The Wall Street Journal published an article by Kate Bachelder called “The Top 10 Liberal Superstitions.” The first “superstition” she cited was that “spending more money improves education.” Her proof: we have spent more money since 1970, but SAT scores and international scores have not gone up.
The article on the WSJ is behind a paywall, but on this site you can read the article in full. Here are two replies that should help to educate Ms. Bachelder and the readers of the WSJ:
Kate Bachelder’s first liberal superstition (“The Top 10 Liberal Superstitions,” op-ed, Oct. 31) is that “spending more money improves education” and she cites the fact that inflation-adjusted spending for K-12 has more than doubled since 1970, with corresponding decreases in SAT scores.
I don’t know what Ms. Bachelder’s age is, but I graduated from high school in 1971 and can say that up to that point in my public education my schools served exactly one special-education student. Spending on special education was nonexistent in 1970 as well as spending on teaching English to non-speakers. Oh, and I remember taking only one statewide test, in fifth grade, not the never-ending expensive testing regimen today’s students must endure.
Spending on education today can’t be equitably compared with spending in 1970, since we are now funding massive programs that didn’t exist 45 years ago.
Julie Hollingsworth
Fort Wayne, Ind.
Spending cuts in public education hurt children, families and eventually the economy. Cuts cause shortages of school nurses, libraries, fine arts and P.E., amenities taken for granted in private schools. They result in larger class sizes. At the same time states have slashed education funding ($5.4 billion in Texas in 2011), the number of students continues to increase, especially children who are low income and English-language learners. Educators aren’t making excuses when they point out that these children are more difficult to teach. Poor children suffer more toxic stress and move frequently. They have fewer books in the home (Beverley Hills’s average of 199 versus 0.4 in nearby Watts) and need more support from wraparound services. Slovakia is held up as an example for spending less on education, but 25% of U.S. children live in poverty compared with only 13% in Slovakia. In Texas over 60% of all public school children qualify for free or reduced lunch.
I respect Republicans for fiscal conservatism, but cutting public-education funding isn’t an investment in the future and doesn’t “conserve” the tradition of our public schools.
Sara Stevenson
Austin, Texas
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Akron Beacon Journal has another in their series about Ohio’s charter schools.
“The state calls the process recycling — a management company is told to close a school but, instead, recruits new school boards who hire the company to run the recreated school.
“We’re trying to crack down on that,” said John Charlton, a spokesman for the state education department. But the state has no say in whether a charter school opens. It can only pressure the sponsors who authorize opening.
“The Beacon Journal reported in 2013 that seven Ohio charter schools had been closed, many for low academic performance, only to reopen. There was confusion among sponsors as to whether the schools were “recycled,” as the state called them, or “new,” as sponsors called them.”
Since Ohio charters are misreporting closure rates. is any research that relies on those rates invalid?
These are fake numbers. They’re meaningless. These charters aren’t closing. They’re simply renaming them.
How much of this is going on nationally? When we read a charter study, are they independently vetting all the reported numbers from each state? Because obviously Ohio is pulling a fast one with these made-up closure numbers.
http://www.ohio.com/news/local/how-failed-charter-schools-reinvent-themselves-1.539596?localLinksEnabled=false
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“The state calls the process recycling — a management company is told to close a school but, instead, recruits new school boards who hire the company to run the recreated school.”
Hey, who knew those rephormers were so green?
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“I respect Republicans for fiscal conservatism, but cutting public-education funding isn’t an investment in the future and doesn’t “conserve” the tradition of our public schools.”
Don’t Republicans understand that “fiscal conservatism” means cutting (gutting) *all* government, even the parts they may like? And that nearly every cut is a cut to the fabric of society? Nearly every cut represents (a) jobs lost and (b) services no longer available. (Yes, I realize there is some waste, but I think we’ve rooted out most of what’s going to be rooted out – the remaining waste is waste that is serving the interests of the powerful and will not be rooted out.)
