Wednesday, March 31, 2010

THE NEW MISS UNIVERSE!

Abbott and Costello get ready to crown one of these lovely ladies as the new Miss Universe!

COMMUNITY SERVICE

Indian Bollywood actresses Soha Ali Khan, Gul Panag (and Miss India 1999) and Neha Dhupia (and Miss India 2002) attend the P&G India launch of Shiksha 2010, its NGO-affiliated programme to provide marginalized children with education, in Mumbai, India, on March 31, 2010.

Comments on Fiscal Policy

Back in December, I spoke at a conference at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.  My remarks about fiscal policy have now been transcribed.  You can read them here.

The health care bill introduces large taxes on firm growth

The health care bill passed by the Democrats includes a lot of provisions that depend on firm size, and which do not apply to firms smaller than some (arbitrary) limit. Most people like small firms and entrepreneurship. However both the left and the right often misunderstand sensible small business policy:

1. First of all, just because something is good, it does not mean the government should subsidize it. There are benefits (closer management control, fewer transactions costs, more flexibility) to small businesses, but there are also costs (less economies of scale, lower productivity). In a functioning economy some firms will be small and some firms large, depending on their relative advantages.

You need strong arguments, some form of important externality for example, for the government to tip the balance in favor of small firms.

Small firms are more expensive to insure, because of administrative costs, economies of scale and because large firms have the advantage of offering a large and diverse workforce that the insurance companies can pool.

Sure, this is “unfair” for small companies, but it also reflects real costs of the economy. In terms of efficiencies there should be fewer small firms because small firms have higher costs. It is “unfair” for Saab that Toyota has economies of scale and can offer the same quality cars cheaper. But that reflects real costs of the economy, there should be few large car companies because of the economies of scale in the car industry.

2. More important here: The main advantage of entrepreneurship is not that these firms are small, it is that they are growing. There is empirical evidence for this. Fast growing firms (“gazelles”) introduce new innovations into the economy, create new and better jobs and increase competition. We want small firms to grow if possible, not to stay small.


Here are some examples:

* The bill offer tax credits to small businesses who have fewer than 25 employees.

*The bill imposes a $2000 per employee tax penalty on employers with over 50 employees who do not offer health insurance to their full-time workers.

* The bill states that in firms with more than 50 employees nursing mothers must be allowed breaks, a year after giving birth, on the job to express breast milk as often as necessary; they must do so in a private place that’s not a bathroom.

* The bill states that chain-restaurants and food vendors with 20 or more locations are required to display the caloric content of their foods on menus, drive-through menus, and vending machines.

As bad as regulations are, they may have even worse effects if some firms are exempted, because in order to receive the exemptions firms behavior is distorted even more.

What the Democrat bill does is create an incentive for small firms to stay exactly below the limit (25 employees, 50 employees, 20 locations etc). This is similar to the unproductive Italian system, with lots and lots of small firms who escape regulations, but few Googles and Wall-Marts.

Italy, Greece, Turkey and Mexico have a much higher share of self-employed and more small firms than the U.S. But these is a reflection of low productivity, regulatory burdens, high taxes and large transaction costs, not entrepreneurship. The U.S has much more innovative entrepreneurship than these countries.

Helping small businesses stay small is not entrepreneurship policy, it is the exact opposite.

Next Writing Campaign Will Begin Soon

First things first: This comment is for those of you who have just recently reached out to me and introduced yourselves. 

I am receiving an overwhelming amount of new emails from new people who are drowning in student loan debt and part of the indentured educated class. And in case you weren't aware that you are part of this class, I want to welcome you! Rest assured, you are not alone - there are millions of people who comprise the indentured educated class. In any event, I want all of you to be aware that I am answering each email as quickly as possible. Many of you are already aware of this fact, but for those of you who have just discovered my advocacy work, research, etc., I am currently living in Seoul, South Korea.

I teach English to advanced (and not so advanced) Korean students. It's a full-time job, so that's one of the reasons why it may take me some time to reach out and connect with you. Although I am thousands and thousands of miles away from the U.S.A., I am just as committed to the student lending crisis here as I was there. In fact, I now have the luxury of dedicating more time to my advocacy work than I did there.

Next Item On The Agenda: The indentured educated class is about to begin a new letter writing campaign to the White House. Some may think that the letter I received from President Obama was meaningless and just a "form letter." However, that's quite false. If any of you saw one of many recent interviews with Pres. Obama, he stated that he receives more than 40,000 emails and letters a day. So, even if it's a so-called "form letter," it was a damned big deal (it was also signed by him). Like I said, I think this letter is only the beginning of correspondence with the White House (at least that is my hope for the millions of debtors out there who need to be heard) . . .

SAFRA: I am hearing the same sentiment(s) expressed about SAFRA (my take is here). Of course, I think that this legislation is a step in the right direction. However, the Democrats should not stop here! In my mind, this legislation is just one of many steps that must be taken to help millions of Americans. It is my hope that this bill is only the beginning of more far reaching reform measures that will help those who are struggling or unable to pay off their student loans. I have also asked countless times, what's out there to help defaulters?

Indeed, it would be wise of the Democrats to consider this suggestion about additional reforms. They are, after all, going to be facing touch elections. If they were to help out student loan debtors in an immediate and positive way, I am more than confident that they would enjoy quite a bit of success as candidates.

On that final note, if you are interested in joining us for the second writing letter campaign to the White House, please send me an email ASAP (ccrynjohannsen@gmail.com), and just put this simple phrase in the subject line: "Count Me In For the Next Letter Writing Campaign!" Don't wait to send this email off! I will begin drafting a letter very soon to send off.

I know it's rough for many of you. It infuriates me to receive more and more emails from people who are struggling with there loans. It's also saddening to be reading the emails from people who are telling me that they are "planning" on defaulting because they have no other choice. You are always in my thoughts, and I sincerely hope that we - collectively - can make a difference that will matter now.

I guess the best I can say in closing is this: hang in there. You are not alone in this battle for higher education justice.

I am grateful to be connected to so many wonderful Americans. You humble me with your honesty, integrity, and amazing backgrounds.

With all of my respect,
Cryn
Your Public Servant




Marron on the Fiscal Challenge Ahead

Donald Marron, with whom I worked at the CEA, reflects on the budget shortfall.

Taxes per Person

Some pundits, reflecting on the looming U.S. budget deficits, claim that Americans are vastly undertaxed compared with other major nations.  I was wondering, to what extent is that true?

The most common metric for answering this question is taxes as a percentage of GDP.  However, high tax rates tend to depress GDP.  Looking at taxes as a percentage of GDP may mislead us into thinking we can increase tax revenue more than we actually can.  For some purposes, a better statistic may be taxes per person, which we can compute using this piece of advanced mathematics:

Taxes/GDP x GDP/Person = Taxes/Person

Here are the results for some of the largest developed nations:

France
.461 x 33,744 = 15,556

Germany
.406 x 34,219 = 13,893

UK
.390 x 35,165 = 13,714

US
.282 x 46,443 = 13,097

Canada
.334 x 38,290 = 12,789

Italy
.426 x 29,290 = 12,478

Spain
.373 x 29,527 = 11,014

Japan
.274 x 32,817 = 8,992

The bottom line: The United States is indeed a low-tax country as judged by taxes as a percentage of GDP, but as judged by taxes per person, the United States is in the middle of the pack.

