Global Strategies

To PPS: Create an "International Marketing Career Track" - Part II

This post is a continuation of my last post “To PPS: Create an ‘International Marketing Career Track’” (here). I today (11/29/10) attended the second meeting of  Portland Public Schools Blue Ribbon Task Force on career tracks at Benson High School. As the task force was dividing into five tables, each with a different group of career tracks, I was permitted to join one of the tables and to participate. My table had “Business and Management” as a topic. Everyone at the table was sharp, knowledgeable and friendly, and I was able to discuss my thoughts on creating an “International Marketing Career Track.”

My thoughts on the task force meeting follow:

(1)   What they are doing is confusing. I think PPS/Mayor Adams would like to get five or six (a need to prioritize to the most important) career tracks of high interest to students, important for the economic growth of Portland, with future jobs expected for students, and doable in one or two high school elective courses with, perhaps, some on-the-job business experiences thrown in. Some coordination with community college and universities would also be a plus. But this is not how the task is described to the task force. I thought there was general ambiguity about the task, especially about how much high school time could be involved (from just one elective at one high school to tweaking a required course at all high schools).

(2)   Take my “Business and Management” table as an example. I think participants at the table agreed that a course (or focus) on “entrepreneurship” would bring all of the important business skills together in a way that was attractive to students. I agreed. The summary back to the full group (see some of the photos above, click on photo to enlarge and read) even mentioned “international component” and “international experiences” (educational). That was good, but not good enough. My table participants did not seem ready to target “international” business or entrepreneurship as a priority. Yet, if one of the half-dozen career tracts selected does not involve a high school year abroad and a focus on selling more abroad,  then Blue Ribbon Task Force will have overlooked its most important economic development priority.

(3)   There were five tables at the task force meeting. Each had a separate economic sector, like health care, education, the arts and communication, industrial engineering and manufacturing, or business and management. I think these were products of the first task force meeting which I missed. It’s hard to get back to the general importance of the “international” component once one is into the specifics of these economic sectors. There is a growing-in-importance international dimension to each of the separate economic sectors.

(4)   At the end, Superintendent Carole Smith spoke of making career tracks “exciting” and to “go deep.” I can’t think of anything more exciting or deeper for some students that a high school year abroad.

 

 

 

 

To PPS: Create an "International Marketing Career Track"

Superintendent Carole Smith, as part of the “High School Redesign” process, and with the help of Portland Mayor Sam Adams, has created a 42 member Blue Ribbon Task Force to suggest what career tracks Portland Public Schools should include. They are now in the midst of several meetings. Their membership includes representative of many leading Portland businesses (see here for list).

Their top priority, IMHO, should be to create an “International Marketing Career Track” designed to develop and sell Oregon goods and services in foreign markets. Such a career track would recognize that Oregon’s best economic opportunities for the next several decades are abroad. The US economy is forecast to grow annually in the 2% to 3% range for the next several decades. There are emerging economies (like China, India, Brazil and others) that are forecast to grow annually in the 6% to 10% range. Oregon, especially Portland, needs to focus on what it will take to sell more goods and services in those markets. President Obama has call for a doubling of US exports over the next four years. But the business opportunities abroad will last longer than that, and Oregon should develop longer term strategies to be competitive in all the important foreign markets. An “International Marketing Career Track” in our public schools could be an important component of that strategy.

A longer title for such a career track might be the “International Product Development and Marketing Career Track” because it should include the skills to develop unique products and services suited for foreign markets as well as the skills of advertising and promotion in foreign markets.

The career track could include courses in international marketing and product development. But the core of the career track should be foreign language proficiencies and study abroad (that is time spent in foreign markets). Opportunities for foreign language learning could be strengthened throughout PPS. Existing proposals to expand Mandarin and Japanese immersion programs and to create a pilot high school study abroad program in which the PPS pays the study abroad fees could be implemented (see here). PPS and the City of Portland could support passage of the Go Global High School Study Abroad Program (see here and here) in the 2011 Oregon legislative session. And online foreign language courses could be offered for languages not offered in brick-and-mortar classrooms. All this is doable at little or no additional costs.

