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: It’s Time for Them to Go

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Anthony S. Fauci, Biden adminstration, CCP Virus, CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, children, coronavirus, COVID 19, Fauci, FDA, Food and Drug Administration, hospitalization, hospitalizations, Im-Politic, Mary T. Bassett, misinformation, New York State, pediatric vaccination, public health, Rochelle Walensky, schools, testing, vaccinations, vaccine mandates, vaccines, Wuhan virus

As the New Year brings Americans their third calendar year of coping with the CCP Virus, it’s abundantly clear that there’s no such thing as a firing offense when it comes to the nation’s leading public health authorities. And it’s been evident in not one but two cases over the last week alone.

Case number one involves Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser. Fauci should already be in near-boiling legal water over the likelihood that he lied to Congress in denying that the National Institute of Alergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) never funded dangerous gain-of-function virus-related research in China. Now he’s just (unwittingly) admitted that he’s been guilty of pandemic-related fear-mongering of the first order on the vital issue of safeguarding children’s well-being.

Fauci has long warned about the dangers posed to minors by the virus and linked vaccination of pupils (along with mask requirements for them) to the goal of keeping schools safely opened. And he’s focused not only on pediatric infection numbers, but on hospitalization rates – widely considered a far more serious matter because they supposedly reveal the incidence of serious and potentially fatal infections. As he argued on NBC News‘ “Meet the Press” on August 8:

“There are a lot of children now – all you need to do is do a survey of the pediatric hospitals throughout the country, and you’re seeing a considerable number of young people who are not only infected but who are seriously ill….the numbers compared to the elderly are less, but that’s a false comparison. These kids are getting sick. We’ve really got to make sure we protect them.”

The alarmist nature of his comments should have been clear from the start, as, for example, that week, according to the CCP Virus data tracker maintained by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the virus-related rate of new hospital admissions for Americans under 17 averaged about 0.14 per 100,000 – which comes to an absolute number of about 100 total hospitalizations among the 73.1 million in that age group as of the latest U.S. Census Bureau figures.

But as I’ve explained, by that time, a national healthcare leader like Fauci should have been aware of the big problem with the hospitalization data in general – they rarely distinguished between patients who were hospitalized because of the virus, and patients hospitalized for other reasons who happened to test positive for the pathogen once admitted. In other words, many “Covid-related hospitalizations” have had nothing to do with Covid.

Here’s how one expert has explained the problem:

“[I]f you look at the children are hospitalized many of them are hospitalized with COVID as opposed to because of COVID. What we mean by that is that if a child goes in the hospital they automatically get tested for COVID and they get counted as a COVID hospitalized individual, when in fact they may go in for a broken leg or appendicitis or something like that.”

“So it’s over counting the number of children who are ‘hospitalized’ with COVID as opposed to because of COVID.”

This expert’s name? Anthony Fauci. But he didn’t make the admission until last week – when total national “Covid-related hospitalizations” for kids still numbered in the low hundreds.

Yet bizarrely, Fauci still favors vaccination for this highly secure demographic cohort, in line with the equally bizarre authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and recommendation from the CDC.  And this even though the jabs for five-to-fifteen years olds are approved only on an “emergency basis”; even though the evidence used seems to consist of a single trial of some 3,100 children; and even though – unlike far more vulnerable older Americans – these vaccine recipients will mostly have many decades from now for any side effects to emerge.

So on the grounds of spreading virus misinformation alone, Fauci should be gone.

Speaking of pediatric hospitalizations and misinformation, it’s also time to sack new New York State Health Commissioner Mary T. Bassett as well. Also last Monday, touting the imperative of pediatric vaccinations, she declared, “Many people continue to think that children do not become infected with COVID. This is not true. Children become infected with COVID and some will become hospitalized. The vaccination coverage remains too low. We need to get child vaccinations up, particularly in the 5-to-11-year-old age group.”

