Aug 1, 2008
Posted | 1 comment
If your message fails, blame the medium - or otherwise go for semantics over substance.
That’s a fair charge for Jay Mathews’ latest WaPo-whine titled “Why I Am A TV Loser.”
You’ll remember that Mr. Mathews debated Two Million Minutes’ Executive Producer Bob Compton about a month ago. And if you’ve forgotten, or missed it the first time around, here’s a recap:
It’s apparently taken Mathews a good six weeks to get up the courage to seethe publicly.
There are two major issues here. The first is about his latest piece; the second is about the global economy/education. I think we’ve got to look at these one at a time.
From Mathews’ opening line, you’d think that he’d been shouted down by Malik Shabazz:
“Don’t ever go on CNBC to debate Bob Compton, one of America’s most energetic prophets of doom, without careful preparation and a willingness to be rude.”
One of the things that initially interested me in Compton’s film was that he wasn’t a “prophet of doom.” He and his associates don’t wear sandwich signs warning that the end is nigh, or that our traffic signs will be in Hindi in 10 years if we don’t shape up. Two Million Minutes is a sensible, realistic look at how we approach education in comparison to India and China. Reality, though, doesn’t get in Mathews’ way:
“I appeared with Compton on Erin Burnett’s show “Street Signs” in early June. He killed me. I thought we would have a scholarly discussion of American public schools. Were they, as Compton argues, losing out to the rising Indian and Chinese schools or were they, as I had written, needing help but unlikely to cause a collapse of the U.S. economy? I got a few words in occasionally, but Compton — whose enthusiasm I applaud, don’t get me wrong — interrupted, sideswiped and left me looking like I was incapable of completing a sentence.”
The tendentious implication that Compton’s contribution wasn’t “scholarly” aside, Mathews appears to have gotten his own television appearance wrong. Mathews was, however, “killed,” partly by his own sputtering ineptitude, partly by Compton’s spirited argument.
And really, Jay, if that interview was the harshest, most rude encounter you’ve had in your 37 years at the Post, you’ve had a Hell of a gentle journalistic career.
99.99%+ of Washington Post readers haven’t - and won’t - see the interview in question. They’ve got to take him at his distorted word. You, dear reader, can watch the video and judge for yourself.
Mathews attempts to re-frame the debate for his unknowing readers. It was Compton’s “enthusiasm,” not evidence; it was his fascist, tour-de-force aggression, not the swift rebuttal of Mathews’ useless arguments. Again, watch and draw your own conclusion.
“That was, of course, exactly what he was supposed to do. It was cable TV, for goodness sake. Discussions there are supposed to be fast and loud. Compton tells me he thought he was being aggressive, not rude. That’s not the way my mother would see it, but I agree with Bob. I just wasn’t ready.”
The debate was your standard splitscreen talking-head matchup with the occasional full shot. But this was CNBC, and Erin Burnett isn’t Jerry Springer [though a love triangle or paternity test would have been that unexpected cherry on top].
Mathews got beat because, as he said so gently about himself, he “wasn’t ready.” And though Mathews’ mother would apparently scowl at the treatment of her little boy, I think mine would’ve found his drubbing a fairly unremarkable result considering the mismatch [my mother tends to value the substance over semantics].
Thankfully, the whining stops:
“I interviewed Compton and responded to his film twice, in a Feb. 11 column and in a piece in the spring issue of the Wilson Quarterly. I confessed I, too, was distressed to see, in his film, Carmel High’s Brittany Brechbuhl watching “Grey’s Anatomy” on television with her friends while they were allegedly doing their math homework.”
Since we’re all being honest here, I should disclose that I’m watching re-runs of “Charmed” as I allegedly write this.
“Many economists argued, I said, that our social, political and economic freedoms, not our education system, make us more productive and creative than other countries. I said Compton, an admittedly mediocre student at James Madison High School in Vienna and Principia College in Elsah, Ill., exemplifies the point. His energy and imagination found the room they needed to prosper in this country which, I said, “gives even B and C students more chances than A students in China and India have.”"
This is the second time, curiously, that Mathews has mentioned Compton’s academic “mediocr[ity]” without referencing Mr. Compton’s Harvard Business School pedigree.
“”I tried to say this on CNBC, too. But Compton cut me off, saying I obviously didn’t know what was going on in Asia because I have never been to India and haven’t visited China (where I was once The Post correspondent) since 1989.”"
