Sunday’s Projo had a good op-ed about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s increasingly dictatorial behavior. In case you may have heard from some sources that Chavez is a legitimate democrat, here is a full explanation of why he is not.
[Open full post]Picking up on Andrew’s theme, I thought it worthwhile to post a comment and response to an earlier post of mine from Jim, who took the opportunity to convey his perspective on the teacher/union topic:
it’s awfully easy and simple to blame the unions, isn’t it?
why don’t you put a little less effort in blaming unions for the shortfalls and start placing the blame where it belongs.
1) too little funding. Many teachers don’t even have the supplies to do the job. “No Child Left Behind”, while it has it’s good points, particularly that it’s beginning to give some accountability, isn’t addressing this. Indeed, if a school is labelled as “poor performing”, instead of revamping, funding and improving it, the act actually ENCOURAGES the pulling of the students on a quasi-voucher system and placing them in other schools. THAT, my friend is no solution. That’s doubling up the problem.
2) too little parental participation, in fact, how about looking at the total apathy that parents (in general) have toward education. The prevalent attitude of parents is “teach my child!” without any thought to the fact that a child’s first teacher and indeed, most important teacher is the parent.
3) poor administration on so many levels, from the federal all the way down to the schools. This is being worked on, but there is much room for improvement. Many times, the politics of the situation are outweighing the need for REAL improvement.
The problems are complex. Unions are the least of the issues at hand.
I responded:
I agree that the problems are complex. And it is easy to blame the unions for unrealistic expectations in their bargaining positions. Teachers are well-paid in this state, many parents and taxpayers feel its time that children’s scholastic performance starts to reflect that.
As far as NCLB, and related to the above, I understand there are funding problems, but couldn’t some of this be alleviated by less education money going to pay teacher’s salaries and benefits? Additionally, it’s my understanding that under at least some of the standards set forth by the state or federal government (though not necessarily NCLB) schools have a period of time to show improvement. For instance, my daughter’s school has reached milestones that are required to have been reached in 2011. You imply that at the first sign of noncompliance, that’s it. I don’t believe that’s the case. Nonetheless, if the children are helped by being pulled from a bad school, isn’t that the goal? We can’t forget that this is not about keeping the teacher’s or school administration or the state comfortable, it’s about providing kids with the best education possible.
Having attended PTO, Parent/Principal nights (work to rule is in effect in Warwick…) and School Committee meetings, I can attest that not enough parents take an active part in their children’s education. However, looking back at my younger days, the same dynamic was true when I was a kid. I was lucky enough to have parents who were among that core group of parents who always seemed to have been involved. in school functions. However, how exactly can this acknowledged problem be addressed? How can parents be forced into participation? On this one, I’m not sure.
Poor administration is a problem and always has been. Such is the case when a bureaucracy is involved, be it local, state or federal. More layers = more problems. In an ideal world, states and localities would dictate the standards and have more immediate control over the course of the education of the kids in their communities. Unfortunately, in Rhode Island, it seems that the educational needs of the children has taken a back seat to other matters, be they political or financial. It’s time that changed. If the example I pointed to at the Stony Brook school is any indication, it looks like we just may be turning the corner.
I’d point out that I try to be positive when I can and Jim, ironically, chose to respond to a post in which I had given credit to some teachers for bettering their school. While Jim is correct in pointing to a whole suite of issues that affect education, the fact of the matter is that–and though Jim may feel it is the least of the problems–readjusting the union’s expectations is also the easiest to fix via citizen intervention. By maintaining school budgets at current funding levels, but spending less on teacher pay and benefits, it seems to follow that more money can go to other, perhaps even more innovative, educational programs. For instance, a parent outreach program with the goal of encouraging more parent participation, could be funded by money saved.
I understand that the problem goes beyond money. Educational priorities also need to be examined, as do some of the philosophies implemented in recent years. One example would be the idea of “mainstreaming,” which sounds benevolent on the face of it, but in reality can detract from the learning environment of (at the risk of being un-PC) “regular” students. No doubt, not all mainstreamed students are distractions, but some are. The idea that slower students can benefit from being in the same class as quicker-learning students is probably true, but a reverse effect on the quicker kids is also possible, isn’t it?
