Spring 2005 Vol. 29, No. 1 Ultimate Test Who Is Accountable for Education If Everybody Fails? —By Jennifer Sloan McCombs and Stephen J. Carroll Encore! Arts Policy Should Leave Audiences Demanding More —By Kevin F. McCarthy, Melissa K. Rowe, and Julia F. Lowell Nation-Building: UN Surpasses U.S. on Learning Curve —By James Dobbins CP22(4-05)_final_corrected.indd 1 6/22/05 3:49:56 PM Get the Big Picture Editor-in-Chief RAND Review covers the big issues with an John Godges Associate Editor eye for the important details. Paul Steinberg Assistant Editor Christina Pitcher Proofreaders Miriam Polon Kelly Schwartz Art Director Ronald Miller Designer Eileen Delson La Russo Production Editor Todd Duft Circulation Christine Troncoso Web Producer Jason Walkowiak Editorial Board Dominic Brewer, David Egner, Alan Hoffman, Bruce Hoffman, James Hosek, James Kahan, Iao Katagiri, Kevin McCarthy, Elizabeth McGlynn, K. 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CP22(4-05)_final_corrected.indd 2 6/22/05 3:50:22 PM Message from the Editor eople in all professions—from accountants to artists, Spring 2005 Vol. 29, No. 1 from warriors to homemakers—routinely compare Pinputs and outputs. Expenses and revenues. Costs and benefi ts. Only then can people justly determine if a course of 4 News action is warranted, be it a budget, a masterpiece, a battle, • Making Muslim friends or a feast. Usually, professionals compare the sum of inputs • Infl uencing the course of MANPADS to the sum of outputs. • Hooked on short-term drug fi xes But public education in America today is being sub- • Sold on VA health jected to a narrower kind of accounting. More than ever, policymakers and educators are focusing on a single mea- 8 Perspectives sure of output: test scores. Since passage of the federal Suburban Sprawl, Body Sprawl No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, teachers and schools Are Land-Use Patterns Driven by Choice or by nationwide have been held accountable to high-stakes the Market? testing regimes that could determine the fate of public schools in all 50 states. The quest for higher test scores has been enshrined as the law of the land. COVER STORY Our cover story by Jennifer Sloan McCombs and Ultimate Test Stephen Carroll stresses the need to take account of the 10 Who Is Accountable for Education If inputs as well as the outputs. For instance, if the national Everybody Fails? goal is to raise the level of literacy among adolescents, By Jennifer Sloan McCombs and Stephen J. Carroll then the nation must not merely test the students but also allocate the inputs—money, time, curriculum mate- Centerpiece—Three Decades of rials, and professional development of teachers—that Financial Earthquakes Rattle are necessary to help the students achieve the goal. As 16 the authors point out, “It’s unfair to hold students and California Education schools accountable for success without giving them the resources they need to succeed.” California is a telling example of an imbalance between Encore! inputs and mandated outputs. The authors provide the 18 Arts Policy Should Leave Audiences fi rst full accounting of 27 years of diminishing inputs into Demanding More public schools in the state, home to 13 percent of the By Kevin F. McCarthy, Melissa K. Rowe, and nation’s students. The outputs come as little surprise. Julia F. Lowell In our story about the arts, Kevin McCarthy and his colleagues assert that arts advocates have focused on a Nation-Building set of outputs that is imprudently narrow. In this case, the 24 UN Surpasses U.S. on Learning Curve outputs are the public benefi ts of the arts. The authors By James Dobbins propose a broader view of these benefi ts and suggest how arts organizations, local education partnerships, and 30 Commentary state arts agencies can boost the benefi ts. Businesses Need Explicit Policies Our story about nation-building not only offers an for Using Data from Access Control accounting of inputs and outputs on a global scale but Cards also compares the balance sheet of the United Nations By Edward Balkovich with that of the United States. James Dobbins explains that the United Nations has steadily crafted an excep- tional ability to extract maximum output (or at least moderate output) from only minimum input. For the On the Cover United States, however, there appear to be only two Andrew, a dropout from Hollywood High School in Los Angeles, waits for friends outside his former campus on March 23. In California, options: either maximum output from maximum input or fewer than two-thirds of all students graduate from high school in central city districts and in communities with high levels of racial and minimum output from minimum input. socioeconomic segregation, according to the Urban Institute. Education experts have called for greater accountability for the dropout rate instead of the current national emphasis on test scores. —John Godges AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS/DAMIAN DOVARGANES WWW.RAND.ORG RAND REVIEW / S P RING 2005 3 CP22(4-05)_final_corrected.indd 3 6/22/05 3:50:25 PM News After 9/11: How Should the United States Deal with the Muslim World? Following the terrorist attacks of nao to Muslim diasporas in the factors, such as the failure of politi- Sept. 11, 2001, and the subsequent West—examining critical cleav- cal and economic models in many U.S. interventions in Afghanistan ages between Muslim groups and Arab countries, that have fueled and Iraq, it is easy to view a mili- tracing the long-term and immedi- anger at the West. tary response as the way to wage ate causes of Islamic radicalism. “While only Muslims them- the war on terrorism. But accord- Rabasa and his research team selves can eff ectively challenge the ing to Angel Rabasa, lead author of developed a typology (see the fi g- message of radical Islam, there a new RAND study, America and ure) showing that Muslim groups is much the United States and its allies can reduce support for fall along a spectrum—from those like-minded countries can do to radical Islam and terrorism—and that uphold democratic values and empower Muslim moderates in improve relations with the Muslim reject violence to those that oppose this ideological struggle,” Rabasa world—by empowering liberal and democracy and embrace violence. noted. He and his team suggested moderate Muslim sectors in what Th is typology can help U.S. poli- the following strategies: is essentially an ideological strug- cymakers identify potential part- • Help to create moderate, inter- gle within the Muslim world. ners in the Muslim world. national networks “to retrieve Doing so requires a strategy Researchers highlighted those Islam from the hijackers.” that, in turn, requires a better un- cleavages within the Muslim • Disrupt radical networks. derstanding of the political envi- world—between Sunnis and • Foster reform of madrassas ronment in the Muslim world. Shi’ites, between Arabs and non- (Islamic schools) and mosques. Rabasa’s report helps to develop Arabs, and among ethnic com- • Expand economic opportunities. that understanding. It charts the munities, tribes, and clans—that • Support Muslim civil society major ideological orientations in have implications for U.S. interests groups that advocate for moder- the diff erent regions of the Muslim and strategy. Th e researchers also ation and modernity. world—from Morocco to Minda- pointed to some of the long-term • Deny fi nancial resources to ex- tremists. • Calibrate the war on terrorism Charting the Ideological Landscape Across the Muslim World Could Point Toward a Strategic Path so that it does not play into the hands of Islamic radicals. Democracy Non-Democracy • Engage Islamic groups in demo- cratic politics. Radical fundamentalists Scriptural (conservative) fundamentalists • Engage Muslim diasporas. Religio-political groups Traditionalists • Rebuild close military relation- Modernists ships with key countries (Paki- stan, Turkey, and Indonesia). Liberal secularists Secularist • Assert a diff erent kind of mili- groups Authoritarian secularists tary presence in sensitive regions, Nonviolence Violence reducing U.S. visibility as an Radical fundamentalists “occupying power” and increas- Religio-political Scriptural (conservative) fundamentalists ing its capabilities in areas such groups Traditionalists as civil aff airs (off ering medical Modernists assistance) and cultural intelli- Secularist Liberal secularists gence (deploying more linguists groups Authoritarian secularists and regional specialists).