http://artvoice.com/issues/v10n18/week_in_review/time_out_on_schools. Maybe you were even there...?
I read that the graduation rate for black males in Buffalo was 25% last year, and the average high school graduation rate for all Buffalo was somewhere really south of pathetic. But, it's not like there are a lot of actual employment possibilities of significance for those with only a high school diploma in much of the country these days, let alone on the Niagara Frontier. Part of this reason is that there is just no respect for those who exchange their labor for money unless this is actually non-productive work (as in FIRE (= Finance, Insurance and Real Estate) employment). Probably the same for education work, and as evidenced by Kaleida's attempt at wage and benefit give-backs to make up for their bad business decision to proceed with the Vascular Center, health care, too... but, that's a bit of a digression. So who's to blame for the pathetic high school graduation rate? Or the pathetically low probability that a college graduate this year will even be able to find a job requiring their college degree (the 2007 peak of 57% dropped to 18% in 2008, and was not much better than 20% for 2009). But, those college graduates that don't postpone jobs for grad school ARE getting jobs - the ones that in the past would have been filled by those with high school degrees. Which also helps explain why those with high school degrees only have such a high unemployment rate - they are getting bumped for minimal wage jobs by those with enhanced educational experiences.
Of course, that can't be a great motivator for getting that high school degree, since unemployed and underemployed is the same whether you are educated or not in terms of income.... And while there are lots of reasons while manufacturing has taken it in the shorts, so to speak, here is an important reason why so many families in this region no longer have viable employment: http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/heading_south_u.s.-mexico_trade_and_job_displacement_after_nafta1
And this affects all skill levels - after all, no factories means no need for engineers in production activities, and lots of college educated support people also are no longer needed (accountants, lawyers, PR, media, advertising, HR, sales, etc). So factory loss also affects the college educated crowd, and in a big way. For evidence (and a really depressing experience), check out what passes for a SUNY Buffalo "job fair" these days - pretty much restricted to mercs (mercenaries), cannon fodder (armed forces), policing, Repo (home foreclosure, repossesion of loaned items) and Pharma Sales "opportunities". Ugh... try this on for size (warning, not a happy one..) http://www.inflation.us/collegebubble.html
So far, few want to even admit the obvious.... that there is ALSO a glut of highly skilled, highly educated people in WNY. And employers in the private sector in this region seem especially incapable of using their talents, even when those employers are, in effect, extensively bribed (or incentivized, so to speak) via tax avoidance, low interest loans, cheap electricity, low interest loans, etc. And it's probably nothing personal, on an individual level most would like to be able to hire more people. And those who went to the recent meeting probably want a fix to what's wrong as evidenced by high drop-out rates and on average, poor test scores by Buffalo's high school attendees....
So, for the next education conference in Buffalo, perhaps these facts could be considered:
a) The strongest correlation between educational success and no success (= no graduation, poor grades, poor comprehension of what passes for being important knowledge, etc) is POVERTY. Minimizing poverty is the best way to improve grades and improve graduation rates. This is a well proven, and in the U.S., usually a conveniently ignored fact.
b) POVERTY is strongly correlated to employment, obviously. If you want to minimize poverty, you have to maximize employment possibilities for the unemployed/impoverished for whom a better education is supposedly intended, and/or an education for their kids..
c) Since private industry does not want to hire or is incapable of hiring sufficient numbers of people at living wages (though they will hire a select few for atrociously high wages in the executive management realm - as in Kaleida (http://wnymedia.net/the-
d) The motivation for educational success is significantly provided by the probability that actual employment at wages that support a middle class life is sufficiently high enough. When that probability of viable employment approaches zero for a large segment of Buffalo, well, motivating those kids to go to school, let alone getting anything of value out of school becomes more difficult than leading a non-thirsty horse to the Scajaquada Creek and trying to force them to drink that yucky water. Also, check out this: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/09/974409/-Why-Life-in-High-School-Is-More-Absurd-Than-Ever.
