Harold Meyerson, editor of “The American Prospect,” takes a close look at the election results and concludes that the Democrats lost because they failed to govern as Democrats. They did not take action to increase economic prosperity, and consequently, did not turn out their base of voters. Republicans are even less likely to produce policies to increase economic prosperity, but in a contest to turn out your base, the Democrats had nothing to offer their base, and a sizable chunk of the base didn’t bother to vote.
It would be wrong, he writes, to conclude that the electorate turned more conservative, because wherever offered the chance to raise the minimum wage, the voters did.
He writes:
Sixty-three percent of respondents told pollsters they believed that the U.S. economic system generally favors the wealthy, while just 32 percent said that it is fair to most. And a wave of ballot measures to raise state or city minimum wages carried wherever they were put before voters — from deepest-blue San Francisco and Oakland to solid-red Nebraska, South Dakota, Arkansas and Alaska…..
Tuesday’s verdict makes clear that the Democrats cannot win by demographics alone. Republicans failed to improve their dismal performance among Latino and African American voters or among the young, but these groups’ low turnout helped doom Democrats in blue states particularly. Voters ages 18 to 29 constituted just 13 percent of the electorate, down from 19 percent in 2012. Latinos favored Democrats by 62 percent to 36 percent, but they constituted just 8 percent of voters, the same level as in 2010, despite their growing share of the population. Tuesday’s electorate tilted white and old — which is to say, Republican….
Yet the same factors that lowered the turnout of the Democratic base also cost the party votes among whites: the failure of government to remedy, or even address, the downward mobility of most Americans. Democrats who touted the nation’s economic growth did so at their own peril: When 95 percent of the income growth since the recession ended goes to the wealthiest 1 percent, as economist Emmanuel Saez has documented, voters view reports of a recovery as they would news from a distant land. Even though it was the Republicans who blocked Democrats’ efforts to raise the federal minimum wage or authorize job-generating infrastructure projects or diminish student debt, it was Democrats — the party generally perceived as controlling the government — who paid the price for that government’s failure to act.
But with the exception of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has been plenty outspoken about diminishing the power of Wall Street, the Democrats have had precious little to say about how to re-create the kind of widely shared prosperity that emerged from the New Deal. The regulated and more equitable capitalism of the mid-20th century has morphed into a far harsher system, just as Americans told the exit pollsters, and the Democrats, whose calling card to generations of voters was their ability to foster good economies, are at a loss for how to proceed.
Educators had little reason to come out to vote; in many states, the Democratic candidate was indistinguishable from the Republican candidate, and both took campaign contributions from the same Wall Street sources. Education should have been the Democrats’ strong suit, given that there are at least five million professional educators, and many millions of public school candidates. But this was an issue that the Obama administration gave to the Republicans by acting like Republicans, by embracing the Republican education agenda of testing, punitive accountability, and choice.
The lesson of this election should be clear: Democrats can’t win by acting like Republicans.
“. . . tilted white and old — which is to say, Republican. . . ”
Careful, them’s fighting words!
It’s obvious that Obama is a hard core neo-liberal by his agendas/policies, and this means as long as he is president, the Democratic Party will not change—they will continue to act more like Republicans then the pre-Obama era.
The GOP was hijacked by the neo-conservatives under G. W. Bush, and now the Democratic Party has been hijacked by the neo-liberals under Obama.
The two major parties might as well combine and call themselves the Neo Party.
You did not go back far enough, It was Bill Clinton who turned Democrats into a party dominated by neoliberals, under the name “New Democrats,” which was done in order to garner the Southern vote. Thus, anti-poverty and anti-labor policies that Republicans could only dream of were put in place by Democrats then, such as reforms to welfare and trade, to the benefit of corporations, resulting in the subsequent outsourcing of millions of jobs to low wage workers in foreign nations.
It was telling when, under that egises, Democratic leaders implemented union busting tactics, such as Mayor Daley in Chicago, when he brought in non-union Walmart stores despite many community protests. When Clinton was idolized at the Democratic convention that nominated Obama, it should have been a red flag that more neoliberliasm was in store from this GOP Lite party.
Chi-Town,
Presumably the members of any community could prevent Walmart from successfully operating a store by not shopping at the Walmart store.
On the other hand, presumably I could drop 10 pounds if I stopped eating a quart of ice cream in one sitting.
FLERP!,
Indeed you may be looking for a way to prevent your future self from eating ice cream. In a similar way, some citizens in the community were looking for a way to prevent other citizens in the community from shopping at Walmart.
That does sound like my future self, actually. He’s always like, “Shut up, past self, I’m not going to let you stop me from exercising my rights as a consumer! And I look good!”
I refuse to shop there, but they strategically put the first Walmart stores in low-income areas here. Sorry, but when poor people can pay less there than at higher priced stores outside their neighborhoods, it’s not really a choice.
Chi-Town,
Paying more for stores outside their neighborhood is a choice?
I presume that you mean that Walmart charged less than stores in the neighborhood and you do not think poor people in the neighborhood should choose the lower priced store. Is that correct?
Typical TE. He has no problem with Walmart policies, such as their practice of hiring non-union workers and paying so little that the company refers many employees to government assistance programs, such as Food Stamps, so the company can make more profits through underpricing. This, from the right wing Waltons who hate government while benefiting from it. Their policies have also stripped Main Streets of mom and pop shops across America. Support for such practices, implemented by a family with 6 heirs who have more wealth than 40% of our country, is truly despicable, but highly predictable from the heartless TE.
Not going to waste any more time on you, TE, so you can leave your circuitous questions at the door.
Chi-Town,
If keeping Walmart out of poor neighborhoods is “allowing” poor households to buy more expensive food and clothing, who exactly are you punishing by keeping Walmart out?
I think Clinton did a lot of great things but I understand he has few if any fans who post here. One thing that happened under his administration was a much stronger economy with higher levels of employment.
“One thing that happened under his administration was a much stronger economy with higher levels of employment.”
Yeah, built on the dot.com bubble that burst soon after. But hey, guess it was good while it lasted.
Cripes, TE, there are scores of studies that show that Wal-Mart is a net-loss to nearly every community it infests. It drives out local business owners/employers who pay decent wages and benefits and makes Wal-Mart the only game in town for both employees and customers, thereby creating a downward spiral.
Dienne,
Do you have some citations? Those articles would be interesting reading.
BTW, this downward spiral often ends with Wal-Mart itself deciding that the store is no longer profitable enough, so even they close up shop, leaving behind nothing but bleakness, sort of like the Once-ler family closing up shop after the Truffula trees were all chopped. But then, I don’t suppose you have any earthly idea what I’m talking about, do you?
I am poor and even though Walmart’s prices are the lowest in my area, I won’t shop there because I live a principled life. I don’t patronize profiteers who exploit people. I try to make do with less and it’s not easy, but at least I live in a city where Walmart is not the only game in town. Most people in poverty that I know feel they have no choice but to shop at Walmart because of their low prices. That is one of the business strategies that Walmart uses to exploit the poor and Democrats have been complicit in enabling that exploitation.
Clinton comes from Walmart country. Hillary used to sit on the Walmart board. I would never, ever vote for another Clinton because I believe that would ensure continued neoliberal policies that benefit only corporations.
Dienne,
I should add that it is the car that most damaged local retailers, allowing customers to travel longer distances. If you really want to bring back local retail, don’t allow people to travel more than a days walk from their home.
TE,
Why fix something that isn’t broken? It’s no secret that you are fond of Charters, but there is no reason to shut down public schools and replace them with private sector Charters that siphon away money for a profit one way or the other.
And if you ask for evidence, read Diane’s book—how many times have I suggested you read “Reign of Error”—or the Stanford study that revels the socioeconomic breakdown of the PISA test proving that:
In fact, “Disadvantaged and lower-middle-class U.S. students perform better (and in most cases, substantially better) than comparable students in similar post-industrial countries in reading. In math, disadvantaged and lower-middle-class U.S. students perform about the same as comparable students in similar post-industrial countries.”
In addition, “On average, and for almost every social class group, U.S. students do relatively better in reading than in math, compared to students in both the top-scoring and the similar post-industrial countries.”
And “The performance of the lowest social class U.S. students has been improving over time, while the performance of such students in both top-scoring and similar post-industrial countries has been falling.”
http://www.epi.org/publication/us-student-performance-testing/
Lloyd,
I argue in favor of choice schools largly because it allows schools to specialize. Traditional zoned schools must try to be all things to all students and that is just not achievable.
TE,
I think your argument has no merit, because there is no guarantee that these for-profit and/or even non-profit corporate Charters—that find ways to make money through other methods that siphon off taxes from the public schools—are going to offers those so-called specialize subjects for every child in the United States, who can afford to take one but only if there is a profit to be made.
Have you even paid attention to the number of private-sector Charters that file bankruptcy and close their doors leaving the taxpayer with the bills they couldn’t pay, when they did not make a profit or have enough money to pay the hefty salaries for the managers, CEOs and major stock holders?
For instance, even at Stanford, a continuing studies class and/or extension class, must attract enough tuition paying students to turn a profit and pay the professors salary or the class is closed.
What you advocate means a significant investment and burden for tax payers when an individual parent of a pre-school to 12th grade student wants a subject for their child that few if any other parents/children are interested in. In effect, a class of one.
This specialization in education exists at the college level for mature adults to take advantage of when they select the college of their choice based on what that college offers, be the college a state or private sector institution, to attend, if they can afford it and if they are accepted. In addition, in many cases, then the adult student has to move to the college that could be located in another state or even on the far side of the country to take advantage of what they want to learn.
If you mention virtual classes, I want to point out that the quality of these classes varies across the spectrum from horrible to great, but even in a great virtual class if the student isn’t a motivate student willing to work individually with maturity, persistence and discipline, then the odds are that an immature, unmotivated student will learn little or nothing, and maturity/discipline comes with age and experience.
It think it is highly arguable that most six-year olds and even 18 year olds—thanks to how the brain is wired between the ages of 15 to 25—are not going to do well in even the best virtual classes.
Lloyd,
I think there is a guarantee that traditional zoned public schools will not provide those specialized approaches to education, which is why I am argue in favor of allowing students to choose the school. If you want to regulate charter schools to require some specialization, that seems like a reasonable position to me.
I am unsure why you are bringing up Stanford and virtual classes.
TE,
Stanford and virtual classes were mentioned by me to make two points:
FIRST—In the profit world and/or the world where nonprofits pay huge salaries to their managers/CEOs and owners, a specialist subject will not exist and/or survive without a large population of students that would lead to enough $$$$ to support the class.
SECOND—I mentioned virtual classes, because when I took a graduate class in writing Op Eds at a brick and mortar university, we were taught to consider what the other side of an argument might bring up and then disarm that counter argument in the original Op Ed piece. That means we have to second guess the critics who will disagree with us. The point I was attempting to make with the virtual option is that success depends on two factors: the quality of the virtual class and the motivation/discpli8ne of the student of any age who is sitting alone at home in front of a comptroller screen.
In addition, I don’t think like an academic or a scholar. I think like a journalist, an author, and a writer, and when I write anything be it an Op-Ed, feature piece or news, I’m thinking of the widest possible audience, and not the person I’m disagreeing with.
The results have been flowing in for years revealing how the for profit/non-profit private sector Charter schools work, and that model does not support your thinking that choice for students who want rare classes few or no one would be interested in is unrealistic, because it would not bring in enough money to make it profitable for the private Charter.
This is where a tutor is called in and a student enrolls in a private class if one exists in the evening after regular school hours.
In Asian countries and in the Asian-American community, when parents want their child to learn a topic or enhance their learning in any subject beyond what is being taught in the public schools, they pay a private school or tutor out of their own pocket. They don’t expect the taxpayers to foot the bill for that.
I don’t want my taxes to pay for your children to take classes that only they are interested in that are not offered at local public schools because their wasn’t enough demand for those subjects from the general student population.
In addition, the more CCSS testing restricts the curricula, the less choices students will have in the public schools giving people who think like you more to complain about.
Do you rationally and honestly think that if the voters were given a choice of where their tax dollars would go when it comes to education, majority would be willing to send those dollars to a private corporate charter school just so a few parents could send their children there?
We already know the answer to that question, and that explains why the corporate driven, fake education reform movement is doing all it can to avoid the democratic process and let the voters decide. Instead, the billionaire oligarchs are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on elections across the country to fool voters and pack elected school boards, the courts, state legislatures, Congress and the White House, with their puppet politicians.
Far from avoiding the democratic process, charters are the product of decisions by elected state legislators.
Fortunately many educators and legislators recognize the value of offering options, whether they be a language immersion school, or Montessori, or arts focused, etc. Fortunately some districts also recognize the value of doing this, empowering educators to create options within districts.
“Far from avoiding the democratic process, charters are the product of decisions by elected state legislators.”
When the elected representatives stop representing the people, that isn’t democracy. It’s a sham, a fraud.
Yes, I understand that from your perspective, when legislators do what you want, that’s democracy in action. When they don’t, it’s a “sham & fraud.”
The people yes
The people will live on….
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
“Where to? what next?”
One of the places the people have decided to go to, in more than 40 states, is to offer opportunities for teachers and parents to create public schools open to all, no standardized test admissions.
Sometimes people misuse these freedoms – and there is corruption (as there is sometimes corruption in unions – which still are an excellent idea).
The broad scope of history in this nation is to expand opportunity for low income – the wealthy who can afford private schools or suburban, elite “public schools” have a range of opportunities…the public school choice movement – both within districts and via charters – offers broader opportunities for low and moderate income youngsters & their families.
I’m not quite sure from this particular comment of your where you stand—what your thinking is.
Do you support the traditional democratic public schools with elected school boards and the states in charge?
Do you support the private sector Charter movement?
Do you support the CCSS and its rank and yank testing agenda?
Lloyd, our children attended urban district public schools, k-12, and all 3 of them have worked for the district they attended (St Paul, Mn), I was an urban public school teacher & administrator for 14 years. My wife was a St Paul public school teacher for 33 years (recently retired).
The organization I work with helps district & charter public schools improve. We also help build closer working relationships between high schools and colleges. And I write a weekly column that appears in a number of suburban & rural papers.
It appears that in addition to being a public school teacher for more than 30 years (congratulations on that, incidentally), you have written some award winning books. What else are you doing now that you have retired?
