One step forward, one step back: Why ed reform donors are frustrated

Changing young people's trajectory is hard, writes Mike Goldstein in Education Next. An education researcher and innovator, he founded or co-founded Match Education, Match Tutoring Corps, Sposato Graduate School of Education, 1Up, the Learning Lab at Bridge International Academies (now NewGlobe), Hoop Brains summer camp, and the Cuemath Learning Lab, and is now working on Teen Flourishing.

Education reformers are "a dispirited rebel alliance of do-gooders," he writes. Donors are tired. "Because political headwinds are so strong and undeniable, few of us want to pick a second battle with this 'optional' existential question. Do kids really change?"

The ed reform movement has been a "significant disappointment," said philanthropist John Arnold on Tyler Cowen's podcast. There have been "isolated pockets of excellence," usually with a "fantastic leader." But the ideas don't scale.

When his philanthropy analyzes the "long-term effects of programs and policies," many of the short-term gains disappear.  "For me, the Fryer-Dobbie 2016 paper on Texas charter school alumni earnings was a biggie," Arnold tells Cowen. "We weren’t really lifting kids out of poverty. And that was the whole point of ed reform."

There’re a lot of interventions that can happen that’ll change somebody’s short-term prospects, whether that’s a job training program or an addiction treatment program or an education program. You can bump them off that baseline for a little bit, and over time, there’s reversion to the mean.

This is very real, though few will say it aloud, writes Goldstein. "But! I’m cheerfully optimistic." That's because he's "moved back towards pursuing artisanal change with kids. Help 20 students here, 100 students there."

As AI displaces white-collar workers, "the price of labor from really talented problem-solvers is about to drop," he predicts. "Artisanal efforts that fully embrace the tendency of kids to 'revert to the mean,' while still changing their arcs, can multiply. And if we build it (the 1,000 flowers blooming), new philanthropy will come."