I talked to George Parker with the extension service. He is a silvaculturist at Purdue. He mentioned that the soil in Indiana is generally better for trees than it is for traditional farming, though it depends on the particular area. The benefits of planting trees include carbon sequestration, providing habitats for many useful species, protecting soil, and providing fuel and construction materials. It is curious to me why there isn’t more investment in such a wonderful product, especially in Indiana where it appears that we may have a comparative advantage in doing so.
The reasons that come to mind for me is that either it’s not profitable or that there is no financial mechanism set up to make it easy for people to do. On the first count, some of the benefits of trees are not taken into account by the market, so we may need some help from the government to make it more profitable. I understand that there are grants and subsidies for tree plantations, but perhaps they need to be augmented. On the second count, it seems that there is a problem with the lag time between when the plantation is planted and when it begins generate revenue.
If you think of a tree plantation in investment terms, it has an initial value based on an expected return at some time in the future. As the date of revenue generation gets closer, the value of the asset grows. Thus, value, if not income, is generated even before the first tree is harvested. Suppose we set up a cooperative where people could buy shares with either land or money. The money would be kept in a trust and used not just to plant the trees but also to run the plantation. The value of the shares would increase over time and eventually pay dividends once the plantation matured. Folks like Paul and Rosie could invest in such a cooperative with the land they have around their house, and folks like me and Jill could chip in the some of the capital necessary to maintain the plantation. If at any time we wanted out, we could just sell our shares at market value, incurring some profit from the investment depending on the projected market value of wood at the projected harvest date.
Such an investment would have both economic and environmental benefits. It would encourage investment in rural areas and stem suburban sprawl. With well placed plantations around Madison, it could raise the value of property in the city center as there becomes less available for development. Ultimately, this is good for the area; it would increase population density and drive down the energy costs per capita to live here.
Does such a mechanism as this exist already? How are current tree plantations funded? What is their profitability? What other obstacles can you see to the development of trees in rural Indiana? My initial research suggests that one could plant approximately 130 black walnut trees per acre, each worth about $4,000 and taking 35 years to mature. At that time, all the trees would be worth approximately $520K per acre. Dividing by 8% yearly income growth for that time period gives you a present value of $7,324 per acre. Add to this the present value of a continuous stream of income of $16,000 per year (from harvesting four trees per year). My college economics is a bit rusty; I forget how to do this calculation. I’m not sure if these numbers are accurate, and even so, I’m not sure if this would make it profitable. It seems on the low side to me. Perhaps you have some advice on the matter or some influence over political matters that would make such an endeavor be more feasible.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Privatize Education
Privatize education. That’s the solution. The problem isn’t so easy to explain. Approximately 90% of school age children in the states of Indiana and Kentucky attend public school. But public schools are not all alike. Typically, the quality of the school—as well as of the student—correlates closely with family income.
The Center for Market and Public Organisation, a think tank from the United Kingdom, studied the degree to which schools were socio-economically sorted in districts with three types of school systems: Neighborhood school systems, where students were assigned to schools on the basis of where they lived; Privatized school systems, where students were given publicly funded vouchers progressively based on income; and school choice systems, where the district offered a fixed array of schools for parents to choose from. The study found that the greatest degree of socio-economic sorting occurred with the school choice model and that the least degree of socio-economic sorting occurred with the voucher school model. The difference between these two models was that the voucher system allowed schools to respond to market signals.
As many as 30% of our high school students fail to graduate. That’s a powerful commentary on the quality of our schools. In effect, they’re not just saying they want their schools to be better; missing school entirely is a better use of their time. Education is a personalized affair; the best learning environment will be different for different children. The private market model achieves the best results because it provides for the best matching between students and educational services. If you’re a parent, you want to write your state legislators and tell them to privatize education.
The irony is that our teachers are teaching better now than at any point in our history. There are tests, like the Brigance, that can screen kids as early as Kindergarten to determine who is likely to struggle with reading and what kinds of interventions will be necessary. The Woodcock-Munoz test can determine the degree of English proficiency a student has upon entering school. In decades past we may have labeled kids simply as slow or ornery; teachers now have the background and wherewithal to diagnose specific learning disabilities. At all levels, teachers know more about the human mind and the different factors that affect learning.