I support the charter school concept within public school districts where teachers actually run the schools instead of a corporate, profit hungry, dictatorial CEO like Eva.
In fact, the first school where I worked after being hired full time was run by a principal who organized the teachers into teams who made almost all of the curriculum and management decisions with his approval and support. After he had a stroke and had to retire early, I never worked with a principal who used the same management methods Ralph Pagan did. Pagan showed us how great it could be to teach when it was a collaborative effort that included students and parents. Together we tamed one of the most dangerous middle schools in Southern California and turned it into a learning oasis for the students who lived in the gang dominated community around the school.
I’ve been to China about ten times. My last trip was in 2008, three years after I retired.
Other than that, I read, watch films and write—for instance, I write for my four blogs, forums like the one found here on Diane’s Blog, and continue to work on the next novel that I plan to have out in 2015.
But it seems that most of my waking hours are spent promoting the books I already have out.
The easiest part about writing a book is writing the book. The promotion seems endlessly demanding and always challenging.
I think I’m busier now than when I was a teacher working 60 to 100 hours a week.
Lloyd,
What percentage of existing charters were created by teachers?
I have no idea. Look it up if you want to know. If that information is available, you can find it as easy as I can.
Lloyd,
It may well be that you support the majority of charter schools in the country.
Agree that it takes more effort to get the word out about a book than write it.
Sorry, meant to mention that the “People Yes”, from which I quoted, was written by Carl Sandburg.
Lloyd,
The majority of charter schools are not part of any chain, so it would seem that they can staff a school without a large number of students.
You may be distresed to learn that your taxes go to provide vouchers to realitivly poor students that they can use to attend private schools. It is called the Pell Grant program.
By the way, are my children the only ones who do not count as part of the “all” that Dr. Ravitch talked about in the title of the blog or do you not wish to pay for courses for any student that has unusual academic needs?
TE,
You digress—as usual. Stick to the topic.
The 9,000 students Eva Moskowitz all but stole from the NY public schools cost about 339 public school teachers their jobs.
And according to Glass Door.com, the typical salary for a Success Academy Charter School’s Lead Teacher ranges from $52,780-$70,035, with an average salary of $62,989.
In addition, the a piece published by the Huffington Post reported “Success Academy charters have among the highest rates of teacher turnover every year, which would not happen if teachers enjoyed the work.” In fact, more than half of the teaches left the schools ahead of the 20130145 school year. In one school, three out of four teachers departed.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-ravitch/charter-schools_1_b_5781474.html
In comparison, starting teacher salaries in the NY City Schools range from $45,530 (bachelor’s degree, no prior teaching experience) to $74,796 (bachelor’s degree, master’s degree plus 30 credits, 7.5+ years teaching experience). Teachers who have a master’s degree but no teaching experience will start at $51,425. With annual increases plus increases for additional coursework, teachers’ salaries will rise to the current maximum of $100,049 per year over time.
The million that Eva Moskowitz pay herself and uses for PR has to come from somewhere so she takes it out of her teachers pay and benefits. The biggest difference for teachers is job security, With Eva there is no due process protection as there is in the NY Public Schools. There is also no way for teachers to protest unless they quit and the numbers reveal how many are protesting Eva’s management methods and demands by leaving.
What about the turn over rate for the public schools?
“Almost a quarter of entering public-school teachers leave teaching within the first three years (U.S. Department of Education, 2007). The rates are higher in schools with low academic achievement, leading many to conclude that policies to reduce teacher attrition are needed in order to improve student achievement.
“Teacher retention may affect student learning in several ways. First, in high-turnover schools, students may be more likely to have inexperienced teachers who we know are less effective on average (Rockoff, 2004; Rivkin et al., 2005; Kane et al., 2006). Second, high turnover creates instability in schools, making it more difficult to have coherent instruction. This instability may be particularly problematic in schools trying to implement reforms, as new teachers coming in each year are likely to repeat mistakes, rather than improve upon reform implementation. Third, high turnover can be costly in that time and effort is needed to continuously recruit teachers. In addition to all these factors, turnover can reduce student learning if more effective teachers are the ones more likely to leave.”
Click to access 1001270_teacher_attrition.pdf
Lloyd, You must have been a fine teacher. You are a patient person. Props to you. You’ve cited the requisite information. I await TE’s response with baited breath and gritted teeth.
Ignore TE, Dienne. Apparently, some people in Kansas know nothing about the wide variety of public transportation that has long been available to people in big cities like NYC and Chicago.
Victorino,
Indeed public transportation is just as culpable in the decline of retail. The ability of a store to to charge high prices is always other stores (or of course, home production). The great enemy of the candlemakers is, of course, the sun: http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html
What nonsense. Local stores thrived in my city (which has a larger population than your entire state), for many decades after people had cars and public transportation. It’s giant corporations that have done in local retailers, like Walmart, by offering lower prices as a result of paying unlivable wages to US workers and slave wages to workers in foreign manufacturing plants. The politicians that paved the way for that are culpable as well, including Clinton.
Victorino,
No doubt your local retailers are pleased that you are willing to pay whatever they wish to charge for thier wares, no matter what more distant retailers charge.
Don’t waste your energy, Lloyd. TE is referring to the school district in his small KS college town world and he has been told repeatedly about the many different kinds of choices that other school districts offer. He has learned nothing and just likes to argue the same old same old.
Cares,
I do try to be precise in my language and talk about traditional zoned schools. Certainly there are school districts which have outstanding qualified admission schools like Stuyvasent High School.
Stuyvesent High School.
10281
That is the zip code for Stuyvesant High School.
“Stuyvesant High School and the other seven specialized high schools are public high schools established and run by the New York City Department of Education to serve the needs of academically gifted students.”
How does this high school decide who the academically gifted students are who live close enough to attend?
This model does not work for everyone and can’t serve everyone. It is a merit based system and a limited number of students must compete to be accepted and attend.
There are 1.1 million public school students in NY City. How many attend the seven specialized high schools that enroll through competition and merit?
Actually, there are nine Specialized High Schools in NY City, and a test is used to get in probably similar to how China tests students to rank them for entry into academic high schools and those who don’t make it are sent to vocational schools. That number is huge compared to the ratio that goes on to attend a high school in China.
Stuyvesent High School, by its very nature, is unsupportable for every child in the United States unless we strip away the merit system that is used to accept students, and then Stuyvesent High School will not be the same school that students competed to get in.
Lloyd,
Those types of schools can only exist outside of the traditional zoned school system. The qualified admission schools skim and take funds away from traditional zoned schools. They, in the words of Dr. Ravitch, rob Peter to advantage Paul.
TE,
I totally disagree that the nine specialized high schools run by the New York City Department of Education to serve the needs of academically gifted students is skimming funds away from traditional zoned schools.
The reason why this is not skimming is because the money stays within the public school system and what NY City has done with these specialized schools is create schools that operate as if they were all focused AP or Honors classes and by organizing these schools they way they have, they are getting more bang for their tax payers by concentrating students who will get the most out of what is offered.
If these students were spread out in zoned schools, the enriched AP and Honors style classes would not be able to offer as many options.
In fact, in a large district like New York City, what has been achieved with these nine specialized schools is EXACTLY what you suggest, but can’t get because you made the choice to live in a rural area where the local district doesn’t have the money or number of students to duplicate the same process/offering.
You claim to be an economist but don’t seem to understand the underlying principal of supply and demand. If there is only one customer for a product compared to a product that has a million customers, which product will make it to the market.
The public schools serve the widest possible student population and not the individual few who want something the public schools don’t offer and tat same principle applies to the private sector with a vengeance. It’s why private sector companies go bankrupt and out o business and explains what is happening to Charter schools that can’t attract enough students to make the profit they need to survive.
Your method of thinking about school choice is unsustainable and can’t survive and a supply and demand world.
Therefore, the nonprofit, democratically supported and operated public schools are the only option that will work when serves must be supplied to students with special needs because of a court order.
If the courts eventually mandate that all private sector Charter schools can not reject students and must provide all the same needs the public schools offer, how long do you think those private sector Charters will stay open?
Fascinating rationale for the creation of elite quasi private schools using standardized tests to screen out students – exactly the kind of thing that charters often are (inaccurately) criticized for doing.
Clearly for some it’s ok for “public” schools to screen out kids using standardized tests – as long as those schools are run by local board. It’s ok for schools to screen out kids from low income families who don’t live in the immediate community – as long as those schools are run by local boards.
Fortunately state legislatures in more than states, often on a bi-partisan basis, see the value of offering other options.
Screen out, NO!
Testing isn’t the only option for admittance to a specialized school in a district the size of New York City.
Stanford, for instance, requires a SAT test in addition to other material when a student submits an application, but the value on the SAT is only a small portion of the admittance procedure.
Stanford looks at the whole student: they consider GPA, require the student to write an essay, look at the variety of classes the student took in high school that included athletics and student social clubs.
If admittance to Stanford had rested totally on the SAT, then our daughter would have never been admitted. But in high school, she graduated with a 4.65 GPA, and was a scholar-athlete who ranked 5th in the state of California in Pole Vault when she was 16. She also joined so many out-of-class academic and science clubs that my wife and I lost track of them all.
You don’t screen out someone who stays in the system even if the school in that system is a specialized high school offering courses designed for students who qualify for entry.
With 1.1 million students, the population to support this option within the system exists. Take away those numbers, and the option would go away and private sector Charters would not be able to step in and fill the gap without the same numbers of students.
I suspect that Eva Moskowitz has a goal to take over the education of all 1.1 million students. If so, she will be one of the highest paid CEO’s in America and any children who resist whatever classes and teaching exists under her management outside of the control of elected school boards, will end up being sent into the prison pipeline.
Sty and other similar schools rely on 1 test to determine who gets in:
http://stuy.enschool.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=126615&type=d
“Places are awarded to those students who earn the highest scores on the entrance exam, the Specialized High Schools Admission Test.”
Very sad but true.
Here, I agree that the 9 specialized schools in New York City should follow an admission process similar to Stanford’s—-if NYC has to include a test in the process
To be admitted by the results of a test only would mean those schools were equal to China’s high schools where students take a test at the end of middle school and are then ranked and placed in high school based on the test score.
Even China has critics in China whoa re citizens who criticize this age old testing mania that dates back to the Han Dynasty, more than two thousand years of testing and ranking students.
Lloyd,
Every dollar that goes to schools like Stuyvasent or Thomas Jefferson high is a dollar that does not go to a traditional zoned school.
But the students are still part of the public school system and everyone who works in that system is still paid by the same pay scale. If those students had stayed in their zones schools, the teachers who were relocated t the 9 specialized high schools would have still been teaching but in a different school.
Again, class size is usually set by contract/law in the local school district. Teachers are hired to staff the number of students enrolled.
For instance, if the average class size allowable in the NY City schools is 25 students for each teacher, then it doesn’t matter where the students end up in those public schools because the staffing formula remains the same.
The nine high schools we are talking about don’t steal money away from the public schools because they are part of the public schools.
In fact, there is no Eva Moskowitz, who is arbitrarily paying herself more than $500,000 dollars for 9,000 students in her 30+ corporate Charter schools, in addition to spending another $500,000 on PR to recruit more students.
Another for instance—in the district where I taught for thirty years, there was a third high school and that high school was an alternative high school set up for the most at risk, and most challenging students to teach. The students that attended Santana are referred to that alternative high school from the two traditional high schools.
If Santana didn’t exist, the same number of teachers would be working at the traditional high schools. The only difference is that those teachers at Santana work out of different buildings in different a location but all part of the same public school district.
The teachers who work at Santana are on the same payroll that every other teacher in the district is paid from.
http://www.santanahs.org/about/mission.jsp
I don’t think it is a waste to sometimes reply to people like TE and/or Annie, because, for instance, whatever I post a comment it isn’t exclusive to the likes of TE or Annie—on the Internet, what I write is often there to read by anyone who is linked to the Internet and that is a lot of people.
Here’s what I think: If we don’t occasional respond to the likes of TE or Annie, then their voice may end up being the only one that someone who is still learning about an issue will find and that person will be influenced by a fool and become another fool.
And I’m not sorry to imply that TE and Annie are fools, because I’m sure they might very well think I’m a fool for not agreeing with their limited and unsupportable thinking.
When has anyone like TE or Annie ever used evidence to support what they think? Most extremists never base what they think on evidence of any kind, because if they do, they would have to admit they were wrong.
It was reported on December 31, 2013 that there were more than 2.8 Trillion people linked to the Internet.
Any comments I decide to make to a comment by a TE or Annie is not really for them but is for the other 2.8+ Trillion people who might drop by to read this thread and see what I had to say in contrast to a TE or Annie.
Once again, excrement is radiating from one of our resident know-it-alls.
Cosmic,
I do understand that making an argument is taxing, but it is often worthwhile. You might try and give it a chance.
The best argument for commandeering multinational corporate or plutocratic income, is the following data. According to Politifact, in 2007, the wealth held by 6 Waltons, equaled the bottom 30.5% of families. By 2010, Waltons’ share equaled 41.5% of families, which equates to 49 million families.
Concentration of wealth threatens our nation’s founding principles, its solvency and its economic future. Oligarchs spend their money to undermine democracy, by contributing to politicians and judges and by funding tax-advantaged 501(c)(3)’s, that have anti-democracy agendas, disguised as charities.
Disproportionate wealth adversely affects the nation and as such, demands remedy. In the undeclared plutocratic war, aimed at impoverishing our communities, commandeering assets, is the least disruptive adjustment possible. As an example, if the Walton’s, Gates, Bezos, Bloomberg and Kochs’ choose to respond to economic loss, by giving up citizenship and future access to the U.S. consumer market, competitors can fill the void.
In defense of our nation, when oligarchs and their businesses appear in court, it’s time for widespread jury nullification. Insurers of oligarch property, can limit their liability by adding expensive riders or surcharges for business owners who choose to be politically active, instead of behaving as guests in our society.
Despite repeatedly asserting the same baseless claims, TE has been enlighted several times before about the many options that have been available to families in school districts for decades (long before charters), such as these “Options for Knowledge” in Chicago: http://www.cpsoae.org/2015-2016%20Options%20for%20Knowledge%20Guide.pdf
I have observed that TE is a broken record who keeps repeating the same thinking without any evidence to support that it has worked or will work—just an idea TE has had that he has invested probably too much time thinking about.
