Patrick Gleeson

Patrick Gleeson is a widely published Ph.D. and was formerly a Registered Investment Advisor and musician.

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Articles by Patrick Gleeson

• 2 essential reasons you can’t protect your stock portfolio from loss

  Monday, December 14, 2020

  A recent internet ad showed a handsome, self-assured older white male relaxed in expensive surroundings wondering how he can be sure his stock portfolio is absolutely safe. We’ll call him “Mr. Winner.” The ad’s sponsor, a major investment firm, will presumably answer that question, no doubt by undertaking the management of Mr. Winner’s portfolio themselves. One problem: not even a prestigious investment management firm can protect Mr. Winner’s stock portfolio from loss, even substantial loss. No one can. Here’s why.

• Will ‘robots’ make good teachers?

  Wednesday, December 09, 2020

  We humans have long been fascinated by our interactions with robots. For decades, the interaction was largely fictional. In reality, robots were primitive, shaky and limited. Recent advances in artificial intelligence, however, make the idea of a classroom led by a robot or other artificial intelligence-informed entity at least plausible. They won’t look like HAL 9000 or R2-D2, but eventually artificial intelligence-informed programs will almost certainly take on a significant part of a child’s education — and probably sooner than you think. Here’s why and likely how.

• Why post-COVID-19 U.S. education will be even less like it used to be than you think

  Thursday, October 22, 2020

  When COVID-19 first became a national conversation topic, a flurry of articles in major U.S. publications followed proposing what, post-COVID-19, would remain the same and what would be different. There seems to be an assumption that these issues have largely been resolved; while we may not like every change, we at least have a pretty good idea of what post-COVID U.S. education will look like. A previous experience with the interaction of a school system and a disaster this century, Hurricane Katrina, should warn us that we're probably underestimating how extensive and profound those changes are likely to be.

• How colleges are spreading COVID-19

  Wednesday, September 23, 2020

  Most of the attention and controversy over school attendance in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic these past couple of months has been focused on K-12 classrooms. Less attention has been paid to college policies. That’s too bad, because it’s now becoming clear those same policies are likely to spread COVID-19 back into many of those students’ home communities.

• Will there be teachers’ strikes over classroom teaching this fall?

  Monday, August 31, 2020

  As schools have been reopening the past few weeks, I've been following teachers’ responses to classroom vs. online teaching. There seems to be growing unease among teachers about opening classrooms in the midst of the coronavirus. But education authorities — certainly the federal government, but also many state and city governments — have not shown the same reluctance.

• Will classrooms stay open this fall?

  Monday, August 17, 2020

  Will your child’s K-12 school be open and stay open for in-person instruction this fall? Unfortunately, there’s no widely agreed-upon answer. Here’s a thumbnail history of the dispute, along with some of the variables, unknowns and recently emerging revisions of the underlying facts.

• Will classroom teaching this fall lead to increased illness?

  Wednesday, August 12, 2020

  In this time of every kind of uncertainty, one of the most troubling decisions Americans must make is: which is worse, the possibility of exposing teachers and students to a deadly disease or the certainty of impairing the education of an entire generation of students by keeping them out of school? Here are the differing views and why there are no easy choices.

• Are K-12 schools on the brink of financial disaster?

  Tuesday, July 21, 2020

  What financial impact will the COVID-19 pandemic have on K-12 schools? Opinion is mixed, ranging from guardedly optimistic to disastrous beyond belief. As usual in our sharply divided country, opinions link to politics. But this is more than a funding disagreement.

• Why teachers’ salaries will fall as unemployment rises

  Tuesday, July 14, 2020

  An April 2020 overview of K-12 job losses notes that, more than 10 years after the Great Recession, employment in public schools hasn't fully recovered from 2008’s Great Recession. The research further indicates that without support from the federal government, the revenue shortfalls related to the current crisis will be dramatically worse. The Economic Policy Institute’s researchers, for instance, anticipate a "revenue shortfall of nearly $1 trillion by 2021."

• Schools and police: How strongly do teachers believe Black students’ lives matter?

  Wednesday, July 08, 2020

  In the wake of George Lloyd’s killing, Americans have become increasingly critical of their police. The presence of police in K-12 schools in the U.S. has been particularly criticized. From the perspective of the Black Lives Matter movement, police in schools are more a threat to black students than a means of protection. Responding to this, some school districts have begun plans to remove police from schools. Somewhat surprisingly, a clear majority of 1,150 teachers, principals and district leaders surveyed in a June Education Week poll still favor keeping police in schools.

• Redlining: Why white people are typically wealthier than Black people

  Wednesday, June 24, 2020

  After a relatively long period of stable opinion, a confluence of early 2020 events has rapidly changed white Americans’ views on race, and, specifically, on why white Americans have so much more wealth than Blacks. Many white Americans, newly conscious of various inequalities holding Black Americans back, may believe these problems, once identified, can be remedied relatively quickly — if not in a few months, then certainly in a few years. A closer look at the wealth gap and its causes, however, suggests that remedies will be neither fast nor easy.

• Qualified immunity and why changing US policing will be very difficult

  Tuesday, June 16, 2020

  Less than a month after four Minneapolis policemen were charged with the killing of George Floyd — one of them on a second-degree murder count — public opinion in the country on race and criminal justice has shifted dramatically. By a remarkable 28-point margin, Americans now support Black Lives Matter. Additionally, by a three-to-one majority, citizens believe that U.S. police departments need major reform. Unfortunately, achieving this will be much harder than most Americans understand.

