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Pope Francis on the Dangers of Poverty and Inequality

By dianeravitch
December 25, 2013 //
21

I am not in the custom of quoting religious leaders, being a secular Jew, but I am nonetheless impressed by Pope Francis’ advocacy on behalf of the poor and his critique of the unfettered market.

To clarify, I understand and believe in the values of a free marketplace of goods and services, but at the same time, I think that society has an obligation to make sure that the market is regulated sufficiently to prevent extremes of inequality.

A healthy society requires a balance of the private and the public sector. A society without a public sector would be (in my eyes) mean, nasty, and brutish for all except those at the very top of a pointy pyramid, for all, that is, except the top 1% or 10%. A society without a private sector concentrates far too much power in the hands of those who rule and fails (as we saw in the instance of the Soviet Union) to permit enterprise, individualism, and personal freedom.

And it is in that spirit that I here cite a short article about Pope Francis, who has emerged as a powerful voice on behalf of the world’s poor.

Pope Francis, the author writes, is critical of “a world that is about “competition and survival of the fittest.” It is a world “where the powerful feed upon the powerless.”

He questions “a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power.” He is concerned that this culture has produced global indifference. Society seems content to believe that poverty is somebody else’s problem. For him, the poor are not only exploited but excluded. They have become “the outcast, the leftovers.”

He hammers the injustice of growing inequality. He sees this income gap as a “result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace.” He speaks of the “sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.”

He also speaks of growing world-wide corruption which is at least tolerated as the world eagerly seeks to serve the “interests of a deified market which become the only rule.” He specifically mentions “self-serving tax evasion,” and “the thirst for power and possessions,” as examples of the harmful corruption that abounds and knows no limits.”

As I reflect on the growing inequality in our society, where a very small number of people enjoy vast wealth while a vast number of people live in poverty, the words of Pope Francis ring true.

Yes, we need a marketplace where people buy and sell goods and services. But the marketplace should not make us indifferent to the losers, to those who cannot succeed in the competition to buy and sell.

A healthy society takes care of all its children and builds a culture where love, kindness, and compassion are valued more than the goods we acquire.

I guess that sounds radical, but I am no radical. I just want a better world for my children and grandchildren and yours too.

Categories Economy, Poverty

Steve Nelson: Education Isn’t Broken, Our Country Is

By dianeravitch
December 18, 2013 //
78

Some months ago, I added Steve Nelson to the honor roll of this blog because everything I read by this remarkable man made so much sense. He is the headmaster of the Calhoun School, a fine New York City private school.

Yet he isn’t looking out for the self-interest of the private schools and their pupils, but for the good of American children and our society.

In this article, Nelson surveys the media moaning over PISA scores and says that the critics have chosen the wrong target.

Our schools are not broken, he writes.

Our society is.

Here is a sample of his thinking, which I share and admire:

We don’t have an education problem in America. We have a social disease. It is as though we are starving our children to death and trying to fix it by investing in more scales so we can weigh them constantly.

Charter schools, Common Core, voucher programs, online education, Teach for America… None of these initiatives, whether financially-motivated opportunism or sincere effort at reform, will make a dent in our educational malaise, because the assumptions are wrong.

As is often the case in our “blame the victim” culture, it is generally believed that improving education will cure poverty. This invites the inference that poor education created poverty. But it is simply not true. Poverty created poor education. The victim blamers cite lazy children and bad parenting as contributors to poverty. But poverty dulls motivation and cripples parents.

And perhaps worst of all, the poor performance of our students is attributed to poor teaching and unions. I propose that today’s teachers (even the underprepared Teach For America kind) are as good or better than teachers were a generation ago. Neither they nor their weakened unions are the cause of our education problems.

It is also asserted that our place in the global economy is threatened by the poor quality of American education. But this is also backwards. Our place in the global economy threatens education, not the other way around. In the service of economic global dominance, we have sacrificed families and schools.

But we persist in our misguided efforts to “fix” education nonetheless. Education reform has been underway for many years, most energetically since No Child Left Behind was enacted in 2001. I challenge any reader to provide comprehensive evidence that education has improved since then.

And I would add, though nothing need be added, that “school reform” has become a Great Distraction, a way of NOT addressing the root causes of low academic performance.