e) Educational success is also somewhat of a family affair - those whose parents or parental figures are educated/appreciate an education tend to do better than those whose parents perceive no value in education (just leaves you unemployed, but a lot deeper in debt). More Catch 22, and mostly curable with viable employment for the parents of the kids going to school.
f) Some horrid solutions to the "not enough jobs/too many people" scenario is to decrease the number of people, rapidly - often by war (US "Civil" War, WW1, WW2), genocide (Rwanda, Turkey/Armenia, Europe in WW2, Bosnia in the 1990's), starvation and protein deficiency (China in Great Leap Forward, North Korea), or societal insanity (the present Congo "rape-fest"/butchery zone). And there is the time honored tradition of slaughtering women by accusing them of witchcraft/health care skills - that was good for a 15 million person population readjustment in the Middle Ages (rumors are that some teabaggers have a yen for this one). But, those are horrid. The civilized way to go is hire people, ASAP, and put them to work doing things that make our country a better place, and these days, more energy sensible.
So much of what I heard in the recent Education Town Hall reporting was adults looking for a scapegoat as to why so many Buffalo children don't see any value in education (maybe the lack of scholarships to SUNY Buffalo for Buffalo high school grads is a factor? - After all, the UB Foundation and related only spends 8% of its annual expenditures on tuition for poor people - see http://wnymedia.net/the-
http://www.dailykos.com/story/
Lastly, most ways of stimulating demand and increasing employment when private industry does an impressive FAIL (as was evidenced in The Great Recession - at least a 7 million jobs lost arrangement) is what was done by the great NY Hero of the Economy Harry Hopkins (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
BUT, there is a way to massively stimulate economic demand without government spending and bribes in the form of tax avoidance for uber-rich people, and that is in the replacement of our pollution based electricity production system (about 80% of NY's electricity is provided via polluters). All you have to do is make manufacture of green energy systems economically viable by creating a demand for them. And to do that, all that is needed is to price the product of these systems - renewable electricity - at a rate that is equal to the cost of production plus some socially defined reasonable profit/return on investment - around 5% to10%, depending on what they are. This could put some of the (so far, "only") $2 trillion in corporate stashed away cash to work, as well as the $1+ trillion in banks/"bankster organizations" like Goldman Sachs. They have NO VIABLE INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES for that money (and then there is a lot more from rich individuals and "Hedgies" - Hedge Funds) in the U.S. at the present time. So much for job creation by those rich people that Republicans in the House and Senate have imagined as "The Job Creators"...
So give them some viable investment opportunities, as well as the rest of us "normal people" who wish for more than 0.25% from savings accounts in banks. Take the value-less added, socially destructive and inapplicable-to-renewable-
"Mister, Is that a game of chance?" asks a prospective poker player.
"Not the way I play it" says Mr. Fields, ever so truthfully...
To get the job of replacing most of our pollution based energy systems done in NY State about 4 million job-years of direct employment is needed, as are $271 billion over 20 years (repaid by electricity and ex-Ngas users) - see http://wagengineering.blogspot.com/2011/04/peak-oil-and-wind-power-in-ny-for-2011.html. And then there are spin-off jobs to be had (multiplier effect). No taxes needed to fund this, and any bonds for a NY Green Bank are readily repaid using interest from loan money that comes from reliable repayments of loans based on sane pricing for renewable energy in NY State. BTW, with enhanced economic performance, tax revenues also rise.... And if you use more expensive routes to make electricity, well, that also creates more jobs (somewhere, hopefully here) manufacturing those systems.....
Or we could moan and groan about those slacker kids and what sometimes passes for adult supervision (take some extreme examples, apply it to almost all, and "mission accomplished"), ad infinitum, call in Wall St and the Hedgies for their "educational treatment" and get another education in how to get fleeced of a lot of money. But without a cure for the "leading the horse to that yucky Scajaquada Creek water" problem, there will be no perceptible improvement in graduation rates or test score performance. But hey, Wall St is close to Madison Avenue, so with the right media campaign, we can be convinced that something is happening even though the SOS mode is really occurring.
TVO
