So after a useful discussion of policy options and empirical distinctions in the comments of my last post, my usual trolls showed up and started flogging a new line: I am again misrepresenting Yglesias because he has no policy ideas in mind at all. According to them, when he titles a post “Public School Choice” he is not actually advocating a policy that increases public school choice. When he titled a post “The Real Problem with Education Localism” he wasn’t saying we should end educational localism. He’s just spitballing about what keeps poor kids out of good schools.
For those who know our history, this is a pretty funny turn of events, as he has accused me in the past of providing insufficient policy details within my complaints. Given those standards and his usual focus on specific policy options, I have to think that there are some policy consequences here. Since he’s saying that poor students don’t have equal choices in public schools or public school districts, and given that the title of the post is “Public School Choice,” it certainly seemed like he was advocating for enhancing public school choice. Seems like a sensible reading! And I insisted on saying, due to my usual leftist intransigence on the idea that public policy should be directed by facts, that we don’t have evidence that choice in schools or districts actually improves student performance. This is the way that this debate has happened for years: ed reformers pose a deductively compelling case for a particular reform, then empirical studies fail to find the promised gains. Given that continued dynamic, asking for evidence for claims is responsible and necessary.
But look, okay, have it your way. If that post was purely descriptive and wasn’t meant to have any prescriptive content at all, then… who cares? Yes, poor people lack choices, in school districts and everything else. What do you want to do about it? Myself, I’d like to lift them out of the miserable condition of their poverty. I’m sure Matt does too. But that is not what is being discussed in ed reform. That certainly isn’t a point of disagreement with Felix Salmon, whose post was the original target of Yglesias’s ire. So, so what? Yglesias is emphatically not one to say that education can’t be reformed without eliminating poverty. So what’s the policy prescription, and most importantly, where is the evidence that the policy prescription would actually work?
All of this jiu jitsu happens for a reason: the education reform movement’s consistent inability to demonstrate results. Forget all the bloggy bullshit that attends these discussions and understand that the basic reality here is an education reform movement that makes great claims for its preferred reforms but fails to show that they work. All of the ire and the rhetoric are the product of this failure. Ed reformers either need to show results that withstand critical study and aren’t revealed to be the product of fraud, or they need to tell us when they’re going to stop making these claims. We’ve been hearing these “solutions” for decades, and the check is coming due. Everything else is marginalia.
Update!: Two comments to share! The man himself:
Why don’t you respond to something I actually say in the post if there’s something you disagree with? Or if you don’t disagree with anything in the post, maybe you should write that you agree with me. Or maybe you should just ignore it.
Instead your argument seems to be “Matt Yglesias wrote a post about education, he’s also affiliated with an ‘education reform movement’ that I dislike so here’s a post detailing some stuff I don’t like about that movement.” Well fair. But so what?
For a response, I turn to commenter Marc:
Matt, you’re utterly in the wrong here. The specific point you’re being asked is where your argument goes. Poor people have fewer choices than rich people do. Agreed.
So what do you propose to do about it? And what evidence do you have, other than dorm room word games, that your solution will work?
folkbum
Yes. Times a billion.
I teach in Milwaukee, and if there’s two things we have, they are poverty and school mobility. A child in Milwaukee has so many options:
• her neighborhood public school
• a specialty city-wide public school with a focus on languages, arts, Montessori, etc.
• a charter school run by the public school district and staffed by union teachers
• a charter school chartered by the public school district but managed by a local or national for-profit or non-profit entity and staffed by non-union teachers
• a charter school chartered by the City of Milwaukee or the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, managed by a local or national for-profit or non-profit entity and staffed by non-union teachers
• a private school paid for by public dollars (in the country’s oldest voucher program) anywhere in Milwaukee County
• a private school paid for by the family anywhere
• a public school in a suburb of Milwaukee through two different state programs that allow and encourage public school choice
Yet where are Milwaukee students–all students, in public, private, and charter schools–on NEAP? Just above Detroit at the bottom of the list. Charters and vouchers and all these other options do nothing to increase achievement. They have been successful at propping up the Archdiocese and sending public money to private coffers, though.
