Plunk Your Magic Twanger Froggy!

It has long been observed that when folks have no clue how something works it is indistinguishable from magic. This is even true of things someone may know how to operate, like a car or a computer or a cellphone. Both the number of things and the number of people that describes is growing faster than the universe is expanding. 

One area of concern is the deep ignorance around money, what it is and how it works. Once upon a time money was needed to buy goods and services. Now credit, accessed on cards, cellphones and computers, has so abstracted money that it is intangible, reduced to an ephemeral concept. Similarly, money as a reward for work or services has not only been reduced to a concept, the bond between work delivered and monetary compensation has been obliterated. Pay, or whatever it should now be called, is an entitlement, a divine right, like cable TV. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the expanding corps of government employees, and within that cohort none are more bedazzled about all things money than teachers. 

This isn't just about teachers who whine about low pay and demand raises. It is more than an intellectual moat between the concept of work for hire, it is complete, perhaps willful ignorance of what money actually is, how it is created, how it is managed and how it serves the economy and the greater good. Instead, they put their faith in Froggy's magic twanger. 

They demand raises about as often as they exhale with the money plunking down by magic. A couple more plunks on the magic twanger and all DCSD HVAC systems are not only brand spanking new they are upgraded with the latest anti-virus technology. Plunk again and foam-in, foam-out hand wash stations appear as if by magic. For these folk money has always been an abstraction. Their pay is based on endurance, not accomplishment explaining why merit is never even measured. The more they inhale, the more they exhale, the more they expect to be paid. They cannot comprehend a world where a raise is earned because it is not a world they have ever encountered. And they've never worked for an organization that had to compete for customers' money, so it may be excused as trickle-down entitlement. 

But there is no Froggy. There is no magic twanger. And money doesn't just "plunk" into your account and it doesn't matter if that account is held by an individual or an organization. There is really no magic.

When Failure Is Not An Option

In most cases, particularly a John Wayne movie, you gut it out, reach deep inside and get the job done. Do or die, there is no try. 

But another part of our life has taken a different view of "failure is not an option" and that would be public education. They long ago embraced "no failure" by dispensing with F's, and retention. Really, does anyone fail a course, or heaven forbid, a grade anymore? Not for some decades. In reaching this education nirvana they fully embraced the process of "when all else fails, lower our standards."

This was fine in before times of Woebegone where every parent believed their kid, their teachers and their schools were all above average. In those times grade inflation was blindly accepted while simultaneously never speaking its name. Until pandemic. Shutdowns. Re-openings. But not schools, at least not here in DeKalb. Why? Lots of reasons. Teachers, at least those most outspoken, seem to be of the mind that their paycheck, perhaps their job is guaranteed without regard to what they do or how well they do it. They are leveraging the "lower our standards" to insist that teaching from the basement is more than adequate, students are learning, even flourishing though some still admit that F2F is "better." The problem is that an effective ban on cameras in the classroom (who really wants a stakeholder parent to observe their child's class) has been replaced with a parent in the virtual classroom. The "adequacy" is being questioned. Furthermore, some parents work outside the home, many drive around seeing shops and restaurants open, private schools holding class and wonder why they are getting the shaft. 

But teachers are pushing back. In Chicago the union called a sick-out forcing re-negotiations on remote teachers. They are advancing the notion that schools, who issues the paychecks, are essential, but that teachers' presence at those schools is not. Unsurprisingly they expect, with each advance of political will to open schools, with each rollout of vaccine, with each scientific study to move the goalposts. They are even beginning to say, out loud, that there will be no F2F in the 2021-2022 school year, perhaps never. 

Some are fighting back. Broward County, where there is a real teachers' union, has issued back-to-work orders and won a battle in court to do just that. The media battle was less civilized. The district did a quick survey of social media, finding many "remote working" teachers posting beach-blanket-bingo parties, destination weddings, nights out on the town, all flouting CoVid protocols, while at the same time insisting the pandemic is just too out of control for a return-to-work. Here's the real kicker: these teachers accused the district of spying. That's right, you post something on public social media and someone sees it and holds it against you and all of a sudden that's spying. At least if you're a teacher living la vida loca. Turns out it was not spying, it was evidence that may well have won the day in court. 

Will the teachers prevail in their all-pay, no-work campaign? Probably not. The NYT op-eds are calling for kids and therefore teachers in the classroom. Immediately. Papa Joe, who you might expect to do whatever the teachers' unions (or any other union for that matter) tell him to do is actually calling for K-8 back on campus in the first 100 days of his administration. Closer to home parents and taxpayers have to be questioning the very existence of public schools. While you may take a dim opinion of teacher-remote classes even considering it little better than nothing, you really need to ask and answer: is it really that much less than DeKalb Schools in the before times? 

Let No Entitlement Fail

No matter how few are affected or how minor the impact (to the individual or society) any aspect of any tax plan negatively impacting an entitlement seems DOA. The AJC recently reported that a tax loophole in place for graduate student stipends might close and the beneficiaries of public largesse are furious.

There is the not-so-subtle subtext of "this is for the children and their education" but the chicken-little hyperbole from "student leaders" is almost unbearable.

“Many current graduate students will be unable to afford this new tax, and would fail to finish their programs as a result.... Universities would suddenly produce fewer graduates, and would be left with fewer instructors for undergraduate courses.”

Really? Wow? They get paid THAT much? So much that they would clear the limit to pay any income tax at all? Honestly, in some fields PhD candidates do get a stipend and generally tuition is waived (you're still on the hook for books and fees) but this doesn't rise to a level of burdensome or even any, income tax.

Then there is the loss of cheap labor complaint noting that fewer grad students, supposedly forced out due to this onerous though unsubstantiated tax burden, would mean fewer graders thereby driving down the quality of undergraduate education. They seem quite ignorant of the quality of graders and missed the memo from the IRS indicating excluded income was for work required for the degree. Grading homework in no way clears that bar. Are they cheating on their taxes? Are they saying it is OK? Sure. Why not? It IS an entitlement, isn't it?