Brookings: "Poor Kids Suck"

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When it comes to slick-looking research of questionable results in fields outside their area of expertise, you can always count on the folks at Brookings. They have a new report out entitled The Character Factor: Measures and Impact of Drive and Prudence, and it has some important things to tell us about the kinds of odd thoughts occupying reformster minds these days.

The whole report is thirty-five pages long, but don't worry-- I've read it so that you don't have to. Fasten your seatbelts, boys and girls (particularly those of you who can be scientifically proven to be character-deficient)-- this will be a long and bumpy ride.

Character Is Important

Yes, some of this report is clearly based on work previously published in The Journal Of Blindingly Obvious Conclusions. And we announce that in the first sentence:

A growing body of empirical research demonstrates that people who possess certain character strengths do better in life in terms of work, earnings, education and so on, even when taking into account their academic abilities. Smarts matter, but so does character. 

In all fairness, the next sentence begins with "This is hardly a revelation." That sentence goes on to quietly define what "character" means-- "work hard, defer gratification, and get along with others." But we push right past that to get to Three Reasons This Field of Study Is Now a Thing.

1) There's concrete evidence to back it up, a la Duckworth et. al.
2) That evidence suggests that character is as important as smartness for life success
3) Given that importance, policymakers ought to be paying more attention to "cultivation and distribution of these skills."

Now, at first I thought point 3 meant that policymakers need to develop better character themselves, and I was ready to get on board-- but no. Instead, Brookings wants character building to be something that policymakers inflict on other people (and they have a whole other article about it). I am less excited about that.

Also, "non-cognitive skills" is nobody's idea of what to call this stuff.

Narrowing Our Focus, Muddying the Water

Let's further define our terms, and distinguish between moral character (qualities needed to be ethical) and performance character (qualities needed to " realize one's potential for excellence").  Some scholars apparently argue that the distinction is not clear cut and/or unhelpful. It appears to me that performance character could be defined as "the kind of character one could have and still be a sociopath," which, in terms of anything called "character," seems problematic.

For this report, Brookings is going to go with performance character. Specifically, they're going to stick with Duckworth's work, defining performance character as a composite of the tendency to stick with long term goals and self control. They reference her revered grit scale and other products of Grittological Studies .

At any rate, for the purpose of this report, we are going to pretend that sticktoitivity and self-control are the key to understanding character. Or, alternately, we could say that we are going to study these two small qualities and do our damndest to pretend that they have broader implications. And to complete this process of obfuscatorial magnification, we're going to give these two qualities new names-- "drive" and "prudence."

We'll define "drive" as the ability to apply oneself to a task and stick to it. We'll define "prudence" as the ability to defer gratification and look to the future. And we will establish the importance of our definitions by, I kid you not, putting them in table form.

Bizarre Side Trip #1

Brookings uses a footnote to cover why they call these things "character strengths" instead of traits. It is totally NOT because that attaches a positive value judgment to them, but because it shows they are deeper than skills and more malleable than traits. Not quite simply born with them, but deeper than simple learned behavior. Remember that for later.

The footnote also has this rather sad observation: "It is hard to learn kindness, but somewhat easier to learn self-control." No particular research base is offered for that extraordinary observation, but it is sheer poetry in terms of efficiently describing the sad inner lives of some folks. Dickens could not have better described the broken soul of Ebenezer Scrooge. But here, as throughout pretty much the whole report, we're going to take the personal experience of one select sampling and assume it to be true for all human beings.

How Much Does Drive Matter?

Here Brookings will throw a bunch of research projects at the wall to see what sticks. They include, for instance, the classic grittological studies that showed that people who tend to complete long projects will tend to complete long projects (because every Department of Grittology needs a Professor of Tautological Studies). "Drive appears to be related to college completion," they observe, and back it up by saying it does better at predicting college completion that SAT or ACT scores, which is a mighty low bar to clear. We're a little fuzzy on how we determined drive ratings for the individuals in these studies; if they have anything to do with high school GPA, then of course they're good predictors. It's like saying that knowing how far your eyeballs are above the ground is a good predictor of your height.

They do have some interesting data from the ASVAB test, which includes some sections that test a student's resistance to mind-numbingly dull tasks (really). And they cite themselves in another paper to prove that non-cognitive skills (sorry-- they backslid, not I) correlate to economic mobility. If I personally had a higher drive rating, I would go read that paper too and report back, but alas, I am not that drivey.

And What About Prudence?

Can I just say how much I love that we're talking about prudence, because it's such a lovely word, steeped in the aroma of maiden aunts and pilgrims. Prudence. Just breathe it in for a moment.

