John Oliver

Privatizing Public Money

There's a good buncha rubes who're always prattling on about how "taxation is theft; da gubmint holds a gun to yer head and steals yer hard-earned money, and gives it away to welfare cheats yada yada yada".

You've got the process right, Dub - but as usual, you're lynchin' the wrong guys, because you're just too deliberately ignorant to know it.

When your head is that far up your ass, even if you manage to open your eyes, all you're gonna see is your own shit.

From TruthDig:

In late February, the North Carolina chapter of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation — a group co-founded by the libertarian billionaire Koch brothers — embarked on what it billed as a statewide tour of charter schools, a cornerstone of the group’s education agenda. The first — and it turns out, only — stop was Douglass Academy, a new charter school in downtown Wilmington.

Douglass Academy was an unusual choice. A few weeks before, the school had been warned by the state about low enrollment. It had just 35 students, roughly half the state’s minimum. And a month earlier, a local newspaper had reported that federal regulators were investigating the school’s operations.

But the school has other attributes that may have appealed to the Koch group.

The school’s founder, a politically active North Carolina businessman named Baker Mitchell, shares the Koch’s free-market ideals. His model for success embraces decreased government regulation, increased privatization and, if all goes well, healthy corporate profits.

In that regard, Mitchell, 74, appears to be thriving. Every year, millions of public education dollars flow through Mitchell’s chain of four nonprofit charter schools to for-profit companies he controls.

The schools buy or lease nearly everything from companies owned by Mitchell. Their desks. Their computers. The training they provide to teachers. Most of the land and buildings. Unlike with traditional school districts, at Mitchell’s charter schools there’s no competitive bidding. No evidence of haggling over rent or contracts.

Mr Oliver, If You Please

"For-Profit Education" is easily the best way for anybody totally devoid of honor to funnel public dollars into private coffers.



Wanna know what kills Capitalism?  Capitalists who are unworthy of the name, masquerading as honest entrepreneurs; demonstrating by their example that it's all but impossible to think anybody could earn a living doing anything but stealing.

Here's the letter Oliver mentions:

To Whom It May Concern:

I am [NAME HERE], a human being with [DESCRIBE AT LEAST SOME LEVEL OF SENSE] who is sick of your [SYNONYM FOR BULLSHIT]

Whatever the benefits of for-profit-schools, your trade group is protecting some of the worst actors, and [ADDITIONAL INSULTS].  [IDEAS FOR PLACES TO CRAM THIS LETTER ONCE ROLLED UP].  [PROPOSALS FOR HUMAN WASTE PRODUCTS TO BE EATEN].

Thank you for your time,

[NAME HERE AGAIN]

Send it to:  APSCU@apscu.org

Is Our Children Learning?

From WaPo:

Teachers have long been accustomed to “going along to get along” but increasingly are raising their voices to protest standardized test-based education reforms of the last decade that they see as harmful to students. In this post, Georgia teacher Ian Altman explains what he and his colleagues are really sick of hearing from reformers. Altman is an award-winning high school English teacher in Athens, where he has lived since 1993, as well as an advocate for teachers and students. He has presented at several national conferences and published in the Journal of Language and Literacy Education. He won the 2014 University of Georgia College of Education Distinguished Alumni Crystal Apple Award as well as the 2012 University of Chicago Outstanding Educator award.

Altman’s list of seven things that reformers should stop saying to teachers comes from conversations he has had with educators across the country and speaks to the fury felt by many teachers who see their expertise being devalued and their profession denigrated.

#6 is a great cross-over from the Bidness Side that is a perfect reflection of what's so fucked up about USAmerica Inc:

6. Stop using education reform clichés.
Here is a compendium of common education reform clichés:
“After consulting the research and assessment data, and involving all stakeholders in the decision-making process, we have determined that a relentless pursuit of excellence and laser-like focus on the standards, synergistically with our accountability measures, action-oriented and forward-leaning intervention strategies, and enhanced observation guidelines for classroom look-fors, will close the achievement gap and raise the bar for all children.”

You can’t talk like that and expect to be taken seriously by educated adults.

If only people in any random Business Meeting could be relied upon to laugh the Cliche-Humpers out of the room, we might make a little progress.

And the payoff at the end:

Teachers didn’t choose this fight. It has been imposed on us by a misguided and deeply conservative “reform” movement. It’s time for reformers to back off because I, and my colleagues, will do a better job if you just get out of the way.