Update: This post has been more controversial than I expected.  I am surprised because I did not say much here.  I merely presented an identity and some data, which illustrated international differences in a novel (and, I thought, interesting) way.  In any event, I thank Scott Sumner for coming to my defense.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

COWPOKE

Mister Switzeland 2009, André Reithebuch

Some facts and figures on time use

I am a little busy, so I will do some lazy blogging. I will translate some facts in my Swedish report about time use every day. There is lots of interesting data in here, so it could generate a few decent blog posts.

First, here is the gender distribution of time.



Sweden and the United States are similar in the gender distribution of time worked in the market, men do about 60% of market work. In Europe (which includes most of eastern Europe but not Russia), men do 65% of market work.

For home production Sweden is the most equal, women do 60% of home production, the U.S the second most equal as women do 64% of home production. Europe is less equal, women do 68% of home production. Stereotypes are confirmed as the disparity is especially true for Southern Europe.

Cohabiting men and women have a more unequal distribution of hours worked than the rest of the population.

What is interesting for all groups is that the distribution evens out. Work and home production are similarly sizes. For the U.S and Sweden women and men in total (adding home production to market work) work the same amounts of hours. In Europe women work slightly more in total than men, but even here the differences are not large.

Feminists who claim that women work more and have less free time than men are wrong.

(Europe refers to the weighted average of 6 big Europeans nations Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain and Poland and the 10 smaller nations Norway, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, Finland, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Belgium.)

Odprti dostop - nekaj predlogov

Odprti dostop je že nekaj let prioritetni predmet strokovnih razprav in pobud, vse pogosteje tudi formaliziranih, uradno zapisanih in na mednarodnem
nivoju. Zbrali smo nekaj izrazov s tega področja in jih poskušali razložiti ter medsebojno pomensko povezati. Zaradi boljšega razumevanja in lažje
nadaljnje razprave pri nekaterih terminih navajamo tudi angleške ustreznike. Poudariti velja, da gre

Monday, March 29, 2010

Obama's Blueprint for Education - Richard Rothstein criticizes

cross posted from Daily Kos

I have already weighed in on the Blueprint, in Obama's "Blueprint" for education - why this teacher cannot support it. Today I want to call to your attention a very important critic by Richard Rothstein, whose current position is as a research associate at the Education Policy Institute, but who spent 1999-2002 as the national education columnist for The New York Times

On March 23 he posted A blueprint that needs more work at the EPI website. His is a balanced examination, but one that is nevertheless more critical than complimentary. I am going to urge that anyone interested in public education carefully read his entire critique. I am going to focus on several issues that caught my attention. I invite your continued reading.

A major focus of Rothstein's critique is the administration's emphasis on students being college ready upon graduation from high school. He actually begins by discussing the funding of college, something addressed in the recent reconciliation bill on health insurance reform. He compliments the administration for recognizing the need to make college more affordable/accessible, writing
It would be foolish to try to re-organize elementary and secondary education to make students “college-ready” if college itself becomes less affordable.


But let's take a look at the goal of having students college ready. The Blueprint calls for all graduates to be college or career ready by 2020. This replaces the requirement of NCLB that all students be 100% proficient in reading and math in 2014. Let me quote how Rothstein embarks on exploring this topic:
The Blueprint’s overall theme is that by 2020 all students should graduate from high school “College and Career Ready.” Administration officials have explained that this entails the ability to gain admission to an academic college program without having to take remedial courses. (The addition of “Career” to “College Ready” is meaningless, because what the Administration intends to convey is that some students may choose to pursue a non-college career, but would still have gained the qualifications to enter an academic college program if they wished.) This is, perhaps, the most disturbing aspect of the Blueprint. It indicates that the Administration may have learned little from the NCLB experience.
He goes on to quote Duncan as describing the 100% proficiency requirement of NCLB as "utopian" and it is worth noting that those in the Congress knew it was not achievable, but did not believe you could move forward with a more achievable goal of say 75 or 80% proficient, certainly not in legislation labeled "No Child Left Behind." Then after noting that a level of proficiency cannot be simultaneously "challenging" for students at the top and bottom of normal distribution, Rothstein offers three powerful paragraphs, which I think need to be offered in their entirety:
But aside from ridicule, NCLB’s adoption of this goal did great harm to public education. It created incentives for educators to lie to the public and claim that they could achieve something that they knew was unachievable. It created well-known incentives to “define down” proficiency, to make it possible for more students to pass themselves off as proficient. It engendered a culture of cynicism in public education, and it discredited public education in the broader community, as it became apparent that school leaders could not deliver what they were promising.

Any institution that sets an impossible goal runs the risk of such cynicism and loss of legitimacy.

The goal of all students college-ready by 2020 is just as fanciful as the goal of all students proficient by 2014. Today, perhaps 20 percent of all youth graduate high school fully prepared for academic college. It should certainly be higher. Aspiring to make it higher is a worthy ambition. But basing policy on a promise, or even an expectation, that we will quintuple this rate in a mere decade is laughable.



Thus, the key selling point for the Blueprint, the idea that all students will be career or college ready, is as unachievable - or if you will, false - as was NCLB's goal of 100% proficiency. We are now at 20% ready for college. But basing policy on a promise, or even an expectation, that we will quintuple this rate in a mere decade is laughable. Which in my mind makes the entire proposal laughable.

There is so much more in this superb analysis of the Blueprint. Just on this point, while the administration tries to divert criticism by calling the goal aspirational, Rothstein cuts quickly to the chase. He notes that schools serving disadvantaged children will be most likely to fail this aspirational goal and continue to suffer sanctions just as under NCLB.
For these schools, the same cynicism, the same false promises, the same gaming, will be stimulated as occurred with NCLB.
Rothstein argues that middle class schools will be harmed by this, that the pressue to dumb down standards of readiness will parallel what happened to standards of proficiency, and then warns
Promising to make all students college-ready by 2020 is, in effect, an attack on the quality of America’s institutions of higher education.


Remember, this is on a key selling point of the administration's education proposal. While Rothstein offers some compliments on parts of the Blueprint - funding some states to broaden their curricula and assessment, providing funds for support outside the regular school day - on the whole he is at least skeptical if not downright critical. Those who have read my post will again encounter criticisms of the administration's shift away from formula-based programs, especially in a time of economic distress and pressu4e (and Rothstein properly credits the education funding in ARRA for having perhaps prevented the laying off of a third of a million teachers and other school employees).

There is more, much more in this 3219 word piece, which originally appeared as part of the group "blogging" effort on education at National Journal. As noted, I strongly urge people to read it.

In his penultimate paragraph, Rothstein offers this:
We can hope that the Administration thinks further about its proposals, and revises them as they proceed through Congress. It is, in any event, virtually certain that the Blueprint will not be adopted in its present design by this Congress, and perhaps not even by the next.
He may be correct. While the House (Miller) and Senate (Harkin) chairmen of the relevant authorizing committees might be inclined to give Obama what he wants on an issue he has said is important to him, they cannot control what their members think. When Duncan appeared on the Hill, most of the senior members of the House Committee were more than a little skeptical and challenging in their questions and commentary, and there were similar concerns offered by some of the senior Republicans, including ranking members Kline (House) and Enzi (Senate). Further, even if authorized, the proposal would have to be funded and House Appropriations Chair David Obey of Wisconsin made clear in his questioning of Duncan his unwillingness to go along merely because the President wants it. He is a 41 year member of the House, a close ally of Speaker Pelosi, who was trusted to preside over the House voting on the Senate Health Insurance Reform bill.

