[lbo-talk] Dismal science on education, again

[David Green]

"I don't disagree with much of anything you've said, although Ravitch bothers me 
less than she does you. All that being said, however, it would be more helpful 
to me if some of those "any number of ways" were specified rather then gestured 
toward in a vague way. If you don't have the time for that, I'm sympathetic, but 
this is why I'm asking if anyone has seen responses to the piece that are 
concrete and specific."
 
The meritocratic ideology in relation to schooling has, during the neoliberal era, relied increasingly on "human capital" to legitimize the notion that economic outcomes reflect effort, intelligence, and "value-added," and that standardized tests are able to measure these, and even at an early age are indicative of basic abilities/achievements that are borne our in future success/failure. The alternative, obviously, is to see testing outcomes as sorting devices, and self-fulfilling and class-based prophecies of success/failure.
 
At the other end of the process, again, earnings may indicate not value-added, but who decides how much we get paid for what we do. Those with greater amounts of formal education have decided to pay themselves well, at various levels of professional and corporate life, in ways that don't necessarily reflect productivity, and that depend on credentials that limit the supply of workers. They've also figured out ways that those with less education shouldn't have their pay "artificially" raised by unions. In any event, the unionization of laborers doesn't necessarily relate to test scores, education, or value-added, but it does relate to wages. The authors of the study obviously neglect to raise any of these issues.
 
There are enormous ideological and statistical problems in the NYT-referenced study, but what's most interesting about the article is that it assumes that these problems don't exist. Instead, it assumes that higher test scores can eventually contribute to fixing the economy if they are widespread enough.
 
David Green