It isn't all the same thing; I think it's bizarre to lump the attempts to prevent an escalation in fossil-fuel generated environmental climate alterations and the response to the covid virus as a "grift" on par with the racialized equity "remedies" promoted by the cottage industry represented by groups like the Equity Collaborative.
And there isn't just one "they."
I get how convenient it is to think that way. But the facts require deeper thought than that.
Uhg, I hate getting off topic, but I hate even more to see people dispute different things, which this looks like to me.
To borrow your phrasing, I think it's bizarre to conflate "attempts to prevent an escalation in fossil-fuel generated environmental climate alterations" and the billions upon billions that have not only been spent in vein, but predictably so. In financial terms, I think what has been spent on equity training is a pittance that pales in comparison to what has been spent to curb climate change, and yet, with similar results. I offer electric cars that are energized by fossil fuels, as just one example, when a conversion to nuclear was the first and most important step.
Understand that I say this with all due respect, and as a fellow nature lover, who just happens to see tangible pollution as far more threatening than an abundance of plant food in the air.
There is racism, and there are racism grifters. There is climate change, and there is climate change grifters. Not sure thats what OP meant, but they have the right to not like people grifting issues.
The charges of grifting may suggest that there is No Problem. In the case of the school system, it has been stated explicitly here (by the author that there was some original problem.
Well the hundreds of millions of dollars that go to climate groups probably would be better spent on nuclear power plants that could actually reduce our carbon footprint
Stop being a dumb ass troll, the subject here is critical theory and the corona virus bullshit people like you want to distract everyone with doesn't help deal with a real problem
I found it interesting and relevant. Bottom line is that a lot of our problems will never go away because there is just too much profit to be made. Imagine how irrelevant Sharpton, Jackson and Crump are in a "post-racial" world. They will never let that happen. Instead they, and their MSM cheerleaders make the US out to be Selma 1955. If you hire thousands of DEI coordinators what do you think they are going to find? The COVID grift uses a lot of the same playbook.
“In middle school and there was something in a book about Arabs and the teacher said – All Arabs are terrorists. I raised my hand and said “I am Arab and I am not a terrorist.” She just stared at me.”
Reminds me of a WPOC at work that claimed she was denied service at a gas station, because she was a POC, at a small town along I-5 about an hour north of L.A. When I repeatedly questioned her about it (asking how she was "denied" service at a self-service pump, cuz I'm the as**hole in the room) she finally admitted that the "denial" consisted of her spotting a pickup truck in the gas station lot...that had a Confederate Flag in the cab window. You can't make this s**t up.
I am guessing it was a lot more likely a section in a history book that discussed the rise of middle eastern terrorism as a force on the world stage.
The student said that, and the teacher said nothing because it was a non-sequitur. I have seen so many times where people tweak these stories like this just a bit to heighten them, but it turns a reasonable interaction into a totally unreasonable one.
"OMG I moved into an apartment building and they came and had me personally complete a document stating I wouldn't damage things. I know it was because I am black. Racism!" Leaves out that every tenant is asked to to this regardless of race.
And then it feeds this narrative that there is pervasive racism everywhere.
Why do people believe kids, kids lie all the time, it is why you have to check their tooth brush to see if it's wet, and send home notes to parents when they don't do their homework. Honestly most people lie, a lot, for almost no reason at all.
Equity training seems to be the new indulgences. Purge your sins with cold, hard cash. Maybe once all four parts of your Loudon piece are finished, you can print it and nail it to CNN's front door.
So what I'm seeing is that someone helped a bunch of consultants rip the county off for some bogus services based on hyper-inflated and anecdotal evidence of "systemic racism" and nobody dared say anything for fear of being called a racist-apologist.
Also, that a full 20% of the student demograpgic was intentionally omitted because it didn't fit into the slick box they had prepared for all of that cash flow.
No wonder parents came together to vote these clowns out of office.
Oh, but you see... it just proves that racism is the root of Loudon County's problems -not the ineptitude of it's elected officials. Classic distraction technique.
Well, actually, it seems that there was a culture in the school involving the wide use of racial epithets and insults. As a person responsible for the school, I would see that as a problem. It's not like there's no problem there.
Agreed, the money numbers seem astounding and I would definitely want to know how and for what they came up with them.
Yes, that is a problem, but it is a problem for which the solution -- disciplining students who use racial slurs -- does not involve either hiring expensive consultancies or finding "systemic racism" in things like race-blind admissions policies to the gifted program.
In the schools I went to, with one exception racial slurs and insults were the norm, but they were not taken very seriously and in any case the faculty
were pretty much out of it. In any event, there are known, empirically proven ways to avert or cure the problem that are not very expensive. For instance, when they occur in a specific class or group, the group has to undergo a tedious, embarrassing sort of encounter group therapy session in which everyone is assumed to be nice under it all. A regular teacher can be trained to handle it -- no $5000 consultants required, just a little common sense. No one wants to suffer such a thing twice.
The thing about advanced education for just the smart people is bound to lead to trouble, of course.
1. If you train animals (or small children, who are of course animals, too) the best method is strong positive reinforcement of desired behavior. Often a negative reaction is what the misbehaving animal is aiming for, so the best response to undesirable behavior is the least response necessary in the situation. This usually works; I speak from experience.