So perhaps I should end as does Rothstein. Here is his final paragraph:
This suggests an unintended benefit of the Blueprint. For the foreseeable future, Arne Duncan will continue to be responsible for administering NCLB. Having now gone on record that its provisions are seriously flawed and that compliance with them is doing American education great harm, the Secretary will have no coherent choice but to begin issuing wholesale waivers to states from compliance with the old law. If it accomplishes this much, the Blueprint will have done a great service.


In other words, like me, Rothstein really does not think much of the Blueprint.

So, what do you think?

Peace.

Obama's Blueprint for Education - Richard Rothstein criticizes

cross posted from Daily Kos

I have already weighed in on the Blueprint, in Obama's "Blueprint" for education - why this teacher cannot support it. Today I want to call to your attention a very important critic by Richard Rothstein, whose current position is as a research associate at the Education Policy Institute, but who spent 1999-2002 as the national education columnist for The New York Times

On March 23 he posted A blueprint that needs more work at the EPI website. His is a balanced examination, but one that is nevertheless more critical than complimentary. I am going to urge that anyone interested in public education carefully read his entire critique. I am going to focus on several issues that caught my attention. I invite your continued reading.

A major focus of Rothstein's critique is the administration's emphasis on students being college ready upon graduation from high school. He actually begins by discussing the funding of college, something addressed in the recent reconciliation bill on health insurance reform. He compliments the administration for recognizing the need to make college more affordable/accessible, writing
It would be foolish to try to re-organize elementary and secondary education to make students “college-ready” if college itself becomes less affordable.


But let's take a look at the goal of having students college ready. The Blueprint calls for all graduates to be college or career ready by 2020. This replaces the requirement of NCLB that all students be 100% proficient in reading and math in 2014. Let me quote how Rothstein embarks on exploring this topic:
The Blueprint’s overall theme is that by 2020 all students should graduate from high school “College and Career Ready.” Administration officials have explained that this entails the ability to gain admission to an academic college program without having to take remedial courses. (The addition of “Career” to “College Ready” is meaningless, because what the Administration intends to convey is that some students may choose to pursue a non-college career, but would still have gained the qualifications to enter an academic college program if they wished.) This is, perhaps, the most disturbing aspect of the Blueprint. It indicates that the Administration may have learned little from the NCLB experience.
He goes on to quote Duncan as describing the 100% proficiency requirement of NCLB as "utopian" and it is worth noting that those in the Congress knew it was not achievable, but did not believe you could move forward with a more achievable goal of say 75 or 80% proficient, certainly not in legislation labeled "No Child Left Behind." Then after noting that a level of proficiency cannot be simultaneously "challenging" for students at the top and bottom of normal distribution, Rothstein offers three powerful paragraphs, which I think need to be offered in their entirety:
But aside from ridicule, NCLB’s adoption of this goal did great harm to public education. It created incentives for educators to lie to the public and claim that they could achieve something that they knew was unachievable. It created well-known incentives to “define down” proficiency, to make it possible for more students to pass themselves off as proficient. It engendered a culture of cynicism in public education, and it discredited public education in the broader community, as it became apparent that school leaders could not deliver what they were promising.

Any institution that sets an impossible goal runs the risk of such cynicism and loss of legitimacy.

The goal of all students college-ready by 2020 is just as fanciful as the goal of all students proficient by 2014. Today, perhaps 20 percent of all youth graduate high school fully prepared for academic college. It should certainly be higher. Aspiring to make it higher is a worthy ambition. But basing policy on a promise, or even an expectation, that we will quintuple this rate in a mere decade is laughable.



Thus, the key selling point for the Blueprint, the idea that all students will be career or college ready, is as unachievable - or if you will, false - as was NCLB's goal of 100% proficiency. We are now at 20% ready for college. But basing policy on a promise, or even an expectation, that we will quintuple this rate in a mere decade is laughable. Which in my mind makes the entire proposal laughable.

There is so much more in this superb analysis of the Blueprint. Just on this point, while the administration tries to divert criticism by calling the goal aspirational, Rothstein cuts quickly to the chase. He notes that schools serving disadvantaged children will be most likely to fail this aspirational goal and continue to suffer sanctions just as under NCLB.
For these schools, the same cynicism, the same false promises, the same gaming, will be stimulated as occurred with NCLB.
Rothstein argues that middle class schools will be harmed by this, that the pressue to dumb down standards of readiness will parallel what happened to standards of proficiency, and then warns
Promising to make all students college-ready by 2020 is, in effect, an attack on the quality of America’s institutions of higher education.


Remember, this is on a key selling point of the administration's education proposal. While Rothstein offers some compliments on parts of the Blueprint - funding some states to broaden their curricula and assessment, providing funds for support outside the regular school day - on the whole he is at least skeptical if not downright critical. Those who have read my post will again encounter criticisms of the administration's shift away from formula-based programs, especially in a time of economic distress and pressu4e (and Rothstein properly credits the education funding in ARRA for having perhaps prevented the laying off of a third of a million teachers and other school employees).

There is more, much more in this 3219 word piece, which originally appeared as part of the group "blogging" effort on education at National Journal. As noted, I strongly urge people to read it.

In his penultimate paragraph, Rothstein offers this:
We can hope that the Administration thinks further about its proposals, and revises them as they proceed through Congress. It is, in any event, virtually certain that the Blueprint will not be adopted in its present design by this Congress, and perhaps not even by the next.
He may be correct. While the House (Miller) and Senate (Harkin) chairmen of the relevant authorizing committees might be inclined to give Obama what he wants on an issue he has said is important to him, they cannot control what their members think. When Duncan appeared on the Hill, most of the senior members of the House Committee were more than a little skeptical and challenging in their questions and commentary, and there were similar concerns offered by some of the senior Republicans, including ranking members Kline (House) and Enzi (Senate). Further, even if authorized, the proposal would have to be funded and House Appropriations Chair David Obey of Wisconsin made clear in his questioning of Duncan his unwillingness to go along merely because the President wants it. He is a 41 year member of the House, a close ally of Speaker Pelosi, who was trusted to preside over the House voting on the Senate Health Insurance Reform bill.

So perhaps I should end as does Rothstein. Here is his final paragraph:
This suggests an unintended benefit of the Blueprint. For the foreseeable future, Arne Duncan will continue to be responsible for administering NCLB. Having now gone on record that its provisions are seriously flawed and that compliance with them is doing American education great harm, the Secretary will have no coherent choice but to begin issuing wholesale waivers to states from compliance with the old law. If it accomplishes this much, the Blueprint will have done a great service.


In other words, like me, Rothstein really does not think much of the Blueprint.

So, what do you think?

Peace.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

New issue of IJMEST, vol 41, issue 3, 2010

A new issue of International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology has been released, and it contains a whole host of interesting articles and classroom notes. This issue appears to have a particular focus on the use of technology in mathematics teaching, and here is a list of the original articles that are contained in the issue:


New issue of IJMEST, vol 41, issue 3, 2010

A new issue of International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology has been released, and it contains a whole host of interesting articles and classroom notes. This issue appears to have a particular focus on the use of technology in mathematics teaching, and here is a list of the original articles that are contained in the issue:


Review of my blog

After a slow month (on the blog - not at work!), it is great to see someone writing a nice review of this blog. This time it is Jerry Johnson from MathNEXUS who has written a very kind review. MathNEXUS is a web site particularly geared towards teachers of mathematics, and it presents itself as a mathematics portal with "news and ideas for teachers and learners of mathematics. So, if you're into teaching and/or learning of mathematics it might be worthwhile to check it out!

