More with the "Death Panels" again?

David B. Rivkin, Jr. and Elizabeth Price Foley construct a shoddy and intellectually empty argument against Obama care in today's WSJ ("'Death Panels' come back to life," December 30, 2010).  Were I to respond in a LTE, I would write that such writing does not belong in a publication aspiring to higher quality.  Since that publication is the WSJ, that would be satire.

The authors begin with a moral claim, as they analyze the FDA's banning of Avastin to patients with advanced-stage breast cancer:

Ponder the FDA's justification—there wasn't "sufficient" benefit in relation to Avastin's risks. Sufficient according to whom? For your wife, mother or daughter with terminal breast cancer, how much is an additional month of good-quality life worth? And what costs should be weighed? Like all drugs, Avastin has side effects including bleeding and high blood pressure. But isn't the real cost to these women a swifter, less dignified death?

In other words, considerations of quality of life are individual, and the government has not moral claim to determine these questions for us.  We should be left alone to decide for ourselves what benefits us and what counts as dignified.  They continue: "The FDA made a crude cost calculation; as everyone in Washington knows, it wouldn't have banned Avastin if the drug cost only $1,000 a year, instead of $90,000." Against such absolute claims of what counts as liberty, something as "crude" as an economic argument pales.  They further emphasize this perspective in the following:

Think it can't happen here? Think again. The 2009 stimulus bill spent $1.1 billion to research "comparative effectiveness." That's the same approach used by Britain's National Health Service to ration care, weighing cost against factors such as the ever-elusive concept of quality of life.   

Here, though, their thinking shows its weakness.  Against absolutist claims of liberty, as they make about  who should decide how best to conduct and live one's life, everything pales.  It is an unfair comparison, since they have already dug out the highest ground for the claims of autonomy.  By their reasoning, any governmental attempt to limit one's pursuit of happiness impinges on this kind of liberty: drug interdiction, traffic laws, food regulation, taxes.  Obamacare, and its efforts to use scientific research to determine effectiveness of medical procedures, fails because any and all comparisons fail.  This is ingenuous logic.

After a brief foray into finding support for the reality of 'death panels,' the authors find the crux of their claim:

There's an enormous difference between government-imposed rationing and treatment decisions in the private sector. When insurance companies deny coverage—for example, on grounds that treatment is "experimental" or not "medically necessary"—they do so based on contract language agreed to in advance by subscribers. If you don't like what a particular insurer offers, you're free to shop around. 

This is an ignorant argument.  People can hardly "shop around" for insurers to cover illnesses they might develop later in life, since they have no idea what those illness might be.  And if they already have one, insurers will be able to deny them coverage (should Obamacare be repealed or found wanting Constitutionally) or hike up the premiums as to make them uninsurable.  Further, the authors are now changing the focus of their disagreement, from the FDA's power to license a drug to the new health care bill's ability to determine what procedures will be covered, through the Independent Payment Advisory Board.

They should their ignorance with their claim that "Moreover, you and your doctor have extensive rights to appeal the insurer's denial, and wealthy patients can pay for the care out of their own pockets." That last would still be true; wealthy people covered by Medicare will still have the option of going outside the system to pay for care.  But these author's do not acknowledge that.  Instead, they point out:

When it comes to that right, courts have held that laws cannot impose an "undue burden" on access to life-preserving treatment. And there's no greater burden than blocking access to such medical treatments on the grounds that the average person, according to a government agency's reckoning, won't benefit sufficiently.  

If the government wants to reduce health-care spending, it can impose higher beneficiary cost-sharing, means-testing or other limits on eligibility that would be perfectly constitutional. But it can't restrict every American's access to proven treatments. With regard to medical care, the government must weigh delicate considerations of cost, quality of life and other factors individually—not collectively—in order to preserve citizens' rights and dignity.

Accept courts do allow laws all the time that restrict our ability to pursue treatment, especially if that treatment has not already received social approval.  And the authors do not bothered that insurance companies routinely make just these restrictions; laws may not intervene between me and my dignified pursuit of life, but financial considerations may.  How is that moral?  It is legalistic, a reversal of the tone they take at the beginning of their op-ed.

