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| Wed 5 May 2004 |
Policy on the hoof is no match for the evidence
GEORGE KEREVAN
PROFESSOR James Heckman, the latest American economics guru in the Allander Series of lectures on the Scottish economy, knows exactly the experience that set him on his road to winning a Nobel Prize. It was meeting his high school physics teacher in rural Colorado in the 1950s.
The twist in the tale is that Heckman was an unwitting beneficiary of the McCarthy witch-hunts of that era. His inspiring teacher was Frank Oppenheimer, who had helped his brother, Robert, build the atomic bomb. Frank was later driven out of academic life because of his membership of the American Communist Party and ended up looking after cattle in Colorado. A farsighted - and brave - school superintendent took the risk of hiring him to teach physics to selected local school students, including Heckman.
As a result of that formative experience, Professor Heckman is now one of the world's leading economic statisticians, and an expert on testing the practical outcomes of government educational and welfare programmes. His early intellectual brush with Frank Oppenheimer taught him two things: a strong social conscience and a devotion to seeking concrete evidence to back up policy initiatives.
Heckman is now a leading proponent of what is known as evidence-based policy-making. This is far cry from Britain's obsession with crude quantitative targets set for government departments. For instance, in the UK we set schools targets for exam passes. Nothing wrong with that except it does not tell us what jobs or careers the students then get. Evidence-based policy-making goes a stage further. Is about measuring, over long periods of time, exactly what happens to people on government programmes - for instance, do folk with university degrees consistently earn more than those with no degree? If not, then we need to rethink the policy of packing more folk into universities.
For the record, Heckman is dubious about the benefits of ever-greater student numbers. He says it is true that, "on average", degree holders earn more than those without degrees. However, the data in both America and Britain shows that students of marginal ability (who tend to be the last folk brought into higher education through special government action) do not earn anywhere near that statistical "average". In fact, taking into account their student debt and lost earnings, they may be worse off. But such evidence is not what politicians usually want to hear.
Heckmman is in Scotland to preach the virtues of evidence-based policy-making. The Scottish Executive is poor at conducting such basic research. Scottish policy-making tends to be intuitive or based on which group can shout loudest. Heckman says it is the same in America except for one thing: so much evidence on policy outcomes has been generated in the past 30 years that it is increasingly hard for politicians of any party to ignore the obvious.
Starting in the 1960s, when Presidents Kennedy and Johnson launched big welfare and vocational training programmes, economists (including a young James Heckman) were hired to collect voluminous amounts of research data on US poverty, skill levels and unemployment. In time it has become possible to track whole generations of the recipients of such public spending and monitor the outcomes. One finding, for instance, was that many government-run vocational training schemes for unemployed young men were a waste of time. As a result of this tough but compelling negative evidence, President Clinton - hardly a Reaganite - scrapped these training programmes.
Professor Heckman and his researchers have now turned their searchlights on Scottish education. The professor's Allander lecture - Skill Policies for Scotland - is the best researched paper in the whole series and - at 128 pages - the most comprehensive. His bottom line - put in characteristically polite tones - is that the Executive is spending its money in all the wrong places if it wants to maximise results.
Specifically, Heckman says that if the priority is to help the marginal layers of society get better educated (and boost national economic growth for us all) then the key age group on which to concentrate are the pre-school under-fives and not those going to university. He offers profuse research-based evidence that it is at this vital early age where cognitive skills (how to think) and non-cognitive skills (such as concentration, honesty, discipline) are embedded.
In middle class families these are nurturing years where children get their head start. But in dysfunctional, very poor families this is where the irreparable educational damage is done.
This is very bad news for Scotland. In recent years, the number of babies born in Scotland to mothers who are drug dependant has actually doubled - they are now a significant part of the entire baby population. Which implies that, despite having boosted spending on schools to £4,700 per pupil (one of the highest figures in the EU), our skills gap is likely to worsen.
Taking an evidence-based approach, the solution would be to switch public funds to extending pre-school nursery provision targeted on poor and dysfunctional families. This is a priority in England where the Treasury under Gordon Brown is producing the cash to ensure that every two-year-old in a deprived area can find a nursery place. In Scotland, the cash has gone to mainstream schooling, though a new Early Years strategy document is to be published this summer.
Professor Heckman, ever the stickler for uncomfortable detail, makes some important caveats. He says that all too often nursery education equals "baby parking" so young mothers can go to work. To produce results in later years, nursery education genuinely has to stimulate a baby's senses and introduce social skills. For a model, Heckman points to the successful Perry Preschool Project in a poor areas of Chicago, which has strong parental involvement, a low teacher:child ratio and extensive in-service training for teachers. This throws new light on the current nursery nurses strike in Scotland. Following Professor Heckman, it might be more sensible to pay the nursery nurses more and upgrade their skills.
Perhaps Heckman's biggest heresy is to say there is no proof that "lifetime learning" works. He says the evidence suggests people become less malleable in leaning new tricks as life goes on - even in their early twenties. He is not advocating doing nothing; rather he is suggesting a different policy approach. Heckman suggests that it would be more cost effective to subsidise jobs for older workers (school mentors? gardeners? nursery nurses?) than to waste money on retraining. That way their valuable social skills would be kept in the community.
He thinks university students should help pay for their education, and the money used to target only those very bright students from poor backgrounds who would benefit from a degree.
As for schools, Professor Heckman still remembers his illuminating encounter with Frank Oppenheimer. He says "teachers matter". Even here, Heckman has the statistical proof: US teachers move more often than here so it has been possible to identify the impact of individual teachers on pupil performance. Alas, says Heckmam, it is still too difficult to cull out the bad teachers. He suggests more school decentralisation in the hope that enlightened head teachers will have the power to take risks in hiring and firing, just as that forgotten Colorado school superintendent did so many years ago.