That may explain why so many billionaires and corporations love to invest in “school reform,” because it is so much more cost efficient than doing something about income inequality and wealth inequality, which are worst than at any point in the past century.

But again, Nelson says it better than I could. He writes:

Raise the minimum wage to a real living wage. Provide affordable health care for every family. End the regressive tax system that has eviscerated local communities. Provide disincentives to the multi-national corporations that have abandoned American communities while chasing the cheapest labor overseas. Put Americans to work with bold infrastructure investment. Extend the meager unemployment benefits that keep many families out of abject poverty. Stop pretending that racism is dead. Instead of telling people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, remove the boot heels of oppression.

Let’s do these things for a decade, and then we’ll talk about PISA scores.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Economy

Guess Who Worked at McDonald’s?

By dianeravitch
December 15, 2013 //
51

Remember the D.C. Whistleblower? Adell Cothorne was the new principal at a highly-touted elementary school where test scores had gone up and off, off the charts. She said she walked in on a grade-erasure session, where staff members were changing student answers from wrong to right. When she blew the whistle on what she learned, she became a pariah and nearly lost her career. For a time, she ran a cupcake bakery. She appeared on John Merrow’s PBS program about the legacy of Michelle Rhee, telling her story.
Now she is back as an educator.

In this post, Cothorne tells us about her early years as a worker for McDonald’s. she reminds us why thousands of fast-food workers are demanding a living wage of $15 an hour. Employers say the rise in costs would be prohibitive for consumers. But would it? She says no.

Another side to this story, which Cothorne does not explore, is the millions of dollars that the heads of these corporations are paid. When you read about the corporate head of a fast-food chain who is paid $10 million a year while paying workers $7-9 an hour, you have to wonder if they have a conscience.

Categories Economy

Crushing Labor Unions and the Middle Class: Is This the American Way?

By dianeravitch
December 14, 2013 //
50

A recent article by business columnist Eduardo Porter in the “New York Times” was titled “Americanized Labor Policy Is Spreading in Europe.”

This is what the “Americanization of labor policy” means:

“In 2008, 1.9 million Portuguese workers in the private sector were covered by collective bargaining agreements. Last year, the number was down to 300,000.

“Spain has eased restrictions on collective layoffs and unfair dismissal, and softened limits on extending temporary work, allowing workers to be kept on fixed-term contracts for up to four years. Ireland and Portugal have frozen the minimum wage, while Greece has cut it by nearly a fourth. This is what is known in Europe as “internal devaluation.”

“Tethered to the euro and thus unable to devalue their currency to help make their goods less expensive in export markets, many European countries — especially those along the Continent’s southern rim that have been hammered by the financial crisis — have been furiously dismantling workplace protections in a bid to reduce the cost of labor.”

Cutting back on workplace protections is sure to increase income inequality while shrinking the middle class.

Porter writes that “These policy moves are radically changing the nature of Europe’s society.”

“The speed of change has certainly been very fast,” said Raymond Torres, the chief economist of the International Labor Organization in Geneva. “As far as I can tell, these are the most significant changes since World War II.”

“While most of the debate over Europe’s response to the financial crisis has focused on the budget austerity enveloping the Continent, the comparatively unheralded erosion of worker protection is likely to have at least as big and lasting an impact on Europe’s social contract.

“It has a disastrous effect on social cohesion and a tremendous effect on inequality,” argued Jean-Paul Fitoussi, an economics professor at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris. “Well-being has fallen all across Europe. One symptom is the rise of extremist political parties.”

“Europe’s strategy offers a test of the role played by labor market institutions — from unions to the minimum wage — in moderating the soaring income inequality that has become one of the hallmarks of our era.

“Inequality across much of Europe has widened, but it is still quite modest when compared with the vast income gap in the United States.

“The question is whether relative equity can hold as workplace institutions that for decades protected European employees’ standard of living give way to a more lightly regulated, American-style approach, where the government hardly interferes in the job market and organized labor has little say.”

This is a model that will ill-serve Europe and which should shame our political and economic leaders. Translated, it means that the rich get richer, the middle class shrinks, and the poor feel hopeless.

The 1% say that charter schools and Teach for America will close the gap that their policies created. They know it isn’t true, but it changes the subject enough to allow them to keep enlarging their share of the pie.

Categories Charter Schools, Economy, International, Teach for America TFA, Unions

Detroit: Crime of the Century?

