Bennett Whines About "Tone"

No one has been a bigger critic of Chris Christie than yours truly. But if you go back through this blog, you'll find I've never once made a crack about his weight. Part of that is simple decency; part is my being close to Christie's age and knowing first hand how hard it can be to get enough exercise.

But the primary reason I don't bring up Christie's waistline is that it's not relevant. He hasn't attacked others for their appearance (as far as I know), and he hasn't pushed policies that punish or reward people based on their size. Why, then, would I bring up a personal matter about the governor when it's not germane? It would be gratuitous and unwarranted, so I don't do it.

On the other hand, I have made what can be described fairly as a personal attack on Christie regarding the choices he and his wife have made for their own children's education. Bringing Christie's kids into it is, admittedly, as personal as it gets. So why is that different? Simple: because it's relevant.

This is a guy who has been cutting school funding for New Jersey's children - particularly our poor children - while complaining about education spending every chance he gets. Yet he sends his own kids to a beautiful, exclusive private school that spends gobs more money than the public schools; a school that doesn't have to educate children who are at-risk or have special needs or who don't speak English at home, the most expensive children to educate.

That is hypocrisy of the highest order. Is pointing that out personal? You bet it is: it speaks directly to the man's character. But is it unwarranted? No, not at all: it's directly relevant to his actions, policies, and words. You can argue over the tone with which I point this out, but understand that is no more than a matter of taste. What shouldn't be in dispute is that the thrust of this "personal" attack is both fair and relevant. Whining about "tone" becomes a way to avoid a criticism that is, without question, germane to the debate.

I bring all this up because we've had a couple of remarkable examples of whining about "tone" this week in reformy circles. The most well-known, of course, is the spectacular spasm of self-righteous indignation that came from Florida's recently-departed education chief, Tony Bennett. I imagine most readers here now know the story of Bennett's grade changing scandal; how he changed the evaluation of a charter school in contradiction to his own staff's assessment.

Bennett, in the tradition of all American politicians caught in a scandal, went before the cameras to deliver a non-apology apology that went heavy on the mea and light on the culpa:

Tony Bennett announced his immediate resignation at a news conference, saying that he while he did nothing wrong he didn't want to be a distraction to ongoing efforts to overhaul Florida's education system. Emails published by The Associated Press this week show that Bennett and his Indiana staff scrambled last fall to ensure Christel DeHaan's school received an A, despite poor 10th-grade algebra scores that initially earned it a C. 

Bennett called that interpretation "malicious and unfounded" and said he would call for Indiana's inspector general to look into the allegations because he is certain he will be cleared of wrongdoing. 

He said it would be unfair to Gov. Rick Scott "to have to spend my time and the State Board (of Education's) time, as things continue to trickle out, defending myself." He called the allegations "politically motivated." He said the decision to step down was his and that both Scott and former Gov. Jeb Bush had urged him to remain on the job. [emphasis mine]

The problem with Bennett's screed is that the facts are not in dispute. He gamed the system to change the grade for a school that did not perform well on the state's Algebra test; even his staff said so. That school was founded by Christel DeHaan, a well-known contributor to Republican politicians, including Bennett himself. He claims he didn't act unethically, that he would never do such a thing - but his actions and his words are there for all to see.

Are the allegations against Bennett "politically motivated"? Maybe, but so what? He did what he did, and he got caught. It's not "malicious" to make a connection between DeHaan's support and his scrambling to change the grade, any more than it's "unfounded" to point out that Bennett's wife, Tina, now works at the for-profit corporation he chose to run some of Indianapolis's schools.

A personal attack? Yeah, OK; I wouldn't use the word "attack," but it's certainly personal. But it's also relevant; it's warranted; it matters. Bennett may now be coming to the good Lord about making the education debate about policy instead of personality (watch towards the end of the video, if you can take it), but that doesn't make the questions about his personal integrity - and how that reflects on his policies - any less germane.

The default position of the "reform" movement is that teachers and their unions are not to be trusted; all reformy policies flow from this axiom. Well, live by questioning motivations, die by questioning motivations. If you spend your day impugning the motives of teachers and their unions, don't be surprised when karma comes back around and bites you in the butt.

