“Responsibility! Accountability! Discipline! Oversight! Rules!” So begins Dan Henninger’s Wall Street Journalcolumn from yesterday, which, among other things, connects the lack of standards in the financial markets to the loss of standards in our schools.

Once we’re done imposing Spartan discipline on the dining rooms of Wall Street, how about some of the same for the halls and classrooms of the average inner-city high school? A nation in panic at the sight of banks imploding has yawned for years while the public-school system melted down.

A handful of Supreme Court decisions going back 40 years relaxed standards of oversight for dress codes, comportment, speech and expulsion, and the average school principal or teacher threw in the towel on daily discipline. Not my job.

Many school administrators can relate to the frontline mortgage-lending officers, some of them old-school bankers who used to help young borrowers understand the difference between the real world and probable ruin. That’s what high-school principals used to do. No more.

Suddenly, local lenders were toiling (if they survived) in the easier liar-loan world fostered by Congress, Fannie and Freddie and guys with great tans in Los Angeles. The old public-school system, once a tight ship in countless towns, knew that game. The schools learned to shove another class of semi-educated bodies into the street every June and call them “graduates” the same way lenders called zero-down-payment borrowers “homeowners.”

I’m not so sure there was a golden age when the public school system ran such a tight ship, but the rest of his analogy makes a lot of sense. Henninger goes on to spot “a ray of hope amid the past week’s rubble in the financial markets. Something positive has been in the air this election, and all the calls now for a return to financial rectitude is part of it.” He might find similar hope for education by reading David Whitman’s recent book on inner-city schools where rigor and discipline have made a comeback.

“People want standards again because they work — in business, in schools, in daily life,” writes Henninger. Indeed.

Or his book, at least.

On Wed. September 3, Fordham hosted a lively panel discussion of the David Whitman’s new book, “Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism.” On hand were Jay Mathews of The Washington Post, and Charles Adams, head of school at the SEED School in D.C. For your viewing pleasure, we’ve posted a video of their discussion online.

“Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism” book talk from Education Gadfly on Vimeo.

The accolades keep comin’! We see that George Will has written yet ANOTHER column citing David Whitman’s new book (published by Fordham) “Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism“. Will focuses his praise this time on Cristo Rey Jesuit High School—one of the six highly effective, “no excuse” schools Whitman profiles in his book.

The Jay Mathews contest to name the high-flying schools in David Whitman’s book has come to a close. The winner? No excuses schools-a “golden oldie,” as Mathews says, since that term’s been around for a decade. But he’s right, it’s pretty good, if not as accurate as “paternalistic.” Read more here.

Check out his ednews.org interview here, and get a quick and helpful overview of his book, Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism.

“Cuando los progres no quieren paternalism,” por George Will

David Whitman writes about the coverage of his new book, Sweating the Small Stuff.

On Monday, August 18, Jay Mathews of the Washington Post wrote a complimentary column about my new book, Sweating the Small Stuff, which recounts the tale of six inner-city secondary schools that have succeeded in closing the achievement gap. When a first-rate reporter like Mathews calls your book “splendid,” “lively,” “readable,” and drops a few other bouquets suitable for framing and book jacket blurbs, it may seem churlish to quibble with his column. But his opposition to my subtitle—Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism—and more generally to my use of the term “paternalistic” to describe these gap-closing schools has since triggered a groupthink blogfest decrying my use of the “P-word.”

Unlike Mathews and columnist George Will, nearly all of the armchair commentariat criticizing the paternalism label has yet to actually read Sweating the Small Stuff, though they have read Mathews’ column and a Fordham Institute press release on the book. Several bloggers, including Joanne Jacobs and Robert Pondiscio at the Core Knowledge Blog, are keeping an open mind about the utility of the paternalism label. But without having read the book, a number of bloggers have already roundly misconstrued the origins and meaning of the term, the “new paternalism.” This mini-brouhaha in the edusphere threatens to overshadow the newsworthy record of these inner-city schools—diverting attention from the important implications that these break-the-mold schools bear for the future of inner-city education. Read the rest of this post >>>

George Will, the nation’s most widely syndicated columnist, weighs in today on Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism. And yes, he does think “paternalistic” is an apt descriptor for these “no excuses” schools (unlike Jay Mathews, Richard Whitmire, and others):

Paternalism is the restriction of freedom for the good of the person restricted. [The American Indian Public Charter School] (AIPCS) acts in loco parentis because [principal Ben] Chavis, who is cool toward parental involvement, wants an enveloping school culture that combats the culture of poverty and the streets.

