Let's play . . . Debunk the Myth!

In comments to this post of mine, where I lay out just two of the differences between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to scandal, Clint (of Milwaukee Id10t fame) repeats some myths that I feel need front-page debunking:

Harry Reid is still in a leadership position (Abrahmof scandal) Hillary Clinton still hasn't 'found' any Rose Law Firm records... Gwen gets arrested by a foreign gov't, prohibits jobs creation and still has a job.

Doyle still has the gaming $$ and travel $$.

Delay stepped down on his own accord, no one HAD to vote him out of his position. Are you sure about this post? I think that you may have this backwards.

One at a time . . .

• Reid and Abramoff: The meida--and one Associated Press reporter, in particular--have consistently misrepresented Reid's connections to Jack Abramoff, usually leaving out the fact that Reid voted consistently against Abramoff's interests. It's worth noting that "[a] search of Reid's donations over the last 15 years shows that the Gambling/Casino industry/sector have been his largest donors in most every cycle." It's natural, then, that tribes represented by Abramoff might continue to contribute to Reid. What's more, many of the contributions Abramoff directed were done to increase his own clout with the tribes, not to win influence with politicians. But the most important thing to remember about Abramoff's clients is this:

  A new and extensive analysis of campaign donations from all of Jack Abramoff’s tribal clients, done by a nonpartisan research firm, shows that a great majority of contributions made by those clients went to Republicans. The analysis undercuts the claim that Abramoff directed sums to Democrats at anywhere near the same rate. [. . . T]he Morris and Associates analysis, which was done exclusively for The Prospect, clearly shows that it’s highly misleading to suggest that the tribes's giving to Dems was in any way comparable to their giving to the GOP. The analysis shows that when Abramoff took on his tribal clients, the majority of them dramatically ratcheted up donations to Republicans. Meanwhile, donations to Democrats from the same clients either dropped, remained largely static or, in two cases, rose by a far smaller percentage than the ones to Republicans did. This pattern suggests that whatever money went to Democrats, rather than having been steered by Abramoff, may have largely been money the tribes would have given anyway.

• Hillary and the Rose Law Firm: Here's a long quote, but worth the full read:

  Even more damning was a "Nightline" report broadcast that same evening. The segment came very close to branding Hillary Clinton a perjurer. In his introduction, host Ted Koppel spoke pointedly about "the reluctance of the Clinton White House to be as forthcoming with documents as it promised to be." He then turned to correspondent Jeff Greenfield, who posed a rhetorical question: "Hillary Clinton did some legal work for Madison Guaranty at the Rose Law Firm, at a time when her husband was governor of Arkansas. How much work? Not much at all, she has said."
  
  Up came a video clip from Hillary's April 22, 1994, Whitewater press conference. "The young attorney, the young bank officer, did all the work," she said. "It was not an area that I practiced in. It was not an area that I know anything, to speak of, about." Next the screen filled with handwritten notes taken by White House aide Susan Thomases during the 1992 campaign. "She [Hillary] did all the billing," the notes said. Greenfield quipped that it was no wonder "the White House was so worried about what was in Vince Foster's office when he killed himself."
  
  What the audience didn't know was that the ABC videotape had been edited so as to create an inaccurate impression. At that press conference, Mrs. Clinton had been asked not how much work she had done for Madison Guaranty, but how her signature came to be on a letter dealing with Madison Guaranty's 1985 proposal to issue preferred stock. ABC News had seamlessly omitted thirty-nine words from her actual answer, as well as the cut, by interposing a cutaway shot of reporters taking notes. The press conference transcript shows that she actually answered as follows: "The young attorney [and] the young bank officer did all the work and the letter was sent. But because I was what we called the billing attorney -- in other words, I had to send the bill to get the payment sent -- my name was put on the bottom of the letter. It was not an area that I practiced in. It was not an area that I know anything, to speak of, about."
  
  ABC News had taken a video clip out of context, and then accused the first lady of prevaricating about the very material it had removed. Within days, the doctored quotation popped up elsewhere. ABC used the identical clip on its evening news broadcast; so did CNN. The New York Times editorial page used it to scold Mrs. Clinton, as did columnist Maureen Dowd. Her colleague William Safire weighed in with an accusatory column of his own: "When you're a lawyer who needs a cover story to conceal close connections to a crooked client," he began, "you find some kid in your office willing to say he brought in the business and handled the client all by himself." Safire predicted the first lady's imminent indictment.
  
