A leading economist has likened the nation’s acceptance of free-market capitalism to that of the brainwashed characters in the film The Matrix, unwitting pawns in a fake reality. In a controversial new book, the Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang debunks received wisdom on everything from the importance of the internet to the idea that people in the United States enjoy the highest standard of living in the world; an iconoclastic attitude that has won him fans such as Bob Geldof and Noam Chomsky…

South-Korean born Dr Chang aims to disprove what he sees as economic myths, including the idea that people are paid what they are worth, that the “trickle down” effect of increasing wealth among the rich helps the poor, and that education makes countries more prosperous…

A leading development economist, Dr Chang was much lauded for his 2007 book Bad Samaritans, which looked at the negative effects of globalisation on developing countries. He is now bringing his focus closer to home, considering problems in the UK. “It is like The Matrix. There is a reality where things could and should be better,” he said. “In order to wake people up to that alternative reality, you need to show them that it isn’t impossible. I’m not necessarily saying that I have a solution, but we have to recognise that some of the things we accept as inevitable aren’t.”

But while Dr Chang may not have the answer, he is sure of the problem – arguing that free-market capitalism has left the global economy more unstable, and people with less job security and greater feelings of insecurity, than ever before. His conviction that, post-recession, we should be rebuilding our country in a “moral” way – by acknowledging the social consequences of economic choices such as benefit cuts and job losses – will strike a chord with many.

“Another myth that needs to be busted is the idea that we can discuss economics without any moral implications,” he said. “What kind of economy we build changes us, so what we do in terms of monetary policy determines who we are.”

Dr Chang also highlights the way in which economics impacts not just on our wages and living standards, but also on our characters. He said: “In conventional economic theory, it is thought that we are born as perfectly formed, rational, self-serving agents. But where you work and what kind of work you do are important in determining your character.”

[Programming Note] I’m starting a new semester, so my schedule this week will be hectic with prepping lectures, creating assignments, and all of the other fun stuff adjunct professors are paid [poorly] to do. Posting may be a little sporadic this week.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty is foundering in his reelection bid against his chief opponent, D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray, despite a widespread sense that the city is heading in the right direction, according to a new Washington Post poll.

With early voting beginning Monday in the Sept. 14 primary, Gray is clearly ahead, leading Fenty 49 to 36 percent among all Democratic voters surveyed. Gray’s advantage swells to 17 points, 53 to 36 percent, among those most likely to vote in the primary.

Okay, note the contradiction set up in the lede. Fenty is falling behind “despite a widespread sense that the city is heading in the right direction”. How can this be? Well…

Although most of those Democrats polled credit the mayor with a record of accomplishment and say he brought needed change to the District, many doubt his honesty, his willingness to listen to different points of view and his ability to understand their problems. The criticisms are especially deep-seated among African Americans, who are likely to make up a majority of primary voters.

Nearly six in 10 black Democrats see Fenty as caring primarily about upper-income residents; more than four in 10 see him as disproportionately concerned about whites in the District. In predominantly black Wards 7 & 8, east of the Anacostia River, where Fenty carried 54 percent of the primary vote four years ago, just 14 percent of all Democratic voters there now back him against Gray.

Citywide, most black voters doubt Fenty’s honesty and say he doesn’t understand their problems. Four years ago, just 17 percent of African Americans expressed unfavorable views of Fenty; now, that number has leapt to 56 percent…

Comparing the latest poll results with the results of Fenty’s unprecedented citywide sweep in the 2006 primary shows a significant drop in support everywhere in the District except wards 2 and 3. In those largely white wards, Fenty would get 55 percent of the vote now, matching his showing four years ago.

Fenty’s most dismal poll showing is among African Americans, with 19 percent of black Democrats saying they would support him, compared with 64 percent for Gray. Among white Democrats, Fenty leads Gray by 64 to 28 percent.

African Americans typically make up about six in 10 city Democrats, and this year, they account for 63 percent of the likely primary electorate, according to the poll, conducted by telephone Aug. 19 to 26. Even if the turnout was evenly split among blacks and whites, Gray would have an advantage because he scores higher among whites than Fenty does among blacks.

Ah, so there are racial and social class components to this dynamic. I wonder why it is that the African American community living in some of the most impoverished urban areas in the nation would not support a mayor that it overwhelmingly supported in 2006?

