More NYU Stuff

53 thoughts on More NYU Stuff

1. men certainly have just as much a right as women to have opinions about abortion and reproductive rights

   That’s generous of you, Jill. I don’t think they do, not at all.

2. Erm, yes we do. Our opinion may not mean as much as a woman’s opinion, but we certainly have a right to it.

3. That’s generous of you, Jill. I don’t think they do, not at all.

   I consider it my right to keep my dick in my pants. If any women insists that I must make her pregnant, she can go hell! I do have my reproductive rights.

4. Ha! Gloating rulez.

5. God, that brings me back to college and our republican/democrat/lib/green debates that we would have. They always ended up evolving into “everyone teams up on the republicans” debates, though, as social issues were always what the questions were about. Good ol’ midwest.

6. Don’t be too sad, you still have the presidency, and a fearless leader with the unique ability to screw up nearly every challenge he’s faced with.

   Awww, is that ALL we have? AND we lost the NYU debate! That bodes poorly for us out in CA. I may as well throw in the towel now! At least my taxes are lower…

7. The Democrats put up great people who had a substantive plan that they were able to back up with facts and data.

   Do tell? Is there going to be a forthcoming link of the debate transcript? I ask because I really want to read how this substantive plan addresses issues like:

   – Illegal immigrants as a class are net tax recipients and a net economic cost to the country, though of course a benefit to their employers and the employers customers. The National Research Council reports:

   The most comprehensive research on this subject was done by the National Research Council (NRC), which is part of the National Academy of Sciences. The study, conducted in 1997, found that more-educated immigrants tend to have higher earnings, lower rates of public service use, and as a result pay more in taxes than they use in services. In contrast, the NRC found that because of their lower incomes and resulting lower tax payments coupled with their heavy use of public services, less-educated immigrants use significantly more in services than they pay in taxes. The NRC estimates indicated that the average immigrant without a high school education imposes a net fiscal burden on public coffers of $89,000 during the course of his or her lifetime. The average immigrant with only a high school education creates a lifetime fiscal burden of $31,000. In contrast, the average immigrant with more than a high school education was found to have a positive fiscal impact of $105,000 in his or her lifetime. The NAS further estimated that the total combined fiscal impact of the average immigrant (all educational categories included) was a negative $3,000. Thus, when all immigrants are examined they are found to have a modest negative impact on public coffers. These figures are only for the original immigrant, they do not include public services used or taxes paid by their U.S.-born descendants.

   – The crisis in our healh-care system is exacerbated by provision of services for illegal immigrants:

   Non-citizens are putting the hurt on our hospitals. A study by the Florida Hospital Association estimates that uninsured non-citizens cost the state’s hospitals an average of $63,612 per patient last year.

   The tab is rising as the number of immigrants continues to swell from coast to coast. The American Hospital Association reported that its member facilities provided $21 billion in uncompensated health-care services last year.

   While not all those costs can be attributed to undocumented aliens, new Census data show that non-citizens are, by far, this country’s largest group of uninsured residents — 43 percent of the total.

   – A growing Mexican underclass, that even after 4 generations in the US, has a a high school drop out rate of 41%, compared to a national average of 23%, and a college graduation rate of 9.6% compared to a national average 45.1% putting the lie to the claim that assimilationist factors are working across generations.

   – The majority of the new jobs created over the last few years have gone to illegal immigrants while the joblessness rate of American Black men (20-64) (excluding those in jail and the homeless) soars over 25%, meaning that these men are idle for the whole year.

   – Illegal immigrants as a source of cheap (and taxpayer subsidized) labor for agribusiness act as an impediment to technological innovation that could automate agribusiness and create higher value technical jobs.

   Those are just some points off the top of my head and I didn’t even get into crime, culture, national security, etc. Please provide some additional information on the debate and how you refuted these types of findings. Or were your Republican opponents simply clueless?

8. Please provide some additional information on the debate and how you refuted these types of findings.

   …I have homework now? You’ve got to be kidding me.

   It’s 4am and I’ve been out all night, so now probably isn’t the best time for me to answer you’re question. So let me just say that I never argued that there aren’t good Republican arguments regarding education and immigration — there certainly are. The NYU College Republicans sure weren’t making them, though.

9. Immigration is one of those issues I cannot say enough about. As a matter of fact, I don’t place this problem under the category of “Immigration.” I categorize it as “Crime” because that’s exactly what it is.

   Now you may have some booger-eating moron like Hillary Klinton who thinks a person who jumps a fence and enters the U.S. illegally is an immigrant or an “undocumented worker” (snicker, snicker), but those with at least a first-grade education should know better. I enjoy using politically incorrect terminology. That’s why I call them Illegal Aliens. Sounds great to me.

   Place too much cargo on a ship and it will sink. We cannot allow everyone to enter the U.S. who wants to reside in our country. It’s a fact. We are going to have to start taking this seriously or we are going to suffer big time. Unfortunately, most of the people who steer our government have zero foresight. They’ll wait until the irreversible damage is already done and then say, “Oh, how could this happen? This is terrible. What to do now?”

   Sound familiar? Vietnam, Social Security, Iraq, 9/11, Katrina, and the list goes on and on and on and on…

10. Although TangoMan drove his argument home gloriously and supported it with facts, I also choose to bolster my perspective by citing real life situations. For example, I know a woman who had to pull her sons out of school and move them to a neighboring district because their classes were swamped with Mexicans who couldn’t speak English. Thus, everyone suffered. The teachers couldn’t get anywhere because they had to stop every 5 minutes to remind them that the English “H” isn’t silent: “It’s HEL-LO, Pedro, not EL-LO.”

    I can’t imagine moving to another country, enrolling my kids in a school, and expecting the teachers to use my first language. That’s really arrogant. Fortunately, my friend was able to get her sons enrolled in a “normal” school and now they’re doing great. Instruction proceeds at its normal pace.

    Gosh, maybe it’s just me, but don’t immigrants seem to lower the quality of life everywhere they go? Isn’t the crime rate in the U.K. soaring because of immigration gone unchecked? Hmmm? Didn’t the 9/11 terrorists take advantage of our pathetic immigration laws to pull off their hit? Hmmm? Isn’t Paris burning right now? Hmmm?

    I’d love nothing more than to hang a “No Vacancy” sign around the neck of the Statue of Liberty. No more huddled masses, please. We have plenty already.

11. Yes,
    not to mention the fact that the mass immigration of the Mexican underclass acts as a steam valve for Mexico. Historically it is the dissatisfied masses who motivate change in corrupt and stagnant political systems. The disgruntled Mexicans, instead of banding together and demanding change in Mexico, just come up here to work as wage slaves. This is bad for everyone, and the Mexican aristocracy are forced to do nothing. Vincent Fox loves illegal immigration because he doesn’t have to face Mexico’s major problems and George Bush loves it because it provides cheap labor which in turn allows Americans to have money to spend at Wal-Mart and the gas pump.

12. Gosh, maybe it’s just me, but don’t immigrants seem to lower the quality of life everywhere they go?

    Gosh, maybe it’s just me, but the immigrants that I’ve hiried seem to be a net benefit to the US economy. But maybe I’m wrong. Tell you what, I’ll fire them on Monday, and tell my customers they should buy from our European competitors because we can’t finish the product in time.

    Making Merka stronger, one xenophobe at a time!

