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Live from the Aspen Ideas Festival
Thursday, July 03, 2008
At a time of crisis and transition in the American economy, do we have the right ideas for training the 21st century workforce? Brian moderates a panel at the Aspen Ideas Festival on the ideas of commerce and knowledge with U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, Wendy Kopp, founder and CEO of Teach for America, and philanthropist Eli Broad.
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Comments
There are too many people in this world. Unless we have a serious redistribution of wealth those 98% of the world at the bottom and the middle will be working for nothing and fighting for scraps.
The problem that has to be resolved is that, jobs, corporations and capital can cross borders. Right now the vast majority of people can't or are unable to do it as easily as capital, corporations etc. So as a result, the people are at the mercy of whatever society they live in for whatever jobs that exist. They can be educated, uneducated all the same.
So fundamentally since people can't easily cross borders due to regulation, language and other barriers, restrictions must be placed on capital and corporations ability to move across borders.
Corporations are incorporating in other countries to avoid paying US taxes. Corporations use 80% of our court system to enforce their contracts and don't pay the taxes to support the court system.
We need to put taxes back on imports and start making things in America again.
Why doesn't the Commerce Secretary go to Nogales, Mexico and see how many factories are there. One is the Swingline plant which was in Long Island City until Year 2000 - 450 jobs gone from NYC. Have the Commerce Secretary read Byron Dorgan's "Take this Job and Ship It".
So Carlos Gutierrez, why have wages been stagnant for those in the middle? Why has the median wage not changed? If there is a shortgage, shouldn't wages go up?
Eventually education will be meaningless because most jobs don't require advanced degrees. And everyone can't be a scientist, doctor, lawyer, financial wiz. There are a lot of average people out there who are, have been and will always have average skills.
If everyone was well educated, the wages of those jobs will go down and stagnant.
There has to be a way for average people out there to be able to work, afford a home, and a car. If they can't then the American dream is dead.
Spellings: "What gets measured gets done."
Is everything that matters and that belongs in a well-rounded education measurable?
I think not.
Here's a benchmark for NCLB: Our family is one of a growing number of families of public school educators who have pulled their own kids out of the public system since NCLB. We are homeschooling, others are choosing private school. We are not in an urban district, but in a leafy, mostly-white NJ suburb. Tying NCLB to funding has dumbed down NJ tests (so says the Fordham Foundation), and is forcing veteran educators (my wife included) to seek exit strategies from the professions they love. The public is mostly unaware of this brain drain, as are, I suspect, most politicians, who no doubt send their own kids to private school.
This entire segement is simply a propoganda mouthpiece for the Bush administration's misguided and failed policies! How did you get roped into this? Where is the alternate viewpoint? Where's the spark? This is totally boring! I'm not looking for a food fight but I expect a meaningful discussion not a series of self-serving monologs. Gutierrez was bad enough. This education discussion is even worse. Who is Eli Broad? He's speaking nonsense. This is a vital issue! Where's the passion???
Why would $125K with a class of 40 be better than $60K for a class of 20? Isn't smaller class size better?
Why is more money for teachers and more kids a better idea? Why should they get $125K when an average starting salary in NY is $30K?
Everyone in the audience claps for $125k, teachers, but I bet if you ask the same question and then say as a result your property tax will double or triple as a result, you would get a lot less clapping. Ideas must be presented with their consequences, otherwise people cannot correctly process them.
Yes to Suzanne. This is a segment of Aspen "Failed" Ideas. Aren't there are people as this festival with alternative ideas!
Brian, get your guests to respond to the idea that the American education system is simply a means to justify a select few being allowed access to the most desirable jobs.
RC's point that "everyone can't be a scientist, doctor, lawyer, financial wiz" is right on the mark. The system is working as designed. All this stuff about being globally competitive strikes me as a red herring.
The real point should be that the children of the upper class will always get always be groomed for the best jobs. A few of the middle and lower classes get opportunities to advance by competing for an artificially limited amount of slots to provide some illusion of class mobility. The rest of us get geared for jobs in the low end of the service economy. After all, someone has to work at Wal-Mart and McDonalds right? The education system justifies why some people must work at those low end jobs.
There's no problem with the education system. If the education system suddenly starts educating everyone for jobs as scientists, doctors and lawyers, who would work at McDonalds?
