Parents have the power to break the stranglehold of standardized testing
By Shaun Johnson | Baltimore Sun
August 25, 2011
Here's an update to a clichéd philosophical question: If a test is scheduled and no one is around to take it, will this test matter?
The new school year for many public school teachers begins weeks before students arrive. Educators attend hours of workshops to discover that the newest acronym is simply a substitute for an older one. More importantly, piles of test data are pored over to both assess the previous year and to fully appreciate what is to come with a new crop of students.
With every new testing mandate, combined with recent scandals chipping away at the once impossibly smooth veneer of test-based education reforms, many teachers, parents and administrators are getting frustrated. Where have market-driven and data-obsessed policies taken us over the last 10 years? Are public schools necessarily better off than they were when No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was initially greeted with bipartisan support?
Another important question: What of education have we lost as a result of strict adherence to standardized tests? Many are answering, "Too much — and enough is enough." The result is that more and more parents and educators are mulling what was once unthinkable: opting children out of state standardized tests.
For example, Tim Slekar, a professor of education in Pennsylvania, opted his son Luke out of his state's tests last school year to "make my community aware and to try and enlighten them of the real issues." This parent and professor's plea is simple and forceful: "Stop treating my child as data! He's a great kid who loves to learn. He is not a politician's pawn in a chess game designed to prove the inadequacy of his teachers and school."
In July, a large group of public school advocates organized the Save Our Schools March in Washington, D.C. to protest the continued, and in some cases stronger, embrace of standardized testing. Even amid budget shortfalls, millions of taxpayer dollars are spent on things like researching newer exams, test security, investigating lapses in that security, and manufacturing data collection systems. Meanwhile, schools must contend with smaller staffs and larger class sizes.
Educators are frustrated by the exclusion of teachers from the larger debate on education reform and policy in the United States. Individual classroom teachers and researchers have been highlighting for years the deleterious effects of focusing solely on success or failure with regard to standardized tests. And even now, with the revelation that high-stakes environments are perfect breeding grounds for desperation and resulting dishonesty, the dispiriting march through another year of test preparation must continue.
In a political and cultural environment that at best feigns listening to educators and at worst demonizes them, the most active public school advocates — like Mr. Slekar — are beginning to feel that opting their children out of completing the state tests is the only message that will get through. Those who began their research into the issue are finding it remarkably easy to do, despite the dissembling of school officials when asked for information.
Parents considering opting their children out of state testing are aware of the implications — that a diminished level of participation will affect the school's ability to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). But the threat of no AYP does not appear as ominous as it once did. What is more, the Department of Education's hemming and hawing over the reauthorization of NCLB, plus this whole business of granting waivers that states don't even want, could mean that the punitive era of education reform is slowly coming to an end.
Growing groups of parents and public school advocates have decided to hit the contemporary reform movement where it counts by taking away the privilege of collecting coveted data. They realize that their children are more than just test scores. They now understand that a laser-like focus on testing and test preparation comes at the expense of numerous other facets of an engaging and well-rounded education. Most of all, these same folks are slowly but surely grasping the power that eluded them during the height of the NCLB era. Despite being largely locked out of the conversation on public education, parents, teachers, and parents who are teachers know they don't have to give up the data any longer.
Opting-out groups are turning to social media to organize. A Florida-based Facebook group, "Testing is Not Teaching," boasts more than 12,000 supporters. A similar, fledgling group called "United Opt Out" claimed 600 national members after just a few days of existence online. Local numbers for Maryland are elusive, and it's too early to tell whether pressing the "Like" button will translate into actual opting out of test taking.
So, to come full circle: If tests were scheduled and no one took them, would it matter? It would probably be the exact opposite of the proverbial tree falling with no one around. Fewer students filling in fewer bubbles would sound an alarm akin to 1,000 trees falling in the forest. This time, one could not ignore hearing it. And the sincere grievances public school advocates have about the dominance of testing might finally receive an attentive audience.
Shaun Johnson is an assistant professor of elementary education in the College of Education at Towson University. His email is spjohnson@towson.edu.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Leaving Children Behind
By PAUL KRUGMAN
February 27, 2011
Will 2011 be the year of fiscal austerity? At the federal level, it’s still not clear: Republicans are demanding draconian spending cuts, but we don’t yet know how far they’re willing to go in a showdown with President Obama. At the state and local level, however, there’s no doubt about it: big spending cuts are coming.
And who will bear the brunt of these cuts? America’s children.
Now, politicians — and especially, in my experience, conservative politicians — always claim to be deeply concerned about the nation’s children. Back during the 2000 campaign, then-candidate George W. Bush, touting the “Texas miracle” of dramatically lower dropout rates, declared that he wanted to be the “education president.” Today, advocates of big spending cuts often claim that their greatest concern is the burden of debt our children will face.
In practice, however, when advocates of lower spending get a chance to put their ideas into practice, the burden always seems to fall disproportionately on those very children they claim to hold so dear.
Consider, as a case in point, what’s happening in Texas, which more and more seems to be where America’s political future happens first.
Texas likes to portray itself as a model of small government, and indeed it is. Taxes are low, at least if you’re in the upper part of the income distribution (taxes on the bottom 40 percent of the population are actually above the national average). Government spending is also low. And to be fair, low taxes may be one reason for the state’s rapid population growth, although low housing prices are surely much more important.
But here’s the thing: While low spending may sound good in the abstract, what it amounts to in practice is low spending on children, who account directly or indirectly for a large part of government outlays at the state and local level.
And in low-tax, low-spending Texas, the kids are not all right. The high school graduation rate, at just 61.3 percent, puts Texas 43rd out of 50 in state rankings. Nationally, the state ranks fifth in child poverty; it leads in the percentage of children without health insurance. And only 78 percent of Texas children are in excellent or very good health, significantly below the national average.
But wait — how can graduation rates be so low when Texas had that education miracle back when former President Bush was governor? Well, a couple of years into his presidency the truth about that miracle came out: Texas school administrators achieved low reported dropout rates the old-fashioned way — they, ahem, got the numbers wrong.
It’s not a pretty picture; compassion aside, you have to wonder — and many business people in Texas do — how the state can prosper in the long run with a future work force blighted by childhood poverty, poor health and lack of education.
But things are about to get much worse.
A few months ago another Texas miracle went the way of that education miracle of the 1990s. For months, Gov. Rick Perry had boasted that his “tough conservative decisions” had kept the budget in surplus while allowing the state to weather the recession unscathed. But after Mr. Perry’s re-election, reality intruded — funny how that happens — and the state is now scrambling to close a huge budget gap. (By the way, given the current efforts to blame public-sector unions for state fiscal problems, it’s worth noting that the mess in Texas was achieved with an overwhelmingly nonunion work force.)
So how will that gap be closed? Given the already dire condition of Texas children, you might have expected the state’s leaders to focus the pain elsewhere. In particular, you might have expected high-income Texans, who pay much less in state and local taxes than the national average, to be asked to bear at least some of the burden.
But you’d be wrong. Tax increases have been ruled out of consideration; the gap will be closed solely through spending cuts. Medicaid, a program that is crucial to many of the state’s children, will take the biggest hit, with the Legislature proposing a funding cut of no less than 29 percent, including a reduction in the state’s already low payments to providers — raising fears that doctors will start refusing to see Medicaid patients. And education will also face steep cuts, with school administrators talking about as many as 100,000 layoffs.
The really striking thing about all this isn’t the cruelty — at this point you expect that — but the shortsightedness. What’s supposed to happen when today’s neglected children become tomorrow’s work force?
Anyway, the next time some self-proclaimed deficit hawk tells you how much he worries about the debt we’re leaving our children, remember what’s happening in Texas, a state whose slogan right now might as well be “Lose the future.”
February 27, 2011
Will 2011 be the year of fiscal austerity? At the federal level, it’s still not clear: Republicans are demanding draconian spending cuts, but we don’t yet know how far they’re willing to go in a showdown with President Obama. At the state and local level, however, there’s no doubt about it: big spending cuts are coming.
And who will bear the brunt of these cuts? America’s children.
Now, politicians — and especially, in my experience, conservative politicians — always claim to be deeply concerned about the nation’s children. Back during the 2000 campaign, then-candidate George W. Bush, touting the “Texas miracle” of dramatically lower dropout rates, declared that he wanted to be the “education president.” Today, advocates of big spending cuts often claim that their greatest concern is the burden of debt our children will face.
In practice, however, when advocates of lower spending get a chance to put their ideas into practice, the burden always seems to fall disproportionately on those very children they claim to hold so dear.
Consider, as a case in point, what’s happening in Texas, which more and more seems to be where America’s political future happens first.
Texas likes to portray itself as a model of small government, and indeed it is. Taxes are low, at least if you’re in the upper part of the income distribution (taxes on the bottom 40 percent of the population are actually above the national average). Government spending is also low. And to be fair, low taxes may be one reason for the state’s rapid population growth, although low housing prices are surely much more important.
But here’s the thing: While low spending may sound good in the abstract, what it amounts to in practice is low spending on children, who account directly or indirectly for a large part of government outlays at the state and local level.
And in low-tax, low-spending Texas, the kids are not all right. The high school graduation rate, at just 61.3 percent, puts Texas 43rd out of 50 in state rankings. Nationally, the state ranks fifth in child poverty; it leads in the percentage of children without health insurance. And only 78 percent of Texas children are in excellent or very good health, significantly below the national average.
But wait — how can graduation rates be so low when Texas had that education miracle back when former President Bush was governor? Well, a couple of years into his presidency the truth about that miracle came out: Texas school administrators achieved low reported dropout rates the old-fashioned way — they, ahem, got the numbers wrong.
It’s not a pretty picture; compassion aside, you have to wonder — and many business people in Texas do — how the state can prosper in the long run with a future work force blighted by childhood poverty, poor health and lack of education.
But things are about to get much worse.
A few months ago another Texas miracle went the way of that education miracle of the 1990s. For months, Gov. Rick Perry had boasted that his “tough conservative decisions” had kept the budget in surplus while allowing the state to weather the recession unscathed. But after Mr. Perry’s re-election, reality intruded — funny how that happens — and the state is now scrambling to close a huge budget gap. (By the way, given the current efforts to blame public-sector unions for state fiscal problems, it’s worth noting that the mess in Texas was achieved with an overwhelmingly nonunion work force.)
So how will that gap be closed? Given the already dire condition of Texas children, you might have expected the state’s leaders to focus the pain elsewhere. In particular, you might have expected high-income Texans, who pay much less in state and local taxes than the national average, to be asked to bear at least some of the burden.
But you’d be wrong. Tax increases have been ruled out of consideration; the gap will be closed solely through spending cuts. Medicaid, a program that is crucial to many of the state’s children, will take the biggest hit, with the Legislature proposing a funding cut of no less than 29 percent, including a reduction in the state’s already low payments to providers — raising fears that doctors will start refusing to see Medicaid patients. And education will also face steep cuts, with school administrators talking about as many as 100,000 layoffs.
The really striking thing about all this isn’t the cruelty — at this point you expect that — but the shortsightedness. What’s supposed to happen when today’s neglected children become tomorrow’s work force?
Anyway, the next time some self-proclaimed deficit hawk tells you how much he worries about the debt we’re leaving our children, remember what’s happening in Texas, a state whose slogan right now might as well be “Lose the future.”
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
September 16 is a date America should celebrate by Roy Cook
Very interesting piece on Mexico's full blooded indian president Benito Juarez by Roy Cook.
-Angela
September 16 is a date America should celebrate
By Roy Cook
September 16, 1810. The Mexican War of Independence movement was led by Mestizos, Zambos and Tribal Indians who sought independence from Spain. As an independent nation, Mexico declared the abolition of slavery and the equality of all citizens, including Tribal peoples, under the law. Freedom for all over 100 years before the United States of America would extend the same rights to the Tribal people in its borders, 1924.
Over the past few years, the Latino population in California has grown in unprecedented numbers, a fact that is being noticed by politicians, media and businesses. According to the 2000 census, there are 37.4 million individuals of Latino descent in the U.S. However, the new unknown immigrants are Meso-American Indians (Native Americans from Mexico and Central America). They are the largest growing population in the state. We have to remember that Latino is not a race and that the labels, Hispanic or Latino, cover up immense racial, cultural and ethnic diversity. There are many Anglo-, and Afro-Latinos who don’t eat burritos or sing “la cucaracha.” Latino is not as simple as “yo quiero Taco Bell;” it’s much more dynamic and complex.
According to the Frente Indigena Organización Binacional (FIOB), a California nonprofit for immigrants, the majority of the people who are labeled Mexican are natives from the Mixtec, Zapotec and Chatino tribes. FIOB estimates there are between 70,000 to 80,000 indigenous workers from Oaxaca throughout California. The Mexican Consulate in San Francisco indicates there are more than 10,000 Maya Indians from the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico currently living in Marin County alone and about 18,000 throughout the Bay Area. But why do the mainstream community and Latino-based service agencies fail to recognize the changing demographics of the community? Is it possible that these individuals don’t fit the romantic view of North American Indians? Could it be that Latinos and community programs that serve them may not be aware of this trend? Or do Latino service providers replicate the same discriminatory behaviors from their own countries of origin? It is not
surprising that many Meso-American Indians making new lives in California do not self-identify with their American Indian heritage.
Historically, Latin America has been tremendously violent and discriminatory against Indian people. Many “mestizos” (mixed bloods) who may be culturally Indian experienced the discrimination as well. The inside scoop within the Latino community is that it’s generally associated with being poor and at the bottom of the social and economic scales. Discriminatory practices against Indians are embodied in almost every institution throughout Latin America. Today, many governments in Meso-America recognize the presence of indigenous people, yet fail to fulfill international accords and treaties. Even though Indians are the traditional low-wage workhorse of this country and Third World countries, they rarely have any political or social status. Consequently, for most indigenous people, it’s safer to be identified as Latino than an Indian. The flip side to all of this is that there are new social movements in California that recognize and respond to this
changing trend. Leaders of indigenous organizations celebrate Meso-American Indian culture and spirituality.
As native people from Latin America begin to feel less fearful, they are becoming more forthcoming about their culture and identity. So, the next time you think you see a “Latino,” keep in mind he or she may or may not even speak Spanish. Many of these people are representatives of a complex and ancient heritage and are contributing to the economy as they are trying to survive.
Yet many of these ‘new’ indigenous people are knowledgeable that Benito Juarez is often regarded as Mexico's greatest and most beloved leader. He was also the first full-blooded Tribal person to serve as President of Mexico, and the first to lead an American country in more than 300 years of Spanish colonialism.
Mexico had finally gained independence from Spain in 1821 after a difficult and bloody struggle since 1810. Mexican War of Independence(1810-1821), was an armed conflict between the people of Mexico and Spanish colonial authorities, which started on September 16, 1810. The Mexican War of Independence movement was led by Mexico born Spaniards, Mestizos, Zambos and Tribal Indians who sought independence from Spain. As an independent nation, Mexico declared the abolition of slavery and the equality of all citizens: brown, black, yellow, including Tribal peoples, under the law.
The economic realities of any prolonged conflict are harsh. Faced with bankruptcy and a war-ravaged economy, Benito Juarez declared a moratorium on foreign debt payments. Spain, Great Britain, and France reacted with a joint seizure of the Vera Cruz customs house in December 1861. Spain and Britain soon withdrew, but the French Emperor Napoleon III used the episode as a pretext to launch the French intervention in Mexico in 1862, with plans to establish a conservative regime.
Benito Juarez, as President, his 4,000 Mexican soldiers smashed the French and monarchist Mexican army of 8,000 at Puebla, Mexico, 100 miles east of Mexico City on the morning of May 5, 1862.The French had landed in Mexico (along with Spanish and English troops) five months earlier on the pretext of collecting Mexican debts from the newly elected government of democratic President (and Indian) Benito Juarez.
Juarez was born in the small village of San Pablo Guelatao, Oaxaca, located in the mountain range now known as the "Sierra Juarez." His parents, Marcelino Juárez and Brígida García were peasants who died when he was three years old. He described his parents as "Amerindians of the primitive race of the country." He worked in the corn fields and as a shepherd until the age of 12. On December 17, 1818, he walked to the city of Oaxaca looking to educate him and find a better life. At the time he was illiterate and could not speak Spanish, only Zapotec.
The Zapotec civilization was an indigenous pre-Columbian civilization that flourished in the Valley of Oaxaca of southern Mesoamerica. Archaeological evidence shows their culture goes back at least 2500 years. They left archaeological evidence at the ancient city of Monte Albán in the form of buildings, ball courts, magnificent tombs and grave goods including finely worked gold jewelry. Monte Albán was the first major city in the western hemisphere and the center of a Zapotec state that dominated much of what we know of as the current state of Oaxaca.
The battle at Puebla in 1862 happened at a violent and chaotic time in Mexico's history. Mexico had finally gained independence from Spain in 1821 after a difficult and bloody struggle since 1810, and a number of internal political takeovers and wars, including the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) and the Mexican Civil War of 1858, had ruined the national economy.
