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fringe
Citizen
Username: Fringe
Post Number: 292
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 9:12 am: |     |
While Monday's workshop review of the administration recommendations regarding assessment of district progress confused even member Latz, Ken Lay would have understood. Vague goals, minimal assessment and a complacent board facilitate a house of cards.
The session was interesting from the standpoint that the BOE's philosophical split on this primary task was quite evident.
Mr. Latz stated that the main mission of the board is to sustain the confidence of the community in the educational institution. Seemingly he recognized that test scores have shaken that confidence and board action is required to undercut what he called "community anxiety." As in the past, he would ignore score comparisons with other districts and dfgs and concentrate on the individual progress of each student. Mr. Betheil noted that this can take a while, and by the time conclusions are reached - the student is gone or beyond help. Mr. Latz did acknowledge that while the district currently looks good when compared to the NCLB standards, it is only temporary because that bar is set to raise yearly, while the performance of SOMSD 4th, 8th and 11th graders remains flat.
Mr. Betheil referred to the article sent to board members by Super H, but not publicly distributed, by a Sergegiovani? that seems to reflect some of Super H's thinking. The two points mentioned -
*Changing the culture of the institution is the real agenda [see slide 22 of the budget]
*Assume people need pressure to change
Betheil ended by noting that if we are only concerned about district students passing the various tests, that is what we will focus on.
Mr. O'Leary followed that by asking for definitive measures for district progress. This sent Super H into a long tirade which boiled down to "No".
Mr. Frazier's contribution was a monologue on the absurdity of test scores as an assessment mechanism. He urged members to avoid political pressures and stay attuned to what we [the BOE] think are meaningful - a subject he did not discuss.
Ms. Slafkes agreed that assessment is not an end in itself, but noted that a community is judged by outsiders on test results. Therefore, the BOE must educate the residents on the value of judging individual progress alone (and downplay the value of comparisons?).
My question was not addressed (since public comment is not allowed at workshops) - why is the administration developing a plan for the BOE on how to assess the administration's programs. Mr. Lay would know the reason for that as well.
JTL |
ffof
Citizen
Username: Ffof
Post Number: 1928
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 9:17 am: | |
i thought 8th grade scores have been increasing, not flat, at MMS anyway. |
Montagnard
Citizen
Username: Montagnard
Post Number: 409
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 9:51 am: | |
I have often felt that Horoschack (and his BoE claque) are without any real philosophy of education.
Certainly the Board has a responsibility beyond "sustaining the confidence of the community in the educational institution". If this is a representative quote, then we're long overdue for a change.
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J. Crohn
Citizen
Username: Jcrohn
Post Number: 899
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 10:12 am: | |
"Mr. Betheil referred to the article sent to board members by Super H, but not publicly distributed, by a Sergegiovani? that seems to reflect some of Super H's thinking."
I believe that would be Thomas Sergiovanni, an education theorist and author (at Trinity College?). As far as I know, his work focuses chiefly on education management [i.e., administration].
Here's a short summary of Sergiovanni I dug up online:
"Servant Leadership" according to Thomas Sergiovanni, argues that leaders who focus on followers' needs and work to fulfill them are truly leaders. Leading is serving in a biblical sense. What comes to mind is the Puritans in New England. Here, Christianity dictated that if a member of the colony served others, they would be "saved." Servant Leadership was a path to Heaven.
A second theory of leadership advanced by Sergiovanni is "Value-Added Leadership," which argues that it is possible for organizations like schools to persevere and do their best no matter what the obstacles, and to never give up until the job is well done. Leadership as "value-added," according to Sergiovanni, is a powerful force that can motivate followers. And it can do so much more than authority and management controls, which frequently bring about mediocre and passionless behaviors amongst followers. Under value-added leadership, followers respond because of their own desires and they respond with a passion and commitment that far exceeds what is expected of subordinates. Value-added leadership comprises nine value-added dimensions and consequently two corollaries.
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J. Crohn
Citizen
Username: Jcrohn
Post Number: 900
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 10:29 am: | |
Oh yeah, another Sergiovanni buzzword is "reflective practice."
