Peter Greene here reviews David Brooks’ latest effort to advise the nation about education issues. Brooks argues that it would be a mistake to try to reduce poverty by redistributionist policies (I assume he means such policies as higher taxes on billionaires or direct benefits to those who are poor or government programs for job creation); instead, we should count on education to reduce inequality and poverty.
In earlier columns, he concluded that Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone charters were “miracle schools” that had closed the achievement gap between white and black students (however, the miracle has not been sustained, even though Canada kicked out the entire entering class whose scores were low, and his schools spend substantially more than public schools with which they are compared); and Brooks endorsed the idea that teachers would produce higher test scores through a trick called “loss aversion,” where they are given a bonus at the beginning of the year, but the bonus is taken away if the scores don’t go up. In 2011, after he heard me speak in Aspen, Colorado, he wrote a column criticizing me for questioning high-stakes testing and charter schools, and of course, he complained that I said that poverty is a leading cause of low test scores. He seems to believe that testing and charters are the answer to poverty, even though after some 13 years of high-stakes testing and 25 years of charters, there seems to be more child poverty, not less.
In today’s column, Brooks claims that the way to prosperity is not to reduce poverty by, for example, creating jobs for people who want to work or raising taxes on the super-rich (that would be redistributionist, which is a very bad thing in his eyes), but by making sure that everyone goes to college. If everyone goes to college, then everyone will get good jobs, and no one will be poor. But where will all those new jobs come from? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the 20 occupations that will supply the most jobs between now and 2022 are mostly low-paying. Except for registered nurses and managers, 18 of the 20 occupations are not high-wage occupations. Do we need to improve our schools? Yes, of course. Will that be enough to reduce poverty? No.
Greene writes:
Mostly Brooks wants to argue for education as the miracle engine of economic justice. And to make his argument, he trots out the work of Raj Chetty, a piece of research that proves conclusively that even researchers at Harvard can become confused about the difference between correlation and causation. (Chetty, for those of you unfamiliar with the “research,” asserts that a good teacher will result in greater lifetime earnings for students. What he actually proves is that people who tend to do well on standardized tests tend to grow up to be wealthier, an unexciting demonstration of correlation best explained by things we already know– people who score well on standardized tests tend to be from a higher-income background, and people who grow up to be high-income tend to come from a high-income background.)
Brooks also cites magical researcher David Autor of MIT, who believes that if everyone graduated from college with a degree, everyone would make more money because, reasons. Because if everyone had a college degree, flipping burgers would pay more? Because if everyone had a college degree, corporations would suddenly want to hire more people? The continued belief in the astonishing notion that a more educated workforce causes higher-paying jobs to appear from somewhere is big news to a huge number of twenty-somethings who are busy trying to scrape together a living in areas other than the ones they prepared for these days.
Brooks isn’t done spouting nonsense:
[Brooks writes:] “Focusing on human capital is not whistling past the graveyard…No redistributionist measure will have the same effect as good early-childhood education and better community colleges, or increasing the share of men capable of joining the labor force.”
Because the vast number of high-paying jobs currently going unfilled is….. what?
Brooks says that redistributionists don’t get it, that they believe that modern capitalism is fundamentally broken, but that their view is biased by short-term effects of the recession. I have two responses for that pair of thoughtbubbbles.
First, it’s not clear whether capitalism is broken or not because we are currently tangled up in some sort of twisted fun-house mirror version of faux capitalism where the free market has been obliterated by a controlled money-sucking machine run by the government on behalf of the oligarchs. I’m actually a fan of capitalism, but what we currently have in this country is not capitalism at all.
Second, your argument about the “temporary evidence” of the recession is invalid because the recession was (and is) not the result of some mysterious serious of natural events. The economy went in the tank because the CEOs and Wall Street put it there. The economy broke because the “capitalists” broke it, and consequently the recession itself is Exhibit A in the case against modern faux capitalism and the greedheads who run it.
Throwing all this back at a magical belief in education is simply another way to blame poor people for being poor. So sorry you need food stamps and health care, but if you’d had the guts and character to go to college and get a degree, you wouldn’t be in such a mess. Your poverty is just the direct result of your lack of character and quality. Well, that and your terrible teachers. But it certainly has nothing to do with how the country is being run. It’s all on you, lousy poor person. And also your teachers.
David Brooks is a master of thinklets about education borrowed from economists who create such thinklets.
Tago!
The only thing a college education will get you today is debt, and lots of it.
“Above all, increase the productivity of workers so they can compete.”
This is just incorrect and he says it twice. Does he know what “productivity” means?
