Money Ball?

I post this in reaction to Dan Walter's article in today's Sacramento Bee comparing Moneyball to cuts in government:


Your article comparing government in California to Money Ball is interesting but wrong headed.

Repeat after me:  you cannot compare the private sector, especially sports to government.

I earned my MA in Government many years ago  and part of my thesis was the role of bureaucracy in government.

Bureaucracy is dull and studying it is like watching paint dry.  But, it holds government together.  And, comparative political studies, show that the more effective, professional and efficient a bureaucracy is, the better the government; regardless of the political change that swirls around it.

Teachers are bureaucrats in a sense.  And your Moneyball analogy damages them greatly.

Conservatives will be jumping at what your article points to as cutting the "fat" and making government more efficient.  And, since conservatives hate government and government bureaucrats, they then will logically assume that reducing the teacher corps, making them more efficient by cutting the most senior in a layoffs rather than the most junior, will work like money ball.  Ruthlessly reduce your fat experienced ball players, get less senior and cheaper ones, and you will win, right?

Wrong!  Teaching is an art.  Baseball is an art.  You cannot apply business efficiency models to them and CONSISTENTLY succeed.

You did not remind the readers that Oakland, of moneyball fame, has NOT  won the World Series yet!  In other words, the theory they are using has not succeeded.

Let me give you a real life example.

I was the coordinator and Principal of all alternative education in our district.   We hired a raging conservative as Superintendent who hated alternative education.  He saw any extra money paid on difficult students as wasted, he thought continuation schools were a waste of  money.

So, he took the idea of converting about 75% of alternative education to Independent Study, started a Freshman intervention program (called Opportunity Education) and cut alternative education by millions of dollars.

The Board was happy because it realized about a five million dollar savings.  Independent Study teachers make way less than regular teachers .  And, drop outs, whose numbers tripled, were hidden statistically the way the Superintendent set it up.  Moneyball wins!

And how about the kids?  Well they are losers anyway, right?  And what about the vocational education that was obliterated?   Well, everyone should go to college right?

So the crime rate of our town moved up.  The poverty rate moved up.   The real drop out rate moved up.  Lives were lost, futures destroyed.

Look, Moneyball is not good government.  Yes, government needs to be constantly improved, effective governmental structures are essential to a society's success.

But reform does not come with a meat axe.  And reformers cannot have "smaller government" biases because good government also costs money.  So does good education.

Why not try the biggest reform yet to government.  Ban all lobbyists!  Reform the voting system and make it mandatory.  And reduce the election cycle to a month, with open access to all media fairly distributed between candidates for a limited time.  That will change this cesspool of privilege and greed we call politics.

Why don't you write about that?