I was thrilled to read the recent article by Nick Hanauer in The Atlantic, where he publicly announced his defection from the blame-public-Schools-first club. He realized that schools alone can’t “fix” poverty and that the biggest problem in our society is income inequality and wage stagnation.
I know of Nick Hanauer as someone who has given millions of dollars to promote charter schools, and now he said he had changed his mind. I know what it’s like to stun your friends and enemies alike by admitting error.
I messaged him on Twitter, and he responded by inviting me to chat on his podcast called “Pitchfork Economics.” Here is the result.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The reign of terror… is actually Trump.
the reign of error likely a reason why we are now experiencing a reign of terror
Educating more kids can never eliminate poverty. Here’s why: as more kids are educated at higher levels, the labor market value of education declines. Think of our millennial generation: well-educated but unable to find work needed to maintain or create a middle class family. We educators would help ourselves if we knew a bit more about basic economics. Billionaire philanthropists are either idiots or knaves when it comes to the seriousness of their “giving.” We need to stop relating to them as if they are genuine supporters of education for everyone, except insofar as their money/political clout makes them appear to be genuine supporters.
And on a related note: as the number of kids who meet the criteria to be admitted to Harvard increases, so do the requirements increase! Seats in Harvard’s freshman class are as scarce resource, so as more and more kids do what is needed to get one of those seats, Harvard makes it just a bit harder to land one of them. This dynamic follows a basic economic principle: the more something is created, generally speaking, the less valuable a single unit of that something becomes. So unless we interfere with markets we can never expect that increasing the number of well-educated kids will provide sufficient incomes to everyone to live a middle class style of life. (So let’s stop fooling young people about the real purpose of real education, which is to elevate the lives of every person and the society that sustains them all.) Poverty will be ended when we screw up the courage to make…health care a human right that society owes to ever human being…and to make decent housing a human right that ever person enjoys and which society must provide. The number of incomes needed to ensure that everyone lives decently will exist only when society makes them available to everyone, and not a day sooner, regardless of how much overall economic growth there is. Norway, and other countries like Norway, makes health care, childcare, income support, and education, human rights that government is responsible for providing since markets can never provide these valuable services to every human being. Incomes will always be insufficient, by themselves, to support a real middle class society, regardless of the level of education acquired by all young people.
Please lets up our own economics game, and start ignoring billionaires, except insofar as they must be regulated to prevent them from interfering with the creation and distribution of goods and services all people have a right to enjoy.
Poverty is not a problem that education can ever solve, but the problem of billionaires is! (Along with a good dose of hard-nosed politics!) Billionaires, if they are honest and reasonably well-educated, know that their education reform work distracts others from noticing that they are the problem that really needs attention. (Sorry Mr. Biden.)
Steve Cohen So education is about getting a job. I’m so glad to know that. CBK
Lol…and now that jobs are being destroyed by robots at an increasing rate, education will about….?
Steve Cohen . . . uh . . .well . . . maybe for citizenship? civility? or perhaps learning about the history of other cultures and our own so we don’t repeat the same problems out of ignorance? or how to raise well-developed children, or how to create and perpetuate institutions devoted to the good of order, and a base of people who can think their way out of, and beyond, limited horizons (for instance, of equating education with getting a job), . . or . . . but thank goodness, if you are right (finally I understand!) we don’t have to think about all those things that don’t add to our bank account and job security, at least not directly. Nevermind. CBK
Catherine,
Certification of education is about getting a job. Education itself need not be certified.
Teachingeconomist I was kidding. CBK
You mean, educating kids alone can never eliminate poverty. This– “as more kids are educated at higher levels, the labor market value of education declines”– is zero-sum thinking based on dog-eat-dog unregulated capitalism [or rather, regulated to favor corporate profit margin over public welfare]. You say, “unless we interfere with markets,” as though they existed in the stratosphere. The study of economics could do with an injection of social reality. You can’t separate the market from the public. The degree to which a successful market raises the QOL of humanity is a sliding scale consequent to the laws and regulations governing it.
I mean, you’re on the right track, but you can’t think your way out of it if you’re married to the mindset of free marketeers. Taxing billionaires is like running after a train: the system is spawning them faster than you can run.
