Monthly Archives: August 2014

The Devil in the Details…..

Charter schools have become the flavor of the day for education reformers, and they clearly have some virtues. Unlike voucher programs that divert public school resources to private and parochial schools, charters are public schools, although operating under more flexible guidelines than their more traditional counterparts.

Philosophically, I have no quarrel with charter schools. (I have big problems with vouchers.) But I do have real issues with the very American tendency to prescribe one-size-fits-all solutions to complicated problems, and too many people have decided that charters are that quick and easy solution.

Charters were initially designed to be experimental–to try new approaches, to innovate in the classroom–and to offer parents a wider array of choices of educational philosophy. So far, so good. But as charters have proliferated without much in the way of accountability or evaluation, some of the reasons we need to tread with caution have emerged.  When Indianapolis’ Project School was closed for failure to perform, for example, parents who had chosen the school and were invested in its approach were furious and their children were uprooted. Ball State University, which had chartered some 20 schools, abruptly closed seven of them, with equally disruptive results.

And then there’s this…

While public schools must provide due process to students when making decisions about suspensions or expulsions, most states exempt charter schools from school district discipline policies. This lack of protection may have enabled some charter schools to suspend and expel students at much higher rates than their public counterparts. In San Diego, Green and his coauthors report, the city’s 37 charter schools have a suspension rate twice that of the public schools, while in Newark, the suspension rate in charter schools is 10 percent, compared to 3 percent for the city’s public schools….

It’s not just discipline, though; charter schools may be exempt from constitutional protections in areas like search and seizure and the exercise of religion. It’s obviously one thing for a Catholic school to require religion classes, but does the same logic apply to a charter school like Arizona’s Heritage Academy, which last month was criticized by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State for requiring 12th graders to read books claiming that God inspired the drafting of the Constitution.

So often, it isn’t what we choose to do. It’s how we choose to do it.

Charter schools–properly conceived, prudently financed and carefully monitored–can be part of the solution to our education woes. But they are not–and cannot be– a substitute for the hard work of fixing our public school systems.

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Foreclosing America

One of the great benefits of teaching college is what you learn from your students. Sometimes the lessons are new, sometimes they appear as new ways of understanding information you already have.

Recently, I served on the doctoral committee of a student who was writing her dissertation on the “Lived Experience of Foreclosure.” Her research connected a number of insights, and highlighted a number of policy issues, in a way that illuminated the interdependence of economic stability and self-worth in American culture in a way I hadn’t previously appreciated.

There weren’t many people who were willing to share their experiences with her, and the reasons for that reluctance could be inferred from the painful insights of those who did respond. In America, after all, homeownership is a cultural marker, tangible evidence of solid and responsible citizenship. Home is more than a roof over ones head or a place to live; it’s a time-honored symbol of the American Dream—and its cultural symbolism makes foreclosure an American nightmare.

Research on the effects of the mortgage default epidemic that accompanied the Great Recession has confirmed foreclosure’s more “macro level” consequences: foreclosures are a threat to neighborhood stability and community well-being; they affect predominantly the low-income and minority populations most likely to be hard-hit by economic downturns; they create an environment conducive to criminal activity and lead to disinvestment.

Those consequences are bad enough, but it is the experience of real people caught up in an economic downturn not of their making—and the lessons that can be drawn from those experiences—that can help us shape policies to minimize a repeat of the recent epidemic.

Foreclosure, it turns out, is not just a legal process triggered by an inability to pay. It is equally the consequence of a profound disconnect between the borrower and lender. That disconnect is a function of dramatic changes in banking since the days when mortgage loans were the product of face to face agreements between an officer of the bank on the corner and a long-term, well-known customer.

The purchase of local banks by ever-bigger, national ones was driven by the bankers’ belief that bigger would be better, that consolidation would permit efficiencies that would ultimately benefit both their bottom lines and their consumers. Divorcing banks from their customers was an unanticipated consequence.

That initial disconnect was exacerbated by the practice of “flipping” mortgage loans. In some cases, the borrower was barely out the door when a letter arrived informing him that his loan had been sold and would henceforth be serviced by Bank B, with whom the borrower usually had no previous relationship.