K. For this, we're going to trot out the old four year olds vs. marshmallows research. There has been some great research in the last forty years to parse out what this hoary old study might actually mean and might actually miss. I like this one in particular from Rochester, because it finds a huge difference factor in the environment. Some researchers behaved like unreliable nits, while others proved true to their words, and the result was a gigantic difference in the children's wait time. This is huge because it tells us something extremely important--

It's much easier to defer gratification till later if you can believe that you'll actually get it later. If you believe that deferring gratification means giving it up entirely-- you are less likely to defer. Brookings does not include the new research in their report.

Brookings concludes this section with

Drive and prudence contribute to higher earnings, more education, better health outcomes
and less criminal behavior.And as long as we're just making stuff up:

We can also easily imagine that they are important for marriage, parenting, and community involvement.

Plus, we can imagine that they give you better hair, firmer muscle tone, and fresher smelling breath. Plus, you probably won't get cancer. But as unsupported as these suppositions are, they are still a critical part of the foundation for what comes next.

Yes, Rich People Really Are Better

Brookings now bravely turns to the question of how class is related to these character strengths. And I can't accuse them of burying the lede:

If character strengths significantly impact life outcomes, disparities in their development may matter for social mobility and equality. As well as gaps in income, wealth, educational quality, housing, and family stability, are there also gaps in the development of these important character strengths?

This is followed by some charts that suggest that poor kids do worse on "school-readiness measures of learning-related behavior." Another chart shows a correlation between income and the strengts of persistence and self-control through the school years.

About Those Numbers

Brookings moves straight from the charts to a whole section addressing the fact that there aren't any "widely accepted tests for character strengths." So here's some of the measures and data that they massaged, including some cool stuff from KIPP, "a highly successful national network of charter schools" which-- surprise-- currently employs one of the authors of this paper. Anyway, KIPP has those cool character report cards, so you know they must have a handle on this whole character thing. Well, performance character. Moral character is outside our scope here.

Anyway, they used surveys, behaviors and tests. They also figured out how to crunch large data sets with a nifty punnett square that crosses direct-indirect with broad-narrow, to get four sorts of character markers. Indirect and broad, which is something like "risky sexual behavior" is a one start marker, while direct and narrow, like the grit scale, is the tops.

Using that rating system, they ploughed through acres of US Data Sets, rating each one based on how well it would indicate character strengths (or the lack thereof), and created a few pages worth of charts. I am impressed by the amont of drive and prudence it must have taken to do all this. Bottom line-- most of these from the Fragile Families Survey to National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Adults, don't provide the kind of awesome data that standardized subject tests provide for cognitive skills (choke). So they would like more direct acquisition of data please. We need more standardized character tests in schools.

So, Let's Just Go There

So after sorting through all those data sets, they selected some faves. Their first choice was perhaps unfortunate-- from the Behavior Problems Index, they plucked the hyperactive scale. Now, they would like us to know that this does not certainly does not "necessarily indicate that a child is medically hyperactive (that is, has a diagnosis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder). In this sense, the terminology here is unhelpful."

Well, yes. Suggesting that a behavior problem (particularly one tied to a medical problem) is a sign of a character deficit would be unhelpful. Is there any way we could make this even more unhelpful?

Sure there is. Let's link scoring low on the hyperactive scale and therefor demonstrating a lack of character-- let's link that to socio-economic class! Yes, this character deficit ties most closely to being born into the bottom quintile-- also teen mom, especially if she's a high school dropout. (The good news, I suppose, is that the researchers see no link in their meta-analyses to race as a factor.)


They also worked backwards, starting with good outcomes and looking to see how the data feeding into those incomes looked. The same picture emerged-- good things (including not getting pregnant and finishing school) were less likely to happen to the poor kids.

Micro-Macro

The study notes that the BPI hyperactivity rating connected to five specifics

• Has difficulty concentrating/paying attention
• Is easily confused, seems in a fog
• Is impulsive or acts without thinking
• Has trouble getting mind off certain thoughts
• Is restless, overly active, cannot sit still

These five very specific traits connected to the BPI hyperactivity score (a small slice of the larger BPI) which we used as a marker of the two qualities that we picked as representative of the one kind of character that we're studying as the stand-in for the full range of non-cognitive skills. So basically we're doing that thing where we look at an elephants eyelash and use it to make pronouncements about the status of all endangered animal species on the African continent.


Oops

Brookings, who don't always seem to get all of the reformster memos, go a page too far now by suggesting (with charts!) that their prudence and drive measures (which would be a half-decent band name) are as good a predictor of success as cognitive/academic measures. Which means that we can totally scrap the PARCC and the SBA tests and just check to see if the kid is able to sit still and wait fifteen minutes for a marshmallow. I will now predict that this is NOT the headline that will be used if leading reformster publications decide to run this story.

What Does It All Mean?

Brookings is not going to put their other foot in it, so it is not clear whether they want to say that lack of character strengths causes poverty or if poverty causes a character strength deficit. They are clear once again at the conclusion that character is a necessary element of success.

