Let’s call him “BeeGee.” Like all capitalists, he attempted to create a monopoly for a product that everybody wanted, and he came so close that he made a major amount of money, too much in the view of his social policy critics. So what if his enterprise employed thousands of people who willingly came to work. By the metric of oversized income and assets, BeeGee has to be confronted. Therefore, it is resolved that the government confiscate a substantial portion of his assets and use the monies to house the homeless and fix the roads. But please do not create any obstruction to BeeGee’s ability to invent products that millions use every day.

The prototypical hedge fund manager is stereotypically a bad guy because his activities produce nothing. His wealth is because each day he says to the mirror, “I Can,” and he risks substantial capital to back up an observation that some securities are overvalued and some are undervalued. He has no right to use his money to pay $100 million for a painting. Therefore, it is resolved that the government confiscate a substantial portion of his assets and use the money to pay the college tuition of financially challenged young people. I am not worried about his ability to make money in the future; he is really smart, works 24/7,  knows every paragraph of the tax code, and has broken no laws.

Some 0.1% wealth category people are like oracles. They see the future well, and their brainchildren assist the entire evolution to TechnoWorld. But should somebody be allowed to spend $100 million on a boat race, like one of these people did. No, that is not helpful to society. Therefore, it is resolved that the government confiscate an equal amount of his assets, to be devoted to the food stamp program.

Both the bank account and annual earnings of this MD are clearly excessive (even by doctors’ standards). However, I, and millions of others, am using his terrific product, so by that definition, he has to be considered a good guy.  But how can I give him a pass—he is superrich.  Policy problem?

And now there is a new entry in the super-rich classification, the winner of the Powerball lottery. He or she (or they) will have created nothing, risked but a few dollars, hired nobody, and have had no impact on anybody in the process of gaining said wealth. If history is any guide, the winner will be portrayed as something of a hero … and will proceed to dissipate a good portion of his largesse.

Overall, how do we assess the legitimacy of one’s income and assets, fairly earned? Can we talk about income inequality as we sip coffee priced at double that of the little place around the corner and put more money in the pocket of Starbucks? How should we think about the wealth of Mark Zuckerberg when we regard his service as indispensable; in fact, we cannot even remember life before Facebook.

Did Apple become the world’s most valuable company because of a singular coherent decision by a governing entity? Of course not; it is the result of most of us (worldwide in fact) loving a product so much that we do not care about the wealth we are creating for people who financially are already “beyond category,” as they say in the Tour de France.

Once the projected policymaker gets past closing various tax loopholes and simplifying the tax code itself, all to the good, how does he think about the actual tax rate?

Clearly it should be raised for upper income individuals. However, to couple that advocacy with a suggestion that high incomes and large asset positions are to be considered the evil consequences of an ugly economic system, that is somehow separate from the cumulative decisions of the rest of us, is to be completely hypocritical as this short enumeration of different situations demonstrates.

Maybe Bernie has a consistent answer to the question of which billionaires should be bashed.

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Two recent moves by the government with respect to college students deserve attention.

First, the FAFSA filing for the period which began January 1, 2016 (to trigger aid for the 2016-17 academic year) can be done using the 2014 income tax filing, with documented adjustments if necessary because of important changes in income. This means you can file sooner than before and consequently federal decisions on dollar amounts can be made quicker. Both are important to students planning their college budgets and can even affect the selection of a school.

Note that there is a procedural step involved. A FSA ID (with a user name and password) must be created to replace the PIN previously used to log into the Department of Education FAFSA website.

Go to StudentAid.gov/fsaid.

Connected to the above information are three recent significant blog posts from http://Blog.ed.gov, which is the key website for education matters at the federal level.

(1) “7 Things you need before you fill out the FAFSA” (the new FSA ID , social security number, driver’s license if relevant, income tax return data, untaxed income, assets, colleges interested in).

(2) “7 Steps to filling out the FAFSA.”

(3) “11 Common FAFSA Mistakes.” Not filling it out completely and not filing as soon as possible are two of the major ones.

Second, students may be aware of different federal programs which are relevant to the repayment of student loans: PLSF, PAYE, and IBR. Typically these apply to recent borrowers. However, the newest entry in this area, REPAYE (Revised Pay as you Earn), is available to all borrowers, with no limits on debt level or income. Details do vary, based on undergraduate versus graduate loans and single versus married borrowers. Log in to studentloans.gov; the student can analyze each repayment program in the context of his own debt situation.

Yes, it has occurred to a few people that consolidating these repayment programs into a single set of rules would be helpful to all concerned. (Equally beneficial would be a cut in tuition levels, but that issue belongs in a different essay.)

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A San Francisco mother is suing the school district because her son’s reading problem left him ‘unqualified for any employment other than the most demeaning, unskilled, low-paid manual labor.””

The question in front of the court reads, “Is a public school system guilty of fraud if it awards a high-school diploma to a student who can read at only a fifth-grade level?”

“This novel law suit – of a type that some educators have been expecting for years – could unleash similar assaults from disgruntled parents across the nation. Many parents … have long complained that teachers shunt their children through the system without properly educating them.”

If I said the above referred to a situation in a typical urban school district in 2016, you, or at least education reformers, would not be in disbelief. Not true. The date is 1972!

Sustainable change is a very long, extremely tough road, involving every component of the socioeconomic/edupolitics equation. And sometimes it is not evident that anything has changed.

