Rational Health Care Reform

The health care debate continued to rage last week in Colorado when a sub-committee in the state house voted on a bill to move to a state-wide single-payer system. This is surprising in a traditionally libertarian place like Colorado, though it is understandable as the state turns more Democratic and voters continue to lose faith with the current system and the lack of a viable alternative. Vincent Carroll of the Denver Post's Editorial Board responded with a typical ideologically conservative commentary that was long of criticism and scare tactics, yet predictably short on alternative proposals. Though I was disappointed to see him immediately resort to the "red flag, talking-point" of rationing, I was pleased to see his concession that the current system already rations care based on ability to pay into the private system. Reform critics claim that single-payer would lead to rationing and prevent people from seeing their own doctors, as well as turn medical decisions over to a bureaucrat. However, that is already true. My employer-based coverage cost me my personal physician, and specialist care is limited. Decision are not simply left up to me and my physician; they are vetted through the administration of the insurance company. Conservative critics who cite those as effects of single-payer are fools. That situation is the essence of the private system as it exists. For, far worse than a cost-cutting bureaucrat (whose bosses are still responsible to voters) focused on budgets, is a cost-cutting executive focused on profits. Insurance companies are in the business of collecting premiums and denying claims.

As Colorado attempts a move to single-payer, I am hoping they will take a more pragmatic approach and blend the public-private system as many countries do, and as we currently do for nine million federal employees. Thus, I hope Mr. Carroll will consider researching and writing about options that would do this, and alleviate the need for states to push for a single-payer system. A good place to start is the Healthy Americans Act, also known as the Wyden-Bennett plan. It is an adaptation and extension of the logical move of extending FEHBP (Federal Employees Plan) to all Americans. In FEHBP, there are more than 250 providers that competitively bid to cover federal employees. Employees are given the choice to purchase as much or as little coverage as they need, but all are guaranteed some basic coverage. Obviously, large pools lower cost, and if a pool of nine million employees works, then a pool of 300 million would work even better. An extension of FEHBP to all Americans is the best and most logical reform, the the HAA is a good second-best.

As Mr. Carroll notes, reform is necessary, and it will come. As the private sector eliminates more people from coverage, the masses will eventually take what they can get. And having lived under it for five years, I can say with all honesty that national health care is far better than being un-insured in this county. Thus, I urge the Denver Post to research and write extensively about plans, such as the HAA or the FEHBP, that blend public and private. I have contacted my congressional candidates and representatives about this, and I hope more people will as they become aware of it. Otherwise, we will be stuck with a system that the masses begrudgingly accept.

Knowledge is the Key

People may logically assume that learning leads to the acquisition of knowledge. However, the converse may, in fact, be true. It appears that knowledge is the key to learning. I've have been intrigued in the past week by all the talk of "knowledge" as the fundamental component of learning. From op-eds in the New York Times to the education blogs, there has been an exciting degree of discussion about the importance of knowing information. This is intriguing, as I've often noted the importance of background knowledge as the key to accessing new material. It first impacted me after reading I Read It, But I Don't Get It by a Denver-area teacher and researcher Cris Tovani. The insights I gained from Tovani's book were revolutionary in my teaching career, as the epiphany about knowledge impacted the way I taught reading, writing, and critical thinking.

That discussion of background knowledge in reading was accented by E.D. Hirsch this week in his New York Times piece "Reading Test Dummies." Hirsch argues very effectively about the importance of background knowledge in students interpreting passages on standardized reading tests. The disconnect between the focus of knowledge in the classroom and the obscure passages in reading tests negatively impacts the validity of the tests. Hirsch notes some impressive research from 1988 about the performance of weak and strong readers based on previous knowledge, where weaker readers performed better on tests than skilled readers if the weaker ones had an interest in and knowledge about the subject. I've often noted to people the significant differences in academic performance between kids of lower and higher socioeconomic status, simply based on background cultural knowledge, especially vocabulary. Poorer kids who arrive in kindergarten with roughly one-third the vocabulary of middle-class kids face a disadvantage in learning from which most will never recover. Until this gap is acknowledged and closed, there will be no fundamental change in reading scores, literacy rates, or achievement gaps.