“Her proof: we have spent more money since 1970, but SAT scores and international scores have not gone up.”
When, oh when are we going to get past test scores as a measure of anything but the ability to take a test (which is, in turn, a measure of family socioeconomic status)? And of all tests to worry about, really, the SAT? That’s still considered worthwhile?
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” (Yes, I realize there is some waste, but I think we’ve rooted out most of what’s going to be rooted out – the remaining waste is waste that is serving the interests of the powerful and will not be rooted out.)”
No, the waste hasn’t been all “rooted out” with the military being the worst producer of waste, abuser of taxpayers money. By law they are supposed to complete an audit of the services every year. NOT A SINGLE AUDIT HAS BEEN EVER COMPLETED AS PER THE LAW.
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Yes, but the military is the epitome of waste that is serving the interests of the powerful which will never be rooted out.
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I wonder if she looked at the change in demographics of the students taking the SAT. I’m sure she didn’t disaggregate any of the data she looked at.
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Egads…
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I don’t respect GOPers for fiscal conservatism because they aren’t and their so called phony baloney fiscal conservatism is just a sham. GOP fiscal conservatism is just a meaningless bumper sticker designed to kill off Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, Obamacare and any other social programs that help ordinary working Americans. The GOP is all for military spending, tax cuts for the rich and racking up huge deficits during a time of war. Bush was the only president to cut taxes during a time of war, he squandered and obliterated the surplus left to him by Clinton. It’s not fiscally conservative to allow our roads, bridges and infrastructure to decay, rot and fall apart in the name of cutting taxes. Cutting taxes starves our schools of much needed funds. The elite private schools where the top millionaires and billionaires send their kids spare no expense for their students. These elite schools are lavishly funded and have very small classes.
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Amen, Joe.
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One should tell the WSJ that we should not spend ANY money or even minimal money on public education.
And then 7 years from now, we our society can look exactly like that of Mexico, Argentina, or El Salvador . . . . .
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I have a feeling that’s what the editors want….
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My pet reform: double the number of teachers. That would allow us all to spend a lot more time doing careful grading and commenting on student work, plan better lessons, read more about our subject area, organize field trips, think about students as individuals, etc. This would be a huge economic stimulus AND a great investment in our future. It would cost a lot, but who could say it wouldn’t improve education? It would make public schools a lot more like elite private schools.
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I’m not sure what it means to argue that SAT scores have not gone up since the 1970s, since these tests are designed so that only a certain percentage of test takers can ever get certain scores. No matter what kids learn or fail to learn the same percentage will score around 500 on each test, and only very small percentages of test takers will score around 800 or 200. The results–the spread of scores–would be the same if every test taker were as brilliant as Einstein.
The way we measure “education” is pathetic, if normed standardized tests are the measuring stick. (Not to mention the fact that the spread is highly correlated with family income!)
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Steve, you aren’t supposed to let that secret out! The curve is the curve, it is preserved by presumption. Scores will always be flat. Good observation, thanks.
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Good point, Steve Cohen.
A few months ago, this study by the CATO institute was being floated about:
Andrew Coulson: State Education Trends
The point was that SAT scores hadn’t really changed in any state in since 1972, and thus all the increase in education spending that had taken place since then hadn’t made a bit of difference. All kinds of media outlets picked up on the survey, but nowhere did I find this issue of a curved structure to the scores addressed.
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Spending more money does not improve education? Do they not remember what the GI Bill after WWII did for our country? True, just spending money – as on Charter Schools – does not improve education but education is one of the wisest investments that can be made for improving our people and our nation.
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The difference is that those WWII veterans wanted to learn and they had a work ethic. They don’t tell their teachers to “shut up!” and I bet they paid attention. That is a different generation and demographic. To compare today’s inner-city kids with the greatest generation’s WWII vets is scandalous. Giving money to people who don’t want to learn, are disrespectful, and disruptive is a freaking waste of money. Let’s get real here. Maybe we should make people pay for their own education. Maybe they will respect education and their teachers more, or have to work to afford an education. The liberal belief that all people are good and want to learn is simply wrong.