• The forthcoming budget battles in K-12 education

  Monday, June 08, 2020

  Once we're past the horrifying COVID-19 pandemic, states are going to be desperately looking for ways to cut expenses, if they aren't already. Teachers and teachers' unions can expect their salaries, benefits and working conditions to take a hit. But how big a hit? And how should teachers and their unions respond?

• Charter schools: The good, the bad and the Betsy

  Thursday, June 04, 2020

  It’s good to remember that the charter school movement began with a 1988 speech on education by Albert Shanker, a fiery, progressive reformer — one of several who saw charter schools as a way to improve the quality of K-12 education in America. Charters would make school more accountable to students and parents and would extend the benefits of education to all. But are today's charter schools good or bad? It’s an interesting question without a clear answer. In this article, I'll sort out some of the conflicting views.

• The future of work: Why resistance is futile

  Wednesday, May 27, 2020

  I've had two careers in my life: one as a college English professor, the other as a composer. What both professions have in common is that they're both being transformed by technology that many musicians and teachers find threatening. Sometimes I'm amazed how much teachers and musicians resist this transformation. Unfortunately, resistance to the incursion of technology in both professions is almost certainly doomed to failure and will deprive skilled workers the opportunity to shape this technology in ways that could benefit everyone.

• How much inequality is enough?

  Thursday, May 21, 2020

  Eighteenth century French moralist Joseph de Maistre observed, "Every nation gets the government it deserves." What he meant is that in a democracy, to some very considerable extent, the shape of the government is determined by the people. The same can be said for economic inequality. In this country, how much inequality is enough?

• An overview of education policies proposed by Trump, Biden

  Thursday, May 14, 2020

  In a recent article, I compared the views of President Trump and former Vice President Biden on K-12 charter schools. Let's compare their views on six of the remaining important education issues as we approach what promises to be an unusually combative election. For starters, how much money is in each candidate's education budget is almost certainly the most significant indicator of their positions on almost every other education issue. Without funding, no education initiative, no matter how well-designed, can be implemented effectively.

• Where Trump, Biden stand on charter school policy

  Wednesday, May 06, 2020

  This article compares the two major-party presidential candidates' policies on a single issue: charter schools. Wherever possible, I've limited my sources to the candidates' firsthand policy statements or to nonpartisan sources. Where it's useful to provide a partisan point of view over a particular issue, I've carefully identified it. Both candidates’ statements are rich in aspirational goals and less forthcoming about where the funding will come from. Here's what the two candidates have said about this important education issue.

• When the failing US response to the COVID-19 crisis really began

  Monday, April 27, 2020

  Beyond all the political posturing — both Democratic accusations of Trump administration failures and equally fervent Trump administration declarations of triumph and blame-shifting — one thing has largely been overlooked. It wouldn't have mattered who was in charge when it became clear we were beginning a prolonged health crisis early in 2020. The failures to adequately respond began years ago and continued through three administrations, both Republican and Democratic.

• Being a performing artist after the coronavirus pandemic

  Wednesday, April 22, 2020

  A few years ago, I retired from writing music for film and television. I'm aware how incredibly lucky I've been to have had the job, but after doing it for years I wanted to see if I could get anywhere attracting an audience with music I'd written for myself, not for a director or producer. So, I quit Hollywood and began again. This year, I was looking forward to my next gig at an electronic music festival, Synthplex, where I was scheduled to headline on March 27. Now, like millions of Americans, I'm sheltering in place, giving me plenty time to wonder — no, worry — about what it will be like pursuing a career in the arts, and especially the performing arts, when this plague has passed.

• The retirement elephant in US classrooms

  Wednesday, April 15, 2020

  By now, most Americans know that pension plans in this country have a problem — put simply, many and perhaps most pension funds don't have enough money to pay the pensions they've promised their retirees. The coronavirus has already deeply affected education in K-12 classrooms. Soon, it will also affect the pensions of K-12 teachers across the country. Here's why.

• How COVID-19 affects the school lunch program

  Wednesday, April 08, 2020

  In a couple of earlier articles, I wrote about how the coronavirus threatens U.S. education in general. Here, I'd like to concentrate on one particular aspect of the problem: how the coronavirus will make an already highly unequal K-12 education experience even less equal by depriving the neediest students of what may be their only substantial daily meal.

• The CARES Act and public education

  Wednesday, April 01, 2020

  On March 27, President Trump signed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES) Act into law. It provides $30.75 billion in emergency relief funds for the U.S. Department of Education. If you’re a K-12 teacher, you’re probably wondering how this affects you. Importantly, how will your students benefit? More pointedly, how much will they benefit?

• Could your school district run out of money?

  Tuesday, March 24, 2020

  As we all struggle with the unprecedented threat to our health the coronavirus represents, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the virus presents a similarly unprecedented threat to our financial well-being. For now at least, government workers — whether local, state or federal — seem to be better off than other wage-workers. For teachers, however, that may not last. Here are the possibilities, both good and bad.

• The coronavirus threat to US education: Part 2

  Wednesday, March 18, 2020

  In part one of this two-part series, I explained that the consequences of this pandemic for school funding will be severe. But for teachers, that's only one of several problems. For example, we don't know yet how many teachers will lose their jobs, but during the Great Recession of 2008 nearly 300,000 teachers (and support personnel) lost their jobs. Job losses in the coming pandemic-related recession will likely be at least this bad.

• The coronavirus threat to US education

  Monday, March 16, 2020

  Like everyone these past few weeks, I've watched the rapid worldwide spread of the coronavirus with alarm. But the emphasis in the media so far has largely concentrated on lives lost and political missteps — both of them significant and disturbing subjects. But nothing I've read seems to describe adequately the impact on American families, probably because the worst is yet to come. It's a huge subject, so here I'd like to concentrate on the implications of the virus for U.S. education.

