Skip to content

Excellence in Education

Monday, December 16, 2013

I've mentioned the concept of “rent seeking” before. Here's a handy definition:

The expenditure of resources in order to bring about an uncompensated transfer of goods or services from another person or persons to one's self as the result of a “favorable” decision on some public policy. The term seems to have been coined (or at least popularized in contemporary political economy) by the economist Gordon Tullock. Examples of rent-seeking behavior would include all of the various ways by which individuals or groups lobby government for taxing, spending and regulatory policies that confer financial benefits or other special advantages upon them at the expense of the taxpayers or of consumers or of other groups or individuals with which the beneficiaries may be in economic competition.

via A Glossary of Political Economy Terms

Not to put too fine a point on it: rent seekers use government policy to divert money to themselves for providing services (or no services) for amounts that far exceed what it would cost to provide them more efficiently. It's not only bankers that do it, though they dominate the field. The term comes readily to mind when the subject of education privitization is under discussion. It doesn't take much imagination to figure out what will happen if we hand the system of public education over to private hands. We will soon find out that it is absolutely necessary that the CEOs of such company get six or seven figure salaries while, at the same time, we will be told that we can get high quality education while simultaneously paying our teachers close to nothing. If you don't have even a little imagination, maybe this will help you see our future:

Eric Parms enrolled at an Everest College campus in the suburbs of Atlanta in large part because recruiters promised he would have little trouble securing a job.

…
But after completing a nine-month program in heating and air conditioning repair in the summer of 2011 – graduating with straight As and $17,000 in student debt – Parms began to doubt the veracity of the pitch. Career services set him up with a temporary contract position laying electrical wires. After less than two months, he and several other Everest graduates also working on the job were laid off and denied further help finding work, he says.

Even that short-lived gig wasn't secured on the strength of Parms's degree. The college had paid his contractor $2,000 to hire him and keep him on for at least 30 days, part of an effort to boost its official job placement records, according to documents obtained by The Huffington Post. The college paid more than a dozen other companies to hire graduates into temporary jobs before cutting them loose, a HuffPost investigation has found.

Everest College's $2,000-per-head “subsidy” program in Decatur, Ga., stands among an array of tactics used for years by the institution's parent company, Corinthian Colleges Inc., to systematically pad its job placement rates, according to a review of contract documents and lawsuits and interviews with former employees.

More than a marketing tool to lure new students, solid job placement rates allow the company to satisfy the accrediting bodies that oversee its nearly 100 U.S. campuses, while enabling Corinthian to tap federal student aid coffers – a source of funding that has reached nearly $10 billion over the last decade, comprising more than 80 percent of the company's total revenue.

via The Huffington Post

Check out the linked article, and take a look at the contract between the school and the employers. It's a masterful work of legal prose, dressed up with all kinds of protestations about the school's concerns for its students, yet devoid of any obligation on the part of the contractor to employ the student for more than 30 days.

Now, why doesn't the party that is always condemning “takers” take aim at welfare cheats like Corinthian? Inquiring minds want to know.

Filed in Corporate Crime, Education | | Comments (0)

Friday Night Music, being rich is the best defense edition

Friday, December 13, 2013







I've been sporadic about this lately, I know, but when I read this article, an old Bob Dylan song came to mind. First, the gist of the article:

16-year old Ethan Couch was driving drunk at THREE times the legal limit and had Valium in his system. He plowed into four people going 70 miles per hour in a 40 mile per hour zone, killing them. Other victims are severely injured; one has severe brain damage. Even after he killed and maimed those people, he was uncooperative and combative with the emergency services and walked away from the police saying "I'm outta here".

He pleaded guilty, of course. But Ethan's parents are very wealthy. (We are talking the 1%.) They hired an attorney that brought on a psychologist to say Couch was "a product of wealth" and was used to getting "whatever he wanted". Because he was so affluent and accustomed to never having consequences, the attorney argued that he should get therapy as opposed to jail.

This was the argument, mind you, used in the defense:

He said Couch got whatever he wanted. As an example, Miller said Couch's parents gave no punishment after police ticketed the then-15-year-old when he was found in a parked pickup with a passed out, undressed 14-year-old girl.
Miller also pointed out that Couch was allowed to drive at 13. He said the teen was emotionally flat and needed years of therapy. At the time of the fatal wreck, Couch had a blood alcohol content of .24, said Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson. It is illegal for a minor to drive with any amount of alcohol in his or her system.

Prosecutors tried to get 20 years. The Defense argued for therapy and probation.
Texas State District Judge Jean Boyd bought the inane "I'm too rich for consequences" defense and actually sided with the Defense and gave him probation.