This is a terribly important point, and it’s one I held off from writing about the last time I fisked Mathews because I was fairly certain he’d give me another opportunity.
It isn’t always necessary to engage in something or to witness something firsthand in order to know it. If either of those two were requirements for knowledge, we’d have no way to study history, or a host of other disciplines, with any degree of certainty.
I can’t get in Bob’s head, but I assume that he was suggesting that Mathews visit India and China because his information was, in Bob’s assessment, inaccurate. If your information isn’t solid, the most efficient way to acquire better information is to go get it yourself. This is why our most earnest politicians visit Iraq and Afghanistan to meet with our military commanders [and it's also why other politicians posture with these visits].
“Vivek Wadhwa, a high-tech entrepreneur teaching at Duke University, has shared with me some of his research, and his occasional e-mail exchanges with Compton. Wadhwa, like Compton, is a successful businessman with a first-hand grasp of the difficulties American companies have finding engineering talent. He tells both sides, supporting Compton on some points and criticizing him on others.”
Mr. Wadhwa appeared in Two Million Minutes and has written recently about global education. In May, he wrote “US Schools: Not That Bad.” If I could fund it independently, I’d invite Mr. Wadhwa to do a speaking tour in upstate New York where he told taxpayers burdened by ever-rising school taxes [oddly enough, in the face of decreasing enrollments] that they should relax because, after all, their local schools aren’t “that bad.”
BusinessWeek couldn’t get enough of Mr. Wadhwa; they published his piece, “What the US Can Learn From Indian R&D” just this week. Its implications for this debate are clear, but there is one facet directly related to public education: Wadhwa’s latest article sweeps so broadly that it reminds me of those gigantic brooms a custodian uses to clean an entire hallway in one pass.
“What is happening in India and China is that private companies, not public school systems, are doing the training that is producing the technical elite building those economies, Wadhwa said. If U.S. corporate leaders such as Bill Gates, he said, are worried about losing to competing nations, they should do more as executives to train their own workforce. “All they are doing now is to blame our teachers and put the burden on our children,” he said.”
This is partly accurate - private companies in India and China are making up for the public school’s shortcomings [we'll get to the truth about that next time]. It also misses the point; we aren’t just concerned with our economic success, as we may be able to shore that up privately as Wadhwa claims. We have to be concerned with bleeding anywhere from $7k to $25k in per pupil expenditure - a significant factor in local taxes in some areas - and seeing little benefit for students or their communities.
Wadhwa is wrong, though. Some of us blame principals as well.
“I hope I am in better shape if Compton and I have a rematch.”
Doubt it.
“But whatever the outcome, it won’t mean much. I encourage scholars and journalists living China and India to further examine those economies and education systems and give us something more than two-week-visit impressions.”
Touche, Mr. Mathews.
“Personally, I think prosperity in other parts of the world is good news. It means happier people with more choices. It may even mean more freedom and less war. Compton and I agree that would be a good thing.”
I hasten to point out that the German higher education model was excellent; that’s why we modeled our universities after theirs. Despite this, Germany was the aggressor in two World Wars that left about 90 million dead.
If one wasn’t sure why I had to split this up into two posts, there you go - what started as a whine and a moan ended up as a third-rate college admissions essay about how better education will end war.
We’ll handle that other issue - the arguments re: Indian and Chinese businesses and how they cope with the education of their hires - next time.
Jul 31, 2008
Posted | 3 comments
I am an unapologetic member of the National Association of Scholars, an organization that, in its own words:
“… is higher education’s most vigilant watchdog. We stand for intellectual integrity in the curriculum, in the classroom, and across the campus—and we respond when colleges and universities fall short of the mark. We uphold the principle of individual merit and oppose racial, gender, and other group preferences. And we regard the Western intellectual heritage as the indispensable foundation of American higher education.”
The NAS recently announced The Argus Project:
PRINCETON, NJ—The National Association of Scholars has announced the opening of its “Argus project,” an initiative that calls for volunteers to help keep watch over American colleges and universities.
The project is named for the creature in Greek mythology whose body was covered with eyes. “Like Argus, who always had his eyes open, the NAS needs to have a steady, open-eyed watch on colleges around the country,” said Ashley Thorne, NAS director of communications. “To do that, we are asking volunteers to essentially be our eyes on different campuses. We hope to attract thoughtful, attentive people reporting on what they’ve witnessed to be our lookouts over academe.”
And, as Mr. Leef points out on PhiBetaCons, the lefties are seething after InsideHigherEd wrote a piece about the Project.
