Dear Senator McCain:
Education policy finally played in the campaign this past week. You exchanged views on education with Senator Obama in the Third Debate, and your surrogate, Lisa Graham Keegan, had a wide-ranging education discussion with Linda Darling Hammond, Obama's surrogate, at New York's Columbia University.
But to tell the truth, these exchanges mystified me. I simply don't understand how your campaign chose your education agenda. Three of your key policies particularly perplex me:
Vouchers. "Choice" is the centerpiece of your education policy, and in the debates you and Graham Keegan both touted vouchers as a main part of that choice agenda. In the debate you insisted that they "worked" and should be expanded. You specifically mentioned the Washington, D.C. voucher (Opportunity Scholarship) program, insisting that it was having a positive effect on student achievement in that troubled school district. Graham Keegan also argued in the Columbia debate that studies showed positive results for vouchers.
Here is what puzzles me: none of what you and Graham Keegan claim for vouchers is based on any available evidence. Indeed, a study done by the Bush Administration's Department of Education in July 2008, under the supervision of a voucher advocate, Patrick Wolf, of the University of Arkansas' department of education reform, concludes that "After two years, there was no statistically significant difference in test scores in general between students who were offered an OSP scholarship and students who were not offered a scholarship.... This same pattern of findings holds when the analysis is conducted to determine the impact of using a scholarship rather than being offered a scholarship." Thus, after two years, no matter how you cut it, there were no perceptible gains for voucher recipients in D.C. compared to similar public school students.
Maybe, if not D.C., there is another voucher case for which you can claim a positive impact -- Milwaukee, for example. However, the first report of a large study, again being conducted by Patrick Wolf, on the performance of 18,000 low-income voucher students in Milwaukee's Parental Choice Program shows that they do no better in their private schools than similar students in Milwaukee's public schools.
So I don't get why you are advocating vouchers as a core educational policy you would push in your Administration. If they have no positive effect on low-income pupils' achievement, why bother? Sure, choice is nice, but if there is no evidence students learn more, why keep insisting that choice "works"?
Early Education. My second puzzle is why your campaign seems to doubt the mountain of evidence about high payoffs to investment in early childhood education for low-income children. While you are ready to back vouchers whole hog when the research shows no gains, you are incredibly cautious on early childhood when the research shows huge social returns. Graham Keegan argued at Columbia that your policy would be to invest $10 million in 50 states (up to $200 thousand per state) to sponsor model Head Start centers. Graham Keegan and you stated that Head Start is still not very effective, because test score differences for Head Starters dissipate by third grade.
But long-term studies of Head Start and other early center-based childhood programs suggest significantly greater high school graduation rates for low-income children who participate in such programs, hence very great social payoffs in lower incarceration and unemployment rates, and higher future incomes. All told, according to the Rand Corporation, investment in 0-4 year-olds' education yields more than $4 in social benefits for every dollar spent. Your $10 million in commitment to early childhood represents about 48 minutes of spending on the War in Iraq, and only one-one thousandths of what Senator Obama says he will put into early childhood. Why are you holding back here and so enthusiastic about choice, when the data show that you should he doing just the opposite, especially if you want to help economically disadvantaged children?
Recruiting Good Teachers. I don't get your teacher recruitment policy either, so maybe you can straighten me out. In her debate, Graham Keegan pushed hard on the notion that the main way your Administration would bring good new teachers into the system would be to use alternative certification routes. One such route is the popular Teach for America, where graduates from good colleges take one-month immersion courses and then plunge into teaching low-income students in inner city schools. I guess you would recommend the same approach to our shortage of primary care doctors, gerontologists, and nurses, especially where the shortages are great -- in inner city communities. Just take smart college graduates, give them a quick course in using computers to diagnose and treat illnesses, and send them out to inner city clinics.
These might be great experiences for talented college graduates before going on with their real lives, but do you honestly believe that alternatively certified teachers staying an average of two plus years in the classroom are going to make a serious long-term dent in improving education for academically shortchanged kids? The empirical results certainly don't bear that out.
Don't you think that we as a society should start thinking about what it will take to prepare many more high quality professional teachers for the growing fraction of students coming from disadvantaged households, and what it will take to change the conditions of teaching in their schools? These students need even more highly skilled teachers and principals than an upper middle class child to succeed, but they actually get the short end of the educational stick -- mainly because there just aren't enough highly skilled, relevantly prepared educators trained to work in such high need schools. At least Senator Obama's education platform talks about investing more in mentoring programs for inner city teachers and spending more to help needy schools.
I must be missing something, but it appears to me that you and your education advisors are pushing policies that ignore reliable research results. I can't tell whether it's a Scrooge mentality about investing in education or a stubborn belief in deregulation that is trumping common sense here. What happened to the pragmatic John McCain? If I may be so bold, let me offer my own advice: beware of ideas backed by questionable evidence; they usually lead to failed policies. Check out what happened to the Bush administration.