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If there really is such a thing as karma, you will be reincarnated as a poor black inner-city kid.
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dienne –
You got me again – I just spit out coffee! Thank you!
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Bravo, Mike. Truthtelling takes courage, which is a scarce resource.. As a veteran teacher, I couldn’t agree more. The emperor has no clothes.
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As far as I can see, comparing any high school kids to veterans is silly. Of course nowadays when our vets come home they end up in fly by night for profit operations that leave them wallowing in debt without adequate training for a job. Not quite the same treatment we gave WWII vets. That actually cost money.
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I dare the Wall street Journal to talk to one of their featured writers from earlier this year….or if they cannot do that, then reread what they printed about apprenticeships…http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304617404579304913308674896 and what this brilliant former member of the ELECTED St. Louis school board wrote about the crummy movie…”waiting for Superman”. http://forums.thenest.com/discussion/5961896/counter-opinion-to-waiting-for-superman
“The 1970s were a time when public education in the U.S. became much more broadly democratic. The decade of the 1970s saw the first federal laws to ban discrimination in educational opportunities on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender or physical handicap. It also was the time of the first state supreme court rulings making it illegal for states to ignore the educational needs of mentally retarded children (federal legislation followed in the 1980s).” the entire review is worth reading.
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I know it is an exercise in futility, as the people who really count search behind closed doors for someone who can match the levels of stupidity of Chris Nicastro as they find a replacement for her…..but I have mentioned a few times, what a wise, perceptive person he would be to become the new commissioner. There would most certainly be an enthusiastic round of applause from teachers……which is why consideration of him is out of the question. Peter Downs….pays very close attention to details. Another mark not in his favor in the eyes of the state of Missouri.
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Kate describes herself this way on her “tweet page.” Junior op-ed editor & cub writer for The Wall Street Journal editorial page. Hillsdale College KKΓ. In addition, supposedly Hillsdale describes itself as the conservative Harvard.
What more can be said!
Tom
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There’s a change in Congress, so we’re moving from charters….. to vouchers!
“A third area of attention could be school vouchers legislation. A bill put forth by Alexander last year would take some $24 billion in federal K-12 spending and let states decide whether they want to use their share for vouchers to go toward private school tuition.”
To look at what comes out of DC, one would think every child in this country attends a private or charter school. You can’t pay them enough to look at what public schools need.
You’d think we could cut staff massively, given that they only work on 20% of schools. Can’t we fire 80% of them, then?
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My second comment does not make sense without realizing it is a follow up to quoting Peter Downs about what happened in the 70’s, a comment which is still under moderation….does that happen because of links to his article in the WSJ and his review of Waiting for superman?
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No, any post with more than one link automatically goes into the moderation mode.
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There is an element of truth to this. It really only matters what kids are in the school. If you made all the schools in Chicago physically look like those in the rich suburbs, the grades would still be the same. The environment doesn’t change. Those kids don’t value education (or their parents), and thus nothing happens. Fill the schools with kids (of any race) with professional parents, and the school is one of the best in the country. This also gets into genetic I.Q. as well. All that matters is who is in the school. Even the teachers, while they play some small role, aren’t really the reason either. I have been to many schools, and the teacher quality isn’t that different. The kids in the schools are the biggest variable. As long as the teachers present the information, inquisitive students will do the rest. You have to have good people who want to learn in your schools. This is logical.
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“I have been to many schools”
In what capacity???
“This also gets into genetic I.Q. as well.”
You don’t really want to go down that bullshit paved path now do you????
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Duane Swacker: what you said.
Or, if you like, we could switch our brains off and go into the magical thinking so typical of those promoting “education reform.”
