ed. argument also ignores the fact that we have also seen significant reductions in class sizes for those in traditional classrooms. Indeed, thanks to teacher union lobbying, 17 states now have set maximum caps on the number of students in class (not special ed. classes, but all classes), including our largest states, California and Texas. The California Teachers Assoc. spent $1 million lobbying to get a class size reduction proposition on the ballot in 1996. A subsequent study of California by Rand Corp. may give us some idea of why class-size reduction doesn't work. That study found that as school districts tried to hire more teachers, teacher quality declined, and teacher quality is a far more important component of education success than class sizes.
Another disingenuous objection is that I cite SAT scores, which are flat over the decades, as proof of how little all of the hiring and spending in our schools has matter. That's unfair, the argument goes, because more kids are taking the SAT's these days, so the pool has been 'diluted,' so to speak.
But anyone who knows enough about education stats to know that more kids are taking SATs today also knows enough to to know that it isn't just SAT scores that are flat. Test scores in general haven't moved much despite our vast education expenditures. In my original piece I also noted that reading scores for 17-year-olds on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test, or NAEP, administered since 1971, are flat over that time, and this test is not administered only to those looking to go to college. But my references to other test scores were cut because of space constraints.
If you've followed the public education funding debate in America, you've heard all of these objections before. They simply don't hold up.
There are many places to go to find some sanity on these subjects, as opposed to what one hears from the education establishment. In addition to Jay's book, you might try the National Council on Teacher Quality which has its own interesting perspective on what blogger Mike Antonucci has called the so-called "teacherpocalypse" that the unions would have us believe is taking place right now.
The special ed. argument also ignores the fact that we have also seen significant reductions in class sizes for those in traditional classrooms. Indeed, thanks to teacher union lobbying, 17 states now have set maximum caps on the number of students in class (not special ed. classes, but all classes), including our largest states, California and Texas. The California Teachers Assoc. spent $1 million lobbying to get a class size reduction proposition on the ballot in 1996. A subsequent study of California by Rand Corp. may give us some idea of why class-size reduction doesn't work. That study found that as school districts tried to hire more teachers, teacher quality declined, and teacher quality is a far more important component of education success than class sizes.
Another disingenuous objection is that I cite SAT scores, which are flat over the decades, as proof of how little all of the hiring and spending in our schools has matter. That's unfair, the argument goes, because more kids are taking the SAT's these days, so the pool has been 'diluted,' so to speak.
But anyone who knows enough about education stats to know that more kids are taking SATs today also knows enough to to know that it isn't just SAT scores that are flat. Test scores in general haven't moved much despite our vast education expenditures. In my original piece I also noted that reading scores for 17-year-olds on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test, or NAEP, administered since 1971, are flat over that time, and this test is not administered only to those looking to go to college. But my references to other test scores were cut because of space constraints.
If you've followed the public education funding debate in America, you've heard all of these objections before. They simply don't hold up.
There are many places to go to find some sanity on these subjects, as opposed to what one hears from the education establishment. In addition to Jay's book, you might try the National Council on Teacher Quality which has its own interesting perspective on what blogger Mike Antonucci has called the so-called "teacherpocalypse" that the unions would have us believe is taking place right now.
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