David Feldman pushes back against the notion that college is a poor investment:

Okay, but the price tag is still very high; is it worth it? Absolutely. A college degree is an asset whose average value is $300,000 to $600,000 of extra lifetime earnings, measured in today’s dollars. And this value has risen steadily for the past 30 years. Your mileage may vary, depending on what you choose to study, but earning a college degree remains one of the best financial investments a person can make.

Nobody is saying that earning this degree is a guarantee of financial success. Even today, 18% of the college-educated workforce in prime working ages earns less than the median wage of a high school educated laborer. But in 1972, the figure was 30%. Think about that the next time someone claims that a college degree simply doesn’t pay off like it used to.

The “your mileage may vary” is understated here. It’s not just a matter of what you choose to study. It’s also a matter of who you are and where you go. People who go to some schools will make more than people who go to other schools. This is attributable to both the who and the where questions (because the who can determine the where). I am not sure where Feldman is getting his numbers, but it’s typically based on averages. And that’s problematic because the people who go to college are not the same people who don’t. Those who graduate and not the same as those who don’t. If anyone wants to point me to some numbers that are comparing apples-to-apples, I’d like to see them.

When we talk about who should and shouldn’t go to college, we should be talking about the borderline cases. Are the bottom quartile of those who go to college better off than financially than the top quartile of those who don’t? This is an overly simplistic way of putting it, since college admissions is inexact and the top quarter of people who miss out on college may well be smarter and more capable than the bottom quarter who go and even graduate. Of course, if those are the results, they are telling in their own way. So you might need to find more apples-to-apples comparisons. Though even that could be problematic because Person A may forgo college because they already have a great opportunity waiting for them while Person B is smart, has good grades, but doesn’t actually know anybody.

If I were to guess, I would say that even if you account for all of the variables, a college degree is still probably going to pay for itself over the course of a lifetime. This does not speak to the value of education, though. Rather, it speaks to (a) the networking opportunities available at college and more to the point (b) the credentialism. People with college degrees get to cut in front of a lot of lines. If everyone has a college degree, it negates the advantage.

Barring something unforeseen, Clancy and I will likely be encouraging our children to go to college. To some, this would make us hypocritical skeptics of universal college education. Actually, it means that we live in the real world. It’s reconciling ourselves to the system we have. A system that says everybody should go to college. It means contributing to a perpetuation of the system, but not supporting it on any ideological level.

Last week, at the League, Nob Akimoto linked to to a story about a girl getting tossed in jail for skipping school:

A judge threw a 17-year-old 11th grade honor student from Willis High School in jail after she missed school again.

Judge Lanny Moriarty said last month Diane Tran was in his Justice of the Peace court for truancy and he warned her then to stop missing school. But she recently missed classes again so Wednesday he issued a summons and had her arrested in open court when she appeared.

Tran said she works a full-time job, a part-time job and takes advanced placement and dual credit college level courses. She said she is often too exhausted to wake up in time for school. Sometimes she misses the entire day, she said. Sometimes she arrives after attendance has been taken.

It’s tempting to chalk this up as a clear abuse of judicial discretion and leave it at that. It’s tempting because it is an abuse of discretion, but we really shouldn’t leave it at that. We should instead be asking ourselves why there was a crime for which the judge could do this. We should be asking ourselves what kind of pressures exist to make this a crime, and perhaps lead the judge to believe what he did was okay. (more…)

Heebie-Geebie complains about fences being built around a nearby school playground.

Going through, my school did not have fences around its playground. You could walk on the premises freely.

And get ticketed for trespassing.

In light of that, I think fences are okay.

There was an article in the Redstone Gazette the other day about Ryersen Gas Stations donating $1,000,000 to St Matthews. Redstone is the blue collar town where I substitute teach. Ryersen is a very large chain of gas stations in the region that has its corporate HQ in Redstone. St Matthews is the local catholic school.

The whole thing left a rather bad taste in my mouth. Some of it is pure partisanship. I substitute at Redstone High School, St Matthew’s public alternative. And my thought on reading the headline was that St Matthews doesn’t need that money, and Redstone schools can use it! St Matthews is where the rich kids go (and select others) while most of the town is struggling to get by. Even setting aside my biases (I don’t substitute at the high school all that much anyway and wouldn’t expect the money to go towards my getting a raise), this raises some class-hackles.

