The Trouble With Local Control

This map accompanies Matt Miller's article on education policy in the January/February issue of The Atlantic that I thought I should recommend before March (issue) madness overtakes the site. It highlights the incredibly large disparities in school funding that exist in our fine nation. These huge gaps are hardly the be-all and end-all of our education problems in the United States, but they're hard to justify. It's just as important to educate children in Alabama as it is to educate them in Massachusetts, but kids in the latter state get double the money of kids in the former.

Miller's article isn't even primarily about money. Instead, it's about the fact that these general institutional issue persists throughout our educational system -- things are wildly different from district to district, and especially from state to state. That's the American tradition of local control at work. But while this is very much our tradition, it's not a very good one. It doesn't really make sense to have the standard of what counts as reading proficiency to be different in Massachusetts than it is in Alabama. Nor, of course, do American families live hermetically sealed, locally controlled lives -- kids move from district to district or state to state all the time. Few other countries do things the American way, and they're generally getting better results. It's time for us to change.

But don't listen to me, read Miller's article. One thing I'd add, though, is that the goofy primary system is a large obstacle to reform here. Iowa and New Hampshire happen to be two of the most fanatical local control states out there, and everyone tailors their education policy to accord with sensibilities in those places.

Comments

Matt,

I agree that no matter where someone lives, it's important that they're educated equally well, but dollar spend per pupil is a terrible metric. How much does land and construction cost in NJ compared to AL? How much do teachers need to get paid to earn a living wage in NYC vs. Jackson, MS? What about the cost of gasoline in CA vs. LA? All of these affect the spend per pupil.

Posted by Mo | February 8, 2008 1:57 PM

Check out my home state of Tennessee -- looks like the lowest rate of all fifty states. No wonder my parents scraped to send me to private school.

The South is a separate country. Disturbingly so.

Posted by BryklynLibrul | February 8, 2008 1:58 PM

I feel like your map is going to test my Kung Fu. Aspect Ratio please.

Posted by J. W. Hamner | February 8, 2008 1:58 PM

Matthew says in other posts that he is skeptical that more money spent on health care means better health outcomes.

I would suggest that he apply the same skepticism to education. More money spent on education does not necessarily lead to better education. Indeed, in many places, the districts where the most money is spent have the worst education.

Posted by Al | February 8, 2008 2:00 PM

Re Al- Conservatives always conveniently omit to notice that the reverse is NOT true. It is not possible to provide an adequate education without sufficient funds to procure qualified teachers, decent facilities and up to date textbooks. And there are disturbingly many districts- more often rural than urban, by the way- that DO lack such basic wherewithal.

Posted by Steve LaBonne | February 8, 2008 2:07 PM

It's just as important to educate children in Alabama as it is to educate them in Massachusetts.

This assertion may seem self-evident to Matt, but it's not. Local control is a very good thing, the country is far too large as it is. The more we nationalize everything, the more we simply create a distant untouchable imperial government unresponsive to the needs and desires of individual voters. If anything we need more decentralization at this point, and far less power concentrated in the hands of people in Washington and New York.

Posted by vanya | February 8, 2008 2:07 PM

Actually, this is one of the things that makes the voucher proposals (which I think Miller supports) so totally stupid.

People say that American schools aren't nearly as good as those in the other developed nations of Europe and Asia. These other nations mostly have extremely centralized school systems. Therefore, we should do the exact opposite thing and *further* decentralize our school systems through vouchers or charters. Makes absolutely no sense...

On another point, though, there's virtually no correlation whatsoever between school spending and educational results, whether measured either across either different geographies or different time periods.

Posted by RKU | February 8, 2008 2:08 PM

Not to be too much of a scrooge here, but isn't the fact that twice as much money is spent in Massachusetts simply indicative of the way the citizens of that state have chosen to run their government? "Taxachusetts" residents simply came together and decided to pay more to educate their children. For whatever reason, Alabama residents did not. I'm actually kind of amazed how little the actual outcomes of liberal vs. conservative state governments are discussed. It would seem we have plenty of actual data about the "best" way to run a local or state government -- over 200 years worth of data. It really bothers me when people throw up their hands and say, gee, why are the divorce rates so high in the Bible Belt? Why are people so much poorer? Why are the kids falling behind in education? I think there's a pretty simple answer: a 'conservative' civic society, most crudely represented in the south, is simply inferior. But don't get me wrong, I love the food.

Posted by Ryan | February 8, 2008 2:08 PM

Not self-evident? It's NOT obvious that it's just as important to educate children in Alabama? If that's "decentralization" then we need LESS of it. Don't sacrifice kids to your ideological whims.

Posted by Steve LaBonne | February 8, 2008 2:10 PM

Plus the article sucks. He basically says the problem with local control is it results in teacher's unions having too much power, an underinvestment in R&D for educational techniques, and lack of standards. How he jumps from this to advocating nationalizing the schools is beyond me. Nothing is stopping the department of education from doing "R&D" or creating a set of national standardized tests. Parents would be very interested in knowing the test result scores for different schools and private schools. Just put some quasi objective information out there as to what impact different schools are having, and you would get a lot more local pressure on improving schools.

