Beware of Arne Duncan’s Tricks

Posted on Mar 9, 2011

White House / Pete Souza

President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan speak to sixth-grade students at Graham Road Elementary School in Falls Church, Va.

By Moshe Adler

The statistical evidence is that smaller class size means better education, but smaller class size also means higher taxes. So Education Secretary Arne Duncan chose trickery to divert parents from the clear road.

At a recent meeting of governors in Washington he suggested that they pay bonuses to the best teachers if they agree to increase their class size. Duncan would prefer to put his own school-age children in a classroom with 28 students led by a “fantastic teacher” rather than in one with 23 and a “mediocre” teacher, he said.

But what parent wouldn’t? If large class size becomes the sign of a good teacher, no doubt all parents will insist that their child be placed in the largest class that a school has to offer. Unable to fit all students in just one class, however, principals will declare all teachers fantastic and assign large classes to all.

And the beauty of it is that the demand for large classes will come from the parents themselves. Clever, huh?

(For a discussion of the statistical evidence, go to the chapter “You Can’t Throw Money at Education” in my book, “Economics for the Rest of Us” pp. 97-106.)

Moshe Adler teaches economics at Columbia University and at the Harry Van Arsdale Center for Labor Studies at Empire State College.

More Below the Ad

New and Improved Comments

We are launching a major overhaul of our comments section.

In addition to more robust spam filtering and moderation, new features include the ability to rate other comments, sort how they are displayed and respond directly via e-mail or in a thread.

Unfortunately, commenters will lose their existing Truthdig identities. It's a pain, we know, but on the plus side you will now be able to log in with a plethora of options, including Google, Twitter, Facebook and Disqus accounts.

Before launching this system we spent months in discussion with our top commenters. We listened to the feedback and we hope you like what we've come up with.

Please direct any problems or concerns to us via our contact page.