The problem for many public school teachers is that they are limited in the ways they can help children learn. We task them to teach solely to a narrow set of academic standards such that they are unable to teach other types of information that could greatly increase the learning and achievement of some students. In Indiana a teacher can start a Charter school for kids who might learn better in a different environment, but the school will then have little purview to select the students that the environment is designed for. Since Charter schools can’t charge tuition and state funding is limited, it is difficult for them to offer special services and still be profitable. Our current system limits the effectiveness of our teachers, as well as their wages and professional opportunities. If you’re a teacher, you want to write your state legislators and tell them to privatize education.
The problem with the current public education system is not that it fails to force poor and minority children to reach an arbitrary academic standard; the standards of excellence are too narrowly defined. The schools of poor children are bad because they fail to develop the strengths of their students. In many cases children do poorly on tests because of untreated learning disabilities. But many children do poorly simply because the tests hold no interest for them. Privatizing education will open the door to many new ways for students to earn intellectual credibility and meet their learning needs. If you’re a student, you want to write your state legislators and tell them to privatize education.
The Center for Market and Public Organisation, a think tank from the United Kingdom, studied the degree to which schools were socio-economically sorted in districts with three types of school systems: Neighborhood school systems, where students were assigned to schools on the basis of where they lived; Privatized school systems, where students were given publicly funded vouchers progressively based on income; and school choice systems, where the district offered a fixed array of schools for parents to choose from. The study found that the greatest degree of socio-economic sorting occurred with the school choice model and that the least degree of socio-economic sorting occurred with the voucher school model. The difference between these two models was that the voucher system allowed schools to respond to market signals.
As many as 30% of our high school students fail to graduate. That’s a powerful commentary on the quality of our schools. In effect, they’re not just saying they want their schools to be better; missing school entirely is a better use of their time. Education is a personalized affair; the best learning environment will be different for different children. The private market model achieves the best results because it provides for the best matching between students and educational services. If you’re a parent, you want to write your state legislators and tell them to privatize education.
The irony is that our teachers are teaching better now than at any point in our history. There are tests, like the Brigance, that can screen kids as early as Kindergarten to determine who is likely to struggle with reading and what kinds of interventions will be necessary. The Woodcock-Munoz test can determine the degree of English proficiency a student has upon entering school. In decades past we may have labeled kids simply as slow or ornery; teachers now have the background and wherewithal to diagnose specific learning disabilities. At all levels, teachers know more about the human mind and the different factors that affect learning.
The problem for many public school teachers is that they are limited in the ways they can help children learn. We task them to teach solely to a narrow set of academic standards such that they are unable to teach other types of information that could greatly increase the learning and achievement of some students. In Indiana a teacher can start a Charter school for kids who might learn better in a different environment, but the school will then have little purview to select the students that the environment is designed for. Since Charter schools can’t charge tuition and state funding is limited, it is difficult for them to offer special services and still be profitable. Our current system limits the effectiveness of our teachers, as well as their wages and professional opportunities. If you’re a teacher, you want to write your state legislators and tell them to privatize education.
The problem with the current public education system is not that it fails to force poor and minority children to reach an arbitrary academic standard; the standards of excellence are too narrowly defined. The schools of poor children are bad because they fail to develop the strengths of their students. In many cases children do poorly on tests because of untreated learning disabilities. But many children do poorly simply because the tests hold no interest for them. Privatizing education will open the door to many new ways for students to earn intellectual credibility and meet their learning needs. If you’re a student, you want to write your state legislators and tell them to privatize education.
Saturday, August 19, 2006
Sonny and Chief
Sonny pats Chief at Kentucky Lake. Note he never lets go of his new bus. We went the last week in July with Nat, Sean, Jonathon, Chief!, Paul, Rosie, David, Kay, Harlan and his friends, Tylor and Joey. Cousins Phillip and Mallory showed up to complete the crew.
