Im-Politic: Better U.S. Schools Will Require More Than Just Money

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Department of Education, education, Im-Politic, math, NAEP, National Assessment of Educational Progress, reading, schools, students, teachers, The New York Times

Evidently The New York Times‘ opinion staff considered the following claim so obviously true that no one bothered to fact check it: “[T]he nation’s politicians [have] neglected and underfunded education for years….”

Made by a Times producer and a freelance collaborator who created a video op-ed purporting to explain “America’s Great Teacher Resignation,” the message intended for readers was obvious: If only those reckless, self-seeking American pols would start spending seriously on the primary and secondary schools, instead of focusing so tightly on scoring “cheap political points vilifying teachers,” American education wouldn’t be such a disaster area.

But actually, the under-funding claim deserved some major fact-checking, because compelling evidence has just emerged that the relationship between educational spending and student performance is difficult to see at best. And it came largely from the U.S. Department of Education in data contained in the latest edition of its National Assessement of Educational Progress (NAEP) – a large-scale Congressionally mandated evaluation that’s issued periodically and dubbed “The Nation’s Report Card.”

As in a previous post, I looked at the NAEP’s state-level reports showing whose fourth and eighth graders were testing above and below the national averages in math and reading. The year I examined was 2019 – the final school year before the CCP Virus struck – to make sure the findings weren’t affected by abnormalities like pandemic closings. And I then compared these results with figures on state-level spending on K-12 education from the USAFacts.org website and the Edunomics Lab, a Georgetown University-based research center. I concentrated on the ten states that spent the most per student on these schools, and those that spent the least.

For starters, here are the ten biggest education spending states plus the District of Columbia and their latest annual median expenditures per student:

New York: $25.4K

District of Columba: $22.2K

Connecticut: $20.7K

New Jersey: $20,2K

Alaska: $19.2K

New Hampshire: $18,6K

Rhode Island: $17,2K

Massachusetts: $17.1K

Wyoming: $17.0K)

Hawaii: $16.2K

Delaware: $15.4K

And here are the ten lowest spenders. (Actually, there are 13 of them because of some ties.)

Utah ($7.8K)

Idaho ($8.0K)

Arizona ($8.6K)

Mississippi; $9.3K

Oklahoma: $9.4K

Nevada: $9.5K

Florida: $9.7K

Texas: $9.8K

Tennessee: $9.8K

Arkansas: $10.1K

Indiana: $10.1K

Alabama: $10.1K

North Carolina: $10.2K

The spending disparities between the groups are pretty dramatic, with average annual median spending per student in those top states averaging $19, 100 and the counterpart for the group averaging just $9,400. So the latter’s outlays overall are less than half the former’s, a margin surely more than large enough to offset living costs differences. And the spread between the biggest and meagerest spending states (New York and Utah) are much greater: $25,400 versus $7,800, or more than 3.2 to one.

But the performance disparities are anything but dramatic. In fact, here are the widest:

>For eighth grade math, six of the eleven big-spending states recorded scores below the national average, versus nine of the 13 low-spending states.

>And in fourth grade reading, just four of the eleven big-spending states turned in below average scores, versus eight of the 13 low spenders.

But remember: These are groups of states that represent the extremes: States that best fit the description of “neglecting and under-funding education” and states that presumably are supporting students and teachers the most. Yet the performance metrics aren’t exactly like day and night.

And the differences in the two other grade and subject categories are positively infinitesimal where they even existed, and especially so given the spending gaps.

Specifically, in fourth grade math, six of the eleven big spenders generated scores below the national average, versus six of 13 of the meager spenders.

In eighth grade reading, five of the eleven big spending states scored below average versus seven of the 13 low spenders.

Also more than a little interesting: The biggest spending state, New York, registered below average scores in three of the four categories. The lowest spending state, Utah, turned in above average scores across the board.

The point here isn’t to oppose spending more money on the nation’s schools. Rather, it’s to emphasize – contrary to the narrative promoted by the Times video makers – that, as with happiness, money alone can’t buy educational effectiveness. In fact, maybe teachers themselves bear some responsibility for under-performing schools.

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Im-Politic: A Viable Alternative to Affirmative Action?

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affirmative action, African Americans, college, college admissions, Defense Department, education, higher education, Im-Politic, integration, Latinos, math, minorities, NAEP, National Assessment of Educational Progress, reading, schools, segregation, Supreme Court

One of the most compelling arguments for ending racial preferences in college admissions – a demand that the Supreme Court will address in two high-profile cases – also seems to be one of the most depressing. As some opponents of such affirmative action programs contend (according to what I’ve heard on some cable talk shows), anyone truly interested in helping students from disadvantaged communities climb the education and therefore career success ladders would focus on improving the grade and high schools that are supposed to be preparing them for college, rather than on awarding higher education opportunities to those who don’t qualify according to race-blind criteria.

It’s depressing because for so long Americans have seemed unable to “fix the schools.” So ending or at least thoroughly weakening affirmative action in higher education, even if Constitutionally prohibited, looks like a recipe for perpetuating racial and ethnic achievement gaps.

Except that some impressive evidence has just emerged showing that primary and secondary schools have succeeded in bringing African American and Latino student test scores closer to white test scores. It comes from the latest edition of the U.S. Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Performance (NAEP – “the nation’s report card”).

The NAEP is incredibly data-rich, but one set of findings I regard as especially revealing were those presenting the shares of different racial and ethnic groups performing at or above the level viewed as “proficient” by NAEP. (Here’s a starting point for this section of the report card.) The results go back to 1990 for math and 1992 for reading, and through 2019 for both. Therefore, they show both trends over time and changes achieved in the roughly three decades before the pandemic and related school closings struck – and set back everyone. I chose proficiency as a standard versus “NAEP Basic” because it figures that the proficient students are those likeliest to attend or want to attend college.

