State Senator Daylin Leach Gives Pennsylvania Legislators A Reality Check

Daylin Leach is a candidate for Congress. Since Allyson Schwartz is running for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, he's running to replace her as the Representative for northwest Philly/Montgomery County. He's campaigning hard, but that doesn't mean he's neglecting his current job as a state senator. The video above was in response to the reactionary Republican budget, which passed the House 111-92 just hours before the Sunday deadline. Gov. Tom Corbett signed it immediately, although it is likely to result in immediate credit ratings downgrades (and higher borrowing costs for the state). Last week, Moody's rated Pennsylvania the 8th worst among all 50 states in terms of liabilities to revenues. Corbett scheme to privatize state-run liquor stores and hike taxes and fees to fund a $2 billion transportation plan failed.

Daylin's speech addressed the root causes-- right-wing ideological derangement when it comes to adequately finding crucial public services, particularly public education, which Republicans have been on a jihad against.

Findings from a secret poll conducted by a prominent Republican firm [Public Opinion Strategies] proposes that Gov. Tom Corbett attack the Philadelphia teachers union to overcome widespread opposition to his education policies and bolster his faltering re-election prospects. "Taking on this fight moves Corbett's approval scores on handling education" and "boosts his overall approval numbers."

...The poll suggests that Corbett, a governor who has long suffered from low public-approval ratings, condition state aid to Philadelphia schools on major union concessions and kickstart his hobbled reelection campaign with a high-profile fight against the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers.

...The poll first establishes Corbett's low approval ratings and widespread public opposition to his education policies, finding that "not only do voters believe that public education in the state is off-track, but they overwhelmingly disapprove of the way Corbett's handling the issue."

Sixty-nine percent of respondents said that Pennsylvania public education is on the "wrong track," and 64 percent blame Corbett-- 43 percent strongly so. In the Philly suburbs, 84 percent said that the city's schools are in the wrong trac. Seventy percent statewide believe that it is Corbett's job to help find a solution.

...[T]he poll does not query voters as to their attitude toward the nearly $1 billion in budget cuts to schools orchestrated by Corbett, which have affected school districts statewide and forced many to enact extraordinary property tax hikes... Twenty-one percent of voters say that education is the most important problem facing the state, second only to the economy.

"When," Daylin reminded his fellow legislators Sunday, "a politician debating the budget says 'We have to do with less' what they really mean is that poor kids, schools and sick folks have to do with less." That kind of attitude-- and a willingness to speak out about it-- is why Blue America has endorsed Daylin. This Daylin:

When people say, “we only can spend what we have,” it’s an odd thing to say because we control what we have.

It is not like we are given a limited amount of money from an outside source and that’s all the legislature and the government can spend-- we decide what the tax rates are, we decide what the fee rates are, we decide what the tax breaks are-- we decide all of that. But we make the decision as to what we have to spend.

To say, "we can only spend what we have," ignores the fact that we control what we have. It implies that we have no choice in what policies are made in this chamber, and the effects that they have on people are something that are just forced upon us. That we are innocent vehicles for realities beyond our control-- but we all know that is not true.

Previous speakers on this budget have said, “No one wants to pay more to the state government. If you take a poll and ask the voters, 'Do you want to pay more taxes?' the answer will be 'No.'" And I agree, that is probably the answer the poll would get.

I would, however, say that I know about polling. I know a lot about how poll questions can be skewed to produce desirable answers. For instance, if a pollster asks someone, "Do you want to spend more money out of your own pocket?" in a vacuum, without that person knowing what that money is going to be spent on, most people being polled will say "no."

It becomes interesting when you ask people, "Do you think we should neglect our schools? Do you think that we should shred our social safety net? Do you think that we should not provide adequate funds to protect our air and our water?” People say "no" to that too.

Then, when you juxtapose the two issues, "Would you pay more taxes if you knew that it would make the schools better?" people say "yes." Of course, people do not say they want to pay more money to the government for no apparent purpose-- but they will say they want to spend money to make our schools and our roads better.

I believe the people of Pennsylvania and the people of the United States are not hard-hearted people. They are not indifferent to the condition of our society. If you ask people in my district (and I can only go by my district), "Do you want to invest in the public schools?" They say "Yes."

When you ask people in my district, "Do you want to hire enough water quality inspectors to go out and make sure that the industries that are providing energy in this state are doing so safely and in a way that does not harm people, animals, wildlife, or the environment generally?" They will say "Yes." They will say "yes" overwhelmingly.

If you ask, "Is it a good idea to cut off all cash assistance for the poorest people in Pennsylvania?" They say "No." And you tell them, "There are 800,000 people in Pennsylvania right now who don’t have health insurance and the state government has increased that number by eliminating Adult Basic Care and other policies that provide health care." Then ask them, "Is that a good idea?” They say "No."

If we are going to make the argument that "we are doing what the people of Pennsylvania want," we should be accurate about what the people of Pennsylvania want.

One of my other colleagues said earlier during this debate said we can’t play "Santa Claus" with state spending. And, with due respect, saying that is demeaning. We are not playing Santa Claus, we are not giving gifts on Christmas morning. When you provide health care for a sick child, that is not playing Santa Claus. When you provide enough money for someone to be able to afford a lousy flop room so they don’t have to lay down on the streets at night-- that’s not Santa Claus, that’s not a Christmas gift. When you tell a kid that lives in a poor neighborhood that we’re going to give you an education that will enable you to someday get out of this poor neighborhood - that is not a Christmas gift, that is not Santa Claus.

