The Economics of Mediocrity

“Show me who makes a profit from war, and I’ll show you how to stop that war” 

–Henry Ford

Where are the Problem-Solvers?

Have you noticed that problems don’t seem to get solved these days? There are a number of issues that one would think, after all this time, that time, money, technology, innovation, policy or any combination of these things would have at least made a sizable dent in the issue if not resolved outright. And yet, there are a number of societal problems that seem to be getting worse as time passes rather than better.

Homelessness is a good example of what I’m talking about. All major cities seem to be experiencing an explosion of homelessness: tent cities abound and that is just what is visible on the surface as one travels through. San Francisco is the current flagship of the problem in my state, though Los Angeles, Sacramento, and San Diego have all served their time. Even my community has tent cities in several areas of the town and we are just a minute segment of the population.

A recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle announced a plan for a 1000-unit housing development in the works for students and how it will work to positively impact the neighborhood. But will that really “solve” the problem? I’m not inclined to think so. A more recent article reports that additional projects are delayed because of funding.

My own community has plans in the works for over 2500 residential units at the edge of town, but again, how will this impact the homelessness problem? Probably not at all as none of the newly proposed units are for low-income housing.

Okay, so maybe homelessness is the wrong problem. Clearly, the problem is too big, complex, and nuanced: the reasons for homelessness varied and are attributed to a wide range of societal issues, only one of which is the availability of affordable housing. Fine. As my former students were always fond of fallaciously saying in arguments, “There will ALWAYS be…” fill-in-the-blank (in this case, homeless people).

What about health care, then? Surely with our advanced technology, education, and innovation, we can not only provide adequate healthcare for our citizenry but reduce the amount of chronic illness in our country. Right? After all, we have gene-spicing technology and are a leader in genetic engineering and research. Clearly, the advanced nature of our systems must indicate that the life expectancy and quality of life in our country are improving in the U.S. rather than…wait, no?

Apparently, the Centers for Disease Control disagrees. Okay, so in fairness, some of the declines can be accurately attributed to the pandemic, but the rest is due to increases in problems that we’ve been struggling with right along, including cancer, heart disease, and liver disease.

Fine, so healthcare (as well as homelessness) is too large a problem to solve outright and too politically charged as well. Again, “There will ALWAYS be…” sick people. 

Dare I even ask about Education? There’s been a lot of innovation, technological advancement, and pedagogical shifts in education over the last ten years, and accelerating into 2020 and beyond.  Surely we’ve solved literacy?  Why is it, after all this time, we still need remediation in schools? Surely the stimulus package is doing what it’s supposed to and mitigating learning loss. Right?

Problem Management

In any case, my point in this little exploration through some of the most complex and nuanced problems that collectively touch nearly every American is not necessarily that there is a critical breakdown in our societal structure, but how we have subtly shifted our intent and our language away from solving societal problems to managing them.

Perhaps it is because these issues, at present, seem insurmountable. Perhaps it is because we can’t agree on what to do long-term, so we compromise to go forward. In any case, this idea of “management” seems to be pervasive rather than the outlier. Even our foreign policy seems to be driven by this precept rather than by creating lasting resolutions (General Petraeus Interview 4:44). 

My concern is, and it seems we are approaching the edges of it now, what happens when we try to “manage” too many things? It seems to me that at some point, we’re going to need to get down to the dirty work of solving some of these issues just so we can get something off of collective our plates. We are approaching a critical mass where we can’t “manage” anything anymore.

I certainly reached that point in my personal life, and I see the systemic signs of it around me in my community. There are a lot of laypeople (such as myself) who want to work to solve issues systemically and in our communities but don’t have the money, education, or other resources to make systemic change. There are a number of grassroots movements in communities that have made great progress in addressing issues in local communities. So why can’t we make inroads on a larger scale? I spent some time wondering why this was so and couldn’t help but take an old adage to heart: follow the money.

Incentivized Disfunction

Since Education is my “wheelhouse,” so to speak, I’ll stick to commenting about that. While there is certainly a fair amount of altruism among individual educators, certain schools and districts, and even a few organizations that partner with educators, the same cannot be said across the board. In an April 2021 article in Forbes, contributor Akil Bello commented on the marketing trend surrounding learning loss for example:

“Learning loss has become more of a marketing catchphrase than a term that captures what students have faced in the last year. The marketing of learning loss, however, has been fairly effective in getting money allocated that will almost certainly end up benefiting the industry that coined the phrase. Ostensibly, learning loss is a term that sprung from educational research that identified and quantified an effect of pandemic-related disruptions on schools and learning. In actuality, it’s the result of campaigns by test publishers and Wall Street consultants.”

