Catholic schools are closing their doors all across America, leaving future generations with nowhere to turn for the high-quality academics and values-based education so many families are seeking. The number of students attending Catholic schools in the US fell from about 5.2 million in 1965 to around two million in 2008.
Pioneer Institute believes these schools are worth preserving. For over a decade, we have raised our voice in support of these excellent academic options, and tools such as tax credit scholarships that would enable more families to attend.
Pioneer has held public forums, published research on the benefits of Catholic education, on successful models such as Cristo Rey, and on policy changes that would stop the Massachusetts education department from depriving religious school students of special needs services and school nurses. The Institute has also convened key stakeholders, appeared in local and national press, filed amicus briefs, produced a feature a documentary film, and much more.
Hubwonk host Joe Selvaggi talks with education financing expert Mark Kantrowitz about the $1.6 trillion in U.S. public student debt – who owes it, who stands to benefit from the Biden administration’s recent promise for across-the-board student debt reductions, and what strategies are available to target only those most in need.
Guest:
Mark Kantrowitz is a nationally-recognized expert on student financial aid, scholarships and student loans. His mission is to deliver practical information, advice and tools to students and their families so they can make informed decisions about planning and paying for college. Mark writes extensively about student financial aid policy, and has testified before Congress and federal and state agencies about student aid. He has been quoted in more than 10,000 newspaper and magazine articles, and has been published in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reuters, Huffington Post, U.S. News & World Report, Money Magazine, Bottom Line/Personal, Forbes, Newsweek and Time. He was named a Money Hero by Money Magazine, and is the author of five bestselling books, including How to Appeal for More College Financial Aid, Twisdoms about Paying for College, Filing the FAFSA and Secrets to Winning a Scholarship. Mark is Publisher of PrivateStudentLoans.guru, a web site that provides students with smart borrowing tips about private student loans. He has previously been employed at Just Research, the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Bitstream Inc. and the Planning Research Corporation, and is President of Cerebly, Inc. (formerly MK Consulting, Inc.), a consulting firm focused on computer science, artificial intelligence, and statistical and policy analysis. He is ABD on a PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), earned a Bachelor of Science in mathematics and philosophy from MIT, and a Master of Science degree in computer science from CMU. He is also an alumnus of the Research Science Institute program established by Admiral H. G. Rickover.
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Read a Transcript of This Episode
Please excuse typos.
Joe Selvaggi:
This is Hubwonk I’m Joe Selvaggi.
Joe Selvaggi:
Welcome to Hubwonk, a podcast of Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston. Americans owe $1.6 trillion in public student debt. President Biden, both in campaign promises and in a more recent comment is considering some student debt forgiveness, either by executive fiat or through a coordinated act of Congress. Though framed as a helping hand for those saddled, with crushing debt and for whom such debt imposes stifling, long-term burdens, any such forgiveness could be regarded as largely regressive heaping largesse on those with the most education debt at the expense of those who have borrowed less paid their debt or not gone to college at all. Nevertheless debate amongst the president’s supporters seem to focus only on the amount of forgiveness while failing to distinguish those that are most in need from those who can well afford to pay. And if such forgiveness implies that college may not equip students with the added skills to pay for their own education, should we reconsider the wisdom of encouraging all students to borrow for secondary education regardless of value or lifetime return?
Joe Selvaggi:
My guest today is Mark Kantrowitz, one of the nation’s leading experts in education financing, aid, scholarships, and grants for the past three decades. Mr. Kantrowitz’s writing has provided students with strategies for making informed choices about education and for borrowing wisely when doing so. Mark and I will discuss his research observation on the profile of those who carry student debt, and he will offer recommendations or more targeted debt forgiveness aimed at the most vulnerable while also avoiding the cost and moral hazard of forgiving the debt of those most able to repay. When I return, I’ll be joined by education financing expert, Mark Kantrowitz. Okay. We’re back. This is Hubwonk. I’m Joe Selvaggi and I’m now pleased to be joined by education financing expert. Mark Kantrowitz, welcome to Hubwonk.
Mark Kantrowitz:
Thank you for having me.
Joe Selvaggi:
Okay. Now, before we dive into our topic of a student debt forgiveness let’s establish for our audience for our listeners, your bona fides as the nation-leading expert on college student financial aid, scholarships, college savings plans, education tax benefits, and student loans. Tell our listeners, how long have you been doing this studying these options at making yourself an expert? You know, what, what brought you to this level of being the nation’s expert?
Mark Kantrowitz:
Well, I’ve been doing this work for three, so I have a lot of experience and I’m not content to state. What is existing policy? I, I like doing research to identify new insights and new rules of thumb that can influence public policy. I’ve served as publisher of several leading websites about planning and paying for college. I’ve written more than 150 student aid policy papers and 14 books including five bestsellers.
Joe Selvaggi:
That’s very impressive. So, you know, beyond what we’re gonna to talk about today, if our listeners are looking for an expert they’re trying to figure out how to pay, to pay for college in the future and prospectively. You would be the guy to talk to about how to borrow wisely and efficiently.
Mark Kantrowitz:
Now my mission is to help students and their families make smarter, more informed decisions about paying for college as well. Well as repaying student loans.
Joe Selvaggi:
So we’re gonna not just talk about the future in this case. We’re, we’re gonna talk about loans already incurred. So let’s, let’s jump into our topic. We’re gonna talk about the concept of a student debt forgiveness. Let’s set the stage for our listeners interested in in this topic, largely it’s brought on by president Biden, recent murmurs, that quote I’m considering dealing with some student debt reduction. This statement comes of course, course in the context of us we’re in the aftermath of COVID 19 during that time it seems reasonable that the student debt there was a moratorium amount paying back student debt, and that was extended a few times. And here we are back to don’t call it normal, but we’re a, an unemployment rate that’s remarkably low. So let’s say the, everybody who wants to work is almost at work. So let’s start with some numbers, how much total student debt now that we’re ready to pay it back. How much student debt is held in the United States
Mark Kantrowitz:
According to the federal Reserve’s G19 report, as of December 31st, 2021, there was a total of $1.75 trillion of student loan debt. More recent data is not available now of this total, about $1.6 trillion is federal student loans and the rest is private student loans. And the federal student loans is owed by a little bit more than 43 million borrowers. Now the payment pause and interest waiver that student loan moratorium applied to about $1.46 trillion of the total.
Joe Selvaggi:
Okay, so this is money. This trillion is a lot, I think it rhymes with billion, a million, but a trillion has 16 zeros, right? It’s 1600 billion. It’s a lot of money. So you’re an expert in the best ways to finance education. Is it already the case that before I go out and borrow money are the, are ways that the government or universities currently work to ease the burden? In other words is the government already doing its most to to prevent an aspiring student from incurring more debt than they should? Are there subsidies both from governments and universities already?
Mark Kantrowitz:
Right. So about six dozen colleges some of the most selective colleges have very generous, no loans, financial aid policies. They do not include loans in the financial aid package, replacing them with grants, but that’s only six dozen out of more than 6,000 colleges. All colleges that provide federal student loans are required to provide entrance and exit loan counseling to borrowers. I’ve argued that this isn’t frequent enough that you have to provide counseling every time the student borrows and that it needs to be personalized to the student circumstances. And some colleges also provide financial literacy training, the quality of the counseling and the financial literacy training varies from college to college. Some colleges have really good training. Some colleges not as good, and some provide the financial literacy training at all. Now every college, since 2011 has been required to provide a net price calculator on their website.
Mark Kantrowitz:
This is a calculator that students can use to generate a personalized estimate of their one year net price. The net price is the diff between total college costs and gift aid gift aid includes grants, scholarships, and other money that doesn’t need to be repaid. It’s like a discount on the college costs. And total college costs include not just re on tuition fees, but also room board, book supplies and equipment transportation, miscellaneous personal. So the net price is the amount of money that the family or the student will have to pay from their savings from contributions, from income, and from student loans, the student loan debt at graduation correlates very strongly with the net price. Now students should consider choosing a less expensive college. They don’t need to go to the most expensive college in their field besides the no loans colleges, which have a net very low net price, because they give more of the aid as grants, as opposed to loans. An in-state public college is for most students is going to be the least expensive option. And in-state public college costs about of quarter to a third, the cost of a private college.
Mark Kantrowitz:
You can also save on college costs in other ways, such as by buying used textbooks or selling them back to the bookstore at the end of the semester minimizing the number of trips home from school. And in general, what you need to do is live like a student while you’re in school. So you Don have to live like a student after you graduate.
Joe Selvaggi:
Oh, that that’s a great, that’s a great takeaway. I, I like that that, that slogan. And of course, when we talk about some selective schools, I, I did quick look up Harvard, if your, your family makes less than 75,000, it’s, it’s free. I think your MIT, that’s your Alma mater. I, I believe mm-hmm, <affirmative> also 75,000 or less, or even up to 140,000, it’s it’s next to, you know, close to zero to, to attend. But for most schools, that’s not the case. I’ll just point out I, I share your concern that colleges though, they are tests with students on making wise decisions. There’s a conflict of interest, right? Because if you’re an expensive school, make giving counseling, you’ve got a disincentive to make it clear to the student, how much they’re gonna owe in the, is that right?
Mark Kantrowitz:
That’s sometimes are as, as between a grant. And so the student is left with not really understanding how much they have to borrow to pay for the college. And sometimes they’ll referred to a loan as an award and not really have any signals that this is money that needs to be repaid.
Joe Selvaggi:
So we do want, you know, so we’re both advocates of students approaching college, it’s eyes wide open and saying, okay, I’m gonna get the education, but I’m gonna have to pay X to get it. So let’s just address some of the sort of narratives that those who are interested in for giving student loans. I think a lot of well, meaning people who, who may be sympathetic to the, these types of policies, imagine that students student debt really is a byproduct of, of, of a a student coming from a family with fewer resources and must borrow to to pay for school you’ve answered. I think already that there are choices that can go to less expensive schools, maybe state colleges, that sort of thing. But is there a correlation in your analysis between how much debt is held by students in general? And let’s say the family income, I there in other words, are, are, are poor kids, the ones who are taking on the debt
Mark Kantrowitz:
Well, and first of all, let’s establish that college means debt of students receiving a bachelor’s degree, more than 70% graduate with student loan debt. If we limit to students who applied for financial aid, filing the FAFSA, then seven eights of them graduate with student loan debt. One of the most effective ways of re eliminating the need for student loan debt is to pick wealthy parents, of course, that you can’t do that. But when I’ve looked at PE grant recipients versus non recipients, the Pell grant re, and these are generally very low income students, it’s a good proxy for low income status. They are much more likely to borrow for college than middle and high income students, and they graduate with more debt. So we expect are least capable of paying students who are least capable of paying for college to borrow the most. And that’s a sign that we’re not giving adequate grants to these students and the Pell grant historically has gone up by only about a hundred dollars a year, even as college costs go up by thousands of dollars a year. Now among students who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 2016, 84% of PE grant recipients graduated with student loan debt that compares with 61% of other students, and they graduated with a few thousand dollars more, a student loan debt.
Joe Selvaggi:
Okay. So let’s, let’s break it down more granularly. Again, 1.6 trillion divided by the number of students is this sort of, are, are students, is there sort of a uniform profile of the debt, or are few students owe a thousand dollars and others owe hundreds of thousands of dollars? We, we really haven’t gotten down into the nitty gritty. We’re all only talking about undergraduate. My research, arguably nothing like yours seems to indicate that the, the massive debt is incurred by those who choose to go to graduate. School might be a pre professional school like law school or medical school breakdown, you know, is everybody about the same debt or we got huge disparities?
Mark Kantrowitz:
Well, we often hear news stories about a student who graduated with a bachelor’s degree and a hundred thousand dollars or more in student loan debt, mind you, you can’t do that just with federal student loans. You need private student loans to do that. The reality is that 90% of bachelor degree recipients graduate with less than $50,000 in student loan debt. And among those who graduate with six figure debt, most of them are graduate students with degrees in medicine or law. It really is an exception to the rule when a student graduates with six figure debt for an undergraduate degree. And that’s usually a sign that something is not being done right, that they’re at too expensive at college, or that nobody try to raise their awareness that they’re taking on too much debt. Because generally speaking, if your total student loan debt at graduations, less than your annual starting salary, you should be able to afford to repay your student loans in 10 years or less. So when your debt exceeds your annual income, that you’ll struggle to make those loan payments and you’ll need an alternate repayment plan like extended repayment or income driven repayment to yield a more affordable monthly loan payment. These repayment plans reduce your monthly payment by increasing the repayment term to 2025 or even 30 years, which means you’re gonna be paying a lot more interest over the life of the loan. And you’ll still be repaying your own student loans when your children go to college.
Joe Selvaggi:
So it’s like graduating with a mortgage that, that sounds a little bit daunting. Is there a correlation now we said there’s students who incur the six figure debt might be in professional schools, graduate schools medicine, law. Those are I think notoriously well paying industries, have you broken down where are the debt lies amongst low income, medium income and high income? I love your sort of back of the envelope rule of thumb, which is you ought not to incur more debt than your expected annual salary upon that graduation. Great, great a nugget there, but how given the profile of who owes money now, are they low income people, medium income, or even high, high income earners?
Mark Kantrowitz:
There’s a super position of two curves. One is people who took on a more lucrative, a degree, like a graduate degree and therefore have higher debt, but also higher income. And people who didn’t graduate at all, they have less debt because they weren’t in college for as long, but they don’t have the degree that can help them repay that debt. So they’re much more likely to struggle. That’s why you often hear statistics about the average debt of people who default on their student loans being under $10,000. It’s actually a little bit more than that. And that’s because a, the likelihood of default increases as the debt to earnings ratio increases the, the greater debt as a share of income. The more likely you are to default, but at the same time, if you drop outta college there’s a second curve there. And when you join the two curves, it yields results that are often misinterpreted as saying, oh, this is only a low income problem, or a low debt amount problem. It’s really a it’s. If you have more debt compared to your income, your ability to pay that debt is impaired. And if you drop out college, you’re much more likely to default on your student loans than someone who graduates.
Joe Selvaggi:
So I think we’re having a disconnect between the cost of college and the benefit of college. It seems odd that one would incur debt for something that doesn’t help them pay that debt, or doesn’t better help them pay for debt. Let’s. let’s start to talk about some of the remedies some of the numbers banded around for forgiveness. Again, I’m jumping ahead to forgiveness. You know, we don’t want blunt instruments such as you know, across the board forgiveness in my view as you mentioned, there’s a huge stratification of debt and potential ability to pay that debt. There’s wealthy people a lot and poor people, a little and ironically, or not ironically, but the, the, the lower income people with smaller debt are at most risk, at least are forgiving all debt across the board. Whatever that number is, it’s inevitably gonna wind up forgiving debt for people who have the most ability to pay back that debt. Isn’t that just obviously true?
Mark Kantrowitz:
Yeah. And that’s one of the things that some people object to in a broad student loan forgiveness program, which is why would you forgive the student loans of someone who is capable of repaying, their student loans? They argue that student loan forgiveness should be targeted at the borrowers who have financial need and not as wealthy or borrowers who don’t really, they want loan forgiveness, but they don’t need loan forgiveness.
Joe Selvaggi:
Yes, indeed. And I gonna, one, one of my little mantras is effective. The government doesn’t have its own money. So that money that’s going to pay off wealthy college graduates, perhaps doctors and lawyers is coming from people who didn’t go to college and perhaps pay their taxes. And that money is getting taken from someone who didn’t go to college and given to someone who did presumably if, if college is worth anything that seems difficult program to, to accept. Now we do already have programs, government programs from the, I guess, the department of education that does serve to forgive loans even before any talk of any future program. Right now, there are several national programs that allow some loan debt to be. Can you share with us, what are some of those programs?
Mark Kantrowitz:
Well, they tend to fall into two groups. One is for people who fulfill some sort of public policy objectives, such as getting people to teach in a national need area or other public service. So you have teacher loan, forgiveness you have public service loan forgiveness. The other group is discharges for people who are unable to repay the debt or can repudiate the debt in some manner. So if you die and your ability repay the debt is impaired. And so there’s a death discharge. If you’re totally I permanently disabled, there’s a disability discharge. If you are the victim of identity theft and didn’t actually borrow the loans, there’s an identity theft, discharge
Joe Selvaggi:
And yeah, and looking at these programs. And I, I wanna, I want you to tell me, I’ve read it wrong. I think recently the education department recently announced it for giving 6.2 billion in student debt for those working in the public sector. Now, I know public sectors jobs are not lucrative necessarily, but they are fairly paid. I assume that people show up for them. This, this program seems to be a bit self-serving that the government, it would forgive government loans for people who work for the government. Am I getting that wrong or is this shamelessly self-serving?
Mark Kantrowitz:
Well, members of Congress are ineligible for public service loan forgiveness. And the program is tied to a specific set of repayment plans called the income driven repayment plans where your monthly loan payment is based on a percentage of your discretionary income, as opposed to the amount you owe. If you’re a higher income individual, you’ll pay more under those plans, the, and someone who’s a low income individual and generally speaking in order to qualify for some loan forgiveness, your total student loan debt has to exceed your annual income. So this isn’t providing loan forgiveness to high paid DMV workers. It is going to people who are taking low paying jobs, despite their high amount of debt in order to give back to society. So an example might be public interest law like a public defender don’t get paid very well.
Mark Kantrowitz:
I mean, $40,000 is, is kind of typical yet. They may have hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loan debt for a law degree. If the warrant for the income driven repayment plans and the possibility of public service loan forgiveness, so that you’re not basically an indenture servant not just a public they wouldn’t go into these fields. The, the debt would be so big that it would provide a severe disincentive to pursuing a public service career. So public service loan forgiveness removes the debt as a disincentive. Now, their example is social workers for a masters of social, your debt might be 70, 80, $90,000. Those jobs pay $30,000, $35,000. It’s there’s a mismatch between how we compensate people for these public and national need areas and how much debt they have to take on to get a degree in that field.
Joe Selvaggi:
So effectively the government needs to effectively subsidize those professions. So as to incentivize people to that, who would otherwise not choose them to choose them. So
Mark Kantrowitz:
It’s also the it’s a lot less expensive for the government to provide public service loan forgiveness, then to pay these people more. I mean, if they were to pay them what they could get in the private sector they wouldn’t need public service loan, forgiveness. Now, public service loan forgiveness, it’s based on how much debt you have. And once that gets forgiven, there’s no more payout. Whereas if you were pay, hire salaries, then that would be higher income over the life, the work life of that individual. So in a way, public service loan forgiveness saves the government money.
Joe Selvaggi:
I’m curious, I just wanna divert for a second. If the government forgives my loan, let’s say owe a hundred thousand dollars and the, the largest forgives that loan. I know from my independent business world, that if my firm gives me a loan that, that they say you no longer need to pay back that’s considered a gift and it’s considered taxable. Would someone who’s been forgiven a hundred thousand dollars loan be then sent a whopping tax bill for the gift that’s been effectively given,
Mark Kantrowitz:
Right? So it used to be the case. Now IRS considers that if someone cancels your debt, it says though, they gave you the money to pay off the debt. And that money, that amount that’s forgiven is income to you. Now, previously public service loan forgiveness was tax free because of a special provision in the internal revenue code. But income, the 20 or 25 year forgiveness at the end of an income driven repayment plan was taxable. Many cases, these borrowers were insolvent and they could qualify for forgiveness of the tax debt, but the American resting plan act added a special provision that all student loan cancellation, whether forgiveness or discharge is tax free through December 31st, 2025. And president Biden has called in his budget for that to be made permanent. And it seems likely that it’ll either be extended or made permanent. And it applies not just to public service, loan, forgiveness, and income driven repayment, but also to the death and disability discharges. And they, they were charging the the, the tax liability against the estate of the de that just doesn’t seem right.
Joe Selvaggi:
So you’ve done a lot of research on ways to more to target forgiveness as opposed to just saying across the board, everybody the first $10,000 of your debt is, is forgiven regardless of income or your prospects for paying it back. What if some of the more targeted or criteria for debt forgiveness how do we target the people we really wanna target that is low income people who really just can’t get out from beyond their debt? How, how would you design a, a forgiveness plan that’s more effective than a across the board amount,
Mark Kantrowitz:
Right. So you could do means testing where you would forgive the student loans for someone who has an income below a particular threshold, maybe $50,000, $75,000 and that would reduce the cost. It would also reduce the number of followers who qualify, but the problem with means testing is that it would require some kind of an application process. And that means it can’t be done automatically. And the recent trend, I mean, what the Biden administration has done a lot of is making loan, forgiveness, the existing loan forgiveness programs, automatic, like doing a data match between the us department of educations records and the VA, or the social security administration in order to implement the stability discharges or special treatment for the debt of members of the us armed forces, where the interest rate is capped at 6% and, and, and similar provisions also with public service loan forgiveness members of the us armed forces are eligible, but I mean, just matching up that data to facilitate that is beneficial.
Mark Kantrowitz:
So I tend to like having a specific dollar amount of loan forgiveness, because it’s much easier to implement, but rather than provide the forgiveness to everybody $10,000 of loan forgiveness us to every borrower would cost 375 billion. And for you completely erase the student loans of a third of borrowers provide that loan forgiveness only to people who owe $10,000 or less, that reduces the cost of 75 billion, but still completely erases the debt of the third of borrow. And it tends to be better targeted at borrowers who are lower income. And you still, it’s not perfect because you still have wealthier borrowers who just happen to have paid down their debt to under $10,000, but it is much more effective than saying everybody get it’s a freebie.
Joe Selvaggi:
I see. I wanna the change, the focus of our lens a little bit. And I, I think we touched on it when we were talking about, you know, sort of prospectively when I’m thinking about taking on debt and going into college and choosing which college and frankly, which major, what do I do for a living and comparing what my debt will be com relative to my, my aren’t we, in a sense if we are effectively forgiving debt for people who are lower income effectively, subsidizing those fields that generate less income, are we creating incentives or, or distorting incentives so that students choose perhaps instead of high paying, let’s say, and majors, they become you know, theater majors or poetry majors don’t. We run the risk of saying, okay, choose your path cost be. And the less you make, the more we’re likely to subsidize afterward. This seems to me that perhaps be steering people in directions that you know, aren’t good for their long term wellbeing,
Mark Kantrowitz:
Right? Well, this is a problem that’s often referred to as moral hazard, where if you know that your student loans are going to be forgiven, then you increase the amount you borrow. However, if they limit the amount of forgiveness to say $10,000, that means that the borrowers will still have to repay the rest of their student loan debt that tends to minimize the risk of moral hazard. And it, any kind of loan forgiveness program will have those potential problems. I tend to favor solutions, which reduce the need for debt by providing more grants, targeted grants up front such as doubling or tripling the Pell grant that not only increases who goes to college and who graduates from college, but it also reduces the amount of debt at graduation, whereas a won’t forgiveness program, I doesn’t increase college access or success,
Joe Selvaggi:
But, but in, okay, let, let’s pull the lines further back PE grants or money coming from the government. And, you know, the deep dark secret is the government doesn’t have its own money. So it’s coming from you’re, you’re essentially giving money, whether in the front end or the, or forgiving in the backend, you’re taking money for people who didn’t go to college and giving it to people do which, in a sense, again, we accept that where you get taxes, give you less of something and substance give you more something, aren’t we, in a sense calling education in general, just a common good worthy of, of taxing people who don’t do it, of these people who do what, what public benefit is it to continuously and perhaps, you know, in the broadest strokes possible, send everybody to college. Aren’t we sort of missing the point here. If, if ultimately the college doesn’t generate the revenue necessary to pay back college, isn’t the value proposition you know, something we consider,
Mark Kantrowitz:
Well, college is not just a private good benefiting the student. It’s also a public good, a college graduate with a bachelor’s degree, pays more than twice the federal income tax of someone with just a high school diploma. So people tend to personalize this issue, asking why they’re of taxes should be used to pay off someone else’s student loan debt. But the reality is that it’s the college graduates who mostly are going to be paying back the cost of this through their income taxes. If their income taxes are actually increased to, to cover the cost and not pass off to some future generation decades from now the one could take that kind of argument that why should my taxes be used for something that I disagree with and to other areas, like, why should you pay for the military if you’re a pacifist, or why should you pay for school taxes if you don’t have children should you pay for the police if you don’t commit crimes should you pay higher health insurance premiums and higher life insurance premiums, if you’re healthy why should you have to pay taxes at all?
Mark Kantrowitz:
If you don’t like your state’s politicians, if you didn’t vote for the guy or maybe the politicians in another state where you clearly didn’t should you have to pay for snow removal if you don’t own a car? Or the example I gave earlier is nobody the public tends to dislike the DMV. Well, why should you have to pay the salaries of people who work for the DMV, if you don’t like the DMV why should you have to pay taxes on things that you buy for your own use? And all of those are similar questions.
Joe Selvaggi:
I, I would be happy to answer any one of those questions. They are all very, very good questions and all easily answered and, and dispensed with. I, I don’t wanna cloud our, our topic with, with sort of hypotheticals, but I will say though, if you characterize if you say merely that those go to college make more than those who don’t and their air go, they pay more in taxes and keep us all happy you. I think that’s a bit of a disingenuous statement, which is to say, that’s not a random sample. We don’t take the same, same 10 guys and send 10 to college and 10, not to college and compare the outcome. You know, the people go to college are self-selected and, and, and arguably have profound advantage of those who don’t. But I’d say if I take someone, you know, at the margin who had a choice, whether they go to trade school or invest in a F-150 and become a, a, a, a plumber instead of going and becoming a history major it, it could be argued that they would make far more in the trades than they would as a professional historian or, or, or something else.
Joe Selvaggi:
And, you know, how does that benefit me to send him to school and how arguably, and, you know, we can have ethical conversation all day long, but if indeed we’ve sent a someone who would otherwise be a successful plumber to being an unsuccessful an unsatisfied historian we’ve heard him too, not just society. So what would you say to, to the people who have those concerns?
Mark Kantrowitz:
Well, I, an, an electrician or an H V a C tech with a certificate or an associates degree can earn as much as a bachelor’s degrees in some fields. And, and the argument that, why should you subsidize one and not the other, like, why should you pay for an electrician who is based in two states over? And so you’re not gonna benefit from that electrician personally. I, I think that we all benefit from having a more educated populist, and, and I’d also like to point out that you really don’t have a student loan problem so much as a college completion problem. The default rate for people who get a bachelor’s degree, who graduate, even if it’s in a field like underwater basket weaving they are much, much less likely to default than someone who drops out. Overall among all undergraduate students, students who drop out are four times more likely to default than students who graduate, but among bachelor degree programs, they’re 95 times more likely to default if they do drop out than if they graduate. So the, the, the problem is that we’re not getting students to finish line. And that includes people who are pursuing enrolled at lower cost institutions like one year and two year programs. They’re actually more likely to default than people who go to a four year program.
Joe Selvaggi:
So I’m, you know I appreciate that. If anything, I, I think perhaps it makes my point more strong in that if we are in a sense, subsidizing college and encourage people to go to college, who might not otherwise choose college by virtue of the return on their investment, but they embark on college, encourage are debt, and then, and then leave college and ultimately default are we doing them a favor by subsidizing them with, you know, let’s say triple your grant plan, they still default. They still leave. They still have debt. How, how have we how do we solve the dropout problem by the giving people more reasons to go to college?
Mark Kantrowitz:
Well, doubling the PE grants would pay for itself in terms of increased federal income tax revenue, based on the number who would ultimately graduate in about a decade. Most people work 40, 45 years. So that means we’re gonna get at least 30 years of pure profit to the federal government from increased federal income tax revenue. It’s the equivalent of a 14% annualized return on investment. Now, if I were to come to you and say, I’ve got this sure fired way to generate 14% return on investment for decades, you’d be asking me, is your name Bernie Madoff? Because, well,
Joe Selvaggi:
There’s a, there’s a big, big, big, big flaw in that, that line of reason, which is to say the people who go to college and the people who don’t go to college are the same people. They’re very, very are different people. So if I push a button and send everybody to college and assume that the half that have not gone to college will now join the ranks of those who do and earn the same amount. You’ve got a point, but that seems like a, a profound, a leap of, of faith. I think there’s a difference fundamentally between people who go to college and frankly, people I’m not saying
Mark Kantrowitz:
Send everyone to college. I’m saying people are college capable of benefiting from college. Provide them with the resources. They need to afford a college education. Right now you have college capable, low income students who don’t go to college because of the chilling effect, a student won’t debt. If you had a borrow more than your parents earning a year to pay for your college education, you’d think twice about going to college. Even if you’ve got the academic chops to be able to benefit ’em from a college education and wealthy students who are least college capable enrolling college at six times, the rate of highly qualified, low income students. So we are not investing in our best resource, which is our people at an adequate level, we need to do more to ensure that college capable, low income students are able to enroll in college and graduate from college. If that’s what they want to do. I’m not saying that someone who flunked out of high school, I mean, should go to college. I mean, maybe they need to go back to high school and, and get their education. Or maybe they that’s. Education is not the right pursuit for them, but there are plenty of people who could benefit from college, but don’t because it costs too much.
Joe Selvaggi:
But if, again, I don’t wanna keep beating this to death, but if we say we’re, when we invest in college, we’re investing with the expectation that it will improve our future earnings to the degree that we’ll be able to comfortably pay our, our college back. Right. So if it provided no value, it would be no, there would be no value in going to college. You might challenge that statement, but let, let’s just stipulate that it ought to deliver some return to the person who receives the education. And I think you would agree with that. But what you’re saying now is that college is inherently good. We should send everyone or who wants to go, or who is, as you say, college capable, but somehow on the other end, that college degree does not empower them to pay back the loan that they incurred. In other words, it isn’t worth what they paid for. Isn’t that really a, a fundamental economic question. It’s not is something valuable, but is it worth enough value to you know, trade money for it?
Mark Kantrowitz:
Oh, and first of all, if they graduate, generally speaking, they’re able to repay their student loans. And except for the rare case where someone goes completely overboard with borrowing, you need to peg the aggregate loan limits to the expected annual income of the degree level and the academic major. The problem is people who drop out, as I said before, have the debt, but not the degree to can help them repay the debt. So we, this isn’t a issue of when people are graduating from college and don’t have the income because they picked a low paying career. And oftentimes those low paying careers give back to society. In other ways, the point is that the federal government is profiting off of college educated people. They pay more federal income tax, a greater share of federal income tax than people who don’t have a college degree.
