The Loss of Jobs

So many are lamenting the loss of Steve Jobs. Are they lamenting the loss of the pop culture icon, or of the rich capitalist/industrialist?

I'm not taken in by the Apple mystique so the pop culture aspect weighs zero on me; I mourn the loss of someone who created and managed a thriving business.

Even if he was a Democrat :-)

Can't "Do" Math? It's Not Your Fault.

Blame your parents and grandparents for bad genetics:

Can't calculate a tip or even balance your checkbook?

Take heart. Maybe you can blame your brain -- specifically, the parietal cortex in the top back part of the head. It also could be a problem that has roots not in a failed arithmetic or "new math" lesson, but even earlier.

Recent findings indicate that how well 3-year-olds estimate quantities predicts their math ability in elementary school. Another study funded by the National Institutes of Health showed that the innate capacity to estimate is impaired in children who have a math learning disability.

The findings are so new that there's no widely accepted way to diagnose what's known as dyscalculia (dis-cal-KOO-lia), nor any set strategies for coping with it -- even though 5 to 8 percent of the population is thought to suffer from math learning disability. Consider it the mathematical partner to dyslexia, which impairs reading ability.

I'm going to need a lot more evidence of this before I believe that 5-8% of the population has a physical issue preventing basic math ability. Gawd, the last thing we need is yet another excuse.

The Sine Curve of Life

It rained last night and this morning. Then it got nice and sunny for most of the school day. Just before school got out, Odin threw his hammer and the loudest clap of thunder announced a downpour.

An hour and a half later, it's sunny again.

Update: An hour and 10 minutes later, it's raining quite a bit again. Weather in the Sacramento Valley isn't usually so mercurial!

You Won't Fix The Racial Achievement Gap Until You're Honest About What Causes It

I had hopes that this column in the Wisconsin State Journal might be headed in the right direction:

Although the gap is closing among students completing algebra by the 10th grade, it has widened on 4th grade reading tests and in high school graduation rates since 2003. Those changes have come as the number of black students in the district has increased and the number of whites has declined.

"We know that we're not pushing the needle significantly," Superintendent Dan Nerad said about what he considers "the most significant social justice issue in America."

The racial achievement gap persists for a variety of reasons both inside and outside the schools.

This was sounding reasonable, but let's look at the next line (boldface is mine):

Factors include poverty, family stability, peer pressure, parental involvement, a curriculum and school culture oriented toward white students, and lower expectations for black students after decades of high dropout and incarceration rates.

Moses on a mountaintop, how are curriculum and school culture oriented towards white people? What on earth does that even mean? I could understand it if the complaint was that they're oriented towards the middle class, but how do we orient things to white students? This I just don't understand. Is it because we expect achievement, is that "white" now? Or is that "Asian"?

This is offensive. I'm sure blaming problems on whitey makes some people feel better, but it's so old now. Black students did better back in days when whitey was the problem, when government-sanctioned racism ruled the day. The Little Rock Nine didn't give up, and they had much more arrayed at them at school than students do today.

Again, as long as you say I'm the problem because of my skin color, I will continue to despise you and attack you. When you're ready to judge people not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character, you let me know.

Is There Anything Wrong With His Analogy?

Fran Tarkenton, Hall of Fame quarterback:

Imagine the National Football League in an alternate reality. Each player's salary is based on how long he's been in the league. It's about tenure, not talent. The same scale is used for every player, no matter whether he's an All-Pro quarterback or the last man on the roster. For every year a player's been in this NFL, he gets a bump in pay. The only difference between Tom Brady and the worst player in the league is a few years of step increases. And if a player makes it through his third season, he can never be cut from the roster until he chooses to retire, except in the most extreme cases of misconduct.

Let's face the truth about this alternate reality: The on-field product would steadily decline. Why bother playing harder or better and risk getting hurt?

No matter how much money was poured into the league, it wouldn't get better. In fact, in many ways the disincentive to play harder or to try to stand out would be even stronger with more money.

Of course, a few wild-eyed reformers might suggest the whole system was broken and needed revamping to reward better results, but the players union would refuse to budge and then demonize the reform advocates: "They hate football. They hate the players. They hate the fans." The only thing that might get done would be building bigger, more expensive stadiums and installing more state-of-the-art technology. But that just wouldn't help.

