173 Comments

I love the term "superficial racial gap analysis" because it applies, in my opinion, to my entire state, Minnesota. Frequently, in both the local and national press, Minnesota is cited as having pretty much the largest racial wealth inequalities in the nation. That became an especially prominent talking point during the violence following the murder of George Floyd. I do not dispute that there is a large gap, and that a portion of it is very likely caused by racial bias. But I would like people to also factor in another influence: Minnesota traditionally welcomes more foreign and domestic refugees than most other places in the United States. In 2018, Minnesota had 4 percent of the nation's population and 13 percent of the resettled refugees. We also have attracted over the years an oversized number of Black families from places like Gary, Indiana, who were seeking a better life.

Well when you really, truly welcome an influx of Liberians and Hmong and Somali refugees, and families from places in the United States where the economy has disintegrated, you are going to, by definition, have a larger wealth gap between the races. But that gap exists for the RIGHT reasons -- because our social service agencies, including Lutheran Social Services and Catholic charities have been national leaders in resettling people who need the help, and who tend to be non-white.

I am proud of this Minnesota tradition. It does not mean we don't have our problems, some of them severe -- the Minneapolis Police Department has been an issue for decades. It means we have our good side, too, and that should not be eclipsed by "superficial racial gap analysis."

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> The Washington Teachers Union, however, has been furiously opposed to it for years and continues to be weirdly preoccupied with job protection for a tiny minority of weak performers

Yes, weird, and definitely not a common property of virtually all American unions.

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My wife's a public teacher. So is my mom. So is the guy who was the best man at my wedding. So is his wife. Basically, I love public school teachers.

That said, education reform should never be about the teachers, it should entirely be about the students. We should pay teachers more, but not because we think they're great and we want to reward them. We should pay them more to attract more talent to the field and so we can fire the bad ones *in order to help students learn.*

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Lewis Ferebee: "There are elements of systemic racism embedded in all systems and organizations."

MY: "But I think it’s a mistake to concede that there is evidence here of “systemic racism.”"

From that quote, you might think she has conceded less than that: not that there is any evidence *here* of systemic racism, but simply that, based on past experience with human systems, there is likely to be systemic racism.

If I run a restaurant kitchen and you ask me whether there are any pathogenic microbes on the surfaces, I'm going to say, "we prioritize cleaning and sanitation, and we have no evidence of microbial contamination, but based on the experience of other kitchens, hospitals, and even clean rooms, I think it is very likely that there are some pathogens on some surfaces."

Systemic racism, on this view, is as pervasive as dust. And conceding its likely presence is simply a nod to original sin.

I'm not saying this is an accurate or helpful way to view institutions, esp ones you are in charge of. But it's different from conceding that there's *evidence here*.

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The point that the highest rated teachers are concentrated in the schools in wealthier neighborhoods raises some questions. For example, are these teachers actually higher performing, or do they just appear to be because they have better students? And if they are actually higher performing teachers, what would happen to teacher retention and teacher and student performance if the district reassigned teachers to achieve a more equitable distribution of effective teachers across schools?

DC being a single district, it has a better opportunity than many places to find ways to break the link between housing prices and access to good public schools.

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I found it interesting, though perhaps not surprising, that black assessors gave lower marks to black teachers than white assessors gave to black teachers. Once again, white supremacy works in mysterious ways.

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There is a quick way to determine which teacher's suck and why. Basically you get a bunch of them together at a party and pour two or three glasses of wine into each one. They get very informative of which other teachers shouldn't even be allowed on school property. In vino veritas.

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I would guess a lot of time servers in the over-50 cohort and a lot more idealists in the 35-and-under. If you've stayed a public school teacher into your fifties, a large portion of your comp is accrued pension benefits and their exponential growth as you get older. Not a lot of incentive to actually teach, but a lot of incentive not to get fired for incompetence. Maybe we need some multi-variate analysis of how this plays out with actual human beings.

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Can we officially be done, on the left, with defending teacher unions? These are the same people who started aligning themselves with Ron Desantis on fighting vaccine mandates. They generally create the least good optics for liberals because they consistently and without the least bit of shame pursue agendas that are actively harmful to children.

At some point, just like police unions defending bad apples because they cargo cult on solidarity above all else, even common sense... teacher unions have to be viewed through the same lens. Good unions don't defend their worst members at the cost of good faith relationships with the people they serve... but most public sector unions have ceased to even try to be reasonable in that regard.

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The plug for zoning reform at the end was weak. If DC scrapped zoning and the price of real estate west of 16th street fell by 15%, the vast majority of families would still be priced out of the good schools. This includes 99% of working poor families.