Character matters. Children who learn and can exhibit character strengths attain more years of education, earn more, and likely outperform other individuals in other areas of life. Of course, many other factors matter a great deal, too – most obviously cognitive skills, but also a host of cultural, social and education attributes.

Also, capabilities don't automatically equal motivation to act. And there's other stuff that could be important, too. Including, I kid you not, self-esteem. But we need more data for research. Also, we can build character, so we need more programs to do that, too.

Did I Miss Something?

Well, somebody did. Best case scenario-- we've re-demonstrated that people who come from a high socio-economic background tend to be successful in school, and those who don't, don't. Stapel on some tautologies as a side show and call it an insight.

Or maybe this is a report that buttresses old farts everywhere by suggesting that if your kid can't learn to sit still, he probably lacks character and is likely to fail at life.

And remember up above when we decided to call these "character strengths." That meant these behaviors are deeper than simple learned behaviors, but not quite genetically hardwired. So we're stopping just short of saying that poor kids are born with a lack of character.

But at worst-- at worst-- this is codified cultural colonialism. This is defining "success" as "making it in our dominant culture, which we will define as normal for all humans." And then declaring that if you want to make it as (our version of) a normal human, you must learn to adopt our values. This is going to Africa and saying, "Well, of course these people will never amount to anything-- they don't wear trousers."

Whether character strengths can be developed through explicit public policy is quite another, and here the answer appears to be: we don’t know. Policymakers often fall into the trap of what philosopher Jon Elster describes as ‘willing what cannot be willed.’ But as we learn more about the importance of character strengths, and disparities in their development, the need to move forward – if only through more research and evaluations of existing character-development programs – becomes more urgent, not least in terms of boosting social mobility. For greater mobility, we need not only to increase opportunities, but also to insure that people are able to seize them.

The authors miss a third, important need-- the need to increase opportunities which can be grasped by the people who we'd like to see grasp them. You don't really increase cutting opportunities for left handed children by setting out a larger supply of right-handed scissors. Nor do you help them out by trying to beat them into being right-handed. The best solution is to meet them where they are-- buy some left-handed scissors.

There are so many things wrong with this report-- sooooooo many things-- and I'm about stumped for wrapping it all up in a neat conclusion. It is such a thin tissue of supposition, weak arguments, cultural biases, part-for-the-whole fallacies and poorly reasoned conclusions that I get rather lost in it myself. I can only hope that as of this post, I'm the only person who's really paid this much attention to it.

Speak Friction

What do you do when it's election day and you know you're on the losing side before you even enter the ballot box (or tube or data input station)?

I'm a big believer in speaking your truth, even if it's the smallest speak in the room. I think we minimize that action at times because we don't see how it can turn the whole ship around-- and very often it's true that it just won't make an enormous difference.

But I like Thoreau's image--

Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

Thoreau may overstate his case a bit (I know-- shocking from Thoreau) but I like the idea of friction. Friction doesn't necessarily stop the machine, but it always affects the way the machine runs. And sometimes that's good enough.

Smart money says that by midnight tonight, Andrew Cuomo will still be governor. But just as with the primary election, there is a huge difference between a Cuomo who's swept into office and one who just barely squeaks through the door as crowds holler at him (a huge difference in particular for Cuomo 2016's Presidential dreams). 

It's the same way you may not be able to flat-out stop your school district from doing Something Stupid, but you can keep it from being an easy, unanimous Stupid. You can't always prevent people from achieving a bad goal. Sometimes the best you can do is make people work for it, and that affects the energy they have to implement it, which in turn sets the stage for failure, which may one day lead to a bunch of people coming to you to say, "Hey, tell me again about why this was a dumb idea."

Sometimes you're friction. Sometimes you're playing a long game.

And sometimes you just want to sleep at night. You want to be able to say, "I did what I could. I said what I had to say. I didn't sit silent in the face of Something Wrong." And sometimes that's as good as it gets.

Yes, voting in elections in this country sucks these days, with a full buffet of bought-and-paid-for tools. But as long as it all runs smoothly, they can tell themselves, "Hey, this is going great! No problems at all." So be a friction. Speak your piece. Get out there, hold your nose, and vote.

Can TFA Be Reinvented

I am a fan of blogger and education professor Jack Schneider. He occupies what I think of as the Very Reasonable Wing of the Resistance with other writers like Peter DeWitt and John Thompson. In the great ongoing debate about the fate of US public education, it's a Good Thing to have some smart folks who are always looking for ways to open lines of communication and dialogue.

In his latest post, Schneider wonders aloud (well, in print-- well, in words rendered on computer screens) if TFA could be reinvented as something less awful.

