March 10: 4th National Call-In Day for Single Payer Health Insurance

Progressive Democrats of America are organizing a call in day in support of HR 676, the single payer health care plan. Please, call your representative on March 10, 2009.

Zero Tolerance for Zero Tolerance

Today, Roberts Elementary art teacher Mindy Herrick returned to the classroom. This is a wonderful event for both the school and for Ms. Herrick. The students, staff, and parents have learned that people, when organized, can bring about positive change; and Ms. Herrick has been shown decisively that the events of the past few months have not damaged her reputation at all. With all the staff, teachers, and a large number of parents watching, Ms. Herrick came to the outdoor stage from inside the school while the speakers played the theme from "Rocky". People were feeling happy, relieved, and triumphant.

The next step is to change the policy of performing random drug searches in teacher parking lots. Of course, none of us want to have teachers or staff whose performance at work is impacted by drug use, and we don't want anyone on campus distributing drugs on campus to anyone else. But random searches in general, and demonstrably so at HISD, are not affecting either population. It seems that adding random searches is not an improvement over searches involving probable cause.

The concept of the probable cause requirement for a search/seizure is rooted in the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution. The amendment requires the Executive (the police) in most cases to have more than a reasonable suspicion they'll find something before they can search a private area. As the link to reasonable suspicion points out, there are cases (such as a search for firearms) which have a lower threshold, but a drug search isn't one of them.

I'm not a lawyer, so this is all untrained speculation. It seems the Supreme Court has recognized that certain employers can institute random tests in Skinner v. Railway Labor Assn., 489 U.S. 602 (1989). Since then, it seems the number and types of employers instituting random searches has grown; I think that "safety-sensitive" has been more and more loosely construed, and more and more people are being searched by their employers. Clearly, HISD has decided they are comfortable their employees fit the definition.

I'm not sure that's reasonable. Of course, we want our kids to be safe; it's just not clear that random drug searches are preventing HISD employees from bringing drugs to school. (It may help prevent students from doing that though - they may not be as rational, nor do they have jobs to lose). Instead, in addition to paying our teachers poorly, and putting pressure on them to "teach to a test", the district is accusing them of being guilty until proven innocent of having drugs. Should they always work under that suspicion?

I have no sympathy for HISD employees selling or sharing drugs on campus. If there's reason to suspect that's happening, please, call in the dogs, and submit the evidence to the District Attorney. On the other hand, if you suspect someone of taking drugs they don't have a prescription for, maybe the right reaction is to figure out how to help them overcome the problem. If there is a problem (and the discovery was not a false positive) and they're an exemplary or even just an effective employee, especially if they've a long history of dedication to their job, maybe the first thing to do is treat them as a valuable person, and see if you can preserve the good in them by helping them overcome a weakness. If as an employer HISD were to find evidence of such a problem, I suggest it should first offer counseling before turning the issue over to the police.

The district should also determine if the drug use constitutes a potential danger to the students; that's a harder call, and of course it's just so much easier to automatically suspend or reassign anyone in such a situation. "Zero Tolerance" is a policy that potentially protects the district from lawsuits in the situation something unfortunate happens - but it's also potentially devastating to the employee, and that public vote of "no confidence" by their employer can make it difficult for them to return to their job. A friend of mine said Zero Tolerance means zero thinking, which can be an appealing approach if you want to implement what looks like an even-handed policy. But does a policy ultimately even protect the students, at such a cost? And what about all the other dangers adults pose to children?

Ultimately, it's my opinion that random drug searches, coupled with a "zero tolerance" policy, do not protect our children any better than a policy of vigilance and understanding. Vigilance will protect our kids from more than just danger from drugs; and understanding will be consistent with the concepts of rehabilitation and forgiveness found in most moral systems and religions.

The Obama administration and secrecy

I read an entry on Glenn Greenwald's blog discussing a filing made by the Obama Department of Justice in the case of Al-Haramain v. Obama et al. Greenwald's analysis is that this is an unfortunate turn of events - an opportunity the Obama DOJ had to reverse Bush-era policy, which they let slip by. But after reading the filing, I'm not so sure.

