Healthcare Concerns on Implementation/Cost Mirror Common Core Concerns

From Althouse and Senior Democratic senator sees the implementation of Obamacare as a "huge train wreck":

"'I just see a huge train wreck coming down,' Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., told Obama’s health care chief during a routine budget hearing that suddenly turned tense."

Baucus is the first top Democrat to publicly voice fears about the rollout of the new health care law.... Normally low-key and supportive, Baucus challenged Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at Wednesday’s hearing.
He said he’s “very concerned” that new health insurance marketplaces for consumers and small businesses will not open on time in every state, and that if they do, they might just flop because residents don’t have the information they need to make choices.
“The administration’s public information campaign on the benefits of the Affordable Care Act deserves a failing grade,” he told Sebelius. “You need to fix this.”...
At one point, as Sebelius tried to answer Baucus’ demand for facts and figures, the senator admonished: “You haven’t given me any data; you just give me concepts, frankly.”

Could the same be said about the adoption/implementation of Common Core standards?  Taxpayers don't know how much money CCSS will cost, the public information on these standards from DESE has been almost nil, assessments need to be taught before curriculum is ready that needs to be tested on computers that don't exist and like Sebelius, the CCSS proponents haven't given any data, just concepts.  These educational standards were never field tested and the proponents have no data to support their claims they will create successful students, even though it is DESE's (and others) contention.

The CCSS were adopted/implemented before they were even written.  Governors/education commissioners/state board officials agreed to use them without knowing what they were signing onto or even how much they were going to cost.  Like the new health care law, CCSS were rammed through without due diligence, the effectiveness promised isn't apparent and CCSS organizational structure is troubling.

Althouse winds up her post by writing:

ADDED: This must be the tip of an iceberg of anxiety among the Democrats, who are alone responsible for this law. For the first time, it crossed my mind that Democrats might decide to support repeal. It would be a huge admission of mistake — like denouncing a war you once supported — but at some point, going forward is even worse. 

The Democrats own the Healthcare Law, good or bad.  Both parties own the CCSS adoption/implementation process (by governor support and up until recently, little interest on the national/state legislative levels to stop implementation) and they should be feeling anxiety with the increasing unhappiness of the taxpayers who are being forced to pay for mandates/regulations for which they never had a vote. 

Watch the video.  Maybe there will be a grant from the education reformers for "educational navigators" to assist schools and parents to understand the CCSS implementation process.  The video fireworks start about 4:50 as Baucus demands specifics from Sebelius on the healthcare program.  

Arne Duncan, NGA officials and CCSSI directors should be questioned on the national level like Sebelius for their elusive data and benchmarks they've referred to in their statements but never produced.   State legislatures should be questioning  the state officials who committed their states to CCSSI before the standards/assessments were even written and demand the data and benchmarks they relied on to make such a decision.

Remember Missouri's Education Commissioner's Love for Cass Sunstein?

Who could forget Commissioner Chris Nicastro's admiration of Cass Sunstein as noted in Missouri's first Race to the Top application?  From ed.gov and the Missouri application (pg 9):

Core Student Learning and Outcomes Goals

 

The Race to the Top has provided an unprecedented opportunity for Missouri to bring its citizens together, to identify common goals and to develop a plan for a decade of educational reform designed to give Missouri’s children a competitive edge in tomorrow’s international competition. Our vision for reform embraces the notion advanced in the book, Nudge, where Thaler and Sunstein outline the need for "choice architects" to subtly steer choices toward positive results while leaving people, districts and schools "free to choose".  We know that if Missouri’s public schools are to be the best choice for our citizens, they must produce the best results. This Race to the Top competition has provided the "nudge" Missouri needed to pick up the pace.

 

We've written in the past about "choice architects" and questioned why they would need to direct Missouri education:

 

Missouri Education Chris Nicastro based her proposal to Race to the Top on this theory; perhaps she is employing the current theory present throughout all the government entities; schools, the EPA, the Department of Education and the State Department. Here's an excerpt from the book's review:

 

Every day, we make decisions on topics ranging from personal investments to schools for our children to the meals we eat to the causes we champion. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. The reason, the authors explain, is that, being human, we all are susceptible to various biases that can lead us to blunder. Our mistakes make us poorer and less healthy; we often make bad decisions involving education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, the family, and even the planet itself.