He and other practitioners of the new paternalism—once upon a time, schooling was understood as democracy’s permissible, indeed obligatory, paternalism—are proving that cultural pessimists are mistaken: We know how to close the achievement gap that often separates minorities from whites before kindergarten and widens through high school. A growing cohort of people possess the pedagogic skills to make “no excuses” schools flourish.

Unfortunately, powerful factions fiercely oppose the flourishing. Among them are education schools with their romantic progressivism—teachers should be mere “enablers” of group learning; self-esteem is a prerequisite for accomplishment, not a consequence thereof. Other opponents are the teachers unions and their handmaiden, the Democratic Party. Today’s liberals favor paternalism—you cannot eat trans fats; you must buy health insurance—for everyone except children. Odd.

Sure, he was flawed, but he got a few big things right.

So writes guest blogger Richard Whitmire* in this phenomenal post that manages to leak Core Knowledge’s plan to release a bona fide reading program; calls for a “gut check” for Democrats scrapping the federal Reading First program; and backs up Sol “Marshall Plan” Stern to boot.

*Whitmire also weighs in on the “paternalistic” debate. And guess what: he doesn’t like the term either.

I’m just going to assume that the last couple paragraphs of Jay Mathews’s column today are tongue in cheek. He thinks that the word “paternalism” is loaded enough that it has a negative effect on the largely positive work of attitudinal schools like KIPP and its ilk. Fine. He wants to have a competition to replace the word “paternalism” with something a little less loaded. Fine. But then we get this:

Among other things, the label makes these inner-city successes sound like a guy thing, when in fact many of their principals and most of their teachers are women.

I’m stumped. Is this a joke? I wish I could be generous and assume that Jay’s intentions were innocent, naïve even, but then I got to this:

Although I don’t think it is such a hot name either, maternalistic schools works better for me than paternalistic. The ones I have looked at energetically recruit and train teachers who will give their small campuses a family feeling, with firm rules for behavior but warmth and respect for each child, more Meryl Streep than Robert De Niro, more Laura Bush than George Patton.

Wow, Jay, stereotype much? After we get a good chuckle from imagining General Patton reading to some wee babes on his knees, let’s talk about how Mathews has illuminated an actual problem: most teachers really are women.

At first bite, this doesn’t seem newsworthy. As Mathews himself argues, we like to think of schools as friendly, warm, maternal places (or do we? I like to think of schools as places where children learn, but maybe that’s just me). But the NEA recently released data showing that the number of male teachers as reached a 40 year low. So what? Well apparently more than we bargained for, according to L.J. Williamson over at Babble Magazine, a parenting site. Some children, especially those with single moms, are growing up with no or few adult male role models. Williamson jokes that these kids might start thinking that women rule the world and quips, “Are they in for a surprise.” I wasn’t totally convinced by the sometimes conspiracy theory-esque conclusions, but it was thought provoking, especially when it comes to stereotypes. One of the biggies? That women are responsible for raising the children, in the home and the classroom. So while Jay can have us all imagining mobster Paul Vitti wiping a six-year-old’s nose, there’s no excuse for making tactless misogynistic jokes, even if they are a matter of tongue-in-cheek semantics.

With my prodding, Michael Goldstein, the sometimes guest blogger at Eduwonk and founder of the fantastic (and, I would argue, paternalistic) MATCH Charter School in Boston, writes in to add his two bits to the debate around David Whitman’s new book, Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism:

I certainly look forward to reading the book. And I think you did a service in publishing it. And I wonder how it will square with Jay Mathews’s book on same topic.

Certainly this nugget is on target. “Unlike the often forbidding paternalistic institutions of the past, these schools are prescriptive yet warm; teachers and principals, who sometimes serve in loco parentis, are both authoritative and caring figures. Teachers laugh with and cajole students, in addition to frequently directing them to stay on task.”

But I’d have to read more to understand what he means by “serve in loco parentis.” And I hesitate with “paternalistic.”

I agree with you that there’s an initial “Uh oh” reaction by school leaders because it’s probably bad marketing for us, Cosby-izing what we do.