However, lots of evidence exists that proves TE’s theory/thinking is wrong, but it is obvious that TE is not interested in evidence. TE is only interested in ideas. During the thirty years I spend in the classroom (1975-2005), I saw far too many idea with evidence forced on teachers to implement with devastating results.
Lloyd,
Which of my policy positions do you think I lack evidence for?
Lloyd,
Any thoughts about Wilson?
Wilson?
What I have been thinking is to ask you to write your premise (your untested and unproven theory) and to support it with evidence that will stand up under scrutiny—not more opinionated thinking.
Do you have any idea what valid evidence is that’s used to support a theory?
Lloyd,
My theory about what?
school choice
Lloyd,
You mean my position that allowing students to choose a school is what allows schools to take different approaches to education? For that I offer emperical observation along with a causal explination for the emperical observation.
The emperical observation is that there are a wide variety of approaches to education in schools that students can choose or not choose to attend. In my town for example there are private progressive, Montessori, and Waldorf schools. We do not see the variety of approaches to education in traditional zoned schools where admission is determined by street address and each street adress is entitled to send a student to one school. If you look out in the world I think you will find that all of the more specialized approaches are done in schools or programs that are optional to attend.
The causal explination for this emperical regularity is that the school board of the district needs to defend the arbitrary assignment of student to school by ensuring that the schools are as identical as is possible. The school board can not assign the students living on the 500 block of Maple street to a French immerson school and the students on the 600 block of Maple street to a Waldorf school.
Sorry, TE, but I can’t accept your observable evidence because it doesn’t have any valid data to support it.
The so-called observation that you use here doesn’t provide the date to prove anything except the claim that some kid couldn’t go to a school that had a class the student and/or his parents wanted the student to take at another school.
In fact, It was observations of this kind from two Harvard professors who were witnesses for the prosecution in the Vergara trial in Los Angeles that the judge used to justify his draconian verdict that 100% of public school teachers in California should lose due process job protections based on the observable guesstimates of two professors that 1% to 3% of teachers might be incompetent. And the professors clearly said it was only a guess based on observations and in no way was valid with data to support what was observed.
You have even misused the word “Observation” to support your theory. Observation can be called as the process of gathering data and inference can be said to be a process of taking decisions about the gathered data.
Where is your data that not having this choice would lead to a child growing up without the skills needed for a job that paid well?
Remember the goal of CCSS and its rank and yank testing agenda? The goal is to graduate high school students with the basic skills that makes them ready to enter the workforce and/or go on to college.
To support your so-called observations, where’s the data that supports your premise that this won’t happen without the choice of a child having the freedom to go to the school of the student or parent’s choice?
For an example of what I mean, I suggest you read the latest post by Mercedes Schneider on her Blog:
You might even consider reading her book to discover more about how real data leads to valid observations:
Without data, there is no way to support the fact that becasue “The school board can not assign the students living on the 500 block of Maple street to a French immerson school and the students on the 600 block of Maple street to a Waldorf school”, this will lead to better educational outcomes and better paying jobs as an adult.
I argue that the choice of school does not lead to college and/or work readiness by age 17/18.
Instead, I argue that a high level of literacy is more important than the choice of school, and how much a child reads outside of the classroom from an early age is more important to being career and/or college ready by age 17/18.
If a student wants to learn French and the motivation and discipline are in place, there are other options such as Rosetta-Stone French and then learning French may take place at home under the supervision of the parent.
On that note, the district I taught at for thirty years, had a bus that ran between the high schools that were divided by not only a railroad and a freeway but also by socioeconomics. On the eastern side of the freeway and railroad were the barrios, the poverty and the street gangs. On the western side, there was a solid middle class community with little poverty or street gang violence.
And that district where I taught allowed students to take classes at both high schools if a class was offered at one that wasn’t offered at the other high school. Those students, who qualified—based on enrollment and room—were enrolled at one high school but could take one and maybe more classes at the other high school if there was room.
Availability in a specific class depended on how many students wanted to take the class. If the class load was 34, for instance, and 100 students wanted to take that class, that meant 66 had to be rejected.
Just because you want something doesn’t mean you will get it. That a proven fact of life.
In addition, this same debate came up in California back in the 1980s, because some middle class parents who lived in the district where I taught wanted their children to have the option to go to the much higher rated Walnut High School in an adjacent district about five miles south of Nogales High School where I taught that had little to no poverty and no noticeable street gang activity.
The Walnut School District in Southern California fought tooth and nail to stop this. They said they were already over crowded, and did not have the funding to build more classrooms if parents were given the freedom to send their children to any school they wanted to.
The parents lost.
Lloyd,
It would be easy to refute my empirical claim. Find a couple of all and only schools where the school board tells residents of the 500 block of Maple street that their children will attend a Waldorf school and the children of the 600 block of Maple will attend a French language immersion school.
TE, you are nothing but a concrete wall. I’ve had my say, and you can’t prove me wrong.
Lloyd,
I have made an empirical claim that you say is false. Go ahead and prove it to be false. I don’t think you can, because it isn’t false.
What you propose has no rational validity in the real world and is not sustainable economically. All you have done is prove you can make a claim, but you can’t prove it will work.
As usual, you ignore reality and the existing data. You also consistently ignore every point anyone makes as you continue to hammer your foolish, unrealistic thinking.
Imagine a world/country where any child may be allowed to go to any school they want anywhere and that school has to make room for them even if that means spending millions of dollars—that they don’t have—to build new infrastructure that might be out of date and empty when student choices causes students to move to another school the following year.
Name one country that does this successfully. Name one country that’s even attempted it. This is what I mean about data. Data that proves what you think will work.
What you propose in unrealistic and unsustainable even in the corporate Charter world where everything hinges on enough income flowing in from taxes to support those schools.
What you propose is “the grass is greener on the other side of the wall” thinking but you can’t see what’s on the other side of the wall.
As I said earlier, and you ignored, when a parent wants a subject or class that the schools don’t offer, we have an existing model that works. The parents pay a tutor or a private school that offers late afternoon or early evening classes to provide that specific education for that child. This is the way it’s done in China, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, and in the Asian-American community in the United States.
Here’s is a sample of data that proves you are wrong chasing a Pollyanna idea that all a child needs is total freedom of choice when it comes to what school to attend:
Asian Americans are the highest-income, best-educated and fastest-growing racial group in the U.S, with Asians now making up the largest share of recent immigrants. A Pew Research survey finds Asian Americans are more satisfied than the general public with their lives, finances and the direction of the country, and they place a greater value on marriage, parenthood, hard work and career success.:
Compared with the general public, Asian Americans stand out for their success in education and career. Most also believe that the U.S. offers more opportunities and freedoms than their countries of origin. A large majority of Asian Americans believe that hard work pays off and most place a strong emphasis on higher education, career and family. In fact, a striking number of recent Asian immigrants hold college degrees. By their own accounts, many say their parents put too much pressure on their children to succeed.
Instead of complaining about the lack of choice in the public schools for unpopular subjects that have little or no demand, Asian-American parents take advantage of the education system that exists with great success, and if they want their children to have educational support outside of the public school environment, they find it and pay for it out of their own pocket.
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/asianamericans-graphics/
In addition, there this data from a study on Asian-American Parenting and Academic Success:
One study, for example, found that Asian-American 11th-graders studied six hours more per week than their white peers. Another found that in 2007, more than two-thirds of Asian-American high school students did homework five or more days a week, while only about 40 percent of white and Hispanic kids, and less than a third of African-American students, did so. According to other research, Asian-American kids devote less time to chores, part-time jobs and dating than other kids. …
Even low-income Asian-American families provide a great deal of indirect, out-of-school support, Li found when she studied 32 Massachusetts ninth-graders whose Chinese immigrant parents worked as cooks, custodians, shelf stockers and nursing home aides.
While few of these parents checked their children’s homework or attended school meetings, they networked with co-workers and other parents, and relied on an older sibling or another relative for tutoring and academic advice. The parents also talked up role models, which Li found gave their kids a sense of confidence rather than creating jealousy or competitiveness. The students’ GPAs averaged 3.27.
http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/asian-american-parenting-and-academic-success-26053/
Lloyd,
Once again, my empirical claim is that traditional zoned schools do not have the diversity of schools that students choose. You can show that to be false by pointing to school districts where the students on the 500 block of Maple are assigned to a Waldorf school and the students on the 600 block of Maple are assigned to Montessori school.
The bulk of your response has nothing whatsoever to do with the validity of my empirical claim.
TE,
And once again, you avoid every point I made. Your so-called empirical CLAIM is not economically viable, it is irrational and unrealistic. I asked you to find a country that does this successfully to prove that your so-called empirical CLAIM is valid and that it will work, and you avoided that too.
I don’t think you will find any acceptable data to prove your empirical CLAIM will work.
In fact, I suggest—ONCE AGAIN—that you read “The Teacher Wars: A History of America’s Most Embattled Profession” by Dana Goldstein to discover what happens when powerful fools—-for instance, Bill Gates and the Walton family—-force their empirical claims on the country’s public schools without any longitudinal studies (plural) and valid evidence that has been vetted by a reputable peer-review panel of peers to prove that a so-called empirical CLAIM even has a chance to work and succeed at adding a valuable element to public education that benefits the majority of students—not one student, but millions.
Goldstein documents what happens when unproven and unrealistic empirical claims are implemented without including teachers, parents and students as valuable partners in the process and not just victims forced to do what they are told, for instance, by the fools and/or monsters driving fake public eduction reform today.
By the way, EMPIRICAL means: based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic, and a CLAIM means: state or assert that something is the case, typically without providing evidence or proof.
This means that an EMPIRICAL CLAIM is an illogical observation without evidence or proof it exists or will work.
I could CLAIM that when I flush the toilet, my human waste ends up in the Andromeda Galaxy.
Correction to my previous comment to TE:
I meant “data” not “date”.
Sorry for the last comment
I meant to say “without evidence”
Not “with evidence”
Chi-town,
Yet again let me point out that I argue that traditional all and only zoned schools do not allow for diverse models of education. The arguments against charter schools presented here generally apply to magnet programs as well. You can not argue that charter schools are illegitimate because they skim strong students and simultaneously argue that qualified admission magnet schools are legitimate public schools.
Lloyd, Yes, TE is a broken record that goes on and on and he has learned nothing from the many educators here who know a lot more than he about K12 education. He likes public school support so that his own advanced high school aged child could take more challenging classes at a local college, while arguing against gifted education in K12 because he thinks it’s elitist. What a clueless hypocrite.
I think TE is indicative of all the gurus through the decades who have forced their unproven thinking on the public schools that have almost every time had little or no valid evidence to support any potential success in the classroom for those politically correct ideas—thanks to the mainstream media—and most of the time created havoc and steps back instead of forward.
In Finland, teachers are respected as professionals, work together in collaborative teams with other teachers and control curriculum from site to site with no intervention or interference from the state. And 99.9% of those teachers belong to a strong teacher’s union, but if you broach these facts to a TE type of person who has all the answers, they will almost always act as if they heard nothing and go on with their unproven thinking without pause. In addition, there is no standardized testing in Finland with a rank and yank agenda to destroy public education.
And in Finland teachers have the power to start new public schools (and do so).
“public schools”
Less than one percent of the schools in Finland are private and they have to follow all the same rules the public school do. There is no double standard.
Lloyd, I’m talking about public schools in Finland that are started by teachers. As you probably know, teachers in Finland have a lot of power over the curriculum. I’d like to see the same in the US.
Agreed. I strongly think that if teachers were in charge of the curriculum and management of public schools with only oversight from elected school boards, we would, as a nation, see dramatic improvements in a short period of time without any testing that ranks and yanks teachers and schools.
Public school administrators should only be office managers who are there to provide support to teachers to make sure they are able to do their job—-not to dictate to them how to do their jobs.
Chi-town,
What support?
Chi town,
I don’t argue against gifted education, it is the posters here that condem “sliming” and “creaming” that make arguments against it.
You are trying to equate gifted education with how charters filter out kids with disabilities, English Language Learners and those with behavioral challenges, by suspending, counseling out and expelling at high rates, and keeping the kids who are most compliant and likely to raise test scores. Those are not the same populations as gifted, so that argument doesn’t fly.
Chi-Town,
Do you really believe that Stuyvasent High school has anywhere close to the number of “kids with disabilities, English Language Learners and those with behavioral challenges” as, say, Boys and Girls High School?
Linda, Thanks for your great post! Those are precisely the points some folks have been trying to make here.
Gifted kids are only 3 – 5% of the population. That is a very small group. (There are schools with specialized programs for students who are creative/talented, such as Fine and Performing Arts programs.) There will be even fewer gifted students who also have disabilities, behavioral challenges or who are ELLs. Anyone who qualifies should be accepted. If students from those groups are being excluded, it’s probably because of their standardized test scores, since schools tend to rely heavily on them. Schools should be using multiple measures, in order to cast a wider net. LLoyd addressed the matter in this thread, and you have already been told this before, so I’m out of here.
Chi-town,
Charter schools enroll an equally small percentage of the student population, about 5%. If charter schools have had a devastating impact on neighborhood schools, gifted and talented programs should have had at least as devastating an impact on the neighborhood schools.
Depends on the definition of giftedness. Howard Gardner at Harvard identified 7 distinct areas of intelligence.
http://www.tecweb.org/styles/gardner.html
Some youngsters are hugely gifted in painting or scupture, but not necessarily gifted in mathematics. Some are hugely gifted in basketball or (pick your sport). One of the responsibilities of schools is to help youngsters identified the thing(s) they are really good at, and enjoy, and develop them.
Gifted schools require that students score high in BOTH math AND reading. This means there are a lot kids that are gifted in just one of those areas, and in other domains, who remain in traditional schools.
Of the top 10 “Companies Paying Americans the Least,” Walmart is number 1:
“Walmart is run by America’s wealthiest family, and it employs more people than any other public company in the world. The majority of the company’s 2.2 million employees, as of last year, worked in the United States. Walmart’s U.S. workforce of roughly 1.4 million dwarfs that of every other American business. Walmart reported revenues of $476.3 billion last year, the largest of any retailer worldwide, as well as roughly $16 billion in net income. Walmart’s financial success has frequently been attributed, at least in part, to its workers’ low wages. While Walmart may benefit from the low wages it pays its employees, taxpayers may not. According to several studies, Walmart employees are among the most likely to rely on government subsidies and assistance programs.”
http://247wallst.com/special-report/2014/11/07/companies-paying-americans-the-least/4/
Veteran,
Which company should pay the least if not Walmart? There has to be some company that pays the least or is most likely to have employees who rely on government assistance.