Mark Kantrowitz:
So is the federal government paying its fair share of college costs are state governments paying their fair share of college costs, given that their profiting from increased income tax revenue. And I think the answer is no that they, and maybe in the 1970s, they were paying their fair share. But over the decades, the financial aid provided by government has shifted from grants to loans grant, every dollar grant costs of government, a dollar, every dollar of a loan yields, a small profit to the federal government. It’s a lot easier to increase aid in the form of loans than it is in the form of grants. And this has shifted the burden of paying for college increasingly from the government to the families. This is despite family income being essentially flat for the last two decades. So families are increasingly struggling to pay for college.
Mark Kantrowitz:
Now, the only form of financial aid with any degree of elasticity is loans cause and their, their income is hasn’t changed. So they either have to send to a lower cost college. And that’s not just from private colleges to public colleges. It’s from four year colleges to two year colleges, two year to one year and one year to no postsecondary education or they have to borrow more. And that’s why we see very steady increases in the average debt graduation and the total student loan debt outstanding. And that’s because the government is not caring, its fair share of the cost.
Joe Selvaggi:
Hmm. I’m not sure I follow that logic, but it seems to me that you, you, you wanna serve that the government needs college education more than the individual. No,
Mark Kantrowitz:
It’s a partnership. It’s a partnership. Part of it gets paid back by the student. Part of it gets paid back by the government and the government still comes out ahead financially, when you look at the impact on federal income tax revenue from getting these students to the finish line.
Joe Selvaggi:
But so does the student you know,
Joe Selvaggi:
It’s but a pub, you know, again, we don’t wanna do a economic degree here, but you know, public good is not, it’s good for the public it’s non-rival non-excludable that sounds like a private good, not a public good. If I go to college and get a PhD benefits me. Sure. I’ll pay more in taxes in my life, but I should be able, willing to pay for what I, I, what I consumed or what I, what I gave to myself. I mean, why not? Why privilege education? Why not give subsidies for people to become again you know electricians, why, why privileged, you know, academics?
Mark Kantrowitz:
I’m not saying that they shouldn’t pay anything for their degree. I’m just saying that the federal government doesn’t pay its share based on its the its share of the benefit and the, the federal government needs to do the, the people who need forgiveness are the people who through often through no fault of their own have are unable to repay the student loan debt. Maybe they got that PhD trained to be a rocket scientist. And the day after graduation, they’re in a car accident and they’re are paraplegic and they can no longer do the job for which they’re trained. That’s why we have a disability discharge just saying, oh, I mean, people should have to pay the entire cost of their college education. Even though the government is also financially benefiting that’s, doesn’t really make sense. The government benefits, the borrower benefits, the student benefits both should be contributing to the cost of that education.
Mark Kantrowitz:
And from the governance point of view, if it were to invest a little more in making college more affordable, it would increase the number of people with college degrees and therefore increase its net federal income tax revenue after subtracting the cost of the getting the students to graduate. And that could benefit the rest of society in two ways, either government has more money. And if you think the government spends its money wisely, it would have more money to spend on programs that benefit society, or it could reduce the taxes that everybody pays because it’s getting more revenue either way. There’s a benefit to the rest of society, not just the individual who got that college degree.
Joe Selvaggi:
All right. We’re I think we’re gonna have to disagree here because I think the, that logic take to it, logical conclusion is, you know, I pay property packs for my house. So the go, the government should subsidize my, my home purchase. I, you know, I mean, I arguably it does for, for mortgages and I, I might take issue with that, but we’re gonna have to disagree, but I appreciate you’ve given this a lot of thought. And you know, I think you’ve given our there’s something to think about and I enjoy a good a good lively conversation like this. So Mark, I want you to be able to plug your services those people who are persuaded by your arguments over our conversation, would like to find you and perhaps ask for your help and best ways to pay for school. How can our listeners find you?
Mark Kantrowitz:
I don’t do paid consultation with families and sometimes people find me and send me a question. And sometimes I’ll answer that, I get far more questions than I have time available to answer. I have a website where I have my student aid policy papers, that’s studentaidpolicy.com. I write for the college investor website. I also write for forbes.com and I’ll soon be starting up a Q and A column that will be published by the Wall Street Journal.
Joe Selvaggi:
Yes, I went on your website. You have I don’t know, hundreds of articles that are all very carefully reasoned and, and supported by data. So I, I do recommend your your website to our listeners. So Mark, thank you very much for sharing your analysis with us. I enjoyed our conversation today.
Mark Kantrowitz:
You’re welcome.
Joe Selvaggi:
This has been another episode of Hubwonk, a podcast of Pioneer Institute. If you enjoy today’s episode, there are several ways to support the show and pioneer Institute. It would be easier for you and better for us. If you subscribe to Hubwonk on your iTunes podcast, catcher, it would make it easier for others to find Hubwonk. If you offer a five star rating or a favored review, we’re always grateful. If you share Hubwonk with friends, if you have idea is or comments or suggestions for me for future episode topics, you’re welcome to email me at hubwonk@pioneerinstitute.org. Please join me next week for a new episode of Hubwonk.
Recent Episodes
This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Karina Calderon, deputy director of The Lawrence Partnership, about her work to help immigrant entrepreneurs drive economic growth in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The Lawrence Partnership is a collaboration of business and civic leaders started in 2015 that helps by incubating, training, assisting, loaning, basically doing everything they and their partners can to grow the city’s businesses. The model they’ve adopted is replicable for sure, and is one based on longstanding relationships and trust between new and longtime residents. Karina explains how it works, shares some of the success stories of their immigrant small business owners, and details her own immigration story, as you’ll learn in this week’s JobMakers.
Guest:
Karina Calderon, a native of the Dominican Republic, is Deputy Director of The Lawrence Partnership. She received formal training as an IT Technician and was three years into a degree as an architect at the Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra prior to making the journey to the United States in pursuit of more opportunities for herself and her young daughter. Like so many aspiring first-generation immigrants, Karina brought with her a basic grasp of the English language, limited personal networks, and a whole lot of ambition, resilience and work ethic. Those ingredients have proven a successful combination. Karina applied her skills to the health care distribution industry, starting with Conlin’s Pharmacy and Home Medical Equipment in 2012. Karina grew with the company and ultimately helped establish a new role managing referrals and partnerships. In addition to her professional accomplishments, Karina always kept close to heart the idea that education is the key that opens all doors. While working full time and raising a family, she continued her education, gaining formal education in Computer Drafting and Design as well as a degree from the Business Transfer Associates program at Northern Essex Community College.
Read a Transcript of This Episode
Please excuse typos.
Denzil Mohammed:
I’m Denzil Mohammed and welcome to Jobmakers.
Denzil Mohammed:
The City of Lawrence, Massachusetts is one we’ve talked about before. Why? Well, out of its 90,000 strong population, 40.8% is far born and more than 80% identify as Hispanic or Latino. According to the immigrant learning center, it has the third highest concentration of immigrants in the entire Commonwealth and its buzzing with immigrant entrepreneurs for Karina Calderon, deputy director of The Lawrence Partnership, a collaboration of business and civic leaders started in 2015 to help grow businesses in a way that benefits all its residents, that immigrant entrepreneurship is the engine driving the growth of the city. She and the Lawrence partnership are tasked with incubated training, assisting loaning, basically doing everything they and their partners can to grow the city’s businesses. The model they’ve adopted is replicable for sure. And is one based on long standing relationships and trust between new and longtime residents. Karina explains how it works, share some of the success stories of the immigrant small business owners and these hails, her own immigration story of making it in the states by herself. As you learn in this week’s job makers, Karina Calderon, deputy director of The Lawrence Partnership, how are you? Welcome to Jobmakers!
Karina Calderon:
Thank you I’m very good. Thank you. I’m very happy to be here. Thank you for the invitation.
Denzil Mohammed:
So tell us a little bit about The Lawrence Partnership. It’s a fairly new initiative and it’s all about making Lawrence bigger and brighter and better, right?
Karina Calderon:
It is for sure. So The Lawrence Partnership, it came out of a collaboration of the private sector, the public sector and also the nonprofit sector. So we have a very robust board of directors of 30 to 32 leaders, local leaders that are executive directors, presidents, CEOs of local and big companies that are here in Lawrence. They saw a need of coming together and in working towards creating an inclusive economic development for the city of Lawrence.
Denzil Mohammed:
And what does inclusive economic development look like?
Karina Calderon:
Well so we do that through different initiatives. And I can tell you a few of them. So, you know, how I told you that we have a very robust board of directors, some of them are residents of different banks in the area. And something that they did was that the, the, the bankers in our board, they came together and they invited some other banks also local to to come and put together a fund. So we can, and it was it’s called a venture loan fund. And the, the idea of this fund is to be able to provide loans to businesses, small businesses that are considered non bankable. So if a small business owner needs a loan goes to bank bank X, Y, Z, which is a huge bank and they get denied. They can go to our venture loan fund and apply for a loan there.
Karina Calderon:
And the main interest of our bankers is to inject this money into the community and help the small businesses with the needs that they have. So what they did was they each came with about a hundred thousand dollars. And right now we have a $1.1 million venture load fund. And until date, if I’m not mistaken, I know that we have learned a little bit more, but last time that I checked that I had a, an actual report, it was about $600,000 that we had put out industries to the small businesses since last summer when we relaunched the venture loan fund. So that’s a way for us to, to create that inclusive economic development. That’s one of the initiatives that it’s, that it’s big on that. Another initiative that we also have, it’s called a revolving test kitchen. It is, it started as a sh as an incubator.
Karina Calderon:
So it started as a it was a collaboration between Sal Lupoli who had a restaurant actually in our building four 20 common street Northern Essex community college, the Lawrence partnership, and also the city of Lawrence. Sal had that restaurant there. It didn’t work out for him. It wasn’t a Sal’s Pizza or anything like that. It had a different name. So then Northern Essex who rented the building, told them like, Sal, you have that space there with all that equipment, let’s do something about it. So we came together and we were able to give this space for, to a food entrepreneur that wanted to taste his recipes, test, his business plan. And we gave him the, the space for a year, so they could run it as a restaurant. They didn’t have to worry about overhead or anything like that.
Karina Calderon:
They did have to pay $500 a month, which if they, by the time that they were done with their one year period, if they opened a brick and mortar in the city of Lawrence, they would get all their money back. So we did that for three years. It was a successful program. Also let me just say that, let me just add that besides, you know, using the space and, and that help with the rent and stuff like that. They also got technical assistance. So the team from Sal Lupoli was, you know giving them some pointers and education on certain areas that they needed help with, like setting prices, you know, cost of good salt and things like that. The city facilitated them getting certain licenses that they need in order to operate their business. So it was a true collaboration. So, like I said, three years, we did that three successful businesses came out of their CocoRay’s, in south Lawrence, Encanto, who ended up opening a food truck. And then Bocaditos who decided after that she wanted to do safe surf classes is in Spanish for, for the Hispanic community. So three success stories each on their own way.
Denzil Mohammed:
This does sound very, very collaborative. And I, and when you introduce the ideas of, you know, getting licenses and permits and that kind of thing, that is, you know, especially for immigrant entrepreneurs who are not familiar with the system and need that kind of technical support, that’s really important.
Karina Calderon:
About two, three weeks ago, we had an event. We called it how to start a business and expand it in the city of Lawrence. And we were very intentional because, you know you may know that about 80, the 90% of this community is Hispanic. So we were very intentional about making this event in Spanish. And we had trans simultaneous translation services inside. So people could feel comfortable because if there’s something that is true, is that I feel like people get to trust you a little bit more when they, when you are speaking their, their same language, you know, they feel more comfortable. The walls come down, we had two panels. The first one was different business owners, local business owners talking about their experiences, giving tips, what worked for them, what didn’t, you know, things like that to inspire the entrepreneurs that were there, watching them and listening to their stories.
Karina Calderon:
So they can know that, you know, there’s a, a light at the end of the tunnel. And then the second panel, it was organizations like ours. Like I said, Mill cities, community investments entrepreneurship for all Merrimack valley planning commission, which is like a, like a Hispanic chamber type of organization. They were there. And also the city of Lawrence, they were there talking about the resources that there are available for business owners. And it’s unbelievable the lack of information that it’s out there. It’s, it’s a huge challenge. People are not aware of the resources and some resources are going untapped because not everybody has access or not even, they don’t even know about their existence. I learned about a few things there, myself.
Denzil Mohammed:
It almost seems as though immigration was a key, played a key role in the model of the partnership, because you had to rec reconcile with and recognize that their language barriers, because these are new Americans and, you know, immigrants learn English over time that it, it happens. But at the start, when they need to get a leg up speaking their own language literally is, you know, as you said, Bill’s trust, but I wanna ask this, this is happening now. You said you, the partnership started in 2014. Why did it take so long for something like this to happen,
Karina Calderon:
But you relationships, they take time to build that trust. It takes time. So I think that possibly, maybe that had a, a, a little bit of a factor. But we are not being shy now, before I remember we didn’t take credit for anything. We would do the work. We would, you know, we would work with a group of partners. We would do the work, we would roll up our sleeves, do the work, and we didn’t need to take credit. Not that we’re doing it now, but we’re just doing it a little differently because we do want people to know that the Lawrence partnership is here and it’s very important. You know, it goes back to trust that the, they don’t only know that they’re, that we’re here, but that they see that the people that say we are a team of three George Ramirez, my, the executive director myself, and then our new star Giro. And it’s important that when they see us, they see they can, they can picture cells because we look like them. We are here because we care about the community and the community. We look like them, they look like us. We are one and we are in our priority is to, to bring this community forward.
Denzil Mohammed:
And I imagine, of course, that’s not just the Hispanic community that, that you’re reaching out to. It’s, it’s everyone,
Karina Calderon:
Everyone, exactly. Everyone. And, and thankfully we can navigate, you know, in, in the different cultures. So, and, and we have partners also like, like I told you, you know, we’re not doing, we’re not necessarily doing this alone. So we’re, we’re one is slacking. The other one is compensating. So I’m not worried.
Denzil Mohammed:
And you mentioned entrepreneurship for all a really, really fantastic initiative. I see that there, even in north, Northwest Arkansas now, yes. Started by Desh Deshpande, who’s also a big legend in the Merrimack valley area, legendary entrepreneur. So what does the landscape in Lawrence look like today?
Karina Calderon:
So right now, let’s say we have a group that is working in revitalizing the downtown of Lawrence. We have Beau this beautiful flower pots on every corner, beautifying the streets. We have building owners working on the facades of, of their buildings on Essex street, trying to make it more appealing and more inviting for people to feel comfortable and come to, to, to Essex street and to Lawrence in general. We have great restaurants. So I hear some people that they say we wanna make Lawrence the mecca of food. I’m like, yeah, sure. Bring it on. Let’s make it happen. And, and we have people that are working on that. We also have huge companies local companies that are, you know, affecting the economy positively. We have Gemline, Able Womack, and then both of them in industrial park and New Balance, it’s also here in Lawrence very committed to the city and in helping it succeed.
Denzil Mohammed:
I like the idea of like a destination city for food because Malden, Massachusetts ha is that at it, it takes, we take so much pride in the fact that we have such a variety of restaurants and just so many of them, you can get pho, you can get Thai food, you can get Mexican food, everything, a new Ramen place just opened up on Pleasant street. And you talk, you talked about Essex street, which of course is like main street in Lawrence mm-hmm <affirmative> mm-hmm
Karina Calderon:
<Affirmative>.
Denzil Mohammed:
So tell me about the role of immigrants in the economic development of Lawrence overall, especially those immigrant business owners.
Karina Calderon:
I think that they are the one running the city. A lot of our businesses are immigrants, sometimes non-English speaking. And I have to, to give some kudos to our partner, Entrepreneurship for all, cuz you know, they have, they have a Spanish version of their program. And, and sometimes I’ve seen reports of the work they do and they, they would tell you so many immigrants and it’s like 93 out of hundred <laugh> mm-hmm <affirmative>, it’s, it’s a big number. And these are people that they’re hungry. You know, they want to succeed. They came here because they had a dream and they, this is the, the, the land of opportunities. That’s what I was told before I came, before I moved to this, to this country. And, and that’s how I see it. And many people see it like that. So yes, more immigrants are, the ones are the, the small, the, the small business community in Lawrence, for sure.
Denzil Mohammed:
That’s, that’s fascinating and a very, very important point. And you said that they’re hungry. They come here with a desire with a yearning, they have to succeed and they’re inherently entrepreneurial. Just the fact that they moved to another country, not knowing if it’s gonna be better or worse is itself an entrepreneurial act
Karina Calderon:
Exactly.
Denzil Mohammed:
Really inherently entrepreneurial. And I’m glad that the city of Lawrence is really capitalizing on that and optimizing it to the benefit of the entire community. And you just mentioned that you came here from another country as well. What is your impression story?
Karina Calderon:
So I am Dominican. I was born and raised in Dominican Republic. I came to spend the summer in Hampton Beach because I was in college there. I was going to architect school and they had this program where college students could come for the summer, spend the summer, work, you know, practice the language and then go back home. So I came in 2002. And then in 2002-03, my mom told me when I was getting ready to go back home, she goes, why don’t you stay and try to open doors for us. Things are a little rough here.
Denzil Mohammed:
Mm
Karina Calderon:
Mom, are you serious? Like, I don’t, I don’t have anybody here. I don’t.
Denzil Mohammed:
And she, and you’re just a kid
Karina Calderon:
22 years old.
Denzil Mohammed:
Yeah, exactly.
Karina Calderon:
But it happened at the right time because, let me tell you, if it happened to me now, I don’t think I would’ve had the same energy and the same drive. So so I stayed with some friends that I made along the way, and I, a lot of things have happened that that’s another story for another day, but I am so glad because those ups and downs that I went through, helped me to be where I am today. And this is not even my final destination just yet. There’s still much more to be done. But I am so grateful for the community that welcome me. I have no family here. It’s just me and my two daughters, but I have a great network of friends of colleagues. So I’m for what the city has done for me. And, and I think that it’s only, it’s only right, that I keep doing the same thing for the city.
Denzil Mohammed:
Perfectly said very, very well said. That’s incredible. And to think that, I mean, people take for granted how hard it is as an adult, especially to learn a whole new language, a whole new culture, all the different laws. And you’re embedded in all the licensing and credentialing and permitting and all these different things. What is a credit score? You know, what is that? So many things to learn and you I’m, I’m, I’m so pleased that you choose you chose to stay with your mother’s encouragement. Mm-Hmm and <affirmative>, how does it feel for you knowing how difficult it would’ve been back in the Dominican Republic to have your daughters grow up in Lauren? So, and in the United States,
Karina Calderon:
I feel very appreciative and very blessed. If my daughters would be here, they would be rolling their eyes. Because one thing that I used to tell them since they were very little was, and they would like verbatim and repeat, repeat it as I was saying it, because I said it so long. So, I mean, I said it so many times that I would, I used to tell them like, listen, cuz my oldest one, she was born in Dominican Republic. So, you know, immigrant, the little one was born here, but I told her like, listen, we came to this country to be the best version of ourselves to take advantage of those opportunities that they give us and work with them and be the best version of ourselves. Because back home, we didn’t have that, you know, the education we don’t, we were blessed back home, at least my family that I did have access to an education, but many people didn’t have the same luxury.
Karina Calderon:
So to come here and see that anybody, as long as they want it, they can have that education. I know that there are their challenges because you know, not everything is easy, then you have to have some skin in the game. I just told them, let you know, let’s, let’s be that let’s be the best versions that we can be. And and I’m just grateful that I, I never thought that I would end up here. Like I told you, I, I came for a summer to have fun with my friends and make some money and bring it back home and, and to end up here and make my life here and, and to live in this community that it’s home now, it’s, it’s wonderful.
Denzil Mohammed:
You’re and you’re having an impact. <Laugh>, you’re having an impact on the CF Lawrence and beyond. And I hope others, municipal workers are listening into this to, to really realize how important these partnerships and these relationships are toward a more inclusive economic situation, wherever they are. You have to get everyone’s, you know, everyone needs to be at the table, whether they’re new or old and the new tend to be that hungry, those hungry people who, who will take that risk and start to exactly and try it out and hopefully end up being successful. Karina Kran off the Lawrence partnership. Thank you so much for joining us on job makers.
Karina Calderon:
Thank you. It was a pleasure.
Denzil Mohammed:
Jobmakers is a weekly podcast about immigrant entrepreneurship and contribution produced by Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston, and the Immigrant Learning Center in Malden, Massachusetts, a not for profit that gives immigrants a voice. Thank you for joining us for this week’s powerful story of immigrant entrepreneurship. Remember, you can subscribe to Jobmakers on Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And please give us some stars. I’m Denzil Mohammed, see you next Thursday at noon for another Jobmakers.
Recent Episodes:
This week on “The Learning Curve,” co-hosts Cara Candal and Gerard Robinson talk with Dr. Wilfried Schmid, Dwight Parker Robinson Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University, who played a major role in drafting the 2000 Massachusetts Mathematics Curriculum Framework and served on the U.S. National Mathematics Advisory Panel (NMAP) in 2008. Dr. Schmid shares how he became interested in mathematics, and how it was taught and encouraged in the German schools he attended. He also talks about his academic career at Harvard, his teaching experiences there and at other elite universities, and the wide disparities in the level of academic math preparation between students from America and other countries. Professor Schmid explains how he became interested in K-12 mathematics, and his work with education expert Dr. Sandra Stotsky in drafting Massachusetts’ nation-leading math standards. They discuss the “math wars” that occurred across American K-12 education, and why, even after the landmark NMAP report, this country continues to struggle with teaching students basic mathematics.
Stories of the Week: In Texas, teachers who choose to resign during the school year are being stripped of their professional certification. US News & World Report’s annual ranking of top high schools is out, and the latest list features several from Massachusetts, including Boston’s exam and charter public schools, as well as wealthy suburban districts.
Guest:
Dr. Wilfried Schmid is Dwight Parker Robinson Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University. He’s a leader in the representation theory of Lie groups and gave the first construction of the discrete series and proved Blattner’s conjecture. Professor’s Schmid’s work on Hodge theory has produced wide-ranging applications. In 1960, Schmid entered the undergraduate program at Princeton University, graduating with an A.B. in mathematics. He received his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1967 from the University of California at Berkeley. After three years as an assistant professor at Berkeley, he became professor of mathematics at Columbia University. He moved to Harvard University in 1978. In addition to his research interests, he became involved in K-12 mathematics education, after a disturbing incident in his daughter’s second grade class. Professor Schmid played a major role in the drafting of the 2000 Massachusetts Mathematics Curriculum Framework, and served on the U.S. National Mathematics Advisory Panel in 2008.
The next episode will air on Weds., May 4th, with Dr. Eric Hanushek, the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. He is internationally recognized for his economic analysis of educational issues, and he received the Yidan Prize for Education Research in 2021.
Tweet of the Week:
"Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated," said Mr. Musk. https://t.co/AMabwvVdQc
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) April 25, 2022
News Links:
The Boston Globe: Here’s A Look at Top Ranked Massachusetts High Schools According 2022 US News & World Report
Texas Tribune: Amid a teacher shortage, some Texas educators are losing their licenses for quitting during the school year
Read a Transcript of This Episode
Please excuse typos.
[00:00:00] Cara: Hello listeners. Welcome to another edition of The Learning Curve. It is your Wednesday, which means it’s time for Gerard and I to shoot the breeze. Talk about education and interview somebody really cool. Gerard, how you doing today?
[00:00:43] GR: I’m doing well in wet, wonderful Charlottesville. When we spoke last week, I believe it was in the eighties.
[00:00:49] I was working on my tan and that is not what I’m doing today, but glad to be with you always, it’s always a sunny day, one way or another. Yeah.
[00:00:58] Cara: You always bring [00:01:00] sunshine to my day. It’s rainy here too. I have to say though, lately I’ve been thinking we must both be really old. Cause we liked talking about the.
[00:01:09] Do you realize I’m like, can I talk about the weather? Like the first thing I do in the morning is like, Hey, Google, what’s the weather today. used to always like criticize my father for watching the weather channel constantly. And now I get it. So kind of scary. Oh, Google’s talking to me.
[00:01:25] I just want everybody to know if you heard that in the background she answered. We’re not even going to cut that out. have a question for you as I open this week, given your vast experience. I would like to know how much stock you put in these things called us news and world report rankings, whether it’s rankings of schools, rankings of colleges, , where do you stand on the rankings
[00:01:54] GR: business?
[00:01:55] In a scale of one to 10, I put an eight [00:02:00] because I know deans at different professional schools who use that as a. To figure out what they can do to go up one or two points. So personally I have seen it make a big difference for me. When I was looking at grad schools, it made a difference. And then third, I take an example from Northeastern university I had a president several years ago who moved the school, like 40 points. Of the U S news world report ranking. And there was an entire story on it because the president decided to be a data-driven person. So for me, it’s an eight for others may be.
[00:02:39] Cara: All right.
[00:02:40] Okay. Yeah, I know. I mean, it’s sort of controversial, but I feel like in my opinion, so, you know, folks that use it, but I feel like the public sort of wakes up to this stuff too. So whether we think that the rankings are fair or not, or we like the algorithm that the user, whatever is. It’s something that gets a lot of attention.
[00:02:57] And I think that that’s important. And I bring this up because [00:03:00] this morning and the Boston globe is an article about the fact that the 2022 rankings for the best high schools in the country is out. And I got to tell you, was drawn immediately to it. I texted our producer, Jamie gas early in the morning.
[00:03:14] Cause I was trying to think of like, of all the stories that can talk about this week. And this one for me brings together some stuff that had been thinking about both nationally, but also. Going to get a little Massachusetts centric for a minute. So in this article, it highlights that the states with the best high schools, by many measures, right, like performance and, , AP access and all these things are of course, number one, let’s always pat ourselves on the back.
[00:03:37] We are Massachusetts. Connecticut and number three, which drum roll Massachusetts people. Don’t like to hear Florida just consistently. And I’m sure it’s because you were chief there at one point. But th you know, Florida is this state that doesn’t matter what ranking you’re looking at.
[00:03:55] There are a couple states that are consistently moving up in these measures, [00:04:00] right? Here’s the same, of course, being who I am. I home right in on Massachusetts. And I want to see, so what are the best school districts? What are the schools that really stand out? Gerard? It’s not going to surprise you to know, but boy did it really make me angry to know the best high schools in the state of Massachusetts break down along these lines.
[00:04:23] And I’m talking here top 20 broad-stroke. Don’t worry. I’m not going to go through all of them. They are the exam schools in the Boston public schools and kiss your brain. Cause I’m going to talk about, I’m going to rant about that in just a minute. They are number two. Charter schools in Boston. Mainly there are a couple that are not, but charter schools just predominantly factored into these best high school ratings.
[00:04:48] And they are wealthy suburban districts, which in Massachusetts, Maine, they start with a w usually because it’s Western and Wellesley. Actually [00:05:00] Lexington made it in there, but here’s the thing that really gets me Gerard. So in people listening, who are in states with magnet schools and exam schools, I’m not saying that they’re a bad thing.
[00:05:09] I think they can be a great thing, but here in the city of Boston, as I’ve talked about previously, and we had a good friend, Charlie Chippewan to talk about this as well, we have been just trained to bang the drum about these huge disparity. That exists within the district. Right? So this got me to thinking, I’m going to pull up the M cast results in that’s our state test for what was cited as like the best high school in basically the country, but certainly in Massachusetts.
[00:05:38] And that is the Boston Latin school, which has been around since obviously the beginning of time. And it’s a very, it’s a very Boston Romany school, but this is a school, as I’ve said in the past, a lot of people will send their kids to private. pre-K. through five schools and then try and get into one of these prestigious Boston exam schools.
[00:05:56] And if you look at the results for a school like this, right, [00:06:00] an M cast scores, the students at these schools who are meeting or exceeding expectations , in Boston’s premier exams. You’re up in the 78%. You’re up in the 83%. Like these kids are knocking it out of the park. Gerard, if you look at our Boston high schools, meaning the schools that kids either they don’t test into, they get some degree of choice, but they’re mainly assigned to kids are scoring in the 28 30 range in terms of the percentage meeting or exceeding expectations.
[00:06:37] On our M cast scores. And this ties into something that I’ve been wanting to talk about because we’ve been banging the drum and saying, how can it be that there are these huge disparities within one district? And the vast majority of kids are shoved into these schools that are just drastically underperforming?
[00:06:55] Well, part of the reason is because. Oftentimes when folks say like, look [00:07:00] at the Boston public schools, they’re so great. What they’re doing is they’re factoring in the wonderful M cast scores from some of these very high performing exam schools. And Gerard, if you can’t tell this just gets under my skin to know and use this platform to talk about it again.
[00:07:20] And again. And so as much as I do appreciate us news and world report rankings, and I think that they can shine a little light on something. I think the big takeaway for me here was, wow, here. You’ve got a couple of really wealthy districts and by the way, charter school, Which are serving kids who are not coming from backgrounds, like the ones in these very wealthy districts where homes are probably the average home in a lot of these places is close to, if not above a million dollars Gerard, yet they are getting similar results in here.
[00:07:51] We are not only with charter schools on the rails. You know, we talked about this last week, not going to get federal start-up funds and stuff, but Massachusetts loves to [00:08:00] hate charter schools as well. So I just want a little bit of a. Shout out or I don’t know, just a shout maybe is what I’m doing.
[00:08:07] Some of our education leaders here in the Commonwealth to say pat yourselves on the back for some of these rankings, but pat yourselves on the back for having really excellent charter schools. And please, please, please. Can we take a hard look at the disparities within that are right in our backyard in BPS.
[00:08:22] So dread I am done. I invite you please to rebut anything that I have.
[00:08:30] GR: Question. So if Massachusetts first, Connecticut, second Florida, third where’s Virginia.
[00:08:36] Cara: Oh friend. I didn’t look that far.
[00:08:40] GR: Ah, here’s the point look that far. So let me start with a few points. What I think about rankings of high schools?
[00:08:49] I always think about my American enterprise Institute colleague, Nat Malpass and he identified that if you look at the top performing traditional [00:09:00] public schools, magnet schools, charter schools. Exam schools, others. They have a lot of things in common. One in particular is usually that one. Percent of the students are taking AP courses.
[00:09:13] So there’s already something built in, in terms of having an AP course. I mentioned that because last fall when I had an opportunity to go to a Gibbs’ national education conference in Florida, I moderated a panel that focused on looking at issues of equity and we had the current. Interim CEO for education trusts, who made a really good point, really several points.
[00:09:37] But she was saying, what are the challenges that schools that serve low income students have is they often don’t have access to a lot of AP courses. Even if the student’s bright, guess what your GPA and your transcript will look less competitive to a college. And so she was bringing in an aspect of AP we overlook.