But, no doubt, Ken Ryersen went to St Matthews. Because most people of note in Redstone went to St Matthews. The city’s leaders (most of whom aren’t ethnically from Catholic countries, despite most of the town itself being so) tend to have gone there. So of course that’s where a lot of the emphasis is going to be. Notably, St Matthews’s football team gets to play at a district stadium, free of charge (this has been a point of contention with some).

Anyhow, it’s natural that Ryersen would want to support the school that he went to. It does create a genuine problem, however, when this school soaks up a lot of the kids that could otherwise be lifting Redstone’s district up. And it does seem to create a wall of sorts.

I thought about writing a (more significant) post, but there’s not much I can touch upon that James Joyner didn’t here. There’s no single snippit that I want to excerpt, so I would recommend going over and reading the whole thing.

I am not anti-corporation or anti-profit, though I have to confess some skepticism of for-profit universities. I’ve been contemplating going back to college in an online capacity and have been sticking to state colleges (and WGU). There are so many bad incentives involved that make me skeptical. Bad incentives from the government. Bad incentives from society. Bad incentives for and from the potential customers.

Some of this is related to my very strong belief in the State University. I am not as skeptical of the non-profit privates as the for-profits, but I am still not a huge fan. This does qualify as a bias. When I see a list of state universities that are struggling, I am more likely to come up with alternative explanations as to why this doesn’t mean that the model is necessarily bad. Of course, sometimes I think the model is bad. I think it’s problematic to send ill-prepared kids to college. I question whether open enrollment universities should even exist (I’m more sympathetic to community colleges). But even here, I don’t think the universities themselves are the problem. Even though, if I were running things, at least some of them would cease to exist. But I’ll still take them over their for-profit alternative, so I guess as long as we have the University of Phoenix, we should have a lower-cost alternative.

A school in Nova Scotia suspended a student for five days because he wore a shirt that said “Life Is Wasted Without Jesus.”

The South Shore Regional School Board suspended William Swinimer from Forest Heights Community School in Chester Basin for five days for wearing a shirt emblazoned with the words, “Life is wasted without Jesus.”

School board Supt. Nancy Pynch-Worthylake said the wording on the shirt is problematic because it is directed at the beliefs of others.

“If I have an expression that says ‘My life is enhanced with Jesus,’ then there’s no issue with that, everybody is able to quickly understand that that’s my opinion about my own belief,” she said.

I do see that as a distinction with a difference, but it’s a rather murky terrain.

Jonathan McLoed argues thusly:

That’s some nice hair-splitting Ms. Pynch-Worthylake is attempting, but it demonstrates an ignorance towards Mr. Swiminer’s faith. Christianity is, certainly, an incredibly personal faith, but it is not introverted and it is not weak. The message of the t-shirt is a universal declaration. It is unequivocal, but it is not pointed.

Granted, the shirt did not say “My life would be wasted without Jesus” but rather that life in general is. That can easily be taken as suggesting that your life would be wasted without Jesus. And so there can be a little provocation construed there. Having said that, the ambiguity involved does not lend itself to an ideal situation for administrative discretion. They might be more willing to pull the trigger in some cases and not in others. They might see one instance through the prism of tolerance to the wearer, and the other through the prism of intolerance to people other than the wearer, even when they are essentially the same thing. James Hanley argues in the comments to McLoed’s post:

Yes, that’s what it’s saying to those students. And a student saying “Jesus is not real” is making a clear statement against the Christian kid’s life.

And both T-Shirts ought to be allowed.

Both should, or neither should. You can argue that “Jesus is not real” is a statement of belief not directed at anyone else, but it makes an implicit statement every bit as much as the Wasted shirt does. Murky.

It’s hard to say whether the administration is in error with this ban without knowing how they would respond to similar messages from other groups. What’s not hard to say is that regardless of their decision, they suspended the kid for five days. At my old school, you could punch someone in the face and be suspended for fewer than five days. I want to know what sort of mediation was tried here. This comes across not as conflict alleviation, but punitive action. I am not certain why they couldn’t have simply said “each and every day you wear that shirt, you are suspended for the rest of the day.”

