I Didn't Know AP Tests Were Scored Any Other Than 1 Thru 5

Apparently they are, and getting a 5 doesn't mean you "aced" it.  Only 12 people on the planet aced the AP Calculus test last year:

What's 12 divided by 302, 532?

It comes out to .00003967 or .003967 percent. That's the percentage of students in the entire world who took the test and earned a perfect score on the infamously difficult college-level Advanced Placement Calculus exam last year.

Cedrick Argueta, the son of a Salvadoran maintenance worker and a Filipina nurse, was in that tiny fraction of perfection, the Los Angeles Unified School District announced.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the self-described quiet 17-year-old senior at Lincoln High — a school of about 1,200 students in the heavily Latino Lincoln Heights neighborhood in Los Angeles — called the news "crazy."

"Twelve people in the whole world to do this and I was one of them? It's amazing," he told the Times.
Though Argueta found out over the summer that he had achieved the highest score, a 5, on the three-hour and 15-minute test, he only found out about his perfect score last week when the College Board sent a letter to the school's principal.

Who knew!

And good for Cedrick for achieving excellence.

Update:  Here's a little more information.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Our school's physics teacher put out a call for lemons--he needed them to generate electrical current.  He got far more lemons than he needed.

He put several of the unused lemons in each of our staff lounges--being California, our school is spread out and we have 3 different lounges.  Anyway, the denizens of the lounge I frequent insisted that I take the lemons and make more limoncello.  My limoncello is reputed to be the best on the planet.  I last made some in late 2012, and I still have a little left in the freezer.  This latest request for a new batch means I'll have to start drinking up the original (yay!) so I can reuse the bottles.

Last time when I made it, I had 17 "naked" lemons (no zest) remaining.  Back to the internet I went for a lemonade recipe.  It was so sweet, though, that I noted that next time I'd use only half the sugar.

This time, though, I won't make lemonade.  Another teacher in our lounge said he'd make carbonated lemonade.  He has all the accouterments to do so.  So after I strip all these lemons, taking their outer yellow and leaving their whites, I'll return them to school and let him make the lemonade.

Lots of cooperation going on with these lemons!

Bacon

Someone somewhere designated this week as some sort of Bacon Appreciation Week, so today in our staff lounge we had a sort of bacon-themed potluck.

We had spinach salad (with a goodly amount of bacon on it), a bacon-bacon-bacon pizza, little smokies wrapped in bacon, chocolate-covered bacon (don't knock it till you try it!), and a chocolate-bacon fudge.  I wasn't feeling so great last night and didn't have anything bacon-oriented to bring, so I did some bakin' and brought corn bread.

It was a good lunch!

The Law Is An Ass

When laws are written and enforced in such a way that the victim is the criminal, the law doesn't merit being followed and the government that passed the law doesn't merit being obeyed:

The teenager told police that she was attacked in central Sønderborg on Wednesday at around 10pm by a dark-skinned English-speaking man. She said the man knocked her to the ground and then unbuttoned her pants and attempted to undress her. 

 

The girl was able to save herself from further assault by using pepper spray on the attacker, but now she may be the one who ends up in legal trouble. 

 

“It is illegal to possess and use pepper spray, so she will likely be charged for that,” local police spokesman Knud Kirsten told TV Syd. 

 

The case has sparked a backlash among some Danes who point to increasing reports of sexual harassment in Sønderborg and other Danish cities at the same time that police say they are stretched too thin to properly carry out their duties.

Yay, California

From Instapundit I get the link to this article, about how California shafted itself by adopting Common Core:

A California commission has just decided the technology costs for Common Core tests are an unfunded mandate, which will require state taxpayers to cough up approximately $4 billion more to local school districts, Californian and former U.S. Department of Education official Ze’ev Wurman tells The Federalist.

This adds to the extra $3.5 billion the legislature gave schools for Common Core in spring 2015 and a separate infusion of $1.7 billion Gov. Jerry Brown snagged for Common Core spread across fiscal years 2014 and 2015. That makes a total of approximately $9.2 billion above and beyond existing tax expenditures Californians will pay to have Common Core injected into their state.

