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Markets in everything?: Mexico edition
Tens of thousands of teachers are blocking highways and seizing government buildings across Mexico to protest a federal education reform ending their longtime practice of selling their jobs or giving them to their children.
...At the heart of the conflict is the "Alliance for Quality Education," a national plan to professionalize teachers and hold them accountable for their students' performances. The plan was ratified in May by Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Elba Esther Gordillo, the leader of the country's 1.6 million-member National Education Workers Union, and sent to Mexico's 31 state governments and Federal District for approval.
To buy a good teaching job costs at least $6,000. Here is the article. This issue is very important for the future of Mexico. I thank John Thacker for the pointer.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on October 18, 2008 at 08:40 PM in Education | Permalink
Comments
If the reformers succeed, can you please send them to Pittsburgh.
Posted by: MH at Oct 18, 2008 9:14:00 PM
If the reformers succeed, please send them to DC :P
Posted by: Robert Olson at Oct 18, 2008 9:30:35 PM
The head of an anti-corruption committee in Yemen was forced to resign when he championed the idea that government officials should not be able to hand the position down to their sons... That is only possible at the upper levels of course, so the idea got shot down pretty quickly. Most people assume the son of Ali Abdulla Salah will assume the throne, er, I mean presidency once "Uncle Ali" steps down...
Isaac Crawford
Posted by: Isaac Crawford at Oct 18, 2008 10:41:39 PM
Mexico really should be another Canada - great people, rich resources, strong families - all of this should combine into a wonderful country. And while Mexico has greatly changed and improved in the last decade, still whenever the subject of further reforms comes up, I always am reminded of Octavio Paz' famous words:
"To cross the border is to change civilizations. Americans are the children of the Reformation, and their origins are those of the modern world; we Mexicans are the children of the Spanish empire, the champions of the Counterreformation, a movement that opposed the new modernity and failed."
Sometimes there does seem something in Mexican life that is profound "counter-reform;" it is almost a tragedy. But hopefully Mexico will finally begin true movement towards the transparent and equitable public institutions - including in education - that will spur it towards its amazing potential.
Posted by: thinker at Oct 19, 2008 12:24:30 AM
You've got to admit, as bad as American Teachers' unions are, they wouldn't have the chutzpah to do this.
Posted by: Scott Wood at Oct 19, 2008 1:39:15 AM
"You've got to admit, as bad as American Teachers' unions are, they wouldn't have the chutzpah to do this."
i can just see the new slogan of the american federation of teachers:
we may retard the improvement of the education system...but it could be worse. at least we don't demand a royalty before we demand our pension.
Posted by: at Oct 19, 2008 2:12:24 AM
"You've got to admit, as bad as American Teachers' unions are, they wouldn't have the chutzpah to do this."
i can just see the new slogan of the american federation of teachers:
we may retard the improvement of the education system...but it could be worse. at least we don't demand a royalty before we demand our pension.
Posted by: at Oct 19, 2008 2:12:48 AM
Tyler,
I know you dismissed off-hand the relationship between government promotion of various diversity initiatives to increase minority homeownership and the mortgage meltdown, but the evidence keeps piling up. Now, you've fallen behind the NYT. Are you ever going to revisit your mistake and correct it?
The New York Times runs an article that provides a human interest illustration for my June "Diversity Recession" thesis:
The Reckoning
Building Flawed American Dreams
By DAVID STREITFELD and GRETCHEN MORGENSON
SAN ANTONIO — A grandson of Mexican immigrants and a former mayor of this town, Henry G. Cisneros has spent years trying to make the dream of homeownership come true for low-income families.
As the Clinton administration’s top housing official in the mid-1990s, Mr. Cisneros loosened mortgage restrictions so first-time buyers could qualify for loans they could never get before.
Then, capitalizing on a housing expansion he helped unleash, he joined the boards of a major builder, KB Home, and the largest mortgage lender in the nation, Countrywide Financial — two companies that rode the housing boom, drawing criticism along the way for abusive business practices.
And Mr. Cisneros became a developer himself. The Lago Vista development here in his hometown once stood as a testament to his life’s work.
Joining with KB, he built 428 homes for low-income buyers in what was a neglected, industrial neighborhood. He often made the trip from downtown to ask residents if they were happy.
“People bought here because of Cisneros,” says Celia Morales, a Lago Vista resident. “There was a feeling of, ‘He’s got our back.’ ”
But Mr. Cisneros rarely comes around anymore. Lago Vista, like many communities born in the housing boom, is now under stress. Scores of homes have been foreclosed, including one in five over the last six years on the community’s longest street, Sunbend Falls, according to property records.