At this time, New York State had recorded 184 child covid hospitalizations (out of a total under-18 population of 4.18 million, according to the latest Census Bureau data). But alarmism wasn’t the worst of Bassett’s offenses. Instead, it was this jaw-dropping admission: 

“The numbers we gave on pediatric admissions weren’t intended to make it seem that children were having an epidemic of infection. These were small numbers that we reported in our health alert. That was based on 50 hospitalizations, and I’ve now given you some larger numbers, but they’re still small numbers. It really is to motivate pediatricians and families to seek the protection of vaccination.”

Lying to the public isn’t a criminal offense – and probably shouldn’t be.  But it sure should be a firing offense. 

According to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, who should be facing big job security questions herself due to the nation’s crying shortage of CCP Virus testing capability despite the Biden administration’s backing for sweeping vaccine mandates, her agency’s controversial decision last week on isolation for indivduals with asymptomatic cases stemmed partly from the “relatively low rates of isolation for all of this pandemic. Some science has demonstrated less than a third of people are isolating when they need to.”  Given Americans’ truth-challenged public health officials, reluctance to follow their advice and instructions is easy to understand.            

 

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

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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

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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.  

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.

Im-Politic: Some History Lessons for Virus Policymakers

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CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, Hong Kong flu, Im-Politic, lockdowns, schools, shutdowns, Wuhan virus

Once the CCP Virus began taking a major toll on American lives and the nation’s economy, I became aware of an historical comparison that I found as astounding and revealing as it’s been widely ignored. Today, months later, I’m still astounded by it, and it remains widely ignored. It’s the mind-boggling-by-any-measure contrast between the way that the current pandemic has been generally viewed and handled, and the way an even deadlier pandemic was handled between late 1968 and the winter of 1970.

That earlier disease outbreak was called the Hong Kong flu (after its supposed origin point), and according to U.S government health agencies, it killed about 100,000 Americans. And the reason I’ve found this fact astounding and revealing is that although this fatality number is just under half that currently attributed to the CCP Virus (218,000), as a share of the U.S. population then, it was only slightly lower. The actual numbers? In 1968, the fatality rate was 0.050 percent (in a population of 200.71 million). Today, it’s 0.066 percent (in a population of 330.47 million).

And even so, the economy and major institutions like schools were left almost completely open. I was in my mid-teens, and I don’t even remember any mention of it – and I was the kind of kid of read newspapers and watched the evening news. And my memory seems pretty accurate, as here’s the historical account that I’ve found whose descriptions of curbs and impacts that were put in place are the most extensive:

“All 50 states experienced increased school absenteeism during the pandemic; 23 faced school and college closures and 31 saw elevated worker absenteeism….

“Newspaper articles chronicled the widespread college closures, slowdowns in business and industry, and threats to Christmas mail deliveries. In December, the Apollo 8 astronauts were vaccinated to protect them from pandemic influenza in advance of their December 21 moon-orbiting flight, and President [Lyndon B.] Johnson was hospitalized with a respiratory infection that his aides said ‘could be called the flu.’ National concerns were reflected in a December 19 New York Times editorial describing the pandemic as ‘one of the worst in the nation’s history,’ bemoaning the ‘amount of discomfort and distress suffered by the millions who have already been hit,’ and the potential for ‘billions of dollars’ associated with treatment and lost productivity.”

Moreover, because the widespread shutdown and lockdown and stay-at-home route wasn’t taken, it’s more than reasonable to assume that collateral public health damage was minimized as well. That’s especially important because treatments for serious physical and mental health problems were so much less advanced back then. And of course, for all the New York Times‘ understandable economic concerns, growth and employment and overall living standards were barely affected.

These diseases are by no means identical. For example, the Hong Kong flu was particularly likely to hit school-age children – roughly the opposite of the CCP Virus pattern, in which seniors have been by far the most vulnerable.

But it seems fair to express the difference between the anti-pandemic strategies of today and yesteryear in this way: During the late-1960s, the federal and state and local governments let life proceed pretty much as normal, and although about 100,000 died, both non-virus public health damage (including deaths) and economic distress were minimized. Nowadays, much of the economy and other institutions (including schools) have been closed for varying periods and many remain closed today, and although the recorded death rate is virtually identical, the non-virus public health damage has been extensive, and the nation is struggling to climb out of its worse economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Without dismissing the need for precautionary and preventive measures (focusing on those most vulnerable,, to be sure), it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that viewed holistically – as is essential – the U.S. CCP Virus approach, as ragged as it’s been, has enabled the perfect to be the enemy of the good.