The twist in the tale is that Heckman was an unwitting beneficiary of the McCarthy witch-hunts of that era. His inspiring teacher was Frank Oppenheimer, who had helped his brother, Robert, build the atomic bomb. Frank was later driven out of academic life because of his membership of the American Communist Party and ended up looking after cattle in Colorado. A farsighted - and brave - school superintendent took the risk of hiring him to teach physics to selected local school students, including Heckman.
As a result of that formative experience, Professor Heckman is now one of the world's leading economic statisticians, and an expert on testing the practical outcomes of government educational and welfare programmes. His early intellectual brush with Frank Oppenheimer taught him two things: a strong social conscience and a devotion to seeking concrete evidence to back up policy initiatives.
Heckman is now a leading proponent of what is known as evidence-based policy-making. This is far cry from Britain's obsession with crude quantitative targets set for government departments. For instance, in the UK we set schools targets for exam passes. Nothing wrong with that except it does not tell us what jobs or careers the students then get. Evidence-based policy-making goes a stage further. Is about measuring, over long periods of time, exactly what happens to people on government programmes - for instance, do folk with university degrees consistently earn more than those with no degree? If not, then we need to rethink the policy of packing more folk into universities.
For the record, Heckman is dubious about the benefits of ever-greater student numbers. He says it is true that, "on average", degree holders earn more than those without degrees. However, the data in both America and Britain shows that students of marginal ability (who tend to be the last folk brought into higher education through special government action) do not earn anywhere near that statistical "average". In fact, taking into account their student debt and lost earnings, they may be worse off. But such evidence is not what politicians usually want to hear.
Heckmman is in Scotland to preach the virtues of evidence-based policy-making. The Scottish Executive is poor at conducting such basic research. Scottish policy-making tends to be intuitive or based on which group can shout loudest. Heckman says it is the same in America except for one thing: so much evidence on policy outcomes has been generated in the past 30 years that it is increasingly hard for politicians of any party to ignore the obvious.
Starting in the 1960s, when Presidents Kennedy and Johnson launched big welfare and vocational training programmes, economists (including a young James Heckman) were hired to collect voluminous amounts of research data on US poverty, skill levels and unemployment. In time it has become possible to track whole generations of the recipients of such public spending and monitor the outcomes. One finding, for instance, was that many government-run vocational training schemes for unemployed young men were a waste of time. As a result of this tough but compelling negative evidence, President Clinton - hardly a Reaganite - scrapped these training programmes.
Professor Heckman and his researchers have now turned their searchlights on Scottish education. The professor's Allander lecture - Skill Policies for Scotland - is the best researched paper in the whole series and - at 128 pages - the most comprehensive. His bottom line - put in characteristically polite tones - is that the Executive is spending its money in all the wrong places if it wants to maximise results.
Specifically, Heckman says that if the priority is to help the marginal layers of society get better educated (and boost national economic growth for us all) then the key age group on which to concentrate are the pre-school under-fives and not those going to university. He offers profuse research-based evidence that it is at this vital early age where cognitive skills (how to think) and non-cognitive skills (such as concentration, honesty, discipline) are embedded.
In middle class families these are nurturing years where children get their head start. But in dysfunctional, very poor families this is where the irreparable educational damage is done.
This is very bad news for Scotland. In recent years, the number of babies born in Scotland to mothers who are drug dependant has actually doubled - they are now a significant part of the entire baby population. Which implies that, despite having boosted spending on schools to £4,700 per pupil (one of the highest figures in the EU), our skills gap is likely to worsen.
Taking an evidence-based approach, the solution would be to switch public funds to extending pre-school nursery provision targeted on poor and dysfunctional families. This is a priority in England where the Treasury under Gordon Brown is producing the cash to ensure that every two-year-old in a deprived area can find a nursery place. In Scotland, the cash has gone to mainstream schooling, though a new Early Years strategy document is to be published this summer.
Professor Heckman, ever the stickler for uncomfortable detail, makes some important caveats. He says that all too often nursery education equals "baby parking" so young mothers can go to work. To produce results in later years, nursery education genuinely has to stimulate a baby's senses and introduce social skills. For a model, Heckman points to the successful Perry Preschool Project in a poor areas of Chicago, which has strong parental involvement, a low teacher:child ratio and extensive in-service training for teachers. This throws new light on the current nursery nurses strike in Scotland. Following Professor Heckman, it might be more sensible to pay the nursery nurses more and upgrade their skills.
Perhaps Heckman's biggest heresy is to say there is no proof that "lifetime learning" works. He says the evidence suggests people become less malleable in leaning new tricks as life goes on - even in their early twenties. He is not advocating doing nothing; rather he is suggesting a different policy approach. Heckman suggests that it would be more cost effective to subsidise jobs for older workers (school mentors? gardeners? nursery nurses?) than to waste money on retraining. That way their valuable social skills would be kept in the community.
He thinks university students should help pay for their education, and the money used to target only those very bright students from poor backgrounds who would benefit from a degree.
As for schools, Professor Heckman still remembers his illuminating encounter with Frank Oppenheimer. He says "teachers matter". Even here, Heckman has the statistical proof: US teachers move more often than here so it has been possible to identify the impact of individual teachers on pupil performance. Alas, says Heckmam, it is still too difficult to cull out the bad teachers. He suggests more school decentralisation in the hope that enlightened head teachers will have the power to take risks in hiring and firing, just as that forgotten Colorado school superintendent did so many years ago.
This article:
http://business.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=508952004