Milton Friedman on Education
A Satanic Idea?
By Bob Sipchen (Monday's column, July 3, 2006)
It’s healthy at moments such as this, when powerful forces clamor for quick and sweeping reform, to reconsider tenacious ideas, even those that the collective wisdom has deemed insane if not satanic.
So how about we Southern Californians pause for a moment in our frantic efforts to once again revolutionize the Los Angeles Unified School District (while also searching for a new superintendent and negotiating a new teachers’ union contract) and instead ponder this: Are public schools worth the effort?
It’s that taboo question that leads me to the study of a sprawling 19th-floor San Francisco apartment.
Big windows take in a rain-soaked landscape stretching from the Bay Bridge to the Golden Gate and beyond. I think of all the public schools out there, brimming with poor kids, minority kids, and listen as a tiny man of 93 explains why Americans should relinquish all such schools to the free market.
Milton Friedman, one of America’s most respected and reviled educational reform advocates, attended public schools himself. You’d think the fact that he went on to win the Nobel Prize in economics would mellow him on the subject. It hasn’t.
“The schooling system was in much better shape 50 years ago than it is now,” says Friedman, his voice as confident as reinforced concrete.
A big fan of freedom, Friedman objects to public schools on principle, arguing — as he says most classic liberals once did — that government involvement by nature decreases individual liberty. But it’s the decline of schooling at the practical level, especially for the poor, that seems to exasperate him.
Friedman puts much of the blame on centralization.
“When I went to elementary school, a long, long time ago in the 1920s, there were about 150,000 school districts in the United States,” he says. “Today there are fewer than 15,000, and the population is more than twice as large.”
Centralization was caused by urbanization and in turn caused bureaucratization. For that, and much more, he blames teachers unions.
Throughout our talk, Friedman uses the phrase “your friends in the teachers union.” This amuses me because, while I do have many friends who belong to teachers unions, my conversations with A.J. Duffy, the cocky president of United Teachers Los Angeles, usually end with him screaming.
Months ago, when I told Duffy I was going to visit Friedman, he smirked. “I don’t think public education can work on the profit paradigm,” he said. “It’s ludicrous.”
Friedman takes the opposite view. At heart, he remains a pure capitalist. He would like to see government get out of schooling entirely. As a pragmatist, he figures that if the government must spend money on education, it should give it to parents to spend, on private schools if they wish.
This approach is usually called a voucher system, and armies of think-tank scholars have cranked out tons of studies supporting all sides of the issue since Friedman injected it into the debate in his 1955 article “The Role of Government in Education.”
None of that has clouded Friedman’s clarity.
“The fundamental thing that’s wrong with our present setup of elementary and secondary schooling is that it’s a case in which the government is subsidizing a product,” he says. “If you subsidize the producers, as we do in schooling, they have every incentive to have a status quo, and a non-progressive system, because they are a monopoly.”
Friedman finds it unfair that a mother who sends her child to private school should also have to pay to educate children whose parents send them to public school — an injustice made more egregious in his view by the fact that the private school mom probably has more money and so has already paid more in taxes.
But he is just as ticked off by what he sees as the great unfairness to poor kids.
“It’s very clear that the people who suffer most in our present system are people in the slums — blacks, Hispanics, the poor, the underclass.”
When I ask him about the “achievement gap” separating low-scoring black and Latino students from better-scoring whites and Asians, he blames my “friends in the union.”
“They are running a system that maximizes the gap in performance. . . Tell me, where is the gap between the poor and rich wider than it is in schooling? A more sensible education system, one that is based on the market, would stave off the division of this country into haves and have-nots; it would make for a more egalitarian society because you’d have more equal opportunities for education.”
But how would overburdened minimum-wage workers be expected to find the time to research a slew of school options, I ask — hearing the patronizing tone of my question as it crosses my lips.
“Who’s in a better position?” Friedman asks.
As a fairly well-informed parent, I can’t bring myself to say “the experts,” so I move on to money.
Jonathan Kozol, author of “Savage Inequalities” and other books of education journalism, has noted that the parents who whine that “throwing money at education” doesn’t solve the problem are usually those spending $15,000 or $30,000 a year to send their kids to private schools. I ask Friedman about the obvious implications of that.
“In the last 10 years, the amount spent per child on schooling has more than doubled after allowing for inflation. There’s been absolutely no improvement as far as I can see in the quality of education. . . . The system you have is like a sponge. It will absorb the extra money. Because the incentives are wrong.
“Would you really rather have your automobile produced by a government agency? Do you really prefer the post office to FedEx? Why do people have this irrational attachment to a socialist system?”
Friedman says that Americans have benefited enormously from free market competition in virtually every other part of their lives. He thinks it’s a matter of time before consumers demand the same right to choose how their children’s minds will be nourished as they do in deciding what food to feed them.
Charter schools allow a measure of choice, he says, in part because they are largely unencumbered by unreasonable union requirements, but he already sees organized labor stalking teachers at those schools.
“Vouchers,” he says, “should have been a Democratic proposal. I don’t think the unions can continue to succeed in making it an act of faith that if you’re a Democrat you’re against vouchers. That’s resting on a pile of straw.
“It’s not going to last. It’s impossible, really, literally impossible for me to conceive that you can keep on sticking to this failing system, this terrible system that does so much injustice.”
Friedman’s a brilliant guy, and he left me with a lot to consider about how we educate our children.
But then my friend Duffy’s a bright guy too, as the deal he helped strike last month to help Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (and the teachers union) gain more control of the L.A. Unified School District makes clear.
In retrospect, I wish I’d invited Duffy to leave his posh union office and join me in my visit to Friedman’s posh apartment.
I’m not sure who would have won the moral battle. But I’d loved to have seen the economist and the union boss crashing about among the bookcases, trying to wrestle each other into intellectual headlocks.
Photo Credit: Robert Durell/LAT
Bob's Question of the Week: Do teachers unions have too much power?
Comments
In his book, "Savage Inequalities," Jonathan Kozol dicusses the fact that many inner city schools don't have enough toilet paper, let alone enough textbooks. These same schools, however, have hundreds of boxes of unopened computers. Why? Because they are mismanaged by government bureaucrats who recognize that nobody with authority is supervising them well. Why is it that most McDonalds have very clean bathrooms and enough toilet paper while are schools do not? I believe the answer is that McDonalds would lose customers if people did not feel comfortable using their bathrooms. McDonalds must compete to survive. If schools had to compete to survive not only would they have enough toilet paper but they would have enough computers. Yes, without unions some teachers might make more money than others, but is this such a bad thing? Shouldn't more qualified and competent individuals make more money?
Andrew Pass
http://www.Pass-Ed.com/blogger.html
Sorry -- my previous comment was on the Green Dot dude's alleged "Parents' Union." I've lost my way and can't navigate to the right place to post the comment. But until I find it, here's an additional comment on that issue, posted by another parent on a San Francisco schools discussion list and reposted with permission:
Just for starters, a couple of things jump out of the "parents'
union" list of demands.
Cap enrollment at 500 students per campus.
> Mandate college prep curriculum for all students.
> Delegate control over budgets, curriculum and hiring to
administrators and teachers at each school.
> Allocate more money to the classroom and increase teacher pay.
> Increase parental participation.
> Keep campuses open later for community.
First, if campus enrollment is capped at 500, I wonder what effect
that would have on the ability of the schools to offer a full range
of extracurriculars, like sports teams and band/orchestra. What we
have found here is that the smaller high schools either forego these
amenities entirely, or they have to choose just a couple of sports
(say, baseball, basketball and volleyball, but no football, or
swimming, or fencing, or badminton, or soccer, or softball, etc), or
band but no orchestra, or no music at all.
