{"id":4116,"date":"2010-10-03T12:48:55","date_gmt":"2010-10-03T20:48:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=4116"},"modified":"2020-07-31T03:06:55","modified_gmt":"2020-07-31T10:06:55","slug":"4116","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=4116","title":{"rendered":"Not a Financial Crisis<\/q>"},"content":{"rendered":"

The self-styled SD<\/abbr> Planning Committee<\/a>, formed to fight cuts to state funding of education, health care, and social services, has posted flyers that declare<\/p>

We face not a financial crisis, but a crisis of priorities<\/span>,<\/blockquote>

I don't know why they end that with a comma<\/em>, as it's followed by a sentence in which it cannot participate. In any case, it's a somewhat puffed-up way of saying that

There's plenty of money for the budget; it's just not being spent well.<\/div><\/p>

Interesting concept, there, that there could be plenty of money in a budget, but that the money is not being well spent. They just might try applying that same<\/em> concept to just those portions of the budget that are allocated to education, to health care, and to social services. Perhaps, even after cuts, there would be plenty of money<\/em>, if only it were spent well<\/em>. And perhaps even if funding to these programmes were increased to the greatest possible levels, it would be spent badly<\/em>.<\/p>

Okay, so there's no perhaps<\/q> to it; that's just how it would be.<\/p>

On the other hand, I have to grimace when I hear or read of linking teacher pay to performance<\/q>.<\/p>

I understand the desire to pay teachers based upon the quality of their teaching. And, outside of the teachers' unions, almost everyone understands that it's not<\/em> a good thing to link teacher pay primarily (let alone directly) to years of service. But I'm pretty sure that real-world attempts to link teacher pay to ostensible measures of performance are going to increase

  • disincentives for teachers to accept jobs working with less able students,<\/li>
  • incentives for teachers to teach to the tests<\/em> by which student achievement is purportedly measured,<\/li>
  • student time tied-up in taking those d_mn'd tests, which themselves teach nothing to students beyond test-taking skills.<\/li><\/ul><\/p>

    A profoundly different model of education is needed to get something that will work<\/em>.<\/p>

    A part<\/em> of that model would be to use markets<\/em> to price teaching, recognizing (amongst other things) that different teaching contexts correspond to different markets.<\/p>

    Unfortunately, another<\/em> part of that model is for parents to accept a significantly greater degree of responsibility for ensuring that their children are properly educated. The vast majority of parents seem willing to pass the buck<\/em> to state-funded schools, regardless of their performance. It isn't sufficient to say Hey, I sent my kid to school! The school dropped the ball, not me!<\/q><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The self-styled SD Planning Committee, formed to fight cuts to state funding of education, health care, and social services, has posted flyers that declare We face not a financial crisis, but a crisis of priorities, I don't know why they end that with a comma, as it's followed by a sentence in which it cannot […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,36,9,104,4],"tags":[147,910,662,148,149,911,150,909],"class_list":["post-4116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-economics","category-ideology-philosophy","category-news","category-public","tag-economic-calculation","tag-education","tag-health-care","tag-markets","tag-prices","tag-social-services","tag-socialism","tag-state-funding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4116"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11380,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4116\/revisions\/11380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}