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by hereandsphere

BOSTON MAYOR : MANAGEMENT IS THE MESSAGE

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^ probably the most-viewed face in Boston today : 29-year old Daniel Koh, who will be Mayor-elect Marty Walsh’s Chief of staff

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“Management” is the message that Mayor-elect Walsh is sending so far. Changes in polkicy may be coming; certainly his core supporters insist on it; but for now, the prioority is to manage better what already is.

We saw the message previewed at the Transition Team Hearings, in which each Task Force found its suggestions divided into “keep,” “implenent,” and “dream” components. Categorization helped task force participants to appraise the impact of their ideas — and to traffic-cop the discussion toward flow, not tie-ups. Still, it wasn’t clear then that traffic-copping would become a policy in itself; but it looks that that is what has happened.

The selction of Huffington Post chief staff manager Daniel Koh to be Walsh’s chief of staff confirms it. Koh is a manager, not a politician. He holds an advanced degree in management; method is his milieu, application his brief. Havard; Phillips Andover (disclosure : my school too). He worked in Mayor Menino’s administration prior to joining Huff post. His selection assures that the policies will be Walsh’s, the implementation, Koh’s. Sometimes chiefs of politicians’ staffs inject policy ideas of their own. It’s all too easy for an office holder’s office manager to control the action. Koh will not — probably can not — do that to Walsh : or maybe I should say, he and Walsh agree completely, that management will be the policy and thus Koh will have free rein to make it happen as he deems best.

(to learn more about Daniel Koh, follow this link to his Huff post bio : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-koh/ )

The selection has won almost universal applause. Nearly everyone understands that, despite Tom Menino’s remarkable popularity with voters, his City Hall abounds in seat of the pants. “Temperamental” is its key. Who knows what, or who, will be the priority tomorrow, or the next day, of Menino’s impromptu, grudge-freckled mind ? As for the BRA, the less said the better. Developers either got aboard Mayor Menino’s Indiana Jones-like chase horse or they risked getting poofed, or cornered. Communities into which developments were to be deposited found themselves labyrinthed, door-locked, sweet-and-sour talked. One heard it at all the Mayoral Forums during the campaign, in every part of the city. Heard also was an almost universal demand to simplify the City’s permitting process — or should I call it “permitting adventure” ? Permitting should eanble enterprise,l not discourage it, much less laugh at it.

Nobody much mentioned the taxi scandal during the campaign; it wasn’t laid at Menino’s door; but nowhere in City governance was Menino’s managerial unavilability more on view. For how many years had the City’s taxi drivers been allowed to be cheated, gouged, disrespected by taxi medallion owners, with not a whisper of investigation undertaken, much less corrective action ? It happend on Menino’s watch, and he knows it did. So do we.

Walsh appears determined to not let that sort of sinkhole exist on his watch. This is a good thing, and a wise one. Walsh knows that the City is divided on most of the major policy areas he will eventually have to face. School reform, City unions, staffing diversity, traffic and bikes, poverty and achidvement, public safety — all portend division that Walsh, elected by a coalition internally mjuch at odds, cannot afford to take hold. On management of what the City does already do, however, there is almost no disagreement : it needs dramatic improvement. Order out of anarchy, simplicity from confusion.

Improving City management was the message of two Mayoral campaigns that did not win : Rob Consalvo and Dan Conley. Walsh won almost all the Consalvo votes : voters who don’t like Walsh’s charter schools record and don’t readily comport with his trade union style but who chose him nonetheless. These voters must be happy to see Walsh adopt Consalvo’s signature theme. As for Dan Conley voters, Walsh won hardly any. His emphasis on City administration first can only be a pleasant surprise to voters who did not envision Walsh as an administrator of anything.

You all know that we at Here and Sphere favored John Connolly. But I saw in Dan Conley a very capable second choice. Thus I too find Walsh’s “management first” message a wise one. The policy decisions can wait while he — and we — fix the process by which those policy decisions will be implemented.

Meanwhile, Councillor Ayanna Pressley has announced that she will seek the Council Presidency. She is said to have Matt O’Malley’s vote and Tito Jackson’s. The wheels are turning. Oh yes they are.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

UPDATE : Now I am getting reports that Bill Linehan will have no less than 8 votes out of 13.  Even so, Ayanna Pressley has made her move. And a statement.

by hereandsphere

SNOW AND COLD, COLD AND SNOW

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Outside my front door almost eighteen inches of white chilly dust quilts everything. Car, bushes, porch roof, trash barrels, sidewalk all wear a parka-coated white through which humps and twigs loom or stab, grasping toward the sun. Good luck with that ; the sun wears a shawl of haze, a lace of cloud ice. Tomorrow, maybe, it will shine; today it sports a drowsy eyelid. A half-asleep sun can’t do its job. The temperature as I write sits at 8 degrees of F. At wake-up time it was 4. But that means there’s no melt, none at all. The snow is dry, as sere as a corpse’s spit. I broomed it off, whisk — whoosh — see-ya !

Then the car. That wasn’t as 1-2-3. Last night’s defroster ice bonded to the windshield epoxy-like; it clung to the driver’s side door like a tic. I had to enter from the passenger side — that door not having opened during last night’s drive, no ice crept into its lock — slide across to the driver seat and with shoulder, shove the door open — wham ! It opened, all right — with a crack. Had my shove ripped the door frame from its seams ? With fingers frozen stiff I stumbled the key into the ignition, wanked it with my knuckles, pumped the pedal — the engine turned over, faithful horse that it is. Was there enough antifreeze, or would the block crack ? On mornings like this I ask that question. They don’t happen every year even here on the coast just northeast of Boston, but at 7 AM it’s too late to wish that I had checked the coolant yester-eve. I am in luck. The engine warms up smoothly. Eight minutes and the defroster is melting the windscreen ice. My hands, too.

Five more minutes of melt, and I can see the driveway and the street. Off I go. Easy on the pedal, steady, out the driveway, onto the street — nobody’s coming, nobody at all, there’s not a car anywhere but mine. It’s the kind of selfie that I like. An honest street on an honest day.

Out onto the expanse of road my horse purrs. Piles of snow dust flank the wide street. The plows guys have earned their overtime pay, the main roads are clear as a gallop. To the nearest Starbucks I go, here to assuage my latte addiction, eat a walnut muffin, and write the story that you are reading now.