It seems to me the brief is arguing that Classified information is determined by the Executive to be sensitive; only the Executive can determine who has access to it; and that there are case law and statutory precedents supporting their assertions. After reading the references, I don't actually see anything wrong with their reasoning. I think both Congress and the courts have concurred - let the experts (the Executive) be the final arbiters of whether disclosure of a document may be harmful to national security.

I believe what's happening here is that the plaintiffs have advanced the wrong arguments. Instead of asking the Court to compel the Executive to disclose the document, and instead of arguing that the Court could choose to disclose the document itself, they probably should be attacking the classification. There, I think, is the problem. The Executive clearly should be able to keep certain information secret - but there should be limits on what can be classified, and I don't think that argument has been advanced. Certainly it should not be possible for the Executive to classify documents to cover up wrongdoing - which in fact appears to be the tactic in use in this case.

However because the plaintiffs haven't (yet?) advanced that particular argument, the DOJ was not required to address it or advance it for them. Let's see if counsel for Al-Haramain addresses the propriety of the classification of these documents, and how the Obama DOJ responds to that. Until they do so, I think the DOJ is right to protect the concept of keeping classified information secret. That's too large a privilege to give up, especially if it can have serious consequences for national security.

Mindy Herrick Returns

Roberts Elementary School teacher Mindy Herrick will be returning to work Monday morning at 7:30am. The staff at Roberts plan to have a big welcome back party at 8am. If you can, be there!

I don't think HISD has yet said why she's being allowed back. The Roberts parents were in touch with both Dr. Saavedra's office and Dr. Adriana Tamez (Central Region Superintendent), and didn't seem to get a detailed answer from either. We'll have to monitor the news to see why she's returning, and perhaps the status of other teachers caught in this drug sweep policy.

About the best you can say about HISD's policy regarding teachers and drugs is that it's confusing.

Paying your superintendent

In an article by the Houston Chronicle's Ericka Mellon, the issue of compensation for the HISD superintendent was discussed. I collected another 10 seconds on my cumulative fifteen minutes of fame, and wanted to clarify a few points.

• First, I said I'd be willing to "spot him the driver" in our 7th largest school district. Yes, I pay taxes too. But I grew up in NJ, and spent four years going to high school in Manhattan, which was only possible because of mass transit. I spent the travel time doing homework, reading, goofing with friends, or just chilling out. Dr. Saavedra probably travels a lot of miles in our huge sprawling city; any time he can prep for a meeting, work on a proposal or policy, etc. is bonus time to us, I think. Honestly, we should make Metro pay for the driver; it's really a shame we don't have a decent mass transit system in the fourth largest US city. I guess we can thank Tom DeLay for that.
• One of my biggest concerns is that the compensation package is almost strictly accretive. The next candidate isn't going to come in and say "I'll take less than my predecessor"; the trend is to ask for all that, and more. I think the Board should spend a little time discussing the package up front, then look for supers who are willing to work within those boundaries. If we need to shave back compensation or perks, we should take advantage of this opportunity to do so.
• I also said the Board should consider putting a cap on the compensated vacation/personal days. That's pretty normal for us plebes, who at best can carry a single year's worth of days over to next year. As an employer, you don't want your employees working for two years then taking a long vacation in the middle of your project the next year (though of course that'd be so nice). You also don't want to get socked with a big payout at termination, which is what we're seeing now with Dr. Saavedra. A cap just makes sense; use it or lose it.
• The salary part of the compensation doesn't faze me much. It's a big job, and a big district. Can we get equally qualified personnel to run it for less? I don't know. The bonus, on the other hand, is obscene; an $80,000 bonus is two average teacher salaries (I think). Wouldn't we be better served having the extra teacher(s)? Since it's tied (in large part?) to the performance on standardized tests, it aligns his compensation with what I consider to be a flawed metric. It also is of probably dubious value; at the end of the day it's the teachers and principals who are making that happen, not him.

In the end, as a taxpayer, I'd like to see us pay the super less if we can. As a citizen and parent of HISD students, I want a person in the job who can make sure the system works for our children. It's the Board's job to try to make those both happen, and I wish them luck.