These are just some off-the-cuff ruminations intended to get a conversation started. It is easy to point out problems. At the very least, Jim has prompted me to wonder: what are some solutions?
After his speech for a gathering of (mostly) Portsmouth Republicans, Mayor Laffey took a sweeping path to not answering a question about whether he’ll challenge Lincoln Chafee for a seat in the U.S. Senate. It didn’t take much listening between the words to hear a “yes” — albeit an indeterminate one.
Considering that the sweeping path led through Laffey’s motivation for entering politics — fixing things that he sees broken first-hand — and his repeated preference for the “knocking on doors” aspect of the occupation, my ear picked up tones suggesting that the choice may not be between senator and businessman, but between senator and governor. Personally, I think sending Stephen Laffey to the U.S. Senate would be a waste of talent for Rhode Island. Given his particular strengths and chutzpa, he’d do us much more good here than in Washington. (And it isn’t a certainty by any means that he could beat a Democrat for Chafee’s seat, even if he manages to best Chafee in a primary.)
As for the rest of the event, it was certainly worth the time to attend. The sore need, however — one that organizer Deborah Mitchell Young cited as a reason for inviting bloggers — was to bring fresh ideas and, more importantly, passion to a largely atrophied state party. There’s a clear split, a rejuvenating split, coming within the RI GOP, displacing those who’ve become accustomed to the quality in Rhode Island politics that raises “business as usual” to the level of a virtue.
Come to think of it, perhaps the question mark for Mayor Laffey, as smart as he is, punctuates a shrewd intuition to wait for the necessary intraparty disruption to occur so that, rather than ride one side of the resulting wave away from the action, his cohort can fill the trough that results.
ADDENDUM:
One observation, offered with emphasis on its mildness: during his speech, Mayor Laffey’s frequent statements of “I did” became jarring. When I’ve heard him speak on the radio and in other venues, I haven’t noticed a similar self-referentialism. So perhaps it was the audience. Perhaps he was tired. But the mayor should take care to remember that “we” sounds incomparably better than “I” when it can be understood to mean the same thing.
ADDENDUM II:
I’ve posted some related thoughts on Dust in the Light.
Peggy Noonan’s latest editorial discusses the world of blogging. She makes the following general comments:
The bloggers have…freedom. They have the still pent-up energy of a liberated citizenry, too. The MSM [main stream media] doesn’t. It has lost its old monopoly on information. It is angry.
But MSM criticism of the blogosphere misses the point, or rather points.
Blogging changes how business is done in American journalism. The MSM isn’t over. It just can no longer pose as if it is The Guardian of Established Truth. The MSM is just another player now. A big one, but a player.
She then describes the power of the blogosphere:
1. They use the tools of journalists (computer, keyboard, a spirit of inquiry, a willingness to ask the question) and of the Internet (Google, LexisNexis) to look for and find facts that have been overlooked, ignored or hidden…What they are looking for is information that is true. When they get it they post it and include it in the debate. This is a public service.
2. Bloggers, unlike reporters at elite newspapers and magazines, are independent operators. They are not, and do not have to be, governed by mainstream thinking. Nor do they have to accept the directives of an editor pushing an ideology or a publisher protecting his friends…[it] is true of bloggers: It’s a story if they say it is. This is a public service.
3. Bloggers have an institutional advantage in terms of technology and form. They can post immediately…This is a public service.
4. Bloggers are also selling the smartest take on a story. They’re selling an original insight, a new area of inquiry. Mickey Kaus of Kausfiles has his bright take, Andrew Sullivan had his, InstaPundit has his. They’re all selling their shrewdness, experience, depth. This too is a public service.
5. And they’re doing it free…This too is a public service…That you get it free doesn’t mean commerce isn’t involved, for it is. It is intellectual commerce. Bloggers give you information and point of view. In return you give them your attention and intellectual energy. They gain influence by drawing your eyes; you gain information by lending your eyes…They get something from it and so do you.
6. It is not true that there are no controls…What governs members of the blogosphere is what governs to some degree members of the MSM, and that is the desire for status and respect. In the blogosphere you lose both if you put forward as fact information that is incorrect, specious or cooked…The great correcting mechanism for people on the Web is people on the Web…their agendas are mostly declared.
