The People’s Front of Judea Merges with the Judean People’s Front

July 31, 2009

This item just in from the AP:

 Anti-Wal-Mart groups merge

Two union-backed groups that have spent years criticizing Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s wages and benefits say they’re going to merge.

 Wal-Mart Watch, backed by the Service Employees International Union, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union’s WakeUpWalmart.com announced Friday they’ll combine efforts to pressure the world’s largest retailer.

The new group will be called Watch Wal-Mart Wake Up, or something like that.  If only they could work on helping Reggie become a woman.

UPDATE:  I sit corrected.  It was Stan, not Reggie, who wanted to become Loretta and have babies.  Thanks to The Minnesota Kid for pointing out my error.

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Posted by Jay P. Greene

Bailouts are Bad — For Teachers as Well as Bankers

July 31, 2009

The Wall Street Journal has a front-page piece today on bonuses paid to employees at banks that had received federal bailout money:

Nine banks that received government aid money paid out bonuses of nearly $33 billion last year — including more than $1 million apiece to nearly 5,000 employees — despite huge losses that plunged the U.S. into economic turmoil…. The $32.6 billion in bonuses is one-third larger than California’s budget deficit. Six of the nine banks paid out more in bonuses than they received in profit. One in every 270 employees at the banks received more than $1 million.

Now, I’ve got nothing against banks (or any other organization) paying large bonuses to their employees — if they do it with their own damn money!  Whatever compensation and hiring system they adopt should yield improved results.  If it doesn’t, the shareholders should experience the consequence of having a foolish compensation and hiring system.  But it makes absolutely no sense to insulate shareholders from the consequences of a foolish compensation and hiring system by giving them federal funds to perpetuate their mistakes.

If this is true for banks, then it must also be true of schools.  Local school districts and states around the country have been on a teacher hiring binge over the last few decades, particularly picking up steam in the last decade.  This is a compensation and hiring scheme just like the banks have.  But instead of paying a small number of executives a huge amount of money, schools are paying a huge number of teachers a moderate amount of money. 

At some schools, as at some banks, their compensation and hiring policies have become unsustainable.  They hired more teachers than they can currently afford to pay.  Rather than making those local districts and states correct their mistakes, either by laying off teachers or raising local funds if they are truly convinced that additional teachers are educationally beneficial, we are making taxpayers nationwide enable and perpetuate those mistakes.  Similarly, providing federal money to banks enabled them to perpetuate mistakes rather than reduce compensation, lay off people, or raise additional capital from shareholders. 

We have no reason to believe that the world would have come to an end if some of those financial institutions had their shareholders wiped-out and were forced to reorganize under bankruptcy.  Similarly, we have no reason to believe that reversing some class-size reductions would have a significant negative effect on student achievement.  Class-size reductions have produced no gains in aggregate achievement and have only shown (questionable) gains in small-scale experiments where hiring additional teachers wouldn’t require hiring lower quality teachers to offset whatever benefits are derived from having fewer students per class.

If people want to be consistent, they should oppose both uses of bailout funds, for teachers as well as for bankers.

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Posted by Jay P. Greene

New DC Voucher Bill Introduced

July 30, 2009

According to an Alliance for School Choice press release:

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) today unveiled a bipartisan reauthorization bill for the D.C. school voucher program.  Lieberman, along with Susan Collins (R-ME) and four other senators, introduced legislation this morning to reauthorize and strengthen the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) for five years…

 Under Senator Lieberman’s bill, the program would be preserved and strengthened significantly. The Lieberman bill would increase scholarship amounts to $9,000 for K-8 students and $11,000 for high school students­indexing the scholarship amounts to inflation. While these amounts remain significantly below the amounts for the D.C. Public Schools, they provide the necessary increases to account for inflation over the past five years.

The bill would also:

–Give scholarship priority to siblings of students who currently participate in the program
–Require participating schools to have a valid certificate of occupancy
–Require teachers of core subject matters to have bachelor’s degrees
–Require an Institute of Education Sciences annual evaluation of the program
–Require students to take nationally norm-referenced tests

I hear that this bill addresses all of the issues raised by Senator Durbin’s bill without any of the program-killing provisions.  If Durbin is really motivated by the concerns he has expressed, such as teachers having bachelors degrees and schools reporting test results, we may be getting close to a compromise.  Of course, that is a big IF.

