the backwards causation

Since reading educational research changed from being an amateur interest of mine to being a daily professional commitment, nothing has been more consistently striking than the strength with which educational outcomes are correlated with demographics of socioeconomic status, parental education background, and race-- and the relative weakness of pedagogical and educational variables.

Broadly speaking, the demographics of students within a given school are far more determinative of educational outcomes than any pedagogical variable that can be isolated. Given this, people who complain that poor students can't get a good education because they are systematically excluded from the good schools have the line of causation backwards; rather, schools are regarded as good because they have systematically excluded the poor students who contribute to poor metrics. Typical complaints that poor students underperform because they are ineligible to attend the best schools ignore the fact that the best schools would necessarily perform worse with an influx of poorly performing students. The response then should not be to expect education to elevate people out of their current station but rather to elevate them out of their current station in order to improve the outcome of their education.

The racial achievement gap is vexing and necessarily controversial. My own stance is that there is very likely no single cause, but rather a series of causes working together in a vicious cycle. I'm confident that our systems to measure educational outcomes are culturally biased in a way that disadvantages black and Hispanic students; that systematic economic exclusions and inequities undermine parental and community stability which contribute to educational outcomes; and that educational disadvantage is hereditary, in the sense that parents who were disadvantaged are likely to pass that disadvantage down to children, due to an inability to model and engender intellectual skills students need. (Indeed, this hereditary disadvantage is widely acknowledged in language and literacy, which are disproportionately influenced by exposure and modeling during the formative years that precede schooling.)

Given the difficulty in isolating variables that contribute to racial disadvantage, it makes the most sense to address the most obvious and manipulable correlate: parental income. We can likely affect major positive changes in educational outcomes through a brute-force method of giving parents money. Typically, addressing educational disadvantage through spending is focused on schools. But since students spend a large majority of their lives outside of schools, and because of the previously-discussed power of demographic and family factors, this is perhaps a misapplication of funds. Rather, giving parents money is likely to have a more direct and immediate effect. Some people say that you can't just give people money. But as Matthew Yglesias has repeatedly discussed, just giving people money has a strong track record. In addition to preventing an unduly paternalistic system from constraining poor parents from making decisions with the same freedom of the rich parents whose children perform so well, such a system would avoid having to create an onerous and costly bureaucracy that would be necessary for enforcement of particular rules about use. I would pay for such a program through significantly more progressive income taxation, which would likely result in slightly higher tax rates for the middle class and significantly higher tax rates for the upper class. Perhaps more traditional social programs that attempt similar interventions could be shrunk or phased out altogether due to the positive effects of a simple transfer of money. In time, if such a program was successful, it would likely reduce costs of other social programs. I am dedicated to protecting our current system of material support for the elderly, but to enact it to the exclusion of similar redistributive efforts for children and parents seems quite strange.

This would all take time. Poverty, in terms of both real capital and social capital, is a cyclical and effectively hereditary problem. In a country in which it is not uncommon to find families who are in their third or fourth generation of poverty, we cannot expect any programs to make miraculous changes overnight. Standards that are universal are inherently an error, as there will always be those who perform below standard, no matter what the social system. And I have been and remain dedicated to a long-term social overhaul that removes material security from chance and demographics in general. A universal basic income, while far from a panacea, would accomplish a great deal of what I'm advocating for here. But if a universal minimum income is not in the cards politically in this generation, perhaps an explicitly child-and-education focused effort like this one could be justified. If we take education as seriously as we say, and if we are really dedicated to attending to the needs of all children, a program of redistribution is likely a necessity-- particularly in the context of a school reform movement which has proven to be, empirically, one of the greatest failures of modern policy making.

When the correlate is determinative, change the correlate. If you want to make sure that no child gets left behind in a capitalist system, give the parents capital. And then, in the long run, we can address why their parents were ever poor in the first place. Let's turn vicious cycles into virtuous.

Update: Two (preemptive) reasons why this doesn't represent a nihilistic argument for the irrelevance of education. (That would be a particularly odd stance for me to take, as I am an educator, and a researcher whose major research interest is how to make education better.)