It’s one helluva winter morning in coastal Massachusetts. Cold and snow, snow and cold. There isn’t even one boat on the harbor, only unused mooring sticks. But the sun is riffling the bay surface into chips of foam, the nor’west wind catches them and rolls the foam up like an ice quiche. Somebody ought to run a trawl right now. When i was a young’un, we’d do just that : run a few traps for lobster — January lobsters are hard-shell like you wouldn’t believe, full of meat and chewy. And fish ? Under surface water this cold entire flocks of fish come out and party like ravers. But I see no trawler, no tuna boat, no lobster dory. Just water wind and haze of sun. It’s a quiet thing, is cold. Not a sound. Dust of snow too has no voice.

But I do.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

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by hereandsphere

LABOR ISSUES AND THE ECONOMY : UNITY IN NEW YORK

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^ center left pact ? unity in New York as Bill Clinton swears in mayor Bill deBlasio

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By asking Bill Clinton to swear him in as New York City’s new Mayor, Bill deBlasio has already made history. On this one move, deBlasio has assured that the Democratic Party will not split between wings “Labor’ and “Centrist.”

This is good news for all Americans who want to see economic progress come to their lives, not just the very favored top earners. Many Americans — myself included — are pushing legislation and referenda to relieve the huge rush of money to the top, money away from everybody else. These moves cannot take the field as an opposition movement within the only political party placed to bring them about. Bill deBlasio and Bill Clinton have signalled that they understand this and will move forward as Democrats together. The initiatives the two men agree on could not be more vital :

1.raise the Federal minimum wage to $ 10.10 n hour and index it to inflation.
2.protect unemployment benefits for long-term unemployed, many of whom have been without work so long that they already require job retraining in order to maintain skills currency
3.commit all the Federal spending needed to repair and improve America’s infrastructure
4.maintain the Federal food stamp program, do not cut funding for it

To which I could add the following :

1.fully staff the National labor relations baord (NLRB) to monitor and protect the organizing and bargaining rights of workers in organizable industries
2.make it an unfair labor practice to (a) reduce workers’ hours to part-time levels so as to avoid paying benefits or providing health insurance (b) make such workers “independent contractors” rather than W-2 employees
3.extend the “earned income” credit to incomes up to 150 % of Federally defined “poverty” level.
4.pass a comprehensive immigration bill that provides all undocumented immigrants other than those with a felony criminal record a pathway to citizenship, and immediately grant social security numbers, access to drivers’ licenses, and access to health care to all such immigrants.

The initiatives that deBlasio and Bill Clinton jointly advocate, and those that I have added to the list, purpose to do the right thing by many millions of our neighbors; they will grow the economy strongly. Did we need Jeb Bush –a Republican — to point out, as he did at last year’s CPAC Conference, that undocumented immigrants are a boon to the economy, in the work that they do and, yes, the taxes that they pay ? That by their young demographic, they help rescue the Social Security fund ? Jeb Bush said that. Why it needed saying, I’ll never understand. It’s common sense ! The economy is ALL of us. If millions cannot participate in it except at the margins, the economy suffers. Time and again I have editorialized that consumer spending = two thirds of our ENTIRE economy. You want jobs created ? Consumer spending creates them. businesses do not hire people because taxes drop. They hire people because demand increases for their products and services.

Why can’t the funders of today’s Republican party get this ? The businesses that have pushed most current Republicans to fight every move that puts more money into more people’s budgets are blind to their own interests. Any business exec with half a brain knows that his or her employees are the strongest asset, that employee turnover is a huge and largely unnecessary expense; that prosperous and loyal employees buy what they make or the services they provide; that they spread the company’s good reputation by word of mouth to everyone they talk to.

May I add, as I’ve said before, that if the Republican-funding business execs don’t like unions, don’t make your workers organize one in order to get paid what they deserve ? Otherwise, expect a union and all the hassle, drama, and — unhappily — oppression and even intimidation that comes with union organizing and job actions.

Granted that almost all of the new job descriptions being formed in the technology world are not union work. They’re as individualistic as innovation in the raw always is. New economy jobs also pay well. There’s no lack of venture funding for innovation work. I also note that many, maybe most, innovation venturists work with the Democratic party now. They’re not the breed of CEO that funds self-defeating money PACs.

In Boston, in our Mayor election, these innovation capitalists and the start-up world that they fund split with union and union-organizing interest groups about which man to support. Nor do we have available a Bill Clinton to swear in Marty Walsh and reunify our state’s Democratic party. But the issue that divided Boston’s Democrats in the mayoral election wasn’t part of the economic progress agenda that Bill Clinton and Mayor deBlasio have shaken hands on. Here the issue was the part that public worker unions should play in the City’s budget and what level of influence they should have on City policy governance. On the economic progress agenda, Walsh and John Connolly fully agreed.

—- Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

PS : many of the innovation venturists and execs who supported John Connolly were and are of a mind to support some Republican candidates, at least locally in Massachusetts; possibly even nationally. Why the current Republican consensus cannot connect to these innovation capitalists, I’ll never understand. It would help, of course, if the party could ditch the lifestyle bigotry and lose the opposition to women’s reproductive rights. Fortunately, those obstacles mine no ground in Massachusetts. Charlie Baker, if he hopes to be our Governor, is free to embrace innovation capitalism, discard Scrooge agendas, wave off the anti-immigrant talk, and embrace diversity, economic dispersion, and the future. He might just do that. His excellent plan to end homelessness in Massachusetts is a promising first step.

by hereandsphere

BOSTON SCHOOLS REFORM : THE ROLE OF PEDAGOGY

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^ the teacher overseeing “learning in community”

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In Part I of my look at how Boston should reform its Public Schools mission I focused on curriculum. I asserted that employers and citizenship must be accorded primary status in curriculum, and also must be the decider about competition among teachers and between schools.

Now for Part II, in which I discuss pedagogy — the means and methods by which teaching is done — because pedagogy is the province of teachers and only teachers. It is they who must use them. It is teachers who innovate teaching method. Teachers lead by example. They are the souls in which passion for knowledge lives.