2. If there is animosity along racial, religious, sexual, or regional lines in a school, it is almost certainly coming from the parents, older siblings, relatives, or neighborhood -- the very same category of people in Loudoun county who were complaining about it. If so, a top-down approach -- the application of authority -- to the situation is not likely to work well because it will be constantly subverted in the students' home lives. I would suggest a sort of encounter-group thing, which although extremely tedious and embarrassing, may at least surface the problem in such a way as to enable reason to take hold.
I think the 'race-blind is racist' idea is a different issue, although in this case it got sucked into the whirlpool.
Kids use racial slurs because they are bad, if calling you a potato made people go crazy they would do that too. Saying offensive things is literally all kids do. When being atheist was a big deal there were a lot of Jesus and God jokes at school, now the worst thing you can say in America is the N word, so guess what they are going to say that.
Thx. When I think how people apologetically speak to Joy Ann Screed or The View, I think of another Costello couplet, "I was up and down on one knee, stroking her vanity."
I dont know that one but Man Out Of Time is one of my faves esp live. Funny, looking at the lyrics for Big Boys online I see the next line is “I was stuck on a hammerhead”…equally fitting for JAR as at a minimum, she is just that!
The pedogogy of D'Angelo is foul on its own merits. The entity that hires them is a different issue. Remember, it's the giant corporations like Amazon that most heavily push the "diversity and inclusion" meme without intending to do anything.
Lighten up. And regards to your last sentence, the corporations push this because they very much intend to do something: continue making money---as much of it as possible. If the latest social/academic fad was zoroastrianism, you'd start to see billboards with Ahura Mazda or Angra Mainyu behind the wheel of a Chevy Silverado EV in short order.
There is a lot to think about with this one. Budgets, prior arrangements (corruption), consultancy fees, addressing externalized, internalized and institutional racism, plus the neoliberal hyperfocus of "my child" first.
But let's put that aside until Matt's next article, and focus how WE TOO could get into the business of securing no-bid contracts for school systems looking to buy some legitimacy and pose as a woke beacon or racial progress (while really failing to acknowledge that they know very little about cultural competency across the board).
Maybe we could form a group and become a shrugging atlas of wokeness? We can call the Broke Joke for the Woke Project!
Earl Scheib eat your heart out.
We can wokify your district for $399, 995.
*** P.S. do not accept any contracts for the state of Kentucky, that shit is hopeless.
Good thinking. And lets funnel it to an offshore account - and use it to buyback shares of media tech companies at discount prices based upon insider information. That's the ticket!
"The inclusion of other stories just seemed bizarre, like this tale about a teacher saying the word “police” in front of a Hispanic student:
The other day we had a teacher mention police – not in a mean way – to a student. Hispanic kids are dealing with immigration and deportation and for that girl, hearing “the police” means a lot to her."
-------
As a teacher, I had something like this happen, and it was just as benign. I won't get into great detail, but I had several meetings, some formal and others informal, over what another student said, which was recalling a thing a public figure did say AND was relevant to the what we were talking about/learning that day. The mom felt that I did not adequately use my authority to convey to the class that this thing that was said by another student was wrong (again, it was benign, and within context it was very benign). My end takeaway is that there is a severe abuse of words, especially "trauma" with a certain sect of people, and they use it to try to bully people. It as one of the events that crystalized for me the thesis that the puritan spirit is alive and well in our more secularized world.
The word "trauma" needs to be retired. True psychological trauma is too terrible of a thing to be confounded with the hurt feelings of the tea-cup generation.
We do not blame tools for their misuse. Words are the same. Canceling words or people is a mistake -- the way to beat poor speech or actions is to use better speech and thoughtful action.
It seems to me that the term "trauma" inherently conflates negative experiences (whether truly severe or exaggerated) with actual biological damage, e.g. traumatic injury. It may be particularly liable to be abused in efforts to blur the line between words and violence, and to treat the former as acts of aggression.
When a tool has been misused to the point it can no longer function, the tool needs to be replaced. "Trauma" used to be like a fine-tip paint brush; today trauma is a can of spray paint.
Can the word "niggardly" ever be recovered with "better speech and thoughtful action?" There comes a point when people's associations of words has been extended so far beyond their actual definition that continuing to use them does more harm than good.
Fix your own language before asking others to do so - and equating "trauma" with the word you chose is batshit insane. I could give you hundreds of examples of real life trauma that are applicable, have meaning, and fit the word exactly. Its overuse probably is a combination of not having enough words that describe this dystopian crypt of a country we live in and our deteriorating educational institutions, plus a few bastards who choose to use it incoherently.
Why confuse language with meaning and usage? One person does not get to decide this - and certainly not using the logic or understanding you have already demonstrated previously.
Any "managers", "executives", "leaders" (what the f**k ever) that have to hire consultants to identify/figure out a problem, and its alleged solutions, are publicly admitting their gross incompetence.
Interesting how the cost of "Flight, hotel, rental car and meals" for "8.16-8.17.18" comes out to EXACTLY $1,200.00 One would think that the actual number would NOT be round, and so be for example, "$1,168.48" Very fishy to me.