First, arguing that educational quality (which includes but is certainly not limited to teacher or school quality) is largely determined by demographic and familial inputs is not the same as arguing that there is no such thing as educational quality. I have little doubt that differences in educational quality are significant, in both the practical sense and the statistical sense (that is, I believe that differences in educational metrics exist that we can say with great confidence are not the result of random quantitative chance). But addressing education as a broad social issue means tackling the largely determinative part of educational outcomes first. Indeed, practically assessing educational quality would be made vastly easier if we had the ability to remove the powerful demographic confounds.

Second, it is plausible (although for the time being largely unverified empirically, to my knowledge) that educational quality has an unevenly distributed impact depending on a student's overall educational level. In other words, educational quality could be more determinative of student outcomes for students who have reached a certain threshold, but be largely irrelevant to the success of students who have not. Think about an illiterate 10th grader. Such a student is overwhelmingly likely to have come from a low socioeconomic background. The ability of high school educators to improve that student's learning outcomes is likely severely restricted. A high school is not designed to teach basic reading and writing skills, likely lacks the resources to do so, and likely lacks educators who are specifically trained or experienced in that area. So for such a student, the lack of prerequisite ability could render educational quality irrelevant. But educational quality could still exist for mediocre and high-achieving students. Again, the natural response seems to be to address the demographic and familial factors that are strongly associated with a lack of basic skills.

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Randy Moss's unforgivable blackness

I don't have a real rooting interest in the game tonight. But a part of me is rooting for the 49ers, only because I'd like to see a championship for Randy Moss-- one of the most transcendently gifted and criminally mistreated athletes of my life.

I typically don't get particularly exercised about sports, but Moss has become one of those issues on which I'm willing to rise to genuine anger. At his peak, Moss was, in my estimation, the most dangerous weapon in the history of football. Take it from a Bears fan who often had to watch him brutalize our defense twice a year: you felt genuine fear when he lined up. He was exhilarating and dominant. And he did it with, shall we say, frequently uninspiring quarterback play. Recently Moss declared himself the best WR ever, provoking guffaws from many who prefer Jerry Rice. But Rice, of course, had either Joe Montana or Steve Young throwing to him for the large majority of his career-- two QBs who are probably among the top 5, and certainly among the top 10, to ever play the game. Daunte Culpepper had a few glory years, but some poor ones as well. Rob Brad Johnson, Jeff George, and Kerry Collins hardly need to be explained. (If Moss played with Montana and Young for 15 years... god.) When Moss was traded to the Patriots and finally played with a great quarterback, the results were amazing: 98 catches, 1493 yards, 23 touchdowns, and dozens of incredible highlights.

The football case, I'm sorry to say, is not really what's defined Moss's career. Today, he is commonly talked about as a disappointment or worse. And it is eminently clear to me that this interpretation is totally bound up in his race. The case against Moss on the football field is like a rundown of every racist sports trope you can think of: his production is all about natural talent and athleticism, not work ethic; he lacks character/leadership/team spirit/toughness; he never got the most out of his talent; he loafed and dogged it; and he generally did not play "the right way," a vague term that is almost always applied to white athletes who are sold as hustlers and hard workers. Moss's off-the-field sins, which many people casually assume are significant, are largely minor. He has been associated with smoking weed; if he does smoke, it's a habit he shares with millions of Americans, and which large percentages of Americans believe he should be legally allowed to do. A notorious incident in a playoff game, where Moss mined mooning the crowd in Green Bay, has been replayed endlessly. I honestly didn't think it was that bad at the moment, despite Joe Buck's absurd howls; afterwards, when I learned that Green Bay fans are notorious for actually mooning opposing teams, I found it funny and totally fair. Much more serious is an allegation of domestic violence. The charges and an attendant restraining order were later dropped by his accuser, and there was never a formal exploration of the facts. I take the accusation very seriously, but I also don't feel that I can fairly judge him for an accusation that was later rescinded.

A strong case can be made that Jerry Rice was a better WR than Moss. It's fine to think that Moss should have accomplished more in the last years of his career, when he bounced around and wasn't productive. But the notion that he is some sort of terrible disappointment, or that he's some terribly malcontent or thug, is just ridiculous. And given the way that the complaints about him always echo typical attempts to undermine black athletes, I have to believe that race is a factor. This is especially the case because of Moss's self-presentation-- thick Southern accent, oftentimes a big afro, considerable (and admirable) disdain for hoary old sports cliches.