The authors seem genuinely upset that government is developing a process whereby decisions about one's health will be made that might restrict the kinds of care one receives.  They should be, as should we all be.  But the point of the health care bill is to bring more people into the system, a moral goal, and to strengthen the fiscal health of the system, a financial goal.  Right now, the system works for those with money or those who are not sick.  Criticizing the new health plan should mean suggesting ways for individuals and doctors to have more say in how a patient is treated, in a way that does not explode the cost curve of the entire system.  Relying on insurance can work, as can developing a single-payer system, in each case provided there is enough money in the system but not too much money to create hazard.

Muslim outreach

Joshua Muravckik makes poor use of statistics in his op-ed in the WSJ today ("Is Obama's Muslim outreach working?" December 29, 2010).  He demonstrates how numbers need context, something he fails to provide.

His claim is speculative, but straightforward:
The data are too slender to sustain the claim that Mr. Bush's policies succeeded in turning much of the Muslim world against terrorism. But they are substantial enough to inform our understanding that Mr. Obama's approach has achieved little in this regard.

And the data that he supplies, from the recent Pew Research Center's Global Awareness Project, does suggest that support for terrorism declined substantially more during the administration of President Bush that under President Obama:
The sharpest decrease in terror support in Indonesia, Turkey and Lebanon came between 2003 and 2005; in Jordan, between 2005 and 2006; and in Nigeria and Egypt between 2006 and 2007.

What Mr. Muravchik does not explain, however, the intensity of the support.  It is facile to think that support follows some rational mode of thinking.  There will be true-blood believers and there will be those with a willingness to follow an idea until faced with what that idea looks like enacted.  Those with less intensity of belief would be the first and a relatively easy group to convince against the use of terrorism.   Faced with the life-blood consequences of what terrorism does to populations and societies, this kind of intellectual, abstract support quickly fades out.  Hard-core supporters would not be much stirred to change their mind.  Nothing much that a foreign-policy built on war and confrontation could to do stifle that passion, but nor could engagement as a policy.

(If we look at Pew, another interpretation of the numbers is always possible.  For example, the bottom for support of terrorism occurred in 2008, at the very end of Bush's term and the beginning of Obama's.  Perhaps Obama's failure to actual end the wars he campaigned to end might contribute to why there is a slight return of support for the idea that suicide bombing is "sometimes justified"? This take corresponds with another Pew study that show a growing disappoint with the President in these same Muslim countries)

Without a more involved analysis on what kind of support terrorism had in the Muslim countries in the first place, through richly layered and extensive ethnographic work and fine-grained research into the state of the population and their beliefs, such claims like Muravchik's take a simplistic account of the data.  Whatever his ulterior aims, this essay is a shoddy piece of academic propaganda, not the respectable work of a "fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies."  That title gives academics a bad name.

The Spirit of Giving?

Arthur C. Brooks makes things up in his most recent op-ed from the WSJ ("Tea partiers and the spirit of giving" December 24, 2010).

He starts innocuously enough with a grand bland claim:
By now everyone knows that the dramatic November election was not an endorsement of Republicanism, but rather a rebellion against expansionist government and an attempt to re-establish America's culture of free enterprise.

By "expansionist" he does not mean the $3trillion war in Iraq and Afghanistan, unpaid for except by borrowing from foreign nations (and not through the shared sacrifice of taxes), nor does he mean the intrusive and civil-rights compromising government data-mining operation; these fall under 'national security,' and are apparently exempt from consideration of the size or reach of government.   Government has increased in size only if we consider the federal government (since states have shed public jobs at an arithmetically higher rate than the national government has added them) and only then if you we include the bulge of Census worker hiring.  Otherwise, the size of government has ebbed.  Yes, regulation has become more dense, though we can include the weak financial regulations bill and a general uptick in oversight departments actually demonstrating oversight (opposed to, for example, the lax and criminal malfeasance of the Bureau of Mining under Republic administration for the past decade).

To"re-establish America's culture of free enterprise" requires that America's culture of free enterprise has been disestablished.  When did that happen?  And what does that mean?  The only thing suffering free enterprise in this country is the corporate culture of down-sizing as means of profit, substituting temporary for full-time employment as a way of reducing benefits, off-sourcing jobs in order to lower labor costs and unwillingness of the banks (soluble only because tax-payers bailed them) to loan money to small businesses.  The middle class is disappearing, and free enterprise with them, a trend that begun under Reagon-omics and Thatcher and accelerated during the decade of Bush tax cuts following Clinton-era deregulated finance.