But then I think you might not be open to the idea—perhaps you are—that may be legitimate disagreement with the precision of the word, one which is NOT borne out of fear. It sort of feels like your set-up is: Here is the premise, there is a marketing reason for No Excuses leaders to disagree with the premise, therefore when they disagree with the premise it can only be for that reason. When it may be because we don’t think the premise is entirely accurate, irrespective of the marketing implications. Which is why I need to read the book.

If you want an immediate reaction:

1. Is telling a kid to stop talking during class a “parental” action?  I just don’t see it that way.  Most schools, of all classes, do this. What is different is the obsession with execution—the several little things you have to get right in order to have an alert, focused class.

2. Is telling a kid to tuck in his shirt a “middle class value?” Go to a poor black church on Sunday, and to a middle class white church, and tell me who has got the tucked in shirts.

3. “SEED was constructed precisely to remove students from those neighborhoods and inculcate in the youngsters a wholly different set of values than they’d find at home.” But these are two different things, neighborhood and home.

Here’s where precision is important. The average MATCH or KIPP or SEED parent believes in values of “Work hard.” However, she struggles, particularly with an older teen, to sit his butt down at the kitchen table to do that work. She can deliver the message, but she can’t easily go beyond that. She simply does not have enough social capital. (Actually, I think this is often true among single middle class white moms, too. This has more to do with solo parenting.)

When we push a kid, we’re very specifically triangulating a kid through parallel parent outreach, so that we BOTH say the same thing—work hard. The home value of work hard is there. It’s just not enough by ITSELF to overcome negative values in the neighborhood—and especially in pop culture (which is not part of the neighborhood, but arguably as powerful).

What’s interesting about Michael’s reaction—which was similar to Jay Greene’s—is the insistence that parents buy into these schools’ values too—along with an admission that the schools’ values are at odds with the neighborhoods’ values. If true, it raises an uncomfortable question: are these schools guilty of “creaming”? Not in the way we traditionally think about it—perhaps their students and their families aren’t any more affluent, or well-educated, than others in their communities. But maybe families that choose “no excuses” schools share different values than their peers do—values that we might associate with the middle class. Families that, to use Michael’s words, respond positively to Bill Cosby’s message. In my view, there’s nothing wrong with that.

Update: It’s worth reading Michael Goldstein’s (smart) response below in the comments.

Jay Mathews thinks David Whitman’s new book, released by Fordham on Friday, is “splendid,” but he doesn’t like the subtitle.

(Previous thoughts about that here and here.)

Jay Greene, no lefty he, doesn’t like the “paternalism” label either. He writes in an email:

Paternalism is the wrong word for this.  Paternalism would be doing a fatherly (root: pater) thing without the recipient wanting it.  But in the case of KIPP, the parents have chosen the school in part because they emphasize these values.  That is, the recipient (the family) chose KIPP at least in part because they emphasized these values that the family wanted emphasized.

This case also shows how there is no value-free education.  Education is an extension of child-rearing and the values in a school should be the values that the family would want.  Any school that tries to avoid emphasizing values is in fact emphasizing values—just not the ones they may have wanted.

I don’t think Jay’s right that “paternalism” always implies that recipients are being forced to do something against their will. Whitman distinguishes the “old paternalism”—where this stereotype might fit—from a “new paternalism” that is more benevolent. Consider policies that allow individuals with gambling addictions to voluntarily place themselves on lists to be barred from entering casinos. It’s voluntary and it’s paternalistic.

Parents choose KIPP because it emphasizes values the family embraces, sure, but it also stresses values that might be at odds with the family’s community. Just because parents sign up for KIPP voluntarily doesn’t mean that KIPP as an institution isn’t paternalistic.

Much of the disagreement caused by the use of the term paternalism in David Whitman’s new book stems, I think, from a reticence to acknowledge reality. That’s unfortunate—education policy already suffers from a dearth of invested persons willing to call things what they are.

Take, for instance, the reluctance of Eric Adler, who co-founded the SEED School, to have paternalism in any way attached to his institution. Whitman writes:

Eric Adler, cofounder of the SEED School in Washington, D.C., argues that calling a school paternalistic implies that its staff is asserting that it “knows better than others—like parents or the neighborhood”—which values schools should transmit. “I don’t think SEED asserts that we ‘know better,’ we just assert that we have more resources with which to teach.”