Thanks for the kind words, Jerry :-)

Review of my blog

After a slow month (on the blog - not at work!), it is great to see someone writing a nice review of this blog. This time it is Jerry Johnson from MathNEXUS who has written a very kind review. MathNEXUS is a web site particularly geared towards teachers of mathematics, and it presents itself as a mathematics portal with "news and ideas for teachers and learners of mathematics. So, if you're into teaching and/or learning of mathematics it might be worthwhile to check it out!

Thanks for the kind words, Jerry :-)

VIVA ANICA!

One of Dean Harris' all-time favorite Miss World contestants ever - Anica Martinovic Kovac, Miss World Croatia 1995 and first runner-up to Miss World 1995. Fifteen years later and she still has covergirl good looks!

The Post and the Daily News editorial boards: designated hit men for Joel Klein

On Friday morning, the NY Post published a picture of Judge Lobis, assigned the case of the lawsuit filed against Klein's arbitrary closing of 19 schools; and wrote an editorial implicitly threatening her if she ruled the wrong way.

After she decided in favor of the plaintiffs later that same day, finding that Klein had clearly violated the mandated procedures established in the governance law, the Post vicioiusly attacked her in another editorial on Saturday morning, accusing of basing her judgment solely to benefit the UFT.

This, by the way, is the Post’s standard attack one anyone who dares to oppose the administration’s flawed and increasingly lawless policies.
On Sunday, the Daily News piled on, in an editorial that sounds like it was written by Klein himself.
Let’s hope that Judge Lobis is not intimidated by these thugs, bought and sold by Rupert Murdoch and Mort Zuckerman, close allies of the Mayor and Klein and members of the Billionaire’s Boys Club.
All of these men, of course, send their kids to elite private schools, and would never stand for arrogant abuse perpetrated by Bloomberg and Klein on students who attend the city's public schools.

Schooling as if Democracy Matters

The focus of our Winter 2008 issue of the Journal of Educational Controversy was on the topic, “Schooling as if Democracy Matters.” In that issue, we raised the question about the ways we should teach the young about the foundations of our democracy and our collective identity in an age of the patriot act, NSA surveillance, extraordinary rendition, preemptive wars, enemy combatants -- all likely to involve violations of civil rights and liberties and a curtain of government secrecy? We asked, what story do we tell our young about who we are, who we have been, and who we are becoming?

I’d like to raise this same question in light of today’s events. In an interesting NY Times op-ed article, “The Rage Is Not About Health Care,” Frank Rich talks about some of the underlying reasons for the rise in rage, venomous rhetoric, violence, and anxieties in today’s demonstrations against the recently adopted health care bill. Comparing the bill’s passage to earlier bills that shook the country – the Medicare Act of 1965 and the Social Security Act of 1935, Rich describes the rhetoric and the upheavals that these bills also caused. But the bill that comes closest to the type of vitriolic criticism that today’s bill is evoking, Rich argues, is the Civil Rights Bill of 1964.

This may sound like a strange claim given that the present Health Care bill actually contains many of the recommendations of the Republican Party, falling far short of the single payer system or public option plan that more liberal proponents advocated. Rather than a “government takeover,” it extends the free market’s involvement in health care. While there are legitimate arguments over health care entitlement, the type of reaction we are experiencing seems to be disproportionate. Rich argues that the health care bill is just a spark that is galvanizing anxieties at a deeper level.

He offers the following explanation for today’s rising tide of rage:

"The health care bill is not the main source of this anger and never has been. It’s merely a handy excuse. The real source of the over-the-top rage of 2010 is the same kind of national existential reordering that roiled America in 1964.

"In fact, the current surge of anger — and the accompanying rise in right-wing extremism — predates the entire health care debate. The first signs were the shrieks of “traitor” and “off with his head” at Palin rallies as Obama’s election became more likely in October 2008. Those passions have spiraled ever since — from Gov. Rick Perry’s kowtowing to secessionists at a Tea Party rally in Texas to the gratuitous brandishing of assault weapons at Obama health care rallies last summer to “You lie!” piercing the president’s address to Congress last fall like an ominous shot.

"If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back from.

"They can’t. Demographics are avatars of a change bigger than any bill contemplated by Obama or Congress. The week before the health care vote, The Times reported that births to Asian, black and Hispanic women accounted for 48 percent of all births in America in the 12 months ending in July 2008. By 2012, the next presidential election year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority. The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935. Their anxieties about a rapidly changing America are well-grounded."
(The New York Times, March 27, 2010)

Both the 1964 and 2010 bills have become the catalyst for shaking the nation’s core understanding of itself. Rich notes the silence resulting from the lack of leadership among today's political leaders, who often tend to exploit the anxieties and fears instead. And this leaves us with the question with which I began this post. What is the responsibility of our teachers and public intellectuals for addressing these deeper issues in the classrooms and in the public square. We hope to address these more profound questions in our summer 2011 issue of the journal on “The Education our Children Deserve.”

(cross-posted on Social Issues blog)

MISS AUSTRIA 2010

Capping off a jammed-packed weekend of pageants around the world was Miss Austria 2010. Contestant No. 3 and Miss Miss Kärnten, Valentina Schlager, won the title and will represent Austria at Miss World 2010. Valentina's best friend, Vice-Miss Kärnten Mirja Roth, was named first runner-up. Second runner-up in the contest was Miss Tirol, Isabella Innerebner.

Education: A Race to Equity instead of the Race to the Top

One of the important names in education that too many currently involved in making policy do not seem to know is Herbert Kohl. Those of us on the Progressive end of the educational spectrum know how important the insight he has offered are, and rare is the progressive thinker on education who has not read several of his books, most notably 36 Children and "I Won't Learn from You:" and Other Thoughts on Creative Maladjustment, the latter a reworking of a slightly earlier essay.

Beginning in Harlem in 1962, Kohl has taught every grade from Kindergarten to College, including being a visiting professor at Swarthmore College.

During a previous time of re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Kohl worked with the late Senator Paul Wellstone on building Opportunity to Learn ideas into the law (you can explore OTL at this Google search).

Recently Kohl sent out an email on A Race To Equity, the contents of which are publicly available quoted in another email on the Assessment Reform Network list archive. I want to share with you and explore the ideas Kohl presents.

I want to focus on a series of questions that Kohl suggests should be answered as part of how we evaluate if we are truly and honestly are going to address the real issues of school equity.

Let me begin as Kohl poses the issue:
When considering school failure, consideration must be given to the situation and circumstances under which children learn. Jonathan Kozolâs Savage Inequalities dramatically documents the lack of opportunity presented to many poor children. Taking off from the, we raised the issue of how to negate those inequalities. The question that droves this analysis was: Do all children have the same opportunities to learn? We were careful to avoid the question of poverty, family background, etc., because we wanted to make strictly educational arguments. We wanted to focus specifically on the conditions of schooling and make the opportunity to learn an equity issue.



Kohl suggests we need a series of measures of equity, and ofers a list some. Let me note that absent some equality of opportunity those in so-called failing schools are often disadvantaged even beyond the prior learning with which they arrive in our schools and classroom. As Kohl writes in the conclusion of the piece from which I am quoting,
My feeling is that progressives should advocate a “race to equity” – a
multibillion dollar initiative to bring some of the most impoverished schools up to the material and pedagogical conditions of the most effective public schools in the country.



