And as we know, nonreligious private schools often cost four, five times that amount. So as a consequence, over 80 , close to 80 of students in the program are attending religious private school. So florida is not alone in that regard although it was one of the first off the mark. Florida s. T. O. M. P. Program has been implemented in a number of different states from indiana to louisiana to pennsylvania. So north and south, east and west. Such that the wall street journal called 2011 the year of School Choice. And 2012 had even more School Choice programs being implemented around the country. So at this point we are serving a dramatically altered cascade. So thats kind of a preamble to the types of world in which we are living right now. You may want to ask yourself okay, why are we doing this . What why might we have moved from a choice environment where students had, families had very little choice. The choice was essentially limited to the residential location for all intents and purposes, to a system in which in many states, many families have the opportunity to attend private school using public money. Those who arent going to private schools, many of them are going to start or schools, quasiPublic Schools. Even within Public Schools, even within the Traditional Public School sector you are seeing dramatically increased rates of what we call open enrollment policies. That is, policies that allow people to live in one part of town to go to school in another part of town. Why is that going on . Moreover, i would like to link the same policies together with another, another change in policy thats been happening. Which is the so called School Accountability moving. The School Accountability movement here in florida everybody is aware of the school grades, for example. But for people are watching who are not in florida, the are now every, nearly every state has some way of evaluating schools based on student test scores in which schools are ranked. In the case of florida schools are rated a f. They are based on a fraction of students who seem provision under states criterion referenced test for determining students proficiencies. They are also evaluating on the basis of student gains from one year to the next, our most test scores. And they are evaluated on a few other things. For example, high schools are evaluated according to things such as Graduation Rates and the like. But largely around the country and with here in florida, schools are evaluated primarily on either fraction of kids who use some performance threshold, or the gains from one year to the next, or largely in case of florida, a combination of the two. Okay, so why do we have these . I put these two things together, School Choice and School Accountability, together its something i will call marketbased performance. Because really for better or for worse, you heard, im an economist, a lot of the impetus behind these reforms have really been driven off into many of the education reformers have been motivated off by some theoretical where that came out of economics over the last few decades. And so its useful for people to think about what were some of the arguments, and thats a way for us to move into critically assessing those arguments. Okay . So why might people, why might we want to have increased School Choice . Economists like to think about evaluating various states of the world of policies according to two different criteria, equity and efficiency. And so i think its useful to start a document efficiency question. Now, i promise im not going to spend much time, so bear with me. Equity and efficiency is about as daunting as im going to get tonight. So let me just define efficiency for the moment. So often people are thinking about what people think about the word efficiency theyre thinking about how many widgets can be produced using certain types of technology, right . And a want to use a more expansive definition of efficiency, and thats what economists also like to think about. Lets just think about efficiency for the sake of our discussion tonight as are the schools, think about the quality dimension from better meaning more efficient, worse means less efficient. So we can defin find better anye want and thats okay from the point of the deal of this discussion. So keeping your mind what have you mean, what have you think means a better school. And that means more efficient. Now, within the notion of efficiency there are two different types of this is the last jargon. We have productive efficiency and we have allocated efficiency. All right. So in the case of for not showing efficiency when we talk about a school been more productively efficient, what that means in english is that the school is doing a better job, so whatever youre thinking that means, using their available resources. When we think about allocated efficiency what that really means is more about the idea that individual students are well matched to different schooling environment. Okay . So why might School Choice, again, we are just spending, describing the rationales and then we will talk about the other side. So now, why might School Choice lead to increased productive efficiency . Well, one argument made is coming this is an argument that was very popular amongst free market economists like milton friedman, for example, is the statement is to say okay, so if the school faces no competition, if a school knows that theyre going to get the same amount of money from the government regardless of whether or not theyre doing a good job or a bad job, if families dont really have an out or dont have an easy out from that school, they may be less likely to try to innovate. Of course, thats a very, thats a very pessimistic view of the world, basically suggesting that educators are only interested in revenue maximization and not interested in educating, per se. But you can tweak that however you