Department of better late than never

I just came across this excellent piece on President Obama's education speech at FactCheck.org. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to keep up with the education debate, but if you just want the punchline, here it is:

Most of the major claims in the president's speech were either based on highly selective reading of the data or were simply wrong.

This brings us to one of the strangest aspects of the education debate: the way it makes smart, conscientious people act grossly out of character. Consider this representative example from FactCheck:

But the claim that "our high school dropout rate has tripled in the past thirty years"? That’s not even in the ballpark. According to the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, the "status dropout rate" – defined as the percentage of people between ages 16 and 24 who are not in school and do not have high school diplomas or GEDs – was 9.3 percent in 2006. In 1976, 30 years before that, it was 14.1. That’s actually a 34 percent decrease in the high school dropout rate.

Of course, dropout rates are notoriously hard to measure and compare. For instance, while NCES shows a status dropout rate of 9.3 in 2006, the high school completion rate for that year was only 74.8 percent. Why the discrepancy? Instead of counting people of a certain age with a diploma or equivalency certificate, this figure compares the number of high school freshman in a certain year to the number receiving a high school diploma four years later. Those who take more than four years to finish aren’t counted, nor are students who get GEDs instead of diplomas. But using this calculation still doesn’t back up Obama’s claim. The dropout rate – that is, the discrepancy between incoming freshmen and graduates – would have been 25.2 percent in the 2006-2007 school year. The rate in 1976-1977 was 25.6 percent.

Even pessimistic accounts don’t show a tripled dropout rate. According to a report by the Educational Testing Service, titled "One Third of a Nation" after the number of students they say are high school dropouts, high school completion rates peaked at 77.1 percent in 1969 and dropped to 69.9 percent in 2000. (NCES shows higher numbers in both years.);That would put dropout rates at 22.9 and 30.1 percent respectively – a 30 percent increase over 31 years. As many sixth-graders could tell you, tripling would mean a 200 percent increase.

So where did Obama’s figure come from? A White House spokesman pointed us to a report by the College Board, which said: "The rate at which American students disappear from school between grades nine and 12 has tripled in the last 30 years." But the College Board’s report included a mistake, which it later corrected: The rate really refers to what happened between grades nine and 10. More important, however, it is not really a "dropout rate." The College Board report in turn cites a 2004 study by the National Board on Educational Testing and Public Policy, which actually shows a tripling of the attrition rate between grades nine and 10, not the dropout rate. In other words, the difference between the number of students enrolled in grade nine in one year and the number enrolled in grade 10 the next year has increased threefold. At the same time, there has been a corresponding threefold increase in grade nine enrollments relative to grade eight. The report shows more ninth-graders failing that grade, not dropping out.

Given that the reform movement has been railing against social promotion for years, it's hard to argue that an increase in students held back is a cause for alarm.

The spam filter on Blogger... what's the word?...

Oh, I remember, sucks.

It seems to have a problem with long comments so if you write a comment and it doesn't appear, please follow up with a short note and Joseph or I will check the filter.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Jonathan Chait disapproves of a liberal journalist's flip-flop on unions

In today's TNR:

New York has a mordantly funny piece about the effort by staffers at Harper's to unionize. The saga begins with gross mismanagement by owner Rick MacArthur, spurring the staff to organize. Then the left-wing MacArthur started to act a lot like a union-crushing boss.

I have a bit more sympathy for MacArthur. He's in a difficult situation trying to save a tremendously worthwhile institution. I tend to be very union-friendly but the situation can get murky when the business in question really is struggling to survive, not just making a play for sympathy. Given that my only source of information is the gossipy and badly written New York piece, it's difficult to assign much blame.

Besides, it's not like he attacked a fundamental role of unions like the right to protect their employees from unfair termination.

Mortgage Questions

This post had a very perceptive take on a question from Megan McArdle:

McArdle: “Let’s turn it around,” I asked. “What if the bank decided that it wanted to exercise the same sort of option?…What if the bank foreclosed on your house, even though you made the payments, because it figured it could make more money taking the house and selling it?” (Not a likely scenario, I know, but a useful thought experiment.).

Response:

Banks exercise the same sort of option all the time when they resell mortgages (and hopefully notes!) from one entity to another entity. That’s the problem we have right now, that this reselling option banks use was so sloppy it’s tearing up the economy.

This is why if you are the type of person who thinks markets self-regulate through consumer demand and reputation there’s a major problem, as consumers have no choice over their mortgage servicer. If you don’t like your servicer, and refinance your mortgage with another bank, that bank can still sell off your mortgage and you can still end up serviced by the same institution.

I never quite thought of the decision to resell mortgages in this light, but this is a remarkably good point. It's not quite the same scenario as "seize the house" (which I think was the actual tactic that McArdle had in mind) but it certainly does put the decision to resell mortgages in perspective.