Same thing with languages - a population of 500 is not enough to
support a choice of foreign languages, which is why 2600-student
Lowell has about 9 languages to choose from, and Gateway, with about 400 kids, has Spanish For All.
Then there is the issue of AP classes. A population of 500 kids is
not enough to support more than a handful of AP - and yet they are
demanding a "college prep" curriculum? Well, having ALL AP classes, as some schools for the gifted do, would accomplish that, but then the schools would have to be sorting their kids by ability, and lumping the gifted kids together. That doesn't seem to be part of
the demands, so I assume that these schools will not be doing that.
Schools of 500 which serve a full range of abilites will not be able
to offer more than a couple of AP courses. Is that an improvement
over the current setup?
Next, the delegating of control over the curriculum, hiring and
budget to the administration and teachers seems to be at odds with
the demand for more parental involvement. The Ed Code requires
school site councils, which must at the high school level be
composed of 25% parents/guardians, and 25% students. Turning such decisions over to each school's site council would accomplish what seems to be the goal (getting these decsisions out of the hands of central office and into the hands of those closest to the students) while including parents in these important decisions too. As it stands, it sounds like this so-called "parents' union" is demanding that parents be involved, but excluding them from the most important decision making at the school. I guess this charter school guy believes that parental involvement should be limited to things like running fund raisers and going on field trips. Oh, and of course, going to sacramento to lobby for more schools like the ones he has created..
.Suddenly I am reminded of the time Edison Schools was
paid $3 million to write a report on how to fix the Philadelphia
school system. When the report came out, guess what it said? Yes,
the only way to fix that school district was, according to Edison,
to turn management of the whole district over to....Edison!
How brazen for this charter-school mogul to announce a totally bogus parents' union. And pretty rich for one of its principles to be higher pay for teachers, considering a primarly goal of the charter movement is busting teachers' unions. Also, does anyone who has ever spent any time around kids really believe that it's feasible to offer all students a college-prep curriculum?
Thanks for the praise and astute discussion. I'm holed up in a San Diego hotel, trying to ignore the call of the waves as I hide from my editor Beth "the Butcher" Shuster and wrap up next week's column. Please note, though, that the Times plans to excerpt parts of these discussions in the paper soon, so with luck we'll get the debate ping-ponging from blog to paper and back again.
Hooray for all of you who want to help kids learn.
This is a great blog!
Bob Sipchen comments, "The more I report and research, the more I see hope in the sort of public/private partnerships you discuss."
I've been thinking about the issue of multi-sector education partnerships for a long long time and would like to suggest we consider the possibility of a three-legged-stool approach: civil society sector/public sector/private sector partnerships.
Discussions are typically framed as between the "public" sector ("motherhood and apple pie") and the "private" sector ("suspect"). Even Milton Friedman uses this limiting frame. This leads to arguments between "market" and "equity" driven systems. That's a false dichotomy which doesn't allow for the existence of the core of "innovation" and "ongoing learning" in the system itself. By expanding our thinking to include the independent/non-profit/civil society sector, we open the door to an educational system that could finally be less dominated by politics and commerce and more driven by innovation and ideas, a.k.a. a "continuous learning" system.
I was part of a design team behind a public charter school that was eventually authorized by the LAUSD. Based on that experience, here's an example of what an independent/public/private partnership could look like: As the charter approval process wore on - and as I watched other charter school applicants try to justify their innovation to the LAUSD Board, I saw that the Board by and large viewed charters as "the other woman". The better the new innovation sounded, the more the Board tended to be threatened.
Yet, there was no need to view the charter developers as competition. Insread we could decide to expand our idea of who can be included in coming up with ideas for schools.
What if, I thought, instead of the LAUSD Board authorizing charter schools in this slow, clumsy and inevitably political fashion, the authorization and evaluation of new school ideas (for charters and non-charters alike) was delegated to the Departments of Education at the various universities in the area? The innovators would inform the Schools of Education and the Schools of Education would inform the innovators. This would create a learning loop instead of a bottle neck. Schools of Education and related Schools such as Schools of Medicine and Psychology would "get" a innovation and appreciate it instead of fearing it.
So this would be just one of many potential scenarios of a independent/public/private three legged stool approach.
1 - The pedagogical innovation/curriculum/methods come from the civil socity sector in partnership with independent and public universities;
2 - the safety of the buildings, compliance with health regulations, and relevant equity matters are regulated by the public/government sector which also contributes funding;
and 3 - the private business sector offers additional funding and organizational expertise.
Slowly a distinction could arise between private sector companies that want to profit from the students and those who want to profit them.
This is a wonderful exchange of ideas. There is loyalty to various camps, but also willingness to concede that sometimes things are not one or the other, but both at once. In that spirit, I want to see if I can provide more common ground.
I grew up in the shadow of Bethlehem Steel, a corporation that for all intents and purposes had a monopoly (together with golfing buddies from U.S. Steel) on steel in this country for more than half a century, much as government schools have had on education since the beginning of the industrial age. And like the public education system, its architects and founding social contract were designed to meet the perceived needs of the 20th century.
Eighty years later, when the world changed and Bethlehem could not, there were similar accusations between management and labor that it was entirely the other’s fault, but both were hypocritical about their own casual abuses. When increasing wages for both groups could simply be tacked onto a captive domestic consumer, there was no reason not to grant everyone their piece of the pie. There were no economic realities to curb the wanton indulgence of management and the graft in the factories. Accountability, quality, and innovation all froze when the money was guaranteed. Today, the company that built the Golden Gate bridge is no more, and the economies of several towns are still recovering. But were it not for the foreign competition that unseated their reign, would the abuse ever have ended?
This is the crux of what Mr Friedman is objecting to. Any large, centralized structure with a guaranteed revenue stream (as schools certainly are) creates too much money in one place, and the inefficiency and graft commence regardless of the best intentions. The idea that the involvement of children somehow cushion or absolve the system from this effect is wishful thinking.
A voucher system would create a bottom-up countering force to the top-down distribution of financing. There would be fewer promises made in such a system. But guarantees are only rhetoric. Money and the way it flows is always the deciding factor. There would still be protections against abuse and fraud as there are in any sector, and surely scandals as well, but the overall corrective influence would be positive, local, and above all, grant ownership, freedom and responsibility of choice to families. I would rather trust them than politicians or education professionals who have not been in the classroom for some time if at all.
Some respondents here have objected to treating school with the analogy of school as business and of children as products. Perhaps describing it as a service is more helpful. A product can be shipped everywhere, whereas a service is localized and more accountable to consumer preference. Large, centralized producers of products indeed can give rise to Enrons and GMs. But what would result from vouchers would be, in my mind, closer to the one-room schoolhouse, mentors-for-hire, and single mothers who could afford to stay home and teach their children in collectives tailored to their needs. An organization in Connecticut that trains welfare mothers as child care professionals, allowing them to learn best practices sorely needed in their own communities, is a great example of the adaptation to local need that a bottom-up financial support structure could support.
Would a bottom-up accountability model be perfect and free from abuse? Of course not. But it would be easier to spot the troubles than in the current protectionist bureaucracy. We’re not talking about a perfect system here. Just a more perfect one.
I would like to applaud the article "Are Public Schools Worth It?"
As a high school teacher, I couldn't agree more that unions are holding education (and educators) hostage. I have been in education as a teacher, administrator, and consultant for more than 20 years. I have seen education from all sides of the desk.
