Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Public School Monopolies and Fairness

I got distracted and didn't reply before this post closed for comment. The upside of being a blogger is that the comments never real close. We just start them up again with a slightly different spin.

Besides, maybe this will entice Hiram/Jon to share his wisdom on G2A. It has been awhile...

Speed Gibson A Question of Fairness: Part 2

First: "The incentive of knowing that they have done a good job serving our kids, and the community as a whole, the same incentive incidentally that I am sure motivates those who teach and administer private schools. Nobody is making the big bucks from operating schools, either public or private."


The challenge I have with Public School self motivation is that they seem to have good intentions and no self control. It is kind of like sending my daughter to the store with a blank check to buy Christmas presents for her friends. She will rightly strive to make as many of her "friends" happy by buying many expensive presents. And it is likely that the quality of the gifts may suffer as she tries to satisfy so many friends with so many presents. She has good intentions, however there is no incentive for her to prioritize, limit, really think, etc.


Using RAS as an example, they have ~2,000 employees, ~11,000 students and ~18,000 parents who all "know" exactly what a GOOD School District should provide. Many of these folks are strongly motivated to ensure "their" viewpoint is supported and funded. Many of these solutions are in conflict, are niche offerings, are expensive, etc. Yet it is so hard to prioritize and say NO... I mean we may lose some students, hurt someones feelings, fail to offer that unique experience, lose some votes, etc.

It is much easier to agree and empathize with everyone while insisting that the schools need more money. The Fed, State, Local Taxpayers, Charter Schools, etc can then be painted as the villains. For instance:
  • We would love to give you a bigger raise, but those cheating Charters stole our students.
  • We would love to offer that program, but the irresponsible Feds are shorting us.
  • We would love to send you to training, but the State mandates these other expensive services.
  • We would love to fix up your school, but the local citizens will not support the levy.
It would be much harder to clearly define content, expectations, limits, priorities, etc and then take personal responsibility for saying no. Being the Manager is a major bummer at times, and often folks don't like your decisions.

I believe that budget constraints and Charter competition do a wonderful job of forcing reluctant folks to prioritize. The lack of funding makes folks overcome their discomfort/inertia and forces them to focus, rank, prioritize, improve quality/productivity and cut non-core or frivolous offerings. The Charters on the other hand make folks really question if they are offering the right things and satisfying their customers. I mean the Charters get students even though their offerings are very limited by comparison.

Second: "Not the kind of behavior associated with competitors, I would note. In any event, those are valuable assets I paid for with my taxpayer dollars, and I don't think they should be just given away. The fact is these schools were closed because, among some other pretty good reasons, the number of students in the district meant that keeping them open would not be efficient. Reopening the schools would simply undo a painful and difficult but very sound financial and planning decision."

The other perspective is that these schools may have been closed because the first Public School did a poor job of satisfying the kids and parents in the community, therefore they pursued other options. And since us citizens have already paid for the building, wouldn't it be wise to offer it to another Public School (ie Charter) that promises to do better for the community. If we don't, aren't we rewarding mediocrity and promoting waste? Yeah go ahead and build those schools, and if you can't keep them full, just take whatever money you can salvage and use it for something else... Sounds fine... We got plenty...

Third: "Near enough for me. To the extent these issues keep me up nights as they occasionally have, I don't worry at all about private schools. They are niche performers who serve small markets which public schools do not now and never will serve. What does worry me is losing kids to neighboring districts which, under the current method of school financing, would be an unmitigated disaster for my local school district. Speed's long ago posting that started off this thread, alluded to Spanish Immersion. Do we have Spanish immersion in order to increase the quantum of fairness in the district? Or because it's cheap? Or because it allows us to compete more effectively in keeping kids in the school district, and quite possibly at some point attracting kids from other school districts?" ""The debate seems to resolve around the fact that each local public school district is a "regional monopoly" on free education." "That isn't true really. With open enrollment, public school districts do not have regional monopolies on public education. Kids can and do enroll in schools not located within their school districts. For schools, it's a very competitive process."

I will repeat that "Open Enrollment" really isn't sincere competition in my opinion, and Lord knows it is not fair. The reality is that it is an escape clause. By this I mean that:
  • Only people that can afford to transport their kids can use it. For better or worse, the remainder remain trapped. (ie usually those that need the best school/teacher)
  • Both Districts are managed in part by Education Minnesota. (limits creativity, variation, staff pruning and improvement)
Now drop a good Charter in your local community that is managed and staffed differently, and accessible to all. Then we have true competition. GM, Ford and Chrysler thought they had competition, yet things really did not improve until Datsun, Toyota and Honda showed up to truly threaten them. That's when they seriously started improving their product, processes, quality, etc. The traditional Public Schools need this kind of motivation or the USA academic capabilities will continue to slide relative to the other developed countries. And that will be really BAD for all of us !!!

