Im-Politic: Where America’s Schools are Best in Fostering Employment

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economy, education, Employment, Im-Politic, Jobs, public schools, schools, state and local government, students, teachers

So it turns out that America’s public school systems have been excelling on the employment front after all. Only their perfomance has nothing to do with their effectiveness at equipping students with the knowledge and skills needed for successful careers. Instead, it has to do with their effectiveness in creating jobs in public school systems – and specifically, growing employment much faster than public school enrollment has increased.

And although most education specialists believe (understandably, IMO), that the lower student-teacher ratios get, the more the former learn, widely accepted measures of student performance show that this relatively rapid expansion of public school system employees has achieved nothing of the kind.

That may be because teachers are getting worse (or at least less capable of teaching today’s students), or because too many of the new workers in school systems are doing something other than classroom teaching. The (official) data I present below doesn’t distinguish between types of public education jobs, and which types have risen faster than others. 

The big picture, though, should worry anyone concerned about lagging public school performance: From 1980 through 2020, according to the U.S. Department of Education, the numbers of students in the nation’s primary and secondary schools were up by 22.16 percent – from 40.877 million to 49.375 million.

But the Labor Department figures peg the expansion of employment in “local education” during that period at 58.77 percent – from 5.073 million to 8.054 million. That’s nearly three times as fast.

And the disparity between the two growth rates has been pretty remarkable during some timeframes. For example, between 1980 and 1990, public school enrollment inched up by just 0.83 percent. But local education employment jumped by 15.45 percent.

Between 1991 and 2001 (generally the years of that decade’s economic recovery), public school enrollment grew by 12.26 percent. But local education systems added 24.29 percent more workers. That’s nearly twice as many.

As made clear by the Bloomberg piece that sparked my curiosity about the trends, the CCP Virus pandemic brought these trends to a screeching halt. Thanks to extended school closings, their aftermath, and other Covid-driven changes in the U.S. employment picture, between 2020 and last year, even though public school enrollment expanded by 1.13 percent, the local education workforce actually shrank by 3.66 percent.

More recently, local education payrolls have rebounded, and as Bloomberg‘s Nic Querolo reports, have almost returned to their pre-pandemic levels. And because municipal finances overall are in unexpectedly excellent shape for now, state and local governments may well be able to boost education headcounts further.

But will public school enrollment keep growing as quickly? (No figures for this year are available yet.) Will the result (finally) be better educational outcomes? Will state and local governments and taxpayers care enough to start changing what seems to be a losing game for students and the country in general? I’ll be eagerly anticipating the full year 2023 enrollment and local education employment data for further insights. 

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Our So-Called Foreign Policy: On Chinese Spying and Dual Loyalties

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academics, Biden administration, China, China Initiative, Chinese Americans, civil liberties, DOJ, dual loyalty, espionage, FBI, German-Americans, higher education, immigrants, Israel, Italian-Americans, Japanese internment, Japanese-Americans, Jews, Justice Department, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, profiling, spying, students, The New York Times, World War II, Yudhijit Bhattacharjee

As an American Jew, I’m extremely aware of the dangers of accusing members of various U.S. identity groups with ancestry from or associated with foreign countries of “dual loyalties.” The worst example of the injustices that can result was the World War II-era internment policy – which punished legal immigrants and even American citizens simply based on the assumption that anyone of Japanese descent could be spying for a wartime enemy.

(German- and Italian-Americans came under suspicion, too, but were placed in camps much more selectively than Japanese-Americans.)

Especially in the U.S. context, the dual loyalty charges levelled against Jews has come from those who claim that when they lobby for or just favor pro-Israel policies, they’re prioritizing the interests of the Jewish State over those of the United States. (For some typical – and unusual – recent examples see here.)

More recently, individuals of Chinese descent living in America have come under the microscope due to concerns about wide-ranging spying campaigns conducted by the People’s Republic. And because the targets have ranged from U.S. citizens to legal immigrants to Chinese nationals resident here as students and on various academic exchange programs, critics have claimed that racial profiling and dual loyalty overreach have marked the responses of American law enforcement agencies.

Indeed, these charges – along with contentions that valuable scientific progress is at risk – have been so persuasive to the Biden administration that last February, it shut down a Justice Department program begun during the Trump years to cope with the alleged threat.

But as a New York Times Magazins article today has made clear, despite the dangers of broad-brush approaches, something like the Justice Department’s disbanded “China Initiative” is absolutely necessary to safeguard U.S. national security adequately.

