Browsing articles tagged with " Obama"
As students filed into Sharon Leger’s fifth-grade category in Farmington on a initial day of school, it became painfully transparent that a new clergyman was not prepared.
Leger never schooled in college how to get, and keep, a courtesy of her students. She also never schooled how to tailor her lessons to learn students who don’t pronounce English or have special credentials needs.
5th category clergyman Sharon Leger: ‘I was left with no strategies.’
“This things was never even overwhelmed on. we was left with no strategies,” pronounced Leger, now in her third year of training during West Woods Upper Elementary School. “Everything we learned, we picked adult from teachers here.”
Leger’s knowledge is common among a 1,200 first-year teachers that start in Connecticut’s open schools any year.
“One thing we keep conference from superintendents is that people come out unprepared,” pronounced Allan B. Taylor, authority of a State Board of Education.
With a state’s open and private colleges graduating about 3,500 teachers any year, dual new national surveys found that, in some cases, scarcely dual of any 3 new teachers felt they had been confused for a classroom.
Addressing this has turn a priority of a administrations of both President Obama and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. On Thursday, a row that a administrator and state legislators created final year to urge a burden of a state’s 21 teacher credentials colleges is approaching to finalize a recommendations. The recommendations are approaching to be authorized by a State Board of Education in April.
What accountability?
When Lauren Palermino graduated from a University of Connecticut 4 years ago, her exchange with a propagandize finished there. When she indispensable assistance overcoming a training obstacles many new teachers face, she incited to those during her propagandize in Farmington for help.
“Maybe if we was in another propagandize we would be in trouble,” she pronounced during her lunch break.
The Board of Regents, that runs a state’s largest open college complement and that graduates nearly half of a state’s destiny teachers, does not follow adult with their graduates in a quantifiable approach to find out if they are teaching, how they are doing in a classroom and where college programs could improve. The University of Connecticut was means to yield some details on their graduates.
The propagandize used a formula of a new consult of graduates to emanate a category for destiny teachers on instructing students who pronounce singular English. However, a feedback on their graduates ends there.
“We don’t get to see how they’re doing once they are out there. Are their students improving? We usually don’t know,” pronounced Marijke Kehrhahn, a associate vanguard of UConn’s Neag School of Education.
One of a recommendations to be deliberate currently by a row would emanate a complement where a state can weigh clergyman credentials programs. This competence embody how their graduates perform on their annual clergyman evaluations and how many go into (and remain) in teaching. It might also embody what propagandize officials and graduates consider about a peculiarity of particular colleges.
The stream complement requires that a programs be authorized by a State Board of Education any 5 years. During a board’s many new collection of approvals final fall, a state’s credentials commissioner pronounced that a complement is too focused on curriculum rather than outcomes.
Pushback expected
This change toward exclusively anticipating out how these programs are doing is certain to face resistance.
Eastern Connecticut State University progressing this year boasted about being ranked a tip informal university by U.S. News World Report. But a college system wants to opt out of a magazine’s new plans, starting in June, to arrange clergyman colleges, and several private colleges also have been reluctant.
Nearly half of those who acquire a training grade in a state’s open and private colleges any year attended a Connecticut State University.
“We need to lane a swell of a teachers post graduation so that we know what a strengths and weaknesses have been,” Malloy pronounced during an talk this week.
When formulating this row — famous as a Education Preparation Advisory Council, or EPAC for brief — a Democratic administrator tasked members with joining these evaluations to a renovation of accreditation.
The breeze recommendations drive transparent of specifics on how this analysis would be carried out; a row has concluded to work that out during “phase two” of their work.
“The demon will positively be in a details,” Taylor, a state credentials board’s chairman, pronounced during a panel’s many new meeting.
Clinical experience
Leger’s formula on her tour to turn a fifth-grade clergyman were above average.
Not usually were her grades so good that she got her propagandize totally paid for, though she spent dozens of hours some-more than Central compulsory tyro training in civic districts.
The in-classroom knowledge is where she schooled a most, she said, contra listening to lectures on campus. Only half her professors had indeed been teachers in a final decade, she said.
“Spending usually 30 hours a division during a propagandize is unequivocally ridiculous,” she said, referring to what was compulsory of her before her final division where she was in a classroom full time. “Requiring some-more hours (working in a classroom) would be helpful, and if that’s not doable afterwards maybe someone’s priorities aren’t in a right spot.”
Teacher Jill Slayton on volunteering to take a tyro clergyman in her classroom: ‘It’s exhausting.’
State legislators final year did pass a law that requires that any college tyro study to be a clergyman spend during slightest 4 semesters in a classroom. However, a tangible time they are compulsory to spend is not outlined.
Leger pronounced it would have been useful for her to be in a classroom full time during a start of a propagandize year so she could see how an gifted clergyman sets parameters with her students to keep control of a classroom. Most training possibilities do their full-time tyro training during a open division given it is their final semester, though by then, a gifted clergyman has already set those bounds with students.
“It was a onslaught to collect adult that things on a go,” she pronounced of formulating prerogative systems, function charts and other techniques to emanate incentives to inspire good function among students.
But expanding a volume of time these college students spend in a classroom is certain to face obstacles, many particularly in anticipating a gifted teachers peaceful to take in these students.
“On tip of all a paperwork, all we do, we have to delicately explain because we did it. It’s exhausting,” pronounced Jill Slayton, a longtime clergyman who has taken several teachers-in-training into her classroom in Farmington.
It’s also been a churned bag on a size of a students colleges have sent her. Some strike a belligerent running, while others are a sight wreck, she said, forcing Slayton to have to reteach her students all in a fragment of a time.
And some relatives seem to comprehend this, too.
“I have had relatives ask me not to put their child in a code new teacher’s room,” pronounced Hamden Superintendent Fran Rabinowitz during an EPAC meeting.
With new statewide clergyman evaluations set to be related to tyro performance, gifted teachers might also be wavering to pointer adult for carrying someone with no knowledge take over their class.
The college officials on a governor’s row pronounced they customarily run into problems of not carrying adequate teachers peaceful to take in their students in need of that experience.
It doesn’t assistance that a auxiliary teachers get paid roughly zero for a additional work. In Farmington, Slayton receives $100.
“Call me crazy, though when people work they like to be paid,” pronounced Sharon Palmer, a former personality of one of a state’s teachers’ kinship and now a commissioner of a Department of Labor. “There should be a minimum” payment.
But like many things, a doubt is where a income is going to come from to repay these teachers more.
“The volume of work they do is unequivocally amazing… we don’t know where that income is going to come from,” pronounced Hari Koirala, a chair of a credentials dialect during Eastern Connecticut State University.
Gov. Malloy with college presidents and others final year: ‘We contingency lift a bar.’
The row had been deliberation requiring that these teachers get during slightest $1,000 for a work, though that did not make it into a breeze recommendations.
Raising a bar
Ninety-five percent of those who request to Eastern Connecticut State University’s training college will be accepted, and 99 percent who enroll will connoisseur with a training degree. (See a school-by-school relapse of acceptance and graduation rates here.)
Malloy, and others, consider a bar needs to be raised.
“What we unequivocally wish to do is lift a profession,” he pronounced this week.
Last year, a administrator due lifting a opening mandate for an dynamic clergyman to be supposed into state open and private colleges — from a 2.7 to 3.3 GPA — something he continues to support.
Nationwide, 23 percent of teachers, and 14 percent of teachers in high-poverty schools, come from a tip third of college graduates, reports McKinsey and Proof Points, a nonprofit classification that supports state-level credentials reform.
Included in a recommendations a row is approaching to opinion on currently is, “Establish[ing] severe standards for selectivity and acceptance” into programs. However, precisely what those standards will be won’t be dynamic until proviso dual of a process.
See related:
Malloy wants usually B+ students in training programs
Education reform: Plans to redesign clergyman colleges stalled
Follow Jacqueline Rabe Thomas on Twitter @jacquelinerabe
More than half a states now need new clergyman analysis systems and, interjection to a understanding announced final week in Albany, New York City will shortly have one, too.
The changes, already underneath approach in some cities and states, are dictated to yield suggestive feedback and, critically, to weed out diseased performers. And here are some of a early results:
In Florida, 97 percent of teachers were deemed effective or rarely effective in a many new evaluations. In Tennessee, 98 percent of teachers were judged to be “at expectations.”
In Michigan, 98 percent of teachers were rated effective or better.
Advocates of preparation remodel concur that such flushed numbers, after many millions of dollars building a new systems and thousands of hours of training, are worrisome.
“It is too shortly to contend that we’re where we started and it’s all been for nothing,” pronounced Sandi Jacobs, clamp boss of a National Council on Teacher Quality, a investigate and process organization. “But there are some alarm bells going off.”
The new systems, a executive feat of a remodel movement, generally rate teachers on a multiple of tyro progress, including their exam scores, and observations by principals or others. The Obama administration has speedy states to adopt a new methods by extend programs like Race to a Top.
