I’m skeptical of most proposals for reforming education. Progressives tend to favor government schools, whereas conservatives tend to favor an approach that yields high test scores. I don’t buy either view.
American education reformers often point to Finland, which has produced high “PISA” scores relative to other western countries. (They tend ignore even higher Asian PISA scores, just as they ignore Singapore’s success in health care. Apparently only European models are useful for the US. ) But now Finland seems to be abandoning its own highly successful model, and its scores are falling:
Here they describe the recent changes:
Finland’s decline may make the wonks who rushed to copy its schools seem silly. But looking deeper there are still lessons to learn from Finland’s example. Despite the country having a reputation for cuddly teaching, it used to take a slightly more hardline approach. In 1996, four years before the first batch of pisa results, a group of British researchers visited the country. They found “whole classes following line by line what is written in the textbook, at a pace determined by the teacher…We have moved from school to school and seen almost identical lessons—you could have swapped the teachers over and children would not have noticed the difference.” As Gabriel Heller Sahlgren, an economist, has noted, most of the children who scored so highly in the first round of tests would have experienced this sort of schooling.
By the time the results came out, many Finnish schools had started to move in a very different direction, confounding touring policymakers. A forthcoming study by Aino Saarinen and colleagues at the Universities of Helsinki and Oulu analyses pisa data from 2012 and 2015, finding that children in schools which gave pupils more freedom to direct their own learning had lower scores in maths and science. Those from poor and migrant families suffered the most. Eschewing the possibility of a happy midpoint between reading from a textbook and leaving children to their own devices, schools have continued to experiment in the years since. A wave of new institutions are being built without classrooms. A new curriculum, which began to be introduced in 2016, encourages lessons without defined subjects.
So now what? Are we to adopt the Finnish system of 1996? Why not the South Korean or Singaporean system?
In my view, we put far too much weight on test scores. In many East Asian countries there is a relentless drive to get high test scores, in order to get into top schools. Kids are deprived of a real childhood. That’s even affecting the US system to some extent. This competition for top schools is a sort of “arms race” with little societal benefit. Bryan Caplan has shown that much of education covers topics with little practical value.
I’d like to see the educational system focus more on entertainment and less on rote memorization. More importantly, I’d like to see us reduce the importance of education by cutting back on public spending and ending occupational licensing requirements that force workers to get credentials of little value for the career they plan to pursue.
We could save lots of money by eliminating public schools and replacing them with a voucher system at roughly half the cost per pupil. Let private schools take these vouchers and engage in non-price competition for students. Those who want something “better” can purchase gold-plated schooling out of their own pockets.
READER COMMENTS
Alan Goldhammer
Jan 26 2020 at 4:13pm
We could save lots of money by eliminating public schools and replacing them with a voucher system at roughly half the cost per pupil. Let private schools take these vouchers and engage in non-price competition for students.
This has already been attempted in Milwaukee Wisconsin when a program was put in place over 30 years ago. The results are mixed. One thing it did do is bail out the Archdiocese of Milwaukee which was almost going bankrupt and could no longer support their parochial schools. Vouchers took care of that (religious affiliated schools account for 90% of the voucher enrollment which included some Jewish and Islamic schools). Perhaps the best overview is this Wall Street Journal article.
Unfortunately, vouchers don’t work very well if at all for special needs students. Most private schools are not willing to set up programs these students need and they are forced into the public system by default. Vouchers are not the panacea that many make them out to be.
Scott Sumner
Jan 26 2020 at 5:27pm
The evidence that vouchers can save money is pretty strong. There’s not much effect either way on test scores.
Alan Goldhammer
Jan 26 2020 at 6:16pm
Scott – do you have any links to data? I’ve looked hard at the Milwaukee system for a couple of years now and it doesn’t look like there are any major savings. Vouchers for some of the private schools do not pay for the entire amount and the student’s family have to make up the difference. This is a hidden cost that may not be reflected in a state or local budget. Wisconsin has two school systems with voucher programs; Racine is the second one. Funding in Wisconsin is also complicated with a major burden on localities.
Scott Sumner
Jan 27 2020 at 5:41pm
Here’s one study:
https://www.edchoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Fiscal-Effects-of-School-Vouchers-by-Martin-Lueken.pdf
Phil Murray
Jan 26 2020 at 7:02pm
Scott: How would “the educational system focus more on entertainment”?
