Our Rose Colored Collapsing Schools

I am writing to you from the U.S. Education apocalypse of which we are all aware. It’s actually quite warm and fuzzy here as apocalypses go and other than the ubiquitous sense of malaise, no one really seems that upset. Everyone seems to know things like…. a third of students don’t graduate high school.....teachers are coming from lower and lower tiers of graduating college students… education quality is falling behind most other developed countries. I blame statistics. Statistics have a lot to answer for, not only for my lack of love-life in College (yes honey, I love you 63% of the time)  but also because of one bizarre statistic in particular. The majority of U.S. parents give the country’s schools system a C but give their local school an A. I find this totally bizarre (a statistic from Tyack and Cuban’s “Tinkering with Utopia”) and largely ignored as a major problem in U.S. education, but I think it is one of the biggest. If you think your child is doing fine the national crisis in education becomes “Someone Else’s Problem” and not worthy of affecting your vote or your taxes. In fact, I think there are really only three problems:

(1) Parents are too happy

                If parents were truly rational and objective, then averaging up all their grades of their local schools should add up to their view of their national average. But if they think their school is and “A school” and everyone else’s is a “C school” then they are wearing rose colored glasses and can’t see straight for problems close to home. Little Johnny or Mary coming home will all A's probably rosy things up a bit. Imagine what would happen if they realized that their little Johnny or Mary was getting a “C education”, I personally think that no politician or union would stand in their way of improving the system. Parents would not tolerate the gradual deteriorating of teacher quality, the schools or state apathy. They would pay the taxes and vote to fix the problems.

(2) People around the most disadvantaged schools don’t vote

                Almost all of the “failing” schools serve disadvantaged communities. This contributes to the one third drop-out rate in U.S. schools. Although a lot of lip-service is given to this problem, there is no real political incentive to fix it. A politician’s job does not depend on it since there is no consequence to ignoring the problem. Why take resources from your voters and give it to communities that don’t vote? Your voters may even punish you for giving resources to non-voters.

(3) The U.S. is happy to have a lot more poor people than most other developed countries.

                The U.S. has a comfort level with wealth disparity which would not be acceptable in many other developed countries. If I told you that a neighborhood had professional involved parents, you would guess (correctly) that it had a good public school. If I told you a neighborhood had economically disadvantaged parents and had all the problems of intergenerational poverty (addiction, crime etc.) then you could guess (correctly) that the neighborhood school was probably not very good. So how much does the actual “school” matter. There are individual heroes and schools that try to tackle these problems but they are hard to scale. Schools like KIPP charter schools uses longer school hours and shorter summers to try to try to compensate for the disadvantaged backgrounds. However, when will it become clear to our leaders that sometimes it’s NOT THE SCHOOL. Intergenerational poverty creates communities that are not excited about education and you end up with apathetic students, apathetic parents which lead to schools destined to fail and need to lower performance standards just to keep teachers working in this difficult environment.

Having just finished a masters in education, I have to say that there is little mystery to fixing the schools problems. The truth is that the people that need to know, know. They know how to fix the problems. They know what other countries are doing better (even countries with highly unionized education). They have done the research and can list off the fixes. There is certainly a lot of will to fix the problem, with research groups, advocacy group etc, there just isn't enough will. People are just not motivated enough. The fixes are long, difficult and expensive, and this country is too happy and rose visioned to do it.

The end of the world.

Obama has won. The man who plans to socialize medicine and make everyone equal through wealth redistribution. Who unabashedly wishes to tax "only rich people". It does seem a bit like an Ayn Rand dystopian novel and Stephen Colbert wasn't the only one I have heard suggesting "Going Galt". So what is the worst that can happen?

(1) We drive up debt so high that we can never pay back and we and our children become indentured servants
(2) We drive taxes so high and increase regulation to the point that no one in their right might would try to produce anything of value.


#1 Simply cannot happen. The U.S. has the nuclear option, which is to cancel all its debts via printing off cash. Its not a pretty option that will have side effects but this "mini-default" is how most government gets out of egregious debts. The "mini" option is to print off enough cash every year to provide high inflation that will diminish the debt to manageable levels. The big fear that Asians will screw America by holding all our debt and using it as leverage is really the reverse. America will inevitably screw them by devaluing the debt to the point of being easy to repay. In my opinion, this is the lessor of two evils. Repaying all the debt at current face value is too much of a millstone and will probably spiral into a depression. I pretty much say a gradual "default" through devaluation is inevitable although it many take many years of pain for people to realize it, hopefully sooner rather than later. Even with the rapid rate that the Fed is printing money (aka Quantitative Easing) right now, it is barely compensating for the other factors shrinking money supply, evidenced by the very low inflation. In other words, we printing just enough to stand still.

#2 is a more realistic fear, but unlikely to justify the terror in many people's hearts. The worst case of this at the moment is probably France which is considered one of the worst countries in Europe for new entrepreneurship. However, the French are not having a famine or giving up on healthcare or education. Higher than average unemployment (10%) is their current curse. The incredibly high cost of employee terminations in France terrify anyone to hire someone, and the culture of high regulation and perceived high level of strikes and entitlement scare of most international companies thinking of using France as a European base. If the worst thing that Obama can do in 4 years is turn the U.S. into France then I don't think you need to jump off a ledge. Ask anyone who has lived in France. There are many many many worse places. France recently instituted a 75% tax against the "very rich" which has driven some out of the country. Admittedly, the list of the largest 50 French companies haven't changed much in the last 20 years, unlike the U.S., and this is indeed a very high cost of European socialism. However, many feel compensated by long vacations and some security in healthcare and aging. Additionally, Obama, even if he wants to, would want to be 100 times more powerful than he seems to create a French type state in only 4 years. His own party would fight him and the Republican controlled House would fight him more. Additionally, his foray in this direction has been quite mild so far, looking only at one mild tax that still has most rich earning more than under Clinton.

Frankly, America is the way most Americans want it to be and most Americans do not want to live in a French state. If the American demographic alters that may change but so far it doesn't seem like that would happen for a long time.