7. I don’t know if the blogosphere is rougher in the ferocity of its personal attacks…If you can’t take it, you shouldn’t be thinking aloud for a living. The blogosphere is tough. But are personal attacks worth it if what we get in return is a whole new media form that can add to the true-information flow while correcting the biases and lapses of the mainstream media? Yes. Of course.
In a nutshell, the liberty which is at the heart of the American experiment requires an engaged, informed citizenry. Citizens can only be engaged and informed when there are genuine public debates on major issues.
Over the years, the MSM became a one-sided ideological engine whose mission – implicit or otherwise – was to promote its view of the world. That inhibited open public debates. Politicians promoting their own self-interest have been no less prone to trying to control and limit the public debate. (Just look at Rhode Island House Speaker William Murphy, for example.)
By contrast, we do not try to stifle disagreements because our underlying motivation is to lift the quality of the public debate and let the best ideas win. We have conservative political leanings at AnchorRising. But not even all of us have identical views on all the issues. That is not only okay, but we celebrate it. It is why we will criticize certain ideas of other conservatives when we believe they are expressing misguided thoughts. We expect no less in return. That is why we welcome other sites which express alternative opinions in conflict with ours. After all, this is America!
The bottom line is that most bloggers are not afraid of open, even contentious, public debates. Democracy is, by its nature, a messy process. I believe that the blogosphere’s major contribution, the “what we do,” is to bring a fearless focus on putting previously unpublished empirical facts into the public debate, thereby lifting the rigor of the debate. That has advanced the cause of freedom.
In closing, it is no less important to keep a perspective on “how we do it.” With that in mind, I would reiterate a quote from William Voegli that was contained in a separate posting:
[Open full post]The inevitable post-election blather about unity fails to make the crucial distinction. A healthy democracy does not require blurring political differences. But it must find a way to express those differences forcefully without anathematizing people who hold different views.
While we have focused on the case of Bill Felkner and Rhode Island College quite a bit, it is worth noting that the “phenomena” of campus bias is by no means restricted to our little corner of the nation. The American Enterprise Institute held a symposium on Monday (transcript can be found at AEI) on the topic. Stanley Kurtz at NRO received a report from a contact that provides a good summary of the views expressed by the panel. Most striking, however, was the stance taken by Roger Bowen of AAUP. According to Kurtz’s contact, Bowen stated:
1. It is no surprise that most faculty in social sciences are liberals, since those fields traditionally have been about questioning identity, writing “progressive” history, and other causes.
2. Among liberals, there is a tremendous range of opinion, and critics such as Klein are simplifying their ranks.
3. Outsiders haven’t the “expertise” to police the faculty. Professors have undergone rigorous training that makes us trust their judgment more than that of journalists and the public.
4. Folks such as David Horowitz are mounting an intimidation campaign. (Bowen recalled his own experience having his class visited in the early 80s by rabble-rousers at Accuracy in Academia).
5. Conservatives prefer going into business, while liberals have a stronger social bent.
6. Most students come into college with too many conservative prejudices and they need to be shaken up.
7. He has never heard of a hiring committee that asked a candidate about political affiliation.
8. Finally, he said, “So the faculty is Democrat. So what?”
David French of FIRE took him on, but Bowen resorted to circular debate tactics and would admit to nothing.
Incidentally, the AAUP has a different focus in the discussion of “Academic Freedom.” Whereas students and those outside of academia define academic freedom as: 1) being able to hear and voice a diverse set of opinions within the context of a given course and 2) not hearing ideological based opinions on subjects outside of the subject matter of a course, the AAUP, in a recent meeting on academic freedom, appeared more concerned with other things.
. . . three issues of concern to faculty and others in the academic community. The policy statements address corporate funding of academic research, background investigations on faculty, and academic freedom and electronic communications. For a summary of these policies, read our press release.
They also released a statement on the efforts by Students for Academic Freedom, comparing them to the John Birch society. While the rhetoric of this statement does indeed sound high-minded, one must remember that they disregard the very real power dynamic in the classroom.
The AAUP casts themselves as the less powerful in the academic/government relationship. They believe that the power of government, brought on by the 9/11 attacks and the Bush Administration, by intimidation and resource (both financial and documents) restriction, will stifle the willingness of academics to speak up and challenge the conventional wisdom. In this, they cast themselves as the weak half of a particular power dynamic.
