Teachers Offer the Wealthy an Escape from Poverty

The following is from Anthony Cody’s excellent critique of the education portion of Obama’s state of the union speech. In a nutshell, if a teacher really did increase the lifetime income of a classroom by $250,000, so what? Spread out over the 40 years of each student’s career, that would amount to only $250 per person per year, enough for a nice date, Sunday afternoon beers or some practical work clothes, but nowhere near enough to bring poor kids into the middle class. And if he really wanted us to not teach to the test, he wouldn’t tie our evaluations and salaries to students’ test scores.

Last night in President Obama's State of the Union address, he repeated a familiar refrain about the importance of teachers. 

A great teacher can offer an escape from poverty to the child who dreams beyond his circumstance.

But it seems that it is those in power who are actually using teachers to escape from the realities of poverty these days. 

President Obama offered as evidence a citation from a recent Harvard report:

We know a good teacher can increase the lifetime income of a classroom by over $250,000.

He went on to say,

Teachers matter. So instead of bashing them, or defending the status quo, let's offer schools a deal. Give them the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones. In return, grant schools flexibility: To teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test; and to replace teachers who just aren't helping kids learn.
 

There are several problems with this. As others have pointed out, if you take a classroom of 25 students, and spread $250,000 over their 40 years of earnings, this amount comes to a grand total of $250 a year per student. This is unlikely to represent an escape from poverty. (see more thorough responses to the Chetty report here, and here.)

The second problem is a glaring contradiction, a logical flaw so huge it has been overlooked by almost every journalist apparently too polite to challenge the administration on it. If you do not wish teachers to teach to the test, if you want them to be passionate and creative, then how can you insist that their performance be measured by the use of test scores?

Let us be crystal clear. The Obama administration has made the use of test scores to evaluate principals and teachers a pre-condition for federal aid. Both Race to the Top and the NCLB waivers require that states develop evaluation processes that incorporate this data.

To see the rest of this article, please click here.

Stop Blaming Teachers When It’s the Parents’ Fault!

Future High School Dropout? (Image from Flickr by izatrini_com)

In today’s New York Times, Thomas Friedman had an op-ed that seems to bash the Ed Deformers and tell them to get off of teachers’ backs. However, rather than placing the blame for the achievement gap and other problems with public education where it belongs—on the defunding of schools and growing poverty among children—he places the blame on parents, as if they merely need to behave better and become more effective parents.

“Here’s what some new studies are also showing,” he tells us. “We need better parents. Parents more focused on their children’s education can also make a huge difference in a student’s achievement.”

There are several problems with this proposal. First, it conflates correlation with causation. Parents who are more involved in their children’s education tend to be more affluent. There is plenty of data correlating affluence with higher academic achievement. So is it affluence or parental involvement or both?

Secondly, can parents simply be taught, encouraged or forced to be more involved in their children’s education or is this a product of their class backgrounds? And what does parental involvement even mean?

Plenty of studies indeed show that parents who read often to young children and who use larger and more complex vocabularies with their kids end up with kids who have significantly larger vocabularies and pre-literacy skills by the time they are ready for kindergarten, creating an achievement gap before children have even started school. Affluent parents are also more likely to have the time and education to do this with their children. A parent who works two or three jobs or who is barely literate is not going to read to their children or use complex language with them.

Affluent parents are also more likely to be able to make it to after school and evening meetings, open houses and community events. They are more likely to understand how the system works and have the self-confidence (or self-entitlement) necessary to navigate the system, advocate for their children and challenge perceived injustices or inadequacies in their children’s schools and classrooms.

Schools are essentially middle class institutions that have mores, norms and expectations similar to those in middle class families. Middle class children, therefore, come to school with the “cultural capital” necessary to succeed, whereas lower income kids often must learn this culture from scratch.

In short, Friedman is correct that parental involvement is important and parents who do, or who learn to, participate in their children’s education are more likely to see their kids succeed academically. However, his op-ed piece implies that there is something wrong with parents who are not involved with their kids’ education, when in reality it is often not their faults. Furthermore, whether you are blaming teachers or parents, you are still missing the point: the most significant influence on academic achievement is a child’s socioeconomic background. So long as we continue to ignore poverty, as long as we accept a society in which a few have all the wealth and a large minority is desperately poor, neither better teaching, no better parenting, is going to close the achievement gap or ensure that all children succeed academically.

