Open Mic for the week of 2/5/2024
There’s a phenomenon where someone writes an essay about this or that but someone else wants to discuss something that has not yet made it to the front page.
This is unfair to everybody involved. It’s unfair to the guy who wrote the original essay because, presumably, he wants to talk about his original essay. It’s unfair to the guy who wants to talk about his link because it looks like he’s trying to change the subject. It’s unfair to the people who go to the comments to read up on the thoughts of the commentariat for the original essay and now we’re talking about some other guy’s links.
So!
The intention is to have a new one of these every week. If you want to talk about a link, post it here! Or, heck, use it as an open thread.
And, if it rolls off, we’ll make a new one. With a preamble just like this one.
Welp, Reuters reports: New quality glitch to delay some Boeing 737 MAX deliveries.
Spirit, you say?Report
This isn’t surprising; you better believe that anything not 100% perfect is gonna be scrutinized with both hands and a flashlight for the next few years.
Like, even in the article it says “they have to review the issue to decide whether they’re still usable”, not “it’s all junk scrap because cost-cutting ex-MDA management sucked all the quality out by chasing profit$”. My experience with this is that after a second look they’ll say “yeah these are fine”, and the issue is that they had to spend the time and money to take that second look, time and money that were not originally in the budget.
That said, my experience is also that by the time they get done convincing themselves the parts are good, they’ll have spent as much time and double the money it would have cost to just throw the parts out and make new ones…Report
Republicans in the Senate – the one who have to win statewide elections to stay in office (and thus tend to face a more purple then red world) have released their proposed immigration and aid package legislation. As expected, the House will refuse to take it up when it arrives. Because refusing to solve a problem you sent years screaming about is good politics in primary season apparently.
https://www.npr.org/2024/02/04/1226427234/senate-border-deal-reachedReport
Intersting article on the NIMBY opposition to green energy, which doesn’t fall along predictable axes of partisan politics but is usually rooted in an underlying resistance to change:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2024/02/04/us-counties-ban-renewable-energy-plants/71841063007/
But as person after person comes to the podium, another theme develops. Often, the people say they don’t reject the need for renewable power. But whatever their arguments, one sentiment underlies them – sadness and sometimes anger as they contemplate what feels like a massive change in the place they live and love.
“I wouldn’t say we’re against renewable energy, I would say we’re against it being forced upon us,” said Coedy Snyder, who lives about three miles from the proposed Oak Run solar farm in Madison County, Ohio. The proposed 6,000-acre, 800 megawatt power plant would generate enough energy for as many as 170,000 homes, and developers say it could provide $250 million in tax revenue over 35 years.
Snyder has lived on the same road his whole life, farming soybeans and corn together with his father, grandfather and brother.
“You live in the country, and you want to be away from all the hustle and bustle. I kind of look at it as if they’re sticking a warehouse or a factory here,” he said. He believes if we wait, renewable technology will get better and not be as disruptive.Report
Well sure, NIMBYism is bipartisan. NIMBY’s are mostly just people who have a stake in an area and don’t want it to change. Anyone of any political persuasion can be a NIMBY which is why it cuts through the spectrum from red blooded libertarians to the most ecologically minded socialist. It’s an entirely understandable, but destructive, sentiment.Report
100%.
And taken to an extreme you end up with MAGA.Report
Trump has, on occasion, feinted in an expressly NIMBY or anti-YIMBY direction.Report
There is a small c kind of conservatism in a lot of people innately which seems to amount to “I don’t like change.” My armchair psychology connects this to our fears on aging, irrelevance, and death. People want Williamsburg or whatever other cool neighborhood to be as it was when they first saw it because they first saw it when the 22 years old and hot and filled with energy.Report
I think it is mainly because real estate can turn from something you love to something you hate really fast under the proper circumstances. During the 19th century, there were people who were born when Chicago was outskirts settlement and who died when it became one of the biggest cities in the world. For some reason, people seem to have less of an appetite or at least less tolerance for this from now on. People want more orderly growth or no growth rather than a jumble of buildings and uses.Report
People in general are both loss averse and risk averse, and being suspicious of change is a logical extension of those sentiments.Report
Lest you think now one cares about the verdicts of TFG’s various criminal trials:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/05/politics/cnn-poll-trump-verdict-election-charges/index.htmlReport
https://sfstandard.com/2023/11/13/california-math-wars-san-franciscans-demand-8th-grade-algebra/
SF stopped teaching algebra in Middle School in 2014-2015. The goal was to encourage more Black, Hispanic, and lower-income kids to take tougher level math in high school. Now there is a campaign via proposition to bring algebra to the eighth grade again.
I think the original goal was laudable but the method of getting to the goal questionable and it reeks a bit too much of “lets tear the overachievers down.”
Now I am really hoping that the usual suspects can talk about this with concern trolling/bashing Democrats, liberals, and/or San Francisco but I doubt it.Report
Education is one of the big internal fault lines in the Democratic Party along with NIMBYism.Report
It seems like it’s really easy to get any given school to say “we should do something new and fresh and unproven!” and it’s really difficult to say “well, that didn’t work… we should go back to the old way”.
I mean, I understand that the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics means that we can’t run experiments with controls and say that this elementary school switches to Whole Word Reading and that one stays on Phonics and we compare test scores for the next 5 years and see how we’re doing at the end… but it should be easier to say “our numbers are going down” and *STOP*.
It shouldn’t take a decade to decide that getting rid of Algebra in 8th Grade is a good way to get more LatinX math students in 10th Grade. What even would be the mechanism for that?!Report
They used to have lab schools to try out new ideas in education on a control group before letting it out in the masses. Not just in the United States but everywhere else. Lab schools don’t seem to exist anymore and new educational techniques just get released in the wild without testing.Report
My high school did an experimental math program that was discontinued about 2.75 years into it. I was in the program for 1.75. On the one hand it’s good they changed direction. On the other I have no idea how damaging it was to those of us in it. I had to take a remedial math program in college but that could have happened anyway.Report
When I was in ninth grade in a small town in Iowa, the school superintendent ran an experiment to see how much math the better students could absorb in a year. They took a group of us, gave us the textbook for Algebra I and II, a classroom where we met daily and a teacher to answer any questions we had. Self-paced all the way. Two of us made it through I and II and spent the last couple of weeks with the trig/pre-calc textbook. My family moved the following summer.
Geometry was okay, but then I was stuck in Algebra II and I already knew all the material. I was carving my initials into my desktop with a Bic pen, and just about the time I got through the darned plastic surface so I could really make progress, got sent to the principal. When the Algebra II teacher showed up, hilarity ensued. I aced his Algebra II final the next day on a dare. As it turned out, the school had recently received a time-share terminal connected to the small mainframe at the local university. They handed me the manuals and wished me luck. Taught myself FORTRAN and bad habits that it took me years to unlearn.Report
You are clearly much more mathematically gifted than me. Anytime someone asks me why I went to law school I say fear of numbers.Report
LSU still has a lab school – https://www.uhigh.lsu.edu/Report
Here’s a map of which school districts across the country offer algebra in middle school:
https://www2.ed.gov/datastory/stem/algebra/index.html#:~:text=Despite%20the%20benefits%20of%20early,Pre%2DCalculus%2C%20and%20Calculus.
Would it surprise anyone here to see that there doesn’t appear to be much of a red state/ blue state split?
Like, Florida offers it almost everywhere, but MIssissippi doesn’t offer it anywhere.
New York does, but California is split.
I’m not sure that Mississippi is refusing to offer algebra so as to get more LatinX students.Report
From what I remember from my suburban New York school days, Algebra was an 8th grade subject for honor’s kids and a 9th grade subject for the non-honor’s kids. At my upper middle class suburban high school, everybody went to college afterwards, the regular math course was Algebra I, Algebra II (geometry), trigonometry, and pre-calculus. For the honor’s kids just put Algebra II in 9th grade and calculus in 12th grade.Report
In my upstate NY days,at a well-regarded school, algebra was offered in 9th grade, followed by geometry in 10th, trigonometry in 11th, and, depending on the school, calculus or something else for 12th.
Of course, in my day they had only recently invented algebra.Report
The link is from 2018 but apparently only a quarter of American 8th graders take Algebra. That isn’t a lot. I’m wondering if the fight over 8th grade algebra is cultural. Americans traditionally assumed that kids were good in math or they were not. East Asian countries, and maybe European ones, assume that any reasonably competent student could be good at math with a reasonably competent teacher. The areas pushing for 8th grade algebra seem to have a higher percentage of Asian-Americans demographically speaking and they are acting on their own beliefs and preferences.Report
The Wall Street Journal article that has been linked to more than once in the previous open thread cites a study that casts serious doubt on whether it makes a noticeable difference whether algebra is taught in 8th or 9th grade. I suspect you’re right about this being largely a cultural issue.Report
One of the things I wonder about the Bay Area educational fights is whether parents from an Asian background especially if they are immigrants, are just taking the systems they know and bringing it here because it was what they are used to.
Asian school systems are notorious for relentless examination and cramming and after school programs like Kumon.
There was an article in the New Yorker in 2023 about an American expat’s experience with Chinese schools. His wife is ABC (American Born Chinese). Apparently at his daughter’s elementary school in China, the math teacher has the power to unilaterally cancel recess if she thinks the students need more math. She apparently does this a lot.Report
The report has something to upset a lot of the easy and lazy arguments.
Charter schools were less likely to offer algebra than traditional or magnet schools;
There was no difference between urban and rural schools, but suburban schools were more likely to offer it;
But as expected, there was a racial disparity.
They didn’t break it down by income level, but I will go out on a limb and state the the rate of participation tracks very closely to parental income level because of course it does.
This is where I start to sound like Dark Matter in saying that the cultural attitudes towards education are probably the single most determinative factor in whether a child succeeds or not.
And this confounds most of the cheap and lazy tropes of education, that it is the fault of educational bureaucracy (Nope), teachers unions (Nope), wokeness (Nope), or any other political fault line.Report
And this confounds most of the cheap and lazy tropes of education
At the cost of introducing an exceptionally poisonous one.Report
Say what you mean.Report
Let us assume that this premise is true:
the cultural attitudes towards education are probably the single most determinative factor in whether a child succeeds or not
One of the things that any given parent could do to ensure the educational success of his/her/eir child is to choose the child’s peer group. Make sure that the child is surrounded by other children whose parents mirror the desired cultural attitudes toward education.
Let this sort itself out for a handful of years and I imagine you’d find yourself with a bunch of schools with high achievers and a bunch of schools with low achievers and a bunch of schools that look like a mixed bag for those who don’t quite have the cash to move or otherwise pay for a better school (where children whose parents read to them are in the same classrooms as children whose parents didn’t).
And when I contemplate the dynamics that would arise in that last part… man, you start seeing stuff like, among other things, demand for vouchers.Report
Let’s not assume stuff. Tell us what you mean.Report
I am saying exactly what I mean.
If P Then Q is true.
If P is also true…
Dude. That implies *Q*.
In this case, “the cultural attitudes towards education are probably the single most determinative factor in whether a child succeeds or not” is P.
“Well, what’s Q?”
Q is “this cannot be meaningfully helped by additional investment or increased quality in educational bureaucracy, teachers unions, wokeness, or any other political fault line.”
P -> Q is true
Finding out that P is true means that Q is true.Report
You haven’t shown why we should accept that Q is true or even implied.
Show your work.Report
Chip, my Q? I got it from you as well.Report
No, I didn’t say that because it isn’t supported by the evidence.
I said educational achievement doesn’t correlate to those factors, not that they can’t help or improve it.
You need to develop your own ideas to support your contention.Report
Do you think that the schools in Baltimore could be improved with:
A) Different (better) administrators
B) Different (better) teachers
C) Different (better) teaching philosophy
Which of these do you think is the case (or two of the three or all three)?Report
No, you’re not. You’re making an unsupported assertion that P implies Q. It doesn’t unless you have a few additional P’s you’re not willing to mention in polite company.Report
Here’s an additional P: “not only is it the single most determinative factor, it’s overwhelmingly determinative to the point where 2nd place, whatever it is, is so far away that it is effectively tertiary.”Report
Are you asserting that on your own responsibility or throwing out a hypothetical? And are there other P’s you don’t want to cop to in polite company?Report
Is “whether Jaybird thinks this” more important than whether it is “T”?
Because, quite honestly, if it’s “F”, I would see that as a much worse reason to believe it than “it’s impolite”.Report
See, this is an example of why I say that conservatives have nothing to offer.