[00:09:56] So what I think of us news and world. I think of Matt, but I [00:10:00] also think about the eight peak components. So that’s number one, number two, it’s not a shock that the best schools tend to be those that focus and work with talented students. Remember as much as people say that charter schools are public, they overlook the fact that public exam schools.
[00:10:20] In fact, many of them have tests to get in. A lot of charter schools, in fact, do not have a test to get in a number of magnet schools have a test to get in a number of charter schools do not have a test to get in. So in some ways, charter schools are actually more democratic than some of the exam and magnet schools that we compare them to.
[00:10:38] But I’m glad that. have exam schools. I’m glad we have specialty schools, but those schools are going to do well for a long time. You bring up something. We often overlook and that’s wealth and household income. The number one school choice program is where you choose to move and buy a house. And where you choose to buy a house.
[00:10:58] It’s going to impact where you go to [00:11:00] school, approximately 83% of the students and the public school sector go to a school that they’re zoned for. And so there’s a correlation between zoning income and outcomes, but let’s also give a shout out and I’m glad you gave a shout out to charter schools. Let me also give a shout out to a school in Virginia.
[00:11:17] It’s called Richmond community school. I’ll start it in the 1970s. It is the only public high school in Virginia, and one of few in the country. Dedicated to taking. Gifted students. Many of them were African-American and many of them who come from financially challenged backgrounds, you and I’ve talked on this show about how many gifted students find themselves overlook.
[00:11:41] The assumption is if you’re a gifted, you’re great. Of course everything’s made for you. We know that’s not the case because a number of gifted students also find themselves with an IEP, a 5 0 4. And we also know that many of them get lost in the shuffle. There are many gifted students who found themselves in juvenile justice facilities, as well as in [00:12:00] prison.
[00:12:00] But you have Richmond community school, which has a great college going. The number of alumni who are doing great things are wonderful. And it’s a school that proves that you can take smart students who are low income and do well. But this program also shows we look at high schools like charter schools that take students who are qualify for free reduced price lunch, but are amongst the best students in the state.
[00:12:26] It just goes to show that poverty doesn’t have to be a proxy for destiny, but we can’t overlook the. That at the end of the day, this is a game of Thrones. And depending upon who you think you are and what family you belong to, we’ll decide who’s going to serve throwing. Who’s not.
[00:12:45] So your story also get me pretty excited and I’m glad to see it out there. There are people who will say all kinds of things about it, but I tell you what, when families are looking to buy a house, they go to places like this. [00:13:00] So let me give a shout out to U S news and world report and for all the drama.
[00:13:05] For having the audacity to rank schools.
[00:13:08] Cara: There you go. Game of Thrones.
[00:13:10] GR: So my story is a little different. We’ve talked a lot about the pandemic and the impact that it’s had on teachers. We know a lot of teachers are not doing well either because of lack of support, own personal professional challenges.
[00:13:24] But one thing we don’t talk about. Is a term in the education space or we talk about contract uh, And then we, we don’t talk about it is we often don’t get into the nuance of teacher licensing. So this story is from Texas. There is a teacher who’s a second grade leader. She joined the profession six years ago and she joined the teaching profession.
[00:13:52] She’s elementary school teacher because she wanted to help students. Well, for the last two years, She’s like, wait a minute, I’m going to be teaching [00:14:00] online for quite some time. And so Stacy decided, you know, what. I’m going to do something different. I’m going to actually lead the profession and I’m going to pursue something else, but she decided I’m going to wait until the end of the school year to leave.
[00:14:17] Is that because she didn’t want to leave her students behind possibly. Is it because she didn’t want to put her principal in a bad spot? Possibly. Is it because she’s got a great. Education program to end the year, and then she will see that done. And then she will leave the professional altogether possibly.
[00:14:34] But one thing she also said is that if I leave in the middle of the school year, I may find my license revoked. And so she’s like, I’m not going to do it. But Stacy is one example. At the same time, she decided to stay in the profession, guests. Over 500 teachers have decided to leave. And in responsive being in the middle of the school year, there’ve been at least [00:15:00] 471 claims filed with the state board of education certification in Texas to say, My teacher left in the middle of the school year.
[00:15:10] He or she broke their contract or contract abandonment. But what does that mean? Well, at least in the state of Texas, they created in 1995, a state board for educator certification and the legislature actually created it because they want it to recognize school educators. As professionals and they wanted to grant educated, the authority to prove and move forward with standards.
[00:15:35] The board has 15 members, 11 are voting members appointed by the governor to six year terms for our classroom teachers. One’s a counselor to our administrators and for citizens, there are four non-voting members who also serve on the board. The governor appoints a Dean of education and a person who has experience working with.
[00:15:55] Alternative education programs, the commission of education appoints a [00:16:00] staff member from the Texas education agency, their state board commissioner of higher education appoints a staff member as well. So they make the decision when they receive a claim from an independent school district, they say, you know what drawer left the profession is.
[00:16:16] The middle of the school year. And he did so without cost or better yet with good calls now in the state of Texas. Good cause means you can leave the profession without punishment, meaning loss of your certification, if it’s for health reasons, or if the spouse is getting a job in a different city, or if you’re even going to transfer schools within the state.
[00:16:37] But if you’re leaving for as some teachers. Health challenges. Some are leaving because they’ve gotten fed up with the way things are going, right now that does not fall under the good cause claim. And so you have attorneys who are working in Texas, who said, they’ve, haven’t seen in number of years, this many people leaving the [00:17:00] profession and some of them are leaving nor are they going to lose their license.
[00:17:04] Which means at least in Texas, if you lose your license, there’s the least one. Where you can’t teach and if you do so in the middle of the year is a good chance you can lose one academic year and half of the other. But according to the reporter, some of the teachers said, I simply don’t. I’m not coming back to the profession, I’m fed up and I’m leaving.
[00:17:24] So there are a couple of takeaways for the listeners. Number one, if you want to learn more about contract abandonment and reasons why people are leaving the profession, in this case, your. State board of education certification in Texas is one example in other states that information or that authority is under the department of education.
[00:17:46] So take a look there because when people are leaving and they’re leaving for different reasons, number two, if state legislatures are thinking about ways of. Keeping a teachers in the profession. Maybe we have to give some thought [00:18:00] to what includes good costs do we put in frustration? Well, maybe not.
[00:18:05] that’s a contractual challenge, but maybe we should broaden the definition to give teachers an opportunity to say, you know, I’m going to leave for a year, but I want to come back and I’d like to come back and teach, but I just need time off. So, one of the few stories, we’ve had an opportunity to talk about regulation and law, but it’s something that I found interesting and interested in getting your thoughts on.
[00:18:27] In fact, I should mention this as well. You could also have your license suspended and not taken away. So there’s also that option. I’ll stop
[00:18:35] Cara: there. I would just say real quick, Gerard, that, what’s amazing to me about this is in a time when everybody’s thinking, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, teacher pipelines, what are we going to do to attract teachers?
[00:18:46] And some are thinking about retention, but most of the new laws we’re seeing are all about pipeline and growing new teachers. And I love this idea that we need to think about making the profession more sustainable for people and. [00:19:00] Troublesome that it took a pandemic to get us there. we could go on about this for quite a while, but you know, Gerard, we’ve got a phenomenal guest actually waiting in the wings for us here.
[00:19:11] So we are going to be talking really quick, coming up with Dr. Wilfried Schmid and he is the Dwight Parker, Robinson emeritus professor of mathematics at Harvard university. So let’s try and put our math caps on. Mine’s not very big, Gerard. It’s not, it’s going to be. Anyway, coming up right after this.
[00:19:53] Learning curve listeners, please help me welcome Dr. Wilfried Schmid. He is the Dwight Parker Robinson professor of mathematics [00:20:00] at Harvard university. He’s a leader in the representation theory of light groups and gave the first construction of the discreet series, improved Blattner conjecture in a minute.
[00:20:09] He’s going to, I hope. Tell me what all. Professor Schmid’s work on Hodge theory has produced wide ranging applications. In 1960. Schmid entered the undergraduate program at Princeton university, graduating with an AB in mathematics. He received his PhD in mathematics in 1967 from the university of California at Berkeley.
[00:20:29] After three years, as an assistant professor. He became professor of mathematics at Columbia university. He moved to Harvard university in 1978. In addition to his research interest, became involved in K-12 mathematics education after a disturbing incident in his daughter’s second grade class professor Schmid went on to play a major role in the drafting of the 2000 Massachusetts mathematics curriculum framework and served on the U S national mathematics advisory.
[00:20:58] In 2008 [00:21:00] Professor Schmid, welcome to the Learning Curve. We’re very happy to have you. And I am curious to know about the experience with your daughter that led you into drafting the mathematics standards for Massachusetts, but let’s, start with you first because you grew up in Germany and you have obviously had a remarkable academic career here in the U S could you talk a little bit about your interest in mathematics at a young age and how you were taught math in German schools?
[00:21:30] Dr Schmid: Well, there are some significant differences between German and us schools beginning in grade five. There were three different school types in Germany, the least ambitious, and these prepared students continued to go to the same school that had attended before for an additional five years in the middle.
[00:21:51] We’re students who went into professions that required better preparation. They attended separate schools that [00:22:00] went up to grade 10. If I recall correctly. And the top level schools were staffed by teachers who taught only two or three subjects for a total of 13 years of schooling. These top level schools provided preparation, FireEye education.
[00:22:16] Teachers at these top level schools were trained at universities, followed by a period of two or three years as apprentice teachers and even teachers at the two lower levels of schools tended to be better prepared than beginning teachers in the us, all my male teachers, and most of my teachers were indeed male.
[00:22:37] I had returned from world war two and prisoner of war camps. That experience tended to make them more tolerant of dissent from students. I certainly argued with my teachers in ways that would not be tolerated by us teachers. My father was a professor of Latin and Greek, and so I attended to school. [00:23:00] That emphasize the teaching of Latin and ancient Greek mathematics was very much an afterthought, but nonetheless mathematics was taught well, in general, one of my parents’ neighbors was the most prominent mathematician in Germany at that time.
[00:23:17] And , when he heard that, I did not think I learned enough mathematics in school. That mathematician gave me private lessons that was truly a remarkable, most prominent German mathematician, volunteering to offer mathematics lessons to a high school student. To some extent I became intensely interested in mathematics as a result of that experience.
[00:23:40] Cara: That’s really quite amazing to have such a prominent mathematician as a tutor. So you’ve got , your own international experience, but you have taught here at Harvard and other. Universities. And you’ve already given us a hint as to the differences [00:24:00] between the system you grew up in and the American system.
[00:24:02] I think it’s really interesting that you could dialogue with your teachers in Germany and didn’t have the same experience here. Can you talk a little bit about. Comparatively at a place like Harvard, for example, what you see in terms of preparation, academic preparation, coming from students from other countries versus the students who are by every definition, elite who were admitted to Harvard.
[00:24:25] Can you talk about the differences in what you see?
[00:24:27] Dr Schmid: first of all, you mentioned Russia and I believe their school system was similar to the Germans. Thing report did an excellent job in teaching students, by making teaching a revered and very well paid profession, the Singapore ministry of education and trust that the writing of textbooks to the most experienced teachers and those Singapore textbooks are ex.
[00:24:54] By tradition in China. Teaching is a deeply valued [00:25:00] profession. Indian society is highly stratified and the Indian students we see in the U S typically come from has that very, that value of education.
[00:25:11] Cara: it’s fascinating that you can locate those differences. Now I mentioned at the outset that you had an experience at your daughter’s school that prompted you to really look at. K to 12 mathematics standards and curriculum. I would love for you to describe for our listeners what that experience was.
[00:25:34] And then can you talk a little bit about the experience of, I mean, this is in the year 2000, so Massachusetts was sort of on the leading edge of states that were even thinking about curriculum standards. This was new at the time. states had them, they certainly weren’t putting them to good use. So I’m curious about how you got there, the experience that led you to this work, and then what the work itself was like.
[00:25:55] Dr Schmid: Well, at that time I lived in Lincoln, [00:26:00] Massachusetts, my wife and I chose to live in Lincoln in part because the Lincoln school. At the highest per capita student spending in Massachusetts, it was also politically liberal.
[00:26:15] GR: My wife and I
[00:26:16] Dr Schmid: assumed that these attributes would make for good schools to some extent that was the case,
[00:26:22] GR: but not in math.
[00:26:24] Dr Schmid: In grades K through five, the Lincoln schools had chosen the program called. Investigations in numbers, data and states that program, the stand, the learning of what are called number facts purposely admitting the teaching of wrong addition and multiplication algorithms and relied heavily on so-called manipulatives.
[00:26:49] That means tiles measuring pictures, measuring tapes. I should say that I was dissatisfied with the Lincoln schools, [00:27:00] mostly because of the K through five mathematics program, the Crimson, the Harvard student newspaper published an op-ed piece that I had written in which I criticized the teaching of math and the Lincoln school.
[00:27:15] Then the New York times published a very long article in K through 12 education that also mentioned my disagreement with the Lincoln case were five schools that brought me to the attention of other mathematicians who are interested in K through 12 mathematics education. At the time, , the Massachusetts mathematic standards.
[00:27:38] Which is a document that describes what should be taught in various grades, where to be a revived. The committee of Massachusetts teachers had written a first draft in line with the ideas of the so-called reform curriculum, including investigations and numbers, data.
[00:27:59] [00:28:00] Start ski at the deputy commissioner of education. And to a lesser extent, the Massachusetts commissioner of education, David Driskell were unhappy with the drops. They contacted a Stanford mathematician, James milligram, who had been very heavily involved in the California. Which proceeded the Massachusetts not force.
[00:28:28] you suggested that start ski and Driscoll contact me. They did. And it asked me to revise the first draft of their Massachusetts curriculum frame.
[00:28:38] GR: Well, let’s take the math wars discussion, just a step further. So when you were working on Massachusetts state standards at this time, We’ve got to remember that there were very unique features about mathematics standards in that state that not only led the state to being a national leader on NAPE going back to [00:29:00] 2005, but it also became really the only state that globally could compete on an international level as related to science and math testing, including Tim’s and PISA.
[00:29:11] Talk to us about the math wars, both sides of the fence. How you were able to help Massachusetts achieve global success?
[00:29:20] Dr Schmid: Well, to be fair to the math education reformers, whom I oppose the school system in the U S had not been successful in teaching math, but it would have made sense to look at other countries that managed to do well in math education and try to emulate.
[00:29:40] Instead the reform has tried to homegrown untested ideas. It’s true that Massachusetts was doing better in mathematics teaching than other states. However, the Massachusetts state standards are only one reason by the state. That’s a, well, it’s a state with two of [00:30:00] the top us universities. And many top medical research facilities.
[00:30:05] These institutions attract a lot of domestic and foreign talent. And then in particular towns to whom education is very important.
[00:30:16] GR: You mentioned. Boston really being a hope for what I would call brain power. When you look at magazines and other articles about the smartest states in America or the smartest cities, Massachusetts, or from a city perspective, Boston will often finish number one, just because of the number of people in the city.
[00:30:35] And yet when you look at Boston public schools math results, Really aren’t that great. And there’s conversation now about receivership, which my colleague Kara has written about recently, but let’s just use that state and even Boston, as an example, there’s a really big debate over why the American K-12 system is so unwavering and implementing true math reform.[00:31:00]
[00:31:00] Is it bureaucratic? Is it ideological? do you see is roadblock.
[00:31:04] Dr Schmid: I’m like in the science and medicine accurate Countrywide, comparative studies in education. Now almost impossible to construct because different states standards specify various times when various topics should be taught.
[00:31:22] The us K-12 education reform was were well-intended. But most of them did not look beyond us borders to see what works instead. They kept trying out various ideas that look new and exciting, but turned out not to be success.
[00:31:41] GR: idea of America looking beyond its borders, be it across the Atlantic or the Pacific ocean, or even going north and south has been a really big challenge. I know you have. Links to Germany many years ago, had a chance to travel to what was then east and west Germany shortly after the [00:32:00] fall of the Berlin wall to look at the K-12 and higher education system.
[00:32:03] And they talked about the apprenticeship program and they also mentioned the. The three things you had mentioned earlier, but the system really focused on the importance of thinking in mathematical ways, not simply to pass a test, but to be able to function in society. You’re at Harvard now Dr.
[00:32:21] Paul Peterson convened a group of scholars, domestic and international to come and talk about students. Well, I ended up meeting the principal of the highest performing math high school in China. And when I went to visit China, he began providing an opportunity to go to the school and meet people.
[00:32:37] Other countries are making this a priority and you identify some of the challenges as why we can’t. Well, let me go to my next question, because as much more fundamental, you’ve talked about algebra one being a gateway course to higher level math. And yet we have a number of students. Who find themselves going into high school without algebra or leaving without algebra [00:33:00] in 2008, you remember the prestigious us mathematics advisory panel, that interview, which reviewed more than 16,000 research, publications and policies on the topic.
[00:33:10] Similar question, even after the work you did at inmap, what can Americans do to really push the idea of teaching students, even basic mathematics?
[00:33:20] Dr Schmid: if I recall correctly, it was Laura Bush, the wife of George W. Bush, who convinced her husband to make education a priority. And to a point the national mathematics advisory panel the members included psychologists interested in how children learn mathematics, educated.
[00:33:43] And mathematicians interested in math education. It would take far too long to enumerate all the conclusions of the tunnel, but that may numerate the main points. The importance of a clear progression off topics, typically in [00:34:00] us schools, mathematical topics would repeat it year after year in the stead, that kind of suggests.
[00:34:07] Each topic should be taught once with adequate depth in school, mathematics is a cumulative subject topics that were covered in prior years would come up again implicitly. And that makes the revisiting the subject really unnecessary importance of preschool. Again, that was one of the main points of the national math panel.
[00:34:31] The importance of preschool. To alleviate the difference between children of different backgrounds. And then there was the issue of adequate preparation of teachers, including in particular teachers in the early grades, a common misconception is the idea. I mean, a common misconception in the year.
[00:34:52] Is the idea that to quote, if you know how to teach, you can teach anything on the quote. [00:35:00] No, that’s just not the case. You cannot teach what you do not understand yourself. Then at the time of the panel, she pocket calculator that said become available. The panel strongly suggested that calculators should not be used in the early grades.
[00:35:16] Because that him, that the learning of what’s known as the number facts,
[00:35:21] us textbooks typically were far too long. And just related to the issue of with repeating topics. Yeah. After a year, of course, then the importance of national tests. at the time state assessment to us real common, but the quality varies greatly making it very difficult to compare the effectiveness of various state curriculum guidelines.
[00:35:48] I have to say that the conclusion of the panel, even though well-founded widely ignored, If I look at my Harvard colleagues, roughly half of [00:36:00] them receive primary and secondary education and other countries, that fact has surely several explanations. One of them certainly is the poorest state of us case with 12 mathematics.
[00:36:14] GR: Very good point about the international dynamic of those who go into the PhD program for mathematics. was just an Indian question for you. Title nine is 50 years old this year. Part of the push was to make sure that. Understood the role of gender, the role that women played in academics today, at least at the undergrad level, we have 2 million more women in college than men.
[00:36:39] We have more women who are enrolled in stem today than 50 years ago. And there are a number of stem teachers. We now have women, we look at. The PhD level for mathematics numbers moving in a better direction than 50 years ago. But surely not as high as we have for men. There’s also an internet, a domestic dynamic of trying to get [00:37:00] more American students to also pursue a PhD in education, independent of race from your years of experience, as a researcher, as an educator, and having looked at this subject uh, the K-12 level and beyond what a couple of recommendations that policymakers.
[00:37:16] Deans at colleges of arts and sciences ed schools. What should we be thinking about to make sure we have more women earning PhDs in mathematics, as well as American students doing the same?
[00:37:27] Dr Schmid: Well, and that’s a very confounding issue. I cannot really say why. There are so many more men in mathematics at American universities than women.
[00:37:42] I just have no excellent. But it is the case. And it is the case in spite of attempts to how should I say, get more women involved in academic mathematics? they are Harvard mathematics department. The vast majority of [00:38:00] members is men. And in spite of efforts that you’ve made to recruit.
[00:38:05] GR: Absolutely. Well, Dr. Smith, thank you so much for spending time with us. Continue the good work and know that you have a platform here in the future to get the message out about the importance of mathematics. Thank you. Take care.
[00:38:54] Cara: And listeners, we always leave you with the tweet of the week and this one [00:39:00] from, a former guest, Barry Weiss I mean, who isn’t talking about Elon Musk and Twitter right now, but she said. Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy. And Twitter is the digital town square where it matters.
[00:39:13] Twitter gives me hives. I’m not going to say for a variety of reasons, but I think that this is a very important point listeners. Next week. We’re going to be speaking with Dr. Eric Hanushek. I think you might know him. He is at the Hoover institution of Stanford university and boy. Oh boy. He’s got a lot of accolades internationally.
[00:39:35] For his economic analysis of educational issues amongst so many other things until then Gerard take really good care of yourself. I can’t wait to be back with you again next week.
[00:39:45] GR: Sounds good.[00:40:00]
Recent Episodes:
In Massachusetts, the Know-Nothing amendments prevent more than 100,000 urban families with children in chronically underperforming school districts from receiving scholarship vouchers that would allow them access to additional educational alternatives. These legal barriers, also known as Blaine amendments, restrict government funding from flowing to religiously affiliated organizations in nearly 40 states and are a violation of the first and fourteenth amendments.
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case this year, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, that could end these amendments. In 2018, Pioneer produced a 30-minute documentary on the impact of the Blaine amendments on families in Massachusetts, Georgia, and Michigan.
“She’s a good girl. She helps me a lot. She has big, big dreams. I don’t have the money, but she has big dreams. I hope she’s going to get everything, but she works so hard. She works so hard in school.”
“Our family is needing to make some really big sacrifices because we believe this is important, and so, we’re basically going to do whatever it takes… Sometimes we look at each other and go ‘I don’t know if I can do it again another month…’”
“A lot of the families have to sacrifice and work multiple jobs… And just scraping together enough money to just make tuition, just the basics.”
“It is discriminatory, that parents who want to choose an alternative to public school for their children, would not in any way receive any compensation for that, whether it be tax credit, whether it be a voucher…”
In the 1840s, nativist movement leaders formed official political parties and local chapters of the national Native American Party (later the American Party), although they continued to be commonly known as the Know-Nothing Party. Politicians sought to insert provisions into state constitutions against Catholics who refused to renounce the pope. The Know-Nothing movement brought bigotry and hatred to a new level of violence and organization.
The party’s legacy endured in the post-Civil War era, with laws and constitutional amendments it supported, still today severely limiting parents’ educational choices. A federal constitutional amendment was proposed by Speaker of the House James Blaine prohibiting money raised by taxation in any State to be under the control of any religious sect; nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations. These were then named the Blaine Amendments of 1875.
in recent decades, often in response to challenges to school choice programs, the U.S. Supreme Court has demonstrated great interest in examining the issues of educational alternatives and attempts limit parental options. Massachusetts plays a key role in this debate. The Bay State was a key center of the Know-Nothing movement and has the oldest version of Anti-Aid Amendments in the nation, as well as a second such amendment approved in 1917. Two-fifths of Massachusetts residents are Catholic, and its Catholic schools outperform the state’s public schools, which are the best in the nation.
Help families like the Costons in Michigan to end the bigoted Blaine amendments in their state that are blocking tuition scholarships and other types of financial support that would make it possible for families to send their children to high-quality schools that are best suited for their children.
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Hubwonk host Joe Selvaggi talks with education financing expert Mark Kantrowitz about the $1.6 trillion in U.S. public student debt – who owes it, who stands to benefit from the Biden administration’s recent promise for across-the-board student debt reductions, and what strategies are available to target only those most in need.
Guest:
Mark Kantrowitz is a nationally-recognized expert on student financial aid, scholarships and student loans. His mission is to deliver practical information, advice and tools to students and their families so they can make informed decisions about planning and paying for college. Mark writes extensively about student financial aid policy, and has testified before Congress and federal and state agencies about student aid. He has been quoted in more than 10,000 newspaper and magazine articles, and has been published in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reuters, Huffington Post, U.S. News & World Report, Money Magazine, Bottom Line/Personal, Forbes, Newsweek and Time. He was named a Money Hero by Money Magazine, and is the author of five bestselling books, including How to Appeal for More College Financial Aid, Twisdoms about Paying for College, Filing the FAFSA and Secrets to Winning a Scholarship. Mark is Publisher of PrivateStudentLoans.guru, a web site that provides students with smart borrowing tips about private student loans. He has previously been employed at Just Research, the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Bitstream Inc. and the Planning Research Corporation, and is President of Cerebly, Inc. (formerly MK Consulting, Inc.), a consulting firm focused on computer science, artificial intelligence, and statistical and policy analysis. He is ABD on a PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), earned a Bachelor of Science in mathematics and philosophy from MIT, and a Master of Science degree in computer science from CMU. He is also an alumnus of the Research Science Institute program established by Admiral H. G. Rickover.
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Please excuse typos.
Joe Selvaggi:
This is Hubwonk I’m Joe Selvaggi.
Joe Selvaggi:
Welcome to Hubwonk, a podcast of Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston. Americans owe $1.6 trillion in public student debt. President Biden, both in campaign promises and in a more recent comment is considering some student debt forgiveness, either by executive fiat or through a coordinated act of Congress. Though framed as a helping hand for those saddled, with crushing debt and for whom such debt imposes stifling, long-term burdens, any such forgiveness could be regarded as largely regressive heaping largesse on those with the most education debt at the expense of those who have borrowed less paid their debt or not gone to college at all. Nevertheless debate amongst the president’s supporters seem to focus only on the amount of forgiveness while failing to distinguish those that are most in need from those who can well afford to pay. And if such forgiveness implies that college may not equip students with the added skills to pay for their own education, should we reconsider the wisdom of encouraging all students to borrow for secondary education regardless of value or lifetime return?
Joe Selvaggi:
My guest today is Mark Kantrowitz, one of the nation’s leading experts in education financing, aid, scholarships, and grants for the past three decades. Mr. Kantrowitz’s writing has provided students with strategies for making informed choices about education and for borrowing wisely when doing so. Mark and I will discuss his research observation on the profile of those who carry student debt, and he will offer recommendations or more targeted debt forgiveness aimed at the most vulnerable while also avoiding the cost and moral hazard of forgiving the debt of those most able to repay. When I return, I’ll be joined by education financing expert, Mark Kantrowitz. Okay. We’re back. This is Hubwonk. I’m Joe Selvaggi and I’m now pleased to be joined by education financing expert. Mark Kantrowitz, welcome to Hubwonk.
Mark Kantrowitz:
Thank you for having me.
Joe Selvaggi:
Okay. Now, before we dive into our topic of a student debt forgiveness let’s establish for our audience for our listeners, your bona fides as the nation-leading expert on college student financial aid, scholarships, college savings plans, education tax benefits, and student loans. Tell our listeners, how long have you been doing this studying these options at making yourself an expert? You know, what, what brought you to this level of being the nation’s expert?
Mark Kantrowitz:
Well, I’ve been doing this work for three, so I have a lot of experience and I’m not content to state. What is existing policy? I, I like doing research to identify new insights and new rules of thumb that can influence public policy. I’ve served as publisher of several leading websites about planning and paying for college. I’ve written more than 150 student aid policy papers and 14 books including five bestsellers.
Joe Selvaggi:
That’s very impressive. So, you know, beyond what we’re gonna to talk about today, if our listeners are looking for an expert they’re trying to figure out how to pay, to pay for college in the future and prospectively. You would be the guy to talk to about how to borrow wisely and efficiently.
Mark Kantrowitz:
Now my mission is to help students and their families make smarter, more informed decisions about paying for college as well. Well as repaying student loans.
Joe Selvaggi:
So we’re gonna not just talk about the future in this case. We’re, we’re gonna talk about loans already incurred. So let’s, let’s jump into our topic. We’re gonna talk about the concept of a student debt forgiveness. Let’s set the stage for our listeners interested in in this topic, largely it’s brought on by president Biden, recent murmurs, that quote I’m considering dealing with some student debt reduction. This statement comes of course, course in the context of us we’re in the aftermath of COVID 19 during that time it seems reasonable that the student debt there was a moratorium amount paying back student debt, and that was extended a few times. And here we are back to don’t call it normal, but we’re a, an unemployment rate that’s remarkably low. So let’s say the, everybody who wants to work is almost at work. So let’s start with some numbers, how much total student debt now that we’re ready to pay it back. How much student debt is held in the United States
Mark Kantrowitz:
According to the federal Reserve’s G19 report, as of December 31st, 2021, there was a total of $1.75 trillion of student loan debt. More recent data is not available now of this total, about $1.6 trillion is federal student loans and the rest is private student loans. And the federal student loans is owed by a little bit more than 43 million borrowers. Now the payment pause and interest waiver that student loan moratorium applied to about $1.46 trillion of the total.
Joe Selvaggi:
Okay, so this is money. This trillion is a lot, I think it rhymes with billion, a million, but a trillion has 16 zeros, right? It’s 1600 billion. It’s a lot of money. So you’re an expert in the best ways to finance education. Is it already the case that before I go out and borrow money are the, are ways that the government or universities currently work to ease the burden? In other words is the government already doing its most to to prevent an aspiring student from incurring more debt than they should? Are there subsidies both from governments and universities already?
Mark Kantrowitz:
Right. So about six dozen colleges some of the most selective colleges have very generous, no loans, financial aid policies. They do not include loans in the financial aid package, replacing them with grants, but that’s only six dozen out of more than 6,000 colleges. All colleges that provide federal student loans are required to provide entrance and exit loan counseling to borrowers. I’ve argued that this isn’t frequent enough that you have to provide counseling every time the student borrows and that it needs to be personalized to the student circumstances. And some colleges also provide financial literacy training, the quality of the counseling and the financial literacy training varies from college to college. Some colleges have really good training. Some colleges not as good, and some provide the financial literacy training at all. Now every college, since 2011 has been required to provide a net price calculator on their website.
Mark Kantrowitz:
This is a calculator that students can use to generate a personalized estimate of their one year net price. The net price is the diff between total college costs and gift aid gift aid includes grants, scholarships, and other money that doesn’t need to be repaid. It’s like a discount on the college costs. And total college costs include not just re on tuition fees, but also room board, book supplies and equipment transportation, miscellaneous personal. So the net price is the amount of money that the family or the student will have to pay from their savings from contributions, from income, and from student loans, the student loan debt at graduation correlates very strongly with the net price. Now students should consider choosing a less expensive college. They don’t need to go to the most expensive college in their field besides the no loans colleges, which have a net very low net price, because they give more of the aid as grants, as opposed to loans. An in-state public college is for most students is going to be the least expensive option. And in-state public college costs about of quarter to a third, the cost of a private college.