Funny you did not mention the Soviet Union.
Social Class and Power in United States
Recently, I attended a Renaissance Fair dressed in my best sixteenth-century garb. I stopped at a shop that sold ale (it was a hot day), and the proprietor said to me, “Good day, Sir. What an honor to have a great gentleman the likes of yourself here among us. Not your everyday, that.” The fellow was a superb actor, and I was taken aback by the deference that he showed. I knew, of course, intellectually, that this was the way it was for thousands of years—that the few governed the many, and that the many treated the few as a separate TYPE of being, but for some reason, in this brief interaction, the force of that really hit me.
I thought about films made in the United States prior to the tumultuous 1960s. In the early-to-mid-twentieth century, MOST PEOPLE in the U.S. were members of a de facto peasantry. They weren’t educated, and they deferred to their betters. And films, in those times, typically portrayed the lives of people of the upper classes. And in those films, when there were interactions between representatives of the lower and upper classes, the former showed the same sort of deference as that actor did at that Renaissance Festival. (Still today, in the U.S., btw, only a third of adults have 4-year college educations.)
This business of social class isn’t something that’s much talked about here in the United States. We like to think of ourselves as a relatively classless society, and it’s not polite to talk about social class. Our founding document—the Declaration of Independence—hauls off with the revolutionary line that it is a “self-evident” truth that “all men are created equal.” But let’s be clear about what the author of that document meant. Thomas Jefferson did not believe in a classless society. He opposed hereditary aristocracy but believed, as he put it in his correspondence, in a “natural aristocracy of talent.” His radical idea was that if laws applied equally to all, talent would rise to the top and rule. This is, of course, the neoliberal position in America today, and this is how Jefferson could be both a slaveowner and a democrat. The more you think about that, the more troubling the view will seem to you because an aristocracy of talent has children, and those children protect their privileges.
A number of years ago, the husband of my then-wife’s sister returned from his Harvard reunion and recounted to me a conversation that he had had with an old friend there. He reported having said to that friend, “It’s so great to be back here. I feel like I’ve been in living in Smallville for the past few decades, and here I am again, back on Krypton with my own kind.”
I found this to be a shocking statement. But I think that yet today, it’s the typical view of members of the privileged classes. I dated, for a while in my twenties, an extremely wealthy young woman who told me, point blank, that she and I had no long-term future because her family had always had REAL MONEY, and rich people really were different. Our relationship would be fun for a while, but she would have to marry within her own class. I told her to get the hell out of my apartment and not to bother to contact me again.
The success of the U.S. industrial economy in the twentieth century led to a vast increase in the size of the middle class and in the education of the members of that class. But make no mistake about it, the wealthy continued to rule. And since the 1970s, disparity in both wealth and income has increased so dramatically that I refer to the times we are now living in as the New Feudal Era. A single family in the United States now has more wealth than does the bottom 45 percent of Americans.
But here’s the difference between America today and the hierarchical world of the past—the one in which a member of the Shogunate in Japan could, with impunity, test out a new sword on any random peasant who happened by. The sort of instinctive deference of the lower classes to the upper that one sees in those 1950s movies—the ways in which waiters and bellhops deal with their “betters”–has largely disappeared. Yes, most Americans still consume entertainment news about people who inhabit a different world of fame and influence—wealthy captains of industry like Bezos or Gates, financiers, politicians, movie stars, and so on, and yes, the distance between the upper and lower classes has grown enormously as the middle class has shrunk, but increasingly, the poor have no respect for the rich—they NO LONGER VIEW THEM AS BEING A DIFFERENT KIND OF BEING—SUPERIOR EITHER BY BIRTH OR BY INDIVIDUAL NATURE.
And the ownership class is beginning to recognize this. Some are writing articles for national magazines warning that unless rich people start sharing the wealth more widely, the crowds with the pitchforks are coming. Others, like the wealthy Roman lords of the second century AD who owned all the land that had formerly belonged to freeholding yeomen families, aren’t so worried. They are increasingly isolated in their separate worlds, in which they interact with the non-wealthy only as servants and drivers and masseuses and mistresses. Ordinary people are out of sight and out of mind.