They also had $12,500 for 5 trips for 2 people, two of which are 2 day and the rest are same day. That's $1,000 per person per day or travel. I guess they're flying business class, renting luxury cars and staying at 5* hotels. Who knew diversity work commanded such lavishness?
And then the equity coaches charge $5000/day each. That's $625/hour assuming an 8 hour workday, which is probably being generous. It seems like the solution to equity is lots and lots of money. Maybe my thinking on a gender studies degree was all wrong!
The standard Loudoun County allotments for travel:
$45/ day meals.
"Hotel and coach airline tickets will be provided by Loudoun County unless authorized by the LCPS administrator signing the agreement"
I guess Lottie Spurlock, director of equity for LCPS, approved this since her signature is on all of the documents.
It might go back further, but the earliest form of this behavior of which I am aware is Jesse Jackson's Operation PUSH. Nowadays of course we have the big-hearted Al Sharpton and his "National Action Network." MO of both: "Gee [insert name of big corporation], you don't seem to hire a lot of minorities. Why don't you hire us to help before someone boycotts your business and gets you a lot of bad publicity?"
Lottie Spurlock was paid around $162,000/year for her role as director of equity for LCPS. That's about the same cost as 3 elementary school teachers going by LCPS numbers. In the back of my head I always knew that this type of grift was not uncommon, but it's still quite astonishing to go through the details and find out how profitable it is.
Just to clarify, the 12,500 was for travel expenses only, and the $5000 per day per person was the cost of consulting. That comes out to 1.2 million/year for the labor.
What you don't understand is that these professionals are busy and important people. They don't have time to be doing things like calculating realistic estimates or keeping track of receipts. Demanding that sh*t is, well, kind of a systemic problem, you know, with the system. Don't make me say it...
oh, my. Regrettably I, and I suspect many others, have seen this kind of thing far too many times. A sudden "problem" and amazingly a new company with a focus on responding to the problem for large sums of money, in general far more than teachers ever actually make. To a normal eye, it just seems both stupid and egregiously rapacious. And very very opportunistic. Thanks for doing the work Matt, deeply appreciated.
I wonder what commonalities might be discovered were one to compare the reports written by the Equity Collaborative for different clients. Would we find similar language or even similar “stories”?
To what extent might these reports be of the fill-in-the-blank template variety masquerading as individually crafted reports justifying their expense?
The answers could either put such cynicism to rest or expose a bunch of grafting charlatans.
$5,000/day a consultant is a ton of money even with travel costs (not clear if they were included) for a school to be hiring for consulting. There is no reason to go much above ~$3,000/day even with travel, this isn't Deloitte sending in Harvard MBA management consultants or forensic CPAs.
I provide highly technical consulting to cities/states an generally bill $1-2k/day + travel. And if I go much above $2k there tend to be LOTS of questions about rates regardless of how crazy the work or how great the results. Interesting schools are shelling out $5k/day with such shoddy bidding.
I also wonder how much of the $32k for the District Equity Plan was actually newly drafted. Or was it just a canned document rebadged.
As for "For instance, Asian students were left out of the section about academic “achievement disparities” (actually there were no stories at all referencing the experiences of the county’s second-largest demographic)."
It is because (as you know) they knew their answer before they started, so were only looking for data which confirmed it. You see this all the time in politically motivated reports. I have been asked to draft giant cost benefit analyses before where I am not allowed to look at or consider any of the the costs. Guess what such an analysis determines...X was a massive benefit!
It's always fun for me to triage press accounts on these types of hot button stories. This is necessary because we're now in the era of partisan click journalism, which means we mostly get hyperbolic stories written for specific, narrow audiences. The truth is the last thing most "journalists" care about. They pretend that the truth is not objective, rather a sliding, indexed hodgepodge of political hopes and dreams and dialectical all or nothing zero sum gains or losses. And let's not forget that the dumbest fux in the media constantly frame their stories as uncovering the latest "assault on democracy" or some other nonsense. As stupid and antithetical to journalism as all this is, doing a triage actually works pretty well to get to some kernel of the truth. Here's how it works:
1. Read a partisan click article written in the NYT or the WP (lefty nonsense)
2. Read the same story written by the WSJ or any right leaning blogger (right wing hyperbole)
3. Read Matt's or a handful of other indie journalists' take on the same story (truthiness)
Somewhere in there is the simple, basic story that Occam so wisely warned us about...in other words not the scintillating end of democracy that the communist party of America was hoping for.
That's not to say that there isn't some controversy here. The new normal these days seems to be for public institutions (and private corporations) to over-react to bad behavior by a few of their employees, while also assuming that the entire institution needs to be re-educated on how to behave according to the new woke rules. That's just dumb. Then, since a lot of these institutions are inherently dumb, instead of doing in house surveys and research on their own to figure out how big of a problem really exists, they turn to expensive training orgs to sort it out for them. And what do these training orgs ALWAYS find out? That yes, there is a really really really big problem that only they can fix...so hire us and your problems are solved. Sounds a little suspicious right? They "find" a big problem that coincidentally only they are qualified to fix. It reminds me of the Three Stooges episode where the idiots released mice and insects into a bigwig party and then knocked on the mansion door to offer their services as exterminators. Unfortunately, the Stooges fucked up the party so badly that a chocolate cream pie fight ensued and all the rich dowagers got what was coming to them - pies in the face.
