How Can We Hold Parents Responsible For Anything?

Using the logic of the SF school district, we should give kids alcohol so they won't use illegal drugs:

All San Francisco middle school students now have easy access to condoms, whether or not their parents want them to have them.

The San Francisco Unified School District became the third in California – after Oakland and Los Angeles – to give away condoms to middle schoolers when board members unanimously approved the decision at a meeting Tuesday night, NBC Bay Area reports.

SFUSD safety and wellness director Kevon Gogin said the decision is based on a survey of sixth through eighth grade students that showed about 5 percent are sexually active and 3 percent use condoms. 

They're going to encourage what any thinking adult knows is unwise (what junior high kid is emotionally ready for sex?) because 5% already do it?  5%?

How can we as a society hold parents responsible for anything their children do when the government (the school system) undermines parental authority and responsibility?

There's A Lesson Here

Do you remember Michael Fay?  He was the American teenager who committed vandalism and theft in Singapore and was sentenced to caning back in 1994.  To put it bluntly, he got his butt whipped with a stick.  While many in America viewed the punishment as harsh, it was a lesson that some countries actually enforce their laws and your excuses and prevarications will not protect you there.

Fast forward to today, where an American university student is under arrest in North Korea for theft:

North Korea presented a detained American student before the media on Monday in Pyongyang, where he tearfully apologized for attempting to steal a political banner -- at the behest, he said, of a member of a church back home who wanted it as a "trophy" -- from a staff-only section of the hotel where he had been staying.


North Korea announced in late January it had arrested Otto Warmbier, a 21-year-old University of Virginia undergraduate student. It said that after entering the country as a tourist he committed an anti-state crime with "the tacit connivance of the U.S. government and under its manipulation."


No details of what kind of charges or punishment Warmbier faces were immediately released.


According to Warmbier's statement Monday, he wanted the banner with a political slogan on it as a trophy for the church member, who was the mother of a friend...

He was arrested while visiting the country with Young Pioneer Tours, an agency specializing in travel to the North, which is strongly discouraged by the U.S. State Department.

He is not a "hostage", contrary to the Fox News video at the link.  He is a thief.

Of course I think that criminal penalties in some countries are unnecessarily harsh.  On the other hand, if you go to other countries, you must obey their laws.  The fact that we don't enforce our laws in this country (illegal immigration, for starters) doesn't mean that other countries don't enforce theirs.  You don't have the right to "freedom of speech" or "trial by your peers" or any other such rights if those countries don't allow them.  And you don't have the right not to suffer corporal punishment a la Michael Fay, or the "right" not to be sentenced to hard labor for theft of a banner a la Otto Warmbier, when you go to other countries.

I have two quotes to offer.  "Stupid should hurt."  "The stupid is strong with this one."  I hope he's learning his lesson after spending several weeks in a North Korean jail cell.  I also hope he'll be released soon.

Micromanaging Teachers

I'm all for having a consistent set of content standards to which all teachers of a course teach.  I not all for having every class of every course on the same page every day, or requiring everyone to grade exactly the same way:

Because our supervisory district administration aren't really teachers, and our curriculum coordinator used to teach elementary school and some MS social studies, everything must have a rubric or it isn't proper. As well, everything we used to do was BAD and must be changed.

We're being asked, "Do we use a rubric? Since your answer should be 'yes', which one of these four is the one you're all going to use?"

The fact that we spent nearly an hour discussing whether to use the word "proficient", "competent", or "skilled", and whether the top level would be modified with "highly", "advanced", or "with distinction" should give you a good idea of how divorced this all was from real students and real teaching. We never did finish that conversation, but we did begin to spend time arguing over whether the four levels should be considered five if there was a checkbox labelled "Not Enough Data to Measure" in addition to Highly 'word', 'word', Nearly 'word', Beginning 'word'.

The funny part is the explicit statement is that we will use the same rubric throughout the building, that every teacher, in every course, for every student, for every transferable skill (the non-content skills), will use the same rubric to determine proficiency. If any measurement does not use the rubric, it isn't measured properly and cannot be defended as fair and consistent across the board...

