Historical Image of the Day

Sharecropper educating her children in her home. Unfortunately, I have neither a date nor place for this. But it's a great image.

Civics

Overheated outrage abounds about low civics scores on standardized tests.

In response, let me give you a civics lesson. You have a very wealthy nation, though one with significant problems with income distribution and racial inequality. But this nation has chosen not to allocate sufficient resources to its schools, both because one of its political parties has demagogued taxation to the point that raising taxes has become a political impossibility and because its state governments and national representatives find it more useful to batter around teachers than to fund education. This nation also places significant social value upon personal income and consumerism, meaning that its smartest and most motivated young people are going into more lucrative professions than teaching.

Although not willing to fund education or pay teachers a high enough salary to attract the best young minds to the profession, the nation frets about falling behind to intensively-educated Asian kids in math and reading. How will they compete with the Chinese?!? So that nation passes an unfortunate law called "No Child Left Behind," which forces kids to take pointless standardized tests, exacerbates the underfunding of poor schools by tying their existence to improved test scores, convinces schools and teachers to fix the test answers in order to save their jobs, and encourages teachers to not ply their wares at poor schools since they will be fired if they don't improve test scores, a near impossibility given the massive problems of social inequality that children in these schools face.

With math, science, and reading being valued over other subjects, subjects like history and, yes, civics become less important. If students need extra time to prepare for the standardized tests, it comes at the expense of those classes. If outside speakers come to the school, kids are pulled out of these classes. Because everything is about the standardized test to comply with No Child Left Behind. Students then don't learn about their government or their collective past, not to mention literature, art, or physical education.

And then this nation freaks out when students don't know the fundamentals about their government. I wonder if there's an easy solution that will cost no money. I suggest more standardized testing and rote memory.

Historical Image of the Day

Teaching children to meditate from the book Teaching Children to Meditate: The Art of Concentration and Centering, 1975

Teacher Status

This Times discussion of teacher status is kind of ridiculous, since it asks how to raise the status of teachers in this country, aside from a pay increase.

Oh, in this status-conscious, class-based society, we'll just sweep that gigantic elephant in the room under a very tiny rug.

So the conversation is kind of a non-starter given that the way to attract top talent is to pay them accordingly and no one wants to pay the necessary taxes to compensate teachers in a way that would make the field competitive with the corporate world.

Even outside of this absurdity, the conversation kind of spins its wheels. I think teacher Vern Williams says it best:

I really doubt that it is possible to raise the status of teachers and teaching in the U.S. considering the major stake holders currently involved in K through 12 education. I understand why students in the top third academically refuse to become teachers, while in Finland, Singapore and South Korea, teaching candidates are selected only from the top third.

Absolutely. And when the response of the Republican Party is to attack the one institution making teachers lives less than hell--their unions--and when they and other education "reformers" want to tie pay to teaching scores, meaning that no one in their right mind or with any interest in a long-term career will teach low-income, high-risk students because they'll probably get fired in 2 years, it's pretty hard to imagine that this situation is going to change anytime soon.

Moreover, I am far from convinced that our schools are broken, or at least any more broken than they were 10 or 30 years ago. I think this is a meme that has infused our discourse, but I strongly dispute that our students are less prepared for their lives than I was in 1992 or my parents were in the 1960s. The poor are not given equal opportunity--nor were they in the past. We don't necessarily excel in math and science--which was a huge issue in the 1950s as well. If anything, the responses to this supposed crisis like Don't Ask, Don't Tell, have created a real crisis out of what was merely systemic problems in American society reflected but not caused by the education system.

Finally, I Feel That Someone Out There Understands How Hard It Is To Be a White Male

I'll tell you what, it sure is hard being a white male these days. We only control like 95% of Fortune 500 companies. And only 43 of our 44 presidents have been white dudes. Not to mention that we totally don't have any access to good education. Until now that is:

The application for a $500 scholarship from the Former Majority Association for Equality looks pretty much like all the others out there. Well, except for this eligibility requirement: “Male – No less than 25% Caucasian.”