The idea that the people of Pennsylvania are saying, "Not one penny, not one more penny for schools-- not one more penny for any of these things-- if it comes out of my pocket!" is just not accurate.

And beyond that, other members of this body keep quoting the private sector. But the private sector doesn’t want these things. The truth is, the private sector doesn’t want us to neglect education because today's school children are the people who will be working jobs in the private sector in the next five, ten, fifteen, and twenty years. The private sector does not want us to neglect roads and bridges because that’s how the private sector's work force gets to their jobs and that’s how the private sector moves its products to market.

As we consider this budget and as we consider future budgets, this legislative body should not fall for the idea that we are forced to neglect the basic roles of government and our society.

There is one more thing that troubled me, when someone said, "Families are struggling, so we are going to have to make do with less." This implies-- well, I don’t know what this implies-- but let's be clear, no money goes to "us." We are not spending tax money on beer and knockwurst for legislators. This money is going to help poor people. This money is going to help kids all across the Commonwealth. This money is going to fix roads. This money is going to aid law enforcement. But more than that, this money is going to programs that will make it unnecessary to spend so much money in the future on law enforcement because these programs are proven to reduce crime.

Saying state government is "doing with less," is framing the discussion in such a way that somehow by spending less money, we are doing something noble.

However, when we say we are "doing with less," what we really mean is that poor kids are "doing with less." Sick people are "doing with less." Handicapped and the elderly people are "doing with less." People who have to drive over crumbling roads and bridges every day to get to work are “doing with less.” Those are the people who are "doing with less."

"We" are fine either way. It’s not "us" that has anything at stake in this budget. It’s the people of Pennsylvania who desperately need the services that, in my view, we are not funding adequately. And I just wanted to make it clear that this really is what’s at stake here.

Please help make sure this safe Democratic seat goes to the progressive, not to some pathetic corporate shill being pushed by the Establishment (nor someone's mekhutonim). You can contribute to Daylin's congressional campaign here.

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Republicans In Congress Hike The Cost Of Education For Poorest Students

Boehner puppet, John Kline (R-MN)

Last week, we warned that John Kline's House Education and Workforce Committee was dead set on raising the cost of college education. When Elizabeth Warren's amendment to lower the cost of student loans to 0.75%, just like the banksters get, it was voted down, every Republican plus Colorado New Dem Jared Polis voting against it in committee. Yesterday, the full House voted on Kline's awful bill, which Democrats are calling the Make College Less Affordable Act, and it passed 221-198 all but 8 Republicans-- most of whom, like GOP crackpots Louie Gohmert (TX), Vern Buchanan (FL) and Tom Cotton (AR) just oppose public education as a matter of their extremist ideology-- voting for it, along with 4 Democrats:

• Jared Polis (New Dem-CO)
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)
• Joe Garcia (New Dem-FL)
• Dan Maffei (New Dem-NY)

Immediately after the vote Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chairs Reps. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) and Keith Ellison (D-MN) asked the question, Why are Republicans trying to make it more costly to attend college?

Students who work hard to get a college education should not be saddled with a lifetime of crushing debt. The latest Republican proposal would make getting a college education more expensive. College education is already too expensive. Why are Republicans trying to make it more costly to attend college?

In June, the student loan interest rate will double from 3.4% to 6.8%. Under the Republican ‘fix,’ when next year’s college freshmen start repaying their loans after they graduate, the interest rate on their college loan is projected to be 7.4%. Meanwhile, the world’s biggest banks borrow money from the government at an interest rate of 1% or lower.

                                                                                                     We should be helping students go to college. We shouldn’t charge students more to borrow for college than we charge banks. We support Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) and Rep. John Tierney’s (D-MA) bill to tie the student loan interest rate to the current Federal Reserve lending rate.

Education continues to be the gateway to the American Dream. At a time when more and more of our nation’s wealth goes to corporate profits instead of middle class wages, the Republican scheme continues handouts to Wall Street at millions of students’ expense.”

No one wants to talk about it, but Republicans would like to drive the children of working class households-- particularly children of color from working class households-- off the college path and into menial labor and trades. It's the Republican Party policy everyone knows about but no one mentions out loud. They're even willing to sacrifice the future of lower middle class white kids to accomplish their goal. Donna Edwards (D-MD) skirted the ugly truth yesterday after the vote, pointing out that "the Republican Majority introduced legislation which, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, would in fact make college more expensive for students and parents than if Congress did nothing. The bill would set variable interest rates for student loans tied to 10-year Treasury notes +2.5 percent for Stafford and +4.5 percent for PLUS loans. Under the Republican bill, students who borrow the maximum amount of subsidized and unsubsidized Stafford loans over five years would pay nearly $2,000 more in interest costs than if interest rates doubled. The bill passed the House by a vote of 221-198."

“America’s families simply cannot afford the Republican solution to student loan rates. That is why I proposed two amendments to reduce the cap for Stafford and PLUS loans, and further reduce the cap for Stafford loans for students pursuing the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. Our economy requires that we curtail unaffordable student loan debt while incentivizing students to join a workforce that will ensure the United States’ competitiveness in the 21st century. Republicans rejected both these ideas, but I urge them to reconsider as Congress works towards a long-term higher education bill.