13. Hmm, I don’t know about you, but I think the US is pretty strong…and we’re a freaking COUNTRY of immigrants?

    Or, is it just that they’re the “wrong” kind of immigrants?

    There are some serious issues to be had with immigration, and the language barrier.

    But this “I have mine, so fuck you” attidude is depressing. and fucked up.

14. don’t immigrants seem to lower the quality of life everywhere they go?

    Well, that’s certainly the opinion of a helluva lot of Indigenous Americans, who feel that the massive numbers of white immigrants to North America lowered the quality of life! The air, land and water are now polluted, many species of animals are now extinct, the elderly are less respected, women are less respected, there is less accountability to the public from those entrusted to govern, there is more class stratification and alienation, etc.

    Marksman2000, which tribe are you enrolled in?

    The disgruntled Mexicans, instead of banding together and demanding change in Mexico, just come up here to work as wage slaves.

    Grace, the same could be said for most of the European peoples who came to America. But since you mentioned it, Mexican citizens living in the United States can now legally vote in Mexican elections by mail—a reform that is already bringing change in Mexico. I wouldn’t worry too much about Mexican citizens; they have a far greater handle on who they are and where they come from than the average U.S. citizen, and a much better historical record of banding together and vigorously fighting for their own interests than citizens of the U.S.

15. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend the debate (law school has a funny way of utterly consuming every free moment you have) but reading this makes me wish I had so I could least offer a defense of my colleagues.

    So, I don’t know anything about what argument the CR’s put forward, but I would note that immigration is not always an easy for Republicans to debate because there is not really a “Republican” position on immigration. Democrats seem to be almost uniformly for open borders; on the Republican side you have Wall Street Journal business-oriented open borders types, Buchananite “fortress America”-style isolationists, security hawks, and those whose views are something of a mix. I’d point out that all of these groups however, with the possible exception of the Buchananites (who are probably the least numerous) all favor legal immigration as a proud tradition that made America great; they just draw the line differently as to how permissive we should be with our immigration policies. If anyone’s in the NYC area and wants to get a flavoring of the different views of immigration on the right, the NYC Lawyers’ chapter of the Federalist Society is debating this issue on Monday- click here for details.

    On education, I find it amusing that the Dems “won”, because in reality, all the good and truly progressive ideas for education are coming out of the right these days. Merit pay, charter schools, vouchers, the whole nine yards. The Dems’ position seems to be “hunker down and do whatever the teachers unions want”, i.e. protect the status quo. Oh, and keep throwing more money around, even though decades of that hasn’t had any appreciable effect on performance.

    Nice post though, Jill, except for the bit about the gender make-up of the debaters, which I think is pretty immaterial. Makes me wish I were back in the game. Maybe if they have a debate next semester and the issues are sexy, like gun control, I will make the trip downtown.

16. Merit pay, charter schools, vouchers, the whole nine yards.

    Jon, none of these can be called progress, hence I wouldn’t call them “progressive.”

17. We cannot allow everyone to enter the U.S. who wants to reside in our country. It’s a fact.

    We don’t allow everyone to wants to reside here to enter. It’s a fact.

    The problem with any Republican stance on immigration is that Republican political leaders are pressured to ignore the “third leg” of immigration–that is, strong enforcement of laws against hiring illegal immigrants.

18. mark,

    but the immigrants that I’ve hiried seem to be a net benefit to the US economy. But maybe I’m wrong.

    You don’t provide any specifics so it’s hard to tell whether the immigrants you’ve hired are chemical engineers from Taiwan, material scientists from India, and tool and die machinists from Korea, or illegal border jumpers with a 6th grade education who work in your cafeteria or assemble do-hickies by ramming a whatzit into the slot of the thingamajiggy.

    If they’re the former, the reseach shows that they actually are a net benefit to the US economy. Good for you. If they are the latter then the reseach shows that they are bad for the economy because they, and their families, draw more in services than they generate in economic activitiy. You’re leaching off of the taxpayers by way of indirect subsidy. Certainly that puts money in your pocket, but only via subsidized labor.

    Tell you what, I’ll fire them on Monday, and tell my customers they should buy from our European competitors because we can’t finish the product in time.

    Take a look at the underemployment data and you’ll see that there is a whole huge amount of slack in the US labor force. You could replace the illegal workers with tax-paying US citizens but you’ll have to pay competitive wages, not taxpayer subsidized, subsistence wages.

    Antigone,

    Or, is it just that they’re the “wrong” kind of immigrants?

    The problem is most certainly that they are the wrong type of immigrants. Our problem is not with immigrants who apply to come to the US, go through a screening process, are healthy and educated. Our problem is with criminals who break the law to arrive and stay here. Our problem is that these criminals foster a growing underground economy and tax cheating. Our problem is that we are a 21st Century technolocally-based economy and we’re subsidizing the importation of grade-school educated criminals. Our problem is that it is these criminals who are deciding whether they will be our neighbors rather than our elected representatives who decide on the criteria necessary for becoming a US resident.

    Most certainly, it is a problem of the wrong type of immigrants.

    La Lubu,

    The air, land and water are now polluted, many species of animals are now extinct,

    Isn’t it odd that when former Colorado Governor Richard Lamm ran for a seat on the Board of the Sierra Club on the specific platform of population and immigration control, which used to be foundational principles of the Sierra Club, he was targeted as a racist, and the default position of the Sierra Club is to support the increased air, land and water pollution that results from out-of-control illegal immigration and the low-tech businesses, which have less economic leeway to install polution control measures on their activities.

    and a much better historical record of banding together and vigorously fighting for their own interests than citizens of the U.S.

    That’s precisely the problem. They are banding together and fighting for their agenda in a country that didn’t invite them. This results in situations where illegally present criminals who chose to go to universities get state-subsidized in-state tuition waivers while US citizens from another state must pay higher levels of tuition.

    Further, the Mexican political establishment is meddling in US internal affairs to an astounding degree:

    Just how shameless is Mexico in promoting illegal entry into the U.S.? For starters, it publishes a comic book–style guide on breaching the border safely and evading detection once across. Mexico’s foreign ministry distributes the Guía del Migrante Mexicano (Guide for the Mexican Migrant) in Mexico; Mexican consulates along the border hand it out in the U.S. . .

    Disseminating information about how to evade a host country’s laws is not typical consular activity. Consulates exist to promote the commercial interests of their nations abroad and to help nationals if they have lost passports, gotten robbed, or fallen ill. If a national gets arrested, consular officials may visit him in jail, to ensure that his treatment meets minimum human rights standards. Consuls aren’t supposed to connive in breaking a host country’s laws or intervene in its internal affairs.

    Mexican consulates, like those of other countries, have traditionally offered consular cards to their nationals abroad for registration purposes, in case they disappear. In practice, few Mexicans bothered to obtain them. After 9/11, though, officials at Los Pinos (the Mexican White House) ordered their consulates to promote the card as a way for illegals to obtain privileges that the U.S. usually reserves for legal residents. The consulates started aggressively lobbying American governmental officials and banks to accept matriculas as valid IDs for driver’s licenses, checking accounts, mortgage lending, and other benefits.