I have no idea why he’s considered credible on this or anything else. He has the theory he’s trying to promote all muddled up.
I am tired of being scolded by people who do such sloppy, lazy work.
We should create an “EDUFAKER (Ed-Deformer) HALL of FAME”
The following should be unanimous inductees:
Bill Gates
David Coleman
Arne Duncan
Andrew Cuomo
Chric Christie
Jeb Bush
David Brooks
She Who Shall Never Be Named
Mike Petrelli
Rob Pondiscio
Wendy Kopp
Mike Boomberg
Joel Klein
Eva Moskowitz
They need to be mocked, embarrassed, humiliated, and held to account for the harm they are inflicting; for using the lives and futures of our most vulnerable children in order to reap their blood money.
Feel free to add to the list
Make that the,
EDUFAKER HALL of SHAME!
Cory Booker
Cami Anderson
Rahm Emanuel
Don’t forget to add John White Superintendent of NOLA and the Recovery School District of charter schools that are failing.
I think I did that here—a sort of hall of infamy for public education reformers: http://wp.me/pLJTE-Up
I’m planning an update. I might move Cristy off the top 10 and replace him with Scott Walker and then add a few more to the extended list.
How do you get such a small URL http://wp.me/pLJTE-Up
from this:http://crazynormaltheclassroomexpose.com/2015/01/24/the-top-10-most-unwanted-list-the-enemies-of-public-education/
Michelle Rhee
John Deasy,
Ramon Cortines
Elaine Fink,
Denise Levine
Add, Warren Buffet.
In July, 2014, he gave the Gates Foundation the largest donation, on record, $2 bil. It’s reported that he is funding H. Clinton’s campaign. He could take a page from the hedge fund playbook, and demand public education, in return for his campaign contributions but, he won’t.
Just like Gates, he can’t get off the “richest men lists”, despite their claims to be trying. IMO, Buffet is doing what financial guys do, he’s hedging his bets. If his PR takes and he looks like a man of the people, he’ll be spared in the populist uprising.
Please don’t forget to include Randi Weigarten, the lawyer, temp substitute teacher, and chief enabler of the so-called reformers, on that list.
I once crunched some numbers on Chetty’s claims and came up with and annual increase in pay of about $250 per person. Obviously this could not apply to any hourly job let alone a minimum wage job where pay raises are scheduled based on (gasp) length of employment or EXPERIENCE! For salaried workers, no explanation was given on exactly how that extra income would be obtained. Better initial salary negotiations based on elementary school grades? On test scores? One sweetly absurd irony is that the educational difference that would get you that whopping $250 per year would likely be invisible to market forces, the ones that magically adjust for such things. Like the idea of close reading with no context needed, Chetty’s idea exists in a vacuum where no other forces come into play, just that “great” third grade teacher.
“Chetty’s idea exists in a vacuum. . . ”
As in between his ears?!?!?
Señor Swacker: you are going to give vacuums a bad name.
😏
David Brooks is a leading proponent of magical thinking. For example, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq will cause X, Y and Z to happen. And it not only won’t be expensive, it will pay for itself!
When events proved him wrong, he couldn’t figure out what happened—reality is just so mysterious and hard to figure out.
😳
And besides, as he and others repeated endlessly, absolutely nobody foresaw or could foresee what would ‘go wrong.’
Literally, revisionist history as in the Soviet Union airbrushing out whoever was on the “enemies of the people” list at the moment. There were plenty of critics that accurately pointed out what could go wrong in Afghanistan and Iraq—and then did go wrong.
Hence, the importance of this and other blogs and other activities in favor of a “better education for all” setting the record straight.
They give the lie to the rheephorm mantra that no one sounded the alarm in time, hence the ridiculous spectacle of the NJ Commissioner of Education declaring in all seriousness:
[start quote]
“It will take time to see the type of progress we all want,” he said. “Whatever we’re doing, we need to double down.”
[end quote]
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2015/03/04/lyndsey-layton-governor-christie-fails-in-newark/
Really, repeat catastrophic and proven failures? So now I go to that forgotten Marx, not the famous Groucho but the lesser, a German fellow:
“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” [Karl]
And then the third time as “education reform.”
Also known as the Potemkin Village Plan for $tudent $ucce$$.
😎
Good post KTA on how these talking heads can be wrong over and over and over again ad infinitum and how much of what they write mimics the old Soviet Pravda (translated as truth). And then still get paid a hell of a lot more than the average “public school union thug teacher” for continuing to spew forth excrement from the top end of their alimentary tract.