In contrast, they are blind to a similar dynamic that occurs in the classroom. They fail to recognize, or outright ignore, that they hold the power over the students in the teacher/student dynamic. High-minded rhetoric about academic debate sounds good but it ignores the very real perspective of a student. Even if a student can challenge a professor in class without repercussions, it is naive to believe that a student will actually exercise such academic freedom. Rare is the student who will submit coursework arguing against the conventional scholarly wisdom on a hot-button issue, much less expecting that their work will get a fair reading. I don’t mean to impugn those professors who both have their biases and are responsible scholars who can divorce themselves from those biases when grading a paper based on its intrinsic scholarly quality. However, to expect students to believe that a professor can do such a thing is unreasonable. In school, we are generally taught to give the “right” answer, after all. It is a big leap to give an “answer” that is not “right” and expect to get a good grade for it.
As such, academic discourse on controversial subjects, whether germane to a particular course or not, is stifled. The result is a flawed belief among faculty and students that the majority of people on campus share the same opinion on a set of issues: silence equals consent. While groups like FIRE and SFAF can help, in the end it will be up to individual students, like Bill Felkner, to challenge the system, grades be damned. In the secular universities of modern day America, academic martyrdom may prove to be the only way to effect change. How’s that for post-modern irony?
ADDENDUM: Thomas Sowell has his own opinion on Academic Freedom withij the context of the Ward Churchill controversy:
[Open full post]However symptomatic Professor Churchill may be of what is wrong with academia today, his situation has nothing to do with academic freedom. His remarks that provoked so much controversy were not made in a classroom or even on campus.
There are no real grounds for firing him under current rules and practices — which tells you what is wrong with those rules and practices. Professor Churchill is protected by tenure rules that are a much bigger problem than this one man or this one episode. . .
Should a professor of accounting or chemistry be fired for using up class time to sound off about homelessness or the war in Iraq? Yes!
There is no high moral principle that prevents it. What prevents it are tenure rules that have saddled so many colleges with so many self-indulgent prima donnas who seem to think that they are philosopher kings, when in fact they are often grossly ignorant or misinformed outside the narrow confines of their particular specialty.
Over the years, the notion of academic freedom has expanded beyond autonomy within one’s academic field to faculty governance of colleges and universities in general. Thus professors decide whether the institution’s endowment can be invested in companies or countries that are out of favor among the anointed, or whether students will be allowed to join fraternities or the Reserve Officers Training Corps.
There is nothing in specialized academic expertise which makes professors’ opinions on issues outside their specialty any better than anyone else’s opinions. In no other institution — religious or secular, military or civilian — are people who make decisions that shape the institution unable to be fired when those decisions lead to bad results.
The combination of tenure and academic self-governance is unique — and explains much of the atmosphere of self-indulgence and irresponsibility on campus, of which Professor Ward Churchill is just one extreme example. Re-thinking confused notions of “academic freedom” is far more important than firing Professor Churchill and thereby turning a jackass into a martyr.
Within my recent post on gambling is the observation, which is by no means an original thought, that government makes much revenue off of vice. The ironic flip side is that as government tries to “legislate morality” in the sense that they attempt to modify behavior (I’m thinking cigarettes here) by raising the cost, they also succeed in driving down demand. Thus, while initial revenue via a tax (such as the cigarette tax) will grow, the government will be forced to raise the tax to maintain the revenue stream as demand drops. In the case of the cigarette tax, more activist policies, such as making bars and restaurants smoke-free, futher exacerbates the problem of a tax-on-vice revenue shortfall by adding even more restrictions and dampening demand further. In short, government policy succeeds in demonizing, and taxing, a revenue stream out of existence.
A similar situation may be occurring with the gas tax. I first heard this story on Rush Limbaugh’s show while driving around yesterday. I wish I could say I was surprised.
College student Jayson Just commutes an odometer-spinning 2,000 miles a month. . .his monthly gas bill once topped his car payment. . .
So Just bought a fuel efficient hybrid and said goodbye to his gas-guzzling BMW. . .And that saves him almost $300 a month in gas. It’s great for Just but bad for the roads he’s driving on, because he also pays a lot less in gasoline taxes which fund highway projects and road repairs. As more and more hybrids hit the road, cash-strapped states are warning of rough roads ahead.