Relax, kids.
FIRE, the Foundation for Inividual Rights in Education, lauds the initiative - as they should. Professor Dorn didn’t get that thrill up his leg, though:
Twice this month I’ve agreed with National Association of Scholars head Peter Wood, but when NAS organizes what looks like a Horowitzian ideological witchhunt, they’ve lost my sympathy. I’m also at a loss to understand why the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s blog applauded NAS. There’s a pretty large gulf between FIRE’s support of and education around individual rights, on the one hand, and NAS’s engaging in an ideologically one-sided hunt for people to complain about college campuses, on the other.
One can only assume that his post was so short because that glass of cranberry wine in one hand prevented him from typing a full response [sticking a pinky out as you sip makes it even tougher].
The argument that the NAS is a Conservative, Rethuglican advocacy tank is a hollow one. The idea of The Argus Project, as I understand it, is simply observation of our campuses and classrooms and the documentation of abuses on all sides of the political spectrum. This is likely why FIRE supports the Project; after all, FIRE has handled many cases over the years for both liberals and conservatives. Political affilition has little bearing on one’s rights.
Dorn would do well to recognize that vigilance and observation are anything but a “witchhunt” - even if such honesty makes for a dull blog post. We can think of our average police department as “vigilant” without engaging in outright “persecution” of citizens, for example. The distinction between the two is an important one, and it’s a distinction that The Good Professor fails to make. The irony that ideology may have gotten in the way isn’t lost.
I e-mailed The Argus Project several months ago and offered to keep an eye on K-12 education issues that were relevant to higher education.
UPDATE, July 31:
FIRE has explained their position. Hopefully Professor Dorn and others know a little bit more about FIRE and the NAS now.
Jul 30, 2008
Posted | 0 comments
Well, I’m glad we got the FOIL request cleared up. Mr. Jacob of the NYC DoE sent along the data in question about 24 hours after receiving my FOIL e-mail:
Hi Matthew,
Attached are the scale scores by race and ethnicity that you requested.
Andy
Andrew Jacob
Office of Communications and Media Relations
NYC Department of Education
52 Chambers St. | New York, NY 10007
212-374-7840 | [email protected]
Thanks again, Mr. Jacob - and to interested parties, that data is available for download. [And yes, as I type this, I'm wearing my new cape - it's dashing!] Eduwonkette has done some analysis already, too.
Mr. Cantor is a busy guy. So busy, in fact, that he wasn’t able to e-mail me himself or acknowledge the receipt of my FOIL request. Hours after my request - rather than fulfilling that request so the data could be made available, which consisted of hitting ‘reply’ and attaching a 30kb Excel spreadsheet - at 9.49pm he wrote on Eduwonkette’s site:
Hey, Eduwonkette, this is weird and untrue. You know we’ve been giving this out, yet you write:”Sadly, this is what it’s come to in New York City - the Department of Education is denying all of us access to data that rightfully belong in the public domain.”
The data does belong in the public domain, and we haven’t denied anyone access, including you. I find it distasteful that you sell your anonymity as martyrdom.
David Cantor
Press Secretary
NYC Dept of Education
Mr. Cantor, you denied Eduwonkette access and specifically cited her anonymity as justification. Please - less Truth Squad, more truth.
Since you’re so busy, I decided to write a letter of apology for you - all you’ve got to do is sign it.
Dear New Yorkers,
This last Sunday I denied a public information request inappropriately. When one is overcome with a bitter, “them vs. us” attitude on top of a penchant for political game-playing and a disinterest in public communication, surely you understand how these things happen. If not for that charming, good-looking scamp at Education for the Aughts, I’d have never seen the error of my ways.
Thanks to Mr. Tabor’s link to the state-funded Committee on Open Government website, I’ve learned a lot about New York State’s Freedom of Information Laws since Monday’s embarrassment. For example, I initially denied Eduwonkette’s request because she was an anonymous blogger. Now I realize that FOIL statutes are in place for the benefit of the public and its independent media. It hadn’t occurred to me that Eduwonkette, though anonymous, was clearly a representative of the media outlet Education Week, which is justification enough to honor her request. Though providing one’s identity makes the Department of Education feel better about fulfilling information requests in a timely fashion, that information just isn’t necessary for us to follow the law.