It would have been great to describe not only the scores for fourth and eighth graders in reading and math, but for high school seniors. Unfortunately, those data only cover the short 2015-2019 period.

Here’s how the shares of white, African American, and Latino fourth graders who have been math-proficient has changed from 1990-2019:

White: 16 percent-52 percent

African American: 1 percent-20 percent

Latino: 5 percent-28 percent

 

Here are the same type of math figures for eighth graders:

White: 18 percent-44 percent

African American: 5 percent-14 percent

Latino: 7 percent-20 percent

 

And now the results for reading proficiency among fourth graders from 1992-2019:

White: 35 percent-45 percent

African American: 8 percent-18 percent

Latino: 12 percent-23 percent

 

And for eighth graders:

White: 35 percent-42 percent

African American: 9 percent-15 percent

Latino: 13 percent-22 percent

It’s clear that in every single case above, African American and Latino scores significantly lag white scores both at the beginning of the time periods examined and at the end. But it’s also clear that in evey single case above, the scores for both minority groups improved at a faster rate than those for white students.

Yes, there’s a baseline effect at work everywhere – that is, when the figure for a comparison year is very low, it’s going to be much easier to generate bigger percentage changes than for a comparison year that’s much higher. But in this instance, what seems most important to me is that bigger is indeed bigger, and undeniably encouraging.

The remaining racial and ethnic gaps remain disturbing, but two other recent findings indicate that faster progress is anything but a pipe dream. First, the U.S. Defense Department runs its own very big school system. In fact, the NAEP compares it to a U.S. state. And even though many of its students come from disadvantaged backgrounds, they’ve been outperforming their “civilian” counterparts for many years in reading and math at both the fourth grade and eighth grade levels. (Twelfth grade data aren’t available for this group.) So maybe the military has long known something about education that it could teach the rest of us?

Or maybe these schools function well because they place disadvantaged kids out of neighborhoods whose many and varied troubles create terrible learning environments? As it happens, there’s some strong evidence for that proposition, too. In other words, as a Washington Post education columnist has put it, the best way to help low-income (including of course minority) students isn’t to try making their local schools better, but to move them into better schools.

Of course, that kind of policy shift would open up a whole can of related “white flight”and “school busing” and housing-segregation worms that have sparked numerous racial conflicts in recent decades – even in liberal cities like New York and Boston. But that only reenforces a conclusion about American attitudes toward making sure that none of our country-men and women are left behind: Too often, failure or inadequate progress stems not from lack of resources or of knowledge, but of will.

Im-Politic: Evidence That the Longest U.S. School Closings Really Did the Most Damage to Students

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CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, education, Im-Politic, math, NAEP, National Assessment of Educational Progress, National Education Association, reading, remote learning, school closings, school reopenings, schools, teachers unions, Wuhan virus

Although a strong nation-wide consensus has now emerged that CCP Virus-related school closings exerted a devastating and perhaps irreversible effect on the education of America’s children, and even that most of the country’s schools stayed partly or fully shut way too long, one group apparently begs to differ: America’s teachers, or at least one of their major unions.

And their views of course matter greatly because of the major influence they wield over Democratic Party politicians.

But data contained in the just-released latest edition of the U.S. Department of Education’s “nation’s report card” on pupils’ proficiency in key subjects clash loudly with the claim by the National Education Association that “no clear conclusions can be drawn between states and cities that reopened schools sooner than others.”

I haven’t checked all the scores for the thousands of U.S. school districts. What I have done is look into the state-by-state statistics. And they contain strong evidence that overall, those states that reopened schools earlier and more completely saw considerably better learning results than those taking a more cautious approach.

Specifically, I took a list of the ten earliest reopeners and ten latest reopeners as compiled by this “Business Intelligence Platform for School and Community Life,” and then examined the scores they received from that national report card – officially known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). I focused on the four measures that received the most attention in the press release announcing the NAEP results – fourth grade reading and math scores in 2019 (just before the pandemic’s arrival) and 2022, and their counterparts for eighth grade reading and math.

And for the best gauges of the impact of school closings, I used the NAEP’s numbers on how each state’s scores in those four subjects compared with the national averages for those two years. That is, I examined whether between 2019 and 2022, the math and reading scores registered by the state’s fourth and eighth graders improved or worsened versus the national averages (which themselves fell).

This method says nothing about which states’ scores were best or worst in absolute terms for either year – because that metric can’t reveal anything about the impact of school closing and reopening policies. In fact, several states that remained leaders in all four student categories, with results above the national averages for both years, moved closer to those (lower) national averages between 2019 and 2022. To me, that’s a clear sign that during a period of severe CCP Virus-related challenges, their performance deteriorated. And several states that remained serious laggards also closed the gaps with the national averages, which justifies in my view concluding that their educational performance improved during this period.

And here’s what I found.

Of the ten states that reopened earliest and most completely, three saw improved student scores compared with the national average on all four fronts: Florida, Texas, and Louisiana. Interestingly, in the ten-state group whose approach was extremely cautious, three states achieved such success as well: California, Hawaii, and Illinois.

But five of the earliest reopening states recorded relative improvement in three of the four categories: Wyoming, Arkansas, South Dakota. Utah, and Montana. Only one of the latest reopening states could make this claim: Washington.

Similarly, among the earliest reopening states, two achieved improvement versus the national average in two student categories: Nebraska and North Dakota. Among the latest reopening states, only one compiled this record: Nevada.

But here’s where the results get especially revealing. Nebraska and North Dakota were the worst performing of the earliest reopening states. But five (fully half) of the latest reopening states performed worse than them. They were Maryland and New Jersey, where three of the four student groups’ performances slumped compared with the national averages; and Oregon, New Mexico, and Massachusetts, in which relative decline took place in all four student groups.

