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rsadelleAs you may or may not know, California has some budget issues. To that end, the Legislature has put a series of measures on a ballot for a special election this month. Two of them have entertaining Con arguments.
Prop 1B "requires supplemental payments to local school districts and community colleges to address recent budget cuts." The Con argument? "No argument against Proposition 1B was submitted." Clearly no one thinks this is a bad idea!
Prop 1F "encourages state budgets by preventing elected Members of the Legislature and statewide constitutional officers, including the Governor, form receiving pay raises in years when the state is running a deficit." The argument against it is that legislators won't magically start working together and fixing budget problems if they don't get raises, and that it's essentially a feel-good measure, to which I say: no shit. Prohibiting legislative raises in deficit years is in no way going to fix our budget process, but I still think it's an important thing to do, and here's why: First of all, it makes sense. When finances are bad, the people in charge shouldn't get raises (assuming, of course, that the people in charge will still make enough money not to starve; generally, this is a safe assumption to make). This is a philosophy I think should apply to companies as well as governments. Secondly, and perhaps even more important than my philosophical argument, is the fact that this will help change future budget discussions. If we prohibit legislative raises in deficit years, people will stop talking about prohibiting legislative raises as a budget fix and focus their energies and conversations elsewhere. Essentially, if 1F passes, it will prevent a derailing tactic.
On the heels of reading/skimming the Official Voter Information Guide this week, I read Douglas McGray's "The Instigator" (abstract only available online) in the May 11 issue of The New Yorker. The article is mostly about Steve Barr, founder of Green Dot Public Schools, a charter school management organization. The article is interesting ("When case-study writers from Harvard Business School asked Barr to describe the inspiration behind Green Dot's model, he didn't cite other schools; he named the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee."), even if it never quite answered my main question (he brings up the objection people have to charter schools that they'll leave behind the most troubled of troubled kids, but never quite addresses it in the context of the school he profiles), but the point that caught my eye and connected it to the election is this:
McGray talks to a couple of students who seem to bring home the lesson the rest of us learned watching Stand and Deliver: what makes a difference in troubled schools is teachers who care and expect things from their students, preferably backed by the school's administration.
Two other interesting points from the article: First, from the first meeting Barr has with the Locke teachers.
And, of course, none of this is long-term data. Maybe the answer to problem schools is simply to reorganize them under a new charismatic leader every few years.
Prop 1B "requires supplemental payments to local school districts and community colleges to address recent budget cuts." The Con argument? "No argument against Proposition 1B was submitted." Clearly no one thinks this is a bad idea!
Prop 1F "encourages state budgets by preventing elected Members of the Legislature and statewide constitutional officers, including the Governor, form receiving pay raises in years when the state is running a deficit." The argument against it is that legislators won't magically start working together and fixing budget problems if they don't get raises, and that it's essentially a feel-good measure, to which I say: no shit. Prohibiting legislative raises in deficit years is in no way going to fix our budget process, but I still think it's an important thing to do, and here's why: First of all, it makes sense. When finances are bad, the people in charge shouldn't get raises (assuming, of course, that the people in charge will still make enough money not to starve; generally, this is a safe assumption to make). This is a philosophy I think should apply to companies as well as governments. Secondly, and perhaps even more important than my philosophical argument, is the fact that this will help change future budget discussions. If we prohibit legislative raises in deficit years, people will stop talking about prohibiting legislative raises as a budget fix and focus their energies and conversations elsewhere. Essentially, if 1F passes, it will prevent a derailing tactic.
On the heels of reading/skimming the Official Voter Information Guide this week, I read Douglas McGray's "The Instigator" (abstract only available online) in the May 11 issue of The New Yorker. The article is mostly about Steve Barr, founder of Green Dot Public Schools, a charter school management organization. The article is interesting ("When case-study writers from Harvard Business School asked Barr to describe the inspiration behind Green Dot's model, he didn't cite other schools; he named the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee."), even if it never quite answered my main question (he brings up the objection people have to charter schools that they'll leave behind the most troubled of troubled kids, but never quite addresses it in the context of the school he profiles), but the point that caught my eye and connected it to the election is this:
He discovered charter schools by accident. When President Clinton went to San Carlos to visit California's first charter school, Barr tagged along, and encountered the school's founder, Don Shalvey, and a Silicon Valley businessman, Reed Hastings, who had just founded Netflix. Shalvey and Hastings were about to draw up a ballot initiative that would increase the number of charter schools in California.And then there's this, which I didn't even know: "Barr explained that California lawmakers had created an option for schools to abandon the district for a charter arrangement if at least fifty per cent of tenured teachers vote to secede." Fascinating.
