In the early 20th century, the conservative temperance movement popularized the belief that alcohol was the major cause of most personal and social problems and prohibition was seen as the solution to the nation’s poverty, crime, violence, and other ills.
This is similar to the the NCLB Act, which is also seen as a solution to the nation’s poverty, crime, violence, and other ills through forced improvements in education.
Upon ratification of the 18th Amendment (Prohibition – 1919 to 1933), the famous evangelist Billy Sunday said, “The slums will soon be only a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and corncribs.
Some towns even sold their jails.
The result of the 18th Amendment led to increased crime and violence due to civil disobedience. There was an increase in small portable illegal stills throughout the country. California grape growers increased their area of cultivation about 700% during the first five years of prohibition. Organized smuggling of alcohol from Canada and elsewhere quickly developed. There was also the notorious and ever present organized bootlegging often resulting in violence. This scourge led to massive and widespread corruption of politicians and law enforcement agencies and the widespread corruption of public officials became a national scandal.
After public support for the 18th Amendment eroded dramatically, Prohibition was repealed, as we are seeing with the NCLB Act.
Another Mr. Morally Correct
The end of slavery in the United States is another example of civil disobedience when abolitionists helped slaves escape from the southern states through the underground railroad at a time when the law said northerners had to return run-away slaves to their owners. This civil disobedience eventually led to the Civil War (1861 – 1865).
Individuals such as Mr. Morally Correct (quoted in Part 1) are conservative idealists supporting easy solutions to complex challenges similar to the temperance movement that led to the 18th Amendment and Prohibition. These misguided people believe that the public schools in America have failed and merit pay or vouchers will overcome all challenges education in America faces leading to a reduction in poverty, crime, violence and other ills.
Mr. Morally Correct and those that believe as he does are wrong just as the temperance movement was wrong in 1919, and without “nonviolent civil disobedience”, the NCLB Act would not be facing close scrutiny and loss of support from the American public.
However, those that are involved in civil disobedience when it comes to the NCLB Act should be aware that they might be punished. Many who violated the 18th Amendment during the fourteen years it was a law during Prohibition went to jail and were condemned by individuals such as Mr. Morally Correct.
In fact, I believe that Mr. Morally Correct will reject everything I have written in this series. After all, he probably is blind, deaf and mute when it comes to the truth just as the temperance movement was.
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).
His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves
Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”
To understand one of the most difficult challenges American public school teachers face, it is time to examine the Hispanic/Latino culture, one of largest student subgroups in America
In fact, Hispanic/Latino students as a subgroup often do not achieve the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) benchmarks and there is a reason why this happens.
According to American Renaissance.com, Only 33 percent of citizens of Hispanic/Latino origin consider themselves “Americans” first. The rest consider themselves either “Hispanic/Latino” or their former nationality first.
The host of this Blog taught in California public schools (for thirty years – 1975 to 2005) with large Hispanic/Latino student populations and often heard Mexican students complain about having to learn English since they weren’t Americans and did not plan to stay—many came with their families to make money and not to attend school. Those schools also had White, Asian and African-American/Black students attending the same classes.
It is obvious that two-thirds of these Hispanic/Latino students bring their attitudes of education, cultural beliefs and biases with them when they enter the United States.
American Renaissance says, “Hispanics drop out of high school in the United States at (more than) three times the white rate and twice the black rate. Even third-generation Hispanics drop out of school at higher rates than blacks and are less likely to be college graduates. From 1992 to 2003, Hispanic illiteracy in English rose from 35 percent to 44 percent. The average Hispanic 12th-grader reads and does math at the level of the average White 8th-grader.”
In California for 2010, 41.7% of Hispanic/Latino students achieved the NCLB benchmarks in the English Language while 46.7% made the benchmark for Mathematics. There were 2,385,282 Hispanic/Latino students enrolled in the public schools, which means 994,662 met the NCLB benchmark for English Language and 1,113,927 met the benchmark for Mathematics, but according to Mr. Morally Correct, teachers should quit their jobs because they are frauds and thieves if they cash their monthly checks since this subgroup did not meet the NCLB benchmark.
Unsupervised children are at increased risk for violence, drug abuse, and sexual activity.
Since this subgroup did not meet the benchmark set by California, many schools in the state are considered failures by the NCLB Act and the teachers/educators may be punished when 2014 arrives by possibly losing their jobs and/or having their schools closed. The students may then be bused to other schools that made the benchmarks as if the teachers are the reason one school succeeds and another one fails.
It doesn’t matter that the failing schools may have met the benchmarks for the White and Asian subgroups attending the same classes with Hispanics/Latinos. All it takes is one subgroup not achieving the benchmark to be considered a failure.