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Posted by Jay P. Greene

A Market of Memorials

July 30, 2009

When I visited the Gettysburg Civil War battlefield a few years ago I was bothered by the clutter of memorials.  There are so many scattered across the battlefield, all of different size, style, and theme, that it seemed to me that they littered what should be a pristine place.

I visited again this summer and have completely changed my mind.  It was an authoritarian impulse to think that there should be one memorial with one style and one message.  Instead, Gettysburg shows us what a market of memorials can do.  Basically, anyone able to raise enough money could build a memorial honoring a state, division, regiment,or individual.  As the Gettysburg Battlefield Wikipedia page describes the process:

The first monument to be placed on the battlefield was in the National Cemetery in 1867, a marble urn dedicated to the 1st Minnesota Infantry, the gallant regiment that was virtually annihilated on Cemetery Ridge, July 2. The first monument to be erected outside of the cemetery was on Little Round Top on August 1, 1878, when the Strong Vincent GAR Post of Erie, Pennsylvania, memorialized their namesake with a marble tablet on the spot where he was mortally wounded.  As the 25th anniversary of the battle approached, veterans groups stepped up the pace of erecting monuments and many of the state governments got into the act as well. By the 1890s, Gettysburg had one of the largest outdoor collections of bronze and granite statues anywhere in the world. For the Union side, virtually every regiment, battery, brigade, division, and corps has a monument, generally placed in the portion of the battlefield where that unit made the greatest contribution (as judged by the veterans themselves)…. There are over 1,600 monuments and markers on the field.

Yes, having over a thousand monuments on a battlefield makes it look noisy and disorderly, but freedom is noisy and disorderly.  By permitting a market of memorials, Gettysburg allowed groups of people to choose who should be honored and how that honor should be conveyed.  If there had been a strong central authority controlling battlefield memorials, as is the norm, the central authority would have decided the subjects and manner of conveying honor.  What if the central authority’s emphasis or style differed with yours?  Too bad. 

Just ask Vietnam vets and relatives what recourse they have if they oppose the controversial gash in the ground that the central authorities chose for the exclusive memorial on the DC Mall.  They can’t, as Gettysburg veterans could, just add their own memorial with their dissenting perspectives. 

And you really can see clashing perspectives among the Gettysburg memorials.  There are multiple efforts to claim credit for who saved Little Round Top for the Union.  There are different framings of the nature of the conflict.  There are different architectural visions.  It’s all there at Gettysburg in its wonderful disorderly freedom.

When I caught myself wishing for a neat and orderly battlefield memorial I could see the difficulty many of us have in really embracing liberty.  In some ways we are all little authoritarians, wishing for perfectly structured, centrally-determined, solutions to problems.  But of course, when we indulge these authoritarian fantasies, we all imagine that we will be the central authority or that the central authority will act in the way we prefer.  That rarely happens in actuality.  We need freedom, with all of its messiness and despite our desire for order and perfection, because we each differ on the nature of the desired order.  Rather than having any one of us impose his or her vision on all others, a marketplace of those visions can allow competing visions to be expressed, with the best persuading others to voluntarily agree.

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Posted by Jay P. Greene

JPG in CJ on SEV

July 29, 2009

Translation:  I have an article in the special summer issue of City Journal on special education vouchers.

Here is a taste:

Rather than compelling families with disabled children to contend with obstinate public school systems, we should give them the option of purchasing the services they need for their children from a private provider. That is, we should give them special-ed vouchers—good for the same amount of money that we already spend on them in the public school system—that they could then use to pay for private school. Not only would this bring better services to disabled New York students; it could also save the public money.

Many parents of disabled students have a lot of trouble ensuring that public schools give their kids an appropriate education. The parents have to know what they’re entitled to, and most do not. They must negotiate services from the local schools—but the schools are experienced in these negotiations, while the parents generally aren’t, so the schools often get away with minimizing their responsibilities. And even if parents win at the negotiating table, getting the schools actually to deliver on their promises is enormously difficult.

In the end, the only way to compel schools to keep their promises is for parents to engage in ongoing legal battles with the same people who take care of their kids each school day. Most parents have neither the resources nor the stomach to do that. Schools, on the other hand, see little downside in promising few services and delivering fewer. The worst that can happen is that courts will step in and order them to do what they were originally supposed to do; there are no punitive damages in special ed. Research by Perry Zirkel at Lehigh University also shows that courts tend to sympathize with school districts and that schools win most legal challenges from parents. And since children age, delays work to the schools’ advantage.