The English and Spanish quickly made deals and left. The French, however, had different ideas.Under Emperor Napoleon III, who detested the United States, the French came to stay. They brought a Hapsburg prince with them to rule the new Mexican empire. His name was Maximilian; his wife, Carlota. Napoleon's French Army had not been defeated in 50 years, and it invaded Mexico with the finest modern equipment and with a newly reconstituted Foreign Legion. The French were not afraid of anyone, especially since the United States was embroiled in its own Civil War.
The French Army left the port of Vera Cruz to attack Mexico City to the west, as the French assumed that the Mexicans would give up should their capital fall to the enemy as European countries traditionally did. But Benito Juarez created a mobile capital on wheels. With him he carried a portrait of Abraham Lincoln.While it is not known exactly when Juárez came to Lincoln's attention, we know that Lincoln was his strong supporter as early as 1857, eve of the Reform War. When Juárez had to flee Mexico City in 1858, Lincoln sent him a message expressing hope "for the liberty of .. your government and its people."
The bond between the two leaders was strengthened in 1861, the year the Civil War began. Perhaps the greatest dividend attained by the informal but highly effective alliance between Abraham Lincoln and Benito Juárez is the way it served to ease the bitterness felt by Mexicans thanks to the disastrous consequences of the U.S.-Mexican War.
-Angela
September 16 is a date America should celebrate
By Roy Cook
September 16, 1810. The Mexican War of Independence movement was led by Mestizos, Zambos and Tribal Indians who sought independence from Spain. As an independent nation, Mexico declared the abolition of slavery and the equality of all citizens, including Tribal peoples, under the law. Freedom for all over 100 years before the United States of America would extend the same rights to the Tribal people in its borders, 1924.
Over the past few years, the Latino population in California has grown in unprecedented numbers, a fact that is being noticed by politicians, media and businesses. According to the 2000 census, there are 37.4 million individuals of Latino descent in the U.S. However, the new unknown immigrants are Meso-American Indians (Native Americans from Mexico and Central America). They are the largest growing population in the state. We have to remember that Latino is not a race and that the labels, Hispanic or Latino, cover up immense racial, cultural and ethnic diversity. There are many Anglo-, and Afro-Latinos who don’t eat burritos or sing “la cucaracha.” Latino is not as simple as “yo quiero Taco Bell;” it’s much more dynamic and complex.
According to the Frente Indigena Organización Binacional (FIOB), a California nonprofit for immigrants, the majority of the people who are labeled Mexican are natives from the Mixtec, Zapotec and Chatino tribes. FIOB estimates there are between 70,000 to 80,000 indigenous workers from Oaxaca throughout California. The Mexican Consulate in San Francisco indicates there are more than 10,000 Maya Indians from the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico currently living in Marin County alone and about 18,000 throughout the Bay Area. But why do the mainstream community and Latino-based service agencies fail to recognize the changing demographics of the community? Is it possible that these individuals don’t fit the romantic view of North American Indians? Could it be that Latinos and community programs that serve them may not be aware of this trend? Or do Latino service providers replicate the same discriminatory behaviors from their own countries of origin? It is not
surprising that many Meso-American Indians making new lives in California do not self-identify with their American Indian heritage.
Historically, Latin America has been tremendously violent and discriminatory against Indian people. Many “mestizos” (mixed bloods) who may be culturally Indian experienced the discrimination as well. The inside scoop within the Latino community is that it’s generally associated with being poor and at the bottom of the social and economic scales. Discriminatory practices against Indians are embodied in almost every institution throughout Latin America. Today, many governments in Meso-America recognize the presence of indigenous people, yet fail to fulfill international accords and treaties. Even though Indians are the traditional low-wage workhorse of this country and Third World countries, they rarely have any political or social status. Consequently, for most indigenous people, it’s safer to be identified as Latino than an Indian. The flip side to all of this is that there are new social movements in California that recognize and respond to this
changing trend. Leaders of indigenous organizations celebrate Meso-American Indian culture and spirituality.
As native people from Latin America begin to feel less fearful, they are becoming more forthcoming about their culture and identity. So, the next time you think you see a “Latino,” keep in mind he or she may or may not even speak Spanish. Many of these people are representatives of a complex and ancient heritage and are contributing to the economy as they are trying to survive.
Yet many of these ‘new’ indigenous people are knowledgeable that Benito Juarez is often regarded as Mexico's greatest and most beloved leader. He was also the first full-blooded Tribal person to serve as President of Mexico, and the first to lead an American country in more than 300 years of Spanish colonialism.
Mexico had finally gained independence from Spain in 1821 after a difficult and bloody struggle since 1810. Mexican War of Independence(1810-1821), was an armed conflict between the people of Mexico and Spanish colonial authorities, which started on September 16, 1810. The Mexican War of Independence movement was led by Mexico born Spaniards, Mestizos, Zambos and Tribal Indians who sought independence from Spain. As an independent nation, Mexico declared the abolition of slavery and the equality of all citizens: brown, black, yellow, including Tribal peoples, under the law.
The economic realities of any prolonged conflict are harsh. Faced with bankruptcy and a war-ravaged economy, Benito Juarez declared a moratorium on foreign debt payments. Spain, Great Britain, and France reacted with a joint seizure of the Vera Cruz customs house in December 1861. Spain and Britain soon withdrew, but the French Emperor Napoleon III used the episode as a pretext to launch the French intervention in Mexico in 1862, with plans to establish a conservative regime.
Benito Juarez, as President, his 4,000 Mexican soldiers smashed the French and monarchist Mexican army of 8,000 at Puebla, Mexico, 100 miles east of Mexico City on the morning of May 5, 1862.The French had landed in Mexico (along with Spanish and English troops) five months earlier on the pretext of collecting Mexican debts from the newly elected government of democratic President (and Indian) Benito Juarez.
Juarez was born in the small village of San Pablo Guelatao, Oaxaca, located in the mountain range now known as the "Sierra Juarez." His parents, Marcelino Juárez and Brígida García were peasants who died when he was three years old. He described his parents as "Amerindians of the primitive race of the country." He worked in the corn fields and as a shepherd until the age of 12. On December 17, 1818, he walked to the city of Oaxaca looking to educate him and find a better life. At the time he was illiterate and could not speak Spanish, only Zapotec.
The Zapotec civilization was an indigenous pre-Columbian civilization that flourished in the Valley of Oaxaca of southern Mesoamerica. Archaeological evidence shows their culture goes back at least 2500 years. They left archaeological evidence at the ancient city of Monte Albán in the form of buildings, ball courts, magnificent tombs and grave goods including finely worked gold jewelry. Monte Albán was the first major city in the western hemisphere and the center of a Zapotec state that dominated much of what we know of as the current state of Oaxaca.
The battle at Puebla in 1862 happened at a violent and chaotic time in Mexico's history. Mexico had finally gained independence from Spain in 1821 after a difficult and bloody struggle since 1810, and a number of internal political takeovers and wars, including the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) and the Mexican Civil War of 1858, had ruined the national economy.
The English and Spanish quickly made deals and left. The French, however, had different ideas.Under Emperor Napoleon III, who detested the United States, the French came to stay. They brought a Hapsburg prince with them to rule the new Mexican empire. His name was Maximilian; his wife, Carlota. Napoleon's French Army had not been defeated in 50 years, and it invaded Mexico with the finest modern equipment and with a newly reconstituted Foreign Legion. The French were not afraid of anyone, especially since the United States was embroiled in its own Civil War.
The French Army left the port of Vera Cruz to attack Mexico City to the west, as the French assumed that the Mexicans would give up should their capital fall to the enemy as European countries traditionally did. But Benito Juarez created a mobile capital on wheels. With him he carried a portrait of Abraham Lincoln.While it is not known exactly when Juárez came to Lincoln's attention, we know that Lincoln was his strong supporter as early as 1857, eve of the Reform War. When Juárez had to flee Mexico City in 1858, Lincoln sent him a message expressing hope "for the liberty of .. your government and its people."
The bond between the two leaders was strengthened in 1861, the year the Civil War began. Perhaps the greatest dividend attained by the informal but highly effective alliance between Abraham Lincoln and Benito Juárez is the way it served to ease the bitterness felt by Mexicans thanks to the disastrous consequences of the U.S.-Mexican War.
Texas-Size Compromise
Kevin Kiley | Inside Higher Education
August 26, 2011
Texas Governor Rick Perry is surging in polls for the Republican nomination for president, but Francisco Cigarroa might be the Texan with the biggest political victory this week.
At a meeting of the University of Texas System’s Board of Regents on Thursday, Cigarroa, the system’s chancellor, presented a framework, which the board adopted unanimously, designed to improve accountability, outcomes, and efficiency at the system’s nine academic institutions and six health centers.
Cigarroa's plan, much like the efforts being pushed by Perry and conservative think tanks in the state, involves much more public reporting about faculty performance and focuses on using technology as a way to drive down college costs. But unlike those plans, it gives considerable leeway to campuses to determine how they will evaluate faculty members. It also avoids some of the controversial assumptions made by other reform efforts -- such as the view that there is a clear relationship between grants obtained and the value of research, or that student evaluations are the best way to measure a faculty member's teaching -- to which faculty members have objected.
The new plan is ambitious in its scope -- encompassing everything from a public database to evaluate faculty productivity to a new resource to develop online courses -- but its biggest success might be the fact that, so far, it has the support of groups on multiple sides of what has been a contentious debate about the future of higher education in Texas. The framework provides a rough outline for the system, and campuses will be left to figure out the details of exactly how they will meet the chancellor's goals, which could create tension down the road. But the fact that Cigarroa is being praised by conservative think tanks, faculty members, and even Perry is a notable departure from the rhetoric that has dominated higher-education talk in Texas.
“Chancellor Cigarroa’s action plan is the first step of many that will be needed for Texas public universities to achieve the important goals of greater transparency and accountability, improved use of resources, more world-class research and high-quality graduates, and reduced cost of higher education to students and taxpayers,” said David Guenthner, senior communications director for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank whose reform proposals have been at the center of many of the debates. “Today’s positive presentation is the beginning of the reform process, not the end – but it is a very good start.”
At the same time, the plan received approval from the Texas Coalition for Excellence in Higher Education, a group formed in opposition to the reforms being pushed by the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “Chancellor Cigarroa’s plan is in direct contrast to the simplistic, ill-conceived, and untested so-called ‘solutions’ being promoted by outside interest groups,” the coalition said in a statement. Democratic and Republican lawmakers also weighed in, supporting the chancellor's efforts.
Tim Allen, a professor at the U.T. Health Science Center in Tyler and chair of the University of Texas System Faculty Advisory Council, said in a presentation following Cigarroa that faculty approved of the plan.
During the past few years, system administrators, university faculty members, alumni groups, politicians, and think tanks have been embroiled in discussions about college costs, accountability, faculty productivity, and the value of research. The Texas Public Policy Foundation has pushed a series of contentious reforms called the "seven solutions" that include separating research and teaching budgets, placing more emphasis on student evaluations, and creating a separate accrediting body. The group has numerous ties to the governor (who has great influence on the direction of the state's public universities, having appointed every member of the state's six boards of regents), who has partially endorsed its reforms.
Officials stressed that such issues have come up in other states as well, and that the issues of college costs and accountability are not unique to Texas, just more high-profile. “Texas finds itself at the epicenter of the national debate on the future of higher education,” Cigarroa said on Thursday.
Efforts to impose parts of those reforms have not sat well with some faculty and alumni groups, who see them as overly simplistic and detrimental to the system in the long run, and particularly to the research mission. But several people involved in the system say the broad support for Cigarroa's plan, and the comprehensive nature of the plan itself, will likely help quell the disputes.
"I think we're mostly past all that now," said Charles Miller, former chairman of the Board of Regents, of the heated rhetoric. He said that in the beginning of the debates about faculty productivity and college costs, some regents and staff quickly moved ahead to solve problems before there was agreement about what the problems were, creating a lot of tension. "In the beginning, the process wasn't well done. But these are smart, capable people on these boards, and when they're being told they're doing something wrong, they dig in and work harder."
Senator Judith Zaffirini, a Democrat from Laredo who chairs the Senate's Higher Education Committee, said she hopes the plan serves as a "unifying force that looks beyond yesterday’s controversies and toward a brighter future."
The plan Cigarroa laid out Thursday is designed to make sure that taxpayers and students are getting their money's worth out of the system -- particularly at a time of diminished state revenue and rising student costs -- which has been a major goal of the reform efforts. "Our primary goal here is enhancing the University of Texas for students and their parents, maintaining high quality, while at the same time, figuring out how to reduce overall costs and cost per student," said Gene Powell, chairman of the Board of Regents, in an interview.
The reforms incorporate suggestions developed by two regents' committees created at the beginning of the year: one on productivity and efficiency, and another on blended and online learning. Faculty members and administrators, feeling like the board was trying to micromanage campus operations, objected to those committees. The board then vested more authority in Cigarroa to create the plan.
In presenting the framework Thursday, Cigarroa stressed that he didn't want to take a "one size fits all" approach. Instead he laid out broad goals while letting each campus determine the actual benchmarks it would use. "Innovation happens at the campus level," he said in an interview. "We're not going to be prescriptive, but we are going to hold them accountable on developing strategies."
In terms of undergraduate students, the framework calls on campuses to improve four-year graduation rates, increase the number of degrees granted, and reduce the financial impact of tuition on families. For each of these, the plan outlines smaller action items, such as tuition policies that encourage four-year graduation, and identifies individuals responsible for carrying them out on each campus.
One of the major pushes in the framework, growing out of the regents' committee, is a call to increase blended and online learning to drive down costs. The board authorized an investment of up to $50 million to create a new Institute for Transformational Learning. The institute will work with campuses to develop online learning resources.
The announcement comes slightly more than a year after the system shuttered the UT TeleCampus, a centralized office for distance-education programs. Administrators said that unlike TeleCampus, the new institute will be a bottom-up approach, with programs originating on campuses, which they hope will spur greater innovation.
It will be left to the individual campuses to hammer out the details for many of the reforms advanced for improving faculty accountability and productivity, including strengthening annual evaluations and post-tenure review and implementing incentive-based compensation.
The system is already working on developing a publicly available dashboard that will present detailed information about department and individual professor productivity that administrators can use to make decisions. Cigarroa stressed that the exact information included in the dashboard has yet to be determined and that each campus will be able to determine its own set of metrics.
The selection of metrics will likely be a contentious issue down the road. Recent efforts to hold professors more accountable, such as lists of professors based on how many students they teach compared to their salaries, have not been greeted warmly by faculty members, who said they felt like they were under attack.
Other reforms include finding new ways to fund and collaborate on research projects, promote shorter completion times for Ph.D.s, and develop health and educational opportunities in South Texas -- including investment in UT-Brownsville, which used to operate jointly with a community college, to make the university a stand-alone four-year institution.
Actual implementation of the plans will take place over the next few years, as campus presidents and administrators determine actual metrics on which to measure performance and productivity.
Miller, who said he has been pushing for similar reforms for years and has been critical of both sides of the debate, said the board and Cigarroa deserve praise for tackling a politically dangerous issue. "There are quite a few people who should take responsibility for not having this discussion sooner," he said."This kind of thing takes leadership at the state policy level, at all levels, and the board should be commended for what they've done.
August 26, 2011
Texas Governor Rick Perry is surging in polls for the Republican nomination for president, but Francisco Cigarroa might be the Texan with the biggest political victory this week.
At a meeting of the University of Texas System’s Board of Regents on Thursday, Cigarroa, the system’s chancellor, presented a framework, which the board adopted unanimously, designed to improve accountability, outcomes, and efficiency at the system’s nine academic institutions and six health centers.
Cigarroa's plan, much like the efforts being pushed by Perry and conservative think tanks in the state, involves much more public reporting about faculty performance and focuses on using technology as a way to drive down college costs. But unlike those plans, it gives considerable leeway to campuses to determine how they will evaluate faculty members. It also avoids some of the controversial assumptions made by other reform efforts -- such as the view that there is a clear relationship between grants obtained and the value of research, or that student evaluations are the best way to measure a faculty member's teaching -- to which faculty members have objected.
The new plan is ambitious in its scope -- encompassing everything from a public database to evaluate faculty productivity to a new resource to develop online courses -- but its biggest success might be the fact that, so far, it has the support of groups on multiple sides of what has been a contentious debate about the future of higher education in Texas. The framework provides a rough outline for the system, and campuses will be left to figure out the details of exactly how they will meet the chancellor's goals, which could create tension down the road. But the fact that Cigarroa is being praised by conservative think tanks, faculty members, and even Perry is a notable departure from the rhetoric that has dominated higher-education talk in Texas.