• US higher education funding has a long way to go

  Tuesday, March 03, 2020

  The state of higher education funding in the U.S. was recently described in a carefully documented report released in February. The report comes from a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded organization with the somewhat wonky title, State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO). What it tells us about education spending in this country is discouraging. Not only does U.S. higher education funding have a long way to go — there’s no obvious way to get there.

• Is a liberal arts education still worth pursuing?

  Wednesday, February 19, 2020

  A couple of generations ago, a liberal arts education was highly respected and easily led to a lot of desirable employment. But the world has changed. Many now believe a liberal arts education has become culturally irrelevant, putting its degree holders at a decided disadvantage in the employment market. Are they right?

• Third-party suppliers can jeopardize your small business

  Wednesday, January 29, 2020

  One of the less-glamorous aspects of contemporary business is the essential role played by third-party suppliers. Their increasing use allows businesses to rapidly scale up to meet increased product demand. Often, they can supply parts or processes for far less than it would cost a company to produce them in-house. But what is becoming increasingly understood is that these third-party suppliers can also threaten your business — that they present several different kinds of third-party supply risk.

• Battles won and lost in American education’s bitter reading wars

  Thursday, January 23, 2020

  American and British educators are divided into two opposing camps over the best way to teach children to read: the “whole language” camp and the “phonics” camp. Both methods have been taught for over a century, but since 1955 the two camps have become stridently opposed to a degree that justifies the popular title for the dispute: “the reading wars.” Below is a brief review of this curious battle of angry academics and legislators, along with my answers to three cogent questions: What does each group propose? Why do they distrust and dislike each other so much? And, finally, is there any hope of a truce?

• ‘Growth mindset’ in education: Great new tool or overrated fad?

  Wednesday, January 15, 2020

  "Growth mindset" theory in education proposes that minds are malleable: teachers can improve students’ "intelligence, ability and performance" by encouraging them to believe their learning abilities aren’t fixed, but are capable of growth. The theory is popular in education circles. Firsthand teacher accounts show dramatic learning improvements attributed to growth mindset. It also has its detractors. At least one well-designed study found little evidence the theory really does work in practice. Who's right?

• The real reason a new K-12 teacher probably can’t afford to live on their salary

  Thursday, January 09, 2020

  There are two different reasons a beginning teacher in this country likely can't afford to live on their salary. One reason is supremely self-evident: state by state and city by city, teachers are paid less than similarly educated and qualified professionals. The second reason isn't quite so obvious, but it underlies the first and it's quite grim. Teachers are underpaid because as a group, teachers are disrespected and disliked by significant segments of the U.S. population. The underpayment isn't just "a lack of funds." It's deliberate and intended.

• Teachers are a lot less enthusiastic about innovation than you think

  Friday, January 03, 2020

  A courageous teacher fights an unwieldy bureaucracy to introduce powerful new learning strategies. Recognize this? It's basically the plot of "Dangerous Minds," the movie starring Michelle Pfeiffer, a plot it shares with a lot of other heartwarming film and television dramas. But also — if you accept the results of an Education Week 2018 poll on teachers and innovation — it’s a storyline you're not that likely to find in real life. Teachers, it turns out, are less enthusiastic about innovation in education than you might think. It's actually their administrators who favor it.

• Common Core: Who loves it, who hates it and why?

  Tuesday, December 17, 2019

  Recently, I wrote about the history of opposition to Common Core, noting that at this point it is neither an unqualified success nor an unmitigated failure. Student scores have not improved significantly, if at all, in nearly a decade. But many states who have adopted Common Core — or adapted several of its principles and procedures — profess relative satisfaction. One of the biggest obstacles to Common Core’s success is that three different groups claim a stake in its outcome, and they passionately disagree about almost everything related to the program. Here's a brief overview of their conflicting views, motives and tactics.

• How Brexit could hurt you financially

  Monday, December 16, 2019

  Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party scored a huge victory in the Dec. 12 U.K. election, giving the Tories 365 seats in the House of Commons and an unassailable 80-seat majority. It's now nearly certain that the United Kingdom will be leaving the European Union in the very near future — the much dreaded and/or anticipated "Brexit." This will have consequences for the U.S. economy as well and, eventually, for your financial well-being. But will they be serious? The shortest answer is yes…and no. Here’s a rundown of the most likely Brexit consequences and how they may affect you.

• Can Common Core ever really work?

  Monday, December 09, 2019

  An embarrassing failure in U.S. education has been the persistent underperformance of K-12 students in matchups with students in other countries. After more than a decade of intense efforts, U.S. students remain firmly in the middle of the pack worldwide. The most recent 2018 cross-national PISA test, administered to 15-year-olds every three years, found U.S. students ranked 37th in math, 18th in science and 13th in reading. This comes after 18 years of costly federal programs that have resulted in minimal improvement. What's gone wrong here?

• The stock market was supposed to crash. What happened?

  Wednesday, December 04, 2019

  Perhaps the most basic truism about the stock market is that it's cyclical — first it goes up, then it comes back down, sometimes landing relatively softly and at other times with a loud crash, wiping out trillions of dollars of investor wealth. 2019 was the year one of the longest bull markets on record was supposed to come to an end — because "everyone said so." Instead, by Dec. 1, the market had gained well over 20%, or about twice its yearly average. How could so many knowledgeable market watchers have been so wrong?