“My decision to attend Wake Forest University then law school came at a cost of $100,000, a quarter of that was a result of interest and service fees. I understand personally that we need a short and long-term solution to college affordability, but it is irresponsible to, at a time when a college education is more important and expensive than ever, to place more of a burden on our students and parents.”

But that's the point. Republicans don't want more Donna Edwardses rising up and championing the interests of working families. Nobel economist Joe Stiglitz: "The life chances of a young American are more dependent on the income and education of their parents than in other industrial countries... Students are being squeezed. Incomes are down, and tuition is going up. They don't qualify for Pell Grants, and their parents really have no way to pay tuition at most schools." He backs Warren's bill to lower the cost of student borrowing.

The White House released a statement just before the vote suggesting President Obama would veto the bill if it ever makes it to his desk. "Under the President's proposal, the rate on new Federal student loans would be set each year based on the Treasury's actual cost of borrowing, and would remain fixed for the life of the loan so that borrowers would have certainty about the rates they would pay. The President's proposal also would expand the 'Pay As You Earn' repayment option to ensure that no student borrower is required to pay more than ten percent of his or her discretionary income on student loans. "While the Administration welcomes action by the House on this issue, H.R. 1911 is the wrong approach. First, the bill would not guarantee low rates for today's students. A rate that continues to vary after the loan has already been taken out would create uncertainty and lessen transparency for students and their families who are making decisions about borrowing for college. Second, the bill's changes would impose the largest interest rate increases on low‑ and middle‑income students and families who struggle most to afford a college education. Third, the bill does not include the President's proposal to extend repayment options to borrowers who have already left school and often face the same debt burdens as current and future students. Finally, the Administration believes that student loan interest rates should not be raised to reduce the deficit. If the President were presented with this legislation in its current form, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill.

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Remember When Rahm Emanuel Was The Worst Thing About DC? Well, Of Course, Now He's The Worst Thing About Chicago

If you're interested in the space where education policy, politics and humor come together, you should be checking out EduShyster.com frequently. The site is premised on that fact that "behind every faddish, jargon-filled plan is a dirty little scheme that ends up making somebody a lot of money. The scary thing is that these fools are winning, and the only way to fight back is to expose the edushysters for the hypocritical charlatans that they are." This week they have a depraved Rahm Emanuel in their sites.

The final “vote” on which Chicago Public Schools to shutter may be a done deal, but the implications of the largest single school closure in US history will be felt well beyond the Windy City. Mayor Emanuel, who has long tethered his political fortunes to hedge-funded education reform, now has poll numbers hovering near the bottom of Lake Michigan. Meanwhile, the Chicago media has suddenly awakened and is practicing, once again, the long-lost art of journalism. And Chicago charter school fever is beginning to look an awful lot like old-fashioned Illinois-style “pay to play” corruption. In other words, on this bad news bears day, my outlook is decidedly wine-box-half-full…

The white course

Let’s start with Mayor Emanuel’s poll numbers. Did I say they were in Lake Michigan? I meant living on Lake Shore drive in a million dollar plus unit with great lake views. A recent poll found that the only voters left who unabashedly approve of the mayor’s education reform agenda are wealthy whites who live in the city’s lakefront wards. Six in ten Chicagoans oppose Rahm’s school closure plan, while a full 75% say they don’t like his vision for education in the city. Of voters with children who attend the Chicago Public Schools, just 9% said they side with the mayor in the debate over how to improve the schools. Fifty-four percent said they now side with the Chicago Teachers Union.

Welcome back, journalists. We’ve missed you!

The past few weeks have seen the kind of reporting that’s all too rare in today’s Walton-funded era of achievement gaptivism. Check out, for example, this “fact check” prepared by a local public radio station in which reporters examine the justifications being given for the mass school closings-- and debunk virtually all of them. Even the Chicago Tribune, which just weeks ago ran an editorial trumpeting the results of a pro-charter push poll, got in on the action. The Trib dug deep into official documents to dispute many of the claims being made by Mayor Emanuel et al and revealed once again just how dependent hedge-funded “reform” is on a lax and fawning press.

Pay for play

Meanwhile reporters at the Chicago Sun Times have been busy digging up the dirt on the state’s largest charter school operator: UNO Charter Schools. It turns out that Illinois’ new favorite past-time, *crushing* the achievement gap by constructing shiny academies of excellence and innovation, looks an awful lot like the state’s old favorite past-time: cash-fueled corruption.

Race to the top

The disproportionate impact of school closings on minority students has already resulted in multiple law suits. But could it finally prompt a conversation on the great white elephant in the room: the overwhelming whiteousness of the education reform movement vs: the communities that reformers are intent on improving? Based on this intriguing tweet from Teach for America CEO Matt Kramer, I’d say the chances are good.

We are so over

In case you missed it, opposition to the school closings in Chicago even precipitated an education reform break up. I’m talking, of course, about the recent decision by the University of Chicago chapter of Students for Education Reform to divorce their national organization. In this Dear John letter, the Chicago students hint at their discomfort with being the fresh Chicago faces of SFER’s national agenda. As for what that agenda is, I will say only that SFER is likely the only grassroots student group in the country to be funded by the Walton Foundation.