Brooks them starts playing with numbers, claiming that "nearly one-third of Americans ... classify themselves as "supporters" of the (Tea Party) movement, according to Gallup."  Supporters of what, exactly?  Brooks does not say, leaving the impression of some significant groundswell of those in concerted alignment with everything the Tea Party wants.  Looking at the numbers, though, it is difficult to figure out where Brooks earns his belief.  The most recent Gallup/USToday poll does indicate that 27% of respondents want the Tea Party standard bearers to set the policy agenda, as many as want the Obama White House to do so, and slightly more than want the GOP leaders and the Democrats to lead.  This is less than one-third of those who were polled; Gallup does not explain who they asked, so we have no idea about how to generalize these results.  Brooks, though, has no problem turning them into a concrete narrative.

I could be considered a supporter of Tea Party movement if asked whether Medicare should be eliminated (we'd both say "no"), if government should be less intrusive (as in protecting a robust 4th Amendment), or if the debt should be reduced (yes - though I would raise marginal rates and eliminate tax breaks).  Further, we would both agree to shrink the size of government - though I would 'support' this through a smaller military, reduction of agricultural subsidies and other forms of corporate welfare and larger role for local control of schooling.  My point is that Brooks dispenses with further explanation since further explanation would dilute his narrative.

With that false identity installed - of the 100+million Americas who stand against Obama America - he gets to his main point:
In fact, the millions of Americans who advocate for private entrepreneurship and limited government—whether they are rich or poor—may be stingy when it comes to giving away other people's money through state redistribution, but they are surprisingly generous when it comes to giving away their own money privately... (a small section on how Americans give more than the non-free enterprise Europeans and Chinese-Russian-others) When it comes to voluntarily spreading their own wealth around, a distinct "charity gap" opens up between Americans who are for and against government income leveling. Your intuition might tell you that people who favor government redistribution care most about the less fortunate and would give more to charity. Initially, this was my own assumption. But the data tell a different story.


Giving more money to charity means caring more about the less fortunate than giving less money to charity but preferring that the less fortunate are cared for in a sustainable, institutional and socially effective way?

He continues:
The most recent year that a large, nonpartisan survey asked people about both redistributive beliefs and charitable giving was 1996. That year, the General Social Survey (GSS) found that those who were against higher levels of government redistribution privately gave four times as much money, on average, as people who were in favor of redistribution. This is not all church-related giving; they also gave about 3.5 times as much to nonreligious causes. Anti-redistributionists gave more even after correcting for differences in income, age, religion and education.

First, what does 'government distribution' mean?  Social services?  Unemployment automatic adjustments?  Social security?  Public school?

Second, a clearer demographic picture of those 'against' and 'for' governmental redistribution is necessary.   Who are they?  What is their wealth?  What are their politics?

Third, average is a terrible statistic to use, since a few high contributors can skew the figures.

Fourth, focus on the omnibus last sentence modifier - "correcting for differences in income, age, religion and education."   What does Brooks mean by correcting for?

Finally, so what?  Immense donations to charity does not mean care more for the fortunate; it could just as easily demonstrate a higher concern for the tax subsidy.  And interest in having government, not the individual, play a leading role in redistribution could represent a logical and compassionate belief in sustained structural support as a more effective and efficient way of addressing chronic and debilitating inequality than sporadic, individualistic, tax-planned giving (dependent on yearly income and estate effects).

More:
The GSS in 2002 showed that those who said the government was "spending too much money on welfare" were more likely to donate blood than those who said the government was "spending too little money on welfare." The anti-redistributionists were also more likely to give someone directions on the street, return change mistakenly handed them by a cashier, and give food (or money) to a homeless person.

Here is the methodology of the GSS:
In-person interviews were conducted with a national, full probability sample of 2,765 English-speaking persons 18 years of age or over, living in non-institutional arrangements within the United States. Interviews were conducted during February, March, and April of 2002. The response rate was 70 percent. 