If the problem is money, nothing is stopping the federal government from making per capita block grants or issuing federally approved text books for free to school districts.

Bad article, stupid idea.

Posted by Doug | February 8, 2008 2:15 PM

Couldn't we also say that it's just important to have low property taxes in Massachusetts as in Alabama?

If education policy is federalized, that means somebody gets to pick the level of education investment. I see no reason to expect it will be people in favor of spending more rather than less.

Posted by njd | February 8, 2008 2:16 PM

I taught high school in both IN (fairly decentralized) and NY (heavy-handed state control) and I can say that unquestionably, the system in NY is better.

Much of this is that NY spends much more educating its children, but another important part is that NY has more rigorous state testing and control. NY Regents exam requirements makes it harder (not impossible, but harder) for schools to "hide" low-performing students in joke classes.

I'd say that the public school experience for "elite" students was comparable in the two states, but there's no question NY did a better job for all students.

Posted by gustav | February 8, 2008 2:17 PM

I'd be interested to see the effect of population density on this issue as well. There is a glaringly obvious swath of heavy spending per pupil through the western Great Plains, and I wonder how much of that has to do with transportation overhead or other similar issues unique to such wide open spaces. Just look at the state of Texas. I doubt the state government would allocate funding per pupil so disproportionately if there weren't a good reason for it.

Wait. I take that back.

Posted by Joe Garland | February 8, 2008 2:18 PM

Spoken like true Yankees. I know, I am one myself. In theory, I agree with both Mikes that standards and spending should be nationalized. But I don't think it is going to happen, for good reasons as well as bad. We are a continent sized country, with a lot of significant cultural differences. The southern folk tradition is very sceptical about the value of education (it tended to turn people into abolitionists and lead people to believe they are descended from monkeys). Interesting new book "Domminion Memories," gives an historical perspective about the Southern elites unwillingness to be taxed for public goods like education. http://www.amazon.com/Dominion-Memories-Jefferson-Madison-Virginia/dp/0465017436

Posted by Rickster Sherpa | February 8, 2008 2:19 PM

There are economies of scale involved here - you are forced to spend more per student in rural areas. Also, cost-of-living is a big factor since I'm guessing a good portion of the costs are teacher salaries, and you can pay teachers less where it's cheaper to live.

Posted by Anonymous | February 8, 2008 2:21 PM

Although I too am dismayed at how little some local governemnts decide to spend on education, the problem with centralizing schools is that who is to say that those who don't value education won't condemn all of us to ignorance.

personally I'd much rather take my chances with my local school board/town/state (on funding and curiculum issues) then face the prospect of a republican guided national public schools.

Posted by Sand | February 8, 2008 2:21 PM

It may be self-evident that it's just as important to educate children in Alabama, but it's far from self-evident that it should cost the same.

Posted by too many steves | February 8, 2008 2:22 PM

It's far from evident that too many steves understands that the educational spending disparities far outweigh regional differences in costs.

Posted by Steve LaBonne | February 8, 2008 2:26 PM

Newark, New Jersey and Washington DC have two of the highest per capita education costs in the country. That's why they have the best school systems.

Posted by wph | February 8, 2008 2:28 PM

I don't know if it can ever be really improved, but this idiotic system of local control & local funding of our school system is one of the most embarrassing piles of retrograde nonsense wrapped in pseudo-democratic language by cellular authoritarians I've ever encountered.

Posted by El Cid | February 8, 2008 2:29 PM

Steve LaBonne is right, the disparities also reflect the differing opinions people on those areas have over appropriate tax rates and the relative importance of funding schools vs roads, cops, and various other things. Which, I think, is as it should be.

Posted by too many steves | February 8, 2008 2:31 PM

I don't want people in Alabama having a say in how well we educate our kids in Iowa. Local control 4 life.

Posted by Anonymous | February 8, 2008 2:33 PM

I don't think it would be fair to say that 'Massachusetts' as a whole spends a lot on education. Education spending, as in most other states, is a local matter, if I'm not mistaken. The schools in, say, Newton or Lexington are well funded and high performing, the schools in, say, Lawrence or Springfield, not so much. I'm sure the same is true in Alabama. Breaking this down by state obscures the real inequalities between rich suburbs and poor inner cities and rural areas, that exist in just about _every_ state.

Posted by Hector | February 8, 2008 2:33 PM

Local control is "trouble?" Much better to have a cram-down one-size fits all national system. Because the people in the hinterlands cannot be trusted, the elites will make all decisions from far away. Beacuse you know what is best, after all. Just like national health care, national (or international) emissions regulation, and nearly every other issue pushed by the left. There is absolutely nothing that big government mandates and national regulation cannot fix or make better.

So the one-size school program is modeled on... the Massachusetts/New York model. Brilliant.

It used to thought that a strength of our system was the ability of states to do things differently-- to be the laboratories for ideas. If you don't like how one state (or, in the case of schools, district) is run, then you have the ability to move somewhere else. You choose how much you want to pay for what you get in return. You choose how to spend local money.

Don't wonder too hard about why the leftist mindset is largely rejected in vast parts of the country. The party of choice. Right.