Im-Politic: The Surprisingly Muddled Politics of School Reopening

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Bill De Blasio, CCP Virus, Chicago, coronavirus, COVID 19, education, Im-Politic, Jim Kenney, Larry Hogan, Lori Lightfoot, Maryland, Montgomery County, New York City, Philadelphia, reopening, schools, teachers, teachers unions, Wuhan virus

Mid-summer sure is shaping up as a bad period for The Narrative being pushed by many politicians in this pandemic and election year, and that seems predominant in those Mainstream Media news organizations still retaining enormous influence over how Americans perceive, think, and even act.

Just a few days ago, as reported on RealityChek, a Gallup poll cast doubt on whether even African Americans regard America’s police forces are systemically racist. More recently, considerable evidence has appeared – and in real life, not polls – challenging the belief that the nation’s school reopening debate pits the Trump administration and other Republicans and conservatives and their insistence that in-classroom instruction resume this fall with no regard whatever for the health of students, administrators, versus Democrats, liberals, and teachers themselves who refuse to expose anyone involved in education to a deadly disease.

Think what you will of the substance of this reopening debate and what types of school year starts strike the best balance between providing students with urgently needed education and other benefits of physical schooling on the one hand, and safeguarding their health on the other. It’s still pretty stunning to learn that in numerous American cities and other jurisdictions, the teachers and their unions – long a key Democratic Party constituency and funder – have been up in arms against the reopening plans of Never Trumper leaders that feature various mixes of virtual and in-school instruction.

Let’s start with my beloved native New York City, whose mayor, Bill de Blasio, is one of America’s most far-Left politicians (albeit one with a unique ability to antagonize folks on the Left). At the end of last month, de Blasio unveiled a reopening plan incorporating a weekly “blended approach” of in-class and virtual learning for “a vast majority of kids.” De Blasio also said that implementing the plan required that the city’s daily positive CCP Virus test rate stayed below three percent – and justified his approach by noting that it had lately been steady at one percent

The reaction of the city’s educators? Protests that included teachers (and some parents) carrying coffins and a guillotine.

Chicago is another big city with a high-profile progressive Democratic mayor – Lori Lightfoot. Unlike de Blasio, she hasn’t alienated many of her fellow progressives. But in the view of her city’s teachers, she has also committed the sin of proposing a school reopening plan entailing “a hybrid schedule combining two days of in-person instruction and three days or remote learning for kindergarten through sophomore year students….” Moreover, Chicago parents with kids in the public schools can opt for full virtual learning under the plan, which isn’t yet official policy. The school system says that it’s prepared for the return of physical classes with “large PPE investments, [a] pod system that should help with contact tracing and that it will have temperature checks at school.” Yet Chicago teachers are marching in protest, too, with the union pushing for an all virtual reopening.

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney has a lower national profile than de Blasio or Lightfoot, and lately a more mixed claim as a progressive champion, including among progressives. (See here and here for evidence.) But he’s clearly a liberal Democrat.

His city’s school Superintendent also proposed a blended-type plan that “would have sent most children back to school in person two days a week and contained a 100% virtual option for families who wanted it.” The response of Philadelphia teachers (and also some parents)? “Don’t force one teacher or student into classrooms until you can guarantee our safety.” And the backlash was strong enough to force the school system into revision mode.

You say you aren’t confused enough? Maryland’s Governor Larry Hogan has recently muddied the narrative still further.  I know – he’s a Republican. But he’s worked hard to position himself as an anti-Trump Republican and possibility for the party’s presidential nomination in 2024. So it would be logical to expect Hogan to fall in with the hard core opponents of in-class reopenings. Yet yesterday, Hogan slapped down as “overly broad” a (liberal Democratic) Maryland county’s order to bar, at least through October 1, not only public schools from offering any in-person education, but private schools as well.

