The power of words, the limits of help, and death

I am sadly reminded today of the power of words and our power to distort them.  We lost someone yesterday.

I recently read “The US is becoming a third world country.” To state this is to state one’s own ignorance. Having spent lots of time in those third world countries, this is patently false.  We insult their poverty to compare the U.S’s problems to theirs.

The primary poverty problem in the US is obesity. The primary poverty problem in Ghana is malnutrition, lack of education, poor health, and infant mortality (to name a few.  I guess that’s more than “primary”). To make this comparison accurate, we have to first burn every US community hospital, churn American roads back to dirt, and rip out our indoor plumbing. And then we are maybe 10% of the way towards a third world country.

Similarly, it’s become de rigeur to compare someone to Hitler. Sure, we have height challenged narcissists in our society. But to compare a current American political figure to Hitler is to insult an entire generation that died in the holocaust. Please, go visit the Holocaust museum, and then try to compare a tax increase to genocide.  I dare you.

I’m reminded of these word abuses when my acquaintance Rep. Gabby Giffords speaks for the first time for the cameras. Was it abused words in the mind of a crazy person that led to Gabby losing half her brain to a bullet? Maybe, or maybe that person was beyond help, regardless.

Beyond help. Beyond help. Today I teach a class on “measuring the results of microfinance”, via simulcast, to 40 business school campuses.  The challenge of measuring results is that the answer invariably says that someone was beyond help. Someone was even harmed, perhaps.  But does that mean we shouldn’t try?  Is only 100% success the ruler we can accept?

I’ll be teaching from the building where, yesterday, a student entered with a gun and, in a confrontation with police, was killed.  That student was beyond help.  As a society, we failed this student.

At moments like this, we are reminded of the rarity of our spectacular circumstances, the blessing of our sanity, and the foundation of our health.  We are reminded of mortality, in the face of a world of activities that seem designed to distract us from that.  For it’s not whether we have fun on life’s path, but whether we make the path better for those that follow.

 

venture capital perspective for social change

I gave a short, fast talking speech to the DGREE conference on how people seeking change should think like Venture Capitalists (in this case, educators, but applicable across multiple goals).

View it HERE

Cars are too safe+ tightrope walkers needed

Cars today are far safer than they were 40 years ago.  And that’s a problem — at least in one respect.  Since cars are safer, people drive more poorly.  A reinforcing feedback loop exists as well.  Since I pulled out in front of you and your new, high powered brakes allowed you to go from 60 to 15 in 2 seconds, then I can pull out in front of lots of people like you.  Since I didn’t use my turn signal and no one hit me, why bother to take my hand from my cell phone or double tall latte to use that indicator switch?

It’s really no wonder then that, while cars get safer, highway fatalities remain the same.  Safer cars create bad behavior and bad habits, since there is less cost to getting it wrong.

This is also true of  other social problems in the country, where improving the situation has led to unintended consequences.  We are a wealthy country.  And one of our biggest poverty problem is not starvation, or food insecurity it’s obesity.  “The highest rates of obesity occur among population groups with the highest poverty rates and the least education” according to Drewnoski and Specter.  We have nobly subsidized food, particularly corn and other inputs to factory processed food, and made food inexpensive.  The result is we are the only country that has an obesity problem tied to poverty.  There are over 1 Billion food insecure people in the world, it’s no wonder that some of them struggle to understand us.

There are more examples.  Since it is really hard to starve in this country, it’s no longer that important to get an education.  We are the most successful economy and political system in the world today, but we have a lower percentage of high school graduates than Panama, Mauritius, Korea, and Australia.  While we have yet to realize it on an individual basis, our graduation rates have fallen behind Tajikistan.  I suspect it’s much more difficult to obtain an education in Tajikistan, where 20% of the population lives on less than $1.25 a day, yet more people do it.

A social infrastructure that protects the less fortunate is incredibly important.  Some folks fall on hard times.  Others may never be able to get back on their feet again.  But in aggregate, across the US population, if we lower the cost of adverse behavior, it seems obvious that we will continue to get adverse behavior.  A “social safety net” works best when there are people attempting the tightrope that is above it.  The net catches the missteps, the falls, the injuries.  Then, the system should provide a ladder to access the tightrope again, and an encouraging audience clapping for more attempts.