But don't call us fascists. We just think we have the right to control every detail of your life.

Posted by Beer Here | February 8, 2008 2:34 PM

I'm guessing that a far better determinant of educational quality and student performance than per-pupil spending is the ethnic breakdown of the students. Someone feel free to run the numbers and check, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that school quality and academic performance vary inversely with the percentage of students who are black or (non-Cuban) Latino.

Posted by Fred | February 8, 2008 2:35 PM

The more we nationalize everything, the more we simply create a distant untouchable imperial government unresponsive to the needs and desires of individual voters. - vanya

And local government is always such much more responsive? I hear your argument all the time, but I never did buy it.

If anything, because many of the sources of information we have are national in scale and many of our political actions are national in scale, it is the federal government that is often the most in touch, while state and especially local governments are often in the hands of out of touch and unresponsive political machines.

Posted by DAS | February 8, 2008 2:37 PM

Sure, I was being provocative, but MY has a tendency to make grand liberal platitudinous statements without thinking them through. In a perfect world of course students in Alabama would have the same opportunities as kids in Mass. But the reality is a nationalized education is going to end up redistributing Massachusetts taxpayer money to fund Alabama schools. Either Mass has to do with less funds at home, or we have to pay more. Since Mass taxpayers bitch and moan when asked to provide extra funding for schools in their own towns, I think this is a political non-starter, even if it's a nice utopian dream. It is also true, as someone pointed out, that the people of Alabama have chosen essentially to underfund their schools, probably so they can give more money to their damn college football teams. Why do we need to kick in extra money to help them?

Posted by vanya | February 8, 2008 2:40 PM

Which, I think, is as it should be.

Well, I guess you're free not to care that some kids won't get an adequate education under that "system", and their life chances will be crippled. (By the way, they'll end up costing more tax dollars, via the criminal justice system, than a decent education would have cost). And the rest of us are free to be disgusted with that kind of callousness, which reflects the kind of conservative "thought" that is dragging the US inexorably toward developing-country status.

Posted by Steve LaBonne | February 8, 2008 2:43 PM

Beer Here, the very essence of education is one in which the elites (teachers) make the decisions about what we should learn.

Ultimately, I suppose, the question is whether the doctrine of "states' rights" gives states the right to create uneducated citizens.

If America's education system is falling behind in comparison to other developed nations, the logical solution would seem to be to make our school systems' structure more like theirs, rather than trying to invent some new hare-brained scheme out of whole cloth.

Posted by Tyro | February 8, 2008 2:46 PM

Steve cares more than the rest of us. That makes him a better person, more moral, and therefore he gets to make decisions for you.

Posted by Beer Here | February 8, 2008 2:48 PM

I agree with Mo that cost of living and other factors need to be taken into account. I also agree with Gustav about how NY State serves its students well.

However, there is another way in which NY's system is terribly flawed: it is much, much too fragmented. It's school districts are much too small, which leads to tremendous administrative inefficiency.

I grew up on Long Island, and attended one of the nation's best public high schools. But in my county (Suffolk County) there are 56 school districts (http://longisland.about.com/cs/education/a/schools_suffolk.htm) for an area with a population of 1.4 million. Some are rich and some are poor, and there are tremendous equity concerns with forcing each to finance itself locally.

But in Fairfax County, Virginia, which has a population of about 1 million, there's only one school district. I think it also has a reputation for excellence, and I suspect it this excellence and its fiscal burden are spread more evenly. Plus it is much more administratively efficient.

Posted by TG | February 8, 2008 2:48 PM

Anyone care to defend the existence of school boards? Wasn't that in the title?

It's also incredibly inefficient to have exactly 17.4 trillion school districts. Resources should be consolidated, e.g. instructors for special needs and gifted children, who often serve a smaller percentage of any given high school than, say, an English teacher, could be better appropriated under consolidation of school districts.

Thousands of uncoordinated factories, indeed.

Posted by Brent | February 8, 2008 3:00 PM

No, Beer Here, I'm just fortunate not to have been the victim of a poor education, as you evidently were. But as it happens, I do care about my country and its future. If you don't, that's your privilege.

Posted by Steve LaBonne | February 8, 2008 3:02 PM

Tyro,

It's not about what to teach. It's about control and whose responsibility it is to determine how much to spend on schools. Parents who want educated children will find a way to make it happen, either through taking over school boards, voting, moving, private schools, or home schooling. A national cram-down requiring a one-size spending level is hardly the answer to improving educational outcomes.

Posted by Beer Here | February 8, 2008 3:05 PM

Jesus Christ. I'm callous and disgusting because I point out that different communities might want different tax levels and different spending priorities? I didn't realize the higher-spending areas had reached the Platonic ideal of school funding, and any deviation made you evil. These are public policy decisions, and in a democracy, people get to disagree about them and fight out compromises. It doesn't mean they're against kids getting a good education.

Posted by too many steves | February 8, 2008 3:07 PM

If teachers get the same pay in Alabama and Idaho and NY then wouldn't there be an incentive for teachers to move to Alabama where the cost of living is lower?

Oh, wait, we don't want any damned outsiders giving our kids dangerous ideas, do we?

