One part of current thinking about American school reform is seemingly simple math, so much so that we see the need to discuss it about as often as we discuss the logic of 2 + 2 =4.
Here it is: We don’t do well in science and math. We don’t do well in science in math because we don’t have enough quality science and math teachers. Without a strong showing in math and science the country will fall behind its competitors in all areas including, perhaps, national security.
Therefore, we need to adjust our administrative apparatus – including school funding mechanisms – so that we, first, increase the number of students taking degrees in math and science and, second, encourage more of them, in turn, to become teachers. This argument will be front and center in Mackinac, Michigan this week.
So: Let’s assume this is true (and most currently do) in order to complete the equation. If the math is correct, our interpretation of the equation result is also simple: to make the numbers come out differently than they already are we need to change the schools, mainly by leaning toward privatization which, as we all know, is much more effective using its resources than the public sector.
Simple enough. Problem solved, as Ross Perot used to say.
But is it possible our own math deficiency is causing us to misread the numbers, to skew the problem long before we get to the solution?
There is, at least, a built in paradox here that should give us pause: if nobody knows math in this country how do we know we don’t know math? Who is doing the calculations?
It might be useful, I think, when talking about our failure in math and science, a failure of public education tout court, we look at some numbers (other than, for example, MEAP scores). MEAP scores, as far as well can tell, tell us about, well, MEAP scores.
Here are some other numbers, then, to ponder.
According to the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, the US – whose universities are still the most sought after on the planet despite the supposed massive failure of public education – produced 17.2 million degrees (not counting Phds, those that work in universities, some of them public, that both take and generate funds for public universities in part through public funding sources like the National Science Foundation and National Institute of Health -- stereotypically, these are the scientists most think of when they think of scientists) in math and science fields. This is in a country of some 314 million, give or take.
Of those 17.2 million degrees in math and science – as of 2008 – 2.6 million were not in the labor force. That is, they weren’t out of work nor were they seeking work. For some perspective: at about 3 million, teachers constitute the largest labor force in the country (one reason they are so in need of management and reform). 4.8 million had jobs that related to their degree, among them a few teachers. Only 490,000 were unemployed. This is a remarkably low number, I should say, for those seeking a university major with an eye exclusively towards employment -- what Governor Snyder seems to like to call "career readiness," what many used to understand as "job training."
But here is the interesting number for school reformers who are convinced our schools need to change completely, absolutely, entirely because of abysmal waste and mismanagement. 9.9 million of those with science and math degrees hold jobs not in their field. That is, they had careers doing something else under than the math and the science that is, presumably, according to our current understanding of school reform math, going to keep America great.
I will provide a little shorthand here. Less than 40% of our math and science degree holders do (in any practical sense) math and science.
Getting accurate data on such large numbers is tricky so the National Center for Science and Engineering hesitates in explaining exactly what these folks are doing. Many, it seems, work in layers of corporate administration that supervise others who, presumably, can’t do math and science as well as their supervisors.
The latter supposition, of course, is mine, not the National Center’s (before I encourage any vote to defund the National Center). Like institutions of its sort it tends to be much more circumspect than bloggers, politicos, etc.
But as a citizen concerned like we all are with America’s greatness, my thought after looking at these numbers is this: if America does have a math and science deficit, university degree production does not show it. And in this equation, it isn’t schools that are bottling up or not yielding opportunities for math and science to bloom as they supposedly did, say, in the 1950s or 1960s.
There is a missing part of the equation somewhere.
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Friday, May 9, 2014
MI Pub ed budget: Sound of Schauer Campaign Washing Down the Drain
Michigan Reporter
Dave Eggert described Mi House Democrats as reasonably content with
this year's school budget.
Indeed, it was much better than in the past two years. While I am sure they are not celebrating loudly you can also hear in the House Democrats muffled contentment the more depressing sounds of the Mark Schauer/Lisa Brown gubernatorial challenge going straight down the drain.
Having based their campaign and limited resources almost exclusively on 1 year K12 budget issues -- and ignoring entirely or endorsing the larger problems of Education "Reform" like the EAA expansion, fed overreach, teacher effectiveness via VAM, Common Core, charters, and so on -- the campaign quite simply has left itself with no where else to go.
Snyder added enough to satisfy the general population, certainly enough to limit any outrage big enough to overcome the 7 to 11 % gap between himself and Schauer; and now we have a long summer vacation with schools set to open "as normal" in the fall.
