May-June 2021

New NHEG Heights Magazine Educational | May - June Group 2021
www.NewHeightsEducation.org
The Market and the Force
But even though we don’t know how to spend money, the market is like the Force from Star Wars. It seeks balance. It pushes money where it
should go and pulls it away from where it shouldn’t.
Thus, even though individuals don’t know how to spend money, in a market, only the right expenditures are rewarded. For example, while you
may not be certain if you’re opening your restaurant in the right place, consumers will show you by going to it or staying away from it. Over
time, businesses learn from what customers respond well to and they either replicate these things or fail.
This prevents societies from wasting resources.
The Government and the Sith
But when the government spends money foolishly, it’s like the Sith (I’m hopeful that our culture has been sufficiently nerdified)—it resists and
manipulates the force rather than submitting to it.
The problem is that there is no corrective to bad government spending. People don’t lose their jobs, government offices don’t close, politicians
and bureaucrats don’t suffer wage cuts.
Despite the fact that Medicare and Medicaid cost $1.412 trillion dollars in 2019, the average cost of healthcare has risen so much that
someone on Medicare or Medicaid will save $0 compared with what they would have paid (in inflation adjusted dollars) for the same service
in 1965. At the same time, anyone not on Medicare/Medicaid is paying 80 percent more than they would have paid in 1965 (again in inflation-adjusted
dollars).
Despite our spending more on education than ever, standardized test scores are no better now than they were forty years ago. And let’s not
forget the SSA and USPS.
Compulsory Schooling Laws: What if We Didn’t Have
Them?
By Kerry McDonald
Eliminating compulsory schooling
laws would break the century-anda-half
stranglehold of schooling on
education.
The takeaway from these examples is clear. Whereas foolish business ventures go bankrupt, foolish government spending seems to continue
indefinitely.
In education this means that if a school district begins an ill-conceived and costly policy (say, not firing ineffective teachers) the only way to
change this policy is through producing documentaries and letter writing campaigns, electing new officials, and withstanding burdensome
teacher union strikes. It’s so difficult to change such policies that it almost never happens.
Contrast that with an inefficient business model; once a business model becomes obsolete, it shrinks and then vanishes. No matter who is
praising or lauding it (does WeWork ring a bell?), if a model doesn’t work, the market will get rid of it.
The Solution
Many educators are aware of this problem. They see it in “PD days,” standardized testing, lousy textbooks, and incomprehensible curriculum.
But as much as they are aware of the problem, most educators do not seem to be aware of the right solution.
Many educators seem to think that we can create a different kind of feedback system, one as good as or better than the market. This is actually
the purpose of standardized testing. Standardized testing is the way the central government generates feedback about the efficacy of its
programs.
The problem with this (besides the obvious fact that standardized tests are an unreliable waste of time) is that even if testing could signify
which pedagogies work and which don’t, it couldn’t show how much to spend on any specific pedagogy.
For example, which one should a school spend money on – a $10,000 professional development that shows teachers how to teach math
50 percent faster, or a $10,000 PD that shows teachers how to teach reading 50 percent faster? Which does society need more—a kid who
knows everything there is to know about computer science or a kid who is well balanced across disciplines?
For moral as well as practical reasons, those questions can only be answered by consumers via the market. A consumer’s decision to spend
money on one of those programs is what signifies which one is worth more to them.
What we need to do, then, is to make the education system responsive to successes and failures, both in the appropriate amount. Practically,
this means opening schools up to market competition, such as through robust voucher systems.
Successful schools will grow, unsuccessful schools will fail, and consumers, that is, students, will ultimately reap the benefits.
Friday, October 5, 2018
We should always be leery of laws passed “for our own good,” as if the state knows better. The history of compulsory schooling statutes is
rife with paternalism, triggered by anti-immigrant sentiments in the mid-nineteenth century and fueled by a desire to shape people into a
standard mold.
History books detailing the “common school movement” and the push for universal, compulsory schooling perpetuate the myths that Americans
were illiterate prior to mass schooling, that there were limited education options available, and that mandating school attendance
under a legal threat of force was the surest way toward equality.
In truth, literacy rates were quite high, particularly in Massachusetts, where the first compulsory schooling statute was passed in 1852.
Historians Boles and Gintis report that approximately three-quarters of the total U.S. population, including slaves, was literate¹. There was a
panoply of education options prior to mass compulsory schooling, including an array of public and private schooling options, charity schools
for the poor, robust apprenticeship models, and homeschooling—this latter approach being the preferred method of Massachusetts education
reformer Horace Mann, who homeschooled his own three children while mandating common school attendance for others.
The primary catalyst for compulsory schooling was a wave of massive immigration in the early to mid-1800s that made lawmakers fearful.
Many of these immigrants were Irish Catholics escaping the deadly potato famine, and they threatened the predominantly Anglo-Saxon Protestant
social order of the time. In 1851, the editor of The Massachusetts Teacher, William Swan, wrote:
“In too many instances the parents are unfit guardians of their own children. If left to their direction the young will be brought up in idle, dissolute, vagrant habits,
which will make them worse members of society than their parents are; instead of filling our public schools, they will find their way into our prisons, houses
of correction and almshouses. Nothing can operate effectually here but stringent legislation, thoroughly carried out by an efficient police; the children must be
gathered up and forced into school, and those who resist or impede this plan, whether parents or priests, must be held accountable and punished.”
This is the true history of compulsory schooling that rarely emerges behind the veil of social magnanimity.
So what would happen if these inherently flawed compulsory schooling laws were eliminated?
Source: Reason Foundation
https://reason.com/
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