If one cannot see the forest for the trees.Når man ikke ser skoven for bare træer.

Why „stupid public policies“ prevail.

If one cannot see the forest for the trees.Når man ikke ser skoven for bare træer.

• Beklager at jeg ikke får det til at deltage i hele konferencen. Jeg synes ikke om det, men hvorfor ser I ved siden af.

• Beklager at jeg ikke fik det til at skrive indlæget på Dansk. Men der er alt for sjældent muligheder for mig til at tage Dansken i brug ...

• Til gengæld er mine overheads skrevet på en måde som skal være selvforklarende. Jeg skal ikke snakke om alt som står der. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn1S3YOFMGw

If one cannot see the forest for the trees.Why „stupid public policies“ prevail.

• Stupid public policies.• The case of competency based

curriculum reform.• The logic of 42.• A short history of the welfare state.• The predicament of

current policy making.• What to do about stupid public policies.

If one cannot see the forest for the trees.

Stupid Public Policies. • In many Western countries, we are currently

experiencing a wave of policy proposals and enacted policies which obviously are not able to deliver what is promised by them.

• However, repeated failure to deliver does not prohibit such policies from being borrowed and copied in other places.

• Political science calls this “stupid public policies”, i.e. “policies that are repeatedly proposed and which continuously fail, even though there is social science research indicating that these policies would not work.” (Schultz 2008, 9)

If one cannot see the forest for the trees.

Anecdotal evidence.• Meeting with the Minister of Education & Andreas Schleicher OECD.

Me: There is no evidence that whole day schooling changes the fundamentals of equity and excellence if all other elements remain the same. Germany just wasted billions of Euros on this experience.Schleicher: That is true. However, I do not know excellent school systems without whole day schools.Me: Nor do I. However the same is true about failing systems as almost all school systems have a certain amount of whole day schools.The minister: It doesn’t matter. I am absolutely sure that whole day schools will improve the outcomes.

• Public debate with the education spokesperson of the Green Party:Me: There is no empirical evidence that transforming Junior High Schools into comprehensive schools without changing the patterns of instruction can solve equity problems. Rather the opposite: It will speed up the spreading of private alternatives, thus enforcing economic segregation.The education spokesperson: It doesn’t matter, because I believe anyway that it will improve equity.

• Public debate on introducing a year of obligatory kindergarten.Me: Given the fact that almost all respective children are already attending kindergarten, there is no reason to believe that making this compulsory will change the underlying trajectories. Rather the opposite: The additional public money for the obligatory part will allow private kindergarten facilities to expand their lead. The departmental spokesperson: This can’t be true because we do not wish that to happen. (It actually happened, and the public evaluation of the whole effort was cancelled).

If one cannot see the forest for the trees.Stupid Public Policies. • I could continue hours and hours telling such stories

concerning e.g. centralized exams, testing, inclusion strategies, migration policies, re-districting and other measures to change school attendance, teacher education, all kinds of school reforms. (Bauer/Geppert/Hopmann 2012)

• Likewise, I know many similar examples from other countries & colleagues.

• The pattern seems almost always to be the same:• A certain policy is said to be evidence based.• Social researchers point to the fact that most, if not all of the

available scientific evidence is contradicting the claims and/or that there is at best no rigorous research supporting the claims.

• This does not stop the politicians from pursuing these policies or from repeating the same claims, often utilizing partisan research (surveys) which seem to support their claims (while a closer look could reveal that this is not the case – e.g. “re-districting”, Hattie).

If one cannot see the forest for the trees.

The Case of Competency Based Curriculum Reform. • The most recent example of such policies, which I have encountered, is the

current move of the Austrian Government towards a “complete overhaul” of the current curriculum guidelines.

• The officially declared aim of this reform is • To get rid of unnecessary curriculum content, thereby opening space for

“new” input such as digitalization.• To transform the remaining content into detailed competency descriptions.• To align testing and grading based on these descriptions (“true grades”), thereby

guaranteeing equal instruction and outcomes in all Austrian classrooms.• Of course, it is expected that this approach will enhance equity & excellence. • I was invited to be a member of the advisory board for this reform.

I declined in an open letter to the department because there is no historical, comparative or other empirical reason to believe that this will work.

• The answer was: It will work that way in Austria, because we believe in it.

If one cannot see the forest for the trees.

The Case of Competency Based Curriculum Reform.• This is not the first attempt to construct “scripted teaching”, i.e.

standardized ways of delivering and evaluating instruction, in the hope of thereby standardizing outcomes and grading.

• There have been recurrent attempts of doing so since 17th century, the most prominent being “monitorial instruction”, the most recent diverse attempts to control instruction by detailed goal management and/or by introducing standardized performance grading based on closely defined competencies.

• Likewise, these attempts have often been accompanied by specific standardization tools such as prescribed school books, tests, and other instructional tools (almost always relying on most recent technologies).

• None of these survived meeting classroom practice in the long run. The most recent disaster happened in Maine (2018).

If one cannot see the forest for the trees.