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Set the rental car GPS on “South” when you leave Houston’s Hobby airport. Drive past the oil pumpers at Victoria, past the dozens of majestic wind turbines in Somewhereville, and past the 60-mile stretch of zero gas stations. Shortly before you would otherwise cross one of several international bridges into Mexico, get off on Business Route 83. When you see “The Lazy Owl,” turn right onto First Street. Reduce your speed as there are roller coaster dips in the road. Once the mobile homes have receded from your view, you will have completed a 350-mile trek to – a school.

The catchment area for said school is challenged to say the least. The average family reportedly has 5.8 members, and 90% of the kids are eligible for Title One financial support. The vast majority have English as their second language. Undoubtedly many are undocumented. A cup of coffee here costs less than a buck, as does the accompanying breakfast pastry. A night’s sleep at the Dolphin Motel is $35 + $2 for the key, paid in advance in cash. Border patrol SUVs are commonplace. Multiple “Dollar” stores are the area’s convenience outlets, WalMart being more of a destination retailer.

If I told you that the college graduation rate of the above school was 60% (over six years), you would regard that as highly implausible, but that is what I was told.. The IDEA “College for All” public school of Donna, Texas seems to be knocking the ball out of the park. This location is part of an overall IDEA system which has 44 schools with 24,000 students and an equal number on the lottery waiting list. Interestingly, IDEA is a charter school but does not publicize that fact.

The tone of IDEA is set at the beginning of this particular December day with a loudspeaker announcement that can be heard throughout the school campus. At 7:30am, students and parents dropping off their future collegians hear a request from the principal, in a positive tone, to stay focused on upcoming tests even during the Holiday season.

On entering the lobby, it is impossible to miss the extensive, informational wall display. Specifically, each teacher has a 8 ½ x 11” sheet with his or her picture, education, prior experience, why committed to IDEA, a learning experience that changed them, a favorite book, and a favorite snack (none of which are available at the school; it has a working organic farm and the only option in its vending machines is water).

My visit was coincidentally the day of some major testing for students, which limited the time spent with the principal. I asked her what she needed. At a different high achieving urban charter school, the response is to “make teachers better faster.” When the IDEA principal was asked, she minced no words, “better teachers.”

The staff skews young and has significant numbers of Teach for America and IDEA alumni represented among its personnel. The recent teacher retention data (84%) equates to longevity of six years, up from 72% (four years) previously. There is a differentiated compensation system and, for superior teachers, the opportunity to create their own lesson plans (in contrast to the use of Direct Instruction for grades one and two). As is often the case in education, the teaching staff is more diverse than the ranks of leadership.

Like charter schools everywhere, classroom walls are covered by instructions, encouragements, quotations – it is almost impossible for a briefly bored student to have his wandering eyes not see something which is helpful to his academic progress. The high school at Donna includes AP courses for freshmen and sophomores and an International Baccalaureate program for juniors and seniors. The latter must complete a course entitled “The Theory of Knowledge,” encompassing a 4,000-word essay and presentation.

Historically, the emphasis has been on the ACT; a 21 here is considered the threshold for college readiness, but a 23 is needed for college without the need to take any remedial courses. The latter is the school goal, as is increased attention to the SAT. In addition to conventional college counseling, the school has ten individuals who are considered to be People with Influence (PWI is the official designation), each with the responsibility for ten students.

As part of the process of acclimating students to college, sixth-graders are taken on a trip to visit Texas schools, while ninth-graders go to the East Coast to see that part of the college world. In addition to the obvious purpose, these trips serve to educate families toward the possibility that their child may want to go far away, always a controversial desire in a close-knit family.

The school does not have tackle football, which is practically sacrilegious in Texas, where hundreds of helmeted high schoolers have what lamentably will be the greatest moment of their lives under the Friday Night Lights. IDEA does have flag football, basketball, and volleyball; students must have at least a 90% mark to participate.

As is true elsewhere in the charter world, IDEA has to beg, borrow or steal (just kidding!) the funds necessary for facilities as it does not receive the money for that purpose which goes as a matter of course to traditional public schools.

P.S. A final observation from this admittedly truncated visit: when some first graders were progressing in an orderly manner from one building to another, several of them were reading while they walked. As I said to the teacher, “if you have young scholars that eager to read, there is little to worry about regarding their educational path!”

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At the risk of clarifying some of the issues which have dogged charter schools for two decades, here are some thoughts:

1. Like all public schools, charter schools are subject to every state/federal regulation and testing requirement.
2. The arguments one hears about charters are typically not about education or kids; they are more likely to be about the adults, more specifically their jobs, and the evaluation thereof, something which is routine elsewhere in organizational life.
3. What the teachers union historically has wanted is to decide, without interference or metrics subject to analysis, whether your child is being educated. You as a parent have no real power in such a situation. This upsets many people.
4. Enrollment in charters is through an open lottery.
5. It is unseemly for affluent people (in this instance, predominantly non-minority) to exercise school choice by moving to towns with reputedly better schools and then object to financially challenged urban parents (a large majority of whom are minority) who attempt to select among the choices available to them.
6. Charters receive less total money per pupil than non-charter schools.
7. Parents who can exercise the power of choice (yes, and show motivation, a term which is never pejoratively applied to suburbanites) are lined up to get their children enrolled in high-performing charter schools.

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