I get it. Adler has no reason to ascent to the labeling of his school as paternalistic and every reason to rebut it. But his statement is untrue. SEED (where students are held to rigid standards of discipline and conduct, and where they live for five days a week) is inarguably asserting, albeit implicitly, that it “knows better.” SEED is not set up to complement the values of its students’ neighborhoods; it was constructed precisely to remove students from those neighborhoods and inculcate in the youngsters a wholly different set of values than they’d find at home. Adler’s rejoinder about “resources” is at best tangential to the whole enterprise.

Adler has done some marvelous things, of course, for which he deserves much praise. One wishes, though, that he were a bit more honest about why he designed SEED the way he did.

Which brings up another point that Whitman may or may not make in his book (I haven’t yet finished it): These paternalistic schools are generally founded and run by liberals for whom the admission that certain values work and others just don’t can be difficult. And so they don’t make such admissions. But they need not—their schools do the talking for them.

Today Fordham proudly releases David Whitman’s latest book, Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism. (We don’t subscribe to the Bush Administration’s maxim that, “from a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.” After all, it’s back-to-school time!)

The book is now available via Amazon, but if you want to dig in right away, read this Gadfly editorial by Checker Finn and Marci Kanstoroom or, even better, print out and read this Education Next excerpt. Here’s the heart of Whitman’s argument (who is, by the way, a freelance journalist and former senior writer at U.S. News & World Report):

Above all, these schools [American Indian Public Charter School, Amistad Academy, Cristo Rey, KIPP, SEED, and University Park Campus School] share a trait that has been largely ignored by education researchers: They are paternalistic institutions. By paternalistic I mean that each of the six schools is a highly prescriptive institution that teaches students not just how to think, but also how to act according to what are commonly termed traditional, middle-class values. These paternalistic schools go beyond just teaching values as abstractions: the schools tell students exactly how they are expected to behave, and their behavior is closely monitored, with real rewards for compliance and penalties for noncompliance. Unlike the often forbidding paternalistic institutions of the past, these schools are prescriptive yet warm; teachers and principals, who sometimes serve in loco parentis, are both authoritative and caring figures. Teachers laugh with and cajole students, in addition to frequently directing them to stay on task.

The new breed of paternalistic schools appears to be the single most effective way of closing the achievement gap. No other school model or policy reform in urban secondary schools seems to come close to having such a dramatic impact on the performance of inner-city students. Done right, paternalistic schooling provides a novel way to remake inner-city education in the years ahead.

The use of the term “paternalistic” is sure to spark debate (most of the schools’ leaders detest it), but don’t knock it till you read Whitman’s argument. As uncomfortable as it might be to discuss in public, what these schools are doing is providing a middle-class, achievement-oriented culture to children who come out of a culture of poverty. And for that, the schools should be applauded (and emulated). It might not be politically correct to use these terms, but they are accurate. And that should count for something.

I’ve gotten lots of feedback about my Education Gadfly column on extra-curricular activities; several friends have written gleefully to make the connection between my piece and Randi Weingarten’s big speech last week, particularly its call for schools as community centers. (Checker made that connection in the Gadfly itself.)

That’s all in good fun, and yes, on the surface, it might appear that we’re talking about the same thing. But upon closer inspection, you’ll find that our visions are actually polar opposites. First, here’s Randi:

Can you imagine a federal law that promoted community schools—schools that serve the neediest children by bringing together under one roof all the services and activities they and their families need... and suppose the schools included child care and dental, medical, and counseling clinics, or other services the community needs.

And now me:

Here’s a suggestion: architects designing high schools of the future should skip the classrooms but keep the gym, the auditorium, and other common spaces. In other words, forget the “school” and build a “community center” instead. Kids could learn academics at home and come to the center for all the rest.

Randi’s vision is good old-fashioned paternalism, pure and simple. Because many urban children (the AFT’s primary clientele) come from families in crisis, Randi wants the government, through its public schools, to provide all the support to kids that they aren’t getting from their parents. My vision is something quite different—a prediction that in the future, lots of parents will actually take greater responsibility for their children’s academic development. As online learning becomes ubiquitous and powerful, and as more parents join the “free agent nation” and work for themselves, from home, I believe that plenty of families will discover that they can handle “school” sans schools. But they will still want their kids to participate in sports, theater, clubs, etc.—just as today’s home-schoolers want these opportunities for their own children.