I suspect the leaders of this school district don't like the taste of the pie they are currently eating.
Don't forget, the bureaucrats and pols get to say they did something about the "problem" by hiring some overpriced and idiotic consultancy program. They simultaneously get to take responsibility for solving the problem while avoiding responsibility for the details of the solution. They're outsourcing accountability.
This goes on constantly in corporations as well, but eventually corporations run out of money. The government just goes back to the well to get some more.
You lost me at "Communist Party of America." These grifters are the epitome of laissez faire capitalism at its ugliest. I don't think these "facilitators" are calling for the nationalization of industries, factories being taken over by workers, or 5-year plans by authoritarian despots. If you are going to use simplistic aphorisms, please try better than the "You're a Commie" from the 1980s. lol
True enough, so let's at least try to ensure that it's as useful to the rest of society as possible. Reading this stuff, I can't see the utility - even if I make the assumption that intentions are pure.
Is the group getting the big money a private entity or not? Under a "communist" system, Loudon would develop it's own re-education under a Cultural Revolution. The sad thing is that the primary sentiment, on which you're correct, gets lost in the Archie Bunker lingo. Have a happy Xmas.
Fair enough, but you should know it was purposefully used as a simplistic aphorism to lazily point out that many of our elites ARE subtly leading us down a path of nationalization of energy, elections and speech, etc. I would also argue that we live in a bizarre new world where many of the loudest voices pushing socialism/communism are the most rabid capitalists on the planet, i.e. being a commie and a capitalist pig are un-ironically not mutually exclusive.
lmao...did you say from the 1980s?? Let's at least go back to the 50s where commie calling was an art form. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
I vacillate on who annoys me more -- the "I know everything, so why read?" Fox watcher or the "I know everything because I read something that agrees with me" MSNBC viewer
You seem to have missed the point, and then gotten yourself trampled by your own straw-horse. That seems to be the very essence of minimalist simplistic snark.🎯
Anybody with brains is setting up a home schooling network. What's the point of the appellation of "good schools" when this is the kind of shit they concentrate on? You're better off going private or home learning. With the internet, no better time to have tons of data at your fingertips.
Possibly. However, one should always look at ways to be at cause. Either online learning or moving elsewhere. Doesn't seem like they're getting much value for the high taxes.
It fascinates me that technology has done absolutely nothing to reduce the cost of education. Is there any other sector that hasn't seen a 0% productivity increase for generations?
Brent, it's worse than that. I'm dating myself, but when I was in high school driver's ed was available for all students. Now you have to pay $600 for driving classes (yay, really helping out the proletariat there). There were also shop classes (Metal, wood and auto). Used to be music, theatre and art classes, 3 foreign languages (Spanish, French & German). Yes, I was at a larger high school, but in a town that had (at the time) 70,000 people. Since those days, we had supplementary money (supposedly) from CA lottery as well, and prop taxes have been going up every year. Less is delivered each year, or funneled to "special" programs that virtue signal but don't do anything.
Getting rid of shop class in the name of encouraging college has been a huge mistake. We now have a shortage of people who can swing a hammer, and a glut of people that have degrees.
It’s remarkable the amount of money that’s wasted on educational claptrap, next year it will be something else so the educrats will have something to talk about in their meetings. (Retired New York State K-2 teacher here.)
The racial grift is a good one. Climate grift solid as well. They’ve kept the COVID grift past its sell date. What a messed up culture.
It isn't all the same thing; I think it's bizarre to lump the attempts to prevent an escalation in fossil-fuel generated environmental climate alterations and the response to the covid virus as a "grift" on par with the racialized equity "remedies" promoted by the cottage industry represented by groups like the Equity Collaborative.
And there isn't just one "they."
I get how convenient it is to think that way. But the facts require deeper thought than that.
There is a lot of money being made on the climate grift. Green crony capitalism. Fuck your snotty “deep thought” comment asshole
Uhg, I hate getting off topic, but I hate even more to see people dispute different things, which this looks like to me.
To borrow your phrasing, I think it's bizarre to conflate "attempts to prevent an escalation in fossil-fuel generated environmental climate alterations" and the billions upon billions that have not only been spent in vein, but predictably so. In financial terms, I think what has been spent on equity training is a pittance that pales in comparison to what has been spent to curb climate change, and yet, with similar results. I offer electric cars that are energized by fossil fuels, as just one example, when a conversion to nuclear was the first and most important step.
Understand that I say this with all due respect, and as a fellow nature lover, who just happens to see tangible pollution as far more threatening than an abundance of plant food in the air.
There is racism, and there are racism grifters. There is climate change, and there is climate change grifters. Not sure thats what OP meant, but they have the right to not like people grifting issues.
The charges of grifting may suggest that there is No Problem. In the case of the school system, it has been stated explicitly here (by the author that there was some original problem.
Well the hundreds of millions of dollars that go to climate groups probably would be better spent on nuclear power plants that could actually reduce our carbon footprint
It's not their money. And if the consultants happen to be a cousin or in-law, well that's just a bonus.