  What really made the story take off, however, was White House aide Carolyn Huber's belated discovery of missing Rose Law Firm billing records that had been under subpoena by the OIC. [. . .] The records' contents also supported Hillary's testimony and public statements in detail. [. . .]
  
  Starr's investigators would spend years seeking evidence to the contrary, with no success.

  As you can see, not only did the law firm records turn up, they exonerated Clinton of any wrongdoing--despite the attempts of your liberal media to make her look guilty.
  
  
• Gwen Moore: Clint thinks Moore should resign because she was arrested protesting the genocide in Darfur. And he thinks she should resign because she--along with many others--thought that millions of tax dollars' worth of investment in the Menominee Valley deserved better employers than one that is primarily seasonal. It's a subject on which reasonable people might disagree; I personally thought BuySeasons should have been in, but they pulled out anyway for reasons unrelated to Moore's protests.
  
  
• Doyle: It is true that Doyle, perhaps in the spirit of good will or something, could return the donations, though no one has proven he did anything wrong--or that contributions influenced him. To be fair, Democrats have called for Doyle to make those returns. I myself have called for Doyle to fire anyone even remotely linked to scandals in his administration and run on a responsibility platform against Green, who hasn't given back his DeLay money (how many Republicans have suggested he do that?). But in digging around to make sure I had my facts straight on Abramoff, I found an editorial from the libertarian Cato Institute:

  Here's the troubling thing about this little ritual of returning donations. The standard of proof in public debates seems to be guilt-by-association. If Mr. Abramoff was a crook, everyone associated with him, including people who received legal contributions from him or his clients, is also guilty of wrongdoing. If Enron executives bilked investors, politicians share the blame. Given that reasoning, only a very public renunciation of the (monetary) tie to the wrongdoer holds out hope of acquittal.
  
  My generation grew up in the shadow of McCarthyism. Our teachers warned us that guilt-by-association drove the hysteria that did so much damage to our First Amendment freedoms. Now it appears that guilt-by-association is an unquestioned standard in the court of public opinion. Certainly the politicians giving back donations believe so. The media and everyone else simply assume the validity of the new standard.
  
  To be sure, guilt-by-association is a great weapon for demonizing and destroying one's opponents. It does less well at fostering civility, the rule of law, fairness or a respect for fundamental political rights. Perhaps those shortcomings should be kept in mind as official Washington readies itself to indulge once again in the pleasures of populist fury.

  Something to think about.
  
  
• Tom DeLay: While DeLay didn't have to be convicted before he resigned from Congress (a la Duke Cunningham), his resignation was timed just right. Consider: DeLay had been indicted already; one in four primary voters told him they wanted him out; his internal poll numbers showed the race to be "too close for comfort"; and the Texas Republican Party believed that if DeLay moved out of his Texas District, they could replace him on the ballot, giving them a chance to keep the seat. That last bit is what makes it suspicious . . .
  
  But there is a more important point in the DeLay mess that directly relates to the point of the post Clint was responding to in the first place. When William Jefferson was implicated--though not even indicted yet--Democrats pulled him from his committee position very quickly. When Tom DeLay was implicated in wrongdoing, Republicans specifically changed their caucus rules to protect him! That is the difference between Democrats and Republicans.

The Clinton and Reid myths Clint perpetuates make me most angry, since they are outright lies. The DeLay thing I think most clearly demonstartes how Republicans and Democrats deal with corruption among their own different. The Moore and Doyle things are a bit squishier, but both sides need airing here. I'm happy to do it, hopefully setting Clint straight.

DiGaudio's Math

The sour-graped one continues his tirade:

Including all compensation, the MTEA teacher makes $67,456.97 per year[*]. This includes straight salary, the cash value of health insurance (if he or she had to pay for a comparable policy with the same coverage out-of-pocket), contribution to the employee's pension, dental and vision insurance, and the total compensation to FICA and Medicare.

Including all compensation, for actually doing that teacher's job, I make $7,280 per year. This includes the cash value of health insurance (if he or she had to pay for a comparable policy with the same coverage out-of-pocket), contribution to the employee's pension, dental and vision insurance, and the total compensation to FICA and Medicare, the sum total of which equals ZERO. That is my annual income. I make 10.7% of what the MTEA teacher specified makes, with as much or more education.

Peter "I will bet my house and property I can do any MTEA member's job better than they can" DiGaudio is responsible for 12 students for one hour each (according to the end of this post). He also says he earns $240 a week, meaning he must only work 30 weeks to teachers' 40**. The average Milwaukee high school teacher is responsible for about 150 students for one hour each. At his rate, if DiGaudio had the workload of an MPS teacher, he would be paid $91,000 for his 30 weeks, or $121,000 for 40. (A similar calculation can exist for elementary school teachers, who often teach fewer students total, but teach them five or six subjects daily.)