To a large extent, Fenty has staked his reelection on education reform, and he has repeatedly promised to retain Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee. He has faulted Gray for declining to say whether he would keep Rhee in her post should he unseat Fenty.

Education is the top voting issue in the poll and one that works toward Fenty’s advantage, particularly among whites. White voters overwhelmingly see the District’s schools as better than they were four years ago. But black voters are as apt to say schools have deteriorated as improved.

Talk of Rhee’s performance and future is a constant on the campaign trail, but the deep polarization over the chancellor does not give either candidate a clear advantage. In the latest poll, 41 percent of Democrats say her record is a reason to vote for Fenty; 40 percent say it is a factor against Fenty. Among white voters polled, 68 percent say Rhee is a reason to support Fenty, but 54 percent of African Americans consider Rhee a strike against him.

Perhaps, letting loose the oligarchs pet Michelle Rhee to run roughshod over public schools in impoverished African American communities without soliciting community input or demonstrating a shred of honesty is a losing strategy? While wealthier, whiter Democrats support educational policies directed at predominantly minority, low-income communities, the people who populate those communities appear to be less than enthused. I would also note that the majority of those wealthier, whiter Democrats in wards 2 and 3 most likely do not have children attending DCPS schools. More interestingly, I would note that the split among D.C. Democrats tells us something about the current state of the party.

Indeed, at the national level, this same dynamic appears to be playing out. While noted pundits at such ‘progressive’ institutions as the Center for American Progress are big supporters of the corporatization of public schools in poor, minority communities [schools that their children would never attend], many of the core groups in the Democratic coalition are quickly becoming disenchanted with the entire farce. As with issues such as Wall Street corruption, illegal surveillance and human rights, the Democratic party under the tutelage of Team Obama has alienated its political base, and there is a good chance that the policies being pursued by the Democrats will lead to a Republican take-over of the House in 2011 and possibly the White House in 2012. Obama’s landslide election was due in large part to his ability to motivate the base through the ‘netroots‘, but the loss of enthusiasm in the base is unquestionably rising. If they sit on their hands watch out. The crazies will be back in power, and we’ll have to relive the Clinton years all over again. That sure ended well…

How do libertarians propose to respond to the power of large enterprises?

Fiscal Austerity and Third World America… Baseline Scenario

The financial crisis may be behind us, but the link to the likely intense debate this fall regarding fiscal policy is direct — we are told that fiscal austerity requires outright and immediate further cuts in the benefits previously promised to people at the federal, state and local level.

Never mind that this is simply not true – at least in the form currently presented (here are a primer on short-term issues and another on the longer-term perspective). A vocal class of people –  including some at the upper end of the income distribution – incessantly insist that “entitlements must be cut” while refusing to address the real causes of both our recent surge in government debt (the financial crisis, caused by perverse incentives in the financial system) and the genuine longer-term issues we face (which are about controlling the future increase in health-care costs – not cutting the level of benefits today).

The self-described “fiscal conservatives” really cannot be taken seriously – in the financial reform debate, they either didn’t show up or preferred to keep the existing system in place, and they refuse to put serious health cost-control measures on the table…

[T]here is a striking similarity between the longstanding stated intention to “starve the beast” (meaning press for reduction in government by creating binding constraints, like a perceived crisis) and what we are seeing play out today.

Matt Taibbi examines the Tea Party… Rolling Stone

The Fox/Rush/Savage crowd in the last 18 months has taken the anti-Muslim fervor that launched a phony war in Iraq, carried George Bush to re-election, and pushed through the Patriot Act, and re-directed that anger at a domestic nonwhite enemy. In doing so they’ve achieved a perfect storm of political cross-purposes: they’ve almost completely succeeded in distracting the public from the real causes of their economic misfortune (i.e. Wall Street corruption), they’ve re-energized a Republican party that was devastated by eight years of Bush-era corruption and incompetence, and, as usual, they’ve made Rupert Murdoch a shitload of money.

Climate Change Turns 35… Real Climate

To those who even today claim that global warming is not predictable, the anniversary of Broecker’s paper is a reminder that global warming was actually predicted before it became evident in the global temperature records over a decade later (when Jim Hansen in 1988 famously stated that “global warming is here”).

