

Why Innovation Can't Fix America's Classrooms - adamtmca
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/why-innovation-cant-fix-americas-classrooms/249524/

======
jerf
Opinion: The thing that has saved the American school system is that everyone
around the world has fully copied the deeply flawed Prussian schooling model,
and in many cases has doubled down on the flaws. Higher performing schools are
often "teaching to the test" _even worse_ than we are, which is how they get
measured as "higher performing" in the first place.

If the Prussian model is soooo spectacularly wonderful, then you have nothing
to fear from it being exposed to a competitive environment. It'll win. No
worries.

On the other hand, if the Prussian model is, shall we say, _less than optimal_
for the 21st century, the fastest way to find out is free market
experimentation, and rather than giving ourselves the same cultural shackles
that everybody else has, the American exceptionalism that will justify our
salaries will be our willingness to experiment, learn, and refine from there
where everybody else insists on the Prussian model. Unless, of course, a 19th
century schooling model is just _so damned perfect_ that it will admit of no
significant improvement. In which case we'll still find that out pretty
quickly. The maximum downside is sharply bounded and the upside of cracking
open the monopoly on education is hard to bound. (I can't call it "unbounded"
with a straight face, that's hard to justify, but it really is hard to know
how much better truly 21st schooling could be.) Failing to at least _try_ some
innovation isn't even remotely justified with a cost/benefit risk profile like
that.

Had some other country beat us to the punch and exposed their schooling system
to free market competition before us, we really _would_ be up the creek
without a paddle.

~~~
VladRussian
>the fastest way to find out is free market experimentation

>exposed their schooling system to free market competition

not all things can be effectively put under free market framework. Bottom line
optimization and profit maximization, natural main objectives of the known
free market implementations, don't work well for nuclear weapons maintenance,
law enforcement ... healthcare and education for that exact reason that the
main objectives in all these areas aren't the bottom line and profit
maximization. For example, private prisons and healthcare in the US is highly
profitable enterprises, while they serve their main objectives worse then
their non-free-market counterparts in comparably developed countries.

~~~
yummyfajitas
It is a bit disingenuous to compare private goods (healthcare, education) with
public goods (law enforcement, defense). In the case of public goods, the
mechanism of freeloading prevents an optimal level of provisioning of them
from a free market.

What mechanism prevents competition and free markets from providing good
performance in health care or education?

~~~
yequalsx
The goal of a healthcare system ought to maximizing the health of the people.
The goal of an educational system ought to be maximizing learning.

Perhaps a free market system (used very loosely) with the goal of pursuing
profits would, as a byproduct, maximize the health of the people or of
learning. I see no evidence that this is the case or that it should be the
case. Indeed, in the case of healthcare I have very strong evidence that
profit seeking isn't a great motivator.

The U.S. spends by far the most on healthcare as a percent of GDP. It spends
far more for certain drugs than socialized systems, has worse health outcomes,
and far greater health access inequality.

There is also a moral aspect. It is morally wrong for someone to profit from
denying someone else healthcare. Unless a free market system can be devised in
such a way that maximizing profit = maximizing healthcare then such a system
is immoral. Cartels and cartel pricing come to mind as something that would
prevent such a system from ever being successfully implemented.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_It is morally wrong for someone to profit from denying someone else
healthcare._

In that case, you are an evil person, since you have profited by engaging in
activities that don't deliver healthcare to others.

A person with even a basic understanding of economics would attempt to assign
utility to human health and then measure whether or not a system is utility
maximizing.

Personally I attempt to do this via revealed preferences - use people's
choices to infer their values. And many people reveal that they don't care a
great deal about health. For example, an obese person feels their health is
less valuable than the enjoyment they receive from a cake or pie. Why should I
assign a higher value to that person's health than they themselves do?

~~~
yequalsx
There's a big gap between someone who does something morally wrong and being
an evil person. My income is not increased because I made a decision to deny
someone health care. I am not profiting from making decisions to deny coverage
to someone. Insurance companies do though. At least, for profit ones do.

My statement wasn't that it is wrong to profit from doing something other than
provide health care. My statement is the it is wrong to profit from denying
someone care. I have not denied anyone care and I have not increased my income
as a result of such denial.

You appear not to understand what profit is and your statement regarding a
basic understanding of economics is ironic given this. Your response would
have been better without resorting to such a tactic.

Your last paragraph is disconcerting to me. There is much wrong with your
position. People do things that are against their long term interests. People
sometimes do things they don't want to do. People can be manipulated into
doing things they regret. Humans, are by and large, not rational. Part of the
purpose of a society is having share responsibilities. To share our burdens.
It is sometimes advisable for society as a whole to look out for our long term
interests and this is a good thing.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I was defining profit = earnings - expenses, but there is no point in getting
into a semantic argument about the definition of profit. (Note that there
actually is no standard definition of profit for an individual.)