As I’ve noted previously, many states are big, diverse places, and especially for those whose student populations are heavily dominated by one or two big cities, district-by-district analyses will be needed.

One such academic effort reported such results recently, and seems to have reached mixed conclusions. On the one hand, the researchers at a Harvard University-Stanford University collaboration called the “Education Recovery Scorecard” observe that “Within states, achievement losses were larger in districts that spent more time in remote instruction during 2020-21.” On the other, they state that “school closures do not appear to be the primary factor driving achievement losses.”

But more such work clearly needs to be done, since the Harvard-Stanford team had only collected results from 29 states.

In the meantime, though, the National Education Association looks off-base in its attempt to absolve lengthy school closings of any blame for the academic losses suffered by the nation’s school children. So just as war-fighting strategy may be too important to be left to the generals, school closing strategy during pandemics may be too important to be left to the teachers’ unions.

Im-Politic: More Reasons to Think Americans Aren’t So Divided

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abortion, affirmative action, college admissions, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, education, gender, higher education, Im-Politic, LGBTQ, minorities, polarization, politics, polls, public schools, race relations, social issues, Supreme Court

RealityChek regulars know that a theme to which I keep returning centers on intriguing evidence that Americans’ views on supposedly polarizing social issues aren’t nearly as polarized as the positions taken by activists on all sides.  Indeed, the public’s views are a triumph of both common sense and a spirit of compromise that’s continually overlooked by the political class across the spectrum. (See, e.g., here on the overall national mood, and here on abortion – a subject of special interest lately given the Supreme Court’s June decision to reject the idea of a Constitutional right to privacy and therefore to abortion.)

So I’m pleased to report new findings of equally surprising and encouraging consensus on two other supposedly divisive wedge issues.

The first is affirmative action in higher education admissions, whose future (for the time being) will be decided by the Supreme Court beginning later this month, when cases challenging such racial preferences will be heard.

If the public opinion has anything to do with the final outcome, however, these programs will clearly be toast – at least according to research summarized in this Wall Street Journal column. As noted by the author, retired University of California, Santa Cruz literature professor John Ellis,

“A 2022 Pew Research Center poll found that 74% of Americans oppose the use of race in college admissions. Even more surprising, 68% of Hispanics, 63% of Asians and 59% of blacks also opposed it. The same applied to both political parties, with 87% of Republicans and 62% of Democrats objecting.”

Most stunningly, even the African Americans who are the main intended beneficiaries of race-influenced admissions policies now strongly oppose the practice – along with three-fourths of the entire country.

Further, Ellis cites referendum results showing that uber-liberal California is off the affirmative action boat, too.

The second set of findings concerns the emotionally fraught matter of whether subjects like gender identity, sexual orientation, gay rights, and trans rights should be taught to pre-college students, and whether such materials on these “LGBTQ” topics belong in these students’ assigned reading.

A national survey from the University of Southern California (brought to my attention in this Washington Post article) makes clear that Americans are strongly opposed to these subjects in elementary school education, but much more open to bringing them into high school classes.

Specifically, the share of respondents agreeing that primary school students should learn about these subjects was only between 28 and 30 percent. But roughly twice as many Americans were fine with including LGBTQ subjects in high school curricula.

Somewhat oddly (at least to me) support for assigning LGBTQ-themed books was a good deal lower for both grade school students (18 percent) and for high school students (38 percent).

All the same, though, a strong consensus view – and one that should make intuitive sense as a starting point for making policy – shines through: Little kids just aren’t ready to be exposed to new challenges to longstanding ideas about gender identity and such. High school students? Much more so.

Of course, as we learned earlier this year with the Supreme Court’s latest abortion ruling, the fact that the public has figured out pragmatic ways to view complex social issues (simply put, supporting a broad right to an abortion early-ish during pregnancies and increasing restrictions as the pregnancy proceeds) is no guarantee that American leaders will be able, or want to, agree.

But as I pointed out in the above-linked abortion post, a powerful lesson taught by U.S. history has been that the Supreme Court “is most successful when it pays attention to public opinion, and runs into its greatest troubles when it gets too far ahead of or too far behind these attitudes.” The same surely applies to elected politicians and activists. Let’s just hope that all of them can get with the common sense approaches favored by Americans before further inflammatory actions really do produce dangerous and lasting national divides.

Im-Politic: A New, Promising but Still Flawed Form of Conservatism

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abortion, America First, China, Christianity, conservatism, crime, culture wars, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, education, family policy, foreign policy, identity politics, Im-Politic, Immigration, industrial policy, inflation, national conservatism, politics, religion, Roe vs. Wade, sovereignty, Supreme Court, Trade, wokeness

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I’m not grateful to have been invited to last week’s third National Conservatism Conference. The interest displayed by this crowd in economic policy ideas that depart dramatically from the right-of-center’s longstanding free market dogmatism was especially gratifying, and there was no shortage of thought-provoking and compelling speakers.

It’s just that my four days at the session left me unconvinced that National Conservatism as it presently seems to be constituted can create or contribute to a winning American political coalition. The main problem: Most of those spearheading the drive to establish National Conservatism as a major national force haven’t recognized which culture wars they should be fighting, and which they shouldn’t — and how this failure to discriminate is endangering other objectives that the movement (and others) rightly deem crucial.  In fact, unhappiness expressed to me by more than a few conference attendees with the stances on social and cultural issues taken by those putative leaders make me skeptical that it’s a movement yet to begin with – or can be if their vision prevails.

The economic dimension of national conservatism, at least judging by the presentations and hallway conversations, is not only politically astute; it’s substantively sound. All the speakers who addressed these issues – including such nationally prominent figures like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and the state’s Republican Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott (the event was held in Miami) supported smarter, more restrictive trade and other economic policies (especially toward China), reduced immigration inflows and genuine border security, and federal policies to promote strategically important industries and to ease economic pressures on the middle and working classes.