This even though both vested and independent analyses found that California’s pre-Common Core curriculum mandates were of higher quality than the Common Core that replaced it. You read that right: Californians got their kids worse instruction, and are paying $9.2 billion extra for it.

This follows our $6 billion in stem cell research that has returned nothing to the state, our tens of billions of dollars on our bullet train that will never see the light of day, etc.   California's motto:  if it's wacky enough or liberal enough, we'll do it--if for no other reason than to show how wacky or liberal we are!

One of the biggest problems, though, is that unlike the stem cell research (which was merely fruit of the poisoned tree, not the actual poisoning) or the bullet train, the change to Common Core standards actually hurts kids, at least in math.

A Downton Abbey Reference

I've enjoyed the show.  Yes, the storylines are so bad that I always say they must have been written by a 7th grade girl ("Uh oh, we're broke and we'll lose Downton--no wait!  One of us just inherited zillions from someone we're not even related to and now we're saved!") but the scenery, the speech, the costumes, I can't help but enjoy it.

It's clear I'm getting old.  My 3 favorite characters are Mr. Carson, Mrs. Hughes (now Mrs. Carson--yay!), and the Dowager Countess.  I respect the dowager's morality even in those few instances where I disagree with it; and come on, Maggie Smith seems to be truly enjoying herself playing that part!

I didn't expect to see Downton Abbey relate to our political issues of today, but when I saw this article I like the dowager even a little bit more:

For those who don't follow the show, one of the subplots of the current and final season, which takes place in 1925, involves a debate over whether to let the larger Yorkshire hospital absorb a smaller local hospital. Though other characters in the show are in favor of the move, arguing it would bring more modern equipment and treatments to the village, Violet is fighting the idea tooth and nail, warning it would deprive the locals of their autonomy and there would be less individualized care.

On Sunday's episode, Violet (played by the brilliant Maggie Smith) made the case that there was a broader importance to fighting the hospital takeover.

"For years I've watched governments take control of our lives, and their argument is always the same — fewer costs, greater efficiency — but the result is the same too," Violet said. "Less control by the people, more control by the state, until the individual's own wishes count for nothing. That is what I consider my duty to resist."

Hear hear. And it might not hurt to hear from the Gipper himself on the issue:

Maybe This Is Why Liberals Rant About Income Inequality So Much

It's all around them:

The folks at Bloomberg Rankings, drawing on U.S. Census data, have measured the level of inequality—the Gini coefficient—in each of the 435 U.S. congressional districts. It’s a fascinating list (and a map) that reveals all sorts of interesting things. Here’s one: 32 of the 35 districts in which inequality is greatest are represented by Democrats (Republicans represent two; the other is vacant).

And this picture from National Review might shed a little light on the problem, too:

Doctor, heal thyself.

As A Parent, You Cringe

I've mentioned before that my son is a military policeman.  He's been at his duty station for just over a year now and just today underwent some training he previously hadn't.

I'm sure that all of us in the army have gone through the "gas tent", a tent filled with CS gas that makes you gag, makes your eyes stream tears and your nose stream snot and your mouth stream spit, and feels like razors as it goes down your throat; you learn quickly that when you hear an alarm of "gas! gas! gas!" that you will want to put your "gas" mask on immediately.

My son went through that in basic training, but as a military policeman he gets to look forward to even more special stuff.  Eventually he'll have to get tazed.  Today he had to work through getting sprayed directly in the face with pepper spray.

He sent me a couple pictures.  He doesn't look happy!  Yeah, I can laugh a little, but that's my son in pain.  No one likes to see that.

He'll get around to sending me the video!

