Dispatch from Turkey

I spent the last couple of weeks on vacation in Turkey, before, during and after President Obama's visit. They love him there and the fact that he came as part of a larger trip to Europe--as opposed to the Middle East--was seen as symbolically a very big deal. The visit included a Q&A session with local university students, which seems to have gone well (video here):

Answering questions from Turkish university students at the historic Tophane-i Amire Hall in Istanbul at a session titled "Live and Online Discussion with President Obama" yesterday, Obama did nothing but solidify that image. At the end of the session, Obama took time to shake hands with the majority of the students, a scene a million miles from the previous U.S. president's visit to Turkey. A few seconds before George W. Bush was shaking hands with the guests at the Galatasaray University in June 2004, his bodyguards were checking their palms for weapons.

Obama was not only different than Bush, but also different from most politicians the students knew. "This attitude is not something a Turk is used to," said Denizcan Demirkılıç, who studies law at the Bahçeşehir University. "How many of the students in this hall ever got to sit this close to a politician? You can stand 30 or 40 centimeters from the president of one of the greatest countries of the world, you ask him questions and shake hands with him. Our politicians have a lot to learn from that."

Demirkılıç was one of the 99 students who were selected for the session, mainly due to their previous participation in programs at U.S.-related institutions or had spent a year in the United States on exchange programs. Most of the students were informed about the possibility of a conference a few weeks ago and last week received calls confirming their attendance. There was no further preparation for them, and as one of Obama's assistants announced prior to the Q&A session, there were "no rules and no restrictions" on what they could ask, as affirmed by students afterward.

Ece Başaran from the Bahçeşehir University was in the United States during Obama's presidential election campaign. Başaran said she was impressed by the president's honesty. "He is very charismatic and honest," she said. "I was in America during the campaign, and he continues to say what he was saying then. There is not a change in his stance. He knows how to touch critical points, but he does it in a certain way that he doesn't hurt you.

In one sense diplomacy is a formal process by which officials representing sovereign nations negotiate over matters of mutual interest, but there's also a lot to be said for simply treating people well and understanding how they see themselves. President Bush liked to refer to Turkey as a "moderate Islamic country," which cuts against Turkey's identity as a nation founded on secular principles. It's true that the vast majority of Turks identify themselves as Muslim, but lots of countries are religously homogenous and nobody calls Finland a "liberal Lutheran country."

Which is not to say that the tension between secular and religous ideals isn't real. Turkey is, famously, the land where the forces of religon, geography, politics, and culture intersect and sometimes collide. We spent our first night on the Gallipoli penninsula in a small hotel built in the village of Kocadere (Number of residents: 23. Percent of residents working in small-scale agriculture: 100). But even that tiniest of population centers has two distinct features: A mosque complete with a blue and white minaret from which prayers are broadcast five times a day, and a small municipal building in front of which stands a flagpole waving a crisp Turkish flag, as well as a polished bust of Mustafa Kemal, hero of the Gallipoli campaign and father of the nation. 

Turkey is also a good place to see where a lot of the fantastic items of antiquity in European museums and capitals used to be before they were stolen or otherwise acquired. The Pergamon museum in Berlin, for example, is a great place to visit, but I suspect its dramatic marbles of gods and monsters would look even better if they still sat on the original site of Alexander the Great's perfect city, looming over the valleys near the Aegean Sea. Same thing with the bronze horses of St. Mark's in Venice, stolen from the Hippodrome when the Crusaders sacked Constantinople in 1204. (Well-travelled animals, those horses--how many other objects have been appropriated by both Nero and Napoleon?) It makes you wonder why, exactly, the word "crusade" continues to enjoy such positive connotations. 

Driving down the Aegean coast is a lot like spending several days inside one of those Poussin landscapes you study in Art History 101. The metaphors are so obvious and strong that you can't help but indulge in a lot of highly cliched reflection on the breadth and cyclical nature of history, civilizations rising and falling and leaving only their bones behind, etc.. No sooner had we climbed up to the ruined temple of Athena in Priene when an honest-to-goodness goatherd drove his flock up around the scattered pieces of Ionic column and through the 2,000-year old mountainside theater. Touristically speaking, it was awesome--they should really charge extra for that kind of thing. 

Same thing with Istanbul, where you can stand on top of the Theodosian walls and under the dome of the Hagia Sophia (where a prostitute is supposed to have danced on the altar during the sack; seriously, what was up with those Crusaders?). President Obama was there last week, and at the Blue Mosque nearby, apt locations for a Christian born of a Muslim father to talk about a better future for people of all faiths. 

Survey Says...

Next week the Washington Teachers Union (WTU) will be releasing results from a poll regarding ongoing contract negotiations with the District of Columbia Public Schools. I was able to get a look at the survey instrument (.doc), and it's what you might kindly call "one-sided."

When asking about the general conditions in DC public schools, it unnecessarily includes the phrase "facing teachers," as if the conditions were bad enough to require "facing" and that teachers are the only ones doing so. Question ten asks respondents to identify which of two, and only two, approaches would best help turn around failing schools: "using student test scores and other measures of teacher performance to evaluate teachers and making it easier to dismiss teachers who are not measure up, or offering more professional development opportunities for teachers and providing additional training, peer support, and mentoring for teachers who need to improve." (Given only these two options, I wonder which one teachers would choose.) Questions 13 and 15 attempt to be parallel but mix up their pronouns, but these are all minor fouls.