Shawn in ShowMe
And when the reality-based community points out reforms in other countries that actually work, we’re dismissed as America-hating sosh-ul-ists.
schlemizel - was Alwhite
Omnes Omnibus
@folkbum: I wonder, how many of the children receiving vouchers end up attending the University School and how many end up attending third rate schools that seem “better” because they are private?
Freddie deBoer
An important corollary to pointing out that typical education reforms don’t fix schools is that most American schools aren’t broken.
Chet
Really, Freddie? So if I wrote a post titled “The Rwandan Genocide” the “sensible reading” would be that I was advocating for genocide?
There is, unfortunately, nothing sensible about your last three posts. Truly disappointing.
Freddie deBoer
@Chet: Chet, what do you think the point of Yglesias’s post was? I’m asking you genuinely.
If you really think that he’s not advocating anything, then… what’s the point?
Tyro
when the reality-based community points out reforms in other countries that actually work, we’re dismissed as America-hating sosh-ul-ists.
National curriculums, no local control, stricter regimes about putting people on the college prep vs. vocational track from a relatively young age. None of these things sound that bad to me, but how many US teachers are advocating for them?
folkbum
@Omnes Omnibus: The UWM-charted schools, as a whole, actually do pretty well. But they are the exception. Voucher schools, recent studies show, don’t do any better for students than those students could expect in the public schools. Previous studies have shown that parents choose voucher schools for a variety of reasons that usually have nothing to do the schools’ scores.
Omnes Omnibus
@Freddie deBoer: I really do think that, for most American schools, the main problems that exist are those that can actually be fixed by throwing money at them. Things like the cancellation of art and music programs, the fact that sports and other extracurricular activities now require fees, and lack of up to date materials can all be fixed by just adding money to the districts. Broken schools require more. Obviously.
Freddie deBoer
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh, I agree. My first and primary policy preference in education is improving funding for public schools, point blank. But I want to be very careful about separating two things: student poverty and low school funding. In the discussion last night, many people were conflating the two. But they are quite different and the distinction matters.
mistermix
@schlemizel – was Alwhite: I live in an area where the same amount money, per pupil, is poured into urban schools, yet the suburban schools have 90+% graduation rates compared to the urban systems’ ~45%. It’s not the money the school has, it’s the money the parents have. Talking about schools in abstraction from the rest of what’s going on in those neighborhoods is silly, since that’s where the whole “education” problem begins.
Freddie deBoer
@mistermix: Right. Education is our proxy issue; we use it as a way to express frustration at intractable problems of poverty, crime, and racial inequality. And while I want to fund public schools better, I also think it’s important to point out that these kids have problems that go well beyond the school door.
Matthew Yglesias
Why don’t you respond to something I actually say in the post if there’s something you disagree with? Or if you don’t disagree with anything in the post, maybe you should write that you agree with me. Or maybe you should just ignore it.
Instead your argument seems to be “Matt Yglesias wrote a post about education, he’s also affiliated with an ‘education reform movement’ that I dislike so here’s a post detailing some stuff I don’t like about that movement.” Well fair. But so what?
geg6
@Freddie deBoer:
THIS. A THOUSAND MILLION TIMES, THIS.
Shawn in ShowMe
@Tyro:
I was thinking more along the lines of going to school six days a week, mandatory club activities and an emphasis on mathematics and science. I’m taking about daycare centers on the school grounds.
It’s time to go all in on education and family support systems. Sure, providing jobs for parents would be a more efficient solution but who’s gonna do it? Certainly not our Galtian overlords.
Marc
Matt, you’re utterly in the wrong here. The *specific* point you’re being asked is where your argument goes. Poor people have fewer choices than rich people do. Agreed.
So what do you propose to do about it? And what evidence do you have, other than dorm room word games, that your solution will work?
Freddie deBoer
@Matthew Yglesias: What policy are you advocating?
Cranky Observer
> MY @14
> Why don’t you respond to something I actually
> say in the post if there’s something you disagree with?
Why don’t you ever respond to any of the detailed, thorough criticisms of what you say that are posted in your own blog’s comments, here, at Crooked Timber, or elsewhere? I understand you have adopted a personal goal of only responding to other A-list bloggers, but you are really making yourself out to be a fool on eduction and teaching issues as you are repeatedly, well, schooled by hundreds of commenters and don’t deign to reply.
