The Times Magazine on New Orleans Schools

In late 2006, Paul Tough wrote a lengthy article in the New York Times Magazine about the challenges of educating disadvantaged children. Exploring--and in some instances taking sides on--the fractious debate over how much schools can accomplish for poor and minority students, it became one of the most widely-discussed pieces of education journalism in years. Now Tough is back with another in-depth article on the same topic, this time through the lens of education in post-Katrina New Orleans. The set-up:

The city’s disastrously low-performing school system was almost entirely washed away in the flood — many of the buildings were destroyed, the school board was taken over and all the teachers were fired. What is being built in its place is an educational landscape unlike any other, a radical experiment in reform. More than half of the city’s public-school students are now being educated in charter schools, publicly financed but privately run, and most of the rest are enrolled in schools run by an unusually decentralized and rapidly changing school district. From across the country, and in increasing numbers, hundreds of ambitious, idealistic young educators...have descended on New Orleans, determined to take advantage of the opportunity not just to innovate and reinvent but also to prove to the rest of the country that an entire city of children in the demographic generally considered the hardest to educate — poor African-American kids — can achieve high levels of academic success.

In other words, New Orleans has become a kind of rare policy tabula rasa, a magnet for policy entrepreneurs and philanthropies eager to use the once-in-a-generation window of opportunity to transform urban education, rather than tinkering at the margins. This obviously raises the stakes for all concerned. Will it work? If not, does that de-legitimize the whole movement? Unfortunately, it also creates a dilemma for Tough as a writer, since nobody actually knows the answer to the central question the article poses. Five years from now, this will be the beginning to a fascinating story. Right now, it's a start without a finish.

Which is not to say the piece isn't valuable. As Tough notes, the governance structure in New Orleans is radically different than in most cities, close to the "portfolio district" model that's been proposed by people like CRPE's Paul Hill (an Education Sector non-resident senior fellow). In this model, elected officials don't so much run schools as manage them by choosing a mix of non-profits, charter school operators and others, setting performance standards, giving each provider a lot of discretion and flexibility, supporting under-performers and ultimately shutting down those that don't succeed. Or as New Orleans superintendent Paul Vallas says, "We put people in business and we take people out of business."

Clearly, the new education world in New Orleans is bringing a lot of talent and energy into a district that was, pre-Katrina, "disastrously low-performing," characterized by "a revolving door for superintendents...school officials indicted for bribery and theft; unexplained budget deficits; decaying building" etc. And it's hard to not to be impressed and moved by stories like this, about a returned hurricane evacuee and his mother:

Tony’s mother, Trineil, who is 31, was a product of [the dysfunctional New Orleans public school system.] Before the storm blew her family to Denver, she had never been outside of Louisiana, even for a day, and everyone she knew had been educated in New Orleans public schools. She was familiar with schools that didn’t work and educators who didn’t seem to care much. So it felt more than a little strange to her to be standing in her home with Hardrick and Sanders, two highly educated, impeccably dressed black professionals, listening to them describe what [their newly-formed charter school] Miller-McCoy had to offer her son.

“Ultimately, it’s my responsibility to make sure that you get to college,” Hardrick said to Tony. “You’re a sixth grader, and I’m standing in your living room telling Mom that if she will allow you to stick with me until 12th grade, you will be accepted to a four-year university.”

School wouldn’t be easy, she told him. He’d have to arrive each morning at 7:30 a.m., he’d have to wear a blazer and a necktie every day, he’d have to do his homework every night or stay until 6 p.m. the next afternoon to complete it. Hardrick handed Tony a copy of the Miller-McCoy Family and School Covenant, which she wanted him and his mother to sign, along with his homeroom teacher and Hardrick herself. All four people, she explained, had to make a commitment to get Tony to college.

“If you work hard and I work hard, we’ll get you there,” she said. “Is that fair? Are you ready to sign and shake and be officially welcomed to Miller-McCoy?”