Gay Cannon Fodder

In honor of the one-year anniversary of Modern School, I am reposting some of my favorite articles from the past year. The following was written when the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell seemed imminent. Now it has finally happened. My commentary is still relevant.

Gay Cannon Fodder

From WikiCommons

Congress’ repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is being celebrated by LGBT activists and liberals as a major civil rights victory. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) was clearly prejudicial and abusive and its repeal is certainly a triumph over discrimination. However, it is a twisted sort of victory that gives a new group of people the right to slaughter poor people throughout the world, have their own limbs blown off, suffer devastating cognitive and psychological trauma, and die, to protect the property and profits of the rich. (Transgender folks still won’t be able to sever, er, serve their country).

Victory for Imperialism—Victory for War Mongers

What the left has not acknowledged is the context, history and broader social implications of this “victory” for gay rights. The end of the ban on gays in the military comes at a time when the U.S. is actively engaged in two overt foreign wars (Iraq and AfPak), numerous covert wars (e.g., Yemen, Somalia), and posturing for potential new wars (Iran and Korea). Yet the military hasn’t been able to recruit enough new soldiers to maintain the existing wars and has resorted to “stop-lossing” battle weary soldiers, some of whom are already showing signs of PTSD. Therefore, the new policy can be seen as a move to recruit and retain more cannon fodder, lesbian and gay cannon fodder.

Poster by Mike Licht

The repeal of DADT is being spun as a victory for U.S. imperialism and nationalism. Obama said that the move will help make the U.S. military “the best led and best trained fighting force the world has ever known.” Joe Lieberman, one of the most hawkish members of congress, used the repeal to leverage his standing with democratic and liberal voters, who have mostly written him off as a right wing ninny.  “We’ve righted a wrong,” he said. “Today we’ve done justice.”

While the repeal of DADT will theoretically allow gays to serve openly in the military without threat of punishment by their superiors, discrimination and persecution will almost certainly continue, just as it does in mainstream society. In fact, in the intense social microcosm of the military, where aggression and violence are not only sanctioned, but encouraged, harassment and assaults on gay soldiers is virtually assured. Consider the case of women serving in the military, who experience high rates of rape and sexual assault.

Victory for Gay Bourgeoisie

Poster by Carlos Latuff

Middle glass LGBT folks have the luxury of partying and celebrating this “victory” since they won’t be going to Iraq or Afghanistan. For those in the privileged classes, the U.S. war machine is just an abstraction, something they can ignore or romanticize, like homelessness and hunger. For working class and poor LGBT folks, especially the unemployed and marginally employed, the situation is much more real. The job market is still awful and there really aren’t a lot of opportunities out there for making a living, except for the military, which will now accept almost anyone, regardless of education and experience.

“A lot of poor and working-class queers with no means to go to college will end up in America’s two endless wars,” says gay writer and activist, Tommi Avicolli Mecca. “As the saying goes, ‘Rich kids end up in college, poor ones in the military.’ Statistics seem to bear that out, with more than half to two-thirds (depending on which study you believe) of recruits coming from lower middle-class or poor households.”

Military Recruiters at Gay Straight Alliance Meetings?

Iraq War Victim (Image by Bird Eye)

Meanwhile, now that DADT has been repealed, those who oppose ROTC and Jr. ROTC programs have lost the one thin thread they had to justify banning ROTC at school. If the military no longer discriminates, then their campus propaganda arms, ROTC and Jr ROTC, can longer be seen as discriminatory, either, and should be allowed on campus, at least by this reasoning. Many believe that the end of DADT will usher in a new era of collaboration between university campuses and ROTC programs.

Now the anti-ROTC movement will have to focus on anti-imperialist, anti-militarist, and class-based arguments, as it should have all along. An organization like the military, that is dedicated to slaughter and plunder for the benefit of capital, does not become legitimate simply by opening its doors to a persecuted minority. The problem is that the public is much more sympathetic to discrimination arguments than anti-militarist and anti-imperialist ones, creating a hard row to hoe for the anti-ROTC movement.