Trying to impose a common rubric for AP Calculus and 7th-grade civics is foolish and counter-productive.

Trying to impose consistency even within our department is foolish and counter-productive. He's a math major; I'm an engineer; of course we look at things differently.

He uses the calculators more than I do; I ask for more mental math than he does. "Who's better?" misses the point that, over the course of four years, students get both.

When a teacher is not allowed to use the word "proficient" because it's not a "growth word", something is wrong. Very, very wrong.  When teaching becomes overly scripted and managed, something is wrong.

Yet Another Example of Forcing School Into Where It Doesn't Belong

Don't we have enough issues to deal with at school, without having to deal with teenage sexting as well?  If it's happening at school, that's one thing, but if it's happening outside of school, why should the school be involved at all?

Concerned by a practice he’s said is becoming more prevalent in schools, a state lawmaker is carrying a bill that would let schools suspend or expel kids for so-called sexting – sharing explicit pictures and recordings via electronic message. Assembly Bill 2536 would also require that health classes include information on the perils of sharing scandalous content.

The bill specifically deals with images or video – lascivious language isn’t enough – and focuses on cases where the communication has “the effect of humiliating or harassing a pupil.” It exempts images that have “serious literary, artistic, educational, political, or scientific value.”

“Over the last few years we have heard many stories about the impacts of sexting. Sexting has real consequences,” the bill’s author, Assemblyman Ed Chau, D-Arcadia, said in an interview. “You basically have a sexting issue and then that issue is exacerbated by the proliferation of these smartphones,” which Chau said is fueling more cyberbullying.

The "effect on a pupil" argument is so slippery.  Just about everything has an effect on kids ("pupils"), are we going to give schools the authority to, for example, suspend kids for not inviting someone to their party (it "hurt their feelings")?  Are we going to give schools the authority to, for example, suspend students who have sex?  Are we going to give schools the authority to, for example, suspend kids who attend the "wrong" meetings outside of school, (again, "hurting the feelings" of others)?

If I've said it once, I've said it 8 zillion times--schools need to worry about what goes on during school.  Anything else is the responsibility of the parents or the police.

Education Spending News Out Of California

From the major Sacramento newspaper:

Three years ago, Gov. Jerry Brown persuaded legislators to overhaul how tens of billions of dollars in state aid flows to schools.

It pumped more money to schools, virtually eliminated strings on billions of dollars that had been restricted to particular programs, and gave additional aid to districts with large numbers of poor and “English learner” students.

The rationale was that educators would have more money and flexibility to improve educations for 6-plus million kids and close the “achievement gap” that separated – and still separates – poor black and Latino students from their white and Asian American classmates.

Simultaneously, the state was abolishing its test-driven oversight system, creating a new “multiple measures” system that would be, it was said, “a flashlight and not a hammer,” and trusting local school officials to do the right thing through “Local Control Accountability Plans” (LCAPs) that would involve parents and taxpayers.

So how’s all that working out? No one knows.

The “multiple measures” system is still being drafted in impenetrable educational jargon, and the LCAPs are drawing criticism for their own opaqueness. New academic tests, keyed to a new Common Core curriculum, have been administered, but educators insist that they are too new to be meaningful.

I'm wondering if the best California legislators can do is end daylight savings time.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/dan-walters/article62907632.html#storylink=cpy

How We Learn Math

I have found this to be true:

Over the past several decades, math education in the United States has shifted from the traditional model of math instruction to “reform math”. The traditional model has been criticized for relying on rote memorization rather than conceptual understanding. Calling the traditional approach “skills based”, math reformers deride it and claim that it teaches students only how to follow the teacher’s direction in solving routine problems, but does not teach students how to think critically or to solve non-routine problems. Traditional/skills-based teaching, the argument goes, doesn’t meet the demands of our 21st century world.