Mark Kantrowitz:
You can also save on college costs in other ways, such as by buying used textbooks or selling them back to the bookstore at the end of the semester minimizing the number of trips home from school. And in general, what you need to do is live like a student while you’re in school. So you Don have to live like a student after you graduate.
Joe Selvaggi:
Oh, that that’s a great, that’s a great takeaway. I, I like that that, that slogan. And of course, when we talk about some selective schools, I, I did quick look up Harvard, if your, your family makes less than 75,000, it’s, it’s free. I think your MIT, that’s your Alma mater. I, I believe mm-hmm, <affirmative> also 75,000 or less, or even up to 140,000, it’s it’s next to, you know, close to zero to, to attend. But for most schools, that’s not the case. I’ll just point out I, I share your concern that colleges though, they are tests with students on making wise decisions. There’s a conflict of interest, right? Because if you’re an expensive school, make giving counseling, you’ve got a disincentive to make it clear to the student, how much they’re gonna owe in the, is that right?
Mark Kantrowitz:
That’s sometimes are as, as between a grant. And so the student is left with not really understanding how much they have to borrow to pay for the college. And sometimes they’ll referred to a loan as an award and not really have any signals that this is money that needs to be repaid.
Joe Selvaggi:
So we do want, you know, so we’re both advocates of students approaching college, it’s eyes wide open and saying, okay, I’m gonna get the education, but I’m gonna have to pay X to get it. So let’s just address some of the sort of narratives that those who are interested in for giving student loans. I think a lot of well, meaning people who, who may be sympathetic to the, these types of policies, imagine that students student debt really is a byproduct of, of, of a a student coming from a family with fewer resources and must borrow to to pay for school you’ve answered. I think already that there are choices that can go to less expensive schools, maybe state colleges, that sort of thing. But is there a correlation in your analysis between how much debt is held by students in general? And let’s say the family income, I there in other words, are, are, are poor kids, the ones who are taking on the debt
Mark Kantrowitz:
Well, and first of all, let’s establish that college means debt of students receiving a bachelor’s degree, more than 70% graduate with student loan debt. If we limit to students who applied for financial aid, filing the FAFSA, then seven eights of them graduate with student loan debt. One of the most effective ways of re eliminating the need for student loan debt is to pick wealthy parents, of course, that you can’t do that. But when I’ve looked at PE grant recipients versus non recipients, the Pell grant re, and these are generally very low income students, it’s a good proxy for low income status. They are much more likely to borrow for college than middle and high income students, and they graduate with more debt. So we expect are least capable of paying students who are least capable of paying for college to borrow the most. And that’s a sign that we’re not giving adequate grants to these students and the Pell grant historically has gone up by only about a hundred dollars a year, even as college costs go up by thousands of dollars a year. Now among students who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 2016, 84% of PE grant recipients graduated with student loan debt that compares with 61% of other students, and they graduated with a few thousand dollars more, a student loan debt.
Joe Selvaggi:
Okay. So let’s, let’s break it down more granularly. Again, 1.6 trillion divided by the number of students is this sort of, are, are students, is there sort of a uniform profile of the debt, or are few students owe a thousand dollars and others owe hundreds of thousands of dollars? We, we really haven’t gotten down into the nitty gritty. We’re all only talking about undergraduate. My research, arguably nothing like yours seems to indicate that the, the massive debt is incurred by those who choose to go to graduate. School might be a pre professional school like law school or medical school breakdown, you know, is everybody about the same debt or we got huge disparities?
Mark Kantrowitz:
Well, we often hear news stories about a student who graduated with a bachelor’s degree and a hundred thousand dollars or more in student loan debt, mind you, you can’t do that just with federal student loans. You need private student loans to do that. The reality is that 90% of bachelor degree recipients graduate with less than $50,000 in student loan debt. And among those who graduate with six figure debt, most of them are graduate students with degrees in medicine or law. It really is an exception to the rule when a student graduates with six figure debt for an undergraduate degree. And that’s usually a sign that something is not being done right, that they’re at too expensive at college, or that nobody try to raise their awareness that they’re taking on too much debt. Because generally speaking, if your total student loan debt at graduations, less than your annual starting salary, you should be able to afford to repay your student loans in 10 years or less. So when your debt exceeds your annual income, that you’ll struggle to make those loan payments and you’ll need an alternate repayment plan like extended repayment or income driven repayment to yield a more affordable monthly loan payment. These repayment plans reduce your monthly payment by increasing the repayment term to 2025 or even 30 years, which means you’re gonna be paying a lot more interest over the life of the loan. And you’ll still be repaying your own student loans when your children go to college.
Joe Selvaggi:
So it’s like graduating with a mortgage that, that sounds a little bit daunting. Is there a correlation now we said there’s students who incur the six figure debt might be in professional schools, graduate schools medicine, law. Those are I think notoriously well paying industries, have you broken down where are the debt lies amongst low income, medium income and high income? I love your sort of back of the envelope rule of thumb, which is you ought not to incur more debt than your expected annual salary upon that graduation. Great, great a nugget there, but how given the profile of who owes money now, are they low income people, medium income, or even high, high income earners?
Mark Kantrowitz:
There’s a super position of two curves. One is people who took on a more lucrative, a degree, like a graduate degree and therefore have higher debt, but also higher income. And people who didn’t graduate at all, they have less debt because they weren’t in college for as long, but they don’t have the degree that can help them repay that debt. So they’re much more likely to struggle. That’s why you often hear statistics about the average debt of people who default on their student loans being under $10,000. It’s actually a little bit more than that. And that’s because a, the likelihood of default increases as the debt to earnings ratio increases the, the greater debt as a share of income. The more likely you are to default, but at the same time, if you drop outta college there’s a second curve there. And when you join the two curves, it yields results that are often misinterpreted as saying, oh, this is only a low income problem, or a low debt amount problem. It’s really a it’s. If you have more debt compared to your income, your ability to pay that debt is impaired. And if you drop out college, you’re much more likely to default on your student loans than someone who graduates.
Joe Selvaggi:
So I think we’re having a disconnect between the cost of college and the benefit of college. It seems odd that one would incur debt for something that doesn’t help them pay that debt, or doesn’t better help them pay for debt. Let’s. let’s start to talk about some of the remedies some of the numbers banded around for forgiveness. Again, I’m jumping ahead to forgiveness. You know, we don’t want blunt instruments such as you know, across the board forgiveness in my view as you mentioned, there’s a huge stratification of debt and potential ability to pay that debt. There’s wealthy people a lot and poor people, a little and ironically, or not ironically, but the, the, the lower income people with smaller debt are at most risk, at least are forgiving all debt across the board. Whatever that number is, it’s inevitably gonna wind up forgiving debt for people who have the most ability to pay back that debt. Isn’t that just obviously true?
Mark Kantrowitz:
Yeah. And that’s one of the things that some people object to in a broad student loan forgiveness program, which is why would you forgive the student loans of someone who is capable of repaying, their student loans? They argue that student loan forgiveness should be targeted at the borrowers who have financial need and not as wealthy or borrowers who don’t really, they want loan forgiveness, but they don’t need loan forgiveness.
Joe Selvaggi:
Yes, indeed. And I gonna, one, one of my little mantras is effective. The government doesn’t have its own money. So that money that’s going to pay off wealthy college graduates, perhaps doctors and lawyers is coming from people who didn’t go to college and perhaps pay their taxes. And that money is getting taken from someone who didn’t go to college and given to someone who did presumably if, if college is worth anything that seems difficult program to, to accept. Now we do already have programs, government programs from the, I guess, the department of education that does serve to forgive loans even before any talk of any future program. Right now, there are several national programs that allow some loan debt to be. Can you share with us, what are some of those programs?
Mark Kantrowitz:
Well, they tend to fall into two groups. One is for people who fulfill some sort of public policy objectives, such as getting people to teach in a national need area or other public service. So you have teacher loan, forgiveness you have public service loan forgiveness. The other group is discharges for people who are unable to repay the debt or can repudiate the debt in some manner. So if you die and your ability repay the debt is impaired. And so there’s a death discharge. If you’re totally I permanently disabled, there’s a disability discharge. If you are the victim of identity theft and didn’t actually borrow the loans, there’s an identity theft, discharge
Joe Selvaggi:
And yeah, and looking at these programs. And I, I wanna, I want you to tell me, I’ve read it wrong. I think recently the education department recently announced it for giving 6.2 billion in student debt for those working in the public sector. Now, I know public sectors jobs are not lucrative necessarily, but they are fairly paid. I assume that people show up for them. This, this program seems to be a bit self-serving that the government, it would forgive government loans for people who work for the government. Am I getting that wrong or is this shamelessly self-serving?
Mark Kantrowitz:
Well, members of Congress are ineligible for public service loan forgiveness. And the program is tied to a specific set of repayment plans called the income driven repayment plans where your monthly loan payment is based on a percentage of your discretionary income, as opposed to the amount you owe. If you’re a higher income individual, you’ll pay more under those plans, the, and someone who’s a low income individual and generally speaking in order to qualify for some loan forgiveness, your total student loan debt has to exceed your annual income. So this isn’t providing loan forgiveness to high paid DMV workers. It is going to people who are taking low paying jobs, despite their high amount of debt in order to give back to society. So an example might be public interest law like a public defender don’t get paid very well.
Mark Kantrowitz:
I mean, $40,000 is, is kind of typical yet. They may have hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loan debt for a law degree. If the warrant for the income driven repayment plans and the possibility of public service loan forgiveness, so that you’re not basically an indenture servant not just a public they wouldn’t go into these fields. The, the debt would be so big that it would provide a severe disincentive to pursuing a public service career. So public service loan forgiveness removes the debt as a disincentive. Now, their example is social workers for a masters of social, your debt might be 70, 80, $90,000. Those jobs pay $30,000, $35,000. It’s there’s a mismatch between how we compensate people for these public and national need areas and how much debt they have to take on to get a degree in that field.
Joe Selvaggi:
So effectively the government needs to effectively subsidize those professions. So as to incentivize people to that, who would otherwise not choose them to choose them. So
Mark Kantrowitz:
It’s also the it’s a lot less expensive for the government to provide public service loan forgiveness, then to pay these people more. I mean, if they were to pay them what they could get in the private sector they wouldn’t need public service loan, forgiveness. Now, public service loan forgiveness, it’s based on how much debt you have. And once that gets forgiven, there’s no more payout. Whereas if you were pay, hire salaries, then that would be higher income over the life, the work life of that individual. So in a way, public service loan forgiveness saves the government money.
Joe Selvaggi:
I’m curious, I just wanna divert for a second. If the government forgives my loan, let’s say owe a hundred thousand dollars and the, the largest forgives that loan. I know from my independent business world, that if my firm gives me a loan that, that they say you no longer need to pay back that’s considered a gift and it’s considered taxable. Would someone who’s been forgiven a hundred thousand dollars loan be then sent a whopping tax bill for the gift that’s been effectively given,
Mark Kantrowitz:
Right? So it used to be the case. Now IRS considers that if someone cancels your debt, it says though, they gave you the money to pay off the debt. And that money, that amount that’s forgiven is income to you. Now, previously public service loan forgiveness was tax free because of a special provision in the internal revenue code. But income, the 20 or 25 year forgiveness at the end of an income driven repayment plan was taxable. Many cases, these borrowers were insolvent and they could qualify for forgiveness of the tax debt, but the American resting plan act added a special provision that all student loan cancellation, whether forgiveness or discharge is tax free through December 31st, 2025. And president Biden has called in his budget for that to be made permanent. And it seems likely that it’ll either be extended or made permanent. And it applies not just to public service, loan, forgiveness, and income driven repayment, but also to the death and disability discharges. And they, they were charging the the, the tax liability against the estate of the de that just doesn’t seem right.
Joe Selvaggi:
So you’ve done a lot of research on ways to more to target forgiveness as opposed to just saying across the board, everybody the first $10,000 of your debt is, is forgiven regardless of income or your prospects for paying it back. What if some of the more targeted or criteria for debt forgiveness how do we target the people we really wanna target that is low income people who really just can’t get out from beyond their debt? How, how would you design a, a forgiveness plan that’s more effective than a across the board amount,
Mark Kantrowitz:
Right. So you could do means testing where you would forgive the student loans for someone who has an income below a particular threshold, maybe $50,000, $75,000 and that would reduce the cost. It would also reduce the number of followers who qualify, but the problem with means testing is that it would require some kind of an application process. And that means it can’t be done automatically. And the recent trend, I mean, what the Biden administration has done a lot of is making loan, forgiveness, the existing loan forgiveness programs, automatic, like doing a data match between the us department of educations records and the VA, or the social security administration in order to implement the stability discharges or special treatment for the debt of members of the us armed forces, where the interest rate is capped at 6% and, and, and similar provisions also with public service loan forgiveness members of the us armed forces are eligible, but I mean, just matching up that data to facilitate that is beneficial.
Mark Kantrowitz:
So I tend to like having a specific dollar amount of loan forgiveness, because it’s much easier to implement, but rather than provide the forgiveness to everybody $10,000 of loan forgiveness us to every borrower would cost 375 billion. And for you completely erase the student loans of a third of borrowers provide that loan forgiveness only to people who owe $10,000 or less, that reduces the cost of 75 billion, but still completely erases the debt of the third of borrow. And it tends to be better targeted at borrowers who are lower income. And you still, it’s not perfect because you still have wealthier borrowers who just happen to have paid down their debt to under $10,000, but it is much more effective than saying everybody get it’s a freebie.
Joe Selvaggi:
I see. I wanna the change, the focus of our lens a little bit. And I, I think we touched on it when we were talking about, you know, sort of prospectively when I’m thinking about taking on debt and going into college and choosing which college and frankly, which major, what do I do for a living and comparing what my debt will be com relative to my, my aren’t we, in a sense if we are effectively forgiving debt for people who are lower income effectively, subsidizing those fields that generate less income, are we creating incentives or, or distorting incentives so that students choose perhaps instead of high paying, let’s say, and majors, they become you know, theater majors or poetry majors don’t. We run the risk of saying, okay, choose your path cost be. And the less you make, the more we’re likely to subsidize afterward. This seems to me that perhaps be steering people in directions that you know, aren’t good for their long term wellbeing,
Mark Kantrowitz:
Right? Well, this is a problem that’s often referred to as moral hazard, where if you know that your student loans are going to be forgiven, then you increase the amount you borrow. However, if they limit the amount of forgiveness to say $10,000, that means that the borrowers will still have to repay the rest of their student loan debt that tends to minimize the risk of moral hazard. And it, any kind of loan forgiveness program will have those potential problems. I tend to favor solutions, which reduce the need for debt by providing more grants, targeted grants up front such as doubling or tripling the Pell grant that not only increases who goes to college and who graduates from college, but it also reduces the amount of debt at graduation, whereas a won’t forgiveness program, I doesn’t increase college access or success,
Joe Selvaggi:
But, but in, okay, let, let’s pull the lines further back PE grants or money coming from the government. And, you know, the deep dark secret is the government doesn’t have its own money. So it’s coming from you’re, you’re essentially giving money, whether in the front end or the, or forgiving in the backend, you’re taking money for people who didn’t go to college and giving it to people do which, in a sense, again, we accept that where you get taxes, give you less of something and substance give you more something, aren’t we, in a sense calling education in general, just a common good worthy of, of taxing people who don’t do it, of these people who do what, what public benefit is it to continuously and perhaps, you know, in the broadest strokes possible, send everybody to college. Aren’t we sort of missing the point here. If, if ultimately the college doesn’t generate the revenue necessary to pay back college, isn’t the value proposition you know, something we consider,
Mark Kantrowitz:
Well, college is not just a private good benefiting the student. It’s also a public good, a college graduate with a bachelor’s degree, pays more than twice the federal income tax of someone with just a high school diploma. So people tend to personalize this issue, asking why they’re of taxes should be used to pay off someone else’s student loan debt. But the reality is that it’s the college graduates who mostly are going to be paying back the cost of this through their income taxes. If their income taxes are actually increased to, to cover the cost and not pass off to some future generation decades from now the one could take that kind of argument that why should my taxes be used for something that I disagree with and to other areas, like, why should you pay for the military if you’re a pacifist, or why should you pay for school taxes if you don’t have children should you pay for the police if you don’t commit crimes should you pay higher health insurance premiums and higher life insurance premiums, if you’re healthy why should you have to pay taxes at all?
Mark Kantrowitz:
If you don’t like your state’s politicians, if you didn’t vote for the guy or maybe the politicians in another state where you clearly didn’t should you have to pay for snow removal if you don’t own a car? Or the example I gave earlier is nobody the public tends to dislike the DMV. Well, why should you have to pay the salaries of people who work for the DMV, if you don’t like the DMV why should you have to pay taxes on things that you buy for your own use? And all of those are similar questions.
Joe Selvaggi:
I, I would be happy to answer any one of those questions. They are all very, very good questions and all easily answered and, and dispensed with. I, I don’t wanna cloud our, our topic with, with sort of hypotheticals, but I will say though, if you characterize if you say merely that those go to college make more than those who don’t and their air go, they pay more in taxes and keep us all happy you. I think that’s a bit of a disingenuous statement, which is to say, that’s not a random sample. We don’t take the same, same 10 guys and send 10 to college and 10, not to college and compare the outcome. You know, the people go to college are self-selected and, and, and arguably have profound advantage of those who don’t. But I’d say if I take someone, you know, at the margin who had a choice, whether they go to trade school or invest in a F-150 and become a, a, a, a plumber instead of going and becoming a history major it, it could be argued that they would make far more in the trades than they would as a professional historian or, or, or something else.
Joe Selvaggi:
And, you know, how does that benefit me to send him to school and how arguably, and, you know, we can have ethical conversation all day long, but if indeed we’ve sent a someone who would otherwise be a successful plumber to being an unsuccessful an unsatisfied historian we’ve heard him too, not just society. So what would you say to, to the people who have those concerns?
Mark Kantrowitz:
Well, I, an, an electrician or an H V a C tech with a certificate or an associates degree can earn as much as a bachelor’s degrees in some fields. And, and the argument that, why should you subsidize one and not the other, like, why should you pay for an electrician who is based in two states over? And so you’re not gonna benefit from that electrician personally. I, I think that we all benefit from having a more educated populist, and, and I’d also like to point out that you really don’t have a student loan problem so much as a college completion problem. The default rate for people who get a bachelor’s degree, who graduate, even if it’s in a field like underwater basket weaving they are much, much less likely to default than someone who drops out. Overall among all undergraduate students, students who drop out are four times more likely to default than students who graduate, but among bachelor degree programs, they’re 95 times more likely to default if they do drop out than if they graduate. So the, the, the problem is that we’re not getting students to finish line. And that includes people who are pursuing enrolled at lower cost institutions like one year and two year programs. They’re actually more likely to default than people who go to a four year program.
Joe Selvaggi:
So I’m, you know I appreciate that. If anything, I, I think perhaps it makes my point more strong in that if we are in a sense, subsidizing college and encourage people to go to college, who might not otherwise choose college by virtue of the return on their investment, but they embark on college, encourage are debt, and then, and then leave college and ultimately default are we doing them a favor by subsidizing them with, you know, let’s say triple your grant plan, they still default. They still leave. They still have debt. How, how have we how do we solve the dropout problem by the giving people more reasons to go to college?
Mark Kantrowitz:
Well, doubling the PE grants would pay for itself in terms of increased federal income tax revenue, based on the number who would ultimately graduate in about a decade. Most people work 40, 45 years. So that means we’re gonna get at least 30 years of pure profit to the federal government from increased federal income tax revenue. It’s the equivalent of a 14% annualized return on investment. Now, if I were to come to you and say, I’ve got this sure fired way to generate 14% return on investment for decades, you’d be asking me, is your name Bernie Madoff? Because, well,
Joe Selvaggi:
There’s a, there’s a big, big, big, big flaw in that, that line of reason, which is to say the people who go to college and the people who don’t go to college are the same people. They’re very, very are different people. So if I push a button and send everybody to college and assume that the half that have not gone to college will now join the ranks of those who do and earn the same amount. You’ve got a point, but that seems like a, a profound, a leap of, of faith. I think there’s a difference fundamentally between people who go to college and frankly, people I’m not saying
Mark Kantrowitz:
Send everyone to college. I’m saying people are college capable of benefiting from college. Provide them with the resources. They need to afford a college education. Right now you have college capable, low income students who don’t go to college because of the chilling effect, a student won’t debt. If you had a borrow more than your parents earning a year to pay for your college education, you’d think twice about going to college. Even if you’ve got the academic chops to be able to benefit ’em from a college education and wealthy students who are least college capable enrolling college at six times, the rate of highly qualified, low income students. So we are not investing in our best resource, which is our people at an adequate level, we need to do more to ensure that college capable, low income students are able to enroll in college and graduate from college. If that’s what they want to do. I’m not saying that someone who flunked out of high school, I mean, should go to college. I mean, maybe they need to go back to high school and, and get their education. Or maybe they that’s. Education is not the right pursuit for them, but there are plenty of people who could benefit from college, but don’t because it costs too much.
Joe Selvaggi:
But if, again, I don’t wanna keep beating this to death, but if we say we’re, when we invest in college, we’re investing with the expectation that it will improve our future earnings to the degree that we’ll be able to comfortably pay our, our college back. Right. So if it provided no value, it would be no, there would be no value in going to college. You might challenge that statement, but let, let’s just stipulate that it ought to deliver some return to the person who receives the education. And I think you would agree with that. But what you’re saying now is that college is inherently good. We should send everyone or who wants to go, or who is, as you say, college capable, but somehow on the other end, that college degree does not empower them to pay back the loan that they incurred. In other words, it isn’t worth what they paid for. Isn’t that really a, a fundamental economic question. It’s not is something valuable, but is it worth enough value to you know, trade money for it?
Mark Kantrowitz:
Oh, and first of all, if they graduate, generally speaking, they’re able to repay their student loans. And except for the rare case where someone goes completely overboard with borrowing, you need to peg the aggregate loan limits to the expected annual income of the degree level and the academic major. The problem is people who drop out, as I said before, have the debt, but not the degree to can help them repay the debt. So we, this isn’t a issue of when people are graduating from college and don’t have the income because they picked a low paying career. And oftentimes those low paying careers give back to society. In other ways, the point is that the federal government is profiting off of college educated people. They pay more federal income tax, a greater share of federal income tax than people who don’t have a college degree.
Mark Kantrowitz:
So is the federal government paying its fair share of college costs are state governments paying their fair share of college costs, given that their profiting from increased income tax revenue. And I think the answer is no that they, and maybe in the 1970s, they were paying their fair share. But over the decades, the financial aid provided by government has shifted from grants to loans grant, every dollar grant costs of government, a dollar, every dollar of a loan yields, a small profit to the federal government. It’s a lot easier to increase aid in the form of loans than it is in the form of grants. And this has shifted the burden of paying for college increasingly from the government to the families. This is despite family income being essentially flat for the last two decades. So families are increasingly struggling to pay for college.
Mark Kantrowitz:
Now, the only form of financial aid with any degree of elasticity is loans cause and their, their income is hasn’t changed. So they either have to send to a lower cost college. And that’s not just from private colleges to public colleges. It’s from four year colleges to two year colleges, two year to one year and one year to no postsecondary education or they have to borrow more. And that’s why we see very steady increases in the average debt graduation and the total student loan debt outstanding. And that’s because the government is not caring, its fair share of the cost.
Joe Selvaggi:
Hmm. I’m not sure I follow that logic, but it seems to me that you, you, you wanna serve that the government needs college education more than the individual. No,
Mark Kantrowitz:
It’s a partnership. It’s a partnership. Part of it gets paid back by the student. Part of it gets paid back by the government and the government still comes out ahead financially, when you look at the impact on federal income tax revenue from getting these students to the finish line.
Joe Selvaggi:
But so does the student you know,
Joe Selvaggi:
It’s but a pub, you know, again, we don’t wanna do a economic degree here, but you know, public good is not, it’s good for the public it’s non-rival non-excludable that sounds like a private good, not a public good. If I go to college and get a PhD benefits me. Sure. I’ll pay more in taxes in my life, but I should be able, willing to pay for what I, I, what I consumed or what I, what I gave to myself. I mean, why not? Why privilege education? Why not give subsidies for people to become again you know electricians, why, why privileged, you know, academics?
Mark Kantrowitz:
I’m not saying that they shouldn’t pay anything for their degree. I’m just saying that the federal government doesn’t pay its share based on its the its share of the benefit and the, the federal government needs to do the, the people who need forgiveness are the people who through often through no fault of their own have are unable to repay the student loan debt. Maybe they got that PhD trained to be a rocket scientist. And the day after graduation, they’re in a car accident and they’re are paraplegic and they can no longer do the job for which they’re trained. That’s why we have a disability discharge just saying, oh, I mean, people should have to pay the entire cost of their college education. Even though the government is also financially benefiting that’s, doesn’t really make sense. The government benefits, the borrower benefits, the student benefits both should be contributing to the cost of that education.
Mark Kantrowitz:
And from the governance point of view, if it were to invest a little more in making college more affordable, it would increase the number of people with college degrees and therefore increase its net federal income tax revenue after subtracting the cost of the getting the students to graduate. And that could benefit the rest of society in two ways, either government has more money. And if you think the government spends its money wisely, it would have more money to spend on programs that benefit society, or it could reduce the taxes that everybody pays because it’s getting more revenue either way. There’s a benefit to the rest of society, not just the individual who got that college degree.
Joe Selvaggi:
All right. We’re I think we’re gonna have to disagree here because I think the, that logic take to it, logical conclusion is, you know, I pay property packs for my house. So the go, the government should subsidize my, my home purchase. I, you know, I mean, I arguably it does for, for mortgages and I, I might take issue with that, but we’re gonna have to disagree, but I appreciate you’ve given this a lot of thought. And you know, I think you’ve given our there’s something to think about and I enjoy a good a good lively conversation like this. So Mark, I want you to be able to plug your services those people who are persuaded by your arguments over our conversation, would like to find you and perhaps ask for your help and best ways to pay for school. How can our listeners find you?
Mark Kantrowitz:
I don’t do paid consultation with families and sometimes people find me and send me a question. And sometimes I’ll answer that, I get far more questions than I have time available to answer. I have a website where I have my student aid policy papers, that’s studentaidpolicy.com. I write for the college investor website. I also write for forbes.com and I’ll soon be starting up a Q and A column that will be published by the Wall Street Journal.
Joe Selvaggi:
Yes, I went on your website. You have I don’t know, hundreds of articles that are all very carefully reasoned and, and supported by data. So I, I do recommend your your website to our listeners. So Mark, thank you very much for sharing your analysis with us. I enjoyed our conversation today.
Mark Kantrowitz:
You’re welcome.
Joe Selvaggi:
This has been another episode of Hubwonk, a podcast of Pioneer Institute. If you enjoy today’s episode, there are several ways to support the show and pioneer Institute. It would be easier for you and better for us. If you subscribe to Hubwonk on your iTunes podcast, catcher, it would make it easier for others to find Hubwonk. If you offer a five star rating or a favored review, we’re always grateful. If you share Hubwonk with friends, if you have idea is or comments or suggestions for me for future episode topics, you’re welcome to email me at hubwonk@pioneerinstitute.org. Please join me next week for a new episode of Hubwonk.
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This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Karina Calderon, deputy director of The Lawrence Partnership, about her work to help immigrant entrepreneurs drive economic growth in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The Lawrence Partnership is a collaboration of business and civic leaders started in 2015 that helps by incubating, training, assisting, loaning, basically doing everything they and their partners can to grow the city’s businesses. The model they’ve adopted is replicable for sure, and is one based on longstanding relationships and trust between new and longtime residents. Karina explains how it works, shares some of the success stories of their immigrant small business owners, and details her own immigration story, as you’ll learn in this week’s JobMakers.
Guest:
Karina Calderon, a native of the Dominican Republic, is Deputy Director of The Lawrence Partnership. She received formal training as an IT Technician and was three years into a degree as an architect at the Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra prior to making the journey to the United States in pursuit of more opportunities for herself and her young daughter. Like so many aspiring first-generation immigrants, Karina brought with her a basic grasp of the English language, limited personal networks, and a whole lot of ambition, resilience and work ethic. Those ingredients have proven a successful combination. Karina applied her skills to the health care distribution industry, starting with Conlin’s Pharmacy and Home Medical Equipment in 2012. Karina grew with the company and ultimately helped establish a new role managing referrals and partnerships. In addition to her professional accomplishments, Karina always kept close to heart the idea that education is the key that opens all doors. While working full time and raising a family, she continued her education, gaining formal education in Computer Drafting and Design as well as a degree from the Business Transfer Associates program at Northern Essex Community College.
Read a Transcript of This Episode
Please excuse typos.
Denzil Mohammed:
I’m Denzil Mohammed and welcome to Jobmakers.
Denzil Mohammed:
The City of Lawrence, Massachusetts is one we’ve talked about before. Why? Well, out of its 90,000 strong population, 40.8% is far born and more than 80% identify as Hispanic or Latino. According to the immigrant learning center, it has the third highest concentration of immigrants in the entire Commonwealth and its buzzing with immigrant entrepreneurs for Karina Calderon, deputy director of The Lawrence Partnership, a collaboration of business and civic leaders started in 2015 to help grow businesses in a way that benefits all its residents, that immigrant entrepreneurship is the engine driving the growth of the city. She and the Lawrence partnership are tasked with incubated training, assisting loaning, basically doing everything they and their partners can to grow the city’s businesses. The model they’ve adopted is replicable for sure. And is one based on long standing relationships and trust between new and longtime residents. Karina explains how it works, share some of the success stories of the immigrant small business owners and these hails, her own immigration story of making it in the states by herself. As you learn in this week’s job makers, Karina Calderon, deputy director of The Lawrence Partnership, how are you? Welcome to Jobmakers!
Karina Calderon:
Thank you I’m very good. Thank you. I’m very happy to be here. Thank you for the invitation.
Denzil Mohammed:
So tell us a little bit about The Lawrence Partnership. It’s a fairly new initiative and it’s all about making Lawrence bigger and brighter and better, right?
Karina Calderon:
It is for sure. So The Lawrence Partnership, it came out of a collaboration of the private sector, the public sector and also the nonprofit sector. So we have a very robust board of directors of 30 to 32 leaders, local leaders that are executive directors, presidents, CEOs of local and big companies that are here in Lawrence. They saw a need of coming together and in working towards creating an inclusive economic development for the city of Lawrence.
Denzil Mohammed:
And what does inclusive economic development look like?