I welcome you to disrupt my thoughts with real argument if you can. But don’t insult me and my profession by telling me just to believe what I’m told and accept the way things are.

 hat tip = FB friend LLS

This Business Of Teaching

Most 'conservatives' will say (ie: just repeat whatever they heard somebody say that they think sounded kinda smart) - anyway, they'll say they want a school (eg) to be run more like a business.  And then they usually go on to say a lot of things that leave most of us wondering if they have the first fucking clue about running any kind of anything that bears even the remotest resemblance to a business.  From what we've seen of American Management in the last 20 years or so, I'm not holding out lotsa hope for anything to improve any time soon.

Here's Curmudgucation on the subject of evaluating teachers:

Before you can judge teachers, you have to decide what you want them to do. That turns out to be really complicated and difficult and wildly varied from parent to taxpayer to administrators to bureaucrats. It even varies within families-- what I want you to accomplish with my oldest child may be way different from what I want you to accomplish with my youngest.

Because this is so hugely difficult, we mostly just don't do it. We collective wave our hands in the general directions of students and say, "I don't know. Go do teachy things." If you want to evaluate people on job performance, you have to decide what job you want them to perform.

And there ya go.  First things first.  What is it you want those teachers to do?  What are the benchmarks?  We have to stop stoopidly insisting that a job description can be "do the job I want you to do" and that's all it needs to say.

Accountability only works when it flows in both directions; it requires the boss to be accountable as well - for setting reasonable goals and expectations; for sticking with the plan until or unless changes are truly warranted by checking real results against those reasonable expectations; for not changing the plan in the middle of everything just because it's politically expedient for you to fuck over somebody's union, or because you need to get up over the next bonus hurdle to cover the down payment on your new boat, or because your 2nd cousin suddenly discovered his burning passion for student assessment and testing technologies that require a "quick and substantial investment of tax dollars in our children's future blah blah blah".

And gosh - it suddenly occurs to me that what we need the teachers to do is what teachers try to do every fucking day of their careers - assess needs, set goals, make plans, implement their plans, check each student's progress, measure their own effectiveness and tweak their plans as they go, etc etc etc.  And what we need the Admin to do is what the teachers try to do every fucking day of their careers.

I can read.  I can read a whole buncha stuff on education and teaching and all that, and I can make it sound like I know more than I actually know about almost anything - cuz I'm a good salesman.  But I'm not a school teacher, so I actually know exactly jack shit about what it takes to be a good school teacher.

Ya wanna know who does know something about being a good teacher?  Teachers.

Maybe we could find some of those teacher people - AND FUCKING LISTEN TO THEM.

Is Our Children Learning?

Yes - they're learning how to take the shortcuts necessary to get the money without having to do the work, which is almost exactly what the Law of Unintended Consequences is all about, which is in full flower when it comes to the straightup bullshit that so many people like to call "School Reform".

Here's a new site I stumbled upon today: CURMUDGUCATION

And here's a full post that lays it all out:

Since the president has declared this week National Charter School Appreciation & General Ain't Charters Swell Week, you are probably thinking, "How can I be part of the charter school excitement?"

In the past, many charters were launched that focused solidly on providing unique and exciting educational experiences for their communities. These schools were innovative. These schools were connected to their communities. These schools were icing on the public school system cake. And these schools were run by chumps. There's only one question you need to answer to gauge the success of your charter school -- am I making money.

Here's how to properly cash in on the charter school movement.

Diversify!
Not the school -- your portfolio. Set up multiple companies. Create a holding company that owns the building, and charge the school rent and facilities fees. Create a school management company, and hire yourself to run your school. Form your own custodial contracting company. Write your own textbooks, and then sell them to yourself. Buy a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter and set yourself up as a lunch concession with ten dollar sandwiches.

Don't Overlook the Obvious
"Non-profit" just means "not wasting money by throwing it away on stockholders." Taking money hand over fist that you can't call profit? Just put it all in a big wheelbarrow and pay it to yourself as a salary. There's no legal limit to what you can be paid as the charter school operator. The only limits to your salary are the limits set by your own sense of shame. If you have no shame, then ka-ching, my friend. Ka. Ching.

Ain't Too Proud To Beg
Have a fundraiser. When you wave schools and children at people, they fork over money like crazy, whether you actually need it or not. The only way it could work any better would be if you found a way to work in the American flag and puppies.