    Quick to defend individual illegals, the consuls just as energetically fight legislative measures to reclaim the border. Voters nationwide have lost patience with the federal government’s indifference to illegal immigration, which imposes crippling costs on local schools, hospitals, and jails that must serve or incarcerate thousands of illegal students, patients, and gangbangers. Californians in 1994 launched the first protest against this unjustifiable tax burden by passing Proposition 187, banning illegals from collecting welfare. Mexico’s Los Angeles consulate swiftly joined forces with southern-California open-borders groups to invalidate the law, even giving the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles a computer and database to help build a case against the proposition. Mexican action against 187 apparently extended to Mexico as well. After a federal judge struck the initiative down in 1998, then–Los Angeles councilman, now mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa credited Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo with helping to undermine it.

    Since 1990, Mexico has embarked on a series of initiatives to import Mexican culture into the U.S. Mexico’s five-year development plan in 1995 announced that the “Mexican nation extends beyond . . . its border”—into the United States. Accordingly, the government would “strengthen solidarity programs with the Mexican communities abroad by emphasizing their Mexican roots, and supporting literacy programs in Spanish and the teaching of the history, values, and traditions of our country.”

    Each of Mexico’s 47 consulates in the U.S. (a number that expands nearly every year) has a mandate to introduce Mexican textbooks into schools with significant Hispanic populations. The Mexican consulate in Los Angeles showered nearly 100,000 textbooks on 1,500 schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District this year alone. Hundreds of thousands more have gone to school districts across the country, which pay only shipping charges. Showing admirable follow-up skills, the consulates try to ensure that students actually read the books. L.A. consulate reps, for instance, return to schools that have the books and ask questions. “We test the students,” explains Mireya Magaña Gálvez, a consul press attaché. “We ask the students: what are you reading about now? We try to repeat and repeat.”

    And it is hard to see how studying Mexican history from a Mexican perspective helps forge an American identity. The Mexican sixth-grade history book, for example, celebrates the “heroism and sacrifice” of the Mexican troops who fought the Americans during the Mexican-American war. But “all the sacrifices and heroism of the Mexican people were useless,” recounts the chronicle. The “Mexican people saw the enemy flag wave at the National Palace.” The war’s consequences were “disastrous,” notes the primer: “To end the occupation, Mexico was obligated to sign the treaty of Guadeloupe-Hidalgo,” by which the country lost half its territory.

    This narrative is accurate and rather tame by Mexico’s usual anti-American standards. But a student in the U.S. could easily find himself confused about his allegiances. Is his country Mexico or the U.S.? Study exercises that include discovering “what happened to your territory when the U.S. invaded” don’t clarify things. The textbook concludes by celebrating Mexican patriotic symbols: the flag, the currency, and the national anthem. “We love our country because it is ours,” the primer says.

    “The Glendale library [in the Los Angeles suburbs] is beautiful,” enthuses the L.A. consulate’s Magaña Gálvez. It has converted half of its space to a Spanish language center using Mexico’s course materials, she says.

    Yet does this Spanish-language project actually result in the acquisition of English? I put this question to Socorro Torres Sarmiento, the community affairs coordinator in the Santa Ana consulate. She dodged the question: “It’s difficult to do English at the same time,” she said. In other words, probably not.

    The contest that Sarmiento is promoting is another device to reinforce a sense of Mexicanness in students. It asks them to draw pictures expressing the “history, culture, natural resources, people, or traditional holidays [of] our beloved and beautiful country.” Winners get a trip to Mexico City at the Mexican government’s expense. Here again—in conservative Orange County, California, at least—some schools are skittish about sponsoring a Mexican government–designed program. Sarmiento responds that embracing Mexican culture is vital for students’ self-esteem. In her school visits for the contest, she asks students if they know who the Aztecs were.

    “Unfortunately,” she says, “they often don’t.” But if the students are to succeed in the U.S., a more relevant question might be: do you know who the Pilgrims were?

    The audacity of Mexico’s interference in U.S. immigration policy stands in sharp contrast to Mexico’s own jealous sense of sovereignty. It is difficult to imagine a country touchier about interference in its domestic affairs or less tolerant of immigrants. In 2002, for example, Mexico deported a dozen American college students (all in the country legally) who had joined a protest in Mexico City against a planned airport. Such participation, said Mexico, constituted illegal domestic interference.

19. Jon, none of these can be called progress, hence I wouldn’t call them “progressive.”

    You can call them whatever you want. But you can’t beat something with nothing…what are the bold, new ideas that your side has presented for progress in education reform lately?

20. “My” side? You mean, as in teachers? Here’s a bold, new thought for you: Politicians don’t know jack shit about the educational process. Anyone who suggests that public education ought to be effectively privatized and run like a corporation isn’t thinking about who gets educated. They’re looking to make money. That ain’t education.

    I’m not doing your research for you.

21. But Lauren, he’s not asking you to do research. He’s asking you what the (broadly, liberal) side of the ‘sphere is bringing to the table in terms of ideas to fix things.

    The drumbeat there for the last twenty years from your leaders (as long as I’ve been paying attention) is funding, funding, funding. Except that as every honest student of the subject knows, funding doesn’t correlate to outcomes for shit. Sure, you gotta have enough funding to have a working building and to pay people – but past that point, it just doesn’t matter. America is not full of schools being held in tents and classrooms with no teacher at the head of them.

    The idea that someone who is looking to make money isn’t thinking about the needs of the people from whom the money is made is interesting. It explains why the American capitalist model doesn’t give people clothes they want, cars they like, homes they can be comfortable in, books to read, computers to play on, furniture to sit on, etc – because the carmarkers and the computer designers are thinking about money, not about the people who will use their goods and services.

    Oh wait – all those incredibly successful sectors of our society ARE run by people who are thinking about money.

    Perhaps the idea that thinking about money makes it impossible to deliver good product has a hole in it somewhere.

22. don’t immigrants seem to lower the quality of life everywhere they go?

    No, in fact, immigrants are typically the only people willing to live in places that the “beautiful people” turn their noses up at. And then those neighborhoods become trendy, and the upper-middle class children of yuppies get their parents to rent them an apartment there. Or, alternately, after a generation or two, those immigrant familes make enough money to buy a home out in the suburbs, move away, and create space for the next wave of poor immigrants to settle in and make their own way.

    The problem for Republicans is that they can’t suppress their nativist instincts enough to oppose illegal immigration without exposing their innate hostility to immigrants and foreigners in general, and it turns people off.

23. “My” side? You mean, as in teachers?

    Uh, no, I meant as in liberals (broadly defined).

    Here’s a bold, new thought for you: Politicians don’t know jack shit about the educational process.

    That’s why conservatives (note: not the same thing as Republicans) have long favored getting politicians out of the process of micro-managing education.

    I’m not doing your research for you.

    My research? I’ve done it, thanks. You may want to consider doing some of your own, since your failure to cite even a single liberal policy propsal for education made in the past 50 years (other than more spending) has basically confirmed my original point: that all the intellectual heavy lifting on education reform is now being done on the right, while liberals are jealously guarding the status quo.

24. Tangoman, Here is a link to the top Superfund sites in the United States. You can also look up the top Superfund sites by state from this link. Funny, but none of these companies are noted for their use of illegal immigrant labor. Undocumented immigrants would have a very difficult time getting hired by any of these large companies. Undocumented immigrants tend to find employment as: farm laborers, fruit/vegetable pickers, sweatshop workers, meatpackers, gardeners, domestics, lower-paid restaurant labor, nannies, and construction day labor. Not exactly the big time when it comes to pollution. The pollution problem we have in this country does not come primarily from “mom-and-pop” cottage industry.

