To me, education is one of the single biggest issues this election.

We can't have real political discussions in this country about the economy because most people barely get percentages. So any talk about how wages are flat but total compensation has grown over the last 8 years because health care premiums have sucked away all the growth just makes peoples eyes roll up in their head.

We can't fix problems, because any national problem is complicated, and people aren't educated enough to understand the ins and outs. So we have to fix education first.

While fixing education would take 10 minutes for either Presidential candidate, it will take you more then 10 minutes to read the background of why my 10 minute plan will work.

My mom was the shop steward for her union, and she always said that there were two problems with education in America:

1. The bureaucracy
2. The Teachers Union

That union she was the shop steward for? The teachers union. The problem is that the bureaucracy and the teachers union feed off each other. Its not the bad teachers who get written up, its the good teachers that get written up for rocking the boat. So the rhetoric about getting rid of bad teachers from both sides misses the point: Many of the bad teachers have burned out from fighting the bureaucracy.

It shouldn't be a great mystery why private and charter schools do better then regular public schools. Private/charter schools put more funds and responsibility in the hands of the teachers and principals. Why that works is obvious when you consider the following:

People with the most influence on whether a child learns to read, in order:

1. The Child. The fact is that motivated children can learn even in bad schools or even with bad teachers, and there are plenty of historical cases of people who learned with no schools.

2. The Parent. Parents have an enormous influence over the child. Parents don't have the skills a teacher has, but they can motivate the child, which leads us back to #1.

3. The Teacher. Teachers have both the skills, knowledge, and connection to the child. But they're not the parent.

Those first 3 people have enormous influence over the child. I would say 99% of the responsibility of whether the child learns rests with those 3 people. 4th is perhaps the principal, but only in their capacity to motivate and support the parents and teachers.

Now lets consider how we run our schools.

In our schools, the more influence you have on a child's learning, the less money or resources you control. It's upside down.

Here's my 3 part strategy for fixing education in this country:

Give Teachers and Principals control of the funds.

Fire 90% of the people at the district office, and put the money into the teachers and principals hands instead of people so far removed from the classroom that they have no clue. Most people in the bureaucracy have never actually taught children.

I'm not kidding about this. Look at the nonsense that has happened because the bureaucracy controls the funds:

• Whole Language Starting in 1970, school districts and State Education Boards switched wholesale from Phonics to something called Whole Language reading instruction. The problem? Whole Language doesn't work for most students.

• Textbooks Schools typically pay up to $200 for textbooks most of which are awful. You can buy a copy of Harry Potter for $13, and the children will actually want to read it. You could actually let them keep the book! My mother had one child who was having trouble learning to read, but he liked porcupines. So she bought him a book on porcupines, and let him keep it. He learned to read. Another child was having problems, but liked sports. So she signed up for a subscription to Sports Illustrated.

• Bilingual Education This is only an issue because the teachers don't control the funds. Have a student who only speaks spanish? You buy a bilingual book. Have a student who only speaks vietnamese, you buy a different book.

Pick any controversy in education, and you'll find the teachers are unanimous, but the bureaucracy is confused, because they've never actually taught children.

teachers.amazon.com

Picture if you will, amazon.com. Now picture everything on amazon that takes money stripped away along. Instead, teachers can go to teachers.amazon.com and see their budget for the year. Child need more help in school? Parents can go to the supermarket, buy a gift card, and hand it to the teacher and know the money will only go to educational materials. Rotary International can donate money to different schools, and know it will go directly to the teachers. The same with IBM, Apple, Disney, Microsoft or any other corporation you can think of.

If you're child is behind in school, $50 in materials placed directly in the hands of any teacher is all they need to come back.

Ask for your child's Test Scores

No Child Left Behind didn't invent standardized testing. There were 50 states that did testing before NCLB, and there are 50 states now that do standardized testing. All NCLB really did is make the school districts disclose the results of the test for the schools.

But it didn't go far enough. After each standardized test, every parent in America should do the following.

1. Ask for your child's test scores. Don't just assume your child is doing ok, because chances are, if you're in a neighborhood with a good school, your child still has a 20% chance of being behind. In a bad school? 50% chance. But the system will never tell you if your child is behind, because if you tell a parent their child is behind the other kids, the parent gets mad at the school. But most kids are behind in something. It's better to find out now, then when they're 18 and can't get a job at McDonalds because they can't read the menu.

2. If your child is behind, insist on more work, not a special class If your child is behind, the school district will offer to put your child in a special class. Do not let them do this. If you let them put your child in a special class, you might as well just plan on them having a career where they say "Would you like fries with that?". If you're running a race, you can't catch up by running special, you have to catch up by running harder. That means more homework for your child, staying after school, and tutoring.