If you haven't figured it out yet, the NFL in this alternate reality is the real -life American public education system. Teachers' salaries have no relation to whether teachers are actually good at their job—excellence isn't rewarded, and neither is extra effort. Pay is almost solely determined by how many years they've been teaching. That's it. link

There's a small difference. The players actually want to win, and so do the owners. They're competitors by nature. That's not necessarily so with teachers and/or students.

Why Is This Book So Expensive?

A paperback for $107??? (as of 10/2/2011)

Treadmill Mini-victory

A couple weeks ago I couldn't run a single step; my injured leg just wasn't strong enough. Two days ago at school, though, I was going to be late for a meeting with a vice principal, so I just started jogging. It didn't feel natural, but I was definitely moving my legs at more than just a shuffle.

So today at the gym I set aside a few minutes and got on the treadmill. I started walking on it, and sped it up to 7 mph (a running pace). This I maintained for 5 minutes, then went down to a brisk 4 mph walking pace for another 5.

My knee is flexible but still swollen with lots of scar tissue in there. I cannot kneel on it yet, and my quads (thigh muscles) are still very weak--but I was able to kinda-sorta run for 5 minutes. I've committed to running a mile on the school track on the one-year anniversary of my injury. When I set that goal over a month ago, I had no idea when I'd be able to run. Now I have every confidence that I'll be able to complete that mile next April.

You Get What You Encourage

And you (hopefully) get less of what you discourage.

On dance duty last night, I was in my usual spot--guarding the back of the breezeway which connects our gyms, keeping kids from going out to drink/smoke/fornicate and keeping others from sneaking in. One of our vice principals was making the rounds and told me this story, which I'll paraphrase:

I just kicked a few kids out, sent them home. What they were doing was not dancing, so I told them, "You're out of here." They asked, "Don't we get a warning?"

Actually, they did get a warning. When they were sent home. That should serve as a warning not to try booty-dry-humping at the next dance.

Isn't it amazing that the kids knew what they were doing was inappropriate, and expected to be able to get away with doing it at least once? Apparently that's the environment they're used to, and I'm glad it wasn't reinforced last night.

Smells Like Teen (Spirit)

Just got home from duty at our school's homecoming dance. After we'd herded all the kids out I stepped into the gym--good Lord, I kid you not, there was a 15-20 degree temperature difference as you walk through the door from outside. And the smell of hundreds of sweaty teenagers lurking in the air would be enough to induce gagging in someone with less of a constitution than I have....

Earth 2

Back in the mid-1990's there was a short-lived (one season) science fiction drama on NBC called Earth 2. One of the cultural points I remember from that show was that marriages were 5-year contracts instead of "till death or divorce do us part". It seems that Mexico City is looking to the future:

Officials in Mexico City are considering a new way to address the city's high divorce rates: by making marriages temporary.

Couples would be allowed to decide on the length of their marriage (minimum license: two years), and the contracts would contain prenup-like legalese about financial support, how marital assets would be divided, and who gets custody of the kids. At the end of the contract, happy (or semi-happy) couples could opt to renew for another two years, while those who are tired of being together could simply walk away without a legal hassle.

"The proposal is, when the two-year period is up, if the relationship is not stable or harmonious, the contract simply ends," Leonel Luna of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, who co-authored the bill, told Reuters. "You wouldn't have to go through the tortuous process of divorce."

When you muck with the culture, there are always consequences. Always. Sometimes they're good and sometimes they're bad, but the consequences are always there. Look what no-fault divorce and the celebration of single-motherhood did for our culture. Woo hoo.

How UC Berkeley Republicans' Affirmative Action Bake Sale Could Have Turned Out

How it could have turned out if there were any adults at Berkeley:

Gibor Basri, Berkeley’s vice chancellor for equity and diversity, could have served a valuable role here by pointing out that the bake sale was obviously a parody of racial and gender preferences, not a criticism of students themselves. Whatever one thinks about the issue of preferences, he might have said, such political theater belongs to Berkeley’s once-revered tradition of free speech. Instead, Basri chose to stoke the melodramatic self-pity of today’s college students. “A lot of students, especially students of color, read [the bake sale] as placing a higher value on white students,” Basri told the New York Times. Basri, in other words, obeyed the ironclad script for all such minor perturbations in the otherwise unbroken reign of campus political correctness. That script requires that the massive campus-diversity bureaucracy treat the delusional claims of hyperventilating students with utter seriousness. Students in the ever-expanding roster of official campus victim groups flatter themselves that by attending what is in fact the most caring, protective, and opportunity-rich institution in the history of the world, they are braving unspeakable threats to their ego and even to their physical safety. (Indeed, so desirable is this alleged threatened status that a gender and women’s studies major held a sign during Tuesday’s protest of the bake sale decrying the exclusion of “queer people” from the Republicans’ pricing structure.)

