The Habit of Improvement ... Income and Educational Inequality and Their Global Economic Effects

The difference between equal opportunity and equal outcome is enormous. Like night and day.

It's also misrepresented by pandering policians and frequently misunderstood by lots of We the People.

Equal opportunity always results in unequal outcomes. Equal opportunity accompanies individual freedom of choice.

Equal outcome discourages the habit of improvement. Everywhere and among all people, both young and old.

Notable & Quotable is a short commentary about the harmful effects resulting from the equal outcome approach to life:

"Prof. Stephen T. Asma in his new book "Against Fairness" (University of Chicago Press):

Our contemporary hunger for equality can border on the comical. When my six-year-old son came home from first grade with a fancy winner's ribbon, I was filled with pride to discover that he had won a footrace. While I was heaping praise on him, he interrupted to correct me. "No, it wasn't just me," he explained. "We all won the race!" He impatiently educated me. He wasn't first or second or third—he couldn't even remember what place he took. Everyone who ran the race was told that they had won, and they were all given the same ribbon. "Well, you can't all win a race," I explained to him, ever-supportive father that I am. That doesn't even make sense. He simply held up his purple ribbon and raised his eyebrows at me, as if to say, "You are thus refuted." . . .

More troubling than the institutional enforcement of this strange fairness is the fact that such protective "lessons" ill-equip kids for the realities of later life. As our children grow up, they will have to negotiate a world of partiality. Does it really help children when our schools legislate reality into a "fairer" but utterly fictional form? The focus on equality of outcome may produce a generation that is burdened with an indignant sense of entitlement."

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Now let's leave the kids alone and move on to the bigger issues facing our society as a result of wanting everybody to win and receive an 'A' grade, the same pay and for forth. Sounds a lot like 'utopian' communism to me. Or maybe just state sponsored socialism. In either case, I don't like it.

For example, there's been a great deal of political chatter about the need for government actions to "save" the middle class. From whom, I would ask? And how exactly will government do that?

And from listening to all this irresponsible "save the middle class" rhetoric, it would be easy to conclude that income inequality is a result of an economic zero sum game. That all we need to do to achieve 'middle class salvation' is to redistribute the wealth equally in the future and blame the present situation on the effects of past equal opportunity and the rich, in other words.

The argument apparently goes that the rich keep all the gains for themselves and that members of the middle class are being left behind to suffer the hardship.

The only problem with that line of reasoning is that it's untrue. It's nonsensical as well.

Because if it were true, all we'd have to do is pay the high earners less and the middle income segment more. Or in the case of Twinkies, raise the pay of the bakers' union members and take it from the fat cat management. But what happens when the fat cat managers lose their jobs and investors lose their money? I guess everybody's equal at that point, but that's a hell of a way to achieve equal outcomes.

But rather than stay with business, let's use education as a comparative example.

Here are the salient facts. In the U.S. public schools, (1) urban schools underperform suburban schools, and (2) suburban schools underperform schools in many other other countries. Two sets of unequal outcomes.

One way to achieve equal outcomes in U.S. education would be to get the suburban schools to do worse amd match the performance of urban schools, thereby creating greater educational equality in U.S. schools.

That, however, wouldn't accomplish anything globally except make the U.S. educational outcomes even worse competitively when compared to schools in many other countries.

Simply stated, it would further weaken our global competitiveness and cause our U.S. standard of living to decline over time. Of course, within the U.S. borders, we'd be more equal as a whole. But in global terms, we'd also be poorer as a whole, too.

Now let's connect educational achievement to economic growth and prosperity. The Suburban Education Gap is subtitled 'The U.S. economy could be $1 trillion a year stronger if Americans only performed at Canada's level in math:'

"Parents nationwide are familiar with the wide academic achievement gaps separating American students of different races, family incomes and ZIP Codes. But a second crucial achievement gap receives far less attention. It is the disparity between children in America's top suburban schools and their peers in the highest-performing school systems elsewhere in the world.

Of the 70 countries tested by the widely used Program for International Student Assessment, the United States falls in the middle of the pack. This is the case even for relatively well-off American students: Of American 15-year-olds with at least one college-educated parent, only 42% are proficient in math, according to a Harvard University study of the PISA results. That is compared with 75% proficiency for all 15-year-olds in Shanghai and 50% for those in Canada. . . .

Compared with big urban centers, America's affluent suburbs have roughly four times as many students performing at the academic level of their international peers in math. But when American suburbs are compared with two of the top school systems in the world—in Finland and Singapore . . . major suburban areas underperform the international competition. 

The problem America faces, then, is that its urban school districts perform inadequately compared with their suburban counterparts, and its suburban districts generally perform inadequately compared with their international counterparts. The domestic achievement gap means that the floor for student performance in America is too low, and the international achievement gap signals that the same is true of the ceiling. America's weakest school districts are failing their students and the nation, and so are many of America's strongest.

The domestic gap means that too many poor, urban and rural youngsters of color lack the education necessary to obtain jobs that can support a family in an information economy in which low-end jobs are disappearing. This hurts the U.S. economically, exacerbates social divisions, and endangers our democratic society by leaving citizens without the requisite knowledge to participate effectively.

The international gap, meanwhile, hurts the ability of American children to obtain the best jobs in a global economy requiring higher levels of skills and knowledge. This economy prizes expertise in math, science, engineering, technology, language and critical thinking.