It's Only Bad If Your Side Is On The Losing End

In this reporter's world, the Supreme Court could never get anything wrong.  Plessy v. Ferguson, Pace v. Alabama, and Bowers v. Hardwick would still be the law of the land.  I have no doubt at all that this particular author would throw a party if Citizens United v. FEC were overruled:

IN his vitriolic dissent last June from the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage decision, Justice Antonin Scalia accused the majority of having carried out a “judicial putsch.” Justice Scalia should know. He and his four conservative colleagues were then in the process of executing one themselves.

On June 30, four days after handing down the marriage decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, the court announced that it would hear a major challenge to the future of public-employee labor unions. That case, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, was argued last week. As was widely reported, the outcome appears foreordained: the court will vote 5 to 4 to overturn a precedent that for 39 years has permitted public-employee unions to charge nonmembers a “fair-share” fee representing the portion of union dues that go to representing all employees in collective bargaining and grievance proceedings. As the exclusive bargaining agent, a union has a legal duty to represent everyone in the unit, whether members or not; the fee addresses the problem of “free riders” and the resentment engendered by those who accept the union’s help while letting their fellow workers foot the bill.

I always enjoy the "free rider" argument.  In effect, what its supporters are saying is that I can be thrown into a taxi, taken a bunch of places I don't want to go, and then should be compelled to pay the taxi driver because he or she took me to those places.  What a silly line of reasoning.

I just couldn't let that argument stand without challenge.  Now I can move on.

For the past several years it is more common for the Supreme Court to rule unanimously in a case than it is for it to rule 5-4.  So yes, there are some "ideological disagreements" that must be decided, but is the so-called conservative wing of the court any more ideological or diabolical than the so-called liberal wing?  Sometimes, previous courts just got things wrong and their rulings must be overturned.  Even Sandra Day O'Connor said in Grutter v. Bollinger that perhaps after 25 years, affirmative action will no longer be needed, implying the Court would no doubt have to rule it unconstitutional and overturn the very case about which she was writing.

If you want to read an entirely biased, one-sided argument--a "vitriolic dissent", as it were, from what the author thinks the Supreme Court will rule--then go read the entire linked article.  If you would like to read both sides of the issue then read the transcript of the case, as it was argued before the Court 13 days ago, in PDF form downloadable from the Supreme Court's official site.

As an aside, everything I've read indicates that most people believe the Court will rule in Friedrichs' favor.  I thought the Court would rule for Kelo in Kelo v. New London and I thought it would rule against the legality of Obamacare.  I'll not count my chickens before they hatch, but I do hope Ms. Greenhouse (author of the piece linked above) is correct in her prognostication.

I'm Thankful To Have Received The Broad, Liberal Arts Education I Did At West Point

While I might not have enjoyed philosophy class, or sociology, or classical literature as much as I enjoyed Physics Of Modern Weapons Systems or Fluid Dynamics, I always recognized the value of taking those "words" classes:

He presented early results from a research study (that eventually he hopes to turn into a book) about the long-term impact of having attended a liberal arts college or experienced qualities associated with liberal arts education. The results back up the claims that liberal arts advocates make for their institutions -- claims that Detweiler said he feared didn't always have data behind them.

The study's initial results suggest that one can prove that a liberal arts-style education can be associated with greater odds, compared to others with bachelor's degrees, on such qualities as being a leader, being seen as ethical, appreciating arts and culture and leading a fulfilling and happy life...

Detweiler acknowledged the current cultural "obsession" with salaries as a measure of the value of a college education. And he said it was true business and engineering majors earned more, on average, than those with liberal arts majors. But he also noted that the top factor associated with a six-figure salary was not college major but having taken a large share of classes outside one's major.

The Class Affects Observed Teacher Ability

Some teachers excel at teaching what we might call "lower end" students.  That doesn't mean that they don't also excel at teaching higher end students, it's just that they're good at both ends of the spectrum.  Almost any teacher can teach a high end class.

