The Liberal Order

Why I Ban Laptops From the Classroom

I began banning laptops in the classroom after the spring semester of 2007. Too many students with laptops were distracting others around them, including one group viewing a soccer tournament during a lecture. The complaints about this ban never cease, with some students imploring me to make an exception in their case since, as one student in the article (linked below) argues, it's what she's accustomed to.

The Washington Post explains this growing trend of banning laptops in the classroom.

A generation ago, academia embraced the laptop as the most welcome classroom innovation since the ballpoint pen. But during the past decade, it has evolved into a powerful distraction. Wireless Internet connections tempt students away from note-typing to e-mail, blogs, YouTube videos, sports scores, even online gaming -- all the diversions of a home computer beamed into the classroom to compete with the professor for the student's attention.

"This is like putting on every student's desk, when you walk into class, five different magazines, several television shows, some shopping opportunities and a phone, and saying, 'Look, if your mind wanders, feel free to pick any of these up and go with it,' " Cole said.

I don't know what infuriates me more about this . . .

One recent semester, [an associate professor of humanities at UC Boulder, Diane E.] Siebert [sic] tracked the grades of 17 student laptop addicts. At the end of the term, their average grade was 71 percent, "almost the same as the average for the students who didn't come at all."

. . . the fact that the laptops are so distracting or that a student in a humanities class at UC Boulder can still earn a passing grade even if they "didn't come at all."

The next obstacle to overcome is text messaging during class.

Diversity, Neighborhood Schools, or Academic Needs School Assignments

With even national attention focused on the vitriolic battle here in Wake County over the recently elected school board majority's voting out school assignments based on socio-economic diversity in favor of neighborhood schools, both ideas seem to miss the larger point of focusing on the interests of the kids and their parents.

The biggest problem of mass public education is the disparate quality of schoolchildren and the desire to force them all through the same faux college prep curriculum. I'd like to see families have the choice of which school their child attends regardless of neighborhood, which simply serves to drive up home prices in some neighborhoods while driving them down elsewhere. Let's get away from bureaucrats selecting school assignments based on their personal preferences.

This type of competition would force schools to discover market niches that serve the interests of the parent-student-customer, lest they find themselves shut down as parents refuse to send their children there.

Some schools would specialize in a college prep curriculum, some in remedial education, others in vocational education such as technology and business disciplines, while others still could specialize in more specialized vocations such as pharmacology production and materials sciences. You would better serve the individual interests of the students by allowing for greater innovation in establishing curriculum and the delivery of education services, while providing education services that meet the specific talents, needs, and desires of the children/parent customer, and not the whims of the education bureaucracy and leadership.

My guess is that it would also cut down the prevalence of cliques and the animosity towards specific groups unfavored within larger groups. (i.e.,The result would be better sorting.) But alas, since this would expose to children that they are different from one another, which is antithetical to the mindset and interests of the education bureaucracy and leadership, it's not likely to ever happen.

Neighborhood Schools and Poverty

The Raleigh News & Observer's Steve Ford argues in favor of diversity assignments for government schools, contending that assignment based on neighborhoods favors kids from wealthy families at the expense of kids from poorer families.

I grew up in Fairfax County and graduated from high school there (Lee High, Springfield, Class of '64). Lee, like all of Fairfax's schools, was racially segregated during my time. In that regard it's come a long way: During the last school year it had a rainbow enrollment that was 28 percent white, 26 percent Asian, 26 percent Hispanic and 16 percent black. Thirty-nine percent of the students were classified as economically disadvantaged.

At McLean High School across the county to the northwest, in one of the region's more affluent communities, the enrollment was 63 percent white, 19 percent Asian, 9 percent Hispanic and 4 percent black. Eight percent of the students qualified for free or reduced-price meals.

Granted that the pool was smaller, but among McLean's "poor" students who took the SAT two years ago, the average combined SAT score for reading and math was 1029. Something wasn't working as well for Lee's disadvantaged students. Their comparable score was 936.

Presumably the McLean students benefited from the school's upper middle class ambience, bringing high academic expectations and levels of support. That is the kind of boost Wake's diversity policy seeks to impart when it distributes kids from poor neighborhoods into schools in the well-off suburbs.

Households are not randomly distributed across geographic regions so that a certain percentage of whites are dropped off in this neighborhood along with a randomly chosen percentage of blacks, some Asians and a few Hispanic families sprinkled among the mix. This is likely a selection bias issue in that families more inclined to care about and be involved in their child's education are more inclined to move to neighborhoods within the McLean school district (or other school districts with more dedicated students) rather than in neighborhoods in the Lee district (or other school districts with less dedicated students). Families that choose to live in McLean neighborhoods are willing to make the sacrifices necessary for their children to obtain a better education that families with similar incomes that have chosen to live in the Lee neighborhoods are less likely to make.

It is naive to believe that by forcing kids who are motivated educationally to attend schools with those who aren't, the latter will magically rise to the challenge. In fact, it's more likely that the latter will bring down the education potential of the former. If Ford and other supporters of diversity assignments truly desire improving the educational opportunities for motivated students of any income level, why not support private school vouchers? Or even tax credits? The answer might be found in the following Ford statement.

In describing his search for a home near Philadelphia in the early 1980s, Ford realized that purchasing a home in Trenton would condemn his child[ren] to receiving a poor quality education. Consequently, rather than buy the home in Trenton and send his child[ren] to private school, they chose to purchase a home in Yardley, PA. (Notice the selection bias again?) He comments,

We investigated private schools, but our heart wasn't in it. We believed in public education and wanted our child to go that route.