Karina Calderon:
Well so we do that through different initiatives. And I can tell you a few of them. So, you know, how I told you that we have a very robust board of directors, some of them are residents of different banks in the area. And something that they did was that the, the, the bankers in our board, they came together and they invited some other banks also local to to come and put together a fund. So we can, and it was it’s called a venture loan fund. And the, the idea of this fund is to be able to provide loans to businesses, small businesses that are considered non bankable. So if a small business owner needs a loan goes to bank bank X, Y, Z, which is a huge bank and they get denied. They can go to our venture loan fund and apply for a loan there.
Karina Calderon:
And the main interest of our bankers is to inject this money into the community and help the small businesses with the needs that they have. So what they did was they each came with about a hundred thousand dollars. And right now we have a $1.1 million venture load fund. And until date, if I’m not mistaken, I know that we have learned a little bit more, but last time that I checked that I had a, an actual report, it was about $600,000 that we had put out industries to the small businesses since last summer when we relaunched the venture loan fund. So that’s a way for us to, to create that inclusive economic development. That’s one of the initiatives that it’s, that it’s big on that. Another initiative that we also have, it’s called a revolving test kitchen. It is, it started as a sh as an incubator.
Karina Calderon:
So it started as a it was a collaboration between Sal Lupoli who had a restaurant actually in our building four 20 common street Northern Essex community college, the Lawrence partnership, and also the city of Lawrence. Sal had that restaurant there. It didn’t work out for him. It wasn’t a Sal’s Pizza or anything like that. It had a different name. So then Northern Essex who rented the building, told them like, Sal, you have that space there with all that equipment, let’s do something about it. So we came together and we were able to give this space for, to a food entrepreneur that wanted to taste his recipes, test, his business plan. And we gave him the, the space for a year, so they could run it as a restaurant. They didn’t have to worry about overhead or anything like that.
Karina Calderon:
They did have to pay $500 a month, which if they, by the time that they were done with their one year period, if they opened a brick and mortar in the city of Lawrence, they would get all their money back. So we did that for three years. It was a successful program. Also let me just say that, let me just add that besides, you know, using the space and, and that help with the rent and stuff like that. They also got technical assistance. So the team from Sal Lupoli was, you know giving them some pointers and education on certain areas that they needed help with, like setting prices, you know, cost of good salt and things like that. The city facilitated them getting certain licenses that they need in order to operate their business. So it was a true collaboration. So, like I said, three years, we did that three successful businesses came out of their CocoRay’s, in south Lawrence, Encanto, who ended up opening a food truck. And then Bocaditos who decided after that she wanted to do safe surf classes is in Spanish for, for the Hispanic community. So three success stories each on their own way.
Denzil Mohammed:
This does sound very, very collaborative. And I, and when you introduce the ideas of, you know, getting licenses and permits and that kind of thing, that is, you know, especially for immigrant entrepreneurs who are not familiar with the system and need that kind of technical support, that’s really important.
Karina Calderon:
About two, three weeks ago, we had an event. We called it how to start a business and expand it in the city of Lawrence. And we were very intentional because, you know you may know that about 80, the 90% of this community is Hispanic. So we were very intentional about making this event in Spanish. And we had trans simultaneous translation services inside. So people could feel comfortable because if there’s something that is true, is that I feel like people get to trust you a little bit more when they, when you are speaking their, their same language, you know, they feel more comfortable. The walls come down, we had two panels. The first one was different business owners, local business owners talking about their experiences, giving tips, what worked for them, what didn’t, you know, things like that to inspire the entrepreneurs that were there, watching them and listening to their stories.
Karina Calderon:
So they can know that, you know, there’s a, a light at the end of the tunnel. And then the second panel, it was organizations like ours. Like I said, Mill cities, community investments entrepreneurship for all Merrimack valley planning commission, which is like a, like a Hispanic chamber type of organization. They were there. And also the city of Lawrence, they were there talking about the resources that there are available for business owners. And it’s unbelievable the lack of information that it’s out there. It’s, it’s a huge challenge. People are not aware of the resources and some resources are going untapped because not everybody has access or not even, they don’t even know about their existence. I learned about a few things there, myself.
Denzil Mohammed:
It almost seems as though immigration was a key, played a key role in the model of the partnership, because you had to rec reconcile with and recognize that their language barriers, because these are new Americans and, you know, immigrants learn English over time that it, it happens. But at the start, when they need to get a leg up speaking their own language literally is, you know, as you said, Bill’s trust, but I wanna ask this, this is happening now. You said you, the partnership started in 2014. Why did it take so long for something like this to happen,
Karina Calderon:
But you relationships, they take time to build that trust. It takes time. So I think that possibly, maybe that had a, a, a little bit of a factor. But we are not being shy now, before I remember we didn’t take credit for anything. We would do the work. We would, you know, we would work with a group of partners. We would do the work, we would roll up our sleeves, do the work, and we didn’t need to take credit. Not that we’re doing it now, but we’re just doing it a little differently because we do want people to know that the Lawrence partnership is here and it’s very important. You know, it goes back to trust that the, they don’t only know that they’re, that we’re here, but that they see that the people that say we are a team of three George Ramirez, my, the executive director myself, and then our new star Giro. And it’s important that when they see us, they see they can, they can picture cells because we look like them. We are here because we care about the community and the community. We look like them, they look like us. We are one and we are in our priority is to, to bring this community forward.
Denzil Mohammed:
And I imagine, of course, that’s not just the Hispanic community that, that you’re reaching out to. It’s, it’s everyone,
Karina Calderon:
Everyone, exactly. Everyone. And, and thankfully we can navigate, you know, in, in the different cultures. So, and, and we have partners also like, like I told you, you know, we’re not doing, we’re not necessarily doing this alone. So we’re, we’re one is slacking. The other one is compensating. So I’m not worried.
Denzil Mohammed:
And you mentioned entrepreneurship for all a really, really fantastic initiative. I see that there, even in north, Northwest Arkansas now, yes. Started by Desh Deshpande, who’s also a big legend in the Merrimack valley area, legendary entrepreneur. So what does the landscape in Lawrence look like today?
Karina Calderon:
So right now, let’s say we have a group that is working in revitalizing the downtown of Lawrence. We have Beau this beautiful flower pots on every corner, beautifying the streets. We have building owners working on the facades of, of their buildings on Essex street, trying to make it more appealing and more inviting for people to feel comfortable and come to, to, to Essex street and to Lawrence in general. We have great restaurants. So I hear some people that they say we wanna make Lawrence the mecca of food. I’m like, yeah, sure. Bring it on. Let’s make it happen. And, and we have people that are working on that. We also have huge companies local companies that are, you know, affecting the economy positively. We have Gemline, Able Womack, and then both of them in industrial park and New Balance, it’s also here in Lawrence very committed to the city and in helping it succeed.
Denzil Mohammed:
I like the idea of like a destination city for food because Malden, Massachusetts ha is that at it, it takes, we take so much pride in the fact that we have such a variety of restaurants and just so many of them, you can get pho, you can get Thai food, you can get Mexican food, everything, a new Ramen place just opened up on Pleasant street. And you talk, you talked about Essex street, which of course is like main street in Lawrence mm-hmm <affirmative> mm-hmm
Karina Calderon:
<Affirmative>.
Denzil Mohammed:
So tell me about the role of immigrants in the economic development of Lawrence overall, especially those immigrant business owners.
Karina Calderon:
I think that they are the one running the city. A lot of our businesses are immigrants, sometimes non-English speaking. And I have to, to give some kudos to our partner, Entrepreneurship for all, cuz you know, they have, they have a Spanish version of their program. And, and sometimes I’ve seen reports of the work they do and they, they would tell you so many immigrants and it’s like 93 out of hundred <laugh> mm-hmm <affirmative>, it’s, it’s a big number. And these are people that they’re hungry. You know, they want to succeed. They came here because they had a dream and they, this is the, the, the land of opportunities. That’s what I was told before I came, before I moved to this, to this country. And, and that’s how I see it. And many people see it like that. So yes, more immigrants are, the ones are the, the small, the, the small business community in Lawrence, for sure.
Denzil Mohammed:
That’s, that’s fascinating and a very, very important point. And you said that they’re hungry. They come here with a desire with a yearning, they have to succeed and they’re inherently entrepreneurial. Just the fact that they moved to another country, not knowing if it’s gonna be better or worse is itself an entrepreneurial act
Karina Calderon:
Exactly.
Denzil Mohammed:
Really inherently entrepreneurial. And I’m glad that the city of Lawrence is really capitalizing on that and optimizing it to the benefit of the entire community. And you just mentioned that you came here from another country as well. What is your impression story?
Karina Calderon:
So I am Dominican. I was born and raised in Dominican Republic. I came to spend the summer in Hampton Beach because I was in college there. I was going to architect school and they had this program where college students could come for the summer, spend the summer, work, you know, practice the language and then go back home. So I came in 2002. And then in 2002-03, my mom told me when I was getting ready to go back home, she goes, why don’t you stay and try to open doors for us. Things are a little rough here.
Denzil Mohammed:
Mm
Karina Calderon:
Mom, are you serious? Like, I don’t, I don’t have anybody here. I don’t.
Denzil Mohammed:
And she, and you’re just a kid
Karina Calderon:
22 years old.
Denzil Mohammed:
Yeah, exactly.
Karina Calderon:
But it happened at the right time because, let me tell you, if it happened to me now, I don’t think I would’ve had the same energy and the same drive. So so I stayed with some friends that I made along the way, and I, a lot of things have happened that that’s another story for another day, but I am so glad because those ups and downs that I went through, helped me to be where I am today. And this is not even my final destination just yet. There’s still much more to be done. But I am so grateful for the community that welcome me. I have no family here. It’s just me and my two daughters, but I have a great network of friends of colleagues. So I’m for what the city has done for me. And, and I think that it’s only, it’s only right, that I keep doing the same thing for the city.
Denzil Mohammed:
Perfectly said very, very well said. That’s incredible. And to think that, I mean, people take for granted how hard it is as an adult, especially to learn a whole new language, a whole new culture, all the different laws. And you’re embedded in all the licensing and credentialing and permitting and all these different things. What is a credit score? You know, what is that? So many things to learn and you I’m, I’m, I’m so pleased that you choose you chose to stay with your mother’s encouragement. Mm-Hmm and <affirmative>, how does it feel for you knowing how difficult it would’ve been back in the Dominican Republic to have your daughters grow up in Lauren? So, and in the United States,
Karina Calderon:
I feel very appreciative and very blessed. If my daughters would be here, they would be rolling their eyes. Because one thing that I used to tell them since they were very little was, and they would like verbatim and repeat, repeat it as I was saying it, because I said it so long. So, I mean, I said it so many times that I would, I used to tell them like, listen, cuz my oldest one, she was born in Dominican Republic. So, you know, immigrant, the little one was born here, but I told her like, listen, we came to this country to be the best version of ourselves to take advantage of those opportunities that they give us and work with them and be the best version of ourselves. Because back home, we didn’t have that, you know, the education we don’t, we were blessed back home, at least my family that I did have access to an education, but many people didn’t have the same luxury.
Karina Calderon:
So to come here and see that anybody, as long as they want it, they can have that education. I know that there are their challenges because you know, not everything is easy, then you have to have some skin in the game. I just told them, let you know, let’s, let’s be that let’s be the best versions that we can be. And and I’m just grateful that I, I never thought that I would end up here. Like I told you, I, I came for a summer to have fun with my friends and make some money and bring it back home and, and to end up here and make my life here and, and to live in this community that it’s home now, it’s, it’s wonderful.
Denzil Mohammed:
You’re and you’re having an impact. <Laugh>, you’re having an impact on the CF Lawrence and beyond. And I hope others, municipal workers are listening into this to, to really realize how important these partnerships and these relationships are toward a more inclusive economic situation, wherever they are. You have to get everyone’s, you know, everyone needs to be at the table, whether they’re new or old and the new tend to be that hungry, those hungry people who, who will take that risk and start to exactly and try it out and hopefully end up being successful. Karina Kran off the Lawrence partnership. Thank you so much for joining us on job makers.
Karina Calderon:
Thank you. It was a pleasure.
Denzil Mohammed:
Jobmakers is a weekly podcast about immigrant entrepreneurship and contribution produced by Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston, and the Immigrant Learning Center in Malden, Massachusetts, a not for profit that gives immigrants a voice. Thank you for joining us for this week’s powerful story of immigrant entrepreneurship. Remember, you can subscribe to Jobmakers on Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And please give us some stars. I’m Denzil Mohammed, see you next Thursday at noon for another Jobmakers.
Recent Episodes:
This week on “The Learning Curve,” co-hosts Cara Candal and Gerard Robinson talk with Dr. Wilfried Schmid, Dwight Parker Robinson Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University, who played a major role in drafting the 2000 Massachusetts Mathematics Curriculum Framework and served on the U.S. National Mathematics Advisory Panel (NMAP) in 2008. Dr. Schmid shares how he became interested in mathematics, and how it was taught and encouraged in the German schools he attended. He also talks about his academic career at Harvard, his teaching experiences there and at other elite universities, and the wide disparities in the level of academic math preparation between students from America and other countries. Professor Schmid explains how he became interested in K-12 mathematics, and his work with education expert Dr. Sandra Stotsky in drafting Massachusetts’ nation-leading math standards. They discuss the “math wars” that occurred across American K-12 education, and why, even after the landmark NMAP report, this country continues to struggle with teaching students basic mathematics.
Stories of the Week: In Texas, teachers who choose to resign during the school year are being stripped of their professional certification. US News & World Report’s annual ranking of top high schools is out, and the latest list features several from Massachusetts, including Boston’s exam and charter public schools, as well as wealthy suburban districts.
Guest:
Dr. Wilfried Schmid is Dwight Parker Robinson Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University. He’s a leader in the representation theory of Lie groups and gave the first construction of the discrete series and proved Blattner’s conjecture. Professor’s Schmid’s work on Hodge theory has produced wide-ranging applications. In 1960, Schmid entered the undergraduate program at Princeton University, graduating with an A.B. in mathematics. He received his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1967 from the University of California at Berkeley. After three years as an assistant professor at Berkeley, he became professor of mathematics at Columbia University. He moved to Harvard University in 1978. In addition to his research interests, he became involved in K-12 mathematics education, after a disturbing incident in his daughter’s second grade class. Professor Schmid played a major role in the drafting of the 2000 Massachusetts Mathematics Curriculum Framework, and served on the U.S. National Mathematics Advisory Panel in 2008.
The next episode will air on Weds., May 4th, with Dr. Eric Hanushek, the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. He is internationally recognized for his economic analysis of educational issues, and he received the Yidan Prize for Education Research in 2021.
Tweet of the Week:
"Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated," said Mr. Musk. https://t.co/AMabwvVdQc
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) April 25, 2022
News Links:
The Boston Globe: Here’s A Look at Top Ranked Massachusetts High Schools According 2022 US News & World Report
Texas Tribune: Amid a teacher shortage, some Texas educators are losing their licenses for quitting during the school year
Read a Transcript of This Episode
Please excuse typos.
[00:00:00] Cara: Hello listeners. Welcome to another edition of The Learning Curve. It is your Wednesday, which means it’s time for Gerard and I to shoot the breeze. Talk about education and interview somebody really cool. Gerard, how you doing today?
[00:00:43] GR: I’m doing well in wet, wonderful Charlottesville. When we spoke last week, I believe it was in the eighties.
[00:00:49] I was working on my tan and that is not what I’m doing today, but glad to be with you always, it’s always a sunny day, one way or another. Yeah.
[00:00:58] Cara: You always bring [00:01:00] sunshine to my day. It’s rainy here too. I have to say though, lately I’ve been thinking we must both be really old. Cause we liked talking about the.
[00:01:09] Do you realize I’m like, can I talk about the weather? Like the first thing I do in the morning is like, Hey, Google, what’s the weather today. used to always like criticize my father for watching the weather channel constantly. And now I get it. So kind of scary. Oh, Google’s talking to me.
[00:01:25] I just want everybody to know if you heard that in the background she answered. We’re not even going to cut that out. have a question for you as I open this week, given your vast experience. I would like to know how much stock you put in these things called us news and world report rankings, whether it’s rankings of schools, rankings of colleges, , where do you stand on the rankings
[00:01:54] GR: business?
[00:01:55] In a scale of one to 10, I put an eight [00:02:00] because I know deans at different professional schools who use that as a. To figure out what they can do to go up one or two points. So personally I have seen it make a big difference for me. When I was looking at grad schools, it made a difference. And then third, I take an example from Northeastern university I had a president several years ago who moved the school, like 40 points. Of the U S news world report ranking. And there was an entire story on it because the president decided to be a data-driven person. So for me, it’s an eight for others may be.
[00:02:39] Cara: All right.
[00:02:40] Okay. Yeah, I know. I mean, it’s sort of controversial, but I feel like in my opinion, so, you know, folks that use it, but I feel like the public sort of wakes up to this stuff too. So whether we think that the rankings are fair or not, or we like the algorithm that the user, whatever is. It’s something that gets a lot of attention.
[00:02:57] And I think that that’s important. And I bring this up because [00:03:00] this morning and the Boston globe is an article about the fact that the 2022 rankings for the best high schools in the country is out. And I got to tell you, was drawn immediately to it. I texted our producer, Jamie gas early in the morning.
[00:03:14] Cause I was trying to think of like, of all the stories that can talk about this week. And this one for me brings together some stuff that had been thinking about both nationally, but also. Going to get a little Massachusetts centric for a minute. So in this article, it highlights that the states with the best high schools, by many measures, right, like performance and, , AP access and all these things are of course, number one, let’s always pat ourselves on the back.
[00:03:37] We are Massachusetts. Connecticut and number three, which drum roll Massachusetts people. Don’t like to hear Florida just consistently. And I’m sure it’s because you were chief there at one point. But th you know, Florida is this state that doesn’t matter what ranking you’re looking at.
[00:03:55] There are a couple states that are consistently moving up in these measures, [00:04:00] right? Here’s the same, of course, being who I am. I home right in on Massachusetts. And I want to see, so what are the best school districts? What are the schools that really stand out? Gerard? It’s not going to surprise you to know, but boy did it really make me angry to know the best high schools in the state of Massachusetts break down along these lines.
[00:04:23] And I’m talking here top 20 broad-stroke. Don’t worry. I’m not going to go through all of them. They are the exam schools in the Boston public schools and kiss your brain. Cause I’m going to talk about, I’m going to rant about that in just a minute. They are number two. Charter schools in Boston. Mainly there are a couple that are not, but charter schools just predominantly factored into these best high school ratings.
[00:04:48] And they are wealthy suburban districts, which in Massachusetts, Maine, they start with a w usually because it’s Western and Wellesley. Actually [00:05:00] Lexington made it in there, but here’s the thing that really gets me Gerard. So in people listening, who are in states with magnet schools and exam schools, I’m not saying that they’re a bad thing.
[00:05:09] I think they can be a great thing, but here in the city of Boston, as I’ve talked about previously, and we had a good friend, Charlie Chippewan to talk about this as well, we have been just trained to bang the drum about these huge disparity. That exists within the district. Right? So this got me to thinking, I’m going to pull up the M cast results in that’s our state test for what was cited as like the best high school in basically the country, but certainly in Massachusetts.
[00:05:38] And that is the Boston Latin school, which has been around since obviously the beginning of time. And it’s a very, it’s a very Boston Romany school, but this is a school, as I’ve said in the past, a lot of people will send their kids to private. pre-K. through five schools and then try and get into one of these prestigious Boston exam schools.
[00:05:56] And if you look at the results for a school like this, right, [00:06:00] an M cast scores, the students at these schools who are meeting or exceeding expectations , in Boston’s premier exams. You’re up in the 78%. You’re up in the 83%. Like these kids are knocking it out of the park. Gerard, if you look at our Boston high schools, meaning the schools that kids either they don’t test into, they get some degree of choice, but they’re mainly assigned to kids are scoring in the 28 30 range in terms of the percentage meeting or exceeding expectations.
[00:06:37] On our M cast scores. And this ties into something that I’ve been wanting to talk about because we’ve been banging the drum and saying, how can it be that there are these huge disparities within one district? And the vast majority of kids are shoved into these schools that are just drastically underperforming?
[00:06:55] Well, part of the reason is because. Oftentimes when folks say like, look [00:07:00] at the Boston public schools, they’re so great. What they’re doing is they’re factoring in the wonderful M cast scores from some of these very high performing exam schools. And Gerard, if you can’t tell this just gets under my skin to know and use this platform to talk about it again.
[00:07:20] And again. And so as much as I do appreciate us news and world report rankings, and I think that they can shine a little light on something. I think the big takeaway for me here was, wow, here. You’ve got a couple of really wealthy districts and by the way, charter school, Which are serving kids who are not coming from backgrounds, like the ones in these very wealthy districts where homes are probably the average home in a lot of these places is close to, if not above a million dollars Gerard, yet they are getting similar results in here.
[00:07:51] We are not only with charter schools on the rails. You know, we talked about this last week, not going to get federal start-up funds and stuff, but Massachusetts loves to [00:08:00] hate charter schools as well. So I just want a little bit of a. Shout out or I don’t know, just a shout maybe is what I’m doing.
[00:08:07] Some of our education leaders here in the Commonwealth to say pat yourselves on the back for some of these rankings, but pat yourselves on the back for having really excellent charter schools. And please, please, please. Can we take a hard look at the disparities within that are right in our backyard in BPS.
[00:08:22] So dread I am done. I invite you please to rebut anything that I have.
[00:08:30] GR: Question. So if Massachusetts first, Connecticut, second Florida, third where’s Virginia.
[00:08:36] Cara: Oh friend. I didn’t look that far.
[00:08:40] GR: Ah, here’s the point look that far. So let me start with a few points. What I think about rankings of high schools?
[00:08:49] I always think about my American enterprise Institute colleague, Nat Malpass and he identified that if you look at the top performing traditional [00:09:00] public schools, magnet schools, charter schools. Exam schools, others. They have a lot of things in common. One in particular is usually that one. Percent of the students are taking AP courses.
[00:09:13] So there’s already something built in, in terms of having an AP course. I mentioned that because last fall when I had an opportunity to go to a Gibbs’ national education conference in Florida, I moderated a panel that focused on looking at issues of equity and we had the current. Interim CEO for education trusts, who made a really good point, really several points.
[00:09:37] But she was saying, what are the challenges that schools that serve low income students have is they often don’t have access to a lot of AP courses. Even if the student’s bright, guess what your GPA and your transcript will look less competitive to a college. And so she was bringing in an aspect of AP we overlook.
[00:09:56] So what I think of us news and world. I think of Matt, but I [00:10:00] also think about the eight peak components. So that’s number one, number two, it’s not a shock that the best schools tend to be those that focus and work with talented students. Remember as much as people say that charter schools are public, they overlook the fact that public exam schools.
[00:10:20] In fact, many of them have tests to get in. A lot of charter schools, in fact, do not have a test to get in a number of magnet schools have a test to get in a number of charter schools do not have a test to get in. So in some ways, charter schools are actually more democratic than some of the exam and magnet schools that we compare them to.
[00:10:38] But I’m glad that. have exam schools. I’m glad we have specialty schools, but those schools are going to do well for a long time. You bring up something. We often overlook and that’s wealth and household income. The number one school choice program is where you choose to move and buy a house. And where you choose to buy a house.
[00:10:58] It’s going to impact where you go to [00:11:00] school, approximately 83% of the students and the public school sector go to a school that they’re zoned for. And so there’s a correlation between zoning income and outcomes, but let’s also give a shout out and I’m glad you gave a shout out to charter schools. Let me also give a shout out to a school in Virginia.
[00:11:17] It’s called Richmond community school. I’ll start it in the 1970s. It is the only public high school in Virginia, and one of few in the country. Dedicated to taking. Gifted students. Many of them were African-American and many of them who come from financially challenged backgrounds, you and I’ve talked on this show about how many gifted students find themselves overlook.
[00:11:41] The assumption is if you’re a gifted, you’re great. Of course everything’s made for you. We know that’s not the case because a number of gifted students also find themselves with an IEP, a 5 0 4. And we also know that many of them get lost in the shuffle. There are many gifted students who found themselves in juvenile justice facilities, as well as in [00:12:00] prison.
[00:12:00] But you have Richmond community school, which has a great college going. The number of alumni who are doing great things are wonderful. And it’s a school that proves that you can take smart students who are low income and do well. But this program also shows we look at high schools like charter schools that take students who are qualify for free reduced price lunch, but are amongst the best students in the state.
[00:12:26] It just goes to show that poverty doesn’t have to be a proxy for destiny, but we can’t overlook the. That at the end of the day, this is a game of Thrones. And depending upon who you think you are and what family you belong to, we’ll decide who’s going to serve throwing. Who’s not.
[00:12:45] So your story also get me pretty excited and I’m glad to see it out there. There are people who will say all kinds of things about it, but I tell you what, when families are looking to buy a house, they go to places like this. [00:13:00] So let me give a shout out to U S news and world report and for all the drama.
[00:13:05] For having the audacity to rank schools.
[00:13:08] Cara: There you go. Game of Thrones.
[00:13:10] GR: So my story is a little different. We’ve talked a lot about the pandemic and the impact that it’s had on teachers. We know a lot of teachers are not doing well either because of lack of support, own personal professional challenges.
[00:13:24] But one thing we don’t talk about. Is a term in the education space or we talk about contract uh, And then we, we don’t talk about it is we often don’t get into the nuance of teacher licensing. So this story is from Texas. There is a teacher who’s a second grade leader. She joined the profession six years ago and she joined the teaching profession.
[00:13:52] She’s elementary school teacher because she wanted to help students. Well, for the last two years, She’s like, wait a minute, I’m going to be teaching [00:14:00] online for quite some time. And so Stacy decided, you know, what. I’m going to do something different. I’m going to actually lead the profession and I’m going to pursue something else, but she decided I’m going to wait until the end of the school year to leave.
[00:14:17] Is that because she didn’t want to leave her students behind possibly. Is it because she didn’t want to put her principal in a bad spot? Possibly. Is it because she’s got a great. Education program to end the year, and then she will see that done. And then she will leave the professional altogether possibly.
[00:14:34] But one thing she also said is that if I leave in the middle of the school year, I may find my license revoked. And so she’s like, I’m not going to do it. But Stacy is one example. At the same time, she decided to stay in the profession, guests. Over 500 teachers have decided to leave. And in responsive being in the middle of the school year, there’ve been at least [00:15:00] 471 claims filed with the state board of education certification in Texas to say, My teacher left in the middle of the school year.
[00:15:10] He or she broke their contract or contract abandonment. But what does that mean? Well, at least in the state of Texas, they created in 1995, a state board for educator certification and the legislature actually created it because they want it to recognize school educators. As professionals and they wanted to grant educated, the authority to prove and move forward with standards.
[00:15:35] The board has 15 members, 11 are voting members appointed by the governor to six year terms for our classroom teachers. One’s a counselor to our administrators and for citizens, there are four non-voting members who also serve on the board. The governor appoints a Dean of education and a person who has experience working with.
[00:15:55] Alternative education programs, the commission of education appoints a [00:16:00] staff member from the Texas education agency, their state board commissioner of higher education appoints a staff member as well. So they make the decision when they receive a claim from an independent school district, they say, you know what drawer left the profession is.
[00:16:16] The middle of the school year. And he did so without cost or better yet with good calls now in the state of Texas. Good cause means you can leave the profession without punishment, meaning loss of your certification, if it’s for health reasons, or if the spouse is getting a job in a different city, or if you’re even going to transfer schools within the state.
[00:16:37] But if you’re leaving for as some teachers. Health challenges. Some are leaving because they’ve gotten fed up with the way things are going, right now that does not fall under the good cause claim. And so you have attorneys who are working in Texas, who said, they’ve, haven’t seen in number of years, this many people leaving the [00:17:00] profession and some of them are leaving nor are they going to lose their license.
[00:17:04] Which means at least in Texas, if you lose your license, there’s the least one. Where you can’t teach and if you do so in the middle of the year is a good chance you can lose one academic year and half of the other. But according to the reporter, some of the teachers said, I simply don’t. I’m not coming back to the profession, I’m fed up and I’m leaving.
[00:17:24] So there are a couple of takeaways for the listeners. Number one, if you want to learn more about contract abandonment and reasons why people are leaving the profession, in this case, your. State board of education certification in Texas is one example in other states that information or that authority is under the department of education.
[00:17:46] So take a look there because when people are leaving and they’re leaving for different reasons, number two, if state legislatures are thinking about ways of. Keeping a teachers in the profession. Maybe we have to give some thought [00:18:00] to what includes good costs do we put in frustration? Well, maybe not.
[00:18:05] that’s a contractual challenge, but maybe we should broaden the definition to give teachers an opportunity to say, you know, I’m going to leave for a year, but I want to come back and I’d like to come back and teach, but I just need time off. So, one of the few stories, we’ve had an opportunity to talk about regulation and law, but it’s something that I found interesting and interested in getting your thoughts on.
[00:18:27] In fact, I should mention this as well. You could also have your license suspended and not taken away. So there’s also that option. I’ll stop
[00:18:35] Cara: there. I would just say real quick, Gerard, that, what’s amazing to me about this is in a time when everybody’s thinking, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, teacher pipelines, what are we going to do to attract teachers?
[00:18:46] And some are thinking about retention, but most of the new laws we’re seeing are all about pipeline and growing new teachers. And I love this idea that we need to think about making the profession more sustainable for people and. [00:19:00] Troublesome that it took a pandemic to get us there. we could go on about this for quite a while, but you know, Gerard, we’ve got a phenomenal guest actually waiting in the wings for us here.
[00:19:11] So we are going to be talking really quick, coming up with Dr. Wilfried Schmid and he is the Dwight Parker, Robinson emeritus professor of mathematics at Harvard university. So let’s try and put our math caps on. Mine’s not very big, Gerard. It’s not, it’s going to be. Anyway, coming up right after this.
[00:19:53] Learning curve listeners, please help me welcome Dr. Wilfried Schmid. He is the Dwight Parker Robinson professor of mathematics [00:20:00] at Harvard university. He’s a leader in the representation theory of light groups and gave the first construction of the discreet series, improved Blattner conjecture in a minute.
[00:20:09] He’s going to, I hope. Tell me what all. Professor Schmid’s work on Hodge theory has produced wide ranging applications. In 1960. Schmid entered the undergraduate program at Princeton university, graduating with an AB in mathematics. He received his PhD in mathematics in 1967 from the university of California at Berkeley.