Thoughts?

Just curious since he speaks in past tense... Where is this nearly monopolistic company now? "Everyone has their own viewpoint, and schizoid personality that I am, I often have several. One of them is from the experience of working for many years for a company, that was one of the most successful monopolies in American business history. It was a company that built enormous wealth for it's shareholders, provided well paid and secure jobs for it's employers, while serving it's customers with outstanding and innovative products that set the standard for the market place." Still thriving, or did it get dismantled after becoming inflexible, arrogant and top heavy? As many of these companies become.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Public education does a number of different things, and is whipsawed between a number of different goals and objectives, many of them in conflict in different degrees. We want schools to be efficient and so we ask why they spend money on niche programs, but then we want them to be competitive, which can mean offering the kind of niche programming that will bring kids into the district. Overall, public schools have an obligation to serve all our kids, but not all of our kids have the same needs and interests.

As for priorities, the priority for school districts should be to teach our kids, not necessarily make life easier for parents.

Second point: In terms of competition RAS is doing ok. The number of kids coming into the district is in rough balance with those going out. I am very open to the idea of turning the closed schools into magnet schools of some kind. It's something the district should consider. But doing so would be a step toward competitiveness, and incidentally higher costs, not a step toward efficiency, very much the behavior we see in the child in the toy store.

Anonymous said...

There isn't anything particularly fair about competition. They don't make Peyton Manning to switch teams at half time to even things out. Every single child in every single school is different, and differently situated, with different assets and liabilities. There is no way that can evened out. Transportation-wise, it astonishes me how many parents pick up and drop off their kids from schools, often using car pools.

John said...

Remember to keep an eye on these schools. Supt Sicoli seems to believe in a similar vision. At least based on his initial comments after moving here from down South.

Attracted to BES Magnets
Pioneer Press BES Integration Have to buy article, but you can see the blog comments...
DailyMe PP BES Integration The PP article for free....
Art School Fizzling
Savage Pacer: BES View

As for competitive... Which students are coming in and which students are going out? (ie who do we look good to and who do we look not so good to) I know Dennis has a good slide on this, but I can not find it right now... Maybe later.

Same question: Can Open Enrollment by itself really improve Public School productivity, cost and quality? Or do we need something significant to push them all out of their comfort zone, and get them to be "Best in the World"?

Anonymous said...

"Still thriving, or did it get dismantled after becoming inflexible, arrogant and top heavy? As many of these companies become."

Innovations in technology lowered the barriers to the market allowing competitors to step in, but the company still remains the dominant player in it's field.

John said...

Found it... An oldie but a goody:
Supplemental Enrollment Report

I'd like to see an updated version if anyone has one. I am wondering what the budget and facility issues did to these Open Enrollment numbers? I know a bunch of folks moved West and South during facility transition. Just curious if we back filled from somewhere.

I know that RAS sent out a letter inviting the folks back and asking for their thoughts. One of my neighbors that attends Beacon got one. Probably a worth while effort, as long as RAS is really listening.
____________
Good to hear the company is still an Operational business !!!

The story reminds me of someone like IBM. The question is did IBM lose its dominant position due to bloat and complacency. Or because "Innovations in technology lowered the barriers to the market allowing competitors to step in". I suppose it is a matter of perspective....

Anonymous said...

IBM does just fine. But as it happened, they were in an industry that turned in a direction which was very difficult to monopolize, small computers, because they are so cheap and easy to make. Any garage hobbyist with a little bit of skill can make a serviceable desktop computer, and that's what many companies did. That led to the rise of the clones. The other thing they discovered was the extraordinary power of two complementary things in the computer industry, standardization and networking. There was a lot of money, as it turns out, in the software which standardized small computers, and that's the gap Microsoft filled, and that's part of what set the stage for computers talking to each other, the revolutionary innovation of our time.

The problem with computers as a business is that apart from Apple, personal computers are basically fungible. They consist of two things Microsoft software, and an Intel chip. The only other thing that changes on them is the label. What that tends to mean is that they compete on the basis of price, and where the barriers of entry to a business are low, pressure on price tend to shrink the profit margins into negative territory. An area where that's happening today is in book readers, the Kindle, Nook, which also compete with iPad which can employ the software of both, where prices are dropping on an almost daily basis. I fully expect to walk in a Barnes & Noble one day, and get handed a Nook for free.

