Back to School

We Americans are suckers for bumper sticker solutions to complicated problems. When it comes to education, those who don’t want to deal with the thorny issues of public education reform insist that we can sidestep contentious decisions about curriculum, resources and equity, and just give parents “choices,” by which they mean voucher programs or charter schools.

So how’s that been working out?

In Colorado, where the state’s Supreme Court recently struck down a Denver charter school “initiative,” the Denver Post reported that

the district created a make-believe charter school called the Choice Scholarship Charter School that would collect the state per-pupil funds. A portion of that $6,100 per student would be sent to the student’s chosen school in the form of a check to the parent, who would use it for tuition.

It’s not enough that the virtual charter school had no buildings, employed no teachers and had no curriculum. Its students never attended a day of class. The school’s existence was to collect money for private schools.

Sixteen of the 23 private schools under the program’s 2011 pilot phase were religious in character, and 93 percent of the 271 scholarship recipients in 2011 enrolled in a religious school. Fourteen of those schools were outside of the district’s boundaries.

The Institute for Policy Studies recently compiled a report detailing current research on charters, and concluded that “While there’s little difference in the overall performance of charter schools and public schools, charters are riddled with fraud and identified with a lack of transparency that leads to more fraud.”

The problems go well beyond outright scams, however. In Tampa, the state Board of Education has voted to include a new requirement in the charter application process ­­­—  school hopefuls must now disclose which charter groups and companies they have been affiliated with in the last five years. As a member of the  Board explained, although some charter schools thrive, others have experienced recurring problems and closed.

Among them is Newpoint Tampa, which closed in 2013 after declining enrollment and financial problems. School district officials said the school’s board meetings were not being held in public or in an appropriate manner…

Earlier this year, two Newpoint charter schools in Pensacola that were run by the same management company operating the Tampa school — Newpoint Education Partners — were shut down after allegations of grade-tampering and contractual violations, the Pensacola News Journal reported.

Because of stories like these, charter school experts say placing extra scrutiny on operators is a must. The goal is to prevent those who have operated schools experiencing serious problems from opening more.

Oversight, obviously, is critical. But we’re talking about a lot of money, and political clout can counter accountability measures. In Ohio, lobbyists succeeding in delaying passage of a charter school reform measure that had broad bipartisan support. The Columbus Dispatch reported on derailment of a bill to implement significant charter-school reforms after charters had been sharply criticized both inside and outside the state.

Sources told the Dispatch that lobbyists were very active behind the scenes, especially the Batchelder Group,representing the White Hat group, a major for-profit charter-school operator run by David Brennan, an important GOP contributor.

Similar stories from other states are plentiful.

The moral of this story is not that charter schools are bad. Some are, many aren’t. Just like traditional public schools.

The moral of this story is: there aren’t easy answers or magic bullets–in education or any other policy domain. Bumper sticker solutions to complex problems often create more complex problems.

The performance of any school depends upon a large number of factors, none of which have much to do with whether the school is a charter or a traditional public school. If we really want to improve American education, we can’t avoid the hard work of defining desirable outcomes, identifying the qualities that define a good teacher, figuring out how to balance accountability with the school-level autonomy that will allow professionals to do their jobs, and ameliorating the effects of poverty that have been shown to impede learning.

The real “choice” is between fixing or abandoning our public schools.

Comments

Democracy, Inequality and Voice

Most of us have heard the old adage “politics is war without the guns.” It’s shorthand for a basic premise of democratic theory: when people have an opportunity to express their preferences and argue for their point of view in a fair fight, they are less likely to shoot each other and far more likely to abide by the results, albeit grudgingly, if they lose the fight.

There’s a substantial amount of history supporting that thesis. What we sometimes forget, however, is that the fight must be fair. Not only that, participants must view it as fair. At the end of a public debate, if the combatants have been able to express their positions, articulate their concerns–if they’ve had what sociologists sometimes refer to as voice–they generally can live with adverse results.

Lawyers often see this same psychology; clients who would be well-advised to settle a case often insist on having their “day in court,” even when that decision entails considerable risk, because they want the opportunity to make their case in a public forum.

Humans want to be heard. We want our points of view acknowledged. When we feel our arguments have been dismissed without proper consideration–when we feel “dissed”– we get belligerent.