The schools and their paid lobbyists spent their political energy on this short 1 year game, and have had little convincing to say to the voting public about the larger threats to public education.
Many public ed advocates, then, have spent considerable time and energy on a campaign that fizzled before it began because the Mi Democratic party would not attend seriously to the issues of those it was supposedly supporting.
Weird.
Instead, Lon Johnson is counting on 1 million voters to come out in 2014 -- many of them African-American women -- to support Schauer and Lisa Brown as they did Barack Obama.
I wish him luck there.
Long term, the fate of public education looks bleak -- and one can not blame the Republican party or its extremists for its undoing. For Democrats, one has the hope they decide to invest time and money now in winnable races and try not to look like complete whiners on public education.
Indeed, it was much better than in the past two years. While I am sure they are not celebrating loudly you can also hear in the House Democrats muffled contentment the more depressing sounds of the Mark Schauer/Lisa Brown gubernatorial challenge going straight down the drain.
Having based their campaign and limited resources almost exclusively on 1 year K12 budget issues -- and ignoring entirely or endorsing the larger problems of Education "Reform" like the EAA expansion, fed overreach, teacher effectiveness via VAM, Common Core, charters, and so on -- the campaign quite simply has left itself with no where else to go.
Snyder added enough to satisfy the general population, certainly enough to limit any outrage big enough to overcome the 7 to 11 % gap between himself and Schauer; and now we have a long summer vacation with schools set to open "as normal" in the fall.
The schools and their paid lobbyists spent their political energy on this short 1 year game, and have had little convincing to say to the voting public about the larger threats to public education.
Many public ed advocates, then, have spent considerable time and energy on a campaign that fizzled before it began because the Mi Democratic party would not attend seriously to the issues of those it was supposedly supporting.
Weird.
Instead, Lon Johnson is counting on 1 million voters to come out in 2014 -- many of them African-American women -- to support Schauer and Lisa Brown as they did Barack Obama.
I wish him luck there.
Long term, the fate of public education looks bleak -- and one can not blame the Republican party or its extremists for its undoing. For Democrats, one has the hope they decide to invest time and money now in winnable races and try not to look like complete whiners on public education.
Thursday, May 8, 2014
From the land of "Reagan Democrats" comes another wild shift in American politics
I grew up around "Reagan Democrats."
These were largely white, male, auto-workers in Macomb County Michigan whose very lives and communities had been created , in part, by unions. Their neighborhoods, schools, two cars, snowmobiles, fishing boats, kids' hockey ice-time, "cottages up north," and semi-annual trips to Florida were made possible by union pay and benefits.
Most of the kids I knew used to dress and look a lot like Kid Rock before Kid Rock was born (in northern Macomb County -- as opposed to Marshall Mathers, who grew up famously north of 8 Mile in southern Macomb County, the border to Wayne County and the city of Detroit).
You get the picture.
Traditionally, because of the unions Macomb County residents voted Democrat.
In and about 1980, however, they turned their allegiances to Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party.
And they have never really looked back. The primary reason for the split at the time seemed to be an understanding of social values. For many, the Democrat party had become too left leaning.
Race mattered, too, as it always does in Detroit and metro-Detroit. Detroit was the center of Democratic politics in the state. The shift to Reagan was, in many respects, just another way for a certain demographic (mine) to say we aren't going to have anything to do with Detroit anymore.
These Macomb County voters had analogues across the country, of course; but the change was just particularly stark and visible here.
The shift of the Reagan Democrats marked a turning point in the country's politics, the advent of what we now know of as the "right wing."
It was, perhaps, the most significant shift in a voting block since southern Democrats turned against the party over civil rights some 20 years earlier.
Today, I find myself staring at another potential national voting shift that can be illustrated through Michigan politics.
Mark Schauer and Lisa Brown are running in Michigan as the candidates for public education. They are Democrats, of course, challenging Republican incumbent Rick Snyder.
Snyder's educational reforms set off a firestorm in Michigan 2012 and big parts of his plans -- erasing geographically defined Districts, creating cheap on-line learning, quasi-voucher programs, etc. -- collapsed, some in scandal.
Two "reforms" survived and look to become part of the landscape: the EAA, the state's reform District, and the state's embrace of Common Core and its VAM models of teacher effectiveness.
Curiously, these are the two reforms that are actually more distinctly Democratic than Republican reforms. The EAA was spawned by the Race to the Top initiatives of 2009 and the CC originates from The White House. These two reforms threaten more than any other effort to undermine a long tradition of local control for schools in favor of a corporate, Washington DC directive.