“Chancellor Cigarroa’s action plan is the first step of many that will be needed for Texas public universities to achieve the important goals of greater transparency and accountability, improved use of resources, more world-class research and high-quality graduates, and reduced cost of higher education to students and taxpayers,” said David Guenthner, senior communications director for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank whose reform proposals have been at the center of many of the debates. “Today’s positive presentation is the beginning of the reform process, not the end – but it is a very good start.”
At the same time, the plan received approval from the Texas Coalition for Excellence in Higher Education, a group formed in opposition to the reforms being pushed by the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “Chancellor Cigarroa’s plan is in direct contrast to the simplistic, ill-conceived, and untested so-called ‘solutions’ being promoted by outside interest groups,” the coalition said in a statement. Democratic and Republican lawmakers also weighed in, supporting the chancellor's efforts.
Tim Allen, a professor at the U.T. Health Science Center in Tyler and chair of the University of Texas System Faculty Advisory Council, said in a presentation following Cigarroa that faculty approved of the plan.
During the past few years, system administrators, university faculty members, alumni groups, politicians, and think tanks have been embroiled in discussions about college costs, accountability, faculty productivity, and the value of research. The Texas Public Policy Foundation has pushed a series of contentious reforms called the "seven solutions" that include separating research and teaching budgets, placing more emphasis on student evaluations, and creating a separate accrediting body. The group has numerous ties to the governor (who has great influence on the direction of the state's public universities, having appointed every member of the state's six boards of regents), who has partially endorsed its reforms.
Officials stressed that such issues have come up in other states as well, and that the issues of college costs and accountability are not unique to Texas, just more high-profile. “Texas finds itself at the epicenter of the national debate on the future of higher education,” Cigarroa said on Thursday.
Efforts to impose parts of those reforms have not sat well with some faculty and alumni groups, who see them as overly simplistic and detrimental to the system in the long run, and particularly to the research mission. But several people involved in the system say the broad support for Cigarroa's plan, and the comprehensive nature of the plan itself, will likely help quell the disputes.
"I think we're mostly past all that now," said Charles Miller, former chairman of the Board of Regents, of the heated rhetoric. He said that in the beginning of the debates about faculty productivity and college costs, some regents and staff quickly moved ahead to solve problems before there was agreement about what the problems were, creating a lot of tension. "In the beginning, the process wasn't well done. But these are smart, capable people on these boards, and when they're being told they're doing something wrong, they dig in and work harder."
Senator Judith Zaffirini, a Democrat from Laredo who chairs the Senate's Higher Education Committee, said she hopes the plan serves as a "unifying force that looks beyond yesterday’s controversies and toward a brighter future."
The plan Cigarroa laid out Thursday is designed to make sure that taxpayers and students are getting their money's worth out of the system -- particularly at a time of diminished state revenue and rising student costs -- which has been a major goal of the reform efforts. "Our primary goal here is enhancing the University of Texas for students and their parents, maintaining high quality, while at the same time, figuring out how to reduce overall costs and cost per student," said Gene Powell, chairman of the Board of Regents, in an interview.
The reforms incorporate suggestions developed by two regents' committees created at the beginning of the year: one on productivity and efficiency, and another on blended and online learning. Faculty members and administrators, feeling like the board was trying to micromanage campus operations, objected to those committees. The board then vested more authority in Cigarroa to create the plan.
In presenting the framework Thursday, Cigarroa stressed that he didn't want to take a "one size fits all" approach. Instead he laid out broad goals while letting each campus determine the actual benchmarks it would use. "Innovation happens at the campus level," he said in an interview. "We're not going to be prescriptive, but we are going to hold them accountable on developing strategies."
In terms of undergraduate students, the framework calls on campuses to improve four-year graduation rates, increase the number of degrees granted, and reduce the financial impact of tuition on families. For each of these, the plan outlines smaller action items, such as tuition policies that encourage four-year graduation, and identifies individuals responsible for carrying them out on each campus.
One of the major pushes in the framework, growing out of the regents' committee, is a call to increase blended and online learning to drive down costs. The board authorized an investment of up to $50 million to create a new Institute for Transformational Learning. The institute will work with campuses to develop online learning resources.
The announcement comes slightly more than a year after the system shuttered the UT TeleCampus, a centralized office for distance-education programs. Administrators said that unlike TeleCampus, the new institute will be a bottom-up approach, with programs originating on campuses, which they hope will spur greater innovation.
It will be left to the individual campuses to hammer out the details for many of the reforms advanced for improving faculty accountability and productivity, including strengthening annual evaluations and post-tenure review and implementing incentive-based compensation.
The system is already working on developing a publicly available dashboard that will present detailed information about department and individual professor productivity that administrators can use to make decisions. Cigarroa stressed that the exact information included in the dashboard has yet to be determined and that each campus will be able to determine its own set of metrics.
The selection of metrics will likely be a contentious issue down the road. Recent efforts to hold professors more accountable, such as lists of professors based on how many students they teach compared to their salaries, have not been greeted warmly by faculty members, who said they felt like they were under attack.
Other reforms include finding new ways to fund and collaborate on research projects, promote shorter completion times for Ph.D.s, and develop health and educational opportunities in South Texas -- including investment in UT-Brownsville, which used to operate jointly with a community college, to make the university a stand-alone four-year institution.
Actual implementation of the plans will take place over the next few years, as campus presidents and administrators determine actual metrics on which to measure performance and productivity.
Miller, who said he has been pushing for similar reforms for years and has been critical of both sides of the debate, said the board and Cigarroa deserve praise for tackling a politically dangerous issue. "There are quite a few people who should take responsibility for not having this discussion sooner," he said."This kind of thing takes leadership at the state policy level, at all levels, and the board should be commended for what they've done.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Rick Perry's Education Policies Bring Mixed Results In Texas
Texas Gov. Rick Perry's k-12 education record has become the Obama administration's newest piñata -- but the administration's attacks mostly paint Perry's education policies in half-true generalizations and miss some real contradictions.
The criticism began Thursday, when U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan unloaded on the newest GOP presidential contender, telling Bloomberg Television that he felt "very, very badly" for Texas school children. "Texas may have the lowest high school graduation rate in the country," Duncan asserted.
Over the weekend, Robert Gibbs, a former White House press secretary and current outside administration advisor, piled on: "I think when it comes to someone like Rick Perry, they're [voters] going to wonder why a place like Texas has one of the worst education systems," Gibbs said on Sunday's "Meet the Press."
But Texas's educational achievement record is more complex than Gibbs and Duncan make it sound, and their claims depend on carefully-chosen data.
On one hand, math scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress test have increased, and Texas students have performed relatively well under Perry's watch -- though progress has stalled recently. On the other hand, NAEP reading scores are relatively low, and Texas leads the country in the number of adults without high school diplomas. And while Texans scored slightly below the national average on the 2011 ACT, few of those students are college-ready.
When asked for clarification on what Duncan meant by saying Texas "may have" the nation's lowest graduation rate, a spokeswoman said she could not comment further. Texas's technical graduation rate may indeed be the nation's lowest, but that figure includes students of all ages who have not completed high school. The state's freshman completion rate is average, and Texas ranked seventh out of the 26 states that reported their four-year on-time graduation rates for 2009.
"Texas is mid-pack on graduation rates, and that's no great shakes," said Andy Rotherham, a former Clinton policy aide who now works as a partner at the think tank Bellwether Education Partners. "The bigger story is that Perry hasn't done anything on education."
WHAT POLICY?
Under Perry's watch, Texas's curriculum wars made national headlines with stories about the state's conservative school board arguing over textbook content. Perry himself received attention late last week for saying intelligent design is taught alongside evolution in Texas public schools. That statement flew in the face of a 1987 state Supreme Court ruling prohibiting the practice. Still, Perry's gaffe was more a statement on values than an education policy pronouncement.
While Perry has condemned the federal government's role in public schools, he does not seem to have a highly-articulated education policy of his own. His campaign website does not list education as an issue. Members of his staff did not return requests for comment.
Perry's gubernatorial website points to several small initiatives: teacher incentive pay, school supply reimbursement, teacher mentoring and increasing standards. But Texas education leaders say they wish Perry had articulated broader education positions.
"I couldn't point out a signature education policy but I give [Perry] credit for letting things play out over time and letting them get better," said Michael Marder, a professor at the University of Texas who runs a teacher preparation program that receives state funds. A lack of coherent education policy is inconsequential, he says, as long as the numbers are relatively good.
Ed Fuller, a long-time Texas education researcher, is less charitable. "If [Perry]'s going to run around claiming that he's done something good, the numbers don't show it," Fuller said. "Fourth grade math flattened out; we're not making improvements -- it's taking a while to translate into the eighth grade."
"He's done nothing," said Linda Bridges, who heads Texas's arm of the American Federation of Teachers.
JUMPING OFF THE FUNDING CLIFF
Budget cuts may end up the education legacy of Perry's governorship; Texas education observers predict that the school system is about to fall off the edge of a funding cliff.
During a special session to reform school funding in 2005, Perry said, "I cannot let $2 billion sit in some bank account when it can go directly to the classroom," according to his website. But the governor had no problem underfunding Texas's schools by $5.5 billion this legislative session, despite access to a $9.4 billion rainy-day fund. That move, some education advocates say, threatens to foil the subtle gains Texas students have made in recent years.
And while Perry touts job creation on the campaign trail, thousands of Texas education employees stand ready to lose their jobs because of the cuts.
The worst is yet to come, says Eva DeLuna Castro, a senior budget analyst at Texas's Center for Public Policy Priorities. Her think tank predicts a loss of 49,000 education jobs over the next two years.
"Federal stimulus money softened the blow this year," she said. "Next August will be worse. There will be cuts to dropout prevention, teacher pay, incentive pay, math and science labs and grants for pre-K. A lot of education initiatives done in earlier years will be gone now."
Texas now ranks 47th nationally in what it pays for each student's education. "[Perry's] goal is to make Texas the 99-cent store of states," said Scott Hochberg, a Democratic state representative. "You're going for cheap."
It's about to get cheaper. The state swapped its heavy reliance on property taxes for a new business tax in 2006, despite the Republican comptroller's warning that the flip would lead to a budget shortfall. Since then, Texas school funding -- and the state budget in general -- has been unsteady.
This budget session, the legislature responded to pressure from Perry and did not fund enrollment growth in schools, despite an increase of 80,000 students. According to Democratic state Sen. Kirk Watson, "[Perry] did this almost single-handedly, blocking the disuse of the rainy day fund with veto threats."
According to Bloomberg News, "Perry cut $15 billion from spending [over time] and shortchanged [students] by about $4 billion from previously mandated levels rather than raise taxes."
To Cody Wheeler, a music teacher at a Louis Elementary School in Houston, Perry's education policies will be apparent for the incoming class. Last year he had 26 students, but budget cuts have forced his district to lay off some teachers. "This year, I'm going to have a class of 35 kindergartners every day," Wheeler said. "That'll be pretty challenging."
FAVORING FEDERALISM
Perry has been called the anti-Obama of education policy more than once. But he's also the anti-George W. Bush in some ways.
Bush, Perry's predecessor in Texas, made education a major issue while leading both the state and, later, the country.
"Governor Bush was making public education a priority," said Hochberg. "Perry's education initiatives in k-12 have been limited to things like announcing that he was going to provide some teachers help to buy school supplies to their classrooms and then never funding it."
With Bush as president, Congress passed No Child Left Behind, the sweeping federal education law that requires accountability and test reporting among school districts and ties federal education funding to set performance standards.
Perry attacked NCLB in his book, "Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington," in a chapter titled "Federal Intervention in Education":
[J]ust like the spending hook used to induce compliance for seat-belt and drinking-age laws, the federal government reaches into our pockets, takes out wads of dollars, and then says that we can have them back only if we comply with federal instructions.
Perry also showed his states' rights principles in his resistance to participating in
Obama's Race to the Top, a grant program that had states compete for federal education funding in exchange for agreeing to implement adminstration-sanctioned reforms. "Texas knows how to best educate our students," Perry said.
He echoed that that point in "Fed Up," writing, "The academic standards of Texas are not for sale. We will retain our sovereign authority to decide how to educate our children."
But critics say Perry's funding decisions undermine any boasts of enhancing student learning. Instead, Texas kids are coming of age in an under-resourced school system that might be unable to prepare them to enter the workforce.
"If students are in underfunded schools, they'll never get ahead," DeLuna Castro said. "When they grow up, they'll be unable to pay taxes, too. It's a cycle. You've got to prepare them for that."
The criticism began Thursday, when U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan unloaded on the newest GOP presidential contender, telling Bloomberg Television that he felt "very, very badly" for Texas school children. "Texas may have the lowest high school graduation rate in the country," Duncan asserted.
Over the weekend, Robert Gibbs, a former White House press secretary and current outside administration advisor, piled on: "I think when it comes to someone like Rick Perry, they're [voters] going to wonder why a place like Texas has one of the worst education systems," Gibbs said on Sunday's "Meet the Press."
But Texas's educational achievement record is more complex than Gibbs and Duncan make it sound, and their claims depend on carefully-chosen data.
On one hand, math scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress test have increased, and Texas students have performed relatively well under Perry's watch -- though progress has stalled recently. On the other hand, NAEP reading scores are relatively low, and Texas leads the country in the number of adults without high school diplomas. And while Texans scored slightly below the national average on the 2011 ACT, few of those students are college-ready.
When asked for clarification on what Duncan meant by saying Texas "may have" the nation's lowest graduation rate, a spokeswoman said she could not comment further. Texas's technical graduation rate may indeed be the nation's lowest, but that figure includes students of all ages who have not completed high school. The state's freshman completion rate is average, and Texas ranked seventh out of the 26 states that reported their four-year on-time graduation rates for 2009.
"Texas is mid-pack on graduation rates, and that's no great shakes," said Andy Rotherham, a former Clinton policy aide who now works as a partner at the think tank Bellwether Education Partners. "The bigger story is that Perry hasn't done anything on education."
WHAT POLICY?
Under Perry's watch, Texas's curriculum wars made national headlines with stories about the state's conservative school board arguing over textbook content. Perry himself received attention late last week for saying intelligent design is taught alongside evolution in Texas public schools. That statement flew in the face of a 1987 state Supreme Court ruling prohibiting the practice. Still, Perry's gaffe was more a statement on values than an education policy pronouncement.
While Perry has condemned the federal government's role in public schools, he does not seem to have a highly-articulated education policy of his own. His campaign website does not list education as an issue. Members of his staff did not return requests for comment.
Perry's gubernatorial website points to several small initiatives: teacher incentive pay, school supply reimbursement, teacher mentoring and increasing standards. But Texas education leaders say they wish Perry had articulated broader education positions.
"I couldn't point out a signature education policy but I give [Perry] credit for letting things play out over time and letting them get better," said Michael Marder, a professor at the University of Texas who runs a teacher preparation program that receives state funds. A lack of coherent education policy is inconsequential, he says, as long as the numbers are relatively good.
Ed Fuller, a long-time Texas education researcher, is less charitable. "If [Perry]'s going to run around claiming that he's done something good, the numbers don't show it," Fuller said. "Fourth grade math flattened out; we're not making improvements -- it's taking a while to translate into the eighth grade."
"He's done nothing," said Linda Bridges, who heads Texas's arm of the American Federation of Teachers.
JUMPING OFF THE FUNDING CLIFF
Budget cuts may end up the education legacy of Perry's governorship; Texas education observers predict that the school system is about to fall off the edge of a funding cliff.
During a special session to reform school funding in 2005, Perry said, "I cannot let $2 billion sit in some bank account when it can go directly to the classroom," according to his website. But the governor had no problem underfunding Texas's schools by $5.5 billion this legislative session, despite access to a $9.4 billion rainy-day fund. That move, some education advocates say, threatens to foil the subtle gains Texas students have made in recent years.
And while Perry touts job creation on the campaign trail, thousands of Texas education employees stand ready to lose their jobs because of the cuts.
The worst is yet to come, says Eva DeLuna Castro, a senior budget analyst at Texas's Center for Public Policy Priorities. Her think tank predicts a loss of 49,000 education jobs over the next two years.
"Federal stimulus money softened the blow this year," she said. "Next August will be worse. There will be cuts to dropout prevention, teacher pay, incentive pay, math and science labs and grants for pre-K. A lot of education initiatives done in earlier years will be gone now."
Texas now ranks 47th nationally in what it pays for each student's education. "[Perry's] goal is to make Texas the 99-cent store of states," said Scott Hochberg, a Democratic state representative. "You're going for cheap."
It's about to get cheaper. The state swapped its heavy reliance on property taxes for a new business tax in 2006, despite the Republican comptroller's warning that the flip would lead to a budget shortfall. Since then, Texas school funding -- and the state budget in general -- has been unsteady.
This budget session, the legislature responded to pressure from Perry and did not fund enrollment growth in schools, despite an increase of 80,000 students. According to Democratic state Sen. Kirk Watson, "[Perry] did this almost single-handedly, blocking the disuse of the rainy day fund with veto threats."
