Andy Smarick says I told you so.
To be clear, I wasn’t the only one raising the alarm. For example, Charlie Barone on the left and Rick Hess on the right were skeptical of the program. But the Duncan-Obama team pushed ahead on SIG with fervor. It’s never been all that clear whether they weren’t aware of the history and research or chose to ignore it. (For an administration that claimed to always follow data, always do what’s right for kids, and only pursue what works, the irony is striking.) But they designed and then implemented a program that did the same things that had disappointed when they were called “comprehensive school reform,” “restructuring,” “reconstitution,” or something else—give more money to the very districts running the persistently failing schools and ask those districts to implement a list of mandated interventions. For some reason this administration was certain this approach would work this time around despite the mountain of evidence telling them otherwise.
On the other hand, Neerav Kingsland cautions on the methods used in the study of SIG’s (in-)effectiveness.
In using a regression-discontinuity design (comparing schools that received the SIG treatment to slightly higher performing schools that did not receive the treatment), the authors were not able to generate a sample size that would be sensitive to positive significant effects that, in my mind, could be considered a success.
The federal government should have either randomized which SIG-eligible schools received funding for the SIG treatment, or the authors should have used a quasi-experimental student-based methodology that allowed for a larger sample
I’ll give you a non-result for only $1B!
Just another example of where equality based thinking gets you. If some people do bad at school it must be the school fault, not the students. All leftist ideology is based on the idea that money, racism, or some other factor causes disparate impact. When you’ve got a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Yet another person who mistakes irony for signalling.
There is no irony if they’re just lying.
I find it startling to see the extent to which large bureaucratic institutions become parasitized by “producer interests.”
It seems like the problems become more obvious with public or quasi-public institutions that cannot go bankrupt and that provide useful services. There is pressure to maintain a customer base by hoarding customers (in this case, school kids). There is always a need for more infusions of cash, too. “All we need is more cash and our results will get better,” is what the educational reformers inside the system tend to say.
Examples:
1. Municipalities and states have to keep raising taxes to pay pensions they have promised. Meanwhile, they don’t seem to improve services. The problem is an old one, as we see with the durability with the old “Machine” politics oft-described in the literature.
2. Schools with poor results have to be sustained to (1) warehouse kids, (2) keep them out of the labor market, and to (3) employ the people who work there.
Other examples, anyone?
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Perhaps Arnold can tell us where this issue fits into his “Three Axes” Model.
it’s still hard for me to effortlessly think in those terms.
It must be
1. “Freedom – Coercion . ”
The students are not free to leave, and other institutions are not entirely free to compete for the students and the dollars budgeted for them.
The other two axes are
2. Oppressor – Oppressed.
and
3. Civilization – Barbarism
.Did I get it right? to repeat, it is not easy for me to keep them clear in my mind.
Other examples? Prison guard unions lobby for mandatory minimums. Also, I had a friend who was complaining that in his town the police said that had to give out more traffic tickets or else they’d have to lay off one of their officers.
I wish I knew more about the issue over all.
Albert O. Hirchman’s notion of _Exit, voice, and loyalty_ is useful for figuring out how the person who is a “revenue source” can look at things. If he is free and walking around, and there are free markets, he can exit. Or he can complain, exercise voice.
Occasionally you will see news items of parents (mostly Black women are the individual cases that stick in my memory) being arrested for sening their kids to suburban schools adjacent to the poorly functioning municipalities in which the children actually live and are authorized to attend public school. .
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Getting back to revenue…
There is a tradition in micro-theory that treats fines as “revenue to be maximized,” by the municipality, and the policy variable is the amount of the fine. The other policy variable is of course aggressive enforcement. I don’t know what causes pushback–perhaps furious citizens.
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A situation that didn’t seem to fit that example:
When I lived in Iowa City, the fine for parking at an expired meter was either $3.00 or $5.00. It would creep to $10 if not paid in about 2 weeks. You would get your car towed at $50 of total fines owed, which would cost you maybe $60 in a tow charge plus your cumulated fines to be paid. And daily impound charges if you didn’t retrieve your vehicle promptly.
I think in Iowa City they were not maximizing revenue, but rather they were trying to maximize the availability of short term parking for shoppers who wanted to buy something at a downtown shop.
The standard interpretation is that municipality governments are dominated by shop keepers, merchants, or real-estate developers.
Winding back toward my point (if indeed I have one)
“Failing schools with teachers shielded from competition” hints at the possibility that the school district is “owned” by District employees past and present, but not by parents and definitely not by the students.
Walter Russell Meads’ concept of “Blue Rot” or the “Crisis of the Blue City / Blue State Model” is that liberal states and cities are dominated by public sector unions.
I’m babbling and wandered through about 4 different concepts. so I will stop. Thanks for letting us play here, Arnold!
I expect this was stimulus as much as anything else. Given the timing, it was as much a free lunch as exists, so no harm, no foul.
That isn’t how stimulus is done. And they set back their own goals. The problem isn’t even that they didn’t achieve results, the problem is they couldn’t have and now nobody in their right mind will let them try again without some extreme vetting.
When you can make me mad FOR Obama that’s pretty special. Heck, I’d like to see a test of stimulus, if such could be done. But flub bing it like this, it’s better nor to be born.