The teachers competence be rated all above average, like students in Lake Wobegon, for a same reason that a comparison analysis methods were deliberate lacking. Principals, who are mostly obliged for a personal-observation partial of a grade, generally are not isolated managerial forms and can be retiring to give teachers low marks.
“There’s a genuine enlightenment change that has to start and there’s a lot of justification that that hasn’t occurred yet,” Ms. Jacobs said.
But even a partial of a class that was dictated to be objective, how students perform on standardised tests, has valid squishy. In part, this is since tests have altered so many in new years — and are changing still, since of a new “Common Core” curriculum standards that many states have adopted — that administrators have been reluctant to set a test-score bar too high for teachers. In many states, uninterrupted “ineffective” ratings are drift for firing.
“We have altered inclination standards 21 times in a final 6 years,” Jackie Pons, a schools superintendent for Leon County, Fla., said. In a county, 100 percent of a teachers were rated “highly effective” or “effective.”
“How can we weigh someone in a complement when we change your levels all a time?” Mr. Pons asked.
Until recently, Florida teachers were typically celebrated once a year for about 20 mins and deemed acceptable or unsatisfactory. Roughly 100 percent of them were rated acceptable in 2010-11. Florida districts are spending $43 million in sovereign Race to a Top extend income on devising and commencement new methods.
Generally, 50 percent of a analysis is now formed on administrators’ observations of teachers and 50 percent on tyro expansion as totalled by exam scores (districts can change that ratio to some extent). For a regard part, teachers are no longer rated simply on “classroom management” and “planning,” though rather on 60 specific elements, including “engaging students in cognitively formidable tasks involving supposition generation” and “testing and demonstrating value and honour for low outlook students.”
One Leon County principal, Melissa Fullmore of Ruediger Elementary propagandize in Tallahassee, pronounced that had it been only adult to her, one or dual of her teachers would have been graded “highly effective,” a tip category. Three would have been noted “needs improvement,” one stage adult from a bottom, and a rest would have depressed underneath “effective.”
With a new present from President Obama, first-year clergyman Lisa Kieslich competence get service from a new “super-sub” so she can spend a day training classroom government tips from a newly dubbed “master teacher” in her school.
That was one prophesy of New Haven’s skeleton for a whopping new $53.4 million, five-year sovereign extend announced Thursday by Obama’s U.S. secretary of education, Arne Duncan.
The grant, that Duncan’s bureau announced Thursday, comes from a $285 million Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF), a rival sovereign grant. The initial collection of money, $12 million, will be accessible this propagandize year. New Haven is one of 35 winners of a latest turn of TIF grants. (Details here.)
“This is a large deal,” U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro of New Haven (at left in print with Mayor John DeStefano) announced during a 3:30 p.m. press eventuality Thursday during a John Martinez School. Local officials credited DeLauro with assisting secure a grant. They remarkable that New York City, that has 50 times a series of students as New Haven, scored usually $53 million.
The extend will capacitate New Haven to reward, commend and rise talent in a training and executive ranks.
New Haven is befitting for a extend since it already has already overhauled a clergyman evaluations to simulate tyro performance—a pivotal remodel Obama has been pulling nationwide—Assistant Superintendent Garth Harries said. New Haven gained inhabitant plaudits for including teachers in those changes, and struck a pacific understanding with a kinship in 2009 that paved a approach for reforms. The principals kinship followed fit with a possess pursuit evaluation, also formed on pursuit performance.
The new changes saved by a extend will build on a “foundation” set by those pursuit evaluations, Harries said.
News of a new extend sent ripples of fad by a training ranks Thursday.
“Oh happy day,” pronounced Iris Duran (at right in photo), a 19-year maestro math clergyman during Fair Haven School. She ran over to John Martinez when she listened about a awaiting of new income to support teachers.
Fair Haven School song clergyman Dan Kinsman (at left in photo), who spent his possess income on a three-week graduate-level category in dance and song in Ghana final summer, pronounced he hopes a district will yield a contribution for teachers to collect their possess training outward a classroom, something “inspiring.”
Leaders Stay In Class
In a review after a press event, Harries pronounced a district won’t utterly be promulgation teachers to Africa—but that they could still find a approach to advantage from a grant.
Harries summarized several efforts a propagandize complement pitched to a feds in a extend application.
One goal: to emanate new care roles for teachers and principals. Right now, Harries said, teachers who wish to pierce adult in a district have usually one option: Become an administrator. Harries pronounced schools need to emanate another option, so teachers can stay in a classroom while also holding on care roles.
The district aims to build a new cadre of indication teachers with consultant talents to share, Harries said. A clergyman could be an consultant on classroom management, or on Singapore math, for example.
Call them “master teachers.” They would keep teaching, while also mentoring other teachers and pity their skills with their peers.
Likewise, a district would emanate a “mentor principal” purpose for principals who would share knowledge with their peers.
The extend will concede for these new “master teachers” and “mentor principals” to get additional remuneration for their new duties, Harries (pictured) said. It would also concede a district to compensate teachers and administrators some-more for operative in formidable environments, such as schools with lots of transitory or special needs kids.
The differentiated compensate beam and care roles are a approach of withdrawal behind a “factory” indication of education.
Along those lines, teachers would get entrance to individualized training according to their needs.
For example, Kieslich, a code new clergyman during John Martinez (pictured during a tip of this story), pronounced she’d like some additional assistance with classroom government for her 6th-grade classroom. The clergyman assimilated a classroom after earning her bachelor’s from Southern Connecticut State University.
As a new teacher, Kieslich is interconnected with a coach for her initial dual years. She pronounced she could always use some-more training.
She pronounced she complicated classroom government in school, though “you only review it from a book. Once you’re in your possess classroom, it’s totally different.”
Harries pronounced that’s only a kind of problem a new extend could solve.
Super-Sub Me
Enter a “super-sub.” In a grant, New Haven asked for income to compensate for 15 to 20 full-time surrogate teachers. Their pursuit would be to cover classes so a teachers can get additional training they need to rise their skills.
For example, a super-sub competence take over Kieslich’s classroom for an whole day so she can learn from an consultant in classroom management. Or a super-sub competence soothe a master clergyman from her duties so that clergyman can spend a day with Kieslich.
Veteran teachers could benefit, too. Shelley Weinhaus (at left in print with Kieslich), who’s in her eighth year teaching, pronounced she already mentors new classroom teachers. She pronounced she sees a advantage in expanding mentoring over first-year teachers. And, she said, teachers could always use some-more training around how to use information to devise lessons.
The district also aims to sight a staff who perform clergyman and principal evaluations.
Teachers kinship President Dave Cicarella pronounced a idea is to emanate an even personification field.
“There’s a miss of integrity and training” to a approach a evaluations are implemented, he said.
None of a sum above are final, Harries cautioned.
A new cabinet of 3 teachers and 3 principals or partner principals, called a Talent Council, will assemble to manage how a income is spent. That cabinet will have a final say.
Recognition
School officials called a TIF present a “largest inhabitant recognition” of a remodel expostulate so far.
While New Haven’s remodel efforts have gained most regard from Obama’s administration, money had not followed a kudos until Thursday.
While some aspects of remodel have generated controversy, a city’s hook with teachers—working with them rather than fighting with them to furnish changes in a landmark contract—has turn a indication cited national for how other cities can urge a schools. Sources of regard have ranged from teacher-union-bashers during a Wall Street Journal editorial page to a preparation routine centrists during The New York Times to pro-union remodel skeptics like Diane Ravitch. Click here for a latest example. New Haven’s teachers concluded to make it easier for a district to get absolved of a lowest performers—and to decider them formed on a brew of exam scores and other factors—while a city concluded to embody teachers in a analysis routine and to offer support for struggling teachers to urge rather than destroy and leave a system.
President Obama announced this week plans to create a national science, technology, engineering and math teaching corps – pending a $1 billion commitment from Congress.
The STEM Master Teacher Corps, as it would be called, would begin with 50 teachers and expand to 10,000 in four years.
Teachers selected for the Master Teacher Corps would be paid an additional $20,000 a year and must commit to participate multiple years.
The goal is to create an expanding impact in which expert educators share their knowledge and skills with other teachers, improving the quality of education for all students.
“If America is going to compete for the jobs and industries of tomorrow, we need to make sure our children are getting the best education possible,” President Obama said in a statement.
The president proposes to give $100 million of the existing Teacher Incentive Fund to school districts to develop plans to “identify, develop and leverage highly effective STEM teachers,” the statement said.
STEM Master Teacher Corps would be located at 50 sites around the country. Obama says he wants to prepare 100,000 more STEM teachers in the next decade.
The administration will make $100 million available immediately out of an existing fund to support top-performing teachers. Over the longer term, the White House plans to launch the program with $1 billion included in Obama’s budget request for fiscal year 2013.
Democrats tried to secure funding for a similar program last year, but the proposal didn’t reach either the House or Senate floors.
