Why Investing Properly in Education Makes Economic Sense:

Henry Levin and Cecilia Rouse make the argument for increased spending in public education in a recent issue of The New York Times. If their figures are correct,  "there is a return of $1.45 to $3.55 for every dollar of investment, depending upon the educational intervention strategy."

If this is true, why then do conservatives so oppose making such an investment? Some people simply hate paying more in taxes, regardless of the benefit, while others, especially politicians, are concerned only with their own immediate benefit. They need to distinguish themselves from those with whom they compete. They are seduced by the desire for power, and someone else has already taken the pro-spending position, so they simply choose the other.

And then there are those who are simply hateful: The dropout rate for African Americans and Hispanics is 45 percent, while for whites and Asians it is only 20 percent. Some people simply don't care about these "others," and then there are those who want to insure a steady supply of very cheap labor.

What do they know that we don't?

The high tech geniuses in Silicon Valley send their kids to schools

without computers!

Apparently, around three-fourths of the computer nerds running companies like Google know that computers teach their kids, especially the preteens, nothing. Many of these kids attend the Waldorf School of the Peninsula, where gadgets of all kinds are forbidden. This backward thinking educational institution actually believes in hands on learning, with plenty of personal interaction.

(See today's New York Times.)

Millions for Gadgets, Not a Dime for Education:

School districts that spend lavishly on gadgetry for the classroom are finding it impossible to demonstrate any positive results in the classroom. Oddly, countries like South Korea have been making dramatic progress in part as a result of incorporating advanced technology into classrooms. Why is there no progress in the U.S.? (See The New York Times.)

The Decline of the West:

In case you needed more evidence that we're on our way to hell in a hand-basket, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa point out the miserable state of college undergraduate education in the U.S. in today's New York Times.

For years, Americans have bragged and taken solace in the belief that at least college education in this country was the best in the world. Those on the inside, however, have realized that "the best" moniker actually referred to graduate school, not the undergraduate departments at state and private schools of higher education around the country.

While grade inflation is rampant and the work an undergrad is required to do in order to receive a B+ grade in all courses is about half in terms of time alone, ignoring quality, the two most important words in a college administrator's vocabulary are "recruitment" and "retention."

Employee growth, by the way, at nearly all colleges and universities, has been in staff and part-time teachers, not in full-time faculty.

Most college presidents, who are often paid like CEOs of Fortune Five Hundred companies, will tell you that the increased cost of education is a result primarily of increased benefit costs for faculty.

But consider that, while faculty numbers have remained at best stable at colleges around the country, the number of staff employees, who are both well paid and receive the same benefits as faculty, have tripled in number. In the meantime, the challenge of teaching the increasing enrollment at colleges has been met with more and more part-time teachers, who are poorly paid and receive no benefits.

You might remember the days when undergraduates lived in dorms that resembled a cell block and ate in cafeterias where the food was tasteless and served on metal trays. Today colleges offer amenities that more closely resemble those of Club Med, with the harshest environmental component being a disagreeable roommate.

And on the Other Side of the Pond: A Gun for Hire

Erik Prince, the Bush administration's pet toy and billionaire private army organizer, is reportedly organizing a private army for the United Arab Emirates, a country ruled by autocrats and awash in oil money. The rulers of the country are afraid that the Arab Spring might invade their little nation and their military force is too small to handle such an uprising, especially if backed by arch nemesis Iran.

Prince and his employees have been facing increasing scrutiny by the justice department in this country. Maybe Prince has found his way out of these troubles and a way to make another billion or so.

Grading Schools and Punishing Teachers:

The most recent controversy in public education comes from President Obama taking the stage with former Florida governor Jeb Bush in the latter's efforts to destroy the teachers' unions by grading schools on their performance and punishing them economically when they fail to live up to standardized testing. (See Nick Anderson's Washington Post piece.)

How do I know it's an attack on unions? Easy. If these folks, including the president, were serious about education, they would focus on school boards, not teachers.

If the citizens of this country ever become united again in their desire to have sound education for America's children, they will elect school board officials who will insist upon it.

The truth is, however, that there is very little that the federal or state governments can do about improving education. Education is something one achieves, not something that is imposed upon the student. All a teacher can do is direct students toward materials and activities while trying to maintain order so that the student can engage with the material and the activities that will lead the student to becoming educated. At best, the teacher is a facilitator and a minor role model. The most important role model and facilitator in the student's life is spelled "p-a-r-e-n-t."