By dianeravitch
December 5, 2013 //
90

By now, you may have heard that a federal judge ruled that Detroit’s pensions may be cut during bankruptcy proceedings, even though the Michigan state constitution expressly protects them.

What you may not know is that the average pension is $19,000 a year.

David Sirota is outraged.

Michigan officials say there is no money to pay the $100 million pension gap yet the state can afford $6 billion each year for corporate subsidies.

Nor is anyone deterred from paying more than $400 million in public funds for a new hockey stadium for Detroit.

As Sirota wrote:

“Every now and again there’s a piece of crystal clear evidence left at the scene of a complex financial crime that shows, beyond any reasonable doubt, what went down.

“If future generations want to understand why the current era is sometimes referred to as a new Gilded Age, they need look no further than Detroit. The city’s financial troubles have far more to do with deindustrialization, destructive trade policies, population loss, political mismanagement and Wall Street’s shady municipal rip-off schemes than it does public pension liabilities.

“Yet, as you might have heard, a judge yesterday handed down a landmark ruling allowing Michigan officials who took control of the city to violate the state’s constitution and slash the average $19,000-a-year pensions of Detroit’s municipal retirees. This ruling is already being touted as a precedent setter for places like California, where a pension-slashing ballot initiative campaign is already underway and where some cities are trying to get out of paying the pension promises they made to retirees.”

Maybe the impoverished retirees can sell soda and popcorn at the new hockey stadium.

Categories Detroit, Economy, Pensions

German-Style Apprenticeship Programs Grow in South Carolina

By dianeravitch
December 5, 2013 //
16

Like many other states, South Carolina has been wooing foreign corporations, hoping to create new jobs and stimulate the economy.

When a German firm relocated to produce heavy engines, it was unable to find enough skilled workers.

So the company leader “did what he would have done back home in Germany: He set out to train them himself. Working with five local high schools and a career center in Aiken County, S.C. — and a curriculum nearly identical to the one at the company’s headquarters in Friedrichshafen — Tognum now has nine juniors and seniors enrolled in its apprenticeship program.”

“South Carolina offers a fantastic model for what we can do nationally,” said Ben Olinsky, co-author of a forthcoming report by the Center for American Progress, a liberal Washington research organization, recommending a vast expansion in apprenticeships.

“Despite South Carolina’s progress and the public support for apprenticeships from President Obama, who cited the German model in his last State of the Union address, these positions are becoming harder to find in other states. Since 2008, the number of apprentices has fallen by nearly 40 percent, according to the Center for American Progress study.

“As a nation, over the course of the last couple of decades, we have regrettably and mistakenly devalued apprenticeships and training,” said Thomas E. Perez, the secretary of labor. “We need to change that, and you will hear the president talk a lot about it in the weeks and months ahead.”

“In November, the White House announced a new $100 million grant program aimed at advancing technical training in high schools. But veteran apprenticeship advocates say the Obama administration has been slow to act.

“The results have not matched the rhetoric in terms of direct funding for apprenticeships so far,” said Robert Lerman, a professor of economics at American University in Washington. “I’m hoping for a new push.”

“In Germany, apprentices divide their time between classroom training in a public vocational school and practical training at a company or small firm. Some 330 types of apprenticeships are accredited by the government in Berlin, including such jobs as hairdresser, roofer and automobile electronics specialist. About 60 percent of German high school students go through some kind of apprenticeship program, which leads to a formal certificate in the chosen skill and often a permanent job at the company where the young person trained.

“If there is a downside to the German system, it is that it can be inflexible, because a person trained in a specific skill may find it difficult to switch vocations if demand shifts.

“In South Carolina, apprenticeships are mainly funded by employers, but the state introduced a four-year, annual tax credit of $1,000 per position in 2007 that proved to be a boon for small- to medium-size companies. The Center for American Progress report recommends a similar credit nationwide that would rise to $2,000 for apprentices under age 25.

The emphasis on job training has also been a major calling card overseas for South Carolina officials, who lured BMW here two decades ago and more recently persuaded France’s Michelin and Germany’s Continental Tire to expand in the state.”

South Carolina has 28,000 people working for German corporations.

What’s the lure?

“Of course, there are other reasons foreign companies have moved here. For starters, wages are lower than the national average. Even more important for many manufacturers, unions have made few inroads in South Carolina.”