Chetty was only able to come up with that meager “annual” gains by extreme chetty picking based on what he found for 28 year olds and then extrapolating it across their entire career while simultaneously disregarding the fact that the data for 30 year olds showed no significant gains.
Moshe Adler pointed out the fatal flaws in Chetty’s arguments to him and it’s hard for anyone who actually understands what Chetty did to escape the conclusion that Chetty is simply intellectually dishonest.
There is a name for what Chetty engages in and it is the opposite of “research”.
Creative Writing?
Joke writing?
Truth or Dare?
Cross- posted at http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Peter-Greene-David-Brooks-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Billionaires_Capitalism_David-Brooks_Diane-Ravitch-150306-903.html#comment536154
with this comment (which at the site has embedded links):
The NY Times is anti-education to the point that it is clear that they are purchased by dark money
http://billmoyers.com/segment/john-nichols-and-robert-mcchesney-on-big-money-big-media/
and only report what the oligarchs want the people to know. Brooks gets to publish his rant.
The NY Times believes that it ‘balances such lies’ with truth. All it does is confoundithe people! However this piece by Egan, is true: Happy Talk History – NYTimes.com has this paragraph:
“The push against professional educators is part of a larger national effort by conservatives to get rid of the history they don’t like, in places like Texas, Georgia, Colorado and Tennessee. Last year, the Republican National Committee passed a resolution endorsing these culture war potshots.With the latest initiatives, the party of science denial is now getting into history denial. On the academic front, they have a point, indirectly. Much of the A.P history framework is boring, bland, and sounds like it was written by committee, which it was. There’s little narrative, drama, heroics or personality — in other words, the real-life stuff that makes for thrilling history.”
And if you want to see what this committee version of history looks like ‘ take a look at the new curricula in a high school in North Carolina Plans to Adopt Koch-Funded Social Studies Curriculum at the Diane Ravitch’s blog. Go on, read how they rewrite history there.
Also, read what Diane Ravitch reveals about North Carolina: ” “There is no aspect of “reform” that has failed more decisively than virtual charter schools. They provide instruction online and receive full state tuition. Their students dropped out at high rates–usually 50% annually–they spend millions on marketing and advertising to lure new students, who her low test scores and abysmal graduation rates.”
“North Carolina’s legislature just invited two online charters to open. They will siphon funds from public schools. North Carolina has, in a short time, gone from being one of the most progressive southern states to one with underfunded public schools and poorly paid teachers. The legislature seems to want to introduce every failed idea into education. They even killed off the state’s successful teaching fellows program, which prepared career teachers, and replaced it with $6 million for TFA.”
This is the plan for all the states.
They are applying what Maddow identifies as ‘genius’ strategy, one that ensured the GOP takeover of state elections…little by little; targeting one small vulnerable place at a time, they turned the states RED and now (in control of the legislatures) they are gerrymandering them to hold on forever.
If you missed this…
go and hear Maddow explain the strategy she calls ‘genius’ —one that they used to take-over the elections — a strategy that they are now using to take out the schools, one state at a time, piece by piece and that spells the end of the road to opportunity for all Americans.
AND SEND A LETTER TO THE EDITORS AT THE NY TIMES, and tell them that Brooks should write about what he knows to be true, as he is clueless about eduction!
“I taught as many as five classes each semester at four campuses in D.C. and Maryland, crisscrossing town by bike and public transportation during work days that sometimes lasted 13 hours. I never knew what my employment would look like the following term and constantly applied for part- and full-time teaching positions in case I didn’t get rehired. Many of the courses I taught—composition, professional writing and journalism—were required for undergraduate or graduate students, yet those programs ran almost entirely on the backs of adjuncts.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/03/06/i-was-a-professor-at-four-universities-i-still-couldnt-make-ends-meet/
I wonder how David Brooks would explain this from the Christian Science Monitor:
“Working-age people are now the majority recipients of food stamps, overtaking the share who are children and seniors, the traditional beneficiaries of the program, according to a new analysis from The Associated Press and University of Kentucky economists. At the same time, the demographics of the food-assistance program have shifted enormously over the past three decades to include more college graduates, the report also found. …
… the findings show that the percentage of food stamp households headed by someone with a four-year college degree has increased from about 3 percent to 5 percent since 1980, and the share of beneficiaries who have at least some college training has leaped from 8 percent to about 28 percent.”
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2014/0127/Who-gets-food-stamps-More-are-college-grads-half-are-working-age.-video
David Brooks should realize that the amount of money spent on programs like food stamps is small in comparison to the cost of corporate welfare. http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/19844-food-stamps-are-affordable-corporate-welfare-is-not#
Hi retired,
Add the costs of foreign interventions also known as wars.