Yes, the Texas-based nonprofit organization has launched a scholarship for white men. Members of the group, which goes by FMAFE, say they aren’t racist and “have no hidden agenda to promote racial bigotry or segregation,” according to their Web site. Instead, they say their goal is to provide financial aid to white men who might not qualify for other scholarships.

“FMAE’s existence is dedicated around one simple principle, to provide monetary aid for education to white males who need it,” the group’s mission statement reads.

And thank God it's in Texas--if there's any white men who don't have a voice in American society, it's white Texans!

Private Higher Education Funding

Can someone help me answer a question?

So private schools had their funding tank during the early part of the recession because they were so invested in the stock market and that collapsed.

Today, the stock market is back over 12,000. So shouldn't colleges have seen their portfolios rise and have more ability to hire new faculty and spend on other things? Why are private colleges by and large still claiming financial hardship? What's going on here?

The Non-Existent Education Problem

Little drives me more crazy in current political discourse than the idea that our schools are failing and that we need to completely revamp our education system.

No one buys into this more than President Obama. His commitment to cliches about public education failure is one of the worst aspects of his presidency. Thus I was thrilled to read Yong Zhao's piece in the Washington Post ripping Obama's education policy to shreds. There are many excellent quotes to choose from, but I particularly like the section on Race to the Top, which I reprint here:

Is it true that Race to the Top is the most meaningful reform of public education in a generation?

Again, it depends. It depends on how one defines “meaningful.” If defined as the scale of impact without questioning whether the impact is beneficial or not, it may be true but considering the actual consequences, Race to the Top is neither meaningful nor flexible. It does not focus on “what’s best for our kids” nor spark “creativity and imagination of our people.”

I wonder if Obama knows what Race to the Top actually does because it is just the opposite of what he asks for. He says:

What’s more, we are the first nation to be founded for the sake of an idea -– the idea that each of us deserves the chance to shape our own destiny…It’s why our students don’t just memorize equations, but answer questions like 'What do you think of that idea? What would you change about the world? What do you want to be when you grow up?' ”


“Our students don’t just memorize equations, but answer questions like “What do you think of that idea? What would you change about the world” -- perhaps this explains why American students scored poorly on tests but have been able to build a strong economy with innovations.

But Race to the Top is about killing ideas and forcing students to memorize equations by imposing common standards and testing in only two subjects on students all over the nation; by forcing schools and teachers to teach to the tests; and by forcing states to narrow educational experiences for all students to a prescribed narrowed defined curriculum.

Race to the Top is precisely what he said it is not: “We know what’s possible from our children when reform isn’t just a top-down mandate, but the work of local teachers and principals, school boards and communities.”

Rather, it is nothing but a top-down mandate. Race to the Top applications required states and schools to be innovative in meeting the top-down mandates: adopting common standards and assessment, linking teacher evaluation/compensation with student test scores, offering more math and science learning, and allowing more charter schools.

In the first round of competition, Massachusetts was penalized for not wanting to rush to adopt the Common Core Standards. Pennsylvania was penalized for proposing innovative practices in early childhood education (Source: Let’s Do the Numbers: Department of Education’s “Race to the Top” Program Offers Only a Muddled Path to the Finish Lin By William Peterson and Richard Rothstein)

Race to the Top is anything but... “the work of local teachers and principals, school boards and communities” States that were desperate for cash had to use all means to coerce teachers, principals, and school boards to sign on to the application because participation of local schools was a heavily weighted criterion. And if teachers and school leaders did not agree, they risked being accused of not supporting children’s education.

And with regard to common standards, while it is true that they were not developed by Washington, Washington definitely helped with billions of dollars to make them adopted nationwide.

Today, our public schools work as well if not better than they ever have. We produce competitive people with great ideas. If anything, the emphasis on rote learning and test taking, attacking teachers unions, and equating financial success with valuable education have the potential to severely undermine our education system. What problems our schools do have result from poverty and de facto segregation much more than teachers who don't care.

Yet Obama doesn't get this. Rather, he hires Arne Duncan as his Secretary of Education and doesn't take a strong stand in favor of teachers unions. Barack Obama may prove to be one of the worst presidents on education policy in recent history.

