How to Level the College Playing Field
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
In Iran, there's something called the Guardian Council. If you want to run for an election, the Guardian Council has to approve you first. If they don't approve you, you can't run.
We don't have that in America, and that's generally considered a good thing. What we do have is an emphasis on credentials -- and the opportunity to get these credentials is gatekept by admissions officers.
For example, look at the Supreme Court. Every current justice went to either Harvard or Yale -- mostly Harvard. The last one not to attend either was O'Connor. So, in practice, we have a guardian council here in America, which determines, among (many) other things, who can get on the Supreme Court.
There's also the issue that not everyone understands the college game -- not just admissions, but the importance of going to a brand-name college in the first place. There are still a lot of parents and counselors and so on out there who think the only thing that matters is getting the degree, no matter where it's from. So if you don't come from a background where people know the game, you're screwed for life, unless you can become a successful entrepreneur.
If the kid isn't getting in to one of the prestige-brand schools, the parents and counselors are correct--many of the public universities and lesser-known private colleges are essentially the same. But there is also a third tier, composed mostly of community colleges, correspondence schools, and for-profit "nationally accredited" colleges. That credential might not be enough to pass by all gatekeepers.
Different universities occupy the top tier for different industries. For instance, in software, MIT counts, but in politics, it doesn't.
It's not really the quality of the institution, but the strength of the brand, and the nepotism by alumni. And it's the people you met that can pry open an opportunity for you later. We don't live in a meritocracy. You still have to know someone who knows someone.
While college has the potential to be a great equalizer, society needs to focus on the school system before kids reach college.
Teachers walked out in three states because they are so underpaid. Teacher have second or third jobs.
You want everyone to have an equal footing? Let’s adequately fund our education from k-12. And while we are at it let’s have some universal pre-k.
If we do both, we can have a more merit based society. If we just focus on colleges, it won’t solve root cause.
The whole thing is a sham.
[0] http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20104018/pdf/20104018.pdf [1] https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa-298... [2] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d16/tables/dt16_605.10.a... [3] https://www.cato.org/blog/public-school-spending-theres-char...
It is not at all uncommon for 5 and 6 year olds coming to her classes to be swearing like sailors, unable to spell their names, not knowing numbers, etc.
It's not simply a matter of kids being behind, their parents simply don't care. It's a cultural attitude old as time, and crosses race and geographical boundaries, from the dense urban city centers to trailer parks in the countryside.
It is coincidental with widespread poverty; both a cause and effect.
We have universal Pre-K and k-12 in my nearest metro area, a nearly-hyper liberal bastion. We also have among the worst white-color divide in the country in terms of education outcomes, with a large minority (25% as a record low) dropping out before completing a high school degree.
There are so many factors at play, and money (in most schools) is not the primary problem, nor will it be the solution.
Every metric we have of educational quality shows that per pupil expenditure has little correlation with good outcomes - the big urban areas with some of the highest expenditures often have much worse performance than many of their nearby suburbs spending less. Not every problem is solved by throwing money at it.
You put merit in quotes and then stated percentages plus the claim that there is a growth in similar IQ partnering.
Unshared env is a polite way of saying noise; approximately 0% "shared env" i.e. parenting, education, etc. (There are many caveats, obviously.)
You could do worse than https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ#Estimates as a place to start.
I don't think schools are the problem, I think it's people. Parents today are either overworked, poor, stressed, unhappy or depressed, single, sick, or a combination of the these and then some.
I talked with a guy just this past week who works at a school for Native American kids. The primary job of these teachers is to make the kids feel safe. Their primary job. Not to teach useful skills, but safety. This is an a major metropolitan area, not on a reservation.
During one class, a teacher asked if anyone had died from or suffered gun violence, every hand went up. These are elementary school kids.
Tell me what difference it makes if the teachers make more money if the kids are all on the edge of committing suicide or at least have no hope for the future. Maybe in places where the kids are fine, teachers can strike and ask for more money.
I have a kid going into teaching, and one of my best friends did teaching. I taught at a local college, and when half the students don't turn in any work at all, it's not a teaching problem.
The spread of preparedness, ability, and focus of the kids even in K-5 and early elementary is stark. Some kids are unable to focus for even 45 seconds. Some kids regularly have no parents showing up for parent events. Some kids can't read (in any language) by grade 2. There's less that teachers can do in the 1000-ish hours of classroom time per year as compared to what the 4500-ish hours of awake, non-classroom time that the families have control over (or the hopefully 3000-ish hours of sleep that they also control).