Compounding all of this is Moss's relationship to Boston, home of the New England Patriots. I was listening to the BS Report, Bill Simmons's podcast, and his regular guest Sal Iacono said something like, "It must kill you that Moss might win a championship." That's hardly an unfair thing for Iacono to say, as many Boston fans indeed have animosity towards Moss. But while listening I couldn't help but ask myself, why? He was transcendent for the Patriots. Yes, the relationship turned sour. But it takes two to tango, and he would hardly have been the first Patriot to leave the team under bad terms during the Belicheck era. Making this worse is the fact that, during their undefeated regular season, everyone involved with the Patriots went out of their way to say what a model citizen Moss was being. It was only later that Moss was suddenly regarded as a malcontent. For all that he accomplished for that team, to be turned into an object of derision so quickly is shortsighted and unfair.

Boston teams, fans, and media have a really ugly history of this sort of thing. Once there is a dispute between a Boston team and a player or coach, the Boston media immediately begins to undermine him. Anonymous quotes are printed, "team sources" reveal embarrassing details, and efforts are generally made to insist that the person on the outs was a bad citizen. It happened with Nomar Garciaparra, it happened with Manny Ramirez, it happened with Terry Francona, it happened with Antoine Walker, and it happened with Moss. Speaking as someone from New England, it's deeply depressing how much of the fanbase tends to march in lockstep with whatever story ownership has dreamed up. Boston's history of race problems-- which continue, according to many black residents-- makes all of this a little bit darker. I wince every time I hear Patriot fans wax on about how much more they like Wes Welker than Randy Moss. The love for Welker is the perfect complement to the disdain for Moss: Welker is a gamer; he thrives on superior effort; he maximizes limited talent; he has heart, guts, character; he "plays the right way." The contrast between them is indeed illustrative, but not in the way most people pointing it out think. Personally? I'd rather have a one-armed Randy Moss than Wes Welker.

I am not making a blanket accusation of racism against Boston sports fans, of course-- I know and love many. And I am not making a blanket accusation of racism against critics of Randy Moss. But I am asking that people think a little bit harder before they make these kinds of critiques. Sports are all bound up with racial politics, and our sports narratives have a long history of echoing racist tropes long after it has become verboten to express them explicitly. I also think that sports fans in general should be far, far less credulous towards stories of bad behavior from players and coaches who are out of favor with team management; local sports media, after all, has far more incentive to tell ownership's side than that of employees. Finally, I'm asking that you appreciate the career of one of the most electrifying athletes of all time. Constantly complaining about what someone didn't accomplish is unfair, when they did accomplished so much. And it's a perverse habit, anyway; it takes enjoyment and makes it into disappointment.

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still tinkering

Hey guys, as you can see, I've once again monkeyed with the blog's layout. I may keep this ultra-minimalist look. I am going to attempt to restore the old header image soon. I say attempt, because (if you can believe my dopiness) I have lost the old image. When I started changing the layout I backed up the old one, believing that would preserve the picture. But sadly it appears to be gone, and as I am an absent-minded dope, I never saved it. I do still have the original picture that I took that I made the header out of, though, so with a little futzing and playing around with fonts, I can hopefully approximate it again.

Let me know what you think of this new, super-minimalist look. I quite like it.

test test

Update: Found a (somewhat small) version of the header in Google. Gonna keep playing around for a bit, we'll see.

Update II: Well, maybe this will do for now. It kind of drives me nuts that the header image doesn't line up with the posts, but oh well. It doesn't look as contemporary as the last change, which I liked, but I couldn't keep the picture nor adjust the widths with that one. We'll see.

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Thanks, Dr. K

Perfect timing for me, following my Bloggingheads appearance, although it's worth saying that I suggested that this phenomenon had been going on for a lot longer than Dr. Krugman is here. I still don't know if this is really happening-- but I do know it's really important to talk about.