Here's a link to his books: http://topics.practical.org/browse/Thomas_Sergiovanni
(And I erred--he's at Trinity University, Texas, not Trinity College!)
Of course, all good ideas can be corrupted, but Sergiovanni is manifestly a step up from the provocateur Alfie Kohn. |
J. Crohn
Citizen
Username: Jcrohn
Post Number: 901
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 10:37 am: | |
"I have often felt that Horoschack (and his BoE claque) are without any real philosophy of education."
Really? That seems kind of strange to me. H. and Co. have a rather well defined progressivist philosophy of education. I happen to disagree strongly with certain aspects of it, but it's not nonexistent, or even incoherent. |
johnny
Citizen
Username: Johnny
Post Number: 825
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 12:36 pm: | |
If Maplewood/South Orange schools were a corporation then we would get an F for corporate governance. Horoschak develops a budget, giving very little meaningful information to the shareholders (citizens). The BOE says nice budget, let's ask a couple of questions and pass it on to the Board of Directors (BOSE) at the last minute. But the Board of Directors has already told the CEO to put in the budget whatever he needs.
Who is accountable? Where are the checks and balances? Fortunately for Horoschak (and unfortunately for us) we are not a corporation. |
Dad23
Citizen
Username: Dad23
Post Number: 47
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 1:19 pm: | |
"Leadership as "value-added," according to Sergiovanni, is a powerful force that can motivate followers. And it can do so much more than authority and management controls, which frequently bring about mediocre and passionless behaviors amongst followers."
I doubt Sergiovani mentioned anything about getting a vote of NO CONFIDENCE from teachers as a method of "value-added" leadership.} |
Nohero
Citizen
Username: Nohero
Post Number: 2859
Registered: 10-1999
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 1:28 pm: | |
Johnny, I like your analogy to a corporation. Just one thing - the "Board of Directors", as it were, is actually the Board of Education. They hire the "CEO" (Superintendent). They can and should demand timely budget information, in a form which allows them to make the hard decisions which EVERYBODY knows (and has known for a while) will have to be made.
And the citizens are both shareholders AND customers. I'd say that entitles us to a little consideration and information in a timely way. |
Montagnard
Citizen
Username: Montagnard
Post Number: 411
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 1:32 pm: | |
Why would someone with "a well-defined progressivist philosophy" choose (say) computer instruction over world languages, or middle-school counselling over elementary-school music instruction?
Other than pure political manipulation, of course. |
Diversity Man
Citizen
Username: Deadwhitemale
Post Number: 628
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 4:41 pm: | |
I have heard of three dimensions, four dimensions and The Fifth Dimension, [UP, UP and AWAY], (ll: no Pitney dimension), but nine dimensions is so smart and advanced that I can hardly catch my breath.
My fingers fail me.
Good-bye.
DWM
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J. Crohn
Citizen
Username: Jcrohn
Post Number: 902
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 5:03 pm: | |
"Why would someone with "a well-defined progressivist philosophy" choose (say) computer instruction over world languages, or middle-school counselling over elementary-school music instruction?"
Well, why not? Either of those choices or their antitheses could plausibly fit into a progressivist philosophy of education.
But I think I understand now that you're discussing a coherent body of priorities, rather than a philosophy per se. |
Dad23
Citizen
Username: Dad23
Post Number: 48
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 7:11 pm: | |
"a coherent body of priorities"
That would be good. A long term plan wouldn't be a bad idea either.
Every year he is the only one who knows what the plan is. And it never has anything to do with the plan the year before. |
Montagnard
Citizen
Username: Montagnard
Post Number: 417
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - 10:41 pm: | |
One might hope for a coherent body of priorities derived from a tenable philosophy of education.
I'm not asking for much, really. Just a plausible way to finish the sentence "The purpose of education is..." with something other than a reference to New Jersey State Law or a spreadsheet. |
nan
Citizen
Username: Nan
Post Number: 1153
Registered: 2-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, February 12, 2004 - 5:52 am: | |
What would be an appropriate "philosophy of education?"
I ask that because, what I'm hearing reported here as coming from Horoschack, Latz, Frazer, etc. sounds visionary compared to the empty corporate jargon and petty harassment coming out of Fringe, jnl, Michael et al. throughout the Ed threads.