Parents expect teachers to work miracles I think as compared to what's possible. Families have wildly more time and vastly more individualized time theoretically available to them and for a variety of reasons (some circumstance, some choice), I think that time is frequently squandered/not used effectively and then it's the teachers' fault somehow when an achievement gap surfaces.
I think this sums it up well, and it's sad. My wife works in public school for the last few years, and has personally been yelled at by parent that said "my child would never do anything like that!" (the kid had destroyed a school book, even admitted he did it...)
The public fight against the teachers, and the teachers are convinced that school should be fun and play time instead of primarily a learning time. So not only does discipline slide, so does learning, and everyone is part of the problem.
A dead comment below pointed out the difference between "gun violence" and "simply violence", it just so happened the story I was relaying was about guns. But I think other forms of abuse are pervasive everywhere, and gun violence affects only a tiny amount of the population. Which is why it was such a striking point for that school and those kids. He completely misunderstood the implications.
Edit: I want to also reiterate that while I taught in college, the students were more interested in Facebook, video games and their phones than learning. This is a student problem as much as anything else.
I'd say the biggest problem with teacher pay is in the public school realm where there is a fixed salary ladder. This leaves no incentive for teachers to put in any effort beyond the minimum.
Georgia (at the time) gave bonuses and increased salary for additional degrees and specializations, so there was some incentive to improve. When she left (mostly because she was tired of dealing with parents...) there was talk about removing the higher education/specialization bonuses, but I don't know if that came about. There's also no union. There are a few professional organizations, but they don't have bargaining power.
I think in the United States, it's really hard to talk about teacher experience as a whole, given the different laws and situations.
I'm not saying your point isn't defensible, it's just that saying teachers/districts are underpaid is far from the obvious answer.
There is a really nice essay titled "The aims of education" by the mathematician Alfred North Whitehead, which talks about what high school education could be. Summary: https://minireference.com/blog/the-aims-of-education-accordi... Original http://www.anthonyflood.com/whiteheadeducation.htm
Someone recommended him for a master stipend at Harvard's Kennedy School. He turned it down. Then I pestered him for a week and he unturned it down.
Why? He's from a working class background, and was afraid of the $10,000/year he'd have pay (with debt). He read the syllabus of each class he'd take and had decided that he could learn just as much by spending $10 on late fees at the library. He was also afraid of his parent's posting their house as collateral for the debt, and that they couldn't do so twice and his brother wouldn't get the same if he wanted.
My point: social mobility is also limited by what people consider possible. My parents were elite, at least in status if not economically, and "Harvard" has meaning in the family beyond being a good university. Similar mechanisms are probably at play with entrepreneurship. Or in the proven tendency of women to feel underqualified for jobs that men with exactly the same CV would apply to without any self-doubts.
That's why we need to actively work on getting underrepresented groups into these institutions and professions. There's too much talent going to waste for stupid reasons right now. Getting that guy to Cambridge, MA may well end up being my most significant contribution to society.
Let's make it easier to reward the good teachers and fire the bad ones. School choice (and the ability to take money to a private school) colud help. More charters would, too.
My conservative and libertarian friends talk this up all the time. However, my understanding is that the whole point is to disrupt the power of sinister teacher unions. Sort of an "Uber for schools", I guess.
The thing is... there is no teacher union in my state (my conservative and libertarian friends stare blankly and blink when they learn this). Here in Georgia, the point of charter schools seems to be:
(1) Shifting control of schools from the local board level to a state commission, overseen by the state legislature, and
(2) Funneling revenue to a number of private (and sometimes for-profit) school management corporations, who shower lots of lobbying dollars on the state legislators in return.
To me, it just feels like magic pixie dust. We think it's sinister to privatize our prisons, but doing the same thing to our kids is great because unions (which are already fake news in most parts of the country now).
I'm honestly not even sure what their proponents see as being the point... if it's not ideological blind-faith, or a misguided quiet assumption that it will help restore racial segregation in schools.
I'd encourage you to read this: https://mskellyenglish12.weebly.com/uploads/3/0/7/9/30792489...
This talks about the first major charter network that primarily worked to serve low-income students for whom the achievement gap was large. The idea behind many of these schools is that the standard model, for one reason or another, is not serving these students properly and that adjustments have to be made. Those can take the form of extended school days, double blocks of reading (core to all learning), a focus on wellbeing, and many more.