Starting tomorrow, PBS will re-air Ken Burn's Civil War saga. It is worth noting that Abraham Lincoln was self educated, as most people were during that period. The fledgling public school system was primarily manned by folks who had failed at everything else in life.

Student Debt Surpasses Nation's Credit-card Debt:

Thanks to the Bush administration, greedy college presidents and even greedier banks the nation's youth is being saddled with massive debt, and nobody is addressing the problem.

The cost of higher education has been skyrocketing well beyond inflation for sometime, as colleges and universities spend like they've found the proverbial pot of gold in order to turn their physical facilities into "club meds."

College administrators claim they have to spend whopping sums to build fancy pleasure palaces to attract continuing growth. The real truth is that an administrator's power is directly related to the size of his budget, just as it is for any bureaucrat.

Of course, they'll tell you the cost is growing because health costs for faculty is driving the budget up, and to some extent, that's true. But it's no truer for colleges than it is for any other business.

And then there's the tie between the Bush administration and the banks. You'll recall that the Bush administration dramatically reduced government assistance for students, forcing the latter to rely on high interest school loans from banks, backed by government guarantees. It was a win/win situation for the banks.

(See the story in yesterday's New York Times.)

Washington, D.C. Area Richest, Best Educated:

The world is irony: Washington, D.C. has the worst schools in the nation; no one doubts this; and yet the census shows that the "area," which implies the burbs, is home to the wealthiest and best educated group of Americans in the nation, and why not? That's where the power is.

Probably many of you thought New York City would be home to the richest and brightest, but all those wealthy money managers just aren't that well educated. Maybe that helps explain why the banks got into such difficulties recently.

Who am I kidding? The banks were never in real trouble. They knew we'd bail 'em out no matter what kind of mess they made. Just imagine going to Las Vegas to play the slots and being guaranteed that no matter how much money you lost you'd still make a profit off of your gambling.

(See The Washington Post story.)

The Argument for Reading:

Recently techie folks have been arguing the relative merits of eBooks, focusing most especially on young readers and whether or not eBooks will increase the amount of time children spend reading. The evidence isn't in yet, but many observers not directly involved with the marketing of eBooks argue that kids will be no more interested in reading a book on a screen than they have been in reading words on paper. Ultimately, it is argued, content and not delivery is most important.

This debate is based on an interesting assumption, which is that reading as an activity is good in and of itself, which in turn is based on the assumption that the vicarious experience of reading allows for the acquisition of a greater amount of experience than one might otherwise have the opportunity for if one does not read.

But what happens if the reader can't remember what he or she has read?

James Collins addresses this question, one which every student has asked, in a New York Times' essay, published September 17 of this year. Central to the issue is "Am I somehow changed as a result of experience I have had in the past even if I cannot recall that experience?"

Are You Rich?

David Kocieniewski explains that most folks compare themselves to people who have higher incomes than themselves when defining wealth. In other words, "I'm not rich because the guy down the street (on the other side of town, wherever) has more money than me. That's what rich is." It seems we never compare ourselves with those who actually have less than us until we reach the Bill Gates level of wealth.

Speaking of rich people, have you seen Ken Burns' latest baseball film on PBS? The film points out that in the 1970s when the medium income for American households was $15,000 the average salary for a major league baseball player was in the neighborhood of $45,000. Today, when the average American family's household income is $50,000, the average baseball salary is $2,400,000.


Just in case you're waiting for Superman …

Gail Collins points out some of the issues raised by the new documentary film that has grade school teachers everywhere in tears. Spoiler alert: This film is about how highly we value lotteries and sentimentalism over hard work and persistence. By the way, the evidence demonstrates that charter schools overall provide no better education than do public schools and about one-third of them are worse.

Buying Votes:

Just how corrupt is the U.S. Government? Eric Lipton at The New York Times reports on the scam many congressmen use to sell their influence: they set up charities that seek donations from businesses and others seeking to influence their votes, then they vote to grant themselves special dispensations to allow exceptions in congressional ethics rules. Is it any wonder that Republicans preach low taxes, stating that charities will do the jobs we expect government to do?


The School Reform Boondoggle:

Robert Samuelson addresses the failure of school reform in today's Washington Post. Samuelson points out that although much has been tried since 1971, nothing has proven effective, regardless of which political party's proposals have been tried. He points out the fallacy of placing a great teacher in every classroom. As my high school senior English teacher pointed out to me many years ago, there are no great teachers, just great students.