For all these reasons, most parents of disabled kids simply resign themselves to whatever the schools deliver—or fail to deliver.

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Posted by Jay P. Greene

Local Control Only When You Agree with Me

July 28, 2009

Where are the advocates of DC local control now? 

Earlier this month a majority of DC City Council members wrote a letter to Arne Duncan urging the continuation and expansion of the DC voucher program.

And today a new poll of DC voters is being released showing that “74% have a favorable view of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program; and 79% of parents of schoolage children oppose ending the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program.” (I’ll add a link to the entire survey as soon as I can find one.  UPDATE:  Here it is.)

Is the same program that Kevin “Too Cool for Private School” Carey called “the voucher program that was imposed on D.C. by Congress“?  Did he mean “imposed” like how Congress imposes millions and millions of dollars on the DC public schools that the new survey finds “76% [of DC voters] rate … as ‘fair’ or ‘poor.”?

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Posted by Jay P. Greene

The Meaning to Word Ratio

July 26, 2009

Politicians haven’t just been debasing our currency; they have also been debasing our language.  Over time presidents have been talking more and more (see Jeff Tulis’ excellent book, The Rhetorical Presidency), but they’ve been saying less and less. 

This point struck me as I read the inscriptions on the Lincoln and FDR memorials during a recent visit to DC.  On Lincoln’s memorial is inscribed the entire text of two speeches, the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address.  The Gettysburg Address is only 244 words and the Second Inaugural has only 698.  But in less than a thousand words, these speeches say so much.

The FDR memorial has 21 quotations drawn from 18 different speeches prepared by Roosevelt.  Presumably those 559 words are the most memorable and important portions of those speeches.  Yet even these greatest hits sound empty compared to the full text of speeches inscribed on the Lincoln memorial. 

For example, one inscription on the FDR memorial reads: “In these days of difficulty, we Americans everywhere must and shall choose the path of social justice, the path of faith, the path of hope and the path of love toward our fellow men.”  These are certainly lofty sentiments, but what exactly do they mean?  What are we supposed to do to pursue social justice, faith, hope, and love?

Here are more bits of empty rhetoric from the FDR memorial: “This Generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny…” and “I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a New Deal for the American People.” and  “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.” and “More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginnings of all wars.”  They all sound great, but I have no idea what any of them really mean. 

But I know exactly what Lincoln means when he says: “Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.” Lincoln has an extremely high meaning to word ratio.  The same is true of speeches given by Washington or Jefferson.

More recent speeches by presidents are crammed with words but remarkably lacking in meaning.  George W. Bush’s second inaugural address comes in at 2,073 words, more than eight times as long as Lincoln’s.  Barack Obama’s inaugural address was 2,399 words, almost ten times as long as Lincoln’s second inaugural.  What has produced this bloat?  Empty lines like this: “On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.”

Just as there is a real cost to inflation (Keynes described it as: “By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens… There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency.”), there is also a cost to the debasement of political rhetoric.  Politicians talk so much and say so little that almost no one outside of those who derive a living or entertainment from it bother to pay attention.  What will happen when politicians really have something important to tell us?  Will they be the politicians who cried wolf?

This is why it is worthwhile to note and denounce empty rhetoric from politicians.  We have to increase the meaning to word ratio.

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Posted by Jay P. Greene

Become a Teacher

July 20, 2009

Business colleges routinely brag about what attractive jobs their graduate are likely to get.  But we in education colleges rarely do the same.  If we make an appeal to prospective teachers at all it is usually akin to an appeal to enter the priesthood.  You’ll make the world a better place, we say.  We almost never say, “And you’ll do well for yourself while doing well for others.”  Just look at the marketing — even the title — of Teach for America.

But the reality is that teaching is a pretty good gig.  Yes, the work can be draining, but the hours are great and you get regular breaks throughout the year, including a long one over the summer.  The annual pay is OK, but when you consider it on an hourly or weekly basis, you’ll get paid more than the average white collar or professional specialty and technical worker (according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics).  In addition, during a period of almost 10% unemployment you’ll sure appreciate the high job security.  And let’s not forget the benefits, including solid health-care and an extremely generous retirement package that will let you retire in your mid-50s with about 60% of your peak salary guaranteed for the remainder of your life and adjusted for inflation.  It would take a fortune in a 401k or 403b to produce that kind of pension benefit.