These particular networks are public and not-for-profit, but there are also charter schools that are for-profit as you mentioned. Generally speaking, "charter school" is an umbrella for any school that operates with a charter outside the standard public school, so it encompasses all sorts of models, but the KIPP-style school is one that has really taken off in the last 20 years in many low-income communities. There are also plenty of problems with KIPP and its brethren, but they have made progress in places many haven't.
I have no problems with unions, but I don't support state protection of them. I suspect if you pressed most libertarians this is how they really feel. It's just in practice, this comes out as being totally against unions.
(1) I definitely want to shift control of schools as locally as possible. It's silly to pretend that the needs of an inner city school in NY look a lot like the needs of a rural school in Kentucky. The more closely tied to the community the people making decisions are, the more likely they will be able to adapt to the needs of the students.
(2) I'm not just an atheist, I'm a Hitchens is my hero atheist. If I thought I'd get the best over-all life outcomes for my children by sending them to a private for-profit Young Earth Creationist school I would do it in a heart-beat. I don't understand why anyone would care more about the for-profit status of a school than they do about the actual outcomes of the students. I suspect not-for-profit secular schools will provide the best outcomes, but I could be wrong.
After the Parkland shooting a bunch of my liberal friends are starting to see the light of day regarding school choice and heading towards the privatization end of the spectrum. It's going to be very difficult to change national policy on school security. It's only slightly less difficult to change state policy. But a hand full of activist parents could very likely get metal detectors, armed guards, etc. at their one school if they were given the freedom to vote with their money. And they would also not have to demand that everyone else make the same choices.
With any hot topics it is difficult to remove personal views from the subject, but let me try.
The premise of charter schools is that US public school system is rigidly set in a pretty bad state. No change is coming internally (as with any bureaucracy). Good new teachers are very difficult to hire (compensation goes to most senior folks, not most capable). Parents know what schools and teachers give their kids good education, but cannot vote with their wallets. Charter schools provide an alternative and competition.
Some examples where this competition works better are: US colleges (expensive but good: many foreigners are coming to study there and pay the exorbitant tuition; few come to US public schools). Finland: letting parents use public money spent on public school tuition for private schools helped Finland school system go from one of the worst to one of the best in one generation.
> The thing is... there is no teacher union in my state.
What are GAE, PACE and MACE? This is an honest question -- I know nothing about Georgia unions; this is just a google search for "Georgia teachers union"
This is a list of universities with the most international students:
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/news/25-us-univ...
The vast majority of them are public schools.
Unions exist to empower labor.
In particular all the political power is held by long-serving pilots - so long-serving pilots earn $300,000 and are last to be laid off, while junior pilots earn $20,000 and are first to be laid off.
In other words, pilots are simultaneously overpaid and underpaid - and the union simultaneously empowers and disempowers employees.
I don't know how accurate that claim is - but in discussions about American teachers' salaries, I have noticed people seem unable to agree on whether teachers are well paid or not.
[1] http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and-airlines.html
Disclaimer: My parents both taught in public schools their entire careers and their county was unionized. My parents seemed to hate the union on balance, but now I'll have to ask them...
The shenanigans that I experienced first and second hand that were enabled and supported/defended by the union were appalling. Teachers teaching subjects they were unqualified for, teachers not showing up to work reliably being protected, a math teacher who literally replied that "the square root of 2 is irrational because it says so on page 79", etc. It was always "gimme more, more, more" and never seemed to be about the kids.
If that experience is in any way indicative, I'm all for gutting the teachers' (and other similar) unions.
I don't mind paying teachers more than we currently do (and paying the required taxes to enable that), but I'd like to see some accountability and improved results. The key question is how to judge that on a timeframe that is both fair to the kids and the measurement (a long timeframe) and to the teachers (who probably don't want to wait until kindergarten junior is 30 to be paid)
Unions are known to protect “incombants”. It is a very real problem with plenty of studies in the labor literature.
It works for other government employees, active duty military for example, and I wouldn't think your average E-1 has any more negotiating leverage than an individual public school teacher.
Military has IG; that could perhaps serve as a model to protect those employees in ways that they ought be protected but without the thuggish protectionist aspects that unions often fall to.
The best way to position a market is such that the parties involved naturally meet mutually beneficial outcomes. Ie incentivize away from abuses and toward goals.
It seems that the military is able to meet its demand for personnel without a union for the employees, so I'd say there's at least a lower limit on "meet mutually beneficial outcomes".