The same goes for National Conservatism’s critique of the overly, and often recklessly, adventurist foreign policies pursued by the mainstreams of both major political parties for decades.

But the conference organizers and another set of speakers seem wed to other goals and measures that are already backfiring among the American electorate and that, intriguingly, clash with other elements of their agenda. The most important by far were near-total opposition to abortion and a determination to tout the United States as a “Christian nation.”

The political folly of these priorities couldn’t be more obvious. As I’ve written, there’s long been a strong national consensus favoring the right to an abortion early-ish during a pregnancy and then favoring broad restrictions later on with significant exceptions (rape, incest, life of the mother, health of the mother). Indeed, that’s why comparable majorities have supported maintaining the abortion policy framework established by the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe vs. Wade ruling – which was entirely consistent with that common sensical compromise. P.S. Contrary to the claims of the extreme pro-lifers on an off the Court, Roe gave states plenty of latitude to enact all manner of abortion curbs. (The other major misconception or falsehood surrounding Roe comes from the pro-choice movement: It never established an unfettered right to an abortion.)

If you’re skeptical, consider that the day that a draft of the Supreme Court’s eventual decision striking down Roe was leaked to the press (May 3), Republicans held a 4.1 percentage point lead in the RealClearPolitics.com average of polls gauging the public’s preference for control of Congress in November’s midterm elections. The latest figures show Democrats with a 1.1 percentage point lead in the so-called Generic Ballot.

It’s true that abortion isn’t the only reason, that the actual votes determining control of Congress aren’t cast nationally but state-by-state, and that Republicans hold enough built-in advantages in the Congressional map to keep their hopes of prevailing very much alive. But the polls also show that the Court’s Dobbs decision, the enactment of and efforts to enact near-abortion bans in Republican-run states that the ruling has permitted, and GOP talk of more such moves (including on the national level) is increasing Democrats’ interest in voting and boosting the party’s prospects. (See, e.g., here.) And not so coincidentally, Republican candidates and leaders all over the country are backing away from hard-line anti-abortion positions.

Adamant opposition to abortion in practically all circumstances also seems to clash violently with other stated National Conservative positions. For example, many speakers at the conference emphasized their support for individual liberty. But what about the right of women uninterested in becoming mothers to lead the lives they wish? Even if the unborn must indeed be deemed human life very early in pregnancies, should the wishes of those women count for absolutely nothing the minute they conceive – and simply because they failed to take adequate precautions, or because precautions taken failed? According to many, and possibly most, at the conference, the answer is “Yes.”

The repeated references to America as a Christian nation are just as problematic. For reasons like those suggested above, if that’s a rationale for insisting that U.S. policies conform with scriptural teachings (and Section 4 of this “Statement of Principles” by the movement’s leading lights certainly suggests this “Where a Christian majority exists” – i.e. in most of the country), that simply won’t wash with big majorities of voters. But the historical arguments advanced for this view don’t impress, either.

Sure, the Founding Fathers were Christians, and for the most part, observant Christians at that. But so what? The England they came from was overwhelmingly Christian. What else realistically could they be? For similar reasons, the Founders were ovewhelmingly white, too. Does that mean that America should be seen as a Caucasian nation?

And does Christian dogma really deserve much credit for the ideals that make up the American creed of freedom of expression and conscience and other major liberties for the individual; representative, accountable government; equal justice under the law; and the like? Clearly, in most of Christendom at the time (e.g., Russia, Spain, Germany) these notions were unknown or actively rejected. Instead, the great American experiment in self-government is rooted in specifically English thought and practice. And ironically, the major contribution made by Christianity that hasn’t been present outside Europe has been the faith’s willingness to leave big swathes of human life to secular institutions and authorities (as in Jesus’ admonition to “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”)

Even worse, precisely because they’re so unpopular as well as intellectually feeble, National Conservatism’s focus on these particular culture wars is weakening the ability of the entire conservative movement (except the libertarians) to fight effectively the culture wars that must be fought – specifically, over woke school public curricula; the metastasis of left-wing authoritarianism in so many major, powerful American institutions; and the related spread of divisive identity politics.

I have nothing but respect for those National Conservatives I met – and other Americans – to declare that they’re less concerned with winning politically than with remaining true to their consciences. But their version of the perfect is shaping up as a powerful enemy of the good and formula for defeat – especially if they wish to contend, as they clearly do, in an arena that rightly values the art of the possible.

That’s why I was so encouraged to find out that many of those I met at the National Conservatism Conference agreed that hard-line anti-abortion stances and pro-Christian nation preaching need to be dropped if any of National Conservatism’s other worthy causes are to be advanced.

For me, nothing could be clearer than the following as a recipe for political victory and national well-being: focusing tightly in an America First-type way on  confining U.S. foreign policy to advancing and protecting U.S. sovereignty and core security (especially against foes like China), on taming inflation and building sustainable prosperity; on securing the border; on fighting crime; on removing propaganda from public schools; on preserving a strong voice for parents in their children’s education; and on resisting the intolerant woke and rigid identity politics ideologies being pushed by our most powerful institutions.

National Conservatism as it exists now is close to being on board. If it can go the extra mile, show better judgment politically, and accept a more inclusive, more historically accurate view of “Americanism,” I’ll be happy to join its ranks.

Glad I Didn’t Say That! A Claim that Masks Are and Aren’t Good for Kids.

Tags

CCP Virus, children, coronavirus, COVID 19, education, facemasks, Glad I Didn't Say That!, masks, mental health, psychology, schools, Wuhan virus

“[T]here is plenty of reason to believe that [mask wearing] won’t 

cause any harm” to children.

– Research psychologist Judith Danovitch, August 18, 2021

 

“This is not to say that masks are preferable to no masks, all things

being equal.”