• The real reason rich kids do better in school

  Wednesday, November 20, 2019

  It’s frequently asserted that the reason rich kids do better in school than poor kids has to do with their life experiences outside the classroom. The problem with this isn’t that it’s entirely wrong — like most things in life, the closer you look, the more complicated it gets. But this view lets our K-12 school system off the hook almost entirely. The reality is that a large part of the problem is that poor kids receive educations that are both inferior and different — they aren’t even taught the same way.

• Why are US K-12 reading scores falling?

  Monday, November 18, 2019

  After 25 years of stable or mildly improving reading scores in U.S. schools, scores began dropping in 2017. The drop, so far at least, isn't dramatic, but has continued despite various attempts to stem the decline. What's behind this downward trend, and how do we stop it?

• How do the presidential candidates propose to make education better?

  Wednesday, November 13, 2019

  One of the hot-button areas for all the Democratic presidential candidates is education. How do they propose to make it more affordable and equitable? How do they propose doing that without lowering standards? Most importantly, how do they propose paying for these costly improvements? Here are the plans of the leading candidates for the nomination — Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders — on two of the most important education areas.

• Can Elizabeth Warren’s education plan finally end segregation in US schools?

  Friday, October 25, 2019

  One of the more disappointing failures in U.S. K-12 education has been the attempt to end segregation in U.S. classrooms. As I pointed out in an earlier article on this touchy subject, the end of segregated classrooms, seemingly promised more than 60 years ago in the historic Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling, never came close to being fulfilled. In reality, the degree of segregation in 2019 is about the same as it was in the 1960s. Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren has a radical plan to change that. Whether it will help or hurt her candidacy remains to be seen, but it is a radical policy change even for Democrats.

• The crippling American teacher shortage

  Wednesday, October 16, 2019

  A teacher shortage doesn’t look the way you might expect. Your child doesn’t come home from their first day of class and announce there’s not enough teachers at school. Neither does this year’s K-12 classroom necessarily have a dozen more kids than last year’s. In some ways, the teacher shortage is nearly invisible, which is part of the problem. What a teacher shortage does is most simply lower the quality of the available teachers.

• Does class size actually matter?

  Wednesday, October 09, 2019

  Most parents agree that kids are going to learn better and faster in a smaller class than in a large one. But not everyone agrees that this is so, despite the fact that the largest study on the effect of class size to date demonstrates that "small classes appear to benefit all kinds of students in all kinds of schools." One of the more trenchant critiques appeared in 2018 in the technological and education-oriented THE Journal, which concluded that "class size doesn’t matter," and that in at least one area, mathematics, outcomes improved as class sizes increased.

• Over 50? Sorry, we just can’t see you

  Wednesday, October 02, 2019

  Every minority in this country faces discrimination in one way or other, including Americans over age 50. For them, one of the persistent problems has been how quickly they become invisible as they age. A research report from AARP released at the September 2019 Advertising Week conference in New York, based on “a random sample of 1,116 images published by popular brands,” indicates widespread stereotyping, much of it not only inaccurate, but degrading and vicious.

• Why the SAT can’t be fixed

  Friday, September 27, 2019

  Your dear mom has fallen down a flight of stairs. She has severe skin cuts, several broken bones and a concussion. Rather than hospitalize her, you buy her a better pair of walking shoes. Will that work? For similar reasons, various attempts to reform the SAT tests that many colleges use to evaluate potential students are unlikely to help. The damage has already been done. Attempting to tidy things up by "improving" the SAT, which notoriously favors the wealthiest students and further disadvantages the poorest, is like responding to your mom’s injuries by buying her a better pair of shoes.

• Is the investment industry beginning to change?

  Thursday, September 19, 2019

  One of the shocking things I learned about the personal investment industry during the years I worked as a Registered Investment Advisor was how often even the most reputable stockbrokers acted against their clients’ best interests. Recent suits against the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) may change all this — but this remains to be seen. The industry has successfully fought off attempts at real reform for decades.

• Why teachers are quitting in droves

  Tuesday, September 10, 2019

  Almost half of all K-12 teachers quit teaching within five years. Those who quit are disproportionately teachers in two of the most critical areas: English or science. Moreover, they quit soonest and most often in high-poverty and urban schools. But neither the federal government nor most state governments have convincingly answered the simple question of why this occurs.

• Why schools can’t hire enough good teachers

  Wednesday, September 04, 2019

  You've probably read about the awful teacher shortage in this country. School districts just can't get enough good teachers. According to the nonpartisan Learning Policy Institute, for example, in the 2017-18 school year there was a shortage of 110,000 qualified teachers. That sounds pretty bad — but when you consider this is a shortage of 110,000 teachers out of 3.8 million — it begins to appear that the teacher shortage may be exaggerated. Overall, in fact, there is a higher percentage of unfilled U.S. jobs in almost every area of science, technology, engineering and mathematics than in education. So how bad is it, really?

• What happened to bilingual education?

  Wednesday, August 28, 2019

  Discussions of the benefits of a bilingual education often emphasize how it improves critical thinking, encourages a wider understanding of others and develops unique problem-solving skills. These are all true, but perhaps the most important aspect for many parents is that bilingually educated children make more money in adulthood. But that being so, why is bilingual education reserved primarily for students who come from money? If bilingual educations aren't distributed evenly across the economic spectrum in this country, one of the reasons is that, historically, many Americans have been somewhat suspicious of teaching their children a foreign language.