Teacher salary is so low because supply is too high [0]. The top 10% of teachers have a huge impact on the success of their students, but it's difficult to impossible to reward them [1]. On the other side of the coin it's practically impossible to fire incompetent teachers [2]. We might also need to increase funding for schools, but I don't believe it will work without fixing these other systemic problems.
I think credentialism is really the core issue here. People use credentials as a proxy for merit because they lack better tools. The science is pretty solid around the correlation between IQ/EQ and workplace performance, but it's illegal to give IQ tests to potential hires. If you can't get into Harvard due to some social/economic issue, you may at least have a high IQ. The more useful metrics we give to hiring companies the closer we will likely get to meritocracy.
[0]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/18/oversu...
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/01/02/are-teacher...
[2]: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20...
No, it's not, generally (the science around pretty much any practical application of any of the various different constructs identified as “EQ” is weak).
> but it's illegal to give IQ tests to potential hires.
No, it's not; specifically, it's not where there is clear evidence that IQ test given is closely tied to performance in the particular job being hired for.
The idea that this is illegal is a myth based on a case where a particular instance was found to be illegal racial discrimination given it's disparate racial impact specifically because there was no demonstrated connection between job performance in the jobs being hired for to support that it was a bona fide test of job ability.
IQ tests have been upheld by the courts subsequently when challenged when there was evidence that they were related to slecific job performance, including when a police department used scores above a certain level as a negative hiring signal.
>A growing body of research suggests general cognitive ability may be the best predictor of job performance [1].
>Beware of I.Q. tests. Many companies rely on I.Q. tests that are not professionally developed and have not demonstrated that only people with an I.Q. above a certain level can be successful in the job. Before administering any I.Q. test, you should make sure your legal counsel reviews the test, you know who developed it, you understand how it’s being applied and how the results will be used to screen candidates before you administer a test to any employee or applicant! The main issue when administering a pre-employment I.Q. test is, how can the "threshold" you set for hire/not-hire be defended? For example, if you state that an applicant must have an I.Q. of 108, can you demonstrate how an applicant or employee with an I.Q. of 107 is not capable of doing the job but a person with an I.Q. of 108 has what it takes to succeed? This is one important reason why many companies will not use I.Q. tests for pre-employment testing. [2]
Basically, while technically IQ tests are not banned explicitly it's such a high risk legal venture that almost no one does it. Instead, they use other proxies such as credentialism, SAT scores, etc.
[0]: https://mason.gmu.edu/~gjonesb/IQandNationalProductivity.pdf
[1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-your-iq-strongly-influenc...
[2]: https://www.hiresuccess.com/blog/is-employment-testing-legal
Which have exactly the same legal problem, the only advantage is they don't have the “this is illegal” myth about them, so are somewhat less likely to be challenged.
But, the evidentiary requirements for them to be upheld if challenged is exactly the same, and most of them have as little (or less) scientific link to performance in the jobs they are used to hire for as IQ tests.
If you evidence that IQ has a particular weight in job performance, using it as a hiring signal with that weight is not illegal (thresholding may be particularly problematic and hard to support, but that's something a red herring—using an IQ test doesn't require using it as a threshold-based filter rather than a weighted input to a multifactorial decision criteria.
If you don't have that evidence and the use of the test has the effect of unequal impact against a protected class, it's illegal, but that's true of anything used as a hiring input, not something specific about IQ tests.
Companies and hiring managers will try to use the best proxies for guessing potential worker productivity they can get. Denying them objective data leads to them relying on much less accurate, more subjective, and more biased "wisdom." For example, the "ban the box" movement has totally backfired. Employers still don't want to hire criminals, so they just avoid groups with high crime rates even more, specifically: minorities [0]. By denying employers to treat you as an individual who has a specific criminal, educational, IQ record, you are left with them treating you as your group identity.
[0]: https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/ban-the-box-does-more-har...
Seems to me it suggests national wealth strongly predicts ability to alleviate the environmental conditions (such as, but not limited to, malnutrition) known to adversely impact IQ.
But that's neither here nor there.
> The second described the growing body of evidence that an IQ test is the single most useful datum you could get about a potential hire.
And if that is really supportable generally, it's probably also easily supportable for a great many specific jobs; where that's the case, IQ tests, regardless of unequal impact on protected classes, are legal, and, as I've said, contrary to your claim of illegality, they've been upheld in a number of cases for just that reason.
