Today in History

38 years ago today, North Vietnamese tanks crashed through the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon and took over South Vietnam.  A war ended.

20 years ago today, the first web site on the World Wide Web went live.  A revolution began.

Optimus Recline

I bought the couch on Sunday, it was delivered this evening. 

Bliss.

Economist: Scrap Affirmative Action

From their keyboards to God's (or the Supreme Court's) ears:

ABOVE the entrance to America’s Supreme Court four words are carved: “Equal justice under law”. The court is pondering whether affirmative action breaks that promise. The justices recently accepted a case concerning a vote in Michigan that banned it, and will soon rule on whether the University of Texas’s race-conscious admissions policies are lawful. The question in both cases is as simple as it is divisive: should government be colour-blind...

Many of these policies were put in place with the best of intentions: to atone for past injustices and ameliorate their legacy. No one can deny that, for example, blacks in America or dalits in India (members of the caste once branded “untouchable”) have suffered grievous wrongs, and continue to suffer discrimination. Favouring members of these groups seems like a quick and effective way of making society fairer...

Awarding university places to black students with lower test scores than whites sounds reasonable, given the legacy of segregation. But a study found that at some American universities, black applicants who scored 450 points (out of 1,600) worse than Asians on entrance tests were equally likely to win a place. That is neither fair on Asians, nor an incentive to blacks to study in high school...

Although the groups covered by affirmative action tend to be poorer than their neighbours, the individuals who benefit are often not...

Although these policies tend to start with the intention of favouring narrow groups, they spread as others clamour to be included. That American federal programme began by awarding no-bid contracts to firms owned by blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans; now it covers people with ancestry from at least 33 countries...

The University of Texas (UT) justifies discriminating in favour of black people not on the ground that society owes it to them, but because, it claims, a diverse university offers a better education to all its students. That is a reasonable argument—some companies benefit from understanding a variety of customers, for instance, and the police probably keep order better if enough of them share a culture with the neighbourhood they patrol—but it does not wash for most institutions. In UT’s case, although colleges benefit from a diversity of ideas, to use skin colour as a proxy for this implies that all black people and all Chinese people view the world in a similar way. That suggests a bleak view of the human imagination.

As a child I learned the maxim "two wrongs don't make a right", and it is as true in the case of affirmative action today as it was in my home or school 40 years ago.  It may be legal, but for all the reasons listed above and so many more, there can be no moral justification for it.  As Oliver Cromwell said when dismissing the rump Parliament:,  "You have been sat too long here for any good you have been doing... Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"

The First Model

I've begun the model fitting for the semester project in the Statistical Analysis course I'm taking--I'm trying to predict the number of points the San Francisco 49ers scored in each game over the past 2 seasons based on various game statistics not including the number of touchdowns, field goals, etc.  I'm trying to predict scores based on data like rushing yards, number of offensive plays, turnovers, etc.

I used to do this as a hobby in my younger, pre-fatherhood days when I was glued to the television all weekend during football season.  On Monday I would look at game stats and try to predict the outcome of games.  A lot of it was gut feel, but one standard rule of thumb was this:  each turnover is worth 4 points to the opposing team. 

In the first model that I've fit, the parameter estimate for opponent turnovers is 3.55.   That means that each opponent turnover was worth 3.55 points for the 49ers.

My rule of thumb seems to be justified!

Just for giggles, I fit the model to the data from this past Super Bowl.  The Niners scored 31 points in that game, the model predicts 29.5.

What I've Been Saying For Awhile

Joanne has a great post up about why some kids learn and some don't.  The best line comes from a quote from another post:

 If you are an active learner you will learn. If you are waiting for someone to deliver it to you, make it “relevant”, make it fun – you will be left behind.

Smarter Balanced Assessments

There are two organizations vying for your testing dollars under the Common Core standards, and California has opted to go with the Smarter Balanced testing.  Here's what we can learn about Smarter Balanced so far:

The plan under discussion here last week among state education chiefs of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium represents the collision of hope and reality, as states confront what is politically and fiscally palatable and figure out how that squares with the more in-depth­—and potentially more valuable—approach to testing promised by the consortium.

“There is the dream, and there’s real life,” said one state assessment director attending the meeting. “We’re trying to bridge the two the best we can.”