want. The notion would be that educators care but two things. They care about making their job as easy as possible, and they care about, and they care about educating kids as well as possible. Arguably, the part they care about making the job as easy as possible, you know, that could be stronger, that may win out more in cases of which they dont have to compete for students. So proponents of School Choice may say if we now have more, if we make educators compete for students, educators going to try harder to do a better job educating students. Thats one argument. The allocative efficiency story maybe educators are not competing for students per se, but does every student, every student learns better in a different environment. So if we provide families with more choice, maybe families might select one school, they are presented with a wide range of school with options they may select some schools for some kids and different schools or other kids. And if we provide them those choices, maybe its not that the school will get better per se, but kids will be better matched to different schooling environments. Now, when we think about excellency equity for mama, people argue equity for School Choice is this notion that in some regard, many of us in this room have always had School Choice. And that is, we can choose where to live. So for example, if 20, 30, 40 years ago if your neighborhood shows your school, if you werent happy with the school that you were in for, you could move to another place. And so relatively affluent families have that opportunity. But relatively poor, so if we did like the Public Schools, therthat were private school ops we could pay for. We had all sorts of opportunities, but maybe poor families, or students of color who maybe were in neighborhoods that had been redlined over the years, such that they could live in certain neighborhoods, maybe those families had fewer choices. If you were poor or, maybe you couldnt afford it private school. Maybe their work neighborhood you couldnt buy into, for example. So the equity argument was a major one. And actually if we look back, if we look back to who were many of the and fellows at the dawn of the School Choice movement, you know, the modern School Choice movement in the 80s and early 90s, it was a combination of free market conservative, and often advocates for lowincome and minority groups. So for example, the urban league of florida has been a longstanding supporter of free School Choice option in florida. And it was often because what you had were allies, people may be focus on the efficiency side becoming allies with those maybe focus more on the equity side. So those are some of the arguments in favor of School Choice, increased School Choice option. Well now, its important to take a step back and think about why some of these things might not work so well. It might not work as well as we might thing. So i think that im very much a moderate, politically when it comes to these types of things. I think that mighty is the are very cute Silver Bullets that are out there, if any Silver Bullets in education. And why might they be very few Silver Bullets out there . One possible reason behind this is that if we think about the underlying economic model behind this communal, i often, people who are advocates will say things like well, what we need is the reason we want vouchers is the private School Market is already disciplined by the power of the market. So private schools dont need accountability goes private schools already are, they live or die based on equality. Well, that assumes very big assumption. So lets think about what the assumptions are that would make that true. One thing that would make that true would be if they were full information. So now, if i have a parent, nude soccer what went on at each and every school, perfectly, and could very clearly identify what was better and what was worse for my child, that could help to move us in that direction. But i dont think theres anybody in this world who was on a mission like that. And the underlying argument behind unimpeded marketplace choice of assumes that that is the case. Another argument, another underlying assumption there is that schools are just, can open and close like factories can. And we know that thats not true either. Theres no place where somebody has some great idea, they open a school and became immediately produce in the type of thing. That doesnt happen. Theres all sorts of hoops people have to go through, even in the private market, right . Forget about charters, et cetera. So then as soon as were moving more and more away from that, then we start to wonder a little bit. Okay now, if parents have an idea that they dont really know necessarily, which is school might be better for the kids, and the more you move away from this notion that parents really have a very good idea, the more you have to wonder a little bit about are we actually going to see the gains in allocative efficiency that are going on . Likewise, the more people might be moving based on noise as opposed to reality, i mean, change in schools for examples, the more we wonder whether schools really face much of an incentive to compete for students, right . If youre an educator and gina that parents are going to basically randomly decide what to leave no matter what you, are you going to do, even if you were, even if you bought into this notion that if i were carter somehow our work differently, that might make my school better. Why would you necessarily be responsive to that if sony was just flipping a coin to decide whether to stay or to go . Now im a little overly dramatic on the other side, but the point of the matter is that there are these strong assumptions that people sometimes conveniently forget when they talk about marketbased solutions to deal with education problems. Lets think about accountability for a moment. In