As explained in this detailed Times report on the FBI’s China-related counter-espionage work (and it’s worth quoting in full):

“…China has sought to exploit the huge numbers of people of Chinese origin who have settled in the West. The Ministry of State Security, along with other Chinese government-backed organizations, spends considerable effort recruiting spies from this diaspora. Chinese students and faculty members at American universities are a major target, as are employees at American corporations. The Chinese leadership ‘made the declaration early on that all Chinese belong to China, no matter what country they were born or living’ in, James Gaylord, a retired counterintelligence agent with the F.B.I., told me. ‘They started making appeals to Chinese Americans saying there’s no conflict between you being American and sharing information with us. We’re not a threat. We just want to be able to compete and make the Chinese people proud. You’re Chinese, and therefore you must want to see the Chinese nation prosper.’

“Stripped of its context and underlying intent, that message can carry a powerful resonance for Chinese Americans and expatriates keen to contribute to nation-building back home. Not all can foresee that their willingness to help China could lead them to break American laws.”

Keep in mind, moreover, that Times reporter Yudjhijit Bhattacharjee is by no means unsympathetic to the profiling and dual loyalty issues, as he wrote in the very next sentence,

“An even more troubling consequence of China’s exploitation of people it regards as Chinese is that it can lead to the undue scrutiny of employees in American industry and academia, subjecting them to unfair suspicions of disloyalty toward the United States.”

But however – genuinely – troubling they are, if you’re worried about Chinese spying and national security, and you acknowledge that much of Beijing’s strategy is based on an attempt to blur the distinction between Chinese nationals and Chinese-Americans, and that the latter can be all too susceptible to these appeals, what’s the alternative to casting a wide net? Pretending that there’s nothing to see here?

Which brings up another disturbing finding of Bhattacharjee’s: The claim of one FBI agent he interviewed that “When… agents go out to talk to companies and universities about the threat…skeptical listeners ask for the evidence that proves the theft of trade secrets is part of a campaign directed by China’s government.”

Given unmistakable evidence of decades of massive Chinese theft of U.S. and other foreign intellectual property, China’s systematic disregard for other long agreed-on global trade rules it’s promised to respect, and its increasingly hostile and expansionist foreign policies, what aside from willful ignorance – or on the part of universities, a naive faith that even a regime so repressive and belligerent would never dream of corrupting the global March of Science – could explain this skepticism?

Obviously no country with what I called yesterday a healthy sense of self-preservation could possibly base its China counter-espionage policies on such assumptions. Nor could any country with inevitably limited national security resources and a consequent need to set priorities.

So even though critics of the China Initiative were right in pointing out that some of those it had prosecuted have been acquitted, and even though that danger of overreach is always present, the Biden administration was seriously mistaken in not only closing down the China Initiative but sanctimoniously declaring that it’s completely scrapping any practices smacking of “standards based on race or ethnicity.”

And if China Initiative critics want to boost the odds of counter-espionage campaigns choosing their targets accurately, they might try getting their own heads out of the sand by helping the government less reluctantly and scrutinizing their own China ties with more realistically and vigiliantly.

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.

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: An Overlooked Reason to Rethink the Four-Year College Model

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adolescence, college, education, Financial Times, higher education, Im-Politic, Oren Cass, students

I feel hesitant to write about what is or isn’t going on on college campuses these days because it’s been quite a while since my own student days; my visits in recent decades have been limited to short trips either to give guest talks or lectures or to drop off and pick up my son when he was an undergrad or to take in an occasional basketball game at George Washington U.; and although I have some friends and acquaintances in academe, we don’t often seem to discuss campus life and how it has or hasn’t changed over time.

So sure – I’ve covered subjects like the dangerous direct and indirect Chinese government presence in American colleges and universities, and about some of the conflicts that have broken out over how to deal with historical figures with racially charged records. (See, e.g., here.)  But I can only recall one instance of even briefly mentioning the crucial matter of how well these institutions are or aren’t educating students and otherwise preparing them to be successful adults and informed citizens.

I’m focused on this matter today, however, because of two recent developments that seem amply to justify the deepest skepticism about the model of undergraduate education that’s become dominant in recent decades. The first entails the much remarked on force with which the CCP Virus has driven so much instruction on-line, and all the questions that this shift have intensified about the constantly surging costs and therefore value of a four-year degree – which of course includes the cost of campus physical plants that provide so many services that have little to do with education.