Or look at it another way: DiGaudio is paid $20 of taxpayer money (the group he works for is paid by Title I dollars under No Child Left Behind) to teach one student for one hour. The MPS teacher--assuming no work during prep, lunch, or at home, since that's DiGaudio's life--is compensated $64 an hour to teach however many students are assigned to her one-hour class. At DiGaudio's rate, if he had a small, small class, he would earn, say, $400 to teach 20 students for an hour.

Want more? The MPS average student-teacher ratio at the high school level (in other words, at what increment of additional students is another teacher*** assigned to a building) is 25:1; however, each teacher teaches for about 5.5 hours a day. We can say that the "student-hours" for a teacher might be the product--137.5 student hours. DiGaudio's student-hours total is 12. Dividing the compensation numbers, the MPS teacher is paid $487 per student-hour (40 weeks; $365 for 30 weeks) . DiGaudio? $809 (40-week rate; $607 for his current 30 weeks).

We can go on and on. Clearly, we can take away two things: DiGaudio is really, really steamed that MPS won't hire him. And, public school teachers are just too danged efficient, since we do his job at a cheaper rate.

* This number should be lower, as Milwaukee-ID10T, whose post this is based upon, missed about $800 worth of employee contributions to average health care.
** Updated 2/7, once I remembered the 30 weeks thing, with updated numbers noted throughout
*** "Teacher" in this case also refers to other members of the bargaining unit, such as counselors, librarians, and tech coordinators, who don't so much "teach" students but still come out of the "teachers" budget line.

A long and spirited defense of, well, me

I'm sick. Metaphorically and literally. I have felt miserable all week, and finally got to the doctor Friday afternoon. I have pills. They are approximately the size of watermelons. I'm also not looking forward to next week, when I will be stuck for three solid days in Kansas City for a conference I'd rather not go to.

And now I find myself further invoked by the Hold 'Em playing blogger, once directly and once indirectly, neither in a nice way. Throw in Blogger's down-time all day yesterday, and, well, you get the idea. On with the show . . .

It is not surprising to read anti-teacher diatribes from the right, which now are almost as common as anti-union ones anymore. So this DiGaudio post does not come as a shock:

I have a number of problems with government-run education. Not the least of which is the monopoly nature of the government-run schools. [. . .] Jay Bullock over at folkbum's rants and rambles, an MTEA teacher in MPS, tries to make the case that there is open competition between public and private schools, since private schools existed before choice. That's disingenuous, and he knows it. There is no real parental choice unless you are an affluent family. Poor and middle class families have little choice but the slums of government-run education.

Finally, people are starting to catch on to the lower-case thing, but how hard is it to get the name right? More seriously, Peter is the one being disingenuous.

One of the most common "liberal" arguments for programs like the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program is that the wealthy have always had de facto choice about where to send their children for school. This is true. But the poor and middle class have also had opportunities--moreso in a city like Milwaukee, of a certain size and with strong religious communities. Private schools have long offered scholarship programs, especially religious schools, where it was very important to be sure that children from the community had a chance to attend. Even without those opportunities, I have heard many parents today wonder why this generation should get a Catholic or other private school education handed to them when their parents had to struggle and save to send them.

But beyond that, the right in this country--and in the fight over vouchers--is so flush with cash that they could easily pay for voucher students to attend private schools. Maybe not all $94 million worth this year, but should the cap not get lifted, just the amount that they are spending on the current anti-cap ad campaign would cover all those over the cap next fall--especially given the prediction that that number will be low. Or consider PAVE--Partners Advancing Values in Education--a Milwaukee-based organization that for the better part of a decade provided vouchers to Milwaukee children so they could attend religious schools. They provided vouchers, that is, right up until the moment that they won their multi-million dollar lawsuit forcing the state to subsidize religious education through state vouchers.

There's an irony in all of this: Private groups spending money, and tons of it, designed to force the government to hand over taxpayer money to private groups. This is not the definition of conservative I learned I school. (This is the same irony at work in the case of anti-tax, anti-government Orville Seymour suing Milwaukee County for $1 million of our tax money.)