I understand as well as anybody - perhaps better than anybody - that New York’s FOIL statutes are laws without teeth. Hell, I can stonewall even the most earnest, legitimate request for 20 or 30 business days, and then giggle with sinister glee when their §89(4)(a) Appeal crosses my desk - all while being in full compliance with the Law! Don’t tell the Committee on Open Government, but here at the NYC Department of Education, FOIL stands for “Freedom of Information? LOLLLLL!”
But I have to warn you, New Yorkers: don’t get too comfortable with this little victory. Unless principled, independent/public media keep on us, we’ll stiff-arm you peons until the cows come home [You "folks" say that upstate, right? I've never been north of Westchester, so just checking].
So, in a word: Sorry. I blew it. I played the gatekeeping game instead of doing my job, and it won’t happen again [unless, of course, New Yorkers let me!].
I do have to thank those of you who were on my case, especially those who pointed out my skill with gameplaying. I’ve been wasting so much time on playing the blog comment game instead of doing my job that I realized I should probably switch careers anyway. I read in the NY Post that Jorge Posada is out for the season - so professional baseball, here I come! See, if I’m a baseball player, I can strike out 70% of the time and New Yorkers still might love me [and if I'm really good at my job, I'll end up meeting Mr. Tabor in Cooperstown!].
Humbly Yours,
[awaiting signature]
UPDATE at 10.20pm, July 30:
Sorry, DC - looks like the Yanks have already crushed your dream.
Jul 28, 2008
Posted | 2 comments
Dear Mr. Cantor,
Please consider this a formal FOIL request for scale scores by race/ethnicity referenced in the following document:
http://www.eduwonk.com/2008/07/from-chris-cerf.html
Hard copies are not necessary; electronic copies of the scores for 2003-2008 will suffice. You can e-mail those to [email protected]. In your comment to Mr. Stern, you suggested that the data were freely available; you should, then, have no trouble fulfilling my request with all deliberate speed - and certainly within the five business day limit stated in our State’s FOIL statute. If the requested records cannot be emailed to me due to their volume, please indicate the actual cost of copying all records onto media convenient for your Office.
I understand the concern you expressed to Eduwonkette, the inimitable - if anonymous - education blogger, regarding the data’s availability. After all, we can’t be sure that Ms. Eduwonkette is an American citizen [and thus a member of the "public"], let alone a New York State resident. You said:
“I’ve thought about it and decided i don’t want to give out information to someone asking anonymously.”
You need not worry about my identity or my citizenship.
And whereas I appreciate such earnest gatekeeping, undoubtedly in the interests of our State’s security and well-being [such data in the hands of our enemies from within or without, or on the desktop of one whose GRE scores have 500 or 600 points on the mean score of your teachers, might yield unpalatable, unpredictable conclusions], I am reminded of a passage in that FOIL statute:
“The legislature therefore declares that government is the public’s business and that the public, individually and collectively and represented by a free press, should have access to the records of government in accordance with the provisions of this article.”
Though your office may keep the gate, you don’t make the rules. Fear not: New York City’s Department of Education would do well to remember that the next time a blogger, or any member of that ‘free press,’ makes a request for information, you can grant that request with less hand-wringing and heartburn. There was no legitimate reason to deny Eduwonkette’s request; there are no reasons - legitimate or otherwise - to deny mine.
I do apologize that this request was made on a public website rather than via e-mail; as it is in the wee hours of Monday, I felt that it was inappropriate to call you, and your e-mail address was not at the ready [My Rolodex is less fertile than Mr. Stern's or Eduwonkette's]. A Google search of “david cantor NYC department of education” yields little of value, and your listings on the DoE website provide nothing in the way of electronic communication. A curious decision, but understandable when one considers that penchant for gatekeeping.
Many thanks to your and your Office in advance. If you need any additional information - though you shouldn’t, as referring to these data as “them” in the discussion on Mr. Rotherham’s website shows that we’re both entirely clear on the data in question - feel free to contact me at the phone number or e-mail address below.
Sincerely,
Matthew K. Tabor
e: [email protected]
w: www.matthewktabor.com
p: 607.821.1752
Cooperstown, New York
UPDATE at 4.24pm, July 28:
For any interested parties, Mr. Cantor’s e-mail address is [email protected] - God knows you won’t find it easily on the DoE website. Now that this post is the first entry for a relevant Google search, no one should have any trouble locating the e-mail address they need.
UPDATE at 10.07pm, July 29:
Mr. Andrew Jacob, to whom the above e-mail was copied, sent along the requested data this afternoon. It is available for download here:
http://matthewktabor.com/downloads/scale_scores_by_ethn_2.xls