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the lobby goes looking for another scalp

So if you haven't been following the news, the Israel lobby has come down in full force. No, I'm not talking about the absurd, humiliating, evidence-of-a-broken-system spectacle of the Hagel hearings. I'm talking about Brooklyn College of the CUNY system, and the Boycott, Divest, Sanction panel that a student group planned and that the faculty of the political science program chose to cosponsor so that the event could take place. The panel promises to present a controversial set of views-- views I happen to largely share-- and, as such, advances one of the core values of the university writ large: the exchange of opinions, even ones considered offensive by others, so that these opinions might be examined, understood, and debated. But as the panel promises criticism of Israel, it has brought about this insane reaction.

If you can read that piece without feeling profoundly depressed, you're a stronger man than I. I would like to emphasize that a sitting New York Assemblyman claimed that an academic panel featuring several tenured professors has "the potential for a second Holocaust." Roll that around in your brain, a little bit. Let it wash over you. It should go without saying: this is a campaign of hysteria, waged by children, totally contrary not only to the basic concepts of free academic inquiry but to the very meaning of freedom of opinion and expression.

Gawker's Mobute put it best:

The Brooklyn College panel might be great; it might be a fiasco; it might be confused or embrace propositions we think morally wrong. What it's not, right now, is worthy of being tied to big-name, galvanic media-friendly words of outrage like "blackballing" and "racism," while dealing in tropes of academic censorship. But this is par for the course with Dershowitz, the law's most enduring concern troll.

What's become clear is not merely that Israel itself is sprinting away from democracy within its borders, as it daily pursues a more deeply and explicitly racist character. It's now undermining democracy in our country, as its many powerful defenders have so distorted the basic ideas of free inquiry that you get madness such as this. Perhaps some heavy-handed bigwigs using their muscle to squash an academic event (and grandstand for the cameras in the process) is a little thing, in the grand scheme. I would call it the subtle undermining of free speech. But that Hagel event-- a public flogging, a ritualistic shaming meant to remind everyone of what our real priorities are-- that's an indication of a corrupted democracy. When a country that ties ribbons around every tree can watch a man be grilled for failing to place Israeli interests ahead of its soldiers and count it as business as usual, something is deeply wrong.

A lot of weird stuff has happened in the past 11 and a half years. But this perhaps the oddest of all, to slowly realize you live in the second most powerful country in the world.

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liberating just one

When Aaron Swartz died, and his death (rightfully) got so much attention, I wasn't quite sure what to do. I wrote a post about the fact that most of the scholars I've met in my life have wanted to free their research, which only makes his prosecution more absurd and unfair. Beyond that, I didn't know how to respond, without seeming like I was piling on to the hot story of the moment. I do want to share two articles with you, one from The Atlantic and one from Enculturation, which is one of the many fledgling open-access peer reviewed journals out there. The open-access journals are just one of the tools we're using to pry open the gates that are restricting the free access of human knowledge to all people. We'll keep prying. And someday, we'll win.

Some academics responded by offering to get academic articles for anybody who needs them. I hope it goes without saying, but-- if you need something, give me a citation, and I'll email you an article. For now, I just want to liberate one, just one: a remembrance of my father, Fredrik E. deBoer, from 2011 that ran in Asian Theater Journal. He's been gone now 15 years, predeceased by his wife, my mother, by 8. I miss him every day.

Fredrik deBoer by Kathy Foley

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a few addenda to the Bloggingheads talk

1. At the beginning of the video, I said that the American dream is said to be that if you're willing to work, you can provide for your own material security, and that if you're also smart, you can achieve prosperity. What I meant to point out is that this hasn't ever been true-- there have always been systematic exclusions along racial and gender lines, there have always been gaps in who is eligible, there have always been people who have been left behind unfairly.... But the American people tend to maintain a belief in this system, probably because the median American 

2. To be clear, I don't know for sure if capital-biased technological change is going to happen in a way that seriously undermines employment in the near term. It might not happen soon. It might not ever happen. But I want to point out how essential to our entire system it is that we have enough jobs for those who are eager to work, and that the way that macroeconomic forces can cause mass unemployment like they're experiencing in Europe could undermine our entire social system. Meanwhile, as I suggested in the discussion, part of the point here is that while we want adequate jobs under a system in which jobs are necessary for securing your own material security, more work is not in and of itself good-- in fact, part of human progress is moving to a situation where people work less. I mentioned that both Matt Yglesias and Peter Frase have made this point in the diavlog. And I feel that we should be working towards a situation in which the value of automation is enjoyed by all people, not merely by those at the top, as so much of the value added to our economy now is.