McGray talks to a couple of students who seem to bring home the lesson the rest of us learned watching Stand and Deliver: what makes a difference in troubled schools is teachers who care and expect things from their students, preferably backed by the school's administration.
Two other interesting points from the article: First, from the first meeting Barr has with the Locke teachers.
"We bombarded him," Cubias said. Barr came back with the same answer again and again: "How will it be worse than what you have now?"Then, after the takeover:
Old-timers and union loyalists who left Locke after the takeover insisted that Green Dot would find a way to weed out problem kids. Others, such as Cubias, worried that uniforms and the promise of tougher discipline would simply keep bad kids away. But teachers and administrators went out into the neighborhood to visit hundreds of parents and students and encourage them to reenroll. Eighty-five per cent of Locke students returned. (In a normal year, only seventy per cent would come back from summer break.)If this sounds interesting to you, you may also be interested in Katherine Boo's January 15, 2007 article Expectations about Michael Bennet (then the Denver schools superintendent; now Colorado's junior Senator) and Denver's Manual High.
And, of course, none of this is long-term data. Maybe the answer to problem schools is simply to reorganize them under a new charismatic leader every few years.
1F
Date: 2009-05-08 06:32 am (UTC)1. If the place I'm working for is losing money this year (which it is), well, you know what, my cost of living is still going up, and I still need a raise that at least covers the cost of living if I'm not going to slip further and further behind each year. (Which is what was actually happening to me.) Why should I deny my representatives something that I think workers deserve?
2. What if the economy stays bad? What if they keep not getting raises for years? What if inflation makes their salary worth a lot less, but they still won't get any raises? Is that going to be good for morale? Is that going to encourage good people to run for office? No way.
3. "Oh, but you weren't responsible for your company losing money, and these legislators are responsible for a deficit," proponents of the law might say. (If you ask the company I work for, they certainly think that sales will go up if I just Work Harder. We'll leave that aside for now.) But the legislators are in the same situation I'm in - I'm doing the exact same things as before, but forces beyond my control have changed the outcome. The California legislature did not cause a global recession. Furthermore, we're not talking about an all-powerful CEO here. How many people are in the legislature, and to what extent can you hold each of them responsible for excess spending/insufficient taxing? Are representatives who voted to balance the budget to be punished along with those who wanted pork? And what about those supplemental payments from 1B that you, not they, voted in? This law would say, "If the budget isn't balanced, we will punish you, no matter what and no matter why."
4. The law would encourage groupthink among legislators. Balancing the budget is not always the best way to do things, but this law is saying that it is, and that legislators will be punished for thinking and acting otherwise. Suppose that spending more money on some worthy cause will mean not balancing the budget. (These days, it's more like spending money on anything at all will mean not balancing the budget.) In making budget decisions, legislators are already taking into account the demands of their various constituents, the needs of their various constituents, the pressures of their friends and family and personal beliefs, and the persuasions of lobbyists. Do you really want to add their own personal budget considerations into that mix?
I am certainly not in favor of showering people with money during hard times. But for the above reasons, denying them a cost-of-living increase seems neither just nor prudent.
Re: 1F
Date: 2009-05-08 04:00 pm (UTC)On the subject of workers vs. legislators: what happens now is that they don't pass the budget on time (They already have to pass a balanced budget: "In March 2004, the state's voters passed Proposition 58. Among other changes, the measure requires that the Legislature pass a balanced budget each year."), and then the state freezes spending, and things like state-funded preschools shut down because they don't have reserves of cash to pay their employees while they wait for the money from the State.
I still think the derailment argument is the best reason to vote for 1F - this takes away one of the things people fuss about during the budget process so they have to talk about other possible solutions.
(All quotes from the Official Voter Information Guide.)