Historical Image of the Day

Our new series will cover racial violence in the North. It's always worth reminding people that racial violence is not just a southern problem.

Anti-busing protest, Boston, 1976

The Perils of Homeschooling

Antonia Blair has a very nice graphic essay in Guernica remembering the horrors of growing up as a homeschool kid in Kansas. Take you 2 minutes to read and is rather powerful.

Let's Blame the Worker!

David Brooks plays a game of Let's Blame the Worker by attacking state workers' pensions as the reason for state government insolvency.

This is of course absurd. One can point to many causes for problems within state governments--overflowing prison systems, poor lawmakers, the anti-tax mentality that has created budget shortfalls across the board.

Most of the problem revolves around tax revenues. And no one wants to talk about this. The general public knows that they are paying taxes and so pointing a finger at public employees makes a certain amount of sense. But of course, those who aren't paying taxes are the wealthy, corporations, and other entities that have received tax breaks, writeoffs, incentives, and other corporate handouts that have impoverished states increasingly reliant upon sales and income taxes from a recession-plagued population that is working less, living in devalued homes, and spending less on consumer goods.

Of course, Brooks supports all of this. So, in the classic American conservative tradition, Brooks blames pubic sector workers. Lest we forget, public sector workers could almost universally make more money in the private sector. And they provide vital services that we need for a functioning society. A decent pension seems like a good pay-off for giving up so much income during the working years.

We all play Blame the Worker in discussions of school reform. Unfortunately, even Democratic politicians and writers (I'm looking at Yglesias here) play the game with teachers. Obviously, they say, the problem with public schools is teacher unions who don't want test scores deciding their futures and who protect the worst teachers from being fired. Michelle Rhee's resignation today as Schools Chancellor in Washington, D.C. is seen as a defeat for these reformers who want to cripple unions and force schools onto a business model.

I'm glad Rhee's gone. As Richard Kahlenberg convincingly argues, teacher unions are leading reform efforts, not holding them back. They oppose testing partially because it takes away from the education (particularly for subjects like history) and because the reformers who want to tie testing to pay or employment completely ignore issues such as poverty, race, and educational background of parents in determining successful education. Rather, it's a simple reliance on testing they want. And if tie employment to test schools, why would you choose to work in an impoverished inner-city school? To be unemployed in 2 years? That's crazy. This just hurts kids' education in the long run.

But of course, it's always easier for Americans to blame the worker instead of fixing the structural problems plaguing our society. There's little political cost to be paid, it rewards lazy thinking (thus attracting pundits), and doesn't cost a lot.

Unfortunately, each time we blame the worker, we damage our institutions for the long-term, undermining public confidence in government, and telling young talented workers to avoid the public sector.

Preparing PhD Students For Life Outside Academia

Bill Petti:

Curry was commenting here on changing the mindset of the students, but I would argue in many disciplines the problem isn't the students, but the professors.  There are still large groups of people in academia that not only disagree with this sentiment, but actively work to undermine students who choose to take their education and apply it outside of academia.  My experience has been in the realm of political science, but certainly know others that have had similar experiences in other disciplines.

The skills one learns in graduate school are absolutely applicable outside of academia.  In many cases, students may be better positioned to apply what they've learned and have a more fulfilling career in either government or business.  Not everyone is cut out for this type of career, but then again not everyone is cut out for a life in academia either.  In many cases, it takes a different set of talents and to thrive in either environment.  And when we take into account the utter dysfunction of the academic labor market, I don't think pressuring students to seek a career in that market is the most responsible thing to do.

Bottom line: the focus should be on the students and what will be the best move for them, not what professors think is the 'proper' career for those pursuing and holding a Ph.D.

Absolutely. While many students go into Ph.D. programs thinking that they want to be professors, the reality is that most them won't get tenure-track jobs. It's absurd to keep admitting students if you are only going to train them for academia.


Universities do a terrible job preparing students for anything outside of academia. This is natural in some sense--professors are the ones who succeeded. But to assume that all their students will also succeed in the academic job market is dishonest and almost fraudulent. Universities and the individual departments within them must do a better job of opening students' eyes to multiple career choices. Individual professors sometimes do this with their students, but they are usually anomalies within the department.


