We'll have this recession thing fixed in no time!

The day after I stood cheering with a million and a half people standing in the Mall at Obama's inauguration, I walked to Capitol Hill to visit an old friend, a staff person for a Congressional committee.  "What do you think of Obama's prospects?" I asked.

"I think he's got a lot going for him," the fellow replied, "but his economic team -- Geithner, Bernanke, and Summers -- is very bad news.  They're full of the worst kind of advice for getting the country out of the recession." 

And so it was and so it continues.  At the beginning of his presidency I wondered why Obama's inner circle did not include the likes of Robert Reich or Joseph Stiglitz.  The answer is obvious.  Their advice would have questioned plain vanilla neo-liberalism (aka free market conservatism) that the administration has followed so slavishly, right to the point of "double dip," lost decade or worse.

Here are some of Stiglitz's latest thoughts on our predicament.

"Throughout the crisis – and before it – Keynesian economists provided a coherent interpretation of events. Pre-crisis, America, and to a large extent the world economy, was sustained by a bubble. The breaking of the bubble has left a legacy of excess leverage and real estate. Consumption will therefore remain weak and austerity on both sides of the Atlantic now ensures the state will not fill the void. Given this, it is not surprising that companies are unwilling to invest – even those that can get access to capital.  
....
When the recession began there were many wise words about having learnt the lessons of both the Great Depression and Japan’s long malaise. Now we know we didn’t learn a thing. Our stimulus was too weak, too short and not well designed. The banks weren’t forced to return to lending. Our leaders tried papering over the economy’s weaknesses – perhaps out of fear that if we were honest about them, already fragile confidence would erode. But that was a gamble we have now lost. Now the scale of the problem is apparent, a new confidence has emerged: confidence that matters will get worse, whatever action we take. A long malaise now seems like the optimistic scenario."

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I'm not an economist or presidential adviser.  But I do talk with lots of college students and parents who still expect their will be good, high paying jobs at the end of the pipeline, especially the STEM pipeline: Science, Technology, Engineering and Math -- the golden pathway to ...?

What should I tell them now?

Anonymous hacks Syrian Ministry of Defense with an uplifting message

"To the Syrian people: The world stands with you against the brutal regime of Bashar Al-Assad. Know that time and history are on your side - tyrants use violence because they have nothing else, and the more violent they are, the more fragile they become. We salute your determination to be non-violent in the face of the regime's brutality, and admire your willingness to pursue justice, not mere revenge. All tyrants will fall, and thanks to your bravery Bashar Al-Assad is next.
To the Syrian military: You are responsible for protecting the Syrian people, and anyone who orders you to kill women, children, and the elderly deserves to be tried for treason. No outside enemy could do as much damage to Syria as Bashar Al-Assad has done. Defend your country - rise up against the regime! - Anonymous."

This news comes from what is (to me) the most interesting web site of the year: THN -- The Hacker News.   But I'm slow picking up on these things.

No Fraud Left Behind -- you say you like standardized testing?

At the top of a growing list of dysfunctional institutions in America would certainly be our public schools.  Among the the most recent and most destructive "reforms" of education -- right up their with the oil & lube coupon/voucher approach -- is the standardized testing regime foisted upon the schools by the widely praised but wrong-headed "No Child Left Behind" law of the George W. Bush years.  Today's headlines reveal what has long been obvious to thoughtful observers: No Child Left Behind forces a set of methods and perverse incentives upon teachers and administrators.  Evidently, the schools in Atlanta, Georgia led the way in revising students' reported test scores to match the program's ambition goals, a way to keep federal cash flowing in.  According Alan Schwarz's story in the NY Times:

"A 413-page report by special investigators for the Georgia governor’s office that was released to the public on July 5 recounted in stunning detail how elementary- and middle-school teachers and administrators throughout the Atlanta public school system manipulated students’ answers on the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test, Georgia’s method of gauging student achievement and complying with the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

The most egregious cheating included principals overseeing social gatherings in which answers were erased and corrected. At Toomer, in the residential Kirkwood neighborhood east of downtown, the report claimed that some teachers either told students the answers or suggested them with voice inflection during testing.

The scandal has reignited the larger national debate over the reliance on test results to evaluate educators and the pressure that such emphasis can breed among superintendents and principals. Teacher cheating knows no borders, as developing situations in Philadelphia, Washington and other cities indicate, but Atlanta, as the most thoroughly investigated example, has become symbolic of it."

The best diagnosis I've heard of the fundamental problem in today's forlorn efforts to improve education through standardized testing came from Diane E. Levin, professor of early childhood learning at Wheelock College in Boston.

"The basic premise of No Child Left Behind can be stated very simply," she observed during a conference in New Orleans three years ago.  "People say: When the teachers did their job, the children we able to learn.  Then the teachers stopped doing their job and the children stopped learning.  When we force teachers to do their job, then the children will start learning again." 

"The hammer used to apply the force," she continued, "is standardize testing used as a way to allocate educational funding."

Levine argued further that the real problems in the schools have to do with much larger, untreated ills in American society -- poverty, unemployment, urban decay, and the chaos in the social relationships that many children must contend with everyday.  Placing the blame on teachers and applying the screws to them merely exacerbates the trouble.

The scandals in Atlanta and elsewhere show the consequences of  ill-begotten efforts to put America's schools on track for "excellence." Alas, Obama's modest revision of the Bush program merely tweaks the system of rewards and punishments and leaves the underlying maladies untouched.

In educational systems that have strong integrity, public support and long term success -- Finland's schools, for example -- the basic approach is: 1. Hire some of the most talented people in society as teachers and pay them well for the work they do. 2.  Working closely with parents, pay careful attention to what each individual child needs.  Of course, this requires a society with a good deal of social solidarity and concern for the well-being of all its members. 

Does this sound like today's America?  Grab your eraser!