"Fixing" Urban Education

Today I came upon two different articles which discussed "urban education"--put another way, "teaching poor kids".

Joanne has a post that compared two different attempts in North Carolina:

To improve the performance of low-income students, Wake County, North Carolina’s largest district, uses busing to integrate its schools by socioeconomic status. One in six students is bused at a cost of $541.56 per student.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg, the second largest district, runs neighborhood schools that serve affluent kids in the suburbs, poor kids in the downtown. Millions of extra dollars go to improve high-poverty schools.

Which system works better? According to the Raleigh News & Observer, both systems are equally unsuccessful.

Coincidentally, RotLC reader Mazenko forwarded to me this column by DC Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, in which she says, "[T]eachers are the solution to the vexing problems facing urban education. "

I don't often say this, but I disagree with Michelle Rhee here. Looking at the failed solutions in Joanne's post, we can either assume that both the districts in North Carolina completely screwed up (not out of the realm of possibility, especially in public education), or something else is at work. I vote for Option B, and I'll even tell you what the answer is: The problem isn't the school, it's the culture.

And that explains why Rhee is mistaken. Her statement could be corrected thusly: Teachers are a necessary, but not sufficient, part of the solution to the vexing problems facing urban education.

And therein lies the answer to why so many students, especially lower income students, do so poorly--as a society we only address the school component.

Update, 2/10/09: And look what the major Sacramento paper reported Sunday.

Are Not Enough Students Applying To UC's?

Or perhaps not enough of the right kind of students, or perhaps the right color of students, are applying. What else would explain this?

University of California regents Thursday approved new admission requirements intended to improve access for low-income students as well as a policy bolstering UC's commitment to financial aid.

The changes for freshmen admission will take effect for the fall 2012 incoming class.

The regents approved a proposal to no longer require high school students to take SAT subject tests. The percentage of students guaranteed admission to the university system based on grade-point average would also be decreased from 12.5 percent statewide to 9 percent.

This isn't even a subtle attempt to get around Proposition 209.

Oh, but you support affirmative action?

As I have pointed out too many times to cite, when “affirmative action” was first imposed on the federal government by presidential executive orders (Kennedy’s 10925 in 1961; Johnson’s 11246 in 1965) government agencies and contractors were barred from discriminating against “any employee or applicant ... because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin,” and they were required to take “affirmative action” to ensure that all applicants and employees were treated “without regard to race, creed, color, or national origin.”

Over time, as we’ve seen, the meaning of “affirmative action” was reversed, so that it now requires precisely what it was originally designed to prevent — treating some applicants and employees better and others worse because of their race or ethnicity.

If you believe in today's version of affirmative action, you've been suckered by race hustlers. You have no moral tie to the goals of the civil rights movement at all.

Two Local Teachers Disgrace The Profession

The major Sacramento paper reports on two teachers:

Two North Highlands teachers were arrested Wednesday after one allegedly had inappropriate sexual conduct with two female high school students and the other tried to help him cover it up, according to authorities.

Sacramento County Sheriff's deputies arrested Eric Charles Gladden, 34, and Monica Maldonado Alarcon, 29, teachers at Futures High School until they were fired this week, on felony and misdemeanor counts.

Deep Thinking About Math

The Boston Globe publishes a short interview with astrophysicist Mario Livio.

(I)s mathematics a human tool, or is reality, in some fundamental way, mathematics?

IDEAS: Can you imagine an alternate universe in which we invent a different type of math? What might that look like?

LIVIO: Let me start with this silly idea - the isolated jellyfish. Imagine that all the intelligence resided not in humans, but in some isolated jellyfish at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. This jellyfish - all it would feel would be the pressure of the water, the temperature of the water, the motion of the water. Would this jellyfish have invented the natural numbers - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on? I think probably not, because there's nothing to count there - everything this creature would have felt would have been continuous rather than discrete, so this creature might have invented a completely different type of mathematics.

