Reply to the "Education Review"
Review of Market Education

by Andrew J. Coulson, September 1999

The Education Review review was released in September 1999,
and written by Alison Halpern

     Alison Halpern’s review of Market Education contains two sorts of criticisms: efforts to challenge the book’s findings on empirical grounds, and sophistries. While I am happy to respond to the former category of criticisms, I am disappointed to find so many crude rhetorical devices littering what purports to be a scholarly review. Nevertheless, I respond to all of Halpern’s points below, in the order in which she made them.
     In the third sentence of her review, Halpern refers to the historical case studies presented in Market Education as "anecdotes." An anecdote is by definition a detached incident, or a single event. In contrast to that definition, each case study I present is a broad based and thoroughly integrated account of the educational system in question, the milieu in which it developed, and the cultural and economic achievements of its society. The sources on which these studies are based are either primary or reputable and widely accepted secondary works. Halpern makes no attempt to defend her outrageous mischaracterization of these case studies as anecdotal. [Editor's note: A  few of the secondary sources cited are in fact controversial, but these are corroborated by primary evidence--see my reply to the HEQ review].
     Halpern then criticizes the book’s historical treatment of state-run school systems, saying that I pay "only lip-service to the successes of the public systems." This is false. I spend considerable time and care examining the most notable claims for the successes of state-run school systems, such as their being responsible for bringing schooling and literacy to the masses in post reformation Germany and 19^th century England and America.
     Rather than glossing over these claims, as Halpern alleges, I show that in general the historical evidence contradicts them. The spread of education and the rise of popular literacy in Germany, for example, began before the state-run school systems advocated by Luther were established, and in fact it would have been difficult for the Reformation to have proceeded with such speed and scope were it not for the fact that so many of the German people were already able to read Luther’s missives. In England and America, the evidence shows that majority literacy was achieved under the largely market-based systems of the early 19^th century, and that the spread of completely tax-funded state-run schools did not accelerate that pre-existing growth in literacy. Furthermore, the U.S. Census Bureau’s own figures show that the enrollment level of white children actually went down between 1850 and 1900 (p. 84), despite the fact that this was the period in which state-run schooling expanded across the country and the majority of states introduced mandatory attendance laws. Though African American enrollment rose substantially after the Civil War, this was principally due to the abolition of laws forbidding them from receiving an education. The bulk of the schools serving newly emancipated black children appear to have been private ventures.
     Market Education describes few dramatic successes of state-run school systems because there have been few dramatic successes under those systems, particularly when they are compared to competitive educational markets. Halpern fails to mention even a single purported success of government-run schooling which is not discussed and confuted in Market Education. Nor does she challenge any of those confutations. I am open to the possibility that I have missed some significant historical achievement of a government school system, and will gladly look into any that are suggested to me. [Editor's note: no such achievements have yet been brought to my attention.]
     Next, Halpern fallaciously trivializes the arguments presented in Market Education, alleging that they equate to the simplistic formula: "public equals bad and private equals good." This criticism is patently unjustifiable given the repeated discussions in Market Education of the shortcomings of private schooling and competitive markets. The century-long stagnation in U.S. private schooling is described at length in Chapter 8, the flaws of voucher programs and private contracting arrangements are catalogued in Chapter 10, and the weakness of free markets (absent an effective subsidy mechanism) when it comes to serving low-income families is noted throughout the book and emphasized in Chapters 9 and 11. Furthermore, a substantial part of Chapter 6 deals with public school success stories. I cannot imagine why Ms. Halpern chose to deny the existence of these subtleties.
     With regard to the several chapters documenting the unsatisfactory performance of U.S. public schooling, Halpern states: "unlike many educational researchers who critique the practice of public education while remaining committed to the idea of it, Coulson simply condemns both the practice and the idea of public education." First, a clarification. I draw a distinction between the ideals of public education (e.g. that all children should have access to good schools) and the institution of public schooling, which is only a mechanism for advancing our ideals. I am a vigorous supporter of public education, and have dedicated the past six years of my life to improving it. I do, by contrast, condemn our state-run "public" school system for its gross deficiencies in providing public education, and its inferiority to parent-driven educational markets.
     That said, I will assume that Ms. Halpern is referring to my condemnation of the institution of public schooling, which she dismisses as "simple." It is inexplicable how Halpern could hold in her hands a 170,000 word book supported by well over a thousand source citations and call it "simple." Market Education meticulously documents the fact that state-run school systems have been inferior to market systems in their ability to serve the public. It would be nothing short of scholarly malpractice to cling to such a deficient institution when a superior alternative exists.
     Halpern’s very first effort to provide evidence backing up one of her criticisms comes almost half-way through her review, when she touches on the subject of reading instruction. She writes that Market Education "relies heavily on the work of Jeanne Chall but ignores the thorough critique of her work by Marie Carbo." I draw Ms. Halpern’s attention to the list of endnote references at the back of the book, where she will find more than thirty citations on this topic. Of those thirty or so references, only three are to works authored by Chall. That is not heavy reliance. Contrary to Halpern’s allegation, studies showing success with whole language instruction are factored into this section, as they are considered by all the major research syntheses in the field (for example, M. J. Adams, Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning About Print, and R. Anderson, E. Hiebert, J. Scott, and I. Wilkinson, Becoming a nation of readers: The report of the Commission on Reading). I also cite several works by leading proponents of whole language instruction, such as Constance Weaver, and address their arguments head on.