The evolving two-pronged approach would give states the option of using a version of the Smarter Balanced test whose multiple sessions and classroom activities span nearly 6½ hours in grades 3-5, close to seven hours in grades 6-8, and eight hours in high school, or the group’s original version, which lasts about four hours longer in grades 3-8 and about five hours longer in high school.

That's a lot of testing.

It would be up to each state to choose which version of the assessment it uses. Early signs suggest that public antipathy toward testing and states’ tight fiscal straits are leading more than a few to consider the shorter version. It was pressure from chiefs within the Smarter Balanced consortium that prompted the group earlier this year to explore the option of two versions...

The pressure within Smarter Balanced to offer a shorter version is unsettling for the group’s biggest advocates, who contend that its vision, while lengthening testing in some states, offers immense promise to make tests a more meaningful gauge of achievement and also a form of instruction...

“You asked for authentic assessments,” Ms. Miller (co-chair of the Smarter Balanced executive committee) said she tells them. “Authentic assessment takes time.”

The measurement error between the two versions of the test will be significant:

And when they move from interpreting the two versions of the tests for groups, as states are expected to do for accountability, to using them to make decisions about individual students—as they plan to do in deciding whether high school students are “college and career ready”—the risk increases, he said.

“Any inferences about an individual from a shorter test will be noisier and less reliable,” the expert said.

“If you’re going to make decisions about people,” he said, “you’d hate to make them based on a test where 30 percent of the time you would make a different decision if you used the long instead of the short version of the test.”

Remember, California chose Smarter Balanced and my guess is that due to budget considerations will choose to go with the shorter test.  30% of the time we'd get different results with the longer version.

Another Zoomie Video

A few days ago I posted video of an Air Force Academy graduate going nose to nose with Piers Morgan.  Above is video of an a cappella group of Air Force Academy cadets performing one of the prettiest songs there is.  If you don't know the original, here's an orchestral version of it:

Education for the Real World

This sounds like a good idea to me:

Critics assail “for-profit” colleges for overpricing their education and not preparing students for today’s job market. But one such school is shredding that label with its innovative tuition promise: If you don’t get a job, they don’t get paid.

The school is called App Academy, and it teaches novice developers how to code software. The intensive course, operational in New York City and San Francisco, lasts only nine weeks but crams in a gigantic curriculum. Students learn multiple software languages, like SQL and JavaScript, and solve rigorous problem sets.

“Our goal is to place students as software engineers,” said Kush Patel, one of App Academy’s co-founders. “We don’t care so much if they can do graph theory or algorithms or other obscure kinds of CS topics. We want to give them real-world skills they can use and actually get them a job.”

Here’s how the tuition scheme works: Students study free-of-charge during the course’s duration. Upon gaining employment after graduation, alumni forward 15 percent of their annual base salary to App Academy, but not all at once. Instead, that sum -- typically around $12,000 for the average graduate -- is deducted incrementally from an employed graduate’s bi-weekly pay check for six months.

If a student isn’t hired within one year of completing App Academy, that student won’t be charged tuition. But that hasn’t been a problem for App Academy: Ninety-three percent of its graduates have received offers or are working in tech jobs. 

I'm on record as saying that colleges should get back to providing more of a liberal arts education.  This, however, isn't a college or university as much as it is a trade school--and I like the idea behind this particular trade school.

Netherlands To Have Its First King Since 1890

I first became acquainted with the monarchy of the Netherlands during my first visit there in 1975.  I've since developed a deep respect for Queen Wilhelmina, queen during World War II, for her leadership in exile.  I had no idea she had been queen for about 50 years by the time WWII broke out!  Queen Juliana was queen when I was there, and I received a nice note from the royal palace when, in 1980, I wrote to congratulate Queen Beatrix on her accession.

Queen Beatrix will abdicate in a couple days and her son will become the country's first king since his great-great-grandfather.  A coronation is a nice little birthday present, too:

With just three days to go before he officially becomes king, crown prince Willem-Alexander celebrates his 46th birthday on April 27.

Willem-Alexander, the Netherland’s first king since 1890, will be less focused on affairs of state and more on fulfilling his role as a binding force in the community at large, royal watchers say...

Although many expected the prince would take the title Willem IV, the prince will be known as king Willem-Alexander and his wife Máxima will have the title queen.

Asked in the pre-investiture interview why he did not want to be named king Willem IV, the prince laughed and said he did not want to be a number. ‘Willem 4 is in a field, next to Bertha 38,’ he said, referring to the way cows are named and registered.