So to all the TFA critics out there, here's my pitch: TFA isn't going away. Not in our lifetime. Why not, then, pressure them to do something like this—a reinvention that would convert their power and influence more productive?

That's the conclusion. His ideas are multi-layered.

Plan A is for TFA to retool their rhetoric to match the things they say internally to each other, which Schneider believes are far more realistic and reasonable than the blustering TFA public persona.

But Schneider doesn't think he can get Plan A, so he has another plan ready for consideration.

To put it as simply as possible: I'd like to see TFA set a goal of recruiting all of its teachers from the alumni rolls of the elementary and high schools where it places teachers.

He argues that this would A) really cement their commitment to recruiting teachers of color and B) would make them confront what it took to get students from high-poverty schools ready to enter and succeed in college.

It is a really interesting idea, but I think it's a non-starter. I think the problem is that Schneider mis-reads the purpose of TFA. At this point, I don't think TFA's missoin is providing teachers for high needs schools. I don't think that's their vision. I don't think that's their brand.

Like many people, I'll give TFA credit for starting out with the best of intentions. But as I argue here, their stated purpose shifts don't resemble the mission creep of a service organization, but the product marketing shifts of a corporation.

And TFA's product is not education for high-poverty students. TFA now deal in money, power, training and networking. They can't forsake the ivy leaguers who use their service, because those folks are their customers. Check out this Business Insider article about how TFA is a great way to angle for a job at Google (where, insiders say, only products of select universities need apply). Look at the massive network of well-placed Masters of the Universe TFA has produced.

At this point, high needs schools are being used as training facilities for TFA's true customers-- the resume boosters who are just passing through. TFA's customers are also the charter operators who depend on TFA for front line shock troops (but troops with a limited life span, because short-term employees are far better for ROI). And to best serve these customers, TFA must maintain its connections and profile, which means power and prestige are part of its business plan, and not something it can easily turn its back on.

I have no doubt that the TFA ranks include some people with a sincere interest in teaching and social judgment. TFA needs these people top maintain an appearance of legitimacy, a way for donors and backers to feel good about the fresh-scrubbed young folks who Really Want To Make a Difference. But as Schneider notes, TFA already knows the things they ought to be doing to better support those fresh-faced recruits and better insure their success. TFA knows what it needs to do for those folks-- and so far, it simply isn't doing them. Because as long as TFA can generate the numbers that make the enterprise look good, they've done enough. Because creating pockets of educational success in high needs schools isn't really their primary mission.

If it were, Schneider's idea would make sense. But his ideas will not help TFA improve its profile, maintain its political clout, or generate more contributions. And his ideas especially won't serve TFA's customer base of resume builders, charter operators, and power players who want to look good doing good.

TFA has already reinvented itself several times, and each time the reinvention was about maintaining TFA's standing as a Major Player in the Ed Reform Biz as well as an extension of the high status school networking network. It will continue to reinvent itself to meet those goals. I would love to believe that at some point it might decide to turn back to its roots and the people in power would really, sincerely redirect their resources and attention to achieving the goals of helping to improve education in the poor corners of the country. But their original attempts to do so were misguided, and they've only wandered further away from that place.

Jack Schneider thinks they could still do good work. It's pretty to think so, but I don't see it happening any time soon.

Is Ed Reform Addicted To "New"?

I have followed with interest the continuing blogoddysey of Andy Smarick (partner at Bellwether Education and Fordham Institute BFF) as he considers some of the places where the reformster movement and classic conservatism don't quite fit. I'm interested because 1) I think Smarick's an intelligent, articulate guy and 2) I've been saying for a while that classic conservatism and modern education reform have enough compatibility issues that I don't think eHarmony would send them on a date.

So installation six of Smarick's journey considers the addiction to "new," particular the automatic overriding of the old with anything labeled "new" or "revolutionary" (he might also have thrown in "game changing"). Is this deep devotion to "new" leading reformsters to throw out and/or ignore perfectly good school system features that are already in place?

As a thirty-five year classroom veteran, I can answer that question with a comparison that I can attest to because in my neighborhood we do have bears and we do have woods, and yes, the two go together.

This is not a new development, however. Or rather, it's not unique to the current wave of reformistas.

Politicians and hucksters, both trying to make some cheap hay, have been crying "educational crisis" since, at a minimum, the appearance of A Nation At Risk. And nobody who is hoping to capitalize on a crisis does it by saying, "OMGZ!! Education is in terrible crisis! Quick-- identify the parts worth preserving and whatever you do, don't hire/elect/pay me to fix them!"

No, for almost as long as I've been teaching, schools have been beset with experts trumpeting The Next Big Thing, because, Good Lord, man, the educational sky is falling and you must do something-- anything -- different right away (preferably like hiring me to consult or buying this new program in a box).