These visions aren’t necessarily contradictory. It may be that poor children from dysfunctional or overstressed families need the services Randi details. And it may be that affluent children from stable, two-parent families will increasingly learn at home. Maybe. Someone call John Edwards; it sounds like the Two Americas aren’t going away anytime soon.

Re my post about a national service academy, Jonah Goldberg makes some fine, related points in the Los Angeles Times by arguing against what he calls “national service mania.” His piece has attracted some 360 comments, which shows that this subject resonates. National service is surely good and something worth encouraging, especially in schools. But it can be taken too far.

Update: Over at The New Republic blog (yes, they have a blog... and yes, TNR is still hanging around and publishing a magazine), Eve Fairbanks responds to Goldberg’s article and totally misses the point.

About my earlier post, commenter Carol writes:

Liam, you had me all the way until the end when you failed to mention students culpability (as well as teachers and admins) when it comes to academic achievement.

It’s a good point; older students bear significant responsibility for their educations. But the larger idea is that simply moving people into a new “culture” doesn’t necessarily change their attitudes or behaviors and won’t cultivate that responsibility. Proactivity and vigilance is imperative. The best charter schools, as is always noted, succeed because they push a rigorous academic culture on their students (no matter who are those student or what color is their skin, etc.) and they brook no dissent. A forthcoming Fordham report argues that such paternalism is, in fact, necessary. I oversimplified all that by writing that schools with “good” teachers succeed, and those with “bad” teachers fail—but reduced to its basic form, it’s true.

The newest Atlantic (not yet online) contains an article about Memphis’s experience with shutting down its noxious projects and offering housing vouchers to their low-income inhabitants, who use the vouchers to move to other areas of the city. The concept has been applied across the country. In Memphis, though, it’s had the unfortunate effect of spreading all over the metropolitan area what were once isolated concentrations of crime. And overall crime rates in the city are way up.

Motivating housing voucher programs is the idea that if high-poverty, high-minority, high-crime neighborhoods are dispersed—if the residents of those neighborhoods move to more economically and racially integrated settings—than deleterious activity will wane. It’s an idea that’s been extended to k-12 education, too: If poor or minority students are removed from all-minority, high-poverty neighborhoods (and their schools), they’ll do better academically. But it’s not that simple. Nor is it true that other forms of shuffling kids from school to school to improve classroom “diversity” does much for the educational prospects of the shuffled. Dangerous neighborhoods are dangerous for a variety of reasons, but at the core it’s because they’re inhabited by... criminals, who, when transplanted to better neighborhoods, are simply able to steal better merchandise. Bad schools are bad not because of who sits next to whom, but mostly because of the... bad teachers and bad administrators who work in them. And good schools are good largely because they’re staffed by people who are good at what they do.

Joseph Epstein is incisive; his writing eschews faddish notions and also goes for the jugular. He won’t dance around a topic. His latest Weekly Standard piece, “The Kindergarchy,” is a fine example.

In America we are currently living in a Kindergarchy, under rule by children. People who are raising, or have recently raised, or have even been around children a fair amount in recent years will, I think, immediately sense what I have in mind. Children have gone from background to foreground figures in domestic life, with more and more attention centered on them, their upbringing, their small accomplishments, their right relationship with parents and grandparents.

The article is well worth reading. One concludes, after digesting it and other similar pieces, that today’s parents are meddling with the wrong parts of their children’s lives and staying out of the parts that demand attention. Epstein notes that a 21st-Century adult is keen to arrange his progeny’s activities, playdates, and daily decisions, but loath to provide any stern guidance or discipline when needed. The result: A lot of spoiled, babied, charmless young adults who don’t think for themselves and feel entitled to everything.

Epstein generalizes. But then, generalizing is often useful. And who can deny that America’s public schools, too, have succumbed to the daffy thinking he skewers? I think, for example, of the misguided notion to push academically untalented students into AP classes; to push all kids into college (and no, that’s not a straw man; some big-name people do think all kids should go to college); to eliminate competition, not between schools but between students, that might leave some pupils disappointed; and on and on.