Interesting, since Germany itself has strong unions.

Just as the textile industry fled South Carolina for nations where wages were lower and there were no unions, South Carolina now meets that need for European nations.

Categories Economy, Students

Anthony Cody: Standards Or Standardization?

By dianeravitch
December 5, 2013 //
75

Anthony Cody notes that the definition of education has become increasingly utilitarian, thus narrowing what is taught and learned only to the skills that make students college-and-career ready. Joy in learning, aesthetic delight in the arts, the intellectual pleasure of history and literature take a backseat to that which is marketable. Are we all meant to serve the needs of corporate America?

He writes:

“One of the undercurrents fueling concerns about the Common Core is the relentless focus on preparation for “college and career.” Education has always had dual aspirations – to elevate mind and spirit, through the investigation of big ideas, and the pursuit of fine arts and literature, and the service of the economic needs of individuals and society. What we are feeling in our modern culture is the absolute hegemony of commercial aims, as if every activity that does not produce profit is under assault.

“And in our classrooms there is a parallel assault on activities that do not “prepare for college and career,” which has been redefined, in practical terms, as preparation for the tests that have been determined to be aligned with that goal. Preparation for college and career has begun to feel more and more like “preparation to make yourself useful to future corporate employers.”

Cody finds that Mario Savio’s famous rant in 1964 against the ties between the university and the corporations presaged what is happening today. Savio might as well have been speaking for the moms and dads of today when he said fifty years ago:

“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels…upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!”

Cody adds:

“In our classrooms, the use of standardized tests to measure and monitor learning, and the imposition of ever-more tightly managed and even scripted curricula, make teachers and students feel as if we are part of a machine. The canaries in the coal mine are the students who do not fit in. But our modern system has a pharmacological answer for that, as this recent New York Times magazine article reported that more than one in ten children between ages 4 and 17 are now diagnosed with ADHD, and many of them are medicated daily. That is 6.4 million children. Before the early 1990s, this number was less than 5%. What has changed? According to the report,

“During the same 30 years when A.D.H.D. diagnoses increased, American childhood drastically changed. Even at the grade-school level, kids now have more homework, less recess and a lot less unstructured free time to relax and play. It’s easy to look at that situation and speculate how “A.D.H.D.” might have become a convenient societal catchall for what happens when kids are expected to be miniature adults. High-stakes standardized testing, increased competition for slots in top colleges, a less-and-less accommodating economy for those who don’t get into colleges but can no longer depend on the existence of blue-collar jobs — all of these are expressed through policy changes and cultural expectations, but they may also manifest themselves in more troubling ways — in the rising number of kids whose behavior has become pathologized.”

“Our education system, in attempting to make everyone fit the same standardized mold, so as to be of maximum usefulness to future employers, is medicating those who don’t fit the mold.”

Cody ends with a veiled prediction that spring 2014 may see the biggest effort ever by parents to remove their children from standardized testing.

Categories Common Core, Economy, Education Industry, For-Profit

EduShyster: When Public Pensions Are “Reformed,” Pensioners Get Shafted

By dianeravitch
November 27, 2013 //
4

Mazinger G, a member of the unaccredited EduShyster Academy, here explains what happened in Rhode Island when a “reformer” took control of the state’s pension funds.

What happened when the state treasurer Gina Raimondo adopted a new strategy of investing the state’s pension funds into “alternative” investments?

“There has been much hullabaloo about Gina’s investing Rhode Island’s $7 billion state pension fund she manages into her *own* firm, just because it charges enormous fees and has no public track record. OK—so it’s true that in the finance industry it is considered somewhat unseemly to directly pocket the assets one is paid to manage. One is supposed to set up a far more discrete screen of consultants, firms, friends, relatives and a complex kickback structure. But that is exactly why people like Gina are such a breath of fresh air: innovative, disruptive and unconcerned with backward and fuddy-duddy notions like *self-dealing* and *conflict of interest.* If she didn’t have serious cred, would out-of-state hedge fund managers have spent big to sweep her into office? Besides there is proof that Raimondo’s cookie-jar-dippery has been perfectly ethical: there’s been no criminal investigation—at least so far!”

This post explains it all. Almost. All except why the governor and legislature sit idly by.

Categories Economy, Pensions

Edward F. Berger: Who Owns America? The People or the Oligarchs?

