Last week, we told you about a thorny issue that highlights the danger of the progressive-left’s agenda to control our lives through political correctness. I am pleased to report due to coalition efforts we were able to see the bill pulled from committee.
Weaponized ridiculousness of political rhetoric about taxes, abortion, and Donald Trump.
Trump's education budget proposes unprecedented expansion of school choice https://t.co/AHjyfVmDEl pic.twitter.com/EYFtIa7yIt
— GOVERNING (@GOVERNING) February 13, 2018
Thank goodness those kids already have a bill of rights… called the Bill of Rights. https://t.co/ZL0LAmN953
— Giovanni Cicione (@GioCicione) February 13, 2018
This week’s bad bill is a thorny issue, but one that highlights yet another danger of the progressive-left’s agenda to control our lives via a government driven by political correctness. In our American society, this means a direct threat to free speech and free thought.
Calabro's comments were revealing – a translation of what she said is; "We won't raise the safety issues that thousands of children are exposed to, but we WILL use safety issues to get a raise."
— Rep Mike Chippendale (@MikeWChip) February 8, 2018
This crowd is not letting up. Elorza tried to begin but is being drowned out by shouts, chants. Watch live: https://t.co/8S22zuHvpG #WPRO https://t.co/xK03xuhcw0
— NewsTalk 99.7 & AM 630 WPRO (@wpro) February 6, 2018
I didn’t plan to take up the former student’s assault of a Portsmouth High School teacher again, but something missing from the Providence Journal coverage of the released police report really should be part of the public discussion. Specifically, reporter Katie Mulvaney leaves out the following, from the report (which I saw in full earlier but now can’t find):
[The suspect] was banging on the doors and she opened the door to redirect him to the main office.
We still don’t have sufficient details to offer a fair opinion of blame. If the teacher recognized the former student, for example, it might be difficult to fault her for letting her guard down.
That said, what we know from the police report is that the teacher made it possible for her assailant to enter the building, and the school resource officer trailed behind the incident until it was over. Those are very important details to keep in mind as people proclaim their opinions on what should be done following this incident.
Adding new personnel and security measures would come at a cost, not only in the money that might go to more useful purposes, but also in the environment under which students live, affecting their sense of community and expectations of the world. Meanwhile, no security system will be immune to human error.
There’s something sadly typical about the claims that the “resource officer” at Portsmouth High School makes regarding a former student’s strange assault on a teacher as he attempted to enter the gymnasium:
The school resource officer sprang into action and soon arrived to find a physical education teacher in hysterics, saying she had just been assaulted by a man trying to get into the gym. The teacher told [Maddie] Pirri the suspect had left and ran towards the school’s main office. …
[Marcus] Schlip, 22, denied the assault, according to Pirri, but because of multiple 911 calls from students identifying him as the perpetrator, she arrested him. A 7-inch, military-style blade was found in his backpack. …
“As soon as I entered the main office, I did observe the suspect in the main office sitting down,” Pirri recalled. “Just casually sitting.”
In summary, the dedicated on-campus police officer did pretty much nothing. A teacher stopped the assailant from entering the gym; students called 911; and the suspect walked to the main office and sat down of his own volition. The claim of Shaun Towne and Steve Nielsen’s WPRI headline — that the incident “shows why [the resource officer] position is vital” — could be fodder for an Onion article or a comic skit.
Sure, one could imagine circumstances in which her presence was critical to a relatively desirable outcome, but then again, one could imagine circumstances that were the opposite. If Schlip had panicked upon seeing a single cop coming toward the office, he could have become dangerous again or run, whereas a larger police presence — even if it arrived a few minutes later — may have prevented that outcome. Or not. We don’t know.
The point is that, in the scenario that actually occurred, we find evidence on the side of those who argued that putting a police officer in every school at great expense in response to Sandy Hook was generally a waste of resources. Other security measures along with changes in patrol routes (for example) could ensure at least the same security without the cost in pay and benefits (including pensions) and without giving kids the sense that they must live always in the presence of uniformed police.
@MarisaCicione Glad to see those tuition $$ being put to good use… https://t.co/4ppTYAixLV
— Giovanni Cicione (@GioCicione) January 25, 2018
Everyone supports school repairs but questions are A. How do we pay and B. How do we allocate? What do we say to towns who properly maintained their buildings while other towns spent money elsewhere and mismanaged?
— Brian C. Newberry (@BrianCNewberry) January 17, 2018
Crumbling schools show that the government’s priority has been other spending (mainly on unionized employees), and more school choice could change the equation in students’ (and taxpayers’) favor.
Better something that is less harmful than more harmful. But to some, innovative new products that reduce health risks – should be banned. In the tobacco and nicotine industry, the politically-correct anti-tobacco movement is advocating for the suppression of individual rights and elimination of less harmful choices, via restrictions and outright bans on products that could improve public health.
Should read "I plan to force the fiscally responsible school districts in RI that have properly maintained their facilities to pay for a bond that will allow the irresponsible school districts in mismanaged towns to fix their own negligence." https://t.co/NmwQ46W7pg
— Rep Mike Chippendale (@MikeWChip) January 10, 2018
Somehow, I don’t expect Democrat Governor Gina Raimondo’s “bold plan” increased school construction funding to emphasize a change in priorities that leads to spending reductions elsewhere. The quote in Shiina LoSciuto and Sarah Doiron’s WPRI article is better seen as a cause for alarm:
Raimondo said she plans to unveil a proposal next week for funding the rebuilding of schools across the state.“I plan to present a bold plan to the legislature, to make a once in a generation investment in rebuilding our schools,” Raimondo said.