Teachers barely looked up or paid attention when Common Core first appear precisely because it looked, at first, like the 5,723,933rd Next Big Thing To Save Education to appear at the school house door.

There are districts out there (thank heaven I don't teach at one, but there are at least two within a stone's throw of me) that adopt new programs, new materials, new methods, complete with new consultants every single year. And there are vendors out there more than willing to sell you a New Savior, no matter how ridiculous. My district did bring in consultants and pay thousands of dollars to implement a special program that was special because A) writing types that every teacher learns about in teacher school were given a proprietary numbering system, B) the writings were store in special proprietary file folders and C) all writing was to be done by skipping every other line on the paper. And for that we paid, I kid you not, thousands of dollars.

And every new program requires something to be thrown out, either as an act of policy or of necessity. One of the things non-teachers just don't get is that we are working with a finite number of instructional hours. If you tell me that I must spend fifty hours a year on a new program, fifty hours of something else must come out of my instruction. You can leave that up to my best judgment, or you can tell me what I have to cut, but either way, something is going away.

This has been a recurring annual process in most schools for as long as probably 99% of current working teachers have been in a classroom. And no part of this process ever involves sitting down to say, "Okay, what part of what we're doing should we absolutely hold onto and support." This is just one part of why teachers despair of having their voices heard. Stand up at your own staff meeting and try to express an professional opinion, and you're lucky to be heard. But leave teaching, start a consulting firm, and charge a few thousand, and suddenly you get to be the guy running the meeting (suddenly, I have an idea for my retirement career).

So this using the New to steamroll the old without concern for the value of the old-- this is not new to current reformerdom. It's just that CCSS and its related movements have in this, as in so many things, brought us the same old routine hoppped up on steroids.

In our earnestness to improve the lives of America’s kids, especially the most disadvantaged boys and girls, our field has become terribly unbalanced. We have consistently picked the progressive path (with its pitfalls) and ignored the virtues of conservatism and the benefits of preservation.

But the question remains: Is it possible to combine the two? Can the strengths of both left and right be leveraged in a single bold reform effort?

Well, yes and no. As soon as you start using words like "bold" my internal alarm goes off, because that goes with the usual call for some New Revolutionary Super Program That Will Change Everything. Though I suppose in the ongoing climate of manufactured overhyped crisis, it's bold to just sit still and refuse to be stampeded.

Well, let's not split vocabularial hairs. My revolutionary idea is that we pick and choose directions for education based on what works, whether it is old or new. Now, I realize we're are going to have (and are currently having) huge HUGE arguments about how to decide what works. For instance, I believe that standardized tests tell us absolutely zip zero nothing about what does or doesn't work in schools.

 I confess an inclination to the old that comes with a proven track record-- but I'm drawn to the track record, not the mere fact of oldness. And I'm always willing to consider the new, provided it doesn't violate my own professional sense of what's sound and it isn't just a new, more expensive way to do what I can already do. But I bet we could mostly agree on this-- let's not consider either newness or oldness a virtue in and of itself. I'm looking forward to Smarick's seventh installment to see how close our answers are.

Charters: Diminishing Returns and Just Good Enough

I suspect many of us will be returning to the fascinating-in-a-car-crash-way transcript of the K12 Fiscal Year 2015 Guidance Conference Call transcript. But for the moment, I want to concentrate on just this one question from one of the conference call participants

Jeffrey P. Meuler - Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, Research Division

So this is a related big-picture question. I mean, you're framing it up that mission #1 is always improving academic outcomes, which -- it's the good and noble thing to do, absolutely, no disagreement there. But I'm just wondering, is your view that -- you guys are deploying a lot of capital. Is this a business that is capable, while investing in academics at the necessary level, that you can return -- generate returns on capital in excess of your cost of capital? I just -- if you could comment on how you're thinking about that as you deploy a lot of capital and as you invest in academic outcomes.

What Meuler seems to mean is this:

It's nice that a school is interested in academic achievement and all, but you're not going to spend so much money on it that you cut into that sweet, sweet pile of money, are you?

Here are two major ways in which the free market is incompatible with public education.

Diminishing Returns and Just Good Enough

Any operator of a business has to look at cost-benefits analysis. As the operator of a widget business, I look at my widget manufacturing and look not just at ways to improve the widgets, but ways to improve the widgets that will pay me back in revenue.

Ford could make cars that are objectively "better" by having all the upholstery hand-stitched with gold-infused thread. But that improvement would not allow the company to make more money from car sales-- certainly not in comparison to the additional production costs. So that improvement (and many others) will not make it into production.

Wal-Mart could have greeters who hand you a cup of cocoa and a scone when you walk in, and that would definitely make the experience of shopping there "better," but it wouldn't make Wal-Mart more money-- certainly not in comparison to the cost of cocoa and scones. So that's not happening any time soon.