Duh, maybe a corporation that is not the largest in America, with the most employees, and which is not owned by the richest US family that has more wealth than 40% of the people in our nation.
I have no interest your discussions. May your convoluted mind and heartlessness damn you to an eternity in hell.
Veteran,
Relative measures are always relative. they are not particularly useful in thinking about absolute poverty levels.
TE needs to go somewhere else to show the world how insensitive and uncaring he is. We don’t need any more proof.
Just Cares Alot,
Caring is meaningless if all it does is lead one to solutions that are not feasible, or even worse, solutions that will make things worse.
Not caring leads to inertia, not problem-solving, and trying to rationalize man’s inhumanity to man just further demonstrates how inhumane you are at your core.
Just Cares Alot,
Think about how a policy would play out.
Suppose you required Walmart to pay $15.00 an hour (that is, I think, the highest minimum wage in the country.) and require full benefits. If we assume that Walmart is simply out to get the highest profits possible, Walmart will decide that it is losing money employing X percent of their employees. The minimum wage will increase the earnings of those that keep their jobs, decrease the earnings of those that lose their jobs. Is that what you had in mind?
Anyone who displays such a blatant lack of concern for the common man and tries to justify the unbridled greed of the 1% is no problem solver. You are undeserving of my time. You’re also running out of people who will interact with you on this blog. Enjoy your well earned isolation.
Just Cares Alot,
You need to think one step further down the road. Increasing the cost of hiring employees will result if fewer being hired. You need to consider the possibility that you will make things worse for the very people you are trying to help.
Repeatedly saying what cannot be done is contrary to problem-solving, but this is typical of TE’s behavior. He is an obstructionist, not a “teachingeconomist.” He has often demonstrated that he has no solutions to equitability, or even an interest in crafting any. This has not changed over time, so don’t be fooled into believing that there is something to be learned from him. He’s got zilch. I really feel sorry for his students.
Teacher Ed,
No one has asked my opinion about what would work.
I would expend the earned income tax credit. That way individuals would have higher income and there would not be an incentive to not hire workers. Some call for a minimum income and that seems reasonable. Likely folks here would reject it because it was advocated by Milton Freedman.
Same old same old. As you’ve been told repeatedly before but never hear, a once a year tax credit is no solution for people who are struggling just to get by today. When you live paycheck to paycheck, a yearly tax credit does nothing to help pay the basic survival expenses that so many poor people fall behind on because their wages are unlivable. People need to be able to pay the utilities before they get shut off and pay their rent before they are evicted. No worker should be condemned to endure such a “solution” to unlivable wages.
I have no interest in any more lame interactions with someone who is intentionally deaf and blind to the serious struggle for survival that millions of American workers are facing on a daily basis.
Teacher Ed,
Don’t base it on federal income tax, base it on social security taxes. Instead of pulling money out of the paychecks, push it into the paychecks. This will have the added benefit of incouraging folks to work on the books rather than work off the books.
Clearly, TE enjoys throwing pennies at the poor. SS takes less than $100 per month from my paycheck. While hanging onto it might be nice, that is not enough to pay even one of my utilities. And, down the road, because of a lifetime of unlivable wages, in retirement, people like me are expected to live on $900 per month from SS, which means we can never really retire. Leave SS alone
Cosmic,
I am not advocating eliminating the tax, I am advocating making the tax rate negative. The government pays you in addition to your employer.
It also means making poor people responsible for paying themselves, whether an earned income credit or an SS credit, because people will never get more back than what they paid in from their meager wages. Anything to avoid taking from the wealthy. That is no solution for the working poor.
How about the assumption that the working poor are tax evaders? This is typical of those who protect the interests of wealthy corporations and have no problem with the billionaires that are currently stashing $21 TRILLION in off shore tax havens.
Veteran,
What assumption that the working poor are tax evaders?
Pie in the sky. Social Security is already in serious jeopardy. We now have a a Congress dominated by politicians who want to cut SS. Diverting SS tax payments from employers and converting them to cash for workers is very likely to be seen by them as undeserved “hand outs.”
That would also be likely to result in lower SS benefits for those employees when they reach retirement age. This is not workable for a population that will already not be getting enough SS to survive on in old age, due to their years in low paying jobs and the relatively little amount they paid into the system during that time.
Saying that your plan would encourage the working poor “to work on the books” suggests they are now working off the books to evade taxes. But, of course, there was no mention of the big time insatiable billionaires that you protect, who are evading taxes through creative accounting and by hiding assets in offshore accounts, which is more money than the GDP of entire countries:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2012/07/23/super-rich-hide-21-trillion-offshore-study-says/
Cosmic,
You don’t pay for it out of the social security tax receipts, you do it out of general revenue. My own preference would be for a carbon tax that recycled the revenue into this program. It is something that 95% of economists would agree is a good plan. You might want to listen to this Planet Money podcast: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/06/04/318458373/episode-472-the-one-page-plan-to-fix-global-warming
In the podcast the suggestion is to lower income taxes with the carbon tax revenue. My suggestion is to run the social security tax system backwards and use the carbon tax revenue to feed money into low income household’s pockets from.
TE said, “You don’t pay for it out of the social security tax receipts, you do it out of general revenue.”
Without telling the WHOLE story, this is extremely MISLEADING.
Do you even know the whole story? If not, here it is: http://lloydlofthouse.org/2013/10/13/social-security-and-medicares-impact-on-the-national-debt-zero/
Lloyd,
What is misleading? The proposal is to use the Social Security accounting systems to disputes the funds. It would not impact the social security system at all.
You didn’t pay attention to what I said.
You said, ““You don’t pay for it out of the social security tax receipts, you do it out of general revenue.”
It’s possible that the way you worded your statement that someone would think we are paying for SS out of our income tax.
Congress has been spending all the SS taxe money for decades keeping the account empty except for IOU’s.
Currently, and for the next few years, the SS taxes coming in have been enough to pay retired Americans what they were promised. So far, no actual money has come out of other taxes to make up for a shortfall of SS taxes, but without an adjustment, that day is coming and then the amount paid out will drop to about an estimated 70%.
The SS law clearly says that SS can’t be paid from any other tax source. If there isn’t enough SS tax coming in, then SS payments have to be cut.
Lloyd,
It is possible that some people believe that the tooth fairy pays for social security payments, but that is not relivent to the discussion here. do you have any thoughts about how to increase the income of poor households without creating disincentives for members of these households to be hired?
TE,
Do you keep a list of questions to throw out at random?
Lloyd,
Only when there are irrelevant comments. Do,you have something to say that applies to,the discussion at hand?
Do you?
Lloyd,
Perhaps a recap is in order. Some here suggested that employers be required to pay anyone they choose to hire a higher wage than is currently paid. I pointed out that employers required to pay a higher wage might choose not to hire to begin with, and that would defeat the purpose of requiring a higher wage. When questioned about my solution to the issue of low earnings, I proposed an expansion to the earned income tax credit that increased the take home pay for low income earners with every paycheck, funded through a carbon emissions tax. You than said that people might not realize that social security payments are funded through a payroll tax and think that they are funded through an income tax. You further said, in effect, that surplus social security tax revenue is currently invested in federal government bonds. Both of these are true statements, yet neither has anything at all to do with the question of how best to help very low income households. Do you have any thoughts about how to help very low income households?
This post is about “why the democrats lost so many elections across the country” and either here or in another thread on this Blog you had the gall recently to mention I should stick to the topic—What topic are you talking about? The one you want to talk about or the one that the blog post focuses on?
I’m not interested in your claims about how to fix income inequality. Start your own Blog and write about it over there.
Lloyd,
I was suggesting that you might want to discuss something about the argument I was making in the thread instead of criticizing me about arguments that I was not making.
A review of this page demonstrates that it’s Lloyd who is most relevant and that it’s TE who has no filter for separating the wheat from the chafe. Some of TE’s personal opinions passed along as facts would be laughable, if only one didn’t know that he could easily be telling a lecture hall of 700 college students the very same garbage..
Teacher Ed,
What chafe do you think I mistake for wheat? What do you fear I am telling my students (not 700 at a time, something more like 300 to 400 in a semester over all my classes).
Specific examples are always helpful, but also rare because, of course, they are helpful.
What a bad joke this thread is. Like our new Congress, which is once again filled with climate change denying GOP, and Tea Partiers who are supported by Koch brothers funding, is going to charge a carbon dioxide emissions tax to corporations and then hand that money out to little people who are struggling? Paleeeze! TE really needs to get a grip on reality!
Other Spaces,
Publications like the Economist have been calling for a carbon tax for close to twenty years now, so I have some hope that policy makers will actually listen to economists for once.
As for tilting at windmills, do folks here think that closing all charter schools is a politically achievable goal?
You are even more out of touch with reality if you haven’t noticed that it is economists who politicians and billionaires listen to, not educational researchers or genuine educators.
Your attempt at analogy is hyperbole. I have yet to see anyone state that they are expecting all charters to be closed.
Other Spaces,
If only politicians would listen to economists more when deciding economic policy.
TE, If you are also telling your students that cars are the reason for the demise of local retailers, then it sounds like you are just fabricating because that is false. You asked Dienne about citations for studies on the impact of Walmart on communities, so here are several in regard to Walmart and other big box stores:
http://ilsr.org/key-studies-walmart-and-bigbox-retail/
Teacher Ed,
Big box stores like Walmart would not exist without cars. Why do you think they devote more space to cars than they do to the actual store?
In general, low transportation costs combined with low information costs that reduce any retailer’s ability to charge high prices. The Internet, UPS, and the USPS are busy trying to kill off the big box store. Even if big box stores remain, their ability to raise prices will be severely limited by consumers ability to purchase from someone else.
So Ford & GM are responsible for killing off local retailers? I doubt you would agree with that since those are corporations and you always defend big business.
A professor should know better than to declare that there is a causal relationship when converging lines of evidence do not indicate that causation exists.
Teacher Ed,
Ford and GM are, in some sense, to blame for the demise of small town retailers and the creation of the big box store.
Song references are popular here, so let me point out that no one owes their soul to the company store these days. The reason is that they would drive past the company store and shop at to Walmart or Target or any number of other retailers.
Trying to pass off your personal assumptions, opinions and views as if they are truths is neither science nor art, it’s pathological. I don’t engage with liars.
Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences (MI) theory assumes that each child has a constellation of strengths. There are some specialized schools that focus on MI. This also began to flourish in individual classrooms in traditional neighborhood schools before NCLB. In my experience, when teachers have autonomy and low class sizes, they have the latitude to nurture the strengths of each child. Throw in the demands of high stakes testing and scripted curricula and MI tends to get lost.
Gifted schools traditionally value logical-mathematical and verbal-linguistic above other intelligences, with the assumption they translate readily to academics and can be quantified. Just like the politicians who have demonstrated since NCLB that they care much more about math and reading than anything else.
Over the years that I was still in the classroom, the district where I taught often sent teachers to workshops to improve their teaching and knowledge of what it takes for students to learn. In fact, teachers, at least in California, never stop learning and improving their knowledge of educatoin and teaching.
For instance, I attended to several workshops on how the brain works and retains what is learned during the day. I also took workshops that focused on how to teach using methods that focused on the different ways students learned and that led to my planning lessons that included every possible learning modality in every lesson from visual, to audio, to tactile, for introverts and for extroverts, etc.
Lloyd, Thanks for your Interesting comments on staff development. I’ve participated in some as a teacher and administrator, and worked with school level people to plan some. I’ve also seen some research saying that pd often is not very effective because it is not specific or practical enough.
Studies I’ve seen say that PD really needs to be focused on needs of students and areas where faculty is interested in assistance – and it should not be “one shot” as often happens. It also is less effective at the end of the day, when people are tired. Some of the most effective pd planned cooperatively with faculty happened in the summer, when faculty were paid to attend and did not have the press of students the following day.
I received training in MI in my education courses. I implemented the same kinds of strategies in my classroom that Lloyd discussed which, as he described about the MI info he gained from PDs, was applicable and practical. Plan on trashing Ed Schools, too, Joe?
Reteach, my original comment about multiple forms of intelligence was in response to an assertion that only 3-5% of students are gifted. I think a much larger percentage of students have “gifts” and exceptional talents if we include a broader array of what is described as “Multiple Forms of Intelligence.”
That’s obvious. It’s also contrary to the reality that gifted schools focus on serving students who score high on standardized tests of logical-mathematical and verbal-linguistic intelligences. Based on the normal distribution, only 3-5% of the population meets the criteria that students excel at high levels in both of those areas. Most kids have different constellations of strengths. Few schools measure other domains for inclusion in gifted programs, and creativity is often overlooked. I am a special educator with decades of experience working with kids from profoundly impaired to gifted and “average” is pretty miraculous to me.
Please ask Mr. Myerson “like” Bernie Sanders on Facebook and start getting his periodic emails…. and try to amplify his voice and those of the progressive caucus. It is maddening to see Sanders (the lone Senate Progressive) and the 75 progressives in the House marginalized in the media while they give newspaper space and air time to Paul Ryan and the austerity budget crowd in the house and give credibility to the presidential aspirations of Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and even Mike Huckabee. Here’s the Progressive Promise, which SHOULD have been the Democrat’s platform:
http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/the-progressive-promise/
Maybe we’ll get to discuss these issues in 2016… oh, wait… Bush and Clinton are running in 2016! We’ll get to re-hash Whitewater and the Iraq war while another generation of students take standardized tests…
Matt Taibbi, writing for Rolling Stone, has once more proven he is an American hero.
Meyerson quotes a poll, “U.S. economy unfair to most”. Taibbi documents it, in the most recent edition of the magazine. The topic is Obama’s Justice Dept. and the SEC’s, egregious flaunting of U.S. laws, when they failed to hold Wall Street criminally accountable for the financial disaster that occurred in 2008 and that continues to plague the economy.
“Democratic Actors”
A Democratic revival
Demands that Demo leaders
Quit acting like their rival
And run as GOPers
Well-put.