– Research psychologist Judith Danovitch, August 18, 2021

(Source: “Actually, Wearing a Mask Can Help Your Child Learn,” by Judith Danovitch, The New York Times, August 18, 2021, Opinion | Actually, Wearing a Mask Can Help Your Child Learn – The New York Times (nytimes.com))

 

 

Im-Politic: Evidence of a Backlash Against Woke Education

Tags

Black Lives Matter, Democrats, education, gender, history, identity politics, Im-Politic, Josh Kraushaar, National Journal, parents, Parents Defending Education, racism, Republicans, schools, students, systemic racism, teachers, Virginia, white privilege, woke capitalism, wokeness

If you, like me, are worried sick by the prospect of Woke ideology totally poisoning all of America’s major institutions, you just got some great news in a new poll. Commissioned by an organization called Parents Defending Education, it indicates that you’ve got plenty of company when it comes to how this fact-free propaganda is increasingly shaping what the nation’s children learn in school.

Not that the case is airtight. For example, the sponsoring organization is avowedly worked up about “indoctrination in the classroom,” so it’s anything but a neutral, passive observer. And its sample seems to skew somewhat too heavily Republican.

But before you conclude that the poll therefore gives far too much weight to conservatives or traditionalists or racists or homophobes or however you care to describe opponents of these new programs (like the New York Times‘ race-mongering 1619 Project), think about this: Fully two-thirds of respondents placed some value on “promoting social equity” in the classroom. Moreover, nearly 45 percent give “the Black Lives Matter Movement” very or somewhat favorable marks, versus very or somewhat favorable ratings from just over 48 percent  – which closely mirrors how this group of groups have fared in other polls.

The respondents, however, strongly disagreed with the ways that Woke propagandists have been defining social (and racial) equity and the role of educators. Specifically:

>Eighty percent “oppose the use of classrooms to promote political activism to students….”

>By a whopping 87 percent to six percent, respondents agreed that teachers should present students “with multiple perspectives on contentious political and social issues….”

>Fifty-five percent attached no importance on teachers placing a “greater emphasis on race and gender,” including about a third of Democrats.

>Seventy percent opposed schools “teaching their students that their race was the most important thing about them.”

>Seventy-four percent opposed “teaching students that white people are inherently privileged and black and other people of color are inherently oppressed.”

>Sixty-nine percent opposed teaching students “that America was founded on racism and is structurally racist.”

>Fifty-nine percent were against reorienting history classes to “focus on race and power and promote social justice,” with 50 percent opposing this idea strongly.

>By a 75 percent to 18 percent margin, respondents opposed “teaching there is no such thing as biological sex, and that people should choose whatever gender they prefer for themselves.”

>Proposals that schools hire “diversity, equity and inclusion consultants or administrators to train teachers,” were rejected by a 51 to 37 percent margin.

Moreover, respondents saw the propaganda problem growing:

“When asked whether their local K-12 school has increased or decreased its emphasis on issues of race, gender, and activism in the last two years, 52% said it had increased a lot or a little. Only 2% said it had decreased. Similarly, 57% said their local schools had become more political, with only 4% saying less political.”

In his writeup of the survey, National Journal reporter Josh Kraushaar correctly observed that the education versus propaganda issue hasn’t yet been tested significantly where it counts most – in local or state elections. But he also observes that Republican strategists smell a big winner along these lines, and I’m encouraged by the fact that such divisive drivel polls so poorly on a national basis after at least a year of it being promoted actively and synergistically by a major American political party (including the current President), the Mainstream Media, the academic world, the entertainment industry (including sports), and Wall Street and Big Business.

Kraushaar also notes that this year’s Virginia Governor’s race could provide highly suggestive evidence. Although campaigns rarely turn on a single issue, U.S. history makes clear how combustible the mixture of race and education in particular is (just think of the school desegregation battles in North and South alike). So having been a major political battleground in recent decades – because of its steady transition from (moderate) Republican mainstay to (also moderate) Democratic strong point – the Old Dominion could soon become known as a socio-cultural battleground with comparably high stakes.  

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Is More Immigration Really the Key to America’s Tech Future?

Tags

Cato Institute, China, education, entrepreneurs, Germany, H-1B visa, immigrants, Immigration, India, innovation, Israel, Japan, skills, South Korea, start-ups, Taiwan, technology, Washington Post, Worldometers.info, {What's Left of) Our Economy

One of the most compelling – and most often made – arguments in favor of higher U.S. legal immigration levels has to do with innovation. Supposedly, without encouraging ever more foreign workers to move to America, the nation will never be able to maintain its global technology leadership, and ultimately an acceptable, much less improved, degree of prosperity. (See, e.g., here and here.)

Part of the rationale for a welcoming posture, as indicated above, has to do with policies toward highly skilled and educated immigrants in particular (like those admitted under the H-1B program), and the special visa quotas allotted to them. But as the Washington Post editorial board recently made clear, there’s a more general view that immigration is especially good at providing America with “a steady supply of working-age strivers” and that “This nation’s prosperity, pluck, ambition and effervescent character are the products of more than 100 million immigrants who have sought better lives in the United States since its founding.” In other words, immigrants are far more likely than the native-born population to possess the risk-taking and general entrepreneurial traits that lead to so much technological progress.

I’ve already debunked one aspect of these claims here, but because they keep popping up, I keep thinking more about them, and have come across more data that not only casts further doubt on the technology-related need for more immigrants, but that indicate that the immigration cheerleaders are putting the cart before the horse.

For instance, it’s widely agreed that the U.S. tech sector is considerably healthier than Germany’s. In this vein, a widely followed global innovation index issued each year by a United Nations agency ranks the former third in the world and the latter ninth. Ninth isn’t so bad, but it’s at the least curious in this regard that for decades at least, Germany has admitted many more immigrants as a share of total population than has the United States.