After leaving the classroom 10 years ago and now returning, I see that nothing has changed for the better and in many instances, has only gotten worse. Until educators wake up and act as the white collar professionals that they are, we will continue to have unions making decisions for the masses. I would much rather my union dues go directly into my classroom.
I was fortunate when I taught in Illinois that I was not forced to join the union. I negotiated everything directly with my administrators and never had a problem. As far as I am concerned, unless the union does something dramatic to improve teacher's salaries, they are useless to me. Ultimately, that is the only thing that they could and should influence on a state and national level, but have not done in the 20 years I have been involved with them.
Teachers are the only white collar professional group that is completely unionized, so why should we be surprised to see the disparity in wages as opposed to lawyers,for example, many of whom do not have as much education as some teachers?! Teachers need to take a look in the mirror and ask themselves why they need a union to represent them. Do they not possess an education that has prepared them to make decisions for themselves?
As someone who covers teachers' unions for a living, I believe the question isn't even debatable. Just review the coverage of the LA Times concerning any major education issue in the state. You'll find lots of stories about the governor bargaining the state budget with the teachers' union, and the mayor negotiating a compromise with the teachers' union, and legislators and school board members waiting with the rest of us to learn what has been decided.
Though they represent public employees, teachers' unions are private organizations. Imagine the uproar if the headlines read, "Governor hammers out budget compromise with Wal-Mart." Or the United Way. Or the California Domestic Ferret Association.
California Teachers Association President Barbara Kerr was elected by 800 activists in a union hall (unopposed, I might add). I must have missed the constitutional amendment that gave her veto power over the state's public education expenditures.
Only 8% of the private sector workforce is unionized, but California's public school teachers - save the ones in charter schools or in Clovis - are almost entirely unionized. Our economic worlds will eventually collide.
Frankly, I cannot understand why anyone (except for their members) is the least bit in favor of teachers unions. Like all unions, the teachers unions exist for the purpose of collusion and price fixing. If their members were selling any other good, such as eggs, or airline seats, or electric turbines, or medications, we would all see that such collusion and price fixing are harmful to the consumer. Is there something unique about education that makes collusion and price fixing beneficial to the consumer?
The article seems to highlight two very seperate points. While I agree with Mark Bell's post about the feel of big union, that doesn't mean that vouchers are the right choice either. How many of those great schools exist in places like South Los Angeles? Not enough! The concept of vouchers is great, but the realiity is that too many kids would have to spend hours on a bus every day to find a school worth attending that has room for them. That's not a very realistic soultion!
While working In LAUSD, I saw some completely hideous displays of union power to protect "educators" who were truly hindering student success. It was so bad, I was too embarrassed continue working there. It's sad to say, but vouchers won't do much for those kids.
This discussion on vouchers seems to ignore the fact that no matter what kind of voucher that has been passed and no matter which state or country it was passed in it has never done anything but improve education in general.
After a hundred years or so you would think people would just look at the reality and drop the hubris.
The above article closes with the comment, "I’m not sure who would have won the moral battle. But I’d loved to have seen the economist and the union boss crashing about among the bookcases, trying to wrestle each other into intellectual headlocks."
You're kidding me right? A union boss able to wrestle a Nobel Laureate into an intellectual headlock? That's a stretch. Friedman's views are not "opnion", they are based on economic science. Why is the argument for competitive education so difficult to grasp? Imagine, an entire educational system competing on behalf of your child!
It is interesting to note that at the college level we already have the voucher system. First, state colleges and junior colleges get their revenue, based in large part upon enrollments. And students are "free to choose." Then the State has "Cal grants" that are made to the student, who can then select the college to attend and the money goes with the student. At the federal level there are now Pell grants that also go with the student, just as the G.I. bill did in an earlier time.
Does this system work? Well, there are hordes of foreign students trying to get into the United States to attend our colleges and universities. In turn, those colleges and universities have diverse objectives and specialties in order to respond to consumer demand.
I do not see any such foreign demand by students to attend our high schools. Test results in other countries are much higher at the high school level. Countries like Belgium have the equivalent of a voucher system.
For those who say vouchers have never been tried, they just do not look very hard. Outside of education they abound in this country: food stamps, welfare checks, etc. The alternative is the post office, veterans hospitals, and FEMA.
Why is it that liberals are so anxious to endorse "Free to Choose" when abortion is involved, but not give a Mother the same choice of schools for her children. I support choice in both cases.
Here in Chicago, two thirds of public school teachers send their kids to private schools. Doesn't that speak volumnes?
We have a problem with hunger in this country but we don't open government grocery stores and require the hungry to eat from the those government stores. Instead, we give the hungry vouchers (food stamps) and tell them that they are free to choose how to best feed themselves at the lowest cost.
The good news is, as Friedman notes, that the government school system in this country is so beyond repair that vouchers are inevitable.
And fear not: the Canadians have public support for private schools and have a far better and cheaper school system of schooling than we do.
Our thoughts on the article are here:
http://www.edspresso.com/2006/07/sipchen_and_friedman.htm
We also respond to John Lloyd's comments here:
http://www.edspresso.com/2006/07/commenting_on_friedman_and_sip.htm
The problem with people who have an agenda is that they often don't let the facts get in the way. Or they answer the most difficult questions with a simple answer and move on to aspects of their agenda that sound a lot better.
No doubt the public schools are a mess and need fixing. But to say abandon them is like the congressional report on FEMA saying disband it after it worked well in the Clinton Administration and then performed so poorly under Bush's leadership.
We definitely need fresh ideas and a new way - the right wingers have a mantra "privatize." It is almost a religious faith that you can privatize anything and everyone will win. Unfortunately this does not often occur and the "haves" usually end up coming out on top and the "have nots" end up worse off.
Education should be the great equalizer in our society and unfortunately it is becoming just the opposite today. But to somehow think giving 2 percent of poor people vouchers and taking away monies for the education of the other 98% is a solution - well that defies logic. Money is needed - the best private schools tuition get more and more expensive every year - how does this fit into the articles equation?
And to think that in this privatization scenario that the poor parents who being poor don't have money and are more likely going to be uneducated themselves are going to magically find great schools for their kids is a fantasy. I would postulate that the supporters of privatization know this or maybe they don't realize that people who come from a background of limited education are not as well equipped to due lack of training and experience.
Milton Friedman says:
"The schooling system was in much better shape 50 years ago than it is now."
Ah, the golden age. Way back when. We can all remember those days as if they were yesterday. At least we can remember what we want from those good ol’ days. What we remember, of course, is what best serves as a positive foil to our reading of the bad ol’ present, the world going to hell in a hand basket, etc., etc.. For a moment, please stop being such nostalgic old grumps and/or such conservative ideolgues with an axe to grind.
What was good about public education 50, 60 years ago was high percentage of exceptional teachers in the primary grades (the deciding years on the education ladder for most students). And it is not beside the point that these exceprional and exceptionally dedicated teachers were 90% women. Professions fully open to women at this time were limited–aside from teaching you could take your pick of professions, as long as that pick was nursing, stewardess, public librarian or secretarial work. Need I tell you these women were the cream of the crop. An underused, untapped human resource.
At this time women had to overcome and/or juggle the obstacles of sex discrimination and the pull of tradition (marriage and family) in order to pursue careers in education. Deciding on a bachelors degree in education and a career as a teacher was major step across an abyss and through a sexist jungle.
The women who took these steps were amazing–and public schools in general, and Milton Friedman in particular, were rewarded for their courage and perseverance.