In a more pragmatic light, the decision to try and do regulation by reputation (long a bad idea) has even less relevance in the modern world. First of all, job tenures at banks may be quite short so the people making decisions that undermine a firms reputation may be elsewhere at the end of this period. Second, firms themselves often vanish or are absorbed by other firms (consider Washington Mutual as an example). These features of the modern corporate environment make it difficult to use a reputation based system as the primary check on the system.

This is not to say that homeowners who are in default should be given free houses (I'd think that was obviously an incorrect conclusion) but rather that we should give the regulatory structure of banks some serious thought.

The Golden Globes as a collective action problem

Even by the standards of Hollywood awards, the Golden Globes was a largely pointless exercise, selected by small and lightly credentialed group of no particular standing. For awhile, it represented a small net positive for the industry -- it did generate publicity and the large number of categories meant that a lot of shows could add "winner of..." to their promotional material -- but eventually the meaninglessness, the poor choices and the suspicion that nominations were made based on who might attend the ceremony all pushed the Golden Globes into the liability category. This came to a head this year with multiple nominations for the Tourist, one of the worst-reviewed pictures of the season, and with a payola scandal.

I suspect that most of the industry would like to see the Golden Globes go away but here's where the collective action problem comes in. If everyone who disapproved would stop covering or attending the event, they could probably kill it in a year or two (I'm counting being bumped to E! as virtual death), but even the Globes' harshest critics haven't been able to go cold turkey. As long as the show is there, all the incentives on the individual level are lined up to keep the show going. The journalist who refuses to write about the nominations or the ceremony loses ground to competitors. The nominated star who boycotts the awards passes up publicity and may be seen as difficult to work with (a label that can devastate an actor's career).

There's something refreshingly trivial about Hollywood versus the Golden Globes, but it does raise an interesting point: just how embarrassing does a situation have to be for an industry to find a solution to a collective action problem? Apparently it need to be worse than having the host of a prime-time network awards show opening with jokes about the fact that the nominations are fixed.

School segregation

From Dana Goldstein:

American schools are more segregated by race and class today than they were on the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, 43 years ago. The average white child in America attends a school that is 77 percent white, and where just 32 percent of the student body lives in poverty. The average black child attends a school that is 59 percent poor but only 29 percent white. The typical Latino kid is similarly segregated; his school is 57 percent poor and 27 percent white.

There are clearly some places that our current educational system could stand to be reformed. I would rather focus on issues like segregation and access rather than whether removing tenure would be a panacea.

h/t Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution

What can I say, I'm a sucker for a good Procrustes joke

Click for the full strip.

Academics

Female Science Professor has an absolutely delightful take down of a Andrew Hacker and his book:

My vote for the strangest part of the book is the paragraph in which the authors describe a "workingman" who "jumped on a subway track to rescue a child who tripped and fell." The workingman didn't think; he just did it. The authors posit that professors on that same platform would not have jumped on the track to save the child:

"We wonder if, had some professors been on the platform, would they have paused to ponder how John Stuart Mill might have parsed the choices?"

I wonder if that is a sane thing to wonder. Of course the professors would save the child. What better way to combine broader impacts, a synergistic activity, and outreach?

and

Similarly, what is your evidence for your contention that professors don't work as much as they say they do? This seems to be it: "A story is told of a classroom where all the students were busy scribbling as the professor droned on. All, that is, but one, a young woman in the back row, who wrote down nary a word. How so? She had with her the notes that her mother had taken for that class during her own student days." That's the evidence? A possibly apocryphal story?

and

For example, your book starts with the story of a candidate who, in his interview for a faculty position, makes it clear that he is not interested in teaching and is only interested in research. The fact that he was not hired indicates to me that the system worked well, yet you used this anecdote to illustrate your hypothesis that professors don't care about teaching and try to do as little of it as possible.

There are a lot more really good examples in this text, these were just my favorites. It is definitely worth an afternoon read.

Joe Gores wrote the best chimpanzee sex scene you'll ever read

That sounds like a joke (and a rather tasteless one given that Gores died this week). It's not. The scene occurs in the book Menaced Assassin and in the most unlikely of settings it goes from wrenching despair to a moment of extraordinary sympathy. It was, like much of Gores' writing sentimental, but it was always honest and hard-earned sentiment.

And damn, the man could write.

Continued (battery issues)

My first exposure to Gores was the short story "The Second Coming" about two hipsters who volunteer as witnesses to an execution, just for kicks. It was published in 1966 in a now forgotten men's magazine and was, in its way, as unlikely as that chapter in Menaced Assassin. There was no mystery -- the accused was guilty -- and no violence except for that mandated by the state, but like the chapter in Menaced Assassin, it will stay with you.

When relative rates are misleading

Mark points me to this article.