This could be big

According to KHOU, HISD Superintendent Dr. Saavedra is planning to stop the random drug searches in campus parking lots. Of the 261 searches this year, only 12 were a result of a tip or request.

Even better is the suggestion that if Roberts Elementary Art Teacher Mindy Herrick is no-billed by her grand jury (for possession of drugs on a school campus) and tests "clean" (reportedly this is already the case), then she can return to the classroom.

I'd be thrilled to see both those happen.

Rally at Roberts Elementary for Mindy Herrick

By now, if you've read Lisa Gray's column in the Chronicle or Ericka Mellon's article, you've heard of Mindy Herrick, the Roberts art teacher who was put on administrative leave and is currently facing charges for "having possession" of two Xanax pills in a baggie in her car. There will be a rally in support of her as detailed below.

We hope to have radio, TV, and print media out in force. I'd like you to consider coming, if not for our particular teacher, to express disappointment and displeasure with HISD's "Zero Tolerance" drug policy.

Join us FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20TH AT 5:00 at the Greenbriar entrance to Roberts Elementary as we RALLY IN SUPPORT OF MINDY HERRICK.   Bring your family, your friends and your neighbors to provide the biggest show of support we can for our beloved teacher and friend. Let's show everyone we want Ms Herrick back at Roberts, now!   We'll hear from Ms Herrick's attorney, Kent Schaffer as well as Roberts students who love Ms Herrick and miss her very much.   Posters and signs are welcomed.  

HISD - College Ready?

Ericka Mellon wrote an article about the performance of high school students at HISD schools on a "college ready" assessment in the Houston Chronicle.

The article describes advances HISD has made in the number of "college ready" students on the TAKS Exit Level exam. This is defined (as far as I can tell) by a student receiving a scale score of 2200 in each of the Math and Reading sections of the exam. My first two questions are:

• Do these scale scores correlate with any future success, such as college performance or acceptance?
• Scale scores are a way of applying a "fudge factor" to try to normalize score reporting across different years' tests (just like the SAT scores, for example); are we sure they represent something meaningful? Can they easily be adjusted year to year to affect the numbers?

Here's an example of the scale score issue: One year, a student can get 23 of 36 questions correct, and receive a scale score of 2100. The next year, the test is determined to be "easier", so a student needs 26 of 37 correct for the same scale score. What's not clear to me is that the composition of the 23 or 26 correct affects the student's scale score. On the first test, if a student shows complete mastery of a most topics, and gets 13 wrong representing a 0% mastery of two core topics, can that be the same as a student who misses 13 questions, some here and there, but with a decent grasp of all the concepts? Can you compare two students who get 23 correct - one who gets 23 of the 24 "easy" questions right, and none of the 12 "hard" ones, and a student who gets 23 correct, a mix of hard and easy questions? Does it make sense to map a scale score to just a raw score, or should the questions or their distributions be weighted? You should refer to the TEA web site documenting the conversion of raw scores to scaled scores on the TAKS.

Never mind. Let's say students who meet the scale score test are all equally "ready for college". One of the documents Ms. Mellon attaches at the bottom of her article shows the achievement levels per high school in HISD. The numbers are interesting. DeBakey has an impressive record of preparing their students for the TAKS exit, the best in town. Almost all their kids score at least proficient in Math and Reading. Bellaire last year saw 82% of their kids "pass" in Math, 76% in Reading. Carnegie, 95%/94%, and that's way up from 87%/72% (!!) in 2007. I love the HSPVA numbers, which kind of buck the trend of doing better in math than reading: 84%/96%. Lamar's numbers are 65%/63%.

What does this mean for a parent trying to decide which HS is right for their kid? On the one hand, if you are not worried about your kids passing these standards, maybe these aggregate numbers aren't that important to your individual case. On the other hand, I worry that schools have been or will be looking at these numbers, setting campus goals, and then expending a large number of resources trying to get those numbers up. Although that's not a bad reaction (again, assuming these metrics actually measure something meaningful), in practice, I fear this means that fewer or no resources at those schools will be focused on the students who are in no danger of missing these goals - the advanced kids who could also use more attention to better develop their own skills and interests. I worry more and more that campus educational resources are a zero-sum game, and when the balance shifts inordinately to focusing on bringing the bottom students up, the top students get less attention. What should that balance be?

