Improving America's Schools The Role of Incentives (1996) / Chapter Skim
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7. Signaling, Incentives, and School Organizations in France, the Netherlands, Britain, and the United States
7. Signaling, Incentives, and School Organizations in France, the Netherlands, Britain, and the United States
Pages 111-146
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From page 111... ...
The rest cannot: teacher quality, priority given to academics, student engagement, and time on task. The third section addresses a more fundamental question: Why do American students, teachers, parents, and school administrators place a lower priority on academic achievement than their counterparts abroad?
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From page 112... ...
The third section also shows how signaling theory, game theory, and agency theory provide a robust explanation of the learning deficits in American upper secondary schools. According to the economic theory developed below, the fundamental cause is the structure of incentives for learning and high-quality teaching of demanding material.
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SIGNALING, INCENTIVES, AND SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 113 Achievement in Lower Secondary School TABLE 7.1
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In the 1983 IAEEA study of science achievement of 14 to 15 year olds, the Netherlands ranked third and the United States ranked last among 17 industrialized countries. After a rough adjustment for age differences, American students lagged slightly more than half a standard deviation (about 1.4 U.S.
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TABLE 7.2 Achievement at the End of Upper Secondary School SIGNALING, INCENTIVES, AND SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 115
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Why does achievement lag in math and science but not in reading? Let us start by looking at seven proposed proximate causes of achievement differentials across countries: • Diversity • Restricted access to secondary education • Teacher quality and salaries • Overall spending per pupil • Priority given to academic achievement • Time devoted to instruction and study • Engagement or effort per unit of scheduled time The purpose here is not to select a single most important explanation for U.S.
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However, only the United Kingdom exhibits the expected tradeoff between achievement levels and enrollment ratios (see Table 7.3)
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Many participate in vocational programs and apprenticeships, which currently account for 54 percent of French and 70 percent of Dutch upper secondary students (OECD, 1993)
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Data on the relative compensation of secondary school teachers are presented in rows 1 and 2 of Table 7.4. American upper secondary school teachers start at a wage that is 14 percent below that of the average worker, and after 15 years of experience they earn only 33 percent more.
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. French upper secondary school teachers are in front of a classroom only 532 hours per year.
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Why are the academic standards for entry into upper secondary school teaching in the United States set so low? Why are salaries so low?
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Academic achievement is the overarching -- some would say the only -- goal of French and Dutch secondary schools. In the United States, academic achievement must compete with other goals.
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For example, in the IAEP study, mathematics instruction time was the same in France and the United States, yet French students knew about 1.47 U.S. grade-level equivalents more than American students.
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In science, however, there is no evidence that Dutch and French students had more homework than American students. Furthermore, English and Scottish lower secondary school students do less homework and have less instruction time in mathematics and science than American students but still outperform them.
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Summary Four of the seven proposed explanations for American students trailing French, British, and Dutch students in math and science can be ruled out: diversity, restricted access, spending per pupil, and time for instruction. Three hypotheses survive the first round of tests: lower-quality teachers, lower priority attached to academic goals, and lower levels of student engagement.
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From page 126... ...
discovered this fact when they examined the determinants of mean SAT test scores in the 37 states with reasonably large test-taking populations. Controlling for the proportion of high school seniors taking the SAT and the race, gender, parental income, and parental education of the test takers, they found that New York state had the highest adjusted mean SAT scores.
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TABLE 7.6 Determinants of Mean SAT Scores for States SIGNALING, INCENTIVES, AND SCHOOL ORGANIZATION 127
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. The Bac exams taken in any one area of concentration are comparable to the advanced placement exams taken by American students seeking college credit for high school work.
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I will argue that the structure of rewards for study is at least as important as their size. These issues will be discussed under seven headings: • Peer group norms • Teacher incentives • Administrator incentives • Competition among upper secondary schools • Standards of the external exams • Redoublement as mastery learning and an incentive to study • Choice of specialization as goal setting 7The Ministry of Education sets an exam that has both essay and multiple-choice components.
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Because the school's signals of achievement assess performance relative to fellow students through grades and class rank, not relative to an external standard, students have a personal stake in persuading each other not to study. An important reason for peer pressure against studying is that pursuing academic success forces students into a zero-sum competition with their classmates.
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Responding to such informal pressures, upper secondary school teachers strive to prepare their students for the external exams. American teachers also are expected to ensure that most of their students pass, but they are free to accomplish this goal by lowering the passing standard.
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. give higher grades than students' work deserves." Forty-six percent reported pressure to "pass students on to the next grade who are not ready." Thirty percent reported pressure to "reduce the difficulty and amount of work you assign." Ms.
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In the United States locally elected school boards and the administrators they hire make the thousands of decisions that determine academic expectations and program quality. When there is no external assessment of academic achievement, students and their parents benefit little from administrative decisions that opt for higher standards, more qualified teachers, or a heavier student workload.
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This means that parents who want their child to attend the best upper secondary schools must make sure their child does well in lower secondary school. The Netherlands has three types of general secondary schools -- the VWO (pre-university, secondary education institution–most difficult)
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An analysis of school choice in the Fife Education Authority found that the schools chosen by those leaving their cachement area had better examination results than would have been predicted given the pupil's primary school test scores and family background and the average socioeconomic status of the pupils at the school.8 Consequently, the free choice of schools that prevails in our four European nations generates a competitive pressure on schools to excel that has no counterpart in the United States outside cities with magnet schools. Standards of the External Exam External examinations at the end of secondary school are probably necessary if high achievement levels are to be attained, but they are not sufficient.
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How do European education systems induce students in upper secondary schools to set difficult learning goals and work toward them? They do not, as some have proposed for the United States, set a single high yea-nay standard that everyone is expected to meet.
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Primary school teachers do not feel accountable for how well students do on exams taken after four years of attendance at a secondary school. Secondary schools tend to be large, and the teachers who handle the firstyear students lack a sense of accountability for performance on exams that are more than three years in the future.
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In 1990 Dutch redoublement rates were 7.5 percent per year in academic lower secondary schools, 5.1 percent per year in LBOs (junior secondary vocational education institution) , the vocational lower secondary schools, and 13.3 percent per year in academic upper secondary schools (Central Bureau Voor De Statistiek, 1993)
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In these two countries peer pressure seems to encourage lagging students to study, not discourage them as in the United States.12 Choice of Specialization as Goal Setting All education systems give upper secondary students and their parents the right to select a specialty and the right to choose the rigor and difficulty level of either the school, the academic program, or specific courses. In France four academic lines -- literature and languages (A)
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Why do French and Dutch parents select secondary schools and programs that are so challenging that many must repeat grades to keep up or transfer into easier programs and schools? There are three reasons.
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Parents base their selection of the upper secondary school their child will attend and which academic or vocational program he or she will pursue, in part, on these reputations. Parents tend to set difficult goals for their children, so most students are placed in programs of study that for them are very demanding.
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Reforms tailored to the American context have a greater chance of successful implementation than any effort to replicate the French or Dutch systems of secondary education. President Clinton, former President Bush, and most of the nation's governors support the development of a system of European-style achievement examinations for upper secondary students.
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1988. "Exit choice and loyalty: the impact of parental choice on admissions to secondary schools in Edinburgh and Dundee." Journal of Educational Policy 3:155–179.
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1992. Subject Area Preparation of Secondary Mathematics and Science Teachers and Student Achievement.
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1989. The IAEEA Study of Mathematics II: Contexts and Outcomes of School Mathematics.
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