Then we could watch, say, the equivalent of upper class [aka one percenters] late 19th century men from England, France and Germany duke it out—quite verbosely and with honor hanging precariously in the balance but with none of that vulgar physical violence involved—which of the three groups is “obviously” quite superior intellectually, morally and spiritually.
Or we can regard this as just a send up, an attempt to meet our daily requirement. Of what? According to “Dr.” Charlie Chaplin*:
“A day without laughter is a day wasted.”
After reading “genetic I.Q.” I know my day wasn’t wasted.
Upon reflection, I am sure you will realize your day wasn’t wasted either.
😎
*P.S. If John Deasy and Steve Perry and Terence Carter can put “Dr.” before their names, why not the Little Tramp? As I understand it, he has a PhD in Laughology with a minor in Smile-esthenics. Beats any of the Broad Academy offerings…
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I thought the piece was actually humorous and juvenile. It seemed to be something written by a high school kid who does not let facts stand in the way of what he or she thinks is a good argument as an answer to a class assignment: “In ten paragraphs, summarize liberal stances with corresponding conservative talking points.” And this is what the WSJ is passing off as commentary these days?
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See my comment at the end….Bachelder wrote a juvenile piece because that’s the quality of her mindset, and that of the WSJ editorial board members.
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The premise that students scoring better on tests (whatever they measure), will be hired at a pay and a skill level commensurate with their test success, requires occupancy in a parallel universe.
On planet Earth, we have declining wages and widespread job
opportunities in the part-time fast-food, discount retail and nursing home sectors.
The nation can’t stagger out from under, the concentrated wealth that denies the middle class and the nation, prosperity.
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Thank you!!
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Don’t expect the Wall Street Journal editorial page to shed any tears about the dramatic income inequality and wealth inequality in our country–some say the gaps have not been as wide since the era of the Robber Barons. Don’t expect them to bemoan the stagnation of middle-class incomes while the 1% enjoys almost all the gains of the economic recovery since 2008. The WSJ has great reporters, but its editorial page is the voice of the 1%.
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I find the term “inequality” a weak battering ram because the lower end of the spectrum could still conceivably be doing OK. The problem isn’t just inequality, it’s that those at the lower end are living pretty wretched lives. You can point to their cell phones and cars and say they’re so much better off than medieval peasants or Karachi slum dwellers, but those items are necessities these days and they drain very meager finances. And the peasants and slum dwellers may have spiritual riches –e.g. a sense of community, joyous festivals –that modern American poor lack.
I’m reading an excellent book now, There is Power in a Union, by Philip Dray. It does a great job of conveying the shabby penury and impotence of American workers prior to the unions’ heyday. And the repellent callousness of the rich. Then the Irish were the feckless, hopeless and inferior Other –a fact that many racist Irish-Americans like Bill O’Reilly today would be loathe to admit.
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Linda,
“(whatever they measure)”
A friendly reminder that THOSE TESTS DON’T MEASURE ANYTHING whatsoever as those tests are not “measuring” devices. One can count the number right and numerize the results but that doesn’t mean anything has been measured.
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The tests make teachers into cannon fodder.
The activity diverts attention, from the robbery of tax dollars.
Your correction is well-founded. “Purpose” is different than “measurement”.
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Hi Dienne
Thanks for a serious joke :)) that you reply to Mike.
“If there really is such a thing as karma, you will be reincarnated as a poor black inner-city kid.”
Your idea reminds me what my mother always set her work as an example to reinforce her children to be kind and considerate to the unfortunates.