As I’ve discussed elsewhere, the criticism of traditional math teaching is based largely on a mischaracterization of how it is/has been taught, and misrepresented as having failed thousands of students in math education despite evidence of its effectiveness in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s. Reacting to this characterization of the traditional model, math reformers promote a teaching approach in which understanding and process dominate over content. In lower grades, mental math and number sense are emphasized before students are fluent with procedures and number facts. Procedural fluency is seldom achieved. In lieu of the standard methods for adding/subtracting, multiplying and dividing, in some programs students are taught strategies and alternative methods. Whole class and teacher-led explicit instruction (and even teacher-led discovery) has given way to what the education establishment believes is superior: students working in groups in a collaborative learning environment. Classrooms have become student-centered and inquiry-based. The grouping of students by ability has almost entirely disappeared in the lower grades—full inclusion has become the norm. Reformers dismiss the possibility that understanding and discovery can be achieved by students working on sets of math problems individually and that procedural fluency is a prerequisite to understanding. Much of the education establishment now believes it is the other way around; if students have the understanding, then the need to work many problems (which they term “drill and kill”) can be avoided.

The de-emphasis on mastery of basic facts, skills and procedures has met with growing opposition, not only from parents but also from university mathematicians. At a recent conference on math education held in Winnipeg, math professor Stephen Wilson from Johns Hopkins University said, much to the consternation of the educationists on the panel, that “the way mathematicians learn is to learn how to do it first and then figure out how it works later.” This sentiment was also echoed in an article written by Keith Devlin (2006). Such opposition has had limited success, however, in turning the tide away from reform approaches.  (boldface mine--Darren)

Old School

When I was in 8th grade (during Carter's presidency!) I got a waterbed.  I still use the frame, but for the past decade-plus I've had an ordinary mattress in it.

I've missed sleeping on a waterbed.

Lately I've been waking up several times during the night, it's not good rest.

A few weeks ago I went to the same store where the bed was purchased (it's probably the only waterbed place left in Sacramento) and ordered a new mattress.  They custom-ordered it from a company in Carson City.  A couple days ago it came in.

I set it up and filled it on Wednesday.  It would take longer than an evening to warm up, though, so my sleep that night wasn't very restful--unless you consider sleeping on an iceberg restful, which I do not.

But last night...last night it was fully heated.  The new fleece sheets were on.  And I crawled in.  So soft, so toasty warm.  I slept for 6 hrs before waking up, turned the pillow over, and slept for another hour and a half or so.  It was heaven.

I'm looking forward to being tired tonight so I have an excuse to sleep in it again.

I Thought This "Campus Free Speech" Business Was Settled During The Vietnam War

I thought that, but I was wrong.  If it must be fought, though, I'm glad FIRE is on the case:

Last fall, the student groups held an outdoor event displaying posters with examples of expression that had been censored on campuses across the country. Three other students filed formal complaints, claiming that some of the posters were “offensive” and “triggering.” In response, USC served Abbott with a “Notice of Charge” letter and launched an investigation for “discrimination,” threatening him with punishment up to and including expulsion for his protected speech.

Abbott and the campus chapters of YAL and the College Libertarians are now suing USC for violating their free speech rights. FIRE is sponsoring the lawsuit, the twelfth in FIRE’s undefeated national Stand Up For Speech Litigation Project. 

“The University of South Carolina is so intolerant of free speech that students can’t even talk about free speech,” said Catherine Sevcenko, FIRE’s director of litigation.

In case you missed it, let's try part of that again, with gusto:

FIRE is sponsoring the lawsuit, the twelfth in FIRE’s undefeated national Stand Up For Speech Litigation Project.  

That they have won so many, and lost none, tells you how anti-First Amendment our universities have become. 

Want Even More Evidence of Media Bias?

Here's yet another one:

Networks Hyped Perry Indictment in 2014; Silent on Dismissal


I wonder if it's because he has an (R) after his name?  No, you're right, I don't really wonder at all.

Let Us Pray It Ends!