It’s entirely possible that the confused politics of school reopenings may complicate efforts to arrive at a reasonable working consensus on this vital issue.  But in these hyperpartisan times, a better outcome might be in store.  The willingness of various politicians to depart from the battle lines widely supposed to exist might become a badly needed force for pragmatism – and especially for the flexible, case-by-case solutions that will undoubtedly often be needed.      

Im-Politic: A Chinese Cure-All for America’s Schools?

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college, education, foreign students, high schools, Im-Politic. China, Leonora Chu, parents, schools, students, teachers, The Wall Street Journal, universities

Nothing would be easier to look at the headline of Leonora Chu’s Wall Street Journal column on lessons that American schools could learn from their Chinese counterparts and conclude that it’s a naive whitewashing – at best – of education in totalitarian countries. And nothing would be more off-base. For the headline is utterly misleading, and the author acknowledges that propagandizing even very young children with communist dogma is only one of the numerous major failures and shortcomings of Chinese schools.

Still, Chu comes off as an unmistakable admirer of many crucial features of the Chinese system, and especially its insistence that parents as well as students respect the authority of teachers, along with the academic results that this attitude produces.

I agree with Chu that too often, “Western teachers spend lots of time managing classroom behavior and crushing mini-revolts by students and parents alike”; that “Americans have arguably gone too far in the other direction, elevating the needs of individual students to the detriment of the group”; and that, “Educational progress in the U.S. is hobbled by parental entitlement and by attitudes that detract from learning: We demand privileges for our children that have little to do with education and ask for report-card mercy when they can’t make the grade.”

Not that even these reasonable propositions are bullet-proof. Principally, how many American teachers today truly deserve this absolute respect? How many are flat-out incompetent? How many are determined to push their own political beliefs on students, at all levels of education, and in public and private schools alike? It’s true that the nation collectively has caused much of this problem by underpaying teachers and thus preventing many individuals of real talent (and integrity) from choosing this profession. But we don’t solve the problem by indiscriminately entrusting our children’s future to the present teacher cohort.

Yet oddly, Chu seems to overlook what seems like potentially the most damning indictment of the Chinese educational system of all. And so have her Wall Street Journal editors: Chinese parents appear to abandon Chinese schools whenever they can. How do I know this? In part because I read The Wall Street Journal.

Indeed, the very same day that Chu’s article ran, the Journal ran a report titled “U.S. High Schools Picking Up More International Flavor.” In this case, the headline was completely accurate. And guess where the plurality of the foreign students streaming into American high schools are coming from? Pat yourself on the back if you answered “China.”

Indeed, correspondent Tawnell D. Hobbs cites a federally funded study finding that the foreign student population in American high schools more than doubled between 2004 and 2016, to just under 82,000. And fully 42 percent are Chinese. Just as intriguing: Three of the other top student-sending countries are known for hewing to Chinese-style, Confucianism-based educational values, too – Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam.

Moreover, why are so many students from these countries with China-like schools coming to America for secondary education? According to one of the study’s researchers, “For most of these students, the goal is to graduate with a high-school diploma. They’re really looking at seeing themselves as being more competitive to get into a U.S. university.”

On the one hand, the decision to try gaining entry into the (still world-class) U.S. higher education system may have nothing to do with any supposed advantage of American high schools. After all, foreign parents may assume that their children will benefit in terms of college admission simply from getting exposed to U.S. schools and their approaches, and to the broader society (including English speakers).

On the other hand, it’s surely no secret to foreign parents that American colleges and universities are turning cartwheels to attract foreign students – mainly for financial reasons. For both public or private institutions have taken to relieving cash crunches by welcoming students from overseas – who pay full freight. So especially if the family has the bucks, there’s no reason to think that junior can’t sail into an American institute of higher education without attending a U.S. high school. And still American secondary education is considered appealing.  

So it seems like the real takeaway here is that although there’s ample room and urgent need for improvement in American schools, and that although some foreign practices and attitudes no doubt can be imported, there’s no reason to think that some magic formula for success lies overseas. The main solutions for what ails U.S. education, as Shakespeare might have said, are “in ourselves.”