I've been in a series of visiting positions. I don't really know what to do if I don't get an academic job. At least I am conscious about trying to improve my job prospects outside of the academy, but I am by no means confident, nor do I have a strong plan of what to do if this all falls apart. I wish I understood the path to move into policy for instance. And I consider myself far better off for this transition than most people in my position.

The Self-Delusion of Conservatives and Classical Education

Conservatives love so-called "classical education." They constantly rail against the teaching of "politically correct" history. They don't want the inclusion of black or women writers into the canon. They believe post-modernism is the devil (never mind that the Bush presidency basically operated on post-modern principles of constructing truth). They think that higher education as presently constructed seeks to destroy conservative values and brain-wash young people with liberal doctrine.

Their solution is often to stress the classics. Sandy Levinson points us to this interesting op-ed about the Texas State Board of Education endorsing classical European thinkers as proper for our students to learn about, as opposed to, say, Cesar Chavez.

Of course, the Texas BOE members have never read Voltaire or Rousseau or Aquinas themselves. But they are convinced about the benefits of a classical education for creating young conservatives.

But is there any evidence for this? I'd say it's rather the opposite. For instance, conservatives love St. John's College, alma mater of Lyrad and many of our commenters. When I went to Lyrad's graduation, the conservative columnist John Leo was the commencement speaker and he droned on about the values of a classical education. For Leo, St. John's was a tool in the culture war. But knowing Lyrad and his friends as I do, I wouldn't exactly say that they became conservatives.

Perhaps they will care to speak about this more.

Now, the St. John's College style of education certainly is racist, sexist, and Euro-centric. There's no question that in that superficial sense it serves the larger political goals of conservatives. And I think that's a huge problem with that style of education. However, actually reading Rousseau and Aquinas doesn't seem to lead to the results that conservatives think.

You Know What Would Really Teach the Kids About History? A Old-Timey Lynching

Wow

A north Georgia history teacher faces punishment after administrators say she let four students wear Ku Klux Klan-like robes for a historical reenactment.

Administrators say four students in Ariemma's advanced placement history class donned Klan-like outfits while filming historical reenactments. Moye says students saw them Thursday and parents of a black student complained.  

I wonder how far such actions could go. Nothing would teach the kids about early 20th century north Georgia race relations than actually lynching a black person! But then, I'm sure that here in Texas, we're now teaching our children how the KKK had to stop crazy black men from raping our white women....

Texas State History Standards

By now, you've all read about the Texas State Board of Education's history standards that eviscerate any reasonable interpretation of American history in favor of right-wing talking points. I should be talking about this more. But plenty of people are reporting on it. And I am not good at expressing outrage. I think that's because very little that happens in this country actually surprises me. We could whole-heartedly embrace fascism in 2020 and I would not be surprised in the least. Mostly, I feel resignation about these things and want to move on to analysis and problem-solving.

Anyway, I do think these right-wingers are way overreaching. I don't know if textbook companies will actually conform to these standards. I certainly don't know what self-respecting historians will actually write these books, except maybe for these bozos. Moreover, by moving so far to the right, the Texas BOE has drawn unwanted attention to their agenda. The extremists have been voted off the Board, though they get to serve until the end of the year. I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of this crazy stuff gets overturned, if other states choose not to adopt these textbooks (even conservative states, given just how embarrassing most of these directives are), and if liberals strike back at this hard, ensuring that textbooks are something we pay attention to going forward and working to ensure legitimate interpretations of the American past are taught to our students.

Also, I'd really like to see the American historical establishment take a harder line against the Texas BOE than it has. Major organizations like the American Historical Association and Organization of American Historians have been far too quiet.

Robots: A Tool of Xenophobic Koreans

Koreans are among the most xenophobic people on the globe. Despite the globalization Koreans have remained strongly xenophobic. At first, I thought this had to do with their long occupation by the U.S. military, but it goes far deeper. Koreans are generally obsessed with racial purity, absolutely opposed to immigration from the poorer nations of Asia, and have a history of strong reactions against other non-American white nations coming to Korea in large numbers to work.