Officials in car-clogged California are so worried they may be considering a replacement for the gas tax altogether, replacing it with something called “tax by the mile.”
Seeing tax dollars dwindling, neighboring Oregon has already started road testing the idea.
“Drivers will get charged for how many miles they use the roads, and it’s as simple as that,” says engineer David Kim.
Kim and his team at Oregon State University equipped a test car with a global positioning device to keep track of its mileage. Eventually, every car would need one.
“So, if you drive 10 miles you will pay a certain fee which will be, let’s say, one tenth of what someone pays if they drive 100 miles,” says Kim.
The new tax would be charged each time you fill up. A computer inside the gas pump would communicate with your car’s odometer to calculate how much you owe.
The system could also track how often you drive during rush hour and charge higher fees to discourage peak use. That’s an idea that could break the bottleneck on California’s freeways.
“We’re getting a lot of interest from other states,” says Jim Whitty of the Oregon Department of Transportation. “They’re watching what we’re doing.
“Transportation officials across the country are concerned about what’s going to happen with the gas tax revenues.”
Privacy advocates say it’s more like big brother riding on your bumper, not to mention a disincentive to buy fuel-efficient cars.
“It’s not fair for people like me who have to commute, and we don’t have any choice but take the freeways,” says Just. “We shouldn’t have to be taxed.”
But tax-by-mile advocates say it may be the only way to ensure that fuel efficiency doesn’t prevent smooth sailing down the road. [emphasis mine]
What’s the message here? Buy fuel efficient cars and see tax/mile policies instituted….or don’t buy fuel efficient cars because tax/mile policies are going to be instituted. My guess? Few people will buy those cars anyway, the gas tax will stay and tax/mile policies will be instituted. For some reason, I just don’t trust government. Do you?
[Open full post]For the record, I thought I’d register my opposition to the placement of a casino in Rhode Island. However, I do support the people of Rhode Island being able to vote on the matter, so long as it is presented legally (unlike the fiasco last summer). During the controversy last summer, I posted about a research detailed in a ProJo Oped piece by Richard A. Hines of the Advisory Board of Citizens Concerned About Casino Gambling. Hines took a look at the socioeconomic impact made by the Connecticut casinos on the communities surrounding them. Hines found that the revenue claims touted by the casinos in Connecticut were overstated and that, in fact, Lincoln Park and Newport Grand generated more revenue, per capita, for the state of Rhode Island than did Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun for Connecticut.
But on a per-capita basis, Rhode Island actually collects more from Lincoln Park and Newport Grand than Connecticut collects from Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun. Per-capita revenue from these sources in Rhode Island is $186, compared with only $115 in Connecticut.
To repeat from my aforementioned post
to me anyway, the social costs have always outweighed any purported financial “gains” that a gambling casino would bring to the state. Hines further explains that the Conneticut communities that host the casinos have seen “increased traffic, demand for emergency services, crime, and need for affordable housing, schools and other municipal services have driven public expenditures far higher than any increased revenue from the casino taxes” and he provides figures to support his claims. (I note that he doesn’t make apparent all of his sources for these figures, though many appear to be from various State of Connecticut studies.)
For some examples of these social costs, read either my original post or Hines’ piece or this study.
I bring this up because there is now a new drive to vote on casino gambling via a new referendum that, it is hoped, will pass constitutional muster. Meanwhile, BLB Investors, a firm trying to purchase Lincoln Park, is doing its best to prevent the building of a casino in the state. In this effort, it has the qualified support of Governor Carcieri.
Julia Steiny provides an example of a school that has improved through the work of its teachers.
When the Rhode Island state authorities designated North Kingstown’s Stony Lane Elementary only “moderately performing” last year, the school staff was miffed. Indeed, they were so not-okay with the label, brainstorming about how to ramp up their students’ performance dominated their meetings with each other.
This year, Stony Lane was designated high-performing, improving and a Regents Commended School. Whew! That was quick. But that’s what a school can do if lots of different subsets of the school community are regularly talking over all the things, big and small, that might make a difference.
Steiny also gave an example of how the turnaround occurred. The main vehicle was communication.
