More On Education

Two thoughts on education tonight. First, more evidence why education matters. Secondly, more evidence that American schools are better than the “Our Schools Are Failing!” Industry want you to believe.

● Point 1: The Populists Lose Another One

One of the tenants of populism is that education is a corrupter rather than an enhancer. Essentially, populism (as practiced by everyone from the left to the right) quickly devolves into the uneducated claiming that their ignorance gives them moral superiority over the elite. Hence, they attack the educated as alien and they revel in idiotic ideas like claiming that a high school education is all the education a “real” person needs. But statistics have blown a hole in that line of crap. And now we’ve added a new piece.

I’ve pointed out before that your income throughout life depends on your level of education. Yeah. “Surprisingly,” all those anecdotal accounts of Bill Gates and three other guys getting rich with only a high school degree turned out to be unique occurrences and in no way representative of the real world. Imagine that. So unless you just happen to invent a once-in-a-lifetime thing, your economic prospects in life are tied to your level of education. Indeed, according to the Census, the median income for people broken down by education level is:

$20,241 Michael Savage Listener
$30,627 High School Grad
$32,295 Some college
$39,771 College grad
$56,665 Bachelor’s Degree
$73,738 Master’s Degree
$103,054 Doctorate Degree
$127,803 Professional Degree

Note that one of those elitist professional types earns six times what a proud populist earns each year, and over a fifty year career will earn $5.3 million more. Even someone with just a generic college degree will earn almost a million more than the proud populist who didn’t need no education.

And it doesn’t stop there. The unemployment rate for low-skill/low-income workers in the US right now is 21%. That is about the same level as the unemployment rate at the worst parts of the Great Depression. However, the unemployment rate for high-skill/high-income workers in the US right now is 3.2%. That is below the level that economists traditionally consider “full employment”... think the Reagan years. So education is the difference between the Great Depression and the Reagan years for job searchers.

And now we add a new piece: how you do matters too. Indeed, the University of Miami has done a study which found that grades matter. Each point a student adds to their GPA during high school adds around 11% to their income compared to their peers when they are out in the real world. That is hugely significant. Indeed, consider that an A student likely makes 22% more than a C student and 33% more than a D student. That’s the difference between $100,000 a year and $67,000 a year. (The one exception to this is when you compare males to females, as females continue to make less than males. However, it does hold true when comparing females to females or males to males or students generally.)

The inescapable conclusion of all of this is that unless you are born rich or happen to invent something amazing, your level of education controls your future and how hard you try when you are going through your education adds a significant component of that. Sorry reel ‘merikans.

● Point 2: Statistical Chicanery

I’ve mentioned before that all these statistics you see about American schools failing are bull. Sometimes they base their claim on numbers that are within the statistical margin of error, meaning they are based on meaningless distinctions. Other times, they rig the criteria by including things that have nothing to do with education outcomes. At other times, they don’t even compare apples to apples, like when they compare all American students against only the best overseas. And once you start digging into any of these numbers, you typically find that the US isn’t at the bottom like they claim but is typically right near the top.

Anyways, there was yet another one of these “WE’RE DOOMED!” studies a few weeks ago, which I sadly cannot find at the moment. This one claimed that America’s schools are failing. And as proof, they claimed that around 35% of American high schools don’t offer algebra or advanced science classes... classes required under the new Common Core standards. Consequently, our schools are failing!!!

Wrong. When you looked into it, this number fell apart immediately. How? Well, consider the state which the study found had the lowest rate of high schools offering algebra or advances science: Georgia. Compliance in Georgia was less than 40% according to the study. However, this was actually a misunderstanding. Georgia requires that all schools teach both classes. The reason they reported they didn’t teach these things was that they name them something else in Georgia, i.e. “algebra” is “Math One.” The study authors didn’t get this.

Errors like this account for almost all of the non-compliance. As for the rest, they are rural high schools in places like Alaska where only a handful of students are taught in a single classroom and there is no ability to teach advanced classes. Those are hardly representative of "high schools" and they don’t even teach enough students to registered within the margin of error. And by counting them as “high schools,” the study distorted how real high schools are performing.

So once again, you had a study which claimed that US schools were failing. Yet, the data they used was obviously fake. A more realistic number is probably that around 95% of American “high schools” offer these courses and the 5% that don’t are specialty schools which teach only a handful of students. In other words, there is no problem here. The scare is a lie.