So: Schauer and Brown literally find themselves running against their own party and President. Indeed, Schauer's own kids' schools in affluent Oakland County would have been transformed if Republicans there had not stood against their own Governor. But they really can't say as much.
The (political) head spins.
For example, the Tea-Party is massing a critical response to the Common Core, resisting as federal overreach. While they characteristically overplay their hand, Tea-Partiers are finding very new allies amongst public school teachers and parents. They may, in fact, be the country's best chance to retain something of its neighborhood public school system.
Who knew?
Schauer and Brown, absent any particularly innovative ideas, and rather than address these complexities, have framed their campaign in 1980s terms: Dems want to spend more this year on education than Republicans. That gained some ground for them in the winter, but as the Governor has passed more money in to K12 -- or enough to satisfy general populace -- they are losing ground fast on this key issue, falling from 7 points back to 11. As everyone heads for "summertime in northern Michigan" rocking to that southern band sound, and schools seem set to open as normal in September, those numbers will drop even more.
Schauer and Brown are rather stuck. To tell a true story about public education they would have to criticize Barack Obama and Arne Duncan. But they have no local money to support them if they abandon national friends.
If, however, they side with the National Democratic Party against public education Michigan again will mark an odd and paradoxical political shift: "Public School Teachers and Parents for Republicans."
I have seen stranger things in my lifetime.
These were largely white, male, auto-workers in Macomb County Michigan whose very lives and communities had been created , in part, by unions. Their neighborhoods, schools, two cars, snowmobiles, fishing boats, kids' hockey ice-time, "cottages up north," and semi-annual trips to Florida were made possible by union pay and benefits.
Most of the kids I knew used to dress and look a lot like Kid Rock before Kid Rock was born (in northern Macomb County -- as opposed to Marshall Mathers, who grew up famously north of 8 Mile in southern Macomb County, the border to Wayne County and the city of Detroit).
You get the picture.
Traditionally, because of the unions Macomb County residents voted Democrat.
In and about 1980, however, they turned their allegiances to Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party.
And they have never really looked back. The primary reason for the split at the time seemed to be an understanding of social values. For many, the Democrat party had become too left leaning.
Race mattered, too, as it always does in Detroit and metro-Detroit. Detroit was the center of Democratic politics in the state. The shift to Reagan was, in many respects, just another way for a certain demographic (mine) to say we aren't going to have anything to do with Detroit anymore.
These Macomb County voters had analogues across the country, of course; but the change was just particularly stark and visible here.
The shift of the Reagan Democrats marked a turning point in the country's politics, the advent of what we now know of as the "right wing."
It was, perhaps, the most significant shift in a voting block since southern Democrats turned against the party over civil rights some 20 years earlier.
Today, I find myself staring at another potential national voting shift that can be illustrated through Michigan politics.
Mark Schauer and Lisa Brown are running in Michigan as the candidates for public education. They are Democrats, of course, challenging Republican incumbent Rick Snyder.
Snyder's educational reforms set off a firestorm in Michigan 2012 and big parts of his plans -- erasing geographically defined Districts, creating cheap on-line learning, quasi-voucher programs, etc. -- collapsed, some in scandal.
Two "reforms" survived and look to become part of the landscape: the EAA, the state's reform District, and the state's embrace of Common Core and its VAM models of teacher effectiveness.
Curiously, these are the two reforms that are actually more distinctly Democratic than Republican reforms. The EAA was spawned by the Race to the Top initiatives of 2009 and the CC originates from The White House. These two reforms threaten more than any other effort to undermine a long tradition of local control for schools in favor of a corporate, Washington DC directive.
So: Schauer and Brown literally find themselves running against their own party and President. Indeed, Schauer's own kids' schools in affluent Oakland County would have been transformed if Republicans there had not stood against their own Governor. But they really can't say as much.
The (political) head spins.
For example, the Tea-Party is massing a critical response to the Common Core, resisting as federal overreach. While they characteristically overplay their hand, Tea-Partiers are finding very new allies amongst public school teachers and parents. They may, in fact, be the country's best chance to retain something of its neighborhood public school system.
Who knew?
Schauer and Brown, absent any particularly innovative ideas, and rather than address these complexities, have framed their campaign in 1980s terms: Dems want to spend more this year on education than Republicans. That gained some ground for them in the winter, but as the Governor has passed more money in to K12 -- or enough to satisfy general populace -- they are losing ground fast on this key issue, falling from 7 points back to 11. As everyone heads for "summertime in northern Michigan" rocking to that southern band sound, and schools seem set to open as normal in September, those numbers will drop even more.