Lets treat profit as income. Your income is not increased, but your potential
consumption is increased every time you decide not to buy health care for
someone who might benefit from it. Is this immoral? I'm guessing not.

If an insurance company denies someone care (increasing revenue) and spends
the money on perks for the CEO (increasing expenses commensurately, for a net
profit of $0), would that be moral?

 _People do things that are against their long term interests._

So your belief is that you know what is best for everyone else, and their
choices should be subsumed to your opinions? Um, ok.

~~~
yequalsx
You previously equated doing an immoral thing with being evil. Now you equate
my statement:

"It is sometimes advisable for society as a whole to look out for our long
term interests and this is a good thing."

with knowing what is best for everyone else. You logic is faulty. I used the
word 'sometimes' and this is an important word in the sentence I wrote. I also
never used the phrasing that I know what is best. I said society. Your
conclusions are not logically supported from what I've written or stated.

You make too many leaps and appear to go from one extreme to the other. There
is a huge gap between "let everyone do as they please" to "I know what is best
for everyone".

------
sgoranson
I feel like there's an elephant in the room all debates on US education dance
around. My experience with school from K-postgrad was that my education was
90% dependent on what I put into it as a student (homework, studying, etc) and
everything else (teacher quality, curriculum, etc) was only marginally
significant to how much I learned. In other words, I believe there's a much
more insidious and intractable problem causing US children to under-perform.
The worst part is that I don't believe we even know exactly what it is. But my
guess is that it's a combination of issues firmly entrenched in our melting
pot of culture.

edit: correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the US is one of the few countries
on earth that has had a consistently high standard of living since WWII,
right? My guess is that a few generations of unparalleled abundance has helped
atrophy a once voracious society.

~~~
cwe
parents teaching victimhood and no work ethic?

~~~
omouse
rich parents? is that who you're talking about?

------
yummyfajitas
One reason why it might not be such a good idea to copy other nations - they
tend to have fairly large achievement gaps between natives and immigrants.

The US has an achievement gap of about 20 pts on PISA, compared to roughly 40
for Norway and even higher in Finland and Sweden.

[http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-
abou...](http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa-
scores-usa.html)

This isn't a big deal for nations with few immigrants, but it is a problem for
the US.

(Of course, for the sake of making a snarky argument, I'm making the same
fallacy as the author: if we copy other nations education systems blindly,
we'll get the same result.)

------
lupatus
Reading biographies on Benjamin Franklin[1], amongst others, makes me
seriously doubt the importance of formal schooling on the amount of success a
person has in life.

I think other factors like innate curiosity and developed capacity for work
are more important.

[1] Franklin's entire formal schooling consists of 2 years at the Boston Latin
School, from which he did not graduate.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin#Early_life>

~~~
metafour
I think it's hard to extrapolate over an entire diverse population based on
one or even a few examples.

------
tokenadult
From the submitted article: "The top-performing nations boost the quality of
their teaching forces by greatly raising entry standards for teacher education
programs. They insist that all teachers have in-depth knowledge of the
subjects they will teach, apprenticing new teachers to master teachers and
raising teacher pay to that of other high-status professions." This is a
basically correct description about teacher selection and teacher professional
development in several countries with schools that outperform schools in the
United States. One way that teachers have the time to meet with more
experienced teachers during the school day for mentoring and discussion of
lesson plans is by setting higher class sizes. If the staffing ratio of a
school (total teachers hired per enrolled pupils) is roughly the same in two
countries, but in one country class sizes are larger, the teacher will have
time during the school day to do lesson preparation in collaboration with
other teachers. That better lesson preparation can result in more engaging
lessons that deliver better education to the larger classes.

I've read a longer article by the same author (Marc Tucker) called "Standing
on the Shoulders of Giants: An American Agenda for Education Reform."

[http://www.ncee.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Standing-
on-t...](http://www.ncee.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Standing-on-the-
Shoulders-of-Giants-An-American-Agenda-for-Education-Reform.pdf)

I just tested to see if that had been submitted to HN before, and it had not,
so now it is linked to from a new thread.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3321124>

Tucker underestimates, in my opinion, the importance of learner choice, but
based on international comparisons he correctly identifies several management
practices that would make the school system in the United States better for
most learners. I have rather more fondness, based on life experience, for
learner choice in schools because I live in a state with statewide public
school open enrollment,

[http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/EnrollChoice/index.h...](http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/EnrollChoice/index.html)

[http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/JustParent/SchChoice/index....](http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/JustParent/SchChoice/index.html)

which has encouraged Minnesota school districts to offer innovative programs
to draw in students.

------
metafour
I'm in a high school classroom two days a week this semester and next semester
is my last before becoming a licensed teacher in the US.