Cranky
Tyro
@Shawn in ShowMe: Yeah, I’d agree with that, but I don’t see anyone in the US pushing for that.
Marc
@Matthew Yglesias:
This reply, by the way, encapsulates what bothers me (and a lot of other folks) about Matt’s style of argumentation.
Golden Rule Matt. Your post complains that Freddie is unresponsive – and you do so without responding in any way to the specific things he said.
You have been consistently equating “misgivings about education reforms” to “doesn’t want to do anything” in many, many posts. Your most recent one clearly had a subtext – it’s of the same kind as the many other strained analogies that you have used to attack any critics of the reform movement.
Analogies which create so much heat and so little light are not serving their purpose. Try being direct and see where that takes you.
geg6
@Marc:
@Cranky Observer:
Heh. Indeedy.
But don’t hold your breath waiting for an answer.
DA
Good grief is that a lot of words to say, “I’m trying to start an argument here.”
Freddie deBoer
@DA: I’m trying to call out a particular line of bullshit that is constantly peddled against teachers unions.
James Gary
@Matthew Yglesias:
Assuming you are the real Matthew Yglesias: There’s no point in engaging with the details of your thesis on educational reform, because your entire thesis is junk. Ditto for your thoughts on professional licensing and intellectual-property law.
Putting forth a stupid plan and then complaining when people point out that it’s stupid is bullsh*t disingenuousness, and you do it all the time. Or at least you did back when I actually read your blog.
MBunge
@Cranky Observer: Why don’t you ever respond to any of the detailed, thorough criticisms of what you say that are posted in your own blog’s comments, here, at Crooked Timber, or elsewhere?
I don’t mind MattY not directly responding to comments. The problem is that he never adjusts his arguments and just keeps repeating the same crap over and over again.
Mike
folkbum
@Matthew Yglesias: Matt, I like you and respect your blog–I link to it frequently from my own–but how about my point in the first comment above: The city of Milwaukee, where I live and teach, is home to the greatest level of public/private school choice for poverty-stricken students anywhere in the country, and yet not one comprehensive study of the effects shows that increased opportunity and choice means a damn thing for achievement.
The correlation between poverty and lack of achievement is real; the choice and charter solutions to the problem are illusory. Period.
(My personal preference for where to start education reform: jobs, health care, jobs, public safety, and jobs. The schools will follow.)
geg6
@folkbum:
At the risk of sounding repetitive, THIS.
Tyro
The problem is that he never adjusts his arguments and just keeps repeating the same crap over and over again.
Be fair, sometimes he picks out the weakest, most tangential argument made about something he wrote and argues against that.
I’m generally not big on “popularizers” who come from a generalist background to provide insight on policy issues, but it’s interesting to see the parallel evolution of Ezra Klein and Matthew Yglesias– Klein evolved into a health-care policy wonk (despite not having an economics or health care background) who can be counted on to give insight into health care policy issues and analysis of laws and policies. MattY has evolved into, “I’m a guy who thinks in a certain way and believes certain things. Here’s how I apply my belief system and way of thinking to stuff that’s going on.”
Freddie deBoer
@folkbum: What folkbum is saying is my position as well. Yes, I agree with Matt’s descriptive claims– poor people have less choices than rich people. I disagree with what I thought was the implied prescriptive claim– providing them with more choices will improve their performance in school. The evidence isn’t there.
Sorry if I’m not giving him enough credit for getting the descriptive part right. That just seems obvious to me. What isn’t obvious is what we should do in light of it being true.
Chet
@Freddie:
To describe a fairly non-obvious problem with trying to improve the poorest and worst-performing schools. You seem to be rather skeptical that schools can be in any way reformed, so I’m surprised that you’re so relentlessly hostile to MY’s two posts on this subject.
folkbum
@geg6: Being repetitive is only a problem when you’re wrong.
What really strikes me about the ed reform movement is how much reformers have faith that tinkering, in small or large ways, with the 12% of a child’s life from birth to 18 that she spends in school is the only way to change educational outcomes. Not merely the best way, the only way.
Freddie deBoer
To describe a fairly non-obvious problem with trying to improve the poorest and worst-performing schools.