Since the 1970s, productivity (the amount of value produced) in the U.S. has almost doubled, while wages have remained almost flat. What this means, ofc, is that during that period, almost all of a vast increase in wealth and income has gone almost entirely to an ownership class.
The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 enshrined in U.S. law a separation of the powers of the military and the police. In recent years, federal defense department authorizations have weakened and blurred this separation and have explicitly authorized the use of military forces to restore civil order. I’m not going to go into detail about this. Let me just say that some people in power, worried about those crowds with pitchforks, have been preparing for dealing with them. A number of self-appointed right-wing citizen militia groups in the U.S. spew rhetoric about the necessity of retaining their Second Amendment rights as a counter to future overreach by the government, but given the vast inequality in resources of the U.S. military, on the one hand, and these morons, on the other, it’s safe to say that those folks inhabit a dangerous la la land of their own imaginations.
Now, here we are in the midst of a Presidential election, and it’s shaping up to be a referendum on two visions of the future—one perpetuating the status quo and the other seeking to bring about equitable redress via higher taxation of the wealthy, Medicare-for-all, free college education, and a universal, guaranteed, basic income.
Add to this situation the fact that technologies are currently emerging that really will enable a wealthy, ruling class to make themselves into a different kind of being altogether—life extension technologies, chemical hedonics, genetic engineering, brain-computer interfaces—these are all in our near future, and they are likely to be available, initially, only to the very wealthy.
We’re going to see some interesting times ahead. Will we survive this? Will we become a totalitarian dystopia? Will we become a Social Democracy like those of some European states? This is a very real and very open question.
The Hunger Games
The Giver
1984
How many dystopian novels must we read before we wake up and take action.
The wealthy for most of the history of this nation, have realized that the best moat around their estates is racial division. It was always used to deflect the anger of the working class away from them and on to a racial minority . In the 20’s it was the immigrants from those sh@t hole countries of Eastern and Southern Europe. For over a hundred years now, shifting blame on to brown people.
No longer confined to the South nor the Negro. The politician was always the Puppet not the master. And this repugnant billionaire fraud , is an excellent puppet master for this Nation. The absurdity that they worship a man who cheated all who ever worked for him. Had a show that featured sending workers to the lions. And preaches bringing the jobs home while he manufactures everything overseas.
From the thoroughly obnoxious but brilliant Nobel Laureate over a half century ago .
“A South politician preaches to the poor white man
“You got more than the blacks, don’t complain
You’re better than them, you been born with white skin, ” they explain
And the Negro’s name
Is used, it is plain
For the politician’s gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game
Well said! Great comment.
Those interested in a less aggregate view of the productivity-compensation gap might want to look here: https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-6/pdf/understanding-the-labor-productivity-and-compensation-gap.pdf
It is interesting to note that the industry with the largest productivity-compensation gap is Information Technology. I think it is likely that the compensation for these folks is understated, as it is standard practice for it employees to get some amount of ownership in the company. If the company becomes successful, the money that flows from that ownership share will not count as labor compensation, thought that is certainly what it is.
You forgot to mention the employer collusion in Silicon Valley (all of the major players). It was the subject of a lawsuit. The goal was to suppress wages of software engineers.
“The ownership class!” I love that appellation for the 1/10th of 1% that own everything. Lately, I call them the ‘cabal,’ because they run this nation– one of several cabals that run the world…into a desert!
I ,too, often think about the separate worlds that they inhabit, especially when I watch the tv programs that show the great estates that they inhabit, their yachts and 400 million dollar, condos. They will never care about the masses. They see us all as SERFS (Recently I actually saw the word ‘neoserfs’ to describe the people.
According to a report published Wednesday by the Institute for Policy Studies, the three richest Americans—Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett—now own more wealth than the poorest half of the US population, some 160 million people. This link offers some details about the wealthy class. http://www.greanvillepost.com/2017/11/10/three-billionaires-are-wealthier-than-half-the-us-population/
But it is this short graphic animation, which I have posted here for years that really nails it… especially at the end, where the person who is off the chart, has to be pasted on.