-{Sorry for the relative silence. I plan on picking things back up more solidly next week. We’re trying to get everything together for a brief trip back to Delosa for a wedding. Below is a NaPP post that touches on some themes I have mentioned here before.}-

I’ve always been torn as to whether or not to write about my adventures in substitute teaching on NaPP since it’s not really political and most non-political stuff goes on Hit Coffee but it is sociological. I had a two-fer assignment today, with the first period a 3rd grade class and the second period a 5th grade. The former was probably the best performance I have turned in to date. The latter was one of the most challenging classes I have filled in for. I’d actually filled in for the class before. It was a bad experience, but I thought I had screwed up. Nope.

Anyhow, the observation of the day is that there are really three kinds of male troublemakers in school (maybe in life).

The Bad Egg Group

The first are Bad Eggs. There’s usually one or two of these in every class. Sometimes it seems to be a manifestation of other problems they’re having. The overlap between Bad Eggs and special instruction is not insignificant. Sometimes, though, they’re just Bad Eggs. You know that the future holds nothing good in store for them (and, likely, people around them).

The Impulse Group

The second group is perhaps the most perplexing. It’s also the smallest group. It’s the kid who is basically a Really Good Kid, save for some serious impulse control problems. They want to be quiet. They want to be good. They try harder than any other student in the classroom to help you. But they’re also among the biggest troublemakers. They just can’t help themselves. I had to report to the teacher that the single-most helpful kid in the room was one of a handful on the Worst List. He was also the first kid I have yelled at since beginning my substitute teaching tenure. Bad Eggs may be less pleasant to deal with insofar as the Impulse Kids, who are at least good or great half or a majority of the time, but they’re easier to deal with.

The Osmosis Group.

The third group are those that absorb the mood of the class. You get the sense that in a good environment or on a good day, they’re fine. But they become a part of any problem that exists. These are actually the most problematic only because they are the most numerous. You try to get them to behave and they simply point the finger at someone who is behaving worse (typically an Egg or an Impulse). These are also the Give Them An Inch kids. You give them an inch, which they may or not be able to handle, but then Bad Egg and Impulse will take a mile and these kids will be right behind them.

It’s only the Bad Eggs that you feel good about writing up. One of the interesting aspects is that when I make my list at the end of the day, even in a really bad class like this one (this class apparently drove two different substitute teachers into retirement over the course of the year), there are only two or three Bad Eggs at most. Then you throw in a couple Impulse Kids and the Osmosis Brigade comes out of the woodwork and at that point, there is so much cover for noise that you can’t single anybody out because almost everyone else is talking and goofing around.

I have an assignment at Redstone High on Monday. Last time I was there, I took a walk and some pictures of the area surrounding the high school. Here they are… (more…)

Today there was an assignment on the exploration of the Americas for the special ed class I had today. It involved my reading to them a page with four paragraphs and answering a series of questions. When they asked for help, I would tell them what paragraph the answer is in. Sometimes, I’d have to get more specific.

The final paragraph read:

Ponce de Leon returned to Spain in 1514. The king of Spain was pleased with his discovery. He appointed Ponce de Leon governor of Florida and gave him a royal grant to colonize it. In 1521, he again landed in Florida with two ships and 200 men. The Indians there fought with the colonists. Ponce de Leon was badly wounded in battle. He died soon afterwards at the age of 61.

The question was: What title did the king give Ponce de Leon?

Student complained that she couldn’t find the answer.

I told her that it was in the couple of sentences of the paragraph.

Ponce de Leon returned to Spain in 1514. The king of Spain was pleased with his discovery. He appointed Ponce de Leon governor of Florida and gave him a royal grant to colonize it.

Still no luck. I rephrased the question. “What job did the king appoint Ponce de Leon to?”

Spain?

No, it was a job in Florida.

Royal grant?

No.

It says royal grant.

That’s not the answer, though.

But I can’t find the answer.

Keep looking.

Five minutes later… King of Spain?