Students Are Marketing Tools
Students have a job at your charter, and that's to make your charter look good and marketable. If they won't do the job, fire them. If they aren't for sure going to graduate, fire them before senior year (100 percent graduation rate makes great ad copy). If they are going to create bad press for disciplinary reasons, fire them.

Students Are Also The Revenue Stream
The other function of students is to bring money in while not costing any more than is absolutely necessary. Never take students with special needs (unless you can use them to make the school look good without incurring extra costs). If a student will require extra disciplinary or academic intervention, fire him.

Always remember, however, that students need to be fired during Firing Season -- late enough to hold onto the money they bring, but early enough that they won't hurt your numbers.

Only Use McTeachers
Personnel costs will eat up your revenue. Make sure your teachers are young, cheap, and easily replaced. Remember -- with the proper programs in a box, teaching requires no more training and expertise than bagging up an order of fries. Why pay New Cadillac wages when all you need are Used Yugos. It should go without saying, but they should never, ever be allowed to organize. Keep them too demoralized to cause trouble, and if someone insists on causing trouble, fire her. Pro tip: TFA can be a great source of people who don't even want to be teachers and will gladly take themselves out of your way.

Remember -- You Are A Public School
You are entitled to public money, public resources, public buildings, public anything you can get them to give you. Never pay a cost out of your pocket when you can get the taxpayers to foot the bill. You also want to accent the "public" in your marketing, as it helps reduce parents' reluctance to screw over the actual public schools.

Remember -- You Are A Private School
Never let anybody see your financials, ever. This is your business, and nobody -- especially not the taxpayers who pay you -- is entitled to know anything about how you run it. "Transparency" is a dirty, dirty word.

In general, rules are for chumps. Make sure you are only playing by the ones that best serve your ROI.

Make the Right Friends
It's true that not everybody can afford to buy, say, an entire legislature or the governor of a state, but even outside of New York, it's possible to use the giant pile of money you've accumulated to help important people understand what a great public service you're performing.

We've come a long way from the days when charter school operators made the mistake of thinking that their schools should focus on educating young men and women. In Modern Times, we better understand that a well-run charter operation can contribute to an important job -- the business of taking money away from undeserving taxpayers and putting it in the hands of the deserving rich. By focusing on the One True Function of charter schools -- making money -- you can develop a robust business that will make it possible for you to send your own children to real private schools that provide the kind of education that, thank goodness, you will never try to incorporate into your own charter operation.

Swedish Meatballs

By way of a piece by Charlie Pierce, here's a Reuters story pointing up one of the big problems with Privatized Schooling - something that everybody seems to understand -  except of course the boneheads making the decisions:

(Reuters) - When one of the biggest private education firms in Sweden went bankrupt earlier this year, it left 11,000 students in the lurch and made Stockholm rethink its pioneering market reform of the state schools system.
School shutdowns and deteriorating results have taken the shine off an education model admired and emulated around the world, in Britain in particular.

"I think we have had too much blind faith in that more private schools would guarantee greater educational quality," said Tomas Tobé, head of the parliament's education committee and spokesman on education for the ruling Moderate party.

In a country with the fastest growing economic inequality of any OECD nation, basic aspects of the deregulated school market are now being re-considered, raising questions over private sector involvement in other areas like health.

Two-decades into its free-market experiment, about a quarter of once staunchly Socialist Sweden's secondary school students now attend publically-funded but privately run schools, almost twice the global average.

--and here's Charlie's closing graph--

There is, of course, a lesson for the United States here, and very likely a lesson to which nobody will pay attention. If you allow a system in which public education is privatized so that some people can make a buck on it, then making a buck is going to become the primary raison d'etre of the system. (See also: health-care.) The more ungainly the scramble for profit, the less your educational system has to do with, you know, actually educating people.

If there are decent jobs in and around the school districts, then the neighborhoods improve.  Better neighborhoods make for better schools.  Better schools make for a better labor pool.  A better work force makes for a better economy, which makes for more jobs in local neighborhoods, and then... oooh, look - then it starts over; it's almost as if all those things are interconnected.

But wait - it's not like the "boneheads making the decisions" are really all that dumb.  They're very much aware of the probability for any given enterprise to fail, so then we're left to wonder - is this just a matter of blind corporate avarice driven by a narrow ideology, or are we looking at a concerted effort to beat people down?