Portland has many companies that do international marketing. Many are represented on the task force. They can provide advice, guest lecturers, and internships (and other on the job experiences).

It’s the smart, strategic career track to develop for Portland’s economic future and for the futures of individual students.

Ricks on "Bring back a draft.."

Tom Ricks has a blog post “When the rich abandoned America – and what that has to do with defense” that is concerned with the all volunteer military, the growth in US of income inequality, and the growing privileges of and resentment of our elites. He ends with a proposal for reinstating a draft: (here):

Bringing back a draft does not mean bringing back the draft we saw in the 1960s. Rather, I think we design a new deal that offer a three-part set of options:

The military option. You do 18 months of military service. The leaders of the armed forces will kick and moan, but these new conscripts could do a lot of work that currently is outsourced: cutting the grass, cooking the food, taking out the trash, painting the barracks. They would receive minimal pay during their terms of service, but good post-service benefits, such as free tuition at any university in America. If the draftees like the military life, and some will, they could at the end of their terms transfer to the professional force, which would continue to receive higher pay and good benefits. (But we'd also raise the retirement age for the professional force to 30 years of service, rather than 20 as it is now. There is no reason to kick healthy 40-year-olds out of the military and then pay them 40 years of retirement pay.)

The civilian service option.Don't want to go military? Not a problem. We have lots of other jobs at hand. You do two years of them -- be a teacher's aide at a troubled inner-city school, clean up the cities, bring meals to elderly shut-ins. We might even think about how this force could help rebuild the American infrastructure, crumbling after 30 years of neglect. These national service people would receive post-service benefits essentially similar to what military types get now, with tuition aid.

The libertarian opt-out. There is a great tradition of libertarianism in this country, and we honor it. Here, you opt out of the military and civilian service options. You do nothing for Uncle Sam. In return, you ask for nothing from him. For the rest of your life, no tuition aid, no federal guarantees on your mortgage, no Medicare. Anything we can take you out of, we will. But the door remains open -- if you decide at age 50 that you were wrong, fine, come in and drive a general around for a couple of years.

The libertarian opt-out is, I think, a new idea, but there is no international service/education option to Rick's proposal. Consider the three options from the movie “Lions for Lambs”: “1. Peace Corp year abroad. 2. US Ameri-Corps in one of the 500 poorest zipcodes. 3. ROTC apprenticeship in US or Abroad.” Of course, these were options for a year of high school.

Here's the relevant scene from "Lions for Lambs"

There is movement to create such options for students in high schools in Oregon. In the 2009 Oregon legislative session there was HB 2719  (here) which would have created the Go Global High School Study Abroad Program (here) for students in Oregon public high schools. The program would permit local school districts to use state and local funds to send high school students abroad. A similar bill is poised to be introduced in the Oregon 2011 legislative session.

I’m not for a draft. I am for more options in high school.

START, nuclear modernization, and study abroad as seen from Oregon

Senator Kyl and the Senate Republicans are playing political games with national security. They are delaying, and perhaps opposing, the START treaty. The Oregonian calls for Senate ratification (here):

U.S. and Russian leaders signed the treaty in April and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved it on a bipartisan 14-4 vote in September, but Kyl, the Senate minority whip, has resisted bringing it to the floor for a vote. The Obama administration added a $4 billion sweetener for "modernization" of the country's nuclear arsenal at Kyl's request, but the senator continues to argue against allowing the treaty to proceed to a vote before January. Meanwhile, sane and sober statesmen and women of both parties are warning of the perils of a delay, which could set back a number of important U.S. priorities, from dealing with a nuclear Iran to verifying and monitoring the Russian stockpile. The previous treaty expired at the end of last year.

Lugar is asking the Democratic leadership, who will remain in the majority after the new Congress is sworn in, to bring the bill to the floor for an immediate vote, no matter what some members of his party are saying. As he put it Wednesday, "the Republican caucus is tied up in a situation where people don't want to make choices. No one wants to be counted."