Via City Journal and NewsAlert.

Master's Degree

I make less than the average teacher in my district and less than the average teacher in California--because, after 14 years of teaching, I still don't have a master's degree. So I've decided to get an MAT degree (Master of Arts in Teaching Mathematics) from the University of Idaho's Engineering Outreach Program via distance learning. I've first got to convince my school district to approve/accept that program (which will probably take months), and I tentatively plan to start coursework next fall.

If Cheating Is Rampant In California's High-stakes Testing, No One Would Know

Why not? Because there's no funding to spot the signs of cheating:

High-stakes education testing in California is operating on the honor system because two years ago state officials eliminated the system used to catch cheaters.

The routine checking of tests for erasures or other anomalies was eliminated in California in September 2009, when the the budget for testing was slashed by $17 million. The cost of security audits and running hand-bubbled tests through a machine to check for excessive erasures and suspicious marks: $105,000.

That means California isn't likely to catch major episodes of cheating like those that rocked city schools in Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, and school districts in Pennsylvania and New Jersey in recent years.

I should invest in whatever company makes erasers.

I Will Lower Your Grade Because You Practice Medieval Superstitions

Everyone likes a good stupid teacher or stupid administrator story, and this teacher fills the bill:

When someone sneezes, a common response is, “God bless you.” But one California teacher finds this statement so offensive and disruptive that he’s working to cut back on its usage in the classroom.

Steve Cuckovich, a health teacher at William C. Wood High School in Vacaville, California, has attempted to banish the friendly gesture, as he believes it is both disrespectful and disruptive. To punish students who do, indeed, say “God bless you” after one of their classmates sneezes, he purportedly knocks 25 points off of their grade.

I agree that sometimes, students say "Bless you" or "God bless you" in a manner designed to be disruptive, but the vast majority of the time it's just a trained response. Sometimes I'll tell students about the origins of the phrase--a medieval superstition wherein a sneeze was an expulsion of the soul--but that's mostly just for information.

I understand if this teacher wants students to stop blurting out phrases, but he seriously crosses a line when he lowers an academic grade for non-academic purposes. Behavior, tardies, absences, etc. should not affect an academic grade, IMNSHO.

Kid Wins One Against His Principal

Everyone likes a good stupid teacher or stupid administrator story, and you've got to cheer that the underdog won in this case:

The high school principal who pushed to suspend a 14-year-old autistic boy for running onto the field during halftime of a football game while wearing a banana man costume has resigned.

Karen Spillman lasted less than two months at Colonial Forge High School in Stafford, Va. The superintendent wouldn't say why Spillman is officially out.

Bryan Thompson became an Internet folk hero after he ended up in handcuffs in the back of a police car following his Sept. 16 stunt.

The full story, and the comments afterward, do not paint a flattering picture of the principal. At all. No matter how you try to spin it.

The Title of the Linked Article Explains Why I'm A Conservative

link

Who Is On The Front Line Of Freedom's Frontier?

Just last week, two well-educated and well-known writer acquaintances of mine remarked in passing on the "fact" that those who serve in the U.S. military typically have no other career options. America's soldiers, they said, were poor and black.

They don't mean this to denigrate their service—no, they mean it as a critique of American society, which turns its unemployed into cannon fodder. Especially today with high unemployment, the charge goes, hapless youths we fail to educate are embarking on a one-way trip to Afghanistan.

These allegations—most frequently leveled at the Army, the military's biggest service and the one with the highest casualty rate—are false. link

Just putting some facts out there, and the author does a good job of doing so.

How Did The Affirmative Action Bake Sale At Berkeley Turn Out?

About like you'd expect :-) In other words, the liberals weren't happy.

Zombie, a star if there ever was one in the realm of internet photoessayists, has the details.

Seen At The Bike Rack Today

Did I mention that the school at which I teach is next to a river?

Education Buzz

This week's is here, with no post from me. I must have failed to send one in :(