Tony looked a little nervous, especially about the 7:30 part, but he nodded his head and said yes. Hardrick handed Tony a pen, and while he signed his name, she asked his mother if she had any questions. “I’m excited,” Petite said. “This is different. Y’all are taking time with these kids.”

What first sold her on Miller-McCoy, she said, was when the woman who answered the phone at the school told her that the boys would wear matching blazers with the school crest. “I said, ‘Blazers?’ I’ve never seen any kids running around in blazers except at St. Augustine” — a nearby Catholic high school — “and that’s where you pay to go to school. This is a public school, and they wear blazers and ties? I want that for my son. I do. I really want it for him. I know he can do it.”

Parental involvement is constantly invoked in education policy debates, in one of two ways: Either it's absence is an insurmountable obstacle that makes certain learning goals all but impossible (and thus school accountability schemes unworkable) or else it's presence creates huge advantages for charter schools like KIPP which obviate any claims that their success might be due to things like superior management, teaching, curricula, organizational culture, etc.

This anecdote suggests that parental involvement isn't set in stone; it is substantially a function of how schools choose to engage parents and what they ask from them. The large majority of parents, black or white, rich or poor, have an intense desire for their children to get a good education. What they don't all have in equal measure is an understanding of how to act on that desire, or the means to act on that desire. Did anyone from the New Orleans school district ever come to Trineil's house, express their commitment to and confidence in her son, pledge themselves to his well-being and ask her to do the same? Apparently not. Parental involvement isn't a fixed quantity; in many places it's an untapped resource. Recognizing and acting on that is what good schools--charter or otherwise--do.

The article also provides an interesting window on the perennial "Can schools do it all?" debate. While Diane Ravitch continues her late-career slouch toward the demography-is-destiny position, the state education superintendent, Paul Pastorek, offers a more nuanced take:

“It would be convenient to say that it’s a whole lot of other people who need to be part of the equation,” he replied. “But we have the job. And we have to do something.” Pastorek said he didn’t want to fall back on the excuse that he had heard from many other school officials, in Louisiana and elsewhere — that it was impossible to fix their schools until other social problems had first been corrected.

But then he switched direction somewhat. In many ways, he said, he was sympathetic to the Ravitch position. “If we want to really get kids to the level that we want to get them,” he said, “and we want to do it in a more efficient and effective way, then we would be well served if we took care of those kinds of problems — if we provided more resources to kids from conception to early childhood, if we took care of mental-health issues and physical ailments and teeth and eye examinations. Including, you know, where these kids go home to sleep at night. I’ve lived in this community a long time, and I can’t imagine how I could ever feel comfortable in neighborhoods that these kids live in at night. And yet they do, and we still expect them to do well.”

Pastorek paused for a moment. “So, now, can I solve all those problems tomorrow afternoon? Can I even get the attention of the people who have control over those things? Right now, in New Orleans, after Katrina, the answer is no, I can’t. But I can’t take the position that I can’t succeed unless I have those things. I have to take the position that we’re going to do it in spite of that. Now, will it be hard? Will I be less successful? Probably yes. But I have to take that approach, because I don’t have really any other cards to play.”

The idea that schools can overcome any external obstacle to student learning, no matter how high, is, on some unavoidable level, utopian. But it's not too much to say that schools can overcome many or even most such obstacles. And there's no way for educators to know ahead of time which students they can reach. Nor are educators in a position to solve all of the outside ills that beset their students. So the only effective attitude--the only moral attitude--is to start with the assumption that every child can be successful, to design schools that reflect this conviction, and not give up on it until the last possible moment. It appears that there are many more people in New Orleans who think this way than there used to be. That's reason enough to be optimistic that the story will end well.