Even Republicans are pissed

And now a gratuitous shout out to my favorite Windy City blog: Chicago Public Fools.This Chicago Public Schools mom is representative of the astonishing diversity of voices that are now questioning the city’s education reform mantra. In this post, Red in a Blue City, she fillets would-be school privatizers like lake trout.

If this is all just over your head, just think of it like this-- Rahm and his Wall Street buddies are steering America towards Greece... without the warm Mediterranean breezes and the delicious fresh food. The prospects for children of working class kids is-- horrifying. "With Greece suffering the biggest economic depression in decades," writes ZeroHedge, "all so a few rich men can preserve their wealth and not have their EUR-denominated savings wiped out (even if the alternative means finally being able to rebalance externally using the Drachma instead of forcing internal rebalancing via unemployment and plunging wages), it was only a matter of time before we found out just how humiliating the conversion of the entire economy to a "gray," non-tax paying one would be for the citizens of Greece."

As the NYT reports, in just the past two years, the numbers of Greeks engaging in prostitution as a last course source of income has more than doubled: according to the National Center for Social Research, the number of people selling sex has surged 150 percent in the last two years.

Furthermore, with every business in which there is exploding "competition" and rich client scarcity, it is not just any prostitution, but very deflationary prostitution:

“Five euros only, just 5 euros,” whispered Maria, a young prostitute with sunken cheeks and bedraggled hair, as she pitched herself forward from the shadows of a graffiti-riddled alley in central Athens on a recent weeknight.

Many prostitutes have been selling their services for as little as 10 to 15 euros, a price that has shrunk along with the income of clients afflicted by the crisis. Many more prostitutes are taking greater health risks by having unprotected sex, which sells for a premium. Still more are subject to violence and rape.

Now a new menace has arisen: a type of crystal methamphetamine called shisha, after the Turkish water pipe, but otherwise known as poor man’s cocaine, brewed from barbiturates and other ingredients including alcohol, chlorine and even battery acid.

And with a surge in prostitution come the drugs, and the danger of an epidemic of blood-transmitted diseases, like HIV.
...Unfortunately for the country which is terrified to just say no to Europe due to the indoctrinated dread of what would happen if it left the Eurozone, this is only the beginning as the problem is far deeper, and it goes to the root of everything: an entire generation going to waste.

But while the Greek still soaring unemployment rate is no surprise to anyone, it is the youth unemployment that is the problem. And as the Telegraph reports, in some areas of Greece, youth unemployment has now hit an inconceivable 75%.

And all this Austerity, whether in Greece or Chicago, "just so the 0.001% uberwealthy can continue to get richer and richer courtesy of a year after year of flawed monetary and fiscal policy, even as the real world around them burns." What we need are more Penny Pritzkers in Obama's cabinet.

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Rick Perry Goes To The Head Of The Class To Help Set Right-Wing Anti-Intellectual Higher Education Policy

It's been a very sad thing for any state that winds up with a GOP/Tea Party-controled legislature, especially when they also have the governor's mansion. Most of them are the states with the worst economic results, worst education results, worst health results and worst environmental results. I don't want to get into a chicken or egg debate about it now. I just want to go beyond the discussion we started last night about the North Carolina Republicans'-- both the Tea Party legislature and Puppet Pat the Governor-- War Against Education... and beyond Alison Brito's useful list yesterday of the the 5 worst teabagger ideas coming out of the North Carolina legislature. Other states are in just as bad shape.

Take Texas... please. We all know more than anyone needs to about their crackpot drugged-up governor, Rick Perry-- a walking wounded, deranged closet case. One of the most severely gerrymandered states in the country, Texas has a House with 95 Republicans and 55 Democrats and a Senate with 19 Republicans and 12 Democrats. Rick Perry and some cronies from Texas A&M have come up with a 7-step program to turn higher education in that state into a corporate joke. They want to gear universities-- not just the crap schools like Texas A&M and Southwest Baptist Theological Seminary but serious universities like the University of Texas in Austin-- to serve the needs of Big Business. Perry and his rabidly anti-intellectual Board of Regents would like to turn the state higher education system into a giant low-budget trade school.

This isn't going over all that well, not even in the state legislature, where many of the members are proud of Texas' higher education system and are responsive to Texans who are up in arms over Perry's proposals. Machree Gibson, chairman of the Texas Exes, UT's mammoth alumni association: "I just don't understand why they want to dumb down a public institution of this magnitude." What Perry's brand of "reformers" have done is to divide up all professors based on how much money they bring into the school. The categories sound like the way Republicans rate campaign donors. If professors are setting up costly research labs that don't result in quarterly returns, they're considered laggards. Only hucksters can thrive in this kind of atmosphere.

Justin Pope put together a lot of valuable background material for HuffPo back in February:

Public research universities, with a mission of both teaching and research, date back 150 years. They produce 70 percent of scientists, engineers and physicians, and two-thirds of U.S. campus research-- the value of which isn't always obvious in advance. "During the Second World War, it was radar and atomic energy that came off of these campuses that saved us," said James Duderstadt, the former University of Michigan president who helped lead a recent National Research Council study of the sector. Before the war, those technologies "looked like the most abstract, frill research."