Times have changed and after a hard struggle (not yet finished) so have the opportunities for women. Do we still attract and hold the very best women (and men as well) to the teaching profession? Particularly at the primary grade level? If you were one of the best and the brightest starting out in college, what field would be the object of your ambitions? If you chose education, would you envision a career of thirty, forty, fifty years teaching reading in the first and second grades? What would be needed to make this your passionate life career goal? When it was time to add a graduate degree to your bachelors, would you focus on a subject matter degree--math, science, history, literature? Or would the siren call of an “easier” (usually, not always) Masters or EdD in “Educational Administration” be the way to go for you? And remember, you’re the top student type and one of the best teachers at your school.
Rewards and recognition are as out of whack in the field of education as they are in major corporations. Educational administrative czars don’t come near to matching the out of the ball park and into the yachts salaries CEOs pull down, but the gulf between the big corner office with plenty of support staff, the one that gets redecorated every couple of years, and the classroom in need of basic teaching tools is wide and galling.
More importantly, this all demonstrates again the public’s failure to put their money where it really counts. Note how every public discussion of teacher’s salaries inevitably includes comments about teaching being a “calling,” a profession not to be sullied by a discussion of filthy lucre. “_Our_ teachers are above all of that.” Try that “calling” business on a lawyer, engineer, or MBA and see what kind of reaction you get if you’re trying to hire one of these important professionals–men, and now women, who study hard, and work hard. Men and women just like teachers, except they don’t have the responsibility of educating your children and grandchildren.
I have no assurance or evidence that vouchers or charter schools or faith based initiatives would change any of this. I absolutely know the “magic” of the marketplace and the “No Child Left Behind” testing of kids into the ground are not the answer. Every day I read about this or that business failure, ethical scandal, defrauding of shareholders, or just plain dumb decisions that are the doings of high placed pooh-bahs in the private sector. Every day I read about the failings and flaws and mind deadening drill that goes along with incessant testing–the latest quick and cheap fix that will not work, that makes things even worse for teachers who have not yet burned out.
The market and shareholders and test makers of the private sector may be able to absorb these failures, for our children and our country this is not an option.
The problems of education today are complex. But the answer starts with questioning the failures at the top of the administrative pyramid and a lack of support at the base. Smart legislation is needed to deal with the top rungs and the smart use of money, big dollars, is needed at the base–you know, where teachers and students come together every day of the week.
Ronald and Kevin,
Thanks! The sort of excellent discussion that's unfolding here is one of the great rewards of writing my column. I'll continue to engage the most interesting thinkers on (and participants in) education topics and I hope smart people will continue the debate here.
Steve,
As a frequent (and extremely articulate) commenter, you know that my column and this blog are called School Me for a reason. The premise is that I'm trying to sort things out and inviting the public along as I do. That will take time. I understand why someone as well-informed as you would get impatient. But stay open-minded and maybe we'll make some progress together.
Robert Lewis,
You and Steve have a theme in common: Only educators merit our respect in discussing education issues. Since I'm an educator only in the sense that Linda Slater defines in her interesting post (see below) I have an obvious disinclination to accept that premise. Besides, education is intricately woven into our society, so it's really not possible to extricate economics from pedagogy. I fail to see why we should listen to someone with a Phd in, say, school administration, but ignore someone with a Phd in economics.
Larry,
That issue of atomization is one I hope to address in a column soon.
Joan and Linda,
The more I report and research, the more I see hope in the sort of public/private partnerships you discuss. Linda, I believe, is a teacher at 24th St. Elementary. I wrote about a garden project there that is an encouraging example of how teachers, district administrators and people in the neighborhood worked well (though not always blissfully) together to make something mutually beneficial happen.
Carolyn,
The Friedmans do, indeed, have children, I believe.
John,
I agree that public schooling is an extraordinary institution. But this column's mission is to find ways to improve education, so I'm going to keep asking questions. PS: We both know that historians don't always agree--if unions don't benefit from centralization why are they largely opposed to charter schools?
No Child Left Behind was implemented to destroy the public school system as we know it, so that people like Friedman can come in and clean up... financially!
After reflecting on all the comments to date on this topic ( including comments of Ron Cox) I am excited. Why? As a proponent of public/private partnerships as the key to ensuring success for our future generation's education, (that means I want the best for each and every homo sapien on the planet), a number of patterns seem to be emerging from this week's discussion about the Mayor's Take-Over.
Us versus Them in a variety of contexts. It's time to stop thinking of "Us" and "Them." Science is teaching us that there is no "us and them" but merely a perception that we hold. We also know as scientists that most of the "truths" that humans have believed in over the course of history have been replaced with new "truths," and so on.
I knew from early on that being a teacher is part and parcel of being a sentient human being. In fact, teaching another word for what our DNA was made to do. Pass on information. We share that trait with all living things. Read Doonsebury this week in the Sunday edition of the LA Times. Teaching is part of the natural evolutionary process.
But back to the pattern of responses. And back to my applause of Ron's comments.
The middle ground is where I'd like to see this adventure begin.
I agree that UTLA has outlived it's usefulness and it's time to find an alternative. I also agree that the School Board and the Mayor's usefulness are at best, limited, as I agree with Milton Friedman's assertion that centralization and government bureaucracy make for very bad bed fellows when trying to operate in the 21st century.
It's time to focus on teaching people how to think like scientists and to use our neocortex instead of our older brains to make critical decisions.
The Earth is in a precarious position. If we don't kill each other with nuclear weapons or by poisoning our planet's biosphere we just might have an opportunity to learn from the mistakes we humans have made over the past few thousand years.
As a passionate teacher in the LAUSD school system, I believe it's time for all of us to let go of our individual egotistical world views and begin to understand that we are only as good as our weakest link, as a group. How can we bear to hold our heads high as Americans and go forth to "save the world" when right here less than 10 miles from Beverly Hills we have third world conditions in our public schools?
Let's focus on fixing what we can fix with what we've got available to us right now.
Here in Los Angeles we have a vibrant community of forward-looking progressive business people who are eager to come into the public school system and add value to it. Why does this model make sense? The local businesses need well-educated people to work for them. It's that simple.
That's why at my school we are working so hard to create enduring relationships with our neighbors who one day might even decide to send their own children to the school.
But again back to Milton Friedman and economics. What if we could take $1,000 per student and get each kid a laptop with access to broadband internet at home? What if those computers were linked to the very best online academic software programs designed to teach to each child's strengths? What if kids and parents could learn English and Reading and Writing and Math and Science on their computers at home or at work or at school?
Maybe then teachers could spend time working one-on-one with students engaging them in discussions and conversations that focus on applying the basic skills of reading, writing, inquiry-based thinking and math to solving day-to-day social and emotional issues facing our inner-city youth. Teachers would be empowered to use their pedogogical training much as Plato envisioned so very long ago. The true job of a teacher is to find out what each child's genius truly is, and then use that genius to guide instruction across the curriculum.
Right now I'm poised and ready to do just that if I'm given the opportunity.
(These comments are completed personal, and not associated with any organization)
Thank you very much, Mr. Sipchen, for your essay about whether Public Schools are Worth the Effort. What I appreciated was your willingness to listen to Mr. Friedman and to raise some of his questions and concerns to our attention, even though you are apparently not completely sold on them. This is especially beneficial as this is such polarizing topic - the reduction by persons from the right or left of the opposing side's viewpoints to slogans and caricatures (seen above already in the comments to your article) accomplishes nothing. If there is any hope for our schools (I am a LAUSD alumnus - '73-'86) it is not in the status quo. More funding (it has doubled, after all, as the schools grow steadily worse), more bureaucracy, more union control (their *primary* concern as a union - rightly - are the teachers' well-being, not the students), and more centralization have not helped.