Even teachers who are good at teaching lower classes, though, may not look so good during a classroom observation.  It's reasonable to assume that the classroom environment in those lower end classes will not match the "ideal" classroom environment (which would be akin to an AP Calculus class environment) and as a result the teacher would not be evaluated as highly as his or her results would merit:

Observations of teachers—usually the most prominent component of teacher-evaluation systems—can carry significant sources of bias, potentially penalizing English/language arts teachers of lower-achieving students, concludes a recent research study...

The analysis provides more evidence that, despite the widespread concern about test-score-based ratings of teachers, observations of teachers are just as susceptible to error. It deepens earlier findings by looking at the topic at a more granular level, and by showing that the findings are consistent across several analytical samples...

The researchers found that ELA teachers of higher-achieving students were more likely to get higher scores on the "classroom environment" domain of the Framework for Teaching, which considers teachers' classroom management and their ability to create a respectful learning environment, among other goals. Overall, an English teacher with a class whose incoming achievement was a standard deviation higher would get his or her score pushed up by about a third of a standard deviation...

Now here's the interesting thing. The bias did not show up on all of the FFT domains. Teachers' ratings on things directly related to instructional technique—whether they ask students probing questions and use assessments for instruction—weren't related to students' prior achievement. And math teachers generally didn't seem to get the same boost from having better-performing students. The authors postulate that math instruction, by its very nature, tends to be more direct and to use fewer groups, conversations, and other techniques that rise and fall on student interactions.

Read the whole thing for details and policy suggestions.

Blogiversary

11 years ago today I started RotLC with this post.  What an inauspicious beginning to something I never dreamed would last this long, never dreamed would encompass over 10,000 posts, never dreamed would create a community of so many people (several of whom I've met in person now), never dreamed would bring me such joy.

Isn't It Ironic (Doncha Think?)

Today I needed to email a PDF file to a student of mine.  Our school district has district-created email addresses for every single student; I logged onto our student information system and district email system, clicked on the student's name, clicked on his email address, attached the PDF, and hit send.

The email was returned as "undeliverable".  If that doesn't tell you about the kinds of difficulties I encounter regarding our "technology services"....

What A Long Day

After school today we had a 3-hour long meeting, the first of several as we prepare for next year's accreditation visit.

I'm so exhausted right now.

I know, First World Problems :-)

"Justice" For This Instructor Would Be Tar and Feathers

Can anyone justify this?  Anyone?

A teacher at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro requires students in her class to write an 8-page commitment to social justice — pupils who take her class because it’s a required course to earn a K-12 teaching credential.

An assignment in instructor Revital Zilonka’s “Institution of Education” class tells future North Carolina teachers that “by the end of the semester, you are required to write your own personal/professional commitment to social justice,” the syllabus states.

The class mandates a list of feminist and Marxist readings, and students’ “commitment” is expected to be up to eight pages long and delve into how they plan to advance social justice “given the new understanding you have by now about society and education,” the syllabus adds.

I've said it 8 zillion times:  lefties don't really believe in diversity, especially diversity of opinions.  And they're all about compulsion.

Chickens Coming Home To Roost

Now it's lefties who are fearing the very monster they created.  Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people:

I was a liberal at 20 and I’m a liberal now, at 47. I have the same ideological trappings as I always have done. I’m laissez-faire socially and fiscally conservative. I’m happy with gay marriage and equality and would like to see drugs legalised, but I also want markets that are broadly free, tax rates that encourage business and so on.

The reason for for this is that ideology has become unbundled. Back in the '70s, if you were really pro-equality, you had little choice but to align yourself with the economic left. Now you can choose your views from a kind of buffet – and it’s perfectly normal to like free trade alongside a load of stuff that would once have belonged on a hippyish fringe.

So why am I bringing all this up? Because the last few years have seen the dawn of a new kind of political correctness which I think of as “PC 2.0”. This is the movement that seeks to de-platform Germaine Greer and wants every trace of Cecil Rhodes removed from Oxford. It’s the kind of thinking that has made gender so confusing that I don’t even know what the right view is any more, although I’m pretty sure that my view will be the wrong one, whatever it is.