The opposite of progressive is regressive.
I always thought the opposite of progress was Congress.
Brooks is an institutionalist. I still don’t understand why the PBS Newshour wants to keep that man on every Friday night.
No I think you explained it completely. This is the same organization that puts Charlie Rose on the air, after all.
Hee, hee. Brooks doesn’t need a woman… he loves himself so much and he has 2 hands.
There is one major problem with Brooks’ premise: more and more economists, including Larry Summers, are coming to the conclusion that more education will NOT lead to better jobs, the jobs need to be in place first. Larry Summers’ change of thinking on this issue is a big deal because he has been the go-to economist for the neoliberals and they— as much as the conservatives— have been the driving force behind the test-and-punish model. Because neoliberal economists and conservatives believe our economy can only be “competitive” if we provide “college for all” AND believe that schools must be subjected to the “competitive” forces of the marketplace, this political coalition promoted the development of a “Common Core” curriculum based on the premise that everyone MUST be ready for college AND endorsed the use of standardized tests based on that curriculum as the yardstick for “competition” between “government” schools and “charters” of all kinds. And as a “bonus”, members of this coalition were able to sidestep the whole question of poverty because their premise was that if students could not pass these new rigorous tests TEACHERS in the “government monopoly” schools were to blame: THEY needed to work harder to get ALL children ready for college and if they failed to do so the whole economy would continue to decline.
More and more economists are *coming* to that conclusion? Then they were pretty dumb to start with because it’s basic economic sense, even our dear departed friend Teaching Economist would have a hard time arguing with. From an economics point of view, it would be irrational for people to spend time and money gaining credentials for opportunities that don’t exist. Economics says that where there are opportunities, people will do what needs to be done to take advantage of them.
The blinders, economists wear, defy explanation.
The only other conclusion is economists are not searching for truth. Their role is to provide a facade of rationalization for greater concentration of wealth.
Economic formulas, like Laffer’s, construct smoke and mirrors And, Brooks condenses it to absurdity for his columns.
Has anyone watched Nick Hanauer’s banned TED talk? He nails the “job creator” argument in @5min.
Link?
YouTube, there are only three excommunicated TED talks, a really distasteful comedy routine, one about psychedelic drugs, and Hanauer’s. Hanauer is a Seattle billionaire who is also a charter proponent, but in the TED talk he tells the unvarnished…
Did a little search, haven’t watched the talk yet but here is Forbes’ take on it: http://www.forbes.com/sites/bruceupbin/2012/05/17/the-real-reason-that-ted-talk-was-censored-its-shoddy-and-dumb/
One can watch it at Forbes.
More like one of their own broke ranks, they’re giving him a white feather…
To echo Krazy TA, it’s an insult to both vacuums and space cadets to include Brooks in their company. One of his more fatuous claims was that the ability of both political parties to raise equal amounts of money was proof money doesn’t influence politics!
I’m reminded of an interview with a white supremacist, the journalist retorts, “You do know we can hear you, don’t you?”
Speaking of The NY Times, has anyone seen today’s editorial on the subject of job growth.
“The latest jobs report showed that unemployment fell to 5.5 percent in February and that 295,000 jobs were added to the economy. But the labor market is not as healthy as those figures might suggest.”
“For example, the latest report shows that unemployment is still elevated for African-Americans, at 10.4 percent, and for Hispanics, at 6.6 percent, compared with 4.7 percent for white workers. In a truly strong job market, those racial gaps would be narrower because the competition for workers would drive joblessness down for minorities, who are the hardest hit in hard times.”
“Another sign of weakness is stagnant wage growth. In a stronger job market, competition for labor would push up wages as it pulled down unemployment. But wages have barely budged throughout the nearly six-year-old recovery.”
“Ignoring these signs of weakness would be foolish, and yet the new report has stirred talk that the Federal Reserve will see the falling jobless rate as a sign of strength that justifies an imminent interest-rate increase. That would be a mistake, however, because raising rates in the near term would lock in high unemployment among minorities and wage stagnation.”
As others have noted, Brooks is a fool. It is folly to believe that more college grads = more high-paying jobs. It’s like these jobs will magically crystallize to meet the available labor. Last I checked, business was seeking ways to avoid paying people money and endlessly reducing their staffs.
Remember “Office Space” when Peter tells the consultants he reports to multiple bosses? Companies would never absorb that kind of payroll bloat.