How different would social attitudes have been in 2002 than now?  What history has intervened between 2002 and now?  How representative would 1936 (70% of the 2765 sampled) randomly sampled people of the entire 300million US population in 2002, much less now?  What would the Tea Party have thought about the massive Medicare Part D vote taken by a Republican-dominated Congress and signed by President Bush in December of 2003?  Would they have preferred that individuals made private donations to drug companies on behave of the elderly instead?

Notice how Brooks turns these 1936 respondents into his "millions of Americans who advocate for private entrepreneurship and limited government"?  This is one way he does a lovely job of using what little data is available to him to create a mythic of Tea Party generosity:  The millions of Americans who believe in limited government give disproportionately to others. This is in addition to—not instead of—their defense of our free-enterprise system, which gives the most people the most opportunities to earn their own success.

Again, with the millions.

It may be that people who have a dim view of their taxes being raised to pay for the social welfare of others give more to private charity.   It also stands to reason that people who see inequality as a rising force shaping the American identity would prefer to use the levers of government to ameliorate the suffering and potentially eliminate its causes through a broad institutional approach.  There is no evidence, not least supplied by Brooks, that supports any of his reasoning behind the 'charity gap.'

What are taxes for?

Daniel Henniger ("What are taxes for?" December 16) makes two typically hermetic and thus sleazy points.

First, he writes,"Barack Obama won't say it, but a school of thought linked to his presidency no longer sees a justification or need for U.S. primacy." This line is silly, irrational and gratuitous.

• Silly.  Obama wants to be the President remembered for making us mediocre?  He wants the legacy of being the anti-hero of American history, the one who dedicated his time in office debunking the illusion of exceptionalism and instilling the ethic of American Average-ism?  The very same man routinely charged with putting his own ego over the good of the country wants a limited version of American identity so that his own identity would thus not be worth very much in the world?  There is more than a whiff of the Birther movement here, with an added faint odor of Obama the anti-American Kenyan anti-colonist, Socialist muslim.  Yes, silly.
• Irrational.  What does this have to do with taxes?  Henniger continues, "That posture would indeed make it easier to maintain the "parity" between taxes and outlays that Mr. Summers seeks on behalf of the public sector."  A balanced budget means that Obama wants to destroy America's ability to act powerfully in the world?  This point admits that deficits are necessary, that primacy demands spending without considerations of consequences and that no relationship exists between what America has to spend in order to establish 'primacy' and how America pays for these expenses. Henniger is linking taxes to decline. Taxes are part and parcel of a weakened America.  A primal America acts with force in the world by not paying for its actions.  Accountability, especially fiscal accountability is for suckers.  Not just counter-intuitive, but hypocritical, contradictory and, yes, irrational to everything else Henniger and his paper would otherwise stand for.
• Gratuitous.  This "school of thought" originates from the same political side that Henniger is speaking to, amplified by authors like himself and his publication the WSJ and its mother ship, Fox News Corporation, and made real by an insular feedback chamber of its readership.  It is "linked" to Obama by the very organs of propaganda that created it.  It is a rational, justifiable school of thought only to the extent that one already believes it to be possible, which already identifies the believer as inside a self-contained, hermetic worldview.  Using an argument agreed upon only by the select audience you are addressing as a rational attitude, shared by those outside the closed shop of anti-Obama-ists (who by virtue of this essay could be called silly and irrational) is not just bad journalism; it is gratuitously bad journalism because Henniger knows better.

His second point has the veneer of substance to it.  "To ensure American well-being, the pre-eminent purpose of a modern tax system should be to achieve the highest possible level of growth in the private economy with a competent, efficient state in a supporting role."

