Shut Up and Agree 
By Martin Harris

Since this is an opinion column and not a news article, I can compose the lead graf with a semi-rhetorical question and not the once-mandatory Five W’s –what, who, where, when, why—once taught in high school English classes even to non-journalism students like me. Here it is: Suppose you went to a seminar and the instructors decided to change the subject? That’s what happened recently when C-SPAN scheduled a promising session with three education experts on the subject of higher K-12 quality leading to better US educational competitiveness leading to higher salaries and a better national economy at home. The short title, invented by participant Eric Hanushek, was "Learn More, Earn More". The other two major participants, Helen Ladd of Duke University and Clive Belfield of Queen’s College, weren’t at all interested in improvements in the achievement potential of students already at the upper end of the test-score spectrum, and so they continually steered the discussion onto their preferred ideological grounds: the bottom quartile of students and all the "root cause" reasons why more taxpayer investment in public schools is sorely needed on their behalf. It was a little like going to a seminar advertised as a discussion of 19th century military equipment and tactics, only to be subjected to hours of Europeans-are-mean-white-guys-and-if-you-weren’t-so-mean-and-dumb-you’d-agree.

Whether Hanushek was set up to be outnumbered 2-to-1, I know not. The sponsoring think tank, an outfit calling itself Strong American Schools, funded by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, posts on its web page Edin08 a fairly non-specific call for "non-partisan public awareness and advocacy effort aimed at elevating discussion amongst American leaders…" but then the web page also shows a welcome focus on student test score comparisons, domestic and international, and its mission statement says quite directly "We have to act now to improve education before more American students lose out on the best jobs, hurting our economy and impacting each and every one of us".

On reflection, SAS may be more Right than Left, if judged by its use of "impacting" as a verb form. I still recall vividly the opprobrium dumped on the Right in general, and Dwight Eisenhower, in particular, a mere soldier, for his non-scholarly use of "finalize" as a verb form, by the self-described more highly educated Left.

Hanushek has been well-known, if not exactly admired, in education circles for several decades; since his early years at the University of Rochester, and more recently at the Hoover Institution, he’s been engaged in a career of extremely unwelcome statistical analysis of student test scores versus class size, concluding with evidentiary certainty that recent class size reduction efforts have raised costs but not test scores, the frequently misrepresented Tennessee Star Study included. At this presentation, he was attempting to make the point that, as the test scores of the better American students fall behind those of the international competition, the better jobs, earnings, and gains in standard-of-living go elsewhere. He didn’t fare well. His co-presenters were far more enthused by the travails of the bottom quartile as measured by those pesky test scores, discussing everything from the need for more pre-K to the need for better nutrition and, of course, government intervention at the family level. They fussed over whether cognitive skills could even be measured, and how much more important non-cognitive skills really are. Hanushek tried to make the point that gains in national economic performance depends on the top quintile, not the bottom quartile, but his co-presenters weren’t having any of it. He, and we, are supposed to shut up and agree. My opinion: it was quite tendentious.

With that perspective, they’re in the mainstream of public education philosophy; consider, for the example, the recently-published Annual Report of the Addison Central Supervisory Union, which is required by statute (16 VSA 165) to report to taxpayers on "Comparative Data for Cost Effectiveness". And yes, there are nine pages on the subject at the end of the Report. Unfortunately (or, more precisely, deliberately) nowhere in those nine pages is there a single mention of test scores as related to class size, so that readers are unable (by design?) to see for themselves what the spending on staffing and equipment has produced in terms of actual improvement in student achievement. Instead, the data presented focus on various aspects of staffing in instructional and support roles. There’s nary a word on what those expenditures actually produce in terms of measurable student productivity, Hanushek’s subject.

More on the 2008 ACSU Annual Report next week.

Martin Harris is a former Chairman of Citizens for Property Rights