I am going to list in bold each of the questions Kohl proposes and then offer some commentary of my own.


What are the facilities necessary to promote equitable learning? We should realize that the physical setting of school can make a difference in the effectiveness of instruction and learning. If nothing else, students can quickly ascertain that their learning is not important if the facilities in which they attend school are decrepit, falling apart, with leaking roofs, heating/ac that does not work, etc. Is there some minimal standard upon which we should be insisting as a precondition to our expectations for learning? We know that wealthy communities often have superb facilities, modern buildings, and the like, while poorer communities, in both urban and rural settings, often conduct classes in buildings as much as a century old, lacking adequate electrical systems for modern equipment as just one indication of how they lag.

What is an equitable ratio of students to teachers?Please note: teacher/student ration is not identical to class size, although it is closely related. It is possible to have a ratio that is too high yet keep class sizes manageable by having teachers responsible for more classes, perhaps removing a planning period and forcing all planning and collaboration and grading to take place outside of paid school hours. Of course, such an approach burns out and discourages teachers, which inevitably leads to other problems. Whether you want to think of the ratio, or of class sizes, recognize this: in our elite private schools those ratios are much smaller than is often the case in schools in economically distressed or isolated communities. In some of our wealthier communities, ratios and class sizes tilt more in the direction of what we see in elite private schools. There are some communities which have made a major commitment on these issues - I live in Arlington Virginia, where I taught in a middle school for one year in which my four sets of students ranged from 19 to 24. By contrast, I have taught most of my career in Prince George's County MD, where in my current high school I have six sets of students with one class having 15 (it is a special program) and my other five ranging from 27 to 37. We know that there is research that supports the idea of smaller classes leading to more effective instruction, especially in elementary. Or if the elementary class has 30 students that there is a teacher aide to assist, or there are co-taught classes: in secondary one can co-teach language arts and social studies, having two teachers for perhaps 40-50 students.

What is the range and scope of a learning program that promotes equitable learning â this would include the arts, opportunity for athletics and cultural learning, advanced placement courses, science labs? Note that this is far beyond the sometimes exclusionary emphasis on reading and mathematics that was the result often seen in schools of lower socioeconomics because of the emphasis on test scores in those two domains under No Child Left Behind. I will acknowledge that Obama has spoken about broadening our understanding of what an education should include, and that the administration's Blueprint allows schools/systems/states to measure performance in other subjects, but for the supposed bottom 5% / 5,000 schools the determination is still being made solely on reading and mathematics. If we narrow what a child experiences in school we do little than perpetuate or even aggravate the unequal status with which that child arrives in our schools. Somehow we need to remember that while literacy and numeracy are important, sometimes they are best learned in a broader context in which the student can experience a broader sense of learning and education. Similarly, we must be able to provide in every school the opportunity to challenge the gifted students that exist in every school, even those in our poorest or most isolated communities.

What are the credentials teachers are expected to have to produce excellence in learning? This question is going beyond the formal licensing today, that is, do you have a complete teaching credential? NCLB said that every teacher was supposed to be "highly qualified" but it was too easy to limit that to paperwork and coursework. We certainly need to have some standards of what we expect those to who we entrust the future of our children to bring to the classroom. What are those characteristics that we can see make a real difference? Can we establish some means of measuring them, so that we do not assume that grades and test scores of teacher candidates are the only measure? Here I note of my five student teachers the one with the highest grades and test scores was totally unable to connect with the students, whereas several with what some might consider mediocre evidence in testing and grades had already demonstrated a real interest and ability in finding ways of motivating and challenging a diverse group of students, both succeeded as student teachers and then later as teachers in our building.


What kind of wages and conditions of work contribute to educational opportunity for children? These are both important issues. Let's address separately. First, if we want to attract and retain teachers we have to be willing to pay them a livable wage. Otherwise we will lose them to other careers, or else force them to work 2nd jobs in order to make ends meet. That is a minimum requirement. Conditions of work are equally important. That includes for many of us the ability to be flexible in meeting the needs of the students, having the support necessary to meet those needs, having the materials and equipment, being in an environment which is not overly punitive either to students or the adults serving those students, being in a setting where it is possible to work with the parents and the larger community for the success of the students. I will acknowledge that money is insufficient by itself to address the issues confronting our schools, but there is no doubt lack of money can undercut our best efforts. And please, do not simply compare the total amount spent per student as a means of undercutting that: yes, DC spends a lot per student, but much of that goes to mandated special education costs, to security, to a top-heavy administrative structure (including record keeping in excruciating detail of things easy to measure but which have not been shown to translate into better instruction), and not to improving instruction in the classroom.

What kinds of supplies and equipment must all school have access to (text books, computers, etc.)? IS it equitable that some school systems have a ratio of computers to students up to 10 times those in other schools? How does one teach laboratory science without labs, equipment, and supplies? What if a school lacks a gymnasium or safe athletic fields? Do some schools still lack chairs and desks for all students? What about a library, with books that students can take out? Remember, for some of our students there is little if any access to public libraries: in rural areas they are too far away, in some urban areas going to a public library - if the community still has one - might require crossing the territory of a hostile gang.


What kind of facilities should house an equitable learning environment for all children? The key word is EQUITABLE. That does not have to be identical. I addressed some of this in the beginning. It starts with the building itself. This is not merely the physical condition and age. It is also whether the building itself encourages or discourages learning. We have many models of building layout that can be considered as part of this.


What kind of standards and measures should be used to measure a school's effectiveness as an equitable learning institution? Are the standards which we impose upon students and schools appropriate for where we begin? That is, is it appropriate to measure all against a uniform and often arbitrary level of performance rather than on the growth we are able to to generate in our students? How much are we willing to go beyond easy to score mass-produced tests? What measures beyond test scores are important indicators of whether that school is providing equity of opportunity for our students? Let me offer a couple of things one might consider. School lunch, attendance, opportunity of extra-curricular activities, opportunity for students to explore subjects in depth, multiple measures (which does not mean just multiple tests) of student learning - these are just a few things that come to my mind as I read this question. But also, how do we set standards? Here I think of the current effort for Common Core Standards that were being developed without the input of teachers or professional organizations of the content areas, but had lots of input from think tanks and testing organizations and certain groups arguing for what I would consider a narrow concept of "reform." I might suggest that in order to determine what standards we should apply, we will first have to be willing to address an issue that still remains largely unanswered: what is the purpose of our providing for public schooling? What is the purpose of school? If we are willing to acquiesce in the sorting process and accept the idea that schooling is driven by a limited idea of economic competitiveness, then I suggest we will continue to be frustrated with the results, in large part because our students will be frustrated with what they experience in the classroom. Perhaps we should try talking to students, current and recently graduated, about what their experience has been, what they think they need, and why?


What role should parents and community organizations play to ensure equitable schools in their communities? Schools do not exist in isolation. In too many cases community support seems limited to honoring athletic teams. In some cases, we are fortunate that there is further support and honoring of academic "winners" - the scholarships one, robotics and Latin and Science and History competitions. Community organizations can provide so much more: guest speakers, field trips, supplemntal materials for classrooms, internship opportunities.