MARRIAGE AMENDMENT
Ballot pretension seems pretty exact
Suppose that a Legislature due a inherent amendment environment a 55-mile-per-hour extent speed in Minnesota. Which of a following titles would be “designed to trick and lean a voter”? (1) “Limiting a speed of vehicles to 55 mph or less,” or (2) “Recognition of slight car speeds usually adult to 55 mph”? No. 1 seems to strike a spike on a head, though Warren Limmer and his marriage-amendment allies would have we trust that it’s dubious and that No. 2 is candid (“Amendment’s altered diction draws domestic ire,” Jul 10).
CRAIG LAUGHLIN, PLYMOUTH
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THE ECONOMY
There’s one place a jar is generally needed
The Star Tribune Editorial Board believes that President Obama “should call for a new stimulus” (July 10). Call whom? Revenue bills issue in a House, and that would be a Republican-controlled House that could hardly do something as apparent as lift a debt limit.
The editors explain that a 2009 impulse check “was too tiny and too riddled with measures doubtful to fast boost spending and hiring,” though observant that both a tiny distance and sterile measures were a Republican grant to a bill.
Obama already called for income to go to a states to assistance them rehire some of a 607,000 public-sector employees who have mislaid their jobs, though Mitt Romney has effectively announced that a summary of Wisconsin is that America doesn’t need some-more teachers, cops and firefighters.
Obama can call, though a line is dead.
JOHN SHERMAN, MOORHEAD, MINN.
• • •
The press and a pundits typically report Obama’s due tax-cut prolongation as singular to those earning reduction than $250,000. Just to be clear, Obama has due to extend a stream reduce taxation rates for a initial $250,000 of everyone’s income, including for a really rich. The Republican position is to conflict this prolongation unless a really abounding also accept taxation cuts on their income above and over a initial $250,000.
MIKE SUPINA, EAGAN
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TRADE AGREEMENTS
U.S. interests are being undermined
Russia’s fasten a World Trade Organization is expected to be another blow to long-term U.S. mercantile and domestic interests. Russia recently had elections that many general monitors say did not accommodate a “free and fair” standard. A change in U.S. trade process is indispensable immediately, one that focuses a trade agreements on states that have truly done a transition to market-based economies and approved governance, such as Brazil, India and South Africa, as good as a many states, such as Britain and Poland, that have given us assistance in NATO operations in Afghanistan and Libya. Trading with Russia (and China, for that matter) will usually continue to give a care of these states legitimacy and lengthen a miss of approved rights for their adults and elsewhere.
ERICK HIGHUM, FRIDLEY
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TEEN’S DEATH
Don’t feat tragedy for immigration views
I am confounded by a Jul 10 minute about Clarisse Grime’s comfortless genocide final week. we am a late clergyman who has subbed frequently during Clary’s propagandize a final dual years. The whole school, in further to her family, has suffered tremendously.
This is a time of grieving; to use her genocide as a brag pulpit to ratify views opposite undocumented immigrants is unconscionable. It was not a driver’s authorised standing that killed her; it was his driving.
FRANCIE R. ANTHONY, ST. PAUL
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TEACHING
The best qualities can come from anywhere
I determine with a Jul 11 minute author that it takes a special chairman to be an effective teacher. we don’t believe, however, that each connoisseur of a training module possesses a qualities she lists. Furthermore, graduates of training programs do not have a corner on creativity and calm or on amatory a learners.
I do not determine that investing a time to get a credential is a usually trail to apropos an effective teacher. Many younger teachers have commented on how most they have to learn once they are on a job. we take this to meant that a training programs are in fact not giving them all they need to be effective.
At a finish of a day, what matters is either a teachers are, in fact, effective. If each connoisseur of a training module were effective (with a kids who uncover on any given day in any given classroom), we trust that a differences between a best and a misfortune schools would be radically smaller. As with any other career, there are improved and worse performers. And given we am contributing to a salaries of all of them, I’d wish them all to be effective.
Now … how do we assistance make that happen?
MICHAEL AYERS, MINNEAPOLIS
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LAWN CARE
Your weed would like to be a bit longer now
As most as I’d like to have my yard planted wholly with vegetables and long-lived plants, I’m not there yet, and still have lots of weed to mow. we usually lifted my mower tallness from 2 1/2 inches to 3 1/2. When a continue gets prohibited and sunny, it is best for a lawn’s health to concede a weed to grow longer. The territory becomes some-more drought-resistant and tolerates less-frequent watering.
One of a additional advantages is a some-more sensuous look. Longer blades of weed yield some-more area of photosynthesis to occur, that both strengthens a roots and allows for plant growth.
It usually takes seconds to make a change in your mower’s height. Do it now. Your weed will appreciate you.
DANIEL JOHNSON, CRYSTAL
The “split-screen” strategy is looking very effective so far.
Last week, the president’s rousing defense of his auto bailout marked the return of the “happy warrior” persona that gives political leaders their greatest appeal, and which Obama too often lacks. Before the UAW, we saw a president in full, relishing the thrust and parry, making his case with vigor, laughing at his foes as well as himself. The GOP candidates’ post-primary remarks that night looked crimped and contrived by comparison.
Then Tuesday, the contrast the White House painted could not have been more stark. Amid repeated questions about the potential nuclear showdown with Iran, Obama’s sober demeanor conveyed his tacit message: I’m a serious, responsible commander in chief — as opposed to these bozos, who are playing politics with very grave matters.
“Those folks don’t have a lot of responsibilities,” Obama said of his Republican critics on the stump. “They’re not commander in chief.” They’re just “popping off.”
Of course, Obama himself popped off plenty back when he was a presidential wannabe. Like all challengers, he was trying to get media traction and frame the debate on his terms. That’s how we ended up doubling down in Afghanistan — the “good war” Obama could support while showing critics he wasn’t “weak on defense” for opposing Iraq. (Hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of American casualties later, that judgment looks as unwise as it was effective back then, at least as a matter of political positioning.)
The split-screen strategy is just the latest reminder of how crucial a skill news manipulation is in the modern White House. The Nixon White House invented modern presidential news management — instituting practices such as the line of the day, morning conference calls among press officers across the executive branch and long-range communications planning meetings. Ronald Reagan and his impresario Michael Deaver perfected these and related techniques. As Mark Hertsgaard noted in his still-valuable 1988 book, “On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency,” the White House’s ability to set the terms of debate often results in “a distressingly narrow or otherwise distorted range of political coverage, no matter who is President.”
My favorite Hertsgaard example from that era involved education. In 1983, after polls showed 2-to-1 public disapproval of Reagan’s education cutbacks, the White House sent Reagan on the road to fix things. After 25 presidential appearances that stressed “excellence in education,” merit pay for teachers and classroom discipline, the polls flipped to 2-to-1 support for Reagan on the issue, without his policy having changed at all! Reagan complained to Deaver about having to give the same speech over and over, but Deaver knew the power of repetition, and it worked.
The power of news management — and the fight each day to shape what the media will deem the “news” to be — now lays behind most of our public life. In Abraham Lincoln’s day, the ability to craft policy with a view to how it would play in the press probably wasn’t the first quality Lincoln looked for in top aides. By 1961, when Daniel Boorstin coined the phrase “pseudo-event” to describe activities staged solely to generate publicity, such talents had become important. Today, they’re indispensable to political success — and to effective governance.
Which is why the White House has desperately needed to raise its game. The health-care debacle in 2009 and 2010 was above all a failure of communications. How else to explain that Obama could pass the Republican-inspired plan Mitt Romney enacted in Massachusetts yet be successfully (and falsely) branded a “socialist”?
Democrats better hope the White House knows the split-screen strategy amounts to easy primary-season pickings. Once the Republicans settle on a nominee — something that will, presumably, happen at some point this millennium — the terrain will change completely. Like it or not, the election will then turn as much on dueling media strategies and their impact on the attitudes of a handful of swing voters as on anything else.
Matt Miller, a co-host of public radio’s “Left, Right Center,” writes a weekly online column for The Post. His e-mail address is mattino2@gmail.com.
Governor Quinn will hand out hundreds of millions of dollars in the form of food stamps and medical care to people who aren’t even citizens of this country but he will close JDC.
To the parents who send their kids to school sick, clearly you have no respect for others and you need to be held responsible for the medical bills you cause others. If your kids are sick keep them home, no one wants the germs and it makes a rough learning environment for those kids who aren’t sick.
An honest president would be a breath of fresh air. What we don’t need is a second stupid one in a row. If you can’t take Iran at their word that they want a nuclear weapon and they will use it against Israel, our ally, and us if they get the chance, then you’re just deaf I guess. That’s what they have said they want to do. It’s just that simple. It’s not warhawk, another liberal catch phrase, it’s common sense, reality. The man wants the bomb, he said he will use it. What’s so hard to understand?
Mr. Gingrich is now saying he will put Sarah Palin in a high post in his administration if he is elected. Well, he just lost my vote.