Here's a bill (in California, no less!) that I can support:

Springing forward and falling back would be reserved for gymnasts under a California bill seeking to eliminate daylight saving time.

If you’ve ever awoken an hour early, showed up to work an hour late or groaned at having to reset all your clocks because of the biannual time shifts, Assemblyman Kansen Chu, D-San Jose, feels your pain.

“I heard some complaints last year from some of the senior citizens (in my district) and their care providers who say this one-hour difference really impacted their lives,” Chu said...

Hence Assembly Bill 2496, which would end the practice in California, undoing a law that voters approved back in 1949 via Proposition 12.

I mean, seriously.  If you can't even decide in which time zone your state belongs....

Due Process Strikes Back

Let's hope this rationality and stroke of simple reason continue:

Thus, Smith upheld the student's allegation that he was discriminated against because of his male gender, which led Brown to reach an erroneous outcome in suspending him for two-and-a-half years.

The accused student's lawsuit also argued a breach of contract with Brown over the school's treatment of him once he was accused. The student argued 11 counts of a breach of contract, and Judge Smith upheld seven while granting Brown's motion to dismiss the other four.

On one count, Smith found that Brown violated its own code of conduct when it treated the accused student as guilty from the start and banned him from school resources, even though the code allows all students access to its facilities. Brown also erred, according to Smith, when it allowed an administrator not specifically named in the code of conduct as having the authority to remove a student from campus to ban the accused student from the campus...

"Most important however, is that Judge Smith offers groundbreaking analysis in stating: 'Requiring that a male student conclusively demonstrate, at the pleading stage, with evidence and/or data analysis that female students accused of sexual assault were treated differently is both practically impossible and inconsistent with the standard used in other discrimination contexts,'" Miltenberg (the student's attorney) added. "We expect this decision to have a significant impact on the manner in which courts view Title IX cases."

It would be nice to get past these Salem witch trials.

A One-Track Mind

Today, as my stats students were working on a 2-sample t-test project determining if one version of a chapter test is statistically significantly harder than another, I planned a project for the next chapter.  My students have done the same project for the past few years now, one that involves the proportion of left-handed students at school, but I want to try something different this year.

I got a report of the birth date of every student in school and was able, without too much effort, to get just the birth month for each of our approximately 1600 students.  The project will be for students to determine if the proportion of students born in any specific month is about what we'd expect given the length of each month.  In other words, are births spread out evenly throughout the year?

Most of the months had numbers close to what we'd expect, but a bar chart of births per month showed September sticking out like a bump on a log.  I showed the chart and data to some nearby students, and almost immediately one boy said, "New Years."

Throw in Christmas parties and Christmas and I'm sure he was correct.

Should I Stay Or Should I Go Now?

No exotic trips for me this summer.  Perhaps I'll just hitch up the Egg-terprise and head off to Calgary, Alberta. 

And perhaps I'll attend this, in a town named for the Roman god of fire.

Not A Bad Start For Age 20, But...

When you're a teacher and you see an article titled This Author Thinks He Knows How To Stop Kids From Hating School, you have to stop and read it.  When you learn that the referenced author is only 20 you feel a little let down, because you know where the article is going to go--straight to Angst-town.

The author is 20 and didn't like school.  He stereotypes (but perhaps not unnecessarily so) and extrapolates--and then comes up with the ideal school:

Goyal documents his research in a new book, Schools on Trial: How Freedom and Creativity Can Fix Our Educational Malpractice. He looks to progressive, democratic schools -- both public and private -- in Chicago, New York and Philadelphia, as models of what's possible. These schools encourage students to take control of their educational experiences, design their own curriculum and play as much as possible. They create happy environments, where bullying is virtually non-existent, Goyal writes....

Hm.  Amazing that that's never been suggested before (except it has been, in every generation since Rousseau).  And my counter to his proposal is the same I've had to Rousseau, to Pestalozzi, to Freire:

According to one Kieran Egan, “Bertrand Russell, after his first disastrous experiment in organizing a school, observed that the first task of education is to destroy the tyranny of the local and immediate over the child’s imagination."