Thaler and Sunstein invite us to enter an alternative world, one that takes our humanness as a given. They show that by knowing how people think, we can design choice environments that make it easier for people to choose what is best for themselves, their families, and their society. Using colorful examples from the most important aspects of life, Thaler and Sunstein demonstrate how thoughtful “choice architecture” can be established to nudge us in beneficial directions without restricting freedom of choice. 

 

From Nicastro's own words in the application process: her vision of reform is based on  the theories in Nudge (rather than the Constitution).  Missouri didn't win RTTT money but we sure got stuck with its mandates (such as Common Core State (sic) Standards) when Nicastro signed on to the ESEA waiver.  

 

What is Sunstein up to these days?  From Althouse:

Cass Sunstein reviews "Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism."

That's a book by Sarah Conly, published by Cambridge University Press. 206 pages, $95. $95! Fortunately, we cannot be coerced to buy that. I will exercise my autonomy and refrain from buying it. I'll just read Sunstein, for free, here.

[A] significant strand in American culture appears to endorse the central argument of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty....

the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or mental, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right.

Sunstein refers to social science research that shows people actually aren't very good at making decisions for themselves. We have "present bias" (and don't pay enough attention to the future), we're bad at assessing probability, and we're "unrealistically optimistic."

Until now, we have lacked a serious philosophical discussion of whether and how recent behavioral findings undermine Mill’s harm principle and thus open the way toward paternalism. Sarah Conly’s illuminating book Against Autonomy provides such a discussion....

To Mill’s claim that individuals are uniquely well situated to know what is best for them, Conly objects that Mill failed to make a critical distinction between means and ends. True, people may know what their ends are, but sometimes they go wrong when they choose how to get them....

If the benefits justify the costs, she is willing to eliminate freedom of choice, not to prevent people from obtaining their own goals but to ensure that they do so....

A natural objection is that autonomy is an end in itself and not merely a means. On this view, people should be entitled to choose as they like, even if they end up choosing poorly. In a free society, people must be allowed to make their own mistakes, and to the extent possible learn from them, rather than facing correction and punishment from bureaucratic meddlers. Conly responds that when government makes (some) decisions for us, we gain not only in personal welfare but also in autonomy, if only because our time is freed up to deal with what most concerns us....

 As for Sunstein himself, he prefers a softer form of government manipulation, described in the article and in his book "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness."

Heh. Various readers comment on Althouse about Sunstein:

I heard Sunstein on a radio show many years ago (I think he appeared with Althouse). I was very unimpressed with him -- a defensive dumbass was my take. But then again, he was a lawprof at an elite school so he must be really really smart. 

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Easy to understand Sunstein (a proxy for our government) = fascist

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These ideas are as old as humanity. The entire concept of the feudal nobility is based around the idea of a class of people who just know better than the foolish underclasses.  

and finally

I'm reminded of the story about Sen Phil Graham (R) questioning a child-hood Govt pre-K advocate during hearings when this came up the first time around in the late 70s (iirc)

Graham was making the point that no govt bureaucrat could care for his children better than he, Phil Graham could, and that tax-payer dollars should not be used to fund a brogram designed by faceless bureaucrats and carried out by teachers not related to the children. "But Sen Graham," the HHS guy replied, "we're concerned for your children's welfare just as much as you are." "Oh really, " Phil replied. "O.K., then, if you say you care about them just as much as I do, tell me their names."

LMAO!

There are many other responses you might want to check out.

Should we be impressed or worried that our Commissioner of Education wants Missouri's educational vision to follow Cass Sunstein's?  I bet I know the answer to that question if I posed it to Althouse readers.

Frank Zappa and School

High school graduation

Picked up from Althouse.