Where has this idea shift brought us? If Mark Bauerlein is to be believed, it’s actually caused a regression and spawned a land of self-absorbed, self-confident 20-somethings who know little. Epstein’s points aren’t new, but might they not be true?

P.S. I suppose, to avoid retribution from social justice crusaders, I should add a disclaimer: Does not apply to lots of poor and minority children.

Mike makes good points about Thompson’s article. But modesty about the lengths to which the KIPP/Amistad/SEED models can be stretched is warranted. District public schools should copy many of the “no excuses” methods at work in high-achieving charter schools, but KIPP and its ilk have luxuries that district schools do not; for example, they can easily expel students who don’t subscribe to their academically demanding, disciplined philosophies.

And let us not get carried away with the paternalism idea. Mike writes:

The KIPPs and the Amistads and the Cristo Reys take in loco parentis to an extreme, intervening in all corners of their students’ lives if that’s what it takes. We need inner-city schools to be more paternalistic, not less.

This type of talk should, and will, make lots of people uncomfortable.

Former presidential aspirant Fred Thompson has a piece on conservatism in the Wall Street Journal today that’s getting lots of attention. He argues that “smaller government will always appeal.” On education, he writes:

An education system cannot overcome the breakdown of the family, and the social fabric that surrounds children daily.

This is the way to “revive the conservative cause”? Through Charles Murray-style defeatism? Of course parents are a child’s first and most important teachers. Of course we’re never going to eradicate our social ills until we stem the decline of the family. Still, there are three big problems with Thompson’s statement.

First, we aren’t, by and large, even trying to use our education system to overcome family breakdown. In the inner-city, where such meltdowns are most acute, typical public schools remain awful and resistant to reform. If we had excellent public schools (or lots of urban kids in excellent charter or voucher schools) and they still couldn’t overcome the challenges of family dysfunction, then this statement could be plausible. But we’re light years away from that.

Second, the excellent schools that are getting amazing results and preparing their students for college and for success in American society reject this notion out of hand. The KIPPs and the Amistads and the Cristo Reys take in loco parentis to an extreme, intervening in all corners of their students’ lives if that’s what it takes. We need inner-city schools to be more paternalistic, not less.

Third, the argument that families must “do their part” can and should be decoupled from excuse-making about what the “education system cannot” do. The most prominent public figure making the case for parents to be responsible, turn off the television, and get their kids to do their homework is, of course, Barack Obama. And he’s doing it without implying that our schools are off the hook until families get their act together.

While No Child Left Behind may not have been in line with conservative principles (or, in many respects, common sense), the antidote is not giving up on schools entirely. We spend over $500 billion on our k-12 education system. A true conservative would expect something in return for that investment.

Coby writes:

Many KIPP schools are better than most urban schools because they alleviate more of the burdens of poverty. There should be more such schools.

But KIPP is able to alleviate many of poverty’s burdens in large part precisely because it has the support of, as I wrote, committed parents, students, and staffs. Sure, we want more schools like KIPP. But we have to realize that there are, for example, only so many teachers who will work 12-hour days, be on-call until 9 p.m., and willingly accept a measly salary for their efforts. KIPP’s brand of paternalism is the right kind—one that surrounds students with a high-achieving culture—and other schools would do well to adopt parts of it. But to embrace educational paternalism, history suggests, is to embrace the creation and spread of lousy programs (e.g., Head Start) that are a waste. At the national level, the concept will be corrupted and money wasted.

Coby’s last point is right, but only on a small scale:

But ultimately, I’d argue, the level of paternalism a school offers its students should be left to the school to decide, and parents can decide whether or not to send their kids there.

Update: Another, perhaps simpler way of saying this is that KIPP doesn’t buff out poverty’s deepest dents and doesn’t try to. Students who come to KIPP already have those dents buffed out; they and their parents are already in a positition that allows KIPP’s incentives to work. If not, they’ll leave or be kicked out.

I’m not quite sure I understand Liam’s objection to my earlier post on the economics of poverty. He says

KIPP and its ilk work for lots of reasons, but it’s safe to say that they wouldn’t be nearly so successful without committed parents and students and staffs—advantages that most urban schools don’t have.