According to Bloomberg News, "Perry cut $15 billion from spending [over time] and shortchanged [students] by about $4 billion from previously mandated levels rather than raise taxes."
To Cody Wheeler, a music teacher at a Louis Elementary School in Houston, Perry's education policies will be apparent for the incoming class. Last year he had 26 students, but budget cuts have forced his district to lay off some teachers. "This year, I'm going to have a class of 35 kindergartners every day," Wheeler said. "That'll be pretty challenging."
FAVORING FEDERALISM
Perry has been called the anti-Obama of education policy more than once. But he's also the anti-George W. Bush in some ways.
Bush, Perry's predecessor in Texas, made education a major issue while leading both the state and, later, the country.
"Governor Bush was making public education a priority," said Hochberg. "Perry's education initiatives in k-12 have been limited to things like announcing that he was going to provide some teachers help to buy school supplies to their classrooms and then never funding it."
With Bush as president, Congress passed No Child Left Behind, the sweeping federal education law that requires accountability and test reporting among school districts and ties federal education funding to set performance standards.
Perry attacked NCLB in his book, "Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington," in a chapter titled "Federal Intervention in Education":
[J]ust like the spending hook used to induce compliance for seat-belt and drinking-age laws, the federal government reaches into our pockets, takes out wads of dollars, and then says that we can have them back only if we comply with federal instructions.
Perry also showed his states' rights principles in his resistance to participating in
Obama's Race to the Top, a grant program that had states compete for federal education funding in exchange for agreeing to implement adminstration-sanctioned reforms. "Texas knows how to best educate our students," Perry said.
He echoed that that point in "Fed Up," writing, "The academic standards of Texas are not for sale. We will retain our sovereign authority to decide how to educate our children."
But critics say Perry's funding decisions undermine any boasts of enhancing student learning. Instead, Texas kids are coming of age in an under-resourced school system that might be unable to prepare them to enter the workforce.
"If students are in underfunded schools, they'll never get ahead," DeLuna Castro said. "When they grow up, they'll be unable to pay taxes, too. It's a cycle. You've got to prepare them for that."
State Senators Try To Buy Time For Teachers
by Morgan Smith | Texas Tribune
February 24, 2011
With major state funding cuts looming, for many school districts, it's not a question of if — but how and when — teacher layoffs will occur. A new bipartisan bill from education leaders in the state Senate could temporarily change how schools go about that.
Currently districts must provide 45 days notice to teachers if their contracts are not going to be renewed. Once teachers receive word of that notice, they have 15 days to request a hearing. A bill by state Sens. Royce West, D-Dallas, Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, and Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, announced at a Capitol press conference Thursday would give teachers 30 days instead of 15 to request a hearing. The idea behind the newly filed SB 912, which the senators developed with input from teacher, administrator, and school board organizations, is to buy time for districts who may be forced to fire teachers soon even as the Legislature continues to work on what many hope will be an improved budget plan.
"Teachers are the No. 1 most important element in the classroom," said Shapiro, who chairs the Senate Education committee. "They come first and we've got to make absolutely sure that teachers across this state recognize that we are working diligently every single day to help them." As the senators took questions from the media at the conference, Shapiro also said she believed the Legislature would use some of the Rainy Day Fund to increase general revenue in the budget.
Davis, who also sits on the Education committee, said she hoped the bill sent a message to teachers that the Legislature is doing "as much we can in a difficult situation."
The legislation also contains a provision that allows districts to designate a lawyer to conduct the hearings in lieu of full a school board. If the estimates of potential layoffs into the 100,000s are accurate, school boards would be overwhelmed.
Eric Hartman, spokesman for the Texas branch of the American Federation of Teachers, emphasized that the legislation was "not something that permanently changes teacher contract rights in Texas."
If it secures a two-thirds vote in both chambers, the bill would take effect immediately — and would apply only for the current school year.
February 24, 2011
With major state funding cuts looming, for many school districts, it's not a question of if — but how and when — teacher layoffs will occur. A new bipartisan bill from education leaders in the state Senate could temporarily change how schools go about that.
Currently districts must provide 45 days notice to teachers if their contracts are not going to be renewed. Once teachers receive word of that notice, they have 15 days to request a hearing. A bill by state Sens. Royce West, D-Dallas, Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, and Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, announced at a Capitol press conference Thursday would give teachers 30 days instead of 15 to request a hearing. The idea behind the newly filed SB 912, which the senators developed with input from teacher, administrator, and school board organizations, is to buy time for districts who may be forced to fire teachers soon even as the Legislature continues to work on what many hope will be an improved budget plan.
"Teachers are the No. 1 most important element in the classroom," said Shapiro, who chairs the Senate Education committee. "They come first and we've got to make absolutely sure that teachers across this state recognize that we are working diligently every single day to help them." As the senators took questions from the media at the conference, Shapiro also said she believed the Legislature would use some of the Rainy Day Fund to increase general revenue in the budget.
Davis, who also sits on the Education committee, said she hoped the bill sent a message to teachers that the Legislature is doing "as much we can in a difficult situation."
The legislation also contains a provision that allows districts to designate a lawyer to conduct the hearings in lieu of full a school board. If the estimates of potential layoffs into the 100,000s are accurate, school boards would be overwhelmed.
Eric Hartman, spokesman for the Texas branch of the American Federation of Teachers, emphasized that the legislation was "not something that permanently changes teacher contract rights in Texas."
If it secures a two-thirds vote in both chambers, the bill would take effect immediately — and would apply only for the current school year.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
"Rube Goldberg" School Finance System Faces New Test
Noteworthy comment by Daniel Casey regarding possible responses to the budget shortfall and education:
-Patricia
by Ross Ramsey | Texas Tribune
2/21/2011
Cutting $10 billion from the state’s bill for public education could push more than two-dozen school districts from the group that receives state financing into the group that writes checks to the state to even things out between richer and poorer districts.
That’s dangerous political territory, but familiar terrain for Texas lawmakers. They’ve been in trouble with the courts over school finance for decades, and generally move to change things only in the face of lawsuits.
But over the years, they’ve also been careful to make sure districts don’t go backward financially, using “hold harmless” provisions to ensure that changes in school finance law don’t cost districts their state aid. By one estimate — from the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association — those requirements now account for $5.5 billion of what the state sends to school districts.
Despite those provisions, and the fact that public education eats up 41.2 percent of the state’s general revenue, the state government paid less than half of the cost of public schooling in Texas.
Texas has a school finance system that would have made Rube Goldberg giggle. It is a mash-up of state, local and federal taxes — the state paid 42.9 percent of the total, the districts paid 47.1 percent, and the federal government covered the other 10 percent in the 2009-10 school year, according to the Texas Education Agency — that is supposed to provide kids in every nook and cranny of the state with the same educational opportunity.
It forces lawmakers to balance the financing of schools where property values are high with those where the values are low, all without dictating local school property tax rates. Not surprisingly, it ends up in court every few years, with the state getting sued by whichever group of schools feels most mistreated at the time.
The state’s red budget could trigger the next round. The Texas Education Agency — directed by Robert Scott, a former aide to Gov. Rick Perry — asked lawmakers for $10.4 billion more than those lawmakers included in their proposed two-year budgets. That’s a little more than $1,000 per student, and the first set of printouts detailing what that might mean to each of the state’s school districts was a sea of negative numbers. According to the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association’s estimates, per-student spending would drop to $7,850 in 2013 from $9,200 in 2010, or about 14.6 percent.
Wealthier districts that already send locally raised tax money to the state — so-called “recapture districts” — would send more. Districts that get money from the state would get less. And depending on how it’s done, some districts that now get money from the state would have to turn around and write checks instead.
According to Moak, Casey & Associates, an Austin-based school finance and accountability consulting firm, a budget cut of that size could shift 30 new districts onto the recapture rolls, bringing the total to 195 districts and raising the amount sent by that group to the state to $1.4 billion from the current $959 million. Daniel Casey, a partner at the firm, who has years of experience in school finance, said the details of what will happen to each school district are unclear until the Legislature decides how to distribute money, what to allow school districts to do with their own taxes and so on. But there’s no way to absorb cuts of that size without affecting the whole system and, some lawmakers and experts say, without putting the state back into court defending its system.
That’s enough numbers to numb most lawmakers, but the politics of it could wake them back up. The most obvious way to make up for the cuts in state aid would be to increase financing from the federal government or to raise local property taxes. The state and the feds are arguing over $830 million in federal funding that Perry refused because of requirements it would impose on state education spending, but even that is not enough to cover a $5-billion-per-year hole.
And the financial problem is only half the trouble; getting the money always, or almost always, forces some change in the balancing formulas.
One trial balloon rises with every school finance crisis, and generally takes 24 to 48 hours to crash to the ground. In the early 1990s, it came from state Sen. Carl Parker, D-Port Arthur. Sen. Bill Ratliff, R-Mount Pleasant, gave it a try a decade later. And this week, it was Sen. Robert Duncan’s turn.
A statewide property tax could replace the local property taxes and end, for the most part, the fight over where the money comes from. The Lubbock Republican shot it down himself, talking to the local Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: “It’s just a discussion. It’s not a proposal.”
Something like that might keep the state out of court on school finance. But it wouldn’t solve the other, bigger problem.
Got $10 billion to spare?
The most obvious way to make up for the cuts in state aid would be to increase financing from the federal government or to raise local property taxes.
-Patricia
by Ross Ramsey | Texas Tribune
2/21/2011
Cutting $10 billion from the state’s bill for public education could push more than two-dozen school districts from the group that receives state financing into the group that writes checks to the state to even things out between richer and poorer districts.
That’s dangerous political territory, but familiar terrain for Texas lawmakers. They’ve been in trouble with the courts over school finance for decades, and generally move to change things only in the face of lawsuits.
But over the years, they’ve also been careful to make sure districts don’t go backward financially, using “hold harmless” provisions to ensure that changes in school finance law don’t cost districts their state aid. By one estimate — from the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association — those requirements now account for $5.5 billion of what the state sends to school districts.
Despite those provisions, and the fact that public education eats up 41.2 percent of the state’s general revenue, the state government paid less than half of the cost of public schooling in Texas.
Texas has a school finance system that would have made Rube Goldberg giggle. It is a mash-up of state, local and federal taxes — the state paid 42.9 percent of the total, the districts paid 47.1 percent, and the federal government covered the other 10 percent in the 2009-10 school year, according to the Texas Education Agency — that is supposed to provide kids in every nook and cranny of the state with the same educational opportunity.
It forces lawmakers to balance the financing of schools where property values are high with those where the values are low, all without dictating local school property tax rates. Not surprisingly, it ends up in court every few years, with the state getting sued by whichever group of schools feels most mistreated at the time.
The state’s red budget could trigger the next round. The Texas Education Agency — directed by Robert Scott, a former aide to Gov. Rick Perry — asked lawmakers for $10.4 billion more than those lawmakers included in their proposed two-year budgets. That’s a little more than $1,000 per student, and the first set of printouts detailing what that might mean to each of the state’s school districts was a sea of negative numbers. According to the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association’s estimates, per-student spending would drop to $7,850 in 2013 from $9,200 in 2010, or about 14.6 percent.
Wealthier districts that already send locally raised tax money to the state — so-called “recapture districts” — would send more. Districts that get money from the state would get less. And depending on how it’s done, some districts that now get money from the state would have to turn around and write checks instead.
According to Moak, Casey & Associates, an Austin-based school finance and accountability consulting firm, a budget cut of that size could shift 30 new districts onto the recapture rolls, bringing the total to 195 districts and raising the amount sent by that group to the state to $1.4 billion from the current $959 million. Daniel Casey, a partner at the firm, who has years of experience in school finance, said the details of what will happen to each school district are unclear until the Legislature decides how to distribute money, what to allow school districts to do with their own taxes and so on. But there’s no way to absorb cuts of that size without affecting the whole system and, some lawmakers and experts say, without putting the state back into court defending its system.
That’s enough numbers to numb most lawmakers, but the politics of it could wake them back up. The most obvious way to make up for the cuts in state aid would be to increase financing from the federal government or to raise local property taxes. The state and the feds are arguing over $830 million in federal funding that Perry refused because of requirements it would impose on state education spending, but even that is not enough to cover a $5-billion-per-year hole.
And the financial problem is only half the trouble; getting the money always, or almost always, forces some change in the balancing formulas.
One trial balloon rises with every school finance crisis, and generally takes 24 to 48 hours to crash to the ground. In the early 1990s, it came from state Sen. Carl Parker, D-Port Arthur. Sen. Bill Ratliff, R-Mount Pleasant, gave it a try a decade later. And this week, it was Sen. Robert Duncan’s turn.
A statewide property tax could replace the local property taxes and end, for the most part, the fight over where the money comes from. The Lubbock Republican shot it down himself, talking to the local Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: “It’s just a discussion. It’s not a proposal.”
Something like that might keep the state out of court on school finance. But it wouldn’t solve the other, bigger problem.
Got $10 billion to spare?
Inside Intelligence: Public Education Funding Is...
Check out the full report: Inside Intelligence: Verbatims for Feb. 21
-Patricia
by Ross Ramsey | Texas Tribune
2/21/2011
Our insiders took on school finance this week, and they're not optimistic that there will be a happy ending.
Lawmakers have proposed spending $10.4 billion less than the Texas Education Agency says it needs to keep things running like they're running now. Is that current level of services sufficient for public education? Two-thirds of our panel said no, it's not.
Do they think the Legislature will close the gap? Yes and no. Twenty percent say the schools will end the session $10 billion short, while 70 percent say they'll end up less than $5 billion short. The remaining 10 percent split between full restoration, more money than requested and don't know.
Should lawmakers free local schools to raise their property taxes to make up for money lost to state cuts? Most of our insiders — 70 percent — said yes, while 27 percent said no.
Our open-ended question this week was "What areas of education spending should be on the cutting block?" The full set of answers is attached, but here's a sampling:
-Patricia
by Ross Ramsey | Texas Tribune
2/21/2011
Our insiders took on school finance this week, and they're not optimistic that there will be a happy ending.
Lawmakers have proposed spending $10.4 billion less than the Texas Education Agency says it needs to keep things running like they're running now. Is that current level of services sufficient for public education? Two-thirds of our panel said no, it's not.
Should lawmakers free local schools to raise their property taxes to make up for money lost to state cuts? Most of our insiders — 70 percent — said yes, while 27 percent said no.
Our open-ended question this week was "What areas of education spending should be on the cutting block?" The full set of answers is attached, but here's a sampling:
• "TEA. Regional Centers."
• "Administrative costs."
• "Administration"
• "School district administration is bloated, and everything else is starved."
• "Administration; non-core programs; discretionary spending on curriculum, test preparation, consultants, public relations, etc."
• "We should be investing in public education, not cutting it to the bone."
• "Athletics."
• "The pensions of school teachers. They should have 401k plans like the rest of us and have to pay for their own healthcare."
• "Building stadiums; consolidating school districts;"
• "General administration, ridiculously expensive and counterproductive pension policies and practices, labor practices that reward retaining ineffective teachers, inefficiencies due to too many districts, local and state programs with no record of success in boosting student achievement, sports excesses, and inefficiencies due to inadequate use of technology"
• "Start with non-classroom expenditures. Next: support and administrative staffing has increased 20 percent since 2004, while student population has risen 7 percent. Moving from the current 1:1 teaching/non-teacher ratio to a 3:2 ratio would produce $3.25 billion in savings. Force a reduction in administrator pay and bonus packages. Abolish the regional service centers."
• "The Target Revenue entitlement should be eliminated first (total elimination saves about $4.5 billion per biennium). Second, outside the system grants should be eliminated (saves about $2 billion). Delaying the July and August payments to districts moves another $3.7 billion into the 2011-2013 biennium."
• "Wrong question, Texas ranked in the bottom quarter of states in per capita student funding throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century. Given the demographic changes taking place Texas needs to step it up, not cut back."
• "Football."
• "Well now, that question reveals the conservative bias in the media! Do we just assume that we're getting overeducated in Texas, and it's time to trim it back a little? I know it's pointless to ask Who's taxes should be raised so that our kids are a little smarter when they get to tomorrow? But still! The arrogance of the assumption that, without question, some education should be cut back is just more than I can stomach."
• "Though a tough political choice, consolidation of the smaller districts is one way to bring huge efficiencies to a bloated mess. Incentives for consolidation - and disincentives for not consolidating - should be in play."
• "This is a no brainer. Consolidate school systems and drastically cut administrative expenses. If that doesn't do, fire teachers."
• "None. Our entire education system from pre-K to post-secondary has been on a starvation diet for far too long. After over a decade of Republican mismanagement, Texas is already seeing the fruits of a policy that is virtually guaranteeing the creation of an entire generation of poorly educated Texans who will be ill equipped to compete and contribute to our state's prosperity. This is the ultimate mortgaging of our future, and I fear we will discover too late that it was a subprime one."
