the social value of shared resources

Brett Frischmann
Faculty Candidate Talk
 (Photo credit: joebeone)

One thing lacking in deep structural change is a vision of where we are going. Schools as learning services centers that provide neighborhood hubs but are also in networks could be managed very differently than how we do it now. If we can transition from credential manufacture to providing services, which in a time of climate change, may well mean having neighborhood centers for communities, schools could be managed as a commons by the people who use them. We ripped out the trolley tracks relying on automobiles, the latest new thing. Do we really want to privatize education and let schools decay while we chase the next new thing? Is this what they are calling innovation?

Will parents and families actually be able to participate in managing a commons that they use?

Oxford University Press: Infrastructure: Brett M. Frischmann (from the Oxford website):  "Infrastructure: The Social Value of Shared Resources devotes much needed attention to understanding how society benefits from infrastructure resources and how management decisions affect a wide variety of interests. The book links infrastructure, a particular set of resources defined in terms of the manner in which they create value, with commons, a resource management principle by which a resource is shared within a community. The infrastructure commons ideas have broad implications for scholarship and public policy across many fields ranging from traditional infrastructure like roads to environmental economics to intellectual property to Internet policy."
...

 And these two excerpts are from the Conclusion of the book:

"Shared infrastructures shape our lives, our relationships with each other, the opportunities we enjoy, and the environment we share. Infrastructure commons are ubiquitous and essential to our social and economic systems. Yet we take them for granted, and frankly, we are paying the price for our lack of vision and understanding. Our shared infrastructures -- the lifeblood of our economy and modern society -- are crumbling. The ASCE Report Card for America's Infrastructure is only one of many indicators. Our shortsighted, piecemeal approach to infrastructure policy must change. We need a more systemic, long-term vision that better accounts for how infrastructure commons contribute to social welfare. 

 ..and this:

"This book develops a more critical, demand-focused theoretic approach. It links infrastructure, a particular set of resources defined functionally in terms of the manner in which the resources create value, with commons, a resource management principle by which a resource is available to all within a community on nondiscriminatory terms. ... While much of the book's discussion is framed in economics, the book persistently emphasizes the relevance and importance of values not well accounted for by conventional economics. "

And one more quote:

...managing infrastructure as a common good may be a more effective means for supporting the production of public and social goods than targeted subsidies.  Commons management is not a direct subsidy to infrastructure users who produce public or social goods, but it effectively creates cross-subsidies and eliminates the need to rely on either the market or the government to "pick winners"  --- that is, to prioritize or rank infrastructure-dependent users worthy of access or support." page 111

 Symposium at Concurring Opinions

Author Brett Frischmann has posted links to the symposia posts at the Center for Internet and Society. Commentary on Infrastructure: The Social Value of Shared Resources | Center for Internet and Society 

Posts include all sorts of topics but there is one on education, a topic not addressed within the book.  Author of this education post, Devan Desi, points out several things:

"One way to think about any work is whether it helps understand a range of problems. Brett Frischmann’sInfrastructure does precisely that…. As a good theory and framework should do, Frischmann’s work digs into several areas and cries out for future work. One example that comes to mind is education. 

"Education has been a crisis issue in the past several decades; Frischmann’s Infrastructure sorts major questions that I believe society misses in this area. An assumption is that education is a public good. Yet, I think we are straying from how we manage such goods. As education seems to be failing, the United States has turned to market solutions. The somewhat standard cry of government mistakes, lack of competition, etc. fit into one model of managing the issue. Yet, as Frischmann explains, education may be understood as a merit good and as such there is a demand side problem: “systematic undervaluation of the merit good in market settings.” (p. 45) I would add that mistakes in proper valuation of education as infrastructure lead to the creation of an education aristocracy that leads to problems of the so-called One Percent type many decry today (but are unwilling to address with tax reform). 

Recent evidence from Finland shows that taking an infrastructural approach leads to outcomes that we would want, but currently fail to reach. As the article describes:

"Decades ago, when the Finnish school system was badly in need of reform, the goal of the program that Finland instituted, resulting in so much success today, was never excellence. It was equity. Since the 1980s, the main driver of Finnish education policy has been the idea that every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background, income, or geographic location. Education has been seen first and foremost not as a way to produce star performers, but as an instrument to even out social inequality. … "

This approach strikes me as a good example of how thinking in terms of infrastructure, social goods, and externalities (p. 49) allows us to recognize different ways of managing complex societal issues. Furthermore, this example has data behind it. Finland is persistently in the top of PISA scores on language, math, and science. And if one wishes to say that Finland is homogenous, different than the U.S etc. there is a control. Norway went with the American model and did much less well. As the article points out, education is a state policy in the U.S. Some states are smaller and more homogenous than Finland. I suggest that a truly innovative state program would look at such an investment to allow the state a competitive advantage. 

elinor ostrom and our educational commons

related (h/t zemanta)

• Frischmann on Infrastructure
• Frischmann on Network Neutrality

truancy in the news, part two

Truancy is a crime created by the mass coerced school system.  As the social structure of American society has changed in the past 100 years, schools have not adapted to their enlarged role in society because they have not had any structural reason to do so: compulsory attendance guarantees a structure that builds out based on no input, like a business with guaranteed but silent customers. Schools have no built-in mechanism for relating to students and families. 