Part of marketing is making a product that is Just Good Enough. Make it too crappy and people won't buy it. Make it too awesome and you won't be able to make money selling it. It has to be Just Good Enough, so that you can still market it effectively without cutting into your revenues. Excellence is expensive, but Pretty Good leaves lots of room to make a profit.

So what Meuler wants to know is, "You're not going to pursue academic excellence to the detriment of finances, are you?"

At some point, a school that doggedly pursued top academic achievement for all its students would become financially unsustainable (unless it were a select private prep school that could charge Philips Academy style tuition). Charters need achievement numbers good enough to stay in the market, but not so good that they're spending too much money to get them.

The Enemy

In marketing there is sometimes a reverse boiling frog pot effect that kicks in. Can we lower the Just Good Enough bar without ill effects on market share? Customers will pay two dollars for a ten ounce box of Frosted Sugar Bombs. Will they readily pay the same if there are only nine and a half ounces in there? We all know this process-- I fully expect that my grandchildren will buy potato chip packages that are the size of a small labrador retriever but which contain one single potato chip. The product is the enemy of profit.

This is more true in education than in any other enterprise. Every dollar I put into the classroom is a dollar that does not go into my pocket. That's fine for public schools-- they don't need to have a penny left over at the end of the year. But if I'm working a for profit or a semi-hidden profit or just trying to pay my $500K CEO, every cent I spend on the students is a cent taken away from my backers, investors, owners, and other financially interested parties.

In free market schooling, students will not be the point. They will be an obstacle. In this model we often compare them to widgets or products, but actually, in the free market charter system, students are also the employees. Their job is to produce good data that can be used for marketing so that the revenue stream can be maintained, and so to that extent, spending money to teach them makes some business sense. But when they start clamoring for art classes or nicer lunches or more tutors, they are on the same footing as assembly line workers agitating for nicer food in the break room. They are asking the company to spend money on something that will not help the company make money.

An A+ student doesn't bring in more money than an A- student. The state pays a flat rate for all students, so past a certain point, spending more to get higher achievement is just throwing money away without hope of increased returns. The free market imperative is to find ways to do less and less for the students. The students don't need to be excellent. Just good enough.

Nothing Nefarious Here

It's typical to want to paint the businessmen in these free market charter scenarios as evil villains, and that's a mistake.

First, it's unfair, because I have no doubt that many if not all of them are reasonably decent human beings.

Second, it implies that if we installed virtuous morally upright CEOs at the top of this pyramid, everything would be okay. That's not true.

It's important to realize that asking the question about investment, trying to get to Just Good Enough, making sure that we're not spending too much money on the education part of the school-- those are all responsible behaviors for people in the investing and management world. Somewhere there are people managing your retirement portfolio, and you would be royally pissed if they weren't paying attention to these kinds of issues.

No, the takeaway here is not that businessmen are evil. The takeaway is that a free market is fundamentally incompatible with a public school system. Putting on pads and slamming other people to the ground is very appropriate on a football field; it's not so great in a China shop. Free market business guys in the world of education are fullbacks body-checking the China, and while it's perhaps frustrating for them, it is positively destructive for the China.

Crossposted from my "other" blog, View from the Cheap Seats

Media and Eyeballs

I'm cleaning up some scraps in the bloggy attic this morning, and some of them took me back to the Time magazine flap of last fall.

There are several chunks of experience that factor into my views of media. I've been a weekly newspaper columnist for almost sixteen years. I was the media "face" of my striking union a little over a decade ago. I teach journalism sometimes, and I have friends and former students in the business.

So I think there are some mistakes that people pretty routinely make when they think about, or deal with, media.

People grossly over-estimate media's investment in a particular point of view. While people may believe that a media outlet is deeply committed to a pro-mugwump or anti-ooblek position, mostly what media are deeply committed to is eyeballs. Lots and lots of eyeballs. Following close behind the eyeball commitment is a commitment to maintaining stature-- which is important because it helps attract eyeballs. If people don't believe you know what you're talking about, they won't come when you call. So, eyeballs.

Media make money by collecting eyeballs and then selling access to those eyeballs. That's the business model. The two big shifts of that model in the last few decades are 1) huge competition for the eyeballs and 2) moving from targets of "enough money to keep lights on" to "enough money for a second Lexus and a vacation home in Spain for the top brass."

With my newspaper gig, I periodically get Letters to the Editor taking me to task for one thing or another (the rule of op-ed is that if I compare, say, a political office to a herd of confused rhinos, I will get nothing from the office and several letters from angry rhino fans). People sometimes ask, "Boy, was your editor upset that Grumpy McSpewsalot chewed you out yesterday." The answer is that no, my editor is actually delighted, because the commotion will sell papers.