The Case of Competency Based Curriculum Reform. • Such an approach would only work if the following pre-conditions could be met

(Hopmann 2001, 2003, 2008 etc.). . It must be possible …• … to design a linear “order” and “sequence” of school knowledge (content,

competencies) which fits all learners likewise irrespective of their cognitive, emotional, social etc. resources.

• … to enact this curriculum in all classrooms likewise irrespective of the actual composition and learning history of the student body at hand.

• … to attribute the outcomes to this enactment irrespective of other learning resources (such as social background and cultural resources).

If one cannot see the forest for the trees.

The Case of Competency Based Curriculum Reform. • None of this holds true:

• There is no unified (universal) order and sequence available. Rather students learn different “matter” with different “meanings”. Therefore, curriculum guidelines should give leeway for adapting teaching to the needs and possibilities of those present.

• There is no way to enact curriculum uniformly. Teaching is always situated in specific circumstances, experienced by different actors, depending on the availability of different resources inside and outside school. No two classrooms are the same.

• There is no “true grading” which is only dependent on what students could learn in class. The narrower the standards, the more they will privilege those with resources to meet such specific standardization. Historically, grades have been constructed as a generalized evaluation of adequate classroom participation, and not as indicators of mastering specific details.

If one cannot see the forest for the trees.

The Logic of 42.• Looking at almost 20 years of PISA driven reforms confirms

what we know already by more than 200 years of public schooling: Standardization has never ever enhanced equity or excellence of schooling in the long run, at best only modernized the technologies of maintaining social divides.

• The “evidence” used promoting such reforms has always been good at constructing specific views on what is wrong, but never been helpful to construct sustainable alterna-tives which are successful according to their own measures.

• If the evidence is “right”, maybe the questions are wrong? Could it be that these reforms are not meant to solve the problems they are based on, but rather to maintain and reframe the “evidence” with new narratives?

If one cannot see the forest for the trees.A Short History of the Welfare State. • Why is this happening? The historical development of the welfare state might

be a central part of an explanation (for more detail see Hopmann 2008, 2014).

• The modern welfare state is build around a trade off: Citizens contribute loyalty and taxes to the state, which in turn covers certain parts of the risks of being born (such as education, health, social security etc.), thus enabling the free movement of labor and capital, which is required in modern economies.

• Coverage was provided by continuously growing “comprehensive institutions”, which (to different degrees) got assigned taking care of certain risks (such as public schools, health care institutions, social insurances, pension funds etc.).

• This turned out to be a highly successful approach creating high levels of historically unprecedented welfare.

If one cannot see the forest for the trees.A Short History of the Welfare State. • Yet, it came along with a fundamental flaw. All citizens got promised

equal access to the benefits of this trade off. However, practically, this could never be achieved. Those who had more anyway, always got more out of the trade off as well.

• Whenever this lack of equality threatened to become a social problem (e.g. labor movement), the solution was to expand the provided coverage (more years in school, more treatments, more benefits etc.) promising better chances for everyone.

• This worked nicely as along as the growth of productivity and the economy allowed expanding the size and share of state revenues. But it gets into serious trouble if these cannot grow anymore ….

If one cannot see the forest for the trees.A Short History of the Welfare State. • This is what actually happens since

the 1980s, additionally put under pressure by the changing patterns of globalization since the 1990s. There is no substantial room for expanding coverage anymore.

Private/Public spending in the UK. NZZ 2013-04-15. (2017 DK: 51.9%, A: 49.1 %, NO: 48.1 %, GB 41.1 %)

If one cannot see the forest for the trees.A Short History of the Welfare State. • This situation has contributed to a fundamental transformation of public policy

making, which we are witnessing since around the 1990s. Instead of expanding the comprehensive institutions (management of placements), more and more resources are distributed based on programs which address current grievances expressed by the relevant electorate (management of expectations).

• The advantage of such targeted programs is that they can be more easily replaced by new programs, if the public or political perception of what is considered being problematic changes.

• Moreover, they allow for a transfer of “accountability”: If programs fail, one can pretend that it is not the policy (or the institution) which got it wrong, but rather those who execute the programs or are clients within these programs.

• This in turn allows for limiting coverage or ending programs in cases where those who are made accountable are said to put an undue burden on the trade off (migrants, refugees, smokers, sluggards, commuters etc.).

If one cannot see the forest for the trees.A Short History of the Welfare State. • These advantages depend on how the

perceived problems are transformed into policy solutions ...

• This is where New Public Management and the rapidly growing evaluation industry comes into the picture. They decide what of the broader public perceptions gets into actual policy making by dissolving complex social configurations (“the wood”) into isolated indicators (“the trees”), which then can be used for calculating the success or failure of any given program statistically.

If one cannot see the forest for the trees.A Short History of the Welfare State. • This has happened to different degrees and

with different speed in all sectors of public expenditure. Actually, the education sector came comparatively late into this game compared to other trade off areas (such as health and social security).

• In the education sector, this is mostly done by associating the perceived problems (e.g. equity, excellence, return of investment) with specific target groups (divided by gender, race/migration, language, religion, culture, rural/urban etc.).

If one cannot see the forest for the trees.