US News Best High School Rankings

Just looking at the first page, the numbers that jumped out at me were the student/teacher ratios.  OK, we all know that schools fudge those numbers--so add 5 students to each one and we're still nowhere close to my class sizes.  My contract caps my classes at an average of 33 students per class with a maximum of 36 in any particular class.  That, dear readers, especially you readers outside of California, is not a typo.

The school at which I teach is ranked the highest in our district using US News' methodology.  Even still, we're beyond #1000 nationally and beyond #200 in California.  We are well above our district average, as determined by looking at the cumulative district data.

Ethical? Right Thing To Do? Smart?

Our math department offers a class that our principal thinks is unnecessary.  I truly don't understand his logic, which seems (to me) to be that students' doing well in this class is evidence that the class is unnecessary.  If I'm misstating his position, it's only because he hasn't communicated it in a way that I can understand.  To be clear, I think he's doing a fine job as principal and in general I support what he does, but on this one topic I just do not understand where he's coming from.

So I'm going to do a little statistical analysis.  The course is a "prep for the follow-on course", so I've asked the district for the following data:
-Students who took both this course and the follow-on course at our school in the last three years
-Grades for those students in the follow-on course
-Students who took only the follow-on course at our school in the last three years
-Grades for those students

My goal is to be see if the prep course students do at least as well in the follow-on course as do students who did not need the extra preparation.  It seems to me a chi-square test would be appropriate, looking at the proportions of students who "succeeded" in the follow-on course (grade of A or B) and whether or not they took the "prep" course.  The true measure would be to compare the grades students would have gotten in the follow-on course had they not taken the prep course, but obviously that information is unavailable to us mere mortals.  Any thoughts on the validity of the analysis as described above?

There's nothing wrong with doing that, but then I thought about the following:  what if we were to do an analysis of standardized test results, by teacher, for different courses?   Oh, I wouldn't need to know the teachers' names; the data could be given to me as Teacher A, Teacher B, etc.  Would an ANCOVA analysis (using last year's test score as a covariate) be mathematically appropriate?  And would it be "appropriate", for lack of a better term, to compare, say, all the geometry teachers?

I was thinking about this because we have some teachers who are all into Common Core, into group work, into all that stuff that I'm not; I'm a direct instruction kinda guy.  Currently, though, my students' results can't be compared to anyone else's, as I'm our school's only statistics teacher and the other class I teach doesn't have a specific standardized test associated with it.  We do, however, have several geometry teachers, and they use varying methods to teach the subject matter.  My thought was that we could use standardized test scores as a proxy for the teaching methods and analyze to see which results are better.  We have lots of geometry classes.

If I could see some evidence that so-called discovery learning and group work, which we're being pushed by the district to implement, is valid, I'd give it a shot, but until then I'm going to stick with direct instruction.

In any other field, a valid statistical test would be considered not only reasonable but obvious; in the unionized, we-are-all-one world of education, though, even the mere suggestion that some teachers (or their methods) are not as effective as others could ignite a firestorm.

What do you think?

2 Years Ago Today

There are a few dates that will always stick with me:
The day I graduated from West Point.
The day my son was born.
The day I hurt myself skiing.

That last one was April 23, 2011.  I was released from the hospital Sunday, April 24th, Easter Sunday.  Monday, April 25th, was my first full day at home.

It was also when I started to get the full picture of just how crippled I really was.  I'm fairly pleased with how far I've come since then.

Defeating Campus Censors

There's a special place in 1st Amendment Heaven reserved for the people at FIRE:

It's no longer a matter of much debate that America's college campuses are not the beacons of free and open discussion they were intended to be. In its 14 years of existence, our organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), has documented hundreds of cases of gross abuses of students' and faculty members' fundamental rights.More than sixty percent of America's largest and most prestigious colleges have speech codesthat are either unconstitutional (at public universities) or directly contradict promises of free speech (at private universities).

The two authors of this piece come from different political and personal perspectives. One is a liberal and an atheist (Lukianoff), the other a conservative evangelical Christian (Shibley). Our combined decades of work as president and senior vice president of FIRE have convinced us that the groupthink and the pressure to conform, be silent, or talk solely to those with whom you already agree that is fostered by the culture and rules of the modern campus is destructive to students, our educational system, and our society as a whole.