Birth of the Cool (New Teacher Pay Policy)

One of the fun things about living in Washinton, DC is watching the Fenty/Rhee school reform juggernaut in real time. After decimating the bloated central office bureaucracy, closing low-enrollment schools, and generally bringing a sense of urgency, leadership, and strategic thinking that DCPS has long lacked, the chancellor is now moving directly to the teacher workforce, proposing a new pay system that's frankly pretty audacious. Here's where things stand:

Less than two weeks before classes begin, many of the District's 4,000 public school teachers are locked in a heated debate over Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee's proposal to offer salaries exceeding $100,000 for those willing to give up job security and tie their fates to student achievement. The rift is playing out in a blizzard of cellphone messages and e-mails, Facebook entries and posts on teacher blogs such as D.C. Teacher Chic and Dee Does the District. Some of the teachers who want "green tier" salaries plan to demonstrate this morning at teacher union offices on L'Enfant Plaza.

The split in the teaching corps largely, but not exclusively, is occurring along generational lines, with younger teachers more willing to accept the risks and older ones often questioning the proposal. Jerome Brocks, a special education teacher with 34 years of experience in D.C. schools, seethes when he talks about Rhee's salary proposal.

"It's degrading and insulting," said Brocks, to ask that teachers give up tenure and go on probation for a year if they choose the more lucrative of the two salary tiers under the plan, which is at the center of contract negotiations between the city and the Washington Teachers' Union. He said that Rhee wants only to purge older teachers and that for instructors to sell out hard-won protections against arbitrary or unfair dismissal is unthinkable. "For Michelle Rhee or anyone to ask that is like Judas and 30 pieces of silver," Brocks, 59, said.

Julia Rosen, putting her classroom in order this week for her third year as a second grade teacher at Key Elementary School, said she would have no problem with a system in which her pay, and maybe her job, was tied to her students' academic growth. "At this school, I think any of us could excel in that kind of a scenario," Rosen, 25, said.

The proposal is the linchpin of the chancellor's quest to overhaul public education in the District, a way to attract and retain high-quality instructors who would be held accountable for growth in student achievement. It would make them among the nation's best-paid public school instructors, enabling those with just five years of experience to make more than $100,000 in salary and bonuses.

Under the proposal, teachers who want to accept lower, but still significant, pay increases can keep the job security that comes with tenure. Those opting for top salaries, however, relinquish that protection. Those coming into the D.C. system would be required to enter the so-called "green" plan.

"Judas"? What is this, Free Trade Hall? It's very hard to square words like "degrading" and "insulting" with a pay system that teachers would only enter of their own volition. There's a certain infantilizing quality to this vision of teacher work, where individuals can't be trusted to make up their own minds about their relationship with management and shouldn't be allowed to make the tradeoff that virtually all well-compensated professionals make: more accountability and less security in exchange for more recognition and compensation.

If Rhee manages to make this stick, the key may very well be this:

One sentiment that seems to bridge the generational divide: The teachers union has done a dismal job in responding to concerns and questions about the plan. "You don't respond to emails, your voice mail is full, the website is not updated and you release no statements to let teachers know where we are in this negotiations process," Breipohl wrote to Parker yesterday.

Some said Rhee, a prolific text-messager, has been far more responsive. "Pardon my ignorance, but why is the Chancellor able to e-mail me back with a multiple sentence response, but George Parker cannot send a one-word reply?" asked "Dee," author of Dee Does the District, who identifies herself as a first-year special education teacher.

Parker said he is trying to keep up with what he described as an enormous volume of calls and messages. "The numbers have just made it impossible to respond in a timely manner and carry on the day-to-day operations of the union," he said.

