Rollercoaster of Emotions Edition

A Great Dog, Gummy Bears, and Popular Music

May 17, 2025

I meant for this issue to be all sunshine and rainbows, and I tried to keep it light (it gets funnier by the end, I promise!). But we tragically lost the older of our two dogs late Monday night due to an accident, and we’re all reeling from it.

Pepper Plucker was what we called a “mini miniature schnauzer,” as she had health problems as a puppy that kept her small her entire life. She was a sweetheart and made friends wherever she went. And I do mean everywhere: It wasn’t uncommon to walk into a kennel or the vet and find Pepper sitting on the receptionist’s lap. You knew you were “Pepper approved” if she rolled over on her back so you could give her a tummy rub minutes after meeting her. Just about everyone was Pepper approved, which was part of her charm. She had a sweet, warm soul.

Yet I also loved her feisty streak. It was occasionally directed at us when she wanted something, and many a bicyclist was on the receiving end of a Pepper barkstorm. She was tiny but stood her ground! Pepper loved napping, and on sunny days we moved her bed so she would always be in the sun streaming through the window.

Pepper was a much loved family member for all of her 15 years, and she was the most special little dog I’ve ever come across. I could write pages about her, but suffice it to say that Pepper will be greatly missed.

Something Short

The Washington Examiner requested a short piece on my thoughts regarding student visas. Earlier this year, I wrote for them about how H-1B visas could be modified to fund more advanced education for American K-12 students, and in this new piece I explore whether a similar approach with student visas could similarly benefit U.S. students. If you hit a paywall with these posts, let me know and I’ll send you my copies.

Interestingly, I was recently told by someone at my present employer that they likely won’t support these ideas because the university sponsors H-1B visas and has lots of international students. But they also admitted that they haven’t read the pieces, and I’m sticking to my guns here: The visa system should have direct benefits for American K-12 students. It’s pro-excellence, fiscally conservative, and has caught the attention of some DC elected officials on both sides of the aisle. I’m not giving up on this one!

Something a Bit More Involved

An issue which I think about a lot is the decline of American manufacturing and the middle class jobs that supported so many American families. The conventional wisdom is that moving factories overseas is the major cause of this steady decline, especially the “China shock” when the U.S. helped bring that country into the world trade system.

But there have been lots of pieces lately that question the conventional wisdom. Here’s one looking at the China shock theory, and I’ll include a Noah Smith article below (part of it may be paywalled).

The long and short of the two posts (and other, similar perspectives), is that the likely culprits for the national decline in manufacturing jobs are (1) factories in northern states (especially the midwest) moving to less union-friendly southern states and (2) automation/robots. Free trade appears to have hurt regional industries, but it also helped others, so it’s hard to point to trade policies as the main driver of the nationwide decline in manufacturing jobs.

This strikes me as important because I continue to worry that automation/robots/AI are only getting better and cheaper. And the “AI shock” is going to take jobs in almost every sector, not just manufacturing. There is some (not yet convincing) evidence that this is already happening for entry-level positions across the board, which is increasing the unemployment rate for recent college graduates. This is something we need to be talking about.

Noahpinion

Globalization did not hollow out the American middle class

For years, I’ve been calling for the U.S. to promote manufacturing. When Americans started getting excited about reindustrialization, I cheered. I was a big supporter of Joe Biden’s industrial policy, and I even praised Donald Trump for smashing the pro-free-trade consensus in his first term…

a month ago · 239 likes · 89 comments · Noah Smith

In a related vein, this op-ed from The Hill touches on related issues and broadens the argument a bit. This is a provocative piece!

Some Things That Intrigued Me

SCOTUS Oklahoma charter case arguments. As I mentioned in the last issue, this case is a big deal. Here’s a pro-choice-friendly perspective on the oral arguments. Bonus points to Michael McShane for the ChatGPT image!

Interesting teacher survey results. EdChoice just released their annual survey of teachers, and the results provide a surprising contrast to last year’s data. Colyn Ritter has a good post on the results. In brief, teachers are becoming more optimistic about the profession as we continue to bounce back from the pandemic.

TFA effects. We don’t have a ton of rigorous evidence about the effects of alternative pathways into teaching. In other words, how do Teach for America teachers, with their limited training, impact student attendance and learning? My colleague Ben Backes at AIR tackled this with Michael Hansen in a paper published last year. In short, TFA teachers were associated with positive gains for their students, but effects faded out over time (i.e., as the students moved into subsequent grades without TFA teachers). The fade-out result didn’t surprise me, as we find it for lots of early interventions. Essentially, a great year in school (due to the teacher, curriculum, peers, etc.) fades out quickly if it isn’t followed by other great years in school.