• Here, he switches his argument from "primacy" to "well-being."  Primacy is a relational term; us and the world.  Well-being is  relative (comparing current experience with the highs and lows of possible and past experiences) though more thoroughly absolute (one's estimation of her quality of life).  We are no longer in the world of competitive influence, but firmly lodged in considerations of the quality of  life here in America.  Henniger is saying that taxes play a leading role in what makes life worth living and what keeps the good life possible.  Following this logic all the way thorough, the "competent, efficient state" supports this possibility for all citizens. That means a positive role for the state, rather than a negative one.  Put differently, the state needs to act forcefully to ensure the opportunity for well-being rather than restrain itself and hope for maximum well-being through a theoretical potential of trickle-down processes.
• "Possible" is an important word here.  The question becomes under what context is the "possible" possible?  What conditions are relevant?  What circumstances matter?  What considerations must be made?  Keeping to the main goal of ensuring American well-being, the tax system enables the kind of growth that leads to a maximal amount of well-being.  Henniger creates a sociological and psychological standard for the quality of life, one that is answerable not in the size of GDP or in arguments about marginal income brackets or by the raw fact of revenue and outlays.  He is saying that well-being proceeds all other considerations, not that it follows and is the consequence of other considerations.  The "possible" is modified by the goal; taxes should be part of a policy of well-being, not a stand-alone issue, nor an isolated economic argument.  The state, then, creates the conditions for this possibility and acts to ensure them.
• The only way that his line makes sense, though, is that one already believes the narrative that maximum well-being is produced by maximum freedom, and that maximum freedom is risked by a state that acts forcefully to ensure false kinds of well-being, one that has revenue, and thus a large tax base.  A reader must already believe the narrative that Obama wants his legacy to be the decline of American exceptionalism to understand Henniger's thinking here.  Put another way, this line makes perfect sense in the the silly, irrational and gratuitous hermetic worldview to which Henniger writes.

Stimulus impact zero

Two more economists take to the "Opinion" section of the WSJ to argue that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the stimulus of 2009) failed.  John F. Cogan of the Hoover Institution and John B. Taylor of Stanford claim "not that the stimulus of 2009 was too small, but rather that such countercyclical programs are inherently limited."

Maybe, but this essay fails its own arguments.

1. They write that "recently released Commerce Dept data show that ..." federals expenditures from the stimulus programs have been "extremely small" - only 3% of the $862b small.  Indeed, most of funding went to state and localities or to tax rebate and cutting.  Ordinarily, this fact would be seen a strong argument that the stimulus was way, way too small to make an impact through federal government purchasing and investment.  You can thus make a great argument that the stimulus should have been structured more toward infrastructure spending (deferred maintenance on the vast needs of public roads, bridges, rail and port, schools and hospitals) and job creation (another WPA and CCC), instead of bundling money to states or giving it away in tax breaks.
2. Further, they tell the reader, even though most of the money went to states, "state and local government purchases of goods and services did not increase at all in response to the large federal stimulus grants."  Why was there no spending boost?  Because "the major part was simply used to reduce borrowing."  One that would use this fact to argue that the budget crisis at the state level was so extreme that a federal stimulus had to be significantly large to have effect. The architects of the ARRA plan, and their collaborators on the eventual compromise bill, aimed too low.  They underestimated the devastating effect of the recession on the local level.  This failure of vision led to a failure of objective. This argument supports those who argued for a much larger stimulus.
3. This "absence of any discernible impact of federal grants on state and local government purchases ..." was expected in advance (based on 1979 research by Ned Gramlich).  History had shown that stimulus programs always under-estimated the ripple of economic effects.  Rather than act to overcome this fact, the too low stimulus confirmed it.  Again, this is not an argument that stimulus does not work, but one that should have encouraged the planner to make the stimulus big, not just bigger.

The stimulus did not provide enough money for the federal government to address capital needs (infrastructure spending, efficiency and greening technology, jobs programs); it gave away too much money in temporary tax cuts and rebates (which the authors earlier claim never work); it gave too little to states to make up for their even worse fiscal situations; and it rejected research that indicated a weak effort was doomed.  In effect, the authors make a major argument on why the stimulus should been much larger.

Journalizing

According to two economists writing in the WSJ (December 8, 2010), Thomas F. Cooley of NYU and Lee E. Ohanian of UCLA, "the Bush tax cuts never went far enough."

They argue that "temporary solutions" like the capital rate tax cut (from 35% in 2003 to 15%) do not help enough to bolster capital stock enough to have an effect.  People make decisions based on long-term trends, not aberrations.  Since "capital can easily escape taxation by going abroad,"so higher tax rates produce counter-productive effects.  Tax rates were not reduced to zero permanently, and thus a failure policy led to the current stagnated economy.

I see three problems in this argument.