Computers Fail to Save Literacy:

School administrators, computer manufacturers, and parents who want to ignore their children were all thrilled at the prospect that isolating children in front of a computer screen would turn American youth into Einsteins, but the truth is becoming abundantly clear that much the opposite has been taking place.

IQ scores and just about every other form of testing indicates that kids, especially those on the bottom half of the economic scale, end up even more poorly prepared as a result of spending more time in front of their computer monitors. (See today's New York Times.) In fact, about the only thing that kids become better at while using computers is learning how to evade the "parental controls" placed on computers to prevent them from participating in "inappropriate activities."

This is bad news for computer and soft ware makers, who have raked in bundles of cash on the assertion that any sort of interaction with a computer would enhance learning. It may be even worse news for school administrators who live and die by enhancing their budgets anyway possible. (Parents who want to ignore their kids will do so anyway, so the news just means they need to find another way to assuage their guilt. In other words, they'll adapt.)

NOTE: Significant evidence indicates that actually having books in the home enhances literacy more than just about anything else one can do.


"Show Him the Money":

Washington Monthly profiles one of America's great scam artists, Thomas J. Donohue, president and CEO of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce. This is another example lobbying gone awry.

Here's the most telling paragraph:

What becomes clear from observing Donohue’s record is that, for all his opposition to federal oversight, he is a quintessential creature of Washington. Like the head of any bureaucracy or agency, he measures his success far less by results than by the size of his budget. That’s why the Chamber’s agenda hews so closely to that of its largest contributors. It’s also why, even in front of dues payers such as Birmingham business leaders, Donohue is happy to trumpet how much money the Chamber is taking from them. Those funds don’t need to lead to accomplishments; they are the accomplishments.

In other economic news: Wall Street is hiring. Analysts predict the hiring increase indicates the economic recovery is underway. (See The New York Times' story.)

Is Texas School Board Stupid or Just Nasty?

By a 9-5 vote the Texas state school board passed a series of sweeping changes to their public school system that will institute right-wing political changes to the curriculum. Among other changes, the right-wingers want Jefferson Davis, a convicted traitor to his country, elevated to a status equal to Abraham Lincoln, at least in terms of students' knowledge of each man's inaugural addresses.

The right-wingers hope that this will serve to brainwash Texas children, while liberals are fearful that it might. But one must wonder if both of these historical figures are carefully examined side by side won't intelligent folks come to the same conclusion that history already has. Lincoln was elevated to the status of a demigod, while nobody even remembers what happened to Jefferson Davis.

And here's the dirty little secret: a number of the conservative members of the school board who voted for the changes will be leaving the school board by the end of the year—before the changes can be enacted. Will saner heads join the board and reverse these nonsensical changes before thy can take effect?

(Read The Washington Post story.)

The Immigrants:

In economics there is only one known truism: Without population growth, there is no economic growth.

Over the past thirty years, without immigrants coming to the United States, population growth would have been nil, non-existent.

America is a country of immigrants. No surprise there, although a good many people in America seem to think otherwise. There are many misconceptions about the phenomenon, and today's New York Times addresses some of them in a story on recent research into who is coming to America, our perceptions of them, and the effects the immigrants have. The results are informative and may be surprising.

For instance, most of us have little objection to wealthy, well educated professional immigrants, while we are often upset by poor and unskilled immigrants. However, without a steady influx of both categories, the economy suffers.


Will Charlie Crist Go Rogue?

Florida governor, Charlie Crist, has bucked his own Republican party to announce a veto of a bill to directly link teacher pay and employment to how well students perform on standardized tests. The speculation now is that he might well declare himself an independent.

Florida is a state dominated by people who hate paying taxes so much that they are perfectly willing to have the children in the state remain illiterate as an alternative to paying a tax increase. Many of these folks are retired and have moved to Florida from other states, living their own children and grandchildren behind. They simply don't want to pay for other people's children to learn.

But there are serious problems with education in all fifty American states. To see just how stupid we really are on this subject, examine the following from The New York Times:

This time, the point of contention was eliminating tenure for Florida public school teachers and tying their pay and job security to how well their students were learning.

I'm sorry, folks, but there is no objective measure for "how well … students" learn. It can't be done. You can only judge product, and students are not products. You can only judge their behavior, and for the most part that's going to be set by the time they are five years old.

Certainly, there are important issues with education, including the fact that many teachers are woefully undereducated themselves, having spent most of their time in higher education's empty "education" courses and very low level "psychology" courses.