That system, let’s call it the “Investing in America” system, will generate more tightrope walkers.  And tightrope walkers (or less euphemistically, entrepreneurs, scientists, knowledge workers and service providers) earn lots more money than safety net sitters.  That allows us to reinvest in better safety nets and ladders.  Thus, no tightrope walkers, no money for safety nets.

Education’s customer isn’t students. It’s the fed.

Today’s education challenge isn’t improving teacher performance and training, or improving student outcomes.  It’s getting money from the latest round of federal fiscal stimulus.

I’m a huge fan of education.  Teachers should be the rock-stars of our communities and paid appropriately.  Schools should be monuments to the glory of education.

But the funding for education, in the colloquial of my son, is “whack”.   Because tax dollars are pooled by governments (federal and state) and redistributed to local communities, the needs of local parents and communities are more and more disconnected from the local schools.  And the schools respond appropriately to this funding structure.  They work hard to seek federal funds.  In Colorado, for example,

Colorado has mounted one of the most energetic campaigns [for federal stimulus dollars]. Gov. Bill Ritter Jr., a Democrat, has directed $7 million in [state] stimulus money to programs he hopes will improve Colorado’s chances, and put Ms. O’Brien in charge of assembling hundreds of state officials, mayors, educators and citizens for dozens of public meetings to discuss strategies . . . Colorado’s effort so far, she said, has consumed 5,000 hours of staff and volunteer time.

Since the federal government is the customer, then the school apparatus responds appropriately.  In Colorado, spending $7m to attract their share of $11B in new federal stimulas is a great investment.  It could easily yield $140m, a 20x return on investment.  So the states start implementing education and curriculum programs that will increase the odds of getting money.  They are programs favored by the current Administration.  They curry favor.  Fifteen states have even hired consultants from McKinsey & Co. to couch educational initiatives in “polished proposals” that increase their odds of federal funding.  The educational initiatives may also increase the odds of students getting an education, but McKinsey wasn’t hired to craft that analysis.

Continuing with Colorado as an example, only 1/3 of the dollars for the schools are controlled by the community.  Imagine that more of the remaining $5.4 billion was in the hands of the parents and communities of Colorado.  How would things be different?  Instead of states rushing to design programs that adhere to the top-down beliefs of “Race to the Top” or teaching to the tests of “No Child Left Behind”, the states and schools would be responding to their customers — the parents and students. With 178 school districts in Colorado and 800,000 students, top-down solutions cannot adapt.  To believe every school district and every student has the same situation, needs the same solution, and responds to the same stimuli is clearly false belief.  In my local school district, the needs are different from school to school, which the superintendent and school board understand intimately but the US Department of Education cannot hope to.

Improving education is a crucial priority for the nation, and a 500 variable equation that’s difficult to solve.  It’s important and it’s hard.  We are a nation of entrepreneurs and business-people, struggling hard to find solutions that will prove attractive to customers and successful for the businesses.  Yet we have developed a counter-intuitive belief that education’s solution should be singular in nature, planned from the center, and implemented through a non-economic process of application and review.

State and Federal governments are the largest customer of education.  I hope they think they’re getting their money’s worth — some really well done applications for funding with pet project programs thrown in to sweeten the deal.  Yet the more government programs intrude by funding and distorting markets instead of setting the rules and playing referee, the more our dynamic economy and slowly sagging educational system will fall behind our world competition.

 

 

here

How many schools can a BMW build?

I just replaced my old car with a slightly less old car of similar type and status.  And the intervening 8 years has brought some strange changes.

I now have a rearview mirror that automatically dims, windshield wipers that adjust to the rain conditions, and a passenger side rearview mirror that points down so I can see the curb when backing up.  Oh, and it’s also the world’s most expensive iPhone bluetooth speakerphone.