Heck yes it’s a Republican county. If we hadn’t knocked Demuzio out, we’d still be having JDC open. That’s a no-brainer folks.
I’m a lottery player and I’ve played for many years. I’ve got to tell you, I haven’t seen the same number twice. You need a quality checker on your lottery numbers up there. Look at last night’s Little Lotto in the paper.
Illinois is just having some bad luck right now. The state happens to have its worst governor ever at the same time the country has its worst president ever. Hold on, things will get better.
Obama rejected the Keystone Pipeline because it reduces our dependency on Mideast oil and those are his Islamic buddies.
This is in response to President Obama’s trip to Disney Land and saying that it was nice to meet another world leader with bigger ears than him, Mickey Mouse. Man, I wonder what we’ve got running this country.
The reason the governor gives for closing JDC is the cost to run the power plant. Well, once it closes they will still need to keep it open and keep it heated. So, the power house will still be running, using the same amount of coal as if all the people were there in case someone wants to use the facility. What does this say? It just says that the governor just wants to close JDC and he’s using the power house as his reason. He just wants to put the people out in the street, he doesn’t care. He hasn’t even been over here to look at JDC or to see what goes on here or the people we care for. He needs to look at what he’s destroying.
If that bumble brain thinks politics has nothing to do with closing JDC then how come Mandate Pat hasn’t done anything to Lake, Will and Cook counties, those are the only three that voted for him big. Dummy.
This is for you my friend, Todd Harmeyer, who I grew up with on Sunset Drive in Beardstown, Illinois, riding SST mini bikes back in the ’60s and early ’70s. A song I dedicate to you my friend: K.C. and The Sunshine Band, “Baby Please Don’t Go.” I will miss you, my friend.
Newt Gingrich scored Romney. Watch for the Wall Street money brokers to go all out to destroy him in Florida. Mitt Romney has spent 10 times what Newt has but I think the people are seeing through his carefully sculptured façade. Go Newt.
Way to go, Newt. Finally someone who will stand up to the state-owned news media.
When Newt challenged what Romney did at Bain Capital he was not challenging free enterprise. He was stating the obvious. Romney and his group sought out distressed companies, sucked them dry and discarded the companies and the workers. The faster he could collapse them the faster he got his millions. Why do you think his buds on Wall Street are pumping tens of millions of dollars into negative adds against Newt? It’s simple to me, so that the rape can continue without interference. If they can get Mitt elected they can also get rid of those pesky regulations intended to shed light on this practice. After all, greed is good.
Headlines say Joe-Pa has died. It’s a shame that he will retain his god-like status and never have to answer for the vile things he condoned by looking the other way.
Go back and review the District 117 vision plan. There is no mention of a sports complex. Don’t make things up to serve your end. Speak the truth and let voters decide.
Don’t you just love the howls from Gingrich over the “liberal news media” asking about a personal issue when not that long ago the birthers were asking about the president’s birth certificate? So much fun watching the finger-pointers poke themselves in the eye.
Since when did the West Central Mass Transit in Mount Sterling start providing drivers with a bus for personal use on weekends?
With all of the JDC residents gone there won’t be much need for Elm City or Pathway. Do you think they figured that into the job loss?
I love the new restaurant inside the VFW. Had a great catfish dinner. The food was great and the waitress was super. So glad to see the “club” has food again.
Chief Grootens; do you think we are really this dumb? We all know crimes are up in old J-ville.
A horrible traffic accident on Jan. 23 in the early morning hours in Beardstown following a high speed chase in two counties and the police chief and WRMS DJ Randy West Taapaken brush it off like it was just another day in Beardstown of a minor traffic accident, and a young 19 year old died. I heard it on the scanner and the police who were chasing them were totally unprofessional and had the adrenaline pumping in their veins yelling into the mic to the dispatcher. This was not just another day in Beardstown.
I do not know who the police officer was who was chasing at a high rate of speed through Beardstown city streets on Jan. 22 at about 3:30 a.m. but you could tell he had a lot of adrenaline pumping by the way he was yelling into the mic to the Cass County dispatcher. You could tell that police officer totally lost his cool. You don’t yell into a mic, he should’ve remained calm and said what he needed to say. Totally untrained and unprofessional.
I was wondering how much the taverns and restaurants in Beardstown are going to have to pay for their water now? Did they also receive meters? Or was it just the homeowners in town?
You are some kind of fruitcake. Cars have a blue light on the control panel that shows you that you are on high beams. It does not matter that the lights come on and go off automatically, if you have the control set at ‘auto’, but you have to dim your lights you nitwit. You are one of the ones who go along on high beams blinding others aren’t you?
I want the members of District 117 school board to know that people are watching them closely. I have heard they are going to hire a consulting firm to help them try to get the sale tax issue passed. That will be paid for by taxpayer money, people. Is that how you want your tax money spent?
The report on the decline in crime in town was very encouraging. Thanks to all who had a hand in this trend.
If you think they are not tracking your every move on the computer today, your cellphone, and your credit cards, what you purchase, the number of times you go to a store, or how much you eat out, the clothes you buy, how many times you visit the bathroom a day. Well, they are. They know everything about you if you use a computer, cellphone, or credit card, you are being tracked. So much for our right to privacy huh?
In his 2008 campaign, Barack Obama became a “fat cat” by accepting more Wall Street money than any other presidential candidate in history. Is history repeating itself?
The state office employees only work seven hours a day. Their hours are generally 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. or 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. with an hour out for lunch. Why are they not working eight hours a day like everyone else? If the government and state assemblymen really wanted to cut costs this would be a good place to start. After all they are getting paid for eight hours a day, and if it is too much of a hardship on the current employees the state could possibly find other capable people willing to fill their place. I don’t know how many state office employees there are but it must be tens of thousands.
I am not voting for Obama and I sure don’t like any of these Republican runners. I sure do hope there is a dark horse waiting in the wing somewhere.
The lack of classroom discipline is the main reason our schools are failing. If we restore classroom discipline and give teachers the ability to apply discipline to the student including abandoning them from the school then things will get straightened out.
The use of bad language and sex in TV and movies is nothing more than an attempt to avert attention away from the very poor content quality.
Regarding the JDC closure, all these people will not be homeless. They are going to group homes and other special housing places similar to group homes. They will need workers there so the 400 people who won’t be working at one place will be working at these places. It looks like it will cost more in the long run. More people will be hired and working but it will cost more.
What right does Governor Quinn have in closing JDC saying that it will save money when he’s spending money hand over fist by living in Chicago and letting the Governor’s Mansion in Springfield sit there empty. At least these people are in JDC for a reason. We should impeach him. He should also be censured and not allowed to make any financial decisions because he’s wasting more money than anyone else in this state.
I’ve never spoken to Open Line before but I have a comment about the quality of flags being flown around Jacksonville. There are some places with tattered and torn flags. They continuously fly flags that are torn and tattered and it’s just unpatriotic. My opinion is that if someone who prides themselves to be American and have pride in the union they ought to be patriotic and maintain respect to our flag. This is a non-military person, but I am a patriotic person.
The PETA people wanting to put memorials on the highway for the cattle is “udder” nonsense.
Everyone here was shocked when we Googled “dead voters in New Hampshire” and saw how incredibly easy it is for just anyone to vote, with no ID whatsoever required. Illinois is the same way. How did we ever allow this terrible kind of mess to occur? What can we do about it?
Progressives, be very careful what you wish for. In recent parliamentary elections in Egypt, Islamists won over 70 percent of the seats, extreme Islamists winning about 25 percent. Keep in mind that not everyone in the world is a latte-sipping, tree-hugging, bongo-tapping, spaced-out, left coast narcissistic limousine-liberal from the 1960s, or wants to be. Other people do exist, and they do vote.
Regarding Tebowing: “Timing of action tells a story. Why would the world need more anger and more outrage? How does it save the world to reject unabashed joy when it is joy and thanksgiving that saves us? The brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true and even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in here and now, they are the change agents who bring fullest Light to all the world.” Ann Voskamp.
I see Obama is starting to blow around about “being for the middle-class.” What an arrogant and condescending hypocrite. He’s no more for the middle class than any of these clowns in Washington. Oh, yeah, I’ll kill the Keystone pipeline which would have created a multitude of “middle class” jobs and helped keep gas prices down for us “middle class” folks. What a joke.
But as Steven P. Jobs of Apple spoke, President Obama interrupted with an inquiry of his own: what would it take to make iPhones in the United States?
Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas.
Why can’t that work come home? Mr. Obama asked.
Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he said, according to another dinner guest.
The president’s question touched upon a central conviction at Apple. It isn’t just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.
Apple has become one of the best-known, most admired and most imitated companies on earth, in part through an unrelenting mastery of global operations. Last year, it earned over $400,000 in profit per employee, more than Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil or Google.
However, what has vexed Mr. Obama as well as economists and policy makers is that Apple — and many of its high-technology peers — are not nearly as avid in creating American jobs as other famous companies were in their heydays.