If we truly want to improve education in this country, we must develop a culture that actually values it, emphasizing the responsibility of the student for learning. That begins at home. And continues at school, in the work place, in our social lives, and then returns to the home.


The Story of Water: Chapter Three

• One out of eight people lacks access to clean water.
• 3.3 million die from water-related health problems each year.
• Washing hands with soap can reduce diarrheal disease by 45 percent.
• An eradication campaign that includes a simple water filter has cut the number of Guinea worm cases by 99.9 percent since 1986.

(See the April 2010 National Geographic.)

What's Wrong with American Education:

The list of problems is long, but one place to start is with the Texas Board of Education. Texas politicians love to pander to right-wing bigots, and the Board has tremendous influence over what appears in textbooks, not only in their state, but also around the country. Textbook publishers and educators have been attempting to fight back, but a recent vote by the Board is making things more difficult. (See today's New York Times.) The Board wants American textbooks to reflect the majority of Texans' belief in white supremacy, Christian fundamentalism, and a "free market" based on "the Chicago School of Economics" that would promote the complete deregulation of business.


Tea Party Rallies Its Support from People Terrified by Debt:

Kate Zernike reports on the Tea Party leadership and its avoidance of all things social in today's New York Times. Unlike the Texas School Board whose conservative majority focus all of their attention on a highly glossed version of history as "the white man's burden," the Tea Party leadership hopes to garner power by appealing to white fears, and ignorance, about the economy.

Political leaders of all stripes make hay out of the fact that almost no one understands how the economy functions. Consider for a moment how many schools of thought are devoted to the subject and how diverse the directions they come from are. Most can be reduced to enhancing the biased views of their proponents, regardless of the political spectrum they emanate from.


Worthy of Note:

Blaine Brownell reflects on the symbolic importance of architecture in today's New York Times. Brownell describes the world's new tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, in historic terms, remarking on the fact that unlike its predecessors, which were devoted to commerce and icons of religiosity, the building in Dubai is primarily a residentual center, and made of reinforced concrete, not steel and glass or stone. Brownell thinks, "If one society worshiped God in stone, and another venerated enterprise in steel, it must say something that we have now been able to reach so high with our most common building material: concrete."


The Conservative Movement's Triumvirate:

Newt (Nuke Getrich) Gingrich, Sarah (I only run in order to quit) Palin, Glenn (I haven't got a clue) Beck. If wooden headed Ronny Rayguns could be prez …. Okay, they may be floating for the moment, but just keep flushing.

It's an Old Story:

The New York Times is running a story in today's edition under the headline: "U.S. Enriches Companies Defying Its Policy on Iran." The Times reveals that over 100 billion dollars in contracts have been let to companies doing business with Iran even as the U.S. government is attempting to convince China to go along with its position that economic dealings with the country should be sorely limited in light of Iran's development of a nuclear weapon.

While this hypocrisy may anger some, there is nothing new in the behavior. Some in the west are fond of pointing out that even as Nazi Germany was invading the U.S.S.R. in 1941 the Russians were shipping raw materials into the country; however, the United States was no different. American companies were fulfilling contracts with the Germans leading right up to the war as well, just as they were with the Japanese. When it comes to business, profits trump all else.


War and the Telling of It:

Roman Skaskiw has written as well as anyone about the modern soldier's experience in the two Bush wars, and in today's New York Times he addresses the issue of whether fiction can ever adequately portray the experience of war.

Today is an especially relevant day to address this topic because it's Oscar day. Two movies, The Hurt Locker and The Messenger have received multiple nominations, and the question about whether or not either of these two movies accurately portrays the soldier's experience has been a hot one in the press.

The answer is of course "No." No retelling of any event can ever, with complete accuracy, bring about the re-creation of an original event. While the retelling of it might recapture the experience for one person, it will ring false for another, no matter whether historical or novelistic. If it were otherwise, we would need only one book, one movie, one story, one epic poem, and think how boring that would be.


Obama Supports Teacher Firings:

The teachers unions are outraged that the man they supported for president is in favor of the action taken in Rhode Island where all 93 teachers were fired in a "failing school." Others are happy to see the president's support in a radical action taken in the name of improved education.

The truth is that the firings will change nothing, just as the other radical actions taken in the past decade have amounted to nothing in terms of improving education in the U.S. Until we realize the lesson of the three decades following the Second World War, that the responsibility to learn lies with the student, education will continue to languish. Certainly a good student learns more with (not from) a good teacher rather than a poor one, but a good student learns regardless of the quality of the teacher.