1. Five years of relatively low rates on capital gains did flood markets, from 2003 until 2008 (really, continuing until the sunset of the Bush cuts in January).  However, the money pooled in finance (and housing, which became the same thing), not industry or service.  A good argument can be made that unless the finance industry comes under a strict and reactionary regulatory structure, money will continue to drain out of the the productive economy and into the shadow world of money chasing money.
2. Is the problem now a lack of capital, in which letting loose the animals spirits of untaxed capital investment the answer?  Paul Krugman says no; it's liquidity (trap).  Assuming he is correct (which I do), this means the authors would exacerbate the deficits at the federal and state level, further depriving resources for deferred maintenance on public works, public health and public education, without adding anything to replace the funds  Their argument is not, on the surface, 'starve the beast,' though the impact of their argument to further reduce tax rates would do just that.
3. They do recognize that setting capital gains taxes at a lower rate (though they settle for 20%, curiously higher than the current 15% rate) will cost.  Deficit-neutrality is possible "provided that  either reducing transfer payments by less than 2% of GDP or a national consumption tax of less than 3% were adopted." Put into numbers, with a $14,000,000,000,000 (trillion) economy, a 2% cut in social services amounts to a yearly drop of $250b, and a 3% consumption tax creates about $400b.  Both these ideas are regressive: socially, as services to the most needy could be the first cut; fiscally, as consumption taxes hit hardest on those with the least income.  In other words, cut the taxes of the wealthiest and make up for lost revenue of the salaries of the poorest.

Essays and arguments like these give credence to the ivory tower view of academics.  Our models have not bearing on the lives people experience.

Lepers

Paul Krugman's long piece on climate change action is worth more in the thoughts it inspires than its sensible recommendations and straight-on description of the future.

He argues that the risk of catastrophe is profound enough to act, despite the lack of certainty about the science or the consequences. The agreement on the science is comprehensive; the agreement on best practices is consensual. Neither though will be decisively known until too late.

I worry that the world has heard this argument before, granted with less universal agreement. Should the US decide to act on this, would our allies refuse to go along because of the flimflam hoisted by President Bush? Would the false conjecture - dire threats about the looming catastrophe of a mushroom would be proof too late - from the Iraqi war doom our efforts at joint, partnership action?

It would cruel indeed for the prevarication and criminal deceit of the Bush administration to poison the world to our supposed good intentions.

Never vote for a Republican in its current form.

To Yves Smith (education version)

Teachers and teacher ed programs are habitually blamed for the terribleness of our schooling system. With good reason, in some respects. But this kind of thinking results more from collusion and mania than examined sociology or in-depth investigation into life in schools (Of course those that do spend that level of commitment in schools in order to communicate about schools, point out the systemic chaos that prevents orderly resolutions). Now that Arne Duncan has turned the heat up, anew again, reasoned approaches to understanding the complexity of schooling and making concrete our ideal abstractions for it get washed out by more mania and collusion.

Case in point: NCATE. A new president joins their team, just in time to reorganize the organization's accreditation process. And amazingly, the new process looks to shadow exactly the changes that Duncan proposes. For a professional organization made of up scholars and teachers involved in teacher ed, reflexivity would seem to be least likely response. Sadly, no.

NCATE Blue Ribbon Panel Initiates a Mainstream Move to More Clinically

Based Preparation of Teachers

January 5, 2010

Contact: Marsha Levine, Jane Leibbrand (202) 466-7496

Washington, D.C. - The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher

Education (NCATE) today announced the formation of an expert panel on

clinical preparation and partnerships, signaling the beginning of a sea

change in the preparation of the nation's teachers. The work of the Panel,

called the NCATE Blue Ribbon Panel on Clinical Preparation, Partnerships

and Improved Student

Learning<http://www.ncate.org/public/010410_BRP1.asp>, will culminate in

recommendations for restructuring the preparation of teachers to reflect

teaching as a practice-based profession akin to medicine, nursing, or

clinical psychology. Practice-based professions require not only a solid

academic base, but strong clinical components, a supported induction

experience, and ongoing opportunities for learning. This redesign is

intended to bring educator preparation into better alignment with the

urgent needs of P-12 schools. Such changes in the way teachers and other

P-12 educators are prepared potentially have far-ranging effects on the

structure of schools of education.