To me these effects are hard to interpret in terms of relative growth rates given that rich areas of the country remained richer (on average) than the poor areas of the country. Let us consider a thought experiment to see what I mean by the problem of relative rates.

One region, call it sunbelt, has income of $1,000 per capita and this income increases by $20 (2% growth per year).

Another region, call it rustbelt, has an income of $500 per capita which increases by $15 (3% growth per year).

Clearly the rustbelt region has better growth (in % terms) but has a lower growth in absolute wealth. Now let us presume that the absolute growth rates remained constant over a decade.

At the end, despite always having lower growth, sunbelt has $1,200 in income while rustbelt has $650 per capita. The relative difference is smaller (as 650 > 50% of 1200) but, in absolute terms, the people in sunbelt now make $550 per year more than the people in the rustbelt.

Are we sure that % growth rates are always the best metric of economic progress?

Quality journalism -- only available for a limited time

Mainly limited by the fact that it took me four days to get around to posting this:

"The Invention of Money" from This American Life

More thoughts on fluoride and lithium

Yesterday, Joseph posted his reaction to the possibility (discussed by Mike Moffatt at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative) of adding lithium to the municipal water supply of cities with low naturally occurring lithium levels. Joseph made some good points but I'd like to go a bit further, starting with the way the original question was stated:

How Much Would You Be Willing to Pay to Reduce Murders by 30%?

I don't have a problem with assigning a dollar value to a life when discussing policy (there's generally no alternative), but I think this is the wrong way of framing the problem for a number of reasons. We are talking about getting a drug to the relatively small portion of the population that needs it by giving it to everybody. There are other options for getting lithium to the people who need it. The water supply approach has the advantage of missing fewer people though not all (I suspect this will make some people, particularly the paranoid, switch to bottled water), but it comes with other concerns.

The obvious comparison here is with fluoride, a comparison that Moffatt himself makes here:

Will it work? I don't know. It seems like it would be worthy a pilot study or two. Although those levels of elemental lithium are believed to be safe, there may be side-effects we are not considering. There are ethical considerations as well, but it is hard to make a case that adding fluoride to the water supply is ethical but lithium is not - and we've been adding fluoride to drinking water for over half a century.

But there are at least two important differences between lithium and fluoride, and both differences have practical and ethical considerations.

First, tooth decay affects most people and virtually all children (whose health society has a responsibility to protect). There was no other practical way to get this treatment to everyone who needed it. Relatively few people need lithium treatment. As mentioned before, there may be other options for getting treatment to those people.

From an ethical standpoint, we are talking about exposing the majority of the population to a heightened level of a chemical that treats a condition that they don't have. This doesn't mean that adding lithium is a bad idea, but it is certainly possible to make an ethical case for fluoride that doesn't hold for lithium.

Add to that the concerns, noted by Joseph, over adding a mind-altering substance to a city's water supply. On the practical side, there have to be unexpected consequences (even with fluoride, there were enough minor side effects to reduce the level used). On the ethical side, you're adding a mind-altering substance to a city's water supply.

I don't know whether we should consider manipulating lithium levels, but I'm pretty sure we should start by acknowledging the complexity of the problem and taking a good look at the alternatives. Though much beloved by economists, this is one situation where "how much would you pay to..." is not going to cut it.

The middle of January and already in reruns -- Alice in Lawyerland

This post from Matt Yglesias on intellectual property (with additional comments by Joseph here), got me thinking about this post from a few months ago. I apologize for repeating myself, but this is one of my favorite examples of copyright hypocrisy:

Alice in Lawyerland: would the laws Disney lobbied for have prevented Disney from existing in the first place?


(disclaimer: I have cashed a number of royalties checks over the years so the following is obviously not an attack on the concept of intellectual property. I like royalty checks. I'm just worried about the consequences of taking these things to an extreme.)

In 1998, the Walt Disney company had a problem: their company mascot was turning 70. Mickey Mouse had debuted in 1928's "Mickey Mouse In Plane Crazy" which meant that unless something was done, Mickey would enter the public domain within a decade. This was a job for lobbyists, lots of lobbyists.

From Wikipedia:

The Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) of 1998 extended copyright terms in the United States by 20 years. Since the Copyright Act of 1976, copyright would last for the life of the author plus 50 years, or 75 years for a work of corporate authorship. The Act extended these terms to life of the author plus 70 years and for works of corporate authorship to 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever endpoint is earlier. Copyright protection for works published prior to January 1, 1978, was increased by 20 years to a total of 95 years from their publication date.

This law, also known as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, Sonny Bono Act, or pejoratively as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act,[2] effectively "froze" the advancement date of the public domain in the United States for works covered by the older fixed term copyright rules. Under this Act, additional works made in 1923 or afterwards that were still copyrighted in 1998 will not enter the public domain until 2019 or afterward (depending on the date of the product) unless the owner of the copyright releases them into the public domain prior to that or if the copyright gets extended again. Unlike copyright extension legislation in the European Union, the Sonny Bono Act did not revive copyrights that had already expired. The Act did extend the terms of protection set for works that were already copyrighted, and is retroactive in that sense.