• The economic impact of our aging population

  Monday, August 19, 2019

  A 2016 article in The Lancet on the implications of rapidly aging world populations cites some disturbing statistics. Important among them is this: Although over the past six decades the world population aged 60 or older has increased only slightly — by around 9% — in the next 40 years this group will more than double. The U.S. is one of the countries that will be most affected by this dramatic increase, resulting in lower birthrates, lower labor participation rates, and dramatic increases in Social Security payouts and healthcare expenditures.

• Beating age discrimination just got harder

  Wednesday, August 14, 2019

  Fighting age discrimination in employment was never easy. Perhaps the most important obstacle is that age discrimination isn’t easy to prove. Historically, when age discrimination in employment suits do go to trial, they’ve been decided overwhelmingly in favor of corporate America and against workers — about 99% of the time. As daunting as this sounds, recent significant appellate court decisions will almost certainly tilt the playing field even further toward corporate America and away from an increasing number of aging workers.

• Age discrimination harms everyone, but it’s hard to prove

  Tuesday, August 06, 2019

  You may think you have a realistic understanding of discrimination against older workers, but it's likely you underestimate how widespread age discrimination in employment actually is. For example, "front-facing" jobs in industries that involve in-person contact with customers often go to younger workers whose presence suggests that the company is forward-looking and innovative. Contrary to its reputation for liberal political and social ideas, Silicon Valley is another prominent offender. But it's less well-known that this kind of discrimination exists in nearly every industry in America.

• Aging: What you don’t know can hurt you

  Wednesday, July 17, 2019

  I don't recall legislation outlawing the discussion of aging, do you? Yet, it’s a topic often avoided in the public sphere, almost as if talking about it were illegal. Yet, despite the uniform silence on the subject in the current presidential campaigns, there's little doubt that there are so many urgent issues related to aging as to constitute a national crisis. How so? First consider this: by 2020, more than 20% of the population in every industrialized society will be over 65 and in each following year the percentage will rise. In contrast, the percentage of persons under 20 remains nearly flat and will remain so for years to come. There are many implications related to these two statistics, none of them good.

• What should we do about economic inequality?

  Friday, July 12, 2019

  In our increasingly fractured political sphere, one of the hot-button issues is "economic inequality." Some conservatives have expressed doubt that there’s a need to reduce it — that maybe some economic inequality is necessary for growth. That’s a minority view, however, even among conservatives. Many Republicans and almost all Democrats believe the current concentration of wealth among a small percentage of the population isn’t sustainable over the long run — that something must be done to lessen it. Predictably, however, Republicans and Democrats have very different ideas about what that something might be.

• What you don’t know about growing old — and why

  Thursday, July 11, 2019

  Americans haven't always faced our national shortcomings very well, although we're probably getting a little better at it. While we have a long way to go to achieve perfection, we've made substantial strides in some areas. However, despite the best efforts of various institutes devoted to the subject, such as the National Institute on Aging, growing old is something we don't want to hear about. This seems particularly strange when you consider that it's one of the few things in life that will certainly affect everyone who doesn’t die young.

• How white Americans and black Americans lead separate lives

  Thursday, June 20, 2019

  Increasingly, Americans live in separate worlds, divided by race, class and political allegiance. Not only is does this segregation continue into the 21st century, studies show that it has increased over a period of decades and is still increasing today. An almost unavoidable consequence of this kind of social apartheid is that on those occasions when groups do attempt communication, their experiences differ so greatly that instead of the communication leading to further understanding, it can lead to further disbelief.

• The empathy gap in education

  Tuesday, June 18, 2019

  Let’s begin with a lede borrowed from the June 5 edition of The Los Angeles Times: "Leaders of the Los Angeles school district made a calculated gamble: The January teachers strike made such a huge, positive impact on the public that sympathetic voters, they thought, would overwhelmingly pass a tax increase to benefit schools." Here’s the background: Los Angeles public schools, like public schools across the country, are overcrowded and lacking in resources, particularly in the resources needed to educate minority students with special needs.

• Who’s against affirmative action in education?

  Friday, June 14, 2019

  Americans' views about affirmative action are notoriously slippery. To give you some idea of how slippery they can be, consider two polls. A February 2019 Gallup Poll determined that over 60% of all Americans favor affirmative action policies in education for both women and minorities, a pronounced increase in favorable responses from the previous 2016 Gallup poll. Meanwhile, a 2019 Pew Poll determined that about three-quarters of all Americans oppose affirmative action in education based on race or ethnicity and only 7% believe it should be a major consideration in college admissions.

• Why minority students get bad grades: The Pygmalion effect

  Tuesday, June 11, 2019

  This is the third of four articles dealing with inequality in U.S. public education. It addresses a persistent problem: the underperformance of black and brown students in public schools. Substantial research studies documented in the first article in this series demonstrated that black and brown students in segregated primary and secondary schools receive a comparatively underfunded education taught by less-experienced and lower-paid teachers in overcrowded classrooms. However, even when minority students come from middle-class, two-parent backgrounds and enjoy the same advantages as their white cohorts — principally classroom integration, teacher skills, class size and funds per pupil — they don’t do as well in college. Why is that?

• Why minority students get inferior educations: School funds and teacher expectations

  Wednesday, June 05, 2019

  Public schools in the U.S. are generally funded by a combination of federal, state and local governments. If the system were designed to succeed, the allocation of funds might be based primarily on need. In such a system, some additional moneys might go to those school districts whose students’ needs were the most acute. This idea runs so counter to the way things actually work as to seem at first almost heretical. This article describes various problems that further contribute to the inferiority of the educational experience offered to minority and especially low-income minority students.