In other words, I'm not sure if capital-biased technological change is going to happen in the near future. But I am sure that we're in a situation where a tremendous amount of generated income is being captured by those at the top, as the chart above shows. What I would like is to have a conversation about our basic social system that considers the nature of technological progress and whether it helps workers or the investment class. I would also like a broader discussion in which the problems demonstrated in that chart can be discussed as problems without people immediately screaming class warfare.

3. It's the nature of the format that you're going to have to make references that seem a bit arch. When I talk about the empirical case against the notion that you control your life, I'm referring to a broad collection of research, particularly education research, that points to how chancy aspect of your life like parentage make a huge impact on your eventual outcomes. One of the things that consistently amazes me in my research in education is just how determinative early-life conditions can affect adult success. What's more, the degree of social mobility for the average America-- the ability of an individual to leave his social class for a higher one and stay there-- is, as an empirical matter, lower than most people assume. I'm thinking of writing this stuff up long-form with ample references, but it's a major project that I would want to publish somewhere other than this blog.

4. One thing that the Internet has shown me is not just the productive capacity of the human species, but the productive desire, the need to create, and also the need to share. And it's not just people writing blogs and recording podcasts, although I value that too. It's "how do I make my own cheese," "here's how you make a bookcase," "this is how to rebuild an engine," "let me help you with your taxes," "here's some schematics for this circuit board." We have so much desire to do things, and to share our knowledge of doing things, and I believe a desire to do things for other people, if the conditions are right. And we have so much need, so much want. When you look at what people are capable of making and sharing, and you look at how much material need there is, you can't help but conclude: something has gone wrong here.

I find the hoary old conservative fear that, if you provide for people's material needs, they'll stop working and sit around on the couch all day just fucking bonkers, man. I find it totally incompatible with my experience. If you give people what they need to survive, will some small number of people sit around and smoke weed all day? Sure. But I doubt many will, and the reality is that as technology continues to erode the amount of human labor needed to provide human society with goods, we can bear the cost of some people who don't work. And as I recognize no positive value in work that is independent from its contribution to human need-- in contrast with, say, the Puritan work ethic of the American mythology-- I see no failing at all in such a situation.

How do we harness that productive capacity and direct it towards the greater good, which people want to contribute to, if they can? By removing their fear of a loss of material security. You take away people's fear that they will lack shelter, food, clothing, transportation, education, and health care, and suddenly, the can spend their time doing those things that they enjoy and understand. Right now we've got a vast army of various trained construction workers-- educated in a particular craft-- who are out of work. Their productive capacity is going to waste, and those of them who have a productive desire are unable to implement it. Why can't they use their productive capacity to help people who have no homes? In large part, because they have to fear for their material security. They have to worry about feeding their families, about paying the rent. But you remove that fear of immediate material security, and suddenly, new doors open.

How do you do it? By giving people money. You can call it a universal basic income, if that suits you. How much will be controversial. But you give people the money they need to provide for their families, and watch the spread of sharing and cooperative labor. Some will say, "you can't just give people money." Sure you can. Just giving people money actually has a great track record.

But culture has to change too. Mike Konczal's "pity charity liberalism" critique, and my own critique of globalize/grow/give liberalism, are based on the fact that our current disparities are not just of material goods but of  power. And I'm still chewing on that. As I suggested in the discussion, there's no reason that we can't have unions within the working economy that coexists alongside an UBI. Indeed, I believe unions would be strengthened under such conditions, as the general employment market would be so much friendlier to labor in general. But do I have a 12-point plan right now? I confess that I don't. I just want people to start talking about the next stage. And I want to express happiness that so many smart people are talking about it.

Update: An interesting Reddit discussion on automated cars. Via Marginal Revolution.

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