Hirsch's arguments are even more intriguing as I ran across Joanne Jacob's entries on both Hirsch and Dan Willingham of the Core Knowledge Blog. Willingham, a psyche professor at Virginia, added to the knowledge discussion by explaining how important "knowing facts" is, and how integral it is to learning and understanding. The "very processes that teachers care about most-critical thinking processes such as reasoning and problem solving-are intimately intertwined with factual knowledge that is stored in long-term memory (not just found in the environment)". Learning "new ideas" is fundamentally linked to having the correct understanding of the relevant "old ideas." There is no more clear explanation of the problems in literacy rates, reading scores, college readiness, and the achievement gap. It's all about a knowledge gap. According to Willingham, "understanding is remembering in disguise."

Willingham's book Why Don't Students Like School is my next purchase, and I expect it will have a similar effect on my teaching that Tovani's book did. His discussion of "cognitive science" is integral to understanding how we can more effectively educate. The discussion reminds me of my questions about why students lose the ability to "wonder." However, it's clear they actually don't. Kids do like learning; they love acquiring new information; they become quite engaged in many activities, including some very philosophical discussions. They don't have an inability to focus - they have an inability to focus on much of what they encounter in the classroom. It reminds me of the "flow experience" described by authors Michael Smith and Jeff Wilhelm in their book Going With the Flow which was a follow-up to Reading Don't Fix No Chevies. I encountered this book and concept in a great staff development class on adolescent male literacy, and it inspired me to seek more ways to engage all my students with knowledge and learning.

Clearly, the concept of factual knowledge as a key to learning is an important component of the education game, and any serious discussion of reform must take into account the ideas put forth by all these authors and researchers.

Need a Job - Go Abroad

Young, college-educated, and unemployed? Get out of this country. And take with you a most precious and desired commodity you acquired for free - the English language. The opportunity to travel, live, and work abroad has always been a great option for the newly-graduated and unencumbered, and in the current economy, it is becoming an attractive option for those young people facing a tough job market. This issue was featured on Right-on-the-Left-Coast, and it reminded me of my own experience, graduating with an English teaching degree in the recession, and tough job market, of 1992. I haven't written about this before, but I have often meant to, as I regularly speak about it to my students. With few high school English teaching positions available - and actually little interest in or motivation to start teaching high school at the age of twenty-one - I up and moved to Taiwan with my future wife to teach English. It was one of the best decisions I ever made.

Because one of my wife's roommates in college was Taiwanese, she had been there before, and she was well aware of all the opportunities to teach English in Taiwan. At the EPO (Educational Placement Office) of the University of Illinois, we ran across a flier for an organization known as Hess Language School. It was based in New York, and it was the largest cram school, or bushiban, on the island of Taiwan. After filling out an application and undergoing a brief phone interview, we moved six-thousand miles from home, and began teaching Taiwanese children the finer points of ABC and "How are you?" The school was founded by an American woman and her Taiwanese husband, and they had basically cornered the market for cram schools, where parents send their children after school for a few hours a week to give them a jump start on the rigors of English instruction in junior high school. Hess provided us with a work visa and a yearlong contract teaching roughly twenty hours a week for about twenty dollars an hour. It was great gig.

We went to Taiwan at the same time my wife's roommate moved there to live at home. She lasted nine months; we stayed five years. During that time, we lived the dream and traveled the world, not to mention saved a lot of money. We knew numerous Americans there who paid off their student loans and credit card debt in a year or two. There are so many options for work abroad, and there is no better time for a little adventure.

Home Ec Returns

"We should learn how to balance our checkbooks, and things like that."