So, That Sucks

Some not very flattering things about KIPP (a charter school franchising scheme) are coming out.

From Schools Matter:

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — A Manhattan mother says her 5-year-old son was locked in a padded room at school, leaving the kindergartner so traumatized he had to go to the hospital.

Taneka Hall said the “safe-calm room” at KIPP Star Elementary School in Washington Heights is used while children are placed in “time-out.” But as CBS 2′s John Slattery reported, she believes the discipline is abusive.On Dec. 3, Hall’s son, Xavier, who has had behavioral problems, was put in the room — which is padded with a window in the door. The charter school would not provide CBS 2 with a photo of the room.

Hall said Xavier was in the room alone and grew more agitated.“So they put him in the safe room, and there in the safe room, he then peed on himself and didn’t allow any teachers to come inside, so they decided to call 911,” she said.

Xavier was taken to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital to be examined. The mother said the padded room, which he’d been in before, frightened him...

I don't know exactly what a really good teacher would or should do with a kid who's having a tough time getting a handle on certain of his internal impulses, but I think maybe locking him in a padded cell ain't it.

A 5-year-old.

In Solitary-Fucking-Confinement.

They say KIPP stands for Kids In Prison Program.  I guess now we know why they say that.

Schools Matter

So what happens if we don't slap a nation-wide school system with all the crap we've been dumping on our public schools?

Schools Matter takes a look at it - and finds that the DoD schools were exempted from NCLB etc etc etc, and gosh:

So what do we see as a result at the DoDEA schools (see earlier post here) after all these years of living without corporate charter schools, teacher evaluation based on test scores, value-added assessment, corporate missionaries for TFA, AYP, Reading First, scripted parrot lessons, DIBELs, segregation based on test scores, corporate tutoring, venture philanthropy, required testing to graduate or be promoted to the next grade, total compliance classroom, test and punish, test prep, withdrawal of funds from those who need it most, rewarding schools that don't need it, nervous breakdowns, vomiting students, nosebleeds, suicides by principals, school children dying from toothaches as billions are spent on testing, and on and on....How have the DoDEA schools survived without all this?

This first group includes the schools that have been scoring better than the National Average:

Then we have the bunch in the middle where there's no appreciable difference between these schools and the Nation Average:

And lastly, here's the group lagging farthest behind the National Average:

Did ya happen to notice where the DoD schools happened to rank in all o' dat?

Almost forgot - isn't a school operated by the Department of Defense very much the epitome of a "Government School"?  And since those Gubmint Skools are doing just fine without all that massive boondoggle, can we drop the bullshit now?

Today's Dismal-ness

For all the time we spend blathering on about how rotten the schools are; and for all the inked up dead trees that eventually serve no purpose except to keep our Christmas decorations safe - for all of that over-stated and under-informed rhetoric, we still seem not to have any good ideas about what we might do to keep 'our precious youth' from rising up and slaughtering us in our beds one night when they finally get hip to how bad we're fuckin' 'em over.

From Salon, by David Sirota (hat tip = Facebook friend DC):

Before getting to the big news, let’s review the dominant fairy tale: As embodied by New York City’s major education announcement this weekend, the “reform” fantasy pretends that a lack of teacher “accountability” is the major education problem and somehow wholly writes family economics out of the story (amazingly, this fantasy persists even in a place like the Big Apple where economic inequality is particularly crushing). That key — and deliberate — omission serves myriad political interests.

For education, technology and charter school companies and the Wall Streeters who back them, it lets them cite troubled public schools to argue that the current public education system is flawed, and to then argue that education can be improved if taxpayer money is funneled away from the public school system’s priorities (hiring teachers, training teachers, reducing class size, etc.) and into the private sector (replacing teachers with computers, replacing public schools with privately run charter schools, etc.). Likewise, for conservative politicians and activist-profiteers disproportionately bankrolled by these and other monied interests, the “reform” argument gives them a way to both talk about fixing education and to bash organized labor, all without having to mention an economic status quo that monied interests benefit from and thus do not want changed.

It's a big hot gnarly mess that doesn't get any better any time soon if we just continue to beat a starving mule, and while there is no solution for a big hot gnarly mess that fits neatly on a bumper sticker, this one thing is certain: you can't fix the schools if you don't fix the neighborhoods.