And I for one am GLAD we are not a corporation. Do you want your schools to be run by someone who views profit as the bottom line? Do you want the schools run by someone who looks to taxpayers to foot the bill for free training for jobs that will go to whomever will work the cheapest? Do you really want your schools run along the lines of the "free market" with a few winners and lots of losers? Corporations are certainly NO guarantee of accountability, at least to the public. |
jln
Citizen
Username: Jln
Post Number: 34
Registered: 2-2001
| | Posted on Friday, February 13, 2004 - 12:12 am: | |
Nan,
Last year in the heat of the debate on deleveling you unloaded a bunch of anti-corporate, anti-free market drivel on this board. I challenged your hypocracy on this matter as follows:
"Nan,
Nothing like a socialist tirade to illuminate the debate. Before we get to the merits of the proposal, you ought to examine your life and contemplate all the stuff you have that is the fruit of free markets and global competition. I'm taking literary license here, but this is a brief catalog: the car that gets you to work, your computer and this internet medium for communication, your microwave oven, availability of fresh fruit in January and a refrigerator that keeps it from rotting, the furnace in your basement and the air conditioner in your window both of which make the seasonal temperature extremes at 43 degrees of lattide easier to take, the shingles on the roof that keep your home dry (not to mention the umbrella that keeps you dry on your way from the parking lot to the store), your kid's allergy medicine (or whatever medicine he/she needs), the surgical technology for your Dad's triple by-pass operation, and your Greatful Dead albums and the CD player with which to enjoy them, etc. etc. etc. I could go on and on . . . but why bother. You'd rather rant and rave and bite the hand that feeds you. You complain about the inequities, but there's no small element of hypocrisy in your argument because you're a lot happier (and healthier) in Maplewood (in the land of large corporations) than you'd be trying to eke out a subsistance living on some God-forsaken plot in the third world. By the way, like it or not, your kids will be competing in a global economy and if you're not getting them ready, they'll be worse off for it. Yeah, I'm a capitalist although I readily recognize the weak points. And lest you get on your high horse about current Republican policy, I happen not to agree with the current Bush tax cuts, because I think excessive deficits and debt are generally a bad idea. And I don't think a property tax is the right way to fund education, but it's here for the forseeable future, so we've got to solve the District's financial problems here. But I digress . . . all of the above is a red herring in the debate about leveling. . . ."
Well you didn't rise to the occasion with a response then . . . maybe you'd consider it now.
And then maybe you'd like to tell all of us (a)whether you are willing to see your taxes double in eight years, (b) whether you are willing to impose that choice on everyone else in the community, and (c) whether you believe Maplewood/South Orange can sustain this sort of uninhibited tax growth into the forseeable future and remain heathy, viable communities.
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Cynicalgirl
Citizen
Username: Cynicalgirl
Post Number: 402
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Friday, February 13, 2004 - 5:02 am: | |
Looks more like Tyco than Enron... |
wharfrat
Citizen
Username: Wharfrat
Post Number: 968
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Friday, February 13, 2004 - 5:17 am: | |
So Jim-
Instead of peppering us with your windy diatribes, tell us what you think the BOE should do. In another thread a number of people asked you a similar question, and your response was pretty anemic.
Once again, after many years of chairing the CBAC schools committee you must have come up with research identifying school districts somewhere in NJ that successfully implement the sane financial model you seek.
You really could contribute something substantive to this thread if you would avoid the turgid prose and just answer the question. |
Cynicalgirl
Citizen
Username: Cynicalgirl
Post Number: 403
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Friday, February 13, 2004 - 5:41 am: | |
Governance question: Do any Maplewood and South Orange town council members serve on the BOE? Are all members voted in, or are some a given? I'm just curious as to where any town governance roles intersect with the Board of Education.
Also, who opens the search for, and defines the criteria for, superintendent position? Do the principals have any vote/review? Do local principals every apply? |
johnny
Citizen
Username: Johnny
Post Number: 829
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Friday, February 13, 2004 - 9:34 am: | |
The BOE are elected positions and they are not Town Council members. I think it is forbidden by law.