Sample of covid grift: https://mtracey.substack.com/p/covid-bullshit-jobs-are-driving-everyone/comments
Stop being a dumb ass troll, the subject here is critical theory and the corona virus bullshit people like you want to distract everyone with doesn't help deal with a real problem
I was responding to a mention of covid grift, among others. I posted a sample of it. That’s not trolling.
I found it interesting and relevant. Bottom line is that a lot of our problems will never go away because there is just too much profit to be made. Imagine how irrelevant Sharpton, Jackson and Crump are in a "post-racial" world. They will never let that happen. Instead they, and their MSM cheerleaders make the US out to be Selma 1955. If you hire thousands of DEI coordinators what do you think they are going to find? The COVID grift uses a lot of the same playbook.
Why don't you try to stay focused instead of haring off after other rabbits?
“In middle school and there was something in a book about Arabs and the teacher said – All Arabs are terrorists. I raised my hand and said “I am Arab and I am not a terrorist.” She just stared at me.”
Sure. That happened.
Reminds me of a WPOC at work that claimed she was denied service at a gas station, because she was a POC, at a small town along I-5 about an hour north of L.A. When I repeatedly questioned her about it (asking how she was "denied" service at a self-service pump, cuz I'm the as**hole in the room) she finally admitted that the "denial" consisted of her spotting a pickup truck in the gas station lot...that had a Confederate Flag in the cab window. You can't make this s**t up.
Because she was a piece of crap???
What does POC mean?
A person of color?
You know that white is also a color, don't you?
Decaf, Scotty...
There is a word for people who view everyone through the lens of skin color and race: racist.
Lighten up, Scotty
Ball sacks, Louis
If that's an offer, you could at least buy me dinner first.
On the EMS, white includes all visible colors, black includes none, by definition.
Lol. "All Arabs are terrorists" said the middle school teacher never.
I am guessing it was a lot more likely a section in a history book that discussed the rise of middle eastern terrorism as a force on the world stage.
The student said that, and the teacher said nothing because it was a non-sequitur. I have seen so many times where people tweak these stories like this just a bit to heighten them, but it turns a reasonable interaction into a totally unreasonable one.
"OMG I moved into an apartment building and they came and had me personally complete a document stating I wouldn't damage things. I know it was because I am black. Racism!" Leaves out that every tenant is asked to to this regardless of race.
And then it feeds this narrative that there is pervasive racism everywhere.
Definitely BS
And then two guys in maga hats hung a noose around my neck and said this is MAGA country...
Why do people believe kids, kids lie all the time, it is why you have to check their tooth brush to see if it's wet, and send home notes to parents when they don't do their homework. Honestly most people lie, a lot, for almost no reason at all.
Equity training seems to be the new indulgences. Purge your sins with cold, hard cash. Maybe once all four parts of your Loudon piece are finished, you can print it and nail it to CNN's front door.
I love this suggestion. Especially since the doors are probably glass.
Who are these equity trainers, why are they qualified? Even the professors at Harvard can seem kind of stupid.
Harvard does have a lot of stupid professors. They have a few big names and the rest are regular trust fund idiots.
Now that is apt. And set up a new department staffed with clergy.
So what I'm seeing is that someone helped a bunch of consultants rip the county off for some bogus services based on hyper-inflated and anecdotal evidence of "systemic racism" and nobody dared say anything for fear of being called a racist-apologist.
Also, that a full 20% of the student demograpgic was intentionally omitted because it didn't fit into the slick box they had prepared for all of that cash flow.
No wonder parents came together to vote these clowns out of office.
Oh, but you see... it just proves that racism is the root of Loudon County's problems -not the ineptitude of it's elected officials. Classic distraction technique.
Well, actually, it seems that there was a culture in the school involving the wide use of racial epithets and insults. As a person responsible for the school, I would see that as a problem. It's not like there's no problem there.
Agreed, the money numbers seem astounding and I would definitely want to know how and for what they came up with them.
Yes, that is a problem, but it is a problem for which the solution -- disciplining students who use racial slurs -- does not involve either hiring expensive consultancies or finding "systemic racism" in things like race-blind admissions policies to the gifted program.
In the schools I went to, with one exception racial slurs and insults were the norm, but they were not taken very seriously and in any case the faculty
were pretty much out of it. In any event, there are known, empirically proven ways to avert or cure the problem that are not very expensive. For instance, when they occur in a specific class or group, the group has to undergo a tedious, embarrassing sort of encounter group therapy session in which everyone is assumed to be nice under it all. A regular teacher can be trained to handle it -- no $5000 consultants required, just a little common sense. No one wants to suffer such a thing twice.
The thing about advanced education for just the smart people is bound to lead to trouble, of course.
A couple of observations on this:
1. If you train animals (or small children, who are of course animals, too) the best method is strong positive reinforcement of desired behavior. Often a negative reaction is what the misbehaving animal is aiming for, so the best response to undesirable behavior is the least response necessary in the situation. This usually works; I speak from experience.
