Week 11: Michelle Rhee and “Blowing it Up Reform” Jal Mehta National 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…)

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)

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)

Limits of predictive social scientific knowledge Social science vs. natural science R 2 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.?

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?