While I basically wanted a car with less than 150,000 miles, what I got was overkill.  It needs to get me places safely, but there is a lot of stuff to go wrong in this car, like the run-flat tire pressure sensors (originally developed for military vehicles) that are giving me a warning light even though the tires are filled.

I hate it.  But not because it’s a bad car.  It’s a fabulous car.  I hate it because I am, and you are, all attracted to these bells and whistles like moths towards a flame.  A simpler car would be more reliable, just as safe, lighter and more fuel efficient, and less likely to break-down.  It’s a barrier for us, though, in part because that car isn’t on the market.  So to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, “BMW, break down this wall” and build quality AND simplicity.  Save me from myself.

Because I want to use the dollar savings to pay for a school for 30 to 60 under-privileged children.  Check out Room to Read on what you could be doing with your seat heaters and two zone air-conditioning system…

If you graduate H.S., we’ll pay for college. Free.

A draft press release from a non-profit I cofounded, Community Promise.  If you’re interested, we can help your community as well.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

We are about to make a stunning promise to local high school students, and we need your help.

The Problem:

Our communities are suffering historically large high school dropout rates.  The official high school dropout rates hover between 20-30%.  The unofficial rates are even higher.  High school dropouts could earn 50% more as graduates and 200% more as college graduates.  In addition to these wage differences, the latest studies show that each year’s “class” of high school dropouts costs California $46B in incremental social services and lost wages over their lifetime.  We want to help fix this.

Our Promise:

+++IF YOU GRADUATE HIGH SCHOOL, WE WILL PAY YOUR CALIFORNIA COLLEGE TUITION+++

. . . and our promise to the community is that we can do that for just a $50 parcel tax.

The benefits are clear:

1) For students, a major barrier to high school graduation and college attendance is removed.  High school graduation and college attendance increases, which in turn increases individual salaries and opens opportunities for employment in an increasingly competitive global economy.

2) For the taxpayer, better property values. People want to live in and are willing to pay for a community with this program.  Kalamazoo, Michigan’s property values have remained flat over the last 12 months, while most of the US is down 20%, including our local neighborhoods.

Huh?  How can we do that?

We’ve structured a program that can pay off students’ college tuition.   All this benefit for just a $50 parcel tax per year.  I’m not a huge fan of taxes.  Who is?  But this one is more than just a social benefit.  It has a clear, selfish economic benefit.  Which do you think will increase property values more:  2 cans of paint for your white picket fence or this unique feature of your community?

Who is covered?

We’re starting in the Sequoia Union High School District.  But after we’re successful there, we’re expanding to your community.  Feel free to contact us for technical assistance and support

Who is “we”?

“We” are Community Promise, a non-profit modeled after a successful program in Kalamazoo, Michigan (www.kalamazoopromise.com) that has already been working in the school district to improve educational outcomes.

What can I do?

Suggested tax-deductible donations are:

$100 – Supporter
$250 – Believer
$1,000 +  – Leader

Please make your donation at www.cpromise.org.

Build a school for $5,000, or 1/5th of a computer mouse

A friend whom I admire told me a story of his recent trip to Cambodia.

“We visited a school in rural Cambodia,” he said, “and when we walked in, all the students stood up and applauded.”

I contemplated that for a bit while grabbing another bite of lunch, and decided that was not usual cultural behavior.  “Why did they do that?” I asked.

“Because I built the school,” he replied.

Another bout of chewing allowed me to process this, raising my esteem for my friend in the process.  “Um, how much did that cost?”

“I don’t know exactly, around $5,000.”

This conversation led to an entirely new perspective on the world for me: the CSE, or Cambodian School Equivalent.  For example, the average car in the U.S. selling for almost $28,000, that equates to 5.6 Cambodian School Equivalents.  A designer couch?  One CSE.

This should remind us that we have so much in this country, which could be one reason why other countries are both jealous and spiteful. (For those interested in helping education in Cambodia, please check out The Cambodian School Project, among others.  You too can build a school.)

I was not terribly suprised to see, then, that a computer mouse, with 3 year warranty, costs nearly 5 CSEs.  $25,000.  The Worlds Most Expensive Mouse. For the computer that has everything.