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mathematics pedagogy : Building the Habits (Love) of Learning

As in so much of the world of thought and in the practice and theory education, Augustine (354-430 AD) was the first to write comprehensively about pedagogy. I cannot think of any writer then or since who has contributed more — even as much — to our understanding of what a teacher does, how, and why. It is well worth your time to read the following long passage from Wikipedia’s extensive biography of Augustine, who was a teacher all his adult life, a brilliant thinker, and (if anything) an even more brilliant writer :

“Historian Gary N. McCloskey ( says a passage in Augustine’s Wikipedia biography) finds four “encounters of learning” in Augustine’s approach to education:

1.Through Transforming Experiences;
2.as a Journey in Search of Understanding/Meaning/Truth;
3.Learning with Others in Community; and
4.Building the Habits (Love) of Learning.

“His emphasis on the importance of community as a means of learning distinguishes his pedagogy from some others. Augustine believed that dialogue/dialectic/discussion is the best means for learning, and this method should serve as a model for learning encounters between teachers and students. Saint Augustine’s dialogue writings model the need for lively interactive dialogue among learners.

“He introduced the theory of three different categories of students, and instructed teachers to adapt their teaching styles to each student’s individual learning style.

“The three different kinds of students are:
1. the student who has been well-educated by knowledgeable teachers
2.the student who has had no education; and
3.the student who has had a poor education, but believes himself to be well-educated.

“If a student has been well educated in a wide variety of subjects, the teacher must be careful not to repeat what they have already learned, but to challenge the student with material which they do not yet know thoroughly. With the student who has had no education, the teacher must be patient, willing to repeat things until the student understands, and sympathetic. Perhaps the most difficult student, however, is the one with an inferior education who believes he understands something when he does not. Augustine stressed the importance of showing this type of student the difference between “having words and having understanding,” and of helping the student to remain humble with his acquisition of knowledge.

“Augustine introduced the idea of teachers responding positively to the questions they may receive from their students, no matter if the student interrupted his teacher.

“Augustine also founded the restrained style of teaching. This teaching style ensures the students’ full understanding of a concept because the teacher does not bombard the student with too much material; focuses on one topic at a time; helps them discover what they don’t understand, rather than moving on too quickly; anticipates questions; and helps them learn to solve difficulties and find solutions to problems.

“Yet another of Augustine’s major contributions to education is his study on the styles of teaching. He claimed there are two basic styles a teacher uses when speaking to the students. The mixed style includes complex and sometimes showy language to help students see the beautiful artistry of the subject they are studying. The grand style is not quite as elegant as the mixed style, but is exciting and heartfelt, with the purpose of igniting the same passion in the students’ hearts.”

Augustine knew well what teachers today know and apply every day in the classroom : that different students require different means and methods. Augustine’s insight can thus be extended to Special Education as well. There are only two ways to apply Augustine’s individualized teaching. either you can separate the three categories of students and teach them apart, or you can bring them into the same classroom and work each group as they are. As Augustine counted highly the community setting, he would seem to favor the integrated classroom.

Can this work ? Augustine was the first education theorist to suggest a variety of teaching styles, each geared to a category of student. It must have been an exciting classroom, with Augustine teaching one way to one group of students and another way to another group, and all the students observing — even participating — in the diverse program. But Augustine did not confine his teaching to classrooms. He loved company at meals, and it is not unlikely that he had many of his students to dinner, thereat to instruct them, probably by improvisation upon the various pedagogic styles he wrote about (and certainly used).

I make the following additional observations to this examination of the greatest educational theorist’s pedagogy ;

1.None but a teacher could have conceived the pedagogic challenge as creatively as Augustine did, or as insightfully
2.certainly the employer of that time, the Roman imperial bureaucracy, could not have done it. Nor did it care to try. That was why it hired teachers. It was the teachers’ job to figure out how to educate students to the needs of Imperial administration.
3.assumed in all of Augustine’s education manual is that all teaching must met a standard of effectiveness. In his time, that was determined by the employer. The ineffective teacher lost Imperial favor, or students, or both. It was a self-evaluating system.

What we teach today has changed — though not as hugely as we sometimes assume — and schools now answer to a million employers, not only one. But Augustine’s pedagogic rule remains : that it is teachers, and only teachers, who must devise the means and methods by which will be taught the curriculum that the society and employers pay to have taught.

Teachers in Augustine’s day had no choice but to excel. They were not paid by the state. Their pay came from students’ fees. If a teacher had imperial favor, the fact was known, and he drew students; and these students paid. If he lost favor, the students’ parents saw that and sent their children elsewhere. Tenure ? There was no such thing. Every day, a teacher risked all. While it worked, it was the finest education system our civilization knew until modern times. Of course I do not suggest that we abolish tenure. far from it. That’s too much to ask of teachers who practice under the current system and have career time invested in it. But I do want to assert that tenure comes at a cost. A non-tenure system such as Roman education is self-evaluating. Evaluations in our tenure system depend upon who is doing the evaluating and answering for them to whom. Most of the evaluators are middlemen, not the society — and not the employers. But I suppose that, as in so much, inefficiency is the precious price that democratic government pays to a complex society of human fallibility.

Today we educate every child, not just the next generation of imperial administrators. We teach for a hundred different careers; we teach dozens of subjects. Scientific method was unknown. All students, of whatever  origin, learned in Latin. A unified administration was the rule then; diversity is ours now. Then, the stylus and tablet ruled; today, the digital device. Yet for all the differences between Augustine’s late imperial state and our always changing polity, teaching remains what Augustine knew it to be : teacher and student, teacher and students, learning for a purpose, a career, a better life and — perhaps — the love of learning for its own sake.

For Augustine, teachers ruled. So too for most of the educational theorists whose impact has been paramount since. Some theorists emphasize the school administrator — the principal. Some, the grading system and promotion from grade to grades. All these Augustine’s school took into account as well. The teacher yet ruled.

If the members of teachers unions could only accept their mission, embrace it as their unique contribution, risk all, and apply it within the larger context of society, competition, and employer curriculum, we would move a long way toward deploying education’s variety of means, methods, subjects, and standards in a context of challenge, innovation, and struggle as opposed to job security, curriculum debates, and one size fits all. It doesn’t. If Augustine knew that, why not us ?