> Companies and hiring managers will try to use the best proxies for guessing potential worker productivity they can get.
That's probably less true in practice than you think, though it's the natural expectation of you make a lot of simplifying assumptions.
> Denying them objective data leads to them relying on much less accurate, more subjective, and more biased "wisdom."
Perhaps, but literally nothing but cargo cult “wisdom” is denying them objective information in the form of IQ where they actually empirically is the best tool for the job.
Paying more money to teachers isn't the answer, the answer is expanding the reach of great teachers using tech. I learned to code for free using online resources. I was able to take courses from Harvard, MIT, and Stanford for free. I brushed up on math skills with Khan academy. What's the point in pay to learn from random teachers and professors when you can learn from the top researchers in the world?
Another issue is language. In California 45% of students speak Spanish at home, so of course they are going to struggle in English and other classes as well as part of that. This also increases costs because you need bilingual teachers.
How?
Demand a cover letter with every application. Weight that massively higher than the resume. In interviews, select overwhelmingly for raw intelligence and grit - look for a spark in the conversation; go off the track a bit and ask about broader implications of some thing you're working on; probe for resilience and determination in overcoming problems.
Then, keep in mind the composition of your entire team when hiring. Try to build a heterogeneous group with a variety of skills and experience. You could use a few top-school people for sure; they have great polish and poise and facility with words (usually) and those attributes are useful in representing your company to others.
By far the easiest way to let this happen is to have a very wide default accept at the resume review stage.
Point is, no one person is in a position to make that broad systemic change. Make some changes in your particular corner of the world and, over time, it'll spread.
EDIT: sorry, I think this should have gone under forgottenpass's succinct reply which is saying the same thing.
Don't have a ludicrous hiring process. Employers get high on their own hype supply and start believing that because they can afford to be selective, and have a trendy enough name, that the selectivity is warranted.
It might be good for an external image. But frankly, if the position can be hired directly out of college, they don't need someone from a prestigious school.
In the field of Computer Science this is a very relevant statement. You don't need to go to a good CS school to get a job at Google anymore.
It's a matter of doing this across all disciplines, though. Not just CS.
Begin promoting and honoring good MOOC programs.
A shortage of smart, ambitious PhDs seeking policy positions is, fortunately, not a problem our society has. Quite the contrary.
You're dealing with a situation where the PhD, in and of itself, is not really much of an accomplishment.
What I said was that when one is in the situation of selecting a professor to be hired at an Ivy, the PhD in and of itself, is not really an accomplishment. It's more akin to an "entrance fee".
2) If diversity means different values, then doesn't that mean different people will value different attributes? Doesn't that mean everyone deserves to go to a top school, or at least everyone who thinks he or she is great by his or her values?
Point 2 suggests that a meritocracy is impossible because there are too many dimensions and measures, all the more so the more you value diversity.
I'm not promoting the above. It's just what came to mind reading the article. I'm not sure what it missed because it doesn't sit right, but it suggests whatever top schools are doing is working and that a meritocracy isn't as tenable as you'd think.
Wow, I guess this assumes that the NYT's readership all went to "top universities".
I happen to donate heavily to my alma mater, which is a no-name state school. I donate to their honors college, which offers academic merit scholarships. This program is what allowed me graduate debt free. On the other hand, I don't even answer the phone when my (private, elite) graduate school asks for money.
Then things like the SATs and GRE compound the problem. Little human knowledge accurately boils down to true/false, multiple choice, or robot graded literature. I also used to hear tales of foreign students memorizing whole books of solutions and essay examples. I competed with them while still doing homework and taking tests - no rime for memorizing at any required scale.
(I agree with you in an idealistic way, but I see millions of micro and dozens of macro problems with trying to implement it.)
I applied to my mother's alma mater which is a top 10 ranking University. I had nowhere near the GPA needed and they wrote back with a nice form rejection letter that says that they had given special consideration as the child of an alumni and regret not being able to offer an invitation to next year's class.
Then I've heard stories of parents donating $2M to get their legacy (child) in to an Ivy League with below average grades.
I had a friend who got into Notre Dame that way. His wealthy alumni grandfather took him and the dean out to dinner one night and slid a generous "donation" check across the table. Guy had something like a 1.8 GPA from high school. He got in.
I hope MOOCs can play a part, too. They seem to hold hope for large-scale change in the outdated college system.
I like the 'microcolleges' idea, I hope this and MOOCs can help solve this problem.