I really agree with your overall position on the importance of education and the need for high results, and it’s interesting to see it linked to affordability. I also appreciate your openness on admitting your lack of expertise on economics. But please, go read and understand some economics. Mamdani’s “affordability” policies or rent control etc is just benefitting a minority at the expense of some out group. It’s called an insider-outsider problem in economics. There’s two ways to lower prices. Lower demand or increase supply. Lowering demand (eg by rent control) just shuts some people out of the market. The only way to lower prices in a way that benefits everyone is by increasing supply. And ideally not by subsidising it which is just hiding the cost by putting it on the government balance sheet. But instead by smart reforms or employing new technology or practices. That’s the only way to grow and increase people’s standard of living
I really enjoy reading your articles about education. I’m not as close to how these numbers are reported, but your students at private schools get captured in this data?
When you write about the UC San Diego math report and that "...K-12 districts likely responded to lower student readiness with heaps of grade inflation" it makes we wonder whether or not there are efforts underway by organizations like ETS to offer (national/international, voluntary) exams in algebra, geometry, etc. as a mechanism for demonstrating mastery.
This framing is incredibly powerful, connecting those NAEP declines to somthing tangible like the 2008 crisis really drives home the scale. What caught me though is how the remediation spiral at UCSD creates this perverse feedback loop where grade inflation masks the problem, students pay for coursework twice, and employers end up bearing the ultimate cost through lower productivity. The political challenge seems to be that housing orchildcare feel immediate while education ROI plays out over decades, even though the ecnomic math clearly says we cant afford to wait.
I really agree with your overall position on the importance of education and the need for high results, and it’s interesting to see it linked to affordability. I also appreciate your openness on admitting your lack of expertise on economics. But please, go read and understand some economics. Mamdani’s “affordability” policies or rent control etc is just benefitting a minority at the expense of some out group. It’s called an insider-outsider problem in economics. There’s two ways to lower prices. Lower demand or increase supply. Lowering demand (eg by rent control) just shuts some people out of the market. The only way to lower prices in a way that benefits everyone is by increasing supply. And ideally not by subsidising it which is just hiding the cost by putting it on the government balance sheet. But instead by smart reforms or employing new technology or practices. That’s the only way to grow and increase people’s standard of living
I really enjoy reading your articles about education. I’m not as close to how these numbers are reported, but your students at private schools get captured in this data?
When you write about the UC San Diego math report and that "...K-12 districts likely responded to lower student readiness with heaps of grade inflation" it makes we wonder whether or not there are efforts underway by organizations like ETS to offer (national/international, voluntary) exams in algebra, geometry, etc. as a mechanism for demonstrating mastery.
This framing is incredibly powerful, connecting those NAEP declines to somthing tangible like the 2008 crisis really drives home the scale. What caught me though is how the remediation spiral at UCSD creates this perverse feedback loop where grade inflation masks the problem, students pay for coursework twice, and employers end up bearing the ultimate cost through lower productivity. The political challenge seems to be that housing orchildcare feel immediate while education ROI plays out over decades, even though the ecnomic math clearly says we cant afford to wait.