Week 11: Michelle Rhee and “Blowing it Up Reform” Jal Mehta
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Transcript of Week 11: Michelle Rhee and “Blowing it Up Reform” Jal Mehta
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Week 11: Michelle Rhee and
“Blowing it Up Reform”
Jal Mehta
National Forum on the Future of Liberal Education
February 19, 2010
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The Dream of Rational Administration
The Dream:
(social) science + social policy = social progress
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Science, Rationality and Progress:A Thumbnail History
The dream: scientific knowledge + policy = progress
Examples: Public health – vaccines
Education – Progressive era schools “outside of politics”
Urban planning and design – planned cities (e.g. D.C.)
Social policy – war on poverty
Professional schools: Kennedy School, GSE
Techniques
Cost-benefit analysis
Policy analysis
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Do you believe in the dream?*
*More precisely: Do you believe that public policy, guided by scientific knowledge and reason, is our best hope of achieving progress?
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Strengths of the Dream: Hallmark Virtues of the Enlightenment
Truth: Science/data preferable to supposition, ideology
Reason: Science preferable to naked power/politics “Climate change”
Progress: Public policy leverages “what we know” for improvement at scale
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Weaknesses of the Dream: Hubris (!) (and Vietnam)
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2. Challenges to the Dream
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Four Limits of the Dream
1. Values
2. Politics & claims of expertise
3. Knowledge
4. Policy & implementation
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Limit #1: Values(People disagree with the dream…)
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Limit #1: Values(People disagree with the dream…)
Science cannot settle questions of value
“Science is meaningless because it gives no answer to the only question important for us:
‘What shall we do and how shall we live?"‘
-- Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” quoting Leo Tolstoy
Post 60s -- cultural and social conflict Busing, abortion, crime, welfare – not by data alone
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Limit #2: Politics(And not only do people disagree, they have
the right to have their voice heard)
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Limit #2: Politics(And not only do people disagree, they have
the right to have their voice heard)
Dream “depoliticizes” politics*
Expertise vs. democracy
Public policy schools lack “jurisdictional claim” of other professions
*
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Limit #3: Epistemology/Knowledge
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Limit #3: Epistemology/Knowledge(Even if people would listen to us, what we could tell them is limited and often fallible)
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Limit #3: Epistemology/Knowledge(Even if people would listen to us, what we could tell them is limited and often fallible)
Limits of predictive social scientific knowledge
Social science vs. natural science
R2 often less than 10 percent
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Limit #4: Limits of Policy
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Limit #4: Limits of Policy(Even if policymakers did what we wanted, top-down policy
can be a weak tool for changing human behavior)
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Limit #4: Limits of Top-Down Policy
Difficulty of changing behavior of agents of the state Discretion & street-level bureaucracy (Lipsky)
“Seeing like a State”:
Inability to see how things look on the ground
Difficulty of changing client/citizen behavior Society & culture
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Four Limits of the Dream of Rational Administration
1. Values – Science cannot settle questions of value
2. Politics – Experts cannot settle questions of democracy
3. Knowledge – Knowledge is finite and limited
4. Policy – Policy is a limited tool for changing human behavior
For more, see Jal Mehta, The Chastened Dream, book manuscript, in progress.
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So how does this apply to D.C.?
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So how does this apply to D.C.?
Detractors of Rhee would say:
Caught up in the technocratic dream
• Values -- No realization that others’ values might differ
• Politics – Experts seek to circumvent democracy
• Knowledge – Will differentiated teacher pay really improve schools? (Problems in the theory of action)
• Policy – Do D.C. schools, by themselves, have the power to substantially change student outcomes?
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So how does this apply to D.C.?
Supporters of Rhee would say:
Reinventing the Dream to achieve results
• Science – Plan built on research about impact of high quality teachers
• Politics -- • Naïve to bow to self-serving political interests• Some remove from politics needed to pursue the common good
• Race – If more kids get educated in D.C., then there will eventually be a more racially even playing field.
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So how does this apply to D.C.?
What do you say?