Posted on by arotherham

Housekeeping

We heard your requests for a way to get Eduwonk content by email and after a mere 6+ years the feature is now installed.  On the right side if you click the email tab next to the other social media buttons you can sign up for a daily digest of content posted on the blog. Of course you can still read via Feedburner or whatever feed/reader you like to use as well as the old horse and buggy way:  Just coming here and reading.  An Ipad app will be released shortly and we’ll add a button for that.

Readership has been especially strong the last few months and for that, I thank you.

10 Replies to “Housekeeping”

  3. Mouse:

    Klein didn’t argue that teachers shouldn’t have pensions or that they didn’t earn their pensions. He argued that defined-benefit pensions were not only costly but both worked against a district’s ability to attract good teachers (low starting salaries prompt young talent to find better opportunities elsewhere) and withheld benefits for the long-term prompting all teachers to stick it out for their reward, regardless of how students are impacted by these misplaced priorities.

    Whether you agree with this argument or not doesn’t make a lick of difference regarding what you just posted and what your linked article states. The underlying issue that Klein tackled is the disconnect between pensions, funding, and teacher effectiveness. He never suggested that teachers shouldn’t have pensions.

    He explicitly states this in his blog post that your article references, and mentions an example where he proposed a plan which offered teachers a choice between two options of pension plans:

    “At one point when I was chancellor, based on discussions with many new and prospective teachers, I proposed that we offer each new hire a choice between the current salary and benefit package and an alternative based on a higher entry salary and lower pension benefits. No one would lose anything: new hires that wanted the lifetime pension benefit could still have it, while those who preferred the proposed alternative obviously would be better off.”

    (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704415104576066192958395176.html )

    But sure enough hardly anyone commenting there (or here) bothers to read for comprehension. It’s easier to anonymously defame those you don’t agree with over the Internets, instead.

  4. Klein penned that the NYC pension is a ponzi scheme.

    Now he partakes of it.

    As John Mitchell of the Nixon administration said, watch what we do, not what we say.

  5. The Ponzi scheme reference was an argument specifically about the defined-benefit system’s unsustainability, not of all pension plans in general. His acceptance of the pension he earned does not imply he believes it is the right kind of pension plan for NYC.

    Were you to watch what Klein did, you would realize that his actions are agreeable to his arguments, both now that he is collecting his pension and before when he floated alternative pension plans. The hypocrite claim would only make sense if he were lambasting teachers for collecting on plans they had legitimately contributed to. I don’t recall him doing that.

  6. From the do as I say, not as I do list:

    “We’ve lost our competitive spirit. We’ve become so obsessed with making kids feel good about themselves that we’ve lost sight of building the skills they need to actually be good at things.

    “I can see it in my own household. I have two girls, 8 and 12, and they play soccer. And I can tell you that they suck at soccer! They take after their mother in athletic ability. But if you were to see their rooms, they’re adorned with ribbons, medals and trophies. You’d think I was raising the next Mia Hamm.

    “I routinely try to tell my kids that their soccer skills are lacking and that if they want to be better, they have to practice hard. I also communicate to them that all the practice in the world won’t guarantee that they’ll ever be great at soccer. It’s tough to square this, though, with the trophies. And that’s part of the issue. We’ve managed to build a sense of complacency with our children.”

    “As a soccer coach in this system, you have to be willing to take personal responsibility for ensuring your children are successful despite obstacles…You can’t say, ‘they suck at athletics,’ or ‘they get no encouragement at home,’ or ‘Their mother has no athletic ability.”
    http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200811/michelle-rhee

    Or this riff from the Harvard alum newsletter:

    “People told me I couldn’t do make kids soccer stars because the kids came from athletically deprived homes, that they sucked at soccer, just like their parents,” she recalls. “The reality was that they went from the bottom to the top, and their home environment didn’t change. What changed were the adults in front of them who were coaching. That gave me the conviction that athletic outcomes are dependent upon what the adults are doing.” http://www.hks.harvard.edu/news-events/news/alumni/michelle-rhee

  7. From the do as I say, not as I do list:

    “We’ve lost our competitive spirit. We’ve become so obsessed with making kids feel good about themselves that we’ve lost sight of building the skills they need to actually be good at things.

    “I can see it in my own household. I have two girls, 8 and 12, and they play soccer. And I can tell you that they suck at soccer! They take after their mother in athletic ability. But if you were to see their rooms, they’re adorned with ribbons, medals and trophies. You’d think I was raising the next Mia Hamm.

    “I routinely try to tell my kids that their soccer skills are lacking and that if they want to be better, they have to practice hard. I also communicate to them that all the practice in the world won’t guarantee that they’ll ever be great at soccer. It’s tough to square this, though, with the trophies. And that’s part of the issue. We’ve managed to build a sense of complacency with our children.”

    “As a soccer coach in this system, you have to be willing to take personal responsibility for ensuring your children are successful despite obstacles…You can’t say, ‘they suck at athletics,’ or ‘they get no encouragement at home,’ or ‘Their mother has no athletic ability.”

    “People told me I couldn’t do make kids soccer stars because the kids came from athletically deprived homes, that they sucked at soccer, just like their parents,” she recalls. “The reality was that they went from the bottom to the top, and their home environment didn’t change. What changed were the adults in front of them who were coaching. That gave me the conviction that athletic outcomes are dependent upon what the adults are doing.”

  9. Chris:
    “That has nothing to do with Klein. What are you even trying to say now?”

    Me:
    Reread my header:
    From the do as I say, not as I do list:

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