—- Michael Freedberg / Here and Sphere

NOTE : You should read Augustine’s Retractiones as well as Peter Brown’s almost on-the-scene biography of Western Civilization’s most insightful social and psychological thinker — not to mention brilliant punster, superb speaker, and dramatic lecturer.

by hereandsphere

BOSTON : SCHOOL REFORM SLICED DICED AND…BLAND ?

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^ curriculum revolutionary : Irnerius of Bologna (1050-1125), who introduced new studies of law and so won the competition to draw students to his lectures

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“Today’s lesson, boys and girls, is ‘school reform : its history, its heroes, and its opponents.”

Thus sayeth the teacher. This shall be Part One of a Two-part course. Let the lecture begin :

No societal institution is harder to reform than schools. it has always been so. To take one huge example, when Greek began to be studied by European scholars in the 13th Century, its introduction, as a taught course, into the universities of that day — which taught all in Latin only — occasioned actual riots. Another example : teachers in medieval Europe were independent contractors, competing with each other (often viciously) for students (and student fees) — not collegial at all. Witness the revolutionary curriculum innovations — and career — of Irnerius of Bologna. Only when the advantages of coming together as a faculty showed themselves fatal to independent teachers seeking students did the faculty, collegial system become the standard. It took almost 300 years to make the point. One thing did NOT change : teachers worked on the margins, never far from wipe-out. If students did not sign up for their lectures, their teaching career ended. Something like that is still the case. Courses that attract too few students to pay the teacher’s salary get dropped from the curriculum.

You will of course notice that I am talking about “higher’ education. The situation with primary education was different and still is. Students in primary school learn the basics. These have hardly changed at all since Roman days — because the basics of civilization scarcely change. What does cahnge is the WAY in which the basics are taught, and, again, changes in method have come about only with much controversy and almost always far too late. Thus it is no great surprise to see that, today, in Boston, school reform movements meet big resistance, even counter-reformation.

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^ Cassiodorus (ca 485-585), the Arne Duncan of his day, as chief aide to Theodoric the Great and later, educational reformer. When he retired, his library of over 2200 books stocked a monastic school that he founded on his estate at Vivarium, near Catanzaro in the “boot” of Italy.

There have always been four major constituencies on the battlefield of school reform : parents; students; teachers; employers. it was so in Roman times — but the Roman system was a ducal, bureaucratic one in which schools prepared for only one career : oratory in the senate, oratory as a proctor (litigating lawyer), oratory in imperial administration. Parents fought to get their brightest children into a school well connected to imperial circles; teachers fought to get the imperial approval without which they could not teach in an imperially sanctioned school; students were force-fed and even beaten, learning by rote, marine-drill-sergeanted into a mindset sufficiently bureaucratic to win them a coveted post in the imperial or Senatorial circle. (if you want to taste something of the flavor of late Roman schools, read chapters 3 through 6 of Augustine’s CONFESSIONS.) To sum up ; in the Roman world, the employer entirely dictated what the school would teach, to whom, and how.

Is it thus so odd that today, in Boston, employers want a major say in how the City’s schools teach future employees ? Is it not a huge concern of theirs, that graduating students be able to meet the entry-level prerequisites, at least, of their hiring ? Kids do not graduate from twelve years of primary and secondary schooling just for graduating’s sake. They graduate to employment. Some may, it is true, go into the military — where they will be trained as forcefully as the Roman world trained its legions. A few may move directly to entrepreneurship. but for 80 to 90 percent of graduating students, employment awaits, just as it awaited the graduates of Roman academies.

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^ John Dewey : “learn by doing” — implanting the culture of apprenticeship learning into school methodology

As for employers dominating, even owning our schools, keep in mind that imperial or Senatorial patronage funded and staffed all the Roman world’s schools. Today we would not accord employers such dominance of our schools, partly because we have thousands of varying employers where Rome had only one. But we cannot, and should not, decry substantial employer involvement in the content and method of what our schools teach. We should invite it.

Our schools also teach one other major ethical learning : citizenship. In Rome, citizenship belonged to all, and it bestowed important rights. But citizenship imposes duties as well, and so long as the Roman world held together its schools taught what they taught not just as skills necessary to imperial employment but also as a responsibility of citizenship. The two obligations were not separate. In our world and our schools, citizenship is not so obviously an integral part of employment knowledge. It involves knowing history, the law, cultural diversity, tolerance, inquiry, participation in politics. Yet are employers not concerned that their employees be good citizens ? Young people who cannot accept diversity, or display good manners, or lack social graces, often make poor employees.

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^ Horace Mann : Massachusetts Congressman and education reformer — citizenship / civics as part of a core curriculum

I present this lengthy background as a platform upon which I now offer the education reform plan posted by incoming mayor Marty Walsh. Here it is as posted on his website :

“Marty’s plan is to immediately build on current strengths within Boston Public Schools, and simultaneously develop and implement a long-term strategy based on equity, access, accountability, transparency and collaboration to provide a top-notch education for all of Boston’s children. Success will require taking a hard look at current practice, the political will to make tough, necessary changes, and the collaboration of families, educators, and partners across the city to realize a shared vision.”

“In addition, Marty recognizes the achievement of students with disabilities can be accelerated by participation in inclusion classes with their differently abled peers. The Walsh Administration will continue support for current plans to expand the number of inclusion schools, and will increase support for principals and teachers to learn about co-teaching models, Common Core Standards and differentiating instruction.

“Embrace and Support the Implementation of the Common Core State Standards – The Walsh Administration will ensure each and every school has a plan to integrate the Common Core State Standards into daily instruction, prepare teachers to teach the standards, and help students demonstrate their knowledge and skills.

“Selecting the next superintendent is one of the most important decisions facing the new administration. It is critical that the superintendent fully embraces the Mayor’s vision and is committed to its success.

“Maintain a Mayoral-Appointed School Committee – Marty supports an appointed school committee. This is the best way to ensure a body that fully reflects all the stakeholders in quality public education, including those with direct experience providing education, and those who understand the importance of prioritizing the needs of the whole child in an urban school setting.

“Central office departments will be redesigned into streamlined cross-functional units and held accountable for how well they provide support and service to schools. School supervisors will closely monitor schools in order to know which school leaders to support, which to push, and which to grant autonomy so that each and every Boston Public School is among the very best schools in Massachusetts.