After a few exchanges, you’re reduced to gibbering cryptically, without any coherent argument for how to improve education for the low performers.Report
First we have to agree that low performers exist.
Then we have to agree that efforts to turn low performers into high performers will fail.
Until we do either of those, we’re going to be stuck with the status quo screaming for more funding for schools that don’t have a single freaking proficient student.
Maybe hearing silly arguments like “It’s not the school district’s fault that it doesn’t have a single proficient student! All of the proficient students moved away!”Report
First, you need to provide support for your contention that “efforts to turn low performers into high performers will fail.”
Show your work.Report
Do the last 20 years or so count?
“You’ve only proved that nothing we’ve tried *SO FAR* has worked! You haven’t proven that our new Woke Kindergarten won’t work!”
“Here are the numbers for Woke Kindergarten.”
“Oh. Well, we have Even Woker Kindergarten. It’s got even more emphasis on Palestinians. It might make test scores go up. Prove that it won’t!”Report
Waving your hands isn’t an argument.
What empirical evidence can you provide that shows that efforts over the last 20 years haven’t helped low performers?Report
Would something like the number of schools without a single freaking proficient student in a particular school zone be evidence of efforts not only not helping but actively be evidence of those efforts failing?Report
No.
Jeez, for a guy who constantly talks in logic arguments, you don’t seem to have a grasp of how logic works.
Your assertion:-“efforts to turn low performers into high performers will fail”- is an expansive statement without caveats, and therefore can be falsified by a single instance of efforts succeeding.
This is why is was a spectacularly dumb assertion to make, since it rests on proving that efforts will consistently fail.
For all we know, those students, even though not proficient, were made more proficient by the efforts to help them.
And we can demonstrate that students with similar backgrounds in other schools are in fact proficient, showing that sometimes efforts do succeed.Report
While I have not done enough research to say that the number of schools going up means that the number of students has also gone up, I’m willing to assume that until you make me prove it.
If the number of innumerate/illiterate students going up doesn’t demonstrate efforts are failing…
What would, Chip?
Is there *ANYTHING*?
And if nothing would… why is this a problem?
Do we even know if it’s a problem? Maybe it’s not one.Report
Again, if you make an expansive unmodified statement about “efforts” (All efforts? Of every kind, everywhere?)
“will fail (Always and everywhere forever?) you set yourself up an impossible task.
You need to exhaustively eliminate any evidence that would falsify either one of those conditions.
You very obviously have not done that.
You’ve scanned some news stories of schools, imbibed a lot of opinions, and come to a conclusion that the only solution is to abandon the low performers.
And now you’re stuck trying to fit facts into that shape even though they don’t fit.
You painted yourself into this corner.Report
What empirical evidence can you provide that shows that efforts over the last 20 years haven’t helped low performers?
https://www.edweek.org/leadership/oecd-u-s-efforts-havent-helped-low-performers-on-global-math-reading-tests/2016/02Report
And the question “haven’t helped” versus “haven’t helped as much as other stuff that demonstrably worked in the past” could be demonstrated by just showing the numbers going down over the years.
“But that doesn’t prove anything!”
“You asked for *EVIDENCE*.”Report
The core problem is we’re at a point of diminishing returns. We’re already helping everyone who is easy to help.
“stuff that demonstrably worked in the past” is “helping people who are easy to help”.
We’re now at a point where we’re trying to help people against the will of their parents and support network.Report
If you don’t want to tell us what you think, just say so.Report
I think that “P is falsifiable” is a much more interesting statement than “Jaybird agrees with P”.
And it’s a hell of a lot more interesting than “P is impolite”.
Now if we can’t say whether P is T or F, maybe whether P is polite or impolite becomes relevant.
But if it’s T and my opinion is that it’s unpleasant that P is T, then I’d probably pivot to whether someone thought it was T and try to shame them in an effort to change the subject.Report
If you don’t want to tell us what you think, just say so.Report
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
― Jean-Paul SartreReport
Hey, speaking of which, have you seen the Woke Kindergarten founder?
Only one of us is arguing that this sort of thing needs more funding.
Whether the people arguing that it needs to be defunded are more anti-Semitic than the people demanding that it be funded is something I’d be willing to explore.Report
He is a grifter from the Left rather than Right and a nobody.
This might fall under don’t ask a question that you don’t want to know the answer to, but the Jews that immigrated to Israel/Palestine or settled there if you want it that way would have been killed in the Holocaust if they stayed in Europe. The people who refer to Israel as “settler-colony” never seem to deal with this fact and treat the Holocaust as a separate thing that just happened to occur at the same time. What do they think will happen to all those Jews without Zionism and moving to Israel/Palestine?Report
This particular nobody was hired by the schools to train teachers, Lee.
This particular nobody is one of the reasons we’re actively discussing stuff like “test scores going down in San Francisco”.
Also, I suspect that there was a misgendering there which, if I understand my Intersectionality point-scoring correctly, is worse than anti-Semitism in the current year.Report
I am!
I want to hammer out that P is, in fact, falsifiable and, having agreed that it is falsifiable, whether it is true and then, if it is true, hammer out whether things follow from it.
For what it’s worth, I think that things follow from it if it is True.
For what it’s worth, I agree that the things that follow from it are impolite.
Easier to maintain the status quo, honestly.Report
If you don’t want to tell us what you think, just say so.Report
I am. I did. I have.
P is measurable.
If P is True, then things follow from P.
Q follows from P.Report
Except you can’t provide support for why anyone should think that Q( (“Efforts will fail”) actually follows from P.Report
We’re demonstrating it elsewhere, Chip. People are actively arguing against firing administrators and firing teachers pointing out that we just can’t know.
Feel free to argue against them, tell them that they’re not showing their work.
Explain to them how, seriously, it’s very important that we find something that will improve things dramatically that we can change at the bureaucratic level.
Phonics maybe.
Because if it can’t… then Q actually follows from P.Report
Nope.
Your contention isn’t logically supported by those other arguments.
Look, if you want to say “I believe that any efforts to help low performers will fail as a postulate belief” we can just let it rest.
But if you keep repeating the same assertion without any support, you will get called out for it, every time.Report
I believe that there are *PLENTY* of ways to help low performers!!!
I just don’t think that “trying to turn them into high performers” will work and it’s been demonstrated that it hasn’t worked and the problem is getting worse.
Maybe call for more funding. That might work this time.Report
OK, this is better, to change the statement from “Efforts to help low performers will fail”
to
“Efforts to turn low performers to high performers will fail”.
But even so, it needs support and is at risk of being falsified by just a few counterexamples of low performers actually becoming high performers.Report
I would appreciate the definition of “high performers” because if we’re talking about stuff like “when we switched back to Phonics, reading scores went up” then I’d be more likely to say that this is somewhere between “high” and “inexcusably low”.
And that’s without getting into issues of whether a “low performer” can still be proficient in math or reading or whether your cutoff line is “literate” and “numerate”.Report
Well now we’re at the point of agreeing that there are in fact efforts which will turn SOME low performers into high performers.
It doesn’t even matter what the definition of high performers is, it seems trivially easy to find some examples, like those students you hear about who come from terrible backgrounds and manage to graduate college.Report
No, Chip. We’re not.
We’re agreeing that there are, in fact, efforts that will turn illiterate and innumerate low performers into literate and numerate low performers.
Which is why I’m asking for you to draw a line.Report
You’re back to making expansive claims you can’t support.
There are NO efforts of any kind which have turned low performers into high performers (however defined)?
This is a spectacular claim requiring spectacular support because all I need to do to falsify it is to find one single counterexample.Report
Provide it then.
Give me the “I was not proficient in math nor reading and now I am…”
What definition of successful are we going for here?
“Now I am a best-selling author”?
“Now I am pulling down $180,000/year as the Assistant to the Assistant Deputy Administrative Assistant to the District Attorney of New York County”?
“Now I am an accountant”?
What definition of “high performer” are you using?
Because, sure, we can find the one single counterexample.
I’m intrigued at what you’ll provide.Report
The easy examples are people like Oprah Winfrey.
Born into poverty to a single mother, a runaway and pregnant at 14.
But she was helped by the intervention of the federally funded Upward Bound program, part of the 1964 Great Society programs.
She also benefitted from a supportive grandmother who encouraged her learning.
She’s an easy example.
Here’s a list of highly successful people who tell us that their success was due in large part to excellent teachers:
https://insidetheperimeter.ca/teachers-who-inspired-great-scientists/
There are less dramatic examples.
For instance, there are literally millions of successful people today who were born into poverty in the Depression who benefitted greatly from the GI Bill and instead of becoming just a second generation of Okies or Appalachia hard luck stories, ended up comfortably middle class.
It was the outside interventions that altered the trajectory of their lives and changed them from low performers to high performers.
There are plenty more, but this is enough I think to falsify the claim.Report
Huh. Your definition of “low performer” seems to be “poor”.
That is not mine.Report
Doesn’t matter what your definition is.
Remember what started this, when I said cultural attitudes towards education were paramount?
Oprah’s culture was what I was referring to, and what the phrase “low performing” means.
She was raised in a culture identical to those kids in Baltimore. If we were talking about any other 14 year old fatherless runaway who gets molested then pregnant she would be held up as practically a cliche of “urban dysfunction”.
There are plenty of other stories, of kids exactly like those Baltimore kids, who have had their lives changed by outside efforts, efforts that turned them into high performers.
And to bring this all the way back to my original comment, those outside efforts changed their culture; children like Oprah were introduced to a different culture, one where education was emphasized, and they responded.
You made an expansive assertion, which has been falsified by empirical data.
This would be a good time for you to narrow your assertion by changing the definition of “Efforts”, or “to” or “turn” or “Low Performer” or “into” or “High Performer” so as to make it defensible.Report
Doesn’t matter what your definition is.
I suggest that it does.
Because it ties in very much to what I am talking about and why it’s relevant to such things as schools having zero proficient students for years on end.
Hey, how many years in a row do you think we could have zero proficient students before we conclude that there aren’t any of those awesome teachers that inspire kids there?
Three?
Five?
Seven?Report
cultural attitudes towards education were paramount?
+1000
children like Oprah were introduced to a different culture, one where education was emphasized, and they responded.
People leave their culture all the time. Our problem is how to get everyone to do it.
So those one offs (in different context we’d call them “freaks” or “anomalies”) need to be replicated at scale for a reasonable amount of money.
And it has to be politically acceptable.
We’re talking about engaging in cultural genocide so we should expect some push back from the members of the group we’re trying to destroy.
Also, if the solution is to spread out everyone, i.e. put a disruptive resource sucking kid in every classroom, then the needs of that kid conflict with the needs of my own.Report
Chip is Italian?Report
You also sound like a certain poster from another blog. I agree that cultural attitudes are the single most determinative factor but nobody figured out to do with the big group of parents that favor the school of hard knocks over book learning. So we just ignore this.Report
I’m reminded of the things I’ve read about the Progressive Era at the turn of the 20th century, when public schooling and social work were just getting established.
I recall reading case histories which sound like they were written today, about the living conditions and life among the immigrant slums of New York.
Then as now, there was always a tinge of essentialism to the descriptions of how dirty and slovenly the Irish/ Slavs/ Italians/ Jews were, how they drank too much, fornicated promiscuously, were prone to criminality and generally were beyond the reach of society to help.
But of course, none of that was true as evidenced by the fact that those slums no longer exist, and the great grandchildren of those slovenly fornicating drunks are now middle class white people watching Fox News and thundering about immigrants.Report
On the other hand they were also saying this about the Appalachian Whites and that never changed. ;).Report
The reaction to Kevin Williamson talking about poor white folk like they talk about poor black folk was…somethingReport
This is a point Tim Harford made in his book Adapt. A lot of what passes for “experimentation” in government isn’t really experimentation because there is no real effort to determine whether it worked, and no interest in reversing course if it doesn’t. Harford blames the voting public and their dislike of “flip-flopping”, but I wonder if there isn’t a deeper cultural dysfunction at play, and not merely in the public sector.Report
Government especially democratic government cannot and should not be run like a C-corp with a sole shareholder who can change things at will. There are also really hard questions on empiricism and how long you need before you determine whether something does or does not work and what it means for something to work or not.
These aren’t easy questions and I think a big failure of the STEM mindset (especially the Engineering part) is that they get very cranky at the consensus building and experimenting aspects of the democratic process.
I don’t think anyone except a stone-cold racist or elitist can think wanting to encourage more Black, Hispanic, and low-income kids to take higher level math in high school is a bad goal. The tricky part is how to make this happen. SF tried something. It might not have worked but at least they tried and all the gleeful progressive bashers are coming out of the word work.
