On Educational Reform II

4.  Public education, as a manifestation of tax-financed formal schooling, is not a right but solely a liberty (i.e. a voluntary collective permission) of citizens in a jurisdiction that commits itself to the principle that an educated population is a positive good for both the quality of democratic discourse and the potentiality of entrepreneurially-driven economic growth and that the existence of such a population requires a tangible collective investment by the polity. In the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, we benefit from a long history of public education, against which the figure of Horace Mann casts a long shadow. Serving as Secretary of the Commonwealth's Board of Education in the 1830s and 40s, Mann considered a free, universal, and secular/non-sectarian education by professional educators, thoroughly trained in pedagogical methods, committed to inculcation of democratic-republican values, and renouncing the use of corporal punishment as a classroom tool, as a fundamental right to the children of citizens in the Commonwealth. We can obviously dwell on the inherent limitations to the exercise of a such a right in Mann's lifetime, but such black marks need not devalue the larger legacy of his ideas and his commitment to work to expand tax financed formal schooling across the Commonwealth and to other states. Evaluated against Horace Mann's legacy, local municipal and state governments owe a substantial fiscal burden to young people within their jurisdictions to ensure that they are conferred an education that will secure their best interests as citizens and as contributors to economic development. To the contrary, I mean to argue here that, in the aftermath of tax revolts that, among other things, created the innovation of proposition two-and-a-half in Massachusetts (a Constitutional restriction on the expansion of property tax levees in Massachusetts municipalities), we cannot fully hold ourselves bound to the responsibility of public education as a right. Having converted our calculus of public school financing from one of inherent public responsibility to every child in the Commonwealth to one prefigured on a cost-benefit analysis, assessing the rates of return to investments in labor and capital on formal schooling against comparable investments in transportation infrastructures, trash removal and/or recycling, or services for the aged, we have, in effect, set the terms of a war of all against all in municipal fiscal policy management. As such, we must, emphatically, recognize that the terms of the debate have changed in the financing of formal public schools. Measured in reference to the economic success of students transitioning from formal k through 12 public schooling through higher education to a remunerative career field, we now assess the mission of formal public schooling in wholly economistic terms. Formal public schooling has become a "worker factory," where the public achieves a return to its investment if and only if the student realizes employment in a remunerative career field upon graduation or, at least, advances to an institutional of higher education from which he or she can realize employment in such terms. In this regard, the language of rights that might have been wholly appropriate to Horace Mann's project becomes horribly misplaced! Instead, we are confronted with a project contingent on the capacity of educators to deliver what tax payers expect to receive for their investment, whether they are directly hiring the educators and administrators of formal schooling or simply contracting with private producers of the formal schooling process.

5.  To the extent that we agree that investments in public education are tangible goods, we must further debate the character of public investments in education, including the problems of management, organization in the interests of labor, curriculum, pedagogical methodology, and standards for assessment of returns to the public investment in relation to the scale of the financial investment and the broader (ideological) goals sought by the public in its investment. Confronting the idea of tax-financed public schooling, k through 12, and the reform of the institution of public, tax-financed schooling demands a full recognition of the various dimensions of the institution as it currently exists, articulating how each dimension might be transformed to better approximate the realization of educational goals. Emphatically, for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, formal public k through 12 schooling has incorporated a hybrid system of traditional and charter schools since the passage of the Educational Reform Act of 1993. Licensed for operation and formal assessment on five-year thresholds, charter schools represent an entirely different approach to management, labor relations, curriculum, pedagogy, and formal evaluation/accountability in relation to traditional, local district schools, on both the primary (k through 8) and secondary (9 through 12) levels. Herein resides their appeal. On the one hand, they introduce critical degrees of pedagogical experimentation and curricular experimentation, and, on the other hand, they pose the potential for more flexible labor relations, enabling ineffective teachers to be readily discharged, contravening the inherent constraints of tenure/seniority for teachers under union contracts in traditional district public schools. At this point, I want to argue that such a mix of potentialities expressly appeals to divergent progressive and conservative perspectives otherwise favorable to educational reform agendas. Conservatives, rightly or wrongly, have consistently grounded their critiques of public education on the idea that tenure protections in collective bargaining agreements insulate poorly performing educators from dismissal. By contrast, from a relatively progressive perspective, I would argue that the primary benefit of diverging from traditional district school models resides in the potential for pedagogical experimentation, a benefit additionally posed in the concept of the "magnet school," otherwise traditional public schools constituted with a different, specialized curricular model and different pedagogical approaches.  
The critical problem here, in my view, concerns the capacity to engage in experimentation in new pedagogical and curricular models, diverging from standard lesson plans, preparation for standardized testing, and standard conceptions of essential curricular goals. If the collective body of citizens in Massachusetts would conclude that a basic-level comprehension of the English language, a basic understanding of mathematics, including elementary algebra, and, perhaps, an introduction to civics/American history/the responsibilities of citizens is absolutely critical for every young person educated in a formal school setting, then we might otherwise disagree about additional curricular thresholds. A charter school in a neighboring town operates on a Chinese-language immersion model, which I consider entirely appropriate not only for young people with parents of Chinese origin but also for students who might aspire to continue onto careers that might take them into East Asia - Mandarin, both in spoken and written forms, is sufficiently complex that any competent speaker needs to start learning the language at a young age. To the extent that we recognize the potential benefits of creating alternatives to "traditional," mainline educational curricula and pedagogy, even as we recognize that there are particular subsets of a larger standard curriculum that we hold as a baseline for all students to learn, local jurisdictions should look into the possibilities for policy experimentation, including charter schools.