Posted by harold | February 8, 2008 3:09 PM

If teachers get the same pay in Alabama and Idaho and NY then wouldn't there be an incentive for teachers to move to Alabama where the cost of living is lower?

Oh, wait, we don't want any damned outsiders giving our kids dangerous ideas, do we?

Posted by harold | February 8, 2008 3:09 PM

Beer Here,

Your "laboratory" has failed. The "global laboratory" has proven this, as the centralized German and Japanese primary schools are far superior to the decentralized American versions.

Posted by freddiemac | February 8, 2008 3:10 PM

Parents who want educated children will find a way to make it happen...

If we take that as a given, and parents who want educated children have all succeeded, then we must thus consider how to ensure that children of apathetic parents still get a good education. You might find that "elitist", of course-- after all a few hoity-toity book-learnin' people are going to insist, in defiance of the parents, that the students become well-educated, but that's the nature of education, which is an inherently elitist endeavor.

Posted by Tyro | February 8, 2008 3:13 PM

too many steves, stop being dishonest and/or dense. We're not talking about unwillingness to pay for frills. We're talking about unwillingness- or in many rural communities, genuine inability- to pay for the basics of a minimally adequate education. If you really don't care about that, then yes, you are callous.

Posted by Steve LaBonne | February 8, 2008 3:14 PM

That's right, Steve. I'm a victim. A victim with a J.D. Pity me.

Does that validate me in your world? You really do care an awful lot, don't you?

BTW, I had a disuccion with my wife's elderly uncle at the family reunion last summer. Tom is in his 80's and is a far Chicago lefty. His politics aside, he's a great person to talk with, and I enjoy his company. He recounted his primary education in Chicago in the 20's. He said there were 73 kids, mostly immigrants, in his class. There was one teacher, a 22 year old nun who ruled with an iron fist. She had to--what other choice was there? And he still kept up with many of the neighborhood kids through the years, many of whom went on to professional achievement.

It's not the money. It's the level of committment from the parents. Little else, except a minimal level of funding, matters.

Posted by Beer Here | February 8, 2008 3:15 PM

Ok, enough playing with trolls...

As the very first post states so accurately, there isn't a purchasing power parity between Massachusetts and Alabama. The cost of living isn't uniform across the country, so no surprise that in those places where it is expensive to live pay teachers more than those places where cost of living is cheap.

More importantly I think is that we develop a national curriculum. I have seen fisthand the different in curriculum between public and private schools and let me tell you it isn't about the money. It is the course and how it is taught. There are a lot of public schools that run a poor curriculum that does not emphasize the basics of English and Math skills and does not teach students to learn from their mistakes. And despite what conservative trolls would have you believe, parents can neither change the way the schools operate or move.

Posted by freddiemac | February 8, 2008 3:17 PM

It's not the money.

Of course it's the money. The school had a captive source of cheap labor -- the nuns -- and were able to divert resources to physical plant, books, and maintenance.

As many have point out, and as you have lacked the reading comprehension skills to discover (or are so enthralled in your narcissism that you have not been reading other people's comments), the problem is regarding what to do with societies and cultures without our borders who refuse to make education a priority. You might find it unacceptably elitist to insist on higher standards, but that's it what we need to learn to deal with. Why do YOU lack a commitment to education? Just because they're father/mother doesn't mean they're not your children. We're asking YOU to make the commitment to educating children, because, as you said yourself, this is what's most important.

Posted by Tyro | February 8, 2008 3:24 PM

It always fascinates me that American schools are so terrible and yet it ends up that Bill Gates, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Steve Jobs, etc., etc. were educated in American schools. It's almost as though American schools aren't as terrible as people say they are.

Posted by Al | February 8, 2008 3:27 PM

In a lot of those rural communities they refuse to do the logical thing (consolidation of school districts) so that they can keep their football team. I am not making that up, I have seen the polling.

Posted by Anonymous | February 8, 2008 3:28 PM

Tyro,

As an addendum to your post, I can tell you from firsthand experience that the curriculum the nuns run is far different than that of many public schools. It, not surprisingly, focuses on the fundamentals. It teaches arithmetic and phoenics. It may be rote to drill times tables, but it works. Today's teachers don't like it because it requires more work grading papers.

And you are right, nuns work for peanuts. They take a vow of poverty you know. I know nuns who say they have to go door to door begging for school supplies like paper. Of course there are no more nuns, so Beer Here's educational utopia from 1920 won't work anymore anyways.

Posted by freddiemac | February 8, 2008 3:30 PM

Freddie,

You must be a fan of No Child Left Behind. That has national standards and is a smashing success. But it looks like we agree it is not about the money. I contend it is the level of commitment from the parent that is the number 1 determining factor as to whether any given child can achieve academically. You think a reconstructed English class is the key. We differ there.

Tyro raises the relevant question of how to protect those children whose parents have failed in their most important duty. That's the key to solving the problem. Figure that one out and you get 10 gold stars. Hint" it ain't about funding the schools or coming up with a national standards program.

But, Freddie, let's not have our thinking challenged. The insular thought coccoon is so much more comforting, nurturing. It allows us to feel important and validated by conversing with others who agree.