And Bob, I . too, see the militarization of our police — years ago, I saw the tanks that rolled down the streets after the bombing at the Boston Marathon.
I am living in a ‘la-la land’ that is NOT imaginary. Born in 1941, my vision of America was a fairy tale from the start.
Moreover, I am exhausted from conversations with ‘morons’ who are totally unaware of what is happening, despite their intelligence and education. WTF are they reading? Not what you and I, or Diane, and the people who chat here read. As Noam Chomsky says: “The general population doesn’t know what’s happening and it doesn’t even know that it doesn’t know.”(AZ QUOTES)
The general population, Noam? Anyone and everyone with whom I try to have a conversation like the one at this blog, shouts me into silence, or walks away laughing at my idiocy. To read your intelligent analysis of what is afoot on our stage restores my sanity. I have more to say, about technology… because I am writing the first essays for my own blog, and one of the first will be”UC: The Inadvertent Consequences of a Transformational Technology.”
At the time when something totally new enters human societies, no one can envision where it will lead. The hunter-gather decided to stay put and farm… and Voila, city states, and militaries needed to defend them. Whoda thunk it? The cotton-jenny, and the mega cities, and the pollution of our atmosphere to support them.
A few hundred thousand years after the cavepeople settled down, the internet gave that not -so-hairy ape– a space in which anarchy can prevail… and called it ‘cyber-space.’
And we get a slaughter in El Paso.
Love your writing, Bob!
Susan
Regarding Boston
Did you hear about what just happened?
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/08/07/heartbreaking-scene-boston-streets-police-destroy-wheelchairs-belonging-homeless
“Boston strong”?
More like “Boston sick”
Thats disgusting.
Some years ago I had a friend who worked in a big company. Her boss was one of those people who had what we call moldy money. They were good folks, those people, donating to all kinds of good things like libraries and symphonies and such.
My friend had occasion to eat with several of the upper crust one evening at a company function and heard them expounding on “the education problem.” They all seemed to,agree that Dan Quayle was possibly the answer to the education problem. No this is not satire. Who could make this stuff up?
The wealthy are no more able to divine the way to educational success than the children of need. Collective decisions about society work better.
As for the blurring of the lines between soldier and policeman, consider what is happening in several of the obviously oligarchy style governments. They employ a sort of unofficial police force, whether they take the form of the white shirts in Hong Kong, the motorcycle militia in the Ukraine, or the self-styled border guards in Texas who are allowed to roam about. The opposition to the 2nd amendment bets that they will never have to oppose the army, but will be allowed to,fight in its stead to solidify the power they crave.
Bob,
Your writing, as usual, is excellent. Perhaps you should consider submitting your thoughts to a forum like The Atlantic??!!
Diane’s blog is a great and safe place to post, but I can’t help but feel that your creativity is being wasted preaching repeatedly to the choir here when it could be used so much more effectively elsewhere where people have not already sided with your opinions…
I would produce more polished pieces for publication. I’m afraid that folks on this blog put up with a lot of my off-the-cuff ramblings. But thank you David, for your kind comment. Means a lot to me.
Bob, if that is really “off the cuff” then my hat is doubly off to you. Each time I read one of your eloquent remarks, I think that it would have taken me hours to compose!! That is why I made my initial response above to you.
BTW, if you didn’t see my later comments to Diane on that same article, I put a call in to the Pitchfork Economics phone number urging Hanauer to mediate a meeting between Melinda and Bill Gates and Diane/compatriots. I was never a Nixon fan, but this could be a Nixon/China moment if the cards are played correctly.
I believe Hanauer is from Washington and is probably in a much better position to get the two sides talking than lowly little me… (to use the deferential speech you noted 😉).
Good luck with this, David, and thank you.
I hope future is “open.” We will need lots of AOCs to win this fight. Our side, in fact, is just beginning to wake up. Not having a real future (destroying our own environment along with stagnant income and increasing costs) is starting to really shake people up. Neoliberal Dems are and will continue to be a real obstacle to progress, and there will always be a threat of them aligning with Republicans to maintain Krypton. (Interesting that kryptonite was really bad stuff!)