[00:20:29] After three years, as an assistant professor. He became professor of mathematics at Columbia university. He moved to Harvard university in 1978. In addition to his research interest, became involved in K-12 mathematics education after a disturbing incident in his daughter’s second grade class professor Schmid went on to play a major role in the drafting of the 2000 Massachusetts mathematics curriculum framework and served on the U S national mathematics advisory.
[00:20:58] In 2008 [00:21:00] Professor Schmid, welcome to the Learning Curve. We’re very happy to have you. And I am curious to know about the experience with your daughter that led you into drafting the mathematics standards for Massachusetts, but let’s, start with you first because you grew up in Germany and you have obviously had a remarkable academic career here in the U S could you talk a little bit about your interest in mathematics at a young age and how you were taught math in German schools?
[00:21:30] Dr Schmid: Well, there are some significant differences between German and us schools beginning in grade five. There were three different school types in Germany, the least ambitious, and these prepared students continued to go to the same school that had attended before for an additional five years in the middle.
[00:21:51] We’re students who went into professions that required better preparation. They attended separate schools that [00:22:00] went up to grade 10. If I recall correctly. And the top level schools were staffed by teachers who taught only two or three subjects for a total of 13 years of schooling. These top level schools provided preparation, FireEye education.
[00:22:16] Teachers at these top level schools were trained at universities, followed by a period of two or three years as apprentice teachers and even teachers at the two lower levels of schools tended to be better prepared than beginning teachers in the us, all my male teachers, and most of my teachers were indeed male.
[00:22:37] I had returned from world war two and prisoner of war camps. That experience tended to make them more tolerant of dissent from students. I certainly argued with my teachers in ways that would not be tolerated by us teachers. My father was a professor of Latin and Greek, and so I attended to school. [00:23:00] That emphasize the teaching of Latin and ancient Greek mathematics was very much an afterthought, but nonetheless mathematics was taught well, in general, one of my parents’ neighbors was the most prominent mathematician in Germany at that time.
[00:23:17] And , when he heard that, I did not think I learned enough mathematics in school. That mathematician gave me private lessons that was truly a remarkable, most prominent German mathematician, volunteering to offer mathematics lessons to a high school student. To some extent I became intensely interested in mathematics as a result of that experience.
[00:23:40] Cara: That’s really quite amazing to have such a prominent mathematician as a tutor. So you’ve got , your own international experience, but you have taught here at Harvard and other. Universities. And you’ve already given us a hint as to the differences [00:24:00] between the system you grew up in and the American system.
[00:24:02] I think it’s really interesting that you could dialogue with your teachers in Germany and didn’t have the same experience here. Can you talk a little bit about. Comparatively at a place like Harvard, for example, what you see in terms of preparation, academic preparation, coming from students from other countries versus the students who are by every definition, elite who were admitted to Harvard.
[00:24:25] Can you talk about the differences in what you see?
[00:24:27] Dr Schmid: first of all, you mentioned Russia and I believe their school system was similar to the Germans. Thing report did an excellent job in teaching students, by making teaching a revered and very well paid profession, the Singapore ministry of education and trust that the writing of textbooks to the most experienced teachers and those Singapore textbooks are ex.
[00:24:54] By tradition in China. Teaching is a deeply valued [00:25:00] profession. Indian society is highly stratified and the Indian students we see in the U S typically come from has that very, that value of education.
[00:25:11] Cara: it’s fascinating that you can locate those differences. Now I mentioned at the outset that you had an experience at your daughter’s school that prompted you to really look at. K to 12 mathematics standards and curriculum. I would love for you to describe for our listeners what that experience was.
[00:25:34] And then can you talk a little bit about the experience of, I mean, this is in the year 2000, so Massachusetts was sort of on the leading edge of states that were even thinking about curriculum standards. This was new at the time. states had them, they certainly weren’t putting them to good use. So I’m curious about how you got there, the experience that led you to this work, and then what the work itself was like.
[00:25:55] Dr Schmid: Well, at that time I lived in Lincoln, [00:26:00] Massachusetts, my wife and I chose to live in Lincoln in part because the Lincoln school. At the highest per capita student spending in Massachusetts, it was also politically liberal.
[00:26:15] GR: My wife and I
[00:26:16] Dr Schmid: assumed that these attributes would make for good schools to some extent that was the case,
[00:26:22] GR: but not in math.
[00:26:24] Dr Schmid: In grades K through five, the Lincoln schools had chosen the program called. Investigations in numbers, data and states that program, the stand, the learning of what are called number facts purposely admitting the teaching of wrong addition and multiplication algorithms and relied heavily on so-called manipulatives.
[00:26:49] That means tiles measuring pictures, measuring tapes. I should say that I was dissatisfied with the Lincoln schools, [00:27:00] mostly because of the K through five mathematics program, the Crimson, the Harvard student newspaper published an op-ed piece that I had written in which I criticized the teaching of math and the Lincoln school.
[00:27:15] Then the New York times published a very long article in K through 12 education that also mentioned my disagreement with the Lincoln case were five schools that brought me to the attention of other mathematicians who are interested in K through 12 mathematics education. At the time, , the Massachusetts mathematic standards.
[00:27:38] Which is a document that describes what should be taught in various grades, where to be a revived. The committee of Massachusetts teachers had written a first draft in line with the ideas of the so-called reform curriculum, including investigations and numbers, data.
[00:27:59] [00:28:00] Start ski at the deputy commissioner of education. And to a lesser extent, the Massachusetts commissioner of education, David Driskell were unhappy with the drops. They contacted a Stanford mathematician, James milligram, who had been very heavily involved in the California. Which proceeded the Massachusetts not force.
[00:28:28] you suggested that start ski and Driscoll contact me. They did. And it asked me to revise the first draft of their Massachusetts curriculum frame.
[00:28:38] GR: Well, let’s take the math wars discussion, just a step further. So when you were working on Massachusetts state standards at this time, We’ve got to remember that there were very unique features about mathematics standards in that state that not only led the state to being a national leader on NAPE going back to [00:29:00] 2005, but it also became really the only state that globally could compete on an international level as related to science and math testing, including Tim’s and PISA.
[00:29:11] Talk to us about the math wars, both sides of the fence. How you were able to help Massachusetts achieve global success?
[00:29:20] Dr Schmid: Well, to be fair to the math education reformers, whom I oppose the school system in the U S had not been successful in teaching math, but it would have made sense to look at other countries that managed to do well in math education and try to emulate.
[00:29:40] Instead the reform has tried to homegrown untested ideas. It’s true that Massachusetts was doing better in mathematics teaching than other states. However, the Massachusetts state standards are only one reason by the state. That’s a, well, it’s a state with two of [00:30:00] the top us universities. And many top medical research facilities.
[00:30:05] These institutions attract a lot of domestic and foreign talent. And then in particular towns to whom education is very important.
[00:30:16] GR: You mentioned. Boston really being a hope for what I would call brain power. When you look at magazines and other articles about the smartest states in America or the smartest cities, Massachusetts, or from a city perspective, Boston will often finish number one, just because of the number of people in the city.
[00:30:35] And yet when you look at Boston public schools math results, Really aren’t that great. And there’s conversation now about receivership, which my colleague Kara has written about recently, but let’s just use that state and even Boston, as an example, there’s a really big debate over why the American K-12 system is so unwavering and implementing true math reform.[00:31:00]
[00:31:00] Is it bureaucratic? Is it ideological? do you see is roadblock.
[00:31:04] Dr Schmid: I’m like in the science and medicine accurate Countrywide, comparative studies in education. Now almost impossible to construct because different states standards specify various times when various topics should be taught.
[00:31:22] The us K-12 education reform was were well-intended. But most of them did not look beyond us borders to see what works instead. They kept trying out various ideas that look new and exciting, but turned out not to be success.
[00:31:41] GR: idea of America looking beyond its borders, be it across the Atlantic or the Pacific ocean, or even going north and south has been a really big challenge. I know you have. Links to Germany many years ago, had a chance to travel to what was then east and west Germany shortly after the [00:32:00] fall of the Berlin wall to look at the K-12 and higher education system.
[00:32:03] And they talked about the apprenticeship program and they also mentioned the. The three things you had mentioned earlier, but the system really focused on the importance of thinking in mathematical ways, not simply to pass a test, but to be able to function in society. You’re at Harvard now Dr.
[00:32:21] Paul Peterson convened a group of scholars, domestic and international to come and talk about students. Well, I ended up meeting the principal of the highest performing math high school in China. And when I went to visit China, he began providing an opportunity to go to the school and meet people.
[00:32:37] Other countries are making this a priority and you identify some of the challenges as why we can’t. Well, let me go to my next question, because as much more fundamental, you’ve talked about algebra one being a gateway course to higher level math. And yet we have a number of students. Who find themselves going into high school without algebra or leaving without algebra [00:33:00] in 2008, you remember the prestigious us mathematics advisory panel, that interview, which reviewed more than 16,000 research, publications and policies on the topic.
[00:33:10] Similar question, even after the work you did at inmap, what can Americans do to really push the idea of teaching students, even basic mathematics?
[00:33:20] Dr Schmid: if I recall correctly, it was Laura Bush, the wife of George W. Bush, who convinced her husband to make education a priority. And to a point the national mathematics advisory panel the members included psychologists interested in how children learn mathematics, educated.
[00:33:43] And mathematicians interested in math education. It would take far too long to enumerate all the conclusions of the tunnel, but that may numerate the main points. The importance of a clear progression off topics, typically in [00:34:00] us schools, mathematical topics would repeat it year after year in the stead, that kind of suggests.
[00:34:07] Each topic should be taught once with adequate depth in school, mathematics is a cumulative subject topics that were covered in prior years would come up again implicitly. And that makes the revisiting the subject really unnecessary importance of preschool. Again, that was one of the main points of the national math panel.
[00:34:31] The importance of preschool. To alleviate the difference between children of different backgrounds. And then there was the issue of adequate preparation of teachers, including in particular teachers in the early grades, a common misconception is the idea. I mean, a common misconception in the year.
[00:34:52] Is the idea that to quote, if you know how to teach, you can teach anything on the quote. [00:35:00] No, that’s just not the case. You cannot teach what you do not understand yourself. Then at the time of the panel, she pocket calculator that said become available. The panel strongly suggested that calculators should not be used in the early grades.
[00:35:16] Because that him, that the learning of what’s known as the number facts,
[00:35:21] us textbooks typically were far too long. And just related to the issue of with repeating topics. Yeah. After a year, of course, then the importance of national tests. at the time state assessment to us real common, but the quality varies greatly making it very difficult to compare the effectiveness of various state curriculum guidelines.
[00:35:48] I have to say that the conclusion of the panel, even though well-founded widely ignored, If I look at my Harvard colleagues, roughly half of [00:36:00] them receive primary and secondary education and other countries, that fact has surely several explanations. One of them certainly is the poorest state of us case with 12 mathematics.
[00:36:14] GR: Very good point about the international dynamic of those who go into the PhD program for mathematics. was just an Indian question for you. Title nine is 50 years old this year. Part of the push was to make sure that. Understood the role of gender, the role that women played in academics today, at least at the undergrad level, we have 2 million more women in college than men.
[00:36:39] We have more women who are enrolled in stem today than 50 years ago. And there are a number of stem teachers. We now have women, we look at. The PhD level for mathematics numbers moving in a better direction than 50 years ago. But surely not as high as we have for men. There’s also an internet, a domestic dynamic of trying to get [00:37:00] more American students to also pursue a PhD in education, independent of race from your years of experience, as a researcher, as an educator, and having looked at this subject uh, the K-12 level and beyond what a couple of recommendations that policymakers.
[00:37:16] Deans at colleges of arts and sciences ed schools. What should we be thinking about to make sure we have more women earning PhDs in mathematics, as well as American students doing the same?
[00:37:27] Dr Schmid: Well, and that’s a very confounding issue. I cannot really say why. There are so many more men in mathematics at American universities than women.
[00:37:42] I just have no excellent. But it is the case. And it is the case in spite of attempts to how should I say, get more women involved in academic mathematics? they are Harvard mathematics department. The vast majority of [00:38:00] members is men. And in spite of efforts that you’ve made to recruit.
[00:38:05] GR: Absolutely. Well, Dr. Smith, thank you so much for spending time with us. Continue the good work and know that you have a platform here in the future to get the message out about the importance of mathematics. Thank you. Take care.
[00:38:54] Cara: And listeners, we always leave you with the tweet of the week and this one [00:39:00] from, a former guest, Barry Weiss I mean, who isn’t talking about Elon Musk and Twitter right now, but she said. Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy. And Twitter is the digital town square where it matters.
[00:39:13] Twitter gives me hives. I’m not going to say for a variety of reasons, but I think that this is a very important point listeners. Next week. We’re going to be speaking with Dr. Eric Hanushek. I think you might know him. He is at the Hoover institution of Stanford university and boy. Oh boy. He’s got a lot of accolades internationally.
[00:39:35] For his economic analysis of educational issues amongst so many other things until then Gerard take really good care of yourself. I can’t wait to be back with you again next week.
[00:39:45] GR: Sounds good.[00:40:00]
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Student Debt Cancellation: Paying For Your Neighbors’ College Education
/in Featured, Higher Education, Podcast Hubwonk /by Editorial StaffHubwonk host Joe Selvaggi talks with education financing expert Mark Kantrowitz about the $1.6 trillion in U.S. public student debt – who owes it, who stands to benefit from the Biden administration’s recent promise for across-the-board student debt reductions, and what strategies are available to target only those most in need.
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Joe Selvaggi:
This is Hubwonk I’m Joe Selvaggi.
Joe Selvaggi:
Welcome to Hubwonk, a podcast of Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston. Americans owe $1.6 trillion in public student debt. President Biden, both in campaign promises and in a more recent comment is considering some student debt forgiveness, either by executive fiat or through a coordinated act of Congress. Though framed as a helping hand for those saddled, with crushing debt and for whom such debt imposes stifling, long-term burdens, any such forgiveness could be regarded as largely regressive heaping largesse on those with the most education debt at the expense of those who have borrowed less paid their debt or not gone to college at all. Nevertheless debate amongst the president’s supporters seem to focus only on the amount of forgiveness while failing to distinguish those that are most in need from those who can well afford to pay. And if such forgiveness implies that college may not equip students with the added skills to pay for their own education, should we reconsider the wisdom of encouraging all students to borrow for secondary education regardless of value or lifetime return?
Joe Selvaggi:
My guest today is Mark Kantrowitz, one of the nation’s leading experts in education financing, aid, scholarships, and grants for the past three decades. Mr. Kantrowitz’s writing has provided students with strategies for making informed choices about education and for borrowing wisely when doing so. Mark and I will discuss his research observation on the profile of those who carry student debt, and he will offer recommendations or more targeted debt forgiveness aimed at the most vulnerable while also avoiding the cost and moral hazard of forgiving the debt of those most able to repay. When I return, I’ll be joined by education financing expert, Mark Kantrowitz. Okay. We’re back. This is Hubwonk. I’m Joe Selvaggi and I’m now pleased to be joined by education financing expert. Mark Kantrowitz, welcome to Hubwonk.
Mark Kantrowitz:
Thank you for having me.
Joe Selvaggi:
Okay. Now, before we dive into our topic of a student debt forgiveness let’s establish for our audience for our listeners, your bona fides as the nation-leading expert on college student financial aid, scholarships, college savings plans, education tax benefits, and student loans. Tell our listeners, how long have you been doing this studying these options at making yourself an expert? You know, what, what brought you to this level of being the nation’s expert?
Mark Kantrowitz:
Well, I’ve been doing this work for three, so I have a lot of experience and I’m not content to state. What is existing policy? I, I like doing research to identify new insights and new rules of thumb that can influence public policy. I’ve served as publisher of several leading websites about planning and paying for college. I’ve written more than 150 student aid policy papers and 14 books including five bestsellers.
Joe Selvaggi:
That’s very impressive. So, you know, beyond what we’re gonna to talk about today, if our listeners are looking for an expert they’re trying to figure out how to pay, to pay for college in the future and prospectively. You would be the guy to talk to about how to borrow wisely and efficiently.
Mark Kantrowitz:
Now my mission is to help students and their families make smarter, more informed decisions about paying for college as well. Well as repaying student loans.
Joe Selvaggi:
So we’re gonna not just talk about the future in this case. We’re, we’re gonna talk about loans already incurred. So let’s, let’s jump into our topic. We’re gonna talk about the concept of a student debt forgiveness. Let’s set the stage for our listeners interested in in this topic, largely it’s brought on by president Biden, recent murmurs, that quote I’m considering dealing with some student debt reduction. This statement comes of course, course in the context of us we’re in the aftermath of COVID 19 during that time it seems reasonable that the student debt there was a moratorium amount paying back student debt, and that was extended a few times. And here we are back to don’t call it normal, but we’re a, an unemployment rate that’s remarkably low. So let’s say the, everybody who wants to work is almost at work. So let’s start with some numbers, how much total student debt now that we’re ready to pay it back. How much student debt is held in the United States
Mark Kantrowitz:
According to the federal Reserve’s G19 report, as of December 31st, 2021, there was a total of $1.75 trillion of student loan debt. More recent data is not available now of this total, about $1.6 trillion is federal student loans and the rest is private student loans. And the federal student loans is owed by a little bit more than 43 million borrowers. Now the payment pause and interest waiver that student loan moratorium applied to about $1.46 trillion of the total.
Joe Selvaggi:
Okay, so this is money. This trillion is a lot, I think it rhymes with billion, a million, but a trillion has 16 zeros, right? It’s 1600 billion. It’s a lot of money. So you’re an expert in the best ways to finance education. Is it already the case that before I go out and borrow money are the, are ways that the government or universities currently work to ease the burden? In other words is the government already doing its most to to prevent an aspiring student from incurring more debt than they should? Are there subsidies both from governments and universities already?
Mark Kantrowitz:
Right. So about six dozen colleges some of the most selective colleges have very generous, no loans, financial aid policies. They do not include loans in the financial aid package, replacing them with grants, but that’s only six dozen out of more than 6,000 colleges. All colleges that provide federal student loans are required to provide entrance and exit loan counseling to borrowers. I’ve argued that this isn’t frequent enough that you have to provide counseling every time the student borrows and that it needs to be personalized to the student circumstances. And some colleges also provide financial literacy training, the quality of the counseling and the financial literacy training varies from college to college. Some colleges have really good training. Some colleges not as good, and some provide the financial literacy training at all. Now every college, since 2011 has been required to provide a net price calculator on their website.
Mark Kantrowitz:
This is a calculator that students can use to generate a personalized estimate of their one year net price. The net price is the diff between total college costs and gift aid gift aid includes grants, scholarships, and other money that doesn’t need to be repaid. It’s like a discount on the college costs. And total college costs include not just re on tuition fees, but also room board, book supplies and equipment transportation, miscellaneous personal. So the net price is the amount of money that the family or the student will have to pay from their savings from contributions, from income, and from student loans, the student loan debt at graduation correlates very strongly with the net price. Now students should consider choosing a less expensive college. They don’t need to go to the most expensive college in their field besides the no loans colleges, which have a net very low net price, because they give more of the aid as grants, as opposed to loans. An in-state public college is for most students is going to be the least expensive option. And in-state public college costs about of quarter to a third, the cost of a private college.
Mark Kantrowitz:
You can also save on college costs in other ways, such as by buying used textbooks or selling them back to the bookstore at the end of the semester minimizing the number of trips home from school. And in general, what you need to do is live like a student while you’re in school. So you Don have to live like a student after you graduate.
Joe Selvaggi:
Oh, that that’s a great, that’s a great takeaway. I, I like that that, that slogan. And of course, when we talk about some selective schools, I, I did quick look up Harvard, if your, your family makes less than 75,000, it’s, it’s free. I think your MIT, that’s your Alma mater. I, I believe mm-hmm, <affirmative> also 75,000 or less, or even up to 140,000, it’s it’s next to, you know, close to zero to, to attend. But for most schools, that’s not the case. I’ll just point out I, I share your concern that colleges though, they are tests with students on making wise decisions. There’s a conflict of interest, right? Because if you’re an expensive school, make giving counseling, you’ve got a disincentive to make it clear to the student, how much they’re gonna owe in the, is that right?
Mark Kantrowitz:
That’s sometimes are as, as between a grant. And so the student is left with not really understanding how much they have to borrow to pay for the college. And sometimes they’ll referred to a loan as an award and not really have any signals that this is money that needs to be repaid.
Joe Selvaggi:
So we do want, you know, so we’re both advocates of students approaching college, it’s eyes wide open and saying, okay, I’m gonna get the education, but I’m gonna have to pay X to get it. So let’s just address some of the sort of narratives that those who are interested in for giving student loans. I think a lot of well, meaning people who, who may be sympathetic to the, these types of policies, imagine that students student debt really is a byproduct of, of, of a a student coming from a family with fewer resources and must borrow to to pay for school you’ve answered. I think already that there are choices that can go to less expensive schools, maybe state colleges, that sort of thing. But is there a correlation in your analysis between how much debt is held by students in general? And let’s say the family income, I there in other words, are, are, are poor kids, the ones who are taking on the debt
Mark Kantrowitz:
Well, and first of all, let’s establish that college means debt of students receiving a bachelor’s degree, more than 70% graduate with student loan debt. If we limit to students who applied for financial aid, filing the FAFSA, then seven eights of them graduate with student loan debt. One of the most effective ways of re eliminating the need for student loan debt is to pick wealthy parents, of course, that you can’t do that. But when I’ve looked at PE grant recipients versus non recipients, the Pell grant re, and these are generally very low income students, it’s a good proxy for low income status. They are much more likely to borrow for college than middle and high income students, and they graduate with more debt. So we expect are least capable of paying students who are least capable of paying for college to borrow the most. And that’s a sign that we’re not giving adequate grants to these students and the Pell grant historically has gone up by only about a hundred dollars a year, even as college costs go up by thousands of dollars a year. Now among students who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 2016, 84% of PE grant recipients graduated with student loan debt that compares with 61% of other students, and they graduated with a few thousand dollars more, a student loan debt.
Joe Selvaggi:
Okay. So let’s, let’s break it down more granularly. Again, 1.6 trillion divided by the number of students is this sort of, are, are students, is there sort of a uniform profile of the debt, or are few students owe a thousand dollars and others owe hundreds of thousands of dollars? We, we really haven’t gotten down into the nitty gritty. We’re all only talking about undergraduate. My research, arguably nothing like yours seems to indicate that the, the massive debt is incurred by those who choose to go to graduate. School might be a pre professional school like law school or medical school breakdown, you know, is everybody about the same debt or we got huge disparities?
Mark Kantrowitz:
Well, we often hear news stories about a student who graduated with a bachelor’s degree and a hundred thousand dollars or more in student loan debt, mind you, you can’t do that just with federal student loans. You need private student loans to do that. The reality is that 90% of bachelor degree recipients graduate with less than $50,000 in student loan debt. And among those who graduate with six figure debt, most of them are graduate students with degrees in medicine or law. It really is an exception to the rule when a student graduates with six figure debt for an undergraduate degree. And that’s usually a sign that something is not being done right, that they’re at too expensive at college, or that nobody try to raise their awareness that they’re taking on too much debt. Because generally speaking, if your total student loan debt at graduations, less than your annual starting salary, you should be able to afford to repay your student loans in 10 years or less. So when your debt exceeds your annual income, that you’ll struggle to make those loan payments and you’ll need an alternate repayment plan like extended repayment or income driven repayment to yield a more affordable monthly loan payment. These repayment plans reduce your monthly payment by increasing the repayment term to 2025 or even 30 years, which means you’re gonna be paying a lot more interest over the life of the loan. And you’ll still be repaying your own student loans when your children go to college.
Joe Selvaggi:
So it’s like graduating with a mortgage that, that sounds a little bit daunting. Is there a correlation now we said there’s students who incur the six figure debt might be in professional schools, graduate schools medicine, law. Those are I think notoriously well paying industries, have you broken down where are the debt lies amongst low income, medium income and high income? I love your sort of back of the envelope rule of thumb, which is you ought not to incur more debt than your expected annual salary upon that graduation. Great, great a nugget there, but how given the profile of who owes money now, are they low income people, medium income, or even high, high income earners?
Mark Kantrowitz:
There’s a super position of two curves. One is people who took on a more lucrative, a degree, like a graduate degree and therefore have higher debt, but also higher income. And people who didn’t graduate at all, they have less debt because they weren’t in college for as long, but they don’t have the degree that can help them repay that debt. So they’re much more likely to struggle. That’s why you often hear statistics about the average debt of people who default on their student loans being under $10,000. It’s actually a little bit more than that. And that’s because a, the likelihood of default increases as the debt to earnings ratio increases the, the greater debt as a share of income. The more likely you are to default, but at the same time, if you drop outta college there’s a second curve there. And when you join the two curves, it yields results that are often misinterpreted as saying, oh, this is only a low income problem, or a low debt amount problem. It’s really a it’s. If you have more debt compared to your income, your ability to pay that debt is impaired. And if you drop out college, you’re much more likely to default on your student loans than someone who graduates.
Joe Selvaggi:
So I think we’re having a disconnect between the cost of college and the benefit of college. It seems odd that one would incur debt for something that doesn’t help them pay that debt, or doesn’t better help them pay for debt. Let’s. let’s start to talk about some of the remedies some of the numbers banded around for forgiveness. Again, I’m jumping ahead to forgiveness. You know, we don’t want blunt instruments such as you know, across the board forgiveness in my view as you mentioned, there’s a huge stratification of debt and potential ability to pay that debt. There’s wealthy people a lot and poor people, a little and ironically, or not ironically, but the, the, the lower income people with smaller debt are at most risk, at least are forgiving all debt across the board. Whatever that number is, it’s inevitably gonna wind up forgiving debt for people who have the most ability to pay back that debt. Isn’t that just obviously true?
Mark Kantrowitz:
Yeah. And that’s one of the things that some people object to in a broad student loan forgiveness program, which is why would you forgive the student loans of someone who is capable of repaying, their student loans? They argue that student loan forgiveness should be targeted at the borrowers who have financial need and not as wealthy or borrowers who don’t really, they want loan forgiveness, but they don’t need loan forgiveness.
Joe Selvaggi:
Yes, indeed. And I gonna, one, one of my little mantras is effective. The government doesn’t have its own money. So that money that’s going to pay off wealthy college graduates, perhaps doctors and lawyers is coming from people who didn’t go to college and perhaps pay their taxes. And that money is getting taken from someone who didn’t go to college and given to someone who did presumably if, if college is worth anything that seems difficult program to, to accept. Now we do already have programs, government programs from the, I guess, the department of education that does serve to forgive loans even before any talk of any future program. Right now, there are several national programs that allow some loan debt to be. Can you share with us, what are some of those programs?
Mark Kantrowitz:
Well, they tend to fall into two groups. One is for people who fulfill some sort of public policy objectives, such as getting people to teach in a national need area or other public service. So you have teacher loan, forgiveness you have public service loan forgiveness. The other group is discharges for people who are unable to repay the debt or can repudiate the debt in some manner. So if you die and your ability repay the debt is impaired. And so there’s a death discharge. If you’re totally I permanently disabled, there’s a disability discharge. If you are the victim of identity theft and didn’t actually borrow the loans, there’s an identity theft, discharge
Joe Selvaggi:
And yeah, and looking at these programs. And I, I wanna, I want you to tell me, I’ve read it wrong. I think recently the education department recently announced it for giving 6.2 billion in student debt for those working in the public sector. Now, I know public sectors jobs are not lucrative necessarily, but they are fairly paid. I assume that people show up for them. This, this program seems to be a bit self-serving that the government, it would forgive government loans for people who work for the government. Am I getting that wrong or is this shamelessly self-serving?
Mark Kantrowitz:
Well, members of Congress are ineligible for public service loan forgiveness. And the program is tied to a specific set of repayment plans called the income driven repayment plans where your monthly loan payment is based on a percentage of your discretionary income, as opposed to the amount you owe. If you’re a higher income individual, you’ll pay more under those plans, the, and someone who’s a low income individual and generally speaking in order to qualify for some loan forgiveness, your total student loan debt has to exceed your annual income. So this isn’t providing loan forgiveness to high paid DMV workers. It is going to people who are taking low paying jobs, despite their high amount of debt in order to give back to society. So an example might be public interest law like a public defender don’t get paid very well.
Mark Kantrowitz:
I mean, $40,000 is, is kind of typical yet. They may have hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loan debt for a law degree. If the warrant for the income driven repayment plans and the possibility of public service loan forgiveness, so that you’re not basically an indenture servant not just a public they wouldn’t go into these fields. The, the debt would be so big that it would provide a severe disincentive to pursuing a public service career. So public service loan forgiveness removes the debt as a disincentive. Now, their example is social workers for a masters of social, your debt might be 70, 80, $90,000. Those jobs pay $30,000, $35,000. It’s there’s a mismatch between how we compensate people for these public and national need areas and how much debt they have to take on to get a degree in that field.
Joe Selvaggi:
So effectively the government needs to effectively subsidize those professions. So as to incentivize people to that, who would otherwise not choose them to choose them. So
Mark Kantrowitz:
It’s also the it’s a lot less expensive for the government to provide public service loan forgiveness, then to pay these people more. I mean, if they were to pay them what they could get in the private sector they wouldn’t need public service loan, forgiveness. Now, public service loan forgiveness, it’s based on how much debt you have. And once that gets forgiven, there’s no more payout. Whereas if you were pay, hire salaries, then that would be higher income over the life, the work life of that individual. So in a way, public service loan forgiveness saves the government money.
Joe Selvaggi:
I’m curious, I just wanna divert for a second. If the government forgives my loan, let’s say owe a hundred thousand dollars and the, the largest forgives that loan. I know from my independent business world, that if my firm gives me a loan that, that they say you no longer need to pay back that’s considered a gift and it’s considered taxable. Would someone who’s been forgiven a hundred thousand dollars loan be then sent a whopping tax bill for the gift that’s been effectively given,
Mark Kantrowitz:
Right? So it used to be the case. Now IRS considers that if someone cancels your debt, it says though, they gave you the money to pay off the debt. And that money, that amount that’s forgiven is income to you. Now, previously public service loan forgiveness was tax free because of a special provision in the internal revenue code. But income, the 20 or 25 year forgiveness at the end of an income driven repayment plan was taxable. Many cases, these borrowers were insolvent and they could qualify for forgiveness of the tax debt, but the American resting plan act added a special provision that all student loan cancellation, whether forgiveness or discharge is tax free through December 31st, 2025. And president Biden has called in his budget for that to be made permanent. And it seems likely that it’ll either be extended or made permanent. And it applies not just to public service, loan, forgiveness, and income driven repayment, but also to the death and disability discharges. And they, they were charging the the, the tax liability against the estate of the de that just doesn’t seem right.