Posted by Beer Here | February 8, 2008 3:32 PM

Matt has a really, really annoying habit of using nearly-irrelevant photographs (or graphs) to accompany a great blog post . It's clearly used as a conversation piece or to break up the look of the blog as opposed to an actual set of data.

Even without commenting on the bizarre aspect ratio, let's think about all the other pieces of information we need to place this map in context:

1) Population centers/density
2) Test scores (does $ correlate to better scores)
3) Funding mechanisms (local prop. taxes versus pooling/splitting at the state level)

For example, haven't we all noticed that (according to this graph) we're spending the most in places that have the fewest people? While this does tend to indicate the absurdness of American education funding mechanisms, it's also a celebration of the near meaninglessness of out-of-context data, especially per-capita measurements!!

For example, I'm going to out on a limb here and say that the dark square in the southeast corner of the great state of Oregon [Harney County, Oregon (pop. 7609 (2000))] is not where the largest budgets are. Ain't no one on this blog other than me been to Harney County. Why does Harney County get so much money per capita? 'Cause there's maybe 2000 kids there!

Posted by Klug | February 8, 2008 3:34 PM

freddiemac, that is a fair point; Catholic school curriculum is better at inculcating the fundamentals across a wide swathe of students. Implementing this sort of thing would be, of course, precisely the sort of elitist interference that Beer Head is arguing against.

Over and over again, I remain stunned why so many of our policy challenged are always met with calls to adopt some new, made-up scheme as a first instinct rather than FIRST asking, "how do successful people/countries solve this problem?"

Posted by Tyro | February 8, 2008 3:35 PM

Beer Here,

You are right that we might be surprised at how much we agree, despite our fundamental disagreement on the role of the Federal Government in this.

Of course you aren't insinuating that No Child Left Behind was designed to improve education are you? More testing does not equal better curriculum.

Of course having good parents is important for getting a good education. That's like saying it is important to have water in order for grass to grow. It is important for children to have good parents. But if a child doesn't have good parents...tough luck? Shouldn't the opportunities be there for children?

I have experienced both public and private school education. And my fiancee has taught in public schools in the inner city and seen the horror first hand, as well as having attended a first rate private school. More than that, I have read insightful accounts of schools that succeed and fail. A good place to start is the book "Black Social Capital" which examines the Baltimore school district. The most promising elementary school in the city turned around not because of more funding, or because the parents suddenly were replaced, but because the school fought to change the curriculum to that of the most successful private elementary school in the city.

Such examples, though anecdotal, bolster both the centralist view I have and the voucher view that many take.

Posted by freddiemac | February 8, 2008 3:42 PM

Spending has little to do with outcomes. the correlates of outcomes are education of parents, and socio-econ status of the family.

Kids come to school without ever having read a book. Their parents are not interested in education, so the kids aren't either.

Schools can only do so much. The crap that all kids are educable and college bound just adds to the blame teachers are trained to accept as truth. It is not a teachers fault if a child is not raised by his parents to value education, homework, good study habits...

Where did tracking go? Bring it the fuck back! Bring back vocational school. We are caught up in PC nonsense.

Poverty and our consumer culture are the problem. Not teachers, or boards, governments. Its parents.

Posted by rishy | February 8, 2008 3:43 PM

Tyro,

You will remain stunned until you comprehend that the "successful countries" you cite are more homogenous and do not have the kinds of societal pathologies that we have with the breakdown of the family as the primary unit of organization. It's not the money.

Posted by Beer Here | February 8, 2008 3:45 PM

Freddie,

NCLB is a miserable failure and a fraud of the first measure. I don't know what it wall take to turn the ship around, but the examples you cite are probably the places to start. You are right-- we will probably never agree about the role the feds should play.

Was there fed involvement in the Baltimore school?

Posted by Beer Here | February 8, 2008 3:50 PM

Tyro,

I have read numberous studies on education that grapple with the idea of money per student. While there are some very rich schools that spend a lot of money per student and do very well, there are also others that do the same and don't do well.

What I haven't read is a study of education that examines the curriculum of schools and measure the efficacy. The reason I harp on this idea of curriculum is that I know what public schools are up to.

In the 1970s, most major cities in America faced huge demographic problems. They lost major swaths of population, which left them bankrupt. Especially since the upper middle class were the first to go. Faced with unemployment and funding problems, a lot of these cities decided to take the city bureaucracies and turn them into FDR style make-work programs. This is why so many large cities are so inefficient, and why a fool like Guiliani can trump his tax cuts and budget surpluses. Most big cities are very wasteful. But let us not forget the impact of forced busing on public schools in America's cities. I wish Matt would make a smart post about that subject, but I digress...

In the aftermath there are a lot of lazy teachers. I have a lot of educators in my family. Don't you think it is crazy that teachers are both unionized and have tenure? Even Harvard professors don't have both. They show movies and assign "busy work". I even had a teacher blithley tell the class she was assigning busy work. I'm all for paying teachers more, but it would be nice if we could also fire the bad ones.

Posted by freddiemac | February 8, 2008 3:54 PM

"The "global laboratory" has proven this, as the centralized German and Japanese primary schools are far superior to the decentralized American versions."

