Author: George London

I was not a normal child. At age 2, my favorite pastime was disassembling every child safety device my parents bought. By age 4, I had become an avid user of the original Macintosh (despite being unable to read.) When I hit school, I was… ”impatient” with the pace of the curriculum. Luckily, I had great parents. They were interested enough to provide me with an endless supply of books and extracurricular excursions. They were savvy enough to maneuver me into an excellent charter middle school. And they were affluent enough to send me to a private high school where the teachers stuffed me with knowledge instead of letting the students stuff me into lockers.

Not all children are so lucky. I’m no social scientist, nor am I particularly well informed about the particulars of the American public educational system. What I am is strongly convinced that educational opportunities make an exceptional difference in the life of a gifted child. And that every gifted child in America – irrespective of background – deserves at least the same opportunities I had.

Last week, I read an article in the New York Times about the continued under-availability of gifted and talented (G&T) education, especially to minority students. In our era of unbelievably insane and misguided budget madness, education is something of an easy target. Children, of course, don’t vote. And G&T education is often seen as a luxury which can be cut or as a competitor for a fixed number of education dollars (especially against programs like special education.)

So, naturally, while falling asleep last night I decided to estimate the actual cost vs. benefit of gifted education. The results were somewhat surprising, so I’d like to share them with you.

In short, the conclusion is that it literally costs the government $0 to spend up to $6,500 extra per pupil per year on gifted education. That’s approximately 50% more than the U.S.A. currently spends on the average pupil.

That sounds like a lot, right? Here’s how I got there:

First, we need a few simplifying assumptions:[1]

·      Students can be ranked into deciles by academic aptitude [2]

·      Annual income is related to academic aptitude by a power law distribution [3]

·      A well-targeted education program can raise the average annual income of a decile by 5% [4]

From there, the logic is simple. The annual median income for men in the USA is ~$45k [5]. We assume that the least a worker in the USA can make in a year is $10k [6]. We then roughly fit a power law distribution using income data reported by the U.S. Census Bureau (which has a pretty clear power law shape.)

(source)

This lets us predict annual income by academic decile:

From there, we can predict lifetime income by simply multiplying annual income by the average number of working years (assumed to be 43)[7]. We then multiply lifetime income by our education “bonus” multiplier (5%) to get the additional income each student is expected to generate over her lifetime. We then assume that the government will take back 30% of that extra income through taxes. We divide those collections by the number of years a student spends in school (13), and we have our annualized “free money” threshold, i.e. an amount of spending per pupil that will generate a positive return on investment for the government.[8]

This chart shows the conclusion:

If you’d like to see the calculations step-by-step or you’d like to adjust my assumptions, take a look at this Google doc.

What does this chart say, exactly? It says that if the government spends an additional $5,000 per year on a gifted student, it can expect to collect more back in income taxes over her life than it spent on her gifted education. In other words, up to a point (i.e. $6,500) spending on gifted education is literally free for the government.

That means that any debate about prioritizing gifted vs. special needs education is deeply misguided. It’s not an either/or question. The only reasonable course of action is to just spend the money on gifted education and make all other education spending decisions independently. The government need not even raise taxes to fund the programs; they could issue a 30-year municipal bond and expect to be able to pay back the interest with the extra taxes they collect.

Now this analysis is obviously an oversimplification. Everyone knows that being smart per se does not guarantee a high income.[9] It’s crude at best to assume a static and binary 5% boost in income from simply having a gifted program. And this analysis completely ignores the many social benefits of having better prepared doctors and scientists[10]. I discuss a number of other specific flaws in the footnotes.

Nevertheless, I think the conclusion is sound. Opportunities for accelerated education made a huge difference in my life, and it’s a tragedy that talented students continue to be denied those opportunities just because of their parents’ income. Whether the USA recognizes that fact, China and India certainly will.

Notes:

[1] Relevant data was hard to find on a cursory Google search. If you have better data or feel like making more sophisticated models, please post in the comments!

[2] The idea of innate academic aptitude is controversial enough even without specifying a yardstick. So choose your own! The method of measurement doesn’t affect the logic as long as a measurement can be made.

[3] It’s pretty clear that income itself follows a power law distribution. I’ve never seen a good study about how well academic aptitude predicts income, but to whatever extent America actually is a meritocracy: it will. For every maxim about “A students work for C students”, I’ve met very few unintelligent people who’ve earned large amounts of money.

[4] I pulled this number out of a hat. Intuitively and based on my own experience, I suspect it’s significantly higher. But I wanted to be conservative for the analysis.