This is entirely the wrong mentality. We don’t want to repair schools once a generation. We don’t need “an investment” as much as we need reform.
Maintenance and repair should be ongoing. The problem is that the incentive in state and local government is to spend as much money as taxpayers will tolerate on ongoing operations and then hit us with a crisis in order to ratchet up the revenue. One photograph of a flooded classroom suddenly makes disappear the consequences for three decades of letting maintenance slide while spending on other priorities.
And then moving forward, this “once in a generation investment” will be built into our state and local tax bills, which won’t go down when all the work is done and all debt is paid off. Instead, as the cost of the emergency subsides, the government will find ways to spend the money elsewhere and let the schools deteriorate again. Meanwhile, whatever mental space Rhode Islanders allocate toward thinking about education will be distracted by the excuse that children can’t learn in crumbling schools and then palliated by the fancy new buildings, even as the level of education continues to be substandard.
We have to stop falling for this ploy.
Iain Murray highlights part the abstract from a new paper by Cornell researchers:
The earnings estimates for men indicate that teacher collective bargaining reduces earnings by $149.6 billion in the US annually. Among men, we also find evidence of lower employment rates, which is driven by lower labor force participation. Exposure to collective bargaining laws leads to reductions in the skill levels of the occupations into which male workers sort as well. Effects are largest among black and Hispanic men, although white and Asian men also experience sizable negative impacts of collective bargaining exposure. Using data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we demonstrate that collective bargaining law exposure leads to reductions in measured cognitive and non-cognitive skills among young adults, and these effects are larger for men.
In other words, exposure to unionized teachers in one way or another tends to reduce boys’ exposure to the skills that men tend more often to need on the job and generally lower abilities, especially in minority populations.
That seems like a data point that ought to be part of the public discussion on education.
Where are the throngs of students taking advantage of this in RI? Anything “free” cheapens the quality.
— Susan Wynne (@scwynne) January 6, 2018
An upcoming Supreme Court case will give teachers unions a chance to focus more on education and less on activism. https://t.co/MK2Ea6gY6m via @aliceblloyd @maxeden99 @weeklystandard
— Manhattan Institute (@ManhattanInst) January 6, 2018
Jon Haidt on intersectionality https://t.co/g1LHC9m70s pic.twitter.com/FwgU29tYOi
— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) December 21, 2017
An important part of my general philosophy on our education system is the principle that resources should go toward the actual needs that students have. If, as teacher union advocates claim when results prove poor, the missing ingredients are parental involvement and relief from poverty, then society should redirect resources from teachers who have no chance to penetrate those barriers to services that will. We can debate how those needs can best be met — what programs, private sector versus public sector, and so on — but the basic idea is a managerial truism.
Those who agree with the foregoing can’t be entirely opposed to this approach by the Providence School department, as Linda Borg reports it for the Providence Journal:
The Providence School Board has hired six school culture coordinators at the district’s middle schools.
They are part of a new initiative by Mayor Jorge Elorza and Supt. Christopher Maher to promote a positive school climate and increase student engagement. The hiring of a seventh coordinator is expected to be approved at the board’s January meeting.
School culture coordinators serve as liaisons between the school and the community, including parents, during the middle school years, when students often begin to lose interest in learning. School culture coordinators aim to support youngsters as they transition from cozy elementary schools to larger secondary schools, with the goal of boosting engagement and reducing chronic absenteeism.
A little skepticism is in order, of course, when school departments start spending on administrators and other non-teachers. How much are these “coordinators” going to be making? Will they be unionized? What, specifically, are they going to be doing?
Some of these questions might be alleviated if the coordinators weren’t directly employed by the school department, because there’s no reason to assume that an agency (ostensibly) competent to teach children is also competent to address the needs of their parents or communities. On the other hand, if the new positions represent a shifting of resources, rather than another excuse to collect more, leaving them within the school department may be the only realistic option.
It seems to me that in order to sustain RI's consumption-oriented ways, this state is becoming far too comfortable with the issuance of debt. Most recent example – paying for school infrastructure.
FILO + debt = huge future problems.
— Len Lardaro (@ladardo) December 14, 2017
I wish it wasn't based on zip code. There are a lot of parents who WOULD drive the extra miles to get their kids to the school that best fit. School choice in a state this size should be a must. But so many bad people are invested in the old system financially.
— Saucy T (@NewportLost) December 6, 2017
Moral panics can destroy lives, and the Providence Teachers Union is right to object to policies that give children the power to bump their teachers out of class, at least temporarily. Ted Nesi and Tim White report for WPRI:
The Providence Teachers Union is asking the city’s school department to change the way it handles allegations of abuse against students in order to prevent its members from being placed on administrative leave without reasonable cause.
In a letter to Superintendent Chris Maher, the union claimed students have been “emboldened to make allegations at a whim knowing that the teacher will be removed from the building with no questions asked,” with some “taunting teachers with threats” of contacting the R.I. Department of Children, Youth and Families with abuse claims.
Students have to be protected, of course, but giving them that sort of power is reckless. Trying to control the issue through punishments is also the wrong approach. Schools shouldn’t want to put themselves in the position that they’ve created an incentive for false accusations and then have to do harm to students’ future prospects because they were drawn in by that incentive.
We need to back off the notion that we can protect everybody from harm with top-down policies and instead allow human judgment to play a role. Another aspect of that approach is to dilute our sense that human beings are psychologically fragile to the point that every inappropriate word or touch should be assumed to have scarring damage.