However, the BOSE (Board of School Estimates) is made up of 3 town committee members from South Orange and 3 from Maplewood. They approve the school system budget that is presented by the BOE and the Superintendent.
So the BOSE is supposed to represent the citizens of MWD and SO. But when they say things like "tell us what you want" to the Super then we run into governance issues. |
michael
Citizen
Username: Michael
Post Number: 478
Registered: 1-2002
| | Posted on Friday, February 13, 2004 - 11:37 am: | |
Nan called me a petty harasser. Thank ye !
nya nya ne nya nya !
Facts please? Or does your obvious frustration leave you factless.
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nan
Citizen
Username: Nan
Post Number: 1155
Registered: 2-2001
| | Posted on Friday, February 13, 2004 - 8:35 pm: | |
jln,
drivel, eh? And your benchmark for cogent comment is reprinting an out of context reply to a reply you posted to someone on an unrelated thread.
It's hard to give a nice response to such mean spirited simplistic revelations. From your analogies, I'd guess you'd be in favor of eradicating hunger by handing out menus to the hungry. In our system there are some who benefit and some who merely look vicariously through the window. Right now, due to the way we fund education in New Jersey, our community may go from being the former to being the latter. And so yeah, it's nice I can get Grateful Dead records, but I don't even like the Grateful Dead and the availability of endless consumer products does not compensate for a lousy education.
But since when do you care if the kids in this town get a good education? The only thing you seem to be interested in is saving a few bucks and pushing Fordham Foundation approved curriculum. Since when does skepticism about the need to educate for "global competitiveness" or disgust when voucher supporters spout off definitions of essential "high standards" automatically make one a rabid anti-capitalist?
Finally let me repeat something I've said to you and Fringe before--What you guys (who DON "T HAVE KIDS IN THE SCHOOLS) don't seem to get is that if we under-fund our schools just to save money on taxes people won't want to live here any more anymore anyway.
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Reflective
Citizen
Username: Reflective
Post Number: 312
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Friday, February 13, 2004 - 8:51 pm: | |
wharf....
Over the past six/seven years, both JLN and JTL have put in countless hours on the school CBAC, coming up with research and recommendations to the Board of School Estimate. They formally present to the BOSE, have written opinion pieces in the News-Record, and have made their findings publically available wherever possible. They are even, Wharf, on Fringe's website.
So Wharf, I throw the research monkey back on your lap, it's disingenuous to condesendingly ask JLN "tell us your recommendations"
To the somewhat newer residents, it's important that you know the difficulty JLN and JTL have gone thru over the years to obtain what is, in fact, public information from the Board and the Administration.
If there is no other example then the pattern of (by our BOE and Admin) stonewalling of public financial information to responsible citizens, the actions of the BOE's and the Administration aptly show why there is no partnership between the educational institution and the residents. |
wharfrat
Citizen
Username: Wharfrat
Post Number: 972
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Friday, February 13, 2004 - 11:19 pm: | |
Reflective-
I was also on CBAC schools committee, the process was a sham. Go back to the archives and follow the thread called the million dollar dance studio. Fringe and JLN didn't put in countless hours of research.
In fact, the year I volunteered, 2002, the report was written even before the members of the committee presented their research. It was a sham.