Schauer and Brown are rather stuck. To tell a true story about public education they would have to criticize Barack Obama and Arne Duncan. But they have no local money to support them if they abandon national friends.
If, however, they side with the National Democratic Party against public education Michigan again will mark an odd and paradoxical political shift: "Public School Teachers and Parents for Republicans."
I have seen stranger things in my lifetime.
Sunday, May 4, 2014
Mi Democrats Opposition to EAA and school "Reform" doesn't cut it -- looks more and more like a simple act of bad faith.
This week the EAA state wide codification issue will either be approved by the Republican controlled Senate -- meaning the Governor successfully has traded votes for a very, bad and unpopular albeit well funded idea -- or it will disappear for a time, perhaps until the November elections have decided things.
Or may be in the summer.
Given this has been such a legislative debacle, the Michigan Democrats have seized on the EAA as a winner for them, of course.
Senators Hopgood and Johnson have fought this issue for some time. Bravo.
The state's most popular political blogger, Eclectablog, brilliantly generated a series of posts www.eclectablog.com that exposed serious problems with the EAA.
And God Bless Ellen Lipton for intelligence, decency, sanity, and superhuman work habits. The whole of the state owes her a thank you.
But if the Mi Democrats seek to make this particular issue a mark against Republicans and Gov. Snyder (and it is) they should spend some time reflecting on how they themselves got us here.
1) There is no EAA without President Obama's Race to the Top intrusion in to local control.
2) There is no EAA without Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's praise on their advertisementshttp://icansoar.org/ (although he not yet appeared on their late night TV 20 commercials, promising to teach children "twice as much" in the way car dealerships sell cars to Detroiters promising that credit reports don't matter). The Democrats have two full years to go with Secretary Duncan who has the President's unwavering support.
3) There is no EAA withou Chelsea Clinton, perhaps the next Secretary of Education (now that we completely have foregone credentials and experience for the post), promising her soon to be born child to the EAA for education.
4) There is no EAA without Jennifer Granholm who was all in in 2009.
5) There is no EAA without the Broad Family Foundation (lifelong Democrats and now full time education "reformers").
6) There is no EAA without the Teach for America organization, stuffed with "liberal" Democrats.
7) There is no EAA with out two slightly crazy House Democrats, Santana and Olumba, turning their back on their party to talk about "keeping it real in the hood."
8) There is no EAA without the quietism of the Eastern Michigan University faculty (mostly Democrats, I wager) who refused to back en masse their brave education faculty in challenging the University's Governor appointed Board of Regents. That situation marks, perhaps, a wider national disconnect between education faculty and the universities that house them.
9) There is no EAA without State School Board President John Austin (an Ann Arbor Democrat if there ever was one) supporting it on national websites.
10) And there is no EAA without the MDE and State Superintendent, himself an example of the public education "Peter principle" on high, a system that promotes leaders based on gender, cronyism, and how well they approximate the look and manner of a 1960s high school boys' basketball coach. Mr. Flanagan, we need to remember, told everyone in December 2013 they should be ashamed of themselves for opposing the EAA.
So: Until the Democratic Party decides where it stands on education "reform" they are acting on "bad faith" here and elsewhere, trying to act as champions of public education.
They served that role for some years, of course. But the Michigan Democratic Party needs to decide where they stand now.
Or may be in the summer.
Given this has been such a legislative debacle, the Michigan Democrats have seized on the EAA as a winner for them, of course.
Senators Hopgood and Johnson have fought this issue for some time. Bravo.
The state's most popular political blogger, Eclectablog, brilliantly generated a series of posts www.eclectablog.com that exposed serious problems with the EAA.
And God Bless Ellen Lipton for intelligence, decency, sanity, and superhuman work habits. The whole of the state owes her a thank you.
But if the Mi Democrats seek to make this particular issue a mark against Republicans and Gov. Snyder (and it is) they should spend some time reflecting on how they themselves got us here.
1) There is no EAA without President Obama's Race to the Top intrusion in to local control.
2) There is no EAA without Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's praise on their advertisementshttp://icansoar.org/ (although he not yet appeared on their late night TV 20 commercials, promising to teach children "twice as much" in the way car dealerships sell cars to Detroiters promising that credit reports don't matter). The Democrats have two full years to go with Secretary Duncan who has the President's unwavering support.