Some Good News

...for a change.  I'm always a little leery of these fluffy feel-good stories when they run on network news.  It just seems like somebody's trying to "buck me up"; telling me "it's not all as bad as we make it look every goddamned day".

hat tip = Democratic Underground

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

So it occurs to me that maybe the Press Poodles could try a little harder to make more of these connections; taking a story of something really shitty that happened, and connecting it with something that somebody across town - or even half a world away - is trying to do that might help solve whatever problem is causing these shitty things to happen in the first fuckin' place.

(Gee - if only we had some kind of really cool technology that helps us find out what's going on in the world; so you could just sit at your desk and browse the entire planet if you wanted...silly me; dreamin' again. Just a tho't.)

Anyway, did you hear it?  It pops up at about the 1:10 mark, and then again near the end of the clip: "...futures made a lot brighter by a crazy idea...".  And what was the new principal's "crazy idea"?  To make the school feel more like a school and less like a fucking prison.

Treating people like people - that's what passes for a "bold new idea" now.

And Jesus wept.

I Got Yer Reform Right Here

A great little reminder regarding "Gubmint should be run more like a business":  For every spectacularly successful company like Google, there are thousands of equally spectacular failures - Value America, eToys.com, and on and on and on.  Thousands.  Is that really the model we want schools (eg) to follow?

(via Democratic Underground)

Somebody new to me - using the name jacobbacharach:

The cheating scandals prove that education reform is a wholly fraudulent endeavor. It isn’t the equivalent of a doping scandal in sports; it’s the equivalent of Enron, Madoff, the financial crisis. You think testing has something to do with compensation, hiring, and firing? It doesn’t. Testing is the accounting of the reform movement, and the executives are cooking the books. They’re manipulating the statements so it looks like the venture is turning a profit. Well, actually, it’s got negative cash flow. The gains are phantoms. The enterprise is insolvent. Even by its own standards, reform fails.

The central proposition of so-called education reform is that it endeavors to make schooling more entrepreneurial. Now this is bogus on its face. The most salient fact about entrepreneurialism is that most ventures fail. Is that the proper model for the delivery of a universal service? Consider the question irrespective of your thoughts about the larger questions surrounding the provision of universal education. Ostensible reformers say they want to mimic the dynamism and innovation of the private sector. The first question is: to what end, exactly? The second is: do you know how dynamism and innovation work?

"High-Stakes Testing" is just another good example of an entrepreneurial idea that sounds pretty good, but then fails miserably when we try to shoe-horn certain enterprises into it.

Mind Mining

Here's a bit from Sir Ken Robinson at a TED conference.



Those who love to dance are often thought insane by those who cannot hear the music.

(hat tip = facebook friend Carol)

Sounds Encouraging

A judge in Colorado apparently has some real balls for a change.  How long before we get the Repub Chorus singing the standard Judicial Activism tune?

"There is not enough money in the system to permit school districts across the state to properly implement standards-based education and to meet the requirements of state law and regulation," she wrote in her ruling. "This is true for districts of every description. . . . There is not one school district that is sufficiently funded. This is an obvious hallmark of an irrational system."

You don't get good solutions just by throwing money at a problem (duh), but you don't get any solutions at all unless you start working the problem.  It always takes more time, effort and money than anybody wants to spend, and we've gotten really good at whining about it. Grow up, shut up and pony up.  We got shit to do.

Read the story in The Denver Post.

We Gotta Fix This Shit

More on certain links between seemingly disparate things.

We Gotta Fix This Shit

Here's the letter Arne Duncan sent out for Teacher Appreciation Week in early May.

I scanned thru the comments and found that they were almost universally negative.

And here's a reply posted on Democratic Underground today (from David Reber, who teaches high school biology in Lawrence KS):

May 25, 2011

Mr. Duncan,

I read your Teacher Appreciation Week letter to teachers, and had at first decided not to respond. Upon further thought, I realized I do have a few things to say.

I'll begin with a small sample of relevant adjectives just to get them out of the way: condescending, arrogant, insulting, misleading, patronizing, egotistic, supercilious, haughty, insolent, peremptory, cavalier, imperious, conceited, contemptuous, pompous, audacious, brazen, insincere, superficial, contrived, garish, hollow, pedantic, shallow, swindling, boorish, predictable, duplicitous, pitchy, obtuse, banal, scheming, hackneyed, and quotidian. Again, it's just a small sample; but since your attention to teacher input is minimal, I wanted to put a lot into the first paragraph.

