One Step Forward, One Step Back
This weekend I opened The Washington Post to find the editors arguing that Congress should cut federal subsidies to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Institute of Peace, and the National Endowment of the Arts, and George F. Will arguing that Congress should preserve federal subsidies to Teach for America.
Weird.
While You Were Watching the Race to the Top…
…President Obama and Congress were doling out tens-of-billions of dollars to the education status quo while doing little of meaningful, reform-y substance. Now we see the payoff: President Obama has gotten bipartisan accolades for supposedly being a different kind of Democrat on education — one willing to take on teacher unions – while he’s fully kept union allegiances.
Reports the Washington Post about National Education Association plans to spend $15 million on largely Dem-friendly, midterm-election advertisements:
Karen M. White, the NEA’s political director, said the 3.2 million-member union is in sync with Obama more often than not. As an example, she pointed to his support for a $10 billion education funding bill that the Democratic-led Congress passed in August over Republican opposition.
“That education jobs bill got so many of our members engaged,” White said. “It was a turning point for us.”
She played down controversy over Obama’s school reform agenda as “bumps in the road,” adding, “we share the same goals as this administration.”
It really wasn’t hard to see the politics at play here: Talk a lot about reform, expend riches to protect the status quo, win good will from all sides. And heck, who gets hurt? Only taxpayers and students, that’s all.
Uh-oh: Here Comes Edu-Goliath!
The hard-nosed, content-at-all-cost folks at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation have been warned, and warned, and warned some more: Get the national curriculum standards you think are so incredibly important, and they will almost certainly be captured by the pedagogical progressives who have dominated education for decades — and whose notions you disdain. Well, if what’s being reported by Common Core’s Lynne Munson – and reiterated in this lamentation for Massachusetts by the Pioneer Institute’s Jim Stergios – is accurate, that is already happening. (Actually, some prominent analysts have long said that the national standards — created by the Council of Chief State School Officers and National Governors Association — are already nothing the Fordhamites should embrace.) Writes Munson:
This is strange. P21 is being subsumed into CCSSO. There’s nothing to be read about this on either CCSSO’s or P21′s websites. But according to Fritzwire the two organizations have formed a “strategic management relationship” that will commence December 1.
So what is P21 – the group cozying up with the standards-writing CCSSO — you ask? Let the Fordham Institute tell you:
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) has some powerful supporters, including the NEA, Cisco, Intel, and Microsoft. Fourteen states have also climbed aboard its effort to refocus American K-12 education on global awareness, media literacy and the like–and to defocus it on grammar, multiplication tables and the causes of the Civil War. Its swell-sounding yet damaging notions have been plenty influential–but the unmasking and truth-telling have begun, thanks in large part to a valiant little organization named Common Core. And new research validates this and other skeptics’ criticisms. Today the contest resembles David vs. Goliath–but remember who ultimately prevailed in that one.
Uh-oh. It might be time to end the biblical references — it looks more and more like Goliath is going to win.
Not Just a ‘Special Interest,’ A Super Special Interest
In the gag-inducing tradition of National Education Association propaganda, President Obama’s “Organizing for America” has released the video below taking issue with House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) calling teachers a “special interest.” Watch…and wince.
Now, certainly many teachers want nothing more than to teach and do a good job. Some might even do it as much “for the kids” as their own personal satisfaction. But teachers, at least as represented by the NEA and the American Federation of Teachers, sure as heck are a special interest. Indeed, they might be called a super-special interest, with unparalled sway over Democrats especially, and an incredible ability to get money out of taxpayers.
But what about teachers’ saintliness?
Certainly many teachers work hard and spend some money out of their own pockets for the kids. But no public-school teacher is so poor that, unlike the no doubt intentionally bedgraggled-looking Jeff in the video, he or she can’t afford anything other than an undershirt to wear. Indeed, as I made clear in my PA Unbearable Burden? Living and Paying Student Loans as a First-Year Teacher, even the lowest-paid public school teachers can afford nice apartments, good food, and much beyond life’s essentials. And the average teacher, on an hourly basis, earns more than the average accountant, nurse, or insurance unerwriter.
Ah, but teachers work “twelve, thirteen hours” a day, right? I mean, isn’t that what destitute Jeff said?
Again, maybe some do, but the vast majority do not. Indeed, according to time-diary research done a few years ago, during the months when teachers are actually working as teachers — so not including lengthy summer and other vacations — the average teacher only does about 7.3 hours of education work inside or outside the school on weekdays, and about two hours on weekends. That’s 18 minutes less per day than the average person in a comparable, full-time professional job. And again, that doesn’t account for teachers’ long, built-in vacations.
So get off it, teacher unionists and apologists. Teacher unions are a gigantic special interest, and all the super-earnest-sounding, unkempt video subjects in the world aren’t going to change that.