Unfortunately it gets worse. Chancellor Rhee's proposal gets a cursory 271 word description, about one-fourth of the 1,033 nice words devoted to WTU's. Overall, the survey gives a laundry list of 20 positive things the WTU contract would provide teachers (compared to zero listed for Rhee's), and only then gets to the main point of the survey--do teachers prefer the WTU contract proposal or Chancellor Rhee's.

When the results of this survey are announced next week, I hope the media and other stakeholders recognize how the results were achieved.

Slumdog Ivy Leaguer

Wake Forest University is hosting a conference this week on making the SAT optional for admission, and they invited Daniel Golden to headline. Golden, author of a book called The Price of Admission that documents all the ways children of wealth and privilege are favored in college admissions, was an interesting choice to headline this conference, because he's actually ambivalent about the SAT:

Some, including our friends at colleges like Wake Forest that have made it optional, argue that using the SAT in admissions amounts to a preference for privilege, because of the sizeable scoring gap between whites and minorities, and between high and low-income students....I agree with [SAT] critics that disparities in scoring by race and social class, exacerbated by test-prep and other coaching options available to affluent students -- are profoundly disturbing. I also don’t believe students should be admitted on the basis of test scores -- or grades -- alone. Creative aptitude, extra-curricular activities and leadership are all important.

At the same time, though, I'm a product of the SAT generation. I was one of the thousands of bright, middle-class public high school students who were able to attend a elite college at least partly because the test helped extend the vision and reach of the Ivy Leagues beyond a cluster of old-boy prep schools. Emotionally, I guess, it's hard for me to accept that a test that broadened opportunity for so many young people is now responsible for denying that same opportunity to others.

It also seems to me that opponents of the SAT often talk as if it's the only instrument of privilege in college admissions -- ignoring the preferences for children of legacies and donors. Unlike those preferences, the SAT at least tries to gauge the candidate's individual merit. And, even granting a bias toward the white and wealthy, the SAT may remain useful in comparing two candidates within the same racial and economic groups -- or when a score goes against type. For instance, if a minority applicant from a low-performing high school does well on the SAT, that score could be a noteworthy indication of academic potential.

But if--as in so many of the examples I cited in my book--a legacy or a development applicant, with all of the advantages of wealth and parental education, bombs on the SAT, that's a strong signal that he or she may not be serious about learning--and that the admissions staff should resist lobbying on the applicant's behalf by the development or alumni office. Indeed, without SAT scores to act as a check on these preferences, it's likely that the number of legacies and development admits at elite universities would be even greater than it already is.

This, I think, is the key argument against the eliminate-SAT crowd. It may or may not be biased against minorities and low-income youth, and kids can be coached on how to improve their score. But, what else do we have that's better, that elite colleges and universities would trust as a replacement? High school GPAs are tarnished by grade inflation and high schools themselves are yoked to reputations. Personal statements are no less coachable than SATs, and extracurricular activities favor the children of parents with time and money. Even worse, none of these things are objective; a student in Abilene, TX cannot be compared to a student from Anchorage, AL on these things.

The SAT, on the other hand, is a national test. A perfect score means the same thing everywhere. College and university admissions offices are already overburdened with applicants to the point of making admissions like lotteries. Taking away one of the more objective measures would make the process all the more opaque.

Making Pell Mandatory

President Obama's budget proposal included several major changes in student financial aid, including a proposal for the biggest change in the federal student loan system since its inception. People on either side of the student loan issue can debate the pro's and con's of the President's proposal to end subsidies to private lenders - and there are some legitimate arguments to be had, along with a lot of complicated cost projections. But Obama's proposal to make spending on Pell Grants mandatory is clearly right and long overdue - yes, it costs money, but it is also a simple matter of fairness.

Currently, Pell Grants are discretionary spending - while Congress hasn't let the program run out of money in the past, keeping Pell on the discretionary side of the federal budget gives Congress control over the amount of money that is distributed and leads to uncertainty for students and their families about whether the Pell Grant money will be there for them when they enter college. Tax credits, on the other hand, which go to more moderate and middle-income students, are not discretionary - every family and student who deducts their tuition or checks the box for the Hope tax credit are guaranteed to get that money. There is no worrying about whether the IRS will just stop giving the credits, and no rush to send tax returns in early to ensure the money is available.

And this isn't just an arcane federal budget issue. I previously worked with high school students who were applying to college, and it was a common refrain among the primarily low-income students and parents that they had to get their federal aid applications in early or else Pell Grant money might not be available anymore. This uncertainty added stress and confusion to the aid process. And it stood in stark contrast with my tax filings, which I have used over my life for tuition deductions, Hope credits, Lifetime Learning credits, and student loan interest rate deductions. I'm not low-income, but I've gotten a lot of federal aid to go to school and I've never worried about whether it would be available.

And it's not just me. The General Accounting Office released a report in 2007 showing the income distribution of different aid programs - how many low-income and high-income people got various grants, loans, and tax credits. The data is from 2003-04 and the total amount spent on the three primary tax benefits - the Hope Credit, the Lifetime Learning Credit, and the Tuition Deduction - exceeded the total amount spent for Pell Grants. But the three tax credit programs are not nearly as well targeted.

Below is a chart showing the distribution of aid dollars through the tax credit programs and the Pell Grant program. Pell grants are very clearly targeted to the lowest income students - nearly all of the aid dollars go to students in the $0 - $40,000 income range, and grants drop off sharply for students with income above $40,000. The same is not true, however for the tax credit programs - and particularly for the tuition deduction, where 37 percent of recipients make $100,000 or more in income.
If we are going to continue to guarantee middle and high-income families help with paying for college, the least we can do is make the same promise and commitment to low-income families.