    The Sierra Club has long endorsed population control, and they’ve been called out for that for quite a while by others who see the words “population control” as code for “stop those swarthy masses from having babies!!” There is a history in this country of immigrant and nonwhite women being sterilized against their will (sometimes, without their knowledge), so it’s hardly paranoia for those of us who don’t fit the “Aryan” mold to not trust those who use such terminology. Richard Lamm…isn’t he the guy who made this speech about how multiculturalism (i.e., the idea that cultures other than WASP or other northern european cultures exist in and contribute to the United States) is destroying America? Lamm was targeted as a racist because he is a racist. And also, come to think of it, when did Mexico invite the United States to come in and invade Mexican territory? Oh yeah—that’s right, Manifest Destiny. Some more of that “immigration” you don’t like. Kinda like the “immigration” that created Texas.

    illegally present criminals who chose to go to universities get state-subsidized in-state tuition waivers

    Translation: students who came here as young children, who’ve never known any country other than the U.S., who’ve done all the right things by knuckling down and hitting the books, getting good grades, and getting accepted into college. Oh, and their tuition isn’t being “waived”. They have to pay tuition; they are just paying it at the in-state rate, as they should, since they are residents of that state.

    There’s a fine example of “compassionate conservatism”; putting the hammer to those who’ve done all the right things….work hard, stay out of trouble, study, earn good grades…..bah.

    The United States Chamber of Commerce is hardly what could be considered a “lefty”, or even a “liberal” organization. Nope, they’re firmly in the moderate conservative camp. Even so, they recognize immigration as essential to the functioning of the economy of the United States.

    Tangoman, you’re wasting your breath if you want me to get all worked up about Mexican immigration, whether legal or illegal. The same people frothing at the mouth over Mexicans frothed at the mouth over my ancestors, too. Perhaps yours, too. It’s the timeless story of “I’ve got mine, you go fuck yourself.”

25. You may want to consider doing some of your own, since your failure to cite even a single liberal policy propsal for education made in the past 50 years (other than more spending) has basically confirmed my original point: that all the intellectual heavy lifting on education reform is now being done on the right, while liberals are jealously guarding the status quo.

    Hey, Jon, what is it that I’m doing right now? What have the last four years of my own education involved? Rotating on my left thumb? Jon, Robert, did you attend public or private schools?

    Like I said, I’m not doing your research for you. You want to see what “liberals” — members of a singular movement with no deviation from a party line — think, you look it up yourself.

    Here’s some food for thought: for the last 150 years, naysayers have been shrieking about the crisis in education. A so-called crisis has been declared literally every decade since the public schools began in New England. In the meantime, study after study shows that, overwhelmingly, parents report that their children’s schools are doing fine even if some other school or schools out there are not. In other words, we have a “fine for me but not for thee” experience that is being responded to on a federal level, with next to no attention being paid to how schools are funded and curriculum is designed, unless it responds to standardized testing scores alone with no other federal nods to other forms of student assessment. Is standardized testing inherently bad? No. Is it wholly representative of student achievement? No. Does it accurately track a student’s educational process? Sort of, if you’re looking to see how well students take tests. Should teacher pay be tied to student test scores? No, and I’m thoroughly amazed that anyone would suggest such a thing.

    The Republican version of educational progress might include the national conference that was held this year that brought together state governors and business leaders — not a single teacher, principal, superintendent, aide, para, nobody who is actually involved in the hands-on learning process, sat on the panel, if they were invited at all. In the meantime, these business leaders were very happy to concede to an educational crisis because it sold their products. Politicians are happy to buy the crisis line because it helps them appear to be invested in improving the so-called crisis. In the meantime, public schools churn out plenty of thinkers who read and write and go onto college and make it in the world just fine.

    You want improvement? Untie school funding from property tax lines. Get political idealogues out of it, including the educational ideologues that the government cherry-picks to toe the party line. Nurture a culture that values education, pays teachers what they are worth, and tells students that there is inherent worth in the headwork that goes on in a classroom. Get rid of the culture that says beauty and money are what make the world go ’round. Get people in at the federal level who have a modicum of experience in the classroom apart from academic study and business interest. Keep schools from being partially funded by corporate sponsors who broadcast their ads into the classroom via Channel One and hang their advertisements on school walls, who feed students their shit food in the cafeteria, and sneak their product endorsements into story problems and lit exercises. Some of the shittiest curriculum I see comes from these businesses trying to eke their way into the classroom, and at this point, the schools are happy to take what they can get because Our Dear Leader is all too happy to funnel money away from schools into other venues.

    The only people who I see truly belligerent about how the public schools perform are those who resent rising property taxes. Telling.

    In other words, don’t sell my kid, teach him. Education is not a consumer product meant to be tailored to those who can buy it.

26. One more thing you might find interesting. School boards, in the Midwest at least, are overwhelmingly populated by conservative and Christian leaders. You might take up some of your complaints with them instead of shitting on teachers.

27. La Lubu,

    There is a history in this country of immigrant and nonwhite women being sterilized against their will (sometimes, without their knowledge), so it’s hardly paranoia for those of us who don’t fit the “Aryan” mold to not trust those who use such terminology. Richard Lamm…isn’t he the guy who made this speech about how multiculturalism (i.e., the idea that cultures other than WASP or other northern european cultures exist in and contribute to the United States) is destroying America?

    I’m sure you know that history is filled with many events and philosophies. I’m sure you know that Marxism was a far more butcherous philosophy than Nazism and has killed many tens of millions of innocent lives. Marxism is based on class struggle. Democrats also see much of the world through a class-based filter. Now, if I came to this forum and said that Democratic Party ideals should be out-of-bounds because class-based philosphies have led to mass-murder, how seriously would you take my position? You’re doing this very thing when you demagogue anti-illegal immigration on the basis of sterilization policies of the past. If you want to actually advocate the position that being against illegal immigration is the same as advocating for mass sterilization then go ahead and make your case. I would though, humbly suggest, that instead you debate in good faith and assume your opponents are not eviiiiillll racists.

    As for the link to Richard Lamm, you seem to be operating under the assumption that all good, right-thinking people, will see the self-evident truth that what the man wrote should cast him into the deepest cauldrons of hell, and so you make no effort to actually make a case for what is racist about his position. Either his positions are supportable or they’re not. You can always provide counter-factuals to falsify him. Please do so. I’m even prepared to take up most of his case and advance it if you’re inclined to assume the position of refuting his points.

    Lastly, I’d be worried less about framing the Liberal position on issues like immigration as a response to Conservative positions, and instead focus on the merits of the position. It really doesn’t do the country much good if Democrats advocate for criminals and serve a constituency that is built on identity politics simply because the Republicans are for more selective policies on immigration. Wouldn’t it be better for the Democrats to put a stop to the importation of hordes of uneducated people, and like the Liberal bastion of Canada, start advocating for a point system, where people apply to immigrate, are judged on things like their age, health, education, languages spoken, etc – criteria that actually benefit the body public of Canada. Democrats can be for expanded levels of immigration, but all of it legal, all of the applicants being screened, all of the applicants having prima facie prospects of not being burdens to society, etc. Isn’t that really better for the country than hordes of 7th grade peasants? Does it really matter that by advocating for a rational and fair immigration reform, that Republican’s may also get some benefit? Just because they want a better system does that mean that you have to demogogue the issue with references to sterilization? Just because multiculturalism is a failure for the very populations that it is supposd to help and the Republicans are noticing this does that mean you have to oppose them and continue to inflict harm on the populations Democrats say they represent?