Apple employs 43,000 people in the United States and 20,000 overseas, a small fraction of the over 400,000 American workers at General Motors in the 1950s, or the hundreds of thousands at General Electric in the 1980s. Many more people work for Apple’s contractors: an additional 700,000 people engineer, build and assemble iPads, iPhones and Apple’s other products. But almost none of them work in the United States. Instead, they work for foreign companies in Asia, Europe and elsewhere, at factories that almost all electronics designers rely upon to build their wares.
“Apple’s an example of why it’s so hard to create middle-class jobs in the U.S. now,” said Jared Bernstein, who until last year was an economic adviser to the White House.
“If it’s the pinnacle of capitalism, we should be worried.”
Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.
A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.
“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”
Similar stories could be told about almost any electronics company — and outsourcing has also become common in hundreds of industries, including accounting, legal services, banking, auto manufacturing and pharmaceuticals.
But while Apple is far from alone, it offers a window into why the success of some prominent companies has not translated into large numbers of domestic jobs. What’s more, the company’s decisions pose broader questions about what corporate America owes Americans as the global and national economies are increasingly intertwined.
“Companies once felt an obligation to support American workers, even when it wasn’t the best financial choice,” said Betsey Stevenson, the chief economist at the Labor Department until last September. “That’s disappeared. Profits and efficiency have trumped generosity.”
Companies and other economists say that notion is naïve. Though Americans are among the most educated workers in the world, the nation has stopped training enough people in the mid-level skills that factories need, executives say.
To thrive, companies argue they need to move work where it can generate enough profits to keep paying for innovation. Doing otherwise risks losing even more American jobs over time, as evidenced by the legions of once-proud domestic manufacturers — including G.M. and others — that have shrunk as nimble competitors have emerged.
Apple was provided with extensive summaries of The New York Times’s reporting for this article, but the company, which has a reputation for secrecy, declined to comment.
This article is based on interviews with more than three dozen current and former Apple employees and contractors — many of whom requested anonymity to protect their jobs — as well as economists, manufacturing experts, international trade specialists, technology analysts, academic researchers, employees at Apple’s suppliers, competitors and corporate partners, and government officials.
Privately, Apple executives say the world is now such a changed place that it is a mistake to measure a company’s contribution simply by tallying its employees — though they note that Apple employs more workers in the United States than ever before.
They say Apple’s success has benefited the economy by empowering entrepreneurs and creating jobs at companies like cellular providers and businesses shipping Apple products. And, ultimately, they say curing unemployment is not their job.
“We sell iPhones in over a hundred countries,” a current Apple executive said. “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.”
‘I Want a Glass Screen’
In 2007, a little over a month before the iPhone was scheduled to appear in stores, Mr. Jobs beckoned a handful of lieutenants into an office. For weeks, he had been carrying a prototype of the device in his pocket.
Mr. Jobs angrily held up his iPhone, angling it so everyone could see the dozens of tiny scratches marring its plastic screen, according to someone who attended the meeting. He then pulled his keys from his jeans.
People will carry this phone in their pocket, he said. People also carry their keys in their pocket. “I won’t sell a product that gets scratched,” he said tensely. The only solution was using unscratchable glass instead. “I want a glass screen, and I want it perfect in six weeks.”
After one executive left that meeting, he booked a flight to Shenzhen, China. If Mr. Jobs wanted perfect, there was nowhere else to go.
For over two years, the company had been working on a project — code-named Purple 2 — that presented the same questions at every turn: how do you completely reimagine the cellphone? And how do you design it at the highest quality — with an unscratchable screen, for instance — while also ensuring that millions can be manufactured quickly and inexpensively enough to earn a significant profit?
The answers, almost every time, were found outside the United States. Though components differ between versions, all iPhones contain hundreds of parts, an estimated 90 percent of which are manufactured abroad. Advanced semiconductors have come from Germany and Taiwan, memory from Korea and Japan, display panels and circuitry from Korea and Taiwan, chipsets from Europe and rare metals from Africa and Asia. And all of it is put together in China.
In its early days, Apple usually didn’t look beyond its own backyard for manufacturing solutions. A few years after Apple began building the Macintosh in 1983, for instance, Mr. Jobs bragged that it was “a machine that is made in America.” In 1990, while Mr. Jobs was running NeXT, which was eventually bought by Apple, the executive told a reporter that “I’m as proud of the factory as I am of the computer.” As late as 2002, top Apple executives occasionally drove two hours northeast of their headquarters to visit the company’s iMac plant in Elk Grove, Calif.
But by 2004, Apple had largely turned to foreign manufacturing. Guiding that decision was Apple’s operations expert, Timothy D. Cook, who replaced Mr. Jobs as chief executive last August, six weeks before Mr. Jobs’s death. Most other American electronics companies had already gone abroad, and Apple, which at the time was struggling, felt it had to grasp every advantage.
In part, Asia was attractive because the semiskilled workers there were cheaper. But that wasn’t driving Apple. For technology companies, the cost of labor is minimal compared with the expense of buying parts and managing supply chains that bring together components and services from hundreds of companies.
For Mr. Cook, the focus on Asia “came down to two things,” said one former high-ranking Apple executive. Factories in Asia “can scale up and down faster” and “Asian supply chains have surpassed what’s in the U.S.” The result is that “we can’t compete at this point,” the executive said.
The impact of such advantages became obvious as soon as Mr. Jobs demanded glass screens in 2007.
For years, cellphone makers had avoided using glass because it required precision in cutting and grinding that was extremely difficult to achieve. Apple had already selected an American company, Corning Inc., to manufacture large panes of strengthened glass. But figuring out how to cut those panes into millions of iPhone screens required finding an empty cutting plant, hundreds of pieces of glass to use in experiments and an army of midlevel engineers. It would cost a fortune simply to prepare.
Then a bid for the work arrived from a Chinese factory.
When an Apple team visited, the Chinese plant’s owners were already constructing a new wing. “This is in case you give us the contract,” the manager said, according to a former Apple executive. The Chinese government had agreed to underwrite costs for numerous industries, and those subsidies had trickled down to the glass-cutting factory. It had a warehouse filled with glass samples available to Apple, free of charge. The owners made engineers available at almost no cost. They had built on-site dormitories so employees would be available 24 hours a day.
The Chinese plant got the job.
“The entire supply chain is in China now,” said another former high-ranking Apple executive. “You need a thousand rubber gaskets? That’s the factory next door. You need a million screws? That factory is a block away. You need that screw made a little bit different? It will take three hours.”
In Foxconn City
An eight-hour drive from that glass factory is a complex, known informally as Foxconn City, where the iPhone is assembled. To Apple executives, Foxconn City was further evidence that China could deliver workers — and diligence — that outpaced their American counterparts.
That’s because nothing like Foxconn City exists in the United States.
The facility has 230,000 employees, many working six days a week, often spending up to 12 hours a day at the plant. Over a quarter of Foxconn’s work force lives in company barracks and many workers earn less than $17 a day. When one Apple executive arrived during a shift change, his car was stuck in a river of employees streaming past. “The scale is unimaginable,” he said.
Foxconn employs nearly 300 guards to direct foot traffic so workers are not crushed in doorway bottlenecks. The facility’s central kitchen cooks an average of three tons of pork and 13 tons of rice a day. While factories are spotless, the air inside nearby teahouses is hazy with the smoke and stench of cigarettes.
Foxconn Technology has dozens of facilities in Asia and Eastern Europe, and in Mexico and Brazil, and it assembles an estimated 40 percent of the world’s consumer electronics for customers like Amazon, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, Nintendo, Nokia, Samsung and Sony.
“They could hire 3,000 people overnight,” said Jennifer Rigoni, who was Apple’s worldwide supply demand manager until 2010, but declined to discuss specifics of her work. “What U.S. plant can find 3,000 people overnight and convince them to live in dorms?”
In mid-2007, after a month of experimentation, Apple’s engineers finally perfected a method for cutting strengthened glass so it could be used in the iPhone’s screen. The first truckloads of cut glass arrived at Foxconn City in the dead of night, according to the former Apple executive. That’s when managers woke thousands of workers, who crawled into their uniforms — white and black shirts for men, red for women — and quickly lined up to assemble, by hand, the phones. Within three months, Apple had sold one million iPhones. Since then, Foxconn has assembled over 200 million more.
Foxconn, in statements, declined to speak about specific clients.
“Any worker recruited by our firm is covered by a clear contract outlining terms and conditions and by Chinese government law that protects their rights,” the company wrote. Foxconn “takes our responsibility to our employees very seriously and we work hard to give our more than one million employees a safe and positive environment.”
The company disputed some details of the former Apple executive’s account, and wrote that a midnight shift, such as the one described, was impossible “because we have strict regulations regarding the working hours of our employees based on their designated shifts, and every employee has computerized timecards that would bar them from working at any facility at a time outside of their approved shift.” The company said that all shifts began at either 7 a.m. or 7 p.m., and that employees receive at least 12 hours’ notice of any schedule changes.