The more important statistic? Even with the advent of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, private school enrollment continues to decline overall. That's right, boys and girls, there are fewer students in private schools in Milwaukee right now than there were in 1990 when the MPCP began. Much of this is attributable to the overall decline in school-age children in Milwaukee, sure. But it blows the hell out of the right's claims that there has never been competition for Milwaukee's schools before now.

Saying that the public schools have a monopoly is like saying that the police department is a monopoly, the state has a monopoly on highways, or if we only had competing state legislatures, then our taxes would be really, really low. The state is required, in our constitution, to provide a free education. We do that, and, despite whatever the critics may feel, we do it to the best of our ability. A lack of competition--competition that, in fact, we don't lack--is most decidedly not what makes our test scores low.

But DiGaudio, as is his wont, didn't stop there. He had to continue:

I see the products of "gummint skoolz" every damn day in my line of work. These products of the wonderful government system cannot read, write or do math at beyond a first or second grade level. All of these kids are between eighth and 11th grade. That is pathetic, and to hear anyone even defending this as a quality product frosts me. This is a pure end result of a monopoly. These kids and others like them have no real future. At most menial jobs such as fast food workers, but more likely gangs, drugs, crime, prison and death. [. . .]

There is a bit of a personal story here which I have to admit colors my opinion to a certain extent. I am currently working for one of the supplemental service providers for MPS, earning a flat rate of $20 per one hour session to work with the failing products of MTEA members who cannot do their jobs properly. I have 12 clients that I see each week. That is my income. Period. No benefits, no retirement. Nothing. You do the math. I am doing your work for you and not getting compensated as well as you are for not doing your job.

The last part of that--income, benefits, whatnot--will come back to haunt us in a moment, but for now I want to focus on the first part. DiGaudio feels free to judge MPS as a whole--and MPS teachers as a whole--because he works for a tutoring company that provides services to MPS students who need help. When he says he sees "the products of 'gumint skoolz' every damn day," the students he sees are the ones who need the most remedial help, clearly not a representative sample. I, too, can tell the story of the year I spent working for the Sylvan Learning Center, where almost all of the students I tutored (and, how I would love to have that 3-1 student-teacher ratio in my classrooms!) were from well-heeled suburban districts or private and religious schools. This is, I know, in great part because prior to No Child Left Behind, which allows your and my tax dollars to pay people like DiGaudio and his boss, Sylvan and its counterparts were priced such that MPS parents often could not afford it. Until NCLB, in fact, there was no Sylvan franchise anywhere in the city proper.

But did I judge, say, the University School of Milwaukee, based in the poor-performing students from there who came to see me at Sylvan? No, of course not. DiGaudio does for MPS, though.

Now, I am not so disingenuous as to dismiss the dismal statistics about MPS that, believe me, I know all too well. We do have too many students who cannot read or do math at grade level. Does DiGuadio think that I don't see these student every damn working day of my life, and that I don't think about how best to teach them on even my days off? Of course I do. Does he think I don't know that many of these kids seem to have no real future? Of course I do, and I have even written here before about how so many of my students seem to have internalized that for themselves, and have "checked-out" mentally, before they even get to me. That's one of the things that makes my job so hard: Students see non-educated members of their own community being successful--and educated ones still going to jail--and therefore do not see the value in an education. With the help of parents--or of themselves, if they get the gumption--they can succeed, and many do. But not all, and to blame, as DiGaudio calls us, "WEAC thugs" for the failure is to absolve the 85% of a student's life he doesn't spend with any of us of all responsibility.

It is easier, in other words, for conservatives to blame teachers for failing urban schools than it is to fix the problems of urban centers in America. It is easier to ask for the "market" to fix schools than it is to do the dirty work of fixing unemployment, poverty, transience, health care, or anything else that makes education a slightly lower priority than, say, trying to stay alive and healthy.

Not content to judge MPS by its worst fruits, DiGaudio continues his story:

I have applied to the local district here and to MPS. As well as virtually every surrounding district in the area. Every year since 1986. Wanna guess how many interviews I have had? None. Not one. In 20 years. So there is a tinge of bitterness on my part. I have to admit that. I see the end effect of lousy teachers and cannot understand why no district around here wants the services of a qualified, highly competent professional. [. . .]

So here I sit. Doing what I can to help fix a broken system. One that I could do a better job of fixing it from within than from without.

At least he's honest about the sour grapes thing. We now know that it isn't just his conservative ideology that makes us all out to be "WEAC thugs"; it's also that fact that no one let him in our club. I don't know what his certification is (he says elsewhere he has an Masters in Education, but not what he's licensed to teach), but I doubt he'll have much luck this year, either; remember, I'm predicting layoffs.

