O my gosh, this guy is .... *smokin*!

[Smarmie Doofus]

Mathew Yglesias wrote something like: Well, what do these test scandals actually *prove*? Matthew got this back for his trouble:

>>>>Like most pro-market types, these people are ignorant of the actual workings of capitalism. They see Apple’s glittering headquarters, Google’s quarterly revenue numbers, and they think, Damn! I wish schools could be more like that! Strewn across the historic landscape behind all this success are hundreds of thousands of failed attempts, many of which don’t make it out of their first year. And you want school to look like this? Well, uh, no; we only want school to imitate successful ventures! Well, I want better arms and a bigger dick, but editing every other eighth of an inch out of the measuring tape will not make it so.

Here is a question for you: who is more fixated on pay, education reformers or traditional teachers’ unions? Reformers make two mistakes that have plagued badly run businesses for an age. If Yglesias had half the MBA he tries to write like he has, he’d be familiar. 1.) Monetary compensation is an ineffective and inefficient motivator of employee performance (Organizational Behavior: Leadership and Group Effect), and 2.) Labor-cost arbitrage—in this case, from union to open shop—can have diminishing productivity returns (Managing Human Resources in a Global Economy). And once again, I’m saying: leave aside the ideological and human problems of late capitalism; even by its own standards, it fails.

What does the ubiquitous cheating in reform-era education mean? It means that reformers are so dumb they can’t even set up arbitrary benchmarks for success; they literally fail their own tests despite having written the questions and answers themselves. Imagine a panel of fish oil salesmen riddled with arthritis and clearly suffering from memory loss and you get some idea. What the cheating proves is that these people are liars and cheats, but more than that, it proves that the systems of accountancy and auditing promoted by the liars and cheaters are themselves a lie. The reform is doubly fraudulent.>>>>>

My goodness me. Read the rest of it. Hot stuff.

http://jacobbacharach.wordpress.com/tag/matthew-yglesias/

"Blogarach". I never heard of him.

[xchrom]

1. du rec. nt

[DetlefK]

2. Wage-decrease means less motivation, but wage-increase doesn't mean more of it.

We workers are a fickle bunch.

[Wednesdays]

3. Kicked and recc'ed

Our educational system has become a giant Ponzi scheme.

[marble falls]

4. Every testsupporter here in Texas should read this. Thanks a lot for posting this,

[raouldukelives]

5. Apple schools don't seem too far off.

The wealthy & connected get the glittering school. The rest get Foxconn.

[NBachers]

6. Pry the windows open and let the truth in

[annabanana]

7. kickers. . . Hot Stuff!!. . .n/t

[Squinch]

8. Excellent! It IS just like Enron!

[proud2BlibKansan]

9. Awesome!

Now, it may be true that seniority is a bad way to determine pay. I don’t really have a dog in that fight. But let me propose to you this one staggering advantage seniority has over “performance.” It cannot readily be faked.

[HiPointDem]

10. yglesias is batting 2 for 2. last week he was lamenting that 3rd world countries, 'sadly,'

'couldn't afford' luxuries like safety standards because they needed money more. as a comment on the bangladesh building collapse.

'sadly,' these things will happen, but it's all for the greater good.

first class prick.

[Smarmie Doofus]

11. His grandma would be turning in her grave.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Yglesias

I met her a few times some years back. A relative by marriage of a friend of mine. Old left family. She wrote her first book when she was 54 and lived til she was 93.

*Powerful* presence. She filled the room when she walked in.

[HiPointDem]

12. did not know that. interesting.