The Fallacy of the Purple Squirrel

Public education gets the blame for producing dumb students and not providing business with qualified candidates. The ball is 100% in the school's and teacher's court right? Hold on a minute. Let's look at some U.S. business hiring practices that may also be contributing the problem. And then let's ask the geniuses at the Business Roundtable what they are going to do to fix their end of the problem.

The lament from business is "Oh boo hoo, we can't find any good candidates with the skills we want. The public education system just sends us dumber and dumber kids."  They then point to cherry picked statistics, like PISA and TIMMS score comparisons with other countries, to prove that those statements are true. But let's take a moment to examine their statements.

The moats, fortified walls and iron gates of ancient fortresses are easily overcome defenses compared to today's equivalent, the Human Resources department which can keep out even the bravest warrior and most qualified candidate for a position. When a company says they can't find any "good" candidates, consider the purple squirrel. The Urban Dictionary says this about purple squirrels, "For all practical purposes, there is no such thing as a 'Purple Squirrel'; not in nature and not in the job market. It is a metaphor used by recruiters to identify the unrealistic expectations of a client company." The purple squirrel is the bane of the modern recruiter. They can find excellent candidates, yet the company still won't fill the position.

The purple squirrel, or perfect candidate, comes preloaded with exactly the right qualifications and experience, and is willing to work for the lowest salary. In today's job market, as more workers become unemployed, companies become more selective and move ever more slowly to fill positions. They hold out for the perfect candidate who can perform a wide range of skills but who is going to be economically competitive with the workers in other countries who; a) have a lower wage scale and b) have not racked up enormous college debt trying to find that magic mix of skills that will get them past the HR department screening and whose salary expectations are high due to the need to pay off that debt.

Companies must also be concerned about legal liability in an environment where EEOC guidelines provide every potential candidate with fodder for a possible law suit. They become risk averse to hiring anybody with the slightest blemish in their careers making them even pickier in their assessment of possible candidates. All of these concerns fall under the HR definition of a "good" candidate. Its getting easier to see why there might not be so many of them.

There is another business practice that may be affecting the quality of candidates who are applying for advertized jobs (where recruiters are not involved). Some companies advertise a job at a certain salary and then, after they get enough responses, start beating down the applicants to see who'll work for the least amount of money. Its easy to see how highly qualified job applicants who've been through that process a few times conclude that it's not worth their time to respond to advertisements for job openings. Employers give the appearance of wanting lower quality candidates by offering correpsondingly low salaries, so guess who shows up for their job interviews? The low quality candidates.

Common Core standards are advertized to make students ready for college and the global job market. They seem to promise employers that purple squirrel which, is it any surprise, makes businesses all vociferously support the standards.

In all my research on common core I have never come across a report done by the US Chamber of Commerce that defined what specific skills businesses want students to master. They have studies that say that businesses can't find candidates with the skills they want, but those skills are never named.

Beth B. Buehlmann, Executive Director of the U.S. Chamber's Center for Workforce Preparation before the House Education and the Workforce Subcommittee on 21st Century Competitiveness had the only definition I could find. They say candidates are illiterate, and here is how they define literacy.

The definition of literacy has changed over time and will continue to change. One hundred years ago, "literacy" was defined simply as the ability to write your name. In the new high-tech, highly competitive 21st century workplace, literacy means the ability to read, write, compute and solve problems, communicate, listen, and perform basic tasks. The National Institute for Literacy finds that almost 50 percent of American adults have low literacy skills making it difficult for them to do many of the tasks required to carry out work and family responsibilities.

Beyond the foundation skills of basic literacy — reading, writing and arithmetic — the meaning of workplace literacy has expanded as workplaces have changed. Technology has had a particularly profound impact on today's workplace skills requirements. New technologies, information, and competition will make today's state-of-the-art products and processes obsolete tomorrow. It has been estimated that jobs will be wholly restructured every seven years. Few working Americans will be able to remain competitive in their existing jobs without continually learning new skills.

I challenge the Chamber to define a single set of skills that all their members would agree represent the skills they want workers to have. That list would either be very short in order to get 100% consensus, or would take the average person until age 40 to complete. Public education therefore represents a cross section of all those wants with a sampling of skills from many areas that can be covered in 12 years. Is it any wonder then that we aren't producing students that match their desired skill set?

The problem of matching job candidates to job openings is a complicated issue that could stand some improvement by ALL parties --- the schools, the student / job applicants, AND employers.

Data Mining: A "Kindler, Gentler Surveillance"?

Your human capital is important to Silicon Valley

Data issues and invasion of privacy concerns crop up constantly these days.  We hear reports of Anonymous hacking into government websites, credit card information compromised and people are upset their Facebook information gets posted in places unknown to the Facebook user.  