OK. I would disagree that it is non-obvious. I think it is pretty obvious that rich parents have greater ability to move their students to other schools or districts or what have you.
You seem to be rather skeptical that schools can be in any way reformed
I am skeptical that improving educational performance for those at the bottom can be accomplished with a schools-first approach. It’s not that there’s no gains to be made with education itself; I imagine there are. But because SES and race are so highly determinative of student performance, I genuinely question how much can be accomplished at the school level at this point.
I’m surprised that you’re so relentlessly hostile to MY’s two posts on this subject.
I don’t mean to be hostile, let alone relentlessly hostile. I am only asking what the point is from a public policy perspective.
MikeBoyScout
If one wants to talk about the need for choice in K-12 education we already have it, and we’ve already made our choice.
We can choose to make public education of our children a top priority and devote the financial and social resources accordingly.
Or we can continue to see K-12 education as an expense which we attempt to strictly limit.
An expense which we grudgingly pay while we enthusiastically fund foreign wars, thousands of military outposts around the world, re-re capitalize behemoth sized financial institutions, and tax cuts for the top one percent of our wealthiest neighbors.
Here’s what I know. 40 years ago my white suburban school had books, paper and pencils for me. 40 years ago not so far away from me, the predominantly minority attended schools were run as ghetto schools getting other school’s hand-me-downs.
Today, where economic segregation in schools continues to exist, the wealthy neighborhood schools continue to be able to provide, and those segregated into areas of less wealth struggle with a myriad of problems knowingly insufficiently funded.
Yglesias and his ilk see the problem and from the comfort of their perch bemoan it and lean towards silver bullet ideas whose only outcome is continuation of insufficient resources and low prioritization of K-12 education throughout the nation.
Svensker
@geg6:
At the risk of sounding tripetitive, THIS.
MBunge
@Tyro: “it’s interesting to see the parallel evolution of Ezra Klein and Matthew Yglesias”
At the risk of being too harsh, the difference between them is probably Klein’s need to make a living at his chosen endeavor and MattY being, as petey bluntly put it, a “trust fund scumbag”.
Mike
Freddie deBoer
At the risk of being too harsh, the difference between them is probably Klein’s need to make a living at his chosen endeavor and MattY being, as petey bluntly put it, a “trust fund scumbag”.
That’s unfair. In no small measure because Yglesias has made a living at blogging.
Danton
Ygelsias went to Harvard, as he reminds his readers every week.
MBunge
@Freddie deBoer: “In no small measure because Yglesias has made a living at blogging.”
Do you know if MattY is able to pay his bills off whatever he makes blogging? Do you think the Center for American Progress can pay as well as The Atlantic?
Mike
Freddie deBoer
@MBunge: I have no idea. I have to imagine it’s at least a viable salary.
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: this.
1. there is no evidence charter schools work, and evidence that they do not deliver MEASUREABLE improvement.
2. there IS evidence that charter schools do devolve into market based for profit farming of the poor.
@Freddie deBoer: and you WANT to make a living at blogging. That is why you are continually ankle-biting A-listers like MY and TNC, and why you are having kangaroo slap fights with Sullys borg.
Please note freddies formula apology after attacking an A-lister
all you do is crit A-listers and then whine when they point out you criticism is unsubstanced.
Samara Morgan
oh great moderation.
i’ll break it up.
@Omnes Omnibus: this.
1. there is no evidence charter schools work, and evidence that they do not deliver MEASUREABLE improvement.
2. there IS evidence that charter schools do devolve into market based for profit farming of the poor.
Cranky Observer
> Putting forth a stupid plan and then complaining
> when people point out that it’s stupid is bullsh*t
> disingenuousness, and you do it all the time.
> Or at least you did back when I actually read
> your blog.
Particularly amusing when you consider MY’s series of well-written and IMHO very well-deserved pieces on Rick Perry attempting to run away from what he (Perry) wrote in his own book two years ago and the direct first-order implications of those policy prescriptions. Yet when the same standard of “this is what you wrote; this is a simple linear implication of what comes after your prescription” is applied to Yglesias’ work – the standard Yglesias applied to Perry – he (Yglesias) gets very very angry.
