By Jack McKay
Interest in the “Inverted U” was started after reading Malcom Gladwell’s recent book, David and Galiath (2013). Gladwell presents the case that “too much of a good thing” as it relates to class size. His point is that as the class size is lowered, achievement is better, but only to a point. If class size becomes too small, then there is a marginal or negative effect on learning. Other words, “too much of a good thing can result in a negative result.”
Is it practical to apply the “Inverted U” theory to other educationally related issues?
The “Inverted U Theory,” developed in 1908 by Yerkes and Dobson as a way of explaining that arousal (e.g., motivation or stress) increases to an optimal level of performance. However, if arousal (e.g., motivation and stress) continues to increase beyond the optimal level, then performance will begin to deteriorate.
Researchers has found that different tasks require different levels of motivation for optimal performance. For example, difficult or intellectually demanding tasks may require a lower level of motivation (to facilitate concentration), whereas tasks demanding stamina or persistence may be performed better with higher levels of motivation.
The effect of task difficulty led to the hypothesis that the Yerkes–Dodson Law can be decomposed into two distinct factors as in a bathtub curve. The upward part of the inverted U can be thought of as the energizing. The downward part is caused by the negative effects of motivation (or stress) on cognitive processes like attention, e.g., tunnel vision, memory and problem-solving.
Following are a series of charts using the “inverted curve” to show that while the intentions of a school reform, designed by policy makers as well intended, are now resulting in unintended consequences. Over the past 10 to 20 years, public school leaders and advocates have been presented with a series of efforts to improve student achievement. These range from (a) increased funding by corporations and foundations intended to change the public schools, (b) increased federal mandates and programs to improve accountability, (c) increase alternative means of providing education in a community through privatization and competition and (d) evaluating teachers to improve instruction and remove the incompetent. While noble in appearance, in each case there are unintended consequences –other words “too much of a good thing.”
Federal state intervention Accountability (Testing)
Most notably, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act, passed by Congress in 2002, was designed to be a flagship federal aid program for disadvantaged students. The NCLB supports standards-based education reform based on the premise that setting high standards and establishing measurable goals can improve individual outcomes in education. The intended motivation was to hold educators accountable by testing and rewarding those school districts that improved student performance.
The primary outcome of NCLB has been an increase in the testing of students. An ideal outcome of testing would be to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the school’s instructional practices. More specifically, the intent would be to provide the faculty with diagnostic information about their students in order to improve student achievement.
However, the unintended consequence of testing has been the trend of teaching the content of the test, thereby reducing or channeling the curriculum. Content not included on the test, such as the arts, music, physical education are reduced or deleted from the instructional program. Further, with the testing comes the unreliable comparison of teachers, schools, systems and communities. With the emphasis on test results published in the media, there is a tendency to judge the effectiveness of the teachers and the school system based solely on outcomes rather than other social and economic issues facing influencing the incoming students.
Finally, there is the pheonomen called Campbell’s Law: “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.” Campbell’s Law explains why there have been a number of scandals related to testing (Houston ISD 2003, 2011 and 2013, Atlanta (2010), Washington, DC 2013)).
Privatization and Competition for students
Privatization is intended to improve the efficiency of the organization, in this case, public schools. The underlying idea is that in a democratic society, a person should have a choice and also where to have their children attend school. Privatization is an attempt to increase the quality of education through increase the management of scares resources by using the practices and procedures successfully used in the private sector. It is believed that through privatization, the following will occur: (1) increasing competency-based teaching, (2) increasing the time of self-learning via technology, (3) greater use of group learning, (4) decreasing the teacher-dominated learning practices, and (5) practice continuous evaluation through the use of testing and monitoring student progress through the use of technology.
However, privatization has resulted in the increasing selectivity of the inputs (the capability of the students), inappropriate rankings of schools, and diminished local control the community’s schools.
School Choice
School choice is a term or label given to a wide array of programs offering students and their families alternatives to publicly provided schools, to which students are generally assigned by the location of their family residence. School choice is sold on the idea that it empowers parents to choose what is believed best for their children. Examples of school choice may involve vouchers to attend private or charter schools.
However, what school choice creates is a climate of self-interest over what might be best for other children and the long-term impact on the community. Unintended consequences of school choice range from creating a dual educational system to segregating the community on social and economic lines. Further consequences are increasing inequities in educational opportunity, narrowing the curriculum to ensure higher test results and competitive advantage for recruitment, along with selective recruiting efforts to attract only the most capable students – skimming the public schools. Finally, there is no reliable evidence that the charter school experience, with less bureaucratic control, improves student achievement nor has led to any significant innovations of instruction and organization.