28. Wow, looks like I touched a nerve.

    Hey, Jon, what is it that I’m doing right now? What have the last four years of my own education involved? Rotating on my left thumb? Jon, Robert, did you attend public or private schools?

    Quite honestly, I have no idea what any of this is supposed to mean, or why you decided to make this personal. Yes, I know you’re a teacher, and I think that’s awesome. My brother’s going to school for education, too, actually, but what does that have to do with anything? What does where I went to school have anything to do with anything? For the record, I went to a public high school, and have since attended two private universities, but that doesn’t have anything to do with the validity of conservative arguments for or liberal arguments against education reform. How is any of what I said “shitting on teachers”?

    All I asked for was some liberal policies for education reform; you declined to offer any, telling me you “wouldn’t do [my] research for [me]”. Look, it’s not my fault if you can’t or won’t articulate your side’s position, or if your side doesn’t have a coherent position to argue. The whole point of debate is to marshal arguments and facts in support of a particular position. Out of your whole diatribe, I still can’t discern a single substantial idea for education reform, other than your apparent visceral hatred of private enterprise contributing to school funding. The rest of it amounts to a wish that schools were better and that there were more teachers involved in the federal education bureaucracy. But even the latter is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

    Here’s some food for thought: for the last 150 years, naysayers have been shrieking about the crisis in education.

    Nobody in this thread said anything about a “crisis in education”. You brought it up. I think we can do better in education, but I never said I thought it was a system in “crisis”.

    The only people who I see truly belligerent about how the public schools perform are those who resent rising property taxes. Telling.

    Again, no one’s been belligerent in this thread except you. I don’t understand how wanting to give impoverished parents the same opportunities to send their kids to the tony prep schools where limousine liberals like John Kerry send their kids, or even just to a public school in another district, is “belligeren[ce]” against public schools. I don’t understand how wanting financial incentives for successful teachers is “belligerence”.

    Our Dear Leader is all too happy to funnel money away from schools into other venues.

    Are you kidding me? Bush has been spending like a drunken sailor on education. The federal education budget went up 50% in his first term, and I don’t have the stats but I’m almost positive it’s gone up more since. The problem with all that federal spending is that roughly half of it just goes to Education Department overhead. So again, I understand that you love the “more spending” idea, but it’s been tried.

    In other words, don’t sell my kid, teach him. Education is not a consumer product meant to be tailored to those who can buy it.

    I would agree with you on that, but I’m not advocating that education be “tailored to those who can buy it” and neither are most in the conservative education reform movement. I think this speaks you a deep misunderstanding on your part on what exactly we’re advocating.

    One more thing you might find interesting. School boards, in the Midwest at least, are overwhelmingly populated by conservative and Christian leaders. You might take up some of your complaints with them instead of shitting on teachers.

    And most inner city school boards are overwhelmingly populated by liberal democrats. So what? And what “complaints” have I made, exactly?

    Look, perhaps we’ve both been a little heated here, but I can sincerely respect that you’re arguing from a position of good faith and that this is a subject in which you’re emotionally invested because you’re an educator. I would hope you’d extend me the same courtesy. I don’t get why you think I’m “shitting on” you, or on teachers generally, and if I gave that impression (although I can’t imagine how I would have) I apologize for that. I just truly think that America can do better by our children, and that by and large conservatives are doing a better job of articulating how we can do that. I remain open to being persuaded by any powerful liberal voices for reform, but so far I haven’t heard any, in this thread or anywhere else. I only hear the voice of opposition.

29. Nobody in this thread said anything about a “crisis in education”. You brought it up. I think we can do better in education, but I never said I thought it was a system in “crisis”.

    And yet that’s the entire basis for enacting the changes that you suggest, because there is something inherently wrong with schools.

    I don’t suggest that you yourself are shitting on teachers, but I’m tired of people ripping on public education who generally have little to no understanding on how the process works. This is a general frustration that I absolutely had to vent on since I’m seeing so much more of it lately. You can call it belligerence if you want, but for someone who attended these crappy public schools in dire need of reform, you seem to be a fine thinker. Why crap on the hand that fed you?

    All I asked for was some liberal policies for education reform; you declined to offer any, telling me you “wouldn’t do [my] research for [me]”. Look, it’s not my fault if you can’t or won’t articulate your side’s position, or if your side doesn’t have a coherent position to argue.

    Sorry if I’m busy (grading papers, thanks for asking), but I have a slew of books on my shelves that could answer your question just fine. If you want a reading list I can make one for you. The fact is, neither political party has a coherent position on public education that serves as a solution to the real problem: Students don’t come to school prepared and ready to learn, parents oftentimes don’t back teachers or make a fuss if a project is too challenging, and our society in general does not value education except as a means to an end.

    Any change enacted before these issues are addressed honestly is going to fall short.

    And merit pay? You can’t endorse that and say you’ve done your research.

30. And yet that’s the entire basis for enacting the changes that you suggest, because there is something inherently wrong with schools.

    You can be in favor of giving parents more opportunities and making incremental changes to our education system without thinking there’s “something inherently wrong with schools”.

    You can call it belligerence if you want, but for someone who attended these crappy public schools in dire need of reform, you seem to be a fine thinker. Why crap on the hand that fed you?

    Again, I don’t really understand why you think school choice and related ideas amount to “crap[ping]” on the public school system. This is the kind of knee-jerk anti-reform mindset that I’ve been referring to: any potential change is immediately dismissed out of hand because there’s this ingrained fear that somehow, someway, it could be bad for the entrenched education establishment. Never mind that it might be good for the kids.

    Sorry if I’m busy (grading papers, thanks for asking), but I have a slew of books on my shelves that could answer your question just fine. If you want a reading list I can make one for you.

    You’re busy grading papers, I’m busy writing one. And sorry, but I already know what your books say. Jonathan Kozol will scream at me and tell me that America is a hateful, racist nation. Duly noted.

    And merit pay? You can’t endorse that and say you’ve done your research.

    Sure I can:

    About 80% of Meadowcliff’s students in the K-to-5 school are black, the rest Hispanic or white. It sits in a neighborhood of neat, very modest homes. About 92% of the students are definable as living at or below the poverty level…

    Students’ scores on the Stanford achievement rose by an average 17% over the course of one year. They took the Stanford test in September and again in May. Against the national norm, the school’s 246 full-year students rose to the 35th percentile from the 25th. For math in the second grade and higher, 177 students rose to the 32nd percentile from the 14th. This is phenomenal. What happened in nine months?

    Meadowcliff has two of the elements well established as necessary to a school’s success–a strong, gifted principal and a motivated teaching staff. Both are difficult to find in urban school systems. Last year this Little Rock public school added a third element–individual teacher bonuses, sometimes known as “pay for performance.”

31. Jonathan Kozol? You project.

    Sorry to see that you’ve avoided the crux of my argument, primarily that your idea of proper reform doesn’t address the underlying problems with the school system. It must be that crappy education you’ve received that blinds you. And sorry, man, but one article won’t convince we when compared to a lifetime of growing up around teachers (special ed, for whom merit pay has little affect), a college education of pedagogy and practice, and actual practical experience.

    Your slip is showing.