the case of School Accountability, here the primary argument behind the School Accountability movement is often okay, i like, one more bit of jargon. Economists call it the principal agent problem. Theres no test on the no test on it is a but feel free to write it down. The principal agent problem works as follows, suppose that people, we in society are impressing educators to act on our behalf. But, of course, educators know more about whats really going on inside the classroom, inside of their schools than to other members of society. Well so, the argument then would be that potentialpotential ly educators might not get as good of a job or might prioritize things that we as a society dont care as much about because they are not being as closely monitored. So the theory would go that we just monitor educators more, that that will induce them to do the things we want them to do. Well, this is a good way of segueing a little bit into the part of the talk of which i talk about evidence. So heres one piece of evidence that is unimpeachable. Its true in florida. Its been true throughout the country. Its been true everywhere in the world where things like School Accountability has been instituted. And that is, educators are really good at doing the things that they get measured on. Its not just educators, right, its all of us. If you were told in your job year two different types of things that you have to do, and your paycheck is going to be determined entirely on one type and not very much on, and not at all on the other type, youre probably going to focus more of your energy on that. So theres nothing special about educators in this. Its just that educators, educators on the topic of tonights conversation. People are, so for a long time, there was a sign that said whats that says what gets measured gets done. That could be viewed as everything good or everything bad about the schools accountability movement. A lot of good or a lot of that. So lets think about the bad first, right . As i started out on the good stuff, whats the bad stuff . So suppose that we as society care about two things, being really simplistic. Lets imagine those two things just for simplicity our ability for kids to do algebra quickly, and ability to think critically and broad measures. And so suppose we have a test thats really good at measuring kids ability to do algebra quickly, but not at all good at those types of common you know, deep thinking skills. Well, the downside of what gets measured gets done would be that educators might focus more of their attention on keeping the things that are on the test. You know, quick algebra skills and them because theyre so many hours in the day, attachment to these other skills we might really care about. The plus side of what gets done, suppose the things that are on the test are actually things that really represent the skills that we value in society for the passenger gets to the. To a degree to which thats true, then you could view this as a positive, right . Theres been hundreds of studies that show this is what happens. But now there are other things that educators have done that you may wonder a little bit more about as to whether or not this is a positive or negative thing about School Accountability exciting recent people can disagree about whether even speaking to test, which in many circles has a very pejorative connotation, i think reasonable people can say some people might say teaching the test is good, another people may say teaching the test is terrible, right . And both could be true for different reasons. There are other things that people do that i think could be less positive. So ill mention two examples of research that ive done in different places, one in florida, one virginia. So in florida, as the dawn of School Accountability, i noticed that one thing i discovered was that, of course, who got tested, the kids who are in school on testing day. And so that made me wonder a little bit about whether or not schools might be interested, perhaps, in influencing who was there on testing day. So i looked at fights between high achieving kids in low achieving kids, and i found now that the test became high stage, that schools are really throwing the book at those low achieving kids, if it happened to be that they would be suspended over the testing period. And the high achieving kids, they could do almost anything and they were going to go to class the next day. That was happening much more during the testing period than any other time of the year. Dramatically more. And so its hard to tell a positive educational story for that, right . I mean, i thought for years about it and i have a hard time imagining a positive story for that. In virginia, so virginia was, so i talk about florida being an Industry Leader in terms of come in terms of School Choice programs. Well, virginia was an Industry Leader in testing. Anyone in florida think florida kids are tested a lot, just look north to virginia. Virginia has tested more subjects for longer. In fact, in virginia a lot of the testing takes place in the afternoon. So that made me wonder, okay, well maybe schools might want to try to very much like athletes cargo load before a priest and it turns out that actually they did. To a huge decrease. Im not talking about the obesity epidemic here. Still its only a few test dates so its not that virginias testing i seem headlines that say testing is making us fat. No, im fat. Has nothing to do with testing. Right . I mean, whats one of the things that we saw . You could look at the tests that were administered in the afternoon versus tests that were administered in the morning, and what we saw where the kids are doing better on the tests administered in the afternoon when schools went and had the opportunity to, well, you know, directly influence their mind. 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