Me here. Instead of creating a panel to investigate if the sea really has changed, NCATE accepts the change a priori. It pegs itself to whatever the administration has already decided. The independence of the organization ceases to exist, at least in terms of professors and educators of practice coming to their own conclusions about the state of schooling. Granted, a size-able organization (over 650 members!) needs an articulated management system. However, managing need not be iron-on application of central office. I am, it seems, so naive.

Dr Nancy Zimpher, Chancellor, State University of New York System, and Dr.

Dwight Jones, Commissioner of Education, Colorado, will co-chair the

panel. Other panel members include experts in education research, policy,

teaching and learning and leaders in higher education and P-12 schools at

the state and local level. The panel will establish a set of guiding

principles for the clinical preparation of teachers so that preparation

focuses more on building the expertise necessary for effective practice as

professionals. This includes the development of candidates' ability to

understand and relate to their students and their needs, development of

practical and evidence-based pedagogical skills, and the use of research

evidence and judgment in practice.

Me here. The outcomes are standard fare, but notice the implication. Teachers today do not understand their what their students need, nor can they relate to these kids. They do not teach according to any standards of evidence (they wing it, I suppose) or pedagogical thinking. And they lack judgment; well, good judgment, a skill based on theory and exemplars. Right. Now, some - many - might fit this portrait. Lord knows who they'll let into the profession. This, of course, from an organization made from schools who have been spending the previous four decades educating teachers to be exactly who they are. If these schools have done such a terrible job, should their membership of accreditation to NCATE be revoked? Would it not make better sense to assume that member schools in NCATE have previously been educating teachers exactly the way they here describe teachers to be educated? If so, then there is no sea change, since all these member programs have already instituted just these practices. Who then are the guilty programs? Cynical me: the administration as ventriloquist.

Teaching has become a vastly different job requiring a different set of

skills than it did 50 years ago. Greater diversity among students and the

tailored instruction that many of them need, make the clinical aspects of

teacher preparation ever more important. Minority students are now the

majority in some states. Students with special needs are mainstreamed as a

result of disabilities law. English language learners from various

countries are studying in classrooms across the nation, as well as

students with individual learning plans (IEPs) who need individual help.

In addition, some students are highly motivated while others dislike

school, are disengaged, and are at risk of failure. Teachers are faced

with more challenges than ever before in the history of the United States,

and they are now being held accountable in ways that their predecessors

were not.

Maybe. But is this evidence for changing practices, or evidence gathered because they have decided to change practice? These factors are descriptions, honest and profound that they are. Descriptions are not in themselves meaningful. The dispositive statement "Teachers are faced with more challenges than ever before in the history of the United States,and they are now being held accountable in ways that their predecessorswere not." is a political judgment, not fact. If anything in this press release reveals some underlying motivation, look at this here statement. It is the political process that has decided to take the shallow route in school critique: the teachers are the loci of needed reform. Politicians do not have time to develop sophisticated programs for urban renewal, tackling the economic, social/cultural and normative processes upon which a functioning polity operates. Instead, cite blame, and develop expedient reforms from there. Does NCATE really believe all this? And by NCATE, I mean the faculty and staff at all those member schools (over 650!).

Significantly enhanced clinical preparation may mean, for example, more

extensive use of simulations, case studies, analyses of teaching and other

approximations of teaching, as well as sustained, intense, mentored

school-embedded experiences. Enhanced clinical preparation should give

aspiring teachers the opportunity to integrate theory with practice;

develop and test classroom management and pedagogical skills; hone their

use of evidence in making professional decisions about practice; and

understand and integrate the standards of their professional community.

These clinical settings also provide the opportunity for evaluating not

only what candidates know, but importantly, what they are able to do.

Finally, the professional preparation of teachers cannot be achieved by

preparation programs acting alone. Intensive clinical preparation,

especially when it is school-embedded, requires the collaboration of all

the stakeholders represented on the Blue Ribbon Panel. The group will

issue a report of its findings and recommendations when its work is

completed, most likely near the end of 2010.