However, don't overestimate the excitement of selling single copies. At its 2005 peak, advertising revenue was 82% of total revenue for a newspaper. Today advertising accounts for about 69% of revenue for traditional news media. Subscriptions are great because they represent pre-commited eyeballs. And advertising revenue is driven by the number of eyeballs, which means that media want to get a high number of eyeballs, even if those eyeballs aren't actually paying to see the media.

That's why "I'm cancelling my subscription (and reducing your circulation numbers)" is far more compelling than "I'm not going to buy this at the newsstand."

The internet has both simplified and complicated the picture. Paper copies are hard to really track, but the internet knows exactly how many times you clicked on that picture of Kim Kardashian's boobalicious dress, you naughty boy. If you're tired of reading about Ann Coulter, stop reading about Ann Coulter. She may be full of crap, and there may be few people who take her seriously, but she is reliable click bait.

The internet is perfect democracy, perfect free market in action. And every click is a vote for what you would like to see more of. And every mention of something gives it more presence in the giant google bowl o' internet fun. See, when I refuse to use She Who Will Not Be Named's name, or post links to certain odious websites, it's not just pique. I'm doing my teensy part to give those things less presence on the interwebs.

So if you think for one minute that Time's editorial board was shaking in their office suites, crying, "Oh no-- all the angry teachers are flooding our site with thousands and thousands of views of our controversial article, which is now linked all over hell and back!" you are kidding yourself. The response to the cover story gave Time the kind of click traffic, ad revenue, and web presence that sites dream about. The challenge for them was to maximize the impact of the controversy without actually pissing anybody off who could really hurt them. It's tricky, but it has nothing to do with taking sides, pushing point of view, or taking an ideological stand. It's all about the eyeballs, and at the end of the day, Time made out just great. People who imagine that they are now sad and chastised by the show of teacher might are kidding themselves. Time is circling the bowl, hanging on to relevance by a thread (and being relevant only matters because it keeps you in the business), and for a week or so, they had the coveted spot of Thing People Are Talking About. The great cover story tempest was a win for Time.

Not that I disagree with the loud angry teacher response. I signed the petition that was eventually used as an awkward photo op, and I would do it again. But there's a reason that Randi Weingarten could publicly spank Time in a way that she is apparently unwilling to do with the far more threatening and dangerous Andrew Cuomo-- because Time didn't really mind the petition thing at all. That piece of performance art got the magazine one more day of a free spot in the news cycle.

There was no way that Time's odious cover could go unanswered, just as sometimes you have to ignore the internet wisdom of Don't Feed the Trolls. The rest of the world was watching, and if teachers had let the whole business go by unremarked, it would have hurt in the broader community of opinion. Sometimes you can't let people jerk you around in front of an audience. But we should not pretend that we have just slain a dragon when we just fed it a side of beef and sent it back to nap.

We can do better.

People have a terrible addiction to the Narrative of Overwhelming Righteous Outrage. In their heads, they envision really letting the opposition have it, unleashing righteous rage so great that the opponent falls to his knees and cries out, "Oh lordy I have been so wrong! I repent. The power of your shining words turn my eyes into my soul and there I see such yuckiness that I feel terrible, and want to make things right by doing as you say and confess my wrongness before the world!" This is really satisfying inside your head, and it happens exactly never in the real world.

In the real world, it works differently. And I am sad to tell you that one group that gets it is TFA. Some people were upset that part of TFA's leaked rapid response memo discussed building relationships with certain media outlets. But that's pretty much how it works. Journalists and media people are just like everyone else-- they like dealing with people they know and understand, even trust. Having a relationship with a journalist does not necessarily mean she'll just run whatever you hand her (though there are such relationships built on a currency of money or access). But it does mean that you'll be heard, and it can mean that when the journalist needs a spokesperson for a particular point of view, she'll think to call you.

Journalists have a job to do, and some of them do it pretty well, some do the best they can, and some kind of suck. They have editors to keep happy and a need for sources of information and material that they can feed their editor so that their editor can go collect eyeballs. Anybody who wants to foster relationships with journalists will do better with "I can help you collect some eyeballs" than with "Bend before my awesome wrath!"

This is a tricky dance. There's a fine, fine line between "I've put something together to make covering this easier for you" and "I was hoping you would just work as our unquestioning PR flack in the press." Therefor, relationships. The greatest interviewers have the ability to build an instant relationship with their subjects. News subjects who get lots of good press often turn out to have that same ability. Rich and powerful media people have lots of rich and powerful friends; those relationships are in the mix as well, and it's complicated because you don't believe your friends because they pay you to, but because they're your friends, and you like and trust them.You share a world view, and that world view colors what you see as True.

The best path to becoming a Recognized Spokesperson for A Group is to travel with your own large reserve of eyeballs. That is how Ann Coulter and the Kardashians get to be Famous-- they have collected a vast army of eyeballs that they bring with them to whatever media outlet they grace with their presence. Justin Bieber stopped appearing on magazine covers not because editors decided they didn't like him, but because his covers stopped collecting eyeballs.