Legislators already revising proposed payday lending regulations
By Laylan Copelin | AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2011
The powerful payday lending lobby already has Texas senators reworking proposed legislation that would regulate what has become a lender of last resort for many Texans.
Several lawmakers, led by state Sen. Wendy Davis, a Fort Worth Democrat, have filed bills that would prohibit payday lenders and auto title lenders in Texas from sidestepping interest rate caps by charging fees that, in some instances, can push the effective annual percentage rates on short-term loans above 500 percent.
Texas is one of a half-dozen states that don't regulate payday or auto-title loans. In 2009, similar legislation to regulate the industry died in the Legislature without a floor vote.
At Tuesday's legislative hearing, the first on the issue this year, Davis said she would rework her bill so it would regulate payday lenders for the first time, but also would create a special interest rate for the industry.
"I'm willing to negotiate a unique rate structure," Davis said during a break in Tuesday's hearing.
Payday lenders such as Cash America Inc. of Fort Worth, ACE Cash Express of Irving and EZcorp Inc. of Austin partner with banks, which make short-term loans. The industry uses brokers in neighborhood storefronts to take loan applications, review the applicant's credit and collect payments. The stores are typically located in lower-income areas, including along East Seventh Street and East Riverside Drive in Austin.
The fees that the broker charges are not considered interest under state law.
If customers cannot repay short-term loans on time, they can "roll," or extend, the note by paying more fees, running up the high annual percentage rates.
"We're constantly rolling these people," said Sen. Royce West , a Dallas Democrat who has proposed a bill similar to Davis'.
At Tuesday's hearing, however, the industry matched the bills' supporters, with witnesses including consumers, pastors and experts.
"If this bill is passed, we will be forced to shut our stores down in Texas," said Jay Shipowitz, president of ACE Cash Express. ACE has 500 payday lending offices in Texas, including eight in Central Texas.
Gerri Guzman , executive director of the Washington-based Consumer Rights Coalition , an industry-backed group, testified that the legislation would eradicate an industry that serves consumers who can't get short-term loans at banks or credit unions.
"These people are underbanked," she said. "If this passes, consumers will be left without an important credit option."
Michael Price of Austin and Frederick Haynes III of Dallas are pastors on opposite sides of the issue.
Price said the industry financially supports his organization, Texas Coalition for Consumer Choice, which promotes personal responsibility and consumer freedom.
He testified that short-term loan rates can be less than fees for bounced checks or penalties for paying utility bills late.
Senators asked him whether it was fair for consumers to pay $1,200 in fees on a $500 loan, as a Houston woman testified about earlier in the day.
"It depends whether she was informed on her decision," he said.
Haynes said his church and three others have organized because "the community is saturated" with payday lenders.
"We are concerned why our community has been targeted," he said.
Haynes said payday loans are harmful to his church members: "Instead of throwing them a lifeline, we're throwing them shackles."
Sen. Chris Harris, R-Arlington, said he had received only two complaints about payday loans over the past decade.
Sen. Mike Jackson, R-La Porte, echoed that sentiment.
"I'm wondering if we're trying to fix something just to fix it," Jackson said. "If there is a huge problem out here, I'm having a hard time finding them."
Davis said that payday loan documents do not tell consumers where they can complain because the industry is not regulated.
She said she's not interested in putting payday lenders out of business. But she complained that industry officials would not tell her what fee cap would allow them to make a profit and stay in Texas.
The legislation was left pending in the Senate Committee on Business and Commerce while Davis and others rework the bill.
Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2011
The powerful payday lending lobby already has Texas senators reworking proposed legislation that would regulate what has become a lender of last resort for many Texans.
Several lawmakers, led by state Sen. Wendy Davis, a Fort Worth Democrat, have filed bills that would prohibit payday lenders and auto title lenders in Texas from sidestepping interest rate caps by charging fees that, in some instances, can push the effective annual percentage rates on short-term loans above 500 percent.
Texas is one of a half-dozen states that don't regulate payday or auto-title loans. In 2009, similar legislation to regulate the industry died in the Legislature without a floor vote.
At Tuesday's legislative hearing, the first on the issue this year, Davis said she would rework her bill so it would regulate payday lenders for the first time, but also would create a special interest rate for the industry.
"I'm willing to negotiate a unique rate structure," Davis said during a break in Tuesday's hearing.
Payday lenders such as Cash America Inc. of Fort Worth, ACE Cash Express of Irving and EZcorp Inc. of Austin partner with banks, which make short-term loans. The industry uses brokers in neighborhood storefronts to take loan applications, review the applicant's credit and collect payments. The stores are typically located in lower-income areas, including along East Seventh Street and East Riverside Drive in Austin.
The fees that the broker charges are not considered interest under state law.
If customers cannot repay short-term loans on time, they can "roll," or extend, the note by paying more fees, running up the high annual percentage rates.
"We're constantly rolling these people," said Sen. Royce West , a Dallas Democrat who has proposed a bill similar to Davis'.
At Tuesday's hearing, however, the industry matched the bills' supporters, with witnesses including consumers, pastors and experts.
"If this bill is passed, we will be forced to shut our stores down in Texas," said Jay Shipowitz, president of ACE Cash Express. ACE has 500 payday lending offices in Texas, including eight in Central Texas.
Gerri Guzman , executive director of the Washington-based Consumer Rights Coalition , an industry-backed group, testified that the legislation would eradicate an industry that serves consumers who can't get short-term loans at banks or credit unions.
"These people are underbanked," she said. "If this passes, consumers will be left without an important credit option."
Michael Price of Austin and Frederick Haynes III of Dallas are pastors on opposite sides of the issue.
Price said the industry financially supports his organization, Texas Coalition for Consumer Choice, which promotes personal responsibility and consumer freedom.
He testified that short-term loan rates can be less than fees for bounced checks or penalties for paying utility bills late.
Senators asked him whether it was fair for consumers to pay $1,200 in fees on a $500 loan, as a Houston woman testified about earlier in the day.
"It depends whether she was informed on her decision," he said.
Haynes said his church and three others have organized because "the community is saturated" with payday lenders.
"We are concerned why our community has been targeted," he said.
Haynes said payday loans are harmful to his church members: "Instead of throwing them a lifeline, we're throwing them shackles."
Sen. Chris Harris, R-Arlington, said he had received only two complaints about payday loans over the past decade.
Sen. Mike Jackson, R-La Porte, echoed that sentiment.
"I'm wondering if we're trying to fix something just to fix it," Jackson said. "If there is a huge problem out here, I'm having a hard time finding them."
Davis said that payday loan documents do not tell consumers where they can complain because the industry is not regulated.
She said she's not interested in putting payday lenders out of business. But she complained that industry officials would not tell her what fee cap would allow them to make a profit and stay in Texas.
The legislation was left pending in the Senate Committee on Business and Commerce while Davis and others rework the bill.
Dallas school district plans to offer incentives up to $10,000 to teachers to resign early
By MATTHEW HAAG, Staff Writer | Dallas Morning News
22 February 2011
The Dallas school district is proposing to offer up to $10,000 to teachers who agree to resign at the end of the year to lighten expenses before possible deep budget cuts.
Under a plan that could be approved Thursday by DISD trustees, the teachers would receive an incentive of 15 percent of their annual salary, up to $10,000. It could cost the district up to $10 million and force it to dip into an already low reserve fund.
The offer would be available to the first 1,000 teachers with contracts who volunteer. That would be about 10 percent of the district’s 10,600 teachers.
Employees who accept the offer must notify the district by March 11, but they would work through the rest of the school year.
“The goal is to help us lay off less people,” said DISD spokesman Jon Dahlander. “We wanted to create a very lucrative incentive. It is to get their attention.”
The proposal comes as Dallas ISD grapples with how to offset a possible $253 million state-funding cut under a worst-case scenario. A reduction that steep could prompt the district to cut 3,900 of its 21,000 positions — 3,100 of those employees would be teachers or others at the campus level.
Neighboring school districts have approved early resignation incentive packages in recent weeks as the Texas Legislature contemplates cutting $10 billion in public education funds over the next two years. But the packages pale in comparison with Dallas ISD’s proposal.
The Rockwall school board approved a $1,000 incentive this week. Cedar Hill is offering $1,000 to the first 50 teachers who step forward.
Irving is offering $500 to staff and $1,000 to teachers if they’re among the first 250 employees to resign. Only 79 employees have accepted so far.
“It’s not bad, but we are certainly not at 250 with about 21/2 weeks to go,” said Irving ISD spokesman Tony Thetford.
The idea is that the offers could be cheaper for the district than laying off employees, who could file grievances and receive unemployment benefits. They also allow districts to better understand next year’s staffing levels and prepare budgets in advance.
Possible cutback targets
Dallas school officials are already eyeing deep cuts to payroll, which consumes more than 80 percent of the district’s $1.2 billion annual budget.
Local and state teacher associations praised the district’s proposal and said they believe many teachers will jump at the offer.
“I think it’s great,” said Rena Honea, president of teachers association Alliance-AFT Dallas. She said teachers at or nearing retirement age would be the most likely candidates.
The deal comes with caveats, however: An employee who takes the offer cannot file for unemployment benefits.
Also, few teachers would qualify for the $10,000 incentive cap, which applies to those making about $66,000 a year. Only those with about 35 years of experience are paid that much, according to DISD records.
Clay Robison, spokesman at the Texas State Teachers Association, said it was the largest offer he’s heard of and he believes it will get teachers’ attention.
“If the teacher is nearing retirement or thinking about retirement, it’s certainly preferable so they can have a little extra,” he said.
But Dallas ISD’s incentive package wasn’t praised by everyone.
DISD trustee Lew Blackburn said he believes the incentive would be accepted by 1,000 teachers, but a $15,000 offer might be snatched up sooner.
He said he would like to know how much money the district expects to save by offering the incentives compared to laying off the same number of employees. “We are going to have to find out,” he said. “But I’d be willing to bet that we are going to save money.”
Savings unknown
Dahlander, the district’s spokesman, said he didn’t know how much the district could save or the size of the severance package laid off employees might receive.
In 2008, DISD laid off 415 educators, who received a severance package of two months pay and benefits if they didn’t challenge the termination.
If trustees approve the proposal, the district could use up to $10 million of its roughly $70 million in reserves. Dallas ISD projects to end this school year with a $20 million surplus, but district officials have tried to improve the reserves and have cautioned against tapping into it.
Michael MacNaughton, a founding member of the watchdog group Dallas Friends of Public Education, questioned the proposal.
“Since DISD is already recommending that 3,100 teachers should lose their jobs, why spend $10M to nudge 1,000 out the door early,” MacNaughton wrote in an e-mail. “Aren’t these teachers going to be let go anyway under DISD’s preliminary proposal in the ‘worst case’ scenario?”
Staff writer Tawnell D. Hobbs contributed to this report.
22 February 2011
The Dallas school district is proposing to offer up to $10,000 to teachers who agree to resign at the end of the year to lighten expenses before possible deep budget cuts.
Under a plan that could be approved Thursday by DISD trustees, the teachers would receive an incentive of 15 percent of their annual salary, up to $10,000. It could cost the district up to $10 million and force it to dip into an already low reserve fund.
The offer would be available to the first 1,000 teachers with contracts who volunteer. That would be about 10 percent of the district’s 10,600 teachers.
Employees who accept the offer must notify the district by March 11, but they would work through the rest of the school year.
“The goal is to help us lay off less people,” said DISD spokesman Jon Dahlander. “We wanted to create a very lucrative incentive. It is to get their attention.”
The proposal comes as Dallas ISD grapples with how to offset a possible $253 million state-funding cut under a worst-case scenario. A reduction that steep could prompt the district to cut 3,900 of its 21,000 positions — 3,100 of those employees would be teachers or others at the campus level.
Neighboring school districts have approved early resignation incentive packages in recent weeks as the Texas Legislature contemplates cutting $10 billion in public education funds over the next two years. But the packages pale in comparison with Dallas ISD’s proposal.
The Rockwall school board approved a $1,000 incentive this week. Cedar Hill is offering $1,000 to the first 50 teachers who step forward.
Irving is offering $500 to staff and $1,000 to teachers if they’re among the first 250 employees to resign. Only 79 employees have accepted so far.
“It’s not bad, but we are certainly not at 250 with about 21/2 weeks to go,” said Irving ISD spokesman Tony Thetford.
The idea is that the offers could be cheaper for the district than laying off employees, who could file grievances and receive unemployment benefits. They also allow districts to better understand next year’s staffing levels and prepare budgets in advance.
Possible cutback targets
Dallas school officials are already eyeing deep cuts to payroll, which consumes more than 80 percent of the district’s $1.2 billion annual budget.
Local and state teacher associations praised the district’s proposal and said they believe many teachers will jump at the offer.
“I think it’s great,” said Rena Honea, president of teachers association Alliance-AFT Dallas. She said teachers at or nearing retirement age would be the most likely candidates.
The deal comes with caveats, however: An employee who takes the offer cannot file for unemployment benefits.
Also, few teachers would qualify for the $10,000 incentive cap, which applies to those making about $66,000 a year. Only those with about 35 years of experience are paid that much, according to DISD records.
Clay Robison, spokesman at the Texas State Teachers Association, said it was the largest offer he’s heard of and he believes it will get teachers’ attention.
“If the teacher is nearing retirement or thinking about retirement, it’s certainly preferable so they can have a little extra,” he said.
But Dallas ISD’s incentive package wasn’t praised by everyone.
DISD trustee Lew Blackburn said he believes the incentive would be accepted by 1,000 teachers, but a $15,000 offer might be snatched up sooner.
He said he would like to know how much money the district expects to save by offering the incentives compared to laying off the same number of employees. “We are going to have to find out,” he said. “But I’d be willing to bet that we are going to save money.”
Savings unknown
Dahlander, the district’s spokesman, said he didn’t know how much the district could save or the size of the severance package laid off employees might receive.
In 2008, DISD laid off 415 educators, who received a severance package of two months pay and benefits if they didn’t challenge the termination.
If trustees approve the proposal, the district could use up to $10 million of its roughly $70 million in reserves. Dallas ISD projects to end this school year with a $20 million surplus, but district officials have tried to improve the reserves and have cautioned against tapping into it.
Michael MacNaughton, a founding member of the watchdog group Dallas Friends of Public Education, questioned the proposal.
“Since DISD is already recommending that 3,100 teachers should lose their jobs, why spend $10M to nudge 1,000 out the door early,” MacNaughton wrote in an e-mail. “Aren’t these teachers going to be let go anyway under DISD’s preliminary proposal in the ‘worst case’ scenario?”
Staff writer Tawnell D. Hobbs contributed to this report.
Texas Education Agency layoffs begin
Officials won't confirm numbers, but past state budget history could signal losses in the hundreds.
By Andrew Kaspar | AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2011
The Texas Education Agency laid off an unspecified number of its 1,054 employees Tuesday, with Education Commissioner Robert Scott releasing a brief statement acknowledging the beginning of a process that could reduce the agency's staff by hundreds.
"Based on the impending budget reductions, we have taken steps to reduce the size of the agency. We will continue our mission to serve our school districts and students," he said.
The final tally of axed employees will be determined in the Legislature's final appropriations bill. Texas' 2003 budget shortfall — about $10 billion — resulted in 200 TEA layoffs, and this year, lawmakers are attempting to close a gap of $15 billion to $27 billion.
Debbie Ratcliffe, a spokeswoman for the agency, described the mood as "very somber" around the William B. Travis Building, where the bulk of TEA employees work.
She declined to give specifics on the number of state employees or positions that were eliminated, saying the agency was informing employees individually. Exact numbers would probably be available later this week, she said.
At the beginning of 2010, Gov. Rick Perry and legislative leaders asked all state agencies to reduce their costs by 5 percent. In December, they requested that agencies find an additional 2.5 percent of their budgets to cut. Tuesday's layoffs are the latest development in a budget crisis that could cut up to 9,600 state jobs before all is said and done.
TEA has cut about $153 million from its budget since the reduction orders were issued, Ratcliffe said, but Tuesday's layoffs were the first significant hit for the agency since 2003. Ratcliffe said these layoffs are not so much part of Perry's belt-tightening request but rather "more in anticipation of what's to come."
"We know that this may not be the end of it, depending on what happens with the budget," Ratcliffe said.
Other state agencies are feeling similar budget pain. The Department of Information Resources cut 22 positions in late January. The Department of Criminal Justice will cut 555 positions by April 15, with notifications to employees beginning next week, agency officials said. Depending on the final budget, as many as 1,200 more jobs could be eliminated from the state's correctional agency.
TEA, which serves as a guiding force and administrative hub for public education statewide, is cutting positions as school districts are also preparing for big cuts to teachers and other personnel. On Monday night, the Austin school district upped its estimate of those to be laid off, bringing its potential job losses to more than 1,100.
"There's probably some sentiment that if school districts are going to be hit, then the state education agency also needs to get leaner," said Andy Homer, director of government relations for the Texas Public Employees Association.