“The Walsh Administration will focus on “deepening the bench” of potential school leaders who know how to work with teachers to improve instructional practices tied to the Common Core State Standards.

“Strong partnerships with local colleges and universities, and support for accelerated programs that prepare teachers for urban schools, such as those offered at the University of Massachusetts Boston, will be developed to supply qualified candidates. Systems and incentive will be implemented to retain strong principal and teacher leaders with appropriate compensation.

“The Walsh Administration will be aggressive in working with federal elected officials and agencies, the Massachusetts State House, and corporate and non-profit partners to increase revenues for targeted programs.”

— so sasys Marty Walsh, officially.

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^B George Perry, Jeri Robinson, and John Barros — Walsh’s Schools team. Is there a Cassiodorus in this triad ? Or just smiling faces ?

The Walsh plan has aroused plenty of opposition from anti-Common Core advocates. (Even though Massachusetts school standards are stronger than Common Core, which is thus irrelevant to Boston schools.) it also disappoints many who want a much more comprehensive overhaul of Boston Public School methods, curriculum, student assignment, and partnering. For me, the plan’s face is its blandness. It is cardboard. It avoids all of the difficult issues. It hardly mentions the most controversial or necessary. you won’t find in it the terms ’employer,’ “charter school,” “teacher evaluation,” “teacher selection,” “school competition.” It really is not a plan for reform at all. What I take from it is a message that we should TALK about reform. This, the City is doing. But then what ?

I find especially unfortunate the plan’s entire avoidance of competition. I know of no dynamic school system in which competition between schools — between teachers within those schools — was not an integral condition. Uncompetitive schools teach uncontroversial knowledge. Competition can be imposed upon schools and teachers only by employers — in the Roman world, the Emperor demanded, and that WAS the competition — or by the students and their parents, who, as in Abelard’s Paris and in the teaching city that was contemporary Bologna — pay their teaching fees to the best teachers. The competition then — years 1080 to about 1270 — was brutal, but knowledge advanced daringly and hugely. (we don’t call it “the Renaissance of the 12th Century” for nothing.) Much of the advance in knowledge was brought into those schools by independent researchers, often working in Muslim lands. The same is true today. Innovation Districts and their collaborative competitors are our era’s version of 12th Century’s wandering researchers. They and their knowledge, gathered from everywhere, should inform, revive, reconstitute our City’s public schools — curriculum, evaluation and pay, responsiveness to a rapidly evolving world of employers.

Or we can choose stagnation, blandness, and loss of the innovative daring that made Boston so different a city for so long.

—- Michael Freedberg / Here and Sphere

Tomorrow : the teacher and his or her career in a system committed tyo innovation, citizenship, and employment.

by hereandsphere

#BOSMAYOR : SOMETHING TO HIDE

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^ all but one of these folks didn’t hide. Why the AFT ? “OneBoston” ? Ya right.

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Thanks to the Boston Globe’s Wesley Lowery, who scooped the story, we now know who “OneBoston” was and where its mysterious, last-week-of-the-race $ 480,000 ad buy came from. The AFT did it. As in American Federation of Teachers.”

My purpose is not to retell Lowery’s story, which you can read in the link below this paragraph. My intention, rather, is to confront the secrecy of it. By steering their $ 480,000 into the Boston Mayor race via a New Jersey PAC, in which state disclosure of donors is not required, the AFT kept hidden what it felt it needed to hide. The same was true of the Boston Teachers’ Union, which didn’t issue an endorsement of Marty Walsh until the morning of election day, too late for news media to make the voting public aware.

Link to Wesley Lowery’s story : http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2013/12/27/american-federation-teachers-revealed-funder-behind-mysterious-pro-walsh-pac-during-mayoral-campaign/ioVOZ2wdjfhxNVPF8hasMN/story.html

Why the hiding ? Clearly these teachers’ unions felt that if their active involvement in a Boston Mayor’s race were known , Boston’s 57,000 public school parents — and surely others — would not like it. These unions know that there’s scant public support for their agenda. Yet they were willing to hide behind the blinds for the sake of electing as Mayor a man who sits on a charter school board — which teachers’ unions profess to hate — but who is known to be a friend of unions and a go-slow collaborator who would likely not shake too many peaches off the peachtrees, in preference to a committed “school transformer” who actually sends his kids to a public school and who wanted much better than the status quo.

All year long the teachers unions have demonstrated their unwillingness to accord any school reform measures but their own. For them it has been “our way or the highway.” Thus the hiding; because school parents, curriculum developers, and Massachusetts’s state government have other ideas about how to improve schools than the teachers unions do and have more than sufficient public support to override the inflexibility of the teachers’ unions; and these unions know it, and thus took to subterfuge to evade the spotlight.

It was a pitiable example to set for the students whose citizenship learning we entrust to teachers. Don’t discuss, insist. Don’t make your moves known, deceive. Don’t confront unpleasant truths, send anonymous poison letters. (Privatization of schools, corporate intruders, child of privilege, etc.)

Bad enough when political campaigns do it. Despicable when done by people to whom we entrust the education of our children.

To circle the wagons around their own agenda, teachers’ organizations were ready to see a Mayor elected whose prospects are incremental at best, a mayor who is too decent a guy and too collaborative to force the hard decsions, instead of pursuing real reform by a Mayor candidate who understood that the future will not be like the past and who had solid ideas — and the intelligent fortitude and talented support group — on how to get his city there. To circle the wagons and do it under the table, like a worker trying to avoid paying taxes. I call it dishonorable.

John Connolly, the loser in this ambush, told Lowery “as a candidate I’m moving past the race. As a BPS parent, I am really angry.”

There was a time when teachers were reformers; embraced experiment; proposed new curricula and new school arrangements. Most teachers still understand very clearly that it is NOT about THEM, it’s about educating children. Unfortunately, the teachers’ organization that invaded the Mayor’s race unannounced “because they are fighting for working families,” no less, failed to get that message. For these groups, it was indeed all about them.