As parents, should we focus on sending our kids to schools with the best records, assuming their staff already feels confident in their students' performance and can focus on deeper or broader curricula? Or should we worry that schools at the top are there because they're focusing so many resources on passing these tests, and our children may languish?

Health care call in

February 12 is the National Call-in Day for HR 676, which is the House resolution implementing a national single-payer health care system. Please call the Congressional switchboard: 202-224-3121 and ask for your representative's office. You can also call (202-456-1414) or fax (202-456-2461) the White House.

Single payer health care is different from "universal health care" because it eliminates the need for private health insurance plans. This helps realize a few important effects:

• Eliminate the inefficiencies of private plans. The 25% - 30% of our premiums which go toward profit and marketing can be used instead to provide care to more individuals.
• Remove the mis-alignment between profit and health. Insurance companies, to make a profit, routinely deny care to their customers, in what often seem like arbitrary decisions. A governmental single payer plan will need to determine what procedures and items to pay for, but it will at least be nationally consistent, a single set of rules for everyone. Yes, there will be a public organization or committee responsible for those decisions - but such deliberations should take place transparently, with the potential for oversight from all of us who are affected. Compare that to the decisions now made by your insurer - who makes them? Are they in your best interests? Do you feel they are concerned to make sure you're healthy, or do they deliver just enough care so you don't leave, and they can maximize their profit?
• Improve doctor choice. Current insurance plans exclude doctors and hospitals, forcing you to choose providers "in the plan". With a single payer, everyone is in the plan.
• Improve the competitiveness of American firms. Firms employing American workers have to pay inflated premiums (see the inefficiencies point above) for health care for their workers. Firms in almost every other developed country have their workers covered under some state-organized plan. Sure, health care has to be paid for somehow; payroll or per-worker taxes are the most likely tool to use. But when everyone's covered, and inefficiencies are squeezed out of the system, it should end up that the cost per worker, for the same level of care, is less under a single-payer plan than in our current environment.
• Potentially mitigate billing errors and issues. I'm on thin ice here because I have no experience dealing with Medicare or Medicaid. Do they pay on time, and in full? Dealing with a single payer may make it unnecessary for a practice or hospital to have a large staff dedicated to collecting payment from insurers. The process may be streamlined, saving time and money for everyone involved.
• Implement a single formulary for prescription drugs, allowing the negotiation of reasonable prices for such a huge market commitment. Yes, this would set a single price for each drug; it would have to be reasonable enough for drug makers to be able to fund research into new drugs. It may end up that the market shifts a bit; drug research and drug manufacture may be split up under some compulsory licensing scheme. A drug researcher would take on the costs of developing new drugs, typically with access to federal funds; once a drug (or device) is developed and tested, the organization would recoup the costs from licensing the resulting patents to manufacturers. A robust market in manufacture could help drive the cost to the consumer down.

A health care market under HR 676 would potentially look dramatically different from what we have now; some companies and segments will be unnecessary and disappear, and others will change dramatically. That's fine with me, because it seems the system we have now is fundamentally broken, and is not delivering the care we deserve for the dollars we're pouring in.

Get out of jail, free

The Houston Chronicle has an article about technology at the Houston Municipal Court system. The court's computer network has been hit, hard, by a virus - the report suggests Conficker but the chief technical director for the City doesn't think so. The effects include a shutdown of the muni court on Friday, and a suspension for arrests for Class C misdemeanors.

To me it seems clear there are a number of lessons to learn:

1. Keep your critical computers away from the Internet. There are computers which are necessary for your department to function, and then there are the computers people use for less critical purposes. Think strongly about keeping an "air gap" between your critical infrastructure and the Internet.
2. Avoid an operating system monoculture. Another hard thing to do - it's a trade-off between being easy to manage (the Southwest Airlines approach) and being robust. Having even 20% of your computers running something other than Windows can mean the difference between an inconvenient virus attack, and shutting down your courts for the weekend.
3. Migrate off Microsoft Windows. It's a bug-ridden virus magnet.The sooner you move away from MS Windows on your critical infrastructure machines, the sooner you become more resistant to viruses and worms.