It's a strange reversal in Republican politics. Republican presidents including Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush have supported or signed nuclear arms-reduction treaties with Russia or the then-Soviet Union. As John B. Rhinelander, a treaty negotiator in the Nixon administration wrote, "Republicans have a proud history of taking the lead on nuclear arms control treaties with Russia -- treaties that have made America safer."

The current treaty that awaits action in the Senate would reduce each country's stockpile of nuclear warheads to 1,550, as well as limiting the number of certain missile launchers and bombers. Even at 1,550, down from the current level of about 5,000, the United States and Russia will have enough firepower at their disposal to wreak catastrophic havoc on one another, or on any other unfortunate target. Air Force strategists Gary Schaub and James Forsyth have argued that the United States would be adequately defended if it had just 311 nuclear warheads.

There's no reason to block a treaty of which 67 to 73 percent of all Americans approve, according to two recent polls. There's no reason at all, except to vex an administration that happens to be controlled by Democrats. Here's hoping the Senate heeds the counsel of wise men like Lugar, and ignores the tactics of people like Kyl.

I agree.

Oregon blogger Brian Hines also calls for ratification (here):

New START treaty is ready to be ratified by the Senate.

Previous nuclear arms control treaties were approved by massive bipartisan margins: 93-6 in 1992 for the START I treaty signed by Republican President George H.W. Bush; 87-4 in 1996 for START II, also signed by George H.W. Bush; and 95-0 in 2003 for the Moscow Treaty signed by Republican President George W. Bush….

….I hope the Senate votes on the New START treaty in the lame duck session. Then we'll see how patriotic and military-supporting the supposedly new and improved Republican party is. A vote against the treaty will be a vote against our national security.

 I agree.

Then there is the associated issue of nuclear modernization. As reported in the NY by William J. Broad (here):

In seeking Senate support for the so-called New Start treaty with Russia, the White House agreed to spend $85 billion over the next decade upgrading the nuclear weapons system, only to find itself stymied by resistance from unsatisfied Republicans.

The deal-making puts President Obama in the paradoxical position of investing vast sums in nuclear weapons even as he promises to put the world on a path to eliminating them.

Even if the project goes forward with that much money, that may not be the end of it. Experts in nuclear weapons agree that the job of building a set of giant factories that can make warheads for the nation’s arsenal would take at least 20 years and countless more billions than are currently budgeted.

“These individual projects have a long history of taking longer and costing more than the original estimates,” said Robert Alvarez, who from 1993 to 1999 was a policy adviser to the secretary of energy, who runs the nation’s nuclear complex.

The main projects are in Kansas City, Mo.; Oak Ridge, Tenn.; and Los Alamos, N.M., the birthplace of the bomb. In each place, aging buildings left over from the cold war would be replaced, and the technology to build warheads would be updated.

Over all, the Obama administration would like to be able to produce up to 80 warheads a year — far more than are needed to replace the warheads destroyed annually by testing, but far fewer than the 125 or more warheads a year that the Bush administration had envisioned.

Nuclear experts say that without the refurbishment program, the nation’s arsenal could slowly shrink as warheads fail or are used up in destructive testing.

I do question the priority need for and the funding level of the $85 billion nuclear modernization program. But let me make just two points here: (1) the $85 billion program is not funded by new revenues or offsetting budget cuts. It will add to the deficit. And (2) $85 billion is a lot of money. The Portland based study abroad organization Education, Travel & Culture (here) offers a high school year in China for $6,860. Add $1,640 for round trip international airfare and potential total cost is $8,500 to send a high school student to China for one academic year. Well, at that price, $85 billion could pay for 10 million American high school students spending an academic year in China. That would be one million high school students each year for ten year. From an Oregon perspective, with about 1.25% of the total US population, our share of one million students would be 12,500 per year. For the year 2008-09, the Oregon Department of Education reported 41,198 high school completers (comprised of 35,138 with regular diplomas, 1,369 with non-regular diplomas, and, 4,691 with no diploma). So, 12,500 would be 35.5% of a graduating class of 35,138 (or 30.3% of  41,198). And, at $8,500 each, that would be $10.625 million per year to Oregon (or, at least, 12,500 students for which Oregon would not need to pay the educational costs).