I left the NYC public school system because it infuriated me that principals (both the principal and assistant principals) cannot speak or write English properly. Some have very few years of classroom teaching. Many new and experienced teachers are leaving in droves since they get no support from the principals for behavior problems. No one checks on them, instead the teachers feel intimidated by the principals for poor performance demonstrated by their students. Nothing can be spontaneously taught, since we must all follow the program or get "written up." G-d forbid the principal walks into room and catches you not teaching what is written in your lesson plan!! Warning!
Three things the government can do that will increase learning are: 1) Make the environment conducive to learning. That means making the public schools (especially in urban areas where many are older than 70 to 100 years) places where children feel comfortable, safe and happy to be there. 2) Reduce class size so teachers can teach each child. 3) Pay teachers he sixcompetitive salaries so you attract the best in this field.
There are several other things that can be done, but the things proposed by Mr. Broad will not get us there. They are band aids.
Wendy Kopp and Spellings seem to be contradicting each other - one says that we are attracting the best and brightest to work for 2 years in the most needy school settings and the other says that we continue to place the most inexperienced and undersupported teachers in our most needy schools thus the need for NCLB. This is at the core of the education problem - people who have huge influence over US educational policy speak out of both sides of their mouths inorder to further their own ideological and political agenda. No one argues the need for transparancy and accountability within the educational system (although a one shot standardized test as the only measure is meaningless) and no one would argue the need to attract the best and brightest to teaching (although knowledge of content does not equal the ability to teach said content). Education is much more complicated than that and unfortunately those who bear the brunt of these misguided policies are students who many have never experienced a well training, knowledgeable, and experienced teacher their entire school career.
On post #15 there was a technical problem on #3. It should read "Pay teachers competitive salaries so you attract the best in this field".
brian,
disappointed by this education panel. you are letting your guests, specifically Ms. Spellings, get away without actually answering the questions. how is the NCLB policy failing, in her opinion? can she answer some of the tough questions articulated more fluently by others than i ever could?
come on. we all live in the real world and know that NCLB is failing and failing our children in many many ways.
I am a Teach for America teacher. Unfortunately this program is not working. We spend the entire year teaching for the standardized tests. Nothing is really learned for the sheer pleasure of learning. I don't enjoy this at all. The amount of hours I put in over the weekend and during my weeknights preparing lesson plans is immeasuable. I love teaching. I am leaving to pursue teaching in a private school where I will have more flexibility with lesson plans and hopefully there will be more accountability for the student's behavior.
A study performed at the University of Kansas followed children for 25 years and determined, scientifically, that kids who watched Sesame Street when they were little did better all the way through high school and into college! This was irrespective of any other factors - gender, geography, race, ethnicity, socio-economic, etc. The kids who watched Sesame Street did better than the kids who didn't - and the more they watched, the better they did!
Since this has been established with scientific methods and scientific accuracy, why isn't Sesame Street mandated in all preschools, pre-K classes as part of an organized plan to give kids the best early head start possible??
I wish people knew about this important study and made sure to keep their kids watching Sesame as much and as long as possible. And I wish there was some way of requiring that it was part of all preschool curriculum - especially in disadvantaged areas where the kids need all the help they can get.
[This study and information would make a good segment for your show, Brian. Contact Rosemarie Truglio, Ph.D., Vice President of Research at Sesame Workshop, or Jeanette Betancourt, Director of Outreach at 212-595-3456.]
[Best regards from me and from Jason.]
I want to add my voice to the number of people who are disappointed with Brian's interview here. Letting a pair of mouthpieces for Bush administration policies rattle on about their talking points without little substantial challenge does not make for a good segment. Just because she's the Secretary of Education doesn't mean you can't ask some tough questions. Was this typical NPR timidness or was it just that nobody researched better questions?
Not enough research.
You know, I don't really understand all this concern about how the education system must make America "globally competitive". This strikes me as code for the idea that education must serve the needs of industry first.
It suggests that making good employees is goal of the education, as one of the former Teach For American volunteers mentioned turing the segment. And yet we hardly ever hear about how education can give people the skills to participate more fully in a democracy. Why is this?
One presumes that Wendy Kopp is to be applauded for the organization she has nurtured. But as a guest on Brian's show, oy! How many pre-packaged talking points can a guest fit into one segment, instead of actually answering questions? During this segment, unfortunately, we got an idea.
This thread is closed.
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