This definitely falls under the heading "Of all the things I thought I would never write about..."
Idris Elba as Stringer Bell
One of my favorite television series I've ever watched is HBO's The Wire. What I liked about it was the unflinching view of street life that the writers portrayed. Season One of The Wire centered on drug dealing in the housing projects of Baltimore and the police officers who pursued them. What was really cool about this series was how you could perceive parallels between the two sides. The super villain who emerges from the projects was a character named Stringer Bell, who was much more businessman than street tough. On the police side, the political ladder that led through the ranks was rife with corruption and cover-ups. Each side seen as it is through the genius of creator David Simon. Stringer Bell definitely did not fit the media stereotype of a drug dealer. On the program, he repeatedly insists on being identified as a businessman.
So what does this have to do with Freakonomics? The chapter I am astounded by asks the question, "Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live With Their Moms?" This exploration was made uniquely possible by an unlikely, but fascinating story. University of Chicago graduate student, Sudhir Venkatesh, was actually able to document the activities of Chicago's Black Gangster Disciple Nation from the inside by virtue of an accidental (and foolhardy) encounter in the stairwell of a hi-rise housing project in which the powerful leader of the branch, only known as J.T., saw to it that Venkatesh was given a "free pass" not only to leave unharmed, but was allowed to return to observe and document the gang's activities for his PhD project.
What Venkatesh learned (especially when given spiral-bound ledger books of the business dealings of the Black Disciples), was astounding: "So how did the gang work? An awful lot like American businesses, actually, though perhaps none more so than McDonald's. In fact, if you were to hold a McDonald's organizational chart and a Black Disciples org chart side by side, you could hardly tell the difference" (89). From what little I know about business, I do know that the McDonald's business model is viewed in most circles as being one of the most effective and profitable. J.T. was near the top of his "business organization" for the same reasons anyone would excel, he was educated (college degree in business) and his business acumen in the field got him noticed by the board of directors (that's what they're called) of the Black Disciples. He rose through the ranks to own many houses, cars, and to have a six-figure (tax-free) salary.
Here's my final takeaway - why would anyone want to be a drug dealer? Levitt posits that it's the same risk/reward dream of "the Wisconsin farm girl becoming a movie star or the high-school quarterback playing in the NFL" (95). Unfortunately for many communities, when crack cocaine swept in, so did drug wars between rival gangs in the money-grab for the new product that was highly addictive and thus profitable. The dream of "winning the tournament," rising through the ranks to become the next J.T., is enough for young men, who feel they have no other prospects for success, to stand on street corners and earn less than minimum wage while bullets from drive-by shooters take lives by the hundreds.
Diving into Freakonomics a little deeper than I intended to, I found myself two full chapters in and really thinking about the way the world really works.
To be honest, there's no great story that led me to this book. If I recall correctly, I may have picked it up at a semi-annual Friends of the Mount Prospect Library sale as a deep discount hardcover. At the time I may have had some interest having read some excerpts and sampling a page here and there. Chapter titles like "What Do Teachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have In Common?" also piqued my interest at the time. However, the volume ended up at the wrong end of my "to read" list and eventually found its way to school among other various titles I make available for students to read.
Until now! I picked it off the shelf (or it picked me!).
First, incentives. There are currently a few grading policies that our district mandates that speak to the subject of the first chapter of Freakonomics. The controversy that was explored in the book concerned rampant teacher cheating on standard tests in the Chicago Public Schools in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Back then, schools in CPS could be closed if schools did not show adequate yearly progress. Teachers would be placed on probation if patterns of low reading scores brought the overall grade-level scores down. The incentive to "fix" the scores to save jobs was there - Levitt explored test answer patterns from thousands of tests from 1993-2000 and applied a complicated algorithm that finds anomalies in the data. The cheaters left telltale signs of changing student answers.
While this study tests the faith we have in our teacher corps, there was a silver lining: "In addition to detecting cheaters, the algorithm could also identify the best teachers in the school system. A good teacher's impact was nearly as distinctive as a cheater's. [Students would demonstrate] real improvement on the easier types of questions they missed...and carried over all their gains into the next grade" (31).
This idea of incentives has me thinking about the reasoning behind D207's "no zeroes" poilicy. No assignment can be entered as a score of below 40% regardless of the status of the assignment. This policy has been instituted in other districts as well, but not without opposition. Incentives lie at the heart of this change. First, the "killer zero" can bring a student's average down so low that he/she may lose incentive to try to bring the average up. A "what's-the-point-I'm-going-to-fail-anyway" cycle begins as averages can plummet below 20% or lower as zeroes pile up. The 40% "floor" provides some hope (a strong incentive that passing is still possible) for the struggling student, but may it also deincentivize a more accomplished student who may skip an assignment or two, losing what could be valuable learning experiences and opportunities, realizing the grade loss is marginal and won't impact an already solid A, B, or C grade. Incentives lie at the core of human decision-making and behaviors, so this chapter really made me think.
Information - who has it and how do people use it to their advantage? Levitt also goes into an idea called "informational asymmetry" - this is where experts use their superior knowledge to take advantage of those (usually consumers) who don't have the same information. I've always felt this way going in to get my car fixed. They always seem to find something that I wasn't expecting. Last time all four of my brake calipers had frozen up (I had only taken my car in for a squeaky AC belt). Anyway, I demanded to see the problem and talk with a technician. Then I would consult the internet to see what the relative cost was and if it was something I could fix myself. Here's where the experts play on my fear - "this is an unsafe car - those calipers lock up, and you will lose your ability to brake." They've got me - I don't have the expertise to fix it or the foolishness to keep driving it, so I foot the bill...again! The internet, Levitt notes, has decreased the level of informational asymmetry in many fields, but still it acts as another incentive to both take advantage of those who don't know, and to resign yourself to the expertise of those who do.