I don't quite understand what it means to "believe in public education"? Does he believe that private schooling is inferior to public schooling? That private schools are inferior at educating students in reading, writing and math relative to government schools? Does he believe the same thing about newspapers? That private newspapers are inferior to public newspapers? Or is there some orthodoxy that permeates the public school system that Ford is concerned economically disadvantaged students would not be exposed to in a private school should they be awarded vouchers?     

Oh Snap!

Ouch! Tim Harford cracks on economists. In providing advice to a student considering studies in economics without a proper math background, Harford claims,

You have theorised on the basis of neat concepts without any real-world knowledge – in some ways, ideal preparation to be an economist.

Here's James Buchanan's take on the feckless state of the profession following economists' bumbling of the financial crisis and events leading up to, and following, it.

The Failure of Government Schooling

It's that time of year again when thousands of families try desperately to get their kids into a charter or magnet school in North Carolina, which by legislation are capped at 100. With far more applicants than there are slots in these schools, because more and more parents are abandoning the failing traditional public school system, most will walk away disappointed. Their needs are rejected for the sake of education bureaucrats and teachers' unions.

This is rarely the outcome in a competitive market system - the needs of the parent/customer would take precedent over those of the employees/managers. If not, people will flee for alternatives that provide them better value per dollar. What a tragedy that the narrow interests of the unions and the education bureaucracy trump the interests of taxpayers and their children.

Public School Managers are Like the Managers at Enron and Lehman Brothers

Raleigh businessman Art Pope, Jr. has an outstanding op-ed in Saturday's News & Observer on the recent resignation of Wake County School Superintendent Del Burns. Burns resigned because the newly elected school board majority seeks to overturn the failed policies devised under his and the previous board's direction. Pope uses the analogy of Enron, MCI and Lehman Brothers, to drive home the point that failed management produces disastrous outcomes.

I do not know Dr. Burns. However, by his resignation he has instantly earned my respect, and I imagine the respect and admiration of every corporate president and director who has ever struggled with this philosophical divide. Many corporate chieftains would selfishly hold out, not wanting to let go of their power, their income or their bonus. Many boards don't have the fortitude to terminate their presidents, preferring instead to "just get along." Either case wastes valuable resources of time, talent, money and trust among all of the stakeholders.

Burns was an effective administrator - for the former board. That board set forth a strategy, and Burns executed its strategy. That board and Burns' staff were in philosophical alignment. Unfortunately for Burns, the old board of directors disappointed its shareholders (the voters), who staged a "proxy fight" and took over the board.

Good for them. If more proxy fights occurred in Corporate America, then perhaps the Enrons, MCIs and the Lehman Brothers of the world would still be in business.

Teaching In the Post-Modern Era

Education Spending In the U.S. From 1970

Andrew Coulson publishes this interesting chart depicting increases in real per-pupil government expenditures on education in this country and the benefits that spending has [not] produced.

These are percentage change increases since 1970. Total federal, state, and local spending increased nearly 140% since 1970. (The blue line. Remember, these data are adjusted for inflation and are per-pupil.) There has been no discernible improvement in student outcomes since then, and in fact, science scores have declined (The purple line).

Who benefited from this spending? The number of school employees per pupil increased by more than 70% since 1970. (The dashed line.)

Job creation is not an enviable policy goal - it's a social waste, and this is indicative of that.

If You Have to Cut, Make It Bleed . . . and Hurt

If you were the head bureaucrat of a government program and, due to declining tax revenues, you had to make cuts in your program, one that's full of questionable spending programs, would you cut those programs or the programs that are most valued to taxpayers? Which would get your point across to the politicians that oversee your agency that you run a mean, tight ship that cannot afford to lose any money?

Fairfax County Schools Superintendent Jack D. Dale proposed to grow class sizes and ditch teachers, too, as a way to save. But then he went on to talk about the very programs that parents live for, the kinds of things real estate agents trying to move a particularly undistinguished rancher will memorize.

In this round of budget cuts, the county might have to end foreign language programs in elementary schools, cut the strings to some music classes, put summer school on ice, pull back on full-day kindergarten and eliminate freshman sports. The size and scope of the cuts are unprecedented for the 173,000-student school system, and more than $100 million in savings is going to be painful no matter where the ax falls.

Ebeneezer Scrooge and the Meaning of Christmas

Steven Landsburg posts one of his old Slate articles on the selfless attitude of Ebeneezer Scrooge.

Great artists are sometimes unaware of the deepest meanings in their own creations. Though Dickens might not have recognized it, the primary moral of A Christmas Carol is that there should be no limit on IRA contributions. This is quite independent of all the other reasons why the tax system should encourage saving (e.g., the salutary effects on economic growth).

If Christmas is the season of selflessness, then surely one of the great symbols of Christmas should be Ebenezer Scrooge—the old Scrooge, not the reformed one. It’s taxes, not misers, that need reforming.

This is true of many storytellers, including one of my favorites. Reportedly pressured by his wife to write a book depicting the destruction of the environment by greedy capitalists, Ted Geisel wrote one of the best books for teaching kids the importance of property rights and understanding the tragedy of the commons.

My friend Howie Baetjer also does an excellent job of explaining the benevolence of Ebeneezer Scrooge.