Well, that was my point. Many KIPP schools are better than most urban schools because they alleviate more of the burdens of poverty. There should be more such schools. There are several reasons most urban public schools lack these advantages, but foremost among them is that governments have a near-monopoly on education, and they make all kinds of rules to maintain the status quo, making it difficult for schools like KIPP to peddle their innovative wares in many cities.

As always, I sympathize to some degree with Liam’s concerns that schools who “try to do more than they’re capable of doing, more than they’re designed to do... risk ignoring their most basic function, which is to teach kids.”

But ultimately, I’d argue, the level of paternalism a school offers its students should be left to the school to decide, and parents can decide whether or not to send their kids there.

Whether or not you agree with Richard Simmons, it’s promising when anti-obesity initiatives work. That appears to be the case in Philadelphia, where the results from a comprehensive healthy-eating campaign showed that “The number of kids who got fat during the two-year experiment was half the number of kids who got fat in schools that didn’t make those efforts.”

What was the secret? Enter libertarian paternalism:

“We found when you give children healthy choices, they pick them,” said Grace McGinley, school nurse at Francis Hopkinson School, one of the test schools.

Call it a nudge, a push, a shove, whatever—schools are supposed to be in loco parentis, so I say be a nudging nanny and junk the junk food for good.

Related to Mike’s post: Here’s a review of Nudge (the book by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein) that appeared in The New Yorker several months ago. The author makes a solid point:

The whole project, though, as Thaler and Sunstein acknowledge, raises some pretty awkward questions. If the “nudgee” can’t be depended on to recognize his own best interests, why stop at a nudge? Why not offer a “push,” or perhaps even a “shove”? And if people can’t be trusted to make the right choices for themselves how can they possibly be trusted to make the right decisions for the rest of us?

Good questions.

In his “Department of Human Behavior” column in today’s Washington Post, Shankar Vedantam considers Nudge, a new book by University of Chicago professors Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler. In it, they argue for “libertarian paternalism.” Says Sunstein:

We agree with people who want to allow the market to flourish, so we are libertarians in that sense. On the other hand, we don’t believe you can just have markets and then declare victory. It is legitimate to be paternalistic in terms of steering people in directions that will increase the likelihood they will do well.

The authors are particularly enamored with “default” policies, such as having companies enroll new employees in retirement savings programs unless they opt out. Vedantam explains:

When new employees are told that retirement accounts will be started for them unless they object, for example, most sign up cheerfully. When told that the accounts will not be started unless they opt in, most employees do not sign up because not having the account is then the default choice.

Defaults work in education, too. One of the primary goals of the American Diploma Project, for instance, is getting states to adopt a common, rigorous curriculum as the default for high school students. If they’d rather take a “general” or “vocation” track, rather than this college-prep route, students have to proactively opt out. It appears to be an effective way to encourage more kids to take tougher courses.

And you might also argue that the role of effective charter school policies (and sponsors) is to ensure that, in a system of school choice, parents will be limited to only good choices—those that are good for their children. Of course, to extend the analogy, the “default” for most parents is the local public school, so there’s no getting around the need for making those as successful as possible, too.

Regarding Coby’s earlier post: A much-overlooked aspect of the “cash for grades” idea is that it might—and, according to past research, probably will—create kids who will work for good grades only when they’re being paid for it. Sometimes, it seems, policymakers get hung up on crafting incentives to induce good behavior without thinking about how the added incentives themselves are skewing relationships and detracting from other, naturally occurring motivators.

In a recent Bloggingheads.tv video, Glenn Loury of Brown University and Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute discuss Mayor Bloomberg’s “cash for grades” program.

MacDonald argues, and Loury more or less agrees, that the program institutes “a caste system” since it assumes that “some of us do things because we understand it’s right, or because it’s in our long-term self interest, whereas the other group we’re just gonna treat like rats in a Skinner behavioral science exam.”

Of course, the government frequently intervenes in the lives of those who presumably don’t know what’s in their long-term interest. Governments do what they do mostly to protect certain segments of society from themselves. Food stamps, housing projects, Medicaid, free or reduced lunch, NCLB—these all cultivate a kind of caste system. Americans have their very own untouchables just like everyone else.

The big difference is that the directness of the cash payouts in Bloomberg’s plan reeks of paternalism, while in the examples above the nanny-state scent must travel through the byzantine air ducts of massive bureaucracies before it reaches our noses. When you get down to it, though, they’re both stinky government cheese.