Weak Defenses of Teacher Bailout
As the Obama administration continues to send mixed signals about the proposed $23 billion public-school bailout, rescue advocates are offering some very wimpy defenses of their cause. That is, except for the National Education Association, which has launched a PR blitz for the bailout in its grandest — and most shameless — tradition of using cute kids to get lots of dues-paying members:
OK, enough of the NEA. The more numerous defenses of the bailout try to offer more reasoned and less emotional arguments for the bailout than does the NEA. But not much more reasoned.
Federal Education Results Prove the Framers Right
Yesterday, I offered the Fordham Foundation’s Andy Smarick an answer to a burning question: What is the proper federal role in education? It was a question prompted by repeatedly mixed signals coming from U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan about whether Washington will be a tough guy, coddler, or something in between when it comes to dealing with states and school districts. And what was my answer? The proper federal role is no role, because the Constitution gives the feds no authority over American education.
Not surprisingly, Smarick isn’t going for that. Unfortunately, his reasoning confirms my suspicions: Rather than offering a defense based even slightly on what the Constitution says, Smarick essentially asserts that the supreme law of the land is irrelevant because it would lead to tough reforms and, I infer, the elimination of some federal efforts he might like.
While acknowledging that mine is a ”defensible argument,” Smarick writes that he disagrees with it because it “would presumably require immediately getting rid of IDEA, Title I, IES, NAEP, and much more.” He goes on to assert that I might ”argue that doing so is necessary and proper because it’s the only path that squares with our founding document, but policy-wise it is certainly implausible any time soon.” Not far after that, Smarick pushes my argument aside and addresses a question to ”those who believe that it’s within the federal government’s authority to do something in the realm of schools.”
OK. Let’s play on Smarick’s grounds. Let’s ignore what the Constitution says and see what, realistically, we could expect to do about federal intervention in education, as well as what we can realistically expect from continued federal involvement.
First off, I fully admit that getting Washington back within constitutional bounds will be tough. That said, I mapped out a path for doing so in the last chapter of Feds In The Classroom, a path that doesn’t, unlike what Smarick suggests, require immediate cessation of all federal education activities. Washington obviously couldn’t be pulled completely out of the schools overnight.
Perhaps more to Smarick’s point, cutting the feds back down to size has hardly been a legislatively dead issue. Indeed, as recently as 2007 two pieces of legislation that would have considerably withdrawn federal tentacles from education — the A-PLUS and LEARN acts – were introduced in Congress. They weren’t enacted, but they show that getting the feds out of education is hardly a pipe dream. And with tea parties, the summer of townhall discontent, and other recent signs of revolt against big government, it’s hardly out of the question that people will eventually demand that the feds get out of their schools.
Of course, there is the other side of the realism argument: How realistic is it to think that the federal government can be made into a force for good in education? It certainly hasn’t been one so far. Just look at the following chart plotting federal education spending against achievement, a chart that should be very familiar by now.
NEA Dues and ACORN
Sabrina Schaeffer (yes, related) over at IWF’s Inkwell wonders when the NEA is going to sever its ties to ACORN, given recent revelations that its employees are willing to help set up a brothel with child prostitutes. Good question. I’m sure a lot of union members would be none too pleased with where their dues money ends up.
From the Examiner:
Teachers unions have contributed over $1.3 million to ACORN and its affiliates, since 2005, according to U.S. Labor Department financial disclosure forms.
Many education reformers would call the NEA criminal in their resistance to effective policy change. But that’s a figure of speech. They do, however, need to be more careful with their money.
The NEA, really any activist group on the Left with a shred of dignity, should publicly end their relationship with this corrupt and criminal organization immediately.
Pervasive Illiteracy in the Afghan National Army
Matt Yglesias has a lot of smart things to say about the pervasive illiteracy plaguing the Afghan National Army. Upwards of 75 to 90 percent (according to varying estimates) of the ANA is illiterate.
As Ted Galen Carpenter and I argue in our recent Cato white paper Escaping the Graveyard of Empires: A Strategy to Exit Afghanistan, this lack of basic education prevents many officers from filling out arrest reports, equipment and supply requests, and arguing before a judge or prosecutor. And as Marine 1st Lt. Justin Greico argues, “Paperwork, evidence, processing—they don’t know how to do it…You can’t get a policeman to take a statement if he can’t read and write.”
Yglesias notes:
This strikes me as an object lesson in the importance of realistic goal-setting. The Afghan National Army is largely illiterate because Afghanistan is largely illiterate…we just need an ANA that’s not likely to be overrun by its adversaries. But if we have the more ambitious goal of created [sic] an effectively administered centralized state, then the lack of literacy becomes a huge problem. And a problem without an obvious solution on a realistic time frame [emphasis mine].