Comments such as this occasionally arise in my class, as students debate (and complain about) much of the core curriculum in high school. I don't know if there is any really "useless information" in the standard high school curriculum, but there is much to be said about addressing more practical issues as we invest in the education of young people. While I point out to my students that learning to balance a checkbook should take about fifteen minutes, I can imagine many basic competencies that I'd incorporate into a "life skills" curriculum, not the least of which is home finance and basic repair.

With that in mind, the Denver Post recently spotlighted a resurgence in home economics in local high schools, with the added emphasis of an increase in both male teachers and students. The classes are now referred to as Family and Consumer Science, and they are focused on being far more practical than the home ec classes of yore. As the economy changes, and more people are adjusting to lifestyle changes, the acquisition of basic skills that not only save money, but might open up a new career, seem like a good investment in education. I'd like to see an expansion of this sort of investment in education, as it strikes me as the sort of basic competencies we should expect of young adults after thirteen years of education. The ability to cook, budget, organize, create, and repair are never useless skills. This also might be a great way to adapt a workforce more quickly, especially for those jobs that don't need a four year degree. So, on with home ec and shop classes.

In the immortal words of Breakfast Club, regarding shop class:

Brian: "Bender, do you realize without calculus, there'd be no engineering."

Bender: "Without lamps, there'd be no light."

Colorado's Lawmaker Poses Questions

In quoting the Bible as a model for what the state government of Colorado should and should not do, Senator Scott Renfroe, a Republican from Greely, has generated a serious discussion for which more information is needed. I am hoping he will address the following issues during his next speech on the floor of the legislature:

1. Exodus 35:2 says people who work on the Sabbath should be put to death. I'm wondering how many doctors, nurses, police officers, firefighters, grocers, and other merchants Senator Renfroe thinks the State of Colorado should kill?

2. Leviticus 10:10 says eating shellfish is an "abomination." Interestingly, that's the same word used to describe homosexuality. Is Senator Renfro as aggressive in pushing legislation that denies the rights of shrimp eaters? If not, why not?

3. Exodus 21:7 sanctions selling children into slavery, and I am wondering if the senator has done this. Should Colorado laws be re-written to address this? Or is that a constitutional issue?

3. Leviticus 25:44 allows the purchase of slaves from other countries. Was the Civil War wrong, as well as the government's current efforts to combat the slave trade? Should Colorado secede from the union?

4. How does Senator Renfroe propose to kill his male friends and neighbors who cut their hair, especially around the temples, as forbidden by Leviticus 19:27? Should the state complete that task?

7. If Senator Renfroe learns of people who plant two different crops in the same field, or who wears garments made of two different kinds of thread (say a cotton/poyester blend) does he get the whole town together to stone them to death, as required in Leviticus 19:19? Does he stone everyone who curses as required by Leviticus 24:10? How many public burnings has he attended for people who sleep with their in-laws, as required in Leviticus 20:14? Should the state organize these activities, or does the senator want to leave it up to individual communities?

Obviously, there is much in the Old Testament that doesn't necessarily work in practice in America in the 21st century. Christ focused clearly on a personal relationship with God and with the plight of the poor and downtrodden. That, of course, brings up an entirely different issue.

What should the state of Colorado do, in a legislative capacity, to erase the problem of excessive wealth and ease the suffering of the poor? Christ said, “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than it is for a rich man to get into heaven.” Is Colorado’s tax policy making it difficult for people to live Christian lives? Christ told a rich man to give half of everything he owns to the poor. Should the state increase taxes to fifty percent, so that each citizen can live according to the word of Christ?

Senator Renfroe has said the government must not make laws “that go against what biblically we are supposed to stand for.” If that is true, then the legislature has a lot of work to do. Of course, if Senator Renfroe seeks to initiate a theocratic government, he might want to put that to the voters first.