32. You can call them whatever you want. But you can’t beat something with nothing…what are the bold, new ideas that your side has presented for progress in education reform lately?

    Fuck, gotta love the bold new idea of “kids don’t need to learn to read when their only job is to grow up to be ignorant suck-up Republican voters”. What next? The bold new conservative idea called The Return to Feudalism?

33. …primarily that your idea of proper reform doesn’t address the underlying problems with the school system

    Actually, you and Jon and myself are pretty largely on the same page when it comes to the types of things we would like to see. I would much rather have a lavishly-funded marble academy where philosophers teach truth and beauty than the Pepsi-Cola Neighborhood School. The question isn’t ends. We all have the same ends at heart. Amanda disagrees; Amanda is a child.

    Where we differ is on means. And the reason for that difference, I submit, is not that Jon and I are evil heartless Republicans, while you are a brainless pantiesless slattern. The difference flows from our view of the world, and our view of what is practical to be done.

    Your laundry list of things to improve is, with one exception which I will address last, a cultural list. You want parents who are committed to their children’s education, a society that views education as a desirable good in and of itself, and so forth. Well and good; I’ll sign on to that list if any genies appear and offer me some wishes. However, the tools of social engineering that we possess do not give us the power to reorder the daily priorities of fifty million American parents. Our public institutions lack the ability to remold our inmost hearts and rechannel the energy devoted to Pamela Anderson’s jugs to an appreciation of Caesar’s compact prose style. (Got to work Caesar in.)

    We cannot change those things, except individually. Other than telling my friends “value education more!” my ability to make these cultural changes is already working full-steam ahead. So, it is a waste of time for me to devote further mental resources towards worrying about the things that you worry about; I can’t change them.

    However, there are things that we can change. We do have the ability to make adjustments to the ways that schools receive funding, where funding is a problem. However, it is not possible to conduct any type of rational analysis of the school systems and conclude that funding is the problem on a widespread basis. There are schools that don’t have much money and which have terrible performance – but there are also schools with even less money that do a terrific job, and schools literally floating on oceans of cash that are lucky not to be burned down each day by their charges. It is manifest that fiscal questions are tangential to the larger questions of school quality – the correlative factor simply isn’t there – but half of the participants in the discussion have some kind of dogmatic blind spot when it comes to economic questions in the educational arena, and are impervious to evidence. (You yourself go on about the Great Leader diverting funds – which is the most obviously counterfactual thing I’ve ever seen you say. Worse than counterfactual; it’s the first stupid thing I’ve seen you say. Ah well, even Jove nods.)

    So we in the reality-based community (cough) focus on things that we can change. We observe that in every other field of human endeavour without exception, monetary incentives can drive positive behavioral changes, and so we suggest making monetary incentives part of a teacher’s incentive structure. Perhaps we’re wrong about how to do it best; let’s have a discussion of that, then. We observe that in every other field of human endeavour, the ability of consumers of a good or service to choose their provider has positive effects on quality and price, by destroying the ability of incumbents to rent-seek, and so we suggest increasing the level of choice in the school system. Perhaps our ideas on how to do this are misguided; very well, let’s figure out how to make choice work without hurting the public system. And so forth.

    The final comment I have concerns teacher pay, the non-cultural value that you endorse as part of your list. Higher teacher pay would certainly be a good thing. However, you might consider the fact that it may not be a good thing for you, or for existing teachers, for the simple reason that markets work.

    If I may be forgiven the boldness of assuming Socrates’ mantle, let’s conduct a thought experiment. Bill Gates, stricken with remorse at the unearned income he has won by exploiting the work of public school graduates in his silicon mill, decides to devote his fortune to improving teacher pay. Rather than get bogged down in the minutiae of funneling money to good teachers, he decides to simply inflate the entire profession. Every teacher working in a public school, from now until the end of time, will get an additional $50,000 per year bonus to their salary, straight from Bill. For purposes of our thought experiment, let’s assume that no enterprising school board cuts their teacher salaries – every teacher makes $50,000 more than they would have made otherwise, forever.

    What do you think will happen?

34. I can’t imagine moving to another country, enrolling my kids in a school, and expecting the teachers to use my first language

    First language?

    What about only language.

    What other way are they going to learn?

    Whilst I think there should be intensive language classes for those that need it – we had the regional intensive language class at my school which meant that they could improve their English skills and then join the classrooms. It was educational for both the ‘traditional’ students as well as the kids from the NESB – we learnt things, that as native English speakers, we weren’t aware of.

    People bemoan these people’s right to an education but then complain when they can’t speak English to your standards.

35. Yeah, I can see all those teachers lining up to do remedial English education and helping special-ed students when their pay is tagged to “performance”.

    All I asked for was some liberal policies for education reform

    Here’s a nice conservative, free-market policy you should approve of: triple teacher pay. That will attract the most qualified, competent people, and create competition for teacher jobs.

36. I could write pages and pages on this subject but, alas, no time.

    Robert, I realize all this is pie in the sky thinking, but the solutions that Republicans have offered so far only lead to more problems. Schools are not little corporations and as such should not be reformed a la free market policy.

    As far as my diverting funds comment goes, I was referring to slashing funds to “failing” schools in order to get his voucher program underway.

37. Honest to goodness, is improving schools really any more complicated than lowering class size, increasing teacher pay (that is to say, lowering salary gaps between rich and poor districts), making sure local communities are involved in their local schools, and ensuring that all teachers are trained?

    Schools’ reliance on local property taxes is, in my mind, the largest obstacle to improving the educational system. Poor districts (such as Camden, NJ) often have the highest property taxes in the state, but can’t compete with richer districts next door (meanwhile, high property taxes retard homeownership in struggling communities). Rich school districts already have large advantages over poor ones when it comes to parent involvement, organization and political power. When they are given gargantuan resource advantages as well, they easily siphon away the best teachers and administrators from the districts that need the most help. This is the case in New York – whenever NYC raises teacher pay, Scarsdale and other suburbs follow suit. The problem is not that all teachers are underpaid – after all, the median teacher in Scarsdale makes more than $90,000 a year. The problem is the ability of rich districts to drain talent from poor ones.

38. Steven, in my state the average starting teacher salary is about $27,000, and we’re middle of the road.

    Other than that, AMEN to everything else you said.

39. Obviously, both legal immigration and the proliferation of illegal aliens inside our borders will turn into one of those problems that somehow “surprises” certain people when we realize there is no way to right our predicament. Why? Because most people are unable to see beyond the moment, their moment, to be more exact.

    A good example:

    maybe it’s just me, but the immigrants that I’ve hiried seem to be a net benefit to the US economy. But maybe I’m wrong. Tell you what, I’ll fire them on Monday, and tell my customers they should buy from our European competitors because we can’t finish the product in time.

    Wow. Nothing I love more than debating the impacts of immigration with someone who can’t see past the weekly production goals and quarterly profits on a spreadsheet. Kinda scary really.

    Wrecking Merka quicker, one short-sighted idiot at a time!

40. Here’s a nice conservative, free-market policy you should approve of: triple teacher pay. That will attract the most qualified, competent people, and create competition for teacher jobs.