Mickey had been Disney's biggest hit but he wasn't their first. The studio had established itself with a series of comedies in the early Twenties about a live-action little girl named Alice who found herself in an animated wonderland. In case anyone missed the connection, the debut was actually called "Alice's Wonderland." The Alice Comedies were the series that allowed Disney to leave Kansas and set up his Hollywood studio.

For context, Lewis Carroll published the Alice books, Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, in 1865 and 1871 and died in 1898. Even under the law that preceded the Mouse Protection Act, Alice would have been the property of Carroll's estate and "Alice's Wonderland" was a far more clear-cut example of infringement than were many of the cases Disney has pursued over the years.

In other words, if present laws and attitudes about intellectual property had been around in the Twenties, the company that lobbied hardest for them might never have existed.

There's nothing unusual about a small company or start-up exploiting lapsed or unenforced copyrights to get a foothold. The public domain has long been fertile ground for stage companies, record companies, publishers, and producers of movies or radio and television; it's just been getting a lot less fertile lately.

More on Just Desserts

Matt Yglesias has a very good point:

And this is for good reason. It’s pretty clear if you read the paper that Mankiw doesn’t intend to be arguing for any really radical changes in the structure of American society. He wants to defend modern industrial capitalism, while bolstering the case for lower taxation of the rich and less generous spending on the non-rich. But think about his examples here. How is it that you can get rich writing books, making movies, designing MP3 players, or making TV shows? Well it’s thanks to statutory definitions of intellectual property. If the copyright on a book only lasted two years, JK Rowling wouldn’t be nearly as rich. If the inventor of the Xerox Alto owned some kind of perpetual right to the concept of a graphical user interface, Steve Jobs’ whole career would be unimaginable. And the firms involved in these industries are constantly “manipulating the system” of intellectual property to try to maximize their own advantage.

I think that this is a very astute point; the structure of modern intellectual property laws have made the creation of these goods very lucrative. But linking success to morality is a very tough proposition because most people who are very successful are going to benefit from favorable regulation (because in places where regulation is unfavorable, it ia harder to be a success).

Consider this small businessman in California (who has discovered that there is a tax for have retail hand scanners):

Then yesterday the bill arrived. Sure enough, the people of California had enacted a new tax on small business. $205 in my case, including $100 for existing and $105 for having a POS system with one barcode scanner. It's like a tax on progress, only applicable to forward thinking businesses that have migrated away from the inefficiency of the cash register. Want to raise state revenue? Require retail businesses to have a point-of-sale machine or pay a $205/year fine. At least then you'll have capital investments in equipment and services that lead to jobs and more tax revenue.



The bottom line is that politics in this state preclude tax increases and our state is tens of billions of dollars over budget. Conservatives decry tax increases while liberals won't budge on public services. This naturally results in the nickel and diming of small businesses. We don't have a union or trade group to defend us, so watch as our business fees silently rise 20%.

The merits of one specific tax may or may not be justified. But people can work hard at a socially productive activity and still end up with a marginal income due to the choices we make on how to tax and regulate business activity. We may have chosen the optimal levels of these things (anything is possible) but ascribing moral superiority to classes of people who manage to obtain favorable regulatory treatment does not appear to be ideal.

Hoisted from comments -- more on Mankiw's assumptions

David had this to say about my post critiquing the way Greg Mankiw and many other economist who defend the magic of the market don't spell out the highly restrictive assumptions they use in their arguments:

An often neglected aspect of these standard assumptions is that they are *sufficient* not necessary conditions. Perfect information, for example, might not exist, but that doesn't mean there won't be an equilibrium capturing all the potential gains from exchange.

These statements may well form a set of conditions that are sufficient but for the most part not necessary to support Mankiw's conclusions. You could say the much same foe some list of statements in most intellectually mature movements. With Mankiw, I'd go even further and say that if these statements don't have to be true; they just have to approximate reality to a sufficient degree in order to make his case.

But we're talking about something slightly but significantly different. In this context, these assumptions are part of the arguments that Mankiw is making. It is, of course, possible for invalid argumnts to lead to correct conclusions and you can have a trivially valid argument that starts with a false premise, but (putting aside those old logic lessons about the implications of the existence of unicorns) you can't have a valid and meaningful argument based on false assumptions.

It's important to put this in context. Mankiw is arguing that, in addition to being immoral, a return to Clinton era tax rates would cause a sharp drop in productivity and economic growth. It is possible that he's right, but there is considerable historical evidence and any number of counterarguments (many by Nobel Prize winners) that contradict his conclusions. Under those circumstances, I think the burden of proof should rest with the guy who's saying this time it will be different.