Indeed, we can see in these links how schools in the past few decades have reacted to a changing user base (changes driven by declining wages) by creating an in-house police force instead of developing deeper ways to work with students and families. This is not how a public social service supported by families and for families should be structured.  An education system that doesn't relate to the people who use the service cannot be effective on any level. 

Parents say Loudoun officials reaching too far to stop school tardies - The Washington Post:

Other times, the situation escalates. On Jan. 21, Loudoun mother Maureen Blake was arrested and charged with “contributing to the delinquency of her minor children by causing them to be habitually late to school,” according to court documents.

This was her second go-round in the courts for tardiness, she said, and now she faces a Class 1 misdemeanor that can carry a maximum of 12 months in jail.

Across the country, some states and local jurisdictions have begun to move away from a punitive approach to enforcing attendance rules. Police in Los Angeles had been issuing $250 truancy tickets to tardy students until recent months, when the policy was scaled back in response to an uprising by parents and activists.

“Punitive discipline leads to a higher dropout rate, more hostility in schools, it leads to kids disengaging from learning and it alienates parents,” said Judith Browne Dianis, co-director of Advancement Project, a civil rights organization that has advocated against harsh school discipline. “It is counter to everything that we know should be done.”

Other states have doubled down. An unusually strong Nebraska law passed in 2010 requires schools to refer students to the county attorney general after 20 absences, whether they’re excused or unexcused. The state commissioner of education, Roger Breed, has hailed the measure for shrinking the number of children who are chronically absent.

In Loudoun, some parents said the school system might accomplish more — with fewer dollars — by adopting a softer approach.

Ed Croft, Parent Teacher Organization treasurer at Waterford, received a certified letter in November from a county truancy officer warning of possible legal consequences. His first-grade son had been tardy 11 times, he said — usually by only a few minutes.

He said he and his wife have been more careful since then, but they’re still not perfect. They overslept last week and their son was late to school — and Croft worries that at some point, another tardy will trigger a court referral.

“If they’re going after the Denicores, they could easily go after me,” Croft said. “They’re just casting a wide net.”

Honors student jailed for truancy invited to Stanford leadership conference | khou.com Houston: "HOUSTON – Diane Tran, the Willis High School honors student who was thrown in jail last spring for missing too much school, is now attending a leadership conference at Stanford University."


Judge in Diane Tran case: I will continue to be tough on truancy | khou.com Houston: "Despite the reversal of the contempt charge in the Tran case, Moriarty said he plans to continue to be tough on truancy.

"I will continue to hold students, and sometimes parents, accountable for unexcused absences as we work to reduce truancy, lower the dropout rate, and instill in tomorrow’s leaders the belief that rules and laws must be followed by all for society to properly function," Moriarty wrote."

2.8 million school absences erased | The Columbus Dispatch: "Columbus City Schools officials wiped 2.8 million student absence days off the district’s computers during the past 51/2 school years, with some key officials responsible for tens of thousands of deletions.

The officials routinely erased more recorded student absences than they reported to the state — in some years, substantially more — according to district data tables The Dispatch obtained by filing a public-records request."

Mass. bill aims to help troubled kids, families - Boston.com: "But educators have expressed concerns over the legislation's requirement for school districts to create programs that deter children from missing school.

Mike Gilbert, from the Massachusetts Association of School Committees a group that represents and advocates for the interests of school leaders, called the requirement "another unfunded mandate."

Gilbert said that schools are already struggling with funding, especially those in urban districts where truancy is a large issue. He added that, by law, schools are required to have a truancy officer."

Disappointing city test scores - Baltimore Sun: "Educators could start by focusing on three areas where a new infusion of energy and talent might make a difference. They include further and sustained reductions in the number of out-of-school suspensions; a new and concerted push to coax truant student students back to the classroom; and more intensive efforts to tackle the problem of chronic absences. All of them will depend in one way or another on improving the overall physical and social environment schools offer their communities."

Mr. Alonso has already asked principals to devise alternatives to suspension for their most troublesome youngsters. Kicking kids out doesn't make the problem go away, because when suspended students come back they bring their old problems back with them, sometimes along with new ones. In-school suspension, after-school detention and weekend detention are just a few of the ways teachers can discipline students without depriving them of valuable instructional time.

Truants are, by definition, not in the classroom and therefore out of the reach of educators unless they are willing to track them down and persuade them to come back to school. This traditionally was the job of truant officers, whose function was more punitive than educational, but the city might get better results sending adults with whom a kid already has established a relationship of trust and respect.

Some kids are absent not because they are truants but because they have some chronic medical conditions such as asthma or migraines that keeps them out of class. Others don't attend regularly because they are victims of abuse or homelessness, or are taking care of family members. These are the toughest cases for educators because getting such children back into school involves providing medical, dental, counseling and other services before they can even begin to think about concentrating on school. That's hard to do if teachers and principals have no idea of what's going on in a kid's life, and it puts an additional burden on personnel to act in loco parentis. But it may be the only way to get some kids back to class.

The Center for Public Integrity: Los Angeles school police chief rethinking discipline policy: "In response to controversy over court citations to students as young as 10, the police chief of Los Angeles' largest school district said he's working with school officials to reduce such tickets and establish, by mid-August, more out-of-court counseling options for kids who are cited.