2. If there is animosity along racial, religious, sexual, or regional lines in a school, it is almost certainly coming from the parents, older siblings, relatives, or neighborhood -- the very same category of people in Loudoun county who were complaining about it. If so, a top-down approach -- the application of authority -- to the situation is not likely to work well because it will be constantly subverted in the students' home lives. I would suggest a sort of encounter-group thing, which although extremely tedious and embarrassing, may at least surface the problem in such a way as to enable reason to take hold.
I think the 'race-blind is racist' idea is a different issue, although in this case it got sucked into the whirlpool.
Kids use racial slurs because they are bad, if calling you a potato made people go crazy they would do that too. Saying offensive things is literally all kids do. When being atheist was a big deal there were a lot of Jesus and God jokes at school, now the worst thing you can say in America is the N word, so guess what they are going to say that.
"Definition of a consultant: someone that steals your watch, then tells you what time it is."
Or, per Dilbert, one who likes to con you, and insult you.
"He's got a mind like a sewer
And a heart like a fridge
He stands to be insulted
And he pays for the privilege" -- Elvis Costello
Always a shout out available to a person of any color, race, gender or creed that quotes Elvis Costello! Well played!
Thx. When I think how people apologetically speak to Joy Ann Screed or The View, I think of another Costello couplet, "I was up and down on one knee, stroking her vanity."
I dont know that one but Man Out Of Time is one of my faves esp live. Funny, looking at the lyrics for Big Boys online I see the next line is “I was stuck on a hammerhead”…equally fitting for JAR as at a minimum, she is just that!
Look the other way when asked to pay for a class of pedagogy from d’angelo and marcuse’s equity training…
Instead, hire the firm of Marx & Engels to hack the accounts of Musk & Bevos,
for a more equitable and satisfying class of asset draining…
The pedogogy of D'Angelo is foul on its own merits. The entity that hires them is a different issue. Remember, it's the giant corporations like Amazon that most heavily push the "diversity and inclusion" meme without intending to do anything.
Lighten up. And regards to your last sentence, the corporations push this because they very much intend to do something: continue making money---as much of it as possible. If the latest social/academic fad was zoroastrianism, you'd start to see billboards with Ahura Mazda or Angra Mainyu behind the wheel of a Chevy Silverado EV in short order.
Not sure why we are arguing given that we probably agree on the main points. Happy Xmas Auntie
That's great!
“You need to pay us more money…based on the report you paid us to write about whether or not you need to pay us more money.”
There is a lot to think about with this one. Budgets, prior arrangements (corruption), consultancy fees, addressing externalized, internalized and institutional racism, plus the neoliberal hyperfocus of "my child" first.
But let's put that aside until Matt's next article, and focus how WE TOO could get into the business of securing no-bid contracts for school systems looking to buy some legitimacy and pose as a woke beacon or racial progress (while really failing to acknowledge that they know very little about cultural competency across the board).
Maybe we could form a group and become a shrugging atlas of wokeness? We can call the Broke Joke for the Woke Project!
Earl Scheib eat your heart out.
We can wokify your district for $399, 995.
*** P.S. do not accept any contracts for the state of Kentucky, that shit is hopeless.
Make sure you budget for a 10 percent kickback.
Good thinking. And lets funnel it to an offshore account - and use it to buyback shares of media tech companies at discount prices based upon insider information. That's the ticket!
LOL! You made me cry. Too funny.
"The inclusion of other stories just seemed bizarre, like this tale about a teacher saying the word “police” in front of a Hispanic student:
The other day we had a teacher mention police – not in a mean way – to a student. Hispanic kids are dealing with immigration and deportation and for that girl, hearing “the police” means a lot to her."
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As a teacher, I had something like this happen, and it was just as benign. I won't get into great detail, but I had several meetings, some formal and others informal, over what another student said, which was recalling a thing a public figure did say AND was relevant to the what we were talking about/learning that day. The mom felt that I did not adequately use my authority to convey to the class that this thing that was said by another student was wrong (again, it was benign, and within context it was very benign). My end takeaway is that there is a severe abuse of words, especially "trauma" with a certain sect of people, and they use it to try to bully people. It as one of the events that crystalized for me the thesis that the puritan spirit is alive and well in our more secularized world.
The word "trauma" needs to be retired. True psychological trauma is too terrible of a thing to be confounded with the hurt feelings of the tea-cup generation.
We do not blame tools for their misuse. Words are the same. Canceling words or people is a mistake -- the way to beat poor speech or actions is to use better speech and thoughtful action.
It seems to me that the term "trauma" inherently conflates negative experiences (whether truly severe or exaggerated) with actual biological damage, e.g. traumatic injury. It may be particularly liable to be abused in efforts to blur the line between words and violence, and to treat the former as acts of aggression.
Unconvinced.
When a tool has been misused to the point it can no longer function, the tool needs to be replaced. "Trauma" used to be like a fine-tip paint brush; today trauma is a can of spray paint.
Can the word "niggardly" ever be recovered with "better speech and thoughtful action?" There comes a point when people's associations of words has been extended so far beyond their actual definition that continuing to use them does more harm than good.
