What Thomas Friedman Doesn't Say, Part Two
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[Part One here.]
After posting Part One, I learned more from Fred Klonsky about the McKinsey group behind the report Friedman touts:
McKinsey has its own problematic track record. . . . McKinsey [coached] Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling at Enron. They created the blueprint for Enron. RememberEnron?
In an article in the New Yorker a few years ago, writer Macolm Gladwell wrote:
The reputations of Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay, the company’s two top executives, have been destroyed. Arthur Andersen, Enron’s auditor, has been driven out of business, and now investigators have turned their attention to Enron’s investment bankers. The one Enron partner that has escaped largely unscathed is McKinsey, which is odd, given that it essentially created the blueprint for the Enron culture.
So McKinsey was a player when Enron's world went flat. Friedman leaves this background out too. No need to look back while moving forward, as the new mantra goes. We should presumably trust that McKinsey's new blueprint for education will do students, teachers, and parents better than Enron did its employees and shareholders. If the liberal New York Times says it's so, it must be okay.
Back to the op-ed. Freidman continues quoting McKinsey:
There are millions of kids who are in modern suburban schools “who don’t realize how far behind they are,” said Matt Miller, one of the authors. “They are being prepared for $12-an-hour jobs — not $40 to $50 an hour.”
What Miller, through Friedman, doesn't say is that there aren't enough $40 to $50 an hour jobs for our top students now. They've been outsourced, pay-reduced, or otherwise Enron-ed from the landscape of American labor. Again, Gerald Bracey:
[E]ven if comparisons of average test scores were a meaningful exercise, it only looks at one dimension--the supply side. Predictably, the [PISA test] results gave rise to calls for more spending on science instruction. This ignores the fact that we have more scientists and engineers than we can absorb. In one study, Lindsay Lowell of Georgetown University and Harold Salzman of the Urban Institute found that we mint three new engineers for every new job (this is from permanent residents and citizens, not foreigners). More disturbing was the attrition rate. While educators fret over losing 50% of teachers in 5 years (and well they should), Lowell and Salzman found that engineering loses 65% in two years. Why? Low pay, lousy working conditions, little chance for advancement. American schools of engineering are dominated by foreigners because only people from third world nations can view our jobs as attractive.
Schools are doing a great job on the supply side*. Business and industry are doing a lousy job on the demand side. The oil industry, responding to increased demand for oil exploration raised the entry-level salaries for petroleum engineers by 30-60%. The number of students lining up to be petroleum engineers has doubled and enrollment at Texas Tech has increased sixfold.
There's a concept: to improve the economy and incentivize student performance, don't outsource $40 to $50 an hour jobs; instead, produce more of them in America. (Which corporation recently offered its employees to keep their jobs - but only if they moved to India, and accepted an Indian middle class salary?)
This is a detour, I know. More in Part 3.
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*I take Bracey to mean "the supply side" as demand is now. In other words, they're producing more qualified and skilled (largely white, largely affluent) students than the job market can - or is willing to - absorb.
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