But Chief Steven Zipperman, who leads the nation's largest school police force, defended his 340 sworn officers' authority to issue citations when officers believe it's appropriate. Students have been cited for everything from truancy to vandalism to possessing a marker that could be used for graffiti. They've also been summoned to court for jaywalking, cigarette and pot smoking. Large numbers of students have additionally been cited for fisticuffs and for being disruptive inside and outside school.  "

Make the Grade - journal-news.net | News, sports, jobs, community information for Martinsburg - The Journal: "Nearly 80,000 public school students in West Virginia - about 20 percent of the total - met the definition of "truant" during the 2011-12 school year, according to state officials. That is, each of them missed five or more days of school in absences that were not excused.

Nearly 10 percent of the public school population, about 29,000 students, had 10 or more days of unexcused absences.

Dropout and Truancy Prevention Network (DTPN): 
Who pays for the RBT?

Most school districts pay for the program from operating funds. This is because the recaptured Weighted Average Daily Attendance revenue usually more than pays for the program.

• Other sources of funds are:
• Court budgets (including especially fine revenue)
• State and Federal grants for dropout prevention, student performance and truancy prevention.
• User (family) pay — from fine revenue
• Private sponsorship (e.g. corporate or Chamber of Commerce)

Once communities understand the effectiveness of the RBT, they get very creative about paying for it. There are few opportunities in life that truly "pay for themselves" but this is one of them.

truancy in the news, part one

Truancy in the news is a regular feature on this blog and this is part one of two posts.  Truancy is a function of compulsory attendance and attendance is the cornerstone of funding. Schools get money for the students that attend in various formulas.  Schools have never learned to work with families and kids in a meaningful way because they have relied on their legal arm and have not built the habit of working closely with the users of this system.  In a time of budget cuts, schools are cracking down on truancy.

South Portland set to expand preschool programming | The Forecaster: ""Truancy rates in South Portland are highest in kindergarten, and students who miss that much school are at risk of failure or dropping out," she said."We're trying to instill that love of learning early on, and the foundation that learning is important."

The district has had good luck with preschool. The first 12 students who attended pre-K classes at Brick Hill all navigated kindergarten this year with no need for any additional support, Godin said.

The next 12 students, who will start kindergarten next year, also seem prepared, she said.

Kindergarten students entering school unprepared for the standard curriculum is a growing problem in South Portland, probably because of declining levels of adult literacy."

Bob Andres, bandres@ajc.com

Danelle Swanson is arrested 

by DeKalb County Sheriff's deputies 

N. Mendez (left) and D. Dickerson 

at her apartment in DeKalb County during 

a roundup of parents of truant children.

Truancy a lingering problem, with jail a last resort  | ajc.com:   
"That's what happened Thursday to two DeKalb County mothers.

Cheryl McCoy and Danelle Swanson [left] were led away in cuffs, each charged with educational neglect, after DeKalb Sheriff's deputies pounded on their doors."

...

"Swanson, 26, [left] didn't show for court after her child missed 16 days of kindergarten. McCoy, 43, skipped court after her teenager missed 37 days of middle school."

Truancy fine battle against Lebanon School District becomes a class-action lawsuit | PennLive.com: "For example, Hummel, a single mother, said she was hit with more than $10,000 in fines. She has claimed that her two children were afraid to go to school because they were attacked and taunted and that district officials offered no help in dealing with the problems.
Other plaintiffs in the case have said they were fined and even jailed when their children missed school or got to class late due to health, behavioral or work scheduling problems.

In ruling in favor of the parents and the NAACP on the class action issue, Kane found that the school district’s arguments against certifying the class were groundless and “quixotic.”

She noted that the district has issued more than 1,200 truancy citations per school year since 2004-05 and that in 2008-09 more than 700 parents and students were slapped with 1,489 citations. From 2004 to 2009, 935 fines were levied that exceeded the $300 state cap, Kane observed, and at least 178 of those fines surpassed $1,000."

In Texas Schools, Parents Cited for Students' Misbehavior | PBS NewsHour: "Jordan, 17, and a ninth grader at Madison High School, has documented disability issues and learning difficulties. Jordan's Father, Norris, is disabled and on a fixed income. Mr. Baylor said he knew nothing about his son's absences until they had both received tickets. But he couldn't afford to pay the fines. At one point, father and son were both looking at potential jail time, all stemming from the Jordan's truancy."    via Blog this'




Wilton Tacks On Points To Track Student Absences | The Wilton Daily Voice: "WILTON, Conn. – Family vacations were once considered excused absences in Wilton Public Schools, but they will no longer have that distinction under the Connecticut State Board of Education’s new and more rigid definitions for excused and unexcused absences."

Nearly 600 parents cited for truancy this year as their kids skip | www.krmg.com: "She tells KRMG that of about 6,000 misdemeanors filed in the last year. 580 cases involved truancy.  Last Friday, the D.A.'s office filed 38 cases of truancy."
...   "All children between the ages of five and 18 must attend class.

The reports of truancy are filed by the school when a student has 10 or more unexcused absences.

Parents with kids who are simply out of control can go to the Juvenile Bureau and file a "child in need of supervision" petition, which can help mitigate the parents' criminal liability."

the impact of police in schools

Early Punishments Can Have Lasting Impact for Some Students | PBS NewsHour | June 26, 2012 | PBS: "“In fiscal year 2011 ... 330,000 non-traffic Class C [citations] were handled in the municipal and justice of the peace courts for juveniles,” Fowler said.