    I’ll support your policy suggestion under two conditions: 1.) completely fire the existing teacher base and 2.) dismantle teacher unions. If we don’t do these two things then all that will happen is that the unions will direct the increased pay package to the existing teacher base, thus blocking qualified, competent people from entering the profession and creating competition. What really needs to be done, along with other reforms, is to increase teacher quality:

    Education majors achieve much lower SAT scores than those choosing other majors. When they finish college, it’s the same story. Education majors are outscored, on the Graduate Record Exam, by other majors anywhere from 91 to 259 points. College students who major in education are among the least qualified. Some of the least qualified students, taught by the least qualified professors, have been entrusted with the education of our children. We shouldn’t be surprised by their falling for fads and substituting methods that work for methods that sound good. This mediocrity isn’t new. When Harvard University’s president retired in 1933, he told the trustees that Harvard’s Graduate School of Education was a “kitten that ought to be drowned.” More recently, a knowledgeable academic said, “The educationists have set the lowest standards and require the least amount of hard work.” In some circles, education departments have become known as the university’s “intellectual slums.”

    Poor districts (such as Camden, NJ) often have the highest property taxes in the state, but can’t compete with richer districts next door (meanwhile, high property taxes retard homeownership in struggling communities). . . .When they are given gargantuan resource advantages as well, they easily siphon away the best teachers and administrators from the districts that need the most help.

    How about we inject some facts alongside the conjecture:

    On average this year, the state’s 31 special-needs districts are outspending their suburban counterparts by about $3,500 per student.

    Trenton, which receives 84 percent of its budget from the state, now spends $14,567 per child, higher than its most affluent neighbor in Mercer County, Princeton Regional ($13,230), and far above rapidly growing Washington Township ($9,383).

    Also, look what happens to troubled student performance when you have generous funding:

    Princeton High School (and thus the district as a whole) ran afoul of the statute for the first time, based on the lagging scores of African-American students on a standardized English test given to 11th graders. Last month, the school was cited for the second year in a row, this time because 37 percent of black students failed to meet standards in English, and 55 percent of blacks and 40 percent of Hispanics failed in math.

    One of the standard complaints about No Child Left Behind by its critics in public education is that it punishes urban schools that are chronically underfinanced and already contending with a concentration of poor, nonwhite, bilingual and special-education pupils. Princeton could hardly be more different. It is an Ivy League town with a minority population of slightly more than 10 percent and per-student spending well above the state average. The high school sends 94 percent of its graduates to four-year colleges and offers 29 different Advanced Placement courses. Over all, 98 percent of Princeton High School students exceed the math and English standards required by No Child Left Behind.

41. completely fire the existing teacher base

    What purpose does this serve and who will replace them?

42. all that will happen is that the unions will direct the increased pay package to the existing teacher base

    That’s a little hard to do if it’s not in the collective-bargaining agreement; unions do not cut the teachers’ checks. I realize that ‘dismantle the unions’ is sort of a reflexive conservative response to all ills from school problems to rainy weather, but let’s be realistic about what unions do and don’t do.

    As for firing the entire existing teacher base, good luck doing that and hanging on to those experienced, qualified teachers you DO have. Better to set teacher standards that everyone has to meet, and quietly phase out teachers who decide that perhaps this is no longer going to work for them.

    On average this year, the state’s 31 special-needs districts are outspending their suburban counterparts by about $3,500 per student.

    Could that be due to the expense of special-needs students, ya think?

    It’s simple market economics: people go where the money is. If bright, qualified people figure out they can make as much money teaching kindergarten as doing tax law, you’ll get more and better kindergarten teachers. Mind you, they won’t have the same prestige because working with kids is sort of women’s work and you don’t wear three-piece suits, but from the market POV that’s irrelevant.

43. Indeed, Mythago. For that matter, I think people have a completely misunderstood idea of what tenure means in the public school system, which is the only reason why I can see anyone would want to fire the entirety of working teachers today.

44. both legal immigration and the proliferation of illegal aliens inside our borders will turn into one of those problems that somehow “surprises” certain people when we realize there is no way to right our predicament

    Question: what is the functional difference between the current wave of immigration from our southern neighbors and the previous waves of immigration from our Atlantic neighbors? (Posession of arcane government-issued documents has no effect on the social and cultural impacts of such waves.)

45. That’s a little hard to do if it’s not in the collective-bargaining agreement; unions do not cut the teachers’ checks.

    ? ? ? ? ? What, you think existing teachers, and their union representatives, are going to sit still while new people are brought into be teachers and those new people are paid 3 times greater than the unionized teacher that they work next to? No way that’s going to happen. The higher salaries will go to the existing teachers, who are protected by seniority. The salary increase won’t serve as any incentive at all, it’ll simply better compensate the existing teacher base.

    I realize that ‘dismantle the unions’ is sort of a reflexive conservative response to all ills from school problems to rainy weather, but let’s be realistic about what unions do and don’t do.

    Too bad then that I’m not a conservative.

    As for firing the entire existing teacher base, good luck doing that and hanging on to those experienced, qualified teachers you DO have.

    Those teachers can reapply and be hired by objective standards, rather than kept on when some of their peers are fired and have people squawking about favoritism from the principal. Better to do a Reagan’s Air Traffic Controller Tactic.

    Better to set teacher standards that everyone has to meet, and quietly phase out teachers who decide that perhaps this is no longer going to work for them.

    There is a school of thought, most famously articulated by Machiavelli, which says that if you need to institute painful reform it is best to avoid a death of a thousand cuts, spread out over years, with everyone anxious about whether they’re going to be the next on the chopping block, and always running the risk of losing the backbone to do the reform properly. Instead, it is better to be brutal all at once, suffer the grief, and then have it done with. Those remaining know that the reform is over, those who were cut can get on with their lives sooner, and the reform is committed to.

    All one need do is look at the sorry assed reforms we perpetually endure in the field of education – they never accomplish anything because they’re all compromised.

46. The higher salaries will go to the existing teachers

    Of course they will. Would you expect anyone to sit still while new employees’ salaries are raised past theirs? No, you increase everyone’s salaries. This also helps with problems called “turnover” and “retention”.

    Better to do a Reagan’s Air Traffic Controller Tactic.

    Yes, and that worked oh-so-well to keep experienced air traffic controllers in their jobs, did it? Instead of firing and rehiring, why not simply implement standards and expect everyone to meet them? I doubt you’d be happy if your boss said “Instead of setting new goals, we’re going to fire you all and make you reapply for your old jobs”?

    Funny how the only ‘compromise’ you can imagine is by teachers, as if they were the only thing standing between us and a fine educational system.

47. Funny how the only ‘compromise’ you can imagine is by teachers, as if they were the only thing standing between us and a fine educational system.

    Thank you for saying it so I didn’t have to. Teachers are the easiest punching bag. Anyone who can only place blame on teachers has some reexamination to do.

48. No, you increase everyone’s salaries. This also helps with problems called “turnover” and “retention”.

    But that doesn’t solve the problem, it only rewards the problem. What we want to do is to attract more able people into the teaching profession than currently exist there. Education faculties on university campuses are intellectual ghettos, attracting the least able faculty and the least able students. Teacher quality is a large part, though certainly not the only part, of the problem. The existing teacher base is a product of the weak educational standards and unions serve to protect the unqualified and intellectually weak teachers from market forces.

    why not simply implement standards and expect everyone to meet them?

    It’s evident that you are earnest in your position, but if you’re inclined to convince me and others that this is workable, then you need to demonstrate why such an endeavor won’t be subject to dilution and stalling efforts. Look at what has happened to prior teacher certification efforts – they’re taken to court, they’re picketed, they’re politically targeted for removal, they’re gamed to the point that they don’t accomplish their stated goals.