Fix your own language before asking others to do so - and equating "trauma" with the word you chose is batshit insane. I could give you hundreds of examples of real life trauma that are applicable, have meaning, and fit the word exactly. Its overuse probably is a combination of not having enough words that describe this dystopian crypt of a country we live in and our deteriorating educational institutions, plus a few bastards who choose to use it incoherently.
Why confuse language with meaning and usage? One person does not get to decide this - and certainly not using the logic or understanding you have already demonstrated previously.
Any "managers", "executives", "leaders" (what the f**k ever) that have to hire consultants to identify/figure out a problem, and its alleged solutions, are publicly admitting their gross incompetence.
Problem solvers epitomized - pay someone else to do it, PR-engineer the shit out of it. The American Way (Bernays would be proud).
@ Lou Gubrious 🤣
❔Reads like a bit of a Lewis Black observation.
Interesting how the cost of "Flight, hotel, rental car and meals" for "8.16-8.17.18" comes out to EXACTLY $1,200.00 One would think that the actual number would NOT be round, and so be for example, "$1,168.48" Very fishy to me.
They also had $12,500 for 5 trips for 2 people, two of which are 2 day and the rest are same day. That's $1,000 per person per day or travel. I guess they're flying business class, renting luxury cars and staying at 5* hotels. Who knew diversity work commanded such lavishness?
And then the equity coaches charge $5000/day each. That's $625/hour assuming an 8 hour workday, which is probably being generous. It seems like the solution to equity is lots and lots of money. Maybe my thinking on a gender studies degree was all wrong!
The standard Loudoun County allotments for travel:
$45/ day meals.
"Hotel and coach airline tickets will be provided by Loudoun County unless authorized by the LCPS administrator signing the agreement"
I guess Lottie Spurlock, director of equity for LCPS, approved this since her signature is on all of the documents.
It might go back further, but the earliest form of this behavior of which I am aware is Jesse Jackson's Operation PUSH. Nowadays of course we have the big-hearted Al Sharpton and his "National Action Network." MO of both: "Gee [insert name of big corporation], you don't seem to hire a lot of minorities. Why don't you hire us to help before someone boycotts your business and gets you a lot of bad publicity?"
Lottie Spurlock was paid around $162,000/year for her role as director of equity for LCPS. That's about the same cost as 3 elementary school teachers going by LCPS numbers. In the back of my head I always knew that this type of grift was not uncommon, but it's still quite astonishing to go through the details and find out how profitable it is.
Just to clarify, the 12,500 was for travel expenses only, and the $5000 per day per person was the cost of consulting. That comes out to 1.2 million/year for the labor.
Should not the word "labor" have scorn quotes around it in this context?
What you don't understand is that these professionals are busy and important people. They don't have time to be doing things like calculating realistic estimates or keeping track of receipts. Demanding that sh*t is, well, kind of a systemic problem, you know, with the system. Don't make me say it...
oh, my. Regrettably I, and I suspect many others, have seen this kind of thing far too many times. A sudden "problem" and amazingly a new company with a focus on responding to the problem for large sums of money, in general far more than teachers ever actually make. To a normal eye, it just seems both stupid and egregiously rapacious. And very very opportunistic. Thanks for doing the work Matt, deeply appreciated.
I wonder what commonalities might be discovered were one to compare the reports written by the Equity Collaborative for different clients. Would we find similar language or even similar “stories”?
To what extent might these reports be of the fill-in-the-blank template variety masquerading as individually crafted reports justifying their expense?
The answers could either put such cynicism to rest or expose a bunch of grafting charlatans.
$5,000/day a consultant is a ton of money even with travel costs (not clear if they were included) for a school to be hiring for consulting. There is no reason to go much above ~$3,000/day even with travel, this isn't Deloitte sending in Harvard MBA management consultants or forensic CPAs.
I provide highly technical consulting to cities/states an generally bill $1-2k/day + travel. And if I go much above $2k there tend to be LOTS of questions about rates regardless of how crazy the work or how great the results. Interesting schools are shelling out $5k/day with such shoddy bidding.
I also wonder how much of the $32k for the District Equity Plan was actually newly drafted. Or was it just a canned document rebadged.
As for "For instance, Asian students were left out of the section about academic “achievement disparities” (actually there were no stories at all referencing the experiences of the county’s second-largest demographic)."
It is because (as you know) they knew their answer before they started, so were only looking for data which confirmed it. You see this all the time in politically motivated reports. I have been asked to draft giant cost benefit analyses before where I am not allowed to look at or consider any of the the costs. Guess what such an analysis determines...X was a massive benefit!
It's always fun for me to triage press accounts on these types of hot button stories. This is necessary because we're now in the era of partisan click journalism, which means we mostly get hyperbolic stories written for specific, narrow audiences. The truth is the last thing most "journalists" care about. They pretend that the truth is not objective, rather a sliding, indexed hodgepodge of political hopes and dreams and dialectical all or nothing zero sum gains or losses. And let's not forget that the dumbest fux in the media constantly frame their stories as uncovering the latest "assault on democracy" or some other nonsense. As stupid and antithetical to journalism as all this is, doing a triage actually works pretty well to get to some kernel of the truth. Here's how it works:
1. Read a partisan click article written in the NYT or the WP (lefty nonsense)
2. Read the same story written by the WSJ or any right leaning blogger (right wing hyperbole)
3. Read Matt's or a handful of other indie journalists' take on the same story (truthiness)
Somewhere in there is the simple, basic story that Occam so wisely warned us about...in other words not the scintillating end of democracy that the communist party of America was hoping for.