And frankly, I think a lot of people use “concern” over Asian-American students/voters/citizens as a way of bashing Black and Brown people. It is in bad faith and it is gross.Report
I don’t think anyone except a stone-cold racist or elitist can think wanting to encourage more Black, Hispanic, and low-income kids to take higher level math in high school is a bad goal.
Sure. Let’s say that this is a good goal. We can ask “How will you go about doing this?”
“We’re going to stop teaching advanced math to Jews until 9th grade.”
Now let’s ask the question:
“HOW IN THE HECK WILL THAT ENCOURAGE MORE LATINX KIDS TO TAKE MATH?!?”
I submit: Only a fool would use “AT LEAST WE WANT TO HELP THEM TAKE MORE MATH CLASSES!” as a reasonable response to this question. “YOU SHOULDN’T RUN DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT LIKE A C-CORP!”
I mean, if I wanted to teach children fractions, I might come up with something like “we’re going to have a section on cooking. We’re going to teach the kids to bake. In our section on cookies, we’re going to do stuff like take a recipe and double it. Then we’re going to take a recipe and halve it. We’re going to specifically use recipes that have somewhat odd amounts like 2/3rds of a cup of milk.”
From that I am pretty sure that I could explain to you what the mechanism would be where children would better understand fractions at the end of a section where they work with recipes where they have to double and halve recipes.
Maybe even internalize that 1/3rd is larger than 1/4th!
But let’s go back to “We’re going to encourage more LatinX students to take higher level math by not teaching it to Jews until 9th grade.”
Please explain the mechanism how this works to me. I mean, *WITHOUT* resorting to how much I must not care. *WITHOUT* telling me that I must oppose LatinX students learning math. Can you just share the mechanism of how this was supposed to work in San Francisco *WITHOUT* talking about some guy in Colorado Springs?Report
I believe Freddie described approaches like this as fighting climate change by banning thermometers.
To me it’s really an issue of backward problem solving. You look at a set data that reveals a problem, then instead of looking at root causes and considering solutions, you just ‘fix’ the data. It should surprise no one when makes things worse.Report
I generally dislike Freddie but his analogy is spot on here.
The reason I gave my warning is because I think there are a lot of bad-faith right-wing trolls that would use this experiment to bash SF and/or start spreading racist conspiracies against Black and Hispanic people and a lot of people justly do not want to find themselves in that bed.
But unlike a lot of other people, I don’t think this prop is just a concern troll campaign from right-wing billionaire VC types even if Gary Tan is doing is best to to prove otherwise by publishing death threats about the Board of Supervisors and then stating “oops” three hours later.Report
I think that the fact that they ended the “experiment” is a good thing and commendable.
I don’t know what the “racist conspiracies against Black and Hispanic people” would be.
If I had any conspiracy theories, it’d be that the engaged parents who could afford after-school tutors for their children were trying to undercut the children of the parents who couldn’t afford classes at Mathnasium.
But, quite honestly, I don’t think that the parents are quite that malicious.
I think that it’s a lot more likely that woke type people were, instead, trying to achieve “equity” and said that the best way to do that wasn’t to teach *THOSE* kids better but to just not teach *THESE* kids.
But not their own, of course. Their own kids spend an hour at Mathnasium after school.Report
My opinion on this is that the entire discourse gets bogged down in a lot of red herrings, confusion of cause and effect, and unfounded class based projection. The underlying reason this is an issue to begin with is because being in algebra might be a proxy for long term educational and employment success. But the algebra class is at best just a proxy. It’s really the long term success that matters, not that the demographics of who is in the algebra class match the population or are within some margin of error of cross racial representation.
If most of the black and hispanic students were coming out of high school and getting jobs in a skilled trade or just learning to repair HVACs at a level that put food on the table and a roof over heads then we would have no rational reason to care about who is in the algebra class. The point is to get people to be self sufficient and we should all be satisfied with that outcome.
The problem is that this would be hard, and probably involve goring a lot of oxen. So instead what we get is someone looking at data and asking what they can do to finagle it into something that cosmetically looks like a politically acceptable solution, and the easiest way to do that is to cut the highest performers down to within range of the lowest. This will of course also fail when the stakeholders pick up on what’s going on. Coming full circle one has to ask if the black and hispanic students at issue were helped. I don’t see how the answer can possibly be yes.Report
one has to ask if the black and hispanic students at issue were helped.
We could and should ask this of any suggested solution to education.
Charters?
Private schools?
Religious schools?
None of them seem to have any track record of helping low performing students.
The way they all work is the Lifeboat Method of tossing all the low performers overboard and pointing proudly to the ones surviving.Report
It’s not tossing them overboard. It’s just them not also getting on the lifeboat.
It’s not like they’d be helped by educational bureaucracy, teachers unions, wokeness, or any other political fault line.
Take the high performers and teach them algebra.
Let the low performers learn how to… wait. Never mind. The undocumented immigrants can do that now.Report
Wow.
I don’t know what’s more stunning – the classism or the racism. Or the misogyny.
But boy you hit all three Jay.
Interesting trifecta . . . .Report
I see the classism and the racism but where is the misogyny?Report
The speciesism was also pretty bad. The anti-religiousness was noticeable, but not as bad as the time zone bias. The anti-ambidextrism was really uncalled for, though.Report
Until well into the 1970’s there was an active assumption that women couldn’t learn higher math. Despite all the women – and women of color – who were human computers for the early space program.
Or the lived experiences of dozens of my science colleagues, many of whom have been told they shouldn’t get pregnant because it will ruin their careers. As recently as this year.Report
Well, San Francisco used to teach Algebra 1 in 8th grade to students that demonstrated that they could handle it.
Then they adopted attitudes like those into well in the 1970’s.
Personally, I think it’s *GOOD* that they’re teaching algebra in middle school again.
On top of that, I think that it was a mistake to stop.
*I* ain’t the guy saying “we shouldn’t teach these kids algebra”.Report
So it’s not so much that Jaybird committed the misogyny as he said something that reminded you of it?Report
Its like The Heart Of Darkness.
You venture far enough upriver of conservative blandishments of liberty and freedom and algebra you eventually arrive at a Col. Kurtz saying the quiet parts out loud.
Just don’t get outta the boat, man. Never get outta the boat.Report
(I understand why Phil might not understand, but you’d think that Chip would.)Report
Its called telling on yourself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPxs0Qh72kYReport
If we agree that this can’t be fixed by changing the administration, changing the teachers, or changing the philosophy… well, we’re stuck, aren’t we?
The only thing we can change is whether we are in the boat or not.Report
I like how everyone gets outraged when I say this about conservatives, but here you are just doing my work for me.
Lets do this.
Lets invite the other conservatives on this board to weigh in on their suggestions and see if it gets better, or if this is it.Report
Everyone doesn’t get outraged.
They only get outraged when you say something like “the problem is the culture” and then feign outrage when conclusions follow from that premise.Report
What if I don’t believe that “Every man for himself” is a logical conclusion to the fact of some cultures not taking education seriously?Report
It’s not “every man for himself”.
It’s “let’s put the kids whose parents want an educated child in the same classroom as other kids whose parents want educated children”.
I mean… why wouldn’t you want your kid in that classroom?Report
Oh that sounds much nicer.Report
You totally can put your kid in the classroom that emphasizes nice over reading!
We’ve got a “Woke Kindergarten” program for their teachers, now that I think about it.Report
Which parents DON’T want their kids educated?
Really?
Wow.Report
Do you agree with this statement?
the cultural attitudes towards education are probably the single most determinative factor in whether a child succeeds or not
If you don’t, then I suppose I can go back to agreeing with you that all parents want their children to be educated. Well, except for the truly most negligent ones.Report
I believe the two probably equal factors in determining student success are parental involvement and encouragement (which has cultural aspects) and the professional teaching abilities of the teachers – bounded by the resources teachers are given. When either of those two legs is damaged we are likely to see what we consider to be negative impacts to students.Report
the professional teaching abilities of the teachers
Should poorly performing teachers be fired?
Like, let’s look at the schools without a single freaking proficient student.
Should we replace every single freaking teacher in those schools?
Or any of them?Report
Successful teachers meet students where they are intellectually and emotionally. That often produces measurable outcomes but not always.
And frankly, the commodification of students (which all this proficiency testing reflects) is part of the problem.
SO sure, find a way to measure a teacher’s impact that takes into account everything the teacher does for students. including the qualitative stuff. Then we can talk about who needs to be fired and who doesn’t.
And in Baltimore, I suspect it’s not the teachers.Report
Yeah, it’s probably easier to say “you can’t measure student performance” and “you can’t measure teacher performance” and “we need more funding”.
That way you never have to change anything.Report
The current crop of student and teacher “performance” measures are weak sauce. They assume all teachers and all students are interchangeable widgets, and that lower performance is the intrinsic fault of both parties, and is not driven by anything beyond the student teacher interaction. test results are also sadly determinative, as bight kids who don’t in fact test well are often shoved out of the lifeboat simply because they don’t test well. Especially in resource poor schools.
So while i believe you can measure teacher and student performance, and sometimes those measures are meaningful, I also believe the current “teach to the test as if your job depends on it (because it does)’ approach has more holes then a good Havarti.Report
Well, let’s agree that we can’t measure teacher performance and thus we should not fire any teachers.
So we’ve got schools without a single proficient student.
We agree that we shouldn’t fire teachers.
Can we measure administration? Like, can we say whether an administrator ought to be fired?Report
It seems unlikely that an entire school system has 100% bad teachers.Report
Its also possible that a teacher without a single proficient pupil is in fact an excellent teacher.
“Not proficient” doesn’t mean their scores were zero. It only means the scores fall below a certain level.
If a teacher gets students who would otherwise test at a score of 10 and raises them to a 40, that could be evidence of an excellent teacher.Report
Without endorsing the precise math, that is very much what happens in many poorly-performing schools — as measured by student achievement. They get better at about the same rate as other students, but from a lower base, lose some of what they gained over the summer while the better-prepared students actually improve some during the summer, rinse and repeat. Such students may never reach the prescribed standard, and will fall behind the better-prepared students, but they do improve. In the not-too-distant past, we simply let the less well-prepared students drop out. We have since taken on the task of educating them. It is hard to do.
Oddly enough, though you would think that good teachers are concentrated in good schools, where better teachers teach better prepared students, the distribution of teacher talent seems to be more nearly random.Report
More unlikely than having 100% of students who cannot demonstrate proficiency in math *AND* reading?Report
One is demonstrable and the other isn’t.Report
But is it more unlikely?Report
Didn’t say that, nor will I agree to it.
In a single district. And as Chip notes, lack of proficiency is simply a measure of reaching a bar or not. Missing that bar by 2 points on a test means you are not proficient. It might also mean your dog died the day before and you can’t concentrate. Or you had no breakfast because you are food insecure and you can’t concentrate.
No, we don’t.
No more or less easily then we can measure teachers.
Yes.Report
Chicago seems to have that problem. Minneapolis/St. Paul as well.
And that’s without getting into issues of cities where the number of proficient students is in the single-digits.
And I don’t know whether I’ve missed cities.
But there are at least two cities with zero proficient student problems… which negates your “in a single district” defense.
Maintaining the status quo seems to be bad.
And it’s weird how the only changes to the status quo seem to be stuff like “let’s stop teaching algebra to students in 8th grade (if it looks like they can handle it)”.Report
You are really bad at reading comprehension. After – what, a year or more – of ONLY discussing Baltimore as an example of a city with zero proficiency you actually think I would reference anything else in reply to you? You have been oddly fixated on that city. We have responded using that city because you keep bringing it to the table.
That’s far form the only change. School vouchers are a change. charter schools are a change. Paying teachers more to create bidding wars across districts is a change.
But you knew all that didn’t you? You just wanted to see how far down the rabbit hole of its clearly the fault of teachers in Baltimore you can drag the rest of us. Congratulations I guess.Report
You have been oddly fixated on that city. We have responded using that city because you keep bringing it to the table.
Would you like for me to talk about Baltimore, Chicago, and Minneapolis/St. Paul in the future? I can easily do that. This way you won’t have to deal with the fact that I’m only talking about a single school district with these failures.
School vouchers are a change. charter schools are a change.
Are these on the table?
Paying teachers more to create bidding wars across districts is a change.
“More funding!” is also a change, yes.
You just wanted to see how far down the rabbit hole of its clearly the fault of teachers in Baltimore you can drag the rest of us.