Myerson and Taibbi are ‘on the money’. From the educational perspective, Obama has thrown his political weight on the wrong ideological horse, with drastic consequences. Educators for their part have been sold out by Randi Weingarten, her AFT ruling council, as well as the NEA. Educators can be a potent progressive electoral force when they throw off the shackles of their current ‘leadership’, working locally to develop insurgent locals and aligning themselves with the progressive elements in their communities. This is not a magical process, but it will demand a slow, building process. Look what Karne Lewis was able to accomplish in Chicago! Look at the candidacy of Zephr Teachout in New York. Progressive change demands a long struggle.
john a.
Harvard’s Lessig, at his blog, shares your sentiment and praises progressive, Zephyr Teachout.
We should learn from the success of Ross Perot’s, 3rd party
candidacy for president. With a stronger vice-presidential candidate on his ticket, his voter share would have surprised the other two parties………. And, his ascendency was not a long struggle!
A great line:
“When 95 percent of the income growth since the recession ended goes to the wealthiest 1 percent, as economist Emmanuel Saez has documented, voters view reports of a recovery as they would news from a distant land.”
That statement captures how I feel.
No matter who is elected, nothing will change without an independent strategic, values-driven, public communications campaign to support the struggle for respectful, equitable, democratic education. Without a public movement even the most courageous politicians cannot make a difference.
Click to access Education-reform-and-the-corrosion-of-community-responsibility-_-The-Answer-Sheet.pdf
Rachel Meadow of MSNBC notes that ‘for the first time in 14 years, more than 200,000 jobs a month have been generated for 9 months in a row. She writes, ”
“For the right, which is still under the illusion that President Obama’s tax breaks and health care law are destroying the economy, this is yet another jobs report that will be very difficult to explain.”
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/job-totals-steady-october-unemployment-drops-once-again
Obama has been under relentless and well funded attack from the right. Some people have ignored thousands of folks who now have medical care, but didn’t before.
Everything has not gone well in this country and unquestionably mistakes have been made. Defense spending overall is not the best place to put dollars – there are much more productive places to spend $.
But I think Meadow has provided important information about progress.
As to expanding opportunity via public school choice – it’s clear many of us will have to agree to disagree. But clearly the growing number of low income families choosing charters (including many not able to get into quasi private magnets that use admissions tests) shows many low income families want options that these schools provide. The same is true of district options open to all – glad to see that number is growing as well.
Democrats made a mistake in the late 1960’s by abandoning the flag to the right wing. Fortunately many Democratic policy-makers see value if using district & charter public school choice as one way to help improve youngsters lives.
When the local schools have been systematically starved and unsupported for decades, that parents choose a charter school does not make it a great policy if equity and systemic improvement is the goal. Escape from poverty for a few is not a worthy national goal.
http://www.arthurcamins.com/?p=260
Where some educators have had the attitude for decades that there is not much schools can do with students from low income backgrounds, some (not all) charters are a huge relief.
Moreover, some charter supporters come from educators and families disgusted by the quasi private magnet schools that use standardized students to screen out most youngsters.
Fortunately some leading progressives more than 40 years ago recognized that one thing that was valuable was to offer options within districts. We faced similar criticisms then – that what students really needed was smaller class size, more arts, less poverty, more jobs., etc. etc.
Some students thrived in district options then and now – but as Shanker pointed out, people who tried to create options within districts often “were treated like traitors or outlaws for daring to move outside the lockstep.’
We should be working simultaneously on problems outside and inside schools. Obama understands that and has tried in many ways to do that. Doesn’t mean i agree with everything he (and Duncan) have & have not done. But this administration clearly has tried to work simultaneously on health care, jobs and other problems outside schools as, well as problems inside them.
Since about 1992, national public K-12 spending has doubled, adjusted for both inflation and enrollment.
Much of that money has gone to pay for the high cost of special education because, in the 90s, courts ordered the enforcement of legislation that requires access to public accommodations for the disabled and equal educational opportunity for all. Prior to that, many public schools routinely turned away kids with special needs, resulting in lawsuits like Corey H in IL.
“Since about 1992, national public K-12 spending has doubled….”
How much of that increase has been on testing, test prep and the computers (hardware and software) necessary for testing?
Dienne,
You might want to look around the National Center for Education Statistics for answer to that question and others like it. Here is a link: http://nces.ed.gov/
Without knowing whether the doubling of K-12 education spending is inflation adjusted, how the geographic and socio-economic status distribution has shifted and how much of any increase has been absorbed by high (but very important) special education expenditures, we can’t draw any inferences. What we do know is that important collaboration time for teacher professional growth and small class size are still not ubiquitous, nor is universal pre-school and supportive family services. These are the supports that would have demonstrable impact on local schools and make them a more attractive choice for parents. These expenditures would also make it more likely that talented committed principals and teachers would work and stay in local public schools creating the stability necessary for sustained improvement.
http://www.arthurcamins.com
We agree that strong early childhood educations, helping young children develop social, artistic and other skills would be very valuable, esp for those youngsters from low income families. Even better if they are age 3 – grade 3 programs.
One of the things that Sec Duncan and President Obama have promoted has been more early childhood programs for young children The House has blocked many efforts to do this, but some money has gone to states to help expand that.
Yes, agreed early childhood programs targeted at students from low income youngsters, if developmentally appropriate, would be a great addition to every city and low income community.
Joe Nathan,
The facts about the expensive failure of charter schools, in the 7th largest state, are at Knowyourcharter.com. The research was funded by middle class workers who live and pay taxes in their communities.
Without those workers, willing to fund research, the skewing of information, by plutocratic-funded data massagers, drives education deform.
Linda,
I can see that the site is funded by the Ohio Education Association (the dues paying teachers are presumably who you mean by the middle class workers) but do you know the funding source for Innovation Ohio? I could not easily find it.
te,
You are correct. Worker associations are made up of people who raise their families and pay taxes in our communities.
When and if, unions resort to the subterfuge of hidden identities, like that practiced by oligarch foundations, I will applaud the workers’ willingness to fight evil, by all means necessary.
The plutocratic war against America is too important for the 99% to use a gloved approach, while the 0.1% show no honor, nor compassion, in their pursuit of income and assets that rightfully belong to those who, as Lincoln said, toil to achieve them. We can not allow our children to be robbed of their American legacy. Lincoln warned us, that in this ages-old war between the divine right of kings and humanity, right must prevail over wrong. Otherwise, all of the sacrifices made for America, will have been in vain.
In 1787, as the Founding Fathers left the Constitutional Convention, a Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got?”
With no hesitation, Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
If we take Franklin’s advice, we fight and we fight hard starting with the pen, the word, and if that doesn’t work, then we must consider seriously following the footsteps of Gandhi. The third option should only be a last resort—following in the footsteps of George Washington during the Revolution.
Linda,
Any thoughts about the National Educational Policy Center? It is funded by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice. Any guess about who funds the Great Lakes Center For Education Research and Practice?
Lloyd,
Gandhi’s people lived in a densely populated area and, in abject poverty. Rallying them may have been both easier and more difficult.
The Arab spring, although a failure, offers one play in a game book, that I hope is being written for America’s future. As the fearful billionaire, quoted in Politico, warned, change may be slow initially but, an accelerated pace is inevitable.
te,
Great Lakes, 600,000 middle income members, paying taxes and raising children in our communities. With total transparency (unlike oligarch foundations), the worker associations are identified at the website.
In contrast, recently, was there an economic research outfit that required prompting to list their backing from multinational corporations? And, is there a discrepancy between what Sourcewatch lists, as their funders, and what they identify?
Does Fordham receive funding from the foundation of 6 Walmart heirs, who live nowhere near our communities, who pay employee wages that are so low, middle income workers have to help with their health and food needs? Do the 6 heirs have income/wealth equivalent to almost 50,000,000 Americans? At our local Walmart, the employees conducted a charitable food drive for their fellow employees. America’s promise was, to be better than this.
Linda,
Once again, by 600,000 middle income members you mean it is paid for by teacher’s dues payments, correct?
The boycott of products, jury nullification for multinational corporations in court, increased insurance premiums for politically active corporations etc., may force oligarchs to pay a price for being enemies of our nation.
Joe,
I have read many of your comments and I think you truly care about kids. I think that Charter Schools do have a winning strategy. Throw out/counsel out the kids that lower your scores. The top ranked Basis School does that here in AZ. If only regular Public Schools could do that. Maybe there should be a market for that in
Charters. Oh yeah, there is one, and they have low scores. I would be fine with Charters if only they would admit that they can do that when regular public schools can’t.
Charters in your state (I assume Arizona although i could be wrong) vary widely. Some serve a cross section, some serve only youngsters with whom traditional schools have not succeeded. Some allegedly encourage kids with low scores to succeed. If they are in fact doing that – it’s reprehensible.
I keep waiting for people here to condemn the quasi private magnet schools that won’t let kids in who can’t pass the standardized tests that are regularly criticized here. How about a moratorium on using test scores to keep students out of these schools?
Fortunately there are district & charter educators across the country who are finding ways to work with and learn from each other so that youngsters benefit.
Joe, I don’t condemn the magnets because at least they’re upfront about the exclusion. The charters that don’t exclude are as troubled as the publics.
I know how to make a big difference in inner city schools: double the number of teachers so that teachers have half the day to do prep, call homes, grade papers, and avoid getting psychologically destroyed by the high-impact experience. And phase in a Core Knowledge type curriculum so that low-income kids get the word and world knowledge that professionals’ kids get. This is the only road to reading and writing proficiency. Pretending that charterizing is the solution distracts from this real solution.
Ponderosa,
Many of the criticisms offered here of charter schools apply equally to qualified admission programs and schools. The “creaming” of students is most efficiently done by the qualified admission charter schools.
I don’t think any single thing is “the solution.” As to Core Knowledge and similar approaches, I think it’s a great option. Some families and educators strongly disagree and prefer a Montessori approach, or a language immersion approach, or … Some youngsters thrive in Core Knowledge, others in Montessori, or other.
How many of those 200,000+ jobs are full time? How many pay more than $10.00/hour? How many Americans have given up on ever finding a job that will support their family?
“But clearly the growing number of low income families choosing charters (including many not able to get into quasi private magnets that use admissions tests) shows many low income families want options that these schools provide.”
Clearly? Sorry, no, not clear at all. When you close 50 real public schools in Chicago or 23 in Philadelphia or however many in zillions or other cities, some of those kids are going to end up in charters. That doesn’t mean those families “wanted options that these schools provide” – the option most of them want is a public neighborhood school. But since they can’t have that option, they take whatever they think might be the next best option.
People have been leaving urban public schools for decades, Dienne, to go to the suburbs (some of which hire detectives to keep out students they don’t want from cities).
Charters have in many cases empowered low income families. Wealthy families have had options for decades.
Where is your criticism of people who went to suburbs? Where is your criticism of those who sent their kids to magnets with admissions tests?
Dienne,
There is this from today’s press release:
The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as
involuntary part-time workers) was about unchanged in October at 7.0 million. These individuals, who
would have preferred full-time employment, were working part time because their hours had been cut
back or because they were unable to find a full-time job. (See table A-8.)
If you look at table A8 there has been a decline in the number of persons employed part time for economic reasons of about a million people between Oct 2013 and Oct 2014.
The press release also contains information about the number of people marginally attached to the labor force and labor force participation rates.
Here is a link to the press release: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
Thanks for sharing TE. Obama has been the victim of incredible racism. He’s made mistakes, but is far better in many ways than he often receives credit for.
(and no, I am not calling anyone who has posted here a racist).
Your answer, Joe, as usual, has no bearing on what I posted. Nice try, though.
My comments responded to some of what you wrote, I gave examples of reforms that helped improve district public schools. TE responded to other parts of your comment.
Joe Nathan constantly brings up a red herring or misdirection or obfuscation about “…quasi private magnet schools that won’t let kids in…” Quasi private magnet schools aren’t being pushed by billionaires are not being propagandized by the media and they are not proliferating. There are none in my area of central NJ. So please bury this bogus talking point. Quasi private magnet schools are not a big problem, they barely exist, especially when compared to charter schools. Joe seems to think that charter schools are panaceas and that they are the silver bullet to the evil public schools and the supposed quasi private magnet schools. The sky is falling, the sky is falling, quasi private charter schools, boo, boo, be very afraid of the quasi private magnate school menace (eyes rolling).
Thousands of kids who can’t get into magnet schools think they are a problem. Their families think they are a problem. Part of the reason we have charters in some states is that some educators and families resented and continue to resent the ability of some magnets to pick and choose.
No, I don’t think charters (or anything else) are a silver bullet or a panacea. A series of things have to come together and be implemented well, whether in a district run or a chartered public school.
To add to Dienne’s point, are we counting New Orleans which had a charter school system forced upon them?
My primary argument against school choice, Joe, is that ultimately the schools choose their students, not necessarily the parents choosing the school. They can decide who they recruit and who they keep over the long-term.
I’ve had several students flow through my school who came from charters who “strongly encouraged” these students to leave their schools. In every case, these kids have been good kids behaviorally but poor students academically. How does this differ from the magnet schools you keep insisting upon? They don’t use an initial test scores but some degree of performance to “select” after the fact.
(For the record, I’m no fan of magnet schools either. Which is why I have issues with charter school student selection processes. A charter opened up in the suburban community next to ours and specifically targeted our Asian Indian population. We also have a sizable African-American population but their neighborhoods never had any canvassing.)
How about the common charter practice of not backfilling those seats when students leave for whatever reason? Isn’t that another form of student selection?
I have no problem with school choice if we ALL play by the same rules. But we don’t. In my state (Michigan) charters are growing in number based on their “quality” which largely is based on their ability to pursue and keep the better students. That’s the real secret sauce here.
Biggest school choice program in the country is the suburbs. And those schools definitely decide which students to accept. They clearly are not open to all who might attend. them.
School choice programs can be set up in many ways. Some clearly don’t serve students from low income families. Some do.
Great points, Dienne. Don’t put a lot of faith in those statistics. I have been looking for a full time job since 08 and I doubt that I have been counted. I have been stuck in part time jobs and jobs as an independent contractor (another corporate profiteering ploy), with low pay and no benefits, and I don’t qualify for unemployment benefits, so how would the government even know of me and my situation? I have never been surveyed. And I know MANY more people who have been dealing with the same circumstances for years –all college grads.
Cosmic,
The BLS gathers employment data in two different ways. The headline number is calculated from household survey data that covers about 60,000 households that are made up of about 110,000 individuals.