Suddenly, those of us who had never worried about being seen as politically unsound are being cast as ageing, right-wing bigots. It’s weird finding yourself on the “reactionary” side of the argument with one of the world’s most famous feminists.

Why Do Lefties Hate Men So Much, Especially Men In College?

Are there any legitimate statistics out there--I don't know, say from the FBI or something--showing that college males are even slightly more prone to commit rape or sexual assault than are men in their age cohort who are not in college?  I wonder why only college students are held to the "yes means yes" standard (he said, she said, anyone?), why only college students are accused in non-legal kangaroo courts without due process protections, why only college students will now have accusations (not legal convictions) held against them when they try to attend other colleges:

One would like to believe that any college student found responsible for sexual assault was actually responsible for the crime. But far too often on college campuses, students are being branded as rapists because of campus kangaroo courts that ignore due process and, under pressure from the government, find students responsible regardless of the evidence.

Now, Congresswoman Jackie Speier, D-Calif., says she plans to introduce legislation that would ensure colleges and universities are made aware when a transferring student has been found responsible for sexual assault or sexual harassment.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education points out that this would be an acceptable approach if the findings of campus hearings weren't flawed. But as Anita Levy, senior program officer for the American Association of University Professors, told Inside Higher Ed, passing on such information is concerning "when the original proceedings may have been severely lacking in procedural protections, and thus the findings questionable — even if that means some genuine serial harassers may slip through the nets."

Of course the person pushing this is a liberal from California. She probably won't be happy until there are no men left in our universities.

Anderson Doesn't Share "California Values", Does Share "Jefferson Values"

These two links tell you a little about the difference between urban California and rural California.  First:

Donald Trump told an audience in Vermont on Jan. 7 that anyone without a gun in a gun-free zone was nothing but “bait” for “sickos.”

Trump won’t have to worry about students or their teachers being "bait" in more than three dozen school districts in America. Guns are not only allowed in class in those school systems -- Trump should be happy to see teachers are being encouraged to come to school with a pistol in their pockets.

These teachers are ready to take down the sickos.

Anderson Union High School District officials in California understand the intent of Senate Bill 707 that Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed into law in December. It is intended to keep concealed weapons out of high school and college campuses.

However, by ignoring the intent, and following the letter of the law, these teachers are not only being allowed to carry guns in their classrooms, they are also being encouraged to pack heat...

Students in Anderson Union High School District in California are not only OK with their teachers carrying guns to class, they told KRCR-TV they felt safer knowing the adults were armed.

Anderson Police Chief Mike Johnson doesn’t get a vote on the school board, so he didn’t share in the decision to arm teachers. But he thinks it is a good idea.

Second:

In Siskiyou County, Calif., the tax base is so small and land area so vast the county’s 44,000 residents have to rely on themselves in an emergency. The county can only afford a slim law-enforcement presence, so if there’s a problem the response time may be "basically never," explains Mark Baird, a rancher and retired deputy sheriff who met with me in a Sacramento coffee shop last Wednesday.

Yet, he pointed out, Senate President Pro Tempore Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) just announced his support for more expansive gun-control measures. That disconnect between rural residents, who rely on their guns for self protection, and the more urban-oriented priorities at the Capitol, is an example of why he drove to the Capitol this week.

Baird is a leader of the ongoing effort to carve out rural northern California counties (and in past proposals, some southern Oregon counties, also) into the 51st state of Jefferson. The idea got a burst of attention in 2014 when Silicon Valley entrepreneur Tim Draper tried (and failed) to place on the ballot a measure that would break California into six states, one of which would have been called Jefferson.

But while the attention faded away, the Jefferson movement—the continuation of an effort that got its start in the World War II era—has plugged along. Baird was here to present "declarations" from 15 of California’s 58 counties calling for withdrawal from California. The group held a rally on the west steps of the Capitol...