While Mr. Friedman's free market approach may be unsettling to some, his ability to entertain pragmatic compromises was suggestive. I wish that you had (or may in the future) continue the conversation between him and Mr. Duffy - even if it was just you as the go-between. Indeed, you are uniquely placed since you have access to people like these two gentlemen that most of us do not. Is it fair to let your essay end on a conundrum of "what if" and not try to make that conversation a reality? And if it cannot be, why not? Who is not listening? Who is not desperate to consider any option - to make any compromise - short of the well being of our city's school children?
I think that, if we got passed the rhetoric, the sham political divides and the self-interest (of taxpayers, unions/teachers and bureaucrats), that a solution revolving around semi-free markets (that would likely result in improved opportunities and job quality for teachers, by the way) may be possible. The question is whether we are all willing to risk our self-interest for the benefit of our city's children?
"Would you really rather have your automobile produced by a government agency?" or would you rather have it produced by General Motors who went from being such a factor in the automotive industry that "what's good for General Motors is good for the country" to what we see now, General Motors teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, Delphi, their major parts supplier hung up in financial woes of the highest order. and GM pushing out 35,000 workers to get a smaller work force to build fewer and fewer cars.They were making a profit per vehicle for a long time, but didn't notice that the Japanese auto makers were taking over huge chunks of their market share. Does Dr. Friedman believe that the market was good for GM stockholders? That the nation is not spiraling downward into haves and have-nots, when housing costs trampoline upwards and college kids wind up graduating as debtors because of their tuition. My degree was not in the dismal science, but I go to the supermarket, and read to 1st graders at a school near me. Maybe Dr. Friedman could shadow me for a morning and look at reality
Bob,
I’ve written before, asking for evidence to back the claims that you, or others have made regarding the value of appointing a non-educator as Superintendent -- fhat evidence was never provided. Now, Milton Friedman makes unsubstantiated claims about the public schools’ teacher’s unions and bureaucracies, and talks of a “better” time for public education in the 1920’s, again with no evidence. A look at the data about the reading level of recruits to the armed services in World War I, and World War II or the high school graduation rates in the 1920’s and 1930’s, as compared with today, would have been telling. His claim that Charters and Vouchers would produce better results, in the absence of a public school system is pure speculation.
Asserting that magnet schools, charter schools, and most private schools have closed the achievement gap would not substantiate the claim that they are better than the public school system, as a whole. Most of these schools use some form of student selection, either on intake, or on exit. Students who don’t fit in find their way back to the public school. Parent involvement is of a different quality in magnets, charters and private schools. Parents must have high expectations, and either work to sustain their children in a private school, or must seek out the magnet and charter school and go through the application process.
A case could be made that parent involvement is the differentiating factor in the achievement gap. Parents who have low expectations, pay little attention to what their children are doing in school, who contribute nothing to the school, and fail to attend parent conferences tend to have lower achieving children. However, the achievement gap has been closed in many traditionally low achieving public school communities by implementing the Correlates of Effective Schools, and other school improvement strategies.
Tempting as it may be to blame parents, teacher’s unions, or the school district bureaucracy, I won’t do it. There are many parents with high expectations and high achieving sudents in “low achieving” schools. I worked as a principal and never had a problem with the teacher’s union. If the bureaucracy was an occasional problem, I worked around it. If parents weren’t involved, we worked to involve them.
The “pie in the sky” solutions of non-educators, who refuse to listen to educators when they offer solutions, are as big a problem for the public schools as is the failure of the State to adequately fund the public schools. The teacher’s union has long complained, and rightly so, that the bureaucracy is too big and that more of the education dollars need to be spent at the school level. They also have rightly asserted that class size has been too large.
Milton Friedman claims that the public schools would soak up more money like a sponge, because the “incentives” are wrong. He’s speaking theory. In practice, California’s class sizes, and dollars spent per student are inadequate as compared with most other states.
Low achieving students need smaller class size, tutoring, a longer school year, summer enrichment, and a comprehensive program of instruction (not just skill drill and test prep). This requires funding.
Low achieving public schools (and districts) need, accountability and funding equal to the challenges they face. They need sound, knowledgeable educational leadership from the classroom to the Board level. A superintendent who is an instructional leader can facilitate systemic instructional leadership.
Sadly, the superintendent also must be a political infighter, because the Legislature and the Governor haven’t had the will to provide the funds needed to make California’s schools the best in the Nation. They’ve been content to consign the public schools to middling status; their complaint being that the schools are doing an inadequate job with inadequate funding. That’s the real problem.
"Why do people have this irrational attachment to a socialist system?"
After reading the comments on this blog, I can answer that question Mr. Friedman. There are people who scream that the high price of gasoline is caused by the big oil companies, as if they were part of some giant secret cartel or monopoly with the insidious intent of rising profits through price gouging. Of course that is just a delusion of the leftist mind, probably due to the effects of a government school education.
But the same people, if part of a teachers union or a government education bureaucracy would defend their coercive education monopoly to the death. Mr. Freidman knows that the only real monopoly is one created by the government, for they alone can force a customer to pay for something they don’t approve of at a price they can’t afford.
The dream of a true monopolist is not having any competition for the consumer dollar, so they can gouge at will, which is why the teachers unions will fight tooth and nail against even charter schools and vouchers or anything that would allow the parents to choose who will educate their children and for how much.
If you don’t think public education is a monopoly enforced by government coercion, try not paying you school taxes and see what happens to you.
Free the schools and free the children’s minds, get the government and public unions out of education.
Considering we've never truly had any long-term experiences with a voucher system such as Milton Friedman proposes, critics such as those on this page are really only speculating as to why they believe it will fail. And this is compared with the system currently in place which quite clearly has been letting many students down for years.
The critics do not create confidence in their arguments when they make basic errors in thinking. One claims that "The school does not have a product." Of course it does. The product is an education. Some schools provide good eductions. Others provide poor educations. That's why, at the college level, people will pay more for an education at Harvard than at other schools.
Another says, "The profit motive will act in the best interests of the shareholders, not the children." No business will long survive unless it first satisfies its customers. Serving the interests of the customers results in serving the interests of the shareholders, not the other way around. The school system is an example of how a contrived monopoly allows a 'business' to survive despite failing to satisfy its customers.
I could go on but instead will just ask: can anyone come up with examples of competitive industries which have failed to improve their service to customers through innovation? Isn't that exactly what Milton Friedman is counting on vouchers to do for our school system?
As a retired teacher and a former union leader, I believe the problem is not how much power, but how it is used. Neither unions nor the administrators with whom they do battle put the students first. Primacy goes to their own survival and prosperity and they attempt to insure those two things by lock-stepping behind their teachers or, in the case of administrators, their good-old-boys (and once in a while girls) clubs.
Reform, whether it be in the form of merit pay, assigning teachers where they are most needed, paying the best teachers as much as administrators, or other changes and/or experiments as yet unnamed is the enemy of the entrenched.
A recommendation: I am not a conservative, but David Brooks, who writes a conservative column for the New York Times, had a great piece yesterday that speaks to the very heart of the education problem and a huge piece of the solution as well.