Since most of the Hispanic/Latino students in California come from Mexico, it helps to understand a little of the culture that gave birth to and raises these children that drop out of US schools more than three times the rate of the White race and two times that of the African-American/Black race.
The results of the 2009 PISA reading literacy test for students age 15 in Mexico reveals that only one percent (1%) earned a 5, which is the highest possible score, while 28% scored a one, the lowest possible score. The CIA Factbook says only 86.1% of the population of Mexico age 15 and over can read and write.
In Mexico, most young children attend primary school but only 62 percent reach secondary school. At secondary level, about half drop out, which means 31% of students that started school at age six will finish high school, according to non-governmental organization Mexicanos Primero (Mexicans First). Source: Reuters
The dropout rate in Mexico’s schools is almost 70% compared to 8.1% in the United States.
However, in the United States, the Hispanic/Latino drop our rate is 17.6%, which is four times better than Mexico’s drop our rate. This evidence suggests that America’s public school teachers are doing an incredible job with the Hispanic/Latino subgroup even if it is not making its NCLB benchmark.
According to a Pew Hispanic Center report, in 2005, 56% of illegal immigrants were from Mexico; 22% were from other Latin American countries, primarily from Central America; 13% were from Asia; 6% were from Europe and Canada; and 3% were from Africa and the rest of the world.
In addition, about 3.5 million of those illegal immigrant students were from Mexico or Central America and almost a million were in California’s public schools, and there is nothing the public schools can do about this situation because in 1982, the US Supreme Court ruled that states and school districts cannot deny education to illegal alien children residing here.
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).
His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves
Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”
Now that we have dealt with Finland and China’s education systems, ethnic/racial and cultural differences compared to the United States, it is time to look at Singapore, which is almost the polar opposite of the United States except for English as the national language.
Unlike China (95% Han Chinese) and Finland (more than 95% Caucasian), Singapore is 74.2% Chinese, 13.2% Malay and 9.2% of Indian descent and about 40% of the population is foreigners. The total population is 5.1 million — 2.9 million were born in Singapore while the rest are foreign-born.
However there is a big difference between the US and Singapore. The US is 64.6% White/Caucasian, 15.1% Hispanic/Latino, 12.85% African-American/Black, 4.43% Asian, etc.
The largest difference between the education systems of Singapore and the United States is that America is influenced by “memes” and/or popular trends, which is a pervasive idea within a given culture. The idea replicates itself (sort of like a virus) via cultural means and on the Internet mostly spreads through web sites, emails, blogs, forums, videos, and other channels. The goal of the meme is to change the thought patterns of the populace. Source: Google
In the United States, those “memes” or trends have led to boosting self-esteem among children, which includes not shaming students; making sure children have lots of fun time, and avoiding meritocracy while promoting students regardless of academic achievement. There is also a popular dislike of corporal punishment as cruel.
However, in Singapore, ‘memes’ or popular trends do not have a similar impact as they do in the US.
In Singapore, Meritocracy is a basic political ideology and a fundamental principle in the education system, which aims to identify and groom bright young students for positions of leadership. The system places a great emphasis on academic performance in grading students and granting their admission to special programmes and universities.
As for discipline in Singapore’s schools, corporal punishment is legal (for male students only), and fully encouraged by the government in order to maintain strict discipline.
Canings in schools may be classified in three areas. The first is a private caning where the boy is caned in the principal’s office; class caning where the boy is caned in front of his class, and public caning where the boy is caned on stage during assembly in front of the whole school population, to serve as a warning to potential offenders as well as to shame the student. It is usually reserved for serious offences committed like fighting, smoking, and vandalism.
School caning is a solemn and formal ceremony. Before the caning, the Discipline Master usually explains the student’s offence to the audience.
In addition, in Singapore, “any child who is unable to attend any national primary school due to any physical or intellectual disability” is exempted from compulsory education. Singapore’s public schools do not provide special education for persons with disabilities.
Caning was once an English tradition. After the British Empire made caning illegal, they lost the empire.
Education in Singapore is managed by the Ministry of Education, which controls the development and administration of state schools, but also has an advisory and supervisory role in respect to private schools.
It is also a criminal offence for parents to fail to enroll their children in school and ensure their regular attendance. Imagine what would happen if this were a criminal offense for parents in the United States.
Due to Singapore’s cultural beliefs and the structure of its educational system, it ranked fifth in reading (The US was 17th) on the 2009 PISA test, second for math (the US was 31st) and fourth for science (the US was 23rd – the OECD average). Source: moe.gov
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).
His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves
Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”
MYTH: “The United States Used to Have the Worlds Smartest Schoolchildren.”