And because Texas adjudicates less serious “classroom cases” in municipal and justice of the peace courts – rather than in juvenile courts that attach confidentiality protections to the proceedings – the punishment likely won’t stop there for Rollins.

He may have to list the conviction going forward on everything from college and job applications to the forms requesting a driver’s license with the state of Texas.

It’s all part of a sweeping zero tolerance movement in schools that Fowler says started in the last few decades and has created a “school-to-prison pipeline.”"

This video gives a good overview of many issues in Texas's growing use of citation and harsh punishment. The Appleseed report mentioned in the video is here: Texas' School to Prison Pipeline,  and this is an excerpt:

"The media and public policy debates surrounding school crime in the 1960s—and continuing through the next decade—triggered a growth in campus security planning and increased pressure to have a police presence in schools. The public’s fears about “heightened youth violence” far exceeded actual juvenile crime statistics or documented accounts of schoolbased violent outbreaks requiring law enforcement intervention (see Appendix, The Genesis of the Myth of the Blackboard Jungle). Still, by 1978, one in 100 surveyed schools reported having a police presence. In the 1990s, this practice became more widespread. Media accounts of isolated deadly school shootings, such as occurred at Columbine High School in Colorado (1999), fanned public fears of “gun-wielding disaffected youth” and shifted the public and policy dialogue from school crime to school violence. This shift in focus led to an increase in federal funding for School Resource Officer (SRO) programs—and school districts in Texas, and other parts of the country, embraced the concept of SROs in schools as way to prevent “another Columbine from happening here.” 

"The Genesis of the Myth of the Blackboard Jungle" appendix concludes:
Congressional hearings almost always follow high-profile school shootings, and yet—with all this attention—we are in no better position today to discern the reality of school crime than we were in the 1950s. Nor have the “get tough” sanctions enacted in the 1990’s helped to address the problems that lead to school crime and violence. A true understanding of school crime is rooted in reliable data leading to research-based, field tested solutions.

This blog addresses the fact that schools have grown powerful by the repeated extension of compulsory attendance laws that bar families from meaningful interaction with schools. Compulsory attendance has placed a hugely troublesome legal tool in the hands of a now large bureaucracy and just having this ability has often prevented schools from adapting to the children and families they should be serving. There is no incentive to develop communication with families, much less begin to actually engage and learn from them.

The Factory Model 
Professional educators do not "get" what the factory approach is all about:

Search Results factory schools — Joanne Jacobs: "I’ve heard the schools-as-factories argument before and found it unpersuasive. The average American never has been a factory worker — and few factory workers needed much education until recently. Furthermore, if we’re educating for compliance, we’re doing a lousy job of it." 

Many see our huge incarceration rate, unmatched in the industrialized world, as necessary since we have so many uncompliant people, but many now say its the new Jim Crow.

Funny,  even management gurus in Forbes grasp the factory model and its impact:

The Single Best Idea for Reforming K-12 Education - Forbes: "To decide what is the single best idea for reforming K-12 education, one needs to figure out what is the biggest problem that the system currently faces. To my mind, the biggest problem is a preoccupation with, and the application of, the factory model of management to education, where everything is arranged for the scalability and efficiency of “the system”, to which the students, the teachers, the parents and the administrators have to adjust. “The system” grinds forward, at ever increasing cost and declining efficiency, dispiriting students, teachers and parents alike."

our educational commons

Press conference with the laureates of the memorial prize in economic sciences 2009 at the KVA: Elinor Ostrom. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The remarkable Elinor Ostrom has passed away. The inability of so-called reform plans to significantly involve families shows that the full implications of Ostrom's work are yet to be widely understood in educational circles where we still think schools must rely on hierarchical organization and professionals. Families are not acknowledged as having any ability to participate in this process except for the fake choice of schools now offered.

Elinor Ostrom dies at 78; first woman to win Nobel in economics - Los Angeles Times: "By studying diverse groups around the world, including Japanese fishermen and Swiss cheese makers, Ostrom showed that it was wrong-headed and often counterproductive to assume that those who used the resources could not set their own conservation plan. She stressed the importance of working on multiple levels to solve complex problems such as global warming.

"What we have ignored is what citizens can do and the importance of real involvement of the people versus just having somebody in Washington … make a rule," Ostrom said the day her Nobel was announced."

Elinor Ostrom - Telegraph: "In fact, she argued that communities themselves had developed out of the need to come together to work out how to avoid over-exploitation of common resources and ensure fairness. The “Tragedy”, as she saw it, typically occurs when there are one or more “stakeholders” who are outside the community social-economic system, who impose their solutions, exert political power or change the rules to gain an advantage for themselves."

Schools Are Part of the Commons
It isn't hard to see that we can generalize Elinor Ostrom's wonderful work to schools in many ways. Her work supports the idea of decentralization and emphasizes the ability of people to manage resources for themselves.  Public schools, the physical infrastructure as well as the staff, can be considered our educational commons and could be managed by families and staff working together. We do not need voucher and charter plans that remain top-down models imposed on communities. Communities and families could make choices and collaborate on the learning process together in their local schools. Schools could network with each other is all sorts of productive exchanges and relationships if families could actually be involved and making choices. In fact, as Ostrom discovered, communities and families can be strengthened by the process.  