Scott Sumner
Jan 27 2020 at 5:44pm
Make lectures more interesting, less focused on memorizing lots of useless information. Have a more interesting selection of readings, aimed at the average student. Go back to having recess, and have longer summer vacations. Teach practical skills.
Njnnja
Jan 26 2020 at 7:15pm
An excellent essay about rote memorization versus more entertaining ways of learning in the most “hard” of “hard science”, mathematics, is A Mathematician’s Lament:
https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf
He opens by imagining that we taught music the way we teach math, with a distraught parent thinking “I’ll have to get my son a music tutor. He simply won’t apply himself to his music homework. He says it’s boring. He just sits there staring out the window, humming tunes to himself and making up silly songs.”
TMC
Jan 27 2020 at 7:45pm
My God, that was a terrible essay. The writer is worried the kids are bored and says the bulk of them won’t major in math anyways. Well if you make them get a solid base in math, memorizing their times tables ect., at least all those who don’t major in math will come out with some skills. And, no, all schooling until college is not by rote. That’s ridiculous. There is plenty of room for both, but math, like music, is foundational. You need to learn the basics and move on up.
BTW Scott, “I’d like to see the educational system focus more on entertainment and less on rote memorization. ” is the way they used to teach kids. Back when they learned something in class, you’ve got your wish for the past 20 years, and all it has produced is colleges where 40% of the kids need to take preliminary courses to teach them what they should have learned in high school.
Njnnja
Jan 28 2020 at 8:48pm
The point of the essay is that memorizing times tables is not a base for math any more than silently putting black dots on staff paper is a base for music. At its heart, math is about patterns: finding them, describing them, exploring them. Learning to manipulate patterns is a much more valuable skill than memorizing times tables, and more enjoyable as well.
I don’t think the enjoyment factor is a coincidence; a well-earned dopamine rush from playing with patterns is 50,000 years of evolution telling you that you just did something good for your brain.
mbka
Jan 26 2020 at 11:58pm
Scott,
couldn’t agree more. Trouble is that the educational system is mostly used as a selection tool. You could call it signalling, but really, what it is, is selection. Your kid is signalling that it’s able to go through some massive effort and is then selected, either by employers or by government, to higher positions. What kids learn during that process is of comparable little importance.
We won’t do away with the demand (in society) for a selection process. The question is, what process could be better suited for the purpose and at the same time, less damaging to the kids? Here I see a problem. Having kids studying hard on subjects most of them dislike, selects for personalities that follow orders easily (of parents and tutors), produce results on demand in the style they’re told, and are able to neglect their own social needs. You also get damaged in the process but your reward for becoming such a person is then to lead society at a higher level. Because, if you look closely – those qualities of following orders, production on demand, and self-flagellation in the pursuit of results – that’s exactly what companies are looking for, not to mention the military or higher government office. Objectively then, the school system is designed exactly for the intended purpose. This is especially true for East Asia. It selects for the kind of people genuinely needed in these positions.
My conclusion – schools won’t change until societies change and there’s demand for freer, less damaged, and more individualistic kids and people. Maybe the gig economy will be our salvation, I don’t know. I totally agree with your sentiment on what schools should be like if the aim were to produce well adjusted, adaptable adults equipped with practical knowledge, but I’m afraid that’s not what they are in fact intended to produce.
Scott Sumner
Jan 27 2020 at 5:47pm
I agree with much of your comment, but towards the end you seem to mix up “produce” with “select for”. I agree that they select for a certain type of person, but I don’t believe that they produce the sorts of skills needed in the job market.
Spending lots of time on boring activities doesn’t make one more able to do boring activities, it just adds the the misery.
Rajat
Jan 27 2020 at 12:33am
Scott, your and Bryan’s writings on education have completely opened my eyes over the last few years and I thank you for that. Bryan’s work appears to be well-researched and he has spoken about his books at length, making a very convincing case for the importance of signalling. Your blog posts have been more casual, but no less thought-provoking. Being a reasonably high-achieving school student back in the day, I naturally gravitating to believing that what we needed in schools was a greater focus on literacy and numeracy – of the type that can be measured on standardised tests. But as I see young people (admittedly a highly-capable subset) coming through the system, they seem to write just as well while being far more articulate and confident than I or people my age were two decades ago. Sure, their mental arithmetic may not be as good. But their ability to interact maturely with people of all ages and contribute constructively in teams is much much better, and that’s what matters in most jobs. This is all consistent with your thinking.