So what can people who recognize the importance of free speech on campus do about it? There are a number of possible measures that might be taken. FIRE is already doing some of them; others would require new large-scale and ambitious initiatives. Some are cultural. Some are political or legal. None are the silver bullet that a lot of us might like, and some have tradeoffs that might make them less desirable. Let's take a look at a few of them.

Click here to see their suggestions.

How I Spent My Evening

After a stressful day, this was a nice treat.

US Air Force Academy Has Turned Out At Least One Man With Huevos

I like this guy--and he looks like former 49ers great Steve Young:

Turns out he's a 2001 graduate of the Air Force Academy.

Piers Morgan is a chickens**t.

Sometimes, Teachers Behave "Inappropriately"

This would be one of those times:

A former Utah high school math teacher was arrested Friday on charges of raping a 17-year-old female student, Fox13Now.com reports.

Courtney Jarrell, 22, who also coached the Riverton High School girls' basketball team, resigned shortly after she was charged by prosecutors.

Jarrell appeared to be well-liked at the school. She now, however, faces two felony charges of object rape and forcible sexual abuse for a non-consensual sexual encounter that allegedly occurred at the teacher's residence.

One of the first rules for being a long-term teacher is "don't rape the students."  Probably next on the list is "don't have sex with the students."

The Next Time Someone Tells You That NPR Is An Unbiased Source....

On NPR’s ‘All Things Considered’ yesterday, Counterterrorism Correspondent Dina Temple Raston concludes that the Boston Marathon tragedy was more than likely “a domestic extremist attack” citing April as a “big month for anti-government, right-wing individuals.”

In her segment, she notes that Hitler’s birthday and the anniversaries of the Columbine attack, the Oklahoma City bombing and the assault on the Branch-Davidian compound in Waco, TX all fall in April.  link

I'll bet she's one of those sickos who's just devastated that, yet again, it was Muslims who carried out this attack. After finding out she was wrong, I'll bet she immediately jumped on the "hope there's not a backlash against Muslims" bandwagon.

She must really hate Americans, to think that way.

By the way, are you hearing any stories about massive waves of backlash against Muslims in this country?  Me, either.

Illegal Fees In California Schools

It's been a lonely battle, and I didn't know that progress was being made on this front, but a longtime reader who shares my passion about illegal fees just posted a comment on this post--a "dispatch from the front", as it were.  California law has been clarified and is no longer up for interpretation.

Ed Code Section 49010:

ARTICLE 5.5. Pupil Fees [49010. - 49013.]

  ( Article 5.5 added by Stats. 2012, Ch. 776, Sec. 1.)

  

49010.  

For purposes of this article, the following terms have the following meanings:

(a) “Educational activity” means an activity offered by a school, school district, charter school, or county office of education that constitutes an integral fundamental part of elementary and secondary education, including, but not limited to, curricular and extracurricular activities.

(b) “Pupil fee” means a fee, deposit, or other charge imposed on pupils, or a pupil’s parents or guardians, in violation of Section 49011 and Section 5 of Article IX of the California Constitution, which require educational activities to be provided free of charge to all pupils without regard to their families’ ability or willingness to pay fees or request special waivers, as provided for in Hartzell v. Connell (1984) 35 Cal.3d 899. A pupil fee includes, but is not limited to, all of the following:

(1) A fee charged to a pupil as a condition for registering for school or classes, or as a condition for participation in a class or an extracurricular activity, regardless of whether the class or activity is elective or compulsory, or is for credit.

(2) A security deposit, or other payment, that a pupil is required to make to obtain a lock, locker, book, class apparatus, musical instrument, uniform, or other materials or equipment.

(3) A purchase that a pupil is required to make to obtain materials, supplies, equipment, or uniforms associated with an educational activity.

(Added by Stats. 2012, Ch. 776, Sec. 1. Effective January 1, 2013.)

 Ed Code Section 49011:

49011.  

(a) A pupil enrolled in a public school shall not be required to pay a pupil fee for participation in an educational activity.

(b) All of the following requirements apply to the prohibition identified in subdivision (a):

(1) All supplies, materials, and equipment needed to participate in educational activities shall be provided to pupils free of charge.

(2) A fee waiver policy shall not make a pupil fee permissible.

(3) School districts and schools shall not establish a two-tier educational system by requiring a minimal educational standard and also offering a second, higher educational standard that pupils may only obtain through payment of a fee or purchase of additional supplies that the school district or school does not provide.