• Why black and brown students get inferior educations: Segregation

  Friday, May 31, 2019

  In recent years, more energy has been devoted to the pros and cons of affirmative action than probably any other education topic. But these arguments on what should or shouldn’t be done to help black and brown students skirt a far more fundamental issue, which even liberal educators and politicians often avoid: why do black and brown students need affirmative action or any other kind of race-based help to enjoy the same level of success in college enjoyed by Asian students and white students? Underlying the answers to that question are two seemingly contradictory bodies of fact.

• Do ‘zero-tolerance’ policies in education really work?

  Friday, May 24, 2019

  In principle, zero-tolerance policies in U.S. schools are obvious and almost indisputable. Some kinds of student behavior cannot be tolerated and must result in disciplinary responses that include expulsion. Students can't bring guns to school, for example; can’t attack teachers, or sell drugs on campus. In practice, however zero-tolerance policies have become fraught and widely disputed. Here's an overview of zero-tolerance policies in U.S. schools along with a sampling of opinion about their usefulness.

• A closer look at the College Board’s controversial ‘adversity score’

  Tuesday, May 21, 2019

  In yet another instance of the truism that no good deed goes unpunished, the College Board — which creates and administers SAT tests — seems to have angered educators of several political persuasions with its recently announced "adversity score," a tool designed to allow college admissions officers to take students’ hardships into account when deciding their college eligibility. Trying to compensate for student hardships without actually taking race into account seems like a plausible solution to the well-understood problem of inequality in education — unless you think about it.

• Great new approaches to teaching — until they’re not

  Wednesday, April 10, 2019

  Social science and technology research offer teachers many promising new ways of educating but not always with a lot of certainty about how well these new approaches work. New teaching methods are generally welcomed, but "innovative" past teaching practices have not always ended well. This is not intended to be a survey of all the teaching methods that didn't work out — that would be more like a book. Ample documentation of failure already abounds, such the federal government’s own 2018 study of 67 federally funded teaching innovations that shows that only 18 percent of them had a measurable positive impact.

• What’s behind the Department of Education’s school funding rollbacks?

  Monday, April 01, 2019

  Why is the Betsy DeVos-led Department of Education continuing to slash education programs? And why, despite criticism even from congressional Republicans, has the department continued to slash budgets for disabled and disadvantaged children while increasing budgets for school choice? There seems to be a clear approach in DeVos' budgets that, while cutting budgets generally, has shifted remaining funds away from at-risk populations and toward wealthier families.

• The sooner you start, the better off you’ll be

  Wednesday, March 27, 2019

  Someday, you'll retire. When you do, how will you finance your retirement? And when should you start? You may think, "In a few years I'll start paying into a 401(k), IRA or Keogh. Right now, I'm paying off student loans, saving to buy a car for a commute and trying to get a little money set aside for emergencies. Beginning to invest for retirement can wait a few years, until I’ll have more money." If you haven't already started investing for your retirement, the best time to begin is now. The earlier you start, the better off you'll be. It makes a bigger difference than you may think.

• Has the Department of Education given up on poor kids?

  Thursday, March 21, 2019

  It's no secret that the current administration's highest funding priorities don't include the Department of Education. President Trump signaled as much in choosing Betsy DeVos to head the department. Her views on public schools were well-known long before her appointment and are summarized in her 2015 comment that public schools are "a dead end." For those who feel public schools are worth saving, the department's announcement earlier in March that it was further slashing the education budget after two years of earlier cuts was troubling. The department proposed eliminating 29 programs, by far the largest being the 21st Century Learning Centers that operate in high-poverty areas.

• Betsy DeVos’ controversial scholarship proposal

  Wednesday, March 06, 2019

  On Feb. 28, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced a new school choice proposal. According to a senior Department of Education official, the $5 billion proposal — which first has to skate past a determinedly opposed Democratic majority in the House of Representatives — would allow each state "to take advantage of scholarship money that would be made available for them for programs they design." This sounds — and may even be — relatively harmless at worst and, at best, could be one of Secretary DeVos’ better ideas. Before getting into the proposal itself, it may be useful to step back and consider what’s going on with school choice from a broader perspective.

• Is there a guaranteed annual income in your future? — Part 2

  Monday, March 04, 2019

  Until recently, most guaranteed annual income proposals centered on moral arguments for providing everyone with at least a subsistence income — for example, that it was an obligatory act of Christian charity. Since the 1960s, those favoring a GAI have abandoned these earlier arguments on moral grounds in favor of what is potentially a more compelling reason: we need to have a GAI simply because, in the very near future, there won’t be enough jobs as workers are replaced by machines with artificial intelligence capabilities.

• Is there a guaranteed annual income in your future? — Part 1

  Wednesday, February 27, 2019

  Nominally nonpartisan banking institutions like the World Bank have long held that a job "is the fastest way out of poverty." This view has been vigorously supported by conservative economists like Arthur Laffer, who has also maintained that lowering taxes, even at the expense of social services, ultimately benefits workers because employers in a low-tax environment create more jobs. The resulting increased labor demand, according to the Laffer theory, will raise both employment levels and workers’ wages, thus creating more wealth for everyone. Two relatively recent developments call these views into question. Instead, there is a new emphasis on this very old idea, a financial guarantee that provides at least a subsistence-level income for all.

• Are classroom sizes hurting students?

  Monday, February 25, 2019

  Is there some point beyond which every student added to a classroom reduces the overall result? As a former teacher, I've watched the growing debate over class size in American primary and secondary education with interest and some alarm. My instinctive response is that class size does matter and that we’re headed in the wrong direction, but does the evidence bear this out? A National Education Association study, for example, reported that funding cuts for education required increasing class size limits in Georgia and Fairfax County, Virginia, which already had larger-than-average class sizes.