It occurred to me that while we've come a long way on some issues, on some we've regressed. When Bob Dylan sang about William Zanzinger, he documented a similar injustice, but at least Zanzinger didn't get off by pleading affluence.

Unfortunately, no decent live videos of Dylan performing this song exist. There's one of him in his later years, in which he gives the impression that he is going through the motions. So, I must settle for this recording from a live performance in England in 1965.


Filed in Music | | Comments (0)

Yet more on “free trade”

Friday, December 13, 2013

Here's an example of what we'll be seeing more of, if the U.S. gets what it wants in the TPP “free trade” talks.

Tobacco companies are pushing back against a worldwide rise in antismoking laws, using a little-noticed legal strategy to delay or block regulation. The industry is warning countries that their tobacco laws violate an expanding web of trade and investment treaties, raising the prospect of costly, prolonged legal battles, health advocates and officials said.

The strategy has gained momentum in recent years as smoking rates in rich countries have fallen and tobacco companies have sought to maintain access to fast-growing markets in developing countries. Industry officials say that there are only a few cases of active litigation, and that giving a legal opinion to governments is routine for major players whose interests will be affected.

via New York Times

The gun manufacturers must be drooling at the prospect of loosening anti-gun laws by corporate fiat. Imagine what a wonderful world it would be if people everywhere were forced to enjoy “second amendment rights”. But, of course, that's not the only possibility for abuse of the masses by the upper classes; the possibilities are endless.

Filed in Corporate Crime, Creeping Totalitarianism | | Comments (0)

Someone should be “candid” with Bill Gates

Thursday, December 12, 2013

When Bill Gates decided to take his billions and go home, he also decided to inflict his philosophy, such as it is, on the rest of us. One target was our teachers.

Gates solution to our non-existent educational crisis was to inflict the same regimen on our teachers that he inflicted on workers at Microsoft, something called “stacked ranking”, which put Microsoft employees in constant competition with one another for continued employment. According to Gates it was the key to Microsoft's success. Some might argue that Microsoft's innovation peaked in the 80s, when Gates had the prescience to realize that it was the operating system that mattered (had IBM not outsourced its PC operating system to Microsoft, Gates might be teaching high school himself) and was well positioned to get Microsoft Office on the first crop of business PCs where, despite the fact that the software has gotten progressively shittier, it remains to this day. One might go on to argue that Microsoft has coasted ever since on the wings of antitrust violations and corporate resistance to change (no one ever got fired for buying Microsoft Office). One might observe that enthusiasm for Microsoft's recent offerings has been non-existent (ever spent time in one of those empty Microsoft stores while waiting for your turn at the Genius Bar?). Apparently, someone has noticed:

Bill Gates foisted a big business model of employee evaluation onto public school, which his own company has since abandoned.
“At Microsoft, we believed in giving our employees the best chance to succeed, and then we insisted on success. We measured excellence, rewarded those who achieved it and were candid with those who did not.”

Adopting the Microsoft model means public schools grading teachers, rewarding the best and being “candid”, that is, firing those who are deemed ineffective. “If you do that,” Gates promised Oprah Winfrey, “then we go from being basically at the bottom of the rich countries [in education performance] to being back at the top.”

The Microsoft model, called “stacked ranking” forced every work unit to declare a certain percentage of employees as top performers, a certain groups as good performers, then average, then below average, then poor.

Using hundred of millions of dollars in philanthropic largesse Bill Gates persuaded state and federal policymakers that what was good for Microsoft would be good for public schools (to be sure, he was pushing against an open door). To be eligible for large grants from President Obama’s Race to the Top program, for example, states had to adopt Gates’ Darwinian approach to improving public education. Today more than 36 states have altered their teacher evaluations systems with the aim of weeding out the worst and rewarding the best.

“So let me get this straight. The big business method of evaluation that now rules our schools is no longer the big business method of evaluation? And collaboration and teamwork, which have been abandoned by our schools in favor of the big business method of evaluation, is in?” Some states grade on a curve. Others do not. But all embrace the principle that continuing employment for teachers will depend on improvement in student test scores, and teachers who are graded “ineffective” two or three years in a row face termination.

Needless to say, the whole process of what has come to be called “high stakes testing” of both students and teachers has proven devastatingly dispiriting. According to the 2012 MetLife Survey of the American Teacher, over half of public school teachers say they experience great stress several days a week and are so demoralized that their level of satisfaction has plummeted from 62 percent in 2008 to 39 percent last year.

And now, just as public school systems have widely adopted the Microsoft model in order to win the Race to the Top, it turns out that Microsoft now realizes that this model has pushed Microsoft itself into a Race to the Bottom.