In recent years, this xenophobia has manifested itself in a strong reaction against English teachers. Matt at Gusts of Popular Feeling has studied this intensely and has provided many examples. Koreans see English teachers as drug-using alcoholics who come only to sleep with Korean women. Miscegenation fears aren't just an American phenomenon. However, the onslaught of globalization has made it imperative for Koreans to learn English. So how to overcome the dilemma of needing the skill and hating the teacher?

Robots.

During the second decade of the New Millennium, robots are expected to replace a number of English-speaking teachers here, who come from such countries as the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada.

At a robotics forum, which brought together 150 experts from across the country late last week in Seoul, participants predicted that English-speaking robots would fill the shoes of native speakers in the future.

"By around 2015, robots should be able to help teachers in English classes. By 2018, they should be able to teach on their own while communicating with students," said Kim Shin-hwan, an economist at the Hyundai Research Institute.

Reliance on technology is not going to alleviate the need for living English teachers, but this incident is a window into just how much Koreans resent having non-Koreans living in their country.

Give Me That Old-Time Intolerance

The case of Melissa Hussain is making the rounds. An 8th grade science teacher in North Carolina, she posted on Facebook about her Christian students harassing her openly about religion, which she is calling a hate crime.

I'll get to Hussain's teaching in a minute, but there's no question that her students and their parents and the atmosphere in the school that tolerates this behavior is indicative of the utter hypocrisy of evangelical Christians. They push their ideas on everyone, both in the U.S. and around the world. They don't tolerate other viewpoints. And then they have the temerity to complain of discrimination against them because they can't have a copy of the Ten Commandments in a courtroom.

Amanda says it well:

The reports I could find on this don’t explain why they think Hussain isn’t a Christian.  It could be her last name---I’d be shocked if that wasn’t a factor---or the fact that she’s a science teacher.  Or maybe she isn’t a Christian and didn’t take pains to hide that fact.  So what?  This country supposedly respects religious freedom, and that counts even for school teachers and even for women and even in North Carolina.  The levels of harassment this woman was subject to are shocking, even for a bunch of ignorant rednecks.  The harassers are admitting that they were provoked by the fact that Hussain taught real world biology that included the theory of evolution.

On her Facebook page, Hussain wrote about students spreading rumors that she was a Jesus hater. She complained about her students wearing Jesus T-shirts and singing “Jesus Loves Me.” She objected to students reading the Bible instead of doing class work.

But Annette Balint, whose daughter is in Hussain’s class, said the students have the right to wear those shirts and sing “Jesus Loves Me,” a long-time Sunday School staple. She said the students were reading the Bible during free time in class.

So, what appears to be happening is that the parents are encouraging their children to disrupt class to harass a woman they believe deserves no respect by refusing to do their schoolwork, and loudly singing hymns.  And when called out on it, they play innocent, acting like open disruption of the classroom is just a legitimate, harmless expression of belief.  This is not all that Hussain was subject to.  Students got into the habit of leaving religious materials on her desk to taunt her.  Postcards with pictures of Jesus were left on her desk so that students could act all butt hurt when she did what you always do when junk mail is left for you, which is throw it away.  Bibles were left on her desk, presumably to create the same kind of faux outrage if she treated them like anything short of magical objects.  After the evolution dust-up, when kids tried to stop the lesson by squawking about Jesus and no doubt freaking out on the teacher, a student left a Christmas card on Hussain’s desk with the word “Christ” underlined.

This behavior, of course, is bullying, and it appears to be encouraged by parents.  Bullying is the absolute favorite tactic of the religious right, from women’s clinic blockades to calling the cops on women who dare admit while pregnant to being anything but as blissed out as a dog suckling her pups.  Men are subject to this kind of bullying, but generally, wingnuts prefer to set their sights on female targets, because they believe women are weak, and like all bullies, they prefer to pick on someone they perceive as weak.

Indeed.