I recently crashed an ongoing meeting in which each grade level, except kindergarten, talked with the teachers working with the children at the grade level below about how to strengthen their program. First, the kindergarten teachers talked with the first-grade teachers, and after an hour they left and the second-grade teachers sat down with the first- grade teachers, and so on and on until the fifth grade had finished its say.
I witnessed the changing of the guard when the first-grade teachers left and the third-grade teachers joined grade two. After a certain amount of shuffling and getting coffee, a very take-charge second-grade teacher named Brenda Glover said: “Okay, we’re here to find out what you need from us.” She paused a moment, then quickly amended: “And don’t say math facts.”
The third-grade teachers looked up, glanced at one another and said quite emphatically: “Math facts.” Everyone in the group either groaned or laughed. But they went on to explore a variety of ways of practicing and re-enforcing the basics of arithmetic. Second-grade teacher Diane Henault mentioned that “Every week we’re trying to get the families to work on math facts. And every single morning, right after announcements, we do 42 problems in three minutes. I’m trying to get the answers to be automatic. My question to you is: can I start letting some of them touch multiplication?”
Before that question could be answered, Rose Cameron, third-grade teacher, asked if the second-grade teachers mix together problems requiring both addition and subtraction? Well, it turns out that they don’t, at least not very often. Cameron says, “I’d really appreciate it if you did mix more because I have a lot of children who don’t even see the signs. They all need to go back and check to see what the problem is really asking of them. Even the really smart ones.” The second-grade teachers look at one another, nod, shrug, murmur assent and make a quick note. They’ll mix the functions more. Done deal. Crack closed.
These conversations across the grade-level seams went on all day, and in this way all sorts of small, but important alignments take place.
It heartens me to see changes being implemented. What is worth remembering is that this process was prompted by a negative report by an oversight authority under the spectre of state and national standards, such as President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act. As the example of Stony Lane shows, criticism can motivate and inspire. So, though they may have griped about the evaluation process and its results, the teachersl put in a genuine effort to “prove them wrong.” They succeeded and preserved their reputation while at the same time putting in place a process that benefitted the consumer of their product — the children. All that parents ask is that their kids get the best education possible, no matter what inspires it or how it is effected. The teachers at Stony Lane are to be commended.
[Open full post]Joseph Buffardi, of Cranston, believes that introducing the concept of merit to teachers’ career advancement is a utopian idea:
In a perfect world, one could make a case for instituting merit pay for teachers. But this is not a perfect world.
As a public-school faculty member for over 30 years, I will grant that not all administrators are unscrupulous. However, give that kind of control and decision-making power to some administrators, and the door is open for favoritism, patronage, fraternization, discrimination, cronyism, political maneuvering, and manipulation by management — causing on-the-job discord among teachers concerned with individual performance.
Buffardi glosses over two related considerations. The first is that public schools don’t exist for the purpose of providing teachers with a harmonious workplace. We should all prefer teachers to be content with their lot, because professional satisfaction surely results in better teaching, but they aren’t the first concern when it comes to education. The students are.
The second consideration is that the environment in which those students learn is ultimately the administrators’ responsibility, and they are not unaccountable if their shenanigans affect the children’s education. Perhaps some teachers are uncomfortable with such duties, but as a group, they have shown no fear of raising issues with the local community, and it is part of their job to make a case when they see things going awry.
Even if merit becomes a euphemism of favoritism, I’m not persuaded that rivalry, even a little bit of divisiveness, among teachers wouldn’t ultimately benefit the students. The “healthy group dynamic” that Buffardi praises can manifest as mob groupthink. Moreover, his subsequent assertion that “it’s no secret that an unscrupulous principal can hand-pick teachers and parents to form a rubber-stamp committee” casts doubt on the actual state of the “group dynamic.”
Teachers wary of merit need insist only that such rewards be placed on top of reasonable union-negotiated raises. That Buffardi characterizes functional merit-based systems as the stuff of fantasy makes audible an interesting philosophical echo of the recent spelling bee fracas in Lincoln. There, administrators claimed to interpret “no child left behind” as synonymous with “no child gets ahead.” Given that mentality in the public school system, opposition to merit pay sounds a bit like a “no teacher left behind” policy.