• When do you owe too much on your credit cards?

  Friday, February 22, 2019

  Putting the title of this article another way, how much can you owe on your credit cards before it lowers your quality of life? There's never an absolute number — if you're living on your Social Security, it could be as little as $5,000 on a single high-interest-rate credit card. If you’re Amazon's Jeff Bezos, currently the world's richest person, there is no such number. But for the rest of us, there’s a point of credit card indebtedness that will cause the credit-rating agencies to lower your credit score enough to make your life more difficult.

• How to leave your job

  Wednesday, February 13, 2019

  For any number of reasons, it's time to move on. How should you do that? If you’ve had problems at work that led to your decision — a toxic boss or the promised terms of your employment weren't delivered — you may be tempted to make a dramatic exit (don't, of course). If you're leaving because you have a wonderful new job opportunity and everyone, including your current boss, thinks you ought to take it, making your exit becomes easier. But there are still right and wrong ways of doing it.

• Is economic inequality rising?

  Monday, February 11, 2019

  Economic inequality is a popular media topic but it’s hard to get objective information about it. Is it increasing or not — and if it is, is that good or bad? In our politically polarized environment, many business writers and economists bring their own perspectives to these topics, with results that depend less on data than on political/social orientation.

• Is retirement bad for your health?

  Monday, February 04, 2019

  Floating out there somewhere in the vast Sargasso Sea of unexamined opinion is an idealized conception of retirement — that most Americans plan on retiring; that there will be enough money for retirement when the time comes and that it will be a fulfilling and happy time of life. No short article can hope to treat the full complexity of the subject, but some of these opinions are simply wrong. Recent research suggests that continuing to work past retirement age isn't a bad idea: that it may positively affect both your mental well-being and your physical health. Among other possibly surprising benefits: those who continue working live longer.

• Did the Los Angeles teachers’ strike change US education?

  Friday, February 01, 2019

  The Los Angeles teachers’ strike — settled in January — was 1) an expensive waste of time or 2) changed the course of education in America. Take your pick. Your choice may depend more on your political views in general than the underlying facts. Here are the two opposing views and an attempt to determine an underlying reality that both sides might grudgingly agree on.

• Why your job may be disappearing

  Wednesday, January 30, 2019

  For more than 50 years now, intellectuals like Herman Kahn have been predicting a future where very few of us will work. Yet unemployment is no worse than it’s ever been. Reasonably enough, most of us have stopped worrying about it. But recent developments in automation and artificial intelligence have sharply increased the chances that your job’s going away — and probably far sooner than you think. Worse, according to an alarming article in The New York Times, many business leaders not only believe technology-related job losses will be substantial in the near future — they’re looking forward to it!

• Why the Los Angeles teachers’ strike matters

  Monday, January 21, 2019

  The Los Angeles teachers’ strike brings home some uncomfortable truths about American education. The outcome of this particular teachers’ strike may influence, even determine, the course of U.S. primary and secondary education for years to come. Many Americans have a clichéd understanding of underperforming and underfinanced American schools — of why certain states have underperforming schools, of the connection between inadequate teacher salaries and student underperformance and, importantly, of the political environments that produce those outcomes. Like many clichés, this is at least partly true, but the reality is more nuanced.

• The real reason to wait to draw your Social Security

  Thursday, January 17, 2019

  Go to the web with the question: "When should I begin drawing my Social Security benefits?" If you were uncertain of the answer before you began reading, you may be more confused afterward. You’ll learn that in 2019 you can begin drawing "reduced" SS benefits at age 62, but that you can receive your "full benefit" at 65 — which is true or not true, depending on what you mean by "full" — and that your benefit amount keeps increasing every year you wait to begin drawing benefits until you’re 70, which is true.

• Is a college degree worth what it costs?

  Wednesday, January 16, 2019

  It's long been held that a college education is worth what it costs. According to College Data, continuing tuition increases have brought the average cost of a Bachelor of Arts degree for the 2017-18 school year to a record high of $9,970 for in-state students attending a public college. Yearly tuition at private colleges for the same school year averages a whopping $34,740. Despite this, numerous online sources continue to affirm that getting a college degree is worth whatever it costs. In reality, better answers to the question may be "it depends," and "it’s complicated."

• American education’s teacher crisis

  Thursday, January 10, 2019

  After decades of largely ineffective attempts by American teachers to raise salaries and improve teaching conditions, American teachers have changed their ways. In 2018, they were organizing, striking, or simply leaving the profession. Until recently, polarized state governments have been unable or unwilling to address the problem. Parents are often unaware of the seriousness of the crisis, which could leave many American students without access to an effective education.

• Should you invest in real estate or stocks?

  Wednesday, January 09, 2019

  In the long run, stocks have a higher return on investment than real estate. But in some circumstances, you’re better off investing in both. If you’re trying to figure out which is a better investment over the long term, you might begin by searching the internet with a simple query like "real estate or stocks better?" You’ll be surprised to find that while most sources conclude that stocks are the better long-term investment, there are writers that come to the opposite conclusion. But not all of these writers rely on appropriate data.

• Is your 401(k) plan good, bad or ugly?

  Tuesday, January 08, 2019

  401(k) savings plans are a great idea. Within limits, you get to decide how much you’ll contribute out of each paycheck. Regular contributions are relatively painless because they’re made for you by your employer. Better yet, many employers match whatever you put in. Best of all, the income taxes that would have been due on earnings in the account are deferred until retirement. But while the idea is great, not every plan’s execution of the idea is great, or even very good.