David Arensburg |
fringe
Citizen
Username: Fringe
Post Number: 294
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Saturday, February 14, 2004 - 11:54 am: | |
The last two CBAC reports and a summary of last year's budget process are at http://hometown.aol.com/njfabian
It's amazing the files one finds in a computer's memory (more objective than some humans)- below is the initial CBAC information request (coverted to web page) for the 2002-03 budget. It was prior to the passage of OPRA and unanswered by the administration.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION REQUEST - MAPLEWOOD CBAC
1.2001-02 Budget Information
·2001-02 Budget as approved by BOSE
·2001-01 Adjusted Budget with explanation of variances from Original
·Detail on Change in Free Balance 6/30/01 to Estimated 6/30/02
2.Enrollment Information:
·Class Size Report - 2000-2001, 2001-2002
·Official enrollment report as of 10/15/01 as submitted to the State
·Fill in following tables:
SPECIAL PROGRAMS 2000 -01 2001-02
# Students - Alternative HS
# Students - Project Ahead
# Students - Explorations
# Students - AP
SPECIAL PROGRAMS 2000 -01 2001-02
$ Program Cost - Alternative HS
$ Program Cost - Project Ahead
$ Program Cost - Explorations
$ Program Cost - Students - AP
3.Contract Information 2001-02
·Current Contract with Salary Guides - SOMEA and ASCA
·# Staff (FTE's) at each step in the Guide
·$ Expended at each step in the Guide
4.Cash Outlays on Technology (General Fund Budget and Bonded)
Technology Spending Last 5 years (cumulative) 2001-02
Hardware
Software
Staff
5.Staff Information 2000-01 and 2001-02
·Fill in following tables:
2001-02 (cur yr) Teacher Information # FTEs
$ Staff Costs (incl. Benefits)
Elementary Schools
Middle Schools
High School
Substitutes
2000-01 (prior yr.) Teacher Information # FTEs $ Staff Costs (incl. Benefits)
Elementary Schools
Middle Schools
High School
Substitutes
2001-02 (cur yr) Admin Information # FTE Admin and Support Staff
$ Staff Costs (incl. Benefits)
Elementary Schools
Middle Schools
High School
Central Office
2000-01 (prior yr) Admin Information # FTE Admin and Support Staff
$ Staff Costs (incl. Benefits)
Elementary Schools
Middle Schools
High School
Central Office
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jln
Citizen
Username: Jln
Post Number: 35
Registered: 2-2001
| | Posted on Saturday, February 14, 2004 - 10:57 pm: | |
Nan,
Let's set the record straight on a number of issues.
1. First while I don't currently have a child in the public schools of Maplewood, I did until recently. My son went K-12 in the District from 1986 through 2000. And JTL still has one child in the system. My public voice on these topics by far pre-dates my son's graduation from CHS. And although I don't speak for him, I don't think he'd disagree that as citizens of this town we have a vested interest in the health of the school system.
2. My interest in the District's financial health is by no means driven by the desire to save a few bucks. My view, is and has been, that there are significant areas in the budget which are ill-spent. That, admittedly, is but one man's view and I am not a professional educator. However, those professionals whom we pay so well have never been able to objectively validate the success or benefits of the educational program which they ask us to pay for.
3. I have not been active in the CBAC this year or last. It is not a very effective body, but it's ineffectiveness is a reflection of the school budget process. As noted by a previous poster, the last year I was involved, the District was completely unresponsive to our information requests. Secondly, and more critically, the School Budget is not really binding on the BOE. Once the tax levy is approved by the BOSE, the BOE can move funds around the budget lines as they see fit. They can spend the funds as per the line items in the budget, or they can change the amounts without further approval. So detailed discussion about how the money is to be spent is really pretty futile. The only discussion that has any merit is the amount of the tax levy.
4. You might want to reflect on the fact that there are other public goods which some people in the community feel are at least as important as the school . . . notably police, fire protection, libraries, parks/trees/flowers, recreation programs, jitney transportation, cultural activities, road maintenance and repair, etc. etc. Those all are competing claims for funds, so you might ask yourself which of those items you'd like to see eliminated.
5. If you don't think any of them should be eliminated, then you should go back to the three questions I asked at the end of my earlier post.
6. As for my mean-spirited comments, I am merely holding up for public scrutiny the hypocracy of your highly critical comments about large corporations and the market system in which we live. The high standard of living which you enjoy is made possible in large part by that system, and yet you insist on biting the hand that feeds you.
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nan
Citizen
Username: Nan
Post Number: 1159
Registered: 2-2001
| | Posted on Sunday, February 15, 2004 - 7:15 am: | |
jln-
Where are these significant ill-spent areas? And remember context is everything. Where are there school districts that have what we have to deal with and do a better job? Objective validation is also contextual--once again---where are the public school systems that have what we have to deal with and are significanly more sucessfull?
