9 responses to “Education Summit: Top Five Most Inane Comments”

1. Next-to-Last Place Ribbon of Honor: Cheapistas in Denial ← NPE News Briefs

   April 28, 2013 at 10:34 am

   […] as a ribbon of honor (aka efficiency). They don’t even make next to last place ribbons. I have heard this meme from the Florida peeps also. They even deny we have a broken school finance system. Judges have disagreed with them […]

   LikeLike

   Reply
2. 

   Next-to-Last Place Ribbon of Honor: Cheapistas in Denial | Cloaking Inequity

   April 28, 2013 at 8:52 am

   […] a ribbon of honor (aka efficiency). They don’t even make next to last place ribbons. I have heard this meme from the Florida peeps also. They even deny we have a broken school finance system. Judges have disagreed with them […]

   LikeLike

   Reply
3. KIPP’s Take from Private Sources Since 2003: $308,999,543.00 – @ THE CHALK FACE knows SCHOOLS MATTER

   April 21, 2013 at 12:05 am

   […] see the Texas spreadsheet here. I don’t know Mike Feinberg personally. However, in the forums in which I have observed him, I find him to be eloquent and dedicated to children. I believe KIPP […]

   LikeLike

   Reply
4. 

   Water into Wine?: Jeb Bush, Cheapistas, and Educational Reform | Cloaking Inequity

   February 27, 2013 at 9:58 am

   […] Whether it is Jeb’s Education Foundation that was discussed here, or former Jeb underlings that I have encountered— the basic narrative is that Florida turned water in wine— a […]

   LikeLike

   Reply
5. 

   The Teat: Be a little more honest KIPP Charter Schools | Cloaking Inequity

   January 20, 2013 at 2:48 pm

   […] don’t know Mike Feinberg personally. However, in the forums in which I have observed him, I find him to be eloquent and dedicated to children. I believe KIPP […]

   LikeLike

   Reply
6. 

   Guess which state is 3rd “Dumbest in the Nation”?! | Cloaking Inequity

   December 9, 2012 at 3:32 pm

   […] pupil educational expenditures: Here is list where some Texans will be proud (including certain legislators) to be at the top while others are embarrassed (me). For your […]

   LikeLike

   Reply
7. 

   Teacher quality: Money matters or matters “somewhere” or not at all | Cloaking Inequity

   December 8, 2012 at 3:20 pm

   […] a recent Education Summit, there were Texas legislators that espoused the idea that cutting education funding in Texas is the […]

   LikeLike

   Reply
8. 

   Leo Linbeck III

   December 7, 2012 at 9:08 pm

   While it’s never pleasant to have one’s comment make a “Top Five Most Inane Comments” list, I do appreciate having a venue in which to respond – kudos to Prof. Vasquez Heilig for having an open comments section on his blog.

   The question of student teacher ratios, as Prof. Vasquez Heilig’s linked study mentions, is a quite controversial one. The Center for American Progress published a white paper last year (http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/2011/04/pdf/class_size.pdf) which explored this subject, and helps frame the broad issue well. (As a conservative communitarian, it’s probably scandalous to see me referring to a study from CAP, but it highlights the way in which education policy does not necessarily fit neatly into traditional political categories.)

   Still, it’s clear that I failed to put my “inane comment” in its proper context. I feel that it is incumbent upon me to correct this failure now.

   The context is this: over the past 20 years in Texas, it is indisputable that class sizes have gotten smaller. Over a time when student enrollments grew by 37%, the number of teachers has grown by 50%. The promise of CSR policies was that if we have smaller classes, outcomes will improve and the achievement gap will narrow.

   This has not happened, of course. Outcomes have not improved, and the achievement gap has persisted. My view is that this is due to two interlinked effects:

   1. CSR leads to an expansion in the number of teachers which leads to an influx of below-average teachers into the profession. If a school needs 30 teachers, it will tend to hire the 30 best teachers. If it then needs to hire 40 teachers, those 10 additional teachers will tend to be lower quality than the other 30. This is not to say that those 10 teachers are incompetent, simply that on a relative basis that will not be as good as the 30 who were already there.

   2. The expansion of the number of teachers tends to hit low-income communities disproportionately. If a suburban School A and an urban School B each need to hire 10 more teachers as in our example above, there is a strong incentive for School A to “poach” 10 good teachers from School B’s group of 30. This leaves School A with 40 good teachers, and School B with 20 good teachers and 20 below-average teachers. Essentially, the “haves” take from the “have nots.”

   It was in that context that I made my remarks. Universal CSR policies – when viewed on an aggregate basis – have tended to have a disproportionately negative impact on high-need, low-income schools. In that respect, I think they have contributed to the achievement gap, and have been one of the worst public education policies promoted over the past few decades. One might still disagree with this view, but it is unfair to characterize it as “inane.”

   Finally, I should add that there are definitely situations where CSR can make a positive impact. (Prof. Vasquez Heilig’s study identified one possible scenario.) We should NOT mandate larger class sizes, and more than we should mandate smaller ones. The right solution is to empower principals and superintendents to make these decisions, rather than having one-size-fits-all policies (such as Texas’ current 22:1 student-teacher ratio) shoved down the throat of local educators by well-meaning, but misguided state officials.

   That is one reason why I am working with a bi-partisan coalition of educators and business leaders to promote policies that push decision-making authority from Austin to local school districts, and empower families by giving them greater control over the education of their children. (See our website at http://www.tffeducation.org for more details on our proposal.)

   In a state as diverse as Texas, we must establish a system of local control and family empowerment. Centralization has undermined our local communities, our education profession, and our ability to prepare our children for future success. It is time to end this destructive trend, and to bring decision-making back closer to the people.

   Cheers,
   L3

   Leo Linbeck III
   Aquinas Companies, LLC
   Stanford Graduate School of Business
   Rice Education Entrepreneurship Program

   LikeLike

   Reply
   1. 

      Julian Vasquez Heilig

      December 9, 2012 at 2:46 am

      The biggest issue is that we believe there is a “one-size-fits-all” educational policy out there. There is someone out there that the shirt and hat fit, but its not me. We need to think about boutiqued educational policy. Class size reduction didn’t work on a large scale in California and elsewhere because the most important input, teacher quality, was not attended to.

      LikeLike

      Reply