In a widely circulated 2012 article in Vanity Fair award-winning reporter Kurt Eichenwald concluded that stacked ranking “effectively crippled Microsoft’s ability to innovate. “Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees,” Eichenwald writes. “It leads to employees focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other companies.”

This month Microsoft abandoned the hated system.

On November 12 all Microsoft employees received a memo from Lisa Brummel, Executive Vice President for Human Resources announcing the company will be adopting “a fundamentally new approach to performance and development designed to promote new levels of teamwork and agility for breakthrough business impact.”

Ms. Brummel listed four key elements in the company’s new policy.

•More emphasis on teamwork and collaboration.

•More emphasis on employee growth and development.

•No more use of a Bell curve for evaluating employees.

•No more ratings of employees.

via Common Dreams

If you think Gates, Congress, or Obama will change their prescription for our public schools, think again. It's far too convenient to blame teachers for conditions created by government policies that shovel money at the Bill Gateses of the world while impoverishing the rest of us. Just as it took the world about 30 years to realize that Microsoft was coasting on a couple of lucky breaks it got in the 80's combined with illegal behavior in the 90s (for which it got a slap on the wrist), it will take at least that long for the politicians to accept the fact that the “race to the top” is destroying the American public educational system. But that's the point, really, isn't it? Time for the for-profits to come to the rescue. Ultimately, the answer to every problem involves creating a few more billionaires and a lot more paupers.

Filed in Education | | Comments (0)

A bit more on “free trade”

Thursday, December 12, 2013

A bit of a follow up to a recent post on the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership pact. Dean Baker, who I mentioned in my post, takes issue with Paul Krugman's comments that the trade pact is no big deal. Baker agrees that as a trade deal it's a nothing, but that is not the point:

Anyhow, Krugman is on the money in his assessment of the impact of the TPP on trade. But the point is that the TPP is not really about trade, it's about changing the regulatory process in ways that would almost certainly be opposed by the people in most of the countries included in the deal.

via Beat the Press

In short, its about handing legislative and judicial power over to the corporations. Here's Mussolini on that subject:

Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.

Filed in Corporate Crime, Creeping Totalitarianism | | Comments (0)

Here’s hoping for failure

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

I urge anyone who comes across this to educate themselves on the proposed Pacific Rim Trade Agreement. More knowledgeable people than I have reported on this. You might start with Dean Baker's blog and work from there. Suffice to say that the United States is not just trying to engineer another massive corporate giveaway, it is attempting to hand international lawmaking authority over to the corporations and private tribunals they may establish.

This morning's Times reports that the agreement is stalled, as the rest of the international community is gagging on the United States demands. The Times, of course, carries water for the corporations, in the typical fashion in which our press slants the news.

The Times reports what “critics say”, and then goes on to report what the treaty does. But no one knows what the treaty does, as the Obama administration, in all too typical (for it) fashion, has conducted the negotiations in secret, not even allowing Congress to know what it is doing. In any event, as Dean Baker had endlessly pointed out, in such a context, it is more appropriate to report what each party “says” rather than report what they “believe” or “think”, and one should certainly not report what a treaty “does” when one has no idea what it says.

Contrast and compare this:

As the negotiators try to complete a deal, its supporters and opponents in Washington are waging intense lobbying campaigns. Much of the opposition comes from consumer, environmental and labor groups who argue that the deal might end up gutting American regulations, giving corporations too much power and moving jobs offshore.

With this:

The Pacific talks would reduce barriers to trade. The deal would cover a huge swath of the globe, nearly a billion people from New Zealand north through Asia, through Canada and the United States and down through Mexico to Chile. Other countries involved include Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Vietnam and Peru.

The opponents “argue”, but it is reported as fact that the agreements would reduce trade barriers. As Dean Baker has pointed out, these agreements reduce barriers to only certain types of trade. The barriers that are reduced are universally those that provide some protections to workers or the environment. Barriers designed to protect the professional classes or corporate interests are never even discussed.

But in the case of this agreement, there is little by way of barriers to be reduced. The U.S. is looking to increase barriers to trade, by, for instance, imposing stringent patent protections for drugs in the affected countries, thus spreading the benefits of outrageously high drug prices from our shores to those afflicted countries whose people are currently actually able to obtain low cost drugs. Of course, we are hearing the tired refrain about “job creation”, but somehow the jobs never get created, and on every front it seems that to get those ever illusive jobs, we must continue to shovel money at the rich. This agreement is nothing more than a corporate welfare program. We can only hope the U.S. will not be able to pressure the other countries to submit, or that Republican resistance to anything Obama will, for once, serve a useful purpose and save the rest of us from a world more completely controlled by the corporations.