And don't show me school systems that dump art and music and recess and spend all day on test prep scripted curriculums and then hold students back or get them to drop out so they won't ruin the test scores. While I think dissagregation of test score data has been the one good thing coming out of NCLB, I also think that there are a bunch of other "objective" items that need to be included in the interpetation of "objective" evidence as well.
I did not mention the CBAC in my post and I don't want to get into it here except to say that after the "million dollor dance studio" thread the only three words I can say are "needs new blood."
The value of the house you live in, and the viability of the community you live in is in great part determined by the viability of its schools. You say the only discussion that has any merit is the amount of the tax levy, I say that as long as property taxes are used as the primary school funding source, the viability of our schools are threatened.
Charges of hypocracy and accountibility cut both ways. At some point corporations and the executives that run them will have to answer to the track record of excess, disingenuous accounting practices, underfunding and misappropriation of retirement accounts, labor practices, and excess outsourcing. Many aspects of our quality of life are value added, and not always measured by the "bottom line."
Americans are creative and inventive and always find ways to land back on their feet. Doesn't it ever occur to you that we got that way because of the way we were educated in school? No, evidently not -- because you are part of an effort to support the big push to turn our educational system into one that produces graduates more like those inexpensive workers in countries where few compain about labor practices or environmental issues, or show the ability to think outside of the box.
Meanwhile it's not getting cheaper to live here so what kind of work opportunities will our kids have? |
J. Crohn
Citizen
Username: Jcrohn
Post Number: 927
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, February 15, 2004 - 10:17 am: | |
"you are part of an effort to support the big push to turn our educational system into one that produces graduates more like those inexpensive workers in countries where few ...show the ability to think outside of the box."
Oh, this is just priceless. |
Montagnard
Citizen
Username: Montagnard
Post Number: 424
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, February 15, 2004 - 12:29 pm: | |
I'd settle for graduates that could express themselves clearly and concisely. |
Dave
Citizen
Username: Dave
Post Number: 6397
Registered: 4-1998
| | Posted on Sunday, February 15, 2004 - 1:36 pm: | |
quote:Meanwhile it's not getting cheaper to live here so what kind of work opportunities will our kids have?
They can join the Peace Corps and work overseas, where the high-paying jobs are. |
Diversity Man
Citizen
Username: Deadwhitemale
Post Number: 634
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Sunday, February 15, 2004 - 2:43 pm: | |
nanny-gate, indeed!!!
nan, I salute you!
What would a day be without the truth, which Mulder mistakenly thought was out there, when
nan found the truth, and put it here?
nan shall make you free.
nan knows that the true evil axis is Bush, Cheney, Halliburton, and Grammaristan.
DWM |
wharfrat
Citizen
Username: Wharfrat
Post Number: 974
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Sunday, February 15, 2004 - 3:37 pm: | |
@#$%!*& boring! |
nan
Citizen
Username: Nan
Post Number: 1163
Registered: 2-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 17, 2004 - 6:23 am: | |
Here's a relevant article that gives us even more to think about.
Creative Class War
How the GOP's anti-elitism could ruin America's economy.
By Richard Florida
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last March, I had the opportunity to meet Peter Jackson, director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, at his film complex in lush, green, otherworldly-looking Wellington, New Zealand. Jackson has done something unlikely in Wellington, an exciting, cosmopolitan city of 900,000, but not one previously considered a world cultural capital. He has built a permanent facility there, perhaps the world's most sophisticated filmmaking complex. He did it in New Zealand concertedly and by design. Jackson, a Wellington native, realized what many American cities discovered during the '90s: Paradigm-busting creative industries could single-handedly change the ways cities flourish and drive dynamic, widespread economic change. It took Jackson and his partners a while to raise the resources, but they purchased an abandoned paint factory that, in a singular example of adaptive reuse, emerged as the studio responsible for the most breathtaking trilogy of films ever made. He realized, he told me, that with the allure of the Rings trilogy, he could attract a diversely creative array of talent from all over the world to New Zealand; the best cinematographers, costume designers, sound technicians, computer graphic artists, model builders, editors, and animators.