I was actually seeing how far we’d go with the whole “we shouldn’t change the schools” thing that we’re willing to go despite the fact that we’re trying to demonstrate how racist I am for saying stuff like “if it’s true that the #1 thing that indicates whether a child will be successful (or proficient, anyway) is the culture then it’s also true that we can’t fix this by changing the administration, changing the teachers, or changing the teaching philosophy that the teachers are using.”
For what it’s worth, I’m willing to agree that we can’t fix this by changing the administrators, changing the teachers, or changing the teaching philosophy.
Maybe we can *NUDGE* it. Switching to phonics away from whole reading, going back to “the old math” instead of dealing with “the new math”.
Maybe offering algebra to kids in 8th grade.
That sort of thing.
But the problem is *EXCEPTIONALLY* deep. And addressing it involves changing our goals away from “college prep” in these schools.Report
You show me a school with one teacher who has zero proficient students, my inclination is to fire him. You show me a school where every teacher has zero proficient students, I’m not going to assume that the teaching is the main problem.Report
Which parents DON’T want their kids educated?
There are parents who don’t invest in their children.
There are parents who never check how school is going. Who don’t correct their children when they count to 20 but skip the number 13. Who don’t correct their children when the kids decide that the class high achiever should be bullied for acting outside of their culture.
There are parents who spend all day being high and/or abuse their kids.
Children are learning machines, when they copy what their parents do they can be copying dysfunctional behavior.Report
My theory is that we need to open our minds to options outside of trying the same things over and over again that have not succeeded. That might include changing our definition of success from things the racial demographics of the algebra class to life outcomes. No idea if it would work but I think it makes a lot more sense to look at things like meeting material needs and not ending up in prison than class placements or who got accepted to Harvard.Report
We’d have to go back to school being a public good, and not being something that should be a business. We’d have to ditch all the culturally approved individual investment and performance management language that has crept into the discourse.Report
I don’t think looking at it is a business is the right way either. I think it should be seen as a combination of public service and investment.Report
So why did you choose black and Hispanic students as your example of who gets tracked into learning HVAC in high school?Report
Because that’s who you referred to in your comment I was replying to.
The reason I gave my warning is because I think there are a lot of bad-faith right-wing trolls that would use this experiment to bash SF and/or start spreading racist conspiracies against Black and Hispanic people and a lot of people justly do not want to find themselves in that bed.Report
Because those were the ones that San Francisco tried to get into high school math by not teaching it to Jewish kids in 8th grade.Report
Not that we need any more but this is another example of why this whole ‘racial equity’ framing just doesn’t make sense for actual problem solving.
Proponents want to make policy decisions expressly about race but then when those policies fail by objective measures, like happened here, counter proposals end up being described as racist for no reason other than the fact that they are being brought in the context of the original failed policy.Report
Say what you will about making them unemployable, at least they won’t be exploited by Capitalists.Report
Argh, I wrote a very long comment that got erased by 502 timeout
TL/DR, the very long history of anti-black racism in the United States ends up flattening a lot of policy discussions that need a lot more nuance. I’ve seen people try and debate whether middle school kids need algebra or high school kids need calculus because they don’t want to be on the same side of things as a right-wing VC who is obviously in this fight for bad-faith trolling reasons but if you have a significant plurality of the population that is wondering what happened to middle school algebra in SF when their more well to do cousins, Connor Park and Maddie Wong get middle school algebra in the San Mateo County public schools, it is not a good look to be that dismissive and defensive.Report
I am generally against tracking in the United States because I have very little faith that it wouldn’t be done in the most racist way possible in the United States. It would be black and Hispanic kids learn HVAC repair and the biggest dolt of a white kid still gets to go to college and major in business somehow.
I’d have more faith in tracking if there was a way for well-connected parents with idiot kids to have their kids tracked out.Report
I’d have more faith in tracking if there was a way for well-connected parents with idiot kids to have their kids tracked out.
“Maybe we could just eliminate 8th Grade Algebra entirely?”
“We could try it.”Report
See Philip H’s reaction above and repeat it hereReport
I see the classism and the racism but where is the misogyny?Report
See my reply above.Report
Even in Europe, wealthy parents could always buy there way out of tracking.Report
Racial discrimination in education is illegal and there are numerous federal and state authorities that seek it out and punish it. What baffles me is the idea that we should keep pretending everyone is college bound and structuring lower ed as though that is the case, even where the approach obviously fails many, many students. To be honest I have a hard time believing people who cite racism as a reason for not trying new things actually care about racism, given where the burden of current bad policy disproportionatly falls.Report
In East Baton Rouge Parish several years ago, the largely white and middle class to upper class denizens of the unincorporated part of the parish tried – and thankfully failed – to create a new city with a new school district because they didn’t want to pay taxes to support schools in the northern end of the parish – which happens to be where most of the black people live.
Now you might not think that is racist, and you might not think its new. But its the lived experiences of Americans in the 21st century.Report
I have no idea how this is responsive to my comment.Report
We believe you.Report
Maybe you should grace us with your thoughts on the topic. Lord knows they must be compelling, given the confidence with which you lay down the snark.Report
I don’t want to repeat myself. Look upthread.Report
One reason why hard tracking works well in Europe is that Europe has a strong welfare state and unions to iron out some differences. We don’t.Report
For a domestic example, Los Angeles has a policy that all high rise developments must have a project labor agreement.
Meaning that a kid who goes into welding instead of college can get a job as a union welder and make a very good income, as much as a software coder.
Of course, this leveling out of outcomes is exactly what would be banned in any nationwide tracking system.Report
Why would that be banned?Report
I dunno, ask any conservative how they feel about mandating labor unions on public work.Report
I mean, I am not a conservative. But your reference to the policy in LA makes me think of a useful thought experiment. What if we had an irrefutable study showing that starting sophomore year of high school assignment of low performing boys to public works, parks and rec, and other physical work for half the day instead of class resulted in ridiculously good outcomes compared to similar students that stayed ib class? Say over their lives they earned triple the wages, had their chances of going to prison cut by 75%, were more likely to have employer health insurance, less likely to fall to addiction, whatever.
Obviously we have no such study. However, if we did, should our reaction be holy sh*t we need to get this going everywhere we can? Or should it be to oppose it due to the racial demographics of the students? Or because rich people will definitely find a way out? Or some similar concern?Report
We have empirical evidence that is very suggestive.
The union laborers in Los Angeles don’t need anything more than a high school degree, and many out-earn their peers who went to college and are stuck as interns or gig workers and are mired in debt.
Speaking on behalf of all liberals everywhere, yes, we need more of this.
More labor unions, more mandatory union shops more publicly financed work more MBE/WBE. If we end up with crews of black and Hispanic workers making $100K/year at manual labor, the ghost of Franklin Roosevelt would smile down upon us.Report
I have my quibbles about mandatory union, mandatory MWBE, but whatever. This is the start of a potentially productive conversation.
I would say that it is the conversation blue jurisdictions should be having about education policy, not the eliminate algebra conversation, which is less a conversation and more a bizarre admission of defeat.
The red jurisdictions where things are a mess we can have pity for but there is really nothing we can do. I brought up the Kevin Williamson thing here the other week but no one really wanted to talk about it.Report
As an additional point of data – my generation of south Louisiana kids went heavily into the oil patch, as did many of their fathers before them. As such you could get a highschool diploma, hire on at Exxon or Anadarco or Transocean as an apprentice pipefitter or welder or what not, and 30 years later you retired a foreman making 6 figures. Ticket to the middleclass, so long as you worked long hours or 21 days on/21 days off on the rigs.
This reality influences local willingness to support all sorts of education policy decisions.Report
So our only options then are doing the same thing we do now and hope for different results, or the whole eliminating algebra thing?Report
I am just saying that strict tracking in America might not have the exact same results as Europe but could easily just be worse. Hard to change things once they are done.Report
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/05/americans-know-trump-is-extreme-they-might-elect-him-anyway/Report
I think a lot of people still don’t realize that Trump is going to be the GOP nominee. Also the MSM goes on its independent snipe hunt againReport
No Saul – people in Red states know full well he will be the GOP nominee because their media tell them so. Independents in Red states are ignoring this at their own peril. Blue state independents and voters may be insulated, but if so it’s really legacy media’s fault, since they are STILL refusing to describe him, or the GOP, accurately.
The fourth estate is failing us badly – and this poll just adds fuel to that fire.Report
I thought that this story would be a lot funnier than it was. Spoiler: It wasn’t a successful one.
San Francisco police station burglarized in Fillmore DistrictReport
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has released its opinion:
Report
About time. Now we will see whether SCOTUS grants cert on this, (since he’s sure to appeal) and if so what becomes of that.Report
We have endured years of the GOP shouting about a crisis at the border, and months of the House GOP insisting it won’t take up aid to Ukraine OR Israel without border policy changes. The House is even willing to impeach a sitting Homeland Security Secretary to express its displeasure. What it’s not willing to do apparently is take a win and run with it:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/05/politics/border-deal-senate-vote/index.htmlReport
Vox has this interesting article on neomedievalism. The TL/DR is that some foreign policy experts believe we are entering a phase that will be “characterized by weakening states, fragmenting societies, imbalanced economies, pervasive threats, and the informalization of warfare.” If you are an RPG nerd, think of something like Shadowrun but without the magic or metahumans that made it cool.
https://www.vox.com/world-politics/24062198/israel-gaza-middle-east-united-states-war-biden-china-ukraine-putin-russia-taiwan-defense-militaryReport
An Unpublished Poem By Leonard Cohen
Over a decade ago an older referred to me as an old-fashioned lawyer of the type they don’t make anymore. This person meant it as a compliment. One thing that old-fashioned lawyers aren’t good at is constantly marketing themselves and many of us have sever qualms over legal advertisement in the first place. This puts us at a big disadvantage among lawyer’s who are capable of doing the marketing if we want to work for ourselves:
https://www.vox.com/culture/2024/2/1/24056883/tiktok-self-promotion-artist-career-how-to-build-followingReport
Hey, look, everyone, it’s almost like the entity that came up with these allegations does this sort of propaganda professionally and near constantly, and is really good at getting idiotic emotional reactions from everyone and then everything claimed quietly falls apart later.
Fun fact: We still don’t have any named rape victims, either, or any actual documented sexual assault during Oct 7th, and a lot of criticism of the insane far-right religious loons who provided that information. We’ve had hospitals taken apart and not any evidence they were used as Hamas locations, we’ve had a grand total of one collateral-damage infant death (With no beheading) in the Oct 7th attacks, we’ve had all sort of explosive claims and allegations from Israel that are splashed uncritically across the media as if we are entirely sure they are true, and then just quietly fall apart, to almost no media response whatsoever.Report
Would you want to admit that you had been had, repeatedly, by the same folks? Doing so would most certainly mean you don’t get invited to the cocktail parties.Report
Mike Johnson had a very bad today because Myonkas survived his impeachment vote with four Republican defections and the Israel alone aid bill also failed.Report
Its like watching a group of monkeys playing with a loaded shotgun.
Comical, but also horrifying.Report
Astonishing ineptitude. Also any media figure outside of the right wing ecosystem that credulously suggests, going forward, that the GOP actually gives a fig about the border or that the Dems are unwilling to compromise are profoundly unserious.Report
NY Times headline: “A day if dysfunction for House Republicans.”Report
Only if you accept that the deal would have forced the administration to change its actions.Report
Of course it would have forced the administration to change its actions, the deal revamped the whole standard for claiming asylum which is the core driver of the current immigration wave (if one sets aside the vast group of mostly right wing businesses clamoring for cheap labor to abuse as a draw).Report
Biden has said he would close the border for migrants upon signature. Hard to see how he could go back on that with only 9 months before he faces the voters.Report
I dunno. Republicans had the trifecta, 2017-2018, didn’t pass anything. Currently they have Biden by the balls, and a Democratic Senate ready to make serious concessions, in an election year environment where this issue polls about as bad for Democrats as abortion does for Republicans. Still, they don’t pass anything.
Maybe there’s a hypothetical bill out there but hard to see how there is one they would support coming out of the currently existing process and where neither party is likely to have a trifecta and super majorities in the foreseeable future.Report
He is a lightweight. My guess is most Republicans don’t even take him seriously. How could anyone?Report
Which, frankly, says even worse things about the GOP because if Mike has no control of his caucus than this, flailing, incoherent, self contradicting, gibbering nonsense is all there is to the party. It’s just unfiltered GOP id all the way down. If this what the private meetings were all like when McCarthy was trying to make them seem palatable?Report
Maybe id. Maybe cowardice. Either way total lack of seriousness.Report
My take is that he is giving the Freedom Caucus what it wants – the chance to be seen voting to achieve all these things that have no shot. All they want to do is pitch fits, so he’s letting them pitch fits. He is smart enough to know the Senate mostly won’t play along. Now he can go back to the caucus and ask the fit-pitchers what they want to do and listen to the thundering silence.