The Predicament of Current Policy Making. • “Academic achievement” has become the predominant tool of measuring success

and failure of educational programs. Not because this is a specifically smart way of doing this, but because the necessary tools for measuring were accidentally avail-able when this policy turn came into being (IEA, NAEP, Standards Movement etc.).

• The problem with this indicator (like many indicators used in areas like health, social benefits etc.) is that it targets something with is clearly beyond the reach of educational policy making, i.e. it is depending on factors outside schooling.

• Yet, if the narrative of improving public education or other social institutions by a given program is to be maintained, this requires indicators which allow for the claim that it is a lack of proper enactment or even the client’s own fault if the program does not achieve what it is officially supposed to.

If one cannot see the forest for the trees.

The Predicament of Current Policy Making. • This is why “migration background” is called out being one of the main culprits for

lacking achievement, and not “poverty”, even though any detailed analysis shows that most of the migration associated differences disappear the moment one controls for social, economical etc. resources.

• This is why schools or even teachers are singled out as “failing”, even though any closer look would reveal that they most of the time do not have the resources which would be needed for making a more substantial difference.

• This is why “lacking parental support” is said to be responsible for all kinds of underachievement, and an alleged “lack of education” accused of being a main source for the social unrest unavoidable in a competition ridden school.

• This is why “student motivation” is considered being a personal obligation, not an impact of schooling, and why all kinds of distractors (such as social media or the social environment) get the blame etc.

If one cannot see the forest for the trees.

The Predicament of Current Policy Making. • Whatever evaluation or testing you look at, you will find many similar transfers of

liability exonerating public policies from their failure to deliver.• Actually, it is the other way round: There is no real interest in avoiding these

fallacies, or in reducing their visibility, because this would rob policy making of the easiest way out of being guilty for not delivering the trade offs promised.

• Large parts of the research community play along, because there is (research-) money and “influence” to be gained by singing the song of social engineering. Most wouldn’t even consider their results as being misleading. Rather they see their pointillistic rendering of indicators as the only relevant state of the art.

• Better expect this kind of “evidence making” to grow. Recent surveys in the US showed that up to 80% of the research quoted in major news outlets stemmed from or was paid for by partisan agencies (such as foundations, think tanks, companies, governments, organizations such as the OECD, World bank).

If one cannot see the forest for the trees.

The Predicament of Current Policy Making. • In this perspective, it is not by chance that almost 50 years of testing and 20 years

of PISA driven policy making have not resulted in a significant reduction of social inequality or any other major concern in most cases (or in the public perception of these causes), rather the opposite. Standardizing the curriculum and the grading will only add to this narrative.

• Even if there is a (limited) success of political interventions, the evidence is often recalibrated to maintain the former narrative. In Austria, for instance, successfully integrating migrants (speaking German at home, marrying an Austrian partner etc.) are simply taken out of the equation to maintain the narrative of failing integration.

• The same happens to other marginalized groups (e.g. less educated, low income, single parents, homeless). It reiterates the story that those in difficulties have only themselves to blame. “We”, i.e. the loyal taxpayers, have a right to abandon them.

If one cannot see the forest for the trees.What To Do About Stupid Public Policies? • All this may explain why “stupid public policies” are not at all as stupid as one

might believe. Which evidence is considered being relevant is not decided by academic standards, but by the functionality for the political discourse.

• I would not even assume that most politicians are actively aware of these short-comings or knowing about the degree to which they utilize “alternative facts”. They simply follow the rules of engagement in a policy discourse constraint by limited resources and growing fights about the re-distribution of wealth and benefits.

• However, like in other areas of “fake news” and “post-truthism”, this has as one consequence: neither policies, nor the public discourse will change significantly because of better research being available. Like the Austrian minister of education said recently: “Sometimes you have to make political decisions irrespective of scientific knowledge” (and as former university professor and migration expert he knows exactly what he is talking about!). Actually, in some cases: “… a doctoral degree was associated with about 60% fewer newspaper citations, holding other variables constant” (Malin & Lubienski 2015, 14)

If one cannot see the forest for the trees.

What To Do About Stupid Public Policies? • What to do then about stupid public policies? Remember that these policies

address public concerns relevant for the respective electorate. If you want to change these policies:

• You will have to get engaged with the social roots of these concerns: Why is it that people believe or at least act based on these narratives?

• You will have to learn how to disentangle the presented evidence to understand what it is actually worth and how to game its production.

• You will have to disconnect your own educational research or teaching practice from the misleading indicators and to focus on those, which really make a difference.

• But there is one important caveat: Do not believe stupid public policies will go away because you ignore them or they will “fail” anyway. They have come to stay! You will have to learn to navigate the multiple realities of evidence making.

If one cannot see the forest for the trees.What To Do About Stupid Public Policies? • “If one defines a situation as real, it is in its consequences real” (Thomas-

Theorem). From the classroom level to academic research, educators have to address the real social, economical, educational etc. causes of these narratives and to get engaged in public discourses framing the policy making accordingly.

• In other words: Educational practitioners and researchers have to understand (again) that doing education is a political endeavor, asking all of us to decide on which side of the social divide and in the social struggles of our time we belong.

Thanks for your attention!