Parents Know Better Than Standardized Tests

New school-choice studies show that even the least advantaged find superior schools for their kids.

By Jason Bedrick and Corey A. DeAngelis. Excerpt:

"New studies on school choice in Colombia and Barbados, however, suggest families know something that tests can’t detect. These two countries, with per capita incomes a quarter and a third of America’s, respectively, can teach us a lot about how the most economically disadvantaged families choose schools.

Stanford’s Eric Bettinger and his research team found that students who won a lottery for a voucher in Colombia were 17% more likely to complete high school on time than students who lost the lottery. The study, released in July, used a method of random assignment to compare apples to apples. So it isn’t because of selection bias that lottery winners earned 8% more than lottery losers by the time they turned 33. It’s because their parents were allowed to choose schools that were better fits for their children.

The positive effects on earnings were even larger for female students (11%) and students who applied to vocational schools (17%). For a single educational intervention, these are substantial increases. The researchers conclude that vouchers “greatly increased [a low-income child’s] chance of transitioning to the middle class.”

Likewise, a rigorous 2018 study revised a few months ago found school choice boosted social mobility in Barbados. Researchers Diether Beuermann and Kirabo Jackson compared the outcomes of more than 7,000 students who had scored right above and below an arbitrary cutoff that Barbados used to determine whether they could enroll in their parents’ preferred school. The study found that attending schools chosen by parents improved student well-being significantly, based on an index of educational attainment, occupational rank, earnings and health.

The results are mixed, however, when it comes to test scores. Two earlier evaluations of the same school-choice program in Colombia, published in the American Economic Review, found it increased test scores and educational attainment substantially. By contrast, the Barbados study found no effect of school choice on test scores, despite the long-run gains in real-life outcomes. This is the latest in a series of studies finding disconnects between effects on test scores and other outcomes—income, high-school graduation, college enrollment, college completion and more—for which tests are supposed to be a proxy.

If test scores aren’t reflecting the long-run outcomes that we care about most, then our thinking needs to change. As the Barbados study concludes, “parents may be rational to prefer schools that have no short-run test-score impacts.”

Parents see more than test scores. Several surveys of parents participating in school-choice programs find that instruction in religious values, morality and character is among the top reasons they select a given school. They want schools that teach their children how to be not only good students but good people. That means inculcating skills and behaviors such as impulse control, conscientiousness and grit—what used to be called “character education.” Unfortunately, character education is generally watered down or absent in traditional U.S. public schools."

The IPCC sounds an alarm about food production, but another U.N. agency’s data show it’s a false one

See A Famine of Fact at U.N. Climate Panel by James Taylor. He is director of the Heartland Institute’s Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy.

"Global crop production sets new records virtually every year. That didn’t stop the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from publishing an alarmist report Aug. 8 that suggests global warming has devastated crop production and threatens food shortages.

“Climate change . . . has adversely impacted food security and terrestrial ecosystems as well as contributed to desertification and land degradation in many regions,” the report asserts. “Warming compounded by drying has caused yield declines in parts of Southern Europe. Based on indigenous and local knowledge, climate change is affecting food security in drylands, particularly those in Africa, and high mountain regions of Asia and South America.”

At the same time, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reports that new records were set for global corn, wheat and rice production five years running through 2017, the most recent year for which data are available. How is that possible?

The IPCC report parses words and engages in semantic tricks to give readers a false impression of declining global crop production. Note the reference to declining yields in “parts” of Southern Europe. The report doesn’t mention that yields are increasing in Southern Europe as a whole. What sense does it make to blame declining yields in a small portion of the world on global warming without crediting global warming for global gains?

The IPCC claims that “indigenous and local knowledge”—as distinct from objectively quantifiable data—supports its claim of declining food production in “drylands” of Africa, Asia and South America. Yet data show crop yields are increasing throughout all three continents and in almost all the nations characterized by drylands.

Environmental activist groups, bureaucrats, socialists looking to transform Western society, and biased journalists continue to make climate claims that have no basis in fact. They hope a constant drumbeat of authoritative-sounding falsehoods will convince you we’re in a crisis only they can solve."