ANSWER: Ben Wildavsky says, “No, it didn’t. Even at the height of U.S. geopolitical dominance and economic strength, American students were never anywhere near the head of the class … the results from the first major international math test came out in 1967 … Japan took first place out of 12 countries, while the United States finished near the bottom …
“If American’s ahistorical [unconcerned with or unrelated to history or to historical development or to tradition] sense of their global decline prompts educators to come up with innovative new ideas, that’s all to the good. But don’t expect any of them to bring the country back to its educational golden age—there wasn’t one.”
MYTH: “Chinese Students Are Eating America’s Lunch.”
Wildavsky’s ANSWER: “Only Partly True … China’s educational prowess is real. Tiger moms (such as Amy Chua, who wrote Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother) are no myth — Chinese students focus intensely on their schoolwork, with strong family support (mostly missing in the U.S.), but these results don’t necessarily provide compelling evidence of U.S. inferiority.”
“Wildavsky then says that many of the students in rural China outside Shanghai (the PISA international test was conducted only in Shanghai) are poorer and less educated than ‘China’s’ coastal cities …
Wildavsky says, “(American) alarmist comparisons with other countries, whose challenges are quite different from those of the United States, don’t help.
“Americans should be less worried about how their own kids compare with kids in Helsinki (Finland) than how students in the Bronx measure up to their peers in Westchester Country.”
MYTH: “The U.S. No Longer Attracts the Best and the Brightest”
ANSWER: “WRONG.”
While Wildavsky mentions that the U.S. should be concerned about the future, the U.S. college education system was (and still is) second to none since the United States has long been the world’s largest magnet for international students.
In fact, he says there are more foreign students in the United States today than there were a decade ago — 149,999 more in 2008 than in 2000.
For international graduate study, Wildavsky says, American universities are a particularly powerful draw in fields that may directly affect the future competitiveness of a country’s economy: science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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The discover what being a member of the “educated elite” means we must consider a combination of income and education. Before doing this, we should understand the definition of “elite”—
1. a group or class of persons or a member of such a group or class, enjoying superior intellectual, social, or economic status
2. the most powerful, rich, gifted, or educated members of a group, community, etc
3. a group or class of persons enjoying superior intellectual, social, or economic status
There is no way that students in the Part 1 video, that have not completed college or might never graduate, belong to the “educated elite”.
If you click on this link at Wikipedia, you will discover that the “educated elite” are those that graduated from college with at least a BA and are earning at or above the medium for their educational level.
The higher the earnings linked to education, the higher the elite status. The median household income in the US is $45,016 annually while households with less than a 9th grade education earn less than $19,000 compared to the median income of a Bachelor’s degree at $68,728 climbing to $100,000 annually for a household income from Professional degrees, which represents the real “educated elite”.
Since we have no way of knowing that any of those people on that video filmed at CSU Fresno (in Part 1) belong to the real “educated elite”, it is wrong to infer colleges are not doing their job.
At first I thought I wouldn’t have signed the ban. Now that I’ve had a few hours to think, I changed my mind and would sign knowing that due to the Constitution and the guarantee of free speech in America that Limbaugh and Beck would not be banned as they might be in Cuba, the USSR or China.
The reason I’d sign is a way to protest how these two and others like them have taken advantage of free speech in the US to twist the facts to deceive the uneducated or the functional illiterate. which is a much larger number than the “educated elite”.
Functional illiteracy in the United States is growing at a rate of over 2 million new inductees per year into its ranks… Statistics show that functional illiterates in this country:
Constitute 70% of the prisoners in state and federal prisons
That 85% of juvenile offenders are classified as functionally or marginally illiterate
That 43% of those with the lowest literacy skills live in poverty
Over 42 million American adults can’t read
Another 50 million read at fourth or fifth grade levels
The total number of functionally illiterate adults increases by approximately 2.25 million persons every single year
My “old” conservative friend inferred that the people signing that ban we see in the Part 1 video were examples of America’s “educated elite”. Really? That’s quite a stretch after considering all the facts. One fact for sure, although Rush Limbaugh earns much more than most of the educated elite, he doesn’t belong to that group since he never graduated from college.
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).
His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves
Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”
An “old” friend, a libertarian, evangelical conservative that may agree with what the Sovereign Citizen movement preaches ( Sixty Minutes on May 15, 2011 ), sent me two links disparaging college education failing to educate good citizens.
I did not agree with the evidence he submitted.
The video link he sent was of college students claiming to support freedom of speech but wanting to ban conservative talk-show hosts Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck from both radio & TV (the video was filmed at CSU Fresno).
How do we define the term “educated elite”?
Is being a student at a college or university enough to be considered among the “educated elite”?
I don’t think so, since many students that start college don’t finish.