By Andrew Kaspar | AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2011
The Texas Education Agency laid off an unspecified number of its 1,054 employees Tuesday, with Education Commissioner Robert Scott releasing a brief statement acknowledging the beginning of a process that could reduce the agency's staff by hundreds.
"Based on the impending budget reductions, we have taken steps to reduce the size of the agency. We will continue our mission to serve our school districts and students," he said.
The final tally of axed employees will be determined in the Legislature's final appropriations bill. Texas' 2003 budget shortfall — about $10 billion — resulted in 200 TEA layoffs, and this year, lawmakers are attempting to close a gap of $15 billion to $27 billion.
Debbie Ratcliffe, a spokeswoman for the agency, described the mood as "very somber" around the William B. Travis Building, where the bulk of TEA employees work.
She declined to give specifics on the number of state employees or positions that were eliminated, saying the agency was informing employees individually. Exact numbers would probably be available later this week, she said.
At the beginning of 2010, Gov. Rick Perry and legislative leaders asked all state agencies to reduce their costs by 5 percent. In December, they requested that agencies find an additional 2.5 percent of their budgets to cut. Tuesday's layoffs are the latest development in a budget crisis that could cut up to 9,600 state jobs before all is said and done.
TEA has cut about $153 million from its budget since the reduction orders were issued, Ratcliffe said, but Tuesday's layoffs were the first significant hit for the agency since 2003. Ratcliffe said these layoffs are not so much part of Perry's belt-tightening request but rather "more in anticipation of what's to come."
"We know that this may not be the end of it, depending on what happens with the budget," Ratcliffe said.
Other state agencies are feeling similar budget pain. The Department of Information Resources cut 22 positions in late January. The Department of Criminal Justice will cut 555 positions by April 15, with notifications to employees beginning next week, agency officials said. Depending on the final budget, as many as 1,200 more jobs could be eliminated from the state's correctional agency.
TEA, which serves as a guiding force and administrative hub for public education statewide, is cutting positions as school districts are also preparing for big cuts to teachers and other personnel. On Monday night, the Austin school district upped its estimate of those to be laid off, bringing its potential job losses to more than 1,100.
"There's probably some sentiment that if school districts are going to be hit, then the state education agency also needs to get leaner," said Andy Homer, director of government relations for the Texas Public Employees Association.
Hundreds of Texans Protest Proposed Immigration Bills
by Julian Aguilar, Justin Dehn and Thanh Tan | Texas Tribune
February 22, 2011
Hundreds of Texans descended on the state Capitol on Tuesday to draw attention to what they say are dozens of bills that, if passed, would hinder economic development, stymie education and — above all — encourage racial profiling in the Lone Star State.
Some marched and waved signs supporting the United Farm Workers. Others, cloaked in Texas and U.S. flags, proclaimed that “Texas Can Do Better Than Arizona.” The immigrants’ rights advocates, former military personnel, lawmakers and students — from seemingly every rural and urban sector of the state — rallied and proclaimed that bills like HB 17 and HB 22 would serve only to increase insecurity and distrust within immigrant communities, hinder Texas’ future workforce from being competitive and lead to an increase in crime. The bills, by state Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball, would make it a Class B misdemeanor to be in the country without proper documentation and mandate that school districts report the immigration status of their students. Riddle has also filed HB 1202, which would make it a state jail felony to knowingly and “recklessly” hire an unauthorized worker.
Immigration-related legislation faces its best chance of passing in decades after a Nov. 2 election that tilted the balance of power to the Republican Party in Texas. Republicans now control the Texas House, 101 to 49. Despite the shift, however, Democratic lawmakers are pushing their own legislation. State Sen. José Rodríguez, D-El Paso, touted his SB 600, which would prevent law enforcement from asking the immigration status of victims of or witnesses to crimes. Rodríguez said the cooperation of the immigrant community has made El Paso one of the safest cities of its size.
State Rep. Armando Walle, D-Houston, told protesters on Tuesday that he was once asked by a reporter why the immigration rallies didn’t draw crowds the sizes of other movements. “It’s because they are all out there working,” he told the crowd, which took up its “Sí Se Puede” chant in response to the lawmaker's comments. “They are out in the fields, in the restaurants.”
Added state Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth: “You are here to say ‘no' to the most racist session of the Texas Legislature in a quarter of a century."
February 22, 2011
Hundreds of Texans descended on the state Capitol on Tuesday to draw attention to what they say are dozens of bills that, if passed, would hinder economic development, stymie education and — above all — encourage racial profiling in the Lone Star State.
Some marched and waved signs supporting the United Farm Workers. Others, cloaked in Texas and U.S. flags, proclaimed that “Texas Can Do Better Than Arizona.” The immigrants’ rights advocates, former military personnel, lawmakers and students — from seemingly every rural and urban sector of the state — rallied and proclaimed that bills like HB 17 and HB 22 would serve only to increase insecurity and distrust within immigrant communities, hinder Texas’ future workforce from being competitive and lead to an increase in crime. The bills, by state Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball, would make it a Class B misdemeanor to be in the country without proper documentation and mandate that school districts report the immigration status of their students. Riddle has also filed HB 1202, which would make it a state jail felony to knowingly and “recklessly” hire an unauthorized worker.
Immigration-related legislation faces its best chance of passing in decades after a Nov. 2 election that tilted the balance of power to the Republican Party in Texas. Republicans now control the Texas House, 101 to 49. Despite the shift, however, Democratic lawmakers are pushing their own legislation. State Sen. José Rodríguez, D-El Paso, touted his SB 600, which would prevent law enforcement from asking the immigration status of victims of or witnesses to crimes. Rodríguez said the cooperation of the immigrant community has made El Paso one of the safest cities of its size.
State Rep. Armando Walle, D-Houston, told protesters on Tuesday that he was once asked by a reporter why the immigration rallies didn’t draw crowds the sizes of other movements. “It’s because they are all out there working,” he told the crowd, which took up its “Sí Se Puede” chant in response to the lawmaker's comments. “They are out in the fields, in the restaurants.”
Added state Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth: “You are here to say ‘no' to the most racist session of the Texas Legislature in a quarter of a century."
Budget Cuts Have Some Calling for STAAR Delay
While schools may not be graded based on test-performance in the first year, students will be, especially those beginning high school in the upcoming 2011-12 academic year. When you experiment with children and their education there are no do-overs. You can never go back and give them what they lost.
-Patricia
by Ben Philpott | Texas Tribune
February 23, 2011
As Texas school districts brace for budget cuts and layoffs in the coming months, many education advocates are particularly concerned about the state's roll out of a new testing system in 2012.
The State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, will track student, school and school district performance, replacing the current Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.
With current state budget proposals set to cut public education funding by about $10 billion, some want STAAR implementation delayed to give districts time to recover from the 2011 cuts.
Dax Gonzalez, a spokesman for the Texas Association of School Boards, said some of those cuts would dramatically reduce the amount of money set to help students prepare for the more rigorous accountability tests and ax many of the remediation programs that will help students who fail the tests.
"Additional instruction and preparation for students and training for teachers is key," Gonzalez said. "So we're really setting our kids up to fail if we implement a new accountability system without providing for the additional resources necessary for preparing the students and teachers."
But Sen. Florence Shapiro, chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee, said current budget proposals are still in draft form.
"Right now we're looking at a base bill," said Shapiro, R-Plano. "And the numbers are going to be significantly different at the end of the day."
The state has spent the last five years preparing for STAAR, and there's no reason to slow down now, she said, especially since school districts won't be graded on STAAR results in the first year.
"We've already put in a lot of money. All the tests are done. All of the curriculum is done," Shapiro said. "We need the textbooks, obviously, which I'm working towards. That's my first goal, to get the textbooks prepared and brought to the schools. But everything is in place."
If something goes wrong the first year, the state can make changes and even slow down implementation, she said. The contract with the company that designed the test allows the state to renegotiate without paying a penalty.
But Gonzalez said that even if the first year of testing doesn't count, schools and students could still take a psychological hit if test scores take a tumble.
"When you bring in a new system and the students don't necessarily know what they are in store for, or if they happen to have a bad year testing wise," Gonzalez said, "that can really do a lot to damage the morale of a school and students."
-Patricia
by Ben Philpott | Texas Tribune
February 23, 2011
As Texas school districts brace for budget cuts and layoffs in the coming months, many education advocates are particularly concerned about the state's roll out of a new testing system in 2012.
The State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, will track student, school and school district performance, replacing the current Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.
With current state budget proposals set to cut public education funding by about $10 billion, some want STAAR implementation delayed to give districts time to recover from the 2011 cuts.
Dax Gonzalez, a spokesman for the Texas Association of School Boards, said some of those cuts would dramatically reduce the amount of money set to help students prepare for the more rigorous accountability tests and ax many of the remediation programs that will help students who fail the tests.
"Additional instruction and preparation for students and training for teachers is key," Gonzalez said. "So we're really setting our kids up to fail if we implement a new accountability system without providing for the additional resources necessary for preparing the students and teachers."
But Sen. Florence Shapiro, chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee, said current budget proposals are still in draft form.
"Right now we're looking at a base bill," said Shapiro, R-Plano. "And the numbers are going to be significantly different at the end of the day."
The state has spent the last five years preparing for STAAR, and there's no reason to slow down now, she said, especially since school districts won't be graded on STAAR results in the first year.
"We've already put in a lot of money. All the tests are done. All of the curriculum is done," Shapiro said. "We need the textbooks, obviously, which I'm working towards. That's my first goal, to get the textbooks prepared and brought to the schools. But everything is in place."
If something goes wrong the first year, the state can make changes and even slow down implementation, she said. The contract with the company that designed the test allows the state to renegotiate without paying a penalty.
But Gonzalez said that even if the first year of testing doesn't count, schools and students could still take a psychological hit if test scores take a tumble.
"When you bring in a new system and the students don't necessarily know what they are in store for, or if they happen to have a bad year testing wise," Gonzalez said, "that can really do a lot to damage the morale of a school and students."
Friday, October 21, 2011
Americans Don't Realize Just How Badly We're Getting Screwed by the Top 0.1 Percent Hoarding the Country's Wealth
We live in a "neo-feudal" society indeed with the top one-tenth of one percent owning tens of trillions of dollars in wealth that is beyond what most of us can imagine. "An entire generation of unprecedented wealth creation has been concealed from 99 percent of the population for over 35 years."
-Angela
AlterNet
Americans Don't Realize Just How Badly We're Getting Screwed by the Top 0.1 Percent Hoarding the Country's Wealth
By David DeGraw
Posted on August 14, 2011, Printed on August 21, 2011
With an unprecedented sum of wealth, tens of trillions of dollars, held within the top one-tenth of one percent of the US population, we now have the most severe inequality of wealth in US history. Not even the robber barons of the Gilded Age were as greedy as the modern-day economic elite.
As American philosopher John Dewey said, “There is no such thing as the liberty or effective power of an individual, group, or class, except in relation to the liberties, the effective powers, of other individuals, groups or classes.”
In my report, The Economic Elite vs. the People, I reported on the strategic withholding of wealth from 99 percent of the US population over the past generation. Since the mid-1970s, worker production and wealth creation has exploded. As the statistics throughout this report prove, the dramatic increase in wealth has been almost entirely absorbed by the economic top one-tenth of one percent of the population, with most of it going to the top one-hundredth of one percent.
If you are wondering why a critical mass of people desperately struggling to make ends meet are still not fighting back with overwhelming force and running the mega-wealthy aristocrats out of town, let’s consider two significant factors:
1) People are so busy trying to maintain their current standard of living that their energies are consumed by holding onto the little they have left.
2) People have very little understanding of how much wealth has been consolidated within the top economic one-tenth of one percent.
Considering the first factor, it is obvious that people have become beaten down psychologically and financially. A report in the Guardian titled, “Anxiety keeps the super-rich safe from middle-class rage,” suggests that people are so desperate to hold onto what they have that they are too busy looking down to look up: “As psychologists will tell you, fear of loss is more powerful than the prospect of gain. The struggling middle classes look down more anxiously than they look up, particularly in recession and sluggish recovery.”
Considering the second factor, people do not understand how much wealth has been withheld from them. The average person has never personally experienced or seen the excessive wealth and luxury that the mega-rich live in. Wealth inequality has grown so extreme and the wealthy have become so far removed from average society, it is as if the rich exist in some outer stratosphere beyond the comprehension of the average person. As the Guardian report states:
“… having little daily contact with the rich and little knowledge of how they lived, they simply didn’t think about inequality much, or regard the wealthy as direct competitors for resources. As the sociologist Garry Runciman observed: ‘Envy is a difficult emotion to sustain across a broad social distance.’… Even now most underestimate the rewards of bankers and executives. Top pay has reached such levels that, rather like interstellar distances, what the figures mean is hard to grasp.”
In fact, the average American vastly underestimates our nation's severe wealth disparity. This survey, featured in the NY Times, reveals that Americans think our society is far more equal than it actually is:
“In a recent survey of Americans, my colleague Dan Ariely and I found that Americans drastically underestimated the level of wealth inequality in the United States. While recent data indicates that the richest 20 percent of Americans own 84 percent of all wealth, people estimated that this group owned just 59 percent – believing that total wealth in this country is far more evenly divided among poorer Americans.
What’s more, when we asked them how they thought wealth should be distributed, they told us they wanted an even more equitable distribution, with the richest 20 percent owning just 32 percent of the wealth. This was true of Democrats and Republicans, rich and poor – all groups we surveyed approved of some inequality, but their ideal was far more equal than the current level.”
This chart shows the survey's results:
The overwhelming majority of the US population is unaware of the vast wealth at hand. An entire generation of unprecedented wealth creation has been concealed from 99 percent of the population for over 35 years. Having never personally experienced this wealth, the average American cannot comprehend what is possible if even a fraction of the money was used for the betterment of society.
Given modern technology and wealth, American citizens should not be living in poverty. The statistics demonstrate that we now live in a neo-feudal society. In comparison to the wealthiest one-tenth of one percent of the population, who are sitting on top of tens of trillions of dollars in wealth, we are essentially propagandized peasants.
The fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans are struggling to get by, while tens of trillions of dollars are consolidated within a small fraction of the population, is a crime against humanity.
The next time you are stressed out, struggling to make ends meet and pay off your debts, just think about the trillions of dollars sitting in the obscenely bloated pockets of the financial elites. I still cling to the hope that once enough people become aware of this fact, we can have the non-violent revolution we so urgently need. Until then, the rich get richer as a critical mass with increasingly dire economic prospects desperately struggles to make ends meet.
© 2011 Amped Status All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/152010/
[w1]
-Angela
AlterNet
Americans Don't Realize Just How Badly We're Getting Screwed by the Top 0.1 Percent Hoarding the Country's Wealth
By David DeGraw
Posted on August 14, 2011, Printed on August 21, 2011
With an unprecedented sum of wealth, tens of trillions of dollars, held within the top one-tenth of one percent of the US population, we now have the most severe inequality of wealth in US history. Not even the robber barons of the Gilded Age were as greedy as the modern-day economic elite.
As American philosopher John Dewey said, “There is no such thing as the liberty or effective power of an individual, group, or class, except in relation to the liberties, the effective powers, of other individuals, groups or classes.”
In my report, The Economic Elite vs. the People, I reported on the strategic withholding of wealth from 99 percent of the US population over the past generation. Since the mid-1970s, worker production and wealth creation has exploded. As the statistics throughout this report prove, the dramatic increase in wealth has been almost entirely absorbed by the economic top one-tenth of one percent of the population, with most of it going to the top one-hundredth of one percent.
If you are wondering why a critical mass of people desperately struggling to make ends meet are still not fighting back with overwhelming force and running the mega-wealthy aristocrats out of town, let’s consider two significant factors:
1) People are so busy trying to maintain their current standard of living that their energies are consumed by holding onto the little they have left.
2) People have very little understanding of how much wealth has been consolidated within the top economic one-tenth of one percent.
Considering the first factor, it is obvious that people have become beaten down psychologically and financially. A report in the Guardian titled, “Anxiety keeps the super-rich safe from middle-class rage,” suggests that people are so desperate to hold onto what they have that they are too busy looking down to look up: “As psychologists will tell you, fear of loss is more powerful than the prospect of gain. The struggling middle classes look down more anxiously than they look up, particularly in recession and sluggish recovery.”
Considering the second factor, people do not understand how much wealth has been withheld from them. The average person has never personally experienced or seen the excessive wealth and luxury that the mega-rich live in. Wealth inequality has grown so extreme and the wealthy have become so far removed from average society, it is as if the rich exist in some outer stratosphere beyond the comprehension of the average person. As the Guardian report states:
“… having little daily contact with the rich and little knowledge of how they lived, they simply didn’t think about inequality much, or regard the wealthy as direct competitors for resources. As the sociologist Garry Runciman observed: ‘Envy is a difficult emotion to sustain across a broad social distance.’… Even now most underestimate the rewards of bankers and executives. Top pay has reached such levels that, rather like interstellar distances, what the figures mean is hard to grasp.”
