Edunomics 101
Thomas Friedman in this morning's NYT published an op-ed on education and economics, or as I dubbed it in the title: edunomics.
I encourage you to read it, so you may form your own opinion. It is an important argument, and should be considered.
His concern is a worthy one:
Our credit and housing bubbles have masked...how far we have fallen behind in K-12 education and how much it is now costing us.
Unfortunately, it is a flawed one. If you have a moment, and care about the economy, or education, you may find this interesting...
Statistics
Friedman relies on a new report from a consulting firm (McKinsey& Company) for the backbone of his commentary. They provide him with such statistics (using a model developed exclusively for this report, by the way) as these:
- Friedman quotes an author of the report referring to "millions of kids who are in modern suburban schools" as not realizing "how far behind they are...They are being prepared for $12-an-hour jobs--not $40 to $50 an hour."
- "If America had closed the international achievement gap [the lag between our students' standardized test scores and those of our leading economic competitors] between 1983 and 1998...United States GDP in 2008 would have been between $1.3 trillion and $2.3 trillion higher."
- Closing the achievement gap between American minority students and white students during the same period would have resulted in improvements in 2008 GDP of $310 to $525 billion.
- Closing the achievement gap between "low-income students and the rest," GDP in 2008 would have improved $400 to $670 billion.
I've searched for the report, but haven't been able to find it. I suspect it hasn't been released or summarized by the company for public consumption yet. So, I linked to McKinsey's web presence and their Wikipedia page above. There, I learned that McKinsey is the #1 rated business management consulting company in America. "Yay!" for them!
But, not "Yay!" for their report.
Assumptions
I believe Friedman's analysis is based on several flawed assumptions:
- It is based on a benchmark defined by the "Nation at Risk" report of 1983. Note the date- this was the Reagan administration's cannon-shot at the education "industry." This is a report widely accepted by the business community and conservative Republicans. To understate the case, its conclusions and evidence are not accepted by progressive educational observers and professionals.
- It defines the appropriate assessment of education as how much $$ per-hour its graduates earn. That's it. That's the only value of an education mentioned in the piece.
- Education systems exist to provide human resources for the business community. There is no other purpose for education in American society.
- Michelle Ree, Wendy Kopp, and Teach for America represent the best minds and programs going for the improvement of public education and should be looked to as examples of correct leadership and desired results in education reform.
- Comparing 100% of American students on standardized tests to the top tier of academic performing students in other industrialized countries (where, sometimes if not often, only the best students are even allowed to take these tests) is an acceptable statistic for determining our students' performance and setting our national self-esteem regarding education. While there are legitimate reasons for considering the international measures Friedman and McKinsey employ, they do not address the flaws in such comparisons.
- I haven't seen the report, so I can't speak to the novel mathematical model created for it, but it sure sounds on its surface like a causation-by-correlation argument to me. If someone can explain how it is not, after reading the article, I'd love to have that insight expressed in the comments!
Policy Implications
What does all this mean for education, and the future of the American economy? Friedman's piece this morning would result in several policy conclusions, if taken seriously and acted upon:
- Arne Duncan's commitment to NCLB, more testing, and more capitalist-business driven "choice" systems in public education will be strengthened and proliferate.
- More money will be spent on testing and assessment. This satisfies the conservative need to cry that more money doesn't help improve education while providing more data, without doing anything to improve education! More testing does not improve education, so the circular argument of spending more money on testing proves that spending more money for education does not improve it! All conservatives win! But, no "A+" from me.
- Teach for America, which amounts to inner-city tourism for highly educated White suburban youth (the vast majority of TforA people leave teaching within 3 years, in a revolving door of very inexperienced young teachers working with the greatest-need "low-income" and minority students Friedman argues need the most help) is becoming an extended version of community service before the Princeton, Harvard, and Yale grads it attracts move on to presumably higher income and higher prestige careers. Because, they are not staying in teaching.
- More statistical reports produced by business consultants purporting to tell teachers and educators what they're doing wrong and suggesting magic-bullet solutions to education problems that fail to address their causes or contexts.
One Possible Conclusion
Of course, in an economic analysis it makes sense to use economic barometers.
But, this is not an economic analysis.
This is an education analysis masked as an economic one.
It’s greatest flaw, therefore, is implying that a correct and proper measurement of the quality of education is the per-hour income of its graduates. As is, Friedman’s piece could easily be read as advocating education policies that are exclusively aimed at increasing the per-hour earnings potential of each student.
While that may be a worthy goal, it is an unworthy basis for educational policy reform.
Successful policy reform is based on targeting the growth and development of children so that they can think creatively, critically, flexibly, and innovatively. Creative, critical, flexible, and innovative thinking are what made us the industrial and yes, even financial, powerhouse we have enjoyed being for so long. Yet these thinking skills have been devalued by the very people who claim to make the case for better education. They have been devalued because the most common proposed education solutions: more testing, vouchers, and more standards, devalue them. Students who only define meeting a high standard as choosing the correct answer from 5 arbitrary options devalues the pursuit of innovative, critical, and creative thinking on its face.
And our students are learning that lesson extremely well.
We are producing millions of students who expect that as long as they continue to give answer A when answer A is correct, that they will earn the $40-$50 that Friedman extols.
That’s what we’ve taught them.
Nothing about quality of life. Nothing about living within their means. Nothing about making the world a better place. These things aren’t antithetical to American ideals and values, but they can be interpreted as antithetical to the $per-hour narrative of educational value. So, we don’t structure our education policy around them.
Those who go forward and earn the millions or $100,000’s, or earn less but are making the world a better place in some way, and those few who do both, will be those who have been taught or have figured out that innovation and creativity are the path to that success. Why aren't we building an educational system that values that?
Why aren’t business and finance leaders calling for us to teach that lesson?