I said in a previous essay, our nation has accumulated a debt and: “We need to feel our way towards ensuring that most of us have a chance to receive a good education and good jobs.” I have been challenged to provide ideas towards doing just that.

Education

One of the first rules of problem solving is the ancient “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” For at least the last 55 years we have failed in providing a good education for our inner-city children. We have primarily been using state funded public schools. In addition, we burden teachers every few years with a new theory of education that they are supposed to apply and report on (this is not limited to only inner-city schools or even only the USA).

Any improvement in this situation will have to be multi-pronged.

Education Itself

There should be competition between schools to attract students (see my essay Monopolies). This may be provided by charter schools or by some other means. Parents should be offered current information about the effectiveness of the schools so that they can make an informed decision (assuming they are interested – and I think that many more will be if they see that they can make a difference). Many of us recently learned of the example of Amanda Gorman, her schoolteacher single mother sacrificed to put her in a private school. Perhaps she would have excelled in a public school, but her mother made a choice, and it was a good one. In any case, the money should follow the students.

The most important schools are those which provide the fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic; in other words, the primary schools should receive the most attention. Secondary and higher education builds on this foundation; if it is poor, students cannot really progress (without remedial classes) no matter how good the teachers, materials and facilities. As a corollary to this, the salaries of primary school teachers should be such that they can attract the best teachers.

I am sure that most teachers and other staff are truly motivated to provide the best education for their students. However, they are all human and there are just as surely those who either cannot or will not and there are those who do better than their peers. For those in the first category, they should be given both guidance and an opportunity to improve; should they not improve, they should be fired. Those in the second category should receive more pay and more opportunity to take further responsibilities. One of these could be helping the weaker ones to improve. Of course, there will be people who feel that they have been unjustly treated; a mechanism must be in place to adjudicate their claims. Should their claims be validated, and should it be proven that prejudice or favoritism were the predominating motivation of the supervisors making the decisions, these supervisors should be penalized up to and including losing their jobs.

There are many other good ideas out there. One could be to follow the German model in that school principals also teach some minimum number of classes per week – this would prevent them from being too removed from reality. Another would be to have those who develop a new theory of education actually go into a school (ideally an inner-city school) and put that theory into practice by teaching a full load for a year.

Financial

There is a common perception that much of the money allocated to them is spent on layers of excessive administration; there are also studies which refute this. A second perception is teacher’s pensions (which remain under funded in many states) absorb most of the additional fund provided. We talk about how much we are spending per pupil, but do not seem to report how much actually goes towards making classroom learning more effective for more students.

A simple to understand report of no more than a single sheet of paper should be created by each state and school district each year for the citizens. There should also be links to more detailed information. The goal of this is to dispel misinformation and to direct attention to the most important issues. The report should contain the following summary information:

• Total expenditures for education
• Total expenditures, both as a dollar amount and as a percent of the total for each of the following:
  • Salaries and benefits
    • For administrators
    • For teachers
    • For other supporting staff
  • Pensions for administrative and teaching staffs
  • Equipment and supplies
  • Facilities: maintenance, construction, utilities etc.
  • Other

Good Jobs

A good education is a part of gaining a good job, but there are also major areas of our country in which there are effectively no opportunities. These include many inner-cities and rural areas. The reasons for these job deserts are many and various; these may include the crime rate, the lack of good infrastructure, the lack of qualified workers and so on.

Local and State Government

Government certainly has a major role to play in making these areas attractive for investments that bring job opportunities. Infrastructure and zoning are two areas of prime governmental responsibility. The primary infrastructure should be aimed at mobility – both of people and products. People should be able to easily get to jobs in other parts of the local economy; raw materials and finished goods should be able to be quickly and economically moved to and from the area. Zoning decisions should also be based on making good jobs available within the range of movement provided by the infrastructure (the two go hand-in-hand).

Government also has a role in encouraging local entrepreneurs. Permits should be a “one stop shop”, not a bureaucratic maze. Any necessary coordination between differing agencies should be the responsibility of that “shop”. Speed and transparency should be the goal. Assistance with financing (perhaps limited guarantees to banks, not direct investments) and aid in making the proper contacts. I am sure that there are many other creative ideas that can be used here.