6.  There is no necessary reason to accept a single pedagogical approach to formal schooling and abundant evidence to suggest that individuals respond to diverse pedagogical approaches with varying degrees of receptivity at different points in the process of formal schooling. Generally, a maximization of access to divergent pedagogical methodologies and fluid admissions/transferability between institutions might best promote educational goals.  

Absurd Criticisms of Clinton's Comedic Racial Insensitivities and Ignored Criticisms of Clinton's Inexplicable Appeal to African-American Voters

On inspecting news headlines this morning, I was surprised by the presence of a headline that Hillary Clinton and New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio were being criticized for making a thoroughly botched attempt at racially insensitive humor at a political roast on Saturday night, proving once again that a humorless technocrat like Hillary shouldn't venture out on stage like she's Amy Schumer - when we finally elect Clinton President in November, it definitively won't be because she could have a majority of the American electorate rolling in the aisles with laughter better than Donald Trump (the mere notion of a Trump Presidency simultaneously make me chuckle uncontrollably even as it scares the shit out of me!!).  That said, I find it a little absurd that Clinton would be criticized for a failed attempt at humor over "colored people time," as if she was being utterly insensitive toward African-Americans.  Such criticisms are expressly silly and the Sanders campaign, especially on the eve of the New York Democratic primaries, shouldn't be indulging in them!!
                Having said this, an encounter last week in Philadelphia between former President (and future first Gentleman) Bill Clinton and some Black Lives Matter protesters, regarding the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act interests me much more, especially in regard to the margin of support that Hillary Clinton has enjoyed within the African-American community and, even more pointedly, among media commentators of the support that Hillary Clinton enjoys within the African-American community.  Expressly, I remain befuddled as to why Hillary Clinton was able to thoroughly run away with the Southern state primaries by massive margins against Sanders on the strength of her support within the Black community.  Dare I ask, are South Carolina and Mississippi two states in the union that the Black Lives Matter movement and recent media coverage on the killings of unarmed African-American suspects at the hands of White law enforcement officers have inexplicably missed?!  To be clear, there is no monolithic Black voting bloc within the Democratic Party, and I am not arguing that some imaginary Black Democratic voting bloc has a slate of issues that it is seeking to advance among Democratic Presidential candidates.  However, to the extent that a range of issues appear especially pertinent to African-American voters, among them law enforcement and criminal justice reform, educational reform and housing policy in urban communities, and environmental justice(EJ), I am oblivious to the appeal of either Secretary Clinton or Senator Sanders on this range of "African-American" issues.
           Both candidates have, over the larger primary campaign, mentioned reform of the federal criminal justice system, notwithstanding the marginal character of the federal government as a participant in the mass incarceration of African-Americans.  Neither candidate has, to my knowledge, advanced any aggressive measures to appeal to the EJ movement - in certain respects, the local character of EJ issues seems to suggest that, short of greater oversight over a broad range of polluting industries, a greater federal role in EJ may not be forthcoming anyway.  The preponderant support for public teachers' unions on the left wing of the Democratic Party, to which Sanders has been pushing Clinton over the course of their campaign, may preclude any significant focus by either candidate on aggressive educational reform measures outside of increased expenditures in support of local public education targeting disadvantaged communities, building on existing frameworks in educational reform (e.g. No Child Left Behind, etc.).  Finally, beyond aggressive enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VI, governing housing discrimination, it seems improbable to me that either Clinton or Sanders would promote significant changes in federal housing policies directly impacting African-Americans in urban communities - a likely scenario involves vigorous (or vigorously publicized) reactions to well-publicized abominations affecting urban communities, like the widespread lead contamination of water supplies in Flint, Michigan.  If, in these respects, the policy slate of African-American voters has been largely ignored by the two leading Democratic candidates in the primaries and we can hardly expect that this will change during the general election campaign for the Democratic Party nominee, then we can hardly say that either Clinton or Sanders should maintain a robust appeal among African-American voters.
             Rather, the only explanation that I can advance for the success of Clinton among Southern African-American voters and among older African-American voters outside of the South remains the default option - such voters tend to lean toward a more moderate to conservative political position in relation to the national Democratic electorate as a whole.  The latent conservatism of such voters is especially connected to its religiosity, grounded in denominations like the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, and the National Baptist Convention.  In this manner, it makes sense that such African-American voters would be more inclined to throw their support toward a candidate that at least professes the Christian faith and maintains a relatively moderate slate of policy prescriptions rather than support a secular Jewish socialist with (on their face) radical policy prescriptions.  As such, it might not make as much sense to attribute as much of Clinton's success to her appeal toward African-American voters or racial/ethnic minorities, in general (or, for that matter, attribute Sanders' failure to appeal these demographics in racial/ethnic terms), than toward a particular, relatively conservative demographic, mistakenly classified in reference to race and/or ethnicity, under the big tent of the Democratic Party.  Sanders' record in appealing to African-American millennials in states like Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin seems to suggest as much.