• How to survive a bear market

  Wednesday, January 02, 2019

  When a bear market begins, get rid of everything and move into cash! No, that’s not what I’m recommending. In fact, it’s probably about the worst injury you can inflict on your retirement account. But during the years I spent as a Registered Investment Advisor, whenever a bear market approached worried clients would begin calling, wondering if they shouldn’t weather the coming storm by doing just that — selling everything and moving into cash.

• A mentor is good — now you need a sponsor

  Wednesday, December 19, 2018

  In corporate America, it’s long been recognized that for high-potential employees, finding a mentor and maintaining a relationship with that mentor is one of the keys to career success. According to a study of over 1,000 corporate professionals, this holds particularly true for women and minorities, more than 75 percent of whom described the mentoring relationship as either "very important or extremely important to their career development." Unfortunately, mentoring alone, although it has a positive effect on the careers of all corporate professionals who develop a mentor-mentee relationship, doesn’t close the gender/diversity gap.

• A stock market survival course: Part 5

  Monday, December 17, 2018

  This is the final article of a five-part investor’s survival course designed to give you essential information you need to succeed as an investor in the stock market. None of it is mere opinion. The previous articles summarized the research indicating that while individual investors underperform the market by more than 60 percent, only about 5 percent of professional investors beat the market in a given year. In this last article I’ll summarize current research on the relationship between risk and return and, finally, will suggest a slight modification of the investment program advocated here that takes advantage of the market cycle.

• A stock market survival course: Part 4

  Thursday, December 13, 2018

  This is the fourth of a five-article survival course designed to give you essential information you need to succeed as an investor in the stock market. The first three articles established that individual investors underperform the market by over 60 percent, and market professionals generally underperform the market as well. A better approach is to give up the attempt to beat the market. This article discusses easy ways of diversifying your investments to lower risk and improve returns.

• A stock market survival course: Part 3

  Monday, December 10, 2018

  This is the third of a five-article survival course designed to give you essential information you need to succeed as an investor in the stock market. None of it is mere opinion. Everything stated in these articles is backed by the research of well-known economists and published in leading journals of economics and finance. Each article can be read in 10 to 15 minutes. This third article begins outlining the market strategies that will substantially improve your investment results.

• A stock market survival course: Part 2

  Tuesday, December 04, 2018

  This is the second article of a five-part survival course designed to give you essential information you need to succeed as an investor in the stock market. None of it is mere opinion. The first article summarized the generally poor stock market performance of individual investors and explained why. This second article explains why stock-picking itself is a bad idea no matter who’s doing the picking.

• Disorganize to increase your creativity

  Friday, November 30, 2018

  Increasingly in this century, researchers and business analysts are paying attention to what increases creativity. What are the approaches and habits you can adopt that will promote and increase your own creative output? Some of the research results are surprising. Although earlier articles and books on the creative process recommended such common-sense strategies as organizing your time and workspace to maximize creative output, more recent data-based research suggests there’s more to It than that — that too narrow a focus on organization can inhibit creativity.

• A stock market survival course: Part 1

  Wednesday, November 28, 2018

  For several years, as a Registered Investment Advisor with my own small investment firm, I managed the stock accounts of private investors. Some were corporate executives, others were entrepreneurs and several were artists. All were smart and successful. Because mine was a small firm, I was in close, frequent contact with each of my clients. What I gradually came to learn from conversations and email exchanges with them was that many, despite their intelligence and proven ability to succeed in their own fields, were really terrible investors. This is a five-part survival course designed to give you essential information you need to succeed as an investor in the stock market. None of it is mere opinion.

• If you hit a wrong note, hit it again

  Thursday, November 15, 2018

  On my first night on the bandstand in Herbie Hancock’s band, I was somewhere between panicked and terrified. As we began the first song, I made the mistake of looking out at the audience. A few rows away sat famed jazz arranger Gil Evans with his best buddy… Miles Davis. At that point I left merely panicked far behind and advanced well into terrified. One horrible mistake would brand me an incompetent newbie, not only in the eyes of my fellow band members, but in the presence of Gil and Miles, both of whom I idolized. It would have helped if I’d known what Miles regularly told his band members: If you hit a wrong note, hit it again!

• Toxic boss syndrome and what to do about it

  Tuesday, November 13, 2018

  The phrase "toxic boss syndrome" is widely used to describe a continuing workplace problem: the really bad boss. How does a toxic boss behave, and what can you do about it? The word "toxic" is particularly appropriate to describe bad bosses because, as research shows, their behavior soon infects entire workplaces. A 2015 Gallop study, for example, concluded that about half of all workers who voluntarily leave a job do so "to get away from their manager."

• What’s the best way to teach children to read?

  Friday, November 09, 2018

  The two most often-used ways of teaching children to read are phonics and whole language. Each of these methods has committed advocates and both teaching methods are currently used, but according to The National Assessment of Educational Progress, more than half of fourth-grade students in the U.S. read below grade-level standards. What are we doing wrong?

• Don’t toot your own horn? In corporate America, that’s bad advice

  Wednesday, November 07, 2018

  Have you ever been up for a promotion you deserved but didn’t get? Maybe it’s because you mistakenly believed your corporation is a meritocracy where great work is always rewarded. Unfortunately, that’s not the way it works. Keeping in mind how it actually does work can lead to better future outcomes. A 2016 survey shows that 85 percent of all corporate workers got their job by networking. What’s true about how persons get hired is, if anything, even truer about how people are promoted. It’s not what you know, but who you know and, more importantly, who really knows you.