To be clear, Parker is by most accounts a good, well-meaning guy who is trying to work with the chancellor while dealing with a lot of internal dissent from some truly reactionary elements within the union. But that doesn't change the fact that his whole job is responding to teachers, while Rhee seems manages to be much more responsive to teachers and pretty much the whole rest of the world all at once. I spent some time in the central office earlier this year (doing research for a Washington Monthly article that's not on-line but is, of course, so great that you should run to your nearest library to track it down) and I can tell you that the above is true: Rhee really does respond to all her emails personally. She's also set up a whole "critical response team" whose only job is to fix problems and respond to questions as quickly and well as they can.
And here's the thing I think people don't really understand. Many if not most of those problems are being solved on behalf of DCPS teachers. Here's what I wrote about Margie Yeager, at the time the head of the rapid response team:

Yeager understands the importance of the HR office intimately; from 2001 to 2003, she taught second grade in DC's Simon Elementary School, back when their was no critical response team. At one point the district stopped sending her paychecks. Later, it accidentally cancelled her health insurance. Phone calls to HR were ignored, meaning that Yeager had to find time to come here to the central office--or, as she referred to it then, "this horrible, crazy place." The experience was so traumatic that when the district failed to refund her union dues (which had been embezzled by the union president and squandered on, variously, furs, handbags, shoes, Tiffany place settings, and a double-barreled shotgun) Yeager didn't both to call anyone. Now, many of the people who e-mail Yeager are tecahers dealing with the kinds of problems she once faced.

So on the one hand you've got an uber-responsive chancellor who reformed the bureaucracy to better support teachers and wants to give them the option to voluntarily enter a system that would pay them a whole lot more money. On the other hand, a union that can't return emails and is notable chiefly for a history of theft and venality so outrageous that it's memorable even by the highly attentuated moral standards of DC municipal government. As I said, it's interesting see what happens next.

Say What You Mean

Because he clearly has more patience than I do, Alexander Russo has been pressing Larry Mishel to give a little more detail on what, exactly, the so-called "Broader Bolder" coalition is really all about.

My take on this hasn't really changed since their statement was first released a few months ago. The thesis of the BB manifesto is that, to quote one of its possibly fictional supporters, "efforts to advance student’s learning and development need to combine policies intended to improve schools with policies designed to transform the social and economic contexts in which children and youth develop." The conceit is that there are serious people out there who don't already believe this. Every school reform advocate I know--and I know my share--absolutely wants better social and economic environments for children, and thinks that doing so would help their education. You'd have to be dead stupid to believe otherwise. It's true that many of them don't spend huge amounts of time working on issues like, say, health care, but that's because there are only so many hours in the day and education reform is a pretty big challenge on its own. Division of intellectual labor doesn't automatically imply indifference or antagonism toward other issues. From this perspective, the whole BB effort is an argument with a phantom.

Many of the BB signatories are smart, serious people who presumably understand all of this. So that raises the question of what the effort is really about. Is it, for example, an anti-accountability manifesto in poor disguise? That's arguably a fair assumption, given the stated positions of many BB adherents on the subject. But in his correspondence with Russo, Mishel adamantly denies this, insisting that they're "only against ‘narrow test-based accountability’ -- not any use of tests."

Okay, fair enough, let's take that at face value. It still doesn't really answer much. There are two components of narrow test-based accountability: "narrow" and "test-based." Would Mishel and his colleagues oppose broad (i.e. not narrow) test-based accountability? What if states and schools were allowed to bring in lots of new assessments--AP tests, SATs, the ACT, along with standardized tests in other subjects (to avoid the dread curriculum narrowing) or non-content-focused tests that look at critical thinking, analytic reasoning, leadership, inter-personal collaboration and other so-called "21st Century skills"? How, exactly, would that work? The critical policy choice is "And / Or" -- would schools be held accountable for student results on those tests and tests of reading and math, or would their performance be deemed acceptable if students did well in those areas or on foundational language and computational skills? And of course then there's the danger of "teaching to test," reducing instruction to accomodate assement, etc. Tough choices and tradeoffs, all.

Alternatively, maybe the BBers see the "test-based" element as the real problem. Of course, the question then is: if not test-based, what-based? If the answer is something like actual post-secondary educational outcome data, then I'm down with that. If it's some kind of vague, locally-designed and defined, unverifiable qualitative measure or parental satisfaction survey, then not so much. Remember that the value of standardized testing is not just the common measure but also the fact that self-assessment for accountability purposes is basically a contradiction in terms.