Do I think Oregon should or could send over one-third of each high school class to China for a year of high school? I think we could. Maybe not all to China, but one-third abroad somewhere: definitely yes. It’s what we should do. And I would be as good and as necessary for our national security as the nuclear modernization program.

 

 

 

Obama: "We welcome China's rise...."

Preseident Obama, speaking in a press conference on 11/12/10 at the close of the G-20 summit in Seoul, Korea, answered a question by saying "We welcome China's rise..." The full news conference is on C-Span here. Here is that question and answer:

 

Blumenauer on C-span: “We can’t afford to spend more on the military than the next seventeen countries combined”

Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer appeared on C-Span’s call-in program on 11/17/2010 for about twenty minutes. The full program is here. The following two minute segment shows him answering one question. Among other statements, he says “we can’t afford to spend more on the military than the next seventeen countries combined.”

I agree.

 

Tim Boyle on Oregon education: “They’re set up to be mediocre at best.”

I probably do not usually agree with Tim Boyle of Columbia Sportswear Company. But I do agree with his latest quote in the Oregonian article “PDC unveils effort to nurture athletics and outdoor business cluster in Oregon” by Allan Brettman. Boyle said (here)

… In an interview Tuesday, Boyle said, "Frankly, the education system here is lacking. Both K through 12 and higher education. They're set up to be mediocre at best. How do we attract people to come here, who are very bright, enthusiastic and hopefully successful when we have bad schools?"

I agree. We need to make changes in our schools and then put more public money into them. We need more foreign language programs, especially Mandarin, and we need to pay to send out high school students to study abroad.

On exporting coal from Longview to China

The Oregonian reports in an article by Scott Learn titled “Australian coal company wants to build coal-export terminal in Longview to ship to Asia” that (here)

An Australian coal company wants to build a coal-export terminal at a private port in Longview, Wash., a move that would allow 5.7 million tons of U.S. coal exports to Asia each year just as environmental activists are trying to shut down coal-fired power plants in Washington and Oregon.

Millennium Bulk Logistics, a subsidiary of Australia's Ambre Energy, plans to build the first major U.S. export terminal on the West Coast along the banks of the Columbia River.

The company has submitted plans to Cowlitz County to redevelop the 416-acre Chinook Ventures port site to export coal, likely from the Powder River basin in Montana and Wyoming. That's the same coal Portland General Electric draws on for its coal-fired plant in Boardman, which the company has proposed closing in 2020 to help curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Of course, this news in stirring up NW environmentalists, as Learn further reports:

"The elephant in the room here is opening up the West Coast to exporting coal to China," said Brett VandenHeuvel, Columbia Riverkeeper's executive director. "The fact that it's being ignored is hugely problematic. For us to simultaneously oppose coal plants here and happily export that coal to China is inconsistent."  

On the other hand, James Fallows has an article titled “Dirty Coal, Clean Future” in this month”s The Atlantic magazine which argues that the world has no alternative to continuing to burn coal and that China is the leader in making it cleaner and more sustainable. The article summary reads (here):

To environmentalists, “clean coal” is an insulting oxymoron. But for now, the only way to meet the world’s energy needs, and to arrest climate change before it produces irreversible cataclysm, is to use coal—dirty, sooty, toxic coal—in more-sustainable ways. The good news is that new technologies are making this possible. China is now the leader in this area, the Google and Intel of the energy world. If we are serious about global warming, America needs to work with China to build a greener future on a foundation of coal. Otherwise, the clean-energy revolution will leave us behind, with grave costs for the world’s climate and our economy.

Now, I’m a climate change believer. I think that globally we need to control carbon emission. But for NW environmentalist to discover suddenly an inconsistency just because the coal for China’s coal plants will come through the NW is ridiculous (and just a tad provincial, like unaware of what’s happening in the larger world).  The inconsistency has always been there. We’ve been trying to shut down a coal plant or two here in the NW while China builds approximate one new coal plant per week. Forget where the coal comes from. We have dreams we can set an example of clean, green living for China and others. Perhaps. But NW environmentalists have not had a strategy to engage China on climate change issues and to put our example before them. And just perhaps, as Fallows suggest, China may make coal much cleaner.