If you are interested in more details about the methodology, you can find some here: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm
Again, I have never been surveyed. Neither have my colleagues in the same situation. The samples are probably not representative. Considering all the companies that now hire part timers instead of full timers, to avoid providing benefits etc., as well as independent contractors, in order to escape minimum wage laws, payroll taxes, etc. –which the IRS turns a blind eye to– that is not surprising.
Cosmic,
The folks at the BLS are as professional as there is in the world in that business.
Last year I had a conversation with a man moving furniture into my school. He shared with me that his daughter’s school was closing and sought my advice. I suggested a charter school. His response was, “The school is down the street from my house. I do not want her to go to a charter school. I like the school and I do not want it to close.” The man and his wife did not own a car and his wife was not currently working. Why shouldn’t a traditional neighborhood school be a choice for poor urban parents?
NJ Teacher,
The folks that sent their children to the school that my district closed a couple of years ago felt the same way. Sometimes schools close.
There is nothing “professional” about overlooking and not reporting on large segments of the workforce not considered “non-farm payroll employment.” The only ones I saw listed as contract workers are in traditional industries, Construction and Finance, where people typically choose to do contract work. They did not address all the workers who were hired as independent contractors in other industries, such as many IT professionals, companies like AAA, and every single teacher at a school where I have worked for the past six years. I have spoken to many workers in these industries and a lot of us took those jobs not because we didn’t want to be classified as employees by companies circumventing minimum wage and other labor laws, but because that was the only work we could find in this economy.
The government could readily find a lot of us through the IRS. Unfortunately, the IRS cares a lot less about corporations that misclassify employees and don’t submit payroll taxes than they care about garnishing the incomes of low wage contract workers who can’t afford to pay those taxes all by themselves.
Cosmic,
No one does statistics better than the BLS. You might want to look around the web site: http://www.bls.gov
Obama is a person of privilege, who is not suffering any effects of racism I can discern. He gave Wall Street a free pass for nearly toppling the US economy with their make believe securities. He has no concern whatsoever for the have nots in our society. I am a critic of his policies. Therefore, I am a racist. Is there any logic to your statement?
Yes, Joe, President Obama has been under relentless attack from the right. The same people –the Waltons, The Wall Street hedge fund managers, and the same people who want to privatize public schools, as a hobby, a power thing, or for profit. See Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, Rick Scott, Rick Snyder.
And President has been supported by people like President BIll Clinton, and Hilary Clinton, and Calilfornia Governor Jerry Brown, and Minnesota Democratic Senator Al Franken, and Mn House Education Committee Chair Carlos Mariani and a long list of others who support offering public school choices, including those in district & charter public schools.
Joe just provided more examples of how, from top to tail, the neoliberal Democratic party is another arm of the GOP and can be counted on to further privatize public education. VOTE GREEN!
Fortunately for more than a million American students, their state legislatures regard charters as part of public education – not as private schools.
Moreover, a number of states offer programs in which students can earn all or part of their 10th – 12th grade credits on college campuses. These campuses are not controlled by local boards.
In a number of states, there are statewide schools on one topic or another. These are free, publicly supported and not controlled by local boards.
Public education is not just what’s offered by local boards.
Opponents of programs such as those described above, often refer to them as “privatization.” Fortunately many state legislators, both Republican and Democrat, view well developed school choice programs as part of public education. And, as noted there can be and I think are some poorly run school choice programs.
We’ve heard enough of your charter school crapola, Joe. Corporations with government contracts are not suddenly considered to be public. And any company that argues they should not have to be audited because they are private, as so many charters and management companies do, such as Success Academy, should be considered private, not public.
All publicly funded schools should be audited yearly and the results made available to anyone who wants to read them.
Joe, can you give an example of what charters offer that regular public schools do not or cannot offer –aside from exclusivity and ability to fire teachers easily? I fail to see why charters are inherently a good thing. People talk vaguely about “freedom from burdensome regulations” –sounds good –but could you please give me some specifics so I can have a concrete sense of what they’re talking about?
Ponderosa,
If we are comparing charter schools to traditional zoned schools, charter schools can offer specialization that can not be done with zoned catchment schools.
Ponderosa, chartering allows teachers, parents & community members to try new things that in some cases traditional districts have resisted/rejected. Here are a few examples:
1. Schools that are run by boards the majority of which are teachers in the school, thus allowing the teachers to be truly in charge, as in an option in many professions; 2. First Montessori junior-senior high school in Minnesota, first arts-focused high school located in downtown St. Paul making extensive use of downtown arts programs, 3. First high school to use production of music videos as a way to draw in students with whom traditional high schools have not succeeded, 4. First (and only) German immersion elementary school in Minneapolis/St Paul metro area. Those are only a few examples.
Moreover, examples like those have in some cases encouraged traditional districts to expand their offerings. SO the Chinese immersion elementary school and the Montessori junior/senior high school were so popular with families that some traditional districts decided to offer those programs. Also some districts decided to offer new schools or schools within schools because they preferred to have students remain in the district (like Forest Lake Mn decided to offer a Montessori option, like Boston Public Schools decided to listen to the Boston Federation of Teacher which proposed Pilot (within district options created by groups of teachers). The Minneapolis district has decided to offer site governed schools in response to the fact that thousands of low income families have left the district to enroll students in local charters.
Some charters stink. Many have been closed. But the charter idea allows people to create new options, and encourages districts to listen to teachers and parents.
Hope that helps.
What propaganda. Charter chains, which have been rapidly expanding across the country, have scripted roles for teachers and canned curriculum. Their executives are from the business world or were TFA temps, not veteran educators, and they have appointed boards from outside the community that do not include parents. It’s the rare exception when charters are interested in teacher initiative and creativity or parent input.
Victorino,
Most charter schools are not part of any chain.
That doesn’t mean smaller charters are any more welcoming of teacher input and leadership or parent participation than chains. Anyways, I focused on chains because of our business history. I would think that economists would be better skilled at recognizing business trends, but then again, you blame the death of mom and pop shops on cars and public transit, instead of corporate greed and the cannibalistic urge to devour the competition, which we have been seeing from Walmart and other corporations.
50 years ago, consumer products were purchased from a wide array of companies, not the 10 corporations we have now. There were many more news agencies than the 6 conglomerates that own 90% of the media today as well. We’ve seen the same kind of thing in other industries, too, such as with banks and privatized health care.
Charters are BIG business, with chains growing rapidly across the nation. Considering the history and the corporations can do no wrong political climate, I think we should expect to see mergers, acquisitions and consolidations down the road for them as well, with very few of the smaller organizations remaining.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/27/consumer-brands-owned-ten-companies-graphic_n_1458812.html
America is back where it was 100 years ago when industrial robber barons owned politicians, controlled government at all levels, owned the media, and possessed most of our nation’s economic wealth. A key factor in finally breaking this stranglehold was the long and bitterly fought struggle to unionize a substantial portion of the workforce. Even though the majority of firms were never unionized they had to provide union-scale wages and benefits to workers in order to avoid being unionized. The economic gains won by workers created America’s Middle Class. The decline of the Middle Class has paralleled the decline of unions, a fact that was statistically masked during the 1980s and 1990s by the easy credit which allowed the Middle Class to maintain its purchasing power, even while falling ever deeper into debt. That all blew up in The Great
Recession. Our consumer-based economy will continue to limp along so long as workers don’t get substantial — very substantial — raises. Today’s robber barons are killing the golden goose — the Middle Class consumer — that drives our economic engine. Greed is always self-destructive.
I tend to agree with almost all of your points, however the Greedy are doing very well, thank you! They need only suck the American Working Class dry (that includes most of the ‘Middle Class’, BTW) and then move on to another country, leaving behind the husk of a formerly prosperous and formerly democratic country.
This is the essence of the charter movement: charters pick the students they want and exclude those they don’t want
Dr. Ravitch,
That might be true if the charter school is potentially oversubscribed.
Of course if that is a criticism of charter schools, it is an even great a criticism of qualified admission programs. Those programs suck all the top students out of neighborhood schools, robbing Peter for the benefit of Paul is the way I think you put it.
Most state laws require a lottery be used if there are more students who want to attend than there are spaces open.
That’s quite different than magnet schools which are allowed to use standardized tests or auditions or some combination to decide who is admitted.
It’s also quite different from suburban districts that say “no” to people who live outside the district.
Some district options don’t use standardized test admissions tests or auditions. I salute them.
Lotteries mean very little as long as charters are allowed to continue to suspend, counsel out and expel the most needy students at significantly higher rates than neighborhood public schools, including special ed students, ELLs and those with behavioral challenges. Those kids are undesirable since they are more costly to educate and less likely to raise charter schools’ test scores. They are often released after the charter gets the money for them and just before testing time of the year, then they go to neighborhood schools and are tested there. Way too many dirty tricks.
During the “New Deal,” immigration was actually curtailed and only immigrants with the most similar, religious or political heritage to the US population, were allowed in as they could assemulate most quickly. There were lots of small businesses that were just getting by which was helpful in absorbing immigrants as well. People forget about the immigration factor, because just prior to the new deal a lot of immigrants were brought in and still had to meet certain standards to stay. They had to have jobs and support their own families within 6 months. Otherwise , it was cheep and easy to send them back to where they came from.
Obama Care and Big business have not been good creating jobs for Americans. Many Americans have great huge college debts and can’t afford to wok for less and then won’t rain in certain field because the job won’t pay well enough to support them . The mandate for Obama care doesn’t help either. So then businesses say they can’t find people to work in certain fields and being in workers of visa who aren’t often times saddled with debt because their government paid for them to go to college. Businesses also do not have to offer healthcare to immigrants.
Then you have open borders and a huge influx of people cross into our country and have little to offer in skills and may be potential criminals who will end up in our prison system. Over all many of the immigrants end up getting benefit’s that is costly. I even saw this happening at Dollar General , when newly arrived immigrants were given an EBT card with $1,200. to set up a household. Back then those things were just not offered, So basically the Democrats trying to pull off the new deal fail to make historical comparison and make adjustments.
They thought bring in immigrants would support them. They thought most everyone would fall in love with Obama Care. They thought fibbing about the state of the economy would spyhc people up. They thought helping republicans to grow charter school is what voters wanted. They thought Mrs. Obama’s lunch lack luster food menu was good for children. They actually thought that bailing out businesses and not holding them accountable would make the economy better. People just got more angry when it didn’t benefit them.
That the way I am hoping it will be going soon with charter school. Hopefully tax payers will begin to see how charters schools are greedy and more concerned with corporate profit over al then student success. you watch. If more regulation is enforced and charters don’t deliver they will be blaming parents/ students and regulation for their failures, kind of like the public schools did in inner cities. Hopefully, teaching will become more respectable profession again with having more highly trained certified staff.
I don’t know about other Democrats, but they sounded here like they were lecturing people or advising people, NOT acting as advocates.
You can’t come to Cleveland and lecture those people about the “skills gap”. It comes off as blaming working people for wage stagnation.
People don’t need earnest career advice from DC Democrats. They need an advocate. Advocates take sides. They have an opinion. They’re not “agnostics” and “relinquishers”.
I read that the Secretary of Labor sees his job as “match,com” for employers and employees and I just cringed. For God’s sake. It’s a regulatory agency, not a cheering squad.
No one wants “advice” from DC. They want some support.
After people went thru the worst economic downturn in their adult lives, Democrats decided they would fan out across the country and lecture them about “climbing the ladder of opportunity” and tell them they’re poorly educated and lazy.
Just pure genius. I hope the consultants made a ton on that.
I so appreciated ed reformers in the US Department of Ed conducting that nationwide “public schools suck!” campaign to push the Common Core.
Thanks guys! Makes it tough to pass an operating levy to replace the funding we’ve lost when the Obama Administration spends a good part of every day pushing their education agenda by using public schools as a political punching bag. It’s disgusting behavior, and I don’t care if Chris Christie is doing it or Kasich or Obama.
Chiara you make me smile daily.
I just bought my own math books, paper, and notebooks for my class. We have a school of rotting mold infested modular classrooms that have been condemned. Nevada refuses to spend a dime on education unless it is for vouchers and charters. I will definitely be out of here if I make it three more years to 20. I will use my latest M.A. in special ed, to be completed this summer, and think of getting a J.D. so I can try to come after some of these people. Robers Skeels has the right idea!
Very sorry you have to put up with the conditions you described. Both my wife and I as public school teachers in Minnesota found we needed to use our $ to pay for some classroom supplies.
As to $ available for Nevada public schools, here’s a link to the Nevada State Dept of Ed “data book” for 2013. It says the state spent about $8631/per student – funds available for both district and charters:
Click to access 2013EDB.pdf
Document also notes that Nevada is spending less per pupil than most US states.
Thanks for doing your best for the kids.
Anyone remember when ed reform was started and was sold to the public as “improving public schools”?
What happened to that? Was that a lie? Did we mistakenly hire people who are actually CONTRA public schools? Boy were we duped.
Some reforms have helped district public schools and urban students.
Examples include community school efforts which involve sharing space, like allowing high school students to take courses on college campuses, which encouraged high schools to add more dual credit courses, and some charters, which encouraged some districts for example, to add district Montessori options, or Chinese immersion options, or other language immersion options (our oldest granddaughter attends an urban district Spanish immersion school).
Her mother (our oldest daughter) and our other 2 kids also attended urban public schools with no standardized test admissions tests. Those schools added college level courses after Mn passed the law allowing high school students to take college level courses on college campuses.
Chiara – do I recall that you live in an Ohio district that is 90%+ white? Or am I mistaken about that?
Sorry, Joe but the ENTIRE ed reform energy revolves around charter schools. Public schools are never even discussed except in the context of charter schools, how they “compare” to charter schools or how they must “learn” from charter schools.
And the beat goes on. The laser-like focus of the ed reform “movement” on charter schools and vouchers continues:
“Be on the lookout for charter school or school voucher proposals to pop up early during the 114th Congress, as school choice legislation was named a top priority by the assumed Republican leaders in the House and in the Senate, which will flip to GOP control in January.”
The Obama Administration must be thrilled. The schools they prefer will once again be the only topics of discussion!
How do you “improve” public education when your movement either bashes or neglects the schools 90% of kids attend? The only time I hear from ed reformers in this state is when they’re labeling public schools as “failing” or delivering another threat of economic sanctions. I’m paying for this? Why?