Such high levels of illiteracy serves to highlight the absurd idea that the United States has the resources (and the legitimacy) to “change entire societies,” in the words of retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel John Nagl. Eight years ago, Max Boot, fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, likened the Afghan mission to British colonial rule:
Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets…This was supposed to be ‘for the good of the natives,’ a phrase that once made progressives snort in derision, but may be taken more seriously after the left’s conversion (or, rather, reversion) in the 1990s to the cause of ‘humanitarian’ interventions. [emphasis mine]
But as I highlighted yesterday at the Cato event “Should the United States Withdraw from Afghanistan?” (which you can view in its entirety here), policymakers must start narrowing their objectives in Afghanistan, a point Yglesias stresses above. Heck, as I argued yesterday, rational people in the United States are having difficulty convincing delusional types here in America that Barack Obama is their legitimate president. I am baffled by people who think that we have the power to increase the legitimacy of the Afghan government. It’s also ironic that many conservatives (possibly brainwashed by neo-con ideology) who oppose government intervention at home believe the U.S. government can bring about liberty and peace worldwide. These self-identified “conservatives” essentially have a faith in government planning.
Yet these conservatives share a view common among the political and military elite, which is that if America pours enough time and resources—possibly hundreds of thousands of troops for another 12 to 14 years—Washington could really turn Afghanistan around.
However, there is a reason why the war in Afghanistan ranks at or near the bottom of polls tracking issues important to the American public, and why most Americans who do have an opinion about the war oppose it (57 percent in the latest CNN poll released on Sept. 1) and oppose sending more combat troops (56 percent in the McClatchy-Ipsos survey, also released on Sept. 1). It’s because Americans understand intuitively that the question about Afghanistan is not about whether it is winnable, but whether it constitutes a vital national security interest. An essential national debate about whether we really want to double down in Afghanistan has yet take place. America still does not have a clearly articulated goal. This is why the conventional wisdom surrounding the war—about whether we can build key institutions and create a legitimate political system—is not so much misguided as it is misplaced.
The issue is not about whether we can rebuild Afghanistan but whether we should. On both accounts the mission looks troubling, but this distinction is often times overlooked.
New Video: Assessing Obama’s Speech to Schoolkids
In this new video, Cato scholars Neal McCluskey and Gene Healy weigh in on President Obama’s speech to schoolchildren on their first day of class.
Overall message: It’s not about the speech.
Cato education policy experts were very vocal about the whole ordeal, and the implications of Obama’s speech. Cato’s Education and Child Policy tagged posts have more details.
Obama in the Classroom
Appearing on Fox News last night, Cato scholar Neal McCluskey weighed in on Obama’s upcoming address to students:
Captain Louis Renault Award: Politics in Government Schools?!*
As Neal and Andrew have already covered extensively, President Obama is set to address the nation’s school children, and the Secretary of Education has sent out marching orders to government teachers and lesson plans for the kids.
The administration has now backpedaled from a classic political gaffe and cleaned up the most offensive aspects; asking kids to write about how they can help, explain why its important to listen to political leaders, etc.
But I think a couple of points deserve repeating.
From a push for vastly expanding federal involvement in preschool and early education to home visitations in the health care bills, the government remains intent on expanding its dominion (And hot on the heels of President Bush’s massive expansion of federal involvement in schools).
But this problem didn’t begin with Obama and won’t end with him. Politics in the schools is what we get when the government runs our schools.
Don’t want your kids indoctrinated by government bureaucrats, special interests, or the President?
Private school choice is the only remedy, and education tax credits are the increasingly popular and successful way to deliver it.
When will a critical mass of the people realize that it is dangerous and destructive to allow the government to control the education of our children and finally do something about it?
* Captain Louis Renault reference
Hate Crimes Bill Becomes an Amendment
Unsure about prospects on passing the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act as a stand-alone bill, proponents intend to attach it as an amendment to the Department of Defense Authorization bill. As I have said previously, this bill is an affront to federalism and counterproductive hater-aid.
Federal Criminal Law Power Grab
This legislation awards grants to jurisdictions for the purpose of combating hate crimes. It also creates a substantive federal crime of violent acts motivated by the “actual or perceived religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of any person.”
This is a federalization of a huge number of intrastate crimes. It is hard to imagine a rape case where the sex of the victim is not an issue. The same goes for robbery – why grab a wallet from someone who can fight back on equal terms when you can pick a victim who is smaller and weaker than you are?
This would be different if this were a tweak to sentencing factors.
If this were a sentence enhancement on crimes motivated by racial animus – a practice sanctioned by the Supreme Court in Wisconsin v. Mitchell – then it would be less objectionable if there were independent federal jurisdiction.
Thing is, the federal government has already done this, with the exception of gender identity, with the Federal Sentencing Guidelines (scroll to page 334 at the link):
If the finder of fact at trial or, in the case of a plea of guilty or nolo contendere, the court at sentencing determines beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant intentionally selected any victim or any property as the object of the offense of conviction because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability, or sexual orientation of any person, increase by 3 levels.
The contrast between a sentence enhancement and a substantive crime gives us an honest assessment of what Congress is doing – federalizing intrastate acts of violence.
If Congress were to pass a law prohibiting the use of a firearm or any object that has passed in interstate commerce to commit a violent crime, it would clearly be an unconstitutional abuse of the Commerce Clause.
Minus the hate crime window dressing, that is exactly what this law purports to do.
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