OK, I'm a working class guy, married to a working class teacher with two kids in public school. Public schools were created for folks like me. The idea was to get kids out of mills and factories and level the playing field. It seems to me Mr Friedman longs for the good old days of the 90's(1890's that is). It is not enough that the wealth of the nation is being held by fewer and fewer, we have to remove one of the great equalizers(education) too. People working near mnimum wage can barely afford clothes, food and supplies for public school, screw private turition. What about the learning impared and those with challenges? Does Mr Friedman envisiona horde of private institutions springing back? If Mr Friedman had his way the market would decide all- if XYZ Air knew their blongo model Q jets were dangerous they would just raise crew pay, lower the fares and let the public decide wether it was worth the risk. Unions scare Friedman because they are only democratic check on unbridled capitalisim. We (yes I'm an AFSMCE member) focus on the main street economy while considering the Wall street one. A nation of stupid people means that soon we can all sit in our hovles and sew LL Bean mocassions for piece rate pay for the Bejing market. JUST HOW DUMB DO YOU THINK WE ARE??
When Milton Friedman went to school in the 1930s, teachers' pay relative to other professions was *much higher* than it is now. Today we pay teachers proportionately less than tradesmen who are less necessary to society's continuation.
Privatization and/or vouchers won't fix the schools, as has been proven over and over again in states where it's been tried. Neither will teachers' union control over hiring/firing help.
Here's what might help get us out of the hole we've been digging for so long:
1. Require all new teachers to have at least a Bachelor's degree in the subject they intend to teach. Degrees in "Education" don't count toward this requirement. Those with higher degrees or higher college GPAs earn higher starting pay.
2. Actually verify new teachers' college transcripts and GPAs for above-average skills. We don't want solid-C students in positions of responsibility. Look what that's done to the Presidency.
3. Pay these new teachers salaries at least commensurate with those for jobs requiring the *same college degrees* in private industry/government.
4. Reward excellent teachers with incentive pay over and above what they'd be making for seniority or other reasons.
FWIW, JMHO, YMMV,
Saverio
Hunt Park
W'63 graduate of LAUSD high-school
As a 1962 graduate of San Pedro High (LAUSD), I am concerned by the steady decline of education in the district. As a Hawaii resident, I am extremely concerned by the low quality education given to our public school students.
Many education union officials point to high rates of public school students entering college...but fail to tell the rest of the story. If half the entering freshmen must take remedial English and even more must take remedial math, have public schools done their duty to the students? I would contend the answer is a harsh no.
As a foster parent, I have had high school students who independently tested with a 3rd grade math level...but the local high school said they didn't need any more math to graduate! Sorry, but I don't agree that 3rd grade math is enough to function adequately in a 21st century society!
In most school districts, the teachers unions are the major force in school board elections. Thus, the elected officials are indebted to the unions that they negotiate contracts with...providing a conflict of interest.
Privatising schools would be a good start...or even outsouce public school operation to private corporations. The current system just isn't working...not is it likely to work until management focuses on the students...not the union members (or worse yet, the union managers).
The URL attached to this note, should lead the viewer to a copy of the Los Angeles High School Handbook of 1935. Check it out.
And yes, Public Schools are definitely worth it!
If the school-wide and academic expectations for students in 1935 were appropriately contemporized for today's students, then perhaps every participant in the school's daily mission would know how importatnt their role is. And play it to the maximum benefit for the students.
Robert Irvin
LAHS, 1970
I'm a parent in the Capo Valley School District. My children go to a Waldorf inspired charter school.
I'm also a green liberal. Teachers deserve collective bargaining as much as any other group of workers. The problem is one of execution rather than concept.
I disagree about vouchers-applying the free market to schooling without constraint will fail. The profit motive will act in the best interests of the shareholders, not the children, which is the same argument used against the teachers unions. If you accept that logic, you have to accept the same results.
The way to fix education is to send the money to where it will do the most good-improving school plants that need it, lowering class size, providing support for at-risk children, and raising wages for teachers. Teacher pay is like the old saw about Wall Street-it's the only place the people giving advice to the well-heeled aren't.
I personally think we need to change all our schools to Waldorf, but that's a pipe dream-no one in power has an interest in making our kids well-rounded...just good test takers and specialists in curricula. For the time we live in, we need people who are physically, mentally and emotionally balanced, sensitive, proficient in being human.
When I first glanced at today's column, and saw Milton Friedman claim that the free market would "stave off the division of this country into haves and have-nots," I had to laugh. Surely this was a joke. But, no, Friedman, a true free market ideologue, expects us to close our eyes, click our heels three times, and find ourselves in the land of Oz. Historically, the periods of our nation's history in which the ideology of unregulated markets held sway--the Gilded Age, the 1920s, and the 1980s, for example--were also those periods that saw a rise in inequality between the haves and the have-nots.
As a historian who has studied the history of teachers' unions and education in the United States, I think several other corrections to statements made by Dr. Friedman are in order. First, Friedman claims that teachers' unions are to blame for the increasing bureaucratization and centralization of school districts, but, with all due respect, he has it backwards. As Joel Spring and other historians of American education have shown, teachers' unions emerged in response to the increasing bureaucratization and district centralization that took decision-making out of their hands. Ironically, the administrators who pushed such policies sought to copy the management strategies of the private sector that Friedman so reveres.
Second, Friedman asks the question whether people would prefer their automobiles produced by the government or by private industry. But the analogy reveals the weakness of comparing education--a social good, with automobiles--a commodity. If schools are going to work like the auto industry, some people will be able to afford Hummers, many others will be forced to accept second-hand clunkers, and still more will be unable to afford anything more than--gasp--public transportation. Ironically, Friedman's analogy undercuts his claims about equality and fairness that, unfortunately, Mr. Sipchen makes no effort to scrutinize.
Third, on this question of "fairness," Friedman bemoans the lot of the mother who must pay for her own child's private education and still subsidize the public education of her neighbor's child. Free market ideologues like Friedman would have us beleive that there is no such thing as social responsibility, that we need only look out for ourselves and let the devil take the hindmost. Yet, when my neighbor's child is educated, he or she has a chance to become a productive citizen with a sense, one hopes, of the social responsibility of providing the same for the next generation. In that way, Mr. Sipchen, we are a nation, not simply a loose aggregation of individuals caring only for ourselves.
Fourth, While I agree that the schools have problems, there is simply no evidence that teachers' unions, whatever their faults, are primarily to blame. The problems primarily stem from a myriald of social and economic factors over which teachers' unions have little or no control. Yet union-bashing is so much easier than tackling seemingly intractable social problems in our economy and in our students' neighborhoods and homes.
One final point. The American public education system is an extraordinary institution. We have the most diverse student population on earth and we have perhaps the most educated, and certainly the most vibrant, workforce in the world. If public education in general, and teachers' unions in particular, are to be blamed for the system's shortcomings, fairness and intellectual honesty dictate that they should also be praised for its successes. Yet, fairness and intellectual honesty were two things missing from this column.
*****
Instead, we should reexamine "every child left behind" to see if the emphasis on math and english skills at the expense of HISTORY and CIVICS... (and art and music, etc.) to improve the rest of public education for the good of future genersations.
*****
Ahh, I see you've figured out the secret consipracy! The more we push the three Rs at the expense of the other 70% of the curriculum, the less eductated the masses will become, and the more they will be herded like sheep.
Not that I really believe in conspiracy theories, but it's too good of a theory to pass up comment on.
Mr. Sipchen, these are some of the most salient and intelligent responses I've seen on the blog to date. Both sides make excellent points to which I can add little.
However, while you've made an interesting--albeit mildly skeptical--call to authority by interviewing Mr. Friedman, it begs for a counterpoint.