How good are the Japanese at educating African Americans and Hispanics? That seems to be where our troubles are. I'd bet that students of Japanese and German ancestry in the U.S. do just as well in our decentralized schools as their co-ethnics do in the old countries.

Posted by Juan | February 8, 2008 3:55 PM

Juan,

An interesting challenge you present! Perhaps there is a study of the successful school districts across the country as divided by ethnic group. What do you think the numbers would suggest of successful African-American schools and unsuccessful mostly German-American schools?

Posted by freddiemac | February 8, 2008 4:00 PM

I hate to pile on to the "culture" argument, but it's so obvious!

I'm Asian-Am; I grew up with a Dad who preached "school, school, school" in terms of my priorities since 1st grade. What's the average American parent think their kids' priorities should be? "Eh, to be a kid."

Should Americans adopt the Asian philosophy? Dunno -- it makes for a lot of stressed out kids.

One more illustration of the "two cultures" argument: last week I attended as a volunteer the Science Olympiad for a major California county. The ethnic mix? 60-70% Asian (Indian/ East Asian/ mix) and 30-40% white. What would the mix have been if I attended a track meet in the same area?

Posted by Klug | February 8, 2008 4:04 PM

Klug,

You are too precerptive. You're not supposed to notice those things. Don't you know we've moved beyond those tired old stereotypes?

I'm not surprised about your background. It fits with my own observation of cultural differences that parents impose upon their children. The Asian kids in my school were constantly drilled to achieve. And who went to the Ivy's and the U of Chicago? While I don't know if your father was an immigrant, the situation you describe is probably the norm for legal immigrants to the US, not just Asian.

It highlights my point that it's not the money. It's the parents.

Posted by Beer Here | February 8, 2008 4:15 PM

Lower school funding per pupil correlates pretty well with voting for the GOP. Now we don't know if those numbers were in place when todays voters were going to school so I won't jump to the conclusion that lower school funding make Republican's. I will be a bit unfair however and suggest that Republican's probably think lower funding of schools is a proactive way of growing supporters.

Posted by rapier | February 8, 2008 4:19 PM

That map makes an intersting comparison to the one on this post: http://www.brainspout.com/blog/index.php/2005/07/06/red-state-darwinism/

Posted by Spike | February 8, 2008 4:20 PM

Spending is a rough measure of commitment to education. Nevertheless, what I get out of that map is that people in the south don't care about children very much.

Posted by Slippery Pete | February 8, 2008 4:22 PM

I think Matt Miller's article is rife with shoddy analysis and frankly Matt's post is a little bizarre as well (in the context of his unsual combination of quality of insights in his posts and quantity of posts). I was in Iowa on the eve of the caucuses listening to Bill stump for Hillary and the minute he got to education all he could muster was creating a national standard for testing and having the Dep. Ed. develop best practices for pedagogy and curriculum and implement them uniformly across the country. He wasn't in fact pandering to Iowans' preference for local control. And by the way, Iowa does have one of the more decentralized systems(during the 90s when state coffers were full each school commonly had a full staff position dedicated to curriculum development) and one of the more successful systems both on achievement and cost-effectiveness(during the 90s when state coffers were full each school had a staff position dedicated to curriculum development). In short, at least as it applies to Hillary, Matt Y's point doesn't hold. But on to Matt Miller. I think there are a myriad of problems in his article. Comparing European countries to America is a bit problematic. Finland has a great educational system. So does Massachussets. Which is bigger? That finland has a centralized system and is successful doesn't necessarily indicate that such an approach is replicable in the US, it is basically the size of the average American state and less heterogeneous than the most homogenoous American state. And that applies for a good many European countries. A more appropriate method would be to look at the larger countries like Germany, Spain, France and England. Germay at least to my knowledge has a much more federalist approach to Education, though I am guessing it is quite the opposite somewhere like England.

Part of the problem with his argument also is the fact that he first concedes that the deterioration of American public education is a more recent phenomenon (i think he identifies the last 30 years). However, local control has been a feature of the educational system for far longer than the last 30 years. In fact, the last 30 years has obvserved a massive consolidation of the number of school districts (dare we say, centralization). Anyhow, Miller offers some promise in attempting to explain away this hole in his argument when he gets to funding. After WWII the suburban community emerges and poor and rich no longer live side by side and thus property taxes are no longer a driver of equality but inequality. But then he observes that the States have been mitigating this transformation significantly by taking an increased role in educational funding to the point that the property taxes are accounting for about half of school funds. This tends to show that state and local governments are making successful accomodations. However, he then further undermines his argument for centralization and to my mind his thesis that local control is the causal factor for American Educational decline by pointing out that really, Title I funding contributes more to inequality than anything because the federal government has a stupid allocation methodology. Ergo we need the federal government to intervene further into public education? I think this is an instance where he saw a correlation confused it for causation and just ran with it without looking back. I tend to think that poverty, pedagogy, and the eroding nuclear family (early childhood literacy is largely the function of exposure to vocabulary, the presence of two literate adults helps in this regard) are the more likely factors driving public education's decline. Local control can only adversely impact pedagogy.

