Visual source: Newseum
Hey, anyone remember when we considered teachers valued professionals instead of lazy union thugs sponging off the taxpayer? Nicholas Kristof says that poor pay for teachers is already forcing the best and brightest out of the classroom, and it hasn't always been that way.
In 1970, in New York City, a newly minted teacher at a public school earned about $2,000 less in salary than a starting lawyer at a prominent law firm. These days the lawyer takes home, including bonus, $115,000 more than the teacher, the McKinsey study found.
Believe it or not, teachers in South Korea and Singapore (two of the highest performing educational systems)
still make more than lawyers or engineers. Why is it worth paying more to keep the best teachers at their desks? Because investing in teachers pays off in their students.
Recent scholarship suggests that good teachers, even kindergarten teachers, increase their students’ earnings many years later. Eric A. Hanushek of Stanford University found that an excellent teacher (one a standard deviation better than average, or better than 84 percent of teachers) raises each student’s lifetime earnings by $20,000. If there are 20 students in the class, that is an extra $400,000 generated, compared with a teacher who is merely average.
Which is all interesting, but then Kristoff goes on to say that teachers unions are bad, and teachers should take bigger class sizes in exchange for pay. In other words, he's channeling Bill Gates. It's hard to take anyone as an advocate of teachers who quotes from two "education reform" organizations, and not from a single teacher.
Frank Rich signs off from the ranks of NY Times punditry.
I do have strong political views, but opinions are cheap. Anyone could be a critic of the Bush administration. The challenge as a writer was to try to figure out why it governed the way it did — and how it got away with it for so long — and, dare I say it, to have fun chronicling each new outrage.
And we had fun reading them -- if only because it was nice to see that someone out there noticed. Looking forward to your essays at
the new gig.
Where are we going to find something to cut from the budget? Maybe a few of these massive boondoggles by the Pentagon might be worth considering. Like the small ships that were budgeted at $2200 million each, actually ended up costing $650 million, and also turned out to be flammable. How about dropping a new class of "supercarriers" that will cost $12 billion each -- if the cost doesn't go up again. Or maybe we could get back just a little of the $135 billion slated for the latest round of Star Wars (apologies to R2D2) missile defense. Of course, there are always more programs from the poor we can rob instead.
General Wesley Clark has thought a lot about American military involvement in Libya, and what he's thinking is mostly that we shouldn't.
What is the wisest course of action in Libya? To me, it seems we have no clear basis for action. Whatever resources we dedicate for a no-fly zone would probably be too little, too late. We would once again be committing our military to force regime change in a Muslim land, even though we can't quite bring ourselves to say it. So let's recognize that the basic requirements for successful intervention simply don't exist, at least not yet: We don't have a clearly stated objective, legal authority, committed international support or adequate on-the-scene military capabilities, and Libya's politics hardly foreshadow a clear outcome.
Joel Klein (not Joe) is a former chancellor of New York public schools who says that teachers can be graded. How? A little this, a little that. We all had teachers we liked better than others, so we know there must be a way! Plenty of people seem to have opinions on teachers on the editorial page today, but opinions from teachers are sadly lacking. Amazingly convenient for a former chancellor to complain about tenure without mentioning that all those "bad teachers" wouldn't get tenure to start with if administration was doing its job, and that actually underperfoming teachers can still be removed from the classroom, as long as the administration isn't too... what's that word? Too, lazy to go through the process.
Go find Doc Brown, David Sirota says we've travelled back to the 80s. And I'm sure there's a point in there, but I got lost in the laundry list of flashback examples somewhere around the spot where the "Huxtable Effect" explains the election of President Obama.
Dana Milbank points out something that was immediately obvious, but still bears repeating.
Peter King staged his investigation into the loyalty of Muslim Americans in an appropriate place: a hearing room once used by the House Un-American Activities Committee.... the ghost of Tail-Gunner Joe would not be denied. It found a host in the body of freshman Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-Minn.)
Of course, for Republicans these days, McCarthyism isn't to be feared, but embraced.
Republicans have been stirring up anger over EPA rules that treat spilled milk like a toxic chemical.
"It appears spilt milk is just as threatening as an oil spill," Mr. Griffith wrote in a recent newsletter to his constituents.... Spilled milk also surfaced at a March 3 hearing, when Representative Jeff Flake of Arizona grilled Lisa P. Jackson, the E.P.A. chief, over the alleged regulation. “How can the E.P.A. promulgate new rules like this?” Mr. Flake demanded. “What’s next — sippy cups in the House cafeteria?”
Yeah! How dare they! Or, maybe how didn't they, because this is just one of several "fictions" that Republicans are using to hurt the reputation of the EPA.
Up to where the action is... In the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Mordecai Lee says politics has moved from the small scale fight over problems with a candidate, to direct attack on supporters of a party.
I think Wisconsin has just entered the era of Thunderdome politics. ... If I'm right, then what we've just witnessed is the politics of not personal destruction as practiced in Washington, D.C., but the politics of political destruction. The Republican Party has just eliminated a major pillar of the Democratic Party's architecture. So, Thunderdome politics. Two parties enter the ring, one exits.
... Where is this coming from? The answer to that, it seems to me, is the sharply increased ideological nature of Republican politics. The impact of talk radio, Newt Gingrich and the tea party has been to energize their base by promoting anger. Given that emotional appeal, compromise has morphed from a positive value to a negative one. To compromise is to show weakness. To compromise is to acknowledge validity to the opponent's perspective.
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