On a recent radio interview, Mecca brought up the possibility that military recruiters might now start visiting high school gay-straight alliance meetings. Now that the military is open to lesbian and gay recruits, this is certainly a possibility. If so, this will probably occur more at working class and low income schools where the students have fewer and more tenuous opportunities after graduation.

The Impending Demise of Unions

In honor of the one-year anniversary of Modern School I am reposting some of my favorite articles from the past year. While some of the details in the following article are evolving (e.g., the specific attacks on workers and the ever changing rogue's gallery of pundits and politicians), the basic premise still holds: that unions are facilitating their own demise through ineffectual and collaborationist strategies and tactics.

The Impending Demise of Unions

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

 With virtually every state facing large budget deficits (and governors pledging not to raise taxes or do anything that might harm the interests of business), programs must be cut and workers must be further squeezed. The problem for state governors is that their workers, the ones whom they must squeeze in order to shrink their deficits, are organized into unions that could make things messy if they were to suddenly strike or take some other form of mass action, especially if they unite with private sector workers.

To prevent this from happening, public sector workers are being set up as straw men. They are portrayed as overpaid, greedy brats who are responsible for the deficits and everyone else’s stagnating standard of living. Both Republican and Democratic politicians are jumping on the bandwagon. Below are just a few examples:

• Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina: These are among the many states that do not allow collective bargaining by public sector workers
• California: Governor Jerry Brown plans to make deep cuts to public worker benefits and pensions
• Illinois: Lawmakers are considering legislation to ban teacher strikes. Mayor Daley supports the ban.
• Indiana: Governor Mitch Daniels ended collective bargaining for state workers with an executive order. At the same time, legislators also want to ban private sector unions from requiring dues from their members.
• Michigan: Governor Rick Snyder received a request from the city of Hamtramck to file for bankruptcy so they can shred union contracts and impose wage and pension cuts. Other cities are reportedly planning to follow suit if Hamtramck succeeds.
• Missouri: Governor Matt Blunt issued an executive order banning collective bargaining by state workers. Rep. Loanne Ridgeway said, “No workers should be forced to join unions. Workers should not be held hostage by unions.” Like in Indiana, legislators also want to ban private sector unions from requiring dues from their members.
• New York: Governor Andrew Cuomo is planning to impose a one-year freeze on public sector wages. He also will allow the layoff of 900 state workers ordered by his predecessor David Paterson and he has refused to extend the millionaire’s tax
• New Jersey: Governor Chris Christie wants teachers to accept a 1-year wage freeze and to pay 1.5% of their salaries toward health care costs. “I want to believe the teachers unions when they put on all those commercials saying it’s all about the kids. When you’re getting everything you want, it’s easy to say it’s all about the kids.” State Senate President Steve Sweeney, (who moonlights as an organizer for the International Association of Ironworkers), has been pushing for pay and benefits cuts for state workers and blames them for the 40% unemployment rate of Jersey ironworkers.
• Ohio: Legislators want to ban teacher strikes and block homecare workers from organizing. Ohio Governor John Kasich has said, “Binding arbitration is unacceptable. . .If they want to strike, they should be fired. . . They've got good jobs, they've got high pay, they get good benefits, a great retirement. What are they striking for?"
• Pennsylvania: An organization called Stop Teacher Strikes in Pennsylvania is soliciting signatures for two House Bills (1369 and 2092) that would constitutionally ban teacher strikes in that state. State Rep. Paul Clymer is a co-sponsor of the legislation.
• Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker wants to strip the right of public workers to form unions and collectively bargain.

Why the Increasing Attacks On Public Sector Workers?

Republicans are claiming that unions have become too powerful and must be reigned in, which is simply not true. Labor has grown significantly weaker over the past fifty years, with union membership in steady decline since the 1950s, when over 30% of American workers were unionized. Today only 12% are unionized, the majority in the public sector. Furthermore, they begin with the asinine assumption that unions lower wages, job availability and living standards. If this were true, unions would wither away on their own, without help from the bosses. To see the absurdity of this assumption, one need only compare average wages in heavily unionized states with those in “right to work” states.