By the way, no one knows how we learn, we only know that it happens. And the most important influences on our processes for doing so occur before we ever enter a classroom.

What happens when you devote your energies to minimum standards rather than striving towards excellence?

You end up with an Interstate highway system riddled with potholes and bridges that collapse, not an Autobahn.

Sam Dillon reports in today's New York Times on the dramatic change of heart that former Bush official Diane Ravitch has undergone in the wake of the mediocrity (an understatement if ever there was one) that the educational policies she once advocated have helped to produce. No Student Left Behind, charter schools, and many other right-wing notions have proven no more effective than blind indifference in changing the results of the educational success in the U. S.

Ravitch has not only changed her mind about the Bush agenda on education, but she's gone so far as to resign from a number of the conservative organizations that helped promote them.

Three Dead in Alabama:

Forty years ago National Guardsmen ran riot in Ohio, killing three young people at Kent State University, as a nation gone mad unleashed its military against private citizens; yesterday, a faculty member of the University of Alabama, who had failed to receive tenure, murdered three of her colleagues at a biology department meeting.

There are no parallels between those events other than a nation that seeks resolution through the use of violence. Undoubtedly, some fool will use this latest episode as justification for arming both students and faculty at universities around the country.

While we're on the subject of tenure, let's stop and consider that factor for a moment: only about half of the instructors at major universities who are eligible to apply for tenure ever receive it. This is dramatically different from the public school systems where tenure exists. In most public school systems, a faculty member is tenured after six months as long as he or she doesn't do something dramatically evil, like bring a gun to school.

At universities, a faculty member has to spend six or seven years working towards tenure and then go through an approval process that takes most of a year and has many layers. Substantial numbers of achievement recognized by one's peers are required. And half of the applicants will be rejected. Think of that. You spend 20 or more years on your education, go heavily into debt, work for peanuts for half a dozen years, and then when you are somewhere between 25 and 35 years of age, there is a fifty-fifty chance that you'll find yourself unemployed and still deeply in debt.

By the way, about half of failed applicants end up filing law suits against their universities, which they almost never win.

The ivory tower gleams in the sunlight, as long as you view it from a significant distance.

(See The New York Times' story.)

Let's Pretend:

So, a senator tells the truth, and then apologizes for it. What a country we live in.

Senate majority leader Harry Reid's one time remarks on Barack Obama's electability due to his light skin and felicity with the English language has drawn fire from the extreme right. These are the same folks who draw their political might from their racist base. (See The New York Times' article.) There hasn't been an honest discussion on race in this country since the Civil War.

How convoluted can things get? Reid comments on the racism of whites and is forced to apologize to a black president for his choice of words. Is it any wonder that 1) we can't get a decent health bill and 2) the Wall Street banking pirates can get away with robbing us blind? (See Frank Rich's column in today's New York Times.)


Where the Money Is:

Louise Story and Eric Dash tell us about the fabulous wealth the Wall Street Pirates will be plunging into their pockets this year in bonuses paid out to bankers. While unemployment sits remains in the double-digits, the bankers continue to make fortunes.

In the meantime, America's college graduates are heading off to law school and grad school in record numbers. What else is there to do with a bachelor's degree? (Back in the 1970s, a bachelor's degree was equivalent to a high school diploma, now it's equal to a grade school diploma, maybe.)

What Is the Purpose of a University?

According to Drew Gilpin Faust, writing for The New York Times' "Crossroads" column, the "are meant to be producers not just of knowledge but also of (often inconvenient) doubt. They are creative and unruly places, homes to a polyphony of voices." Faust goes on to complain, however, that "at this moment in our history, universities might well ask if they have in fact done enough to raise the deep and unsettling questions necessary to any society."

Faust points out that a business degree, once the degree sought by students who could not manage to major in a serious subject, is now the most popular degree.

Fixing American Education:

Harold Levy thinks he's got the answer. First, he wants to raise the age for compulsory education nation-wide to 19, and better yet, one year beyond high school. Then he wants to lengthen the school day and the school year. We're still running our school's under the old agrarian system that allowed students time off to help with the planting and harvesting when only one person out of a hundred is employed in modern agriculture. He also thinks we should look at the truancy issue. It seems that the average urban school student cuts a month off from every year.

Mr. Levy apparently believes that parents and other adults are actually interested in education.