One of the most common opinions families have about homeschooling is that is strengthens the family because they must work together. A lot of homeschoolers don't expect that. They anticipate the increased workload but they are often surprised at the upside in family relationships. Extending that, families and communities that were working together on learning, working themselves, could be surprised at the many good relationships born from that work. From the same article above:

With her husband, Vincent Ostrom, she developed the concept of “polycentrism”, which vests more authority over regulating the use of common resources to individuals, communities, local authorities and local NGOs. Local small-scale solutions, such as better loft insulation or the installation of solar panels could, cumulatively, make a tremendous difference, she argued, while big changes invariably lead to destabilisation and chaos. “What we have ignored is what citizens can do and the importance of real involvement of the people versus just having somebody in Washington make a rule,” she explained.

Communities that were actively involved and supported by schools truly focused on their needs could find ways to make tremendous changes for the better. Crazy top-down models of change are just that: top-down, uniformed models created by people with no structural tie to the children or families involved.  Often these people have financial interests in specific outcomes or their large-scale experiments are ideological instead of the thousand small practicalities of a decentralized model.

Closing local public schools reduces our educational commons. This privatization means closing the one center that many communities already have in place, a school that could be managed by families and staff if we saw schools as a social service providing learning resources.  And that location could network with others in many ways since there is no reason to only stay in that location, like a prison. It is a base but a neighborhood base.  And that's important. Instead, we see schools as educational factories required to turn out credentialed students per specifications. And now they plan to move the factories around and let some choose.  There may be a few creative charters and a few that work their past suspension tactics but with 180 days of mandated core courses and loads of testing all locked into college tracks, well, good luck fighting that remote control.

Decentralization
US schools are routinely called decentralized by many education writers. What they mean is the funding is decentralized. And that is a problem, too. But the power or political structure and the administrative structure are centralized and a recent post of mine transcribes Holt's own statement of the necessity of decentralizing this power which means a different relationship with the family.

Decentralization could also mean using neighborhood schools as community hubs and bases from which to network with other schools as well as the neighborhood and wider area.

Reason magazine discusses Ostrom's work on decentralization:

Elinor Ostrom, Scholar Who Argued for Decentralization, RIP - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "Landing somewhere between Hayek and Kropotkin, Ostrom advocated "polycentric governance" -- in the words of her husband and frequent collaborator Vincent, a system where "many elements are capable of making mutual adjustments for ordering their relationships with one another within a general system of rules where each element acts with independence of other elements." The Ostroms applied these ideas to areas ranging from local government to climate change, pushing back against the idea that (in Elinor's words) "without a hierarchical government to induce compliance, self-seeking citizens and officials would fail to generate efficient levels of public goods." In fact, they found, a patchwork of private organizations and "multiple governmental units without a clear hierarchy" regularly outperformed centralized systems."

Ostrom's work demonstrates that non-professionals can indeed manage complex resource management issues and though schools may be a somewhat different task, it really shouldn't be hard to see how those principles could apply to families and local schools. John Holts wrote of the closed silos of education, locked away on the many schools in a city, that make it a challenge for someone to get an instrument to play or to participate in some event or get access to tools. And schools sit idle and under-utilized for long stretches of time.

The grand philosopher of the Commons: in memory of Elinor Ostrom: "Ostrom identified key design principles underlying long-term, robust common-pool resource institutions. These principles related to clearly defined boundaries; congruence between rules and local needs and conditions; collective-choice arrangements; monitoring; graduated sanctions; conflict-resolution mechanisms; minimal recognition of rights to organise; and nested enterprises."

Ostrom's Own Education
Ostrom worked her way through college (back when you could) and was in some ways an untraditional student.  She is a passionate interdisciplinarian and teamworker.  More from Ostrom's autobiographical sketch (link at bottom to more of her work) and her criticism below of universities:

Elinor Ostrom - Biographical: "... The National Research Council created a special committee in the mid-1980s to review the empirical research written about common-pool resources. Scholars began to recognize that much research on this topic had been conducted but was divided by discipline, sector, and region. Consequently, scholars who studied inshore fisheries in Africa did not know about other studies of resources in Africa. If they were sociologists, they did not know any of the work done by economists and vice versa. Participating in the NRC committee, and seeing the immense amount of research that had been done but not synthesized, taught me a major lesson. The way we organize the modern American university fragments our knowledge badly. Not only are we divided by discipline, but we are divided by the methods that scholars use. Economists using nationwide statistical data are critical of economists using the experimental lab to test theory. Scholars who do field research are critical of the use of any other method."

Elinor Ostrom Reading List - NYTimes.com: "For those interested in more information about Professor Ostrom, here’s a brief reading list:"

background posts
ten key values (see decentralization)
amar bhide
centers for continual learning
reforesting the commons
the compulsory attendance mindset

truancy in the news

Up to 15 Percent of Students Chronically Skip School, Johns Hopkins Finds - NYTimes.com: "“We don’t see the problem clearly because, in most places, we don’t measure it, and average daily attendance really skews the way we view this,” said one of the authors, Robert Balfanz, a research professor at the university’s School of Education."