Foxconn employees, in interviews, have challenged those assertions.
Another critical advantage for Apple was that China provided engineers at a scale the United States could not match. Apple’s executives had estimated that about 8,700 industrial engineers were needed to oversee and guide the 200,000 assembly-line workers eventually involved in manufacturing iPhones. The company’s analysts had forecast it would take as long as nine months to find that many qualified engineers in the United States.
In China, it took 15 days.
Companies like Apple “say the challenge in setting up U.S. plants is finding a technical work force,” said Martin Schmidt, associate provost at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In particular, companies say they need engineers with more than high school, but not necessarily a bachelor’s degree. Americans at that skill level are hard to find, executives contend. “They’re good jobs, but the country doesn’t have enough to feed the demand,” Mr. Schmidt said.
Some aspects of the iPhone are uniquely American. The device’s software, for instance, and its innovative marketing campaigns were largely created in the United States. Apple recently built a $500 million data center in North Carolina. Crucial semiconductors inside the iPhone 4 and 4S are manufactured in an Austin, Tex., factory by Samsung, of South Korea.
But even those facilities are not enormous sources of jobs. Apple’s North Carolina center, for instance, has only 100 full-time employees. The Samsung plant has an estimated 2,400 workers.
“If you scale up from selling one million phones to 30 million phones, you don’t really need more programmers,” said Jean-Louis Gassée, who oversaw product development and marketing for Apple until he left in 1990. “All these new companies — Facebook, Google, Twitter — benefit from this. They grow, but they don’t really need to hire much.”
It is hard to estimate how much more it would cost to build iPhones in the United States. However, various academics and manufacturing analysts estimate that because labor is such a small part of technology manufacturing, paying American wages would add up to $65 to each iPhone’s expense. Since Apple’s profits are often hundreds of dollars per phone, building domestically, in theory, would still give the company a healthy reward.
But such calculations are, in many respects, meaningless because building the iPhone in the United States would demand much more than hiring Americans — it would require transforming the national and global economies. Apple executives believe there simply aren’t enough American workers with the skills the company needs or factories with sufficient speed and flexibility. Other companies that work with Apple, like Corning, also say they must go abroad.
Manufacturing glass for the iPhone revived a Corning factory in Kentucky, and today, much of the glass in iPhones is still made there. After the iPhone became a success, Corning received a flood of orders from other companies hoping to imitate Apple’s designs. Its strengthened glass sales have grown to more than $700 million a year, and it has hired or continued employing about 1,000 Americans to support the emerging market.
But as that market has expanded, the bulk of Corning’s strengthened glass manufacturing has occurred at plants in Japan and Taiwan.
“Our customers are in Taiwan, Korea, Japan and China,” said James B. Flaws, Corning’s vice chairman and chief financial officer. “We could make the glass here, and then ship it by boat, but that takes 35 days. Or, we could ship it by air, but that’s 10 times as expensive. So we build our glass factories next door to assembly factories, and those are overseas.”
Corning was founded in America 161 years ago and its headquarters are still in upstate New York. Theoretically, the company could manufacture all its glass domestically. But it would “require a total overhaul in how the industry is structured,” Mr. Flaws said. “The consumer electronics business has become an Asian business. As an American, I worry about that, but there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Asia has become what the U.S. was for the last 40 years.”
Middle-Class Jobs Fade
The first time Eric Saragoza stepped into Apple’s manufacturing plant in Elk Grove, Calif., he felt as if he were entering an engineering wonderland.
It was 1995, and the facility near Sacramento employed more than 1,500 workers. It was a kaleidoscope of robotic arms, conveyor belts ferrying circuit boards and, eventually, candy-colored iMacs in various stages of assembly. Mr. Saragoza, an engineer, quickly moved up the plant’s ranks and joined an elite diagnostic team. His salary climbed to $50,000. He and his wife had three children. They bought a home with a pool.
“It felt like, finally, school was paying off,” he said. “I knew the world needed people who can build things.”
At the same time, however, the electronics industry was changing, and Apple — with products that were declining in popularity — was struggling to remake itself. One focus was improving manufacturing. A few years after Mr. Saragoza started his job, his bosses explained how the California plant stacked up against overseas factories: the cost, excluding the materials, of building a $1,500 computer in Elk Grove was $22 a machine. In Singapore, it was $6. In Taiwan, $4.85. Wages weren’t the major reason for the disparities. Rather it was costs like inventory and how long it took workers to finish a task.
“We were told we would have to do 12-hour days, and come in on Saturdays,” Mr. Saragoza said. “I had a family. I wanted to see my kids play soccer.”
Modernization has always caused some kinds of jobs to change or disappear. As the American economy transitioned from agriculture to manufacturing and then to other industries, farmers became steelworkers, and then salesmen and middle managers. These shifts have carried many economic benefits, and in general, with each progression, even unskilled workers received better wages and greater chances at upward mobility.
But in the last two decades, something more fundamental has changed, economists say. Midwage jobs started disappearing. Particularly among Americans without college degrees, today’s new jobs are disproportionately in service occupations — at restaurants or call centers, or as hospital attendants or temporary workers — that offer fewer opportunities for reaching the middle class.
Even Mr. Saragoza, with his college degree, was vulnerable to these trends. First, some of Elk Grove’s routine tasks were sent overseas. Mr. Saragoza didn’t mind. Then the robotics that made Apple a futuristic playground allowed executives to replace workers with machines. Some diagnostic engineering went to Singapore. Middle managers who oversaw the plant’s inventory were laid off because, suddenly, a few people with Internet connections were all that were needed.
Mr. Saragoza was too expensive for an unskilled position. He was also insufficiently credentialed for upper management. He was called into a small office in 2002 after a night shift, laid off and then escorted from the plant. He taught high school for a while, and then tried a return to technology. But Apple, which had helped anoint the region as “Silicon Valley North,” had by then converted much of the Elk Grove plant into an AppleCare call center, where new employees often earn $12 an hour.
There were employment prospects in Silicon Valley, but none of them panned out. “What they really want are 30-year-olds without children,” said Mr. Saragoza, who today is 48, and whose family now includes five of his own.
After a few months of looking for work, he started feeling desperate. Even teaching jobs had dried up. So he took a position with an electronics temp agency that had been hired by Apple to check returned iPhones and iPads before they were sent back to customers. Every day, Mr. Saragoza would drive to the building where he had once worked as an engineer, and for $10 an hour with no benefits, wipe thousands of glass screens and test audio ports by plugging in headphones.
Paydays for Apple
As Apple’s overseas operations and sales have expanded, its top employees have thrived. Last fiscal year, Apple’s revenue topped $108 billion, a sum larger than the combined state budgets of Michigan, New Jersey and Massachusetts. Since 2005, when the company’s stock split, share prices have risen from about $45 to more than $427.
Some of that wealth has gone to shareholders. Apple is among the most widely held stocks, and the rising share price has benefited millions of individual investors, 401(k)’s and pension plans. The bounty has also enriched Apple workers. Last fiscal year, in addition to their salaries, Apple’s employees and directors received stock worth $2 billion and exercised or vested stock and options worth an added $1.4 billion.
The biggest rewards, however, have often gone to Apple’s top employees. Mr. Cook, Apple’s chief, last year received stock grants — which vest over a 10-year period — that, at today’s share price, would be worth $427 million, and his salary was raised to $1.4 million. In 2010, Mr. Cook’s compensation package was valued at $59 million, according to Apple’s security filings.
A person close to Apple argued that the compensation received by Apple’s employees was fair, in part because the company had brought so much value to the nation and world. As the company has grown, it has expanded its domestic work force, including manufacturing jobs. Last year, Apple’s American work force grew by 8,000 people.
While other companies have sent call centers abroad, Apple has kept its centers in the United States. One source estimated that sales of Apple’s products have caused other companies to hire tens of thousands of Americans. FedEx and United Parcel Service, for instance, both say they have created American jobs because of the volume of Apple’s shipments, though neither would provide specific figures without permission from Apple, which the company declined to provide.
“We shouldn’t be criticized for using Chinese workers,” a current Apple executive said. “The U.S. has stopped producing people with the skills we need.”
What’s more, Apple sources say the company has created plenty of good American jobs inside its retail stores and among entrepreneurs selling iPhone and iPad applications.
After two months of testing iPads, Mr. Saragoza quit. The pay was so low that he was better off, he figured, spending those hours applying for other jobs. On a recent October evening, while Mr. Saragoza sat at his MacBook and submitted another round of résumés online, halfway around the world a woman arrived at her office. The worker, Lina Lin, is a project manager in Shenzhen, China, at PCH International, which contracts with Apple and other electronics companies to coordinate production of accessories, like the cases that protect the iPad’s glass screens. She is not an Apple employee. But Mrs. Lin is integral to Apple’s ability to deliver its products.