The children in America's suburban schools are competing for these jobs not only against each other and their inner-city and rural neighbors, but against peers in Finland and Singapore, where students are better-prepared. The international achievement gap makes the U.S. less competitive and constitutes a threat to national strength and security. Stanford economist Eric Hanushek has estimated that America would add $1 trillion annually to its economy if it performed at Canada's level in math.

So what do Americans do? We talk a great deal about the achievement gap. We write books and reports about it. We wring our hands at its existence. We adopt a revolving door of short-term reforms in response. But nearly 30 years after the alarming federal report "A Nation at Risk," not one major urban district has been turned around. Many of our suburban school districts are losing ground. We have settled on a path of global mediocrity for students attending our most affluent schools and national marginality for those attending failing inner-city schools.

A Hollywood drama released in September, "Won't Back Down," offered an alternative. It told the story of two parents (one a teacher) determined to transform their children's failing school in the face of opposition from administrators, teachers and unions. The protagonists faced apathy and intransigence at every turn.

Hollywood caricatures aside, the movie correctly conveyed that parents are the key. Parents need to say that they won't stand for these intolerable achievement gaps. The first step is for parents to learn what quality education is and how it is achieved.

This isn't a game for amateurs. Parents need to use every resource at their disposal—demanding changes in schools and in district offices; using existing tools such as "parent-trigger" laws and charter schools; organizing their communities; cultivating the media and staging newsworthy events; telling politicians and officeholders that their votes will go to candidates who support improvement; even going to the courts. If parents want change, they have the capacity to make it happen, but it isn't easy.

At the same time, it is critical to recognize that school districts can't perform miracles. They can't overcome the tolls of poverty and poor housing, but they can close gaps. They can raise the floor and the ceiling of student academic achievement. Some schools in high-need districts and suburbs are already doing this. There is no excuse not to—and, if we hope to compete globally, there is no time to lose."

DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS

So if income inequality is an issue, let's at least address the real reasons why that's the case and why minimizing or even eliminating it won't solve our domestic problems, financially or otherwise. Competition is the key, and competition doesn't allow for equal outcomes.

So why do we have inequality? Simply because that's the inevitable result of equal opportunity. Rising standards of living are the result of the temporary effects of rising income inequality.

Higher ceilings mean higher floors in an economy, and raising the ceiling, whether in education or business, should receive equal focus with raising the floor. Otherwise nobody will like what happens, other than "pure" communists, of course. And there aren't any of those "purists" anywhere in the world, including Russia.

Our problems are not because the American fat cats are stealing income that rightfully belongs to the middle class. In fact, it's because we're being outcompeted by others in the world in terms of cost, quality and productivity. At least that's what consumers are saying by spending their MOM as they do.

But let's turn our attention back to education now.

Most of what we hear today about the problems with America's education system concerns evaluating teacher performance fairly, teacher pay and pensions, the effects of teachers unions and the admittedly sad condition of urban schools. {NOTE: How about including the international competitiveness of student performance and suburban schools in the public discussion?}

Unfortunately, this causes us to take our eyes off the real ball. And that ball is the global competitiveness of Americans --- all Americans. And our education system is an essential element of our nation's competitiveness. We're losing our competitiveness and even our willingness to compete. That has to stop.

We see this desire to "play down" all the time and it's all around us.

Youth sports teams don't want to play against better competition, because parents and coaches don't want the kids to become discouraged by losing. Thus, they keep them from playing the best available competition.

We see it when all participants receive a medal and everybody gets to play.

The best players don't get better, but the play becomes more equal. Who does that help? In effect, there's no floor on acceptable performance and the ceiling gets lower all the time.

If we live in the suburbs, we congratulate ourselves on having our kids attend better schools than their urban counterparts. It gives us a mistaken feeling of school superiority. We tell ourselves we're the best, and we want to believe we're the best, but we don't want to risk finding out that we're in fact not the best.

So we never learn that we need lots of improvement. We either ignore the problems or excuse the lack of acceptable performance.

With respect to urban schools, we excuse their poor performance because of urban poverty. In other words, it's not our fault. It's not the teachers' fault, the parents' fault, the kids' fault or anybody's fault. It just "is."

And taking that approach leaves us all off the hook to do something about it --- at least for now.

SUMMING UP

I say this. What difference does it make that we make excuses for why we can't compete with all comers?

In a global work place, we have to take the steps to be competitive. And that requires that our educational system be world class. And that our employees and companies achieve world class status, too.

Otherwise we're resting our on our laurels and that's the loser's way to play.

So let's encourage the good to get better and the better to become the best. Let's always raise the bar. Let's embrace inequality and encourage the habit of continuous and rapid improvement.

Whatever our level of performance at any point in time, it's not good enough. It's never good enough. Not for winners. And America is for winners. All of us.

So let's instill the mindset that if we're behind, we play hard to catch up. We don't give up.

And if we're tied, we play hard to get ahead.

And finally, if we're ahead, we play hard to get further ahead.

As legendary baseball pitcher Satchel Paige said, "Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you." 

Let's face it. Excellence and inequality go hand in hand.

In fact, excellence by one creates the incentive for all others to get better. And that's how virtuous circles --- in the case of companies, teams, individuals, societies and educational systems --- are created.

Continuous and rapid improvement occurs when the conditions are right and the habit of improvement is in place. Not before then.

Let's get busy catching up, getting ahead, lengthening our lead and thereby setting an example for others to follow.

That way we'll all be better off for the way we've played the game.

And who is that opponent? It's our own potential.

Thanks. Bob.