Do editors and journalists sometimes throw agendas around because they just want to? Sure. There's certainly something attractive about being a Very Rich Guy and using that wealth to build a media empire with which to foist your ideas on the world. But even war-manufacturing William Randolph Hearst kept his eye on those circulation numbers and his status in the halls of power. I can't think of a single example of a media outlet choosing principle over business, even if it meant going broke. Even Fox will drop people who are ideologically pure if they can't bring the eyeballs or maintain stature any more (looking at you, Palin and Beck). Yes, we have the inspiring stories of journalists who stood up for What Was Right, wielding their Davidian pens against powerful Goliaths. Those stories are rare and celebrated because they aren't the norm.

So in teachers vs. Time, taking our eyeballs and going home after telling Time why we were doing it = excellent plan. Encouraging everybody to click their eyeballs on over to reread the article and then again to read all the responses = not so effective. Calling the writer names (even after it turned out she's actually married to a teacher) = not a great plan. Talking to her so that she knows she has some new education contacts next time = good plan. Expressing honest outrage and sharing information from our side (aka reality) = useful means of educating journalists. Trying to punch them in their metaphorical nose because they didn't already know these things = not so useful. Time is small potatoes these days; only a couple million subscribers and fairly tiny number of single copy buyers. But we'll be more prepared the next time this sort of thing inevitably happens.

The media like a good story. Some media like the same basic story over and over again. And some media like a good story so much they'll not let facts get in the way. It helps anyone who deals with media to remember that they have a job to do-- and that job is gather eyeballs. 

Meanwhile, one last point-- as we often note with our own students, rewards can be better motivation than punishment. During this same time frame both Forbes and The Atlantic published articles that did a much better job of capturing some True Things about the battle for US public education. We should all make certain that we do our part to make those pieces successful. Reading, liking, saving, sharing-- in other words, making good use of our eyeballs-- can show editors and publishers that a more accurate and true depiction of the issues will draw a nice sized crowd. It's not an epic, cathartic battle, but it's still a win-win.

Maybe DC Dems Should Just Shut Up

For the love of God, Washington Democrats. Many's the time I've tried to defend you to my conservative friends and family, but sometimes you seem so hell-bent on acting like cartoon Democrats, you make it nearly impossible.

This week, the President went to Rhode Island and said this:



The now-infamous quote is “Sometimes, someone, usually mom, leaves the workplace to stay home with the kids, which then leaves her earning a lower wage for the rest of her life as a result. And that’s not a choice we want Americans to make. So let’s make this happen: By the end of this decade, let’s enroll 6 million children in high-quality preschool, and let’s make sure that we are making America stronger.”


Maybe that's a verbal fumble. Maybe he wanted to say that he didn't want women to have to make that choice. But the six million preschool enrollees line kinda makes that unlikely. (It also represents a jump up from the 2.2 million that he previously wanted to hit by decade's end.)

In that case, there's no good way to spin this. It could mean that the President thinks preschool programs can do a better job of raising kids than mom, or that making money is more important work than staying at home with the kids. It could mean-- no, sorry, there's just no way to spin this that isn't a slap in the face for stay-at-home moms.

This pairs up badly with comments like Arne Duncan's June 2014 observation that Hispanic families suffer from a "cultural hesitation" about putting their kids in preschool. "Sometimes you have a cultural piece where people are scared to put their kids in more formal care and they prefer, you know, to do the grandmother, the neighbor, whatever," said Arne. Yes, those crazy people wanting to keep their small children in the care of immediate family. What the hell are they thinking?

In that same clusterfarfenugen, HHS Secretary Kathy Sibelius observed that "pre-school could make Hispanic children 'culturally comfortable' with entering public schools as kindergartners." So remember boys and girls-- the school is not there to serve and adjust to you and your culture. Instead, you need to be properly assimilated.

If administration members and supporters wonder why folks on the hard right keep blathering about crazy commie plans to separate children from their parents as quickly as possible for government indoctrination, it could be because administration figures keep saying things that make it sound as if that's exactly what they want to do!

The GOP suffers from many loud voices that seem to have lost all contact with traditional conservative values in their pursuit of electoral wingnuttery. But many leading Democrats have also lost all contact with traditional Democratic values. This feeds the cycle of strident argument because these days, it's not even necessary to create a straw man version of the opposing side because somebody on that side is already acting far worse than the straw man you were about to manufacture.

So if the administration does not really believe that it knows better how to raise small children than their own parents, they should choose their words and their policies more carefully. If they do actually believe that government knows best, then they deserve every accusation of being over-controlling, meddling, nanny-statists that they get.