   Special classes don't work for various reasons. First off, the special teachers who teach those special classes are paid per student. It is not in their interest for your child to progress back to their normal class. So its a life sentence for your child. Additionally, either these special classes have a fair number of students in them (15-30) so really your child isn't really getting any more instruction than they would in their regular class. Or, the special class has just a few students (5), but its only for part of the day, so the student has to leave their regular classroom and travel to the special class (10 minutes lost). Then they get some special time, but then they have to go back to their regular classroom. So your child starts 20 minutes behind. Whatever attention they get has to be awfully special to make up for that. Generally, they just fall farther behind. It's also typical to give those classes to the rookie teachers, so the child is getting worse instruction. What your child needs is a tutor.

   The argument against tutoring is that it stigmatizes the child. You know what is stigmatizing? Spending the rest of your life saying Would you like Fries with that?. Besides, who are they fooling? Being is a special class isn't any less stigmatizing then tutoring. The real reason they don't want to offer tutoring is because its inconvenient. Fuck 'em, insist on the child staying in a regular classroom, but work with the teacher to get extra work for them, and tips on how you can help.

3. If your child is behind, give the Teacher a $50 gift card to Amazon

   In most supermarkets, you can just take your change jar to the Coinstar counter and do this directly and the Coinstar people won't charge you their usual fee. Collect Aluminum Cans if you have to. Stand up during church and beg for the money. Seriously, it will be the best $50 you've ever spent.

That's all Folks

Those 3 things are all we need to do to fix education in this country. Thank you for listening. Now if I could just get one of the Presidential Candidates to shout this from the rooftops.

Cool article in the WSJ about spending and the budget deficit.

The Bush tax cuts also aren't the budget problem. Until this year federal tax collections have been surging. In the four years after the 2003 tax cuts become law, tax receipts exploded by $785 billion. This year revenues have declined by 0.8%, but a major reason is the $150 billion bipartisan tax rebate that has hit the Treasury without spurring the economy. Without these nonstimulating rebates, federal tax payments would have climbed another 2.5%, according to CBO. Revenue is expected to be a healthy 18.5% of GDP next year without any tax increase.

Yeah, I haven't gotten my rebate yet, because I still have to get the money together to pay my taxes in the first place.

Another myth is that the war on terror has busted the budget. While operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are expensive, defense spending is $605 billion this year, or about 4.5% of GDP. That only seems large by comparison to the holiday from history of the 1990s, when defense fell to 3% of GDP. As recently as 1986, defense spending was 6.2% of GDP.

The CBO says that, merely in the two years that Democrats have run Congress, federal expenditures are up $429 billion -- to $3.158 trillion.

Meanwhile, remember that "pay as you go" spending promise that Speaker Nancy Pelosi made in 2006? We called it a ruse at the time, and the last two years have proved it. Senator Judd Gregg (R., N.H.) has tallied up at least $398 billion in "paygo" violations so far. Earmarks were also supposed to be cut in half by this Congress. In 2008 there were some 11,000 at a cost of $17 billion, the second most ever, and far more than half the peak of 14,000 in 2006.

Bush was bad, but Pelosi was worse.

There's some whining over here by someone who doesn't really know what the military does.

It's not all about bullets. Last time, FEMA sucked, and the military did great. So if Bush is sending the military to deal with Gustav, that could be a good thing.

Anyways, here's what I wrote in a comment there:

Sergeants worry about tactics. Colonels worry about strategy. Generals worry about logistics. I find most of you article woefully ignorant about what the military actually does.

In the wake of a natural disaster, you want a hot meal, a cot, a blanket, and a tent. There is no one on earth better equipped to deliver those things then the US military, because winning wars is about exactly those same things.

Meanwhile, FEMA is mostly about the financial aspects of a disaster.

In other words, get off your civilian high horse. Getting the military involved early to deal with what could be a cat 5 hurricane could be exactly the right thing to do. The military has more knowledge about transportation, health care, food, and transportation than any civilian agency.

In short the guys at FEMA are bankers, the guys in the military are truck drivers. In a natural disaster, you need truck drivers, not bankers.

Another way to put it. The Army has to deliver a hot meal, a cot, etc. while people are shooting at them. So what's a little wind and rain. :-)

My mom, who was the shop steward for her union always said there were two things wrong with education in America;

1. The District Office (in other words, the bureaucracy.
2. The Teachers Union

The problem is, you can't get rid of just one. Looks like the Democrats are are getting closer to reality, given the fact that the running joke at Democratic conventions is "Where do you teach?"

The Republicans always talk about getting rid of bad teachers, like tenure is the problem. The reality is that bad teachers don't rock the boat, good teachers do. So its the good teachers who get written up.

Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.

From the WSJ:

Just weeks ago the fragile commodities markets could be sparked ahead by a mere hint of bad news. That market psychology has reversed, with Monday's action showing that even war can't halt oil's current retreat.

Inside the commodity-trading pits and brokerage houses, the conversation isn't whether prices are pulling back in the near term, but how far and for how long.

That was made clear as markets digested increasingly violent images of conflict between Russia and the oil crossroads of Georgia. Oil prices fell to as low as $112.72 a barrel before settling at $114.45 a barrel, down 75 cents,

Those hippie fascists in California are striking again.

Now they've banned fast foot restaurants in poor neighborhoods.

Hat Tip to Marginal Revolution