IDEAS: So, instead of jellyfish math we have math that reflects our abilities?

LIVIO: Why did the ancient Babylonians and Greeks and so on start with arithmetic and geometry? I think that largely this is because of our particular perception system. We are very, very good at seeing edges of things; we can very well tell what is an object, what is the background of the object; we can tell individual objects very well, we can also tell very well whether a line is straight or not, just with our eye.

IDEAS: So, at some level, mathematics is a human invention?

LIVIO: The mathematics we use to explain the universe were not actually chosen arbitrarily. Imagine that you do this very simple experiment where you put pebbles in a jar. You put first three pebbles, and five more pebbles, and you want the mathematical tool that will predict to you how many pebbles are in the jar. You think this is idiotic - it's mathematical addition - three plus five. If you do the same experiment with drops of oil, and you say three drops and five drops, you just have a pool of oil, the same thing does not apply to the second example.

Humans at some level chose the mathematical tools based on them being suitable for the particular problem.

Interesting, to say the least.

Hat tip to NewsAlert.

How's That "Draining The Swamp" Thing Going? Part 2

Part 1 was here, a week ago. Part 2 is here, courtesy of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

When in the last election Democrats spoke of a "culture of corruption" in Washington, few realized they were making a promise.

The Obama administration is not yet three weeks old but already features a growing collection of ethically challenged officials.

Defend them, lefties, because they're your people. Can't blame President Bush for these problems!

Here's What A Harvard Economist Says About The Porkulus Package

Lefties love Harvard people, so let's see what one has to say about our current economic conditions.

And I take it from the Wall Street Journal piece you wrote last week... well, the piece is just specifically about measuring multipliers, but I take it that you are fairly skeptical in general that fiscal policy will boost aggregate demand.

Right. There's a big difference between tax rate changes and things that look just like throwing money at people. Tax rate changes have actual incentive effects. And we have some experience with those actually working.

What would you say is the best empirical evidence there?

Well, you know, it worked to expand GDP for example in '63 and '64 with the Kennedy/Johnson cuts. And then Reagan twice in '81 and '83 and then in '86. And then the Bush 2003 tax-cutting program. Those all worked in the sense of promoting economic growth in a short time frame...

The last thing is just about the stimulus bills as it stands. Two things here. One thing is what do you think about the ratio of spending to tax relief in the bill. And the second is, if you judge it by Larry Summers standard -- that stimulus be temporary, timely and targeted -- does it clear the bar?

This is probably the worst bill that has been put forward since the 1930s. I don't know what to say. I mean it's wasting a tremendous amount of money. It has some simplistic theory that I don't think will work, so I don't think the expenditure stuff is going to have the intended effect. I don't think it will expand the economy. And the tax cutting isn't really geared toward incentives. It's not really geared to lowering tax rates; it's more along the lines of throwing money at people. On both sides I think it's garbage. So in terms of balance between the two it doesn't really matter that much.

It's the worst bill put forward since the 1930s.

Update, 2/8/09: Here are two interesting videos. The first is economist Milton Friedman being interviewed by rabid leftie (but always a polite host) Phil Donahue, and the 2nd is a clip from Saturday Night Live. They're both short; the first is exceedingly enlightening, and the second is funny because it has just enough truth in it to go with the humor.

CTA and Affiliated Locals vs Agency Fee Objectors

It's that time of year again. CTA, which is legally entitled to my money as my "representative", has to justify what it charges me. To do this, CTA hires an "impartial arbiter" (no conflict of interest there!) from the American Arbitration Association to determine which of its expenses are "chargeable" to agency fee payers and which are not. Next November, I can have the "non-chargeable" money refunded to me.

According to the letter that CTA sends me each year, I'm allowed to request that my contact information be provided to other agency fee objectors for the purposes of coordinating. This year, I not only did that but also requested that I be given the contact information of other willing objectors.

The CTA said I'd have to get this information from the AAA. The AAA said that this information is confidential and cannot be released--even though CTA and individual objectors say publicly that it can be released.