In fact, the average American vastly underestimates our nation's severe wealth disparity. This survey, featured in the NY Times, reveals that Americans think our society is far more equal than it actually is:
“In a recent survey of Americans, my colleague Dan Ariely and I found that Americans drastically underestimated the level of wealth inequality in the United States. While recent data indicates that the richest 20 percent of Americans own 84 percent of all wealth, people estimated that this group owned just 59 percent – believing that total wealth in this country is far more evenly divided among poorer Americans.
What’s more, when we asked them how they thought wealth should be distributed, they told us they wanted an even more equitable distribution, with the richest 20 percent owning just 32 percent of the wealth. This was true of Democrats and Republicans, rich and poor – all groups we surveyed approved of some inequality, but their ideal was far more equal than the current level.”
This chart shows the survey's results:
The overwhelming majority of the US population is unaware of the vast wealth at hand. An entire generation of unprecedented wealth creation has been concealed from 99 percent of the population for over 35 years. Having never personally experienced this wealth, the average American cannot comprehend what is possible if even a fraction of the money was used for the betterment of society.
Given modern technology and wealth, American citizens should not be living in poverty. The statistics demonstrate that we now live in a neo-feudal society. In comparison to the wealthiest one-tenth of one percent of the population, who are sitting on top of tens of trillions of dollars in wealth, we are essentially propagandized peasants.
The fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans are struggling to get by, while tens of trillions of dollars are consolidated within a small fraction of the population, is a crime against humanity.
The next time you are stressed out, struggling to make ends meet and pay off your debts, just think about the trillions of dollars sitting in the obscenely bloated pockets of the financial elites. I still cling to the hope that once enough people become aware of this fact, we can have the non-violent revolution we so urgently need. Until then, the rich get richer as a critical mass with increasingly dire economic prospects desperately struggles to make ends meet.
© 2011 Amped Status All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/152010/
[w1]
8 Reasons Young Americans Don't Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance
AlterNet
8 Reasons Young Americans Don't Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance
By Bruce E. Levine, AlterNet
Posted on July 31, 2011, Printed on August 21, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151850/8_reasons_young_americans_don%27t_fight_back%3A_how_the_us_crushed_youth_resistance
Traditionally, young people have energized democratic movements. So it is a major coup for the ruling elite to have created societal institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance to domination.
Young Americans—even more so than older Americans—appear to have acquiesced to the idea that the corporatocracy can completely screw them and that they are helpless to do anything about it. A 2010 Gallup poll asked Americans “Do you think the Social Security system will be able to pay you a benefit when you retire?” Among 18- to 34-years-olds, 76 percent of them said no. Yet despite their lack of confidence in the availability of Social Security for them, few have demanded it be shored up by more fairly payroll-taxing the wealthy; most appear resigned to having more money deducted from their paychecks for Social Security, even though they don’t believe it will be around to benefit them.
How exactly has American society subdued young Americans?
1. Student-Loan Debt. Large debt—and the fear it creates—is a pacifying force. There was no tuition at the City University of New York when I attended one of its colleges in the 1970s, a time when tuition at many U.S. public universities was so affordable that it was easy to get a B.A. and even a graduate degree without accruing any student-loan debt. While those days are gone in the United States, public universities continue to be free in the Arab world and are either free or with very low fees in many countries throughout the world. The millions of young Iranians who risked getting shot to protest their disputed 2009 presidential election, the millions of young Egyptians who risked their lives earlier this year to eliminate Mubarak, and the millions of young Americans who demonstrated against the Vietnam War all had in common the absence of pacifying huge student-loan debt.
Today in the United States, two-thirds of graduating seniors at four-year colleges have student-loan debt, including over 62 percent of public university graduates. While average undergraduate debt is close to $25,000, I increasingly talk to college graduates with closer to $100,000 in student-loan debt. During the time in one’s life when it should be easiest to resist authority because one does not yet have family responsibilities, many young people worry about the cost of bucking authority, losing their job, and being unable to pay an ever-increasing debt. In a vicious cycle, student debt has a subduing effect on activism, and political passivity makes it more likely that students will accept such debt as a natural part of life.
2. Psychopathologizing and Medicating Noncompliance. In 1955, Erich Fromm, the then widely respected anti-authoritarian leftist psychoanalyst, wrote, “Today the function of psychiatry, psychology and psychoanalysis threatens to become the tool in the manipulation of man.” Fromm died in 1980, the same year that an increasingly authoritarian America elected Ronald Reagan president, and an increasingly authoritarian American Psychiatric Association added to their diagnostic bible (then the DSM-III) disruptive mental disorders for children and teenagers such as the increasingly popular “oppositional defiant disorder” (ODD). The official symptoms of ODD include “often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules,” “often argues with adults,” and “often deliberately does things to annoy other people.”
Many of America’s greatest activists including Saul Alinsky (1909–1972), the legendary organizer and author of Reveille for Radicals and Rules for Radicals, would today certainly be diagnosed with ODD and other disruptive disorders. Recalling his childhood, Alinsky said, “I never thought of walking on the grass until I saw a sign saying ‘Keep off the grass.’ Then I would stomp all over it.” Heavily tranquilizing antipsychotic drugs (e.g. Zyprexa and Risperdal) are now the highest grossing class of medication in the United States ($16 billion in 2010); a major reason for this, according to theJournal of the American Medical Association in 2010, is that many children receiving antipsychotic drugs have nonpsychotic diagnoses such as ODD or some other disruptive disorder (this especially true of Medicaid-covered pediatric patients).
3. Schools That Educate for Compliance and Not for Democracy. Upon accepting the New York City Teacher of the Year Award on January 31, 1990, John Taylor Gatto upset many in attendance by stating: “The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions.” A generation ago, the problem of compulsory schooling as a vehicle for an authoritarian society was widely discussed, but as this problem has gotten worse, it is seldom discussed.
The nature of most classrooms, regardless of the subject matter, socializes students to be passive and directed by others, to follow orders, to take seriously the rewards and punishments of authorities, to pretend to care about things they don’t care about, and that they are impotent to affect their situation. A teacher can lecture about democracy, but schools are essentially undemocratic places, and so democracy is not what is instilled in students. Jonathan Kozol in The Night Is Dark and I Am Far from Home focused on how school breaks us from courageous actions. Kozol explains how our schools teach us a kind of “inert concern” in which “caring”—in and of itself and without risking the consequences of actual action—is considered “ethical.” School teaches us that we are “moral and mature” if we politely assert our concerns, but the essence of school—its demand for compliance—teaches us not to act in a friction-causing manner.
4. “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top.” The corporatocracy has figured out a way to make our already authoritarian schools even more authoritarian. Democrat-Republican bipartisanship has resulted in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, NAFTA, the PATRIOT Act, the War on Drugs, the Wall Street bailout, and educational policies such as “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top.” These policies are essentially standardized-testing tyranny that creates fear, which is antithetical to education for a democratic society. Fear forces students and teachers to constantly focus on the demands of test creators; it crushes curiosity, critical thinking, questioning authority, and challenging and resisting illegitimate authority. In a more democratic and less authoritarian society, one would evaluate the effectiveness of a teacher not by corporatocracy-sanctioned standardized tests but by asking students, parents, and a community if a teacher is inspiring students to be more curious, to read more, to learn independently, to enjoy thinking critically, to question authorities, and to challenge illegitimate authorities.
5. Shaming Young People Who Take Education—But Not Their Schooling—Seriously. In a 2006 survey in the United States, it was found that 40 percent of children between first and third grade read every day, but by fourth grade, that rate declined to 29 percent. Despite the anti-educational impact of standard schools, children and their parents are increasingly propagandized to believe that disliking school means disliking learning. That was not always the case in the United States. Mark Twain famously said, “I never let my schooling get in the way of my education.” Toward the end of Twain’s life in 1900, only 6 percent of Americans graduated high school. Today, approximately 85 percent of Americans graduate high school, but this is good enough for Barack Obama who told us in 2009, “And dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It’s not just quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country.”
The more schooling Americans get, however, the more politically ignorant they are of America’s ongoing class war, and the more incapable they are of challenging the ruling class. In the 1880s and 1890s, American farmers with little or no schooling created a Populist movement that organized America’s largest-scale working people’s cooperative, formed a People’s Party that received 8 percent of the vote in 1892 presidential election, designed a “subtreasury” plan (that had it been implemented would have allowed easier credit for farmers and broke the power of large banks) and sent 40,000 lecturers across America to articulate it, and evidenced all kinds of sophisticated political ideas, strategies and tactics absent today from America’s well-schooled population. Today, Americans who lack college degrees are increasingly shamed as “losers”; however, Gore Vidal and George Carlin, two of America’s most astute and articulate critics of the corporatocracy, never went to college, and Carlin dropped out of school in the ninth grade.
6. The Normalization of Surveillance. The fear of being surveilled makes a population easier to control. While the National Security Agency (NSA) has received publicity for monitoring American citizen’s email and phone conversations, and while employer surveillance has become increasingly common in the United States, young Americans have become increasingly acquiescent to corporatocracy surveillance because, beginning at a young age, surveillance is routine in their lives. Parents routinely check Web sites for their kid’s latest test grades and completed assignments, and just like employers, are monitoring their children’s computers and Facebook pages. Some parents use the GPS in their children’s cell phones to track their whereabouts, and other parents have video cameras in their homes. Increasingly, I talk with young people who lack the confidence that they can even pull off a party when their parents are out of town, and so how much confidence are they going to have about pulling off a democratic movement below the radar of authorities?
7. Television. In 2009, the Nielsen Company reported that TV viewing in the United States is at an all-time high if one includes the following “three screens”: a television set, a laptop/personal computer, and a cell phone. American children average eight hours a day on TV, video games, movies, the Internet, cell phones, iPods, and other technologies (not including school-related use). Many progressives are concerned about the concentrated control of content by the corporate media, but the mere act of watching TV—regardless of the programming—is the primary pacifying agent (private-enterprise prisons have recognized that providing inmates with cable television can be a more economical method to keep them quiet and subdued than it would be to hire more guards).
Television is a dream come true for an authoritarian society: those with the most money own most of what people see; fear-based television programming makes people more afraid and distrustful of one another, which is good for the ruling elite who depend on a “divide and conquer” strategy; TV isolates people so they are not joining together to create resistance to authorities; and regardless of the programming, TV viewers’ brainwaves slow down, transforming them closer to a hypnotic state that makes it difficult to think critically. While playing a video games is not as zombifying as passively viewing TV, such games have become for many boys and young men their only experience of potency, and this “virtual potency” is certainly no threat to the ruling elite.
8. Fundamentalist Religion and Fundamentalist Consumerism. American culture offers young Americans the “choices” of fundamentalist religion and fundamentalist consumerism. All varieties of fundamentalism narrow one’s focus and inhibit critical thinking. While some progressives are fond of calling fundamentalist religion the “opiate of the masses,” they too often neglect the pacifying nature of America’s other major fundamentalism. Fundamentalist consumerism pacifies young Americans in a variety of ways. Fundamentalist consumerism destroys self-reliance, creating people who feel completely dependent on others and who are thus more likely to turn over decision-making power to authorities, the precise mind-set that the ruling elite loves to see. A fundamentalist consumer culture legitimizes advertising, propaganda, and all kinds of manipulations, including lies; and when a society gives legitimacy to lies and manipulativeness, it destroys the capacity of people to trust one another and form democratic movements. Fundamentalist consumerism also promotes self-absorption, which makes it difficult for the solidarity necessary for democratic movements.
These are not the only aspects of our culture that are subduing young Americans and crushing their resistance to domination. The food-industrial complex has helped create an epidemic of childhood obesity, depression, and passivity. The prison-industrial complex keeps young anti-authoritarians “in line” (now by the fear that they may come before judges such as the two Pennsylvania ones who took $2.6 million from private-industry prisons to ensure that juveniles were incarcerated). As Ralph Waldo Emerson observed: “All our things are right and wrong together. The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike.”
Bruce E. Levine is a clinical psychologist and author of Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite (Chelsea Green, 2011). His Web site is www.brucelevine.net
© 2011 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/151850/
[w2]
8 Reasons Young Americans Don't Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance
By Bruce E. Levine, AlterNet
Posted on July 31, 2011, Printed on August 21, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151850/8_reasons_young_americans_don%27t_fight_back%3A_how_the_us_crushed_youth_resistance
Traditionally, young people have energized democratic movements. So it is a major coup for the ruling elite to have created societal institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance to domination.
Young Americans—even more so than older Americans—appear to have acquiesced to the idea that the corporatocracy can completely screw them and that they are helpless to do anything about it. A 2010 Gallup poll asked Americans “Do you think the Social Security system will be able to pay you a benefit when you retire?” Among 18- to 34-years-olds, 76 percent of them said no. Yet despite their lack of confidence in the availability of Social Security for them, few have demanded it be shored up by more fairly payroll-taxing the wealthy; most appear resigned to having more money deducted from their paychecks for Social Security, even though they don’t believe it will be around to benefit them.
How exactly has American society subdued young Americans?
1. Student-Loan Debt. Large debt—and the fear it creates—is a pacifying force. There was no tuition at the City University of New York when I attended one of its colleges in the 1970s, a time when tuition at many U.S. public universities was so affordable that it was easy to get a B.A. and even a graduate degree without accruing any student-loan debt. While those days are gone in the United States, public universities continue to be free in the Arab world and are either free or with very low fees in many countries throughout the world. The millions of young Iranians who risked getting shot to protest their disputed 2009 presidential election, the millions of young Egyptians who risked their lives earlier this year to eliminate Mubarak, and the millions of young Americans who demonstrated against the Vietnam War all had in common the absence of pacifying huge student-loan debt.
Today in the United States, two-thirds of graduating seniors at four-year colleges have student-loan debt, including over 62 percent of public university graduates. While average undergraduate debt is close to $25,000, I increasingly talk to college graduates with closer to $100,000 in student-loan debt. During the time in one’s life when it should be easiest to resist authority because one does not yet have family responsibilities, many young people worry about the cost of bucking authority, losing their job, and being unable to pay an ever-increasing debt. In a vicious cycle, student debt has a subduing effect on activism, and political passivity makes it more likely that students will accept such debt as a natural part of life.
2. Psychopathologizing and Medicating Noncompliance. In 1955, Erich Fromm, the then widely respected anti-authoritarian leftist psychoanalyst, wrote, “Today the function of psychiatry, psychology and psychoanalysis threatens to become the tool in the manipulation of man.” Fromm died in 1980, the same year that an increasingly authoritarian America elected Ronald Reagan president, and an increasingly authoritarian American Psychiatric Association added to their diagnostic bible (then the DSM-III) disruptive mental disorders for children and teenagers such as the increasingly popular “oppositional defiant disorder” (ODD). The official symptoms of ODD include “often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules,” “often argues with adults,” and “often deliberately does things to annoy other people.”
Many of America’s greatest activists including Saul Alinsky (1909–1972), the legendary organizer and author of Reveille for Radicals and Rules for Radicals, would today certainly be diagnosed with ODD and other disruptive disorders. Recalling his childhood, Alinsky said, “I never thought of walking on the grass until I saw a sign saying ‘Keep off the grass.’ Then I would stomp all over it.” Heavily tranquilizing antipsychotic drugs (e.g. Zyprexa and Risperdal) are now the highest grossing class of medication in the United States ($16 billion in 2010); a major reason for this, according to theJournal of the American Medical Association in 2010, is that many children receiving antipsychotic drugs have nonpsychotic diagnoses such as ODD or some other disruptive disorder (this especially true of Medicaid-covered pediatric patients).
3. Schools That Educate for Compliance and Not for Democracy. Upon accepting the New York City Teacher of the Year Award on January 31, 1990, John Taylor Gatto upset many in attendance by stating: “The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions.” A generation ago, the problem of compulsory schooling as a vehicle for an authoritarian society was widely discussed, but as this problem has gotten worse, it is seldom discussed.
The nature of most classrooms, regardless of the subject matter, socializes students to be passive and directed by others, to follow orders, to take seriously the rewards and punishments of authorities, to pretend to care about things they don’t care about, and that they are impotent to affect their situation. A teacher can lecture about democracy, but schools are essentially undemocratic places, and so democracy is not what is instilled in students. Jonathan Kozol in The Night Is Dark and I Am Far from Home focused on how school breaks us from courageous actions. Kozol explains how our schools teach us a kind of “inert concern” in which “caring”—in and of itself and without risking the consequences of actual action—is considered “ethical.” School teaches us that we are “moral and mature” if we politely assert our concerns, but the essence of school—its demand for compliance—teaches us not to act in a friction-causing manner.