Robert William Fogel, another Nobel laureate in economics, may have a different view. While I'm familiar with his work in only passing, his book--"The Fourth Great Awakening"--sits on my summer reading pile along with books on pedagogy. While his specialty is the application of economics to history, he may have something germane to contribute. Perhaps you will pursue an opportunity of interview him as well.
What a rich opportunity this space is for you to set up a dialogue among thinkers on educational issues. There really is nothing else like it in the popular media, unless you consider publications such as EdWeek "popular." I envy such a position. Use it well.
Advocates of free-market education are forgetting that we already had one very high profile -- and much fawned-over by the mass media -- experiment with that, Edison Schools, which has fizzled ignominiously. Edison's former cheerleaders now treat it like an embarrassing odor in the room. Ask a free-market-education advocate "what about Edison?" and the response is basically, "oh, well, that...."
Friedman has no kids and, as someone else pointed out, knows absolutely zilch about education. I wonder how many decades ago he was last in a K-12 classroom.
I'm so tired of hearing those on the Right whine about "free market economy" deregulation and when it comes to education, vouchers. These methods will not solve everything and at times result in great harm. (California's phony energy crisis?)
What about the common good? Is there no reason to work together? No need for cooperation to achieve a common good?
I submit that the founding fathers believed in a common good and goals to be achieved through common effort. This is who the first two hunderd years were accomplished, and the basis for how the "greatest generation" resolved WWII for the West.
Additionally, through good management (government), same regulation and union effort, a resilient economy developed out of a devastating depression. During the mid-to-late 20th century a healthy middle class developed for the majority of US citizens.
What made this country great in the mid 20th century was a consensus.on values derived from shared priciples as learned through the common experience of public education. This helped to create a more tolerant society
From a society of many immigrants, the melting pot amalgamation of America was promulgated in large part through the public school systim. In history, civcs, and potlitcal science studies we learned the principals of democracy and how a demoratoc government is supposed to operate. As a result, great LIBERAL strides were made in civil rights and there were gains in equality for all minorities.
Then came division and dissent.
The 1970's, dirty politics and fragmentation -the exhultation of ethnicity and race at the expense of the whole-
The 1980's , Reaganism, greed, trickle down, deregulation, and anti-unionism.
The 1990's. Contract with America, Rush Limbaugh, the rise of the American Taliban - evangelism.. Liberal became a dirty word.
Now this country is teetering on the brink of Fascism. We need common goals, a consensus and widespread knowledge about how a democracy is supposed to work MORE THAN EVER. Exactly how will vouchers help to solve this problem?
Instead, we should reexamine "every child left behind" to see if the emphasis on math and english skills at the expense of HISTORY and CIVICS... (and art and music, etc.) to improve the rest of public education for the good of future genersations.
Americans have benefited enormously from free market competition in virtually every other part of their lives
Stated by someone who completely ignores the farm subsidy and the resulting cheap food had by Americans for the past 1/2 century.
A free-market farming system in the US would produce $40/lb hamburger, erase cotton farms and probably offshore our entire food supply. I'm guessing we'd end up with the same result in education; ample $30K/yr private options and the poor at missionary schools.
I'd like to clarify that I was answering the question of the week ("Do teachers unions have too much power?"), not making a commentary on the column itself. While I feel that yes, in many ways unions have too much power, I disagree with the idea that vouchers are good for students and for our school system.
I'm not saying that as a public school teacher trying to preserve my job--I know that I have the skills and flexibility to go anywhere and teach, or find a job outside of the classroom, if I needed to.
I believe that when a voucher system is implemented, it removes the strongest students with the most active parents from the public school system, students and parents that help create a stronger, better learning environment for others. This penalizes students who, through no fault of their own, have parents who can't or won't support their education, lowering the quality of the school system as a whole. I believe that a free, universal public education system is essential for creating an informed electorate, and the more students are segregated according to social class and race, the more everyone suffers.
It's impossible to look at teachers unions alone - they are part of a larger whole. Our system of education - which includes the "public" and "private" parts of it - is an operating system designed in another time when independent thought, meaningful connection, and a wide range of artistic and scientific skills were not considered essential. Learning the basics to hold down a manufacturing job was all that was necessary. The world has complexified considerably since then but our system of schooling still operates the same as it did before. Our aim is very very low. The sad, dispiriting mantrum, "leave no child behind", says it all. Three out of four words are negative. Our reptilian brain rises to the occasion. We are fearful: Poor U.S.! Children are being left behind!!!! But then the survival instict says, Aha! But not m y child!!!! And there you have it -the basis of a divided system perpetuated and the impetus for replacing the messiness of authentic teaching/learning with the "teacher-proofed" standardized testing assemly-line.
I propose a new positive frontal-cortex affirmation that is more in tune with our era:
"Every child a new possibility for the earth and its people."
About the teachers unions and their power? First, let's re-phrase the question.
How can we transform the power struggle between teachers, public education officials for the benefit of the parents, students and society?
Do we aim to operate as a society more at the frontal cortex level and less at the reptilian fear/survival level? Any system is weakened wherever persons use power and external force to control, manipulate, or coerce o t h e r people. On the other hand, any system is strengthened when persons use power and inner strength to take responsibility for their o w n thoughts, feelings, and behavior. The only power worth struggling for is power over self.
Ultimately, the purpose of schooling is to learn to school ourselves. If I have power over myself, I am empowered and enabled to direct my life with purpose and to align with others empowered with purpose.
What would a system of education designed to school children and young people to ultimately have the inner power and strength of mind, character, and skill to take responsibility for themselves and the world - to school themselves for the rest of their lives look like?
First, we could re-structure the educational system so that the incentive is to take ourselves in hand and to foster connection and collaboration instead of incentivizing know-it-all-ing and competition for personal rewards.
The bright side is that taking responsibility for ourselves is catching on - the charter school organizational model is an empty box that invites persons willing to do the work of self-responsibility and social responsibility to work together. The only way for students to learn to be self-reliant and public-spirited is to experience self-reliance and public-spirtedness in action by the way the system inside of which their school and their classroom operates. The system is the hardware; the teacher is the software.
The teachers unions would serve society if they took it upon themselves to stand for teaching as a profession of independent thinkers whose work with children and young people and families is an opportunity for continual self-development. That would be powerful.
Dr. Friedman's expertise is in economics, not education. His is a classic example of someone with great credentials, but no expertise in the field. He should stick to economics. There is no doubt that economics plays a role in the management of a school, but it applies in buying books and pencils, hiring and firing bus drivers and janitors. The school does not have a product. Quote, "...the government is subsidizing a product." Schools do not produce geniuses, or morons, they try to make the most of what they get. In reality, the school has very little control over the student. For example, there is little or no penalty for absenteeism. A worker, who is absent 10% of the time, will generally be summarily fired, but efforts to fail students, who absent that often are usually met with outcries. With classrooms as crowded as they are, this is usually not feasible in any case.
The proponents of vouchers argue that vouchers would equalize oppurtunity among students. It is often said that students could go to the school of their choice. This is not true, in general private schools do the choosing, and they can be very choosy. The students do not do the choosing, but choose between those that have accepted them. A public school, on the other hand has to take any child, who shows up on the doorstep. Until public schools are permitted chose their students as do private schools, the voucher system will not equalize oppurtunity. Nobody proposing vouchers has proposed this.