That's not to say that there isn't some controversy here. The new normal these days seems to be for public institutions (and private corporations) to over-react to bad behavior by a few of their employees, while also assuming that the entire institution needs to be re-educated on how to behave according to the new woke rules. That's just dumb. Then, since a lot of these institutions are inherently dumb, instead of doing in house surveys and research on their own to figure out how big of a problem really exists, they turn to expensive training orgs to sort it out for them. And what do these training orgs ALWAYS find out? That yes, there is a really really really big problem that only they can fix...so hire us and your problems are solved. Sounds a little suspicious right? They "find" a big problem that coincidentally only they are qualified to fix. It reminds me of the Three Stooges episode where the idiots released mice and insects into a bigwig party and then knocked on the mansion door to offer their services as exterminators. Unfortunately, the Stooges fucked up the party so badly that a chocolate cream pie fight ensued and all the rich dowagers got what was coming to them - pies in the face.
I suspect the leaders of this school district don't like the taste of the pie they are currently eating.
Don't forget, the bureaucrats and pols get to say they did something about the "problem" by hiring some overpriced and idiotic consultancy program. They simultaneously get to take responsibility for solving the problem while avoiding responsibility for the details of the solution. They're outsourcing accountability.
This goes on constantly in corporations as well, but eventually corporations run out of money. The government just goes back to the well to get some more.
You lost me at "Communist Party of America." These grifters are the epitome of laissez faire capitalism at its ugliest. I don't think these "facilitators" are calling for the nationalization of industries, factories being taken over by workers, or 5-year plans by authoritarian despots. If you are going to use simplistic aphorisms, please try better than the "You're a Commie" from the 1980s. lol
Nothing screams laissez-faire capitalism like using tax dollars to pay for the social indoctrination of minors in government schools.
Everything that happens in an American school, public or private, is a form of social indoctrination.
True enough, so let's at least try to ensure that it's as useful to the rest of society as possible. Reading this stuff, I can't see the utility - even if I make the assumption that intentions are pure.
Is the group getting the big money a private entity or not? Under a "communist" system, Loudon would develop it's own re-education under a Cultural Revolution. The sad thing is that the primary sentiment, on which you're correct, gets lost in the Archie Bunker lingo. Have a happy Xmas.
lol just because the money ends up in private hands doesn't make it capitalism.
Fair enough, but you should know it was purposefully used as a simplistic aphorism to lazily point out that many of our elites ARE subtly leading us down a path of nationalization of energy, elections and speech, etc. I would also argue that we live in a bizarre new world where many of the loudest voices pushing socialism/communism are the most rabid capitalists on the planet, i.e. being a commie and a capitalist pig are un-ironically not mutually exclusive.
lmao...did you say from the 1980s?? Let's at least go back to the 50s where commie calling was an art form. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Agreed. I was just trying to use language and context would understand. Lol
Mission accomplished...lol
I vacillate on who annoys me more -- the "I know everything, so why read?" Fox watcher or the "I know everything because I read something that agrees with me" MSNBC viewer
On any given day, you and I have a lot in common
You seem to have missed the point, and then gotten yourself trampled by your own straw-horse. That seems to be the very essence of minimalist simplistic snark.🎯
Why do you need to nationalize, when you can use the ESG funds to accomplish your end goals?
@ Memo From Turner 👍
Your memo is spot on.✔
It is a classic protection racket. Be a shame if property values fell because the schools aren't inclusive
Anybody with brains is setting up a home schooling network. What's the point of the appellation of "good schools" when this is the kind of shit they concentrate on? You're better off going private or home learning. With the internet, no better time to have tons of data at your fingertips.
And the minute the schools perceive a threat, up will come the zoning issues, accreditation issues, etc. Can't fight the borg.
Possibly. However, one should always look at ways to be at cause. Either online learning or moving elsewhere. Doesn't seem like they're getting much value for the high taxes.
It fascinates me that technology has done absolutely nothing to reduce the cost of education. Is there any other sector that hasn't seen a 0% productivity increase for generations?
Brent, it's worse than that. I'm dating myself, but when I was in high school driver's ed was available for all students. Now you have to pay $600 for driving classes (yay, really helping out the proletariat there). There were also shop classes (Metal, wood and auto). Used to be music, theatre and art classes, 3 foreign languages (Spanish, French & German). Yes, I was at a larger high school, but in a town that had (at the time) 70,000 people. Since those days, we had supplementary money (supposedly) from CA lottery as well, and prop taxes have been going up every year. Less is delivered each year, or funneled to "special" programs that virtue signal but don't do anything.
Getting rid of shop class in the name of encouraging college has been a huge mistake. We now have a shortage of people who can swing a hammer, and a glut of people that have degrees.
It’s remarkable the amount of money that’s wasted on educational claptrap, next year it will be something else so the educrats will have something to talk about in their meetings. (Retired New York State K-2 teacher here.)