Likewise, the claim that public sector workers have it too good, that their benefits are too generous and a rip-off to the poor taxpayers, is just a diversion to distract us from the real causes of the economic meltdown and growing deficit: corporate greed, protracted wars, Wall Street bailouts, extended tax cuts for the wealthy, and nominal corporate taxes.

Some have argued that the crackdown on unions is punishment for the millions of dollars unions spent to defeat Republican candidates. If so, then why are Democrats like Jerry Brown and Andrew Cuomo, who owe their electoral victories to the vast amounts of money spent by unions on their behalf, also attacking unions?

Silly Assumptions Yield Absurd Conclusions

The left also base their arguments on some silly assumptions, like the idea that everyone should have the right to organize or strike or that we can vote into office representatives who will protect our interests. These assumptions ignore the fact that the state exists to serve the interests of capital, not labor. Voting simply gives workers the opportunity to choose who will exercise state power over them. Some politicians try to portray themselves as the more benign and beneficent of the choices. Hence, Jerry Brown, with a violent anti-labor background (as Oakland Mayor, he called in the cops to brutally suppress an ILWU protest) was transformed into an acceptable “pro-labor” choice for governor (compared to the vitriolic and unabashedly anti-labor candidate, Meg Whitman). Labor chose Brown and the union bureaucrats will bend over backwards to help Brown impose austerity on their members.

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

The ruling class depends on our labor and our cooperation to keep their businesses profitable. The state assists them in this by ensuring that things run smoothly and with minimal disruption, sometimes with laws that seem counter to their interests (e.g., child labor, minimum wage, and overtime laws). If we as workers place our trust in the state to protect us with such measures, then we will continue to accept the lesser evil each election cycle, which means we will continue to vote for our class enemies, rulers who will always place the interests of our bosses over our own. Hence, teachers who supported Obama were rewarded with Race To The Top. And their support for Jerry Brown will be rewarded with multi-billion dollars cuts to the education budget in California and subsequent lay-offs, furloughs and pay and benefits cuts, facilitated by the pinstriped bosses of the NEA and AFT.

Likewise, it is not in the interests of the ruling elite to have unions or strikes and, for much of U.S. history, they made sure that unions did not have the right to strike or to collectively bargain. It should be pointed out that strikes still occurred. In fact, these rights were granted in 1934, with the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), in response to protracted militant (and illegal) strikes, including several general strikes that effectively shut down the cities of San Francisco and Minneapolis. The right to strike was granted (along with strict rules governing how and when strikes could be conducted) as a means to control workers and minimize labor unrest so as to minimize the impact on business. This right was not a god-given inalienable right, nor was it one that workers won through the vote. It was a stopgap measure imposed by the state, on behalf of the ruling elite, so as to keep the economy running smoothly, a bone that was thrown to labor to get them to quiet down and behave. What the state giveth, the state can taketh away, as so many states are now trying to do. And what workers lose legislatively can be won back by misbehaving (i.e., illegal strikes and job actions).

The Impending Demise of Unions

Of course, the real reason for the growing attacks on public employee unions is that the ruling elite want no restraints whatsoever to their ability to make profits. Their greed and misbehavior created the biggest economic crisis in generations and they were punished with a multi-trillion dollar gift from the federal government. As a result, they have grown cockier than ever. There has been no New Deal. No significant new regulations or limits to their business practices. They want it all, they want it now, and they have no reason believe they won’t get it.

To this end, they would love nothing more than to destroy all vestiges of organized labor and they see public workers as the biggest impediment to this goal. When the wages and benefits of public sector workers are lowered, those of private sector workers follow suit. When one group of workers loses union protections, it weakens all workers by limiting their ability to take job actions in solidarity with each other.

Meanwhile, how are the few remaining unions dealing with the escalating class war? Most have relinquished their most important role of organizing, educating and mobilizing workers, so they can play the election game:

• Choose the lesser evil
• Sell him or her to their members
• Accept the impending job, wage and benefits cuts
• And then try to spin it as a victory by claiming that the alternative would have been much worse

The consequences of this game are that wages, benefits and living standards continue to decline for the vast majority of us, while the wealthy continue to grow wealthier. Concessions given by workers are almost never given back, not without a fight. So why give the concessions in the first place, especially without a fight? 