But lately these globally ambitious institutions have strained against the reins of what some call an anachronistic system of state control and funding. Duderstadt calls them "critically endangered." Another recent report, by the National Science Foundation, found state support for the 101 major public research universities fell 20 percent between 2002 and 2010.

Those institutions are "the backbone of this nation's knowledge economy," Duderstadt said. "If the states turn their back on them, they're committing a grievous act against the national interest."

UT-Austin, the flagship of the 216,000-student UT system, is among the biggest With more than 52,000 students, the university has 3,166 faculty, plus more than 10,000 professional staff. About 10,000 students also have jobs in labs, classrooms, libraries and elsewhere on campus. Recent discoveries range from lithium-ion batteries to the two largest black holes in the universe. It's also spun off hundreds companies and helped make Austin a tech hub, which in turn benefits the university. On Thursday, UT announced a $50 million gift to establish a medical school from the family foundation of Michael Dell and his wife. Dell dropped out of UT-Austin to start his namesake computer company in Austin.

Thirty years ago, Texas taxpayers funded more than half the university budget. This year, the state contributes about 13 percent, or $295 million.

In-state tuition at public research universities has increased 43 percent beyond inflation over the last decade, to more than $15,000. UT-Austin remains considerably less-- around $10,000 per year.

Yet while state funding cuts have been devastating, Duderstadt says universities and their growing legions of well-paid administrators haven't always helped their cause with the public. "They're just totally deaf, dumb and blind on how the crazy things they do on campuses convince the American people that they don't have any ability to control costs," he said.

In Texas, an ascendant group of critics with Perry's ear thinks the flagship university has lost sight of a key mission: affordable and efficient undergraduate education.

"We've gone too far in the direction of research at the expense of our students," said Thomas Lindsay, director of the Center for Higher Education at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a think-tank with ties to several of Perry's regents. He cites a (much-disputed) study arguing the research of most UT-Austin faculty isn't top quality, and that reassigning some research-focused faculty to teach more could halve tuition. That, he says, could also decrease class sizes and boost completion rates.

In fact, most of UT-Austin's endeavors beyond basic teaching are supported by non-state sources-- $700 million annually in outside research funding and $300 million in philanthropy.

Still, in spots on campus one could wonder if this isn't more car than Texas taxpayers need. The law school's faculty is highly regarded in academia-- and very well paid. But could it use fewer theorists, and more practitioners? What about the seven museums, like The Harry Ransom Center, which has spent millions buying literary collections like Jack Kerouac's notebooks, and recently spent $30,000 to preserve dresses worn by Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind?

Powell, the regents chairman, insists he supports UT-Austin's research mission and values its reputation.

But "we are a public institution that (is) paid for by the citizens of the state of Texas," Powell said. Texas has "a lot of students who cannot afford an institution that is a very high-priced, Ivy League-type institution."

In the broader debate, the two sides are separated by a common language-- terms all agree are worthwhile in the abstract, but which carry associations that delineate a cultural divide.

Does "academic research" call first to mind tweedy professors expounding on poetry in journals nobody reads? Or scientists curing diseases and spinning off businesses?

Is "productivity" common-sense practices for cutting through academic inefficiency and lowering costs? Or code for replacing the nuanced work of nurturing young minds with crude, assembly-line widget-making?

In "affordability," some hear a self-evident, primary mission for any university. Others hear "cheap."

Affordability is a top Perry priority, and he's pushed Texas universities to offer a complete four-year degree for just $10,000-- about what UT-Austin currently charges per year.

Re-elected with strong Tea Party support to a third term in 2010, Perry has appointed all 60 regents of Texas' six public higher education systems, including UT and Texas A&M. He and his regents have encouraged Texas public universities to expand enrollment and online offerings.

But critics say they're destroying quality for quantity. Early alarm bells rang with a push from Perry's Texas A&M regents for business-like metrics for faculty productivity, reporting how much they "made" or "lost" for the university. Worries grew when the UT board briefly hired a consultant with ties to the Texas Public Policy Foundation who was openly skeptical of academic research's value.

So when Powell made his "Chevy Bel Air" comments, shortly after becoming chairman in February, 2011, the car metaphor struck a nerve.

The Texas Exes president e-mailed alumni warning "the mission and core values of our beloved University are under attack." A high-profile group of state business and political leaders called the Texas Coalition for Excellence in Higher Education was launched, roiled by a study from another conservative group arguing that UT-Austin could get by with one-third its current faculty if they taught more efficiently.

Last spring, a fight over tuition became a litmus test for competing visions of the university-- and even higher education itself.

Perry let it be known that despite sharp state funding cuts, UT-Austin shouldn't ask to increase tuition the coming year. On campus, many saw the move as a first step toward imposing a $10,000 degree.

The feeling was a university offering a $10,000 degree couldn't be great. It couldn't be a Cadillac.

Powers breached protocol, requesting a 2.6 percent in-state increase anyway. The board turned him down.

"It was viewed as a personal attack on the campus," said Alan Friedman, a longtime faculty senate leader. More than a swipe at the faculty's job performance, he said, "it's that they don't like the job at all. It's a right-wing backlash against higher education, especially the notion that campuses like this one are controlled by liberals."

But the defeat was an Alamo moment-- a tactical loss that galvanized supporters. Even students saw a tuition freeze as a threat to the prestige of their degrees. When reports surfaced the board wanted Powers out, a Facebook group called "I Stand With Bill Powers" surged past five-figure membership.