He’s also making electing Democrats really easy.Report
Stochastic political terrorism strikes the GOP.Report
Trump has called for an end to the Bud Light boycott.
From his Truth Social, apparently:
Anti-Trump folks have pointed out that one of A-B’s lobbyists is going to hold a fundraiser for Trump (and that Trump owns about $5 million in A-B stock).
Others argue that everybody involved with the ad has been fired, it’s time to Move On Dot Org.
Still others argue back “NOT UNTIL WE GET OUR APOLOGY!”
Anyway.
A-B stock price was at $62/share on Monday, Trump posted that on Tuesday, the price is currently $65.44.
I’m guessing that the boycott is as over as it’s going to get.
If you want a sneak peak at Bud Light’s Superbowl ad, you can check out the Budweiser Genie here.Report
That’s one minute of my life that was wasted. How much are these idiots being paid to create this “advert”? facepalmReport
Less than Heinerscheid last year, more than Heinerscheid this year.Report
Speak of the Devil and he will appear.
Report
And if you want to look at the numbers for yourself, do it here.Report
I poked around the data a wee bit and noticed across the board drops in state test scores between 2012 and 2013, with the lower numbers remaining consistent-ish in subsequent years. So I poked around a bit more elsewhere and found this:
“The Illinois State Board of Education has made it tougher for students to be considered proficient on state tests.
The board voted Thursday to raise the cut-off score for the Illinois Standards Achievement Test in English language arts and math. The change affects elementary and middle school students.
State Superintendent of Education Christopher Koch (cook) says it’s “a significant step in changing how we measure a student’s progress.”
Koch says the new, higher expectations will provide more accurate information about how students are doing. He says educators will be better able to identify students who need more help and ensure young people are on track to enter college or career-training programs.”
Source: https://www.pjstar.com/story/news/2013/01/24/illinois-state-board-education-raises/42450624007/
I thought that was interesting and at least somewhat relevant. If nothing else, it shows how comparing numbers really requires a close and careful consideration of context. Like, did you know that a state could just up and change the score required to be considered proficient? Heck, did you know that most — maybe even every — state have their own tests?
So… I dunno… maybe look a little more closely at what is going on before trying to draw any conclusions.Report
Sorry… Edison’s data.
https://irc.isbe.net/School.aspx?source=trends&source2=iar&Schoolid=320461110252003Report
https://irc.isbe.net/State.aspx?source=trends&source2=iar&Stateid=IL
Statewide numbers are up 2022 to 2023.Report
So… if we lowered standards, we could say that more students were proficient?
They should do that.
Then we wouldn’t be able to say that there was a problem.Report
Is that what you think they should do?
I don’t think they should do that. I just think we should consider things like… context.
If you looked at the shift in numbers between 2012 and 2013 WITHOUT that context you’d really wonder what happened. If you looked at it with that context, well, you’d know at least the primary reason for the change.
So… what I think *WE* should do is look at these numbers in as much context as we can.Report
Koch says the new, higher expectations will provide more accurate information about how students are doing.
Heck with *THAT*.
Look at it in *CONTEXT*.Report
I… don’t understand. What are you saying?
You’re quoting my article back to me as if it supports your point when… it doesn’t. It supports my point. That’s why I linked it!Report
It has to do with how the “more accurate” information seems to be “yeah, these kids aren’t reaching the bar we set for proficiency”.
The context seemed to be that they raised the bar because they wanted to see who couldn’t reach it.
And the context that more people reach a lower bar is context that you find more interesting than I do.Report
And yet, Illinois still scores better on reading than Texas. And Alabama. And Oklahoma. And Mississippi. And West Virginia.
Maybe those states can study Illinois to see how they might improve.Report
They’d probably want to study the schools that have proficient students instead of the ones that don’t have a single proficient student, though.Report
As I mentioned yesterday, not necessarily.
Those 30 schools didn’t have scores of zero. Its possible that their scores, however low, were improved from a lower baseline by excellent teachers.
But in any case, we should all agree that low test scores demand that we take some sort of action, maybe more stress on phonics, and aggressive intervention to change the culture that doesn’t stress education.Report
I didn’t say that they had scores of zero.
I said that they didn’t have a single proficient student.
So I will say again: They probably want to study the schools that have proficient students instead of the ones that don’t have a single proficient student.
Though I will grant that maybe there are some really awesome teachers there that are getting those students right up to the bubble.
(How many years in a row without a single proficient student would be enough to get you to say that maybe they don’t have one of those Dead Poets Society Robin William types dragging those kids, kicking and screaming, just up to the edge of the bubble? Three? Five? Seven?)Report
I’m willing to say that right now!
Its entirely possible if one were to study it closer, that all the teachers there should be fired.
Or some of them. Or none of them.
But in any case, even if every teacher were to be replaced tomorrow, IMO that wouldn’t be enough.
We need an aggressive program to improve the culture which doesn’t stress education.
In my opinion.Report
To your point, Chip… I looked at just one school (the top on in the Tweet… Lovejoy)… and found this:
https://irc.isbe.net/School.aspx?source=trends&source2=iar&Schoolid=500821880221001
This indicates that while 0% of students tested proficiently, the number of students who approached proficiency went from 3.7% to 16%, who partially met went from 25.9% to 40%, and who did not meet went from 70.4% to 44%. All those numbers moved in a positive direction from 2022-23.
Oh my… I checked another school just to see if Lovejoy was some sort of anomaly: Edison Elementary.
And I see they actually have 5.4% of students as proficient. See, the Tweet is using 2022 data even though 2023 data is available. Weird. Also, similar to Lovejoy, all of Edison’s numbers are trending positively from 2022.
The rest on the list appear to be high schools and their data is presented differently, at least based on just a few clicks. So, well… huh, maybe this Tweet ain’t all its cracked up to be.Report
Wait, are you saying a conservative firebrand defense lawyer’s cherry picked proficiency data might not what it appears on the surface? Heaven forfend!Report
I think its absurd when conservatives try to make school performance into a partisan issue when they really have only one solution to offer, which is the Lifeboat Theory.
Which is the theory that predominated in the 19th century, failed miserably, and led exactly to the development of compulsory universal public education.
So I’m happy to even just accept the premise that “A lot of American schools are not doing well, at all.”
Because the only rational response can be “Well, we need aggressive government intervention and funding to match.”Report
when they really have only one solution to offer, which is the Lifeboat Theory.
Problem: Assume the local school isn’t working for my kid.
Solution: Make it so my kid has no choice but to go there. This will help the local school administration because making them responsible to local parents is a bad idea.
This seems like an idea that would be strongly favored by the school administrations, and the iron law of bureaucracy would promote people who like this idea.
But it’s a bad idea. You give everyone a lifeboat, not because you want them to be used, but because if they are needed then they’re really needed.
We need more lifeboats, not fewer. More opportunity for good cultures and good parenting to shine through so it can be copied.
As for the people who have bad cultures and who make bad choices, we don’t have a solution that works at scale. There are nasty choices, do you exile the 5 disruptive students in the class to help the others knowing those five will be worse off?Report
Exile them where? And then what happens if we do?
See, this is why compulsory universal public education was invented, because in the 19th century the Lifeboat Theory was the norm, and it resulted in mobs of uneducated idle young men with no prospect.
And that demographic is always and everywhere a powderkeg of societal chaos that no police force can contain.
So yeah, we need to make education:
Compulsory;
Universal;
Publicly controlled
I’ll repeat it for the umpteenth time, the problem of education has NEVER been how to educate the top 90% who are doing alright, but that bottom 10% who aren’t.
And yes, those people are, and always have been, and always will be, difficult, and consume far more in resources than seems reasonable.
But there is no other choice.Report
Exile them where?
In-school suspension! They can learn in a space more tailored to their learning style!
And then what happens if we do?
To whom? The kids who can learn unhindered? I imagine they’ll be better off.
The kids who are enduring in-school suspension? I imagine that they won’t be worse off.Report
Wonderful!
Lets do it at scale, and institute compulsory tutoring and culture classes for low performing students.
Sort of a HeadStart/ UIpward Bound program on steroids, where we give specialized one on one teaching to poor students.
We give them classes on art and music and culture, exposing them to a different world than the one they are used to.
Free meals to keep them well nourished, family counseling when there is dysfunction in the home.
For those who choose a college prep path, we offer that, and for those who choose job training we ofgfer that.
All this in conjunction with strong labor unions and MBE/WBE programs, to guide low performing students into secure middle class careers.Report
Does that work in Baltimore? I understand it’s in the top quintile of funding in the country.Report
We know it works.
How do we know this?
Because the multi-billion dollar tutoring and private school industry demonstrate that on a daily basis.
Their whole premise is that they can take low performing students and turn them into high performing students.
Remember the whole “If Junior doesn’t straighten up we’ll send him to military school” thing?
Maybe we should offer that sort of thing at scale.Report
It only maybe works when the father isn’t in prison, the mother isn’t focused on work and/or her new boyfriend, and the kid didn’t see his cousin shot 8 times in front of the local convenience store.Report
Remember the whole “If Junior doesn’t straighten up we’ll send him to military school” thing?
The military doesn’t take low performers any more.
That’s really really grim btw. The military, who is desperate for people, has no work for the bottom 15% or so of society.Report
We know it works.
If it doesn’t work in Baltimore, then we seem to “know” something that isn’t True.
And that’s a problem.
You cannot learn something that you think you know.Report
Sort of a HeadStart/ UIpward Bound program on steroids, where we give specialized one on one teaching to poor students.
If this means “every day he gets a personal teacher 1-on-1” then educating him is 20x as expensive as his class mates. This means…
1) This breaks the budget.
2) This is poor use of resources.
The money needed to bring him up to normal could be used to advance lots of high functioning students. That will have greater returns for society.
Free meals to keep them well nourished, family counseling when there is dysfunction in the home.
We already do both of those.
…guide low performing students into secure middle class careers.
One hopes after all this the result isn’t someone who is still low performing.Report
Just pretend that these are police officers, court bailiffs and parole officers, then it is easier to swallow the cost.
I’m not being snarky. Any discussion of the cost of doing something needs to assess the cost of doing nothing, and right now in Baltimore, the cost of doing nothing is astonishing.
But hey, if there is a better lower cost proposal, I’m open to it.
I’ve only asked a dozen times for a conservative proposal on how to move low performers to high performers (or hell, just medium performers), and all I’ve gotten so far “Let’s all run away!”Report
if there is a better lower cost proposal, I’m open to it.
Your numbers don’t work.
Florida’s cost per inmate is $19,069.
Florida’s cost per student is $8,143
The median amount of time served (the middle value in the range of time served, with 50% of offenders serving more and 50% serving less) was 1.3 years (This is for State) although average time served by state prisoners released in 2018 was 2.7 years.
Federal is significantly longer (average sentence imposed is 12.1 years) but State does the heavy lifting for numbers.
20x teaching for everyone at risk is way more expensive than jail.
There are a number of other issues that increase the cost of education and lower the cost of jail.
1) After 20x teaching, some will still end up in jail. They are at risk for a reason.
2) Not everyone at risk ends up in jail.
3) Some of the “jail” crowd kill each other which also reduces costs.Report
Would it be cheaper to let turnstyle jumpers, taggers, shoplifters and various petty offenders go free?
This is the origin story of Broken Windows theory, where petty offenses create a vast but hidden cost.
The cost of a large pool of idle uneducated young men without prospect incurs a cost far more than your quoted price of $19,000 per year.
Ask Jaybird how much homelessness and petty theft is costing San Francisco.Report
The cost of a large pool of idle uneducated young men without prospect incurs a cost far more than your quoted price of $19,000 per year.
And yet we still manage to pay for it. What we can’t pay for is your plan.
The good news is your idea has some chance of working (witness Hawaii’s intervention program).
The bad news is we can’t do this in Chicago. The budget would break and the voters would object to giving every at risk student the equiv of FAR MORE than a Yale education per year.
And that assumes we could actually pay this much for bad students without the system instantly being corrupted.
IRL, my student could benefit a lot from having this kind of focused one-on-one instruction and would do a lot more with it because she’d have her parent’s support.
So how do I make her an “at risk” student?
The administration would be better served by trying to teach my “at risk” student because her success would make them look better.Report
Yes, we manage to pay for the cost of crime and homelessness and addiciton, because we have no other choice and the cost is often hidden.