In addition to laying out how schools will be measured, any legitimate position on accountability also necessarily describes what to do with that information. Presumably the BB coalition believes that the current way of doing things is overly punitive, dispiriting, etc. (If not, I'll post a prominent correction.) If not to sanction, label, etc. how exactly will the information from whatever broader, less-test-based measure they come up with be used to spur school improvement, and why do they think that approach will work?

These aren't trivial questions. They go to the heart of how one thinks about educational accountability. Without answers, there's really no way to know what the BB cadre is trying to accomplish, other than suggesting that they're on one side of an argument that doesn't really exist.

College for All Some How Many?

I spent yesterday morning participating in a panel discussion (video here) at the Center for American Progress, responding to a couple of new papers they've commissioned about higher educaiton. The first, by Sara Goldrick-Rab and Josipa Roksa, makes a comprehensive case for expanding the federal higher education agenda beyond the current monolithic focus on student financial aid. The paper is very good. As I told the audience, if you're a Hill staffer, journalist, think tank person, whomever, you could pretty much just stick this paper in your desk drawer and fake your way as a higher education policy expert for months if not years by periodicially referring to its analysis of how things are and recommendations for how they should change.

The second paper, by MIT economist Paul Osterman, is titled College for All? The Labor Market for College-Educated Workers. (Matt Yglesias weighs on this at his new CAP address here). It's also well worth reading. My biggest quibble is actually with the title. This question comes up often, sometimes slightly rephrased as "Is College for Everyone?" or "Should Everyone Go to College?," and it's a silly formulation because the answer is, obviously, no. If you put it this way, people immediately think of their idiot third cousin or that guy from high school who liked to drink grain alcohol and tie M-80s to the backs of squirrels, and they rightly say "Of course not, and anyone who thinks otherwise is being utopian and dumb."

The real question (and the one Osterman actually addresses) is how many people should go to college, and is that number, compared to current college-going and degree completion rates, too small, too large, or about right? Osterman frames the discussion around the college wage premium (the average difference between wages for people who have college degrees and those who don't). This number has been bubbling up with increasing frequency in policy debates, because it hasn't changed much over the last seven years. That's a break with historical trends; from the early 1970s to 2000, the premium grew steadily and substantially, particularly for people with advanced (post-baccalaureate) degrees.

The flate wage premium is being used as evidence in some very significant intra-progressive policy debates. As economist Tony Carnevale put it (he was the other respondent on the panel, societies provide citizens with economic security in three basic ways. One is by the government owning and/or taxing the hell out of production and using those resources to provide cradle-to-grave income and services. The second is making employment the focus of security through strong labor arrangements i.e. unions and guilds. The third is by subsidizing education and credentialling so citizens can earn enough money to take care of themselves. Most societies have some combination of these; the decision is which to emphasize and to what degree.

Historically the United States has bet on door #3, education. And as the wage premium steadily increased even as more students went to college--as the price of college-educated labor rose even as the supply rose too--this looked like a good choice. The stagnant wage premium is causing some people to suggest that this strategy has run its course, the economy has absorbed all the college-educated workers it can, and that the credentialism inherent to degree-granting is actually hurting less educated workers. Since socialism doesn't seem like a realistic option, we therefore need to shift our policy priorities toward more robust labor-focused reforms.

Osterman doesn't take a position on this debate per se, but he does conclude that there are plenty of good reasons to continue investing in more higher education attainment, both from a societal cost/benefit standpoint and for individual students in terms of expected economic returns (as well as not-insubstantial non-economic benefits), for themselves and their children. Carnevale concurred. (He thinks the evidence is even stronger than Osterman allows.)