Joe Selvaggi:
So you’ve done a lot of research on ways to more to target forgiveness as opposed to just saying across the board, everybody the first $10,000 of your debt is, is forgiven regardless of income or your prospects for paying it back. What if some of the more targeted or criteria for debt forgiveness how do we target the people we really wanna target that is low income people who really just can’t get out from beyond their debt? How, how would you design a, a forgiveness plan that’s more effective than a across the board amount,
Mark Kantrowitz:
Right. So you could do means testing where you would forgive the student loans for someone who has an income below a particular threshold, maybe $50,000, $75,000 and that would reduce the cost. It would also reduce the number of followers who qualify, but the problem with means testing is that it would require some kind of an application process. And that means it can’t be done automatically. And the recent trend, I mean, what the Biden administration has done a lot of is making loan, forgiveness, the existing loan forgiveness programs, automatic, like doing a data match between the us department of educations records and the VA, or the social security administration in order to implement the stability discharges or special treatment for the debt of members of the us armed forces, where the interest rate is capped at 6% and, and, and similar provisions also with public service loan forgiveness members of the us armed forces are eligible, but I mean, just matching up that data to facilitate that is beneficial.
Mark Kantrowitz:
So I tend to like having a specific dollar amount of loan forgiveness, because it’s much easier to implement, but rather than provide the forgiveness to everybody $10,000 of loan forgiveness us to every borrower would cost 375 billion. And for you completely erase the student loans of a third of borrowers provide that loan forgiveness only to people who owe $10,000 or less, that reduces the cost of 75 billion, but still completely erases the debt of the third of borrow. And it tends to be better targeted at borrowers who are lower income. And you still, it’s not perfect because you still have wealthier borrowers who just happen to have paid down their debt to under $10,000, but it is much more effective than saying everybody get it’s a freebie.
Joe Selvaggi:
I see. I wanna the change, the focus of our lens a little bit. And I, I think we touched on it when we were talking about, you know, sort of prospectively when I’m thinking about taking on debt and going into college and choosing which college and frankly, which major, what do I do for a living and comparing what my debt will be com relative to my, my aren’t we, in a sense if we are effectively forgiving debt for people who are lower income effectively, subsidizing those fields that generate less income, are we creating incentives or, or distorting incentives so that students choose perhaps instead of high paying, let’s say, and majors, they become you know, theater majors or poetry majors don’t. We run the risk of saying, okay, choose your path cost be. And the less you make, the more we’re likely to subsidize afterward. This seems to me that perhaps be steering people in directions that you know, aren’t good for their long term wellbeing,
Mark Kantrowitz:
Right? Well, this is a problem that’s often referred to as moral hazard, where if you know that your student loans are going to be forgiven, then you increase the amount you borrow. However, if they limit the amount of forgiveness to say $10,000, that means that the borrowers will still have to repay the rest of their student loan debt that tends to minimize the risk of moral hazard. And it, any kind of loan forgiveness program will have those potential problems. I tend to favor solutions, which reduce the need for debt by providing more grants, targeted grants up front such as doubling or tripling the Pell grant that not only increases who goes to college and who graduates from college, but it also reduces the amount of debt at graduation, whereas a won’t forgiveness program, I doesn’t increase college access or success,
Joe Selvaggi:
But, but in, okay, let, let’s pull the lines further back PE grants or money coming from the government. And, you know, the deep dark secret is the government doesn’t have its own money. So it’s coming from you’re, you’re essentially giving money, whether in the front end or the, or forgiving in the backend, you’re taking money for people who didn’t go to college and giving it to people do which, in a sense, again, we accept that where you get taxes, give you less of something and substance give you more something, aren’t we, in a sense calling education in general, just a common good worthy of, of taxing people who don’t do it, of these people who do what, what public benefit is it to continuously and perhaps, you know, in the broadest strokes possible, send everybody to college. Aren’t we sort of missing the point here. If, if ultimately the college doesn’t generate the revenue necessary to pay back college, isn’t the value proposition you know, something we consider,
Mark Kantrowitz:
Well, college is not just a private good benefiting the student. It’s also a public good, a college graduate with a bachelor’s degree, pays more than twice the federal income tax of someone with just a high school diploma. So people tend to personalize this issue, asking why they’re of taxes should be used to pay off someone else’s student loan debt. But the reality is that it’s the college graduates who mostly are going to be paying back the cost of this through their income taxes. If their income taxes are actually increased to, to cover the cost and not pass off to some future generation decades from now the one could take that kind of argument that why should my taxes be used for something that I disagree with and to other areas, like, why should you pay for the military if you’re a pacifist, or why should you pay for school taxes if you don’t have children should you pay for the police if you don’t commit crimes should you pay higher health insurance premiums and higher life insurance premiums, if you’re healthy why should you have to pay taxes at all?
Mark Kantrowitz:
If you don’t like your state’s politicians, if you didn’t vote for the guy or maybe the politicians in another state where you clearly didn’t should you have to pay for snow removal if you don’t own a car? Or the example I gave earlier is nobody the public tends to dislike the DMV. Well, why should you have to pay the salaries of people who work for the DMV, if you don’t like the DMV why should you have to pay taxes on things that you buy for your own use? And all of those are similar questions.
Joe Selvaggi:
I, I would be happy to answer any one of those questions. They are all very, very good questions and all easily answered and, and dispensed with. I, I don’t wanna cloud our, our topic with, with sort of hypotheticals, but I will say though, if you characterize if you say merely that those go to college make more than those who don’t and their air go, they pay more in taxes and keep us all happy you. I think that’s a bit of a disingenuous statement, which is to say, that’s not a random sample. We don’t take the same, same 10 guys and send 10 to college and 10, not to college and compare the outcome. You know, the people go to college are self-selected and, and, and arguably have profound advantage of those who don’t. But I’d say if I take someone, you know, at the margin who had a choice, whether they go to trade school or invest in a F-150 and become a, a, a, a plumber instead of going and becoming a history major it, it could be argued that they would make far more in the trades than they would as a professional historian or, or, or something else.
Joe Selvaggi:
And, you know, how does that benefit me to send him to school and how arguably, and, you know, we can have ethical conversation all day long, but if indeed we’ve sent a someone who would otherwise be a successful plumber to being an unsuccessful an unsatisfied historian we’ve heard him too, not just society. So what would you say to, to the people who have those concerns?
Mark Kantrowitz:
Well, I, an, an electrician or an H V a C tech with a certificate or an associates degree can earn as much as a bachelor’s degrees in some fields. And, and the argument that, why should you subsidize one and not the other, like, why should you pay for an electrician who is based in two states over? And so you’re not gonna benefit from that electrician personally. I, I think that we all benefit from having a more educated populist, and, and I’d also like to point out that you really don’t have a student loan problem so much as a college completion problem. The default rate for people who get a bachelor’s degree, who graduate, even if it’s in a field like underwater basket weaving they are much, much less likely to default than someone who drops out. Overall among all undergraduate students, students who drop out are four times more likely to default than students who graduate, but among bachelor degree programs, they’re 95 times more likely to default if they do drop out than if they graduate. So the, the, the problem is that we’re not getting students to finish line. And that includes people who are pursuing enrolled at lower cost institutions like one year and two year programs. They’re actually more likely to default than people who go to a four year program.
Joe Selvaggi:
So I’m, you know I appreciate that. If anything, I, I think perhaps it makes my point more strong in that if we are in a sense, subsidizing college and encourage people to go to college, who might not otherwise choose college by virtue of the return on their investment, but they embark on college, encourage are debt, and then, and then leave college and ultimately default are we doing them a favor by subsidizing them with, you know, let’s say triple your grant plan, they still default. They still leave. They still have debt. How, how have we how do we solve the dropout problem by the giving people more reasons to go to college?
Mark Kantrowitz:
Well, doubling the PE grants would pay for itself in terms of increased federal income tax revenue, based on the number who would ultimately graduate in about a decade. Most people work 40, 45 years. So that means we’re gonna get at least 30 years of pure profit to the federal government from increased federal income tax revenue. It’s the equivalent of a 14% annualized return on investment. Now, if I were to come to you and say, I’ve got this sure fired way to generate 14% return on investment for decades, you’d be asking me, is your name Bernie Madoff? Because, well,
Joe Selvaggi:
There’s a, there’s a big, big, big, big flaw in that, that line of reason, which is to say the people who go to college and the people who don’t go to college are the same people. They’re very, very are different people. So if I push a button and send everybody to college and assume that the half that have not gone to college will now join the ranks of those who do and earn the same amount. You’ve got a point, but that seems like a, a profound, a leap of, of faith. I think there’s a difference fundamentally between people who go to college and frankly, people I’m not saying
Mark Kantrowitz:
Send everyone to college. I’m saying people are college capable of benefiting from college. Provide them with the resources. They need to afford a college education. Right now you have college capable, low income students who don’t go to college because of the chilling effect, a student won’t debt. If you had a borrow more than your parents earning a year to pay for your college education, you’d think twice about going to college. Even if you’ve got the academic chops to be able to benefit ’em from a college education and wealthy students who are least college capable enrolling college at six times, the rate of highly qualified, low income students. So we are not investing in our best resource, which is our people at an adequate level, we need to do more to ensure that college capable, low income students are able to enroll in college and graduate from college. If that’s what they want to do. I’m not saying that someone who flunked out of high school, I mean, should go to college. I mean, maybe they need to go back to high school and, and get their education. Or maybe they that’s. Education is not the right pursuit for them, but there are plenty of people who could benefit from college, but don’t because it costs too much.
Joe Selvaggi:
But if, again, I don’t wanna keep beating this to death, but if we say we’re, when we invest in college, we’re investing with the expectation that it will improve our future earnings to the degree that we’ll be able to comfortably pay our, our college back. Right. So if it provided no value, it would be no, there would be no value in going to college. You might challenge that statement, but let, let’s just stipulate that it ought to deliver some return to the person who receives the education. And I think you would agree with that. But what you’re saying now is that college is inherently good. We should send everyone or who wants to go, or who is, as you say, college capable, but somehow on the other end, that college degree does not empower them to pay back the loan that they incurred. In other words, it isn’t worth what they paid for. Isn’t that really a, a fundamental economic question. It’s not is something valuable, but is it worth enough value to you know, trade money for it?
Mark Kantrowitz:
Oh, and first of all, if they graduate, generally speaking, they’re able to repay their student loans. And except for the rare case where someone goes completely overboard with borrowing, you need to peg the aggregate loan limits to the expected annual income of the degree level and the academic major. The problem is people who drop out, as I said before, have the debt, but not the degree to can help them repay the debt. So we, this isn’t a issue of when people are graduating from college and don’t have the income because they picked a low paying career. And oftentimes those low paying careers give back to society. In other ways, the point is that the federal government is profiting off of college educated people. They pay more federal income tax, a greater share of federal income tax than people who don’t have a college degree.
Mark Kantrowitz:
So is the federal government paying its fair share of college costs are state governments paying their fair share of college costs, given that their profiting from increased income tax revenue. And I think the answer is no that they, and maybe in the 1970s, they were paying their fair share. But over the decades, the financial aid provided by government has shifted from grants to loans grant, every dollar grant costs of government, a dollar, every dollar of a loan yields, a small profit to the federal government. It’s a lot easier to increase aid in the form of loans than it is in the form of grants. And this has shifted the burden of paying for college increasingly from the government to the families. This is despite family income being essentially flat for the last two decades. So families are increasingly struggling to pay for college.
Mark Kantrowitz:
Now, the only form of financial aid with any degree of elasticity is loans cause and their, their income is hasn’t changed. So they either have to send to a lower cost college. And that’s not just from private colleges to public colleges. It’s from four year colleges to two year colleges, two year to one year and one year to no postsecondary education or they have to borrow more. And that’s why we see very steady increases in the average debt graduation and the total student loan debt outstanding. And that’s because the government is not caring, its fair share of the cost.
Joe Selvaggi:
Hmm. I’m not sure I follow that logic, but it seems to me that you, you, you wanna serve that the government needs college education more than the individual. No,
Mark Kantrowitz:
It’s a partnership. It’s a partnership. Part of it gets paid back by the student. Part of it gets paid back by the government and the government still comes out ahead financially, when you look at the impact on federal income tax revenue from getting these students to the finish line.
Joe Selvaggi:
But so does the student you know,
Joe Selvaggi:
It’s but a pub, you know, again, we don’t wanna do a economic degree here, but you know, public good is not, it’s good for the public it’s non-rival non-excludable that sounds like a private good, not a public good. If I go to college and get a PhD benefits me. Sure. I’ll pay more in taxes in my life, but I should be able, willing to pay for what I, I, what I consumed or what I, what I gave to myself. I mean, why not? Why privilege education? Why not give subsidies for people to become again you know electricians, why, why privileged, you know, academics?
Mark Kantrowitz:
I’m not saying that they shouldn’t pay anything for their degree. I’m just saying that the federal government doesn’t pay its share based on its the its share of the benefit and the, the federal government needs to do the, the people who need forgiveness are the people who through often through no fault of their own have are unable to repay the student loan debt. Maybe they got that PhD trained to be a rocket scientist. And the day after graduation, they’re in a car accident and they’re are paraplegic and they can no longer do the job for which they’re trained. That’s why we have a disability discharge just saying, oh, I mean, people should have to pay the entire cost of their college education. Even though the government is also financially benefiting that’s, doesn’t really make sense. The government benefits, the borrower benefits, the student benefits both should be contributing to the cost of that education.
Mark Kantrowitz:
And from the governance point of view, if it were to invest a little more in making college more affordable, it would increase the number of people with college degrees and therefore increase its net federal income tax revenue after subtracting the cost of the getting the students to graduate. And that could benefit the rest of society in two ways, either government has more money. And if you think the government spends its money wisely, it would have more money to spend on programs that benefit society, or it could reduce the taxes that everybody pays because it’s getting more revenue either way. There’s a benefit to the rest of society, not just the individual who got that college degree.
Joe Selvaggi:
All right. We’re I think we’re gonna have to disagree here because I think the, that logic take to it, logical conclusion is, you know, I pay property packs for my house. So the go, the government should subsidize my, my home purchase. I, you know, I mean, I arguably it does for, for mortgages and I, I might take issue with that, but we’re gonna have to disagree, but I appreciate you’ve given this a lot of thought. And you know, I think you’ve given our there’s something to think about and I enjoy a good a good lively conversation like this. So Mark, I want you to be able to plug your services those people who are persuaded by your arguments over our conversation, would like to find you and perhaps ask for your help and best ways to pay for school. How can our listeners find you?
Mark Kantrowitz:
I don’t do paid consultation with families and sometimes people find me and send me a question. And sometimes I’ll answer that, I get far more questions than I have time available to answer. I have a website where I have my student aid policy papers, that’s studentaidpolicy.com. I write for the college investor website. I also write for forbes.com and I’ll soon be starting up a Q and A column that will be published by the Wall Street Journal.
Joe Selvaggi:
Yes, I went on your website. You have I don’t know, hundreds of articles that are all very carefully reasoned and, and supported by data. So I, I do recommend your your website to our listeners. So Mark, thank you very much for sharing your analysis with us. I enjoyed our conversation today.
Mark Kantrowitz:
You’re welcome.
Joe Selvaggi:
This has been another episode of Hubwonk, a podcast of Pioneer Institute. If you enjoy today’s episode, there are several ways to support the show and pioneer Institute. It would be easier for you and better for us. If you subscribe to Hubwonk on your iTunes podcast, catcher, it would make it easier for others to find Hubwonk. If you offer a five star rating or a favored review, we’re always grateful. If you share Hubwonk with friends, if you have idea is or comments or suggestions for me for future episode topics, you’re welcome to email me at hubwonk@pioneerinstitute.org. Please join me next week for a new episode of Hubwonk.
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Karina Calderon on How Immigrant Entrepreneurs Help Cities Grow
/in Economic Opportunity, Featured, JobMakers /by Editorial StaffThis week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Karina Calderon, deputy director of The Lawrence Partnership, about her work to help immigrant entrepreneurs drive economic growth in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The Lawrence Partnership is a collaboration of business and civic leaders started in 2015 that helps by incubating, training, assisting, loaning, basically doing everything they and their partners can to grow the city’s businesses. The model they’ve adopted is replicable for sure, and is one based on longstanding relationships and trust between new and longtime residents. Karina explains how it works, shares some of the success stories of their immigrant small business owners, and details her own immigration story, as you’ll learn in this week’s JobMakers.
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Read a Transcript of This Episode
Please excuse typos.
Denzil Mohammed:
I’m Denzil Mohammed and welcome to Jobmakers.
Denzil Mohammed:
The City of Lawrence, Massachusetts is one we’ve talked about before. Why? Well, out of its 90,000 strong population, 40.8% is far born and more than 80% identify as Hispanic or Latino. According to the immigrant learning center, it has the third highest concentration of immigrants in the entire Commonwealth and its buzzing with immigrant entrepreneurs for Karina Calderon, deputy director of The Lawrence Partnership, a collaboration of business and civic leaders started in 2015 to help grow businesses in a way that benefits all its residents, that immigrant entrepreneurship is the engine driving the growth of the city. She and the Lawrence partnership are tasked with incubated training, assisting loaning, basically doing everything they and their partners can to grow the city’s businesses. The model they’ve adopted is replicable for sure. And is one based on long standing relationships and trust between new and longtime residents. Karina explains how it works, share some of the success stories of the immigrant small business owners and these hails, her own immigration story of making it in the states by herself. As you learn in this week’s job makers, Karina Calderon, deputy director of The Lawrence Partnership, how are you? Welcome to Jobmakers!
Karina Calderon:
Thank you I’m very good. Thank you. I’m very happy to be here. Thank you for the invitation.
Denzil Mohammed:
So tell us a little bit about The Lawrence Partnership. It’s a fairly new initiative and it’s all about making Lawrence bigger and brighter and better, right?
Karina Calderon:
It is for sure. So The Lawrence Partnership, it came out of a collaboration of the private sector, the public sector and also the nonprofit sector. So we have a very robust board of directors of 30 to 32 leaders, local leaders that are executive directors, presidents, CEOs of local and big companies that are here in Lawrence. They saw a need of coming together and in working towards creating an inclusive economic development for the city of Lawrence.
Denzil Mohammed:
And what does inclusive economic development look like?
Karina Calderon:
Well so we do that through different initiatives. And I can tell you a few of them. So, you know, how I told you that we have a very robust board of directors, some of them are residents of different banks in the area. And something that they did was that the, the, the bankers in our board, they came together and they invited some other banks also local to to come and put together a fund. So we can, and it was it’s called a venture loan fund. And the, the idea of this fund is to be able to provide loans to businesses, small businesses that are considered non bankable. So if a small business owner needs a loan goes to bank bank X, Y, Z, which is a huge bank and they get denied. They can go to our venture loan fund and apply for a loan there.
Karina Calderon:
And the main interest of our bankers is to inject this money into the community and help the small businesses with the needs that they have. So what they did was they each came with about a hundred thousand dollars. And right now we have a $1.1 million venture load fund. And until date, if I’m not mistaken, I know that we have learned a little bit more, but last time that I checked that I had a, an actual report, it was about $600,000 that we had put out industries to the small businesses since last summer when we relaunched the venture loan fund. So that’s a way for us to, to create that inclusive economic development. That’s one of the initiatives that it’s, that it’s big on that. Another initiative that we also have, it’s called a revolving test kitchen. It is, it started as a sh as an incubator.
Karina Calderon:
So it started as a it was a collaboration between Sal Lupoli who had a restaurant actually in our building four 20 common street Northern Essex community college, the Lawrence partnership, and also the city of Lawrence. Sal had that restaurant there. It didn’t work out for him. It wasn’t a Sal’s Pizza or anything like that. It had a different name. So then Northern Essex who rented the building, told them like, Sal, you have that space there with all that equipment, let’s do something about it. So we came together and we were able to give this space for, to a food entrepreneur that wanted to taste his recipes, test, his business plan. And we gave him the, the space for a year, so they could run it as a restaurant. They didn’t have to worry about overhead or anything like that.
Karina Calderon:
They did have to pay $500 a month, which if they, by the time that they were done with their one year period, if they opened a brick and mortar in the city of Lawrence, they would get all their money back. So we did that for three years. It was a successful program. Also let me just say that, let me just add that besides, you know, using the space and, and that help with the rent and stuff like that. They also got technical assistance. So the team from Sal Lupoli was, you know giving them some pointers and education on certain areas that they needed help with, like setting prices, you know, cost of good salt and things like that. The city facilitated them getting certain licenses that they need in order to operate their business. So it was a true collaboration. So, like I said, three years, we did that three successful businesses came out of their CocoRay’s, in south Lawrence, Encanto, who ended up opening a food truck. And then Bocaditos who decided after that she wanted to do safe surf classes is in Spanish for, for the Hispanic community. So three success stories each on their own way.
Denzil Mohammed:
This does sound very, very collaborative. And I, and when you introduce the ideas of, you know, getting licenses and permits and that kind of thing, that is, you know, especially for immigrant entrepreneurs who are not familiar with the system and need that kind of technical support, that’s really important.
Karina Calderon:
About two, three weeks ago, we had an event. We called it how to start a business and expand it in the city of Lawrence. And we were very intentional because, you know you may know that about 80, the 90% of this community is Hispanic. So we were very intentional about making this event in Spanish. And we had trans simultaneous translation services inside. So people could feel comfortable because if there’s something that is true, is that I feel like people get to trust you a little bit more when they, when you are speaking their, their same language, you know, they feel more comfortable. The walls come down, we had two panels. The first one was different business owners, local business owners talking about their experiences, giving tips, what worked for them, what didn’t, you know, things like that to inspire the entrepreneurs that were there, watching them and listening to their stories.
Karina Calderon:
So they can know that, you know, there’s a, a light at the end of the tunnel. And then the second panel, it was organizations like ours. Like I said, Mill cities, community investments entrepreneurship for all Merrimack valley planning commission, which is like a, like a Hispanic chamber type of organization. They were there. And also the city of Lawrence, they were there talking about the resources that there are available for business owners. And it’s unbelievable the lack of information that it’s out there. It’s, it’s a huge challenge. People are not aware of the resources and some resources are going untapped because not everybody has access or not even, they don’t even know about their existence. I learned about a few things there, myself.
Denzil Mohammed:
It almost seems as though immigration was a key, played a key role in the model of the partnership, because you had to rec reconcile with and recognize that their language barriers, because these are new Americans and, you know, immigrants learn English over time that it, it happens. But at the start, when they need to get a leg up speaking their own language literally is, you know, as you said, Bill’s trust, but I wanna ask this, this is happening now. You said you, the partnership started in 2014. Why did it take so long for something like this to happen,
Karina Calderon:
But you relationships, they take time to build that trust. It takes time. So I think that possibly, maybe that had a, a, a little bit of a factor. But we are not being shy now, before I remember we didn’t take credit for anything. We would do the work. We would, you know, we would work with a group of partners. We would do the work, we would roll up our sleeves, do the work, and we didn’t need to take credit. Not that we’re doing it now, but we’re just doing it a little differently because we do want people to know that the Lawrence partnership is here and it’s very important. You know, it goes back to trust that the, they don’t only know that they’re, that we’re here, but that they see that the people that say we are a team of three George Ramirez, my, the executive director myself, and then our new star Giro. And it’s important that when they see us, they see they can, they can picture cells because we look like them. We are here because we care about the community and the community. We look like them, they look like us. We are one and we are in our priority is to, to bring this community forward.
Denzil Mohammed:
And I imagine, of course, that’s not just the Hispanic community that, that you’re reaching out to. It’s, it’s everyone,
Karina Calderon:
Everyone, exactly. Everyone. And, and thankfully we can navigate, you know, in, in the different cultures. So, and, and we have partners also like, like I told you, you know, we’re not doing, we’re not necessarily doing this alone. So we’re, we’re one is slacking. The other one is compensating. So I’m not worried.
Denzil Mohammed:
And you mentioned entrepreneurship for all a really, really fantastic initiative. I see that there, even in north, Northwest Arkansas now, yes. Started by Desh Deshpande, who’s also a big legend in the Merrimack valley area, legendary entrepreneur. So what does the landscape in Lawrence look like today?
Karina Calderon:
So right now, let’s say we have a group that is working in revitalizing the downtown of Lawrence. We have Beau this beautiful flower pots on every corner, beautifying the streets. We have building owners working on the facades of, of their buildings on Essex street, trying to make it more appealing and more inviting for people to feel comfortable and come to, to, to Essex street and to Lawrence in general. We have great restaurants. So I hear some people that they say we wanna make Lawrence the mecca of food. I’m like, yeah, sure. Bring it on. Let’s make it happen. And, and we have people that are working on that. We also have huge companies local companies that are, you know, affecting the economy positively. We have Gemline, Able Womack, and then both of them in industrial park and New Balance, it’s also here in Lawrence very committed to the city and in helping it succeed.
Denzil Mohammed:
I like the idea of like a destination city for food because Malden, Massachusetts ha is that at it, it takes, we take so much pride in the fact that we have such a variety of restaurants and just so many of them, you can get pho, you can get Thai food, you can get Mexican food, everything, a new Ramen place just opened up on Pleasant street. And you talk, you talked about Essex street, which of course is like main street in Lawrence mm-hmm <affirmative> mm-hmm
Karina Calderon:
<Affirmative>.
Denzil Mohammed:
So tell me about the role of immigrants in the economic development of Lawrence overall, especially those immigrant business owners.
Karina Calderon:
I think that they are the one running the city. A lot of our businesses are immigrants, sometimes non-English speaking. And I have to, to give some kudos to our partner, Entrepreneurship for all, cuz you know, they have, they have a Spanish version of their program. And, and sometimes I’ve seen reports of the work they do and they, they would tell you so many immigrants and it’s like 93 out of hundred <laugh> mm-hmm <affirmative>, it’s, it’s a big number. And these are people that they’re hungry. You know, they want to succeed. They came here because they had a dream and they, this is the, the, the land of opportunities. That’s what I was told before I came, before I moved to this, to this country. And, and that’s how I see it. And many people see it like that. So yes, more immigrants are, the ones are the, the small, the, the small business community in Lawrence, for sure.
Denzil Mohammed:
That’s, that’s fascinating and a very, very important point. And you said that they’re hungry. They come here with a desire with a yearning, they have to succeed and they’re inherently entrepreneurial. Just the fact that they moved to another country, not knowing if it’s gonna be better or worse is itself an entrepreneurial act
Karina Calderon:
Exactly.
Denzil Mohammed:
Really inherently entrepreneurial. And I’m glad that the city of Lawrence is really capitalizing on that and optimizing it to the benefit of the entire community. And you just mentioned that you came here from another country as well. What is your impression story?
Karina Calderon:
So I am Dominican. I was born and raised in Dominican Republic. I came to spend the summer in Hampton Beach because I was in college there. I was going to architect school and they had this program where college students could come for the summer, spend the summer, work, you know, practice the language and then go back home. So I came in 2002. And then in 2002-03, my mom told me when I was getting ready to go back home, she goes, why don’t you stay and try to open doors for us. Things are a little rough here.
Denzil Mohammed:
Mm
Karina Calderon:
Mom, are you serious? Like, I don’t, I don’t have anybody here. I don’t.
Denzil Mohammed:
And she, and you’re just a kid
Karina Calderon:
22 years old.
Denzil Mohammed:
Yeah, exactly.
Karina Calderon:
But it happened at the right time because, let me tell you, if it happened to me now, I don’t think I would’ve had the same energy and the same drive. So so I stayed with some friends that I made along the way, and I, a lot of things have happened that that’s another story for another day, but I am so glad because those ups and downs that I went through, helped me to be where I am today. And this is not even my final destination just yet. There’s still much more to be done. But I am so grateful for the community that welcome me. I have no family here. It’s just me and my two daughters, but I have a great network of friends of colleagues. So I’m for what the city has done for me. And, and I think that it’s only, it’s only right, that I keep doing the same thing for the city.
Denzil Mohammed:
Perfectly said very, very well said. That’s incredible. And to think that, I mean, people take for granted how hard it is as an adult, especially to learn a whole new language, a whole new culture, all the different laws. And you’re embedded in all the licensing and credentialing and permitting and all these different things. What is a credit score? You know, what is that? So many things to learn and you I’m, I’m, I’m so pleased that you choose you chose to stay with your mother’s encouragement. Mm-Hmm and <affirmative>, how does it feel for you knowing how difficult it would’ve been back in the Dominican Republic to have your daughters grow up in Lauren? So, and in the United States,
Karina Calderon:
I feel very appreciative and very blessed. If my daughters would be here, they would be rolling their eyes. Because one thing that I used to tell them since they were very little was, and they would like verbatim and repeat, repeat it as I was saying it, because I said it so long. So, I mean, I said it so many times that I would, I used to tell them like, listen, cuz my oldest one, she was born in Dominican Republic. So, you know, immigrant, the little one was born here, but I told her like, listen, we came to this country to be the best version of ourselves to take advantage of those opportunities that they give us and work with them and be the best version of ourselves. Because back home, we didn’t have that, you know, the education we don’t, we were blessed back home, at least my family that I did have access to an education, but many people didn’t have the same luxury.
Karina Calderon:
So to come here and see that anybody, as long as they want it, they can have that education. I know that there are their challenges because you know, not everything is easy, then you have to have some skin in the game. I just told them, let you know, let’s, let’s be that let’s be the best versions that we can be. And and I’m just grateful that I, I never thought that I would end up here. Like I told you, I, I came for a summer to have fun with my friends and make some money and bring it back home and, and to end up here and make my life here and, and to live in this community that it’s home now, it’s, it’s wonderful.
Denzil Mohammed:
You’re and you’re having an impact. <Laugh>, you’re having an impact on the CF Lawrence and beyond. And I hope others, municipal workers are listening into this to, to really realize how important these partnerships and these relationships are toward a more inclusive economic situation, wherever they are. You have to get everyone’s, you know, everyone needs to be at the table, whether they’re new or old and the new tend to be that hungry, those hungry people who, who will take that risk and start to exactly and try it out and hopefully end up being successful. Karina Kran off the Lawrence partnership. Thank you so much for joining us on job makers.
Karina Calderon:
Thank you. It was a pleasure.
Denzil Mohammed:
Jobmakers is a weekly podcast about immigrant entrepreneurship and contribution produced by Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston, and the Immigrant Learning Center in Malden, Massachusetts, a not for profit that gives immigrants a voice. Thank you for joining us for this week’s powerful story of immigrant entrepreneurship. Remember, you can subscribe to Jobmakers on Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And please give us some stars. I’m Denzil Mohammed, see you next Thursday at noon for another Jobmakers.