Now, the other issue here is whether Hussain should have complained about this on Facebook. And the answer is of course not. Rule #1 in modern teaching should be to never talk about the specifics of teaching problems in a public or semi-public forum. There should be clear avenues for dealing with these problems. On one level, you discipline students--you control the classroom, you report them to the principal, you suspend them, you make their lives hell in your classroom. Of course, this is a lot easier for a man to do than a young woman. And who knows if she has the right temperament to handle a classroom of right-wing 8th graders. Lots of us don't.

If parents and your administration don't support you, take it higher up. Take it to the superintendent. Make someone listen. And if no one will listen, then you can consider taking it public, but in very specific ways that would probably include you quitting your job first.

Now, obviously this was a frustrated and hurt teacher who faced a very difficult situation that she didn't expect. I really feel for her. I can't say I know what I'd do in her situation. But I think the lesson for me if I am ever teaching on the pre-college level is to control the classroom and to tolerate none of that kind of behavior. I really couldn't care less if the students like me or not. That's actually  harder to do on the college level because administrators actually believe that teaching evaluations are legitimate critiques on your effectiveness as a teacher. In the public schools,  I can't see how your students not being a little afraid of you is a good thing.

An Idea So Crazy, I Can't Believe Rick Perry Didn't Think of It First

Perhaps you've heard of the proposal in the Utah state legislature to eliminate the mandatory 12th grade. Seniors just screw around anyway, right? Also, I'm sure if that happened, senioritis wouldn't just transfer to the 11th grade or anything. Also, large numbers of teenagers hanging around with nothing to do has never caused any problems in society or anything.

Obviously we can make fun of these wackos in any number of ways. But let's take this proposal seriously for a minute. Because it now represents a serious policy idea in the conservative world. If you went back 40 years and suggested that much of the current Republican agenda would be mainstream and that even the Democrats would have adopted much of it, you'd have been laughed out of the room. Since Americans don't want to pay taxes under any circumstances and they also don't want big deficits (except for the military of course. Support our troops!!!!11!!11), we can expect crazier and crazier cuts to domestic programs. Cut the 12th grade? Eliminate all busing for high schoolers? Why not!

Of course, this isn't going to pass. The same laziness and greed that makes us not want to pay taxes makes us not want to deal with the consequences of not paying taxes either, particularly when that means we have to figure out what to do with our kids. But don't be surprised to see similar ideas pop up around the conservative blogosphere and filtering into Republican politics and mainstream political discourse in coming years.

Texas Public Schools and Dress Codes

In case you didn't think the Dallas suburbs were hellish enough, here's Mesquite's absurd crackdown on fashion in the public schools:

The parents of a 4-year-old boy disciplined for having long hair have rejected a compromise from a Texas school board that agreed to adjust its grooming policy.

The impasse means pre-kindergartner Taylor Pugh will remain in in-school suspension, sitting alone with a teacher's aide in a library. He has been sequestered from classmates at Floyd Elementary School in Mesquite, a Dallas suburb, since late November.

After a closed-door meeting Monday, the Mesquite school board decided the boy could wear his hair in tight braids but keep it no longer than his ears. But his parents say the adjustment isn't enough for Taylor, who wears his hair long, covering his earlobes and shirt collar.

I've known a lot of parents who have their boys' hair long. And this is absurd. In clearly trying to create heteronormativity among their students, I wonder what would happen in this district if a student came out as gay. Or transgender for that matter. Would they violate the students' civil rights and suspend the person? I'm sure they would.

It gets better too:

The district is known for standing tough on its dress code. Last year, a seventh-grader was sent home for wearing black skinny pants. His parents chose to home-school him.

On its Web site, the district says its code is in place because ''students who dress and groom themselves neatly, and in an acceptable and appropriate manner, are more likely to become constructive members of the society in which we live.''

Great. By "acceptable and appropriate" we mean Christian, conservative, and heterosexual. Fantastic!

And we all know nothing undermines the moral fabric of our society like skinny jeans.

Hell, I'd home school my child too before subjecting them to that. And I don't even support home schooling.

Higher Education Leadership for the 21st Century!!!