The EPA recently said it will no longer approve product labels that claim glyphosate is carcinogenic to humans

See A Scientific Roundup: The EPA intervenes against California’s rogue cancer regulation. Excerpts:

"In an extraordinary intervention, the EPA recently said it will no longer approve product labels that claim glyphosate is carcinogenic to humans. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup, the popular weed killer. The herbicide has been on the U.S. market since 1974, and the scientific consensus is that it isn’t carcinogenic in humans.

The letter is a rebuke to California, which in 2015 said it would add glyphosate to its official list of carcinogens under the state’s 1986 Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, known as Proposition 65. California cited the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer’s finding that glyphosate “probably” causes cancer. "

"EPA’s letter is an attempt to restore science to the glyphosate debate and counter California’s rogue regulation. The letter cites EPA’s extensive review of the scientific literature on glyphosate, as well as the concurring judgments of regulators in Canada, Australia, the European Union, Germany, New Zealand and Japan."

Poor living conditions in the Soviet Union

See ‘Without the Banya We Would Perish’ Review: Sweat Like a Russian “Either socialism will defeat the louse,” Lenin famously declared, “or the louse will defeat socialism.” The louse won. Book review of Without the Banya We Would Perish: A History of the Russian Bathhouse by Ethan Pollock
by Gary Saul Morson. 

"In the first years of the Soviet Union, typhus and other epidemic diseases took millions of lives, and communist officials placed their hopes in new bathhouses. “Either socialism will defeat the louse,” Lenin famously declared, “or the louse will defeat socialism.” The louse won. As late as 1965, when typhus was spreading in Moldova, there were still so few banyas that residents of the capital, Kishinev, could bathe, on average, once every 150 days.

Right through the 1970s, most Soviet citizens lived without indoor plumbing. Even in 1991, when the Soviet Union ended, many who did have indoor plumbing had to share it with several other families in a communal apartment. As long as the U.S.S.R. lasted, banyas were a necessity, but shoddy construction and Soviet inefficiency guaranteed that there were never enough. Every five-year plan promised ambitious banya construction, but we can infer how few were built when Mr. Pollock reminds us that “hardly a month went by in the 1930s without an article in either Pravda or Izvestiia announcing the completion of a banya in some part of the USSR.” As the novelist Mikhail Bulgakov observed, “red tape triumphs” while “the people become encrusted in filth.”

As anyone familiar with Soviet institutions would guess, most banyas were “under repair” at any given time. “In 1946, if all the banyas were running smoothly, people could bathe in a banya only once every 60 days on average,” Mr. Pollock explains. But all the banyas did not run smoothly: “In the city of Kaluga plans called for its only two banyas to provide 500,000 cleanings in the first half of 1946. Instead they provided only 172.” Workers, waiting hours in line only to find there was no more hot water when their turn came, complained of a “banya famine.”

Throughout the Soviet period it remained common to use unfiltered water, polluted with human and industrial waste, and Mr. Pollock mentions a banya that got its water from a swamp. Sometimes Soviet officials built banyas with no source of water at all. In city after city, the boilers exploded."

Dark Money On The Left

See The Left’s Lucrative Nonprofits: ‘Powerful interests’ and ‘dark money’ are mostly on the Democratic side by Kimberley A. Strassel. Excerpts:

"In 2018 the nonprofit watchdog Capital Research Center analyzed grants handed out in the 2014 election year by six big foundations on the right (including the Bradley and Charles Koch foundations) versus six on the left (including the Open Society and Tides foundations). Liberal public-policy charities, organized under chapter 501(c)(3) of the tax code, bagged $7.4 billion of this foundation money in 2014. For conservative charities, the figure was a mere $2.2 billion. That $7.4 billion also dwarfed total 2013-14 campaign receipts to federal, state and local campaigns ($4.1 billion) and spending that cycle by independent groups ($830 million)."

