The Case Against Stakeholder-Driven Education Policy

Governments must respond to data, not pressure

I have written before about how my daughter’s public school is considering eliminating its entire early childhood program—cutting 3K and Pre-K classes that serve dozens of families—to comply with an unfunded state-issued class size mandate. This change would sacrifice programs with strong empirical support to slightly reduce class sizes in elementary grades, where research shows mixed results at best.

The school is making such a backwards decision because the class size mandate was passed at the urging of the teachers’ union, and an alternative solution—repurposing specialty spaces as classrooms—would anger elementary school parents who outnumber the families of younger children. In other words, the loudest, most organized stakeholders are driving policy, not evidence or the community’s broader interests.

This is exactly why I believe that state and local governments must ensure that public schools work deliberately to benefit their surrounding communities. To that end, elected officials should implement educational policies that yield (or at least intend to yield) the greatest return on investment of taxpayer dollars.¹ The decision makers in government should include people with experience and expertise in education, of course, but they should be serving as policymakers, not educators. They should be making decisions based on empirical research and doing so largely independent of teacher and parent organizations who will inevitably lobby for their own preferences.

I know this isn’t a viewpoint that’s always warmly (or at least publicly) embraced by either political party who seem to be focused on increasing either union strength or “parental rights” (or both), and thus, it isn’t bound to win me many friends. But it’s one that I hold strongly nonetheless. Let me explain why.

People tend to have strong opinions and lots of skin in the game when it comes to public education. Everyone has firsthand experience with education that shapes how they believe schools should operate. School staff, understandably, have strong convictions about how things should run—both because they possess expertise in education and because their work environment affects them directly. Parents hold equally strong views because there is nothing more emotionally charged than their children’s wellbeing, and schools play an outsized role in that.

But public schools are not intended to serve individual children or families; they are meant to serve the community as a whole. Teachers and administrators are public servants, employed by the government and paid with taxpayer money, and thus are obligated to serve the public interest, not the preferences of any particular group.

Therefore, state and local governments need to cut through a whole lot of noise and make objective decisions on behalf of the entire community—not on behalf of these individual (often vocal, often passionate) stakeholders with competing agendas.

Example 1: When Teacher Unions Drive Policy

The class size mandate was passed at the urging of the United Federation of Teachers. Of course teachers want smaller classes—reduced class sizes make their jobs considerably easier and more pleasant. There is some research suggesting benefits to smaller classes, but the findings are generally mixed and modest at best. The UFT appears to have cherry-picked and exaggerated findings that support their position while ignoring contradictory evidence.

More importantly, the UFT certainly didn’t conduct a rigorous cost-benefit analysis of what program cuts would be necessary to accommodate class size reductions. For example, our school, like many others, is now proposing to eliminate early childhood programs—specifically 3K and Pre-K classes—which have far stronger empirical support than class size reductions do. It makes no sense whatsoever to cut these early childhood programs simply to satisfy the UFT’s preference for this mandate. If we sacrifice early childhood education to make room for slightly smaller elementary classes, it will represent a net loss to our community and a poor use of taxpayer dollars.

Example 2: When Parent Preferences Drive Policy

Now let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, that the class size mandate wasn’t passed in response to UFT lobbying and that class size reductions would be unambiguously beneficial to the community. There’s another way to accommodate reduced class sizes: repurpose specialty spaces in the school to create additional classrooms.²

Our school is fortunate to have dedicated spaces like a music room, art room, and therapy offices that could be converted into classrooms. The music and art teachers and related professionals could float from classroom to classroom to see students. This approach wouldn’t eliminate any programming—it would simply mean these programs wouldn’t have their own designated facilities.

I cannot point to research on the benefits of having a designated music room versus teaching music in a regular classroom because such research simply doesn’t exist. But, regardless, I can say with confidence that a complete program cut is far more damaging than a change of venue.

Yet what’s being proposed is cutting early childhood programs entirely, not repurposing specialty rooms. Why? Because parents of elementary students (who far outnumber parents of 3K and Pre-K students) will be upset about losing the music and art spaces. They will complain. They’ll show up at meetings and make their displeasure known. Again, this is decision-making designed to appease vocal stakeholders, not to benefit the broader community.

What makes this conversation so fraught is that parents love their children fiercely, and teachers care deeply about their students and their working conditions. These are not villains. They have legitimate concerns and powerful emotional investments. Their passion is understandable and, in many ways, admirable.

But emotional investment does not equal sound policy. The loudest voices are not always the wisest ones. When we allow whoever can organize most effectively, lobby most persistently, or complain most loudly to drive education policy, we don’t necessarily get better schools, but we do certainly get schools that cater to special interest groups, often at the expense of evidence, equity, and the community’s long-term interests.

Government officials need to examine data dispassionately, weigh tradeoffs honestly, and make unpopular calls. They should be insulated enough from immediate political pressure to base decisions on the most rigorous analyses and strongest empirical research that’s available.

We elect representatives to make difficult choices on behalf of everyone, including the people who aren’t in the room, and we deserve policies grounded in evidence rather than in the preferences of whomever can make the most noise.

***

The whole album is awesome, but this one is my favorite!

1. Measured how?, you might ask. Ideally, we’d see that every dollar spent is translating to the maximum future earning power of students, but clearly this isn’t something that’s feasible to measure. So, in the meantime, I think the best objective measure we’ve got is standardized test scores. The merits of assessment data is a conversation for another day!

2. There is another option that’s even better: increasing the number of teachers in existing spaces. However, that would require us to shift the mandate’s focus to student-teacher ratio rather than absolute numbers of students in a classroom. There is evidence to suggest that reduced student-teacher ratios yield roughly equivalent student outcomes to reduced class sizes at a lower cost: of course funding another teacher is cheaper than funding another teacher in another classroom. It is unclear to me why this isn’t a proposal that’s being considered more seriously.