Justice Democrats, the legislators to support, not just tolerate.
Bob, it’s a thought-provoking post, so I’ll respond w/several replies.
First: Info please: how is Jefferson’s idea that natural talent rises to top & rules related to neoliberalism? Also, how does it relate to Jefferson being both a slaveowner and a democrat?
Bethree, check out Jefferson’s response (or lack thereof) to the eloquent letter he received from Benjamin Banneker. Jefferson believed that there were some people by nature superior to others, and that in the absence of hereditary aristocracy, with a playing field leveled by laws that did not respect one person above another, the naturally superior would rise to the top. This is also the neoliberal view–that those who have the genius will rise to the top, acquire great wealth, and leave the rabble behind, and that this is the way of the world. There’s a reason why so many neoliberal types love pop evolutionary psychology, which reinforces their Social Darwinism.
20thC classism: the distinction between inherited and acquired wealth was strong, but really just a pidgin version of Euro nobility. There were no heir-scions. The closest we come is the DuPonts [minor nobility, crown-appointed], who sold their publishing house (as they ran from the Reign of Terror) – seed $ for their 1st factory. The rest started poor & acquired their wealth– but the longer you had it, the more it looked like “inherited” ;-). Roosevelts looked patrician cuz they built from 1640’s dry-goods biz. [FDR share bolstered by Delano’s 19thC China-based import-export– incl opium].
Hollywood pandered to Depression-crushed movie-goers by creating a relatable image: the offspring of those arrivistes were glorified businessmen in coats & tails w/faux-Brit accents [“heirs!”], w/ both work ethic & a houseful of servants. No Whartonesque reluctant, slothful sons/ grandsons showing up PT at “the firm,” no briefly nouveau riche Gatsby con-men.
I agree today’s wealthy have lost their patrician luster. I think many of the ‘peasantry’ see them as inventors or speculators who played their cards right or hit the lottery. The old-time deference was a reflection of early-20thC lack of social mobility, acknowledgment of one’s ‘station in life.’ The current lack of awe hangs on from high post-WWII social mobility. That’s gone, & the serfs are starting to replace it w/a casino/ lotto version of the American dream [promoted 24/7 by media – & legal gambling]. Banana-republic stuff. So maybe we’re headed for a revolving door of coup-replaced autocrats, à la banana republics.
I’d like to think the intelligentsia & what remains of the bourgeoisie could nudge us toward social democracy. But I can’t quite put that together w/the hordes of rural-minded folk who’d rather live in a hovel w/a shotgun than be part of a society that shares wealth via govt administration. We were pioneers just 150-200 yrs ago. I hope culture can move that fast, but I don’t count on it.
The founding fathers were, by and large, quite wealthy people–merchants, plantation owners, successful lawyers, and so on, and were generally college educated at a time when few were. These weren’t ordinary folk–despite the well-worn American myth. The Constitution did not originally set voting eligibility requirements, but many of the colonies and then former colonies restricted voting to free, white, property-holding men.
Another change in US classism: It used to be that academics had “class.” My mother’s clan were the well-educated progeny of an early-20thC Ivy League classics professor. The family never had money – but the prof’s 5 kids (incl my grandmother) were comped free at classy boarding schs like the Hill Sch & Rosemary, & got free tuition at his Uni. Their kids (incl my mother) got a foot in the door as legacies, & scholarships because of high grades. They were all nerds w/a patrician air, & tightwads; most lived comfortably, none became rich.
Has the “classiness” of academics disappeared? Maybe it’s just that I haven’t lived in a collegetown for 50 yrs. During my decade in NYC, I found less classism in general, & respect for high intelligence regardless of income. But since moving to metro-NYC suburbs 25 yrs ago, I sense no particular respect (let alone deference) for academic types. If anything, they are looked down on due to limited salary. For a long time I’ve lived among people for whom the term “class” applies to country club types.
I suspect what we generalize from media is grossly warped by commercials & program content. American classism is quite variable, & has to be studied in micro-environments.
“American classism is quite variable, & has to be studied in micro-environments.” Yes. Extremely well said, bethree. There are many varieties of wealth in the U.S., and what constitutes wealth is quite relative. It’s a fascinating topic, this, and I don’t think the definitive work on the subject has been done.