Cranky
Samara Morgan
@Freddie deBoer: and you WANT to make a living at blogging. That is why you are continually ankle-biting A-listers like MY and TNC, and why you are having kangaroo slap fights with Sullys borg.
Cranky Observer
Love the Edit feature; too bad ThinkProgress can’t use this comment system.
Cranky
Sly
Its not an issue of poor people having fewer choices. It rarely, if ever, is. If a poor family has a choice between multiple schools, what is the chance that there will be substantial differences between those choices in terms of academic “performance” (however you wish to define the term)? In real terms, one school is not going to be all that marginally superior or inferior to another school in same district, regardless as to the question of “edu-localism.” So the importance of choice is a red herring when all your choices are manifestly inadequate to fit your wants and needs.
In other words, if I go to a restaurant for lunch and the only thing they’re offering is month-old rotten beef, my expectations for meal satisfaction is not going to be improved if they added month-old rotten pork to the menu.
The problems with “poor performing” schools are the problems of endemic poverty: the relative minuscule number of meaningful opportunities for improvements to potential quality of life, the relative minuscule margin of error for missing or misusing the scarce opportunities that are available, and the resentment politics that stands in the way of poor communities in their desire to build the kind of institutional structures that help them overcome the first two problems.
The “Reform Movement” doesn’t address any of these problems. It doesn’t even pretend to. In fact, it doubles down on existing problems and creates entirely new ones while deluding themselves into thinking that the opposition to their tinkering is based solely on the “special interests” of corrupt stake-holders in whatever system they’re trying to replace. It’s stupid, pathological, and boring.
Samara Morgan
@Cranky Observer: but freddie is neither linear or clear.
for example.
here is the post where freddie attacks MY.
title: Why should government subsidize choices that don’t work?
now i understoood that to mean that freddie 1. opposes charter schools because they don’t work….and 2. that MY supports charter schools.
then in freddies next post we can read an apolo to MY, and a seachange in freddies position.
so which is it cranky? do charter schools work or dont they? does freddie endorse them or oppose them?
its clear as mud.
freddie has more positions than the kamasutra and hes as fake as Gaga’s pen0r (altho she did a credible turn as Joe last nite).
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
If we’re going to have blogfights, you’re required to sum-up the history of the fight in under 6 sentences if the fight goes back further than 4 links. It’s just common courtesy. It helps clarify some of your vague references. Hell, you could have just posted the last paragraph of this post and been much clearer.
I know I sound like a clarity troll here, but it took me a half-hour to follow all the links and figure out what in the world you were talking about.
Samara Morgan
@Cranky Observer: yeah i loathe facebook. TP comments sukk ass.
im a temple priestess of hacktivism and an otaku of Julian Assange.
that pisses off the “patriots” here no end.
Samara Morgan
@Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac: it only goes back 2 links.
Samara Morgan
@folkbum: this is a good policy position
Omnes has a good policy position
these are pragmatic, workable policies that can HELP…as opposed to say … having thousand word he said/she said kangaroo slap fights over whether charter schools work and who supports them.
Samara Morgan
@folkbum: here is birthmarkers take on how the schools can follow.
Cranky Observer
Samara Morgan @46,
I am not in the business of writing Mr. deBoer’s posts for him. I believe however that between his posts and the comments thereto there has been a good discussion of the efficacy of charter schools, including links to substantial studies, and the results are not good for the Yeglesias ed reform crowd.
Cranky
Samara Morgan
@folkbum: throw money at the schools like Omnes suggests. hire teachers aids for after school programs, music teachers, art teachers, language teachers, gifted teachers, title one teachers, construction to add facilities, buy books and computers, build basketball courts and start a fencing team or a hacker team for example……that would make jobs, raise real estate prices, build pride in the community school.
kay talked a while back about how to break the negative feedback cycle for parents that didnt do well in school themselves…..well, give them pride in their community school. give them jobs.
bootstrap the community with a terrific school.