For example, how much are we paying right now for homelessness?
Consider a given commercial property in a large city. I know from experience that often the rents need to be discounted to overcome the market damage done by homeless people congregating in front of the building.
The discount amounts to millions in building valuation, sometimes tens of millions, to a single entity.
This is a cost which is paid, by every building owner in the city, amounting to billions, hundreds of billions across the country.
We could solve homelessness for less than the cost we are paying right now.Report
This is shifting the conversation. The root problems for homelessness are mental illness, addiction, and our failure to build enough homes (i.e. local control over zoning).
You are correct in fixing most homelessness could be done cheaply. All we’d need to do is outlaw local interests from preventing zoning. It would probably be a massive net gain for society for various reasons.
However we can do that without increasing educational spending for risk children by 20x.Report
Even if we restrict ourselves solely to crime, the cost of crime and the underlying pool of uneducated young men is several orders of magnitude beyond the cost of housing them in prison.
Its far cheaper and better to educate and train them for useful jobs than it is to endure the inevitable crime and disorder they cause.Report
Its far cheaper and better to educate and train them for useful jobs than it is to endure the inevitable crime and disorder they cause.
1) I see no reason to think the level of spending you’re proposing is “far cheaper”. My back of the envelop suggest the opposite.
2) I’m not convinced this will work at the scale we need.
3) I have a hard time seeing it as politically viable.
4) Unintended consequences and misaligned incentives will be a problem.
Having said that, it’d be interesting to try to run at a small scale. Go to Chicago and randomly pick 100 at risk types and do this. If it works then try it again with 1000.
Maybe you can get the costs down to something reasonable.
This might even be something that Gates has tried.Report
The numbers are heading in the right direction. That’s a sign that they’re heading in the right direction.
Maybe we’ll actually have at least one proficient student next year.
And then we won’t be able to compare these schools to the ones in Baltimore anymore.Report
Jay, while I agree with you on a lot of this subject I think this is where you go off the rails. The schools in question may well suck, and given the numbers it is probably fair to take it for granted that they are not well run.
However the real question is whether the children at these places could succeed academically anywhere. That’s where I think it’s instructive to look back at that teach for America essay that was circulating a little while back, about how the children are poorly nourished, witnesses to gang violence, come from completely chaotic home lives, etc. The teachers and administrators can all be subpar and still not be the root cause. A variation of this is very likely what is goint on in the backwoods of red states Chip will point to, where the districts are full of children from broken homes and in the custody of dysfunctional adults with addiction and other problems.Report
I am 100% down with the idea that we cannot fix this by changing the teachers, or changing the administration, and that even changes like “phonics vs. whole word” won’t do a whole lot to nudge much.
Seriously.
I just think that that means that there is stuff that follows from that.
And the stuff that follows from that?
*THAT* is where I go off the rails.Report
Yes, the implications are not good and IMO raise a moral quandary that is very hard for a democracy that values individual freedom and civil rights very hard to address.
An authoritarian system would probably forcibly break up entire zip codes and try to dilute the dysfunction. Of course historical episodes where things like that have been done haven’t always gone well and in some contexts are now seen as among the gravest of crimes. It’s a lot easier to just throw money at the problem even where everyone knows it isn’t a solution.Report
Make it illegal for people who care about their kids’ educations to move their children to different school districts.
“It’s your duty to provide these other children access to your own!”
Something like that.
“You can’t take your kids away! What about socialization?”Report
It would really be doing the opposite. Even the best public schools have some number of people who won’t or can’t perform. My high school would fall into the ‘pretty good’ public school category but there was still a visible chunk of students so mired in dysfunction junction as to be going nowhere and who I can’t imagine met proficiency standards. The material issue was just that there weren’t so many that it caused those families that were engaged to withdraw.
Now, do I believe many of those students were actually helped as individuals by virtue of the learning environment? Probably not. But maybe some of the marginal ones were and the real problem people were few enough in number that there was no sense of crisis. That’s what I would call dilution. Picking up people and forcibly scattering them. But again, not really solving anything for individuals, not easy for a liberal democracy like ours, definitely involving some potentially really bad unintended and abusive consequences, etc.Report
Would you be ok with stricter drug laws and far more foster care?Report
Drugs laws are creating criminals and we don’t have enough foster parents, especially for the group we’re talking about.Report
Drug laws don’t create criminals; people become criminals by committing crimes. One of the reasons we have drug laws is to deter people from committing drug crimes. The people who use drugs are likely to be the same people who have children that they don’t encourage toward education. We shouldn’t lock people up for setting a bad example, but if we locked up more criminals for longer we’d see a decrease in bad examples. There would probably be a lot more kids moved into foster care.
I’m not saying this is the only path to improve education, but I am saying that if we’re willing to have uncomfortable conversations about improving education, things like this are going to come up.Report
Our experience with Prohibition suggests bad policy can have bad outcomes.
We pass a law that people aren’t willing to follow and then we have to enforce it on them.
This creates social and economic damage, in the case of Prohibition, much more than just living with the behavior that we outlawed.Report
I would say a core paradox is that a common denominator with the children in question is absent fathers. Incarcerating drug offenders results in a lot of absent fathers. Are fathers who are present and committing serious enough drug crimes to do real time better than absent fathers? I am not sure the answer is clear, and at best you are looking at 2 bad situations.Report
It’s a lot more ugly than that. We’re giving lots of money to criminal organizations and so on.
The drug crimes themselves are a thing, but part of that entire package is violence and other bad habits.Report
5.4%? oh, great news! I guess everything’s working.
I mean, it’s not like this is some Jew school or something like that. We have higher standards for those people. But, y’know, that’s just what you have to do with some kinds of people, they need a firm hand on the wheel and a clear path to walk, right?Report
Is that what you think I’m saying? That’s not what I’m saying.
What I’m saying is that if we are going to wring our hands about schools with 0% proficiency and use that as the binary metric for consideration… did they have 0% or did they not… then we ought to… look at the actual numbers on whether that is the case or not.
I’m sorry that this Tweet is mostly useless nonsense if trying to have a serious conversation about education. You seem really upset by that. Would you like a tissue?Report
Worth noting that grade level and a half loss across core subjects (including reading, but not just reading) is pretty much true across states. Some states, districts, and schools did better than others, of course, but what we’re looking at here is an unprecedented (at least in living memory) shock to education that will take some time to recover, and that won’t speak much, if at all, to the overall level of education across states.
That said, almost every state’s primary and secondary education systems are worse than Illinois (consistently rated one of the top few in the country), so you know that if sh*t’s bad in Illinois, it’s probably even worse in Alabama, where the resources to fund a recovery just don’t exist.Report
Texas data from last year:
https://texas2036.org/posts/reading-math-scores-continue-post-pandemic-drop/Report
Well now what! Texas’ numbers are going down but Illinois’ are going up?Report
It’s a CRT conspiracy!Report
Don’t forget the border crisis!Report
Coincidentally, I just looked at the list of 30 schools (the data’s from 2022). They’re not all in Chicago, it should be clear, but of the 22 in Chicago, 12 are Youth Connection Charter Schools (YCCS in the name, if you’re looking at the list).YCCS schools are last resort charter schools for kids who are at high risk of dropping out. Pretty much every one of them ends up at those schools precisely because they’re really far behind educationally. Looks like several of the other Chicago schools are charter or vocational schools, so it’s likely that the student bodies are in similar situations to those at the YCCS schools.
Also worth noting that all of the schools are small, some very small, which is an indication that there are other factors at play.
These are kids that need a bunch of targeted help, and these schools are designed to give it to them. The pandemic probably hit them really, really hard, and it will be important to watch these kids (and future kids at these schools) closely over the next few years.
It’s worth noting that Chicago Public Schools are probably the best-studied schools in the country, and a place where data-driven policies are heavily utilized (and frequently tested), so I assume after these results, CPS didn’t sit on its ass.
Now, I am sure the people who are talking about this in this thread are not the quick-to-jump-to-conclusions types, but just in case someone has accidentally jumped to a conclusion or two based on the 30 schools number (I have most of the people in the conversation set to ignore, so I can’t be sure that none of the people here have done so uncharacteristically), I thought I’d throw this information out there.Report
Jump-to-conclusion types are gonna jump-to-conclusions.
Were you here when we had the conversation about data in, I think Alabama? Or Mississippi? And I pointed out that they raised their percentages by simply holding back everyone who failed, thereby changing the data sets in a pretty dramatic way during the years that were being looked at? And everyone acted like that’s good process? FUN TIMES.
How do you set people to ignore???Report
We discussed that here, for the record.
And everyone acted like that’s good process?
Holding kids back, making sure that they get extra tutoring until they are good enough at it?
It sucks that that’s necessary but it resulted in more proficiency than, for example, whatever Baltimore is doing this week.
The argument was not “this is emotionally fulfilling for everybody involved”.
It was “they managed to increase proficiency”.
If it were as easy as giving all of the kids copies of “Our Bodies, Ourselves”, I’d have instead suggested we do that.Report
It didn’t lead to more proficiency. You’re wrong about that. Wrong. Dead wrong.
But you don’t want to listen or learn. Maybe your proficiency should be evaluated.Report
It didn’t? The measurements went up.
I’ll quote you:
I pointed out that we can’t necessarily determine that the phonics alone is why Mississippi’s scores are soaring. It could be the tutoring. It could be because they only advanced students to 4th grade who were already proficient.
If they hammered the reading and used multiple different things to make sure that the kids were proficient when they got to 4th grade, then that’s *A VICTORY*.
Sure, it took more than one year for some kids. And you know what? That sucks.
But the argument we had back there was that they did more than phonics. They also did tutoring. They held kids back a year.
But kids who wouldn’t have been proficient were proficient after such things as phonics, tutoring, and the other stuff they succeeded at doing.
If you want to argue that there was more at play than phonics… sure.
But, according to the article, the scores were, and I am quoting this, “soaring”. “But that doesn’t mean ‘proficient'” is a good argument, I guess.
But at that point, we’re back to “maybe changing stuff in the schools won’t change things for the students” which, I assure you, I am willing to run with.Report
There’s an x next to their names. Click it, and they’re ignored on that machine.Report
At Varsity Tutors, I found some practice 4th grade reading tests! Free!
And quick, too! Just 3 questions.
They give you a section from Alice in Wonderland and ask you three multiple choice questions:
1) What were Alice’s feelings at the beginning of the passage?
2) Why didn’t Alice like her sister’s book?
3) Based on the text, what does the word “curiosity” mean?
I’m pleased to say that I got 100% on the 4th grade reading test.
Then it told me:
You scored better than 47% of all others who took this practice test.Report
Anyone who started the test and then said “Quit test and show me results” was marked incorrect for any unanswered questions.
Context.Report
I suppose that the additional context is that I don’t know whether these 3 questions are representative of 4th Grade tests out in the wild. I assume they are…
But, anyway, there are 30 schools in Chicago without a single proficient student.
That is to say: There are 30 schools in Chicago that do not have a single student capable of passing a test full of questions like those 3. Assuming, of course, that those questions are representative.Report
“There are 30 schools in Chicago that do not have a single student capable of passing a test full of questions like those 3.”
Actually, there aren’t 30 schools. As I stated above, this data is outdated.
Further, it does not mean students can’t answer these questions. It means they can’t answer enough of them to meet whatever the state threshold is for proficiency (Note: That threshold was raise in 2013).
So… you’re either being deliberately obtuse OR you really misunderstand how school testing works.
If the former… well, enjoy that. If the latter… maybe do a bit more listening and a bit less talking. Perhaps see Chris’s post just above about the types of schools that are most prevalent on the list.Report
As I stated above, this data is outdated.
Do you have 2024 numbers that I could compare to?
Further, it does not mean students can’t answer these questions. It means they can’t answer enough of them to meet whatever the state threshold is for proficiency (Note: That threshold was raise in 2013).
So what’s the best way to describe the students that aren’t able to answer enough questions correctly to demonstrate proficiency to Chicago’s standards?
I must be obtuse because I thought that describing the schools as not having “a single student capable of passing a test full of questions like those 3” was somewhere in the ballpark of describing the state of affairs. Maybe “passing” is the wrong term… “getting a score at or above the number deemed by the state to demonstrate proficiency”.Report
You want 2024 numbers on February 8th of 2024? You really are a ass.
YOU shared a link that included 2023 data. You did. You. Jaybird. You. When I point out that the Tweet references 2022 data and that 2023 data shows a better picture within those schools, you respond — on February 8th — with, “WELL WHERE IS THE 2024 DATA?!”
