Week 11: Michelle Rhee and “Blowing it Up Reform”

Jal MehtaNational Forum on the Future of Liberal Education

February 19, 2010

The Dream of Rational Administration

The Dream:

(social) science + social policy = social progress

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

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?

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

Weaknesses of the Dream: Hubris (!) (and Vietnam)

2. Challenges to the Dream

Four Limits of the Dream

1. Values

2. Politics & claims of expertise

3. Knowledge

4. Policy & implementation

Limit #1: Values(People disagree with the dream…)

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

Limit #2: Politics(And not only do people disagree, they have

the right to have their voice heard)

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

*

Limit #3: Epistemology/Knowledge

Limit #3: Epistemology/Knowledge(Even if people would listen to us, what we could tell them is limited and often fallible)

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

Limit #4: Limits of Policy

Limit #4: Limits of Policy(Even if policymakers did what we wanted, top-down policy

can be a weak tool for changing human behavior)

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

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.

So how does this apply to D.C.?

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?

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.

So how does this apply to D.C.?

What do you say?