At the Capitol rally, attended by several hundred people, I saw this sign: "Rural areas need proper representation." As one speaker noted, "This is not secession." He then invoked the Federalist papers No. 51, an essay about the proper way to construct a legislature. Baird points to a 1964 U.S. Supreme Court case that forced legislatures to base representation solely on population (rather than having Senate seats divvied up by county). In fact, their next step is a federal lawsuit based on these representation issues.

Those counties that would be part of the new state tend to have some of the lowest populations in California. Colusa has around 21,000 people. Sierra has 3,000 and Trinity has nearly 14,000 people. Those are rounding errors in most Southern California cities. Obviously, it’s hard to get much attention to their concerns in a Legislature dominated by representatives from counties with millions of people.

These representation concerns seem authentic. I was driving through Yuba County over the weekend and heard radio ads promoting Jefferson. I’ve seen the Double-X flag (standing for residents having been double-crossed by politicians in Sacramento and Salem) flying all across the north state.

Are you surprised to learn that Anderson is in the would-be state of Jefferson?

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Back in the late 90s, a time when computers in schools weren't everywhere, I was in my teacher credentialing program.  One of my friends in the program was able to get a donation of about 2 dozen computers for her elementary school classroom; she loaded them up with Oregon Trail, some other educational games, and other goodies.  These were stand-alone computers, not connected to each other or to the internet.  I'm not even sure if they had internet capability or not.

One day she called me in a panic--do I need any computers?  If not, could I at least take some?  See, her principal didn't think it was fair that her class had computers and no other classes did, so the principal ordered the computers removed.  That afternoon.

Fast forward to today.  I have a dozen and a half netbook computers for use in my stats classes.  They were purchased by the school and our district tech services folks worked their magic on them.  We have wireless nodes all over our school, and these computers are, of course, internet-capable.  They're dang difficult to use, though, because, in an effort to make sure a student somewhere doesn't access pictures of boobies or something, our tech services has made the process of logging in and using the computers a herculean task.  If we do it exactly by the book, network speeds slow to a crawl.  Even when we don't do it exactly by the book, I still encounter problems that I have to work around.  (Note:  kids may know how to use phone apps, but logging into our school computer network and accessing a web site when given a URL that omits www for convenience sake?  No way.  Most of them aren't as savvy as adults think they are.  The hurdles our tech services people put in our path are to try to stop the very few who are tech savvy.  But I digress.)

It would be great if things could work smoothly--you know, like my wireless network at home does, no matter what kind of equipment I connect to it with.  It would be great if school administrators weren't such ninnies about computers:

All teacher Kim Kutzner wanted to do was help her students dig into their school work.

In her zeal to reach her students and make their writing assignments easier, the Chowchilla [California] Union High School English teacher pooled her resources and used her husband’s savvy to get her students the equipment she believed would help them excel.

Kutzner says her students’ test scores are up after she and her husband bought the equivalent of nearly $80,000 worth of laptop computers for her students to use...

Kutzner told The Modesto Bee that at first the English Department Chair was given major ‘atta girls’ five years ago for buying the computers at auctions, having her husband fix them up and network them into a classroom computer lab.

Now, however, the district is, as the principal of her school told Independent Journal, “investigating” and “assessing” the use of the computers. In fact, the school may ban their use.

It’s unclear why the computers are now becoming an issue.

The laptops aren’t connected to the internet and students are currently being allowed to use them.

The Chowchilla Union School District Superintendent says he’s now concerned with the privacy of students.

Banning "Please"

Among other things, teachers should model appropriate behavior for their students.  They should show students, by their example, how to be a good person in our society.  Failure to model those behaviors, especially in front of "bratty" kids, seems more than a little counterproductive.  Banning that modeling is just plain stupid:

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WTVD) — For parents, please is often referred to as the magic word, but now one Charlotte school is banning teachers from using it.

Officials at Druid Hills Academy say that the goal is to make so-called "bratty kids" behave.

It's called "No-Nonsense Nurturing," where the teachers give kids concise, clear instructions in a format called M.V.P. – movement, voice and participation.