Filed in Corporate Crime, Creeping Totalitarianism, Economics | | Comments (0)

Good News, Local Edition

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

The Groton Open Spaces Association has, over the years, been responsible for preserving a vast amount of open space here in Groton. I am especially indebted to the Association, as I live a short walk away from Haley Farm State Park, which would have become a site for tract housing had it not been for the Association, which got its start preserving the Farm. Since that time it has bought, or caused to be purchased, additional open space that roughly forms a greenbelt through the center of Groton from the Sound to, until recently, land just south of the Ledyard line.

GOSA just announced that it has purchased the Avery Farm, a beautiful piece of land that straddles the Ledyard-Groton border. The last dirt road in either town (at least I beleive that to be the case, and I have bicycled a good deal in Groton ) runs through this land. The road is closed in the winter, but I have taken to driving through it in the summer as I make my way home from work in Norwich.

You can read a full description of the property here, including information on the various flora and fauna that can be found there. Here's a few pictures I took there recently; they really don't capture the place-I was mainly fooling around with an ultra wide angle lens.

20131211-190941.jpg

20131211-190956.jpg

Groton has truly been blessed to have this group of people in its midst. Without them, a lot of our open space would have been lost to developers. I should add that they have done what they've done with little to no cooperation from local politicians of either party. Most of our politicos seem to subscribe to the view that no land should go unraped in our ceaseless quest for “economic development”, which never seems to consist of attracting business to the unused physical plant that already exists. But that's a post for another day. I'm looking forward to walking this land, now that it belongs to the people.

Filed in Good News, Local issues, Uncategorized | | Comments (0)

A Postscript

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

A bit of a follow up to Sunday morning's post, in which I ranted about a Boston Globe article that referred to two extremes in Congress. Paul Krugman agrees.

In practice, left-wing cranks have never played a significant role in US politics, while right-wing cranks always have.

via Conscience of a Liberal

I'd go a bit further and say that perfectly coherent and realistic left wing views are systematically read out of the public discourse. We have freedom of speech in this country, but there is a wide range of views (almost entirely on the left) that the masters of our discourse will not allow themselves to hear.

By the way, the lack of recent posts is not because I lack brilliant things to say, but because my internet service has been frustratingly spotty. It works great at those times (say, 4:00 in the morning) when you don't want to use it, but goes on and off at random at other times. The problem is supposedly being addressed, but I am not holding my breath.

Filed in Media | | Comments (0)

Sunday Morning venting

Sunday, December 8, 2013

I grow tired of this sort of thing. The Boston Globe reports that a number of political scientists got together to discuss ways of overcoming what they reportedly call a “democratic deficit” in this country. That deficit undoubtedly exists, and some of its causes, such as huge amounts of money from sources representing only one set of interests, and gerrymandered districts, were correctly identified. But, I cannot allow this to pass unnoticed:

No one suggested that democracy be replaced with some other system. But many urged that fundamental elements be reshaped to repair what they called the nation’s “democratic deficit,” aiming to make a Congress dominated by extremes better reflect the public’s more centrist viewpoint.

via The Boston Globe

Now, lets consider this. If Congress is “dominated by extremes” then it stands to reason that there is a powerful extreme right and a powerful extreme left. There certainly is a powerful extreme right. It is called the Republican Party. Where, I ask, is this extreme left that, presumably, would be to the left of the allegedly “centrist” views of the public? It would be helpful if the reporter sought to place any actual issues that are out there today on a left-right spectrum, and demonstrate how the public is allegedly in the “middle” between two articulated extremes. Rather, we are given a graph showing the distance between the “most liberal” and “most conservative” legislators, where we learn to our shocked surprise that Bob Casey is the most liberal person in the Senate. Thus, the “center” is explicitly defined as the mean distance between the most “liberal” (Casey?) and the most conservative member of each body, thus assuring that the “center” shifts ever rightward as the Republican Party grows more reactionary and the Democratic Party, at the behest of the Washington punditry and its Wall Street donors, grows ever more “moderate”.

Let's look at reality for a second. I’ll go with my favorite hobby-horse, Social Security. We all know that it is the fervent wish of the right to destroy Social Security root and branch. We know that they have been at it for years, ginning up a fake crisis, etc. We also know that Social Security has no short term problem, but in the long term, it will have to trim benefits if something is not done about its funding. The primary force driving that problem, by the way, is the fact that back in the 80s, when steps were taken to preserve Social Security's funding, the actuaries doing the math had no idea that income inequality would increase to the extent that it has. If incomes had been distributed as they expected (i.e., as incomes were distributed when the actuaries did the math), there would be no long term problem at all. Since so much income has been shifted to the top, and since those at the top only pay Social Security taxes on the first $100K of income, there is a long term funding problem.