Some schools of education have already developed rich partnerships with

districts aimed at boosting P-12 achievement, especially in low-performing

schools. NCATE featured a few examples of these schools of education at a

June press briefing announcing a redesign of accreditation to help schools

of education<http://www.ncate.org/public/062309_TeacherEdRequirements.asp>

move to a target level of excellence on accreditation standards, and to

encourage institutions to create Transformation Initiatives which focus on

P-12 learning needs and improve the evidentiary base of the profession.

The Panel will examine characteristics and elements of clinical

preparation in exemplary programs, will review the research, and will make

recommendations as to how those characteristics and elements can be

supported in policy and through funding formulas at every level -- school,

district, state and federal. The aim is to move from islands of innovation

which are driving student achievement in certain schools or districts to a

culture in which excellence is the norm.

Me again. To translate: as bad as things are, we will find those programs that have figured out success, copy it, disseminate it and hold all you accountable to follow it. Because, well, who does not want to be excellent? Amazingly, we will find many of the programs in our organization the very programs that have figured out how to succeed. And by complete chance, the panel is made up of faculty from these very programs.

OK; that last point was unfair. What if the panel was empowered to review the field and decide for itself whether the problem really is teacher education? Granted, such findings would be dismissed as a confirmation bias. Where, then, will the commission find out what works? And, using the standards of quality in research, how will they determine that what works (in the place they find it) does work (in places with diverse conditions)? Is this something of a show?

In a follow-up phase, the Blue Ribbon Panel will form a working group to

guide changes in NCATE standards and accreditation processes to support

more clinically-based educator preparation and working partnerships

between preparation programs and P-12 schools. NCATE will pilot proposed

changes at sites currently supported by teacher quality grants located in

Race to the Top states. A second phase of the work will be guiding the

process through NCATE policy boards to implement changes in NCATE

accreditation standards to help support the Panel's recommendations and

vision.

Me here. Sad; NCATE admits collusion. What is to be is what is. At least now the politics can be seen in clear light.

Dr. James Cibulka, president of NCATE, said, "The Panel is jointly chaired

by leaders from higher education and the states. States, districts, and

colleges and universities must work in close collaboration and in new ways

to meet urgent P-12 learning needs."

Me here. To translate: whatever the Dept. of Ed says, we can say it louder, just as long as they say it first.

Cibulka commented on the Panel's

influence on accreditation: "The Panel's work will inform future changes

to the NCATE standards and process to support a focus on P-12 student

learning to maximum advantage, and to ensure the standards and process

truly measure quality in appropriate ways. Revised accreditation standards

will help establish new norms in educator preparation," Cibulka continued.

Dr. Nancy Zimpher, Chancellor of the State University of New York System

and co-chair of the panel, said, "I am confident that this panel will help

create new synergies at the local level, through collaborative

partnerships between school districts, states, and higher education

working to assess local needs. The operative phrase is 'joint work,' which

will entail new expectations and roles for all stakeholders."

Dr. Dwight Jones, Commissioner of Education, Colorado, and panel co-chair,

said, "NCATE has taken a bold step in creating this Panel, representative

of all stakeholders, to help move forward changes in educator preparation

which will better meet P-12 urgent needs. Raising P-12 student achievement

in America is an imperative; using our combined resources in new ways to

focus on urgent P-12 needs will help reach that goal. I see this Panel as

a major step forward in restructuring educator preparation throughout the

nation."

Me here. I guess quotes add a bit of humanity. The boundary between corporate speak and educational dialogue crests caverns. In comparison terms, will NCATE become the teachers' AMA? For homework, go interview your family doctor. Ask her how she feels about the government dictating her practices in just the way that Duncan seems to be dictating to NCATE.

To sum, I agree with all the language used here to describe quality teacher education programs. In fact, I would like to see all teachers be required to undergo a med-school approach to pre-service teaching: multiple years in graduate schooling; several years apprenticing to different practitioners in schools, like rotations; slow entry into the profession at first, with heavy mentoring and collaboration from experienced teachers; different lengths of internships, depending on the area of teaching, the age level and the community. I just do not see that NCATE, via the Duncan-Obama plan, envisions such a model. Rather, it will help establish hegemonic policies that punish, retard innovation, sap motivation and hand the task of teaching more progressively into the hands of technocratic script readers.