(NOTE: many of these citations originated from the oft-published "letter to Dr. Laura" featured in a West Wing episode)

The "End" of Adolescence

Once again, I post an entry and as I research more I find myself on the same side of the fence as Newt Gingrich. It seems that since Newt has left elected office, he has really hit his stride with engaging discussions about health care, finance, and, now, education and adolescence. Like Dr. Robert Epstein's book The Case Against Adolescence, Newt has been speaking at places like that American Enterprise Institute, and he is arguing that "adolescence" is a "failed cultural" model. Newt presents some insightful history, as well as some intriguing recommendations, in this short clip. Though I do concur that Newt can have the tendency to exaggerate and over-extrapolate on occasion, the idea is still valid and intriguing.

Realistically, it can be argued that adolescence is a nineteenth-century invention designed to keep children out of the employment market where they were competing with adults for jobs. Thus, by the 1920s we had nearly nationwide mandatory education for kids k-12. This has proved counterproductive. Whereas kids should seamlessly transition from being children to young adults, as they have done across cultures for centuries, we've now reached a point where the average American lives in arrested development until about the age of twenty-six. Instead, we should be focusing on providing incentives for students to move expeditiously through schooling, developing the basic competencies.

One of Newt's insights is the idea of giving high school students who graduate early the money that would have been used to educate them as a scholarship. If they graduate two years early, they can have the sum of those two years. I think that is a fantastic idea. Personally, I'd like to see some offered to the motivated students and the rest refunded to taxpayers who might appreciate not paying for the babysitting of so many teenagers. Regardless, these ideas should be examined and debated more in-depth by communities and departments of education. Newt's comments can be explored more in depth in this interview with Business Week magazine.

Ending Adolescence

Shocking as it may be to many, there is validity to the claim that "adolescence" is a twentieth-century invention. Additionally, there is validity behind the argument that the creation of adolescence has been a huge mistake for contemporary society. As high schools struggle with establishing a reasonable level of education for all students, as state governments in New Hampshire and Massachusetts consider offering graduation at sixteen, as some school districts move away from grade levels toward basic standards of competency, as college presidents push to lower the drinking age to eighteen, as communities struggle with levels of driving privileges, it becomes clear that society needs to figure out what an adult is and what do do with all these teenagers. This issue is compelling explored in-depth in the book "The Case Against Adolescence" by Dr. Robert Epstein. He argues that as society has decreased the responsibility of adolescents and increased the restrictions on their freedom, we have complicated what should be a more seamless transition between childhood and adulthood. He may be right.

Clearly, age is a completely arbitrary factor in establishing competency for a myriad of rights and responsibilities. There are plenty of fourteen-year olds who can competently drive, sixteen-year-olds who can competently vote, and eighteen-year-olds who can competently drink. It's the last one, by the way, that I have the most difficulty with. However, I can reasonably understand that there is a disturbing discrepancy between the time societies have historically bestowed adulthood and the polls which show the average adult didn't consider himself an adult until about the age of twenty-six. Why does nature bestow adulthood at puberty and religions bestow it at about the same time, though American law pushes it to eighteen and twenty-one, and American culture apparently sets it in the mid-twenties. This is a problem.

I have long considered the idea that American society should consider lopping one year off of high school and two years off of college, as the current system is surprisingly inefficient. As a high school teacher, I always have a considerable number of juniors who are ready for college - as noted by the presence of AP classes. Granted, there are issues of emotional maturity to consider. However, those are not established by age, and many of my students who clearly seem ready for college and life often don't believe they are. That's sad. There is much to consider about Epstein's beliefs, and while some assertions make me (and him) rather uncomfortable, I hope his ideas begin to generate and contribute to the type of debate American society needs to have.

Can Stephanie Meyer Write?

As an English teacher, I regularly discuss the issue of quality writing with my students. In other words, "what's good?" Inevitably, the discussion addresses the issue of literature versus popular fiction, and lately it has been centered on the skill, or possibly the lack thereof, of Stephanie Meyer. For as long as I have been teaching, I have argued that there are great writers and there are great storytellers, and they are not always the same. In terms of literature, a great writer inevitably tells a great story. However, a great storyteller may not stand the test of time - there might not be any literary quality. Charles Dickens happened to be both, though there were countless popular writers during his time who never attained significance. In contemporary times, the debate has raged over writers such as Stephen King, John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Dan Brown, James Patterson, J.K. Rowling, and, now, Stephanie Meyer. As an English teacher, I assert that J.K. Rowling is the only truly great writer. It seems one of these writers agrees, and he's not shy about stating it.