Foundation and Corporate Grants
Foundation and corporate funding of public education can be positive or negative, depending on the purpose or objective of the contributor. Usually, the motive of a foundation or corporation appears to be holistic, but the unintended consequences ranging from the integrity of the school’s mission or to the research outcomes. Foundations like Gates and Walmart have invested heavily in the areas of accountability. These efforts related to imposing a business model of measuring outcomes based on controlling the incoming raw materials – contrary to the public school model of accepting all students, regarding of social class and level of preparation for schooling.
Beyond the corporate model of controlling inputs is the undue influence on decision-making on the local school board, the dependence on outside funding sources, as well as the potential increase in the inequity of the distribution of funds within and through a school system and state.
Somewhat related is the integrity of educational association aligned public education. Once respected national educational associations like the National Education Association (NEA), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the Association for School Curriculum and Instruction (ASCD) and the publications like the Chronicle of Higher Education and Education Week, are now facing an integrity issue related to their editorials and research. Even the U.S. Department of Education, under the leadership of Arne Duncan, has been strongly implicated with ties to the Gates Foundation, thereby creating an integrity issue with motives at the federal policy level.
The Gates Foundation, for example, has significantly changed the level of influence over legislative policies about education, e.g., testing, teacher evaluation, school organization and merit pay. By buying legislation, the desired change in more likely to last and feel more like routine governance.
Teacher Evaluation Process
The reform efforts surrounding teacher evaluation have been related to value added measures (VAM). VAM are designed to estimate the teacher’s effect on student learning. Policy makers believe that emphasis on the impact of a teacher on student learning, over a period of time, will improve the quality of the teaching profession. A number of prominent researchers have concluded there is no evidence to support value added measures as a reliable indicator of successful teaching. Research evidence suggests that the unintended consequences of VAM are such things as deteriorating collaboration, increased turnover of faculty, and an increase of administrative time to carry out the related observations and documentation relative to improved instruction. A complimentary motive of teacher evaluations is to reward those outstanding teachers with higher salaries – merit pay.
There is no reliable evidence to suggest that greater emphasis on the teacher evaluation process motivates teachers to improve and therefore paid a higher salary. Regarding merit pay, there is considerable research that suggests that monetary rewards (merit pay) are not valid incentives to improve performance in a cognitive activity such as teaching. In teaching, where thousand of decisions are made about classroom management, instructional practices and diagnostic are made daily, altruism trumps money (Heyman and Arueky) .
There is no reliable evidence to suggest that greater emphasis on the teacher evaluation process motivates teachers to improve and therefore paid a higher salary. Regarding merit pay, there is considerable research that suggests that monetary rewards (merit pay) are not valid incentives to improve performance in a cognitive activity such as teaching. In teaching, where thousands of decisions are made about classroom management, instructional practices and diagnostic are made daily, altruism trumps money (Heyman and Arueky).
Summary
As stated, “too much of a good thing” can result in some unintended consequences. While well intended, some of the recent efforts to reform public education by zealous reformers have not developed as planned. Most efforts to improve the public schools have been directed towards the management of resources (e.g., charters and vouchers) and personnel (e.g., teachers and students) and placed an emphasis on the outputs of the education process (e.g., testing and evaluation). At the same time, the inputs have been ignored (e.g., adequate funding and the readiness of students entering school).
Why have the well-intended reforms been less than successful? First, reforms like increased testing, school choice, and teacher accountability, have little or no research data to justify the time and effort. Testing places emphasis on scripting and passing, not learning. School choice places emphasis on student recruitment, not on inclusiveness and innovation. Teacher accountability places emphasis on competition and short-term rewards, not on collaboration and creativity.
References
Psychology Arousal – The Inverted Curve, by H. Chambers, http://pe-arousal.blogspot.com/2011/09/inverted-u-theory.html
Yerkes, R. M. & Dodson, J. D. (1908). The Relation of Strength of Stimulus to Rapidity of Habit-Formation. Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology, 18, 459-482.
Heyman James and Ariely, Dan, Effort for Payment: A tale of two markets. 2004, American Psychological Society. http://web.mit.edu/ariely/www/MIT/Papers/2markets.pdf
The results, recently published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, show remarkably clear conclusions. In each of the conditions, all participants who were reminded of money demonstrated behaviors consistent with decreased interpersonal skills and increased personal performance. http://psychcentral.com/news/2008/07/10/money-influences-behavior-more-than-we-think/2586.html