All of that, of course, is just foreground for where DiGaudio and friends go next. It begins at the home of Milwaukee-ID10T (his name for himself, not mine), with a post called, Do MPS Teachers Really Have It That Bad? The post is a near-perfect strawman, as nowhere in the arguments for or against vouchers or anywhere else in recent memory has there been a great upswelling of "we teachers have it so rough!" Some of us, famously even, have been saying for some time that more money is not what we need. Digging around for something different recently, I found this old post of mine from a different blog where I take issue with our current superintendent's view that "What young people are looking for is a higher wage." In discussing Anna Qunidlen's "The Wages of Teaching," I noted that the whole idea is one of myth. As I commented below the ID10T's post, the only time I have suggested higher starting salaries is in an attempt to draw better people to the fold.

The ID10T makes several factual errors in his post, still uncorrected, which I also pointed out in the comments. DiGaudio magnifies the errors in his own approving post--things like saying we have paid vacation time over winter and spring break. We do not. The sour grapes of the Hold 'Em-playing one also come through: "All this for doing a job MTEA teachers aren't doing .... how about cutting me in on some of the gravy?" he asks.

But it's the strawman factor that gets me most of all. As the ID10T asks in a comment below mine,

Recent college grads would probably be more willing to get into teaching if [t]hey were not constantly bombarded with msgs by the WEAC/MSM and other sources complaining about how bad it is. Why would any normal person want to go into a profession that all they hear about is negativity. If WEAC and other liberally slanted groups wanted more teachers then they should be out there being positive about such a career choice. Oh wait - Thats right, Supply and demand. The fewer teachers there are in the system the more money they are worth. The more money they are worth, the more money the unions get in dues. (2 hrs a pay period) The more money they get in dues, the more money they can give to other liberal leaning socialist organizations. And then the more powerful they become. Never mind. WEAC will never promote teaching as a profession. They would lose to much power.

First, the ID10T misstates the way dues are assessed--they have nothing to do with how much we are paid. I pay as much as someone 20 years my senior, who pays as much as someone who started teaching this year. Second, the ID10T's argument here runs counter to everything his side has been saying about the union's motivations to oppose the voucher program. He says we want an artificially low supply compared to the demand. Aside from seeming to run counter to NEA's dire predictions of teacher shortages, it breaks with the conservative calcualtion that fewer public school students means fewer public school teachers means less in dues, and that's why the union opposes vouchers. The ID10T's side needs to make sure that they all have their stories straight.

Throw in some old-school union bashing, and you have the gist of the argument.

The kicker, of course, is DiGaudio's comments to that post:

I'm probably better than 90% of the clowns on the MPS payroll and in the MTEA. Hiring me would be an upgrade anywhere. I have applied each of the last 4 years and probably 10 times in the past 20 without one single interview.

I'll match my recommendations and evaluations with you, Jay, and any damned person on the MPS payroll. Tell me why? Hell, I told HR I'd even move to Milwaukee because it's better than the pissant piece of crap worthless work I am doing now.

And, I will bet I can do your job better than you can.

No one hired him? Hm.

Fellas, go back to what I wrote about "The Wages of Teaching," if you really want to know why people don't want to become teachers:

If Quindlen is right that the American people should be our biggest advocates, then those same people ought to recognize that it was the teachers who reached them--not the meddling anti-tax forces, the know-it-all politicians, or the privateers who currently run the Department of Education--who deserve the praise and rewards. It was the teachers who helped them "levitate" who created conditions for success, not vouchers or Intelligent Design or corporate America.

Think back for just a second about your favorite school teacher, one who really did help you levitate, and ask yourself this: Would I meddle now in how that teacher does her job? Would that teacher have been as effective with me then if he'd had to prepare me for a standardized test? Would that teacher agree with me if I'd said to her face that she had an easy job--summers off and weekends free?

You know what the answers are. You know what the solution is: Stop perpetuating myths and start respecting and supporting what we teachers do.

The reason the best and the brightest don't want to be teachers is because every time we turn around, somebody is calling us "thugs," questioning our intelligence, berating us for failing our students. You can't turn on the radio or read a newspaper without learning how awful we are, how poisonous our union is, how unvalued we are by society. We are told by the Kafka-esque bureaucracies to teach to the test, do these mountains of paperwork, blow with the ever-shifting winds of "reform."

Once in a great while, a parent or student expresses their appreciation, and those days--those days--we stop regretting our decision to be teachers.

Only on those days.