Your lead sentence, "I have worked in education for much of my life", immediately establishes your tone of condescension; for your 20-year "education" career lacks even one day as a classroom teacher. You, Mr. Duncan, are the poster-child for the prevailing attitude in corporate-style education reform: that the number one prerequisite for educational expertise is never having been a teacher.

Your stated goal is that teachers be "...treated with the dignity we award to other professionals n society."

Really?

How many other professionals are the last ones consulted about their own profession; and are then summarily ignored when policy decisions are made? How many other professionals are so distrusted that sweeping federal legislation is passed to "force" them to do their jobs? And what dignities did you award teachers when you publicly praised the mass firing of teachers in Rhode Island?

You acknowledge teacher's concerns about No Child Left Behind, yet you continue touting the same old rhetoric: "In today’s economy, there is no acceptable dropout rate, and we rightly expect all children -- English-language learners, students with disabilities, and children of poverty -- to learn and succeed."

What other professions are held to impossible standards of perfection? Do we demand that police officers eliminate all crime, or that doctors cure all patients? Of course we don't.

There are no parallel claims of "in today's society, there is no acceptable crime rate", or "we rightly expect all patients -- those with end-stage cancers, heart failure, and multiple gunshot wounds -- to thrive into old age." When it comes to other professions, respect and common sense prevail.

Your condescension continues with "developing better assessments so you will have useful information to guide instruction..." Excuse me, but I am a skilled, experienced, and licensed professional. I don't need an outsourced standardized test -- marketed by people who haven't set foot in my school -- to tell me how my students are doing.

I know how my students are doing because I work directly with them. I learn their strengths and weaknesses through first-hand experience, and I know how to tailor instruction to meet each student's needs. To suggest otherwise insults both me and my profession.

You want to "...restore the status of the teaching profession..." Mr. Duncan, you built your career defiling the teaching profession. Your signature effort, Race to the Top, is the largest de-professionalizing, demoralizing, sweeter-carrot-and-sharper-stick public education policy in U.S. history. You literally bribed cash-starved states to enshrine in statute the very reforms teachers have spoken against.

You imply that teachers are the bottom-feeders among academics. You want more of "America's top college students" to enter the profession. If by "top college students" you mean those with high GPA's from prestigious, pricey schools then the answer is simple: a five-fold increase in teaching salaries.

You see, Mr. Duncan, those "top" college students come largely from our nation's wealthiest families. They simply will not spend a fortune on an elite college education to pursue a 500% drop in socioeconomic status relative to their parents.

You assume that "top" college students automatically make better teachers. How, exactly, will a 21-year-old, silver-spoon-fed ivy-league graduate establish rapport with inner-city kids? You think they’d be better at it than an experienced teacher from a working-class family, with their own rough edges or checkered past, who can actually relate to those kids? Your ignorance of human nature is astounding.

As to your concluding sentence, "I hear you, I value you, and I respect you"; no, you don't, and you don't, and you don't. In fact, I don't believe you even wrote this letter for teachers.

I think you sense a shift in public opinion. Parents are starting to see through the façade; and recognize the privatization and for-profit education reform movement for what it is. And they've begun to organize --Parents Across America, is one example.

. . . No doubt some will dismiss what I've said as paranoid delusion. What they call paranoia I call paying attention. Mr. Duncan, teachers hear what you say. We also watch what you do, and we are paying attention.

Working with kids every day, our baloney-detectors are in fine form. We've heard the double-speak before; and we don't believe the dog ate your homework. Coming from children, double-speak is expected and it provides important teachable moments. Coming from adults, it's just sad.

Despite our best efforts, some folks never outgrow their disingenuous, manipulative, self- serving approach to life. Of that, Mr. Duncan, you are a shining example.

There's a lot that needs to be worked out, but the first thing we have to do is to understand that public education can't be included in this manic obsession with privatization.  There are things that simply must be held communally; among them are Healthcare, Law Enforcement, National Defense and (at minimum) K-12 Education.

Second, you can't fix the schools if you don't fix the communities those schools are trying to serve.