I think some of the improvement may be due to the changes in emphasis at schools of the type you describe as happening in Finland. But some seems to be due to better teachers – more engaged, less confrontational and less tied to mind-numbing and meaningless processes and tasks. Looking back now, I think most of my teachers (in the 1980s) were dreadful, and I went to an expensive private school. Even now, I think there is a lot of room for improvement – eg I think high school economics teachers are woeful. Do you think one can separate the role of teachers from curriculum/teaching emphasis, or are the two linked and if so how? Are they both a function of the broader culture?
The article alludes to something that has come up in Australia too – the disproportionate effect of changing educational approaches on migrant and disadvantaged students. Do you see that as a drawback of a less rigid approach?
Finally, in Australia and I suspect elsewhere, improvement on PISA scores has been used as the justification for enormous expansions in public funding for K-12 schooling. This creates a bind for politicians and educators. Educators want more funding but cannot establish a link between increased funding over time and higher scores (in fact, scores here have been declining, as elsewhere). They even say that the lack of impact of private schools on test scores (controlling for socio-economic background) shows private schools are a waste of money. That leaves them only with the argument that public schools cannot improve test scores without more funding for the disadvantaged students they serve. Meanwhile, politicians cannot endorse a shift to more entertaining (and cheaper) schooling because the public would feel defrauded for all the funding increases granted to date. Moreover, supporting more spending on education is as close to motherhood as one can get, and even 99% of economists cite it as a way to increase economic growth. What a mess!
Rajat
Jan 27 2020 at 12:37am
Scott, your and Bryan’s writings on education have completely opened my eyes over the last few years and I thank you for that. Bryan’s work appears to be well-researched and he has spoken about his books at length, making a very convincing case for the importance of signalling. Your blog posts have been more casual, but no less thought-provoking. Being a reasonably high-achieving school student back in the day, I naturally gravitated to believing that what we needed in schools was a greater focus on literacy and numeracy – of the type that can be measured on standardised tests. But as I see young people (admittedly a highly-capable subset) coming through the system, they seem to write just as well while being far more articulate and confident than I or people my age were two decades ago. Sure, their mental arithmetic may not be as good. But their ability to interact maturely with people of all ages and contribute constructively in teams is much much better, and that’s what matters in most jobs. This is all consistent with your thinking.
Matthias Görgens
Jan 27 2020 at 11:52pm
That’s probably just less lead and better nutrition?
Not entirely serious, but just pointing out that determining causation is extremely difficult here.
P Burgos
Jan 27 2020 at 9:57am
This makes me think of Bryan Caplan’s recent post about public choice economics. Teachers are pretty well liked, live in every community in the nation (except the wealthiest communities), and pretty numerous. The politics of total voucherization simply won’t work due to those facts.
Phil H
Jan 27 2020 at 10:36am
Alex Tabarrok recently had a study in which he found that the rising costs in education or some related industry were all down to the Baumol effect, which suggests that the big savings you predict would not materialise.
Thomas Hutcheson
Jan 27 2020 at 11:31am
There’s something to be said for a real voucher/tax credit system that covered the full costs (most proposals are pretty stingy.). It would be quite a revolution in federal/state relations. That gives me pause.
Matthias Görgens
Jan 27 2020 at 11:50pm
Why are you suggesting a voucher system?
Following your logic, the education system should just be privatised without subsidises. Or even with heavy taxes, since you talk about negative externalities, but don’t mention any positive externalities.
And why eliminate price competition?
(And if you are worried about poor people, the standard answer is to give them money not food stamps or education stamps.)
Now as a matter of what’s politically feasible, school vouchers are of course infinitely easier to sell than what you get from taking your logic to the end.
Allen
Feb 15 2020 at 5:10am
“We are excited to provide the educational foundation upon which rapidly emerging AI-assisted ultrasound applications will be used by nurses to advance patient care,” states Gabriele Nataneli, PhD, SonoSim’s Chief Technology Officer.
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