One of the reasons that inequality is so corrosive to democratic systems is that people without money are almost always people without voice. A healthy democratic system doesn’t require a population where everyone has comparable resources, but it does require a population where everyone who wants to participate–who wants to be heard–has sufficient resources to do so.

Anyone who has been part of a legislative body–as an elected official, a paid lobbyist or a citizen activist–will confirm that the voices of poor people are rarely if ever heard in the corridors of power. When policymakers move to cut food stamps or drug test welfare recipients, they rarely hear testimony from people who will actually be affected by those actions. They hear disproportionately from business and taxpayer groups. With the exception of social welfare nonprofits (most of which have their own resource issues), no one is there to lobby for the poorest American citizens.

And the poor sure aren’t contributing to political campaigns.

When poor people have virtually no voice, even in the decisions that most directly affect them, that hurts democracies in two ways.

When legislators make decisions based on partial information, even the best-intentioned among them will opt for policies that have by definition been inadequately vetted. They will pass laws with unintended (and often unfortunate) consequences.

Worse, the people who had no voice–the people who are affected by rules they had no part in creating and no opportunity to debate–tend to be the people with the most legitimate grievances and the fewest outlets for expressing those grievances. When a society includes a large number of people who have effectively been disenfranchised–people who, thanks to their poverty, have little to lose– history tells us they will eventually take to the streets.

That’s not only bad for democracy and rational policymaking–it’s bad for business. Civil unrest is certainly not in the best interests of the privileged and well-to-do, who would be better served by sharing some reasonable measure of their power and wealth.

There’s another old adage that comes to mind: pigs get fed. Hogs get slaughtered.

Comments

What We Learn When Journalists Do Their Jobs

In my recent blog about the termination of the PR contract intended to repair the considerable damage to Indiana’s reputation inflicted by the RFRA debacle, I questioned Governor Pence’s assertion that Indiana was creating lots of jobs so the contract was no longer necessary.

I also noted that there has been considerable criticism of the way in which the state’s economic development agency reports job creation numbers. (In all fairness to Governor Pence, those concerns precede the current administration.)

I knew there had been allegations that the Indiana Economic Development Corporation routinely  and intentionally “cooked the books,” but I was unaware of the considerable evidence supporting those allegations until a regular reader sent me a link to a story done last year by WTHR.

The extensive report is pretty devastating. Among WTHR’s findings:

  • IEDC’s new transparency website is missing basic disclosure information that other states release to taxpayers.
  • The state agency is not releasing any information about hundreds of projects it previously announced.
  • IEDC is reporting official job statistics that exclude all failed economic development projects from its calculations.
  • Both IEDC and the governor are citing the state’s new job transparency law as justification to withhold information from public disclosure.

I encourage readers to click through and read the entire report. It documents misdirection and “gaming the system” by the Administration in great detail–and it should make taxpayers pretty angry.

It certainly made me angry, for two reasons: first, because our elected officials are playing fast and loose with the truth; and second, because this sort of investigative reporting about local government is all too rare.

The whole purpose of freedom of the press was to provide this sort of “watchdog” function–to allow the press to act on behalf of citizens who lack the time and expertise to keep tabs on those we’ve charged with managing our governing institutions. Kudos to WTHR–but where is the rest of the local media?

We get lots of coverage –indeed, I’d suggest overkill–of things like the Richmond Hill trial, the (thus far speculative) investigation of Subway spokesman Jared Fogle, and the most recent bar openings, but little or no oversight of the state and municipal government agencies that spend our tax dollars and regulate our behaviors. Figuring out what’s going on is admittedly more work than telling us about the opening of the latest restaurant–but it’s also a whole lot more important.

When I see a well-researched story like this one, it reminds me why journalism is so important–and makes me sad that we have so little of it.

Comments

Tea Leaves and Prognostications

There are..what? Seventeen Republicans contending for the party’s nomination? How does one tell which one –if any– has “legs”?

Predicting political outcomes is perilous. I’ve lived long enough–and seen enough “pundit predictions”–to take all of them with a whole shaker of salt. With the possible exception of Nate Silver, political “analysis” is mostly the analyst’s wishful thinking.

That doesn’t mean they can’t be fun to read. Especially the ones that tell you things you want to believe.

One such “analysis,” I came across was written not long after the 2014 midterms–midterms that Republicans won big– by a GOP columnist for the Houston Chronicle, Chris Ladd. Rather than celebrating those victories, Ladd declared the week of the Midterm Elections “a dark week for Republicans.” 