No, the King of Spain appointed de Leon for a job. What job?

I don’t understand.

If I am the teacher of the classroom, what is Ponce de Leon to Florida?

The teacher?

Keep looking.

It’s in {points} this sentence:

He appointed Ponce de Leon governor of Florida and gave him a royal grant to colonize it.

Five minutes pass.

Is it colonize?

Read it again.

I can’t find it.

This process was repeated with “Who did the colonists fight that were already here when they arrived?” Also, “What did the King of Spain want Ponce de Leon to do to Florida.” I can’t recall that she answered a single question without a significant amount of guidance (though none perplexed her as much as that one).

—-

I figure there are four possibilities:

(1) She can’t read. At all. I’ve had her before and I would think that I might have noticed something like this. But maybe not.

(2) She can read, but doesn’t understand these particular words. The thing about this one is that she speaks at about a 4th or 5th grade level. I never have trouble understanding her. She seems to understand what words mean. Otherwise, I’d just assume this.

(3) She can read, but doesn’t understand the point of reading. That the answer is in the content of the question rather than simply finding the right word. She’s impatient and trying to find a short cut. Though, as with four, it took her longer to hash this out with me than it would have for her to read it.

(4) She can read, but has learned that expressing frustration will get someone to give you the answer. Though, as with three, the whining was more effort than the reading would be.

I’m not sure what the least depressing answer of the four is.

I (sort of) beat a mentally handicapped 7th grader in checkers… and I’m proud of myself! Mostly because he apparently plays a lot of checkers and I haven’t played in years (I had to remind myself of the rules). Of course, the kid didn’t realize that I beat him. I had more pieces left on the board than he did, but I overtook him at the last possible second with a double-jump that went from him having a 7-6 advantage to my having a 6-5 one. He went first, so fair is fair.

It was a half-day yesterday, because they are about to get “Easter Break” and so they were let out at 1:00 instead of 3:00. Better still, classes ended at 11:00, followed by an assembly and then a meal-party.

The assembly had various community leaders. The first was a high school teacher who basically said “Bullying is wrong, but when you get to high school don’t be the kind of jackass that is going to make kids want to bully you.” The third speaker was a state senator who used to teach at the school, who basically said that you are all beautiful creatures of god and that you need to act like it. The second speaker was perhaps the most interesting one. He was the owner of a couple local fast food franchises. His lecture was basically how to go about getting a job in the service sector. At my high school, they would have had a guy explaining how to get a job outside the service sector. But Redstone is Redstone.

The second speaker’s advice was relatively straightforward. Be respectful, don’t ever think that you’re better than the job you are applying for, and stuff like that. He tripped over a bit on one point, which is that you should avoid getting tattoos or piercings because you will be evaluated negatively on them. The trip-up was that he was essentially saying that books will be judged by their cover, which books aren’t supposed to be, but they are, and so while you shouldn’t judge a book by your cover, people – especially people that hire and people presumably including him – will most definitely judge you by your cover.

Another difference between the middle school and my own middle school is the assumption, in the latter case, that everyone there will go to college. Every mention of college in this assembly was tempered by “If that is what you want to do” or “if you think that is the right thing for you to do.” Because, well, a lot of the kids aren’t going to college. And I suppose they decided it’s unwise to pretend otherwise. Also, they might worry about getting angry calls from parents who didn’t go to college or something.

I plan to write more about special ed in the future, but the sort of low-capability classes such as the one I had yesterday are actually among the easiest. Not because the kids are easy – they have attitudes that run the gamut but all of them have… quirks – but rather because low-capability kids come with paraprofessionals. They’re far better equipped to run the class than I am. I take orders from them.

Paras in Arapaho are basically one-on-one tutors and supervisors. No college degree is required for the job. One of the paras works nights as a waitress. The cultural distinctions between paras and teachers is white collar versus blue doing very similar jobs. While the paras do not measure up in terms of academic accomplishment, they have a certain… toughness. Some of the toughest people I see within the school system. What they seem to lack in finesse they make up for in a willingness to say – and this is a quote – “Jesse, cut that shit out.”

(Which Jesse does. Immediately.)