To be clear, this isn't an argument against supporting organized labor. As Larry Mishel and Richard Rothstein said, "Hotel jobs that pay $20 an hour, with health and pension benefits (rather than $10 an hour without benefits), typically do so because of union organization, not because maids earned bachelor's degrees." But it does mean that progressives shouldn't get caught in a false choice between more, better education and more, better jobs.

Easy Journalism and the Model Minority Myth

The Albany Times recently reported a 50 percent increase in the Asian American population in the Capital Region in New York. The piece considers all Asian immigrants as one homogeneous group following educational opportunities, and ignores the inter- and intra-group differences within Asian-American populations.

The article quotes Lining He, himself an economist and president of the Chinese Community Center of the Capital District, saying “[m]ost Chinese people in this area are very well educated and are working as researchers and engineers.” He’s numbers are technically correct, but they also hide a substantial percentage of Chinese immigrants that do not even graduate high school. According to the US Census Bureau, 48.1% of Chinese immigrants 25 and older have at least a bachelor’s degree. This is what the media likes to highlight, but we don’t often hear about the 23% of Chinese who have not graduated high school or the 13.5% who are living in poverty. Both percentages are higher than national averages.

Inter-group differences mask even greater disparities. While 44.1% of all Asian immigrants hold a bachelor’s degree (including 48% of Chinese and 63.9% of Asian Indians), only 9.2% of Cambodians and 7.7% of Laotians own a college degree. 53.3% of Cambodians and 49.6% of Laotians do not hold even a high school diploma. These rates are lower than those of Hispanics and African Americans.

Policymakers, educators, and journalists should keep these inter- and intra-group differences in mind. Otherwise, we end up with journalistic pieces like the one quoted above, which neglects to consider the challenges schools face in educating such disparate groups. In the end, all it does is perpetuate the model minority stereotype and report the 10,000 foot-view of demographic changes.

- Posted by Rhea Acuña

Strike Out

Yesterday's Denver Post shows why we won't, or at least why we shouldn't, see a teacher's strike unfold later this month as the city plays host to the Democratic National Convention. The article has many demonstrative points as to why the union has little grounds for a strike. The district's proposal would:

• Increase first-year teacher salaries more than the plan put forth by the Denver Classroom Teachers Association ($42,413 versus $38,000).
  

• Increase bonuses for teaching in hard-to-staff schools and subjects or for teaching in a school with demonstrated growth.
  

• Make 4,484 out of 4,500 teachers better off. That's worth repeating: only sixteen teachers would be no better or worse off than they are now. Imagine a print-out of every teacher's name ranked by their expected raise. With one teacher per line and 49 lines to a page, the document would be 93 pages long. Under the district plan, every teacher before page 88 would get raises larger than 5%.

The bottom of the article has a chart comparing the district and union proposals. Take much time to look at the numbers and you'll see it doesn't amount to big differences (in fact, only 3/24 categories are higher under the union plan).

Granted, the district should give up its "master teacher" idea, where principals would get to select one teacher for a one-time bonus of $2,900. That's ripe for patronage, and the union is right to oppose it. But it's not grounds for a strike.

300 Denver teachers feel the same way.

Lots of Variety in the Sausage

This week's New Yorker book review offers a lesson on pluralism. It compares two works, one by the long-forgotten political philosopher Arthur Fisher Bentley and one by Thomas Frank of "What's the Matter with Kansas?" fame. This passage from the review has particular relevance to education policy:

[Frank] believes that liberals, once in power, will not merely transfer economic resources from business to working people but will tend to the public interest, to good government. Underneath all the fun Frank has with lobbyists and their dainty shoes, the heart of his book is the idea that, just as conservatives actually want government to be corrupt and incompetent, liberals have an equally strong interest in making government work properly.

We see this phenomenon in education too. It's fashionable in some circles to argue NCLB was designed to show schools as failures in order to completely re-shape the educational landscape, opening the door to greater support for vouchers and private schools. There's even limited evidence that some in the Department of Ed. used this rationale to support the law. Under this theory, conservatives win when government (in this case, public schools) fail. In a never-ending cycle, they campaign on the need for more private education options (as evidenced by public school failures), and, when their own policies lead to more public school failure, they argue for more private school options. So the argument goes.