In this weekend's edition of USA Today, the lifestyle section reports on several celebrities publicly criticizing others. Among them, Stephen King says of the skill of J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer, "The real difference is Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephanie Meyer can't write worth a darn. She's not very good." Ouch. Though I have to agree. Strangely, Stephen King used to be one of my examples of a good storyteller who wasn't a great writer, though I have to give him credit for his knowledge in "On Writing." An important issue in this debate is the issue of popularity, and King acknowledges that. Sadly, Us Weekly's West Coast Bureau chief Melanie Bromley - who judges the spat - does not. Bromley incorrectly asserts "At the end of the day, it's the fans who are judging, and sales prove these books (by Meyer) are fantastic."

Actually, that's not true. Popularity does not equal quality. McDonalds serves 42 million people everyday, but nobody claims it is high quality food. No food critic worth his credentials would rave about the Big Mac, though they'd admit it tastes good. Similarly, the movies of Tom Cruise make billions, but no one with any credibility in judging the craft would argue Tom Cruise is a great actor. He's, quite simply, not. In fact, he doesn't act at all - he's Tom in every movie. The Academy is never going to call him, or Adam Sandler or Will Ferrel for that matter, a great actor. However, their movies are still immensely popular. Thus, Stephanie Meyer may be fabulously entertaining, but she'll never knock Harper Lee off the required reading lists of high school English departments.

Who's Educated?

“Did you know that nearly two-thirds of Americans aged 18 – 24 still cannot find Iraq on a map?” That question was on a flyer that went up at my school this week. It was posted by some club, and the information was attributed to CNN. Clearly, the question is designed to shock and outrage, pointing a finger at a weakness in the education system or the culture in general. My answer to the question is this: Who cares? I wonder if the data was taken from people looking at atlases with the names marked on the country. Of course it wasn’t. It was a blank map, and, thus, the question is simply measuring the arbitrary ability to match names to random shapes. When is that necessary? How is that a valid measure of education? Are the Joint Chiefs sitting around drawing up foreign policy with a bunch of blank maps in front of them? I don’t think so.

This sort of question – and all its snide implications – is indicative of the wrong kind of conversations Americans have when evaluating education. The arbitrary assigning of educational significance to some knowledge is baffling, and it’s become a punch-line in this country with popularity of shows such as “Who’s Smarter than a Fifth Grader?” Who’s smarter? A sixth-grader. So are all those professionals who went on the show and were “embarrassed” because they can’t name the countries that border Ecuador. I’d like to see the show that puts the “smart” fifth grader in a house by himself when the main line bursts. Can the fifth grader fix that? Can he balance a budget? Can he draw up a contract? Can he fix dinner?

I concede the importance of basic skills, and I argue to my students that it’s not enough to be able to punch numbers into a calculator. Their brains benefit from having to do math “the hard way.” Much knowledge in contemporary education is designed to “grow” and “exercise” their brains. Much of it is integral to critical thinking, especially if they can extrapolate basic knowledge into larger trends. Much of it is about becoming “a person on whom nothing is lost.”

And then there is assigning names to random shapes. Who cares?

Bill Gates' Education Fix?

While the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has greatly contributed to progress in school reform, there are times when Bill's ego leads him to falsely believe he can work his "Windows" magic everywhere. Case in point: his recent op-ed in the Washington Post entitled "School Reform That Works." Gates offers explanations of urban, failing schools that have improved through increased expectations and standards, guided by programs like KIPP. Certainly, this progress is admirable and should be, in some ways, replicated. However, when Gates begins to make broader recommendations on school policy, he reveals an ignorant bias toward the mission of k-12 education in the United States. One example is his misguided belief that "Our goal as a nation should be to ensure that 80 percent of our students graduate from high school fully ready to attend college by 2025." His assumption that a college prep curriculum is necessary for eight out of ten high school students reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of American society and the type of education reform it needs.