Unless unions start to acknowledge that bosses and workers have nothing in common, that politicians are not our allies, and start to prioritize organizing and mobilizing their members, they will facilitate their own demise.

Let Them Eat Cake: San Diego County Board of Education Votes Itself a Raise

What if teachers and other workers could vote themselves a raise? Alas, we actually have to get up early and work for our meager salaries. Only bosses get this privilege. And, when you get right down to it, school board members are nothing but bosses.

Some have argued that school board members generally do not make much. On the other hand, they do not do much either. And their membership on the board is often a stepping stone to higher office, which helps them to cultivate relationships with business leaders that can result in various lucrative future jobs. So, in a way, serving on a school board could be seen as an apprenticeship, like student teaching, except way more profitable in the long run.

Of course, we are not talking about real money here. The 5% raise will only increase their monthly compensation by $22.05 each to just over $463, according to the San Diego Education Report Blog. However, this does not count their other perks and benefits. Many school board members in California, for example, receive health benefits. Regardless, there is an obvious symbolic message, a pretty cynical and stupid one in this economic climate: There may not be enough money to retain teachers, benefits and class sizes, but that doesn’t mean students’ families shouldn’t cough up a few extra bucks to help out a few poor members of the ruling elite out.

More Crumbs For Beggars (As They Race to the Trough)

A New York Times article today said that Race to the Top (RTTT) “also-rans” like California, New Jersey and Pennsylvania will get another chance to compete for federal RTTT grants, only this time the pot will be much smaller. These “losers” will have the opportunity to trip all over each other to impose merit pay, increase private charter schools, and otherwise convince the feds that they are the most education business-friendly states in the nation, all to win grants worth between $10 and $50 million.

Hopefully none of the states will bite. This kind of money is chump change to states grappling with multi-billion dollar deficits. Furthermore, there is no evidence that the reforms being demanded by the Obama Administration will improve educational outcomes, though there is plenty of evidence that they improve the bottom line for educational management organizations and private charter school companies. Merit pay and “evaluation reform” also have the potential to weaken teachers unions and harm students, by forcing out many quality veteran teachers who happen to work at low income schools, which tend to have lower test scores. This increases the percentage of young, novice teachers who not only lack experience in the classroom, but who also tend to be less active in the union and more willing to go along with “reforms” that threaten effective existing programs, as well as teachers’ working conditions.

Obama is also making $500 million available in competitive grants for early childhood programs. However, this is far less than the $10 billion he had asked for in 2009. Congress denied that request and another similar one last year. Regardless, this is also chump change considering the true cost of providing early childhood education programs for all eligible children in all 50 states. However, when offered competitively, it forces states to make terrible compromises, like allowing private businesses to operate public services with minimal oversight and for private profit. And while some early childhood programs, like Head Start, have a proven track record in improving some educational outcomes, none of these programs really address the most significant influence on academic success: familial wealth.

Kathleen Sebelius , whose Health and Human Services department administers the Head Start program and will co-administer the early learning competition, was quoted by the NY Times saying that many 5-year-olds were unprepared for kindergarten because they lacked “social skills that would allow them to sit in a classroom or listen to a teacher.” However, gaps in social skills, as well as in language and pre-reading skills, already exist by the times kids are three, well before most early childhood preschool programs begin.(See the work of Burkam and Lee and Hart and Risely).

The gap is class-based, with middle class kids being much more likely to be socially and academically ready for preschool- and kindergarten. There are numerous reasons for this. Poor children are much more likely to be born prematurely and to suffer malnutrition, iron-deficiency anemia, and exposure to smoke, lead and other environmental toxins. Each of these can impair cognitive development or lead to learning disabilities. Likewise, poor children suffer higher degrees of stress, which leads to the overproduction of the hormone cortisol, which can impair memory and learning. Higher income parents tend to read much more often to their children and at an earlier age, while also exposing them to a greater variety of words and expressions.

While early education programs can help to mitigate this gap, it would make sense to also address the causes of the gap well before children are ready for preschool, so that lower income children are not constantly playing catch-up. Furthermore, even if we increase the investment in early childhood programs, but continue to allow kids to live in poverty, many of their earlier gains will be reversed.