Dear Commons Community,

Linda Darling-Hammond has an essay on value-added teacher evaluation in the current issue of Education Week.  She sees great harm in this approach and uses as an example the case of a teacher in New York City.

“New York City’s “worst teacher” was recently singled out and so labeled by the New York Post after the city’s education department released value-added test-score ratings to the media for thousands of city teachers, identifying each by name.

The tabloid treatment didn’t stop there. Reporters chased down teacher Pascale Mauclair, the subject of the “worst teacher” slam, bombarding her with questions about her lack of skill and commitment. They even went to her father’s home and told him his daughter was among the worst teachers in the city.

Now the facts: Mauclair is an experienced and much-admired English-as-a-second-language teacher. She works with new immigrant students who do not yet speak English at one of the city’s strongest elementary schools. Her school, PS 11, received an A from the city’s rating system and is led by one of the city’s most respected principals, Anna Efkarpides, who declares Mauclair an excellent teacher. She adds: “I would put my own children in her class.”

Most troubling is that the city released the scores while warning that huge margins of error surround the ratings: more than 30 percentile points in math and more than 50 percentile points in English language arts. Soon these scores will be used in a newly negotiated evaluation system that, as it is designed, will identify most teachers in New York state as less than effective.”

As I have written before on this blog, the value-added teacher evaluation system and the idea that teacher evaluations be made public are appalling, insulting, and professionally disgraceful.  The New York City Department of Education should be ashamed for what it has created.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Rick Santorum created a firestorm while campaigning in Puerto Rico on Wednesday by commenting that to become a state the commonwealth had to adopt English as its main language.  USA Today quoted Santorum:

“As in any other state, you have to comply with this and any federal law. And that is that English has to be the main language,” Santorum told El Vocero, a San Juan newspaper. “There are other states with more than one language as is the case in Hawaii, but to be a state in the United States, English has to be the main language.”

Santorum stood by his comments today.

“What I said is English has to be learned as a language and this has to be a country where English is widely spoken and used, yes,” he said, according to ABC News. He added the use of English should be a “condition” if Puerto Rico is to become a state.”

CNN pointed out that the U.S. Constitution spells out how a state can be admitted, but there is no mention of a language requirement. Some states and local governments have adopted what are known as “English only” laws, making English the official language of government.

Santorum’s  remarks drew criticism, and prompted one delegate who had been pledged to him to quit, saying he was offended.    On Thursday Mr. Santorum and his aides scrambled to contain the damage, with the candidate saying several times that the local media had misquoted him as saying he wanted English to be the “only” language, whereas he believed that English should be the “primary language.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The fallout from Greg Smith’s op-ed expose of Goldman Sachs is reverberating throughout Wall Street and beyond.  Smith’s Op-Ed landed “like a bomb” and reignited a debate on the Internet and on cable television over whether Wall Street was corrupted by greed and excess. The New York Times is devoting four articles to the story in today’s edition.  “Goldman Boss: We Call Our Clients Muppets,” screamed the front page of The London Evening Standard. One of the Times articles reported that:

“By noon, television crews crowded outside Goldman’s headquarters in Lower Manhattan. More than three years after the financial crisis, the perception that little has changed on Wall Street — and that no one has been held accountable for the risk-taking that led to the crisis — looms large in the public consciousness. While it was an unusual cry from the heart of a Wall Street insider, many questioned whether it would prompt any change..

Others were less surprised. One Goldman client who spoke on the condition of anonymity called the letter “naïve,” saying that the firm had been trading against its clients for years. “Come on, that is what they do and they are good traders, so I do business with them.”

The official response from Goldman Sachs top executives was:

“Lloyd C. Blankfein and Gary Cohn, said in a letter to employees: “We were disappointed to read the assertions made by this individual that do not reflect our values, our culture and how the vast majority of people at Goldman Sachs think about the firm and the work it does on behalf of our clients. Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. But it is unfortunate that an individual opinion about Goldman Sachs is amplified in a newspaper and speaks louder than the regular, detailed and intensive feedback you have provided the firm and independent, public surveys of workplace environments.”

