American public education has been subjected to waves of reform, but much remains constant from generation to generation. Perhaps out of frustration with the slow pace of change, today’s advocates and policymakers–whether conservative, centrist, or moderately liberal–now use a fundamentally new strategy. Instead of tinkering with what goes on inside schools, they concentrate on changing the incentive structure. In this post, I describe that strategy and then criticize it on democratic grounds. [Please also click on “comments” to see a response from Harry Boyte that pushes my argument in more ambitious directions.]

The traditional approach assumed that the important questions about education were “what?” and “who?” “What” meant the materials, teaching methods, and curriculum used in actual classrooms. Much of the debate about education from 1900 until ca. 1985 consisted of arguments that the content of instruction should be more rigorous or more relevant, more directive or more experiential, more coherent or more diverse. (See, for example, the Nation at Risk report of 1983). Decisions about content were made–in varying proportions–by state agencies, school districts, principals, and teachers, sometimes with considerable input from citizens, especially those who served on school boards and PTAs. Thus the education debate was mostly about what should be taught, and arguments were directed to state and local school leaders.

People also debated “Who?”, meaning the identity of the teacher–how she was qualified and selected–and the composition of classes. The influential Coleman report of 1966 led people to think that the teacher was relatively unimportant but that the mix of students was crucial. Poor kids needed to be exposed to middle-class students; kids with disabilities needed to be mainstreamed. Thus, for a generation, the main issues in federal education policy were desegregation and integration. There was also much debate about the pros and cons of “tracking” students–separating them by interest or ability level. Again, this was a debate about “who?”

Despite all this attention to “what?” and “who?”, education didn’t change fast enough for many reformers, or not in the directions they wanted. Recently, they have given much more attention to “why?”–in other words, to the incentives that are supposed to motivate administrators, teachers, and students to behave in certain ways. There are three major types of proposal for changing the incentive structure in education, thus causing students and educators to answer the “why?” question differently:

1. Impose regular, standardized tests with carrots and sticks. (Then the answer to “Why study?” is “To pass the test.” “Why teach effectively?” — “To get the kids through.”)

2. Increase the degree of parental choice and allow funding to follow students. (“Why teach effectively?” — “To attract pupils.”)

3. Increase funding for schools, or equalize funding among districts. (“Why work in a difficult school setting?” — “To earn a reasonable salary.”)

None of these approaches is completely new. Liberals have been advocating higher teacher salaries for a long time. School choice was first defended (to my knowledge) by Milton Friedman in 1955. There were high-stakes tests before No Child Left Behind.

Nevertheless, the tenor of the debate has shifted. Politicians and policymakers now show an extraordinary lack of interest in the “what” and “who” questions. They seem to agree with the economist Gary Becker about the futility of looking inside schools: “What survives in a competitive environment is not perfect evidence, but it is much better evidence on what is effective than attempts to evaluate the internal structure of organizations. This is true whether the competition applies to steel, education, or even the market for ideas.” Becker is a libertarian, but liberals who want to pay teachers more to teach in inner-city schools are also interested in competition–they just want schools to compete better in the job market.

It’s important to think about incentives; that’s one of the main themes of modern social science. Asking schools to educate better (or differently) without changing their incentives won’t work. On the other hand, there are democratic reasons not to ignore the internal policies and choices of schools:

1. If the market or the authorities that create standardized tests control schools by manipulating the incentives, there is little scope for parents and other community-members to deliberate about local education. (It is especially difficult to deliberate about norm-referenced exams.)

2. If parents create incentives for schools by choosing where to send their kids, I worry that they will seek private goods for their own children (such as marketable skills and membership in exclusive peer groups) rather than public goods (such as civic skills, experience with democracy, and exposure to diversity). I also worry that parents who are not well-educated themselves will choose schools without the demanding extracurricular activities and enrichment programs that generate civic skills. (However, I must admit that school systems without choice also provide lousy extracurriculars for low-income kids.)

3. If educational authorities create incentives for schools by imposing standardized tests, all the pressure will be in favor of outcomes that can be measured on exams–especially individuals’ factual knowledge and cognitive skills. It is much more difficult, or perhaps impossible, to create high-stakes assessments of moral values, habits and dispositions, and collaborations. Yet a democracy needs people who collaborate and who have civic virtues and habits.

4. All these approaches to reform (including the liberal tactic of increasing funds for teachers’ salaries) involve extrinsic motivations. But people can also be intrinsically motivated to teach and to learn. Democracy needs citizens who understand the intrinsic value of working and learning together. Besides, as I argued previously, it is offensive and alienating to treat good teachers and students as if they lacked internal goals and will only respond to carrots and sticks.

I think there are good arguments for increasing teacher salaries, imposing at least some tests that have high stakes, and providing some degree of school choice. However, if the above arguments are persuasive, we also need vigorous public debates about what goes on inside schools.