The obvious solution is to raise or abolish the cap on income subject to Social Security taxes. This would hurt no one but the rich, and it would be the merest of scratches, and mostly to their pride. It's a given that the Republicans would oppose such an increase. It seems to stand to reason that it is exactly what the “extreme” on the other side should be proposing, and proposing loudly and vigorously. And, according to our intrepid reporter, who feels honor bound to honor the “two extremes” meme, the public should be somewhere in the middle. And yet…

There are Democrats who favor this approach, but they keep their mouths shut, or speak only in whispers (the “radical” Elizabeth Warren excepted). The President, the leader of our extremes apparently, sees the solution in cutting Social Security, by enacting the chained CPI, which has substantial support in (indeed was first proposed by) the rightward extreme.

So where does the public stand?

The public is quite comfortable with raising the Social Security tax. This means that the “centrist” public is to the left of almost every member of Congress.

How about the chained CPI, the theory that as the general public gets poorer, the elderly should be dragged down with them? How does the “centrist” public feel about putting granny on a catfood diet? The Globe reporter might be surprised to learn that once again, they either agree with the leftmost members of Congress, or are to the left of them. Granted, it's a bit closer here, because the issue is less fully understood. But those with the most interest in understanding it oppose it the most.

Even on health care, when one drills into the numbers, the opposition to Obamacare is as high as it is only because there is a substantial portion of the opponents who think it does not go far enough toward the system of single payer care that we deserve. Opponents to the law are usually lumped together and placed in a right wing bag, but that is not the case in reality.

In any event, the fact is, that there is no one with a semblance of power in this country articulating extreme left, or even doctrinaire left positions. I put the word “radical” in quotes when I referred to Elizabeth Warren not as a knock on her, but because the supposedly radical positions she is taking are positions that would have been considered unexceptional until recently. Prime among them is her “radical” proposal to reenact Glass-Steagall, which 83% of the centrist public supports and which will go nowhere, because it lacks support across the spectrum in this Congress. So where, I ask, is the extreme left in our Congress? Where are the legislators demanding a return to 1950's tax rates on the rich? But that's fairly moderate. Eisenhower was fine with those rates. Where are the legislators demanding confiscation of the vast fortunes stolen from the rest of us by the bankers and hedge fund managers? Where are the legislators demanding socialized medicine, never mind single payor? Who is standing up for the unions? Where, we finally must ask, are the guillotines? People who understand the meaning of the word “extreme” in the political context want to know.

Filed in Dysfunction, Rants | | Comments (0)

Grade inflation at Harvard

Thursday, December 5, 2013

The Boston Globe reports:

Harvard College is facing a new round of disapproval, and even ridicule, from some educators following news that the most common grade awarded is an A, more than a decade after professors pledged to combat grade inflation.

Critics say that making top grades the norm cheapens the hard work of the best students and reinforces the deluded self-regard of many members of the millennial generation.

via The Boston Globe

I'm having a hard time getting worked up about this one. Grade inflation is a problem in our high schools, and I'm certain it's a problem at some colleges. But, lets think about Harvard for a minute. There was a time when it was shot full of the pampered rich, and the “Gentleman's C” was, at least in legend, a common occurrence. But despite the preferences still given to legacies, things are a lot different at Harvard today. The average SAT scores at Harvard run from 700 to 800. It has a 6% admissions rate. Isn't it to be expected that the highest achievers in the nation will get A's? And in the case of Harvard students, while they may have a lot of self-regard (and believe me, they do), in their cases, is it fair to say they are “deluded”?

It would be profoundly unjust to grade these students on a curve. On a transcript, a Harvard C is worth the same as one from East Nowhere University. If you gave a C to the “average” Harvard student for work that would get him/her an A anywhere else, you would be essentially punishing him or her for getting into one of the best schools in the nation.

Turn it around. If the average grade handed out at Harvard were a “C”, wouldn't that engender criticism, likely from the same folks criticizing the school now.

Not that Harvard is perfect. In my own humble opinion, based on some personal knowledge, you can get a better education at any number of small liberal arts college, primarily because such places place more emphasis on education and less on the kind of networking that goes on at Harvard. But that doesn't change the fact that most Harvard students are there because they are very smart; have earned and deserved A's all their lives; and should be expected to perform well at Harvard or anywhere else they might have chosen to attend. It's just a shame so many of them go on to lead useless lives as consultants, bankers, or hedge fund managers.

Filed in Ramblings | | Comments (0)