Indeed, in 1990 (a good starting point, since current Germany came into being with the reunification that year of the former Federal Republic that comprised the nation’s western part and the former Communist run east), Germany’s immigrant inflow of 1.256 million represented 1.59 percent of the new country’s 79.054 million inhabitants. The 1.536 million green cards awarded by the United States that year accounted for only 0.60 percent of its 252.120 million people. (My official sources for German and U.S. annual immigration totals are here and here, respectively. For population, I used the reliable Worldometers.info website.)

But maybe Germany has made up some ground on the United States during this nearly three-decade period? Not according to this study last year from the Cato Institute – one of America’s foremost supporters of much more lenient U.S. immigration policies. If you look at Figure 2, you see that in 2018, Germany was lagging the United States just about as badly in the number of patents it received in the United States (still the world’s most important market for technology) as it was in 1990.

There doesn’t seem to be much evidence that its relatively large immigration inflows have given Germany much of an edge in entrepreneurship, either. As of 2019, according to this source, Germany’s business start-up rate was less than half that of the United States.

This chart, moreover, makes clear that it’s not just the U.S.-Germany comparison that mucks up the ostensible relationship between tech prowess and entrepreneurship on the one hand, and immigration levels on the other. After all, in 2019, India’s start-up rate was also much higher than Germany’s – even though India is much better known for sending folks abroad than for attracting them. Foreigners aren’t exactly flocking to live in China, either, yet its start-up rate matches Germany’s.

That Cato Institute study provides more complicating international comparisons. That Figure 2 shows that as of 2018, Israel has forged into the lead as the country receiving the largest number of U.S. patents. And its performance started taking off in the mid-1990s. Yet in 1995, when Germany and Israel were roughly on a par in their ability to receive American patents, the 76,361 immigrants Israel admitted in 1995 equalled 1.36 percent of its population of 5.619 million – not far from relatively un-innovative Germany’s figures. By the time it became the international leader, Israel’s immigration rate had fallen to 0.32 percent of its 8.972 million population – much lower than that of Germany, which had become a clear als-ran on the U.S. patent scene – and roughly the same as the recent U.S. rate which has been decried as so woefully inadequate.

And look at the other top performers in Figure 2 other than the United States and Israel. Taiwan hasn’t been anything close to an immigration magnet, either, and ditto for South Korea. As for Japan, it’s long been known as one of the most xenophobic countries in the world (as noted in that Washington Post editorial).

What do the non-U.S. “patent tigers” identified by Cato have in common? As author Jonathan M. Barnett puts it:

“Short on consumers, resources, and labor (and saddled with geographic separation from key consumer markets), the patent tigers (especially Israel and Taiwan) were compelled to specialize in innovation-intensive segments of the global supply chain in which ingenuity, rather than labor or natural resources, conferred a competitive advantage.”

As a result, as widely agreed, they’ve worked hard to create top-notch educational systems for their own populations. German education is highly regarded, too, but it’s often observed that its history and culture in particular have discouraged self-starters.

The lessons for the United States seem pretty clear here.  On the one hand, it’s got lots of the overall population, raw materials and domestic markets that the patent tigers lack.  On the other, unlike Germany, it still enjoys an entrepreneur- and innovation-friendly culture.  If Americans did a much better job of educating their own people, especially in the math, science, and technology fields, they should be able to keep its global technology edge even while controlling immigration more tightly. 

If, however, the nation continues to coddle underperforming school systems, especially at the primary and secondary levels, the argument for relying on immigration to fill the tech gap will look all the stronger.  And in a supreme irony, the ready availability of highly skilled and educated immigrants will keep reducing national incentives to get the national education act together.      

Im-Politic: Maybe American Higher Education Isn’t a Completely Lost Cause?

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academics, cancel culture, Center for Study of Partisanship and Ideology, critical race theory, education, Eric Kaufmann, higher education, humanities, Im-Politic, liberal authoritarianism, political correctness, social sciences, tolerance, wokeness

The late Native-American leader Wilma Mankiller wisely observed that “Whoever controls the education of our children controls the future.” It’s a great way to explain why it’s so important to determine whether the country’s schools at all levels generally have stayed in the business of transmitting knowledge and learning techniques to students, or whether they’re becoming propaganda operations.

Scarily, there’s abundant and seemingly surging evidence of the latter, and though I’m not big on arguing by anecdote, I certainly was alarmed by my stepson’s own recent experiences at Dickinson College, where in his humanities and social science courses, he contended he was both fed a diet of woke-ism and regularly belittled for being a white male.

So when I first heard about a massive new report on “Academic Freedom in Crisis: Punishment, Political Discrimination, and Self-Censorship,” I was expecting to see a detailed case that American higher education had passed the point of no return on political correctness, critical race theory, and intolerance of dissents from them. Instead, the March study from the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology contained a noteworthy amount of evidence that traditional notions of academic freedom – which logically, anyway, go hand-in-hand with non-overtly politicized notions of education – retain surprisingly (to me, anyway) strong support on U.S. campuses.

Not that the study, by University of London political scientist Eric Kaufmann, doesn’t serve up plenty of findings to worry about. But these were some of the most encouraging of the many results compiled and discovered by the author that stood out:

>Of the academics surveyed in various studies in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada who consider themselves to have ever been victims of what Kaufmann calls campus authoritarianism, only 0.03 percent report being dismissed from their jobs or being “deplatformed” (barred from forums or debates held either in person or on social media). And the U.S.-specific numbers are probably lower, since elsewhere in the study it’s made clear that academic freedom’s position in the United Kingdom and Canada is much more precarious. (p. 13)

>A much higher but still distinctly minority share (23 percent) of such respondents report being “threatened by disciplinary action for speech.” (p. 13)