And parents: if we want their involvement do we provide an opportunity for them to participate? Is there even an active parent organization? What about providing opportunities for meeting with teachers and administrators on a schedule that works for parents? In many well-off communities, it is not difficult for a parent to adjust a work schedule for a parent conference. What if the parents both work two jobs, for which it represents a loss of income? What if the parents lack language skills, are we prepared to work with community associations to provide translators?

I have in this posting barely scratched the possibilities we could explore in the questions Kohl raises. And I am sure Kohl would tell us that these are only some of the questions we need to consider if we are going to make our schools more equitable.

Perhaps some do not care about school equity. There is a strand of thought among many in America which has no trouble with inequity, which is prepared to justify the increasing economic and social disparities in this nation. After all, we have seen some of that thinking in recent debates over health care reform.

I have experienced up close what the inequity in access to health care means. This weekend I again volunteered in dental triage at a Mission of Mercy seeking to bring basic dental care to people who normally go without. Health and nutrition and education are interrelated. Equity does not have to mean equal. But surely there should be some minimal levels beyond which as a society we understand we cannot allow some of our people to be trapped.

School is supposed to make a difference. Certainly we saw the explosion of the middle class in the decades after WWII in part because we opened up higher education through things like the GI Bill and various other programs, we opened up home ownership, we began to address some of the economic and racial inequity that was endemic in mid-20th century America.

I fear that we may have lost the belief that we can really provide opportunity for all. I worry that we are beginning, under the current economic pressures most of us are experiencing, to pull back from the concept that we have a responsibility for all of us. We may use language like "no child left behind" yet at the same time acquiesce as the educational opportunities for "other people's children" to use the phrase made famous by Lisa Delpit are not really our concern.

Herbert Kohl has been one of the important voices on this, as has Jonathan Kozol, as have many who continue to labor within many schools which do not have the facilities, the larger community support, and thus struggle to provide equity of educational opportunity.

The original Elementary and Secondary Education Act was a product of Lyndon John's Great Society. Johnson had after college and before politics served as a school teacher in a poor economic community. He had seen first hand the lack of educational equity and its impact.

A competition inevitably has winners and losers, and thus inevitably leaves some behind, our telling them that in some way their education is not important enough. That is wrong.

I do not claim to have all the answers. I note that too often we are not asking all the right questions. Herbert Kohl offers some questions I think we need to consider.

What do you think?

Peace.

Education: A Race to Equity instead of the Race to the Top

One of the important names in education that too many currently involved in making policy do not seem to know is Herbert Kohl. Those of us on the Progressive end of the educational spectrum know how important the insight he has offered are, and rare is the progressive thinker on education who has not read several of his books, most notably 36 Children and "I Won't Learn from You:" and Other Thoughts on Creative Maladjustment, the latter a reworking of a slightly earlier essay.

Beginning in Harlem in 1962, Kohl has taught every grade from Kindergarten to College, including being a visiting professor at Swarthmore College.

During a previous time of re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Kohl worked with the late Senator Paul Wellstone on building Opportunity to Learn ideas into the law (you can explore OTL at this Google search).

Recently Kohl sent out an email on A Race To Equity, the contents of which are publicly available quoted in another email on the Assessment Reform Network list archive. I want to share with you and explore the ideas Kohl presents.

I want to focus on a series of questions that Kohl suggests should be answered as part of how we evaluate if we are truly and honestly are going to address the real issues of school equity.

Let me begin as Kohl poses the issue:
When considering school failure, consideration must be given to the situation and circumstances under which children learn. Jonathan Kozolâs Savage Inequalities dramatically documents the lack of opportunity presented to many poor children. Taking off from the, we raised the issue of how to negate those inequalities. The question that droves this analysis was: Do all children have the same opportunities to learn? We were careful to avoid the question of poverty, family background, etc., because we wanted to make strictly educational arguments. We wanted to focus specifically on the conditions of schooling and make the opportunity to learn an equity issue.



Kohl suggests we need a series of measures of equity, and ofers a list some. Let me note that absent some equality of opportunity those in so-called failing schools are often disadvantaged even beyond the prior learning with which they arrive in our schools and classroom. As Kohl writes in the conclusion of the piece from which I am quoting,
My feeling is that progressives should advocate a “race to equity” – a
multibillion dollar initiative to bring some of the most impoverished schools up to the material and pedagogical conditions of the most effective public schools in the country.



I am going to list in bold each of the questions Kohl proposes and then offer some commentary of my own.


What are the facilities necessary to promote equitable learning? We should realize that the physical setting of school can make a difference in the effectiveness of instruction and learning. If nothing else, students can quickly ascertain that their learning is not important if the facilities in which they attend school are decrepit, falling apart, with leaking roofs, heating/ac that does not work, etc. Is there some minimal standard upon which we should be insisting as a precondition to our expectations for learning? We know that wealthy communities often have superb facilities, modern buildings, and the like, while poorer communities, in both urban and rural settings, often conduct classes in buildings as much as a century old, lacking adequate electrical systems for modern equipment as just one indication of how they lag.

What is an equitable ratio of students to teachers?Please note: teacher/student ration is not identical to class size, although it is closely related. It is possible to have a ratio that is too high yet keep class sizes manageable by having teachers responsible for more classes, perhaps removing a planning period and forcing all planning and collaboration and grading to take place outside of paid school hours. Of course, such an approach burns out and discourages teachers, which inevitably leads to other problems. Whether you want to think of the ratio, or of class sizes, recognize this: in our elite private schools those ratios are much smaller than is often the case in schools in economically distressed or isolated communities. In some of our wealthier communities, ratios and class sizes tilt more in the direction of what we see in elite private schools. There are some communities which have made a major commitment on these issues - I live in Arlington Virginia, where I taught in a middle school for one year in which my four sets of students ranged from 19 to 24. By contrast, I have taught most of my career in Prince George's County MD, where in my current high school I have six sets of students with one class having 15 (it is a special program) and my other five ranging from 27 to 37. We know that there is research that supports the idea of smaller classes leading to more effective instruction, especially in elementary. Or if the elementary class has 30 students that there is a teacher aide to assist, or there are co-taught classes: in secondary one can co-teach language arts and social studies, having two teachers for perhaps 40-50 students.

What is the range and scope of a learning program that promotes equitable learning â this would include the arts, opportunity for athletics and cultural learning, advanced placement courses, science labs? Note that this is far beyond the sometimes exclusionary emphasis on reading and mathematics that was the result often seen in schools of lower socioeconomics because of the emphasis on test scores in those two domains under No Child Left Behind. I will acknowledge that Obama has spoken about broadening our understanding of what an education should include, and that the administration's Blueprint allows schools/systems/states to measure performance in other subjects, but for the supposed bottom 5% / 5,000 schools the determination is still being made solely on reading and mathematics. If we narrow what a child experiences in school we do little than perpetuate or even aggravate the unequal status with which that child arrives in our schools. Somehow we need to remember that while literacy and numeracy are important, sometimes they are best learned in a broader context in which the student can experience a broader sense of learning and education. Similarly, we must be able to provide in every school the opportunity to challenge the gifted students that exist in every school, even those in our poorest or most isolated communities.

What are the credentials teachers are expected to have to produce excellence in learning? This question is going beyond the formal licensing today, that is, do you have a complete teaching credential? NCLB said that every teacher was supposed to be "highly qualified" but it was too easy to limit that to paperwork and coursework. We certainly need to have some standards of what we expect those to who we entrust the future of our children to bring to the classroom. What are those characteristics that we can see make a real difference? Can we establish some means of measuring them, so that we do not assume that grades and test scores of teacher candidates are the only measure? Here I note of my five student teachers the one with the highest grades and test scores was totally unable to connect with the students, whereas several with what some might consider mediocre evidence in testing and grades had already demonstrated a real interest and ability in finding ways of motivating and challenging a diverse group of students, both succeeded as student teachers and then later as teachers in our building.