We disagree that the entire school reform effort is focused on charters or that district public schools are never discussed except as you described.
Joe is right. We must never forget all the turnaround schools in urban areas. Are any schools turning around in upscale communities?
Mr. Nathan, I recall a few months ago you posted on DR blog that you’re interested in learning more re education nationally. Please read Jersey Jazzman (NJ music teacher/doctoral candidate Rutgers GSE); Bruce Baker’s (Rutgers U prof) School Finance 101; & Bob Braun’s Ledger blogs to learn why we in NJ don’t have as rosy a view of reform efforts as you. (e.g., attrition rates for African American male students at Newark charter schools; the unplanned transportation fiasco resulting from state-appointed superintendent Cami Anderson’s One Newark plan; the financial effect of charters on Hoboken public district)
If your Midwestern friends are psyched about Chris Christie running for President 2016, they might ask: If he can’t do a decent job as “the decider” for state-controlled Newark Public Schools ~38,000 students–How could he handle The Pentagon??
Thanks, I read several of those folks.
I’m not interested in voting for your Gov. You may have noticed that Mn re-elected a Democratic Governors, and a Democratic US Senator (both of whom support district & charter public schools).
Hi booklady!
You give great blog advice!
Christie is doing a fabulous job in Newark. Public schools are being closed left and right. Veteran teachers are being targeted in favor of Teach for America and uncertified others. Libraries are being converted to computer labs. Teachers of color with roots in the community are being thrown out of positions in droves.
Chiara, correction. . .they are mentioned. They are mentioned in “turning around.”
I hate that phrase. “Turn Around.”
“Let’s turn it around!” It’s too vague to really mean anything and has no place in policy.
Yeah, it implies that the teachers are driving it into the ditch. In reality, the teachers are using every last muscle to turn the steering wheel away from the ditch.
Look at the candidates! – Paul Vallas for Lt. Gov. in Illinois, Cuomo for Gov. in NY and Cory Booker for the Senate in NJ. Although Cuomo and Booker both won, they are no friends to public education. If the Dems want to be relevant they’ll need to back off the school privatization mania. Jeff Merkeley, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and their supporters need to be taken more seriously by the DC Dem insiders for the Dems to assert their leadership again. Warren and Merkeley are the future of the Democratic Party.
I think the reason things turned out like this is basically because people are disgusted and don’t understand enough about politics to know what they’re voting for. Why would anyone want Scott Walker who works to destroy the middle class? Why vote to dismantle ACA when there is no alternative health plan? Why want the EPA to be totally defunded when it is the only agency that does anything to protect our air and water?
Political ads are lies and anything repeated often enough becomes a truth. Ads being paid for by billionaires works to get people to vote against their own best interests. I had one lady on Nov. 4th who to wanted to know why there is so much fraud in elections. There is very little fraud. (As a poll clerk I couldn’t say my opinion.) However, I see the ‘fraud’ ID restrictive voting laws as a way to disenfranchise the poor, elderly, ill and students. it’s another way to steal elections by the GOP.
I’d like to think that people would ‘wake up’ before the country totally goes down the tubes of self destruction. The GOP party works only if you are rich and want more money or if you are a corporation that doesn’t want any restrictive government rulings that disrupt the quest for more profit, which is obtained by destroying the environment and paying poor wages for workers.
That post-mortem is being delivered by not only the Democrats, but by Republicans, many of whom ran ads that sort of reminded people of the old party.
I think it will be uniquely horrible now, because voters don’t really like Republicans any more than they like Democrats, and politicians know it.
They’ll get together to do something or other just to save their own hides in the next election. It will be worse than gridlock. It will be actively bad government.
“Sen. Bernie Sanders has proposed a bill to designate “Democracy Day” as a national election holiday to make it easier for Americans to vote.
Nationwide, preliminary indications are that the total turnout for the 2014 elections was only 36.6 percent, according to the United States Elections Project at the University of Florida.”
You can sign the petition to support designating election day as a national holiday in order to facilitate increased voter turnout here:
http://www.sanders.senate.gov/democracyday
Good idea. Thanks for sharing. Another option is to make voting something that happens on weekends.
Also interesting that many people have opted for voting early – that is a good option in some states.
The Democrats in my opinion care more about Wall Street money than public schools. I sent more than 30 emails recently to each of these people: Howard Dean, Hilary Clinton, Al Rankin, and others, telling them that anyone who loses in a close race can blame it on Obama’s Education Policies. Many teachers decided they may have a better future if they elected someone besides a Democrat. They have heard this message from many sources and chose to ignore it! Now what? Pray?
The mid-term elections were not overtly about education.
For voters, the number one issue was the economy (cited by 80 percent of voters). For the parties, and Republicans especially, much of it was about securing and cementing control of state legislatures.
And while the Dems have coddled Wall Street (and sought and taken its money), this time around two-thirds of the Wall Street cash went to Republicans. There’s a reason for that. The big-money boys did NOT want to take any chances that Sherrod Brown of Ohio might chair the Senate Banking Committee (though they might like Chuck Schumer). They want a Republican to do their bidding.
In truth, the big banks could and should have been broken up after the Great Crash. Those who committed fraud –– and there are plenty of them –– should have been prosecuted. But Obama and the Dems backed off that fight quickly, because that’s what the “smart” people told them to do.
Yeah, no question. Obama is basically a moderate Republican. So are the “centrist” Democrats. And Obama’s education policies are – in my view – baseless. But is he preferable to a Ted Cruz, or Jeb Bush, or Scott Walker, or Rick Perry?
People who care about the general welfare of the country, and public educations’ role in it, had better vote. And from what I’ve observed. Republicans have little to offer in either area.
“Democrats can’t win by acting like Republicans.” As long as there is big corporate money in politics, as long as the election cycle is endless and there is no public funding of campaigns, then Democrats will act like Republicans and they will not win.
The answer is a third progressive party which will take a message of economic equality and fairness to the voters, and which will give Americans a reason to vote, even in off year elections. Bernie Sanders and his proposed constitutional amendment to reverse Citizens United is a good place to start. IMO Hillary Clinton’s hopes of winning the Democratic nomination without a contest from the left went up in flames after Tuesday’s results, and I think that is a good thing. Hillary is the same old Wall St./Gates Foundation thing. But as good as Elizabeth Warren is, I also think her chances of getting the Democratic nomination if she went after it are next to nil – the Democrats will invariably act like Republicans.
My favorite part of the Meyerson article is his description of Obama as “too-cool-for-rule”. This nails it. I hate “cool” and I see it all over the place in the faces of Bay Area techies and hipsters. This bland, cool, narcissistic, technocratic elite group. They are too cool for politics. They are too cool for passion. They are loathe to let their hipster coifs get ruffled. Wanting to preserve a cool image, they shun the scrappy fights we must fight to bring about a better society. They think it can all be done in measured conversations and antiseptic apps. A bloodless, useless crew.
TFA is the epitome of “too cool”. Too cool for veteran teachers, too cool for teachers’ unions, too cool, ultimately, for teaching. “Cool” is a primitive and ugly social value. It’s a way of creating an in group and an out group just like in middle school. It’s akin to Silicon Valley’s relentless quest to winnow “talent” from “non-talent” and Ayn Randians’ relentless quest to distinguish their “excellence” from the masses’ “mediocrity”. Cool is the antithesis of solidarity.
Obama has no fire in the belly, he seems to have no core convictions. We need a Roosevelt or an Eisenhower, not a career elitist.
And Republicans claim they lose because too many of them are acting like Democrats. Yawn. Call me cynical, but this pretty much sums it up:
http://www.visualnews.com/2011/10/28/visual-bits-103-occupy-wall-street-tea-party/
Harold Meyerson is right that the Dems cannot rely on demographics alone. They have to make it crystal clear to voters what they stand for and what they’ve done. They did not do that well in the mid-term elections.
Take, for example, Alison Grimes in Kentucky. Grimes repeatedly refused to say if she voted for Obama, and she tried to steer clear of the Affordable Care Act, which is quite popular in the state. Even Mitch McConnell said he’d keep the Kentucky exchange alive while he simultaneously said he’d kill “ObamaCare.” Grimes should have made this a centerpiece of her campaign.
In Colorado, Mark Udall let Cory Gardner define both himself and the race. Udall kept emphasizing Gardner’s views on “personhood” and failed to go after Gardner hard on his crazy economic ideas. Gardner, like most Republicans, wants to cut taxes more for corporations and the rich, precisely the medicine that pile up huge deficits and debt under Reagan, Bush and Bush.
Republicans should get some “credit” for keeping looney-tune candidates out (like Chris McDaniel in Mississippi), for recruiting candidates that could win (Gardner, Tom Cotton in Arkansas, Jodie Ernst in Iowa), and for grooming and training those candidates rigorously.
But voter schizophrenia played a part too. Voters think the economic structure is skewed in favor of corporations and the rich (it is), yet they voted for the party (Republican) that is primarily responsible for creating that structure, and they voted for candidates who would make it even worse. Exit polls showed that voters dislike Republican Congressional leaders more than Obama, and distrust Republicans more than Democrats, but they voted for Republicans. Bizarre.
And, voters were not terribly informed. By far, the #1 issue cited as important by voters was the economy. And yet, “employers have added at least 200,000 jobs for nine straight months – the longest such stretch since 1995. Combine it with an unemployment rate that has slid to 5.8 percent – the lowest since 2008 – and the picture that emerged Friday was of a job market gaining increasing distance from the recession that officially ended nearly 5½ years ago… For workers in the hotel, restaurant and entertainment industry, hourly pay has risen 3.5 percent in the past year. Retail pay has risen 2.6 percent. So has construction pay… Over the past six months, the economy has grown at a 4.1 percent annual rate.”
http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_289563/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=Y0ysJBix
It sure seems to me that the Dems failed to adequately get out the vote, and they failed to highlight what they’ve done and how they’ve done it, and they did not explain well why Republicans cannot be trusted to keep the economic growth going.
Meanwhile, as USA Today reports, “the 85 richest billionaires on the planet, including the likes of Carlos Slim, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, have as much money as the 3.5 billion poorest people…if Bill Gates, for example, spent $1 million every day, it would take him 218 years to exhaust his funds. That, of course, would never happen because Gates would be earning millions of dollars a day in interest on the rest of his wealth.”
This kind of income disparity is simply unsustainable, besides being just flat-out wrong. But Republicans will try their very best to sustain it. And the Dems have to call them out out it.
Good points.
It boggles my mind that the “better quality of life” stump speech is still owned by the elephants. It’s like Walmart telling us how to live better!
We, the middle class, have been so reduced to a scrappy existence, taking whatever we can get, that paying less taxes and having a smaller government are the only tunes buzzing in voters ears–not that they even address why the middle class is poorer than ever before, adjusted to inflation. As such, citizens aren’t voting for populists like Shenna Bellows of Maine, who was decimated by a [female] career politician that stands for everything that voters across America decided was NOT important to them in special measure voting.
We are a young nation and have not yet had a fight against the tyranny of our own home grown royalty. Those days are coming when the white collars will roll, but until then, I have to maintain that this election was
THE VERY BEST GOVERNMENT THAT MONEY COULD BUY.
Under the Bush administration, important government research publications were eliminated, for example, the Industrial Outlook, which measured productivity by industry. The easy-to-read book, which college libraries and corporations subscribed to, would have shown us that the financial services industry is a drag on GDP. Then, Pete Peterson, John Arnold and other hedge funders may have been too ashamed to suggest problem (or, no problem) fixes, outside of their industries.
Based on Ohio charter schools (Knowyourcharter.com) and the debacle of for-profit colleges, the Industrial Outlook would have shed light on the taxpayer abuse of education dollars.
Let’s ask Pres. Obama to start re-issuing the publication.
The Democrats lost because it was the president that failed the American people. His lack of leadership and extreme liberalism made the generally conservative Americans turn against him and the party. What a wave of a win.
Sue,
Perhaps you will offer some specific examples of Obama’s “lack of leadership” and his “extreme liberalism.”
I’d very much like to see what it is you’re talking about.
I get the lack of leadership part, but the “extreme liberalism” is a fairy tale. He doesn’t refer to himself as a liberal and his policies are not liberal. He is a puppet of big business.
“Cosmic Tinker” is right. And in 4 years or so everyone will be scrabbling to vote Democrat again. Because perception is everything and the binary thinkers who only vote democrat and think democrat thoughts and see democrat things will continue to panic about creationism and warm weather and whatever, and republicans who are the same will continue to panic about dead babies and terrorists and whatever, and nobody will bother to pay attention to real life. They are exactly the same:
http://www.humblelibertarian.com/2011/08/bush-20-100-ways-barack-obama-is-just.html#idc-cover
Where’s SDP(DAM) when ya need him?
String bean, string bean
such long threads
with thought long past dead
like education in the string bean nation
Chile’s dread
NY Time discussion of what Democrats must do to win in 2016:
Say “No to Republibama Government” http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=10626
Teacher Ed,
It is not a personal assumption, it is pretty simple economics. If a group of people can only shop at store A, that store has a great deal of pricing power (formally it has a relatively inelastic demand curve). The shopper can only choose between buying from store A or not buying the good.
Reducing transportation costs allows people to shop at multiple stores. Now the shopper can choose between buying the good at store A or store B or store C or not buying the good at all. Moreover, the store now has a greater incentive to lower the price because it can bring in additional customers from the adjacent areas that previously only shopped at store B or C because of the high transportation costs. In more formal terms, the reduced transportation costs have made the demand curve more elastic and all firms have an incentive to increase sales through lower prices. If some of the firms have higher costs than others, they may not be able to compete and close.
Cars lowered transportation costs, especially in rural and suburban areas.
Folks, to recap, TE had asked for citations for studies on the impacts of Walmart on communities, as mentioned by Dienne and described by others, so a link to a page with citations was provided. On that page, there’s also a link to info about Walmart’s history of predatory pricing, which describes lawsuits filed against the company, both here and abroad, because of their practice of intentionally selling merchandise under cost, in order to run the local competition out of business: http://ilsr.org/walmart-charged-predatory-pricing/
An Internet search revealed that two US cases were settled out of court and Walmart lost a case in Germany. They have since closed its store there.
No matter, Cars are TE’s story and he’s sticking to it –even if that means blaming the entire auto industry. His conclusion is based purely on speculation and despite evidence to the contrary. That is lying to me.