In our state, the stimulus bill granted California schools $23.2 billion in one-time aid for 2020-21 and another 9.3 billion for 2021-22 on the condition that schools allocate at least 20% to address learning loss. Incidentally, now that we’re two years down the road, there seems to be a lack of transparency in a number of districts as to where the one-time COVID money actually went.

In the same article, Bello also traced some of the historical roots of the “self-fulfilling prophecy” narrative trend back to the 1980s and the “Failing Schools” rhetoric in which testing data was misrepresented to the public in order to promote policy that would directly benefit a market or specific corporations within that market. 

While corporations usually end up with the funds in the end, schools themselves are not completely off the hook. California’s school funding formula “...gives districts additional funding based on their share of high-need students (low-income, English Learners, and/or foster youth)” (PPIC). While there is more flexibility under the new funding formula for where funds can be allocated, schools are still incentivized to show greater needs in certain populations and spend money in ways that incentivize certain markets within the education industry.

With school districts chronically underfunded in most states, “good administrators” find the money for their sites wherever they can. Unfortunately, local schools have been incentivized to show problems so as to get the funding to resolve them. 

Our growing SPED population is one indication (though it is often cited as one of the primary drains on school funds): our population appears to be statistically overdiagnosed, but more telling, no one seems to exit the program once admitted. A 2019 LAO Report details the rising numbers of students identified as well as the rising costs of serving those students within the system even though it also says that most are served through general educational systems. 

Looking at the special education system critically becomes especially muddy politically because no one in the system wants to be accused of denying students with disabilities any of their rights under the law and there is some science to suggest that rates of learning disabilities are increasing, especially in the case of ADHD and autism (although much of the research suggests that the uptick stems from changes in how the disorders are diagnosed). In any case, the system is incentivized to show learning deficits in specific populations; SPED being one of them. And money allocated to these populations certainly doesn’t stay within a given district for long.

Who Is This Really Helping?

Resources, especially money, are a key part of managing and solving the big problems facing our systems. It certainly makes a difference in education. However, I think we need to take a closer look at who is benefitting from our broken systems; who is literally banking against success, and why. These are the individuals and organizations that are lobbying against the policy changes and resource allocation that could really make a dent in the root problems that are eroding the undergirding of our social structures. Or they are trying to sell us a “magic pill” that only their company can provide. The argument that such efforts to affect real change cost more in resources than we have is starting to lose ground: the number of resources invested weekly, monthly, yearly, and by the decade to “manage” an eroding infrastructure will be even more in the long run, not to mention the legacy of victims we leave behind. The only difference is whose pocket those resources end up in.

We’re already spending the money: Billions of dollars are spent each year on the rising cost of healthcare which can be attributed to the rise of chronic disease and access for the uninsured. Billions of dollars are spent on prisons. Billions of dollars are spent on educational interventions. Billions of dollars are spent on welfare and food stamps.

The truth is that these issues have common threads and are large enough problems now to have spilled over into each other. Studies show a strong link between literacy rates and incarceration rates, joblessness, and poverty. Poverty impacts access to food, shelter, clothing, and healthcare. Inadequate food sources and lack of healthcare perpetuate chronic disease. And chronic disease can affect a host of things, most materially to this discussion, the ability of adults in a given household to work. And educators know for certain that sick, hungry, cold, and unhoused students face significant barriers to learning, closing the loop for another generation if there isn’t some drastic intervention.

What would it look like if all Americans had adequate food, shelter, and clothing? What would it feel like if everyone was literate? What would that mean for our prison system and incarceration rates? What would it be like if everyone had access to adequate healthcare and there was a decline in chronic disease? I know…pie in the sky. “There will always be…”

I think we’re all so stuck in the “There will always be…” that we almost can’t wrap our heads around creating a system where there is enough for everyone within that system. We’re told we can’t, that there isn’t enough for everybody, or that “they” don’t have because they don’t work for it or are otherwise undeserving…but it is usually by someone who has cornered the market on perpetuating a failing system. I think we’re beyond “management.” I think we need to do better.