What kind of wages and conditions of work contribute to educational opportunity for children? These are both important issues. Let's address separately. First, if we want to attract and retain teachers we have to be willing to pay them a livable wage. Otherwise we will lose them to other careers, or else force them to work 2nd jobs in order to make ends meet. That is a minimum requirement. Conditions of work are equally important. That includes for many of us the ability to be flexible in meeting the needs of the students, having the support necessary to meet those needs, having the materials and equipment, being in an environment which is not overly punitive either to students or the adults serving those students, being in a setting where it is possible to work with the parents and the larger community for the success of the students. I will acknowledge that money is insufficient by itself to address the issues confronting our schools, but there is no doubt lack of money can undercut our best efforts. And please, do not simply compare the total amount spent per student as a means of undercutting that: yes, DC spends a lot per student, but much of that goes to mandated special education costs, to security, to a top-heavy administrative structure (including record keeping in excruciating detail of things easy to measure but which have not been shown to translate into better instruction), and not to improving instruction in the classroom.

What kinds of supplies and equipment must all school have access to (text books, computers, etc.)? IS it equitable that some school systems have a ratio of computers to students up to 10 times those in other schools? How does one teach laboratory science without labs, equipment, and supplies? What if a school lacks a gymnasium or safe athletic fields? Do some schools still lack chairs and desks for all students? What about a library, with books that students can take out? Remember, for some of our students there is little if any access to public libraries: in rural areas they are too far away, in some urban areas going to a public library - if the community still has one - might require crossing the territory of a hostile gang.


What kind of facilities should house an equitable learning environment for all children? The key word is EQUITABLE. That does not have to be identical. I addressed some of this in the beginning. It starts with the building itself. This is not merely the physical condition and age. It is also whether the building itself encourages or discourages learning. We have many models of building layout that can be considered as part of this.


What kind of standards and measures should be used to measure a school's effectiveness as an equitable learning institution? Are the standards which we impose upon students and schools appropriate for where we begin? That is, is it appropriate to measure all against a uniform and often arbitrary level of performance rather than on the growth we are able to to generate in our students? How much are we willing to go beyond easy to score mass-produced tests? What measures beyond test scores are important indicators of whether that school is providing equity of opportunity for our students? Let me offer a couple of things one might consider. School lunch, attendance, opportunity of extra-curricular activities, opportunity for students to explore subjects in depth, multiple measures (which does not mean just multiple tests) of student learning - these are just a few things that come to my mind as I read this question. But also, how do we set standards? Here I think of the current effort for Common Core Standards that were being developed without the input of teachers or professional organizations of the content areas, but had lots of input from think tanks and testing organizations and certain groups arguing for what I would consider a narrow concept of "reform." I might suggest that in order to determine what standards we should apply, we will first have to be willing to address an issue that still remains largely unanswered: what is the purpose of our providing for public schooling? What is the purpose of school? If we are willing to acquiesce in the sorting process and accept the idea that schooling is driven by a limited idea of economic competitiveness, then I suggest we will continue to be frustrated with the results, in large part because our students will be frustrated with what they experience in the classroom. Perhaps we should try talking to students, current and recently graduated, about what their experience has been, what they think they need, and why?


What role should parents and community organizations play to ensure equitable schools in their communities? Schools do not exist in isolation. In too many cases community support seems limited to honoring athletic teams. In some cases, we are fortunate that there is further support and honoring of academic "winners" - the scholarships one, robotics and Latin and Science and History competitions. Community organizations can provide so much more: guest speakers, field trips, supplemntal materials for classrooms, internship opportunities.

And parents: if we want their involvement do we provide an opportunity for them to participate? Is there even an active parent organization? What about providing opportunities for meeting with teachers and administrators on a schedule that works for parents? In many well-off communities, it is not difficult for a parent to adjust a work schedule for a parent conference. What if the parents both work two jobs, for which it represents a loss of income? What if the parents lack language skills, are we prepared to work with community associations to provide translators?

I have in this posting barely scratched the possibilities we could explore in the questions Kohl raises. And I am sure Kohl would tell us that these are only some of the questions we need to consider if we are going to make our schools more equitable.

Perhaps some do not care about school equity. There is a strand of thought among many in America which has no trouble with inequity, which is prepared to justify the increasing economic and social disparities in this nation. After all, we have seen some of that thinking in recent debates over health care reform.

I have experienced up close what the inequity in access to health care means. This weekend I again volunteered in dental triage at a Mission of Mercy seeking to bring basic dental care to people who normally go without. Health and nutrition and education are interrelated. Equity does not have to mean equal. But surely there should be some minimal levels beyond which as a society we understand we cannot allow some of our people to be trapped.

School is supposed to make a difference. Certainly we saw the explosion of the middle class in the decades after WWII in part because we opened up higher education through things like the GI Bill and various other programs, we opened up home ownership, we began to address some of the economic and racial inequity that was endemic in mid-20th century America.

I fear that we may have lost the belief that we can really provide opportunity for all. I worry that we are beginning, under the current economic pressures most of us are experiencing, to pull back from the concept that we have a responsibility for all of us. We may use language like "no child left behind" yet at the same time acquiesce as the educational opportunities for "other people's children" to use the phrase made famous by Lisa Delpit are not really our concern.

Herbert Kohl has been one of the important voices on this, as has Jonathan Kozol, as have many who continue to labor within many schools which do not have the facilities, the larger community support, and thus struggle to provide equity of educational opportunity.

The original Elementary and Secondary Education Act was a product of Lyndon John's Great Society. Johnson had after college and before politics served as a school teacher in a poor economic community. He had seen first hand the lack of educational equity and its impact.

A competition inevitably has winners and losers, and thus inevitably leaves some behind, our telling them that in some way their education is not important enough. That is wrong.

I do not claim to have all the answers. I note that too often we are not asking all the right questions. Herbert Kohl offers some questions I think we need to consider.

What do you think?

Peace.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

ZEN ON SUNDAY

Two worlds come together - Miss World 2009 and Mr World 2010

The Gig is Up

March 27, 2010 (GBN News): Tiger Woods was not the only public figure to recently lose a lucrative celebrity endorsement contract due to embarrassing legal trouble. GBN News has learned that Joel Klein, the NY City schools chancellor, had apparently been paid “in the high six figures” by Research in Motion to prominently display his Blackberry at public events. But the company is reportedly dropping Mr. Klein due to a recent lawsuit.

According to a ruling by state supreme Court Judge Joan Lobis, the closure of 19 schools by the NY City Department of Education under Mr. Klein violated state law. And Mr. Klein may even be defying the court ruling itself by effectively preventing children from enrolling in the schools, which are now supposed to remain open.

“We couldn’t have asked for a better pitchman for our product,” a source at Research in Motion told GBN News. “He’s shown off that Blackberry every chance he gets. He never takes his eyes - or his fingers - off of it at PEP meetings, press conferences, even social events. He clearly prefers his Blackberry to human beings. But we’re a reputable company, and we can’t be associated with people who don’t show respect for the rule of law. So we had to let him go.”