Only a “fool” would call a college student that may fail all or most of his or her classes then drops out of college a member of the “educated elite”. Attending college doesn’t automatically make someone a member of the “educated elite”. You have to graduate first and get a job that pays well, which I will talk about in more detail in Part 2.
How many students graduate from college and have a chance to join the “educated elite”. Remember, graduating isn’t enough to achieve the status of “educated elite”.
“At public colleges and universities only 29.0% of students graduate in the traditional four-year time frame.
“Of course, the timeframe most used to discuss graduation rates is the six-year window. This timeframe appears to be used because here graduation rates pick up substantially. At public schools the percentage of students that graduate within six years nearly doubles to 54.7%.
“One might think those more expensive private, non-profit schools would have significantly better numbers. They do in fact have better numbers but given their overall selectivity the rates continue to be extremely disappointing.
“Over the four-year timeframe, we see that private schools graduate 50.4% of their students, a number that nearly mirrors the six-years of public institutions.” Source: Open Education.net
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).
His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves
Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”
Rolling Stone reported that all across America, Wall Street is grabbing money meant for public workers. The legal theft of public pensions started in Road Island in 2011 as a test case. “In state after state, politicians are following the Rhode Island playbook, using scare tactics and lavishly funded PR campaigns to cast teachers, firefighters and cops – not bankers – as the budget-devouring boogeymen responsible for the mounting fiscal problems of America’s states and cities.”
Fortune Magazine in addition to In These Times, and KQED also reported on this legalized fraud being supported by corrupt elected representatives from the state level all the way to the White House.
In fact, during my full-time university days on the GI Bill [1968 – 1973] before I graduated with a BA in journalism, I learned how easy it was for the media to make mistakes—sometimes deliberately—while practicing what is known as Yellow/Hate journalism to boost profits.
And Yellow/Hate Journalism [based upon sensationalism and crude exaggerations] is what the Associated Press [AP] did when it ran Public retirement ages come under greater scrutiny by Don Thompson on December 14, 2011.
For instance, how would you feel if you read, “Patrick Godwin spends his retirement days running a horse farm east of Sacramento, Calif. with his daughter? His departure from the workaday world [he worked thirty-six years in public education and was the superintendent of one of California’s 1,600 school districts] is likely to be long and relatively free of financial concerns, after he retired last July at age 59 with a pension paying $174,308 a year for the rest of his life.”
That previous quote was in the second paragraph of Thompson’s AP news piece, and it is extremely misleading because of what it doesn’t say.
What the AP piece doesn’t tell us is that in 2010 the average member-only benefit for retired public school educators in California was $4,256 a month before taxes [less than a third of what Godwin earned in retirement] and that is only 16% of educators that retired in 2010 who worked as long as Patrick Godwin did. The median years of service was 26.6, and if you were one of the educators that retired after 26.6 years of public service [the median] and was only 55 years old [the earliest you may retire], using the CalSTRS retirement calculator, that person earned about $2,130 a month before taxes—much less than the $14,525.66 that Godwin earns each month.
I calculated once that if a public school teacher in California taught for 42 years or more, his annual retirement income would equal what he earned the last year he worked.
But—and this is a very large BUT that we never hear about—in public education, less than 4% retire with full pay. In fact, 9% retired in 2010 with 10-15 years of service in public education, 11% with 14-20 years, 15% with 20-25 years, 12% with 25-30 years, 23% with 30-35 years, and 16% with 35-40 years. — CalSTRS
The reason why AP ran with Patrick Godwin’s retirement income as an example is called sensationalism designed to cause an emotional response (hate) so people who don’t know all the facts will talk about it. Word of mouth attracts readers and an audience and that stirs the hate.
In addition, Godwin was a school district superintendent at the top of the public education pay scale, which represents about 0.2% of the total number of retired educators in California. That means 99.8% of public educators in California do not earn as much as Godwin did in retirement.
The result is that many readers might be fooled to think that most public educators in California will retire with Patrick Godwin’s annual retirement income. However, that is far from the truth since most will not come close, but Thompson’s biased and misleading piece didn’t say that
The reason AP distorted the facts about teacher retirement plans as much as they did is because of audience share, which determines how much a media source [TV, newspapers, hate talk shows, magazines, Blogs, etc] may charge to advertisers, and balancing the news and telling the truth often does not achieve this goal, because profits are the foundation of the private sector media.
It’s a simple formula: if you don’t make a profit you go out of business and everyone working for you loses his or her job so almost everyone plays the same Yellow/Hate Journalism game, and then there is the politics of money.
To understand why Thompson wrote such a misleading news piece, it helps to understand the trend away from private-sector pensions that were once similar to current public sector-pensions and the answers are in the numbers.