(4) A school district or school shall not offer course credit or privileges related to educational activities in exchange for money or donations of goods or services from a pupil or a pupil’s parents or guardians, and a school district or school shall not remove course credit or privileges related to educational activities, or otherwise discriminate against a pupil, because the pupil or the pupil’s parents or guardians did not or will not provide money or donations of goods or services to the school district or school.

(c) This article shall not be interpreted to prohibit solicitation of voluntary donations of funds or property, voluntary participation in fundraising activities, or school districts, schools, and other entities from providing pupils prizes or other recognition for voluntarily participating in fundraising activities.

(d) This article applies to all public schools, including, but not limited to, charter schools and alternative schools.

(e) This article is declarative of existing law and shall not be interpreted to prohibit the imposition of a fee, deposit, or other charge otherwise allowed by law.

(Added by Stats. 2012, Ch. 776, Sec. 1. Effective January 1, 2013.)

Ed Code Section 49012:

49012.  

(a) Commencing with the 2014–15 fiscal year, and every three years thereafter, the department shall develop and distribute guidance for county superintendents of schools, district superintendents, and charter school administrators regarding the imposition of pupil fees for participation in educational activities in public schools. The department shall post the guidance on the department’s Internet Web site.

(b) The guidance developed pursuant to subdivision (a) shall not constitute a regulation subject to the requirements of Chapter 3.5 (commencing with Section 11340) of Part 1 of Division 3 of Title 2 of the Government Code.

(Added by Stats. 2012, Ch. 776, Sec. 1. Effective January 1, 2013.)

Ed Code Section 49013:

49013.  

(a) A complaint of noncompliance with the requirements of this article may be filed with the principal of a school under the Uniform Complaint Procedures set forth in Chapter 5.1 (commencing with Section 4600) of Division 1 of Title 5 of the California Code of Regulations.

(b) A complaint may be filed anonymously if the complaint provides evidence or information leading to evidence to support an allegation of noncompliance with the requirements of this article.

(c) A complainant not satisfied with the decision of a public school may appeal the decision to the department and shall receive a written appeal decision within 60 days of the department’s receipt of the appeal.

(d) If a public school finds merit in a complaint, or the department finds merit in an appeal, the public school shall provide a remedy to all affected pupils, parents, and guardians that, where applicable, includes reasonable efforts by the public school to ensure full reimbursement to all affected pupils, parents, and guardians, subject to procedures established through regulations adopted by the state board.

(e) Information regarding the requirements of this article shall be included in the annual notification distributed to pupils, parents and guardians, employees, and other interested parties pursuant to Section 4622 of Title 5 of the California Code of Regulations.

(f) Public schools shall establish local policies and procedures to implement the provisions of this section on or before March 1, 2013.

(Added by Stats. 2012, Ch. 776, Sec. 1. Effective January 1, 2013.)

All of this is searchable on California Legislative Information web site, now located at http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codesTextSearch.xhtml.

I'll make sure this information is disseminated at my school.

Common Core in California

I received permission from the author to post the following here:

Yesterday, I found sample CCSS test questions. They seemed VERY similar to our current standardized tests, just with bells and whistles. Now, gasp, the domain has been removed. Perhaps "they" are getting wind of backlash, or, want to keep everything secret.

Either way, bells and whistles don't make things better, its trickery. The questions were not of more rigor, just more computer based "fun" methods set to confuse students. Keypad/calculator looking icons to type in an answer in some, bubble-in the answer in others, drag this and that here and there to answer this, highlight that.

Here's where I got the link; the sample items and performance task portion. Its all California based but CCSS is national so it applies to most every state. http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sa/smarterbalanced.asp

We are so screwed.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

Californians pay for their state universities because there's this belief that there's a social good we all share by doing so.  If that's true, isn't this just wrong?

The University of California, Davis has admitted nearly 22,000 applicants for its freshman class this fall, but they include fewer California students than last year and more students from other states and countries.

UC Davis' admissions reflect the University of California's goal to substantially increase the number of out-of-state and international undergraduate students ever since lawmakers imposed state budget cuts during the recession.

Perhaps our UC's are just government-run businesses which, if profit is the motive, shouldn't be government-run anymore.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/04/19/5354544/uc-davis-accepts-more-foreign.html#storylink=cpy