The second was the appearance last week of a Financial Times column that’s brilliantly alluded to a strong resulting suspicion of mine that keeps growing, and that surely is widely shared, if still rarely voiced explicitly. As author Oren Cass wrote in a piece covering many of higher education’s woes:

“It’s easy enough to disprove the economic claim that attending college promises them success, but much harder to refute the cultural message equating ‘not college material’ with ‘loser’. Worse, we advertise the college experience as an amusement park entitlement — a rite of passage filled with sports and parties, sex and alcohol, activities calendars overseen by cruise-ship directors called ‘campus life co-ordinators’, and, oh, classes that you should try to attend, all paid for by someone else or at some other time. Try convincing a teenager it would really be smarter to forgo that experience for a few years of hard work, an industry credential and some savings in the bank.”

And he further derides colleges today as “four-year summer camps” and “private playgrounds” for the children of the wealthy.

That second swipe unintentionally reminds us that major distinctions need to be made between private and public universities, and that therefore a latter day version of “Animal House” probably isn’t what most undergrads whatever their school are living.

But beyond the exaggeration and oversimplification, Cass points the way to a possibility that deserves full consideration, and it seems best expressed as a question. Let’s leave aside all the controversies raging today about political correctness and safe spaces and snowflakes and academic propagandizing. Let’s also table for now the serious and necessary discussion concerning whether higher education’s emphasis should be more vocational and professional and technical, or more purely academic.

The question remains – and it’s actually a series of questions: If a society wanted to transmit most effectively to its college-age youth the widest range of the knowledge and skills and experiences considered essential for later life both public and private, would it really be placing these late teens and early twenty-somethings in environments that are largely isolated physically? Where the basics of life are literally served up to them on a platter? Where none of the chores and responsibilities of independent adulthood need to be carried out or met? Where all of the adults present are products of the same cloistered set ups? Whose ideal of the community of scholars – however typically honored in the breach – is barely one step removed, at least in the West, from the medieval monastery? And would that society structure this system so as to ensure that so many of these coddled youth would be those whose talent or birth or some combination of these and other advantages tended to push them into lives of outsized power and influence?

Following on: Could such a cloistered situation reasonably be expected to engender anything deserving the term “personal growth,” or reinforce any desirable form of maturation? Isn’t it far likelier that it’s fostered the kind of entitled sensibilities that never fail to harm any human community, and in fact the kind of narcissism and extended adolescence that seems so widespread among my own Baby Boomers – the first generation during which a system once reserved for the upper classes was extended to the broad middle – and succeeding cohorts?

Of course no society in its right mind would knowingly engage in practices so described, or expect anything but counterproductive, and even perverse, results. Just as obvious, this portrait of campus life is too broadbrush and shouldn’t tar the reputations of all those students who work their way diligently through four-year colleges needing to balance the requirements of classroom and jobs, of generations before them faced with the same challenges and strapped with the often inevitable debts, and of students who have donated big chunks of time and continue to volunteer for all manner of worthy community service projects.

Yet can anyone seriously deny that a nation-wide gap dividing town and gown is exactly what’s been created and cultivated in higher education for decades now? Or that its excessive width – indeed the imperative of rethinking the very goal of immersing near-adults in an environment defining itself, however undeservedly, as higher brow than its surroundings – is becoming ever clearer from the abundant evidence that many of even the less completely pampered undergrads leave academe lacking everything from critical thinking skills to the ability to function in the workplace without time-consuming supervision? (See, e.g., here.)

I am far from knowing what model should or will replace it, though I sense that the very breadth of higher education’s failure is a glaring sign that more than one alternative is in the offing. I’d also be surprised if lots of time and trial and error weren’t needed to devise them, and if some version of the current four-year community of scholars model didn’t survive as the best match for some students – as it is now.

But for most – and even for many of the most academically inclined – higher education seems certain ultimately to much more closely integrate the classroom world and the broader world that graduates will enter. And I’m equally certain that, once this transition is well underway, most will look back and wonder why anyone thought they should have been kept so far apart to begin with.

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.”

Im-Politic: Economy/Election Poll Shows Surveys’ Strengths and Weaknesses

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2016 election, blue-collar workers, Cato Institute, consumer confidence, Democrats, Donald Trump, economy, Financial Crisis, Great Recession, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Jobs, millennials, minorities, polls, recovery, Republicans, students, The Conference Board, TPP, Trade, Trans-Pacific Partnership

I was going to start off with today a post-mortem on last night’s presidential debate but decided to wait until we get what are billed as the complete TV ratings – which are scheduled to be released later today. In my view, until we get the first reliable polls, these will be crucial to answering the question of who won in the all important minds of the voters (as opposed to the chattering classes). I’ll explain what I mean in that post, so stay tuned!