A couple of my math professors at the university I attend went to China over
the summer to get an idea of what their primary education classrooms are like
and compare them to ours. One of the things I've heard regarding the overall
demographics is that there they don't have the expectation that all students
are going to get educated to the extent that we attempt to here. At a certain
point if students don't perform well enough they are transitioned out to a
vocational school instead of following an academic track.

This very well could have a profound effect on comparing scores across
countries, their top percent of students is being compared to our entire
population of students.

If you consider some of the books that are being tossed around in these
threads, e.g. Liping Ma's Knowing and Teaching..., one of the small things
that sticks out is a language issue that can have an impact on a young child's
number development.

Also, according to that book there is an entirely different mindset when it
comes to not only teaching as a profession but in their professional
development as well. They are afforded more opportunities for planning and
collaboration compared to what is often experienced here.

I think we as a society have to consider whether it is feasible to continue
down this road where we attempt to educate everyone to the same level.

------
jessriedel
If you ranked individual US states among countries, you'd find that many of
them are near the very top. (As a whole, the US can't compete against tiny
countries like Luxembourg because of the law of large numbers.) Wouldn't it
make a lot more sense for the badly performing states to look at the well
performing states rather than foreign countries? There will be fewer
confounding variables and cultural hurdles to applying lessons learned.

In any case, as soon as an author writes something like

>To many in the financial community, these market-inspired reform ideas are
very appealing.

I know this is smear job rather than an intellectually honest appraisal. I
mean, really. We shouldn't try new models of schooling because they are
basically like the financial crisis? Are you kidding me?

------
richcollins
Perhaps he's right depending on your definition of "top performing". He
doesn't define it but I'm guessing he means "scores well on standardized tests
involving math and verbal skills".

When you optimize for creation of wealth for others (products / services) and
for yourself (positive life experiences), you end up with a very different
solution: <http://www.sudval.org/>

------
pnathan
It also is the case that some countries measure a different population of
students for 'high school' than the US.

E.g., in Germany at one time, the secondary schools that were measured was the
academic track, this was being compared against the US's schools which was the
general secondary school population.

I'm not sure if this still holds true but it's something to be aware of - the
measurement bias.

Paying teachers well & requiring them to have in-depth knowledge of the
subject is good. No argument there!

~~~
jcampbell1
When I see Shanghai listed at the top of the international chart, I always
laugh. About 40% of Shanghai's population are non-registered residents that
have no access to the public schools, and are not included in the results. To
compare Shanghai to the US, you would have to drop the poorest 40% from the US
numbers.

------
rubashov
> figure out what the top-performing countries are doing and then, by
> capitalizing on our unique strengths, develop a strategy to do it even
> better.

The top performing countries' strategy is to have mostly Asian or Northern
European students, and very few of third/second world extraction.

~~~
tokenadult
A Hacker News participant who kindly checked the facts in another recent
thread

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3319177>

was able to verify what I had read in other official sources on international
testing programs, namely that United States students underperform (because
their schools underperform) on an ethnicity-matched basis. One detailed report
on the issue that I think you will find to be interesting reading is the
Education Next report on mathematics learning opportunities for top
mathematics students in the United States,

<http://educationnext.org/teaching-math-to-the-talented/>

which shows that United States students miss opportunities in school to
develop their abilities to the fullest. A look at the content of mathematics
textbooks in different countries, and specialized studies on differences in
teaching practices

[http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-
Mathematic...](http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematics-
Understanding/dp/0805829091)

[http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Gap-Improving-Education-
Class...](http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Gap-Improving-Education-
Classroom/dp/1439143137/)

in different countries have helped me understand the differences I frequently
observe between people of the same ethnicity who received their primary and
secondary education in different countries.

~~~
yummyfajitas
You overstate your case again. US students of Asian origin slightly
underperform Asia in math (but outperform all non-Asian nations). Also, US
students of European origin outperform all but 6 countries with similar
demographics.

The other participant did not verify that it was caused by school
underperformance, merely that I misread the numbers. The correction puts Asian
Americans at #5 in the world rather than #4. It does not change the fact that
Asian Americans are still 32 points higher than the first non-Asian nation
(Hungarians). Nor does it change the fact that European Americans are #1 among
European nations + Anglosphere.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trends_in_International_Mathema...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trends_in_International_Mathematics_and_Science_Study)

Incidentally, any claims one makes to the inherent superiority of Asian
education systems must be limited to math and science. Asian Americans are #1
in combined literacy (#2 if you consider Shanghai as a separate group), and
European Americans are #2 among primarily European-descended nations.

(See tables R1 and R3. <http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2011/2011004_1.pdf> )

(As before, I'm only posting this so others are not misled by tokenadult's
logical fallacies and intellectual dishonesty.)

~~~
rdl
Have these ethnicity-based differences within the US been constant over time?