First of all, this is a superb writeup, Bob! As Joel Herman pointed out, Divide et Impera has been THE approach the elites have used and still use to control the populace, be it black vs white, or black/white vs asian, or “wet”s vs “dry”s (Prohibition), or weed-lovers vs war on drugs, or good people vs commies, etc. In this context, the century-old idea of class struggle remains as hot as it was back then. But you should also remember what happened in Russia a hundred years ago: people are not inclined to work when they don’t have to. If the communists did not force the populace to build all those power stations and factories in sub-human conditions, Russia would seize to exist as a sovereign country. Laid-back communism is possible only when there is no danger of war, meaning there a single communist government on the whole planet, and the goods are produced by robots, not by humans. Then everyone can kick back, relax, and smoke weed.
Diane Maybe Bill Gates and the Zuckerbergs will read that article in The Atlantic and get something from it–because it was from someone who WAS in their own camp. Kudos, with a nod and a bow, to Nick Hanauer for showing that power doesn’t always come with social-moral-political-spiritual blinders or necessarily corrupt those who have it. CBK
Loved your podcast…will post it later, because I have errands. You nailed all the most important points…the bottom line is what you identified… love listening to you!
Wrap around services… Of course.
We teachers exhausting ourselves for 58k, in order to educate our nation’s kids. You bet.
Arts program for kids to have a motivation to come to school… YES!
Have you ever tried to get a kid to so something? Motivation is the key to my success… and I offered my 7th grade a week of art each month, if they did the hard work of revising their letters to me, for the 3 previous weeks.
I would love to talk to you about what you said, about how children are measured in other ways then the tests that schools sue to evaluate. Both my grandkids in Austin have been schooled in an alternate way. ‘Home-schooled’ applies, but they have been part of a coop that rounds out their education; of course, they both have been in the astonishing dramatic arts project, by their mother, Improved Shakespeare — Andee Kinzy’s drama creation puts the Bard’s words into the mouth of kids.
After hearing, reading and speaking the thousands of words from that era. like my grandson Brant does here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js0tgFC3KSA&t=362s at age 7. You should hear him speak now, at 12. Well you CAN — hear him here — where he and his sister talk about Hamlet in this intro to Global Hamlet.
Zia ,who is 15 in that clip, writes scripts, too, and speaks beautifully, and has been involved in the filming of Global Hamlet, as Andee traveled across the world with my son for his business. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq7yRhcP9v0
Zia has skills in stage production, and acting as well, having been an assistant other mom for a decade.
What a shame there are no arts in the schools.
Zia not going to high school after her world trip, but is enrolled in community college for 2 years, before she applies to Barnard .
(YUP! That’s where she plans on going, and she will because she got a great education even though the Texas public schools could not offer it to her.)
It just seems to me that when a bunch of incredibly wealthy and powerful people all started saying, at the same time, “education is all that matters- therefore all we need to do is privatize the schools of the lower classes and shout you down when you raise any other issues” SOMEONE would have questioned that, instead of blindly chasing it for 20 years.
That is REALLY convenient. You don’t even have to hate them to question it- come on. It’s HUGELY self serving!
The part this is most disappointing to me are the academics, because we’re all supposedly paying them to think and ask questions. I guess the billionaires neatly solved that problem, though. They put them all on the payroll.
Diane and all Here is an article in the Non-Profit Quarterly about Texas and their charter situation:
“In Texas, the State Promotes Charters, but Local Districts Pursue Different Path” by Martin Levine
August 5, 2019
Some of it sounds good, however . . . . CBK
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/in-texas-the-state-promotes-charters-but-local-districts-pursue-different-path/?utm_source=NPQ+Newsletters&utm_campaign=694e835928-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_01_11_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_94063a1d17-694e835928-12886885&mc_cid=694e835928&mc_eid=cc73fe1cff
Thanks!
Great podcast. Thanks, Diane and Nick!
A podcast full of “awakenings.” I hope Mr. Hanauer can convince some other billionaires to see the light. Without the infusion of cash from wealthy donors, so-called reform would lose steam quickly.