Due to the politics of money, beginning early in the 1980s, during the Reagan era, there was a rapid shift away from private sector employer-based defined benefit pension plans to employee-controlled personal retirement accounts.
teacher pensions explained
Under President Reagan [1981 – 1989] this trend in the private sector was helped along by the Republican Party that controlled the Senate from 1981 to 1987 giving President Reagan the leverage he needed to shift private sector pension money to the stock market and other risky investments—another part of the Reagan plan besides adding two trillion dollars to the national debt by cutting taxes on the wealthy; raising them on the working class by cutting deductions and spending more.
And since 1982 and Ronald Reagan’s infamous trickle down economic reform, profit expectations of American corporations have skyrocketed, and right behind have been the costs of health care, the cost of housing, the cost of military programs, the cost of banking, and the cost of many other products and services.” – The Agonist
In 1980, approximately 92 percent of private retirement saving contributions went to employer-based plans; 64 percent of these contributions were to defined benefit pension plans [similar to the public pension plans of today].
Then by 1999, [thanks to President Reagan and the Republican majority in the Senate while he was president] about 88 percent of private sector contributions were switched to defined contribution plans, the vast majority of personal retirement accounts being set up as 401(k)s and Individual Retirement Accounts (IRA), and that ended in disaster.
I suggest your either Google the failure of 401 (K) or read what PBS.org said, “Most people don’t know that the 401(k) products are toxic and their behavior toward a 401(k) product is toxic because no one has been responsible for providing a safe product.
“The Congress has not put itself [out] as a responsible actor. Employers were told, “It’s up to your employees to choose,” and the banking industry and the mutual fund industry said, “Trust us.”
If you are a regular fan of hate media and trust no other source, you will probably dismiss anything from PBS. But what about CNBC.com, Forbes.com, NBC News.com, USA Today, or even the Los Angeles Times. Will you trust one of those sources over your favorite hate radio show? If not, then I suggest you read this from Mother Jones.com to discover who is behind the lies designed to fool and why.
Back to the public sector retirement plans that did not follow the risky 401 (k) path to retirement. The Public Sector stayed with employer-based defined benefit pension plans such as the one I have through CalSTRS.
It helps that the union membership rate for public sector workers is 36.2 percent and that is substantially higher than the rate for private sector workers at 6.9 percent.
Discover how California is fixing its public pensions
To understand the numbers better and why the media focuses its Yellow/Hate Journalism circus act to attract the biggest hating mob, in November 2011, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that there were 20.4 million public sector employees [2 million work for the federal government—the rest work for the states or local county or city governments] and about 128 million private sector employees.
If you published a newspaper, a magazine, ran a TV news network, hosted a conservative talk show, or wrote a popular conservative Blog, which audience would you focus on to boost advertising rates? As I said, it’s all in the numbers
A, 20.4 million B. 128 million
Another example of how misleading Don Thompson’s AP piece, Public retirement ages come under greater scrutiny, was: “With Americans increasingly likely to live well into their 80s, critics question whether paying lifetime pensions to retirees from age 55 or 60 is financially sustainable. An Associated Press survey earlier this year found the 50 states have a combined $690 billion in unfunded pension liabilities and $418 billion in retiree health care obligations.”
What Thompson also doesn’t mention in his AP piece is that some states managed their pension funds better than others did.
A March 2011 report on the Best and Worst State Funded Pensions by Adam Corey Ross of The Fiscal Times offers a more balanced picture. Ross wrote, “State pension programs across the country have undergone a major transformation, as more and more of them are cutting back the amount of money they set aside for retired workers, gambling that they can meet their obligations through investments instead of savings …”
In fact, Ross lists the best fully-funded state pensions that existed then, which were: New York, Wisconsin, Delaware, North Carolina, Washington, South Dakota, Tennessee, Wyoming, Florida and Georgia. He also lists the worst state pensions where the gamble did not pay off. However, with Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin and Cuomo of New York, the public pension plans for those two states are probably doomed along with the public unions in those states if the voters don’t get rid of them in the next election.
California fell between the two lists, but thanks to recent legislations plans to fill the funding gap in a more sensible way. In addition, nowhere does Ross or Thompson mention that California has two state pension plans—CalPERS and CalSTRS.
As Public Pensions Shift to Risky Wall Street, Local Politicians Rake in Political Cash
The California State Teachers’ Retirement System [CalSTRS], with a portfolio valued at $189.1 billion as of June 30, 2014, is the largest teacher pension fund and second largest public pension fund in the United States. In addition, CalSTRS makes it clear that “it’s important to understand that the risk of facing depleted assets exists approximately 30 years from now versus actually facing insolvency today.”
