{"id":2891,"date":"2005-05-28T09:14:26","date_gmt":"2005-05-28T13:14:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2005\/05\/28\/2891.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:50:04","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:50:04","slug":"whats-the-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2005\/05\/28\/whats-the-point\/","title":{"rendered":"what’s the point?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In this morning’s New York Times<\/I>, there’s a not-yet-pay-per-view guest column by Matt Miller called Honor Thy Teacher<\/a>, which suggests spending rougly $30 billion nationally on increasing the salaries of teachers in impoverished elementary school districts, in exchange for two union concessions: merit pay rather than seniority, and easier termination of “the worst teachers”. The 30 bees would raise starting salaries to $60,000 in the cities; “[t]he best teachers would earn up to $150,000.” Oh, and he’s suggesting the Democrats in Washington propose reinstating the estate tax to pay for this.\n

No, no, stop laughing. And you, stop weeping. I know, I know. It’ll never happen. I don’t want to talk about the merits of the plan (it has many), but why Mr. Miller is proposing it in the pages of the New York Times<\/I>. What is his rhetorical purpose? What does he want? Because even if he really does want to make this grand bargain, he must know that there is nobody to make it with.\n

My first thought was that by indicating that the unions would be willing to make those concessions for a ton of money, he was devaluing those concessions, saying, in effect, that the unions didn’t really believe in seniority pay and job protection, but were just holding out for more money. I do think he’s doing that, but I don’t think that’s the main purpose of the article. It might be. It’s incredibly dismissive of those concessions, calling them “reforms” and acting as if there could be no doubt that they should be enacted, and it is just a matter of shmearing the right people. Myself (and y’all know how pro-union I am, Gentle Readers), I distrust merit pay, particularly coupled with removing job protection, as a way for budget-squeezed management to screw workers. It’s management who decide merit, usually, and their incentive to do it fairly is what, exactly? And if you complain, well, then, remember the last guy who complained? His performance reviews went downhill, and now he’s in another line of work.\n

I admit that there are serious flaws with systems that don’t allow pay raises for merit, and that don’t allow incompetents to be sacked. I have no idea whether those systems as they are currently enacted really do exacerbate those flaws. I do know that portraying the unions as inflexible, greedy and destructive political mammoths has been a trope used for specific political purposes by a party opposed to broadly egalitarian education. So by using language such as “soothe the savage union beast” or even “reforming destructive union practices”, Mr. Miller is telling me that either he isn’t really interested in improving public schools, or that he has bought in to the Republican line, or that he is pretending to have bought into it. Whichever is the truth, it doesn’t inspire me to trust the man. Still, I don’t think that weakening the union position is the main point of the article.\n

I was tempted, after dismissing that, to think that the point of the article was simply self-aggrandizement. Look, he says, I have an idea! Since it isn’t within the realm of political possibility, I don’t have any associated responsibilities. I can claim support for it without providing any evidence for it. I can smugly declare that I know what would be best without getting my hands dirty. I can be the smart guy! And, you know, there’s something to that. And, you know, he’s sitting in Maureen Dowd’s chair.\n

I think there’s something more to it, though. Mr. Miller’s Big Idea is that we need to be talking about Big Ideas. His big Big Idea is a 2% solution<\/a> for increasing public investment, which, you know, I haven’t read, but he claims that conservatives would love it. I haven’t noticed. But I have some sympathy for the Big Idea that we should, nationally, be talking about big changes, not just tiny ones. Particularly, I think there’s some slight chance that Big Ideas could catch the public’s attention, and compete with the Anti-Tax idea. So I hope that the point of the article is not to seriously claim that “If Schwarzenegger or Bloomberg were to scrap their current plans and declare such ambitious goals, unions would chuck their dogma and link arms to find the money.” No, I hope that Mr. Miller is making such a preposterous claim in order to goad people to think about Big Idea solutions rather than small idea solutions to a variety of other problems. The point is not to solve this problem at this time, but to build a framework for solving problems in the future. At least if that’s his rhetorical purpose, it’s one I can take seriously. I still don’t, you know, wholeheartedly agree, but at least it’s not a total waste of the Times<\/I>’s space.\n

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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