In the meantime, I was really struck by the results – and the interpretations – of a new poll on how Americans view the high profile issues of the economy and trade. All else equal, at this point, these seem to be the main determinants of both the upcoming presidential and Congressional election results.

The survey was commissioned by the publication Politico and the Harvard University school of public health. (Go figure!) And when it comes to Americans’ assessment of the country’s performance since the financial crisis peaked in 2008, the findings look like good news for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. That’s no major surprise. What was more unexpected was how bipartisan the downbeat views are, and how that finding was soft-pedaled in the summary article.

Respondents were asked whether they thought that the U.S. economy had gotten “better” since the downturn in 2008, “worse,” or “stayed the same.” “Better” won with a 41 percent plurality, “worse” came in at 32 percent, and “stayed the same” was the answer of 24 percent. So that seems fairly encouraging for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who served in the administration that’s been responsible for the economy since 2009. At least, it seems, there’s no mass political uprising brewing against the Obama record.

But think about 2008. That wasn’t the run-of-the-mill “downturn” suggested by the poll’s bland wording. That was perfect economic storm time, a period when the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in particular nearly triggered a global financial and economic meltdown. In addition, the second half of the year in particular was also a time when Americans were losing not only their jobs but their homes in droves. So one in four respondents seeing no change since then is stunning enough. Even more so is the belief of nearly one in three that matters are worse.

Nor should you put too much stock in the article’s claim of “a clear partisan split on this question” with Democrats more upbeat than Republicans. It’s true that 67 percent of Democrats (versus only 21 percent of Republicans) perceived an improving economy since 2008. But 32 percent saw the situation just as bad or worse than during that crisis period. Just as important, a total of 62 percent of independents gave the expansion (which technically began in mid-2009) that kind of lousy grade.

The big questions that still arise, though, from these findings:

>How do Americans perceive their own economic and financial circumstances, as opposed to the country’s? Usually they feel much better about their own lots, and the latest Conference Board consumer confidence survey supports that proposition. It just hit a nine-year high.

>Which of these judgments will matter more in the voting booth?

>Will Americans who are down on the economy place more trust in Trump or Clinton to set things right?

>How will these and other economic poll results break down by state – which of course will influence the all-important Electoral College count?

Meanwhile, the Politico-Harvard survey produced several important results on the trade policy front. First, it found that although only 29 percent of the public has heard of President Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Pacific Rim trade agreement that’s currently before Congress, 63 percent of those familiar with the agreement oppose it. And 68 percent disagree that Congress should vote on the matter in a lame-duck session of Congress – which the president is pushing for.

At the same time, such trade soundings have been all over the board lately – see this poll released a little earlier from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs for some contrasting results.

Much more interesting to me was the genuinely partisan split – which both surveys found. As Politico described it, Americans who call themselves Republicans have swung not only to being sharply critical of U.S. trade policy, but decidedly more critical than self-identified Democrats.

In GOP ranks, the Politico-Harvard poll found that 47 percent of respondents said that free trade agreements have hurt their communities and fully 85 percent called them net job killers. The comparable results for Democrats? Only about 25 percent and 50 percent.

My big takeaway here: “The party of the common man” may now be a misnomer for the Democrats. And interestingly, an analyst from the Cato Institute, which disagrees with nearly all my views on trade policy and even politics, concurs. He told a Politico reporter that the trade shift 

“might also reflect a shift in party affiliation among voters [especially among] ‘less-educated white males, blue-collar folks who probably used to support Democrats, but who are now Republicans. For cultural reasons, I think they are more prone to subscribe to the characterization of trade that Trump likes to use, the sort of nationalist view of us versus them.’”

Conversely, more and more Democrats look to be college students and other younger Americans (who have relatively limited experience in the job market or who take more cosmopolitan views of the global economy); government employees and workers in low-wage service industries (who face no foreign competition); and minority citizens (who have never been terribly active on the trade front but who should be).

Of course, polls shouldn’t be taken as gospel, especially this year – even when they agree. But if you look at enough of them, and read a bit between the lines, you’ll probably wind up more informed about American politics, not less. So I’ll be keeping an eye on them for the rest of this campaign – and you should, too, if you’ve got the time.