Do you see why I question the impartiality of the arbiter who works for this organization?

Does CTA Really Represent Teachers' Views?

It didn't on Proposition 8, or so it seems.

The most laughable point is this one:

“I think the CTA does represent the majority of its members,” said CTA spokeswoman Sandra Jackson. “I don’t believe that the overall membership is more conservative than the leadership. If so, I think we would hear about it.”

Update, 2/8/09: Someone agrees with me.

Porkulus Has Been Tried Before

And it's failed.

Japan’s rural areas have been paved over and filled in with roads, dams and other big infrastructure projects, the legacy of trillions of dollars spent to lift the economy from a severe downturn caused by the bursting of a real estate bubble in the late 1980s. During those nearly two decades, Japan accumulated the largest public debt in the developed world — totaling 180 percent of its $5.5 trillion economy — while failing to generate a convincing recovery. Now, as the Obama administration embarks on a similar path, proposing to spend more than $820 billion to stimulate the sagging American economy, many economists are taking a fresh look at Japan’s troubled experience. . . . Among ordinary Japanese, the spending is widely disparaged for having turned the nation into a public-works-based welfare state and making regional economies dependent on Tokyo for jobs. Much of the blame has fallen on the Liberal Democratic Party, which has long used government spending to grease rural vote-buying machines that help keep the party in power.

NYT link via Instapundit.

I wasn't enjoying Hugh Hewitt's show on the drive home from work today, so I switched over to Michael Savage. He's pretty extreme, but he said something today that struck me as inarguable: A crisis of excess debt cannot be solved by more debt.

We're in deep trouble.

Update, 2/10/09: Here's another column, subtitled A History of Folly.

Trivia Night

A local restaurant/brewpub holds trivia night on Thursday nights, and for a few years now groups from my school--teachers, and sometimes students--have gone. Each team is allowed up to 6 people, and of course no cell phones or similar equipment is allowed.

Since Christmas break I've been three times; our team make-up has varied slightly over these three times, but it's a very fun group.

The first time I went we scored 21/30. The next time we scored 24, and last night we scored 25.

As someone famous once said, there is much pleasure to be gained from the knowledge of useless facts.

Here Is Change I Can Believe!

President Bush was nothing if not polite to those who opposed him and his policies. He genuinely tried to reach across the aisle to work with Democrats, just as he did in Texas.

President Obama, on the other hand, seems a bit arrogant ("I won"), a bit mean-spirited (swipes at President Bush on the White House web site and in his inaugural address, with President Bush a few feet away), and a bit amateurish:

A fired-up Barack Obama ditched his TelePrompter to rally House Democrats and rip Republican opponents of his recovery package Thursday night – at one point openly mocking the GOP for failing to follow through on promises of bipartisanship.

In what was the most pointedly partisan speech of his young presidency, Obama rejected Republican arguments that massive spending in the $819 billion stimulus bill that passed the House should be replaced by a new round of massive tax cuts.

“I welcome this debate, but we are not going to get relief by turning back to the same policies that for the last eight years doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin,” said President Obama – sounding more like Candidate Obama than at any time since he took the oath of office less than a month ago.

This is definitely the change I expected from this man. He's not very presidential. FYI: partisan attacks, bullying, and scare tactics are not leadership. But then again, how would he know? He's never really been in charge of anything before.

His idea of bipartisanship is for the Republicans to do what he wants. Sorry, it doesn't work that way.

I hope he grows into this job quickly, before he becomes a national and international laughing stock.

Update, 2/6/09: On his radio show today, Savage referred to the President as Obama The Petulant. It's fitting.

Update, 2/9/09: This view from across the pond isn't exactly flattering, starting with the title: Barack Obama is a novice - and it shows

How To Make A Willing Suicide Bomber

You don't need to hate America or Israel or the West to be a suicide bomber. All that leftie talk about "root causes" is so much bunk. How do you make someone willing to blow himself up? Rape him.