A profile of two of the most active members of the Billionaire Boys Club: the Koch brothers… New Yorker

[T]he advocacy wing of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation—an organization that David Koch started, in 2004—held a different kind of gathering. Over the July 4th weekend, a summit called Texas Defending the American Dream took place in a chilly hotel ballroom in Austin. Though Koch freely promotes his philanthropic ventures, he did not attend the summit, and his name was not in evidence. And on this occasion the audience was roused not by a dance performance but by a series of speakers denouncing President Barack Obama. Peggy Venable, the organizer of the summit, warned that Administration officials “have a socialist vision for this country.”

Five hundred people attended the summit, which served, in part, as a training session for Tea Party activists in Texas. An advertisement cast the event as a populist uprising against vested corporate power. “Today, the voices of average Americans are being drowned out by lobbyists and special interests,” it said. “But you can do something about it.” The pitch made no mention of its corporate funders. The White House has expressed frustration that such sponsors have largely eluded public notice. David Axelrod, Obama’s senior adviser, said, “What they don’t say is that, in part, this is a grassroots citizens’ movement brought to you by a bunch of oil billionaires.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

In the new system, public schools operate under five distinct governance structures that serve different student populations: Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) traditional public schools (which educate 7 percent of the city’s students); OPSB charter schools (20 percent); Recovery School District (RSD) traditional public schools (36 percent); RSD charter schools (34 percent); and Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) charter schools (2 percent)…

In 2009, 87 percent of all white students in the city attended an OPSB or BESE charter school, while only 18 percent of black students did so. In contrast, 75 percent of black students attended an RSD school (charter or traditional public) in 2009, compared to only 11 percent of white students…

OPSB and BESE schools in the city provide some of the most advantageous educational settings in the region. However, they do so mostly by skimming the easiest-to-educate students through selective admission requirements that allow them to set explicit academic standards for incoming students. They also shape their student enrollments by using their enrollment practices, discipline and expulsion practices, transportation policies, location decisions, and marketing and recruitment efforts. These practices certainly contribute to the selective student bodies and superior performance of these schools.

Suburban public schools—charters and non-charters—also provide good educational settings and outcomes. Suburban traditional schools are less likely to be segregated by race or income and test scores reflect this. RSD charter schools still skim the most motivated public students in the RSD sector despite lacking the selective admission requirements OPSB and BESE charters have. They do so by using their enrollment practices, discipline and expulsion practices, transportation policies, location decisions, and marketing and recruitment efforts. These practices almost certainly work to increase pass rates in RSD charters compared to their traditional counterparts. As a result of rules that put RSD traditional schools at a competitive disadvantage, schools in this sector are reduced to ‘schools of last resort.’ This sector continues to educate the hardest-to-educate students in racially segregated, high-poverty schools.

I’d like to make two points: First, these findings are not surprising in the least. They mirror the effects of educational marketplaces from Chile to Sweden. Parental choice and school competition create an incentive structure that leads to the sorting of student populations along the lines of class, race, and achievement. Second, the student sorting taking place coupled with the demographic shifts that took place as a result of Katrina make generalized comparisons between schools and the overall system pre- and post-Katrina very difficult. It is almost impossible to ensure that you are comparing similar student populations. In short, the supposed successes of education reform in NOLA is ephemeral at best.

Pointing toward a new gallup poll, EdWeek reported yesterday that overall support for Team Obama’s education policies is slipping.

Support for President Barack Obama’s education agenda is slipping among Americans, according to a poll released today of the public’s attitude toward public schooling.

The survey, conducted by Phi Delta Kappa International and the Gallup Organization, reports that just 34 percent of those polled would give the president an A or B when grading his performance on education during his first 17 months in office, compared with 45 percent in last year’s poll, which covered the president’s first six months in office. The president’s grades fell not just among Republicans surveyed, but also among Democrats and Independents, who increasingly gave Mr. Obama grades of C or lower.

Poll respondents, for example, took a decidedly different tack than the president and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan when it comes to turning around low-performing schools. When asked what was the best solution, 54 percent said the school should remain open with the existing teachers and principal and receive outside support.