>Only seven percent of U.S. respondents in a survey conduced by the author would favor a “campaign to oust” an academic for “dissenting” (i.e., negative) views on the value of diversity. Only eight percent would support similar efforts either regarding a colleague believing traditional parenthood as superior, or one backing a “restrict immigration” position. A higher, but still decidedly minority (18 percent) would support such a campaign against a colleague believing that “a higher share of women and minorities lowers organizational performance.” (p. 23)

These findings cover what Kaufmann calls “hard authoritarianism” in higher education. But he’s also studied forms of “soft authoritianism,” which he defines as “not being hired, promoted, awarded a grant, or published in a journal.” Of course, he notes, “both matter for academic freedom. Active social bullying is more punishing than social ostracism, which is in turn worse than socially avoiding someone or not including them in one’s social circle.” And all can damage careers. But here the picture looks unexpectedly encouraging, too. For example:

>Kaufmann admits that the sample size is very small, but his own poll found that just 22% of US academics “admit they’d discriminate vs a [Donald] Trump supporter in hiring.” He claims, however, to have come up with a methodology that can determine the share of respondents who would act on such views without admitting to them; This figure is a much bigger 40 percent – but still a minority. (p. 139)

>A separate, larger study found that “17% of [U.S.] conservatives and 16% of centrists would discriminate against a leftist hire whereas only 14% of American academic leftists would discriminate against a conservative hire.” Not only are these percentages low, but I interpret them as showing that such prejudices can work both ways – and possibly cancel out each other’s impact to some extent. (p. 146)

>Similarly, and returning to his own surveys of U.S. academics, Kaufmann found that “24% of leftist academics would rate a right-leaning grant lower while just 16% of right-wing academics would rate a left-leaning grant lower. However, in terms of papers, right and left discriminate against each other at a similar rate (13- 14%), and for promotion, right-wing academics are somewhat more likely to discriminate against the left than vice versa (16% vs. 13%).” (p. 150)

>Using his methodology for uncovering concealed biases, the author writes that 26- 48 percent of American left-wing academic staff would discriminate against a right-leaning promotion, grant, or paper and 26-32 percent of those on the right would do so against their left-leaning equivalents. Again, these more controversial numbers are higher, but still represent minorities. (p. 150)

And positive results aren’t simply confined to the realm of actions and potential actions. For example:

>Kaufann’s survey found that Americans academics profess to prioritize “academic freedom” over “social justice” by 58 percent to 26 percent. Moreover, only 38 percent of American academics in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) view themselves as “activists” – and they’re clearly among the most politicized groups on campuses. (pp. 59 and 100)

>Moreover, according to the author, it’s not even clear that “academics are more likely to discriminate on political grounds than professionals in other sectors.” (p. 182) In other words, there may be no special discrimination problem in higher education – although its aforementioned crucial role in “controlling the future” arguably makes its politicization more dangerous.

In this vein, Kaufmann’s report does present evidence that the presence of activist, agitprop-spouting professors is having an outsized and damaging impact on students. Thus he cites a 2019 U.S. study reporting that:

“…55% of students feel that the ‘campus climate prevents me saying things I believe.’ Fully 82% of conservative students said they had self-censored at least once in class, compared to 40% of liberals. On politics, race, gender, and sexuality, about 30-35% of Republican students are reluctant to share their views in class compared to 15- 25% for Democrat students. While these numbers show a substantial chilling effect, they indicate that right-leaning students are somewhat less inhibited in expressing their views than right-leaning academic staff.” (p. 170)

In addition, there’s reason to think that the (largely woke) politicization of American colleges and universities could worsen in the coming years, as Kaufmann presents considerable evidence showing that younger academics tend to be less tolerant and more willing to act on their progressive biases than their older counterparts.

But perhaps most revealing was Kaufmann’s decision to end his analytical section on an unmistakably bright note: “Fair-minded leftist academics outnumber the hard-authoritarian left by a factor of two or three (even in SSH fields), and offer an important base from which to build a future consensus in favor of academic freedom.” And if someone who’s investigated the subject so thoroughly, and clearly began with such grave concerns, can see reasons for hope – albeit with the need for continued vigilance and pushback – who am I to disagree?

Im-Politic: A Trifecta (& Not in a Good Way) for the Washington Post

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alliances, allies, benefits, contract workers, education, foreign policy, geopolitics, globalism, globalization, Jobs, Mainstream Media, manufacturing, media bias, MSM, national security, NATO, North Atlantic Treat Organization, remote learning, reopening, schools, teachers, teachers unions, temporary jobs, Trade, wages, Washington Post, Zoom

At 11:30 yesterday morning, when I sat down for my typical Sunday brunch at home (where else these days?), I had no idea what I’d blog about today. At 11:35, after perusing the Washington Post Outlook section, I had no fewer than three ideas, each of which focused on an article simultaneously whacko and emblematic of key Mainstream Media and broader establishment biases. Ultimately, I decided that they were all so inane and representative that a single post briefly examining each would suffice to get the message across.

First catching my eye was a proposal by Seton Hall University political scientist Sara Bjerg Moller that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) “reorienting” its focus to add countering the rise of China to its list of missions, and even designating it the top priority. One obvious retort is that the European members of this alliance binding America’s own national security to that of the continent is that during the Cold War, when they readily acknowledged the threat posed by the old Soviet Union, these European members collectively never even mustered the will to provide adequately for their own defense even when they became wealthy enough to create such militaries.

They preferred to free ride on the United States instead – which perversely enabled this behavior by sticking hundreds of thousands of its own troops – and their dependents – in harm’s way, smack in the middle of the likeliest Soviet invasion roots. The idea was that since these units couldn’t possibly match the conventional armes of their Soviets and their East European satellite states, once the shooting started, their vulnerability and indeed impending destruction would leave a U.S. President no real choice but to use nuclear weapons to save them. The odds that the conflict would escalate to the all-out nuclear exchange level that would endanger the Soviet homeland itself was suppsed to keep Moscow at bay to begin with. (And if you think this sounds exactly like the U.S. “tripwire” strategy for defending South Korea that I just wrote about here, you’re absolutely right.)