According to Pink News, an Algerian militant, Abu Baçir El Assimi, confirmed in the pages of The Sun that:

“The sexual act on young recruits aged between 16 to 19 was a means to urge them to commit suicide operations…that “intense social stigma and fear of more gay sex attacks leaves Muslims prepared to die.”

I'm sure that any day now, Zombie will have a photoessay up of San Franciscans protesting this abuse. I'm equally sure that Queers For Palestine will lead this protest.

Discipline and Disrespect At School

I'm a proponent of student free speech. I don't think schools can or should attempt to deal with off-campus (or outside-of-school-activities) activities of students. So usually, I'd support a law like this:

A state lawmaker is proposing legislation that would bar schools from punishing students for their electronic insults, even if they write them on class computers during school hours.

It's that last clause that's a show-stopper for me. Can students be sanctioned for verbal disrespect to a teacher, but be allowed to type the same disrespect--on school equipment--and get off scot free?

The lawmaker who's proposing this law is an idiot.

To me the situation is extremely clear--what kids say and do outside of school is their own business and, with very few exceptions, cannot be dealt with by school authority. What they say and do at school can be regulated by school authority.

Is that such an unreasonable position?

A Tax Cheat As Treasury Secretary

Here's one way of continually voicing your objections to having a tax cheat as Secretary of the Treasury.

With President Obama, Real Science Will Rule The Day

I have an atheist friend who was convinced that President Bush, because of his professed Christianity, just didn't take "real science" seriously. President Obama is supposed to change that.

Or is he?

Faith-Based Initiative

I'm sure there were plenty of people who voted for President Obama in part to get those wacky right-wing Christian evangelicals away from our government. I guess the left-wing Christians are OK.

The White House is expected to announce tomorrow the creation of a Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, part of its effort to overhaul the White House office of faith-based initatives.

The group will do more than steer federal social-service funds to religious organizations, said the Rev. Jim Wallis, who expects to be named to the council. "This is a much broader mission than who gets funded," he said.

Wallis, who presides over Sojourners, a progressive Christian organization based in the District, said that he expects the council will advise the president on substantive policy issues -- both foreign and domestic.

Sounds to me like the Christians will have even more access to, and influence on, the President than they had in the last administration. How interesting!

Education Porkulus

Head over to edspresso and look for today's posts and back a few days. They're having a lot of fun talking about the porkulus package and the money in it devoted to education.

A Million, A Billion, A Trillion, Oh My

Here's a great story from CNN about how big these numbers are, and why fiscal conservatives (like yours truly) panic whenever we hear the numbers associated with the recent porkulus package.

"To put a trillion dollars in context, if you spend a million dollars every day since Jesus was born, you still wouldn't have spent a trillion," McConnell said.

CNN checked McConnell's numbers with noted Temple University math professor and author John Allen Paulos.

"A million dollars a day for 2,000 years is only three-quarters of a trillion dollars. It's a big number no matter how you slice it," Paulos said.

Here's another way to look at it.

"A million seconds is about 11½ days. A billion seconds is about 32 years, and a trillion seconds is 32,000 years," Paulos said. "People tend to lump them together, perhaps because they rhyme, but if you think of it in terms of a jail sentence, do you want to go to jail for 11½ days or 32 years or maybe 32,000 years? So, they're vastly different, and people generally don't really have a real visceral grasp of the differences among them."

I read Paulos' book Innumeracy about 20 years ago, and it's as important today as it was then--for just this reason.

Update, 2/8/09: Here's an interesting picture showing the relative costs of some famous projects compared to the current porkulus package.

Layoffs and Rumors of Layoffs

Today the big one hit school--our district is going to give pink slips to every single teacher, well over a thousand of us. We got an email from our local union saying not to worry, they'll let us know any further information as soon as they get it from the district. It was so reassuring. Not.

Gloom, Despair, and Agony at Wal*Mart

Not quite, according to an intrepid reporter who got a job there.