Third, there are problems with Unions and with Tenure that have to be addressed, but those are problems of ego and power structures.  The original point of tenure was to  protect faculty from undue pressures from donors, clergy and politicians.  You don't abandon the solid principles of collective bargaining and academic freedom when things get outa whack.  You tend to the needs; you tweak; you remodel and rebuild; you get the system back into balance and go on from there.

Schools

"Is our children learning?"

I think they are (most of 'em, anyway).  Which kind of amazes me, because the school systems (and especially the teachers) don't get much help really.  The kids are criticized a lot for being lazy or self-centered or spoiled or distracted or whatever sound bite the politicians need today so they can use it at tonight's fundraiser.   The kids' parents get hammered - mostly for the same reason.  Everybody gets madder (at each other), the problems don't get addressed, and the schools just continue to circle the drain.

I don't know answers and I don't have solutions, but I know we don't "fix the schools" doing the things we've been trying for the last 20-30 years.  And really, guys, we're not gonna get anywhere without putting some serious money into the project.  Which is what a lot of people think we've been doing for a lot of years.  Unfortunately, we've been pouring all the money into just about everything but the schools.

Here's a pretty fair example, from Minneapolis-St Paul about one of the biggest problems - Standardized Testing and Assessment.

Though the efficacy of standardized testing has been hotly debated for decades, one thing has become crystal clear: It's big business.

In 2002, President George Bush signed the infamous No Child Left Behind Act. While testing around the country had been on the rise for decades, NCLB tripled it.

"The amount of testing that was being done mushroomed," says Kathy Mickey, a senior education analyst at Simba Information. "Every state had new contracts. There was a lot of spending."

The companies that create and score tests saw profits skyrocket. In 2009, K-12 testing was estimated to be a $2.7 billion industry.

So, yes - we need reform in our education systems, but we need to be sure we're keeping the ideology separate from the economics.  In short, the starting point is this: Stop trying to force-fit the art of teaching into some bullshit standardized business model that really doesn't even exist in the first place.

Teachers' Pay (updated)

Here's a look at what teachers get paid in various countries.  And, gosh, there seems to be a connection between higher pay and better school performance.  Hoodathunkit.

This chart can be easily (mis)interpreted to mean that we're paying more for teachers and getting less in return.  The problem with that assumption is that Finns have (on average) about $450/month more disposable income than the average here in the US.  And their bennies are better, primarily because their healthcare coverage costs a lot less.  Surprise, surprise.

The oddest thing tho' is that generally, the cost of living is quite a bit higher in FInland vs the US except for some very important items - Mortage Rates & Utilities - but they're eatin' our lunch on education. 

I wonder if we could possibly learn something from Finland.  They seem to be doing something very very right.

A Certain Justice

A for-profit startup "College" - based on Free Market principles, with the expressed intention to teach a kind of Ayn Randian Objectivism - has failed due to...wait for it...an inability to access Federal Student Loan money.  There were other reasons as well, but still.  The irony - it burns!

I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time, but really, this whole Privatizing Education thing has to stop.  It's just another way to siphon tax dollars into corporate pockets.

Read about it here.

Ten Years Of Hell

Whether or not you believe it, I'm not always looking for dark clouds that surround the silver linings.  There has been some decent economic news of late and I really do wanna be up and enthused, but I'm not going to be sucked in by the happy talk that managers and bureaucrats throw at us every other day.

The Credit/Debt Monster is still on the loose, and the bail out schemes for Wall Street and Greece (and the rest of the EU), plus the Stimulus Package (the 2nd half of which hasn't even started yet) are still way too recent for anybody with any sense or credibility to make a good assessment.  So we're operating on the assumption that "we're on the right track" and "things will be back to normal soon".  Where have we heard that before?

Here's a little ditty from Rupert Street Journal from last month that passes on to us exactly what the Gov't told the "reporter".  But there's a gimmick the lenders use when reporting  problems with these loans that actually helps them under-report the loans in default by a factor of up to 5.  Where most of the loans showing up in these statistics are the "traditional" ones held by 20- and 30-Somethings for loans they took out to go to "traditional" institutions, the real story in the last couple of years is that a huge amount of money has been borrowed by a much wider range of people to attend the non-traditional For-Profit schools like Univ of Phoenix and Capella Univ which have been enjoying a massive boom.  Any guesses on what those default rates are?  Take a look at this episode from Frontline. At about the 40 minute mark, the picture of our future servitude comes into very sharp focus.

And Jesus wept.