More on Education and Expertise

A few days ago, I highlighted an article that argued that the problem with public education was that there was not enough expertise and, heaven forbid, enough state level bureaucrats managing the infrastructure.  I pointed out that this is often the argument of technocrats in favor of failing public institutions:  The problem is not the institution, they argue, or its incentives but it just needs the right people in charge.  I argued that, probably like GM, all the expertise in the world was not going to turn around an organization whose DNA had gone senescent.

Alex Tabarrok comes at this issue from a different angle, but with similar results.  Too many of the examples highlighted of successes in public education rely on a super-teacher or super-administrator who overcomes all the organization problems in his/her school to create a success story, one that is usually fleeting and tends to die when that individual leaves  (Jaime Escalante is a great example - most of his math program improvements died after he left).

Tabarrok argues that you can't just keep hoping for more of these unique individuals who can overcome a myriad of bureaucratic obstacles.  You have to reinvent the system so that average capability, poorly motivated workers can still get a good result for students.  I know some will be scared off by the analogy, but this is the kind of thing that franchise restaurants do very well -- plug low-skill, sometimes poorly motivated employees into a system that successfully provides consistent, predictable service for customers.

What we need to save inner-city schools, and poor schools
everywhere, is a method that works when the teachers aren't heroes.
Even better if the method works when teachers are ordinary people,
poorly paid and ill-motivated - i.e. the system we have today. 

In Super Crunchers,
Ian Ayres argues that just such a method exists.  Overall, Super
Crunchers is a light but entertaining account of how large amounts of
data and cheap computing power are improving forecasting and decision
making in social science, government and business.  I enjoyed the
book.  Chapter 7, however, was a real highlight.

Ayres argues that large experimental studies have shown that the teaching method which works best is Direct Instruction (here and here
are two non-academic discussions which summarizes much of the same
academic evidence discussed in Ayres).  In Direct Instruction the
teacher follows a script, a carefully designed and evaluated script.
As Ayres notes this is key:

DI is scalable.  Its
success isn't contingent on the personality of some uber-teacher....You
don't need to be a genius to be an effective DI teacher.  DI can be
implemented in dozens upon dozens of classrooms with just ordinary
teachers.  You just need to be able to follow the script.

Contrary
to what you might think, the data also show that DI does not impede
creativity or self-esteem.  The education establishment, however, hates
DI because it is a threat to the power and prestige of teaching, they
prefer the model of teacher as hero.  As Ayres says "The education
establishment is wedded to its pet theories regardless of what the
evidence says."  As a result they have fought it tooth and nail so that
"Direct Instruction, the oldest and most validated program, has
captured only a little more than 1 percent of the grade-school
market."

I don't know anything about DI and haven't seen the data and so can't comment on its effectiveness.  But I can say that if it works, there is no way it will be adopted in public schools.  Public school systems are run first for the administration bureaucracy, second for the teachers, and only about third for the students.  Anything that serves the latter but reduces the power of the former will never succeed, again because the incentives are not there for better performance.  Only school competition will allow such new models to be tried.

9 Comments

  1. dearieme:

    Little harm in proletarianising the teachers if they have already largely destroyed any notion that they are a profession.

  2. Jeff:

    You forgot football. In Texas, it's:

    1. Administrators
    2. Teachers
    3. Football program
    4. Students

  3. Mike:

    DI sounds alot like the method the nuns used on us in grade school in the 60's...it was effective (along with corporal punishment, of course).

  4. Ari:

    DI sounds like, well, education. As a current high school student in a liberal state, I can personally attest to the degree teachers will go to find "alternative" teaching methods, all of which are of course complete bullshit. These include rearranging desks to make the "learning environment" more "welcoming," forcing students to do silly art projects with no educational value, abandoning actual work and note-taking in favor of random discussion, e.t.c. Keep in mind that I'm a senior in straight Advanced Placement courses. I can only imagine what goes on the in the average freshman class.

    Quote from one of the linked articles:

    "Ironically, those methods aim specifically at improving cognition or boosting self-esteem showed either negative average effects or no average effect on all three types of measure. This result anticipates later studies that have shown "the dark side" of efforts to found education upon self-esteem rather than viewing self-esteem as an outgrowth of acquiring proficiency at skills.

    Direct Instruction (DI), devised by Siegfried Engelmann in the early 1960's as he taught his own children, is defined by the researcher James Baumann: "The teacher, in a face to face, reasonably formal manner, tells, shows, models, demonstrates and teaches the skill to be learned. The key word is teacher, for it is the teacher who is in command."

  5. Greg:

    Sounds like another reason to homeschool. "Super Crunchers" sounds interesting, thanks for the note.

  6. JoshK:

    It just seems that when we have these conversations about "fixing education" that we've already gone and drank the socialized-school / public-teachers' union cool-aid. We don't sit around talking about fixing Fedex or Walmart or Albertsons. Any private sector company is just expected to work - and if not, it will fail and be replaced. If we ever re-privatize education we'll stop talking about it...

  7. John:

    DI is the method that the Navy has been using for upwards of 40 years to teach the Nuclear Power School. Officer walks in with a binder full of notes, whites section of notes on board, students copy section of notes, officer reads what is written on board, asks for questions, resolves all understanding issues of students, erases board, and continues. Tests occur at least weekly.

  8. Charles D. Quarles:

    Direct Instruction is another name for apprenticeship. It works quite well. In fact, the US Medical Education system uses it at both the undergraduate (medical school, dental school, optometry school, and nursing school) level and the post-graduate (medical residency) level. I have often wondered why apprenticeship based trade secondary schools died in this country. I know why now and it is the same reason why phonics was displaced by whole language and old style math basics were replaced by New Math (TM). It empowered the Socialists in and out of government at the expense of students and free peoples.

  9. Jim:

    You are spot on re implementation of DI. We have been trying for 4 years to get it fully implemented here on Guam, with full funding by the Feds (the only reason the bureaucracy let it get started), and in spite of continual and increasing success, the school system is fighting it tooth and nail.l

    Nearly impossible to improve this intrenched system. I am truly thankful that my kids are out of the system, getting out just prior to the recent dramatic decline in the last few years in all schools here, other than those fully implementing DI.

    If you can get DI into your school system, you should. It really works...thus the resistance by the bureaucracy.
    Jim