Freddie deBoer
I am a skeptic about charter schools. I believe the extant evidence is very discouraging, particularly when you consider scale and attrition effects. Also, I believe that union rights are just that, rights, and that they can’t be taken away when convenient. To that end, I’m somewhat supportive of unionized charter school experiments. There are some charter schools that have been attempted with the input and blessing of the teachers unions, utilizing union teachers. Since these preserve union rights, I’m not opposed to seeing how they perform. Am I optimistic? I confess I am not. As a matter of simple epistemology, I think it’s too soon to say that we know for a fact that they aren’t going to work. But for me, support is dependent on the support of unions and the use of union labor.
Samara Morgan
@Cranky Observer: relly?
what are freddies posts about exactly?
i just pointed out where he apparently holds two positions that cancel each other out.
exactly what i said! Three one thousand word posts of he said/she said kangaroo slap fighting over whether charter schools work and who supports them!
:)
Cranky Observer
> Samara Morgan @53
> throw money at the schools like Omnes suggests. hire
> teachers aids for after school programs, music teachers,
> art teachers, language teachers, gifted teachers, title
> one teachers, construction to add facilities, buy books
> and computers, build basketball courts and
> start a fencing team or a hacker team for
> example……that would make jobs,
> raise real estate prices, build pride in the
> community school.
I’m in 101% agreement with that plan; I have advocated the same in my own metro area and of course on Yglesias’ and Klein’s blogs (under prior commenting systems) and elsewhere.
Cranky
Samara Morgan
@Freddie deBoer: hmmm
do you know who else supported union rights?
hitlerErik “Beyond Unions” Kain.but just until he got that paying gig.
forgive if im skeptical, but i have a hard time pinning down your evolving positions.
and why should unionized charters work any better or worse than un-unionized charters?
YOU SAID
why should government subsidize choices that don’t work?
:)
Bob
Charter schools don’t work. They’re just another way of funneling funds into interest groups and for profit organization hands.
For the record, I put Matt one level above McArdle in no field experience pundit nonsense.
Samara Morgan
@Cranky Observer: haha
you got freddies job.
i wish.
:)
folkbum
@Samara Morgan: “improve the schools and improve the housing market” is kind of like step 2 in the underpants gnomes plan, or the “and then a miracle occurs” step of the classic S Harris comic panel.
Here’s what gnaws at me constantly. Take two neighborhoods, a few miles apart, one in the city of Milwaukee and one in a first-ring suburb. What is different in the schools? Maybe a couple thousand dollars a year per student, but the books, curriculum, after-school activities, and whatnot aren’t that different. Yet one has among the worst results in the state and one among the best.
But looking just at median household income, over the first 18 years of a child’s life, there’s a literal million-dollar difference in resources available to that child. In 12 years of schooling, to make up for the financial difference between the wealthy and poor families, we could–perhaps should–spend $100,000 a year per child in school.
Would that “improve the schools and improve the housing market”? Undoubtedly. But how do you come up with that kind of money? And how do you deal with the fact that it’s still approaching the problem from the wrong end–the output side rather than the input side?
That’s why I say stop messing with me, I know what I’m doing in my classroom and so do my colleagues; instead, bring family-sustaining jobs back to our cities, make sure our kids and their parents get health care (especially pre-natal and early childhood care), and so on. Boost that median income, make the neighborhoods safer, make the kids healthier, and the schools will improve.
kindness
Yglasias is crazy to be debating with another blogger. That said, Matt is all too frequently a milqutoast kind of liberal. Oh sure, he’s liberal & all, just in a Clintonian kind of way, which while I understand, I don’t cotton too all that well.
Samara Morgan
@Bob: but Matt is not advocating charter schools….freddie is…
and here
im so confused. why NOT oppose something that he has been arguing doesnt work, and slamming MY for ….for what? pageclicks?
since the cat got freddies tongue, i’ll ask you, why would unionized charters work any differently than other charters? what is the magickal secret ingredient?
Tyro
kay talked a while back about how to break the negative feedback cycle for parents that didnt do well in school themselves….. give them jobs.
Yeah, no– this is the last group you want with responsibility over kids when they need to get educated. This was a brilliant idea they had in the late 60s version of school reform to fire tr “outsiders” and hire people only from “the community.”
You hire people who care about education. Period.