Dr. Friedman also says, "In the last 10 years, the amount spent per child on schooling has more than doubled..." He overlooks the fact that in the last 10 years the number of children, who do not speak English has enormously increased and that a great deal of the money is spent on them. In past years, schools were criticized because of increases in spending, and then it was pointed out that most of that increase was caused by alterations necessary to care for the disabled, hard of hearing and others. The students, who are disabled, hard of hearing and variously handicapped, would not apply to private schools, as their chances of being accepted are nearly zero.
As a recently tenured teacher with LAUSD, I feel I can offer some comment about whether or not the teachers union (UTLA) has too much power. My opinions have been influenced by my previous experience as a health care professional with Kaiser Permanente, where I was represented by SEIU Local 399.
One of the things I highly value as a teacher is no one from administration bothers me. As with my previous position with Kaiser, I am very conscientious and believe I do a very good job. This freedom from unnecessary harassment allows me to devote more quality time to those who need it most--the students. For instance, while working for Kaiser, management would call employees who were at home sick and make threats that they had better bring a doctor's note when he/she returned or else. This happened to everyone in my department even if the employee had never been sick before. At LAUSD, no one bothers me. I enjoy and appreciate this freedom because UTLA would not tolerate it and because I am a good teacher.
UTLA makes it possible for good teachers to do what they do best--teach the kids.
Mr. Sipchin--
Your column's headline in the print version of the LATimes is "Are Public Schools Worth the Effort?" But the column is about apples and oranges.
The apples: your entire column is about LAUSD which, though it enrolls more than 700,000 students, is a small minority of the public school system of the Southern California region covered by your paper. The lion's share of your readers live in school districts that perform far better.
The oranges: you talk with Milton Friedman, who proposes doing away with _all_ of these districts and creating a market system. California voters have twice had an opportunity to vote on initiatives that would have created something like Friedman proposes. Both times, the suburban majority overwhelmingly voted no.
You are writing about important things. Please do your homework. For more thorough information, you could go to SCCORE.org or www.ed-data.k12.ca.us.
(Full disclosure: I run SCCORE.org. You will find my contact information there. Mr. Sipchin, feel free to contact me.)
Yours,
DML
The comments in the article seem to omit the most salient issue in the voucher controversy. American education has historically had as a dominant theme the importance of development of national unity through patriotic feeling, and as subtext the virtue of Protestant Christianity as the moral/spiritual ground for that unity. Pluralistic and other tendencies in American demographics have pushed American education away from this subtext into a sort of limbo, characterized by a loss of consensus on moral/spiritual subtext.
What a voucher system will do to accommodate to this loss of consensus will be to sectorize the general population according to cultural-religious orientation, with the dominant cultural-religious orientation of each region gaining the upper hand in education. We already see that this has developed to some extent, and a voucher system will speed up this process. So the issue is not which organizing principle of the public schools will generate the highest quality schools; it is, which cultural-religious systems will come to dominate the schools in which particular regions?
Stated somewhat differently, should we sacrifice the appearance of national unity that the public schools foster, and have instead different educational systems that are each internally coherent with respect to the some particular cultural-religious orientation? Of course, such sectorization will lead to the United States reverting from federation to confederation, a type of organization that does exist in nations such as Switzerland and Canada. What we gain in local control we will lose in national unity, which may or may not be a good thing.
(Of course, blaming teachers' unions for the problem is the favorite red herring for masking the real issue.)
Thank you many times over for this wonderful article. Of course teachers' unions have too much power. They're focused on the right things for their members but vouchers are the right thing for "the people." And it is indeed sad that Democrats turn their backs on vouchers, when their traditional constituents (blacks, hispanics) favor, indeed plea for, school choice in large numbers.
I was in LAUSD one year as a Teaching Fellow and was impressed with the quality of support I received from the union. But I was also part of that merry band of voucher supporters who put a choice initiative on the ballot in 1994. There we were, with pitchforks and torches, storming the Legislature! And the Legislature panicked. They passed a law allowing charter schools -- but ONLY 100! No more! The barbarians were at the gate.
Well, we spent $4 million on the initiative and the teachers' unions spent $16 million to hurl us back into the darkness. The unions also had a better slogan than we did: "A risk we can't afford."
We were repulsed, and with style: our measure failed two to one. 66% versus our 33%.
But two wonderful things came of it. Our rulers granted charter schools which the teachers were forced to accept. And the schools have become more numerous as both sides knew they would.
And that $16 million? Why, those dollars were kept from mischief in the general election so something was gained there too.
Give it time, dear friends. Give us time...
Yes.
I say this reluctantly, as a lifelong Democrat and a believer in the ideal of unions: to provide better wages and working conditions for their members. However, as a teacher and a union representative, I've slowly come to realize that the reality of teachers' unions in the US is one that is out of line with the original concept.
While unions fight for better working conditions for their teachers, and while I believe that in some respects this is necessary because what teachers are paid in the US is disgraceful, most unions now promote what is best for the teachers at the expense of what is best for the students. I went into teaching for the students.
While it would be wonderful to be able to afford a house in our Golden State without having to sell my soul to the ARM devil or work a second or third job, there are many improvements in my work environment that I would willingly trade for a higher salay. More counselors. A trained librarian. A full-time child psychologist. Smaller class sizes. A longer school day. Free, incentive-based parenting classes.
Instead, the union in our district has supported raising the class size and eliminating certificated positions that don't directly affect students (counselors, librarian, psychologist, speech therapist) in order to reduce the number of teachers in our "salary pool". Yes, this makes the salary greater for each of us, but it also leaves students without essential and beneficial services.
Our union also supports policies that are not beneficial to students in the long run, but protect teachers' jobs. I'd prefer not to get into this because the specific nature of my current frustration could lead to my identification, and I'd prefer to remain anonymous, but I will say that the union is attempting to enforce change to students' class schedules to the detriment of the students' preparation for college, but to the benefit of the union, who believes they are preserving teachers' jobs. This has the effect of pushing our school, already a low-performing school, more and more toward remediation rather than advancement.
I became a union leadership with the belief that my voice would be heard and I would be able to facilitate change, and I'm leaving it disillusioned and bitter that these people call themselves educators, but in decision-making, the students and what is best for them are far from their minds.
Of course, in a perfect world, salary squabbles would be a moot point and teachers would be paid what they are worth, but unfortunately, this is far from a perfect world.
posted by Mike at 6:12 AM
I think two misconceptions about Mr. Friedman's credentials should be cleared up. First, unlike what has been stated before, he is a father. I am not sure whether his son David (now an economist and law professor at Santa Clara University) attended public schools or not, but he still has dealt with the issue of educating a child first hand. Second, his background in economics does not disqualify him from authoritatively saying school vouchers would be an improvement. Economics, at its heart, is the study of the consequences of human action, specifically choices made in the face of scarcity. Even if it isn't immediately apparent that schools produce and sell a product, they are still faced with the dilemma of efficiently allocating the resources availible to them. I will agree that Mr. Friedman is not in a position to say what the best allocation is, but he is fully justified in saying that the best allocation is most likely to occur is under a free market system. However, if Mr. Friedman were only advocating efficiency, he would not support school vouchers. Vouchers, like any other subsidy, distort the price mechanism and create misallocations. Vouchers are intended to reduce inequalities and allow everyone access to a quality education. Using the automobile analogy, if everyone is taxed porportional to their income, but receive $15,000 back in a "car voucher," even those who are dirt poor could afford a brand-new car. Sure, the rich will still drive Cadillacs and Hummers, but no one is stuck with a clunker. This is much more equitable than the equivalent of our current system where you can either only drive a shoddy car that you already bought with your tax dollars or a top of the line SUV.