3) There is no EAA withou Chelsea Clinton, perhaps the next Secretary of Education (now that we completely have foregone credentials and experience for the post), promising her soon to be born child to the EAA for education.
4) There is no EAA without Jennifer Granholm who was all in in 2009.
5) There is no EAA without the Broad Family Foundation (lifelong Democrats and now full time education "reformers").
6) There is no EAA without the Teach for America organization, stuffed with "liberal" Democrats.
7) There is no EAA with out two slightly crazy House Democrats, Santana and Olumba, turning their back on their party to talk about "keeping it real in the hood."
8) There is no EAA without the quietism of the Eastern Michigan University faculty (mostly Democrats, I wager) who refused to back en masse their brave education faculty in challenging the University's Governor appointed Board of Regents. That situation marks, perhaps, a wider national disconnect between education faculty and the universities that house them.
9) There is no EAA without State School Board President John Austin (an Ann Arbor Democrat if there ever was one) supporting it on national websites.
10) And there is no EAA without the MDE and State Superintendent, himself an example of the public education "Peter principle" on high, a system that promotes leaders based on gender, cronyism, and how well they approximate the look and manner of a 1960s high school boys' basketball coach. Mr. Flanagan, we need to remember, told everyone in December 2013 they should be ashamed of themselves for opposing the EAA.
So: Until the Democratic Party decides where it stands on education "reform" they are acting on "bad faith" here and elsewhere, trying to act as champions of public education.
They served that role for some years, of course. But the Michigan Democratic Party needs to decide where they stand now.
Saturday, May 3, 2014
Mitt Romney's old MI school District keeps its buses, but orders lunch out, not knowing what else to do.
It is
now considered a "best practice" for School Districts to review
outsourcing services (transportation, food, custodial work, etc.). Some 60% of Districts in Michigan have
gone that route.
My own affluent district in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan -- once home to Mitt Romney -- just finished their latest due diligence, deciding to keep their superb in-house transportation service and, with some tweaks, their custodial and grounds team. They did decide to "outsource" their food services program to a giant provider.
The bus question was not too hard. The District has a perfect record going on 21 years and the savings for privatizing would have been $6,000.
$6,000.
In Bloomfield Hills, 6k is called a Wednesday night out.
Still, the language of austerity and privatization has been thoroughly naturalized even by the decent and well meaning.
"We have to cut somewhere," said one board member, repeating the language and logic of board members across the country for the last 15 years. "We have to protect the classroom."
Here's what's weird. Privatization has not worked. Not at all. Not a lick. Not only are public school systems not saving anything they are losing money.
Indeed, every school District in Michigan is worse off financially and in terms of services provided since this "best practice" became adopted some 15 years ago.
As I approach 50 I do find myself quoting Republicans more so let's ask the Ronald Reagan question to public school Districts: "Are you better off now than you were 15 years ago?"
The answer would be a resounding no.
Here is what is weirder. We keep trying this, saying the same things, making the same arguments, and, to top it all off, calling this "innovative" and "outside the box" thinking.
Did I mention my District also has started a "foundation" so that private donors can supplement the District which is limited in how much it can call for taxes? How is that for "outside the box" thinking? Heard that one before, too? How's that working out for ya?
But my point is this: It is not really known how outsourcing became a "best practice." Considering outsourcing was not a "data-driven" process as we say today. That is, there was no systematic study to see if it would work. The push began before big data. It was purely ideological. It was an act of quasi-religious faith in free markets
Let's keep getting weird as this is, after all, also where Jimmy Hoffa was last seen.
While nobody every determined this "best practice" through systematic study we now have to show -- through "data" and an assortment of consultants -- that the in-house systems work better than the free market systems that have never worked.
I don't fault my school board members.
They are serious, thoughtful people who serve the District in very strange times, often taking extraordinary abuse from Tea-Party types (yes, even in Bloomfield, et ego Arcadia or something like that). I know some personally, and helped them get elected. I don't have the luxury, in short, of imagining them politically demonic forces "other" than me, either on the left or the right. They are neither, in our outsized political rhetoric, "fascists" or "whacky socialists." They are experienced in both schools and business, decent and well meaning, remarkably civil when civility is in short supply.
But they, like all of us, are utterly bereft of political and economic imagination right now. They are crying to "think out side the box," when thinking outside the box only means what it has only meant since its insipid inception in to the lexicon. It means privatize, even privatizing has been a disaster.