Intelligence vs idiocy; beauty vs ugliness; kindness vs cruelty; richness vs poverty; these facts of life have been a mystery to me regarding KARMA. However, it is sad to see that naive people keep doing things without critical observation the truth and the beauty in alleviating others’ sufferance. Back2basic
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I was looking at Julie Hollingsworth’s point about comparison with 1970. That is the year I graduated from high school. Thirty two credits were required but I was unaware of the number I earned as that was never a focus. I started teaching in 1975 and high school students in Indiana still needed 32 credits for their diploma, in specific quantities for certain subjects. There were no certificates of completion or honors diplomas. Just one sort of diploma. By the time my daughter graduated from high school in 2001 the state required 42 credits but she earned an “honors” diploma which required 48 credits. She earned 55 since she opted to take courses beyond the required subjects. Some of her credits were earned in summer sessions so that her schedule could be flexible to allow her to enroll in all the subjects she wished. We paid a fee for summer session but that was minimal. Due to the greater number of courses she completed there was the need for higher number of teachers. She had many options that were not available when I was in school, such as AP course enrollment. The caliber of her education does not compare to mine and her class sizes were much lower than I experienced during my baby boomer education. The quality and the broad spectrum of courses was far superior to what was available in the late 1960’s.. I am sure it cost much more to educate her, even if adjusted for inflation. Her SAT scores were comparable to mine but she received a much superior high school education. The major difference in our college experiences, both in state universities, is that both she and I are still paying her school loans and the payments are much higher than mine. I had mine wiped out by the time she was born. We hope hers will be paid by the time her 6 year old attends college. IF that is an option in 12 years.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
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Kate Bachelder is a newbie hire at the Wall Street Journal from Hillsdale College, the so-called “conservative Harvard.” She majored in Political Economy, which means she was steeped in its “free-market approach” to both (and which also means she has a
a real tenuous link with reality). Presumably, while there, she “tutored” under John Miller, who directs the “journalism” program at Hillsdale. Miller was a Bradley Foundation fellow at the Heritage Foundation and wrote a book glorifying the deeds and influence of the right-wing Olin Foundation (which also funded Heritage).
Hillsdale College is led by Larry Arnn, who’s quite a right-winger himself. Arnn fancies himself a “constitutional scholar,” yet he pens an awful of constitutional tripe, writing, for example, that the character and rights embedded in the Constitution “are the gift of the Creator, unalienable to us, violable by others only with His wrath. This is the ultimate source of our character.”
The American Revolution and the Constitution and Bill of Rights are progressive to the core. Yet the Wall Street Journal editorializes that “A hallmark of progressive politics is the ability to hold fervent beliefs in defiance of evidence.” So, according to the WSJ, the Constitution and Bill of Rights are a sham, based on little or no truth. Wholly unsubstantiated.
You see how this works. The WSJ editorial page – itself a quagmire of narrow-minded hypocrisy – hires a neophyte, grounded in conservative dogma, to spread more nonsense, and then other conservatives feed on it, just eat it up. Jack Welch, scurrilous ass that he is, called Bachelder’s piece, “thoughtful.” As if he’d know.
Two things are clear: 1) Kate Bachelder was indoctrinated well, and cannot be equated with a thinker, and 2) conservatives like the editorial board members at the WSJ, Bachelder, Welch, and Arnn are scary people to whom honesty and integrity and Constitutional values mean little, if anything.
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Democracy,
Can a college be more right-wing or neoliberal than Harvard’s school of education or Harvard’s economists, Rogoff, Reinhart and Chetty?
I’ll proffer as a substitute, Time magazine is more plutocratic than the Koch’s.
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Yes, Linda, Harvard’s ed school pushes a lot of things that make little educational sense. And I suspect some of it is to garner money.
And Time magazine has been a stolid supporter of corporate-style education “reform.” Its Michelle Rhee cover was pathetic; the cover story by the “Amazing” Amanda Ripley was little better. The newest education cover story “Rotten Apples,” was abysmal.
But is Time as bad – or as influential – as the Kochs? I don’t think so.
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Democracy,
The Time reference was tongue in cheek.
Doesn’t the outing of Time magazine deserve a wider audience, than coverage in Gawker? The Koch’s got the cover of the New Yorker!
The average guy on the street, erroneously thinks Harvard is progressive, when at least two of its colleges have scholars that get national attention for neoliberal or right-wing
agendas.
The website, Sourcewatch has a masterful entry for K12, Inc.
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