Freddie deBoer
Considering that matoko is dominating the discussion as always, and that her comments all show up as dark black REDACTED bars to me, I’ll sign off here. I’ll just leave off by giving folkbum’s latest comment an endorsement. The disparities in income between children of poverty and children of the middle and upper classes are simply too big, it seems to me, to be made up purely at the school level. Yes, throw money at public schools! Absolutely. But understand that differences in homelife that are so vast probably can’t be made up for just at the school level no matter what kind of money we’re talking about here.
Chet
Well, it eluded you for two days until I explained it to you. Regardless, it does seem very non-obvious given how sure people are – even your supporters in this thread – that all we need to do is improve the worst-performing schools.
Samara Morgan
@folkbum: im not messing with you.
my preferred pragmatic solution is Heckman. we can get the most bang for our bucks that way.
but in a recession…why not throw some money at the schools instead of bleeding off the high parental SES high parental involvement students into charters?
reduce class size by hiring more teachers, teaching specialists, and teachers aids…and make community jobs by adding faciliities and positions.
i agree that market-based approachess to education reform (fix the schools, fix the teachers) are ass backwards….like NCLB.
charters are a fixing schools approach. merit pay and busting unions are fixing teachers approaches.
Samara Morgan
moderation again?
@folkbum: im not messing with you.
my preferred pragmatic solution is Heckman. we can get the most bang for our bucks that way.
Samara Morgan
@folkbum: but in a recession…why not throw some money at the schools instead of bleeding off the high parental SES high parental involvement students into charters?
reduce class size by hiring more teachers, teaching specialists, and teachers aids…and make community jobs by adding faciliities and positions.
i agree that market-based approachess to education reform (fix the schools, fix the teachers) are top down….like NCLB.
charters are a fixing schools approach. merit pay and busting unions are fixing teachers approaches.
Samara Morgan
@folkbum: but in a recession…why not throw some money at the schools instead of bleeding off the high parental SES high parental involvement students into charters?
reduce class size by hiring more teachers, teaching specialists, and teachers aids…and make community jobs by adding positions and building classrooms.
i agree that market-based approachess to education reform (fix the schools, fix the teachers) are top down….like NCLB.
charters are a fixing schools approach. merit pay and busting unions are fixing teachers approaches.
Samara Morgan
@Freddie deBoer: buk buk buk
chicken!
other people can read my comments.
Samara Morgan
@folkbum:
haha, but that is freddies magikal union ingredient for charters.
you are preaching to the choir here.
I’m a huge fan of Dr. Heckman.
but I also know that something so cheap as a fencing coach or a video-gaming club can help students…its a hook to draw them in to education, and to give them pride in their school….
dont think of it as throwing money at the schools….think of it as halting the bleeding that our new austerity economy is forcing on the schools.
Giving funding to poor public schools is a social justice policy…like the Heckman Equation….charter schools are a market-based policy….like NCLB.
:)
Svensker
@folkbum:
It’s much easier just to criticize the teachers and the schools.
Samara Morgan
@Tyro: im talking about construction jobs and teachers aids jobs.
Samara Morgan
@Svensker: and those are also the market based policies endorsed by glibertarians every where….fix the teachers(merit pay, union busting), fix the schools (charters, vouchers).
we have social justice problems because of the “freed” market colonizing our education system and hollowing out the middle class.
so we need social justice solutions.
like throwing money at poor schools and the Heckman Equation.
Paul in KY
@Samara Morgan: Keep on given em Hell, Samara!
P.S. Just finished book 4, don’t know if I can wait the 10 or 11 months to read book 5 ;-)
Paul in KY
@Freddie deBoer: She’s redacting the Hell out of you :-)
Samara Morgan
@Paul in KY: read it now, and then read the short stories. Dannie’s character development is just….splendid….irresistable….then Winds of Winter will be out in time for beach season.
valar dohaeris!
folkbum
@Svensker:
And that’s the GOP platform in a nutshell. Welcome to Wisconsin.
Samara Morgan
@Chet: so are you chet from TAS the Glibertarian Hivemind?
if you are you know i cut my bloggy babyteeth on Dr. Jim Manzi’s education positions.
there is never anything sensible about thousand word he said/she said kangaroo slap fights.
Samara Morgan
@folkbum: since you are a Real Live Educator, what do you think of the Heckman Equation?