They argue that policy makers tend to look at absenteeism in the wrong way, requiring districts and states to measure average daily attendance rates, but — with the exception of a few states — not focusing on the relatively small number of students who account for most absences. They found that some schools report an average of more than 90 percent daily attendance, masking the fact that 40 percent of their students are chronically missing.         via Blog this'

[UPDATE: charge dropped after outcry]
Honor student placed in jail for tardiness and truancy at school | khou.com Houston: "Tran said she works a full-time job, a part-time job and takes advanced placement and dual credit college level courses. She said she is often too exhausted to wake up in time for school. Sometimes she misses the entire day, she said. Sometimes she arrives after attendance has been taken.

The judge ordered Tran to spend 24 hours in jail and pay a $100 fine. Judge Moriarty admitted that he wants to make an example of Tran.

“If you let one (truant student) run loose, what are you gonna’ do with the rest of ‘em? Let them go too?” Judge Moriarty asked."

Ky. near top in jailed kids for status offenses - Bowling Green Daily News: Local News: "Children were put into Kentucky jails more than 1,330 times last year for running away, skipping school, buying tobacco products and other offenses.

Kentucky has one of the highest rates in the nation of incarcerating kids for status offenses – actions that are crimes for children but not for adults. It’s a situation that harms children, negatively affects communities and costs taxpayers, according to a new study by Kentucky Youth Advocates.

“If a status offender is put into the same cell as a violent offender, there’s no one that thinks that status offender is going to turn the violent offender into a better-behaved kid,” said Terry Brooks, executive director of Kentucky Youth Advocates. “Instead, what happens is the status offender gets enrolled in a criminal school.”

Status offenders accounted for 17 percent of youth incarcerations in Kentucky last year. That means one out of every six times, a child was put in jail for something that wouldn’t be a crime for an adult, according to Kentucky Youth Advocates."

Release: United States Continuing to Overspend on Police, Despite Decreasing Crime Rates — Justice Policy Institute: "WASHINGTON, DC – Despite crime rates being at their lowest levels in more than 30 years, the U.S. continues to maintain large and increasingly militarized police units, spending more than $100 billion every year, according to a report released today by the Justice Policy Institute. Police forces have grown from locally-funded public safety initiatives into a federally subsidized jobs program, with a decreasing focus on community policing and growing concerns about racial profiling and “cuffs for cash,” with success measured not by increased safety and well-being but by more arrests."BBC News - Giants of French history: Jules Ferry and Marie Curie: "But it was in 1879 that he became part of the republican government of Jules Grevy, creating public primary schools and training secular teachers for them. In 1881, education became free and, the following year, secular and compulsory for children, both girls and boys, aged 6 to 13."

indonesia expands compulsory schooling

By Gunkarta Gunawan Kartapranata (Own work)
 licensed image, via Wikimedia Commons

Indonesia is expanding compulsory attendance to increase the length of time the large number of young people attend school. The investment in educational services for young people is a wonderful thing and the actual provisioning of services will boost the economy as Indonesia invests in the many jobs needed to provide these services. But a quick study of the history of mass coerced schooling should create a bit of caution. The basis of compulsion means it is an undemocratic system where input from its users does not really exist and there is no real incentive for administrative layers to care.


Tempointeraktif.com - Foke Plans 12 year Compulsory Education Program: "TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta:Coinciding with National Education Day, the Jakarta provincial government on May 2, 2012, unveiled its plan to launch a 12 years compulsory education program in 2013 till 2015. "

Education Key to Future of ‘Golden Generation’ | The Jakarta Globe: "In about two decades, Indonesia will hit the demographic jackpot, according to Education and Culture Minister Muhammad Nuh.

In 2010, about 46 million Indonesians were aged between zero and 9 years — the largest slice of the country’s demographic pie.

The next largest chunk comprised young people between the ages of 10 and 19, with about 44 million. The older the age group, the smaller the proportion of the population. The education minister sees all this as a bonus for Indonesia.

If the country can provide good education and health care — the “software” and “hardware” of human development, he says — for the 90 million Indonesians now aged zero to 19, then Indonesia will shine in the future. "
...
“In 2045, we are not talking about high school graduates anymore. We need more people with master’s degrees or even doctorates,” he said. 

Haris added that the ministry also needed to tackle a cultural problem of parents not seeing the importance of education and get them behind the plan.  ... 

If the country can provide good education and health care — the “software” and “hardware” of human development, he says — for the 90 million Indonesians now aged zero to 19, then Indonesia will shine in the future. "...“In 2045, we are not talking about high school graduates anymore. We need more people with master’s degrees or even doctorates,” he said. 
Haris added that the ministry also needed to tackle a cultural problem of parents not seeing the importance of education and get them behind the plan.    via Blog this'

The many jobs within the system that are created will be hard to rearrange over time in a compulsory system that restricts feedback by not building fundamental relationships with families and the children themselves. Only a model that allows feedback from users, that is driven by that in a democratic way, will be sustainable. Already, families are estranged and some surely feel an erosion of family significance in a compulsory system that easily defines their concerns as "non-belief." Using a mechanism like compulsory attendance may grow the system faster but , like using artificial fertilizer, the plant will not be as strong nor as well anchored in healthy soil. A less coercive approach would strengthen mediation and interaction instead of fostering an administrative body that has police power over families.