While Mr. Cisneros says he remains proud of his work, he has misgivings over what his passion has wrought. He insists that the worst problems developed only after “bad actors” hijacked his good intentions but acknowledges that “people came to homeownership who should not have been homeowners.”
They were lured by “unscrupulous participants — bankers, brokers, secondary market people,” he says. “The country is paying for that, and families are hurt because we as a society did not draw a line.”
The causes of the housing implosion are many: lax regulation, financial innovation gone awry, excessive debt, raw greed. The players are also varied: bankers, borrowers, developers, politicians and bureaucrats.
Mr. Cisneros, 61, had a foot in a number of those worlds. Despite his qualms, he encouraged the unprepared to buy homes — part of a broad national trend with dire economic consequences.
He reflects often on his role in the debacle, he says, which has changed homeownership from something that secured a place in the middle class to something that is ejecting people from it. “I’ve been waiting for someone to put all the blame at my doorstep,” he says lightly, but with a bit of worry, too.
The Paydays During the Boom
After a sex scandal destroyed his promising political career and he left Washington, he eventually reinvented himself as a well-regarded advocate and builder of urban, working-class homes. He has financed the construction of more than 7,000 houses.
For the three years he was a director at KB Home, Mr. Cisneros received at least $70,000 in pay and more than $100,000 worth of stock. He also received $1.14 million in directors’ fees and stock grants during the six years he was a director at Countrywide. He made more than $5 million from Countrywide stock options, money he says he plowed into his company.
He says his development work provides an annual income of “several hundred thousand” dollars. All told, his paydays are modest relative to the windfalls some executives netted in the boom. Indeed, Mr. Cisneros says his mistake was not the greed that afflicted many of his counterparts in banking and housing; it was unwavering belief.
It was, he argues, impossible to know in the beginning that the federal push to increase homeownership would end so badly. Once the housing boom got going, he suggests, laws and regulations barely had a chance.
“You think you have a finely tuned instrument that you can use to say: ‘Stop! We’re at 69 percent homeownership. We should not go further. There are people who should remain renters,’ ” he says. “But you really are just given a sledgehammer and an ax. They are blunt tools.” [More]
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Oct 19, 2008 6:59:15 AM
Steve: This has nothing to do with education reform in Mexico. Well, except that your story features a Mexican. :P But seriously, get over yourself.
Posted by: JSK at Oct 19, 2008 7:09:15 AM
Thanks to our own teachers' unions, it costs many times $6,000 to get rid of one incompetent teacher in the US.
Posted by: ZF at Oct 19, 2008 12:33:22 PM
Americans are the children of the Reformation, and their origins are those of the modern world; we Mexicans are the children of the Spanish empire, the champions of the Counterreformation, a movement that opposed the new modernity and failed.
Well, Spain is doing rather well, especially comparing to Mexico.
Any explanation for that?
Large difference in average IQ between Mexicans and Spanish must not be mentioned.
Posted by: mik at Oct 19, 2008 6:23:49 PM
I always thought the U.S. left treated jobs as possessions. It never occurred to me to ask why then, could they not be bought and sold. I guess that would be inconsistent with shunning wealth for transactions based purely on political pull.
As for these Mexicans, I'm always amazed that people can come up with ways to screw up that I couldn't even fathom.
Posted by: Andrew at Oct 20, 2008 5:02:43 AM
You know, on second thought, the market in teaching jobs could be a useful measure of whether a job is under compensated or over compensated. If the compensation levels are correct, the price of the position should be $0 (since opportunities elsewhere are just as good, there's no reason to pay for this one).
I wonder what a permanent tenured teaching job would sell for here in Michigan at the current average salary of $57K? Ford was offering up to $140K to buy out hourly workers:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/15/business/15ford.html
And this was to give up jobs in a company whose long-term future was questionable anyway. So what would a 100% secure lifetime job in Michigan go for at a salary of $57K with a 3 month summer sabbatical every year and gold-plated benefits? $250K? More?
Posted by: Slocum at Oct 20, 2008 7:50:09 AM
"Well, Spain is doing rather well, especially comparing to Mexico.
Any explanation for that?
Large difference in average IQ between Mexicans and Spanish must not be mentioned."
I think it's fine to mention IQ, but counter to (what I imagine is) your agenda that in and of itself would more likely be attributable to the quality of food since as "children of the Spanish empire" they would share genetic makeup.
Posted by: meter at Oct 20, 2008 12:41:18 PM
One word: Franco
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