Retired Teacher,
So right. If Gates, the Waltons, and other billionaires stopped funding disruption, their “movement” would disappear. It has no roots at all.
If the Gates and Waltons started promoting public schools and criticizing charters, their many paid shills at places like the Thomas B. Fordham Institute would suddenly be supporting public schools, too.
The “academic” researchers whose careers are subsidized by them would suddenly start finding all sorts of evidence why charter schools waste money and do nothing.
Without that money, the charters that are subsidized with tens of millions of dollars would no longer have that money to market to the most successful students and to hire lawyers and PR folks to cover up how they rid themselves of so many struggling students.
Charters can’t exist without being heavily subsidized by the billionaires so they can claim they are doing a better job with less money and have an enormous PR budget to promote that lie with gullible “education reporters” (really education mouthpieces) who believe the word of billionaire-approved charter CEOs has no need to be fact checked.
They wouldn’t be doing it if there wasn’t something in it for them. Gates: using public $ to sell packaged ed [sw/ hw]. Waltons, Kochs, Broad: union-busting, & moving public $ into private hands. Et al billionaires who speak of running schools like a biz: to them, pubschs & all other public services represent govt OH; chop it to skeleton & compete globally.
President Obama retweeted Hanauer’s awakening! Wow! That’s such a pleasant shock. First time since 2008 Obama did something to give me some Hope for public education. I am so glad I listened to the podcast. Nick and Diane together was inspiring. I needed that ray of light in the dark. Wealthy educationists who Change are big time heroes. Thank you.
I must say that, as a teacher, the interview was very frustrating to listen to.
Frustrating because it reminds me that state and federal education policies ultimately derive from people who have never actually practiced within the field. Neither you, nor Nick came to your “woke” realizations until decades had been spent working contrary to the best interests of students.
Everything mentioned during the interview could have been articulated by an inner-city school teacher with 5 years of experience under her belt.
or a rural school teacher or a suburban school teacher or. . . .
Yes! Every teacher knows what’s happening. All of us who taught for decades know what is happening. Only the people do not know, because the war on public education is fought behind the curtain; this, even as the lies about ‘reform’ and ‘choice’ destroy the profession and thus, cause the failure. If you take the. doctors out of the hospitals then people will die. Take the real education professionals out of the classrooms by making it impossible to teach, and the demolition of public education is assured.
The doctors are already out of the hospitals. Insurance companies decide health care directives. The Dr. may suggest treatment, but insurance companies dictate what will be covered. Health care has been completely privatized…….corporate/conglomerate physician groups, corporate radiology sevices, corporate labs, hospitals owned and run by CEO’s/ CFO’s and Boards of businessmen. People are already dying because Dr’s can’t make decisions and have no autonomy. They (the billionaires) already tried to privatize Medicare and SS for the elders and infirm and that hasn’t worked so they have moved on to education of the masses (children). Once the Billionaires win the privatization “trifecta” of social goods/services, we will be doomed. This is why it’s important to fight and resist…..even if people think we are wearing a “tin foil”hat.
Carolmalaysia, commenting in a prior thread, described a recent finding by the Fed. Reserve.
In 33 years, the top 10% will have 100% of American wealth. If SIB’s and privatized public education weren’t factored into the equation, the time frame shortens.
The author of this finding is Scott Burns, founder of Couch Potato and a columnist for the DallasNews. No connection to the Federal Reserve. See https://www.dallasnews.com/business/personal-finance/2019/08/04/rate-rich-could-truly-just-33-years-now
Burns cited Fed. Reserve data – the calculation is described at Common Dreams.
The Fed. Reserve reports a house burned down. The fire pattern is attributable to arson. It is corroborated with evidence of accelerant, an igniting device, an arsonist’s confession and a court’s finding of guilt. A reporter summarizes the event.
Only ideologues or jerks quibble and make minutiae points as if the conclusion is in question.
Linda,
If I used data from the Olympic Games showing the winning time in 100 meter dash in 1956 was 10.5 seconds and the winning time in the 100 meter dash in 1964 was 10.0 to “find” that if that rate continues, getting .5 seconds faster every 18 years, the the winning time for the 100 meter dash in 2054 will be 7.5 seconds.