To get real equity, you would have to decouple school attendance from ability to live in a fancy neighborhood. This is called busing. Nothing triggers white flight like busing! 38% of kids in DC get food stamps. If they were spread evenly throughout the system, 38% of kids in every class would be on food stamps. Plenty of households that are far from middle class respectability make too much to qualify for food stamps. The educational outcomes of kids whose households make a bit too much to get good stamps are hardly inspiring, eg most people who graduate from residential four year colleges come from the top third of the income distribution.

White progressives are happy to send their kids to schools with middle class minorities and immigrant strivers. I doubt they are ready for economic integration.

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1. The employer-employee relationship isn't always adversarial, but unions are created to be adversarial. So a unionized industry will almost inevitably have adversarial relations, especially a large unionized industry. It's baked into unions' principal-agent relationship. They are duty-bound to maximize the best interests of their members, just as corporate CEOs are duty-bound to increase shareholder value and lawyers are duty-bound to zealously represent their clients. It's very difficult for them to moderate their advocacy for their principals' interests for the sake of the greater good. It's not impossible, but it isn't how the system is designed to work. Their default setting is to represent their principals' interests to the exclusion of anyone else's.

2. This doesn't mean unions are bad. We have lawyers and business corporations for a reason, and we have unions for a reason too. Sometimes we as a society have to mediate between two competing legitimate points of view, and we decide the best way to ensure a just result is to "arm both sides." It's like checks and balances in government. If both sides fight vigorously, hopefully the outcome will land on the best/most truthful spot in the middle.

3. Because the process is adversarial, it is always in unions' interests to refuse to do whatever management wants their members to do. It is by refusing to do whatever management wants that the union can demand that management pay the union's members to do that thing.

4. That's generally fine in the private sector, but in the public sector there are two complications. First, in the public sector it is management's (i.e. the government's) job to seek the good of society, not to increase shareholder value. That doesn't mean it always does that, of course - not by a long shot. But it is supposed to, and so it often does. Therefore, because it is in unions' interests to refuse to do whatever management prioritizes, it is generally in public employee unions' interests to refuse to make any changes that would benefit society. Second, management also has a principal-agent dynamic, and while its agents (i.e. politicians) do have an incentive to seek the good of society, its principals (i.e. voters) don't always place the *highest* priority on that. So when push comes to shove, you'll often find that management would rather not pay unions extra to agree to stronger accountability for bad apples, but instead would rather lower taxes. In other words, if you "arm both sides" in the public sector hoping they'll eventually land on the most societally beneficial settlement, you may be disappointed.

5. This does not mean that public employee unions are bad. If they didn't exist at all, their members could be exploited. It does mean, however, that you shouldn't be surprised when they oppose changes that would require their members to do good things. That is, in fact, what you should always expect them to do.

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So... can we talk about Chicago and the teacher's strike there? That was amazing to behold. I will never forget the MSNBC panel devoted to this urgent affair. It had all the stars, Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, I think Reid as well. They had representatives of the Teacher's unions as well as an astroturf parent's association that ardently supported everything the teacher's wanted. Which evaporated as soon as the deal was inked. And how they did talk? They talked about the crappy libraries, the run down school infrastructure, the terrible HVAC, the obsolete and inadequate school computers. You'd almost think the teacher's union actually cared about these things. Sadly, when they got to the bargaining table every single one of those issues just evaporated. And the settlement, every nickle of it, over a billion dollars, went to guess who? To be honest I never expected anything else. Unions bro!

Ah but what they did later was one of the shittiest things I have ever seen. When that big settlement forced the closure of Chicago's oldest and most rundown schools (which were predominantly black) and the students were directed to newer schools in better condition the union went nuts. And then we were treated to on air assertions by Melissa Harris Perry that keeping these Black Students segregated in run down shithole schools there was no money to fix was in the student's best interest. She even had one study to back it up.

And so we were treated to union allegations that the Mayor was racist because he did not support segregation. A unique situation you think? No the same allegations were leveled at the Black mayor of Philadelphia. He was racist. Can't have Black students being permitted to attend better newer schools even when the student/teacher ratio isn't violated. Why it might cause a few teachers to get laid off.

My advice is to crush them.

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Given Matthew's unconventional opinion on allowing all children of whatever age to vote I would like to know his position on allowing all students of whatever age to evaluate their teacher's performance. Just like they do for college staff even before such students have reached the age of majority.

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I love the connection at the end. Parking minimums are systemic racism. :-)

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Once again, you want to read actual journalism, you have to go to Substack; certainly not to the 2021 clown car Washington Post.

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I'm not a teacher (putting this out there ahead of accusations of bias). I have 2 kids in public school (not DCPS). Of all the metrics by which I judge teachers and schools, the standardized tests are low down the list, unless the scores are outrageously bad.

The value of the results is only as good as the tests, and the tests are worthless. I know that "teaching to the test" is constantly cited, but even in my suburban district, I've watched it. Curricular changes have all been made in line with improving test scores, and they've been particularly rough on ELA. They focus on abstracted skills and shorter passages. There isn't coherent content.

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