The Boston Teachers Union (BTU) had an opportunity, early in the race, to embrace the candidacy of John Connolly, which had made education the number one issue, and to discuss with him how to best reshape the public schools to be beneficial to the future economy and society. That would have been a superb exercise in reform that the voting public would surely have welcomed. Instead, the BTU chose to retrench, to demonize Connolly, to support a man they didn’t want to support, and to do so by last-minute ambush. But I do not blame the BTU as profoundly as I do the AFT. The BTU’s resistance to reforms not advocated by it was well publicized even if their election-morning endorsement wasn’t. The AFT chose to hide behind the curtain, like Polonius, and to lob a $ 480,000 bomb into the arena. It shouldn’t be surprised if it now finds itself poignarded by a host of Boston School Parents who have other ideas about school reform and who resent being ambushed by refuseniks.

—- Michael Freedberg / Here and Sphere

Reporter’s note — All of this confirms my appraisal that it was Walsh’s weakness, electorally, that allowed him to accrue so many allies and thus to win. The politicians and interest groups that lent Marty their support applied the “City Council Presidency” rule : always vote for the weakest. That’s fine when electing a mostly powerless Council Presidency. It’s not so fine when misapplied to an office truly potent, as Boston’s mayor sure is. By applying the “vote the weakest” principle to Walsh, the groups and politicians who backed him basically retained power in their own hands — a kind of back-door Recall. The last thing these groups and office holders wanted was a strong Mayor who didn’t need them at every flex point. Walsh can still break free and grab the power of office; but to do so, he will have to betray and/or push aside many of his supporters. (It can be done. See the papacy of Pope Stephen III, mid- 8th Century, for an example of how to do it.) However, I see nothing in Walsh’s career or temperament that suggests such an outcome. I’m not sure he even wants it.   —- MF

by hereandsphere

#MAGOV : ELECTION OVERLOAD ? DON’T KNOCK IT

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^ five of the seven US Senators who have represented Massachusetts since 2009. can you name the other two ?

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A couple of days ago I was conversing as usual about Massachusetts politics with a friend who suddenly stopped me. “Do you realize we’ve had seven different US Senators in this State the past four years ?”

I had not, in fact, realized that. He counted them out : Ted Kennedy, Paul Kirk, Scott Brown, Elizabeth Warren. John Kerry, Mo Cowan, Ed Markey. Yup, seven it is.

We’re not used to such stuff. Before 2009, Massachusetts had sent the sme two men to the Senate since 1984, when John Kerry replaced Paul Tsongas. That’s what we do. We want our Congressmen and Senators to build up huge seniority, to outlast their opponents, to leave the Federal bureaucracy no chance to put off reforms in hopes that the reformer would just go away. It work. Kennedy and Kerry got a lot done in their 47 and 29 years in the Senate. Meanwhile, the seven who have followed them had, in comparison, barely time to put a name plate on the office door. It’s the same deal for a Massachusetts Congressman. Get him or her elected and then re-elect him or her every time until the seniority passes critical mass. Almost no Massachusetts Congressmen get defeated. The last time it happened was 1996, when Peter Torkildsen was beaten by John Tierney, who has held the 6th District seat ever since.

Given our state’s political habits it’s no wonder that people here are now calling the tide of elections, special and otherwise, rolling through Massaachusetts as “election overload.” In addition to the US senate elections there’s been a Special election in the 5th Congressional District, a Boston Mayor election, several State Legislature “specials” — and more of these to come — and, in eleven months, the regular election for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, and more. For some of these “specials,” very few voters have bothered. Even the dramatic, confrontational Boston Mayor election only induced 37 % of the City’s voters to cast a ballot.

About the same percentate of the State’s voters balloted in the now legendary 2009 US senate “special” in which Scott Brown became the only Republican that we have sent to the US Senate since 1978. It seems as though 36 to 37 % of voters is our State’s participation ceiling other than on “normal” election dates. On those dates, between 70 and 80 percent of our voters vote. The state has two classes of voters : the “always active” 36 to 37 percent and an equal number of “only at the usual time”people.

What is the difference between these two groups ? I’d say that the only-at-regular-time people see voting as a duty, while the participant actives see it as connection. Those who vote whenever an election is called actually expect, or hope, that their vote will move things. The duty voters probably vote as skeptics, not believers. That’s healthy. Politics is an arena of agendas, not saviors. We should be skeptical of agendas. But we also need believers in agendas; and my point in this column is that we should welcome, not shrug at, the tide of elections now rolling over Massachusetts. Our democracy was not set up for lifetime office holders. Well into the 20th Cehtiury it was uncommon for Senators and Congressmen to serve for 20, 30, 40, even 50 years, as some have done since. Citizens stood for office, served, and came home again to their lives and communities. The Massachusetts custom, since the 1920s, of saying “why replace someone who’s down there doing his job ?” now gives way to a series of fresh faces, one after another, many people voicing our State’s concerns, each in his or her own way, and — we hope — voicing the concerns of more voters than just the insiders who for so long had everything their own way.

Almost all of our state’s political indsiders are Democrats. It is totally a good thing that, since 2009, they have had to campaign to the 70-80 of voters who vote in elections rather than just to the 15 % who control the Democratic primary, For decades, our state’s politics was — with the exception of Governor elections — the purview of a very small core whose members spoke only to themselves. That’s not true now. With so many elections at hand for so many offices, vast numbers of candidates who, in the period 1960-2008 would never have had a chancve, now have that chance. Many of therse newcomers are Republicans. Some are Tea Party. Much of what the Tea candidates, in particular, have to say shocks and disgusts; but better that it be said out in the open, where it can be confronted, than seething in silence. As for the Democrats, they now divide on many issues, between Obama-Clinton centrists and the labor-Left who would like to use Elizabeth Warren as their banner. All of which assures me that in the foreseeable future, Massachusetts will be a state with three — maybe four — political parties stepping into a never-ending exercise of democracy in action. After all, there’s at least five major candidates going for the Governorship, several others, and a lengthening list of new names vying to be Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Treasurer, and state Legislator. Don’t knock it.

