Education




The problem is not people being uneducated.
The problem is that people are educated just enough to believe what they have been taught, and not educated enough to question anything from what they have been taught. 🧠 pic.twitter.com/cxbtlR3cTn

— Richard Feynman (@ProfFeynman) January 7, 2021

From the teachings of physicist Richard Feynman (1918-88).  He's this guy.

Not A Root Cause: Really

A few hours after yesterday's post, President Barack Obama, in what appears to be a direct response to THC, remarked in at a Catholic-Evangelical Leadership Summit on Poverty that increased divisions in society are leading wealthier people to send their children to private schools (like the President whose children attend the elite private Sidwell Friends School while at the same time ending a program under which poor children in the District of Columbia received vouchers to attend private schools) and thus spurring disinvestment in public sector goods like education.

“Kids start going to private schools, kids start working out at private clubs instead of the public parks, an anti-government ideology then disinvests from those common goods and those things that draw us together.”

Let's look at some evidence.  The first two charts from the US Department of Education and the last from the OECD and all via Powerline.

Education expenditures up about 300% in constant dollars over the past 50 years.

Enrollment is up only about 35%.

Per pupil expenditures for selected countries.  U.S. does well comparatively.



As mentioned yesterday, these same types of charts were used in the healthcare debate to argue that the United States was spending too much.

THC has seen this same argument about more spending made for decades regardless of the evidence.  It's getting a little tiring.

William Voegeli's 2010 book, Never Enough, had as its thesis that there is no limiting principle in today's liberalism.  Its only constant is that whatever is being spent on a social program is Never Enough, a war cry reflecting the bizarre mindset of the Washington political world where increases in spending are denounced as "cuts" and "slashing budgets"; for more see The Fiscal Uncliff.

Isn't it time for some people to become reality-based?

Not A Root Cause

The recent riots in Baltimore resurrected a common notion that the solution to social problems is always to spend more money on any particular issue; in this case, education.  Here's an example from Jon Stewart of The Daily Show on April 28:

"If we are spending a trillion dollars to rebuild Afghanistan's schools, we can't, you know, put a little taste Baltimore's way".  [See note at end of post on factual accuracy]

THC thinks Mr Stewart is missing the point. Here is the spending on Baltimore schools per pupil compared to one of the best performing school districts in the country, the Fairfax County Schools of northern Virgina, courtesy of Marginal Revolution (via Coyote Blog).  Baltimore spends $17,196 per pupil while Fairfax spends $13,593.

“If we are spending a trillion dollars to rebuild Afghanistan’s schools, we can’t, you know, put a little taste Baltimore’s way. It’s crazy.” - See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/05/jon-stewart-wrong-on-education-in-baltimore.html#sthash.bpRraMKL.dpuf

“If we are spending a trillion dollars to rebuild Afghanistan’s schools, we can’t, you know, put a little taste Baltimore’s way. It’s crazy.” - See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/05/jon-stewart-wrong-on-education-in-baltimore.html#sthash.bpRraMKL.dpuf

“If we are spending a trillion dollars to rebuild Afghanistan’s schools, we can’t, you know, put a little taste Baltimore’s way. It’s crazy.” - See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/05/jon-stewart-wrong-on-education-in-baltimore.html#sthash.bpRraMKL.dpuf

THC checked the figures for the Amity School District within which he resides and which is one of the highest rated districts in Connecticut and found per pupil spending to be $17,545, about the same as Baltimore's.  The nationwide average cost per pupil is $12,198.

The other item to note is that in Baltimore, 81% of the costs are being paid by the state and federal government, not by local taxpayers, while in Fairfax only 25% of costs come from those sources, so that taxpayers across the country, as well as in Maryland, are already making quite a contribution already to the Baltimore schools.

How much money you spend on something is not often a good measure of the quality of the result you will obtain.  If it were our healthcare system would have the best outcomes in the world.  Yet many of the same people who decry the cost of healthcare because it does not give us the results they would like and thus are proposing ways to spend less, insist that continuing to spend more on education will give us the results we want, even though American spending on education has grown steadily for four decades with stagnating performance.  Spending is a very poor metric when it comes to addressing the kind of issues Baltimore faces.

[NOTE] And by the way, Stewart's assertion is factually incorrect as the Washington Post noted.  On an annual basis the Federal government spends more on Baltimore schools than it did in any year on schools in the entire country of Afghanistan!

“If we are spending a trillion dollars to rebuild Afghanistan’s schools, we can’t, you know, put a little taste Baltimore’s way. It’s crazy.”
–Jon Stewart, “The Daily Show,” April 28, 2015
- See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/05/jon-stewart-wrong-on-education-in-baltimore.html#sthash.aJArwSH8.dpuf

“If we are spending a trillion dollars to rebuild Afghanistan’s schools, we can’t, you know, put a little taste Baltimore’s way. It’s crazy.”
–Jon Stewart, “The Daily Show,” April 28, 2015
- See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/05/jon-stewart-wrong-on-education-in-baltimore.html#sthash.aJArwSH8.dpuf

Simpson's Paradox

Note:  This is NOT Homer Simpson's paradox - see next post

Simpson's paradox occurs when a correlation present in different groups is reversed when the groups are combined.  See Wikipedia for definition and some examples.  It is often unrecognized by those unfamiliar with statistics and uncomfortable with numbers, becoming a real problem when data subject to this paradox is given a causal interpretation.

In the political context it most recently appeared in 2011 when the combination of the union bargaining legislation, proposed by Gov. Walker and passed by the Wisconsin legislature and Texas Gov. Perry's inept presidential bid placed both states in the political spotlight. In both cases, it appeared as attacks on the performance of Texas, in one case economic and in the other, educational.

What Can't Go On, Won't Go On

Maybe college will be cheaper in a few years.

From Carpe Diem