Public vs. Private
The New York Times piece on the results of the Educational Testing Service’s study of private and public schools would seem to investigate the true difference between them. At the outset, this is an odd comparison. Only 10% of American students attend private school for grades K – 12 and private schools are seldom seen alongside high performing, suburban public schools. Moreover, the results mostly confirm what we already know: wealthier, fairer-skinned children do better on academic tests than do their poorer, browner counterparts.
The ETS would do better to compare public vs. public. Why does the public school model work for wealthy children but not for poor children? If the value of an education were contained in the knowledge acquired therein, it would be enough to send every kid off with an encyclopedia at graduation, ensuring future success in the job market. But the most valuable aspect of an education is the credibility earned from meeting a standard of excellence. So the problem with the public school system for many poor people is not that they lack the ability to learn, or even that the system has bad teachers; it’s that it has too narrow a definition of success.
David Hawpe’s editorial suggests that the argument for vouchers rests on the supposition that it will raise the tests scores of poorer students. But the argument for vouchers is just that it will free public school teachers and poorer children from a system that qualifies them as failures. If you had to take tests that you perpetually failed, you’d lose interest too. We need to allow students to define success for themselves and seek out schools that support those goals. More of our public school teachers would want to start private schools for the poor if they knew they’d be judged by how well they met the needs of their students, not by how well their students met the arbitrary standards of upper class white folk.
The ETS would do better to compare public vs. public. Why does the public school model work for wealthy children but not for poor children? If the value of an education were contained in the knowledge acquired therein, it would be enough to send every kid off with an encyclopedia at graduation, ensuring future success in the job market. But the most valuable aspect of an education is the credibility earned from meeting a standard of excellence. So the problem with the public school system for many poor people is not that they lack the ability to learn, or even that the system has bad teachers; it’s that it has too narrow a definition of success.
David Hawpe’s editorial suggests that the argument for vouchers rests on the supposition that it will raise the tests scores of poorer students. But the argument for vouchers is just that it will free public school teachers and poorer children from a system that qualifies them as failures. If you had to take tests that you perpetually failed, you’d lose interest too. We need to allow students to define success for themselves and seek out schools that support those goals. More of our public school teachers would want to start private schools for the poor if they knew they’d be judged by how well they met the needs of their students, not by how well their students met the arbitrary standards of upper class white folk.
Liberal Tolerance
The term liberal was coined during the enlightenment. It was derived from the word liberty with a connotation of tolerance. The first liberals fought for universal suffrage and the abolition of slavery. In Europe, liberals fought for greater economic freedom; the kings’ dominance of commerce stifled the people. Anyone who claims to be a liberal and wants to forcibly remove 11 million people from the borders of the United States is suffering from an identity crisis. There are reasons to eschew immigrants, but tolerance and liberty are not among them. One might fear for the resiliency of our institutions. One might believe tomorrow’s problems can be met with yesterday’s solutions. These are the attitudes in our House of Representatives where I fear there is not a liberal left.
Immigration Support
I tried not to buy anything during the immigrant boycott day. I’m not an immigrant. I’m a liberal. Does anybody remember what that means anymore? We stand up for liberty. We take the more tolerant side of most issues. This seems to get lost in much of the rhetoric of today. Most people, even Liberals, find it difficult to be liberal on all issues. Ironically, people who are liberal on social issues tend to be conservative on economic issues and vice versa. For example, the same people who are tolerant of gay marriage think that people shouldn’t be allowed to sell their labor for less than a certain minimum wage. Similarly, many folks who think that English should be the only language one can speak in the US also think that guns should be freely available to anyone for any reason.
Immigration poses a particular dilemma for many of us because it is an economic and social issue at the same time. It’s not just that people can be on one side or another; they may have to reject part of their ideology to accept another.
Immigration poses a particular dilemma for many of us because it is an economic and social issue at the same time. It’s not just that people can be on one side or another; they may have to reject part of their ideology to accept another.