Commentator Elizabeth alerted me of this Times interview with University of California president Mark Yudof. I guess Yudof didn't consult with his press agent before giving this interview. Or he just didn't care. Some lowlights:

Q: U.C. is facing a budget shortfall of at least $753 million, largely because of cuts in state financing. Do you blame Governor Schwarzenegger for your troubles?
A: I do not. This is a long-term secular trend across the entire country. Higher education is being squeezed out. It’s systemic. We have an aging population nationally. We have a lot of concern, as we should, with health care.

Q: And education?
A: The shine is off of it. It’s really a question of being crowded out by other priorities.

Q: Already professors on all 10 U.C. campuses are taking required “furloughs,” to use a buzzword.
A: Let me tell you why we used it. The faculty said “furlough” sounds more temporary than “salary cut,” and being president of the University of California is like being manager of a cemetery: there are many people under you, but no one is listening. I listen to them.

Q: The word “furlough,” I recently read, comes from the Dutch word “verlof,” which means permission, as in soldiers’ getting permission to take a few days off. How has it come to be a euphemism for salary cuts?
A: Look, I’m from West Philadelphia. My dad was an electrician. We didn’t look up stuff like this. It wasn’t part of what we did. When I was growing up we didn’t debate the finer points of what the word “furlough” meant.

Q:When you began your job last year, your annual compensation was reportedly $828,000.
A: It actually was $600,000 until I cut my pay by $60,000. So my salary is $540,000, but it gets amplified because people say, “You have a pension plan.”

Q: What about your housing allowance? How much is the rent on your home in Oakland?
A: It’s about $10,000 a month.

Q: Does U.C. pay for that on top of your salary?
A: Yes, and the reason they do that is because they have a president’s house, it needed $8 million of repairs and I decided that was not the way to go. Why the heck would I ever authorize $8 million for a house I didn’t want to live in anyhow?

Q:What do you think of the idea that no administrator at a state university needs to earn more than the president of the United States, $400,000?
A: Will you throw in Air Force One and the White House?

Wow, talk about dialing it in. Yudof just wants to get paid. The shine is off education, so why bother fighting for it. Instead, he'll just hang out with celebrities.

Higher education in the 21st century! Fantastic!

Matt Yglesias and Merit Pay for Teachers

Yglesias is obviously one of the most influential progressive voices on the internet, but I find him quite susceptible to right-wing talking points about certain issues, especially education and labor. On these two issues, he shows every sign of never having to have thought about how to pay his rent or worry about material possessions at all and of having attended elite schools his entire life where the teachers were great and gave him every advantage.

When he writes about education and labor together, disaster results.

In a series of posts, (here, here, and here) he's talked about the need for merit pay for teachers. Merit pay is something that conservatives constantly talk up to fight against teacher unions. And in a rhetorical sense, it works--who oppose getting paid more if you do a good job? Hell, I would support that if it made sense in the real world. The problem is this--who decides who is doing a good job? We see over and over again in the real world workplace that those pay raises go to workers who tow the company line, rat out other workers to management, are friends with the boss, etc. Sexual favors for merit raises are hardly unknown.

Let's say I am teaching high school history in a conservative part of the country. I am not going to teach a conservative history. Some parents don't like me very much. I'm a pain in the ass for the principal because they call her. But I'm doing one hell of a job teaching history. I'm getting the kids interested, I'm trying new methods, I'm doing all sorts of audio-visual things, I'm making history alive for these kids. Do I get a merit raise? Hell no. The person getting the merit raise is the assistant football coach teaching down the hall from me who helped take the team to the playoffs last year.

If there was some objective way to give merit raises, I think lots of people would support them. But there's not. It gives tons of power to management. What bugs me about Yglesias on this issue is that he's so blind to this obvious fact, despite literally hundreds of people screaming it in his face (or at least on his blog). Everyone even remotely revolved with labor and education knows this to be true, but he won't listen or even begin to deal with these facts. On these issues, Yglesias very much reminds me of the close-minded conservative writers we all can't stand. It's really quite depressing.

All of this doesn't even get into issues of test scores as the judge of teacher competence, the value of teaching degrees, and issues of seniority. I'm happy to slam Yglesias on this too, but I'll desist for now unless someone wants to hear more.