     The plain fact, as I write in Market Education, is that the preponderance of reputable studies shows the superiority of structured early phonics instruction. As new evidence continues to accumulate, that consensus is only strengthened. After Market Education went to press, the Scottish Office of the U.K. released the results of a 5 year, large scale study (Watson and Johnson, 1999) comparing the effectiveness of various early reading instruction methods. This study found yet again that a synthetic phonics-first approach produced the highest achievement in reading and spelling overall, and the fewest under-achieving students.
     No discussion of reading instruction techniques could mention every article and book written on such a popular topic. It is nevertheless possible to present the consensus of rigorous experimental trials and that is precisely what is done in Market Education. Even the American Federation of Teachers, hardly considered an organization of reactionary anti-progressives, is now championing the need for early phonics instruction. To present a single outdated article (Carbo, 1988) as a supposed refutation of this consensus is preposterous.
     Halpern decries the book’s treatment of public school teachers, saying that its assessment of teachers as generally having poor academic abilities and a lack of interest in academics is "condescending." Indeed, she dismisses these conclusions as "opinions." But indignation is not an argument and my conclusions are not mere opinions. In reputable surveys, teacher candidates themselves report much less interest in academics than do other college students, as a group their verbal and mathematics SAT scores are consistently the worst or second-to worst of students in all ten discipline categories identified by the College Board (which administers the SAT), teachers stress the importance of academic achievement over other educational goals only a third as often as do parents, they view the "nurturing and interpersonal aspects of a teacher’s role as more important than the academic aspects," and the list goes on (p. 140). In is hard to see how these research findings could be honestly construed as "opinions."
     Halpern then moves on to critique the book’s treatment of the experimental evidence on school vouchers. Her criticisms are inconsequential. Voucher experiments are treated only in passing in Market Education and then only because of their high profile in the current debate. Because they represent such tiny numbers of schools and students, because they separate payment from consumption, because participating schools are rarely if ever operated for profit, and because whole categories of schools (most often religious schools) have until recently been prohibited from participating, these programs do not constitute truly competitive markets. A large portion of Chapter 10 is devoted to explaining how and why existing voucher programs fail to constitute true educational markets. The sections discussing empirical evidence from existing voucher experiments could thus be removed entirely from Market Education without affecting its conclusions, which rest instead on the modern and historical evidence of actual educational markets.
     But no such revision is necessitated by Halpern’s off-target criticisms. She faults my rejection of the Witte study of Milwaukee’s voucher program, but that rejection is entirely justified. Randomized experiments are overwhelmingly recognized in the scientific community as superior to experiments in which control groups are cobbled together by experimenters. While the Greene/Peterson/Du and Cecilia Elena Rouse studies analyzed the randomized experiment, Witte failed to do so. Criticisms of the statistical significance of the early Greene/Peterson/Du findings on Milwaukee are interesting, but do not apply to the Rouse study that also found academic improvements in Milwaukee.
     Halpern also fails to note that I do discuss the vigorous disagreement between the Cleveland voucher studies performed by Green, Peterson et al. (which showed academic gains), and by researchers from Indiana University (which did not). She is almost certainly unaware of the latest research in this field by the Indiana University team (which was unavailable at the time of Market Education’s writing). According to the IU team’s most recent work (Metcalf, 1999), students participating in the Cleveland voucher program enjoy significant improvement in their scores over those remaining in the public schools. So a consensus among formerly opposed scholars is now developing around the positive academic effects of vouchers. Note that there has never been any disagreement over the fact that voucher programs lead to significantly higher parental satisfaction and parental involvement in their children’s schools.
     Halpern’s last argument is equally ineffective. She faults Market Education for failing to assess the works of writers such as Henig, Whitty, and Meier. This is a fallacious appeal to authority. To the best of my knowledge, none of the individuals cited has conducted either a comparative historical analysis of school governance structures or an analysis of contemporary free market educational systems (e.g. the Japanese juku). In other words, these "experts" are not expert in the subject matter of Market Education: The Unknown History. Though some, such as Henig and Meier, have studied and criticized quasi-market education reforms (e.g. charter schools, the New Zealand model, government-funded vouchers), Market Education does not advocate these quasi-market reforms. In fact, it criticizes them as well.
     Though I don’t doubt that Ms. Halpern meant well, her review consists almost entirely of linguistic gestures rather than rational arguments. Her few attempts at offering supporting evidence or appealing to dissenting authorities are specious, and her sweeping conclusions are thus unfounded. I look forward to a more substantive review of Market Education.

References:

Watson, Joyce E., and Johnston, Rhona S., 1999. "Accelerating Reading Attainment: The Effectiveness of Synthetic Phonics." Government report, Scottish Executive Education Department - Educational Research Unit (ERU). Available on-line at:
http://www.hmis.scotoff.gov.uk/riu/pdf/interchange_57.pdf

Read Alison Halpern's review of Market Education

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