As they say in the news business, this story has legs!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

A former Goldman Sachs executive resigned his position because the corporate culture was greed was good and the environment “is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it”.  In an op-ed piece/letter to the editor of the New York Times, Greg Smith, a Goldman Sachs executive director and head of the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, slams his former company for abandoning the interests of its clients.   He comments:

“To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for.

It might sound surprising to a skeptical public, but culture was always a vital part of Goldman Sachs’s success. It revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients. The culture was the secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to earn our clients’ trust for 143 years. It wasn’t just about making money; this alone will not sustain a firm for so long. It had something to do with pride and belief in the organization. I am sad to say that I look around today and see virtually no trace of the culture that made me love working for this firm for many years. I no longer have the pride, or the belief. “

This is sad commentary from an individual who obviously loved what he did in a company that stood for his values and interests.  I am afraid to say that similar letters can be written by individuals in many other firms.  We should not  assume that all corporate America operates in a similar vein but after the betrayal of so many companies in 2008, the finance industry needs to do a lot of public relations and good will to erase doubts.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Rick Santorum captured twin victories in the Alabama and Mississippi primaries on Tuesday, overcoming the financial advantages of Mitt Romney and the Southern allegiances to Newt Gingrich on a night that amplified his argument that the Republican nominating fight is becoming a two-man race with Mr. Romney.  The New York Times is reporting that these are important victories for Santorum’s candidacy and put significant pressure on Newt Gingrich.  Gingrich who was counting on doing well in the southern states to justify his candidacy, has to start considering certain realities.   In fact, losing to Santorum in both Alabama and Mississippi has left him without any real life line to winning the nomination.

These are important victories for Santorum more for their symbolism than for their actual delegate count.  Romney still leads handily in the number of delegates.

To be continued.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Last Saturday, HBO aired its controversial movie, Game Change,  on Sarah Palin’s run for vice president in 2008.  Due to popular demand, HBO has been rerunning the movie every night since.  MSNBC interviewed two of the principal players on the McCain/Palin team last night – Nicolle Wallace and Steve Schmidt – both of whom verified the depictions in the movie.

Today in the Daily News,  columnist Richard Cohen provided his critique. Cohen does not hold back in his comments:

“At some point while watching HBO’s absolutely smashing movie “Game Change,” it occurred to me that Sarah Palin has ruined America. .. With her selection as John McCain’s running mate, American politics lost its way.

The movie portrays Palin as an ignoramus. She did not know that Queen Elizabeth does not run the British government, and she did not know that North and South Korea are different countries. She seemed not to have heard of the Federal Reserve. She called Joe Biden “O’Biden,” and she thought America went to war in Iraq because Saddam Hussein, not Al Qaeda, had attacked on Sept. 11, 2001.

At the same time, she was a liar. In the movie, she was called exactly that by McCain’s campaign chief, Steve Schmidt, who came to realize that one of Palin’s great talents was to deny the truth.”

Cohen goes on to comment on several of this year’s “dysfunctional” Republican nominees – Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, etc.  all of whom were seriously lacking.  He concludes:

“So far, the Palin effect has been limited to the GOP. Surely, though, there lurks in the Democratic Party potential candidates who have seen Palin and taken note. Experience, knowledge, accomplishment — these may no longer matter. They will come roaring out of the left proclaiming a hatred of all things Washington, including compromise. The movie had it right. Sarah Palin changed the game.”

If you haven’t seen the movie yet and you are at all interested in our government, it is well worth the two hours.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Huffington Post is reporting that Republican presidential candidate, Rick Santorum,  accused Fox News of “shilling” for Mitt Romney during an interview with Fox’s Brian Kilmeade on Tuesday morning.