State and local governments often use various tax breaks and subsidies to attract new investment. I have read of enough of these which have failed to provide the promised jobs but retain the benefits. Leaving aside the issue of fairness to those businesses already invested (somebody pays the taxes), part of the problem seems to be that outside investors receive benefits based on promises. I would say that the promises need to be on the side of the government – you provide X number of net jobs for local people and then you receive the benefits for an agreed period so long as the jobs remain. This is too much common sense not to have been attempted many times, perhaps the political pressure to achieve splashy “results” in the short-term is the problem. Large companies with large projects invite a bidding war between localities.

Federal Government

Not all of Trump’s ideas were bad. The idea of opportunity zones in depressed areas was one of the better ones. They bring capital into these areas to create projects that benefit the people in the area. Will all the investments be successful in meeting these goals? Of course not. There will be mistakes and there will be some who game the system for their own profit. This implies that controls must be in place and exercised. However, I am sure that there will be some who are so anti-capitalist that they will attempt to take these incidents and discredit the whole enterprise.

Culture

This is a critical area (see my essay Basic Concepts – Culture) and depressed areas have often developed a sub-culture which has aspects that prevent success in the larger culture. While there are many examples, the one that stands out is acting white as a term of abuse for those doing well in school. Cultures usually change relatively slowly, but the direction of change can be influenced. Events such as Black History Month and Dr. Martin Luther King Day have been good steps, but more needs to be done. More recognized celebrities should be recruited to highlight the achievements of those who are not celebrated, but who have been a success. These can be educators, doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs and so forth. These should be the role models, not just sports and entertainment figures (but not excluding them). Victimhood must be shed, while it may inspire a few to greater efforts, it only discourages many.

Ghettos

To a certain extent, people like to group with similar people. Our history includes many Little Italies, China towns, and so on. To the extent that these are voluntary, fine. These have tended to disperse over time as groups became more assimilated. But in some cases, moving out of these enclaves has been made more difficult by both laws and informal agreements. This is an anecdote, but I remember reading a column many years ago (I think it was a Herb Caen column in the San Francisco Chronicle) where he asked a Black friend why he drove a new Cadillac but lived in such a poor neighborhood. The man answered, when I buy a car, they only care about the color of my money. These laws and practices have largely been successfully eliminated, but the damage they caused remains.

In other cases, governments, attempting to provide better housing, have created large concentrations of poverty in areas with few job opportunities and served by poor public schools. In addition, this better housing has often been poorly maintained and is now very rundown. Undoing this will probably take time and be painful. I am not against social housing, only how it has been implemented in many places (and not only in the USA). In the part of Belgium where we live, there seems to be a better solution. I do not know if it was by design or chance, but while there are many social housing units, they do not dominate any neighborhood. They generally only occupy an area of a few blocks and are composed of a mixture of duplexes and apartment buildings. The apartment buildings are not large, 10 to 20 units. These housing areas are surrounded by “normal” housing areas and the children go to the same schools as all the other children. While it is difficult to compare cultures, the people who live in the social housing generally maintain the outsides of their houses well and exhibit a certain community pride. This may be a part of the general Belgian (or Flemish) culture, or it may be due to the example of the privately owned homes nearby. There are immigrants living in these areas (here that usually means Moslems), but I see no place where they are the dominant group.

What I Do Not Support

In a word, reparations. It could be that I am not intelligent enough or imaginative enough, but I cannot see how they can be made either fair or effective.

By fair, I mean both on the giving and receiving ends of the process. On the giving end, the only potentially constitutionally method would be via taxes on everybody (individuals and/or companies). There is no way to limit this to only those White families who benefited from slavery. First of all, how would you identify them? Would one great-great-great-great grandfather who was a slave owner be qualifying? Would they have enough money? On the receiving end there is a similar question. Not all Black families have slavery in their background; for example, neither President Obama nor Vice-President Harris (perhaps her father’s ancestors were slaves in Jamaica) can make that claim. Would it be limited to only those whose wealth was below a certain level? If so, why only the Black poor? Why not the others?

By effective, I mean that a sudden influx of money to people who are financially ignorant (not stupid) would likely lead to a flock of “friends and advisors” who would soon pluck many of these of their new wealth. We have enough examples in our history: the gold rush miners who struck it rich only to be dirt poor soon, the talented athletes or musicians who have made bundles of money and died poor (but not their managers and “friends”). I grant that many would use their new wealth wisely, but many more would not. A few years later, after poverty has returned for too many, what would be the answer? It was not enough; reparations need to be paid and paid again.