Educational testing
As I pore over old articles about education funding and Charter Schools I come across one recurring thread: the idea that the quality of the educational service provided by a school is measured by how well its students do on standardized tests. I find this thinking problematic for two reasons. The first is that it’s difficult to determine the contribution of school to one’s learning amid factors such as student aptitude and interest and family support. A good friend commented to me once that he was in the sixth grade before he learned anything at school that he hadn’t already learned at home. To think that his school was getting the credit for his achievement all those years….
The second reason is that the knowledge that one learns at school is the least valuable aspect of one’s education. Half of it is untrue and the other half is useless. More useful is the accessibility to information gained from study, and most valuable is the credibility one earns from reaching a standard of excellence. So why, then, do we focus so much attention on test scores? One reason is that knowledge is relatively easy to measure. The sophistication of our testing can tell us quite precisely what historical knowledge a student has retained or how well she reads. This knowledge tends to correlate to other factors that are harder to measure: intellectual habits and diligence of study. Students with higher test scores are more likely to go to college, earn higher incomes and have better marriages. But we mistakenly think that correlation implies causation. It sounds silly when we say it like this: if you retain lots of facts about Indiana State history now, you’ll be a better spouse. But we often say it like this: Get those kids to score better on those tests and they’ll be able to make more money in the economy. If it were that easy we could send them off in the world with an encyclopedia and a dictionary and they’d be set. Most people learn the information most useful to them in the years after formal education.
Should we continue to test student knowledge of codified standards? Of course we should. The tests provide us with valuable information about the students and afford them the ability to earn academic credibility. But it should not be the only standard of excellence they can strive for, nor do their scores have any direct relevance to the value of educational services provided by schools.
The second reason is that the knowledge that one learns at school is the least valuable aspect of one’s education. Half of it is untrue and the other half is useless. More useful is the accessibility to information gained from study, and most valuable is the credibility one earns from reaching a standard of excellence. So why, then, do we focus so much attention on test scores? One reason is that knowledge is relatively easy to measure. The sophistication of our testing can tell us quite precisely what historical knowledge a student has retained or how well she reads. This knowledge tends to correlate to other factors that are harder to measure: intellectual habits and diligence of study. Students with higher test scores are more likely to go to college, earn higher incomes and have better marriages. But we mistakenly think that correlation implies causation. It sounds silly when we say it like this: if you retain lots of facts about Indiana State history now, you’ll be a better spouse. But we often say it like this: Get those kids to score better on those tests and they’ll be able to make more money in the economy. If it were that easy we could send them off in the world with an encyclopedia and a dictionary and they’d be set. Most people learn the information most useful to them in the years after formal education.
Should we continue to test student knowledge of codified standards? Of course we should. The tests provide us with valuable information about the students and afford them the ability to earn academic credibility. But it should not be the only standard of excellence they can strive for, nor do their scores have any direct relevance to the value of educational services provided by schools.
Madison Gas
High gas prices are inconvenient to all of us, but affect the poor disproportionately; they spend a higher percentage of their income on gasoline. Pat Bauer wants to throw the poor a "life raft" by cutting the $0.18/gallon tax on gasoline. This is a tempting political move, but it’s a step in the wrong direction. A six percent decrease in gas will ease the pain at the pump slightly, but in ten years there will still be poor people in Madison and gas will only be more expensive, taxes or not. Solving this problem requires different thinking.
Imagine a world where you can walk to the grocery and take public transportation to work. A shift toward higher population density will make us all less dependent on energy. We can get there, but not with Daniels’ energy policy. We need to make it easier to build up in downtown than out into our farmland. We need to invest in public transportation and yes, we need to further raise the price of gasoline through taxes. Such policies will be inconvenient and may change Madison beyond what anyone would recognize. But a world where we are not slaves to the gas pump might not be such a bad thing.
Imagine a world where you can walk to the grocery and take public transportation to work. A shift toward higher population density will make us all less dependent on energy. We can get there, but not with Daniels’ energy policy. We need to make it easier to build up in downtown than out into our farmland. We need to invest in public transportation and yes, we need to further raise the price of gasoline through taxes. Such policies will be inconvenient and may change Madison beyond what anyone would recognize. But a world where we are not slaves to the gas pump might not be such a bad thing.