Quartz (qz.com) asked this question:  Analysis: Is big data to Barack Obama what big oil was to George W. Bush? and informs the reader how this administration is allowing private business freedom to use personal data for corporate gain.  This data sharing of personal information, however, is eroding individual privacy and has privacy experts concerned about the manner in which this bill of rights was developed and lack of legal protection for individuals:

When the White House unveiled its new privacy bill of rights, almost exactly one year ago, the event was heralded by one consumer advocate as “the clearest articulation of the right to privacy by a US president in history.” But attention quickly shifted to the the bill’s limitations. Users could opt out of targeted ads, but this alone wouldn’t end ad tracking. The bill relied too heavily on voluntary commitments by advertisers like Google and Facebook. And though the bill was strong on “rights,” it lacked details on implementation and enforcement. Critics also pointed out that the American Commerce Department, which represents American businesses—not consumers—had spearheaded the bill and was in charge of developing the policies meant to enforce it.

Reread that last sentence and compare it to the education reform spearheaded by special interests,  Common Core Standards in particular.  Consumers (taxpayers) did not spearhead this initiative.  It was formulated by private trade organizations (the National Governors Association and the Chief Council of State School Officers) and the public was largely unaware of this takeover of state/local control of education.  Like the American Commerce Department, the NGA and CCSSO are in charge (with funding from the Federal Government) of developing the policies meant to enforce it.  And like the privacy bill of rights for consumers designed by this administration, FERPA lacks details on implementation and enforcement and expands the transmission of personal data to third parties.

The article states the EU is concerned about this data sharing:

Now, one year later, as Europe reviews its own wide-ranging privacy legislation for implementation, Silicon Valley is sending hordes of lobbyists across the Atlantic. And the Commerce Department is at it again, leading the charge in Brussels.

Two requirements in the proposed EU laws stick like thorns in the side of the American data collection industry: one, that tech firms receive prior approval (i.e., informed consent) from users before collecting their personal data, and two, that the refusal of data tracking be an accessible and irreversible option. Silicon Valley, which has built a thriving global business around targeted ads and data brokering, is understandably antsy.

Take those two EU requirements for data collection and expand it to the data collection envisioned for children tracked from "cradle to career": 

• One, that educational institutions receive prior approval (i.e., informed consent) from parents before collecting children's personal data
• Two, that the refusal of data tracking be an accessible and irreversible option.

These options have not been given to parents regarding the massive upcoming data collection on their children and most parents are probably not even aware what data is being gathered and where this data is being sent and for what purposes.

Big business does not like these privacy safeguards in the educational or non-educational realm:

To the growing indignation of European officials (paywall), lawmakers in Brussels are lobbied by five or six different American law firms every single day. And the American government is adding fuel to fire. A recent statement from the US Mission to the EU urges Europe to be “more flexible” about issues such as consent from internet users. “Interoperability of our respective privacy regimes is critical to maintaining our extraordinary economic relationship,” it said. For its part, the American Chamber of Commerce has been organizing events in Brussels and Strasbourg, leading one European official to tell the New York Times that, “My impression is that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Commerce Department are mostly just following the interests of Silicon Valley.”  (MEW note: See letter of 72 businesses signing on to the support of CCSS here).

Why are business interests superseding the rights of the individual?

This lobbying highlights a relationship between technology companies and the American government that echoes the close ties between the energy sector and the previous administration of George W. Bush. Silicon Valley was an important source of campaign finance for the Obama presidential campaign: Employees of tech firms donated seven times as much to the Democratic candidate as to his opponent, Mitt Romney. (Big Oil, by contrast, gave eight times as much to Romney as to Obama.) Obama’s election victories in 2008 and 2012 hinged at least to some degree on his campaign’s groundbreaking use of technology and social media. And the president’s second-term agenda, such as his proposal to ease immigration requirements for high-skilled workers, has drawn applause from technology executives.

Data mining your human capital to educational reform companies is no different than accessing your Facebook information, your credit card scores and your shopping habits.  The educational reforms require massive Silicon Valley technologies and the CCSS are important to drive this implementation.  Think how handy it will be for companies to hire employees based on their data sets and the issues of human personalities won't have to figure into the equation.  The data is measurable and scientific.  The hunt for data is too much to resist (and creates more jobs ) and the vision of data solving the world's problems is guiding many of these companies:

....Tien, the EFF lawyer, also suggests that the American government isn’t putting pressure on Europe solely for the sake of American business. “You have to think about the phenomenon of Big Data, how enthralling that vision is,” he says. “The way people in Silicon Valley talk about harnessing Big Data isn’t just about economic incentives, it’s about solving problems, curing cancer, solving the world’s ills. It’s ultimately quite different from railing against the Patriot Act. It’s a kinder, gentler surveillance.”  But still, Tien said, the American government, and Silicon Valley lobbyists, “should own up to the real privacy issues Big Data raises.”

Why do your children require a "kinder, gentler surveillance" from "cradle to career"? Do you really believe the American government and lobbyists are concerned about privacy issues?  With all the furor over the privacy issues raised post Patriot Act, where is the outrage of the data gathering/sharing of children's personal data to government agencies and private firms?