Due to losses from investments during the 2008 global financial crises, the CalSTRS retirement “fund took an enormous hit to its stock portfolio when the market plunged during the heart of the recession, losing nearly $43 billion—roughly 25 percent of its value—from June 2008 to June 2009.”
However, in June 2014, California’s Governor Brown signed Assembly Bill 1469 to stabilize CalSTRS funding in an effort to bridge the nearly $74 billion funding gap that would keep the fund solvent beyond 30 years. Teachers’ Retirement Board Chair Harry Keiley said, “Educators in California do not receive Social Security for their CalSTRS-covered employment and the benefit they earn from years in the classroom serves as the cornerstone of their retirement income. Today’s actions further strengthen the Governor and Legislature’s commitment to uphold the state’s promise of a secure retirement to teachers.”
The vote in the State Senate was 37 – 0, and in the Assembly was 76 – 1. – legislature.ca.gov
Critics of public pension plans like CalSTRS will claim that the cost of these plans are bankrupting states, but that is false—in fact it is a damn lie. For instance, the current annual budget of California is about $156 billion. The state’s annual contribution to the CalSTRS pension plan is usually about $1.4 billion or 0.89% of the total state budget. With the 30-year plan from AB 1469 to stabilize the funding gap to uphold the state’s promise of a secure retirement to teachers, the state will be paying $1.9 billion annually to CalSTRS (instead of $1.4 billion) or 1.12% of the total annual state budget of California. – ebudget.ca.gov
It’s a fact that misery loves company and when the accountants, carpenters, clerks, plumbers, reporters, salesmen, and secretaries, and many other professions in the private sector, read the Yellow/Hate Journalism in Don Thompson’s AP piece, Public retirement ages come under greater scrutiny, many of these people in the private sector will say, “It isn’t fair. If we have to work longer and suffer, so do they.” In fact, that is already happening. Due to pressure from the private sector, this has led to: “Earlier in New Jersey, part of a legislative deal struck between Democrats and Republicans raised the normal retirement age from 62 to 65,” Thompson wrote.
Is Your Pension Safe? States Struggle With Pricey Challenges
On the other hand, when given a choice, many private sector employees do not save toward retirement other than Social Security. Many do not put money into 401 (k) plans or pay into tax deductible IRAs. Many that own homes take out equity loans to finance vacations, purchase new cars, pay off credit card debts, or go on spending sprees.
The result is that the average family in America cannot afford to retire as early as many public employees that paid into employer-based defined benefit pensions.
For example, total U.S. consumer debt was $2.43 trillion as of May 2011. Average credit card debt per household was $15,799. Average total debt in 2009 (including credit cards, mortgage, home equity, student loans and more) of U.S. households was $54,000. Source: Credit Card.com
As for me, instead of paying into Social Security while I taught, I paid 8% of my gross monthly pay for thirty years into CalSTRS, and the school district where I taught contributed a matching amount of about 8%. That means if I get any Social Security from the jobs I had outside of teaching, it isn’t going to be much.
In fact, to force public educators in California to work more years may cost more than it will save.
When I retired, the school district stopped paying me and saved the tax payers money since most teachers that retire after teaching 30 years or more are replaced by younger teachers that are paid much less.
Keeping older, higher paid teachers working longer will only cost the taxpayer more in the long run since those same teachers that are working longer will end up with a larger monthly pension check since the longer a teacher spends in the classroom, the larger the pension.
I’m impressed when a reporter does their job properly and balances the news instead of feeding the mob that bellies up to the slop-trough of Yellow Journalism, which is based on sensationalism and crude exaggerations.
In his piece, Hall wrote, “From state legislatures to Congress to tea party rallies, a vocal backlash is rising against what are perceived as too-generous retirement benefits for state and local government workers. However, that widespread perception doesn’t match reality.”
According the Hall, “Pension contributions from state and local employers aren’t blowing up budgets.” They amount to just 2.9 – 3.8 percent of state spending, on average.
In addition, Hall says, “Nor are state and local government pension funds broke. They’re underfunded …”
With those facts, we should ask what the real reason is why the far-right hate groups are turning on public-worker sector pension plans.
The answer may be Wall Street, Hedge Funds and US bank private-sector greed, the same risk-taking greed with someone else’s money that caused the 2007-08 global financial crises.
According The Council on State Governments, in 2006 before the crash, the total amount of money held by these federal, state and local public-pension plans was almost $6 trillion dollars, and greed—it seems—has no limits.
If you do not believe me, ask people such as Bernard Madoff [who robbed his victims of $50 billion], Scott Rothstein [$1.2 billion], Tom Peters [$3.7 billion], Allen Stanford [$8 billion], March Dreier [$400 million], Lou Pearlman [$500 million], Michael Kelly [$428 million], the Greater Ministries International Church [$500 million], Scientology minister Reed Slatkin [more than $600 million], and Nicholas Cosmo [$370 million].
Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize winning economist, who said greed was good when he came up with the theory of trickle down economics, must be dancing in hell.
_______________________
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).
Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).
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Over on Diane Ravitch’s Blog, a site to discuss better education for all[highly recommended], I left a comment for one of her posts that mentioned an author’s lecture I attended back in the 1980s. The comment was about a memoir written by the father of a son who was retarded [the father/author’s words not mine]. The son also had learning disabilities. After more than thirty years, all I remembered was the basics and I think the father said his son had an IQ of 80 [I could be wrong. It might have been lower]. I’ve forgotten the name of the author and his memoir. I once had a video of the lecture but loaned it to another teacher who loaned it to another teacher and I never saw the video again.
Anyway, the anonymous person who replied to my comment didn’t think the kid was retarded with an 80 IQ, and it turns out this anonymous commenter was right. He also said 80 wasn’t far from average—also correct.
I attended that lecture more than thirty years ago, and the son did have learning disabilities severe enough to land him in special education classes. The parents had to fight to get him in regular classes. They also unplugged the TV at home and stored it on a shelf in the garage where it sat until both of their children were in college. The TV was replaced with family reading time. The result, the son ended up at Harvard and graduated with a degree in engineering.
The Stanford-Binet Fifth Edition IQ Classification [it’s obvious that the language has been changed to placate critics of IQ tests—check out older versions of IQ tests to see what I mean]:
40-54: Moderately impaired or delayed
55-69: Mildly impaired or delayed
70-79: Borderline impaired or delayed
80-89: Low average
90-109: Average
110-119: High average
120-129: Superior
130-144: Gifted or very advanced
145-160: Very gifted or highly advanced
There’s also the Current Wechsler IQ classification; the Woodcock-Johnson Test of Cognitive Abilities; the Kaufman Adolescent and Adult Intelligence Test, etc.
I don’t want to spend much time on learning disabilities [LD], because I want to focus on the small fire that I seemed to have started when I brought up IQ on Ravitch’s Blog. But LD’s should be mentioned because they may affect children with even high IQ’s. The home environment, lifestyle, health, diet and exercise also play an important role in a child’s ability to learn.
LD’s are a group of varying disorders that have a negative impact on learning. They may affect a child’s [or adults] ability to speak, listen, think, read, write, spell or compute. The most prevalent LD is in the area of reading, known as dyslexia, and as child I had severe dyslexia; so did my older brother, but the education experts didn’t know what dyslexia was in the early 1950s. Instead, my mother was told that I was so retarded I would never learn to read or write. Years later when I took my first IQ test, the results said I had an IQ of 135, and it’s obvious that I overcame the dyslexia and learned to read and write, but my brother didn’t.
It seems that one politically-correct camp in the United States and maybe Europe—because I have no idea where the critics of IQ live—believe we shouldn’t use IQ to measure a child’s intelligence. In fact, this politically correct group wants IQ removed as a way to measure intelligence probably because it might hurt the child self-esteem. In fact, the politically correct self-esteem movement would like to do away with all competition, grades and GPA ranking. They’ve had some success in this area—one of the causes of dumbing down the schools in the United States.
I don’t disagree with evidence from studies that offer theories that even slow learners with lower IQ’s may achieve success in life but it’s arguable that the lower the IQ, the tougher the odds are of a child achieving their dreams as an adult later in life depending on what those dreams are—after all, few end up becoming President of the United States—and for instance: billionaires, millionaires, rocket scientists, super models, Academy Award winning actors, Grammy winners, or win gold medals at the Olympics.
While a high IQ is not a ticket to success and wealth, the evidence suggests that it helps. It’s also arguable that a person with a high IQ who also has high social intelligence (SQ/SI) stands a much better chance at success and a better quality of life than someone with a low IQ and high SQ/SI. Other factors that lead to the success of a child achieving their dreams later as an adult are motivation, discipline, perseverance, the ability to learn from failure, and evidence suggests that writing detailed goals and reading those goals daily also helps. There’s also emotional intelligence that some think is important. (examiner.com)
My biggest sin to the politically correct camp of self-esteem was to dare to mention the difference in average IQ’s between racial groups. The word one commenter used was racism. However, the fact remains that there is a difference in average IQ’s between racial groups.
Princeton.edu says, “The connection between race and intelligence has been a subject of debate in both popular science and academic research since the inception of intelligence testing in the early 20th century, particularly in the United States.” Forgive me if I don’t post that IQ comparison here. If interested, Google it.