That's not to say that students shouldn't have a wide choice of classes from which to choose.  I think schools should have more electives, not fewer, and students should be allowed more freedom to choose.  I wouldn't go as far as Goyal suggests, though.  Neither am I willing to be completely swayed that we should change our entire educational system because he didn't like school.

As for the next quote, I'm willing to believe that perhaps Huffington Post incorrectly used "destruct" rather than "deconstruct".  If he actually said and meant "destruct", well, then he's just in idiot; why should schools, paid for by contributing members of society, encouraging "destructing" that very society?

I think they're creating docile, passive adults who largely are not capable of complex, critical thinking.

I think they generally create people who fit into the social order and don’t look to destruct it as much. It's very rare for kids to come out of school with a lot of their imagination and curiosity intact.

I'm on record as saying that a prerequisite to critical thinking is having a large base of knowledge about which to think critically.  And Goyal here paints with an extremely broad brush, one I'm not sure that he's intellectually capable of handling.  Really, it's "very rare" for kids to graduate with imagination and curiousity?  Really?

I'm sure Goyal is well-meaning and may very well have some good ideas.  The ideas expressed in the linked article certainly aren't bad for a man of 20--but I'm not ready to "destruct" our educational system and replace it with his, not just yet.

All Good Things

Break is over, school starts back up tomorrow.  That means I'm back in "school week" mode, which also means that I'll start doing my homework again tonight on my normal schedule.  I worked on it only 2 of 5 days this past week, but fortunately I was (and still am) far enough ahead in the course that I can get away with that.

I really should get to writing my paper.  A rough draft of it is due in just over a month--and Spring Break is in there somewhere!

Unnecessary--Common Core Is On The Job!

I've been under the incorrect (?) impression that Common Core is supposed to solve all of society's problems, and perhaps even bring about a thousand years of peace:

Tucked inside Gov. Jerry Brown’s projected 2016-17 budget is a proposal for an unusual state-funded competition to address a long-standing challenge facing high school seniors: getting them better prepared for college-level math.

Brown is proposing spending $3 million for a competition to develop a year-long math course that is closely aligned with the California State University’s expectations for incoming freshmen, and will help students avoid having to take remedial classes when they get there.

In higher education circles, educators increasingly refer to these classes as “developmental classes,” in part to remove the stigma that may be associated with the “remedial” label.

The governor’s budget proposal noted that a high school course already exists to better prepare students for college-level English – the Expository Reading and Writing Course – which is now being taught in most high schools in the state...

The additional high school course would mesh with the Common Core State Standards, which envisage a three-year sequence of math courses but also strongly recommend a fourth year, without specifying what that fourth-year course should be...

In particular, the new math course could help students master Algebra 2. WestEd’s Finkelstein noted that Algebra 2 is a hard, discouraging experience for many students in the 11th grade, leading them to abandon math entirely after taking the class. He estimates that 30 percent of students don’t take any math in the 12th grade. Other estimates put that figure as high as 40 percent. That means that large numbers of students are likely to arrive in college unprepared for college-level math, and that they will have to take developmental classes to catch up. It might also disqualify them altogether from admission to most UC campuses.

We won't even teach Algebra 2 at my school anymore.  We teach integrated math.  Maybe this proposed course should prepare students for "integrated math 3".

Read the entire article at http://edsource.org/2016/gov-brown-proposes-competition-to-create-new-high-school-math-course/94051.