We may be demanding our children perform so miraculously, achieve flexibility and creativity in a globalized, 21st century world because we have so little imagination left of our own to give.
We here in metro-Detroit are perhaps more prone to this than some, having lived with the "boom and bust" of the auto industry for decades. There is nothing more natural, no more characteristic gesture of fiduciary responsibility than to tighten up in lean times and save for the future.
Here's the weirdest thing though. The ur-Weird. The Weird that is so weird we can't even think it.
There is no imaginable public education future to save for if your only thought to save public education is privatization. These cuts are now, literally, for the sake of cutting, not for saving. The cuts are transformative only in the sense that they render what they were supposed to preserve as unrecognizable.
As one board member said, "The state is never going to give us more money so we have to cut somewhere."
But if there is truly no future -- and I don't disagree with this -- why in the world and what in the world are public school systems saving for? And if at this the case we need to drop the 20st century cut and save, outsource mentality fast and do what we tell our kids to do: think critically.
My own affluent district in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan -- once home to Mitt Romney -- just finished their latest due diligence, deciding to keep their superb in-house transportation service and, with some tweaks, their custodial and grounds team. They did decide to "outsource" their food services program to a giant provider.
The bus question was not too hard. The District has a perfect record going on 21 years and the savings for privatizing would have been $6,000.
$6,000.
In Bloomfield Hills, 6k is called a Wednesday night out.
Still, the language of austerity and privatization has been thoroughly naturalized even by the decent and well meaning.
"We have to cut somewhere," said one board member, repeating the language and logic of board members across the country for the last 15 years. "We have to protect the classroom."
Here's what's weird. Privatization has not worked. Not at all. Not a lick. Not only are public school systems not saving anything they are losing money.
Indeed, every school District in Michigan is worse off financially and in terms of services provided since this "best practice" became adopted some 15 years ago.
As I approach 50 I do find myself quoting Republicans more so let's ask the Ronald Reagan question to public school Districts: "Are you better off now than you were 15 years ago?"
The answer would be a resounding no.
Here is what is weirder. We keep trying this, saying the same things, making the same arguments, and, to top it all off, calling this "innovative" and "outside the box" thinking.
Did I mention my District also has started a "foundation" so that private donors can supplement the District which is limited in how much it can call for taxes? How is that for "outside the box" thinking? Heard that one before, too? How's that working out for ya?
But my point is this: It is not really known how outsourcing became a "best practice." Considering outsourcing was not a "data-driven" process as we say today. That is, there was no systematic study to see if it would work. The push began before big data. It was purely ideological. It was an act of quasi-religious faith in free markets
Let's keep getting weird as this is, after all, also where Jimmy Hoffa was last seen.
While nobody every determined this "best practice" through systematic study we now have to show -- through "data" and an assortment of consultants -- that the in-house systems work better than the free market systems that have never worked.
I don't fault my school board members.
They are serious, thoughtful people who serve the District in very strange times, often taking extraordinary abuse from Tea-Party types (yes, even in Bloomfield, et ego Arcadia or something like that). I know some personally, and helped them get elected. I don't have the luxury, in short, of imagining them politically demonic forces "other" than me, either on the left or the right. They are neither, in our outsized political rhetoric, "fascists" or "whacky socialists." They are experienced in both schools and business, decent and well meaning, remarkably civil when civility is in short supply.
But they, like all of us, are utterly bereft of political and economic imagination right now. They are crying to "think out side the box," when thinking outside the box only means what it has only meant since its insipid inception in to the lexicon. It means privatize, even privatizing has been a disaster.
We may be demanding our children perform so miraculously, achieve flexibility and creativity in a globalized, 21st century world because we have so little imagination left of our own to give.
We here in metro-Detroit are perhaps more prone to this than some, having lived with the "boom and bust" of the auto industry for decades. There is nothing more natural, no more characteristic gesture of fiduciary responsibility than to tighten up in lean times and save for the future.
Here's the weirdest thing though. The ur-Weird. The Weird that is so weird we can't even think it.
There is no imaginable public education future to save for if your only thought to save public education is privatization. These cuts are now, literally, for the sake of cutting, not for saving. The cuts are transformative only in the sense that they render what they were supposed to preserve as unrecognizable.
As one board member said, "The state is never going to give us more money so we have to cut somewhere."
But if there is truly no future -- and I don't disagree with this -- why in the world and what in the world are public school systems saving for? And if at this the case we need to drop the 20st century cut and save, outsource mentality fast and do what we tell our kids to do: think critically.
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