Be warned, if you dare to step on this politically correct sacred ground that has been anointed by the holy water of the self-esteem movement, tread carefully.
However, it is arguable that IQ does play an important role in success and it’s not racist to say so. Instead of looking at IQ by race, we may also compare average IQ by country with the highest average IQ found in Asia where the top five are located: Hong Kong #1; South Korea #2; Japan #3; Taiwan #4, and Singapore #5. Those who argue that IQ tests are flawed because they were created by Caucasians in Europe/the United States, take note of the top five.
The United States is ranked #19 [tied with Hungry, Poland, Spain, Austria, Denmark, France, Mongolia, and Norway] with an average IQ of 98 and Finland is #25 with an average IQ of 97.
The ten countries with the lowest average IQ are all in Africa. Equatorial Guinea is the lowest with an average of 59. (Statistic Brain.com and Nation Master.com)
Using IQ as an indication of the odds of success may be measured from other comparisons besides race.
First—Let’s look at income (World Top Incomes Database; Real U.S. 2010 dollars):
Psychology Today.com reports, The average IQ of individuals in the top 1% who earned $857,477 was 137. The next level was the top .1% with an average income of $3,693,111 and an average IQ of 149. Then we have the top .01% earning on average $16,267,243 with an average IQ of 160.
The other 99 percent with an annual income range of $0 to $335,869 had IQ’s—on average—that ranged from 60 to 136.
Second—a few examples of the average IQ of college majors:
The average IQ of a Physics and Astronomy major was 133; Mathematics Sciences 130; Engineering 126; Chemistry 124; Humanities & Arts 120; Agriculture 115; Health and Medical Sciences 111; Education 110, and Social Work 103. For the complete list, I suggest you click on Statistics Brain.com.
Third—Number of billionaires by continent in US dollars:
Africa has 13 (population of 995 million—1 for every 76.5 million people)
Asia 412 (4.14 billion—1 for every 10.048 million)
Europe 390 (739 million—1 for every 1.89 million)
North America 486 (529 million—1 for every 1.088 million)
South America 51 (386 million—1 for every 7.56 million)
Four— Poverty and low IQ:
Ascd.org says, “The effect of environment on the IQ of young children can be significant, particularly for children living in poverty. As the influence of poverty decreases, the importance of environmental conditions as a limiting factor on intelligence also decreases. By addressing the environmental issues created by poverty, it may be possible to weaken the link between low socioeconomic status and poor student performance on IQ (and other) tests.”
“A childhood spent in poverty often sets the stage for a lifetime of setbacks. Secure attachments and stable environments, so vitally important to the social and emotional development of young children, are often denied to our neediest kids. These children experience more stress due to loneliness, aggression, isolation, and deviance in their peer relationships, and they are more likely to describe feeling deprived, embarrassed, picked on, or bullied. As a result, they more often face future struggles in marital and other relationships.” (Ascd.org says)
Psycnet.apa.org says, “It is posited that low IQ children may be likely to engage in delinquent behavior because their poor verbal abilities limit their opportunities to obtain rewards in the school environment.”
Leading from the Sandbox.com says, “Signs of poor EQ include the inability to listen to others, defensiveness, unawareness of how we come across, lack of sensitivity to others’ feelings, an inability to deal constructively with conflict, a drive to control others, narcissism, and the need to have our own way.”
Conclusion: The evidence suggests that average to high IQ—when a child lives in a middle income or higher environment with stable parents—does have a vital role to play in later success, but IQ by itself isn’t enough to predict outcomes.
It is also possible, but rare, for a child to escape poverty as an adult. The odds are also against children with IQ’s lower than average.
In the end—no matter the IQ; SQ; EQ or LDs—parent involvement is the key that overcomes almost all obstacles to a child’s education. A key study in the UK says:” Overall, research has consistently shown that parental involvement in children’s education does make a positive difference to pupils’ achievement.” (nationalarchives.gov.uk)
Based on 49 studies, It is noted that the bulk of the research finds that a positive learning environment at home has a powerful impact on student achievement. The second approach is illustrated by Rhoda Becher’s extensive review of parent education literature, which finds numerous studies documenting effects of school-based programs that train low-income parents to work with their children. Effects include significantly improved language skills, test performance, and school behavior, as well as important effects on the general educational process. The third approach is illustrated by studies of community involvement which suggest that the degree of parent and community interest in high quality education is the critical factor in the impact of the school environment on the achievement and educational aspirations of students. (eric.ed.gov)
When the parents are not part of the learning process; are dysfunctional and/or abusive, the odds are against success no matter what teachers do in the classroom.
_______________________
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.
His latest novel is the award winning Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.
And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to kill Americans.
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Crazy Normal - the Classroom Exposé 