Recent Episodes:
Harvard Mathematician Prof. Wilfried Schmid on K-12 Standards & Results
/in Academic Standards, Featured, News, Podcast /by Editorial StaffThis week on “The Learning Curve,” co-hosts Cara Candal and Gerard Robinson talk with Dr. Wilfried Schmid, Dwight Parker Robinson Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University, who played a major role in drafting the 2000 Massachusetts Mathematics Curriculum Framework and served on the U.S. National Mathematics Advisory Panel (NMAP) in 2008. Dr. Schmid shares how he became interested in mathematics, and how it was taught and encouraged in the German schools he attended. He also talks about his academic career at Harvard, his teaching experiences there and at other elite universities, and the wide disparities in the level of academic math preparation between students from America and other countries. Professor Schmid explains how he became interested in K-12 mathematics, and his work with education expert Dr. Sandra Stotsky in drafting Massachusetts’ nation-leading math standards. They discuss the “math wars” that occurred across American K-12 education, and why, even after the landmark NMAP report, this country continues to struggle with teaching students basic mathematics.
Stories of the Week: In Texas, teachers who choose to resign during the school year are being stripped of their professional certification. US News & World Report’s annual ranking of top high schools is out, and the latest list features several from Massachusetts, including Boston’s exam and charter public schools, as well as wealthy suburban districts.
Guest:
The next episode will air on Weds., May 4th, with Dr. Eric Hanushek, the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. He is internationally recognized for his economic analysis of educational issues, and he received the Yidan Prize for Education Research in 2021.
Tweet of the Week:
News Links:
The Boston Globe: Here’s A Look at Top Ranked Massachusetts High Schools According 2022 US News & World Report
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/04/26/metro/heres-look-top-ranked-massachusetts-high-schools-according-2022-us-news-world-report/
Texas Tribune: Amid a teacher shortage, some Texas educators are losing their licenses for quitting during the school year
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/04/19/texas-teachers-quit-lose-certification/?utm_campaign=trib-social&utm_content=1650579241&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
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Read a Transcript of This Episode
Please excuse typos.
[00:00:00] Cara: Hello listeners. Welcome to another edition of The Learning Curve. It is your Wednesday, which means it’s time for Gerard and I to shoot the breeze. Talk about education and interview somebody really cool. Gerard, how you doing today?
[00:00:43] GR: I’m doing well in wet, wonderful Charlottesville. When we spoke last week, I believe it was in the eighties.
[00:00:49] I was working on my tan and that is not what I’m doing today, but glad to be with you always, it’s always a sunny day, one way or another. Yeah.
[00:00:58] Cara: You always bring [00:01:00] sunshine to my day. It’s rainy here too. I have to say though, lately I’ve been thinking we must both be really old. Cause we liked talking about the.
[00:01:09] Do you realize I’m like, can I talk about the weather? Like the first thing I do in the morning is like, Hey, Google, what’s the weather today. used to always like criticize my father for watching the weather channel constantly. And now I get it. So kind of scary. Oh, Google’s talking to me.
[00:01:25] I just want everybody to know if you heard that in the background she answered. We’re not even going to cut that out. have a question for you as I open this week, given your vast experience. I would like to know how much stock you put in these things called us news and world report rankings, whether it’s rankings of schools, rankings of colleges, , where do you stand on the rankings
[00:01:54] GR: business?
[00:01:55] In a scale of one to 10, I put an eight [00:02:00] because I know deans at different professional schools who use that as a. To figure out what they can do to go up one or two points. So personally I have seen it make a big difference for me. When I was looking at grad schools, it made a difference. And then third, I take an example from Northeastern university I had a president several years ago who moved the school, like 40 points. Of the U S news world report ranking. And there was an entire story on it because the president decided to be a data-driven person. So for me, it’s an eight for others may be.
[00:02:39] Cara: All right.
[00:02:40] Okay. Yeah, I know. I mean, it’s sort of controversial, but I feel like in my opinion, so, you know, folks that use it, but I feel like the public sort of wakes up to this stuff too. So whether we think that the rankings are fair or not, or we like the algorithm that the user, whatever is. It’s something that gets a lot of attention.
[00:02:57] And I think that that’s important. And I bring this up because [00:03:00] this morning and the Boston globe is an article about the fact that the 2022 rankings for the best high schools in the country is out. And I got to tell you, was drawn immediately to it. I texted our producer, Jamie gas early in the morning.
[00:03:14] Cause I was trying to think of like, of all the stories that can talk about this week. And this one for me brings together some stuff that had been thinking about both nationally, but also. Going to get a little Massachusetts centric for a minute. So in this article, it highlights that the states with the best high schools, by many measures, right, like performance and, , AP access and all these things are of course, number one, let’s always pat ourselves on the back.
[00:03:37] We are Massachusetts. Connecticut and number three, which drum roll Massachusetts people. Don’t like to hear Florida just consistently. And I’m sure it’s because you were chief there at one point. But th you know, Florida is this state that doesn’t matter what ranking you’re looking at.
[00:03:55] There are a couple states that are consistently moving up in these measures, [00:04:00] right? Here’s the same, of course, being who I am. I home right in on Massachusetts. And I want to see, so what are the best school districts? What are the schools that really stand out? Gerard? It’s not going to surprise you to know, but boy did it really make me angry to know the best high schools in the state of Massachusetts break down along these lines.
[00:04:23] And I’m talking here top 20 broad-stroke. Don’t worry. I’m not going to go through all of them. They are the exam schools in the Boston public schools and kiss your brain. Cause I’m going to talk about, I’m going to rant about that in just a minute. They are number two. Charter schools in Boston. Mainly there are a couple that are not, but charter schools just predominantly factored into these best high school ratings.
[00:04:48] And they are wealthy suburban districts, which in Massachusetts, Maine, they start with a w usually because it’s Western and Wellesley. Actually [00:05:00] Lexington made it in there, but here’s the thing that really gets me Gerard. So in people listening, who are in states with magnet schools and exam schools, I’m not saying that they’re a bad thing.
[00:05:09] I think they can be a great thing, but here in the city of Boston, as I’ve talked about previously, and we had a good friend, Charlie Chippewan to talk about this as well, we have been just trained to bang the drum about these huge disparity. That exists within the district. Right? So this got me to thinking, I’m going to pull up the M cast results in that’s our state test for what was cited as like the best high school in basically the country, but certainly in Massachusetts.
[00:05:38] And that is the Boston Latin school, which has been around since obviously the beginning of time. And it’s a very, it’s a very Boston Romany school, but this is a school, as I’ve said in the past, a lot of people will send their kids to private. pre-K. through five schools and then try and get into one of these prestigious Boston exam schools.
[00:05:56] And if you look at the results for a school like this, right, [00:06:00] an M cast scores, the students at these schools who are meeting or exceeding expectations , in Boston’s premier exams. You’re up in the 78%. You’re up in the 83%. Like these kids are knocking it out of the park. Gerard, if you look at our Boston high schools, meaning the schools that kids either they don’t test into, they get some degree of choice, but they’re mainly assigned to kids are scoring in the 28 30 range in terms of the percentage meeting or exceeding expectations.
[00:06:37] On our M cast scores. And this ties into something that I’ve been wanting to talk about because we’ve been banging the drum and saying, how can it be that there are these huge disparities within one district? And the vast majority of kids are shoved into these schools that are just drastically underperforming?
[00:06:55] Well, part of the reason is because. Oftentimes when folks say like, look [00:07:00] at the Boston public schools, they’re so great. What they’re doing is they’re factoring in the wonderful M cast scores from some of these very high performing exam schools. And Gerard, if you can’t tell this just gets under my skin to know and use this platform to talk about it again.
[00:07:20] And again. And so as much as I do appreciate us news and world report rankings, and I think that they can shine a little light on something. I think the big takeaway for me here was, wow, here. You’ve got a couple of really wealthy districts and by the way, charter school, Which are serving kids who are not coming from backgrounds, like the ones in these very wealthy districts where homes are probably the average home in a lot of these places is close to, if not above a million dollars Gerard, yet they are getting similar results in here.
[00:07:51] We are not only with charter schools on the rails. You know, we talked about this last week, not going to get federal start-up funds and stuff, but Massachusetts loves to [00:08:00] hate charter schools as well. So I just want a little bit of a. Shout out or I don’t know, just a shout maybe is what I’m doing.
[00:08:07] Some of our education leaders here in the Commonwealth to say pat yourselves on the back for some of these rankings, but pat yourselves on the back for having really excellent charter schools. And please, please, please. Can we take a hard look at the disparities within that are right in our backyard in BPS.
[00:08:22] So dread I am done. I invite you please to rebut anything that I have.
[00:08:30] GR: Question. So if Massachusetts first, Connecticut, second Florida, third where’s Virginia.
[00:08:36] Cara: Oh friend. I didn’t look that far.
[00:08:40] GR: Ah, here’s the point look that far. So let me start with a few points. What I think about rankings of high schools?
[00:08:49] I always think about my American enterprise Institute colleague, Nat Malpass and he identified that if you look at the top performing traditional [00:09:00] public schools, magnet schools, charter schools. Exam schools, others. They have a lot of things in common. One in particular is usually that one. Percent of the students are taking AP courses.
[00:09:13] So there’s already something built in, in terms of having an AP course. I mentioned that because last fall when I had an opportunity to go to a Gibbs’ national education conference in Florida, I moderated a panel that focused on looking at issues of equity and we had the current. Interim CEO for education trusts, who made a really good point, really several points.
[00:09:37] But she was saying, what are the challenges that schools that serve low income students have is they often don’t have access to a lot of AP courses. Even if the student’s bright, guess what your GPA and your transcript will look less competitive to a college. And so she was bringing in an aspect of AP we overlook.
[00:09:56] So what I think of us news and world. I think of Matt, but I [00:10:00] also think about the eight peak components. So that’s number one, number two, it’s not a shock that the best schools tend to be those that focus and work with talented students. Remember as much as people say that charter schools are public, they overlook the fact that public exam schools.
[00:10:20] In fact, many of them have tests to get in. A lot of charter schools, in fact, do not have a test to get in a number of magnet schools have a test to get in a number of charter schools do not have a test to get in. So in some ways, charter schools are actually more democratic than some of the exam and magnet schools that we compare them to.
[00:10:38] But I’m glad that. have exam schools. I’m glad we have specialty schools, but those schools are going to do well for a long time. You bring up something. We often overlook and that’s wealth and household income. The number one school choice program is where you choose to move and buy a house. And where you choose to buy a house.
[00:10:58] It’s going to impact where you go to [00:11:00] school, approximately 83% of the students and the public school sector go to a school that they’re zoned for. And so there’s a correlation between zoning income and outcomes, but let’s also give a shout out and I’m glad you gave a shout out to charter schools. Let me also give a shout out to a school in Virginia.
[00:11:17] It’s called Richmond community school. I’ll start it in the 1970s. It is the only public high school in Virginia, and one of few in the country. Dedicated to taking. Gifted students. Many of them were African-American and many of them who come from financially challenged backgrounds, you and I’ve talked on this show about how many gifted students find themselves overlook.
[00:11:41] The assumption is if you’re a gifted, you’re great. Of course everything’s made for you. We know that’s not the case because a number of gifted students also find themselves with an IEP, a 5 0 4. And we also know that many of them get lost in the shuffle. There are many gifted students who found themselves in juvenile justice facilities, as well as in [00:12:00] prison.
[00:12:00] But you have Richmond community school, which has a great college going. The number of alumni who are doing great things are wonderful. And it’s a school that proves that you can take smart students who are low income and do well. But this program also shows we look at high schools like charter schools that take students who are qualify for free reduced price lunch, but are amongst the best students in the state.
[00:12:26] It just goes to show that poverty doesn’t have to be a proxy for destiny, but we can’t overlook the. That at the end of the day, this is a game of Thrones. And depending upon who you think you are and what family you belong to, we’ll decide who’s going to serve throwing. Who’s not.
[00:12:45] So your story also get me pretty excited and I’m glad to see it out there. There are people who will say all kinds of things about it, but I tell you what, when families are looking to buy a house, they go to places like this. [00:13:00] So let me give a shout out to U S news and world report and for all the drama.
[00:13:05] For having the audacity to rank schools.
[00:13:08] Cara: There you go. Game of Thrones.
[00:13:10] GR: So my story is a little different. We’ve talked a lot about the pandemic and the impact that it’s had on teachers. We know a lot of teachers are not doing well either because of lack of support, own personal professional challenges.
[00:13:24] But one thing we don’t talk about. Is a term in the education space or we talk about contract uh, And then we, we don’t talk about it is we often don’t get into the nuance of teacher licensing. So this story is from Texas. There is a teacher who’s a second grade leader. She joined the profession six years ago and she joined the teaching profession.
[00:13:52] She’s elementary school teacher because she wanted to help students. Well, for the last two years, She’s like, wait a minute, I’m going to be teaching [00:14:00] online for quite some time. And so Stacy decided, you know, what. I’m going to do something different. I’m going to actually lead the profession and I’m going to pursue something else, but she decided I’m going to wait until the end of the school year to leave.
[00:14:17] Is that because she didn’t want to leave her students behind possibly. Is it because she didn’t want to put her principal in a bad spot? Possibly. Is it because she’s got a great. Education program to end the year, and then she will see that done. And then she will leave the professional altogether possibly.
[00:14:34] But one thing she also said is that if I leave in the middle of the school year, I may find my license revoked. And so she’s like, I’m not going to do it. But Stacy is one example. At the same time, she decided to stay in the profession, guests. Over 500 teachers have decided to leave. And in responsive being in the middle of the school year, there’ve been at least [00:15:00] 471 claims filed with the state board of education certification in Texas to say, My teacher left in the middle of the school year.
[00:15:10] He or she broke their contract or contract abandonment. But what does that mean? Well, at least in the state of Texas, they created in 1995, a state board for educator certification and the legislature actually created it because they want it to recognize school educators. As professionals and they wanted to grant educated, the authority to prove and move forward with standards.
[00:15:35] The board has 15 members, 11 are voting members appointed by the governor to six year terms for our classroom teachers. One’s a counselor to our administrators and for citizens, there are four non-voting members who also serve on the board. The governor appoints a Dean of education and a person who has experience working with.
[00:15:55] Alternative education programs, the commission of education appoints a [00:16:00] staff member from the Texas education agency, their state board commissioner of higher education appoints a staff member as well. So they make the decision when they receive a claim from an independent school district, they say, you know what drawer left the profession is.
[00:16:16] The middle of the school year. And he did so without cost or better yet with good calls now in the state of Texas. Good cause means you can leave the profession without punishment, meaning loss of your certification, if it’s for health reasons, or if the spouse is getting a job in a different city, or if you’re even going to transfer schools within the state.
[00:16:37] But if you’re leaving for as some teachers. Health challenges. Some are leaving because they’ve gotten fed up with the way things are going, right now that does not fall under the good cause claim. And so you have attorneys who are working in Texas, who said, they’ve, haven’t seen in number of years, this many people leaving the [00:17:00] profession and some of them are leaving nor are they going to lose their license.
[00:17:04] Which means at least in Texas, if you lose your license, there’s the least one. Where you can’t teach and if you do so in the middle of the year is a good chance you can lose one academic year and half of the other. But according to the reporter, some of the teachers said, I simply don’t. I’m not coming back to the profession, I’m fed up and I’m leaving.
[00:17:24] So there are a couple of takeaways for the listeners. Number one, if you want to learn more about contract abandonment and reasons why people are leaving the profession, in this case, your. State board of education certification in Texas is one example in other states that information or that authority is under the department of education.
[00:17:46] So take a look there because when people are leaving and they’re leaving for different reasons, number two, if state legislatures are thinking about ways of. Keeping a teachers in the profession. Maybe we have to give some thought [00:18:00] to what includes good costs do we put in frustration? Well, maybe not.
[00:18:05] that’s a contractual challenge, but maybe we should broaden the definition to give teachers an opportunity to say, you know, I’m going to leave for a year, but I want to come back and I’d like to come back and teach, but I just need time off. So, one of the few stories, we’ve had an opportunity to talk about regulation and law, but it’s something that I found interesting and interested in getting your thoughts on.
[00:18:27] In fact, I should mention this as well. You could also have your license suspended and not taken away. So there’s also that option. I’ll stop
[00:18:35] Cara: there. I would just say real quick, Gerard, that, what’s amazing to me about this is in a time when everybody’s thinking, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, teacher pipelines, what are we going to do to attract teachers?
[00:18:46] And some are thinking about retention, but most of the new laws we’re seeing are all about pipeline and growing new teachers. And I love this idea that we need to think about making the profession more sustainable for people and. [00:19:00] Troublesome that it took a pandemic to get us there. we could go on about this for quite a while, but you know, Gerard, we’ve got a phenomenal guest actually waiting in the wings for us here.
[00:19:11] So we are going to be talking really quick, coming up with Dr. Wilfried Schmid and he is the Dwight Parker, Robinson emeritus professor of mathematics at Harvard university. So let’s try and put our math caps on. Mine’s not very big, Gerard. It’s not, it’s going to be. Anyway, coming up right after this.
[00:19:53] Learning curve listeners, please help me welcome Dr. Wilfried Schmid. He is the Dwight Parker Robinson professor of mathematics [00:20:00] at Harvard university. He’s a leader in the representation theory of light groups and gave the first construction of the discreet series, improved Blattner conjecture in a minute.
[00:20:09] He’s going to, I hope. Tell me what all. Professor Schmid’s work on Hodge theory has produced wide ranging applications. In 1960. Schmid entered the undergraduate program at Princeton university, graduating with an AB in mathematics. He received his PhD in mathematics in 1967 from the university of California at Berkeley.
[00:20:29] After three years, as an assistant professor. He became professor of mathematics at Columbia university. He moved to Harvard university in 1978. In addition to his research interest, became involved in K-12 mathematics education after a disturbing incident in his daughter’s second grade class professor Schmid went on to play a major role in the drafting of the 2000 Massachusetts mathematics curriculum framework and served on the U S national mathematics advisory.
[00:20:58] In 2008 [00:21:00] Professor Schmid, welcome to the Learning Curve. We’re very happy to have you. And I am curious to know about the experience with your daughter that led you into drafting the mathematics standards for Massachusetts, but let’s, start with you first because you grew up in Germany and you have obviously had a remarkable academic career here in the U S could you talk a little bit about your interest in mathematics at a young age and how you were taught math in German schools?
[00:21:30] Dr Schmid: Well, there are some significant differences between German and us schools beginning in grade five. There were three different school types in Germany, the least ambitious, and these prepared students continued to go to the same school that had attended before for an additional five years in the middle.
[00:21:51] We’re students who went into professions that required better preparation. They attended separate schools that [00:22:00] went up to grade 10. If I recall correctly. And the top level schools were staffed by teachers who taught only two or three subjects for a total of 13 years of schooling. These top level schools provided preparation, FireEye education.
[00:22:16] Teachers at these top level schools were trained at universities, followed by a period of two or three years as apprentice teachers and even teachers at the two lower levels of schools tended to be better prepared than beginning teachers in the us, all my male teachers, and most of my teachers were indeed male.
[00:22:37] I had returned from world war two and prisoner of war camps. That experience tended to make them more tolerant of dissent from students. I certainly argued with my teachers in ways that would not be tolerated by us teachers. My father was a professor of Latin and Greek, and so I attended to school. [00:23:00] That emphasize the teaching of Latin and ancient Greek mathematics was very much an afterthought, but nonetheless mathematics was taught well, in general, one of my parents’ neighbors was the most prominent mathematician in Germany at that time.
[00:23:17] And , when he heard that, I did not think I learned enough mathematics in school. That mathematician gave me private lessons that was truly a remarkable, most prominent German mathematician, volunteering to offer mathematics lessons to a high school student. To some extent I became intensely interested in mathematics as a result of that experience.
[00:23:40] Cara: That’s really quite amazing to have such a prominent mathematician as a tutor. So you’ve got , your own international experience, but you have taught here at Harvard and other. Universities. And you’ve already given us a hint as to the differences [00:24:00] between the system you grew up in and the American system.
[00:24:02] I think it’s really interesting that you could dialogue with your teachers in Germany and didn’t have the same experience here. Can you talk a little bit about. Comparatively at a place like Harvard, for example, what you see in terms of preparation, academic preparation, coming from students from other countries versus the students who are by every definition, elite who were admitted to Harvard.
[00:24:25] Can you talk about the differences in what you see?
[00:24:27] Dr Schmid: first of all, you mentioned Russia and I believe their school system was similar to the Germans. Thing report did an excellent job in teaching students, by making teaching a revered and very well paid profession, the Singapore ministry of education and trust that the writing of textbooks to the most experienced teachers and those Singapore textbooks are ex.
[00:24:54] By tradition in China. Teaching is a deeply valued [00:25:00] profession. Indian society is highly stratified and the Indian students we see in the U S typically come from has that very, that value of education.
[00:25:11] Cara: it’s fascinating that you can locate those differences. Now I mentioned at the outset that you had an experience at your daughter’s school that prompted you to really look at. K to 12 mathematics standards and curriculum. I would love for you to describe for our listeners what that experience was.
[00:25:34] And then can you talk a little bit about the experience of, I mean, this is in the year 2000, so Massachusetts was sort of on the leading edge of states that were even thinking about curriculum standards. This was new at the time. states had them, they certainly weren’t putting them to good use. So I’m curious about how you got there, the experience that led you to this work, and then what the work itself was like.
[00:25:55] Dr Schmid: Well, at that time I lived in Lincoln, [00:26:00] Massachusetts, my wife and I chose to live in Lincoln in part because the Lincoln school. At the highest per capita student spending in Massachusetts, it was also politically liberal.
[00:26:15] GR: My wife and I
[00:26:16] Dr Schmid: assumed that these attributes would make for good schools to some extent that was the case,
[00:26:22] GR: but not in math.
[00:26:24] Dr Schmid: In grades K through five, the Lincoln schools had chosen the program called. Investigations in numbers, data and states that program, the stand, the learning of what are called number facts purposely admitting the teaching of wrong addition and multiplication algorithms and relied heavily on so-called manipulatives.
[00:26:49] That means tiles measuring pictures, measuring tapes. I should say that I was dissatisfied with the Lincoln schools, [00:27:00] mostly because of the K through five mathematics program, the Crimson, the Harvard student newspaper published an op-ed piece that I had written in which I criticized the teaching of math and the Lincoln school.
[00:27:15] Then the New York times published a very long article in K through 12 education that also mentioned my disagreement with the Lincoln case were five schools that brought me to the attention of other mathematicians who are interested in K through 12 mathematics education. At the time, , the Massachusetts mathematic standards.
[00:27:38] Which is a document that describes what should be taught in various grades, where to be a revived. The committee of Massachusetts teachers had written a first draft in line with the ideas of the so-called reform curriculum, including investigations and numbers, data.
[00:27:59] [00:28:00] Start ski at the deputy commissioner of education. And to a lesser extent, the Massachusetts commissioner of education, David Driskell were unhappy with the drops. They contacted a Stanford mathematician, James milligram, who had been very heavily involved in the California. Which proceeded the Massachusetts not force.
[00:28:28] you suggested that start ski and Driscoll contact me. They did. And it asked me to revise the first draft of their Massachusetts curriculum frame.
[00:28:38] GR: Well, let’s take the math wars discussion, just a step further. So when you were working on Massachusetts state standards at this time, We’ve got to remember that there were very unique features about mathematics standards in that state that not only led the state to being a national leader on NAPE going back to [00:29:00] 2005, but it also became really the only state that globally could compete on an international level as related to science and math testing, including Tim’s and PISA.
[00:29:11] Talk to us about the math wars, both sides of the fence. How you were able to help Massachusetts achieve global success?
[00:29:20] Dr Schmid: Well, to be fair to the math education reformers, whom I oppose the school system in the U S had not been successful in teaching math, but it would have made sense to look at other countries that managed to do well in math education and try to emulate.
[00:29:40] Instead the reform has tried to homegrown untested ideas. It’s true that Massachusetts was doing better in mathematics teaching than other states. However, the Massachusetts state standards are only one reason by the state. That’s a, well, it’s a state with two of [00:30:00] the top us universities. And many top medical research facilities.
[00:30:05] These institutions attract a lot of domestic and foreign talent. And then in particular towns to whom education is very important.
[00:30:16] GR: You mentioned. Boston really being a hope for what I would call brain power. When you look at magazines and other articles about the smartest states in America or the smartest cities, Massachusetts, or from a city perspective, Boston will often finish number one, just because of the number of people in the city.
[00:30:35] And yet when you look at Boston public schools math results, Really aren’t that great. And there’s conversation now about receivership, which my colleague Kara has written about recently, but let’s just use that state and even Boston, as an example, there’s a really big debate over why the American K-12 system is so unwavering and implementing true math reform.[00:31:00]
[00:31:00] Is it bureaucratic? Is it ideological? do you see is roadblock.
[00:31:04] Dr Schmid: I’m like in the science and medicine accurate Countrywide, comparative studies in education. Now almost impossible to construct because different states standards specify various times when various topics should be taught.
[00:31:22] The us K-12 education reform was were well-intended. But most of them did not look beyond us borders to see what works instead. They kept trying out various ideas that look new and exciting, but turned out not to be success.
[00:31:41] GR: idea of America looking beyond its borders, be it across the Atlantic or the Pacific ocean, or even going north and south has been a really big challenge. I know you have. Links to Germany many years ago, had a chance to travel to what was then east and west Germany shortly after the [00:32:00] fall of the Berlin wall to look at the K-12 and higher education system.
[00:32:03] And they talked about the apprenticeship program and they also mentioned the. The three things you had mentioned earlier, but the system really focused on the importance of thinking in mathematical ways, not simply to pass a test, but to be able to function in society. You’re at Harvard now Dr.
[00:32:21] Paul Peterson convened a group of scholars, domestic and international to come and talk about students. Well, I ended up meeting the principal of the highest performing math high school in China. And when I went to visit China, he began providing an opportunity to go to the school and meet people.
[00:32:37] Other countries are making this a priority and you identify some of the challenges as why we can’t. Well, let me go to my next question, because as much more fundamental, you’ve talked about algebra one being a gateway course to higher level math. And yet we have a number of students. Who find themselves going into high school without algebra or leaving without algebra [00:33:00] in 2008, you remember the prestigious us mathematics advisory panel, that interview, which reviewed more than 16,000 research, publications and policies on the topic.
[00:33:10] Similar question, even after the work you did at inmap, what can Americans do to really push the idea of teaching students, even basic mathematics?
[00:33:20] Dr Schmid: if I recall correctly, it was Laura Bush, the wife of George W. Bush, who convinced her husband to make education a priority. And to a point the national mathematics advisory panel the members included psychologists interested in how children learn mathematics, educated.
[00:33:43] And mathematicians interested in math education. It would take far too long to enumerate all the conclusions of the tunnel, but that may numerate the main points. The importance of a clear progression off topics, typically in [00:34:00] us schools, mathematical topics would repeat it year after year in the stead, that kind of suggests.
[00:34:07] Each topic should be taught once with adequate depth in school, mathematics is a cumulative subject topics that were covered in prior years would come up again implicitly. And that makes the revisiting the subject really unnecessary importance of preschool. Again, that was one of the main points of the national math panel.
[00:34:31] The importance of preschool. To alleviate the difference between children of different backgrounds. And then there was the issue of adequate preparation of teachers, including in particular teachers in the early grades, a common misconception is the idea. I mean, a common misconception in the year.
[00:34:52] Is the idea that to quote, if you know how to teach, you can teach anything on the quote. [00:35:00] No, that’s just not the case. You cannot teach what you do not understand yourself. Then at the time of the panel, she pocket calculator that said become available. The panel strongly suggested that calculators should not be used in the early grades.
[00:35:16] Because that him, that the learning of what’s known as the number facts,
[00:35:21] us textbooks typically were far too long. And just related to the issue of with repeating topics. Yeah. After a year, of course, then the importance of national tests. at the time state assessment to us real common, but the quality varies greatly making it very difficult to compare the effectiveness of various state curriculum guidelines.
[00:35:48] I have to say that the conclusion of the panel, even though well-founded widely ignored, If I look at my Harvard colleagues, roughly half of [00:36:00] them receive primary and secondary education and other countries, that fact has surely several explanations. One of them certainly is the poorest state of us case with 12 mathematics.
[00:36:14] GR: Very good point about the international dynamic of those who go into the PhD program for mathematics. was just an Indian question for you. Title nine is 50 years old this year. Part of the push was to make sure that. Understood the role of gender, the role that women played in academics today, at least at the undergrad level, we have 2 million more women in college than men.
[00:36:39] We have more women who are enrolled in stem today than 50 years ago. And there are a number of stem teachers. We now have women, we look at. The PhD level for mathematics numbers moving in a better direction than 50 years ago. But surely not as high as we have for men. There’s also an internet, a domestic dynamic of trying to get [00:37:00] more American students to also pursue a PhD in education, independent of race from your years of experience, as a researcher, as an educator, and having looked at this subject uh, the K-12 level and beyond what a couple of recommendations that policymakers.
[00:37:16] Deans at colleges of arts and sciences ed schools. What should we be thinking about to make sure we have more women earning PhDs in mathematics, as well as American students doing the same?
[00:37:27] Dr Schmid: Well, and that’s a very confounding issue. I cannot really say why. There are so many more men in mathematics at American universities than women.
[00:37:42] I just have no excellent. But it is the case. And it is the case in spite of attempts to how should I say, get more women involved in academic mathematics? they are Harvard mathematics department. The vast majority of [00:38:00] members is men. And in spite of efforts that you’ve made to recruit.
[00:38:05] GR: Absolutely. Well, Dr. Smith, thank you so much for spending time with us. Continue the good work and know that you have a platform here in the future to get the message out about the importance of mathematics. Thank you. Take care.
[00:38:54] Cara: And listeners, we always leave you with the tweet of the week and this one [00:39:00] from, a former guest, Barry Weiss I mean, who isn’t talking about Elon Musk and Twitter right now, but she said. Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy. And Twitter is the digital town square where it matters.
[00:39:13] Twitter gives me hives. I’m not going to say for a variety of reasons, but I think that this is a very important point listeners. Next week. We’re going to be speaking with Dr. Eric Hanushek. I think you might know him. He is at the Hoover institution of Stanford university and boy. Oh boy. He’s got a lot of accolades internationally.
[00:39:35] For his economic analysis of educational issues amongst so many other things until then Gerard take really good care of yourself. I can’t wait to be back with you again next week.
[00:39:45] GR: Sounds good.[00:40:00]
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