So, I will now step away since it is abundantly clear that you are uninterested in having a serious conversation. I pointed out to you that the most up to date data was included in the link YOU shared and that data paints a different picture than whatever is offered in that Tweet. You don’t actually want to look at data. You want to stand on your soapbox and rant and rave and ignore everything that counters your perspective.
Have fun with that. Later dude.Report
Kazzy, you are correct to note that asking for 2024 numbers is an absurd request.
In the same way, I think that calling 2022 numbers “outdated” is an absurd assertion.
“2023 numbers are better than 2022 numbers” is a good point. I believe that I would respond to that point by saying something like:
Report
By the way… you know you looked at just one SUB-test, right? Cuz there were 4 sub-tests there that make up the overall Reading test.
Hey… remember when I said, “Sometime we have to decide what ‘Reading’ means” and you acted like I was crazy.
LOOKS LIKE WE DON’T AGREE ONW HAT READING MEANS!Report
Not only do I know I looked at just one SUB-test, I know that it only asked me three questions.
Hey, I googled “fourth grade reading proficiency test” and that was the top hit.
I wanted to see what any given test might be like. I mean, maybe the questions might be surprisingly difficult and so a 4th grader not getting north of… what? 80%? wouldn’t be surprising.
As it is, they gave me the first handful of paragraphs from a famous book that would be more or less appropriate for 4th grade (the books that I remember we had back then include “Where the Red Fern Grows” and “Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing”) and then asked multiple choice questions about the contents of those paragraphs.
Like, instead of thinking “man, this is kinda unfair”, I walked away thinking “these are not particularly difficult paragraphs and the questions are not particularly sneaky trick questions”.
Like I came away thinking that if those questions were representative of the proficiency tests that actually exist, that the tests are pretty good and the people who put them together to measure proficiency calibrated them fairly well.
Should I take the other three SUB-tests and see if those are particularly unfair? Maybe they are…
I’ll be right back with a quick report.Report
This time I looked at Nebraska’s practice test.
This one felt a little bit tougher than the other practice test. A couple of questions where the right answer felt like it was 95% right and there was another answer that was 75% right… like, #15: “What could another title be for the passage?”
That one felt like they put answer #1 there to catch the kids who just skimmed and stampeded to the next question.
But that was only one question of 16. There are the 93.75% kids and the 100% kids, I guess. Gotta separate them out somehow.
Do you have a practice test that you, as an educator, will give the most well-rounded test-taking experience to give us all the best idea of what these tests are actually like (including all SUB-tests)?Report
So… for the record… you feel well-positioned to judge what is happening in these schools based on…
1.) A Tweet referencing outdated information
2.) 3 questions from a practice subtest
3.) Your — and if memory serves you are a college-educated adult — performance on those 3 questions
4.) Your memories of 4th grade
I think you think I’m saying these tests are bad. I’m not.
What I’m saying… and I will say this as clearly as I can… is that that Tweet is basically useless at making any sort of determination about what is happening in Illinois schools, in general or those specific ones. It was a bad Tweet to share if you wanted to have a substantive conversation about what is happening in those schools or Illinois schools in general.Report
Well-positioned enough to say “holy crap, this is really bad”, yeah.
The tweet referred to 2022 numbers and not 2023 numbers. I suppose it’s good that the numbers are edging back up after some seriously *HORRIBLE* numbers.
Those numbers are less absolutely horrible and are now merely really, really bad.
The three questions gave me a place to look and see “what is the test like? Like, is it *UNFAIR*?” And, as a college-educated adult, I looked and saw that the test was *NOT* particularly unfair.
And, from there, I went to my memories of 4th grade and considered what a school full of children incapable of demonstrating proficiency would have to look like.
Or, I suppose, with updated numbers: where 1 out of 20 children were proficient.
For what it’s worth: I’m pretty sure that I agree that the schools are not failing. The teachers are pretty good, all things considered. The administrators aren’t likely to be replaceable with better administrators. And switching from whole word theories to phonics might nudge things a little bit… but not, like, to the point where these schools would suddenly start demonstrating Texas-levels of competence.
I agree with all of that.Report
Mayorkas impeachment failed.
Israel-alone aid failed.
Comprehensive Israel-Taiwan-Ukraine-Gaza (humanitarian)-Border Security bill failed.
All because Republicans either can’t their act together or because they don’t actually want the things they demanded (like more money for border security). All they want is political theater and they can’t even do that.
Truman did very well running against the “Do-Nothing Congress” in 1948. I wouldn’t say Dewey was an afterthought but Truman knew how to take it to the people. Seems to me the GOP is teeing that up for Biden & Co. pretty nicely, despite their best efforts to gin up issues for themselves.Report
If the Senate passes the aid package sans border changes I’m not sure if I’ll laugh or cry.Report
Trump’s plan for the border is like Nixon’s plan for Vietnam in 1968. His plan is to keep the mess going long enough that he can run on fixing it.Report
Which is hilarious since he didn’t the first time.Report
Also, RIP Mojo Nixon.Report
oh man. I had not heard that. Bummer. Guess no one is gonna put his face on a nuclear bomb.Report
People mock how Martha’s Vineyard got rid of the undocumented visitors but they don’t understand how much economic damage those undocumented visitors actually did.
Report
Well it’s true that MV is eligible, but not because it’s “low-income”:
As of January 1, 2023, qualifying property is limited to property placed in service in eligible census tracts. An eligible census tract is a population census tract that is a low-income community as described in section 45D(e) or that is not an urban area.Report
Oh, it’s just non-urban.
That makes sense, then.
And, let’s face it, we kind of want more of these things. If you want more of something, subsidize it!
More funding!Report
https://reason.com/video/2018/12/19/remy-its-beginning-to-look-a-lot-like-ch/Report
Thanks, dude. Thanks a lot. I spent the morning working on a Citrix issue and now I have “It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Citrix” in my head.Report
Hey, click at your own risk. But at least it scans better than “It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Amazon Workspaces”.Report
So is the issue that they classified it as “low income”? Wait… DID they classify it as low income?
Or is the issue the subsidies?Report
I’m pleased with the setup.
“We’re going to help people in low income and non-urban areas!”
Who can be opposed to that?
These are for electric vehicles. How many EVs do you think they sell in the low income areas? I’m guessing “relatively few”.
So this becomes a way to subsidize Martha’s Vineyard under the guise of helping low-income areas.
And if you question it? Hey. Are you saying that you’re opposed to helping low-income areas?
It’s brilliant.Report
“Is your favorite cookie company grooming children?”
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/miacathell/2024/02/07/oreo-pflag-campaign-n2634860
Oreo’s latest partnership signifies a disturbing trend in U.S. corporations advancing the LGBTQ+ agenda, as far-left ideologues impose it on children through programs like Drag Queen Story Hour and by placing pornographic books in public school libraries.Report
“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” it said. “Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him — by then a former president well into his eighties — of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/joe-biden/special-counsel-says-evidence-biden-willfully-retained-disclosed-class-rcna96666Report
Agreed, it’d be incredibly hard to convince Biden of doing something he didn’t do- maliciously retain and conceal sensitive documents. That’s not surprising considering that, by all indications, Biden didn’t attempt to hide them, or deny he had them, or refuse to return them, or move them about to hide them from his own attorneys, or show them off to other people like a certain someone else did with enormously larger numbers of far more sensitive documents.
Which is why Trumps facing serious prosecution risks and Biden isn’t even going to go to trial.Report
The report also contained a nice swipe at Biden’s age from the Republican Daddy Special Prosecutor.
Only Republicans can investigate Republicans and only Republicans can investigate Democrats.
Otherwise there is bias, you know.Report
Frankly, “maliciously retain and conceal sensitive documents” isn’t the standard. The standard is “was he authorized to have the documents” after he was no longer VP and did he still have them. The investigation revealed he “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials to his ghost writer after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.” The standard isn’t what Trump did, the standard is “is he now authorized to have these documents”? The answer is no.
And as for Saul’s comment: “The report also contained a nice swipe at Biden’s age” Biden’s got memory problems. That’s well documented. Hell, he recently said he met Mitterrand.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/biden-french-president/
I think it’s a fair argument that a guy with a documented history of memory problems probably isn’t a guy the fed gov wants to let have unsupervised control of classified documents, but that’s just a side note.
Regardless, I don’t think it was snark by the investigator, it was “can we realistically get a conviction on a guy who has a well documented history of memory problems without looking like it’s a witch hunt.” YMMV on that.Report
The investigator also noted, repeatedly, that most previous executive office occupants have ended up retaining documents that they shouldn’t have and that charges have never been brought, largely because they simply return them as soon as they find them which is precisely what Bidens people did in this case. Which suggests both that the investigator reached the correct conclusion in not bringing charges but that, as he was a federalist society hack, he couldn’t resist inserting a bunch of partisan swipes.Report
https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-blog/judge-kacsmaryk-abortion-pill-mifepristone-rcna137612
Well it turns out that the publisher is going to retract three studies that Judge Kacsmaryk (District Court of Gilead) relied on to ban MifepristoneReport
Texas A&M-Qatar Campus to Close by 2028
The Saudi blockade ended in 2021 and everybody else got normalized last year sometime.
So it ain’t that.Report
Oral arguments in the Trump Disqualification case were yesterday.
Tea leaves say: Not looking good for disqualification.
However, the goat entrails don’t point to which line of reasoning SCOTUS will use to overturn. (We all know what my read on this would be).
I’m mildly happy it doesn’t seem to be focused on the ‘dumb’ who’s an officer argument… but a little sad that there seems to be more focus on, ‘what if all the states did this’ argument… and a little gratified that Congress and the Section 5 argument is in the hunt. Though I’ll admit that I’m a little surprised at some of the lackluster historical research shown by the justices, especially Kavanaugh (or his clerks anyway).
https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/02/supreme-court-appears-unlikely-to-kick-trump-off-colorado-ballot/Report
Whatever they decide I dearly hope that it’s a unanimous or near unanimous decision.
Though the arguments pout forth so far, though they comport with my own opinions, are not reflecting well on our vaunted conservative originalist section of the Supreme Court. So much for the plain reading of the text.Report
WaPo expects it to be unanimous.
Disgusting perhaps, but unanimous.Report
I’m still waiting for a good breakdown by justice by someone who follows the court regularly… send me a link if you’ve got one.
Prelim Rorschach tests seem to range from 6-3 to 9-0 depending on the viewer.Report
The court-watchers I’ve read all seem to think 9-0 or 8-1. The 1 is presumably Gorsuch, who wrote while he was on the 10th Circuit that states have the final say about who goes on their ballots.Report
I hope they’re right.Report
Seems the IDF is intent on both being formal occupiers in Gaza, and doing ethnic cleansing:
https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-02-09-24/h_a2a8d5dcdbf2e6c4d461652590457519Report
For it to be “ethnic cleansing” they will have to either kill them or push them out of Gaza. The Israeli claim is there are large numbers of Hamas there.
Edit: What is interesting in all the calls for “a cease fire” is how few of them say “Hamas should surrender”. It all seems to be “Israel should go home and wait for the next mass murder”.Report
Seems like if you plan to move everyone in a place to somewhere else that’s ethnic cleansing of that place.Report
If it’s intended to be permanent, maybe. But an emergency evacuation before a military strike isn’t ethnic cleansing. More like the opposite.Report
Having destroyed the rest of Gaza, where do you think these folks would be “evacuated” to? And how would they be “evacuated” while leaving behind the alleged Hamas elements in their midst?
Too many red flags for me to believe it’s not intended to permanently remove Palestinians from Gaza.Report
I will acknowledge my mistake if Israel removes the Palestinians from Gaza. Will you acknowledge yours if they don’t?Report
Sure.Report
RE: Having destroyed the rest of Gaza, where do you think these folks would be “evacuated” to?
Does it matter? They are already living in tents there and are already displaced persons.
If Israel is going to bring a brutal war to the spot then anywhere will be better than where they are.
If you want to assume bad faith, then the question is whether Israel is deliberately chasing large numbers of civilians around so they’re refugees in practice as well as in theory.
The problem is Hamas is almost certainly there. There are 1.4m people there, no effort was made to prevent them from going, and they always locate with civilians.
They deliberately give Israel the choice between ignoring them and getting civilians killed.Report
And as the week closes out, a 200-foot tall AM radio tower has somehow gone missing in Alabama.Report
Good news! There is groundwork being laid to get rid of massively inefficient 401k saving plans!