“The man has had a ten-to-one money advantage,” Santorum said of Romney on the radio show “Kilmeade & Friends.  “He’s had all the organizational advantage. He has Fox News shilling for him every day — no offense, Brian, but I see it — and yet, he can’t seal the deal because he just doesn’t have the goods to be able to motivate the Republican base and win this election.”

Kilmeade defended his network, saying Romney’s campaign team answered interview requests, and that he had tried to get Santorum on his show for at least three and a half months, with no response.

And I thought that Fox News was an equal shilling opportunity broadcaster and shilling for anything that carried the Republican Party label.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times has started an online debate based on the question of why so many young black men are not succeeding in our society.  The introduction says it all:

“The news for young black men is not good: they are disproportionately singled out for discipline in school, they are more likely to be stopped and frisked by New York City police officers, and according to Michelle Alexander in her book, “The New Jim Crow,” nearly one-third of black men are likely to spend time in prison at some point in their lives.

Would pulling back on draconian drug laws or legalizing marijuana be enough to fix this imbalance? What else needs to be done?”

Several insightful opinions have already been expressed:  spend more on schooling,  reform the juvenile justice system,  family support.

Weigh in!!!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday there was another tragedy in Afghanistan perpetrated by American troops.  A lone American soldier in the middle of the night went from house to house killing sixteen Afghanistan civilians including nine children while they slept.  This horror comes on the heels of American soldiers urinating on enemy corpses and the burning of Korans.  These are devastating acts that will incur the wrath of many Afghanistan and Arab peoples for decades to come.  No matter what good we have done in this region, we are seen by many as outsiders who disrespect and defile their religion, culture and people.

We need to get our troops home as soon as possible.  We have killed most of the Al-Qaeda leadership which I believe was our original mission.  Bring the troops home!!!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times has an article referencing the work of Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce,  and commenting on data from several studies on college graduates:

“Instead of serving as a springboard to social mobility as it did for the first decades after World War II, college education today is reinforcing class stratification, with a huge majority of the 24 percent of Americans aged 25 to 29 currently holding a bachelor’s degree coming from families with earnings above the median income.

Seventy-four percent of those now attending colleges that are classified as “most competitive,” a group that includes schools like Harvard, Emory, Stanford and Notre Dame, come from families with earnings in the top income quartile, while only three percent come from families in the bottom quartile.

Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce and co-author of “How Increasing College Access Is Increasing Inequality, and What to Do about It,” puts it succinctly: “The education system is an increasingly powerful mechanism for the intergenerational reproduction of privilege.”

The article goes on to identify that the stratification begins before students ever get to college.  SAT scores, for instance, have a strong positive correlation to family income (see chart above on 2009 SATs).

The article concludes:

“The built-in tension between postsecondary selectivity and upward mobility is particularly acute in the United States. Americans rely on education as an economic arbiter more than do other modern nations,” Carnevale wrote in “How Increasing College Access Is Increasing Inequality, and What to Do About It.” “Americans always have preferred education over the welfare state as a means for balancing the equality implicit in citizenship and the inequality implicit in markets.”

Politically, the lack of access to a four-year college education is a crucial problem for one of the key battleground constituencies of 2012: whites without college degrees. Several issues that can be mined by enterprising politicians cluster around this debilitating lack of access — in fact they help cause it — including the enormous debt loads carried by students and recent graduates, as well as the emergence of for-profit colleges saddling low-income students with loans for programs they cannot complete. The data show that a disproportionately large percentage of young adults from working-class families who, according to their test scores and grade point averages, are equipped to earn a B.A., are either not going to college, or failing to finish — relegating them to a life of stagnant or declining wages. There is a reservoir of resentment over this fate…”

All education but especially our colleges and universities  have to look at ourselves and determine how we may be contributing to this situation.  For example, the large four-year public institutions – selective and less selective – in response to declining state revenue have been courting  “better” foreign and out of state students and increasingly are cutting back or no longer providing support services for students deemed to be at risk.

Tony