Mrs. Lin earns a bit less than what Mr. Saragoza was paid by Apple. She speaks fluent English, learned from watching television and in a Chinese university. She and her husband put a quarter of their salaries in the bank every month. They live in a 1,080-square-foot apartment, which they share with their in-laws and son.
“There are lots of jobs,” Mrs. Lin said. “Especially in Shenzhen.”
Innovation’s Losers
Toward the end of Mr. Obama’s dinner last year with Mr. Jobs and other Silicon Valley executives, as everyone stood to leave, a crowd of photo seekers formed around the president. A slightly smaller scrum gathered around Mr. Jobs. Rumors had spread that his illness had worsened, and some hoped for a photograph with him, perhaps for the last time.
Eventually, the orbits of the men overlapped. “I’m not worried about the country’s long-term future,” Mr. Jobs told Mr. Obama, according to one observer. “This country is insanely great. What I’m worried about is that we don’t talk enough about solutions.”
At dinner, for instance, the executives had suggested that the government should reform visa programs to help companies hire foreign engineers. Some had urged the president to give companies a “tax holiday” so they could bring back overseas profits which, they argued, would be used to create work. Mr. Jobs even suggested it might be possible, someday, to locate some of Apple’s skilled manufacturing in the United States if the government helped train more American engineers.
Economists debate the usefulness of those and other efforts, and note that a struggling economy is sometimes transformed by unexpected developments. The last time analysts wrung their hands about prolonged American unemployment, for instance, in the early 1980s, the Internet hardly existed. Few at the time would have guessed that a degree in graphic design was rapidly becoming a smart bet, while studying telephone repair a dead end.
What remains unknown, however, is whether the United States will be able to leverage tomorrow’s innovations into millions of jobs.
In the last decade, technological leaps in solar and wind energy, semiconductor fabrication and display technologies have created thousands of jobs. But while many of those industries started in America, much of the employment has occurred abroad. Companies have closed major facilities in the United States to reopen in China. By way of explanation, executives say they are competing with Apple for shareholders. If they cannot rival Apple’s growth and profit margins, they won’t survive.
“New middle-class jobs will eventually emerge,” said Lawrence Katz, a Harvard economist. “But will someone in his 40s have the skills for them? Or will he be bypassed for a new graduate and never find his way back into the middle class?”
The pace of innovation, say executives from a variety of industries, has been quickened by businessmen like Mr. Jobs. G.M. went as long as half a decade between major automobile redesigns. Apple, by comparison, has released five iPhones in four years, doubling the devices’ speed and memory while dropping the price that some consumers pay.
Before Mr. Obama and Mr. Jobs said goodbye, the Apple executive pulled an iPhone from his pocket to show off a new application — a driving game — with incredibly detailed graphics. The device reflected the soft glow of the room’s lights. The other executives, whose combined worth exceeded $69 billion, jostled for position to glance over his shoulder. The game, everyone agreed, was wonderful.
There wasn’t even a tiny scratch on the screen.
David Barboza, Peter Lattman and Catherine Rampell contributed reporting.
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Image pleasantness of Flickr user Aristocrat underneath Creative Commons license.
Each January, Early Ed Watch predicts a prohibited spots for a entrance year — issues that will browbeat discussions in early credentials process and trigger halleluiahs or handwringing from advocates of improved investments in early learning, birth by third grade.
Last year we forecasted a concentration on a sovereign budget, a Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Head Start re-competition, clergyman evaluation, Striving Readers and other competitions and taxation reform. (Looking back, we should have named a Early Learning Challenge forward of Striving Readers. And taxation remodel never unequivocally became a contention magnet we imagined, nonetheless it stays value gripping an eye on.)
Here are a prohibited spots for 2012. Do we agree? What are we missing?
#1 The Presidential Race and Education
Thus distant in a GOP primary, usually Newt Gingrich has concurred a Obama administration’s record of swell on credentials remodel by programs like Race to a Top and Investing in Innovation. In an try to woo his party’s regressive base, that is doubtful of sovereign efforts to umpire internal schools, Mitt Romney has distanced himself from his record of support for No Child Left Behind and for standards-and-accountability credentials remodel some-more broadly. Other possibilities have signaled their enterprise to idle a U.S. Department of Education.
Polls uncover electorate arrange credentials comparatively low on their list of emanate priorities, nonetheless as primary deteriorate draws to a tighten and a ubiquitous choosing starts in earnest, credentials is certain to come adult in debates between President Obama and a contingent Republican nominee. At that point, will a GOP pierce to a core on propagandize remodel or will it continue to cruelly impugn sovereign propagandize alleviation efforts? How will a House Republicans’ latest devise for revamping No Child Left Behind figure into a debates, if during all? Will clergyman unions continue to be clever supporters of President Obama given a Administration’s pull for revamping a approach teachers are evaluated?
#2 Race to a Top – Early Learning Challenge
In late Dec a Departments of Education and Health and Human Services announced 9 winners of a latest turn of Race to a Top, that focuses on early learning. In 2012, a winning states will have to exercise their desirous agendas—and as states have gifted with other rounds of Race to a Top, this is no easy task.
The foe compulsory states to request usually underneath 4 of a 8 process concentration areas, nonetheless winners Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota and North Carolina practical underneath during slightest 6 categories. All a winners solely Maryland practical underneath a QRIS rival priority, that requires states to rise a devise to embody all early credentials programs in a state’s peculiarity rating and alleviation system, tracking information on module peculiarity measures such as child/staff ratios. Then there is California, that perceived about half of a income it practical for, nonetheless is implementing remodel in a midst of a state bill crisis – in fact, a bill offer now on a list would condense a state’s new transitory kindergarten program.
How successfully will states exercise their Race to a Top promises? How many will ongoing bill shortfalls impede their work? What swell will be made? Will non-winning states try to use their Race to a Top skeleton to urge their possess early credentials systems? New York, for example, deserted skeleton to rise a kindergarten comment after unwell to win an Early Learning Challenge grant. And will there be another Early Learning Challenge competition? Congress saved Race to a Top for another year, and while these supports are authorised to be used for early education, they do not have to be. We’ll be examination this closely.
#3 State Budgets
The retrogression spurred mercantile crises in states opposite a country, and early childhood credentials has been among a victims as state legislatures done low cuts to change budgets. In 2011, a National Institute for Early Education Research found a initial year-to-year decrease in state appropriation for pre-K programs given 2002, when a classification began tracking appropriation in a annual State of Preschool report. A indolent mercantile liberation from a recession, and a death of sovereign impulse funds, presents some-more roadblocks to augmenting appropriation for childhood expansion programs. Cuts to full-day kindergarten or stalled skeleton to enhance it have also been in a news.
But there are some signs of hope. A few states have indeed seen slight income upticks this year as taxation income exceeded approaching levels, and a Race to a Top – Early Learning Challenge speedy many states to rise early training systems and plans. Early Ed Watch will be following state bill politics in 2012, too, and we’ll be looking for a few things. Will state appropriation totals for programs for children before to kindergarten be stable this year when governors settle their spending priorities? Will districts find ways to strengthen full-day kindergarten? Might both kindergarten and pre-K programs start to miscarry as state outlooks start to demeanour a tiny brighter?
#4 Waivers from Sanctions underneath ‘No Child Left Behind’ Law
This month a Department of Education is approaching to emanate waivers to a 11 states that asked to be free from No Child Left Behind (NCLB) sanctions. Twenty-eight some-more states and a District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have indicated that they will contention requests for waivers before February.
In sell for this flexibility, states contingency dedicate to work toward a set of priorities that a Department of Education has established. The concentration is on improving 3 areas: standards and assessments; clergyman and principal analysis systems; and burden systems. Notably, states could also select to concentration on early learning, electing to do so, however, will not assistance a state win a NCLB waiver. At Early Ed Watch, we see this as a large missed event nonetheless are still extraordinary to see what happens in states that are postulated waivers. Will this new set of priorities finish adult improving credentials in a waiver states? Will priorities summarized for waivers eventually make their approach into a subsequent Elementary and Secondary Education Act? And will early credentials get a due as an critical partial of PreK-12 sovereign credentials process relocating over No Child Left Behind, or will it once again tumble by a wayside?
#5 Competitive Grant Programs with a Focus on Early Ed
2011 was a large year for sovereign extend programs and early education. As we remarkable above, a Race to a Top-Early Learning Challenge doled out $500 million to 9 states to urge coordination of early training programs and foster propagandize willingness for disadvantaged children; 5 new Investing in Innovation (i3) grantees with early training as a concentration were awarded $26 million in supports to assistance weigh and scale adult innovative approaches to education; and a $30 million Promise Neighborhoods module released a sum of 20 grants to assistance low-income communities possibly devise or build cradle-to-career educational pipelines.