Congress could use that money!Report
Eh, what does it matter anyway. Assuming climate change doesn’t kill us all first, we optimistically have 20 years at the current trajectory before default — but neither party cares at all, nor does the populace. We’ll be 10 feet from the edge of the cliff and going 80MPH before anyone thinks to try to brake or swerve.Report
Here are a few ideas for making SS solvent for any foreseeable future:
https://www.cbpp.org/research/increasing-payroll-taxes-would-strengthen-social-security
It would be illuminating to see who supports them, who has better ideas, and who prefers to let it collapse.
Not surprising. Just illuminating.Report
It won’t “collapse”. Nor will it “default”. Those words have meanings.
It will still function, however it will pay about 75% of it’s promised benefits.
We’d finally see whether SS is still super popular with it finally not paying everyone more than they pay in and we’ll get to see if there’s political will to pay for it entirely.Report
Oh sorry, my link didn’t work and it wasn’t obvious that I was changing the topic to the federal debt overall: https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2023/10/6/when-does-federal-debt-reach-unsustainable-levelsReport
Same comment as before.
American conservatives have no ideas, nothing to offer except 19th century Gilded Age nostrums and pieties.Report
“Maybe we could do the thing that worked for thousands of years?”
“That type of thinking is old!”
If your definition of “good” is “new/novel”, I imagine that conservative thinking will come across as self-evidently bad. You might not even understand how anyone else could come to any other conclusion unless they were bad too.Report
It is odd how, despite endless hectoring by the wealthy via their well financed libertarian mouthpieces, the masses don’t fancy those thousand year old concepts like:
-only the wealthy don’t need to worry about starving.
-Only the wealthy get to make decisions for everyone.
-Only the wealthy get to tilt public policy in their favor.
And on and on.Report
For what it’s worth, “pitchforks” are also pretty old.
Lamp posts go back to the 16th Century!Report
What’s notable is how completely conservatives have abandoned the thoughts of Burke and Chesterton.
Universal public education is a century old, the New Deal nearly so, Medicare as old as its recipients and yet conservatives want to tear them down to return to the policies which were so thoroughly discredited they sparked a world war which left 50,000,000 dead.Report
This game looks like fun. Does it have to be three things that no political party believes, or just three things that no one here believes? Are there extra points if no one says anything that implies any of them, or no one says anything that could even be mistakenly interpreted as them?Report
Ask him if he supports abolishing the 401(k).
If you phrase the question just right, you might get him to say that nobody is arguing that.Report
On the larger question of federal finances and entitlements the past post war path has tended to be through independent and/or bipartisan commissions designed to create cover for both sides. Only one party has defected from that and it’s very clear which it is.
Of course there’s a larger cross pressure here. Smarter members of the upper middle or HENRY type classes will ultimately figure out that big salaries by themselves don’t wash out to meaningful benefits from Republican tax cuts and over time their plans may well create different problems we forgot existed post New Deal/Great Society but neither will they end up ahead under the most ambitious fantasies of the left fringe of the Democratic party.
To me the big question is what exactly the new social contract is supposed to be, in light of demographic pressures and in a post industrial environment, but no one seems ready to touch it.Report
This is a great observation.
I’d add that trying to craft and sell policy based on what’s best for the richest and poorest segments has been a massive bamboozle that is alienating broader society (I don’t want to simply say, Middle Class — because its wider and that term doesn’t mean what we think means).Report
Full agreement. I’m of course quick to add that a lot of this is downstream of certain broader material successes of the country. We’re legitimately richer than we used to be in a lot of ways across the spectrum, and not just on paper either. The HENRYs and upper middle class still get a legitimately good deal and it would be ridiculous to say they don’t, just as it would be inaccurate to mistake them and their interests for those of the actual middle class.
At the same time the more one thinks about it the harder it becomes not to notice the total lack of coherent theory underpinning the way taxes, entitlements, and fiscal policies operate in the now existing environment. The political alignments don’t really make sense and it doesn’t turn up in the official discourse at all.Report
Not true at all. The GOP wants there to be no regulatory state, whether its dictating safe working conditions, gender pay equity, female body autonomy, or clean drinking water. One way to achieve the destruction of those parts of the federal government is to take away funding in the form of slashed taxes. They have been remarkably consistent about this across decades.Report
I don’t really agree. The right wing view of this is easier to mistake for coherent only because it is so comprehensively unwilling to engage with what would happen if it ever actually succeeded.Report
based on voting to date, and policies implemented by Republican presidents to date – augmented by consistent document dumps etc. there is really no other conclusion. They have been as consistent here as on any political subject since the Civil Rights movement and the environmentalism movement emerged alongside each other in the 1960’s.Report
I do not support abolishing the 401(k) and while I wouldn’t say that “nobody” is arguing for it I would observe that your link goes to a pair of academics talking about it- and that’s it. By that standard just about any subject you can imagine has the “groundwork being laid” for it.Report
Well, if it’s just academics talking about it, that’s no big deal.
Maybe we could go from there to attacking people who say we shouldn’t do that as not having any real arguments as for what we should do, outside of “Gilded Age nostrums and pieties”.Report
Jay said:
“Maybe we could do the thing that worked for thousands of years?”
I was just trying to think of conservative arguments that persist to this day and also are a thousand years old. Obviously virtually no liberal arguments fit this bill because liberalism is only a couple centuries old, max.Report
“Live according to your means”, I guess. Half of the stuff in Proverbs is that old. Ecclesiastes is that old. Marcus Aurelius was pretty good. Oooh, the part in Genesis that talks about Joseph saving up in the fat years for the lean years! That might apply!
Plenty of stuff that predates the, and I’m copying and pasting this, “Gilded Age nostrums and pieties”.
I have nostrums and pieties from the Bronze Age, thank you very much.Report
I mean the country is living according to its means. Historically when a modern liberal nations means has run out it’s adjusted to live according to those new means. The problem, from a right wing point of view, is those adjustments rarely move the nation closer to the state of affairs the money men would like to see.Report
I am seriously down with Fedposting about billionaires. I am.
I am just going to ask that we Fedpost about billionaires prior to complaining that nobody has any progressive ideas in response to pushback against abolishing 401(k)s.Report
Hmmm well you’d probably be able to find some lefties who want 401k’s gone because they want to bring back defined benefit pension plans. Of course none of said lefties are any closer to the levers of power than your two professors are.Report
They don’t have to argue for getting rid of 401ks.
They just have to say that “you don’t have any ideas!” when someone pushes back against getting rid of 401ks.Report
Well Kenb did change the subject to the national debt before Chip wheeled out his “you don’t have any ideas” line. I think the very trivial subject of these two economics kooks wanting to get rid of 401k’s was well sidelined before that line came out.Report
Maybe we could try hyperinflation, paying off all of our bills like that, then pegging the dollar to a stable currency in another country somewhere?Report
Ummm sure, except that, of course, inflation’s back down in the 2% range and looks set to stay there. When countries try that sort of scheme they peg their currency to the dollar- as you well know- because currently it’s the only game in town globally speaking.Report
Exactly as I said, you don’t even care enough to look, and you’re in good company. The important thing is you already know who you’ll blame as we’re all plummeting.Report
It seems to me, looking back over the past 24 years of recent history, that the only proposed deals to reduce the deficit have ever originated from the Democratic party whereas the Republican party has only ever increased the deficit via tax cuts and more spending.
As to the specific claim of the US’s fiscal situation being unstable, we already know that it can be stabilized in a straight forward manner by raising taxes first, cutting non-safety net spending second and then finally cutting safety net spending last to finish the balancing out. That’s how democracies typically balance their accounts when they are finally forced to do so.
The GOP and their plutocratic backers know this too, which is why they’ve spent my entire adult life trying to cut taxes when they’re in control and try to force the Democratic party to cut spending via obstruction when they’re out of control. What is beyond me is why they think anyone, anywhere, would fall for it.Report
I’ve asked conservatives endlessly to take the five big categories of spending:
1. Interest
2. Social Security;
3. Medicare;
4. Defense;
5. Every other thing the government does;
And tell us what those numbers would look like in their dream scenario.
Because even if all you did was finance the first four, we would still run a deficit.
And none of them are brave enough to admit they want to cut Social Security or Medicare and they don’t want to cut Defense, so they just stammer and hem and haw and change the subject.
There literally is no way to balance even one year’s budget without a massive tax increase.Report
I think people here didn’t really get my point, which I suppose must be my fault. I’m saying that *neither side* has much of a constituency for fiscal responsibility. I agree that the previous GOP has been opportunistic rather than principled in the past, and the MAGA folks don’t give a crap.
However, Democrats very clearly don’t care either, as evidenced by the widespread support for Biden’s ridiculous multi-trillion-dollar spending bills and the heaps of anger directed at Sinema and Manchin for their opposition. It’s surely clear by now (and should have been then) that spending a couple trillion dollars in the face of a supply-shocked country just then emerging from the pandemic was economic malpractice, but i haven’t seen anyone here or among the Dem party at large express any regrets or lessons learned. Quite the contrary, Dems continue to cheer whenever Biden gets out the federal charge card again for a cause they support.
Y’all trot out this “all we have to do is raise taxes”, which is sort of true except that no one is actually willing to do it (except in a figleaf way on “billionaires”, which will not put a noticeable dent in our $34 trillion dollar national debt). We’re screwed, there are no adults in the room anywhere.Report
Actually I trot out that raising taxes AND cutting various spendings would be required and I also point out that of the two parties in this country one of them has proven willing and capable of perform all the actions necessary to balance the budget (the Dems) and one has demonstrated the opposite (the GOP).
While the Dems haven’t prioritized balancing the budget, for generally pretty good reasons, they are fully capable of raising taxes (natch) but also of cutting spending. The ACA was partially paid for, after all, by cutting existing spending- about 741 billion dollars of it if I recall correctly. You just don’t find that kind of flexability on the other side of the aisle.
And, of course, the constant wailing of “we’re screwed” is hyperbolic. I’ve personally witnessed an actual national fiscal crisis and the US just isn’t close , yet, to that kind of crisis.
That’s not to say that it wouldn’t be a good idea to sort it out sooner than later but you can’t do that with only one operational party. If the Dems balanced the budget, for instance, the GOP would campaign against it, win and then would promptly cut taxes again to throw the budget out of wack again.Report
As someone who has worked inside federal budget preparation and execution for most of career, I’m going to say the same thing I always do – looking at all sources of revenue, and all sources of expenditure, roughly 1/3rd of what the federal government spends is not covered by revenue. That generally equals ALL discretionary spending – what the Congress is wrangling over with appropriations bills and continuing resolutions. You can address that in four ways – raise taxes (including the “taxes” for earned benefits like Social Security and Medicare), eliminate discretionary spending. Change the funding and spending formulas for mandatory spending, or run deficits financed by Treasury bonds.
That’s it.
We have 40 plus years of data that cutting taxes without cutting government doesn’t work. Supply Side/voodoo economics is a failure.
And if you want to have ANY discretionary spending – the FBI, most of DoD, National Parks, Clean air enforcement – then you can’t eliminate discretionary spending.
We are in a corner of our own making, and there is really only one way to get to solvency that doesn’t crash the economy. Eliminating the Executive Branch to keep taxes low isn’t it, no matter what the GOP tells you.Report
According to this website: https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/, the U.S. government was spent over half a trillion dollars more than it took in just since 10/1/23. There is no one way to reduce that, and the number is so mind boggling large that most people can’t even comprehend how much it is.
Plus, once you get to the bargaining table no one wants their very essential sacred cow gored, which is how you end up over spending by $500 million dollars in 6 months. The whole exercise is just preposterous.Report
I agree that its preposterous – but it is also easily explainable. And relatively simple. Raise taxes. Essentially eliminate the Executive Branch. Radically alter how you pay Earned benefits. If you want to balance the budget these are your options. You could do a combination of these on smaller scales and probably accomplish the same thing.
But there is no magical underpants gnome solution to this. And both parties are responsible.Report
It probably doesn’t help that a third of the way through FY 2024 this nation doesn’t have a budget. We’re living paycheck to paycheck, but fortunately we have a black Amex to fund everything.Report
technoically we have a budget – its what each chamber uses to design its appropriations bills. What we lack is the Appropriation bills themselves, which are the legal authorization for how to spend the revenue we have collected. Continuing resolutions are sort of that, but since they don’t allow new starts or program terminations they aren’t really helpful.
And of interest, one of the reasons we have such expensive government is once we get an appropriation, spending windows start closing July 1 based on the dollar amount of the expenditure. That way the federal government gets all its money spent by 30 September. When you get an appropriation in mid-March, its take until mid April for the money to actually get to a program to spend – by July.
That’s far more maddening FWIW.Report