    You see, I’m not against your suggestion in principle, it’s just that I don’t think that the principle can be implemented because it’s been tried and always defeated by those it is meant to address. Therefore, a cleaner and more decisive tactic is needed. You can’t negotiate around incompetence with those who are defending it and holding reform hostage until some incompetence can be permitted.

    I doubt you’d be happy if your boss . . .

    If my business is failing to meet it’s goals, my boss shouldn’t be worried about my happiness. If she has a plan then she needs to act on it. If I think that I can help in that plan then I’ll make my case to the boss. My unhappiness about the boss’s dilemma doesn’t really matter. Similarly, teacher unhappiness at the fact that since most of their colleagues aren’t the sharpest tools in the box that reform efforts are thus required to attract more capable people to the profession is really immaterial.

    Don’t get me wrong, it’s not just teachers that are the problem. Education schools are a HUGE part of the problem, so too with ideologically motivated, though unreliable, research that underpins much of the pedagogical tools used by teachers, and for that matter the administrative principles prevalant within the educational establishment. Many of these problems were recognized as far back as the 1930s and yet the persist, in large part because of institutional inertia. Which brings me back full circle to my point, you don’t change institutional inertia from the inside with gradual reforms because the vested interests fight back, and they are indeed powerful. You have to have decisive amputation of the disease. Sorry for sounding melodramtic but images of surgical trauma are running through my head at the moment 🙂

49. Hey Jill,
    Thanks for covering the debate, and linking to a fairly flattering picture that still can’t hide my height issues. (Not that I’m bitter or anything.) I can tell that conservative bloggers (at least on immigration) are a scary, scary bunch, who use the exact same arguments against our current crop of immigrants as the fucking nativists did against my grandparents.

    Oh and Jon, Jill’s point about the gender makeup of the debaters is important because, in a school that is 60% female, the Republican club has for two years running failed to have a female member debate on their side for longer than 60 seconds. Based on the piss-poor showing of the male bozos who were up against me, you also can’t argue that the club is selecting its speakers purely on merit, at least not without grievously insulting all women Republicans at NYU.

50. Education faculties on university campuses are intellectual ghettos, attracting the least able faculty and the least able students.

    Again: market theory tells us that’s because we don’t invest much money in those faculties and we don’t pay teachers well. Paying existing teachers more is just something we have to do, because you can’t very well pay new teachers a bunch more than older teachers. That doesn’t prohibit implementing tough standards for existing teachers: you get this faboo salary but you have to show that you are capable of doing your job, and if you’re not, you’re out.

    My unhappiness about the boss’s dilemma doesn’t really matter.

    Sure does, if boss’s plan is a bad one, and she loses good employees who figure they can do better for themselves elsewhere. Meaning boss will chase off the best employees.

51. Paying existing teachers more is just something we have to do, because you can’t very well pay new teachers a bunch more than older teachers.

    There are always some stellar teachers to be found, but most of the teachers in the field simply don’t deserve the pay increase. I understand that they are good people doing a very important job for society, but the numbers really tell the tale. They are, as a group, the least intellectually equipped of most univeristy majors, taught by faddists whose research is looked upon with dismay by colleagues in other departments.

    You’re asking the public to trust the teachers to reform themselves and quite frankly the public doesn’t trust the teachers. Every time standards for teachers are proposed they are fought tooth and nail to protect the teachers who shouldn’t be really shouldn’t be teaching. The fact that better qualified candidates will be drawn to higher salaries would point to a way of reforming the public school system. If teachers who haven’t been producing the results expect to be paid the same salary that the more intellectually qualifed newcomers will be earning then I think the public will simply give up on public schooling and turn to other alternatives. Here’s a recent survey:

    Its single most compelling finding is that “if money were not an issue,” only 46 percent of white public school parents and 30 percent of black parents would prefer that their child continue to attend a district-operated public school. A staggering 48 percent of white public school parents and 68 percent of black parents would opt for private (or charter) schools.

    The teachers have blown their credibility, and quite frankly, if the interests to be protected are those of teachers rather than those of a viable public school system, then that becomes very clear to the public.

    A triage is required – sacrifice the prinicple of public schooling so as to further the interests of teachers, or sacrifice the interests of teachers so as to bring in more intellectually capable replacements.

    Clearly, no politician has the fortitude to propose a wholesale reform like that which I’m proposing. The path of least resistance is to mouth platitudes, game the tests, give into the unions, and hope that self-interested parents take advantage of charter and private schools, thus slowly killing the beast. Kiss public schooling good-bye. I happen to think it’s worth fighting for, for many reasons, one of which is the civic unity aspect of public schools that is absent in a universe of disparate institutions serving different communities. However, even a system of charter schools will be better than an ever-failing system of public schools designed to keep teachers happy.

    Look, there’s a lot wrong with education these days, and it’s not all the teacher’s doing, but this thread seems to be concentrating on teachers so I’m simply focusing my comments on teachers. I comment on education blogs frequently, and most of my criticism centers on research, ideology and pedagogy, and not so much on the personnel.

52. i wholeheartedly resent the use of the term “buchananite”

53. I wrote the bulk of the house edit about the debate, though the issues with format were mostly Rachel’s. What I believe she wanted was in fact a more structured, formalized debate – 3 minute intro for each side, 5 (or however many) minute response for each side, 3 minute rebuttal, and so on, each on a specific pre-determined point. Or however formal debates are typically setup. Audience participation seemed to do little for the sophistication of the content itself.

    Also, she felt that the topics themselves were overly broad, and would’ve been more useful had they been more specific. Rather than broadly “immigration,” which is a massive topic, even pre-terrorism considerations (which are often dubious, admittedly), perhaps specifying “US-Mexico immigration issues.” With education, narrowing it to say NCLB or vouchers or charter schools would’ve been vastly more productive. I largely agree with this sentiment.

    Against our (actually, mostly my) claim that no real new ideas were introduced a number of people have specifically and solely pointed to that particular immigration position as the example of a new idea being broached.

    I suppose the caveat of “realistic” should’ve been added, as closing our borders even after a massive short-term influx seem unrealistic at best. For one, (and this is a question I attempted to pose via the flawed but I suppose otherwise unamendable post-it note system) when would we re-open them again? And would simply the Mexican border be sealed? What about workers immigrating from say Canada that have guaranteed employment lined up during this closed border period? Secondly, there’s no telling what the effects of such a massive influx of immigrants over such a short period of time would ultimately be, but I doubt they would be good.

    I would also contend that Rachel, Lucas and I were perhaps the closest ones there to a neutral third-party, and given that it’s well-known we all lean left, even that assertion borders on dubious. I would say that we had no vested interest in any case.

    Were the Republicans in horrible form? Most definitely. Unprepared and obnoxious. But it doesn’t mean the Democrats were perfect, which is the message most loudly being put across, and why we felt strongly about giving a message to both sides.

    I suppose a way that the Dems could positively spin this is that utterly low level of debate put forth by the Republicans didn’t force the Dems to be at the top of their game.

    On a purely personal level, I felt that the only Dem debator to truly stand out was one of the guys on immigration, who really knew his shit and had for the most part a great way of getting it across. I don’t know his name, but he was the one that wasn’t trying to be a smartass, which was refreshing given that nearly everyone else was. So kudos to him.

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