As with the Korea approach, Washington’s NATO Europe strategy needlessly exposes the continental United States to the risk of nuclear attack because wealthy allies skimp on their own defense spending, but that’s not the main problem with Moller’s article. After all, if the Europeans never mobilized enough resources to prevail over a Soviet threat located right on their doorstep – and a Russian threat that presumably still exists today, since the alliance didn’t disband once Communism fell – why would they answer a call to arms against a danger that’s half a world away from them. And even if they agreed with the United States on the imperative of containing Beijing, why wouldn’t they simply repeat their free-riding strategy, which arguably would allow them once more to reap all the benefits of America’s efforts without incurring any of the costs or risks?

But weirdest of all, the author herself admits that Europe remains far from a new anti-China European mindset. In her own words:

“Regrettably, as with Russia [today], Europe is divided over how to deal with China. Many European allies are wary of picking sides in the struggle for influence between the United States and its Asian rival. Some, like Germany, even appear outright resentful at the suggestion that they must choose. German Chancellor Angela Merkel rushed last year to conclude the E.U.-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment — even though the incoming U.S. national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, had strongly signaled that Europe should wait till Biden’s inauguration.”

Don’t get me wrong: It would be great if the Europeans were ready and willing to stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States against China. But they’re not today, and a heavy burden of proof rests with those arguing that this common front is even remotely possible for the foreseeable future, much less that the United States should spend much time trying to create one. So I’ve got to think that this article was run simply because the relentlessly globalist and therefore alliance-fetishizing Washington Post believes that wishing for (and hyping the prospects of) something can make it so.

The second item is actually a pair of Outlook articles this morning. Their theme – and I could scarcely believe my eyes: Everyone’s overlooking all the advantages that remote learning can create! In other words, for months, national dismay has been growing that conducting classes by Zoom etc at all educational levels has been at best completely inadequate and at worst could permanently scar both the educational attainment and the psyches of the a generation of American students. As warned by none other than President Biden:

“Today, an entire generation of young people is on the brink of being set back up to a year or more in their learning. We are already seeing rising mental health concerns due in part to isolation. Educational disparities that have always existed grow wider each day that our schools remain closed and remote learning isn’t the same for every student.” 

But it’s also clear that the President is loathe to antagonize politically powerful teachers’ unions, which have acted determined to keep schools closed unless a wildly ambitious – not to mention medically unnecessary – set of demands have been met. Largely as a result, all the evidence indicates that a large share of American students still aren’t back in class in person full time (although the hesitation of many parents is partly responsible, too).

It’s just as clear, though, that the Post as an institution, like the rest of the Mainstream Media, is wildly enthusiastic about Mr. Biden. So even though the editorial board has upbraided the unions for their foot-dragging, the Outlook section is run by a different staff and, call me paranoid, I can’t help but suspect that yeserday’s two pieces – by an “author and educator in Boston” and a college professor – aren’t part of an effort to pave the ground for a school re-closing if the CCP Virus shows signs of a comeback.

After all, the articles were dominated by claims to the effect that one author’s Zooming this semester is “light-years better than the last;” that his teaching is “radically improved” since then;  that “if remote learning has been good for one thing, it has closed that gap between authoritative teacher and abiding student”; and presumably best of all, “I used to invest a lot of importance in arbitrary deadlines and make-or-break exams to establish high academic standards. These days, I’ve let go of many of my old notions about penalties for late or missing work.”

It would be one thing – and indeed noteworthy – if these alleged developments were broadly, or increasingly, representative of the American educational scene today.  But the Outlook editors provided no such insights, and if these reported experiences have been exceptions to the rule – as the evidence overwhelmingly concludes – what else could they been trying to accomplish by airing them but soft-pedaling the harm resulting from mass remote teaching?   

The third Outlook item that set me off today was an article by a Washington University (St. Louis) sociologist that included a challenge to the claim that “Manufacturing jobs are the ‘good’ jobs.” The reason? “Unlike in the past, typical pay for these workers is now below the national average” and “the rise of temporary and contract work is a factor….” Moreover, “Not all [such jobs] were offshored or automated, it turns out. Many were just reclassified — downgraded into worse jobs.”

Sure, author Jake Rosenfeld didn’t devote a lot of space to the subject. But he definitely should have devoted more, because what he omitted was critical. For example, it’s true that overall private sector average hourly wages now exceed those for manufacturing, whether you’re talking about the total workforce or just the production/non-supervisory workforce.

But the changeover is pretty recent. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, for the former, it came in 2019; for the latter, in 2006. Moreover, a 2018 Economic Policy Institute study found that although manufacturing’s wage premium (its edge over the rest of the private sector) indeed eroded between the mid-1980s and 2017, the benefits premium actually increased. That’s a finding hard to square with the idea that temporary workers are increasingly dominating manufacturing payrolls.

Further, the idea that offshoring in particular has nothing to do with what growing popularity temps have had with manufacturers can’t withstand serious scrutiny. Or does Rosenfeld believe that super-low-wage pressure from countries like China is unrelated to U.S. workers’ declining bargaining power even when production and jobs aren’t actually sent overseas?

At the same time, efforts to downplay U.S. trade policy’s effects on manufacturing are incredibly convenient for a news organization that, like so many of its peers, enthusiastically backed the pre-Trump administration trade decisions that decimated U.S.-based manufacturing and its employees for decades – and still does.

Despite the expression, “Three strikes, you’re out,” I’m not going to stop reading the Post Outlook section or the rest of the paper. Both are just too influential. But no one should assume that the number of whiffs in yesterday’s paper was limited to three, or that other editions in recent years have been much better. And I do find myself wondering just how many strikes per day I’m going to give this once venerable publication.