Warming education
We went to see "An Inconvenient Truth" yesterday. As an aspiring politician, I highly recommend that you see it, if you haven’t already. If you are at all predisposed to the idea of global warming, this movie will have a profound effect on you. There are solutions, of course. He gives these at the end. It amounts to a lot of small things that, when put together, make a big difference. It’s things like buying efficient appliances and light bulbs, walking and biking, taking public transportation when you can.
The last one irks me a little. Take public transportation when you can. In many places public transportation is ineffective because people live so spread out. Everyone wants his own two-car garage and acre yard—all ten minutes from town. If we are to solve global warming we need to use less energy. And to use less energy we need to live closer together. Higher population densities means using less energy to get from here to there—and to get all our "stuff" from here to there.
I’ve made these arguments before, but this movie compels me to make them again, and make them louder. Education is only one key of the population distribution solution, but it’s an important one because it opens the door to the other facets. This is how it works: Today, one can select the school for her children by choosing where to live. But as people are searching for ever more diverse educational options, those with means are sequestering themselves into enclaves where they surround themselves with other like-minded people. This is not the only thing driving geographic segregation, but we won’t reverse this trend until we can break the link between where a person lives and where a person goes to school. Privatization of the school system will create the diversity in school programs that people seek while allowing folks to all live together in the same population center. A voucher system can provide greater equality by progressively redistributing wealth. Again, the private sector is no bastion of virtue; it just provides better matching of a differentiated service to a diverse population.
Once the education issue is resolved we can propose other incentives to bring people together: better parks, higher gasoline prices, tolls on all roads, zoning restrictions on suburban sprawl, economic incentives to support stands of trees, and yes, better public transportation.
I know you have reservations about privatizing education. As a public school student and a champion of social justice, it took me a long time to come to these conclusions. But the rationality of it is overwhelming. I used to see this as a matter of providing opportunities to teachers; but it has become a moral imperative. I try to make the argument, as Al Gore says, "person to person", "family to family". He recommends writing your legislators for change. You could be our next representative. I hope you will find the strength to change us, even before it becomes popular to do so.
The last one irks me a little. Take public transportation when you can. In many places public transportation is ineffective because people live so spread out. Everyone wants his own two-car garage and acre yard—all ten minutes from town. If we are to solve global warming we need to use less energy. And to use less energy we need to live closer together. Higher population densities means using less energy to get from here to there—and to get all our "stuff" from here to there.
I’ve made these arguments before, but this movie compels me to make them again, and make them louder. Education is only one key of the population distribution solution, but it’s an important one because it opens the door to the other facets. This is how it works: Today, one can select the school for her children by choosing where to live. But as people are searching for ever more diverse educational options, those with means are sequestering themselves into enclaves where they surround themselves with other like-minded people. This is not the only thing driving geographic segregation, but we won’t reverse this trend until we can break the link between where a person lives and where a person goes to school. Privatization of the school system will create the diversity in school programs that people seek while allowing folks to all live together in the same population center. A voucher system can provide greater equality by progressively redistributing wealth. Again, the private sector is no bastion of virtue; it just provides better matching of a differentiated service to a diverse population.
Once the education issue is resolved we can propose other incentives to bring people together: better parks, higher gasoline prices, tolls on all roads, zoning restrictions on suburban sprawl, economic incentives to support stands of trees, and yes, better public transportation.
I know you have reservations about privatizing education. As a public school student and a champion of social justice, it took me a long time to come to these conclusions. But the rationality of it is overwhelming. I used to see this as a matter of providing opportunities to teachers; but it has become a moral imperative. I try to make the argument, as Al Gore says, "person to person", "family to family". He recommends writing your legislators for change. You could be our next representative. I hope you will find the strength to change us, even before it becomes popular to do so.
Welcome to jilmeka!
emeka and i are finally starting a blog. today. so check in for news on: sonny, education, poetry, the price of gas, the chestnuts and everything else oh-so-interesting in our lives.
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