The New Yorker review does a nice job refuting this position in general. Most convincing is the political reality that any party that does a bad job of governing will get kicked out of office by our electoral system. If a party passes bad legislation or ignores crises, they're probably not going to hold their positions long (see the 2006 midterm elections).

Specific examples in the education world make the bad-government-is-good-for-conservatives argument silly. To begin with, elected politicians from both parties face enormous pressure at the local level to advance their city or state's education system. It is local and state governments' most expensive and important function, and a politician who performs poorly in this key area will not last.

At the national level, anyone assuming the NCLB-as-conspiracy premise must believe either that the law was unnecessary--i.e. our schools were wonderful and didn't need a more extensive federal accountability system--or ridiculously punitive--i.e. the law punishes schools unfairly. Neither position was ultimately defensible, because in reality we knew our schools could be a lot better than they were, and they're not being punished in either massive numbers or draconian ways. Mostly they're pursuing benign "other" reforms.

In Thomas Frank's world, competition for policy is between only two groups. Corporations, conservatives, and lobbying are all aligned against the people. He even writes that, "lobbying brings a constant pressure in a single direction."

Bentley's work has far more relevance to today's education policy landscape, in which liberal reform groups frequently are at odds with teachers unions, who in turn disagree with civil rights groups about the future of federal education policy. On most issues, these groups are mostly in agreement, and they likely vote for the same candidates in national elections. But observers would be hard pressed to pin down exactly who are the liberals and who the conservatives on national standards, for example. No, the policy alignments are ever-shifting.

Bentley's primary thesis, and one that sounds downright scandalous in a political climate like ours, is that interests are absolutely essential, that all governing is the result of interest groups, and we are being duplicitous when we decry "special interests" on the other side while accepting them on our own. By extension, as much as there's a portion of the population seeking to "blow up" public education, so is there one seeking to convert schools to bastions of radical leftism.

We in the middle are left sorting it out and making the sausage.

Notes from VirginFest

This year's full-blown rock festival post complete with pictures, band-by-band coverage, etc. won't come until next month, when Maureen and I fly to Texas for Austin City Limits. But here's an abbreviated report from the first day of VirginFest:

As the world becomes ever more inter-connected, there's a certain fear that globalization will ultimately lead to a thin grey soup of culture, into which all the national distinctions we treasure dissolve. You feel it when you walk down a graceful Parisian boulevard in spring and hear dread words like "Ou est le KFC?" Or when you get the feeling that we're headed toward a future where there's an Irish pub on every corner but no actual authentic Irish people left, in Ireland or elsewhere. Call it the tragedy of the cultural commons. 

On the other hand, you've got bands like Gogol Bordello, which essentially answers that age-old question, pondered by philosophers throughout the years: What would happen if Frank Zappa had been born into family of gypsies in the Ukraine in 1972, fled the Chernobyl meltdown, and ended up on the lower east side of Manhattan, where he founded an Eastern European folk/punk band that includes a Russian fiddler, Russian accordion player, Israeli guitar player, Ethiopian bassist, two backup singers of Thai and Chinese heritage dressed in roller derby outfits, and (naturally) an Ecuadorian percussionist / MC? 

Similarly, lets say your whole act consists of a man and woman, both Mexican, sitting on a pair of chairs, each playing an acoustic guitar, with no vocals and an uncategorizable sound that begins with Latin influences and then wanders through rock structures, salsa, flamenco, and the occasional Led Zeppelin cover. How awesome do you have to be to end up on the main stage at VirginFest? Answer: ten kinds of awesome, or Rodrigo Y Gabriela. 

In other words, as with most things, there are plusses and minuses of bringing the world's cultures together. On the whole, I say thumbs up.