And why was what looked like a resounding victory “a dark week”?

The Midterms of 2014 demonstrate the continuation of a 20 year old trend. Republicans are disappearing from the competitive landscape at the national level where the population is the largest utilizing a declining electoral base of aging, white, and rural voters. As a result no GOP candidate on the horizon has a chance at the White House in 2016 and the chance of holding the Senate beyond 2016 is vanishingly small.

Ladd identified a “blue wall” on the electoral college map, and noted that in 2014, GOP support had gotten deeper, but no wider.

The Blue Wall is a block of states that no Republican Presidential candidate can realistically hope to win. On Election Day that block added New Hampshire to its number and Virginia is shifting At the outset of any Presidential campaign, a minimally effective Democratic candidate can expect to win 257 electoral votes out of the 270 needed to win. If Virginia joins New Hampshire that number will be 270 out of 270.

To win, a GOP  candidate has to win all nine “tossup” state and one solidly Blue state. Thus, in the next, and into the foreseeable future, Presidential elections will be decided in the Democratic Primary. What are the chances that a Republican candidate capable of appealing to the increasingly right wing GOP will appeal to enough Democrats to win in tossup and Blue states?

Ladd makes a number of other points (my favorite: “Voter suppression is working remarkably well, but that won’t last.” Glad to see someone willing to call it what it is..), and the whole piece is well worth reading, especially if you are a Democrat looking for a feel-good few minutes.

The problem with taking this–or any– analysis at face value is that things change. Predictions are particularly hazardous in state-level races: Favored candidates do stupid things (RFRA, God intended that rape, etc.), or get caught playing footsie in public restrooms. A hurricane keeps voters away from the polls. Even at the national level, parties have been known to nominate people who are simply unelectable– unsalable even to the party base.

National trends can also change. At some point (admittedly, probably not 2016), the GOP is going to realize that a strategy that depends on playing to the anger and fear of old white guys isn’t viable, and the party will revert to its more rational roots.

The only political prediction that is usually true is: the party that gets more voters to the polls, wins.

Comments

Scott Walker Wants to Do for the US What He Did for (to?) Wisconsin

Well well…to the surprise of absolutely no one, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (aka Koch Brothers’ favorite errand boy) has squeezed into the GOP’s presidential campaign clown car.

Walker’s positions were summarized by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich:

1. On immigration, Walker says he’s changed his mind on a path to legal status for undocumented immigrants and no longer supports the idea. He’s expressed skepticism toward legal immigration as well.

2. On gay marriage, Walker is calling for a constitutional amendment allowing states to ban it.

3. On abortion rights, Walker is pushing for a 20-week ban in Wisconsin with no exceptions for rape or incest. (In 2014 he told voters his previous legislation left “the final decision to a woman and her doctor.”)

4. On “gun rights,” Walker is against any attempt to ban assault weapons or limit the ability of anyone to own a gun.

5. On labor unions, he is the GOP’s most virulent anti-labor candidate, having taken on teachers and other public employees and signing a “right-to-work” law. (He says his battles with labor leaders have prepared him to take on the Islamic State.)

6. He favors tax cuts over deficit reduction and public education. His most recent Wisconsin budget cuts taxes, requires steep cuts to education, and deepens the state deficit.

7. He has tried to weaken Wisconsin’s “open records” law by blocking press requests that have yielded some embarrassing finds in the past.

Reich omits Walker’s persistent attacks on higher education– his sneering dismissal of scholarly endeavors and his ongoing effort to make the University of Wisconsin focus upon  job-training to the exclusion of the life of the mind. (He also fails to mention the criminal investigations that have been triggered by charges of serious wrongdoing.)

So how has Wisconsin fared under the administration of this paragon of the far Right?

The Pew Charitable Trust recently reported that Wisconsin has had the largest decline of any state in the percentage of families considered “middle class,” or those earning between 67 and 200 percent of their state’s median income.

In 2000, 54.6 percent of Wisconsin families fell into the middle class category but that has fallen to 48.9 percent in 2013, according to U.S. Census figures compiled by Pew.

All other states showed some decline but none as great as Wisconsin’s 5.7 percent figure.

Wisconsin ranks dead last among the 50 states in terms of a shrinking middle class, with real median household incomes there falling 14.7 percent since 2000.

I assume he’ll run on his record….

Comments