The book showcases Planned Parenthood, which according to its tax filings has for at least eight years spent tens of millions of dollars in total on contracts with Grassroots Campaigns Inc. GCI is a for-profit political outfit, which brags about activating Democratic voters. Technically, Planned Parenthood hires GCI for “consulting” and “fundraising.” The latter involves rolling out GCI employees to knock on doors or stand on the street asking for Planned Parenthood donations. This solicitation is netting someone somewhere an extraordinary list of potential Democratic voters and recruits. And here’s the kicker: Tax filings show that Planned Parenthood consistently pays more to GCI annually than GCI raises for Planned Parenthood. Other enormous liberal charities use GCI in the same way, and consistently run losses.

Dark, powerful money? The left has a monopoly here, too, via the creation of a new “sponsor” model. Take Arabella Advisers, also the subject of a Capital Research Center report. Arabella is a for-profit, privately held entity. It manages four generously funded liberal nonprofits, which according to tax filings between 2013 and 2017 received $1.6 billion in donations. Those four entities in turn collectively “sponsor” dozens of political outfits. The beauty of this arrangement, for the left, is that the “projects” don’t have to disclose any information—salaries, vendors, original funders, boards, nothing. They are black holes.

And they are influential. Just one of these recent “pop-up” groups is Demand Justice, a “project” of Arabella’s Sixteen Thirty Fund. The outfit got rolling in early 2018, with the express purpose of combating Republican judicial nominees, and was a major player in the drive-by hit on Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Almost nothing is known about Demand Justice beyond that it is run by former Hillary Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon. Where are all those media sleuths when you need them to sniff out “dark money”?"

Companies are restructuring their compensation and benefits packages to attract these qualified women

See Historic Rise of College-Educated Women in Labor Force Changes Workplace by Likhitha Butchireddygari of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"The rise of these female workers is changing the way companies structure compensation and benefits packages to attract qualified women. According to human resources consulting firm Mercer ’s 2015 National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans, 6% of employers with 20,000 or more employees covered egg freezing. In 2018, that number nearly tripled to 17%. Smaller companies have seen smaller but steady growth in coverage of fertility services in recent years.

“With greater numbers, HR departments are going to have to pay more attention to their female-educated workers,” said Richard Fry, senior researcher at the Pew Research Center. “For example, there’s evidence that female workers maybe more value flexible-work arrangements. They may value more highly generous parental-leave policies.”

Paid parental leave has also seen a growth. The percent of companies offering coverage increased from 24% to 40% between 2015 and 2018, according to Mercer’s Survey on Absence and Disability Management."

It might be better to divert drug users to social service programs and intensive case management

See Seattle Has Figured Out How to End the War on Drugs: While other cities are jailing drug users, Seattle has found another way by Nicholas Kristof. Excerpts:

"Seattle’s first crucial step came in 2011 when Satterberg and others started a program called LEAD, short for Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion. The idea is that instead of simply arresting drug users for narcotics or prostitution, police officers watch for those who are nonviolent and want help, and divert them to social service programs and intensive case management."

"Almost immediately, this was a huge success. A 2017 peer-reviewed study found that drug users assigned to LEAD were 58 percent less likely to be rearrested, compared with a control group. Participants were also almost twice as likely to have housing as they had been before entering LEAD, and 46 percent more likely to be employed or getting job training.

LEAD isn’t cheap — it costs about $350 per month per participant to provide case managers. But it is cheaper than jail, courts and costs associated with homelessness."
"While the U.S. doubled down on the criminal justice approach to drugs, Portugal took the opposite avenue, decriminalizing possession of all drugs in 2001. It was a gamble, but it succeeded. As I’ve reported, Portugal’s overdose deaths plunged. The upshot is that drug mortality rates in the United States are now about 50 times higher than in Portugal."

"“Legislative and law enforcement solutions to drug problems in the U.S. have consistently caused more harm than they have solved,” noted Alex Kral, an epidemiologist with RTI International, a think tank. Countless studies have shown, he said, that public health approaches work better."