And here’s info about one of the Walton family’s latest self-serving practices: “Walton Family Undermining Rooftop Solar, ILSR Report Finds”
http://ilsr.org/walton-report/
Teacher Ed,
If Sam Walton had never expanded from his original store, local small retailers would have been killed of by some other big box store. Perhaps it would have been K-Mart that you would now be upset with, or Target. After all, it was not Walmart that killed off the ubiquitous food markets in small towns, it was Kroger or Safeway that built the supermarkets to replace the market and people started buying far more than they could comfortably walk home with.
Perhaps it would help if I take a different approach to the explination. Draw a four mile circal around your home. For me, that would be a two hour round trip on foot. Is there a Walmart inside that circle? There isn’t one for me, so without some faster, low cost transportation there is no possibility that I could be a Walmart customer. I would guess (and this is just a guess) that a large majority of the people in my town would not be within four miles of a Walmart. High transportation costs would mean that most people in my town could not be Walmart customers.
Thanks, Teacher Ed, for your assiduous work. It supports my assumptions of TE’s lack of veracity and integrity.
Teacher Ed, maybe you should ask TE for citations about the impact of the automobile on communities. It could be that TE’s not the only one who believes there’s a connection.
Teacher Ed,
We can learn from TE—learn how to recognize someone who is blind, deaf and mute when it comes to actually using valid data to think and form opinions.
Lloyd,
May I suggest that you only shop at retail stores within walking distance of your home. It will give you a feel for why high transportation costs create small retailers widely dispersed around the area and low transportation costs allow retailers to take advantage of returns to scale and build larger stores.
TE,
Thanks for the suggestion, but I walk the 1.5 miles to our local town to shop, see films and eat. There is also a Target, a Trader Joe’s and a Wholefoods market all within that range.
In fact, I walk two or three times a week to town and walk at least 2 or more miles a day.
I suggest we compare our carbon footprints.
To compare, I suggest we use the same Free Carbon Footprint calculator—I based my answers on one person to keep it simple:
http://www.nature.org/greenliving/carboncalculator/
The results for my Carbon Footprint
“Your estimated greenhouse gas emissions are 14 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent per year, which is below the U.S. national average.”
The U.S. average per person is 27 tons of CO2 annually.
Lloyd,
Is that the only way that you shop? Without cheap transportation, you would only be able to buy what is within walking distance.
If everyone was restricted to only shopping within a mile and a half of their house, small stores would start to open and all the large stores would have to close. They would not have enough customers to justify the scale of a Sam’s club or a Walmart or a Target or even a Safeway. They would close. You have run history backwards.
TE,
There you go, changing the topic again and avoiding everything I said.
Lloyd,
I am a fellow walker. My usual commute to work has been by foot or bicycle for the last couple of decades. Because I live in a harsher climate than you do (we will spend weeks with the high temperature never gets above 30 in the winter and weeks in the summer with triple digit high temperatures), my carbon footprint is no doubt larger than yours.
walking is good
Thanks, John A and Lloyd! And precisely…
Flerp, the issue was specifically about Walmart and its involvement in killing off local retailers. TE insists cars were responsible, regardless of evidence that Walmart has long engaged in shady business practices, including those that purposely seek to destroy the competition, such as through predatory pricing.
Cars have existed for a century, Those of us who have lived through decades of growth in the expansion of grocery store chains, department stores, shopping malls and big box stores have seen decreases in the number of local retailers, but not their total annihilation, as happens in many places when Walmart moves in. For example, although I don’t have much money, I frequent the SuperMercado in my integrated neighborhood because of the convenience and my desire to support local retailers, as do others in my community, so they have continued to thrive despite the area chains.
If you look at the article about Walmart’s involvement in undermining solar energy, and how they treat their employees, it is clear that, on many fronts, the Waltons are willing to go to extreme lengths to serve their own interests, regardless of the havoc they wreak on the lives of others. With all these indicators, I think it’s irresponsible and unconscionable for a teacher to ignore all of that and blame cars.
Teacher Ed,
You do understand that local small grocery markets were killed by SUPERmarkets. You just don’t remember a time without supermarkets.
Of course I remember small grocery stores before chains, and SuperMercardos are exactly that, They are small grocers or “supermarkets,” which are established and owned by Mexican immigrants, not a chain.
My neighborhood grocery store is a Duane Reade. Actually, that’s not quite accurate. It’s three Duane Reades that are all more or less equidistant from me.
I feel compelled to try to moderate this, because it doesn’t seem like anyone is actually making any assertions that are difficult to accept. How about we all agree that cheap transportation has had a profound effect on the way commerce and communities are organized, that one of those effects has been the rise of big-big retailers, and finally that big-bog retailers themselves have had a profound effect on smaller retailers?
Wow, those are two stunning typos I just made. In each case (“big-big” and “big-bog”) I meant to type “big-box.”
Lloyd, you are not “running the clock backwards.” You are commendable, and increasing numbers of people are doing the same thing.
I lived without a car for several decades because I couldn’t afford to buy one. I walked a lot, took public transportation, rode a bike and, eventually, I bought a small motor scooter –which went too slowly to drive on streets with speed limits above about 35 MPH. All severely limited me to buying only what I could personally carry. so I know very well what it’s like to shop without a car. When I finally got a (used) car, I felt that my world had significantly expanded, but that was about a lot more than shopping. Now that I have a 15 year old used car which is not in very good condition, I am conscious of conservation needs and I walk a lot again.
Teacher Ed said
“All severely limited me to buying only what I could personally carry. so I know very well what it’s like to shop without a car. When I finally got a (used) car, I felt that my world had significantly expanded, but that was about a lot more than shopping.”
Exactly right.
Without cars, there are no Walmart supercenters, no Targets, no department stores, no large stores at all outside of densely populated urban areas. It would be a country of small shops within walking distance of every customer they serve.
In addition, I have boycotted Walmart for decades due to their obvious agenda to destroy the public schools in the United States. If a Walmart was a block from my house, and I had to walk two miles to reach a Target or Costco, I’d walk the distance.
P.S; Though they might differ in other regions like the southwest, in my northern area, “supermercado” is a generic term used by small storefront Hispanic grocers. Most have no parking lot. Some have a taqueria.
People can spin it any way they like, but the truth is that cars are not responsible for Walmart’s cannibalistic business practices. Maybe if TE taught economics in the business school, he would acknowledge the Walton business plan.
Teacher Ed,
Without cars and people driving past local shops to the Walmart supercenter there would be no Walmart. Without Walmart, you would be complaining about Kmart.
Teacher Ed — what, in your view, is responsible for Wal-mart’s cannibalistic business practices? Anything that realistically could be changed? (As opposed to, for example, making cars disappear.)
NO. THIS IS NOW AND HAS ALWAYS BEEN ABOUT WALMART’S BUSINESS PRACTICES. PERIOD. (Emphasis added for the intentionally deaf and blind.)
techer Ed,
Interesting. I thought we were talking about the disappearance of small retailers.
The Waltons are responsible for Walmart’s business practices. Politicians who value big business over the common man are complicit.
When six heirs of one company have more wealth than the combined wealth of 40% of our population, this is an oligarchy. When that is still not enough wealth for them, it is capitalism run wild. I would like to see more Roosevelt type leaders stand up and reign in the Waltons and their ilk, but it looks like we are headed in the opposite direction with the new Congress.
How would you propose the Waltons be reined in?
This is where we may be heading now, “Grand Theft Election:
How Republicans Plan to Rig the Electoral College and Steal the White House”
https://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/civil-liberties/report/2013/01/24/50459/grand-theft-election/
Hopefully, in two years, enough people will still believe that there’s a meaningful difference between Democrat and Republican presidents.
The original post from Ch-Town Res was about the neoliberal takeover of the Democratic party by Clinton, and an example was provided of how a Democratic mayor (in a union stronghold) brought in Wal-Mart despite community uproar. TE was the one who turned the thread into a discussion about Walmart. Playing dumb doesn’t work here.
Teacher Ed, that’s a trick TE plays, changing the subject.
Dr. Ravitch,
If you read every post you are well aware that I have been arguing against the thesis that Walmart caused the decline in local retail sales for several days with Teacher Ed. Teacher Ed does not believe lower transportation costs, provided by automobiles, caused local retail stores to lose pricing power. I do.
It was not I that suddenly changed the conversation. Nice try though.
Teacher Ed,
Apparently you don’t actually think that Walmart caused the decline in small retail stores in small towns. If that is the case, I certainly agree.
We can all read very well TE and can easily see how you blamed cars for the demise of local retailers in response to concerns that were expressed about reprehensible Walmart business practices. Diane is right. You tried to change the topic then, but others did not follow your tangential lead and repeatedly came back to discussing Walmart.
You may think you are in charge every time you hijack conversations but you are no one’s leader here. “Nice try though.”
Teacher Ed,
We have been talking about the destruction of small retailors for days. You have been disagreeing with my view for days. There has been no change in the discussion in this thread.
Apparently, you have no idea what I think. As evident to others according to their comments, I believe in what research has demonstrated, not your personal opinions and spin.
TE is splitting hairs. Clearly he did not bother to read the citations I provided about WALMART. He doesn’t recognize when others are not on his mobius strip.
Sorry, that last link is dated. Here’s one from today:
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/11/13/3592146/michigan-lawmaker-poised-to-resurrect-plan-that-could-rig-the-electoral-college-for-republicans/
TE. You are sorely mistaken if you think that suddenly throwing in that “small town” qualifier when you blamed Ford & GE for killing off local retailers escaped knowing eyes. People are onto your tricks and know about how you change the terms out of left field and then keep it up, as if you had said that all along. This was all too obvious since the discussion was about Walmart in Chicago.
Chi-town,
When I use the word “density” I am distinguishing between relativly urban and realitivly rural areas.
You are, of course welcome to argue that Walmart has destroyed small retailers in large cities, but I think this is the harder case to make. Amoung other problems in making the case is that there are no Walmart stores in New York City or Boston or San Francisco or Detroit or Seattle.
Your responses here and above to being called out on your tricks just provide more examples of how often you try to change topics and hijack discussions.
Glad to see how very aware Diane and others are of this, as well as of how often you insert your bias with no proof of veracity.
Chi town,
What tricks? I have spent days trying to explain the pretty basic economics involved in the centralization of retailing. It is fine that you decide you don’t want to talk about that anymore.
And now he uses the queen’s “we” to try to tell people what they have been talking about. HE has been talking about whatever fancies him; I have been talking about Walmart.
At some point you have to stop replying to TE’s postings; each response on your part acts as a behavioral reinforcer; he continues to be rewarded by your response. if the usual crew of responders stop responding to TE, eventually he will just go away. Otherwise, ‘you’ will have you running around in circles chasing your own tail. Bon chance!
Agreed, John, TE’s pattern is to try to get the last word, so this could go on forever. He doesn’t realize how self-incriminating his last words usually are, so he can have at it for all I care. I’m out of here.
No one asked for your bogus lessons on economics, TE. We prefer verifiable facts. All done dealing with you.
Chi-Town,
I am offering only the most basic economics lessons. Economics is just common sense, a valuable commodity often in short supply.
And there we have it, people. TE values common sense, not facts. (And he really does have no clue how bad he makes himself look in his fight for the last word.)
Cosmic,
Commen sense incorporates facts, not dilusions or wishful thinking.
TE, “common sense”? you must be kidding.
John a,
Not at all. The basic assumption of economics is that people do what they think best given the choices available to them.
TE, you mistake my meaning. over and out.
Wow. This guy just keeps proving how seriously whacked out his thinking is.
People often make decisions that have nothing to do with facts, and their actions are frequently based on desires, misconceptions and belief systems, but they often call that “common sense.” If economists accept “common sense” as a synonym for facts, and if economics is based on the assumption that “people do what they think is best,” then that discipline is grounded in bias and it is not a science. It’s more like astrology.
It is, however, very difficult to swallow that economists have this kind of faith in people when they push on them abominations like Voodoo Economics, VAM, the sanctity of markets and the “miracle” of choice. This suggests their assumption is more like ‘there’s a sucker born every minute.’
Time to get the hands of these astrologers off other professions they seek to control, such as education. I would be much more likely to trust social scientists, who are typically trained to not make assumptions about people, because people are idiosyncratic and unpredictable.
I will not be taking any questions.
just , simple, ‘props’, for your response.
Elder Wise,
Indeed people usually make choices based on their desires. In academic economics the term used is preferences, and we spend a great deal of time talking about them. Beliefs are harder, but typically we use some sort of Bayesian updating to model belief formation.
The way I was using the term “common sense” was not as a reference to facts about the world, more about simple observations about the world. Take the discussion here. I would say that it is common sense that people prefer to pay less for a good or service than more for the identical good or service. Economists habitually think hard about things like cost. Some aspects of cost are uniform across individuals and easy to compute (think the price that Acme charges customers assuming no price discrimination (a technical term in economics)), some aspects of cost must be paid by all individuals but can be unique to each one so are hard to measure in the real world (think about the transportation costs that depend on an individuals location that were the topic here for a couple of days), and some costs are nearly unobservable (think about purchasing from Acme when you spouse disagrees with the politics of the owner of Acme). Economists follow these ideas out to their logical conclusion.
You seem to have the wrong idea of what economists do or think. Economists think hard about where decentralized markets work well and where they work poorly. Economists also think hard about where centralized organizations work well or work poorly. It is thinking like an economist that has lead the publication the Economist to call for government action to reduce carbon emissions for decades, but also to argue in favor of emission taxes verses a system of regulation.
If you want to understand some basic economics, you might want to read a textbook. Given the general view on this blog, perhaps Krugman Wells would be the most acceptable to most, but any introductory textbook will do. Alternatively, Naked Economics by Wheelan and Malkiel can serve as an introduction without a single graph or equation. Textbooks can be very expensive new, but used prices are low (any edition of the text will do) and with a little effort you can find a copy of most books illegally copied on the internet.
off-putting, pedantic, condescending. have you no self insight?. no response desired. just give it some thought.
And yet I manage to post without calling anyone names.
you don’t have to do anything but post; sometimes, for example in your case adjectives. do actually provide an accurate description of your postings. ciao.
I probably should have also said that I will not be reading one more word from the astrologer, let alone what looks to be multiple paragraphs of what I imagine is amphigory in defense of astrological divining.
And thank you very much, John.