I’ve argued before on this blog, and will continue to do so, that we in Oregon need to engage China on a whole range of important issues, climate change being one important one.  While I mostly advocate for more Mandarin and study abroad in China programs in our public education system as the foundation of that engagement, I think broader engagement on issues like climate change and its accompanying technologies is important.

If NW environmentalists just focus now on stopping the export of coal to China, they will have focused too narrowly and will accomplish little. China will get the coal somewhere else. NW environmentalists should join the call for more Mandarin and study abroad in China programs, and find other ways to engage China directly and constructively. The real battle for cutting carbon emissions is in China and India, not here in the northwest.

Are PPS programs "educationally sound" for the 21st century?

Former Hillsboro Superintendent Joe Rodriguez in an Oregonian op-ed “The PPS construction bond: a wise investment in Portland infrastructure” writes (here):

Kudos to Portland Public Schools and Superintendent Carole Smith for their foresight in being willing to invest in the future of Portland's schools, businesses and community by proposing a $548 million construction bond for schools. While "brickbats" have been rightly thrown at PPS for rearranging deck chairs to improve its high schools, the proposed construction bond is timely, educationally sound and economically feasible and essential.

Securing such a bond will not only construct better, safer and more technologically focused schools, but will provide a significant economic boost to Portland's building trades and associated local businesses. Modernizing Portland's schools will also serve as further incentive for businesses to locate or relocate in Portland, parents to continue to send  their children to public schools and families to move to Portland…..

First, I don’t see how the parts of the last sentence in the first paragraph are consistent. I understand the phrase “’brickbats’ have been rightly thrown at PPS for rearranging deck chairs to improve its high schools” as a criticism of the high school redesign process, that, perhaps, the high school redesign process didn’t accomplish what it should have. If so, I agree with him. And, if so, then how can Rodriguez then, in the same sentence, call the construction bond “educationally sound?” He can't. They aren't, not for the global economy of the 21st century.

Second, what is a former superintendent of an also, IMHO, second-rate school district doing telling us what to do in Portland? Show me where Hillsboro has a variety of language immersion programs (especially Mandarin), or that they pay for high school students to study abroad, or their extensive offering of online courses that students can take independent from the brick-and-mortar building.

Third, it not just the physical building, but the programs in the buildings that will attract business to locate in Portland or parents to send their children to Portland Public Schools. I think PPS needs to make some simple, low cost changes in its programs before moving ahead with investments in facilities. I’m a “no” voter until they do (see here).

Oregonian: "No overstating the significance of Pacific Rim trade to Oregon"

I am a supporter of free trade, but it is important to get the terms of any trade deal right. So I agree with the Oregonian editorial “Keep pressing for South Korea deal” (here):

A free trade deal between the United States and South Korea resisted completion this week, but Northwesterners should hope that negotiators persist until they reach an arrangement that each government can support. Such a deal would be disproportionately good for this region.

And:

There's no overstating the significance of Pacific Rim trade to Oregon. U.S. Census data show that Oregon sent almost $15 billion worth of goods overseas last year, while importing roughly $12 billion, meaning that the flow of goods was positive for U.S. manufacturers as well as for regional trade handling companies. South Korea is already one of the state's biggest trading partners, after China, Japan, Canada and a couple of others, depending on whether you read the list of imports or exports.

Records show that free-trade deals historically have benefited U.S. manufacturers. The National Association of Manufacturers has pointed out that the United States runs a trade surplus with its free-trade partners, and a massive deficit with all other countries.

Port of Portland executive director Bill Wyatt told a Senate committee on trade this spring that a free-trade deal with South Korea "could be one of the most significant steps that Congress could take to stimulate American exports." He noted that forecasters believe it would increase the U.S. gross domestic product by $10 billion or more.

As note in a previous post (here), in the academic year 2007-08, the Oregon University System had 66 of its students studying in South Korea. In the Fall of 2009, there were 446 South Korean students studying in the OUS.