Frank Zappa's idea of school.  Interesting thoughts from 1981.  He stated, "Schools train people to be ignorant, with style".  In 2013?  "Schools train people to be ignorant, in a common manner."

Style is so overrated.

Arne Duncan's Vision of Community Schools Realized? Dinner Now Served at Schools.

Parents don't have to figure out dinner menus. What a deal.

What are food stamps for?....one reader asks in this Ann Althouse blog Who Gets Free School Dinner in Madison Wisconsin:

"Unlike the lunch program, eligibility for a free dinner is based on whether the school qualifies for the program based on school poverty rates, rather than the income level of an individual student. So any student participating in an eligible after-school program can eat the dinner meal for free."

Eligible schools for the dinner program must have at least 50 percent of students qualify as low-income. In Madison last year, 18 elementary schools, seven middle schools and East and La Follette High schools met that requirement.

To be eligible, students must take part in an academically focused after-school program, not an after-school sport. Memorial is looking into setting up a homework club for athletes between practice and the free meal so that they can participate in the free meal.

So, in this affluent city, we are nevertheless so poor, that the federal government is subsidizing free dinner at 18 elementary schools, 7 middle schools, and 2 of the 4 high schools. And it doesn't matter how much money your parents make, you get free dinner if you go to that school and do an after school activity... as long as your activity is not sports.

Yeah, that makes so much sense. What's with discriminating against the students who, after sitting at desks all day, choose a physically active after-school activity? Aren't they more in need of food? What's the connection between this policy and fighting obesity?

"This progressive city is way behind other cities in that regard," [Mayor Paul] Soglin said. "We should not look at this as a frill, or as an experiment, but something citywide."

This is not a frill. It's an imperative... within the progressive agenda... which seems to have to do with increasing dependency of government and inspiring the young to look to the authorities as their nurturing, nourishing mothers. 

This connects nicely with Arne Duncan's plan of community schools and the superseding of parental responsibilities ceded to governmental authority:

If children are hungry, they need to be fed. It's hard to learn if your stomach is growling. We need to take that on. If students can't see the blackboard, need eyeglasses, we need to do that. If students need a social worker or counselor to work through the challenges they're facing at home in the community, we need to do that.

And so I -- my vision is that schools need to be community centers. Schools need to be open 12, 13, 14 hours a day six, seven days a week, 12 months out of the year, with a whole host of activities, particularly in disadvantaged communities.

And when schools truly become centers of the community, where you have extraordinary teachers, the best teachers, the best principals, great nonprofit partners coming in during the non-school hours to support and do enrichment activities, social services, then those students will beat the odds, will beat poverty, will beat violence in the community, will beat sometimes dysfunctional families, and be productive citizens long term. They will go to college.

The comments from Althouse readers shouldn't be missed.  Here's a comment explaining the issue with the government becoming a nanny and freeing parents from raising their own children (while placing the responsibility on taxpayers):

So let's do this:

for every free meal that a kid gets from school, subtract a proportionate amount from the food stamps.

if a parent is so incapable of parenting that they can't feed their kids at all -- not breakfast, not lunch (what's wrong with a PB & J?), not dinner -- let's assume they can't provide for any of their basic needs, and set up "public boarding schools" (but, again, no more welfare benefits for the kiddies).

What's next: subsidized clothing distribution?

Of course, the biggest issue is that plenty often, this is a money-maker for the schools, when the subsidies from the feds are substantial enough that they cover the full cost, and some. 

Is the role of government now to feed kids one, two, three meals a day?  What ARE parents responsible for today in raising their children?  In some areas of the country, the schools even feed students on the weekend.  This is from Washington state in response to articles on feeding students at school:

You mean food is not being sent home from school with kids for the weekend where you live?  It is where I live. The food isn't coming from the school food services.  It is coming from places that seem to be working with or in coordination with food banks---connected to  social services operation.  Food is packaged out and put in book bag sized backpacks and delivered to the schools for students to pick up on Friday afternoon.  That way the students have some food for the weekend.  I guess the social services operations thought of this before the schools did.  They are using the schools as their distribution point.  It is really quite a sophisticated operation.