People shouldn’t complain about what a good gig teaching is; people should seek to become teachers and get it themselves.  That’s the sensible advice that a Madison, WI teacher gave:

As someone who has been teaching for 18 years, Brand is familiar with the resentment and jealousy that her summer break elicits from those outside the profession. “It’s definitely a perk of the job,” she says, noting that people who covet her summers off could be teachers if they so choose. “I just say, ‘Well, you could go back to school and be a teacher yourself. It’s got its trade-offs.'”

If only we told prospective teachers about how attractive the job could be, we’d almost certainly draw more of them, including more of our best and brightest.  Why should all those kids go to business school when they could be preparing to be teachers?

The problem is that people fear that advertising the pecuniary benefits of teaching would undermine the appropriate motivation for teachers.  Balderdash!  Do you think the brilliant heart surgeon is undermined in her motivation by the attractive pay?

And teacher unions cultivate a false sense of poverty among teachers in order to keep them and the general public mobilized for the next demand for increased pay or benefits.  Let them try.  We should launch our own campaign in ed schools of telling the world about how rewarding, both personally and financially, teaching can be.

(edited for typos)

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Posted by Jay P. Greene

One More Brummett Update

July 16, 2009

Arkansas columnist John Brummett responds to my most recent blog post.  (See also yesterday’s related post here)

 Unfortunately, he continues to change the subject.  The issue is not whether a summer literacy program in Fayetteville is a good program or not.  As I’ve said before, I’m willing to believe that it is.

The issue is whether doubling (or tripling) teacher pay for that program was a good use of additional stimulus dollars.  If it really is a great program, wouldn’t it be better to use those funds to double the number of students who could participate and hire twice as many teachers?  Or how about making the program run twice as long?

Only right-wing zealots would favor halving the number of students or halving the number of days for a beneficial program. 

And one small point — name-calling can be done with adjectives.  Ugly and smelly are adjectives.

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Posted by Jay P. Greene

Brummett Update

July 16, 2009

As I warned yesterday, Arkansas columnist John Brummett was preparing another attack on me.  Sure enough, Brummett threw his tantrum.  He opens with name-calling: “He’s right-wing and quite the zealous advocate of many education reform notions.”  

Then he assigns to me responsibility for all sorts of things that aren’t actually attributable to me.  For example, he says (dripping with sarcasm): “He gives [teachers] summers off and calculates their hours of actual classroom instruction and concludes that he knows people in other professional fields who aren’t doing as well or significantly better.” 

I didn’t do any of those things.  Teacher contracts with schools give them the summers off.  The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) calculates their hourly and weekly pay.  The BLS reports that teachers, on average, make more than other white collar and professional workers on both an hourly and weekly basis.  I just repeated what the BLS reported.

He continues falsely attributing to me claims that were not invented by me: “He faulted [Fayetteville schools] for spending federal stimulus dollars not to stimulate the economy, but to pay teachers what he assumes to be twice their usual hourly rate for something they would have been doing anyway, and for much less, without the stimulus.”  (emphasis added) 

I didn’t assume that teacher pay was doubled with the stimulus dollars.  The Northwest Arkansas Times reported that fact and I, again, just repeated it.

Finally, he makes the case for this use of stimulus dollars: “This is a new and different program that wouldn’t have been undertaken without the extra Title 1 money from the stimulus, [district officials] say. This will be high-intensity summer session with innovative techniques and individualized instruction and counseling, they say.”

I never disputed that the program might be a beneficial one.  As I wrote in my initial post on this topic: ”The Leap Ahead program may well be a good one.”  My objection is to paying teachers twice their normal rate (as reported by the NWAT) and three times what teachers in neighboring Springdale are being paid for the same program.  Nothing in Brummett’s column justifies that.  And he conveniently neglects to mention how Springdale teachers are being paid 1/3 as much for the same thing.

It’s clear that John Brummett uses his column to prosecute his own personal, political agenda.  That’s acceptable for a columnist, but normally they have to be constrained by facts and logic in doing so.  He can’t falsely attribute to me claims that are not my own.  And he can’t switch the issue from doubling (or tripling) teacher pay for a program to the desirability of that program.  At least, his newspaper shouldn’t let him do these things with their paper. 

Who exactly is the zealot here — the person repeating the factual claims of the BLS and the Northwest Arkansas Times or the person omitting crucial facts, falsely attributing claims, and changing the subject?

(This material is also contained in an update to yesterday’s post.  See also a more recent post on the same issue here.)

3 Comments | teacher pay | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

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