The administration’s models for school turnarounds have been criticized because they often require the replacement of the principal and other school staff members, and questions have been raised about whether the approach is based in research.

While this may give hope to those working in the education field, we shouldn’t get our hopes up too much. For example, beneath the headlines, the poll details that support for charter schools and measuring teacher effectiveness by student scores on standardized assessments continues to grow. My take away is that this poll is not measuring a growing realization that the policies being pursued by Team Obama are not well grounded in research and that they are undermining our ability to impart 21st century skills to our children as much as it reflects the general decline of Obama’s popularity.  The majority of Americans simply do not adequately understand the controversy involved or have the requisite knowledge and curiosity to have an informed opinion about the education policies being pursued by Obama and Duncan. The failure of the Fourth Estate to inform the republic of even the most basic research involving education policy is compounded by a knowledge industry constructing emotional narratives that serve the interests of the powerful to the detriment of the majority… including a counter-poll published on the same day that gallup released its latest poll.

Put simply, the landscape of contemporary political discourse is so polluted that it is a safe bet that the average American has little to no understanding of many of the issues faced by the republic. Their opinion of Team Obama’s policies is little more than a gut feeling. This is the era of that most dangerous of identity politics: Faith-based politics.

That is, they yadda yadda the CCSSI standards, but what the students should actually “know and be able to do” is entirely different. I don’t know what the fuck anybody actually thinks standards are for. I have no idea. What are we even talking about? [...]

The outcomes don’t follow from the standards at all. They’re a completely different set of standards.

What is its basic conception of assessment?

What is its goal?

Does it reduce everything to numbers?

Is it about “doing to” or “working with”?

Is its priority to support kids’ interest?

Does it avoid excessive assessment?

Note Kohn’s last point… “excessive assessment”. It is obvious here and elsewhere in Kohn’s work that he is not against assessment in all forms, just those forms of standardized assessment that kills curiosity and discovery in education and reduces the goals of schooling to the cognitive basement. However, for those whose pay check is dependent on organizations pushing these kind of assessment-based curricula, this outrage must not stand. So, how does Tucker respond?

There’s a real need for healthy skepticism around our nation’s quest to collect and utilize education data to improve and deepen student learning. Complex formulas, such as those used to calculate value-added scores for teachers, need to be open to examination, testing, and improvement over time. Policymakers and educators need to better understand how to interpret and use assessment data, both from statewide summative tests and their own classroom activities. And we need smart policies, practitioners, and even skeptics to help us use better information about student learning to its full potential.

But there’s a big difference between healthy skepticism and denial. Alfie Kohn, writing in Education Week, sits firmly in denial.

If you follow the link offered by Tucker, he is attempting to tar Kohn by linking him to climate change deniers! That’s right… If you do not accept reductive quantitative measures of academic performance that are not very good at doing the job for which they are being used [1][2][3][4], then you are a “Data Denier” akin to the anti-science global climate change deniers. Neat trick, right?

[UPDATE] The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer has published a well-researched article on two of the biggest polluters of public discourse… the Koch brothers.

What I find most interesting about the article is that it acknowledges that for the majority of TFA recruits teaching is just a stepping stone on to ‘bigger and better’ things. One of the biggest issues facing struggling schools is high teacher turnover rates and the absence of institutional knowledge that can help in mentoring new teachers and build an institutional culture conducive to academic achievement. TFA quite explicitly embraces a revolving door of teachers as the answer to turning around struggling school despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary.

Teach for America, based in New York, was founded in 1990 by a Princeton graduate who hoped to expose future leaders to the problems of education. It enlists college graduates from a variety of academic backgrounds and career interests, not just education majors…

“What’s terrific about it is that it makes teaching sexy for a group of people for whom teaching would not ordinarily be sexy. And it attracts bright people,” said Arthur Levine, former president of Teachers College at Columbia University.

But he said five weeks of training is not enough. Nor is it adequate, he said, to know the subject matter: Teachers also must know how to connect with children.

“For inner-city kids, it’s a huge disadvantage to have a teacher who doesn’t know how to teach,” Levine said. And even if the teachers rapidly improve, they just as rapidly quit. Almost half of Teach for America instructors leave the profession after their two-year commitment, according to a 2008 Harvard study. Such turnover, Levine said, “ensures a continuous array of rookies.”