Why universities? A colleague sent me this interview with National Academies President Marcia McNutt and ASU President Michael Crow. It’s a quick read and great summary of why university research is so important - and how other countries have used it to accelerate economic and cultural development. A stark reminder that our current, sharp divestment in research is going to cost us for decades.

Does creative productivity change over time? Spoiler alert: No, it does not. There have been a spate of studies on this question recently, most focusing on the research careers of academic scientists. What they generally find, and this recent study and this other one are no exceptions, are that highly productive researchers stay highly productive throughout their careers; low-productivity researchers stay lightly productive for their careers. The number of people who switch categories in either direction are so rare as to be negligible (I can recall one colleague in my 30-year career who became highly productive later in their career. One.). Lots of possible explanations for this phenomenon, which I’ll explore in a future issue.

Some Things I Found to be Cool

Nature’s Own Bread, Part III: A loyal reader, Amalia P. V., noted that my concerns about Nature’s Own Perfectly Crafted Thick Sliced Multigrain Bread bread are eerily similar to a plot in a Young Sheldon episode. I had completely forgotten about Sheldon complaining about a change to one of his favorite products! H/t to Amalia for the keen observation. I’ll be back in New England in about a week and will let you know how my Nature’s Own Perfectly Crafted Thick Sliced Multigrain Bread experiment goes.

Best gummy bears. I realize Haribo is supposed to be the gold standard for gummy bears, but our German confectionery friends simply can’t compete with Indiana’s Albanese gummy bears. Always incredibly soft and packed with flavor, you can occasionally snag a pack on an airplane. This photo is for the standard flavors, but I recently had the “exotic flavor” pack, and I just bought the Sour Only Gummi Bears. Highly recommended!

Music edition: The kids are alright. One of my favorite colleagues is Glenn Gass, who retired as a music professor from Indiana University a few years ago. Glenn is a jazz and rock-and-roll specialist, and he taught an immensely popular rock course for many years (he once shared the story of leaving for the day, an hour after class ended, only to find that day’s guest speaker, Lou Reed, still searching for his rental car; Lou wasn’t a car guy and couldn’t remember what type of car he had rented!). But upon Glenn’s retirement, he sadly conveyed that the course was rarely taught as the young ‘uns “just aren’t into rock anymore.” Here was the world’s foremost academic authority on The Beatles, noting that college students didn’t care about rock-and-roll. Ugh!

Fast forward to earlier this month, when my daughter invited me to a concert with one of her favorite bands, Djo. Djo is the nom de music of Joe Keery, whom Stranger Things fans will recognize as the actor portraying beloved character Steve. In particular, I recommend “End of Beginning,” “Delete Ya,” and “Charlie’s Garden.” The influence of the Beatles are obvious, but his music also has a breezy, best-of-the-80s-and-90s feel to it. We had fun! (Check out Sombr’s “Undressed,” which I stumbled upon during a post-concert Djo listening fest. I’ve subsequently heard it in a restaurant … this one is going to be a song of summer.)

As I stood in the venue, surrounded by people from their late teens to early thirties (yes, I stood out, and not in a good way!), I thought about Glenn and wished he could see what I was seeing: A packed crowd of young people rockin’ out. The final song of the encore was just plain ol’ hard rock, forming a monstrous wall of noise, and there wasn’t a soul in the house that wasn’t totally into it.

Jade Plant of the Month

This beauty has been the result of considerable effort over the years. It has never grown uniformly, even after I heavily pruned it back to even it out. One side just grows taller than the other. But it has nice, dense leaves and lots of character. It’s looking forward to the summer in New England!

Some Events to Consider

Pandemic schooling event. AEI has been hosting a lot of high-quality education events recently. Next week they are hosting a virtual panel discussion on May 22nd titled, Why Did America Get Pandemic Schooling So Wrong? Important topic, good panelists.

Recent advisory board meeting. I’m writing this the day of my first meeting of the Virginia Advisory Council on Advanced Learning. Although I’ve testified and otherwise supported many state and local commissions, task forces, etc., this is the first time I’ve been appointed to serve on one. I’m really enjoying it thus far! We provided guidance to Virginia Department of Education leaders, and it was fun to interact with parents and educators from around the Commonwealth (and yes, they all call it “The Commonwealth”). Today’s work largely focused on helping with advice documents regarding Virginia’s new automatic enrollment law. Feeling blue about our politics? Serve on a state or local committee and you’ll feel much better about the country and our collective future.