Posted by Richard | February 8, 2008 4:29 PM

Why would federal control make things better? More likely it will give red staters a bigger say in how we educate our kids in blue states. No thanks!

Posted by Fp | February 8, 2008 4:34 PM

I think Matt Miller's article is rife with shoddy analysis and frankly Matt's post is a little bizarre as well (in the context of his unsual combination of quality of insights in his posts and quantity of posts). I was in Iowa on the eve of the caucuses listening to Bill stump for Hillary and the minute he got to education all he could muster was creating a national standard for testing and having the Dep. Ed. develop best practices for pedagogy and curriculum and implement them uniformly across the country. He wasn't in fact pandering to Iowans' preference for local control. And by the way, Iowa does have one of the more decentralized systems(during the 90s when state coffers were full each school commonly had a full staff position dedicated to curriculum development) and one of the more successful systems both on achievement and cost-effectiveness(during the 90s when state coffers were full each school had a staff position dedicated to curriculum development). In short, at least as it applies to Hillary, Matt Y's point doesn't hold. But on to Matt Miller. I think there are a myriad of problems in his article. Comparing European countries to America is a bit problematic. Finland has a great educational system. So does Massachussets. Which is bigger? That finland has a centralized system and is successful doesn't necessarily indicate that such an approach is replicable in the US, it is basically the size of the average American state and less heterogeneous than the most homogenoous American state. And that applies for a good many European countries. A more appropriate method would be to look at the larger countries like Germany, Spain, France and England. Germay at least to my knowledge has a much more federalist approach to Education, though I am guessing it is quite the opposite somewhere like England.

Part of the problem with his argument also is the fact that he first concedes that the deterioration of American public education is a more recent phenomenon (i think he identifies the last 30 years). However, local control has been a feature of the educational system for far longer than the last 30 years. In fact, the last 30 years has obvserved a massive consolidation of the number of school districts (dare we say, centralization). Anyhow, Miller offers some promise in attempting to explain away this hole in his argument when he gets to funding. After WWII the suburban community emerges and poor and rich no longer live side by side and thus property taxes are no longer a driver of equality but inequality. But then he observes that the States have been mitigating this transformation significantly by taking an increased role in educational funding to the point that the property taxes are accounting for about half of school funds. This tends to show that state and local governments are making successful accomodations. However, he then further undermines his argument for centralization and to my mind his thesis that local control is the causal factor for American Educational decline by pointing out that really, Title I funding contributes more to inequality than anything because the federal government has a stupid allocation methodology. Ergo we need the federal government to intervene further into public education? I think this is an instance where he saw a correlation confused it for causation and just ran with it without looking back. I tend to think that poverty, pedagogy, and the eroding nuclear family (early childhood literacy is largely the function of exposure to vocabulary, the presence of two literate adults helps in this regard) are the more likely factors driving public education's decline. Local control can only adversely impact pedagogy.

Posted by Richard | February 8, 2008 4:54 PM

The goal of spending little on public education is to make it more affordable to send your white kids to private schools.

Posted by An Outhouse | February 8, 2008 5:05 PM

Exactly Fp. MY, Freddiemac and others apparently assume our national curriculum will be created by the sort of high achieving, pedagogical wunderkinder in black turtlenecks and 1000 Euro designer eyeglasses that populate the German Bundesministerium of Education. But why? A US national curriculum would probably be a disaster - best case, a race to the lowest common denominator in an effort to offend as few interest groups as possible and make "success" achievable for as many as possible. Worst case the next wingnut president will gut science education and make everyone learn creationism and worship Ronald Reagan. Face reality - we do not live in a compact country like Japan, Sweden or Germany with 1000 years of national traditions and common culture.

Posted by vanya | February 8, 2008 5:07 PM

This is all very nice, but why arbitrarily stop at the Rio Grande? Why not also include Mexico? Canada? Norway? Uganda? Micronesia?

Unless, of course, your agenda requires you to exclude those.

While my agenda might, instead, be better advanced if I cut you out of the deal - much as you conveniently want to exclude Uganda.

So it's all a question of whose ox is getting gored.

Posted by Duncan Kinder | February 8, 2008 5:11 PM

Per Vanya: " the country is far too large as it is. The more we nationalize everything, the more we simply create a distant untouchable imperial government unresponsive to the needs and desires of individual voters."

He's right. The only reason the US holds together as well as it does is due to Federalism. The concept took a couple of major hits when states taking their limited sovereignty in extreme directions resulted in a response from the Federal Government (secession, racial policies). Overall, however, I think it's still useful.

The desire to centralize is based on the hope that the central authority will do a better job on a particular task than the aggregate of the local authorities. I think such hope is often misguided.

The Federal Government can try to assist States and localities to do their job better, but trying to organize along the lines of French Republic on this scale is a bad idea.

Posted by cmholm | February 8, 2008 5:28 PM

People in the US don't go to prison because they got a poor education. They go to prison because they don't have enough money to protect themselves from the drug laws. This gives us the largest prison population in the world.

The drug wars are kept in place by the desire of the police to control us, the big alcohol and tobacco companies to protect their markets, and the big drug companies to protect their markets. Lots of places in the US would have gone local option if local option were an option.