Then, the University of Virginia fiasco unfolded. Powers declined to comment, and Powell said he hadn't closely followed what happened there. But by every other account, events in Charlottesville were followed breathlessly in Austin. Virginian's Sullivan was a longtime UT professor and administrator, and widely admired.

If the board wanted Powers out, it reconsidered the PR ramifications. His job now appears safe, though many here still think UT-Austin's reputation remains threatened.

Many observers share Friedman's view that the debates over tuition and research are really about something broader.

"There seems to be a political move, and it's not just in Texas, away from the classical mission of the university-- cultivation of the mind and pursuit of knowledge-- to a concept of a public university as sort of a job corps or a trade school," said Peter Flawn, who came to Texas more than a half-century ago and was UT-Austin's president from 1979 to 1985, then again in 1997-98.

In an interview in his office in the geological sciences building, Flawn, now 86, recounted UT's efforts to build a world-class university in a state with little history of generously supporting education.

Far-thinking governors, like John Connally and Bill Clements, working with UT loyalists in the Texas legislature, grasped the potential of a great research university to diversify Texas away from a boom-and-bust commodities economy, Flawn said. Donors like Dallas investor Peter O'Donnell, who has given more than $135 million to the university, helped retain world-class researchers who would otherwise have been poached away.

"It takes a long time to build a first-class university," Flawn said. "You wonder, how long would it take to destroy one?"

Campus liberals aren't the only critics. Neither the Texas Exes nor the Texas Coalition lacks Republicans. O'Donnell, a state GOP stalwart, has publicly criticized Perry's higher education priorities. Republican former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who previously headed Texas A&M, seemed to do the same in a speech in November, calling the contention that research comes at the expense of teaching "a profound misunderstanding of how universities become great and stay great, and a profound misunderstanding of the higher education enterprise as a whole."

Southern Methodist University political scientist Calvin Jillson says UT grads of both parties occupy an "urban elite" who see UT-Austin's benefits in their communities. But Perry's base among Texas' rural residents sees more "value in a `3Rs' preparation for the job market."

Recent events follow a pattern of "anti-intellectual populism that has assaulted UT regularly over the school's history," Jillson said.

"Political authorities find the faculty and their research interests to be counter to the political culture of the state and therefore dangerous," he said. "The question is always: `Is this what we're paying for with our tax money?'"

Gibson, the first black woman to head the Texas Exes alumni group, sees the dispute through the lens of a growing and diversifying Texas.

"There are a lot of alumni that are upset that their kids can't get in," she said. "They've been coming here for generations. But there are so many more people in the state of Texas now." She also sees a racial element, with some resenting the university's diversity efforts, notably its recent defense of racial preferences in admissions before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Lindsay, from the Texas Public Policy Foundation, says lower-income students get grants, and high-income kids can afford to pay. But "it's the middle class that's being squeezed." He adds, "none of us wants to compromise one bit" on UT's research mission. But he doesn't think making some faculty teach one extra class does so.

"To somehow say if we do that, we're somehow not going to discover a cure for cancer, I think they get a little hyperbolic about it," Lindsay said.

Rick Scott (R-FL) and Scott Walker (R-WI)-- not to mention Puppet Pat (R-NC)-- are also driven by the same intense hatred of students and professors that drives Rick Perry, and are also eager to wreck their states' higher education systems. Conservatives, of course, have never seen any sense in teaching the children of the working class liberal arts-- just stuff that makes them better cogs in the corporate wheel. The idea of teaching the masses to think for themselves is nothing short of horrifying to a conservative. In fact, to conservatives this kind of thing is positively anathema to their world view of what public universities should be doing:

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Well, Of Course Rich Kids Are Smarter Than Poor Kids

My pal Roland teaches in an inner city elementary school in one of the toughest neighborhoods in L.A. Everyday he comes home exhausted and frustrated and drained. "Maybelline was suspended again," he seems to tell me more often than I ask him if he wants to eat at Ink or M.A.K.E. Maybelline is 8. I remember when he first told me about her at the beginning of the semester. He said he thought she might be a genius, definietly the smartest child in his class. He seemed excited to play a role in helping her reach her potential. Now he's relieved when she doesn't terrorize his other students, steal their lunches and pencils or just beat them up. Maybelline's probably not going to Harvard or Stanford (where Sean Reardon teaches education and sociology). More likely she's going to end up at the Central California Women's Facility outside Chowchilla. Essentially, she has no parents; no idea who her father was and her mom's a junkie, in and out-- mostly in-- jails and prisons. Maybelline lives with her unemployed grandfather.

Did you read Reardon's OpEd in the NY Times over the weekend, No Rich Child Left Behind? He didn't mean the kind of rich Maybelline is. She doesn't have to study for her tests-- she never does-- but she aces them anyway. What a shame that society will squander that kind of richness! "Here’s a fact that may not surprise you," offers Reardon: "the children of the rich perform better in school, on average, than children from middle-class or poor families. Students growing up in richer families have better grades and higher standardized test scores, on average, than poorer students; they also have higher rates of participation in extracurricular activities and school leadership positions, higher graduation rates and higher rates of college enrollment and completion." And the differences are growing-- gigantically.