Also worrisome, the acceptance of a system where more degrees and more schooling are always needed. There is no stabilisation or way of regulating this and there are clearly limits to the amount of time people should spend in school or so one would think. The problem is very clear in the US where over half of those who completed high school are now low-income families. This is a problem of credentialing and jobs, not of schooling. Schools are used to filter out rather than opt in and the compulsory nature of schools undergirds their control of credentials. These could be separate: education services could stop attempting to manufacture credentialed persons and let individuals control what credentials they seek to attain. 

That said, reading of the enthusiasm with which Indonesia make a large investment in their children and young people and the belief in doing that is something I have not read much about in the US lately. The US has already invested in a school system but grasping system dynamics is too hard for US politicians and they prefer handing over the whole public system to charters and other privatization schemes even if it means destroying the public nature of the institution.

Having a mass coercive educational system is not a guarantee of child well-being. The US now has 20% of children in poverty and another 23% near that are "food insecure." Healthcare, too, is a struggling institution in a country where some want to fund weapons instead of children. That's always a bad sign. No real warrior takes bread out of children's mouths. Many call it corruption and that is a huge problem but it is also a sign of structures that are not designed to be democratic or fully aligned with citizens in a deep way.


background
real democracy
think twice India:  learn from mistakes made in the US
related
A to Z:homeschooling resources in Indonesia

bake the cake and eat it, too

 Virginia home-schoolers can’t have their cake and eat it, too - The Washington Post: 

Back when I was a budding thespian at Rockville High School, the drama teacher — a creative whirlwind named Orville Bell — decided to do something radical: He opened auditions for the spring musical, “Oklahoma!,” to students from a nearby all-girls Catholic school. I guess he figured the girls there were getting tired of doing “The Women” every year.

I was the second cowman from the left, and if it weren’t for my dance partner from Holy Cross, I may never have learned how to pronounce “Siobhan.”

I think there was some grumbling among a few Rockville parents, but because pretty much everyone who goes out for a musical gets in and none of the three girls were in featured roles, it wasn’t a problem.
What was a problem was next year, when Mr. Bell cast a college student as El Gallo in “The Fantasticks.” Everybody knew the college student would be a great El Gallo, but surely someone at Rockville should be given the chance at the lead. Mr. Bell backed down. 

I thought of this episode when I heard about the bill before the Virginia General Assembly that would allow home-schooled students to try out for and play on public school sports teams. It’s nicknamed the“Tebow Bill,” because apparently that’s what Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow did in Florida. 

I’m against the bill for various reasons. 

There are administrative drawbacks. If students are required to maintain a certain grade-point average to be eligible for extracurricular activities, who’s to say the home-schooled kid’s principal, homeroom teacher or guidance counselor — i.e., Mom, Mom and Mom — isn’t going to bump up Jimmy’s English grade from a C to a B just so he can start at wide receiver? 

Maybe schools should rethink their grading policies. Grades are proven to be ineffective and grading systems within the US are unequal and punitive by class. Grading is unnecessary and harmful; assessment can be ongoing and some teachers are dropping grading altogether.

Grading is a way schools routinely disallow many kids from sports. Schools do not see their job to be helping every kid who wants to play football play. Schools see their job as offering football to a chosen, qualified few.  The high school sports industry has a poor record of looking out for student health and wellness, cheerleaders are no longer coed, and the school culture around football games is overblown and often toxic.

The author continues:

But my main objection is philosophical. 

School does a lot of things, just one of which is educating students. School is a place children learn to get along, learn what it means to work in a group, to navigate the shoals of cliques and conflicts. It’s where you learn some of the basics of what it means to be a citizen. 

This is incorrect: schools do not teach any sort of positive socialization. Even in well-heeled districts, toxic socialization breeds peer-dependence, bullying, and cheating as well as an attitude of entitlement and a tacit acceptance of authoritarian methods. Perhaps we could say that mass school socialization creates the lack of empathy for others and an acceptance of authoritarian methods. That may be the core experience. Take a look at our political culture and think about it.

In August in the Deep South, we have kids in football gear with constant heat issues because of the massively centralized school system that ignores local climate and conditions. It's time for football in cooler locales and so everyone is on the schedule and that schedule is unrelated to climate.  If we had not massively centralized, no doubt we would have far more diversity of school cultures instead of the pasturized and processed football culture. Lots of schools would still develop different cultural activities if football wasn't one of the official school activities and there was some sort of democratic and local input.

Human children are not designed for authoritarian factories. And families and communities have changed in the past 30 years. Families in the US have scant time off, unlike other industrialized countries. Many US families have no health care and most have health care that is time intensive and of wildly varying quality. Families are increasingly poor, stressed and fractured. Communities are strapped and segregated and bowling alone. Schools have mounting cadres of police as well as heavy corporate involvement in the form of useless textbooks, standardized tests, core curriculum goals and various initiatives sought by corporateers interested in the bottom line but uninterested in what families want or need.

Grading for elementary students used to be U or S and a hot meal was cooked on site and there was recess and lots of walking to and fro. Now our schools grade and test even the youngest students and food is an abomination. From the one-room schoolhouse to the massively-centralized system we now live with has been a long journey and most working-class families struggle to cope with schools' intransigence, exploding fees and increasing suspensions and medication. The author also says:

We often despair about our public schools in this country, but they’ve been a common experience for millions of us. If you happen to not agree with that common experience, you might decide, as is your right, to home-school your child. 