4. “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top.” The corporatocracy has figured out a way to make our already authoritarian schools even more authoritarian. Democrat-Republican bipartisanship has resulted in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, NAFTA, the PATRIOT Act, the War on Drugs, the Wall Street bailout, and educational policies such as “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top.” These policies are essentially standardized-testing tyranny that creates fear, which is antithetical to education for a democratic society. Fear forces students and teachers to constantly focus on the demands of test creators; it crushes curiosity, critical thinking, questioning authority, and challenging and resisting illegitimate authority. In a more democratic and less authoritarian society, one would evaluate the effectiveness of a teacher not by corporatocracy-sanctioned standardized tests but by asking students, parents, and a community if a teacher is inspiring students to be more curious, to read more, to learn independently, to enjoy thinking critically, to question authorities, and to challenge illegitimate authorities.
5. Shaming Young People Who Take Education—But Not Their Schooling—Seriously. In a 2006 survey in the United States, it was found that 40 percent of children between first and third grade read every day, but by fourth grade, that rate declined to 29 percent. Despite the anti-educational impact of standard schools, children and their parents are increasingly propagandized to believe that disliking school means disliking learning. That was not always the case in the United States. Mark Twain famously said, “I never let my schooling get in the way of my education.” Toward the end of Twain’s life in 1900, only 6 percent of Americans graduated high school. Today, approximately 85 percent of Americans graduate high school, but this is good enough for Barack Obama who told us in 2009, “And dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It’s not just quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country.”
The more schooling Americans get, however, the more politically ignorant they are of America’s ongoing class war, and the more incapable they are of challenging the ruling class. In the 1880s and 1890s, American farmers with little or no schooling created a Populist movement that organized America’s largest-scale working people’s cooperative, formed a People’s Party that received 8 percent of the vote in 1892 presidential election, designed a “subtreasury” plan (that had it been implemented would have allowed easier credit for farmers and broke the power of large banks) and sent 40,000 lecturers across America to articulate it, and evidenced all kinds of sophisticated political ideas, strategies and tactics absent today from America’s well-schooled population. Today, Americans who lack college degrees are increasingly shamed as “losers”; however, Gore Vidal and George Carlin, two of America’s most astute and articulate critics of the corporatocracy, never went to college, and Carlin dropped out of school in the ninth grade.
6. The Normalization of Surveillance. The fear of being surveilled makes a population easier to control. While the National Security Agency (NSA) has received publicity for monitoring American citizen’s email and phone conversations, and while employer surveillance has become increasingly common in the United States, young Americans have become increasingly acquiescent to corporatocracy surveillance because, beginning at a young age, surveillance is routine in their lives. Parents routinely check Web sites for their kid’s latest test grades and completed assignments, and just like employers, are monitoring their children’s computers and Facebook pages. Some parents use the GPS in their children’s cell phones to track their whereabouts, and other parents have video cameras in their homes. Increasingly, I talk with young people who lack the confidence that they can even pull off a party when their parents are out of town, and so how much confidence are they going to have about pulling off a democratic movement below the radar of authorities?
7. Television. In 2009, the Nielsen Company reported that TV viewing in the United States is at an all-time high if one includes the following “three screens”: a television set, a laptop/personal computer, and a cell phone. American children average eight hours a day on TV, video games, movies, the Internet, cell phones, iPods, and other technologies (not including school-related use). Many progressives are concerned about the concentrated control of content by the corporate media, but the mere act of watching TV—regardless of the programming—is the primary pacifying agent (private-enterprise prisons have recognized that providing inmates with cable television can be a more economical method to keep them quiet and subdued than it would be to hire more guards).
Television is a dream come true for an authoritarian society: those with the most money own most of what people see; fear-based television programming makes people more afraid and distrustful of one another, which is good for the ruling elite who depend on a “divide and conquer” strategy; TV isolates people so they are not joining together to create resistance to authorities; and regardless of the programming, TV viewers’ brainwaves slow down, transforming them closer to a hypnotic state that makes it difficult to think critically. While playing a video games is not as zombifying as passively viewing TV, such games have become for many boys and young men their only experience of potency, and this “virtual potency” is certainly no threat to the ruling elite.
8. Fundamentalist Religion and Fundamentalist Consumerism. American culture offers young Americans the “choices” of fundamentalist religion and fundamentalist consumerism. All varieties of fundamentalism narrow one’s focus and inhibit critical thinking. While some progressives are fond of calling fundamentalist religion the “opiate of the masses,” they too often neglect the pacifying nature of America’s other major fundamentalism. Fundamentalist consumerism pacifies young Americans in a variety of ways. Fundamentalist consumerism destroys self-reliance, creating people who feel completely dependent on others and who are thus more likely to turn over decision-making power to authorities, the precise mind-set that the ruling elite loves to see. A fundamentalist consumer culture legitimizes advertising, propaganda, and all kinds of manipulations, including lies; and when a society gives legitimacy to lies and manipulativeness, it destroys the capacity of people to trust one another and form democratic movements. Fundamentalist consumerism also promotes self-absorption, which makes it difficult for the solidarity necessary for democratic movements.
These are not the only aspects of our culture that are subduing young Americans and crushing their resistance to domination. The food-industrial complex has helped create an epidemic of childhood obesity, depression, and passivity. The prison-industrial complex keeps young anti-authoritarians “in line” (now by the fear that they may come before judges such as the two Pennsylvania ones who took $2.6 million from private-industry prisons to ensure that juveniles were incarcerated). As Ralph Waldo Emerson observed: “All our things are right and wrong together. The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike.”
Bruce E. Levine is a clinical psychologist and author of Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite (Chelsea Green, 2011). His Web site is www.brucelevine.net
© 2011 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/151850/
[w2]
How Obama lost his voice, and how he can get it back
This piece came out awhile back but still applies to the Obama presidency. Any possibility of recovery? First, you'd have to agree with this analysis.
-Angela
How Obama lost his voice, and how he can get it back November 03, 2010|By Marshall Ganz
Los Angeles Times
How Obama lost his voice, and how he can get it back
Barack Obama went from being a transformational leader in the campaign to a transactional one as president. It didn't work, and he must reverse course.
President Obama entered office wrapped in a mantle of moral leadership. His call for change was rooted in values that had long been eclipsed in our public life: a sense of mutual responsibility, commitment to equality and belief in inclusive diversity. Those values inspired a new generation of voters, restored faith to the cynical and created a national movement.
Now, 18 months and an "enthusiasm gap" later, the nation's major challenges remain largely unmet, and a discredited conservative movement has reinvented itself in a more virulent form.
This dramatic reversal is not the result of bad policy as such; the president made some real policy gains. It is not a consequence of a president who is too liberal, too conservative or too centrist. And it is not the doing of an administration ignorant of Washington's ways. Nor can we honestly blame the system, the media or the public — the ground on which presidential politics is always played.
It is the result, ironically, of poor leadership choices.
Abandoning the "transformational" model of his presidential campaign, Obama has tried to govern as a "transactional" leader. These terms were coined by political scientist James MacGregor Burns 30 years ago. "Transformational" leadership engages followers in the risky and often exhilarating work of changing the world, work that often changes the activists themselves. Its sources are shared values that become wellsprings of the courage, creativity and hope needed to open new pathways to success. "Transactional" leadership, on the other hand, is about horse-trading, operating within the routine, and it is practiced to maintain, rather than change, the status quo.
The nation was ready for transformation, but the president gave us transaction. And, as is the case with leadership failures, much of the public's anger, disappointment and frustration has been turned on a leader who failed to lead.
Obama and his team made three crucial choices that undermined the president's transformational mission. First, he abandoned the bully pulpit of moral argument and public education. Next, he chose to lead with a politics of compromise rather than advocacy. And finally, he chose to demobilize the movement that elected him president. By shifting focus from a public ready to drive change — as in "yes we can" — he shifted the focus to himself and attempted to negotiate change from the inside, as in "yes I can."
During the presidential campaign, Obama inspired the nation not by delivering a poll-driven message but by telling a story that revealed the person within — within him and within us. In his Philadelphia speech on race, we learned of his gift not only for moral uplift but for "public education" in the deepest sense, bringing us to a new understanding of the albatross of racial politics that has burdened us since our founding.
On assuming office, something seemed to go out of the president's speeches, out of the speaker and, as a result, out of us. Obama was suddenly strangely absent from the public discourse. We found ourselves in the grip of an economic crisis brought on by 40 years of anti-government rhetoric, policy and practices, but we listened in vain for an economic version of the race speech. What had gone wrong? Who was responsible? What could we do to help the president deal with it?
And even when he decided to pursue healthcare reform as his top priority, where were the moral arguments or an honest account of insurance and drug industry opposition?
In his transactional leadership mode, the president chose compromise rather than advocacy. Instead of speaking on behalf of a deeply distressed public, articulating clear positions to lead opinion and inspire public support, Obama seemed to think that by acting as a mediator, he could translate Washington dysfunction into legislative accomplishment. Confusing bipartisanship in the electorate with bipartisanship in Congress, he lost the former by his feckless pursuit of the latter, empowering the very people most committed to bringing down his presidency.
Seeking reform from inside a system structured to resist change, Obama turned aside some of the most well-organized reform coalitions ever assembled — on the environment, workers' rights, immigration and healthcare. He ignored the leverage that a radical flank robustly pursuing its goals could give a reform president — as organized labor empowered FDR's New Deal or the civil rights movement empowered LBJ's Voting Rights Act. His base was told that aggressive action targeting, for example, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee — where healthcare reform languished for many months — would reflect poorly on the president and make his job harder. Threatened with losing access, and confusing access with power, the coalitions for the most part went along.
Finally, the president demobilized the widest, deepest and most effective grass-roots organization ever built to support a Democratic president. With the help of new media and a core of some 3,000 well-trained and highly motivated organizers, 13.5 million volunteers set the Obama campaign apart. They were not the "usual suspects" — party loyalists, union staff and paid canvassers — but a broad array of first-time citizen activists. Nor were they merely an e-mail list. At least 1.5 million people, according to the campaign's calculations, played active roles in local leadership teams across the nation.
But the Obama team put the whole thing to sleep, except for a late-breaking attempt to rally support for healthcare reform. Volunteers were exiled to the confines of the Democratic National Committee. "Fighting for the president's agenda" meant doing as you were told, sending redundant e-mails to legislators and responding to ubiquitous pleas for money. Even the touted call for citizen "input" into governance consisted mainly of e-mails, mass conference calls and the occasional summoning of "real people" to legitimize White House events.
During the 2008 campaign, transformational leadership defied conventional wisdom. Funds were raised in wholly new ways. Organizers set up shop in states that no Democratic president had won in recent times. Citizens were engaged on a scale never before imagined. And an African American was elected president!
Now Obama must take a deep breath, step back, reflect on the values that drew him into public life in the first place and acknowledge responsibility for his mistakes. He must reverse the leadership choices of the first half of his term. His No. 1 mission must be to speak for the anxious and the marginalized and to lead us in the task of putting Americans to work rebuilding our future. He must advocate, not merely try to mediate in a fractious, divided Washington. And he must again rely on ordinary citizens to help us move forward.
Although the stakes are greater than ever, only by rediscovering the courage for transformational leadership can he — with us — begin anew.
Marshall Ganz helped devise the grass-roots organizing model for the Obama campaign. His most recent book is "Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement." He is a lecturer in public policy at Harvard University.
Los Angeles Times Articles
Copyright 2011 Los Angeles Times
Terms of Service
-Angela
How Obama lost his voice, and how he can get it back November 03, 2010|By Marshall Ganz
Los Angeles Times
How Obama lost his voice, and how he can get it back
Barack Obama went from being a transformational leader in the campaign to a transactional one as president. It didn't work, and he must reverse course.
President Obama entered office wrapped in a mantle of moral leadership. His call for change was rooted in values that had long been eclipsed in our public life: a sense of mutual responsibility, commitment to equality and belief in inclusive diversity. Those values inspired a new generation of voters, restored faith to the cynical and created a national movement.
Now, 18 months and an "enthusiasm gap" later, the nation's major challenges remain largely unmet, and a discredited conservative movement has reinvented itself in a more virulent form.
This dramatic reversal is not the result of bad policy as such; the president made some real policy gains. It is not a consequence of a president who is too liberal, too conservative or too centrist. And it is not the doing of an administration ignorant of Washington's ways. Nor can we honestly blame the system, the media or the public — the ground on which presidential politics is always played.
It is the result, ironically, of poor leadership choices.
Abandoning the "transformational" model of his presidential campaign, Obama has tried to govern as a "transactional" leader. These terms were coined by political scientist James MacGregor Burns 30 years ago. "Transformational" leadership engages followers in the risky and often exhilarating work of changing the world, work that often changes the activists themselves. Its sources are shared values that become wellsprings of the courage, creativity and hope needed to open new pathways to success. "Transactional" leadership, on the other hand, is about horse-trading, operating within the routine, and it is practiced to maintain, rather than change, the status quo.
The nation was ready for transformation, but the president gave us transaction. And, as is the case with leadership failures, much of the public's anger, disappointment and frustration has been turned on a leader who failed to lead.
Obama and his team made three crucial choices that undermined the president's transformational mission. First, he abandoned the bully pulpit of moral argument and public education. Next, he chose to lead with a politics of compromise rather than advocacy. And finally, he chose to demobilize the movement that elected him president. By shifting focus from a public ready to drive change — as in "yes we can" — he shifted the focus to himself and attempted to negotiate change from the inside, as in "yes I can."
During the presidential campaign, Obama inspired the nation not by delivering a poll-driven message but by telling a story that revealed the person within — within him and within us. In his Philadelphia speech on race, we learned of his gift not only for moral uplift but for "public education" in the deepest sense, bringing us to a new understanding of the albatross of racial politics that has burdened us since our founding.
On assuming office, something seemed to go out of the president's speeches, out of the speaker and, as a result, out of us. Obama was suddenly strangely absent from the public discourse. We found ourselves in the grip of an economic crisis brought on by 40 years of anti-government rhetoric, policy and practices, but we listened in vain for an economic version of the race speech. What had gone wrong? Who was responsible? What could we do to help the president deal with it?
And even when he decided to pursue healthcare reform as his top priority, where were the moral arguments or an honest account of insurance and drug industry opposition?
In his transactional leadership mode, the president chose compromise rather than advocacy. Instead of speaking on behalf of a deeply distressed public, articulating clear positions to lead opinion and inspire public support, Obama seemed to think that by acting as a mediator, he could translate Washington dysfunction into legislative accomplishment. Confusing bipartisanship in the electorate with bipartisanship in Congress, he lost the former by his feckless pursuit of the latter, empowering the very people most committed to bringing down his presidency.
Seeking reform from inside a system structured to resist change, Obama turned aside some of the most well-organized reform coalitions ever assembled — on the environment, workers' rights, immigration and healthcare. He ignored the leverage that a radical flank robustly pursuing its goals could give a reform president — as organized labor empowered FDR's New Deal or the civil rights movement empowered LBJ's Voting Rights Act. His base was told that aggressive action targeting, for example, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee — where healthcare reform languished for many months — would reflect poorly on the president and make his job harder. Threatened with losing access, and confusing access with power, the coalitions for the most part went along.
Finally, the president demobilized the widest, deepest and most effective grass-roots organization ever built to support a Democratic president. With the help of new media and a core of some 3,000 well-trained and highly motivated organizers, 13.5 million volunteers set the Obama campaign apart. They were not the "usual suspects" — party loyalists, union staff and paid canvassers — but a broad array of first-time citizen activists. Nor were they merely an e-mail list. At least 1.5 million people, according to the campaign's calculations, played active roles in local leadership teams across the nation.
But the Obama team put the whole thing to sleep, except for a late-breaking attempt to rally support for healthcare reform. Volunteers were exiled to the confines of the Democratic National Committee. "Fighting for the president's agenda" meant doing as you were told, sending redundant e-mails to legislators and responding to ubiquitous pleas for money. Even the touted call for citizen "input" into governance consisted mainly of e-mails, mass conference calls and the occasional summoning of "real people" to legitimize White House events.
During the 2008 campaign, transformational leadership defied conventional wisdom. Funds were raised in wholly new ways. Organizers set up shop in states that no Democratic president had won in recent times. Citizens were engaged on a scale never before imagined. And an African American was elected president!
Now Obama must take a deep breath, step back, reflect on the values that drew him into public life in the first place and acknowledge responsibility for his mistakes. He must reverse the leadership choices of the first half of his term. His No. 1 mission must be to speak for the anxious and the marginalized and to lead us in the task of putting Americans to work rebuilding our future. He must advocate, not merely try to mediate in a fractious, divided Washington. And he must again rely on ordinary citizens to help us move forward.
Although the stakes are greater than ever, only by rediscovering the courage for transformational leadership can he — with us — begin anew.
Marshall Ganz helped devise the grass-roots organizing model for the Obama campaign. His most recent book is "Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement." He is a lecturer in public policy at Harvard University.
Los Angeles Times Articles
Copyright 2011 Los Angeles Times
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