One way to see this is to look at the scores of rich and poor students on standardized math and reading tests over the last 50 years. When I did this using information from a dozen large national studies conducted between 1960 and 2010, I found that the rich-poor gap in test scores is about 40 percent larger now than it was 30 years ago.

To make this trend concrete, consider two children, one from a family with income of $165,000 and one from a family with income of $15,000. These incomes are at the 90th and 10th percentiles of the income distribution nationally, meaning that 10 percent of children today grow up in families with incomes below $15,000 and 10 percent grow up in families with incomes above $165,000.

In the 1980s, on an 800-point SAT-type test scale, the average difference in test scores between two such children would have been about 90 points; today it is 125 points. This is almost twice as large as the 70-point test score gap between white and black children. Family income is now a better predictor of children’s success in school than race.

The same pattern is evident in other, more tangible, measures of educational success, like college completion. In a study similar to mine, Martha J. Bailey and Susan M. Dynarski, economists at the University of Michigan, found that the proportion of students from upper-income families who earn a bachelor’s degree has increased by 18 percentage points over a 20-year period, while the completion rate of poor students has grown by only 4 points.

...In San Francisco this week, more than 14,000 educators and education scholars have gathered for the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. The theme this year is familiar: Can schools provide children a way out of poverty?

We are still talking about this despite decades of clucking about the crisis in American education and wave after wave of school reform.Whatever we’ve been doing in our schools, it hasn’t reduced educational inequality between children from upper- and lower-income families.

Part of knowing what we should do about this is understanding how and why these educational disparities are growing. For the past few years, alongside other scholars, I have been digging into historical data to understand just that. The results of this research don’t always match received wisdom or playground folklore.

The most potent development over the past three decades is that the test scores of children from high-income families have increased very rapidly. Before 1980, affluent students had little advantage over middle-class students in academic performance; most of the socioeconomic disparity in academics was between the middle class and the poor. But the rich now outperform the middle class by as much as the middle class outperform the poor. Just as the incomes of the affluent have grown much more rapidly than those of the middle class over the last few decades, so, too, have most of the gains in educational success accrued to the children of the rich.

...It may seem counterintuitive, but schools don’t seem to produce much of the disparity in test scores between high- and low-income students. We know this because children from rich and poor families score very differently on school readiness tests when they enter kindergarten, and this gap grows by less than 10 percent between kindergarten and high school. There is some evidence that achievement gaps between high- and low-income students actually narrow during the nine-month school year, but they widen again in the summer months.

That isn’t to say that there aren’t important differences in quality between schools serving low- and high-income students-- there certainly are-- but they appear to do less to reinforce the trends than conventional wisdom would have us believe.


If not the usual suspects, what’s going on? It boils down to this: The academic gap is widening because rich students are increasingly entering kindergarten much better prepared to succeed in school than middle-class students. This difference in preparation persists through elementary and high school.



My research suggests that one part of the explanation for this is rising income inequality. As you may have heard, the incomes of the rich have grown faster over the last 30 years than the incomes of the middle class and the poor. Money helps families provide cognitively stimulating experiences for their young children because it provides more stable home environments, more time for parents to read to their children, access to higher-quality child care and preschool and-- in places like New York City, where 4-year-old children take tests to determine entry into gifted and talented programs-- access to preschool test preparation tutors or the time to serve as tutors themselves.

But rising income inequality explains, at best, half of the increase in the rich-poor academic achievement gap. It’s not just that the rich have more money than they used to, it’s that they are using it differently. This is where things get really interesting.

High-income families are increasingly focusing their resources-- their money, time and knowledge of what it takes to be successful in school-- on their children’s cognitive development and educational success. They are doing this because educational success is much more important than it used to be, even for the rich.

With a college degree insufficient to ensure a high-income job, or even a job as a barista, parents are now investing more time and money in their children’s cognitive development from the earliest ages. It may seem self-evident that parents with more resources are able to invest more-- more of both money and of what Mr. Putnam calls “‘Goodnight Moon’ time”-- in their children’s development. But even though middle-class and poor families are also increasing the time and money they invest in their children, they are not doing so as quickly or as deeply as the rich.

The economists Richard J. Murnane and Greg J. Duncan report that from 1972 to 2006 high-income families increased the amount they spent on enrichment activities for their children by 150 percent, while the spending of low-income families grew by 57 percent over the same time period. Likewise, the amount of time parents spend with their children has grown twice as fast since 1975 among college-educated parents as it has among less-educated parents. The economists Garey Ramey and Valerie A. Ramey of the University of California, San Diego, call this escalation of early childhood investment “the rug rat race,” a phrase that nicely captures the growing perception that early childhood experiences are central to winning a lifelong educational and economic competition.

It’s not clear what we should do about all this. Partly that’s because much of our public conversation about education is focused on the wrong culprits: we blame failing schools and the behavior of the poor for trends that are really the result of deepening income inequality and the behavior of the rich.

We’re also slow to understand what’s happening, I think, because the nature of the problem-- a growing educational gap between the rich and the middle class-- is unfamiliar. After all, for much of the last 50 years our national conversation about educational inequality has focused almost exclusively on strategies for reducing inequalities between the educational successes of the poor and the middle class, and it has relied on programs aimed at the poor, like Head Start and Title I.