By dianeravitch
November 25, 2013 //
27

Edward F. Berger has published an excellent post about the hostile takeover of American democracy by a small number of people with a great deal of wealth.

Read it all. He begins:

“A majority of those who hold the power and wealth of our nation run their coercive top-down empires as personal wealth and power generators. They see themselves as decision makers who should shape the world (i.e., similar to the ‘rule of the few’ model used in China). They believe in their system of unquestioned force-based rule. They believe that that the American Constitutional system of governance, law, and elected representatives interferes with their perceived ‘right’ to rule.

“Their use of power and their control of resources, dictate government and economic policies. Their present approach is to take over any government (County, State, and Federal) that has goals other than their own. For example, turn public lands including national parks over to them and let them exploit the resources. Turn the schools over to them and let them limit education and profit from the money taxpayers pay for public education. Privatize every aspect of government, including prisons, for profit. Appoint czars to run cities, schools, and public services. Reject elected officials.

“Representative Democracy is an irritant to this loosely affiliated oligarchy. They do whatever it takes to control those elected and get them to do their bidding. They subvert the Democratic system and stop citizens from organizing, voting, or questioning them. An educated populous must be dumbed-down, and public comprehensive education must be disrupted. An example is what they have already accomplished in Red States – states that have the worst education, medical care, women’s rights, work opportunities, freedom, and obviously, representation.”

Can we save our democracy?

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Economy, Education Industry

NY Times: Many College Graduates in Europe Are Unemployed

By dianeravitch
November 22, 2013 //
42

This is a sad story, and there is a warning here for us.

College graduates in Europe are having a hard time finding jobs.

The story in the New York Times begins like this:

“Alba Méndez, a 24-year-old with a master’s degree in sociology, sprang out of bed nervously one recent morning, carefully put on makeup and styled her hair. Her thin hands trembled as she clutched her résumé on her way out of the tiny room where a friend allows her to stay rent free.

She had an interview that day for a job at a supermarket. It was nothing like the kind of professional career she thought she would have after finishing her education. But it was a rare flicker of opportunity after a series of temporary positions, applications that went nowhere and employers who increasingly demanded that young people work long, unpaid stretches just to be considered for something permanent.

Her parents were imploring her to return home to the Canary Islands to help run her father’s fruit business. It was a sign of the times, though, that even her own father probably would not be able to afford to pay her.

“We’re in a situation that is beyond our control,” Ms. Méndez said. “But that doesn’t stop the feelings of guilt. On the bad days, it’s really hard to get out of bed. I ask myself, ‘What did I do wrong?’ ”

Samuel Aranda for The New York Times

Alba Méndez, 24, preparing for a job interview in Madrid.

 

The question is being asked by millions of young Europeans. Five years after the economic crisis struck the Continent, youth unemployment has climbed to staggering levels in many countries: in September, 56 percent in Spain for those 24 and younger, 57 percent in Greece, 40 percent in Italy, 37 percent in Portugal and 28 percent in Ireland. For people 25 to 30, the rates are half to two-thirds as high and rising.

Those are Great Depression-like rates of unemployment, and there is no sign that European economies, still barely emerging from recession, are about to generate the jobs necessary to bring those Europeans into the work force soon, perhaps in their lifetimes.

This link should direct you to the graph comparing unemployment rates among youth in different countries.

Let me say upfront that I think anyone who wants to go to college should be able to do so.

The best way to make that happen is to lower the cost of college.

That won’t happen by collecting data about college costs and completion rates, but by public subsidies to make college affordable.

President Obama has set a goal that by 2020, the U.S. would have the highest college graduation rate in the world.

But why?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has projected that two-thirds of the new jobs created between 2008 and 2018 would not require a college degree.

They will require on-the-job training, as well as responsibility and character, with such traits as showing up for work every day on time.

These are jobs in the construction trades, health aides, fast-food workers, customer-service agents, retail clerks, etc.

It is interesting to note in the New York Times graph that Germany, whose college graduation rate is far lower than ours, has one of the lowest youth unemployment rates in Europe.

Why? They have not outsourced their manufacturing base; they have high quality school programs for students who do not want to go to college. They have good jobs and a strong economy.

What is the lesson here?

Categories Economy, Education Reform, Graduation rates, Higher Education
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