If the US could revise the drug laws to reflect reality, I might consider giving the feds more power about education.

But consider this- local districts started turning thumbs down on DARE because it was proven not to work long before the feds started to give up on it. Considering what DARE was costing each district, and the damage it was doing, that's a powerful argument for local control.

Posted by serial catowner | February 8, 2008 6:35 PM

The article's pretty good, which is saying a lot for an article on ed. policy. I do think Miller makes a huge oversight in not pointing out that Democrats almost succeeded in taking the first step toward nationalizing education back in the 90s (when Clinton's National Test program was started and then eventually overturned by the Republican Congress), but other than that, it's quite well done, I think.

That map, on the other hand, is downright awful. First of all, it makes no allowances for COL differences, which is almost as bad as showing some "The Rising Cost Of X" graph without using constant dollars. Secondly, it doesn't relate spending to results. Conservatives will say that the map shows that "Massachusettes overspends." Liberals will say that "Massachusettes probably has the best education system in the country." And, well, it does, but what if some other state does 98% as well for half the (adjusted) cost? None does, of course, but you wouldn't know by looking at the map.

Posted by Adam | February 8, 2008 7:30 PM

Miller's negative portrayal of teachers unions is no go. In strong teachers union states, the intention of breaking teachers unions has nothing to do with meritocracy, and everything to do with getting rid of seniority pay - which often means getting rid of superior teachers to bring in cheapers fresh faces.

Attempts like Bill Bennets and Podesta will only appeal to the Broder/Bloomberg crowds as long as they refuse to recognize the tyrrany of self serving school administrations.

Case in point the national and often administration driven push for "IB", programs which by and large are producing inferior less educated students at the cost of time and resources to traditional subject support eg Math/English.

Often when one someone focuses on an administrative success in a terrible scholl district, closer inspections will yeild losses in the ability to convey learning basics. Often the old war horses of the school, who know very well how to teach the core materials are exactly the ones targeted for removal, at the expense of something flashy that falls apart when the head administrator jumps to another district to make more money.

The problem with school systems in america looks a lot like the problem with corporate boards in America. Until we can clean up or even address the problems at the top there will be no progress.

Posted by patience | February 8, 2008 8:53 PM

It really bothers me when people throw up their hands and say, gee, why are the divorce rates so high in the Bible Belt? Why are people so much poorer? Why are the kids falling behind in education? I think there's a pretty simple answer: a 'conservative' civic society, most crudely represented in the south, is simply inferior.

Divorce rates are higher in the South because marriage rates are higher. Someone in Massachusetts who lives with a succession of lovers, dumping each one after two years will not add to the divorce rate while someone who has divorced once after a marriage of ten years will.

The drug wars are kept in place by the desire of the police to control us, the big alcohol and tobacco companies to protect their markets, and the big drug companies to protect their markets. Lots of places in the US would have gone local option if local option were an option.

The drug wars are kept in place by the desire of a lot of people to find some excuse to keep young black and Latino males incarcerated, because that is the easiest way to reduce crime, although it causes an unbelievable amount of collateral damage.

Your "laboratory" has failed. The "global laboratory" has proven this, as the centralized German and Japanese primary schools are far superior to the decentralized American versions.

Germany and Japan are fairly homogenous countries, so a centralized system is much more appropriate for them than for a country as regionally diverse as the U.S. Plus, most of the success is probably due to the students in the schools being German and Japanese.

Posted by Glaivester | February 9, 2008 12:14 AM

Actually, the article kinda sucks. After admitting that the Prussian system was intended to provide educated subjects of an autocratic government (but hey, what's not to like?) the author goes on to list national problems, like the poverty of black families caused by persistent racism in pay scales, and the incarceration, by the drug wars, of black fathers, that cannot be solved by education. This is par for the course- 'liberals' always prefer to provide more education instead of actually attacking the root of a problem.

The author goes on to note that education was not included in the Constitution, apparently unaware that one reason for that was that education had already been included in the Northwest Ordnance of 1787.

He then goes on to state that "Many reformers across the political spectrum agree that local control has become a disaster". Of course they do- that's what happens when you ask the "reformers". But what happens when you ask the people who don't want to do away with local control? Apparently, 'many' reformers want to do away with local control, but most of the people with kids actually in the schools don't. Just the kind of thing that happens when you don't get a good Prussian education.

Sadly, time does not allow me to give the article the thorough drubbing it deserves. Suffice it to say that if the author has a good education, it's something we can do without.

Posted by serial catowner | February 9, 2008 9:36 AM

Good map, good post and for all I know good article (which ignoring your advice I haven't read). However, I would like to point out that price levels are not the same in every state (or school district). You would never present a time series of spending without correcting for inflation, yet here is a map which doesn't correct for the spatial equivalent of inflation.

I don't blame you or Miller. There just isn't good published data on geographic variance of price levels. However, there should be.

My explanation is that low price level states don't want someone to think of basing income taxes on income deflated by the local price level.
That would reduce the subsidy from blue states to red states and, especially, from urban areas to the over-represented heart of American living high off the public hog rural areas.

Posted by robert waldmann | February 9, 2008 9:48 AM