When I visited, I met dozens of Americans from places like Berkeley and MIT working alongside talented filmmakers from Europe and Asia, the Americans asserting that they were ready to relinquish their citizenship. Many had begun the process of establishing residency in New Zealand.
Think about this. In the industry most symbolic of America's international economic and cultural might, film, the greatest single project in recent cinematic history was internationally funded and crafted by the best filmmakers from around the world, but not in Hollywood. When Hollywood produces movies of this magnitude, it creates jobs for directors, actors, and key grips in California. Because of the astounding level of technical innovation which a project of this size requires, in such areas as computer graphics, sound design, and animation, it can also germinate whole new companies and even new industries nationwide, just as George Lucas's Star Wars films fed the development of everything from video games to product tie-in marketing. But the lion's share of benefits from The Lord of the Rings is likely to accrue not to the United States but to New Zealand. Next, with a rather devastating symbolism, Jackson will remake King Kong in Wellington, with a budget running upwards of $150 million.
Peter Jackson's power play hasn't been mentioned by any of the current candidates running for president. Yet the loss of U.S. jobs to overseas competitors is shaping up to be one of the defining issues of the 2004 campaign. And for good reason. Voters are seeing not just a decline in manufacturing jobs, but also the outsourcing of hundreds of thousands of white-collar brain jobs--everything from software coders to financial analysts for investment banks. These were supposed to be the "safe" jobs, for which high school guidance counselors steered the children of blue-collar workers into college to avoid their parents' fate.
But the loss of some of these jobs is only the most obvious--and not even the most worrying--aspect of a much bigger problem. Other countries are now encroaching more directly and successfully on what has been, for almost two decades, the heartland of our economic success -- the creative economy. Better than any other country in recent years, America has developed new technologies and ideas that spawn new industries and modernize old ones, from the Internet to big-box stores to innovative product designs. And these have proved the principal force behind the U.S. economy's creation of more than 20 million jobs in the creative sector during the 1990s, even as it continued to shed manufacturing, agricultural, and other jobs.
We came up with these new technologies and ideas largely because we were able to energize and attract the best and the brightest, not just from our country but also from around the world. Talented, educated immigrants and smart, ambitious young Americans congregated, during the 1980s and 1990s, in and around a dozen U.S. city-regions. These areas became hothouses of innovation, the modern-day equivalents of Renaissance city-states, where scientists, artists, designers, engineers, financiers, marketers, and sundry entrepreneurs fed off each other's knowledge, energy, and capital to make new products, new services, and whole new industries: cutting-edge entertainment in southern California, new financial instruments in New York, computer products in northern California and Austin, satellites and telecommunications in Washington, D.C., software and innovative retail in Seattle, biotechnology in Boston. The economic benefits of these advances soon spread to much of the rest of the country, as Ohio-born MBAs in Raleigh-Durham built credit-card call centers in Iowa, and Indian computer whizzes in Chicago devised inventory software that brought new profitability to car factories in Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
But now the rest of the world has taken notice of our success and is trying to copy it. The present surge of outsourcing is the first step--or if you will, the first pincer of the claw. The more routinizable aspects of what we consider brainwork--writing computer code, analyzing X-rays--are being lured away by countries like India and Romania, which have lower labor costs and educated workforces large enough to do the job. Though alarming and disruptive, such outsourcing might be manageable if we could substitute a new tier of jobs derived from the new technologies and ideas coming out of our creative centers. But so far in this economic recovery, that hasn't happened.
What should really alarm us is that our capacity to so adapt is being eroded by a different kind of competition--the other pincer of the claw--as cities in other developed countries transform themselves into magnets for higher value-added industries. Cities from Sydney to Brussels to Dublin to Vancouver are fast becoming creative-class centers to rival Boston, Seattle, and Austin. They're doing it through a variety of means--from government-subsidized labs to partnerships between top local universities and industry. Most of all, they're luring foreign creative talent, including our own. The result is that the sort of high-end, high-margin creative industries that used to be the United States' province and a crucial source of our prosperity have begun to move overseas. The most advanced cell phones are being made in Salo, Finland, not Chicago. The world's leading airplanes are being designed and built in Toulouse and Hamburg, not Seattle.
Read the rest here: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0401.florida.html
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