It is no longer uncommon for a mortgage to be sold several times during its term. Among the consequences of flipping is the obvious one; when the bank extending the loan doesn’t intend to keep it, there is less incentive to ensure that the borrower can repay. The growth and prevalence of inadequate and unethical underwriting standards—a scandal widely discussed in the wake of the Great Recession—is largely attributable to flipping.

This distance between the borrower and the eventual owner of the mortgage emerged over and over in the conversations with the foreclosed homeowners. In one case, the delinquent homeowner found a buyer, but couldn’t reach anyone who had the authority to approve the short sale.

Consequential as it has been, the foreclosure epidemic illustrates a problem that is far larger and more pervasive than current banking practices: America’s growing power imbalance.

Free markets require willing buyers and willing sellers, each in possession of the relevant information, and each able to walk away from a transaction if they deem it too one-sided. People who enter into such agreements are expected to live up to their terms—an expectation that most of us agree is just. Increasingly, however, the transactions to which we are party are not the result of negotiation and unforced decision-making. Instead, they are “take it or leave it” arrangements in which one party has all the power and possesses most or all of the relevant information.

In an economic world characterized by such imbalances of power, it may be time to rethink policies that operate to penalize the powerless and reward the predatory.

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About Those “Liberal” Professors

One of my graduate students pointed me to an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, highlighting a study into the persistent accusation that “liberal” professors are guilty of politically indoctrinating their students.

Dodson’s analysis of the data shows that students who get engaged academically are likely to increase their time talking about political issues and becoming engaged in civic life.

With regard to political views, academic engagement promoted moderation. “[T]he results indicate — in contrast to the concerns of many conservative commentators — that academic involvement generally moderates attitudes,” Dodson writes. “While conservative students do become more liberal as a result of academic involvement, liberals become more conservative as a result of their academic involvement. Indeed it appears that a critical engagement with a diverse set of ideas — a hallmark of the college experience — challenges students to re-evaluate the strength of their political convictions.”

The data on student activities demonstrate the opposite impact: The more involved that liberal students get, the more liberal they become, while the more involved conservative students get, the more conservative they become.”This finding suggests that students seek out and engage with familiar social environments — a choice that leads to the strengthening of their political beliefs.”

This research is consistent with a study I saw a few years ago: when people who were moderately inclined to believe X were placed in a discussion group with others who all believed X, they emerged from the experience much more invested in X. People who participated in more diverse discussions–who were placed in groups representing a range of positions on X–developed more nuanced (and less dogmatic) opinions about X.

It all comes back to what academics call motivated reasoning… the willingness of people invested in a particular worldview to choose the news and select the information environments that reinforce their pre-existing beliefs.

A good teacher provides students with a wide range of relevant information, at least some  of which will inevitably challenge their worldviews. As I tell my students, it’s my job to confuse you. I’ll know I’ve succeeded if, after taking my class, students use two phrases more frequently: “it depends,” and “it’s more complicated than that.”

Because, really–it is more complicated than that.

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Can Anyone Explain This?

Scott DesJarlais is a rabidly pro-life congressman from a reliably red district in Tennessee. He’s also a doctor who cheated on his wife with at least two of his patients, and was caught on tape encouraging one of them to have an abortion. In a rational world, you’d expect him to lose the primary election following those revelations. You’d be wrong.

I’ll let Ed Brayton (Dispatches from the Culture Wars) take it from here…

“Rep. Scott DesJarlais, who pressured a woman—one of two patients he admitted having affairs with—to get an abortion in the 1990s, appears to have narrowly avoided becoming the fourth Republican incumbent to lose a primary this year. With 100 percent of precincts reporting on Thursday, he led state Sen. Jim Tracy by 35 votes—34,787 to 34,752. (The results are not official and a recount is possible, although the state has no law mandating one in such circumstances.) The abortion revelation emerged after DesJarlais’ 2012 primary, when the only thing standing between him and reelection in the deeply Republican district was a token Democratic candidate in the general election.