From one guy who impugns the motives of teachers and their unions...

...to another.

More "Teachers Get Summers Off" Nonsense

It's one of my favorite reformy memes: "Teachers get summers off!" Today's version comes to us via Matt Yglesias:

There are few more cherished nostrums in American life than the importance of equal opportunities. Unfortunately, one of them is the importance of summer vacation. It's a cheap way of doing something nice for teachers, but summer vacation is a disaster for poor children and their parents, creating massive avoidable inequities in life outcomes and seriously undereducating the population. [emphasis mine]

The frustrating thing here is that a lot of Yglesias's column makes sense. There is no doubt that poor children suffer in comparison to wealthier children in their learning outcomes due to variations in their summer experiences (a great argument, by the way, for not using test-based teacher evaluations, since we have no clue how students with varying summer activities are distributed across teachers). I think we need to be careful about how we develop summer programs, and we're going to have a hard time addressing whether such programs should be mandatory, especially for more affluent families and communities that already have what they feel are appropriate levels of summer activities.

(Also, as the father of two teenagers: I'm not sure I want them in school during the summer rather than having work experiences. But that's a big subject for another time...)

All this said, I think Yglesias is right to broach the subject as a matter of inequity. And I'll give him credit for this:

The contrast between America's rhetorical obsession with the bad educational outcomes of poor children and its blasé attitude toward summer vacation is striking. Conservatives have spent years pounding the point that a lack of money is not the problem in American public education. While it's true that there's much more to quality schools than money, the existence of summer vacation is a huge barrier to equal opportunity, and the barrier to year-round schooling is clearly financial. You'd need to install air conditioners, and you'd have to pay utility bills. You'd need to pay teachers and school staff more. But the gains would be obvious.

OK, good: unlike Chris Christie, Yglesias is willing to admit that teachers don't get paid during the summer. But if that's true, how is imposing a two-month, unpaid furlough every year "doing something nice for teachers"?

Yglesias and Christie both imply that teachers relish making a plan to get through two unpaid months every year; that somehow this is a perk of the job. My personal experience is quite the opposite: the days between June 30 and September 15 - the last and first paychecks of the school year - are hardly a gift. Most teachers I know do one of two things: work at a part-time or seasonal job (which usually pays even less than teaching), or provide care full-time to their own children, who are also off during the summer. And that doesn't include the work all teachers do between June and September to get ready for their next year at school, engage in professional development, or pursue advanced degrees.

The research about teachers and non-school jobs is spotty at best. According to NCES, in 2008 about 17% of teachers worked outside of school during the summer; another 21% worked in their schools, but we don't know what the overlap between the two figures is (and we don't have a good estimate of how much teacher income in the summer is "off the books"). We also don't know how many teachers were taking care of their own children, which I would certainly argue is full-time work. In addition, these figures come from before the recession; more recent reporting puts the second job rate for teachers at one-in-five, although informal reporting goes as high as one-in-three or even one-in-two.

But none of this really addresses the implication both Yglesias and Christie make: that teachers view having their summers off in exchange for not being paid as a perk. I searched around a bit on the usual academic databases trying to find some research about teacher attitudes toward summer break; at first glance, I couldn't find anything. The famous MetLife surveys don't broach the subject. So how can anyone say that unpaid summer furloughs are a perk when we haven't even asked teachers whether they see it that way?

Given how many teachers work in summer programs at their own schools, it's not too much of a stretch to think that, at a minimum, a healthy portion of the teaching corps would be glad to have a longer school year - provided they were paid for it, and that they would be guaranteed decent working conditions, including air-conditioned rooms. And I strongly suspect, given the large number of women in the profession, that even more teachers would agree to working a longer year if they knew their own kids were going to be in school as well.

So let's stop implying that teacher attitudes are the primary impediment that keeps us from extending the school year. And let's stop saying that an unpaid summer break is a perk; it's reasonable to assume that, for at least a good fraction of the teaching corps, summers off is more trouble than it's worth.