We’ve barely given a thought to what the rich were doing. With the exception of our continuing discussion about whether the rising costs of higher education are pricing the middle class out of college, we don’t have much practice talking about what economists call “upper-tail inequality” in education, much less success at reducing it.

Meanwhile, not only are the children of the rich doing better in school than even the children of the middle class, but the changing economy means that school success is increasingly necessary to future economic success, a worrisome mutual reinforcement of trends that is making our society more socially and economically immobile.

We need to start talking about this. Strangely, the rapid growth in the rich-poor educational gap provides a ray of hope: if the relationship between family income and educational success can change this rapidly, then it is not an immutable, inevitable pattern. What changed once can change again. Policy choices matter more than we have recently been taught to think.

So how can we move toward a society in which educational success is not so strongly linked to family background? Maybe we should take a lesson from the rich and invest much more heavily as a society in our children’s educational opportunities from the day they are born. Investments in early-childhood education pay very high societal dividends. That means investing in developing high-quality child care and preschool that is available to poor and middle-class children. It also means recruiting and training a cadre of skilled preschool teachers and child care providers. These are not new ideas, but we have to stop talking about how expensive and difficult they are to implement and just get on with it.

But we need to do much more than expand and improve preschool and child care. There is a lot of discussion these days about investing in teachers and “improving teacher quality,” but improving the quality of our parenting and of our children’s earliest environments may be even more important. Let’s invest in parents so they can better invest in their children.

This means finding ways of helping parents become better teachers themselves. This might include strategies to support working families so that they can read to their children more often. It also means expanding programs like the Nurse-Family Partnership that have proved to be effective at helping single parents educate their children; but we also need to pay for research to develop new resources for single parents.

It might also mean greater business and government support for maternity and paternity leave and day care so that the middle class and the poor can get some of the educational benefits that the early academic intervention of the rich provides their children. Fundamentally, it means rethinking our still-persistent notion that educational problems should be solved by schools alone.

The more we do to ensure that all children have similar cognitively stimulating early childhood experiences, the less we will have to worry about failing schools. This in turn will enable us to let our schools focus on teaching the skills-- how to solve complex problems, how to think critically and how to collaborate-- essential to a growing economy and a lively democracy.

Nothing really there for Maybelline-- nor for most of her classmates. Not any more than the air traffic controller fix helped them or their families or communities.

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What Can We Learn From What The GOP Is Doing To North Carolina's Education System?

Last year, one of our favorite Blue America candidates was North Carolina state Rep. Patsy Keever, who was running against reactionary Republican closet case Patrick McHenry. Although Patsy kicked his ass where she was best known, Buncombe County-- where she rolled up a 46,240 (66%) to 23,740 (34%) victory-- the DCCC, angry that Patsy beat some conservative shill of theirs in the primary, refused to help her run in the general. In the end, the huge disparity in spending-- McHenry spent $1,127,555 and Patsy spent $419,465-- helped McHenry win big enough margins in Gaston, Cleveland and Catawba counties to beat her districtwide 57- 43%. Thanks for nothing, Steve Israel!

We were happy to see Patsy elected chairman of the Buncombe County Democratic Party Saturday. A lifelong school teacher, whose first priority has always been education, Patsy has been hard at work fighting the Republicans in the state legislature working to undermine North Carolina's public education system. This is an article she wrote last week for Diane Ravitch's blog:

To Educate Or Not To Educate In NC
by Patsy Keever

Our rulers in Raleigh are answering that question for us with bills that they could vote into law to change everything from how Carolina and State are funded, to whether tax money ought to be used for church schools, to whether or not Hamlet needs to be taught to “tech” kids. If our local legislators do not hear from us, they will vote on these bills in a vacuum-- which is contrary to representative democracy.

We have two education commandments in North Carolina. The first was spoken a century ago by Gov. Charles B. Aycock, our first education governor, “You cannot do the best for your child unless you also do the best for my child.”

The second is from our state Constitution, which mandates that “The General Assembly shall provide by taxation and otherwise for a general and uniform system of free public schools, which shall be maintained at least nine months in every year, and wherein equal opportunities shall be provided for all students.”

Pretty simple. Education for all of our students is our ultimate long-range economic development tool, our best defense against politicians who would mislead us, and our moral and constitutional duty. How do we work together to ensure that all of our children get the best possible education? How do we ensure that the limited funds are fairly distributed? How do we ensure that our school personnel have the tools and resources they need? How do we incorporate the best ideas into all of our schools? How do we keep a positive attitude and continue to do the best for all our children? What can you do?

On April 23, from 6:30-8 p.m. at the Asheville City Schools boardroom on Mountain Street, Public Schools First North Carolina, a statewide nonpartisan nonprofit is hosting a gathering of parents, school personnel and the general public to provide information about pending legislation, to identify resources and to hear ideas and suggestions from the attendees. Asheville City Schools Foundation and Children First are co-sponsors of the meeting.

At a time when the citizens of Asheville and Buncombe County are facing water control issues, airport control issues and election issues, we cannot lose sight of the most long-lasting and important responsibility-- our children' s education. We can choose to sleep through this-- but in doing so, who knows what nightmares may come? And that is the rub. See you on the 23rd.

This isn't just happening in Asheville and it isn't just happening in North Carolina. It happens wherever voters give the Republican Party control of state government.

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