Why would Gates choose an arbitrary number such as 80% of high school graduates going to college when statistically only 30% of the country currently has a degree. That is the highest the US percentage has ever been, and it has adequately served a country that even in this crisis is only looking at 8% unemployment. Is he expecting that by 2025 eight out of ten jobs in America will require a college degree? Where are all the jobs for that "over-educated" population he seeks to create. I doubt they'll all be hired by Microsoft. Gates' vision is a foolish over-estimation, and if he'd run his business with the same kind of narrow view of society, I bet Macs would be the dominant platform in the world, not PCs. Gates also praises the schools where 90% of student "enter" a four-year college. That's impressive, but the more important statistic is whether 90% exit with a degree. Research shows the number will be more like 40%, Thus, college serves to be a colossal waste of time and money for many kids. Gates is creating unrealistic educational expectations that will result in a tremendous waste of resources.

Bill Gates has done a lot of good for schools, but he might consider returning to computers, as Microsoft lays off 5000 people, and he reveals a true lack of understanding in terms of the educational needs of this country.

High School Sports Obsession

The case of America's obsession with sports, seen played out most often in the high school and club sport realm, just got worse in Colorado with the most recent meeting of the high school association. Sadly, with the approval of sports practices during holiday breaks, CHSAA (Colorado High School Activities Association) has once again shown it does not have the best interests of students at heart. The boards' already weak eligibility requirements reveal a lack of interest in academics. Now, the board has shown a disregard for the emotional well being of kids by ignoring the importance of "family time" and the simple need for "a break." Any practices offered by coaches will be "voluntary" in name only, as no athlete will risk disappointing a coach and no coach will risk allowing the competition to get an advantage.

Spokesman Bill Reader claimed the change was necessary because "we're in a different era" now. He's right about that - we are even more sports-obsessed than we were. There's no legitimate reason why teams need more practice, but there is plenty of evidence that coaches aren't wise enough or secure enough to know when to take a break. Before committing to increased emphasis on sports, parents and coaches should read Fred Engh's book Why Johnny Hates Sports. It's a book that asks very important questions about youth sports, and for Colorado students, having to practice on Christmas is now one of the answers.

No Taxes for Teachers

Ten years ago, when I was teaching high school in Illinois, a colleague of mine and I came up with what we believed to be one of the best ideas in addressing issues of the teaching profession and public school reform - no income taxes for teachers. It seemed to be the perfect plan, considering school districts often struggle to pay competitive wages while balancing budgets, people constantly claim teachers are dramatically underpaid, and critics lament the ability of education to draw the best and brightest of students. While I've never complained about teacher pay - I'm actually quite comfortable with the income I earn - and I don't agree that money is the reason the best people don't enter or remain in the profession, I think a lot of good could come from the no-taxes-for-teachers plan. Now, someone has said it in a larger forum than teachers' lounges and my blog. Thomas Friedman's commentary in the New York Times today proposes investment in education - including an exemption from federal income taxes - as an integral idea for the stimulus plans of the Obama administration.

There are some problems with this assumption, notably the idea that we want the kind of people who would be primarily motivated by this incentive to become teachers. In fact, there is much to argue that "the best and brightest" don't always make the best teachers, and financial compensation shouldn't be a motivation for educators. However, the kind of investment in education that Friedman proposes has a lot of relevance, in that any stimulus plan should create a stronger society with motivated innovators like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates who are inspired by their math and science classes. Obviously, this doesn't simply come from modifications to teacher pay - Friedman makes other salient points about who is teaching and how and why. Yet, I am pleased that my idea is gaining some tractions. Can't wait for my windfall.