—- Michael Freedberg / Here and Sphere

by hereandsphere

MEEK AT THE MOVIES — THE WOLF OF WALL STREET ( 4 stars )

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^ Leonard DiCaprio as penny stock pusher in Martin Scorcese’s “Wolf of wall Street”

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“The Wolf of Wall Street” is everything “American Hustle” wanted to be and more. It’s smart, mean and makes a pointed political statement while roiling in the excess of its characters. As far as drama goes, let’s face it, : rags to riches and success isn’t so alluring. No one wants to see a nice guy make it, they want to see someone claw their way up, live large and fall hard. Take, “Scarface,” “Goodfellas” or “Wall Street” to name a few. “Wolf” and “Hustle” are less violent and black and white, but the elements, greed, lust, envy and hubris, are all there in fine, fermented form.

Both films are based on true stories and take place in New York City during high flying eras that predate cell phones and the rampant use of the internet. “Hustle” jogs through the Abscam scandal of the 1970s via a petty con who, ensnared by the Feds, helps draw in corrupt pols. “Wolf” is smaller fare, following the hilariously self-destructive travails of a hungry wanna-be who, from humble origins, gets his brokerage license on the eve of the Black Friday market crash of 1987 and instead of cashing out and moving on to something more sure-footed, goes on to parlay his smooth cold-calling skills into a pump and dump scheme, manipulating the penny stock market and making a killing on the fifty-percent commissions. The sad underlying truth to “Wolf,” as wonderfully articulated by an over-the-top broker (a blazing Matthew McConaughey adding to his banner year) teaching the naive ‘Wolf’ pup the ropes over a five martini lunch, is that money in motion is change in your pocket. Always be selling and always be buying; forget about value added, if they make money, good, but it’s all about movement.

As that young fry of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort, who morphs into a coked-up kingpin of crack and cash, Leonardo DiCaprio delivers one of the strongest performances of his impressive career. It’s also Martin Scorsese’s best film since “Goodfellas.”

Marty, who’s a soft spoken reflective soul, has made some of the most violent, in-your-face films of all time. “Wolf” is no exception. Sure, there’s no real gun play or jaw cracking per se, but “Wolf” is brutal. You never see the plumbers or middle class mom and pops who are defrauded, led astray and into ostensible ruin, throwing their life savings on junk because a faceless, confident voice on the other end of a telephone told them he was going to make their dreams come true and put them on easy street. Jordan, too, is a train wreck, snorting coke and entertaining escorts in the office during working hours. Yes the film’s pretty racy, working women work the conference rooms during work hours, servicing the execs, before giving the new hires a turn, and female co-workers, either caught up in the frenzy of money, the desire to get ahead or the sheer love of sex, are as happy to get on their knees and perform felatio as they are excited by closing a deal. Belfort lives big and he’s fairly generous, unless you do something to irk him; then you are fired in the most humiliating way possible. And he does all this while popping qualudes, getting a candle inserted into his rectum and raising a family.

How a self-interested SOB like Belfort spins so rivetingly, and for three hours, is both tribute to DiCaprio and the screenwriter Terence Winter (“Boardwalk Empire” and “The Sopranos”) who get at the decadent depravity and don’t try to make Jordan heroic as his moral compass falls out. “Hustle” tries to have its cake and eat it. The characters too don’t feel real or likable. Jordan lives the American dream and nightmare, and it couldn’t be more illumination or a reflection of what ails us. Jordan is Gordon Gecko with a heart and insecurity, a boy with a supermodel and a race car. The formula has played out tragically for celebs and athletes before, but none have done it with such bombastic aplomb as Jordan.

The supporting cast which includes Jonah Hill as Jordan’s wigged-out wingman, Kyle Chandler as the FBI agent on Belfort’s tail, and Rob Reiner as pop Belfort.

—- Tom Meek / Meek at the Movies

by hereandsphere

CHRISTMAS : GOOD WILL TO ALL MEN

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^ the tree, the light, and the presents = good will to those we love an d to all men

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There is mankind at its worst, mankind in the ordinary, and mankind at its best. If today means anything, it means celebrating mankind at its best. That is what those who believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the son of God celebrate in him. How can a human being be better than to be God’s only begotten son ? Believers in Jesus believe that there is a “best’ in human life, that it has been witnessed, that it will come again. But first of all, that a best human being was born, because being born is proof that he existed; that it is possible actually to encounter the best of human beings.

Today is the date that the Christian polity, under Emperor Constantine’s guidance, set as the date of Jesus’s birth. His actual birth day was not known. Nobody recorded it; when Jesus was born, he was born a very ordinary child to a very ordinary family. No early writing mentions the day of his birth, because none of the writers of that time (excepting possibly the beloved disciple in John) knew Jesus personally; and those people who did know him did not follow him because of what day he was born but because of what he was doing, decades later, when they recognized that he was very special. Thus the Church gathered 300 years later in synod assigned a day to Jesus’s birth. It was no ordinary day. On December 25 began the Roman world’s most important festival, the very pagan, very raucous, but entirely celebratory festival, the lupercalia. That festival celebrated the lengthening day after the Winter Solstice ; the return of the sun, of light, of planting season and bounteous harvest to come. It was a festival of hope, of optimism, of — good will to all men, that all might propser from the coming of the light.

By decreeing December 25 as the birth day of Jesus, the Church  made Jesus’s birth a symbol of the light, of all best things. And so it has been ever since. The addition, much later, to December 25 of the St. Nicholas story — of the giving of presents — simply reiterates what Constantine and his bishops had in mind. The day symbolizing Jesus’s birth is to be a day of ritual bounty in honor of the bounty to come — to all men, in good will.

It really seems a miracle, that a bishop of Constantine’s day, St. Nicholas of Myra, became —  via German folklore, of all things — the jolly German burgher named “Santa ‘Klaus,” a jolly symbol of the happiest day in the lives of everyone he visits this morning. But so it is. Santa really does live, doesn’t he ? And for those who, despite the history, think Santa just a cute invention, I refer you to the immortal 1890’s newspaper editorial “Yes Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus.’ in which the writer assured his reader’s 10-year old daughter — for such she was — that Santa Claus (as we call him) is as real as happiness is real, as good will to all men is real.