1) Using their data does not mean it is a “finding” by the World Olympic Committee
2) It is also extremely unlikely that the “finding” will be correct. In fact, Usain Bolt won the 2016 Olympics by running .19 seconds faster than the 1964 time, not the predicted 1.5 seconds faster.
This methodology is how this cited “finding” was reached. Take the difference between two points and assume that this will continue in a linear way.
The best comparison you can think of is a human, characterized by finite attributes, to an economic system of wealth aggregation?
Your students are being cheated.
Linda,
At least we can agree that my using the winning times for the 100 meter dash does not mean it is a “finding” of the Olympic Committee.
If you like, we can travel back in time and ask what Scott Burn’s would have concluded in the past. Between 1989 and 1992, the share of the wealth held by the top 10% did not change. So Scott Burn would have concluded that if current rates continue, the 10% of wealthiest families will see no increase in overall wealth for the foreseeable future. We might look at 2001 to 1004 when the share of wealth held by the top 10% declined. Scott Burn would have to conclude that if current rates continue, the wealthiest 10% families would become less wealthy for the foreseeable future.
It is just stupid to pay attention to any forecast done using two data points and a ruler.
Data from the same source used by Scott Burn. Can be found here: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/51846
ATE says “It is just stupid to pay attention to any forecast done using two data points and a ruler.”
It’s even stupider to pay attention to any forecast done using just ONE data point and a ruler.
From the abstract of a much touted “study”.
“At age 28, the oldest age at which we have a sufficiently large
sample size to estimate earnings impacts, a 1 SD increase in teacher quality in a single grade raises annual earnings by about 1% on average. If this impact on earnings remains constant over the
lifecycle, students would gain approximately $25,000 on average in cumulative lifetime income from a 1 SD improvement in teacher VA in a single grade.Replacing a teacher whose VA is in the bottom 5% with an average teacher would increase the present value of students’ lifetime income by more than $250,000 for the average class- room in
our sample.”
Can you identify the “even stupider” people (ESP ) who wrote that?
Even the Amazing Kreskin (of ESP fame) would be no match for the authors of that paper.
Actually, the study I quote from is even more ridiculous than using a single data point and a RULER.
Diane, I listened to and enjoyed the entire podcast. You did an excellent job presenting your case.
Did you consider asking Nick Hanauer if he could arrange a “summit meeting” between you and Bill Gates??? You have made an important opening into the opposition. It would be a shame to let it go to waste!!!
Hello again, Diane.
I just called Nick’s phone number at Pitchfork Economics and left an impassioned plea in his voicemail requesting that he try to facilitate an “education summit meeting” between you and your assistants and Melinda and Bill Gates. I explained that your past attempts had been rebuffed except for a single meeting with an executive at the Gates Foundation. I concluded by saying that if Nick really wants to change the course of “Educationalism” as he states, the best way to do it would be by going straight to the top and opening this dialogue.
I hope this does some good.
I have not contributed much to the blog comments lately because, as I said to Bob above, I think it is important to focus one’s efforts in ways that will actually effect change. I continue to read your blog silently as an important source of information, and thank you again for the service you provide.
Time to get ready for another school year and the ongoing battle with the AP system…
Sincerely,
Dr. David Kristofferson
eduissues.com
Thank you, David. I would love to talk to Bill and Melinda.
If Nick or his assistants reply to my message, you will be the first to know.
PS – Correction – the term he uses is “Educationism.” Sounds like an invented word ??!!
It is because the supposed reforms were invented out of thin air.
Back in the 1950s, the term “educationists” was usedderisively to refer to professors of education.
I didn’t have time to explain that.
“effecting change”, thanks David for your efforts to save Main Street, community schools and, in stopping the wealthy’s cannibalization of the children of the 90%.
Superb headline for the post!
The slogan “Better schools will not heal America” effectively exonerates the powers that be from doing anything about the school system, which is not designed for teaching students, it is designed for sucking state and federal money and for providing a platform for an easy money laundering scheme: buy a useless product or a teaching method from someone you know, get a kickback, and blame the teachers.