Duckest Fuckingway: Ask not for whom the Duck Fucks. . .
I like to wait until the ‘tako-chin gets hammered and starts telling the truth. The it gets really entertaining.
dcdl
@Svensker:
My personal preference for where to start education reform: jobs, health care, jobs, public safety, and jobs. The schools will follow.
(I forgot the block quote)
Yep, it mainly is all about social-economics which can encapsulate a lot of elements.
Paul in KY
@Samara Morgan: Think I might do that. Valar Morghulis!
Samara Morgan
@dcdl: so how do you jump start “jobs, health care, jobs, public safety, and jobs” in this economy?
social justice programs.
like throwing money at poor schools and the Heckman Equation.
folkbum
@Samara Morgan: Heckman’s the early childhood guy? Absolutely–early childhood is the one place where the “throw money at it” approach seems to have the greatest impact. I would give my left nut for a systematic approach to pregnancy and early childcare in this country that stressed health, reading, enrichment play, and early socialization.
taylormattd
what will really help public education is to ensure that no self-labeled “progressive” votes for Obama.
Isn’t that right Freddie?
Tyro
You guys really don’t get that when the schools are so poor that the goal of every single person who makes it into the middle class is to move away sends the local economy into a tailspin and destroys opportunities for jobs, do you?
Who is going to provide those jobs? No one who lives in those neighborhoods, that’s for sure.
Samara Morgan
@taylormattd: he wont answer so i will for him.
Samara Morgan
@Tyro: that is why the government has to provide social justice, dumbo.
Scott Walker and the glibertarians and conservatives sure arent going to do it.
their neighborhoods are either richie-rich or in Distributed Jesusland™.
Tyro
Social justice doesn’t apply to the middle class?
Samara, you are pretty creepy.
Samara Morgan
@Tyro: ?? where did you get that?
social justice is the lifeline for the middle class before our “freed” market overlords farm it out of existance.
and im VERY creepy. you didnt get my nic?
Samara Morgan
synopsis:
freddie has spewed out THREE (count ’em) one thousand word posts of he said/she said kangaroo slap fighting over charter schools on the front page of BJ.
if i want to see glibertarians kangaroo slap fighting i can go to Cato or the Atlantic.
Chet
I’m the only Chet I know about, and I recognize the inimitable Major anywhere that she appears. Good to read you again, motoko.
Samara Morgan
@Chet: LOL
domo arigato gozaimashita
/bows low
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
Mr. Matt Yglesias’s opinion on public education is certainly worth considering, as much or more than his opinion on the wisdom and necessity of going to war with Iraq in 2003 or spending quality time chez Megan McArdle.
.
.
Marginalized for stating documented facts
Tough but true. Standardized test scores haven’t budged over the last 40 years, since 1970. Yet, since 1970, the percentage of administrators in K-12 public schools has skyrocketed by 50%.
Source: Dollars in the Classroom.
Of course, the real question is something no one is asking. In a global economy where the American middle class is going away and all the high-skill high-wage jobs are being offshored to PhD engineers in Mumbai eager to work for $2 an hour, why do American kids need education?
The top-paying jobs for American 18-year-olds right now are “whore” and “dope dealer.” You don’t need any education to do those jobs.
t jasper parnell
The facts of the matter:
Powerful unions, piecemeal reform, no tests, and kids taught how to learn. Sounds like preneoliberal America to me. Yglesias and his merry band of blame teachers first are always wrong.
ETA everything prior to powerful unions ought to be blockquoted.
t jasper parnell
@Marginalized for stating documented facts: Well, no formal education.
t jasper parnell
@t jasper parnell: I should point out that small classrooms are key as well, something else Ygly sees as bells and whistles.
suzanne
@folkbum:
Bingo.
Though it is reprehensible how little we spend on schools, spending more in this arena is not going to get us all the goals we seek. A child’s level of educational attainment is strongly correlated to that of his/her parents. That is, in turn, strongly correlated with that now-adult’s lifetime earnings, Which means that, for children of rich and/or educated parents, half the battle is won before the first day of kindergarten.
The only long-term solution is to pull people out of poverty. Hell, pay 100% of the college tuition for students who are the first in their families to attend college. Hand out birth control and condoms out in every high school class.