[5] The median income for women is substantially lower, but I’m assuming that’s because homemakers are counted. Assuming men and women have equal earning potential if they actually do work, using male income shouldn’t affect the conclusion.

[6] A bit less than full-time minimum wage income, since unemployment rates are much higher for the less educated.  http://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/what-are-annual-earnings-full-time-minimum-wage-worker

[7] Working from 22-65

[8] I’m ignoring any time-value-of-money issues, both because that would be complicated and because I figure that wages should grow approximately at the interest rate, so discounting vs. wage inflation should cancel out.

[9] In an era where a good data scientist can earn $300,000…we’re getting close. Many top decile people will chose lower income careers, but they will have had at least the option to earn more if they chose.

[10] Medical, technological, and scientific discovery probably also follow a power law distribution. So we should expect that giving our brightest scientists more education will significantly increase the rate of discovery.

I’m fortunate to have a lot of well-intentioned friends. They believe in a variety of noble causes and sincerely want to change the world for the better. To date, few of them have succeeded. [1]

With the terrible tragedy on Friday, we’ve seen an outpouring of good intentions on Facebook and Twitter. But I’d be very surprised if that sentiment produces any more meaningful change than all the similar outpourings following (far too many) previous tragedies.

Why? Because every failed movement fails in its own way, but every successful movement is alike.

There is really only essentially one way to create meaningful political change. I’m going to walk you through it now.

Step 1: Identify the decision-makers.

The USA is a democratic republic (not a democracy.) We have a legislature that makes laws, an executive that enforces laws and controls administrative agencies, and a judicial system that interprets the law and the constitution.

Nearly every aspect of our society is under the direct control of one of those branches (or its local equivalent) and no one else.  If you want to change the law (for example to ban assault weapons), you must win over 51% of the legislature. [2]

Win over 51% of the legislature and you win. Win over 50% or less and you lose, no matter how much money you raised or awareness you created. It really is that simple.

Step 2: Identify your opponents.

The status quo is not random. Whatever aspect of society you identify as a bug, someone else sees as a feature. That person (or more often, that very large group of people) prefers things they way they are and will actively fight change. Sometimes, your opponent really will be a shadowy cabal of corporate SuperPAC’s. But in most cases your opponents will be an outright majority of your fellow citizens.  In that case, you have very different problems that require very different tactics.

Step 3: Figure out how to sway the decision maker.

For example, let’s assume that you’re trying to pass a law; 51% of Americans oppose it; Congress voted down the law 41%/59% last year.

What are you to do? Since you’ve completed Steps 1&2, you already know that you need to pick up the votes of 10% of Congress, and that there is a large and organized group of citizens who are pushing Congress the other way.

What determines how a Congressman votes? A little bit of ideology and a whole lot of fear about reelection.

So you need to convince 10% of Congress that flipping to your side is the best way (or better yet the only way) to get reelected. You do that by identifying the Congressmen who won their last election by the smallest margins, preferably in districts where overall public opinion on your issue is as favorable as possible.

Step 4: Create a credible (political) threat.

Politics is the art of threatening with a smile. And now you know exactly which Congressmen to threaten.

You’re not going to be able to bluff this part. Politicians are incredibly savvy at reading the political winds, and if you’re just blowing air there is going to be a large opposition actively pointing that out.

You’re going to need to actually change a lot of hearts and minds, and make your target Congressmen painfully aware of that change. To do that, you’re going to need to get organized. You need to build an actual organization (with leaders and resources) that contacts citizens, convinces them, and commits them to expressing their newfound view directly to their representative.  This effort has to be strategic. Getting a million New Yorkers to sign a petition for more mass transit funding is completely useless if the relevant bill is being filibustered by a senator from Idaho.

Step 5: Enjoy

If you follow these steps, one of two things will happen. Either you’ll realize that enough people disagree vehemently with your goals that you’ll never get what you want no matter what tactics you use. Or you’ll actually get to watch a law be passed that finally corrects a serious social blight.

This year’s successful war against SOPA is an excellent example of this method in action. That effort worked because the major tech organizations united in opposition to the law (which was already unpopular among those who knew about it), they put their message clearly in front of millions of voters, and they coordinated an outpouring of calls and letters to Congressmen. That groundswell made enough Congressmen realize that supporting SOPA threatened their own reelection, and the law collapsed.

I trust that my friends will remain well intentioned. And I look forward to all the wonderful things they’ll accomplish if they just remember: identify the decision makers, identify your opponents, figure out how to sway the decision makers, and create a credible political threat by contacting, convincing, and committing the right group of fellow citizens.

[1] Except perhaps on a very local scale, which is valuable but much less than they intended.

[2] Or 61%, thanks to our silly filibuster system.