But after his reelection, the dominoes continued to fall. Divorce transcripts released two weeks after the race revealed that he and his first wife had decided to abort two pregnancies. That proved a problem for the congressman, who is adamantly pro-life: Per his website, “Congressman DesJarlais believes that all life should be cherished and protected. He has received a 100% score by the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the oldest and the largest national pro-life organization in the United States.”

My favorite part of this was that his opponent put out an ad calling attention to DesJarlais’ hypocrisy and this was his response:

DesJarlais spokesman Robert Jameson called the piece “just the sort of disgusting gutter politics we’d expected from [U.S. House Democratic leader] Nancy Pelosi and her allies in Washington.”

Yeah, that’s disgusting. No, not the fact that he cheated on his wife multiple times despite his allegedly “pro-family” principles. Not the fact that he did it with his patients, which can get your medical license yanked and is probably the single biggest ethical breach a doctor can make. Not the fact that he encouraged one of his mistresses to get an abortion despite his self-declared opposition to abortion. No, it’s disgusting to point out that vile behavior. But remember, DesJarlais is exactly the kind of guy who lectures liberals about moral relativism and says his religious values guide him.

If those things don’t disqualify you from winning an election full of allegedly pro-family, pro-life voters, what the hell could possibly do so?

My question exactly.

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It Seems To Me I’ve Heard This Song Before…

Gannett has “spun off” its print media holdings into a separate company, and not so coincidentally, the Indianapolis Star is once again cutting staff.

The Indianapolis Newspaper Guild announced that the newspaper will reduce newsroom staff and management by another 15 percent over the next few weeks. That will leave the employee count at 106, down from the current 124, and substantially below historic levels.

The paper plans to cut five of its remaining 11 photographers and the entire staff of the copy desk. The Guild said the cutbacks mark the sixth round of layoffs at the Star in six years.

In a story detailing the changes, Star Editor Jeff Taylor wrote that the paper was

“taking steps to significantly recast our newsroom in coming weeks. We will expand our reporting staff, further sharpen our focus on being responsive to the interests of our readers in real time, and deepen our community connections.”

Taylor said more reporters will be dedicated to investigative, business and “quality-of-life” coverage.

More investigative reporting. Right. And I have a really nice bridge to sell you….

If memory serves, each of the previous rounds of cuts has been accompanied by these same promises–and each time, the promises have proved hollow. At this point, there is more actual news in the IBJ and more “news I can use” in my monthly neighborhood paper, the Urban Times, than in the Indianapolis Star. 

This isn’t nostalgia for the way things never were. I’ll be the first to acknowledge that the Star was never a first-rank newspaper. It did, however, have investigative reporters. It did have statehouse reporters, and a city beat staffed by people who had some institutional memory and the cojones to call ’em like they saw ’em–people who reported on the nitty-gritty of government and didn’t waste precious column inches fawning over elected officials.

Today’s Star–with its “McPaper” insert– panders to celebrity watchers, hypes new restaurants and “hot properties,” pads the paper with vapid “human interest” features, and runs paid obituaries and advertisements where news used to go. None of this requires that quaint thing we used to call journalism. On the rare occasions when the Star reports on public matters, it is often painfully apparent that the reporter didn’t understand the issue sufficiently to write a coherent story–a deficiency shared by whoever is currently copyediting. (The garbled prose and typos in so many articles suggests that the copyediting function has already been dispensed with.)

The problem is, in the absence of a newspaper of general circulation performing the time-honored “watchdog” function, We the People have absolutely no way of holding our elected officials accountable. The recent recycling deal is a perfect example: the Mayor’s office reported that the vendor would recycle 80-90% of the trash collected, and the paper uncritically repeated that assertion. The actual contract requires the vendor to recycle less than 20%. If we had a real newspaper–with enough real reporters–someone would have read the contract and noted the discrepancy.

The saddest part of all this is that newspapers remain profitable–just not profitable enough to satisfy Gannett and its shareholders. Gannett doesn’t seem to understand that cutting staff may boost profit margins in the short term, but the lack of substantive content will doom the enterprise in the long term.

And the long term isn’t very far away.

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