Reality-BasedTM Political Numbers from Nicholas Beaudrot
Electoral Math
Reality-BasedTM Political Numbers from Nicholas Beaudrot
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[See Ezra's blog for more.]
It's pretty obvious that The Wire's creative leader, Baltimore Sun reporter and author David Simon, is not a big fan of "blaming the victim". He portrays the drug trade as something close to a rational response to conditions in urban Baltimore; the lack of quality schools, decent paying jobs, and a sense of family and community, all combine to make it hard for teenagers to see a prosperous future without either leaving the city or getting in The Game. We get a large dose of this "don't blame the victim; blame the system" critique in Episode 4, this time focusing on the Tighlman Middle School. The kids are happier at school than they are when they're back on the streets or in foster homes, according to Bunny Colvin's tour guide. But the bureaucracy clearly doesn't work. Many teachers aren't able to keep their students engaged; social promotion sends Bubbles' "nephew" Sherrod to eighth grade when he ought to be back in sixth grade; Bunny and his new college boy colleagues have a hard time convincing the school board to approve their proposals (and find her unwilling to admit that the system doesn't work); and the assistant principal bends funding rules to enlist Cutty as a truant officer, but only needs him to round up students for a few days in the fall to increase school funding.
Despite all these flaws, good things somehow still happen even in the most broken of broken schools. In Colvin's walking tour of the school, he sees several rooms where the teacher has lost control, but one where the kids are sitting quietly, eagerly raising their hands to answer questions, and paying attention to their lessons. The teacher has organized a quiz game that keeps most of her kids on task. Is this a plausible real-world experience, or an attempt to make the show a little less bleak? Believe it or not, successful teaching does happen even in low-performing schools. In his article "Hot for Teachers: John Kerry's quietly radical school reform plan", Washington Monthly contributor Jonathan Schoor tells the story of a charter-school advocate who plans on keeping her kids in a low-performing school, because their teacher is worth saying for. And the success of various turnaround programs and efforts to target a small number of at-risk children suggests that with a lot of effort, even the largest obstacles to learning can be overcome.
If teaching matters, how should we change the way we run schools to put good teachers in the places they'll do the most good? Kerry's plan offered teachers a straight-forward deal; more spending on teacher salaries must be accompanied with rigorous standards for teacher quality, the right for school districts to move teachers to low-performing schools, and the prerogative to fire low-performing teachers.
The problem is funding all of these initiatives. The Teaching Commission estimated the increase in teacher salaries, trainging, and other resources needed to give good teachers an incentive to move to the toughest schools at $30 billion/year—enough to give every teacher in the country roughly a $10,000 raise. Coupled with additional state resources, that would certainly help, but $30 billion is a lot of money. By itself that's enough money to increase domestic discretionary spending by 6%, and education spending by 60%; and this is after Bush already increased domestic spending by 60% in his first term. Obviously, spending more on education is a good idea, but it will take a lot of work For the time being, such a bold proposal will probably sit on the shelf until a state produces positive results with a similar plan.
Be sure to check out The Quick and the Ed for policy-based Wire reviews.
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updated by Nicholas Beaudrot on 08:45 02 October 2006