You do not have to believe — in the Church that Constantine gave legal recognition to, form and process; and which well before Constantine’s day had taken to heart and soul the life and works of Jesus of Nazareth for proof of God’s good will to all men — to accord good will to all men a central place in your own life. You are not on this earth alone. None of us is here alone. We depend on each other in almost everything, every day; each of us accords respect to every one of us wherever we meet, when instead of injuring or being mean to someone, we encounter them with courtesy, patience, a smile, hospitality, a collaboration, a purchase, a conversation. We do this almost without realizing. It is second nature to us as members of the human community. but especially on this day set aside to honor — even worship — the best of men and the best in men, we restore the health of our souls, the clarity of our vision, the strength of our purpose, the charity and courtesy that we give to our fellows — no matter who we are or what God we believe in .

And of course the presents and the Christmas cards. Dear readers, take this little message as our Christmas card to you. You can even sing it : “Good will to all men, the light is come !”

—- the Editors / Here and Sphere

by hereandsphere

POLITICS AFTER OBAMA : THE COMING 2014 ELECTION

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^ in the post-Obama era, insurgents find common ground : Elizabeth Warren and John McCain

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The 2014 mid-term elections are under way, and both parties are preparing a battle which won’t resemble that of 2012 much at all.

We’re moving into the post-Obama period. Agendas are advancing that the President either does not want or has little to do with. Even in foreign policy he doesn’t have his way undisputed : witness the Senate bill, presented by 13 members from each party, to toughen Iran sanctions if the recent Interim Agreement doesn’t lead to a permanent one. The bill’s point is hard to disagree with, but it’s hard to see how diplomacy is assisted by legislation that feels like interference.

I agree with the Wall Street Journal that the hiring of John Podesta as a Presidential adviser announces that Democrats will campaign 2014 as a “class warfare” election. But it’s difficult to see how that translates into support for Obama’s remaining initiatives : immigration reform, gun control legislation, tax reform. The “class warfare” cry seems geared to invigorating the Democratic party for 2016. Same is true of nominating Senator Max Baucus of Montana to be Ambassador to China. Baucus was up for re-election next year; he had already announced his retirement. Montana was carried by Romney in 2012, by 14 points. Electing a Democrat to succeed Baucus was going to be difficult. Now, however, a Democrat — probbaly Lieutenant governor John Walsh, as the Wall street journal says — will assume Baucus’s seat, by appointment, and run in 2014 as the incumbent. It’s a smart move and a party move. Retaining the senate is a must for their 2016 basis.

Obama has wiggle room to pursue party-building stuff because the Republican Party is having to change as well, in the direction of compromise, so that it can be seen as a realistic governing party and not as obstruction. Republican strategy now accords vital budget and funding agreements, even as Obama concentrates on party-building in opposition.

As I have noted in several columns, Democrats at ground level having been moving for many months now to advance an agenda largely (but not entirely) Left-populist : union workers’ rights, higher minimum wages, banking reform, teacher union control of public education, alleviation of pay inequities, greater public spending on infrastructure and aid to families in need. It was easy to see that the infusion of these priorities into Mayor elections in Boston and New York was not happening only for local reasons. Clearly the leaders of this agenda had in mind the 2016 Democratic nomination for President.

At times the intensity of this movement has threatened to split the Democratic party, and i have decried that. we don’t need the Demotratic party to become “Left-tea’d,” as I have put it. But I wonder now if my warnings have been superseded by events. The 2014 campaign is upon us, the Democratic Party as a whole seems committed to the Left-ing agenda, and this is probably a wise decision for the party to make at mid-term time.

What must not happen is for this agenda to appear the Elizabeth Warren for President campaign. THAT would personalize the issues, and generate all manner of opposition to from Democrats threatened. Speaking of Warren, how come I do not see as much love for Senator Bernie Sanders as for her ? Sanders has been an eloquent voice for a Left-populist agenda — much of it very needed — long before Senator Warren appeared on the scene. My suspicion is that Warren Love arises from the 52 million dollars she raised for her 2012 campaign. It is ironic that the Left-populist movement wants big big money even while decrying its influence.

Readers can now ask me : what, if any, of the Left-populist agenda do I support ? Answer : I support quite a bit of it.

1. We do need a higher minimum wage. Substantially higher. Why should taxpayers have to sbsidize low-wage employers who pay their workers so little that they need public assistance to make ends meet ?

2. Employers should not be allowed to use job seekers’ credit scores as a hiring factor except if the job being sought is a financial one such as a comptroller or bank employee.

3. Financial institutions that specialize in customer deposits should not be allowed to use those deposits to engage in arbitrage trading. Or else such trading should be subject to the Federal Reserve’s margin requirements just as these are already imposed on customer accounts at stock-broker firms.

4. Union workers’ pension and benefit rights, as contracted for, should never be subject to legislative negation.

5. Infrastructure is as communal as anything in our society. Maintaining and improving our infrastructure is a vital economic duty. If tax dollars are needed, they should be granted.

But :

1.Education reform. This was the big divisive issue in the Boston Mayor election. I do not agree that teachers’ unions should control public school reform or that corporations have no defensible interest in school performance. I support school competition, because it is from competition that we find out what works well or not so well. I accord teachers unions a central voice in school reform because it is they who must do the teaching and who must work competigtively. But decsions on how to proceed with education reform must be collegial. Corporations have a vital interest in public education because the jobs they must fill depend on school graduates being prepared sufficiently to do them.

2.Unions in general : as I wrote almost every day during the Boston Mayor campiagn, union workers deserve strong representatipon in the halls of power, but they shouldn’t own the halls of power. Union workers number only about 10 %, nationally, of all employees, and no next-generation jobs in the innovating economy easily translate to unionization because almost all such jobs are individually dfifferent, employed by small units constantly reshaping, and involve pay that isn’t just a paycheck but includes benefits, stock, bonuses, and collaboratives. How to accommodate the innovation economy will be a major challenge for Democratic policy leaders facing 2016. Many in the innovation economy might just find a newly reasonable Republican Party more sympatico than a Democratic party committed to Left Populism. Take the fake-“Christian” stuff, the contempt for needy people, and the anti-immigration bigotry out of the Republican agenda, and the possibility is very real for the innovation community to prefer Republican entrepreneur-ist reform to Democratic Left-Populism.

After all, if Elizabeth Warren and John McCain, insurgents both, can co-sponsor banking reform legislation — and they have — then economic innovators are as free to find a useful home on the McCain range as on the Warren one.

—- Michael Freedberg / Here and Sphere