Anonymous said...

I think we're off on the wrong foot. Open enrollment is not competition in any real sense. It's like do you want Bell South for your telephone company or nobody at all? Oh, if you move far enough, you can get AT&T (I'm talking pre-breakup of the classic monopoly) or nothing. You could switch between different arms of the same monopoly, but you had to move to a different reason to get somebody even nominally different (but still At&T). Magnet schools and special interest, like STEM schools, aren't competition either, because it is still run by a government agency that isn't accountable to the customer.

Time was you could have any color phone you wanted, as long as you chose black. Then along came the princess phone, and you could choose beige! Choice and competition, all from the same provider. ?? Really? I will believe in competition when I see schools actually competing for students and the dollars they bring with them, such that both the "losing" school and the "winning" school get better, because they have to. You don't get better playing against yourself. The way competition is kept fair is if everybody plays by the same rules. Right now the public schools offer a "free" education and nobody else can do that. It's not fair. Give every parent the voucher, even out the other rules, and watch public AND private schools all get better.

J. Ewing

John said...

Since I do not see vouchers as a viable option for the many reasons I listed previously, I think charters are a good step in the right direction. And from what I have heard, many charters are significantly different from the status quo public schools. And I think you will have a hard time convincing the traditional schools that the Charters are part of the same organization. (ie Ma Bell)

Now please take some time and help me understand what you think the difference is between Charters and "your ideal Schools" that would accept vouchers in your reality.

In my reality, the voucher is the child... Whichever school attracts the child, gets the money associated with that particular child. Just like a voucher... The only difference is that the Public's money must be used at Publicly funded schools.

It seems to me that Blake, Breck, Provident, etc could easily run a charter school and get in on all this "High Dollar" public funding if they wished. I am not sure why they don't...

Unless they don't think that they can suceeed with the challenging kids that have challenging families for that amount of funding?

Well, here is a list of schools that the traditional Public Schools seem to fear. MN Charter Schools They have unique methods, management, curriculum and have to compete for every dollar and volunteer hour they can get.

And they hope for someone to provide an empty "public" building for a resonable cost. I think this would be a good starting point.

Anonymous said...

"Open enrollment is not competition in any real sense. It's like do you want Bell South for your telephone company or nobody at all?"

I love the way people use analogies to gloss over the real differences in arguments. Schools are territorial and phone services are not. I have equal access to AT&T or Verizon as wireless providers. What doesn't distinguish them is how close they are.

I don't distinguish between real and unreal competition. The fact is different school districts offer different programs and have other things that distinguish them. Some of them advertise, and those advertisements are real enough. And I don't believe there is competition between some different kinds of schools. Those parents, for example, who want a religious education for their children aren't interested in public schools, they are not part of the market public schools serve. Public schools do not compete with religious schools because they do not have the "product" religious schools provide.

Anonymous said...

"It seems to me that Blake, Breck, Provident, etc could easily run a charter school and get in on all this "High Dollar" public funding if they wished. I am not sure why they don't."

A basic reason is that they don't want to be public schools. That's not a market they want to serve. And by and large, most public schools don't view them as competition, I believe.

The reality is that we are facing a 6.2 billion dollar budget deficit, and our schools are currently reeling from a 1.9 billion dollar budget cut. Finding more money to open more public schools, when enrollment is declining is just extremely problematic. Especially when it amounts subsidizing competition which many dismiss as unreal.

John said...

From a most knowledgeable and helpful reader... Here is a link that says us voucher and Charter folks have it all wrong... What is your take on this?

Washington Post International Tests...

Anonymous said...

It's difficult to know what to make of this sort of article. For example:

"The best performing school systems manage to provide high-quality education to all children."

Isn't this a tautology, and in that respect does it say anything more interesting than x equals x? Isn't it the reason best performing school systems provide high quality education to all children because that's the way we define them? And how exactly do we define high-quality education? Is it an education that teaches a kid how to be a good plumber? Or is it an education that results in a kid getting into Harvard? Or some combination of both?

Anonymous said...

I'm curious as to what degree the "findings" of that opinion piece are significant compared to other factors. For example, do private school students that come out of public schools do better than they did in public school? Do they do better than similar kids that stay in the same public school? Is there any explanation whatsoever for the fact that some public schools do twice as well as others with the same amount of money spent? Since the US spends twice as much as any other country, is there any reason whatsoever why we should accept such terrible results?

J. Ewing

John said...

I think the links are probably the most useful part of the post. I'll have to put a tickler in my task list to review them further.

I found it most humorous that folks are still suprised...