You may have all sorts of reasons. Perhaps our public schools are too secular for you. Or maybe our public schools aren’t rigorous enough for you. Maybe our public schools aren’t safe enough for you. Maybe you love your children more than the rest of us love ours and you just want them around you all the time. 

There is not one common experience within the schools unless it is the decline of personal empathy for others and a innate acceptance of authoritarian tactics and ranking and sorting. That might be the true socialization experience of mass schooling. But there are many school communities with issues beyond who plays the lead role in a school play. Suspension rates in some areas are astounding, children and families are demoralized instead of energized.

“They just want to try out,” the bill’s sponsor, Del. Robert B. Bell (R-Charlottesville), told The Washington Post’s Anita Kumar. “They just want a chance to participate with their friends, their neighbors, their community members.” 

Guess what: They do have the chance. They can go to public school.
“I was disappointed to not have the opportunities that others did,” said a 17-year-old Leesburg home-schooled soccer player. 

You do have the opportunities. Yes, taking advantage of those opportunities would mean trading your living room for a classroom, and I can see why you might not want to do that, but life is full of difficult choices. You can’t always depend on others to make them easy for you. 

I’m not against home-schooling. I’m against people wanting to pick and choose the parts of a public education they agree with.

Public education system isn't much interested in the public. It's a business that doesn't care about its users. Parents have no voice or say in how their children are educated in a vast system that enforces its legal mandate with police.

Forced schooling may have begun with a few years of basic skills taught but we now enforce a massively long attendance because the entire system depends on the money tied to that attendance. Families are greatly diminished in power by this institution that grew large without any structural way of relating to families other than to use its police arm. And that means schools are increasingly becoming militarized. Family disenfranchisement plays a large part in the vast amount of money spent since families cannot help target services by participating.

Every family should be able to pick and choose classes at their school. Schools manufacture credentials instead of providing learning services. That a critical distinction; credential manufacture is a factory model, top-down process. Providing families and their children learning resources is different. The users of the system should be the people the schools work with and accommodate in a learning services model. If schools would value the users of the school, they could find that their choices drive the system.

Who else are the schools for?

More:

Should Home-Schoolers Play for the High School Team? - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com: 

New Orleans King Cake, French style, By Infrogmation of New Orleans (Photo by Infrogmation),
licensed by GFDL or CC-BY-SA -3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

student suspensions in DC

In Washington area, African American students suspended and expelled two to five times as often as whites - The Washington Post:

Across the Washington area, black students are suspended and expelled two to five times as often as white students, creating disparities in discipline that experts say reflect a growing national problem. 

....

She pointed to one unsettling statistic: 71 percent of suspensions for insubordination, a relatively rare offense in the county, were handed out to black students. African Americans make up 21 percent of students in Montgomery’s schools. The goal is to dig deeper into the data, offer more professional development and share best practices, she said. “We don’t try to minimize the data,” Lacey said. “We just try to talk about it the way it exists.”

The Post’s analysis found that in the Washington suburbs alone, more than 35,000 students were suspended or expelled from school at some point last school year — more than half of them black students.

Authoritarian schools that rely on coercion have not built the habit of listening to and working with families or students. It is the family and the child that are blamed for system issues and this means suspensions and truancy charges to enforce a relationship based on power, not service. This tendency is only magnified when students are in poverty. Yet is precisely these children and families who would benefit most from real and substantial support from their local schools. Schools and teachers should be allies of the family and focus on serving them instead of serving those who benefit from failing kids and testing schools. But schools now police families instead of working with them.

From James Baldwin's famous essay, "A Talk to Teachers," (see my post on Baldwin on education):

America is not the world and if America is going to become a nation, she must find a way – and this child must help her to find a way to use the tremendous potential and tremendous energy which this child represents. If this country does not find a way to use that energy, it will be destroyed by that energy.

There is a way to use that energy, to use the energy of every child, and the first step is creating a system of resources that works with and supports families and kids. A power relationship built on policing families is wrong from the start.

background posts

• understanding school funding
• james baldwin on education
• policing parents
• blaming parents, blaming the family
• the cost of getting tough
• semi-private clubs called schools
• make public schools truly public
• department of education police
• parental power, not
• blaming families, juvenile justice edition
• bullying families and children
• every parent should have real choices

growth of home schooling

public domain image via WikipediaEdWeek had this post up, looking at home schooling last July: Research Center: Home Schooling:

"Back in 1980, home schooling was illegal in 30 states. It was not until 1993 that all 50 states made the practice lawful. But in recent years, the practice of home schooling has taken off. While reliable numbers are hard to come by since states define and track home-school enrollment differently, some experts argue that home schooling is the fastest-growing form of education in the country (Ray, 2011)." ....

Public programs that offer support to home-schooled families are also popping up around the country. Alaska sponsors a program whereby teachers can communicate with home-schooled students all over the state via email, telephone, and home visits. California has developed an independent-study program for home-school students. Iowa and Washington now require schools to admit home-school students part time (Hardy, 2001).

The above [left] illustration is from "The Home and School Reference Work", Volume III by The Home and School Education Society, H. M. Dixon, President and Managing Editor. The book was published in 1917 by The Home and School Education Society.

This copyright free image is from page 883.