These aren’t outrageous pools of money, nonetheless they are going to account some early credentials strategies on a many incomparable scale, and will exam a waters for new and opposite approaches to early credentials reform. Additionally, all 3 programs were renewed for FY2012, nonetheless it is misleading either or not Race to a Top will have an early childhood concentration in a subsequent round. Will a grantees produce new, innovative models for early education? Or will their desirous skeleton could tumble brief in a face of real-world hurdles such as a need to locate relating extend supports and to follow by on a many promises for partnership between schools, non-profit organizations and other agencies?
#6 Competitions for Head Start Dollars
Though it got tiny courtesy in a mainstream press, a universe of Head Start was jarred final tumble when a sovereign supervision announced new standards for appropriation and told 132 organizations that run Head Start centers that they weren’t measuring up. The “re-competition” guidelines, as they are known, list 7 difficulty spots. If an classification receiving a Head Start extend has problems in one of those 7 areas, it will have to contest for renewed sovereign dollars opposite other organizations that wish to run Head Start programs in a same geographic area.
In 2012, this means transformation is expected on during slightest dual fronts: Newcomers – either propagandize districts or community-based organizations – will be scheming to win grants in a cities and towns where a 132 grantees have stumbled. And a other stream grantees – during slightest those with their wits about them – will be double- and triple-checking their financial systems and ramping adult a training of their teachers to safeguard that they are charity a high-quality knowledge to a pre-kindergarten students in their care. The Classroom Assessment Scoring System – a apparatus used to establish a peculiarity of training in a new sovereign discipline – will continue a swell as a standard-bearer for good interactions between adults and children in Head Start.
#7 Quality Rating Improvement Systems (QRIS)
Tiered Quality Rating Improvement Systems were large priorities in a Race to a Top – Early Learning Challenge competition, nonetheless there has been tiny investigate on either or not these systems urge module peculiarity or training and expansion outcomes for immature children. (QRIS systems mostly use a elementary three- or four-star rating to promulgate information on module peculiarity in mixed domains, such as child/staff ratios and clergyman credentials, and benefaction it in formats, such as interactive Web sites, that assistance relatives make some-more sensitive decisions about where to place their children.)
RTT-ELC compulsory states to rise a devise to countenance their QRIS, display a attribute between peculiarity ratings and children’s training outcomes. Last year, Early Ed Watch lifted a few questions about this. For a many part, peculiarity rating and alleviation systems have not enclosed children’s training outcomes as a member of a rating scale. Traditionally, a systems magnitude inputs like a ones mentioned above. We haven’t nonetheless dug into a winners’ applications to review their plans, nonetheless a ensuing investigate is certain to be valuable. What will we learn about peculiarity ratings and training outcomes?
We’ll be examination how winning states urge their systems and how California, Minnesota and Washington move their existent pilots or tiny informal efforts to scale. What doing hurdles will these states encounter? How will they make a information permitted to parents? How will states inspire or need childcare centers and early credentials programs to participate? Will winning states offer plenty technical assistance and support to centers looking to urge quality?
#8 Assessment and Teacher Evaluation
Among a many argumentative priorities of Race to a Top and a Obama administration’s other credentials remodel extend programs was a requirement that states and districts use tyro feat information — typically standardised exam scores — to weigh teachers. Because many states now exam usually in math and reading and usually during some class levels, states like Colorado and New York, that have betrothed to weigh all teachers formed on tyro training growth, will now need to rise assessments for many some-more subjects and class levels.
Most cryptic could be how states select to consider a youngest children, for whom required tests might not be appropriate, and in non-traditional subjects, such as music, manifest art and earthy education. If such assessments are seen as astray to teachers, there could be many some-more clashes around a nation between policy-makers and teachers’ unions — like a discuss now holding place in New York, in that a state Department of Education has threatened to secrete Race to a Top appropriation from districts whose teachers’ unions conflict attempts to tie clergyman analysis to tyro exam scores. As states hurl out their new skeleton for clergyman evaluation, how will teachers in a early grades be judged? This is an event for states to make many improved use of regard to consider how teachers are doing. Will they seize a chance?
#9 Teacher Education
As schools onslaught to make a many of fewer resources, relieve educational feat gaps and foster educational achievement, investigate on clergyman credentials and veteran development, generally in a early years, will be paramount. A report from a National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), scheduled for recover in tumble 2012, will consult 1,400 aloft credentials clergyman credentials programs around a nation and investigate a outcomes and peculiarity of any one. That consult follows an Education Sector policy proposal to urge clergyman preparation; a recently-released report from NCTQ exploring tyro training programs; a Department of Education proposal for clergyman remodel and alleviation initiatives; and a paper from a group here during a New America Foundation focusing on clergyman credentials and acceptance for expertise in a early grades.
Despite this sustain of activity, many questions remain: Will teacher residency models, in that clergyman possibilities work with a coach clergyman to benefit knowledge before apropos bone-fide teachers, continue to grow? How will states rise choice acceptance options? And what will come of a collaboration between Teach for America and a National Education Association on clergyman preparation?
#10 Technology’s Role in Early Ed
It used to be that credentials record was left to a educators in late-elementary, center and high schools. No more. Over a past few years, digital record from kid-friendly cameras to touchscreen tablets has turn increasingly manifest in early childhood settings and, but question, in households with immature children.
New investigate saved again this year by a U.S. Department of Education’s Ready to Learn module is starting to yield some insights into how record can be harnessed to assistance immature kids learn math and literacy. More conferences, such as a second-annual Early Education and Technology for Children meeting in Salt Lake City in March, are grappling with a intersection of digital training and early education. And this will be a year that a National Association for a Education of Young Children, in and with a Fred Rogers Center, releases a long-awaited position matter on how record should be deliberate in early childhood settings, including preschools and pre-K classrooms, kindergarten and a early grades. The matter – that a Early Education Initiative has commented on rigourously and seen in early drafts – should assistance educators arrange out how to use record in suitable ways that kindle creativity, hands-on training and capacitate entrance to children’s novel and other profitable content. Already some propagandize districts are purchasing rafts of iPads and other technologies for kindergarten classrooms, and preschools are introspective a squeeze of interactive white boards. While there will certainly be some who doubt a knowledge of putting screens in front of kids in early childhood, record is positively entrance to their classrooms in some way, figure or form. Guidelines for intelligent use can't come a notation too soon.
The investigate totalled teachers opposite a criteria in Charlotte Danielson’s Framework for Effective Teaching rubric, that is used in New York as a apparatus for watching teachers. Teachers scored improved during classroom government than they did on measures of higher-order enlightening challenges, such as seeking prolific questions.
A ancestral demeanour inside a nation’s classrooms, including some in New York City, embellished a dour picture, according to a report expelled by a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation today.
The second installment of a foundation’s desirous Measures of Effective Teaching study, a news focuses on a design of training yielded by 5 opposite classroom regard tools. It also scrutinizes those collection themselves, final that they are profitable as a proceed to assistance teachers urge though usually useful as analysis collection when total with measures of tyro training famous as value-added scores.
The end is a clever publicity of a Obama administration’s proceed to improving training by implementing new evaluations of teachers that pull on both observations and value-added measures. New York State took this proceed to overhauling a analysis complement when it practical for sovereign Race to a Top funding.
Among a organisation of five observation tools a substructure difficult is a rubric now being piloted in New York City classrooms as partial of stalled efforts to exercise a changes to clergyman evaluation, Charlotte Danielson’s Framework for Effective Teaching.
Through all 5 lenses, instruction looked common in an strenuous infancy of some-more than 1,000 classrooms studied, a news concludes. There were some splendid spots. Many teachers were scored comparatively good for a aspect of training famous as “classroom management” — gripping students well-behaved, creation certain they are engaged.
But teachers often fell brief when it came to other elements of teaching, such as facilitating discussions, vocalization precisely about concepts, and delicately displaying skills that students need to master. These higher-order ability sets, a news notes, are essential in sequence for students to accommodate a lifted standards summarized in a Common Core.
The investigate is a many expanded famous hearing of instruction in a U.S., reviewing some-more than 1,000 teachers for this news and scarcely 3,000 for a study. Its lead authors are a economists Thomas Kane, of Harvard, and Douglas Staiger of Dartmouth, nonetheless some-more than a dozens researchers contributed to a study.
The evaluations were conducted by lerned evaluators, who watched clips from videotape of some-more than 1,000 teachers around a nation and afterwards judged either a training exhibited certain traits summarized in a regard tools.
One difficult aspect of a investigate is that it doesn’t only ask what a regard collection have to contend about teaching; it also asks either those regard collection are good ways to magnitude training during all. The doubt is essential to a quarrelsome clergyman peculiarity debate.
Motivated by a Obama administration’s concentration on improving training by improving a proceed teachers are evaluated, a clergyman peculiarity discuss has been dominated by a hunt for a improved analysis tool. The thought is that if propagandize districts could have a improved proceed to arrange teachers, afterwards they could boost peculiarity by rewarding those who are many effective and improving or stealing those who are reduction effective. Continue reading »