There was apparently some good news for the Chancellor, however. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Mr. Klein broke the record for longest game of “Brickbreaker” when he managed to make the game last the entire length of the marathon January 26 PEP meeting.

David Frum and Bruce Bartlett are full of it

I have followed David Frum for years. I read probably every post he wrote on New Majority/FrumForum. I have defended him in arguments with friends. Boy do I feel like a fool.

From my reading Frum was genuinely a free marketer, who made the legitimate point that the GOP needs to be more intellectual and advocate more moderate policies on some issues.

Bruce Bartlett in contrast is just another Social Democrat, someone who claims taxes do not affect economic behavior in a major ways, someone who wants people to accept the delusion that the payroll tax is not a tax on the worker’s income, someone who wants the U.S to be impressed by and emulate the French economy, even though the U.S produces 50% more on a per capita basis than France.

I twice took the time to point out errors in Fromforum, once when they claimed there were 1 million Iranians in the U.S (they corrected this), and once when they claimed typical Americans earning 50.000 a year only pay 7.5% in federal taxes, because they are in the 7.5% bracket (they did not correct this).

But the last few days has convinced me I was wrong to trust David Frum.

Regarding the dispute between AEI and David Frum on why he was let go, I am of course no mind reader. However Frum and Bartlett, especially Bartlett, have made claims that were demonstrably false and that they have subsequently had to retract.

Attacks on conservatives by other conservative attract a lot of media. However if the only thing you do is attack other conservatives, and if there is the suspicion that you only refer to yourself as a conservative to be more effective in undermining the right, people get understandably upset. Yet, if the attacks are based on legitimate concerns, conservatives should take them to heart. More importantly, the substance of the criticism tells us something about Frum and Bartlett’s motivations.

So the core issue is whether there is some merit to Frum and Bartlett´s original attacks regarding Obamacare. While I don’t want to waste reader’s time with personal feuds, I can tell you what free-market theory on American health care policy is. Reasonable people can disagree about whether or not the free market side arguments I believe in are correct, but it is nevertheless useful to articulate what my side of the argument believes.

Frum and Bartlett central claim is that free market people at AEI in particular and Republicans in general intellectually like Obamas health care plan (or, they should like if they just were less partisan). From the “intellectual” free market perspective that Bartlett and Frum have, Obama’s plan is decent. Republicans should have worked with Obama to make it even better.

AEI scholars deep inside know the plan is good and that the current system is in need of reform, they are just pressured not to say this. Frum and Bartlett claim that to the extent that the right does not support Obama, it is because they are not intellectuals. They further claim that the intellectual cadre of right wing thinker secretly approve of Obama’s plan, but are just afraid of saying so.

Are these claims plausible? No. They are moronic. Here is the free market view:
We believe there is a massive problem in American Health care, caused by the collective action problem of third party finance. The third party system is arguably caused by government policy.

In 1945 the way Americans paid for health care was the same way they paid for other services, out of their own pockets. Around 70-80% of health finance was out of pocket. Due to wage caps and due to the tax system this system was replaced by insurance tied to the employer (another reason insurance is tied to the employer is adverse selection, but free marketers emphasize the tax reasons). Even in 1960 out of pocket was still 60% of health care finance. At this point the government further entrenched the third party payer system by introducing Medicare and Medicaid, which grew rapidly. These trends completely transformed how health care was produced:

Since almost all of the clients are third party payers. Health producers no longer have functioning systems of buying health care directly. Currently, out of pocket is 13% of health care finance. 87% of the system is third payer.

The health care inflation caused by collective action problems has contributed to increasing the number of uninsured. More problematically, being uninsured is now much worse than being uninsured in 1945, because you no longer can buy reasonably prices health services.

The health care bill passed by Congress only exacerbates the central problem of the American system. If the problem is too much health spending and third party payers, the plan *increases* the government subsidy to employer provided health care. It expands Medicaid, a entitlement plan already trillion dollars in the red long term. It worsens the even larger deficits of Medicaid, by taking out the low hanging fruit in terms of tightening the program and using them to finance more subsidies.

The plan also creates massive implicit tax rate increases. These tax rates are worse even than ordinary taxes for the supply of taxable income. The reason is that the tax increases not only have a negative substitution effect on supply, they are combined with a subsidy, so they also have a income effect that reduces supply.

Bruce Bartlett has repudiated mainstream economics and thinks that taxes do not adversely affect the economy. But remember, we are not discussing what a Social Democrat thinks about Obama’s reform. The claim is about intellectual conservatives. Frum and Bartlett claim that Republicans should like this plan, and that AEI scholars secretly already do. A plan that massively raises implicit taxes on large parts of the middle class, that introduces regulations that incentivize corporations to stay small, that increases the subsidy for third party financed health care.

Milton Freidman was the main pro market intellectual of the century. Do you think, that if Milton Friedman was alive today, he, as an intellectual, would have supported the general thrust of Obamacare? This is essentially what Frum and Bartlett claim. Are we supposed to take these people seriously?

Read how Milton Friedman diagnosis the American Health Care in 2001 and judge yourself what the top free market intellectual would have thought of Obama-care. I guess if Milton Friedman were alive today and criticized Obama, Bruce Bartlett would say that he was not really an intellectual, and David Frum would claim that Friedman was secretly in favor of Obama-care and afraid of “donors” to reveal his true feelings.

The second claim of David Frum is that Republicans should have worked with Obama to make the plan better, and passed it in a bipartisan fashion. Let us say, for the sake of the argument, that this would have made the plan somewhat less catastrophic for the country. Of course with the political balance of power being what it is, the core of the plan would have passed.

But at what long term cost for free-market policies?!? Obama-care is likely to worsen health inflation in the U.S. It worsens the financing problem of Medicare. It probably increases the deficit. It is complex and massive intrusion in the economy, and will probably lead to unintended consequences (but I guess “intellectuals” Bartlett and Frum have not taken this into account).

When those problems inevitably emerge, what position will Republicans have if they helped Obama pass it?!?

With Frum’s political masterplan Democrats will get the political benefits of expanding entitlements to the lower middle class, and Republicans will not even have the benefit of principled free-marketers and the tax-paying groups that oppose the reform. What would libertarians think, many of whom already believe that Republicans are as bad fiscally as Democrats?

Are Republicans suppose to think David Frum has their best interest at heat, given how ludicrous his criticisms is, and how politically disastrous his advice would be? Are free-marketers supposed to think Bruce Bartlett is still a serious intellectual, given his shallow and almost dogmatically Social Democratic views?

And are observers of the AEI-Frum controversy who know the basics of free-market liberalism suppose to believe that intellectual at the AEI secretly admired Obama´s ruinous plan? David Frum would not have wasted my time and that of others had he just beeen more honest about who he has turned into.

MISS INDIA WORLDWIDE 2010


It has been a busy pageant day across the globe! From Europe to Africa to Asia! Crowned tonight in Durban, South Africa, as the new Miss India Worldwide 2010 was hometown girl Kajal Lutchminarain. The glittering gala was held at the Durban International Convention Centre. First runner-up in the pageant was Miss United Kingdom, Niharica Raizada. Second runner-up was Miss Suriname, Cher Marchand.

MISS UNIVERSE CROATIA 2010

The new Miss Universe Croatia 2010 is Lana Obad. She won the title tonight in Zagreb during a a glittering ceremony that included a Lady Gaga-inspired dance number with all of the contestants. First runner-up in the contest was Katarina Martinović; second runner-up was Doris Delić.