There Is Hope For The Friedrichs Case

Justice Scalia's death threw a lot of cases up in the air.  Here is a little reassurance regarding the Friedrichs case:

Below is a list of frequently asked questions and their respective answers:

1. How will Justice Scalia’s passing impact the case?
First and foremost, the Friedrichs case is not over. However, as a result of a potential tie decision, the Center for Individual Rights has announced plans to argue that the case be re-heard when a full Supreme Court can render an authoritative decision.
2. What would happen if a tie vote were to be made?
If the Supreme Court were to issue a 4-4 decision, the lower court ruling could be upheld.  Waiting for a new justice to be seated will once and for all give teachers the answers they deserve about their free speech rights.
3. When will the case be re-heard?
While much is still uncertain about the eventual Supreme Court nominee and approval process, experts expect the case to be re-heard during the courts next term, which begins in October of this year. This could mean a year-long delay of the final resolution of the case.
4. Has this ever happened before?
Yes! There are decades-old examples of the U.S. Supreme Court re-hearing cases that have already been argued once a new justice is appointed to the court.
5. Union supporters think the case is over. Is that true?
   The Center for Individual Rights – representing the AAE plaintiff teachers in Friedrichs vs. CTA – issued the following statement addressing this issue:
   
   “Union supporters who proclaimed Friedrichs done and over with within hours of Justice Scalia’s death miss what is at the heart of this case:  the crucial need for our Supreme Court to settle controversial questions of individual rights — rights that affect all Americans — authoritatively.  These central First Amendment issues need to be settled after full deliberation, not as the result of the tragic and untimely death of one Justice.  Friedrichs needs to be heard and decided by a full Court.” Read the full statement.

Dare I hope again?

Poor Little Lambs

Do they know, or even care, how pathetic they sound?

Brown University students are whining that classes and homework are interfering with their social-justice activism — and it’s, like, totally unfair for sensitive, forward-thinking minds like theirs to be expected to do so much schoolwork at school. Yes, you read that right . . . expectations to do schoolwork at school are oppressive, and it is a very, very serious problem: “There are people breaking down, dropping out of classes and failing classes because of the activism work they are taking on,” one anonymous student, referred to as “David,” told the Brown Daily Herald...

So, given this, I have to ask: If having to do course work at college is too much for you — even with an extension — why are you at college? Call me crazy, but I thought that the point of being a college student was to go to classes and complete assignments to earn a degree. How else could it possibly work? You just earn one by going there? By being physically present within a certain radius of a classroom? What exactly do these kids want?

Pampered, spoiled, narcissistic. My generation created this, and for that I am truly disappointed.

Here's the solution:

If you want to do no college coursework and full-time social-justice work, how about just not going to college and doing social justice work full time?

Oh, that won't work--because it would be work, and work is harrrrrrrrrrrrrd.

Universities, Free Speech, and Bravery

Yesterday, Adam Falk, the president of Williams College, disgraced himself, the college that he leads, and the institution of free speech that he has claimed to support. He did this by disinviting John Derbyshire, the mathematician and commentator, from speaking at Williams for a student-run program called "Uncomfortable Learning," a series specifically designed to bring serious but alternative points of view to the expensive (this year's tab: $63,290) and coddled purlieus of Williamstown, Massachusetts, where nearly all the faculty are left-leaning and the students, with rare exceptions, are timid if irritable politically correct babies...

John Derbyshire's unpardonable offense is to have opinions about race that differ from those certified by the examining board of politically correct attitudes. Those opinions mandate, for example, that it is OK to say "Black Lives Matter," but not "White Lives Matter," or even "All Lives Matter," which is held to be racist (yes, really). It's OK to say that you believe in genetics, but you must never, ever ask questions like: "Is intelligence or social behavior heritable?"  That, too, is held to be deeply racist, just as asking questions like "Do men, in general,  display greater aptitude for math than women?" is impermissible. (And note well: you can't even ask the questions, let alone answer them in the wrong way.)

John Derbyshire inadvertently burned his bridges with the politically correct establishment back in 2012 when he published an article expressing some of his thoughts on the realities of race in contemporary America. You can read his offending column here and learn a bit more about his views from an interview he conducted with Gawker here...

By his disreputable actions yesterday, Adam Falk has indisputably joined the ranks of the neo-McCarthyites who, basking in the conviction of their own virtue, present themselves as staunch defenders of free speech just so long as there is no cost to do so.  link

Then there should be a cost.

I'm not against having "horrible" people speak at universities, or against appropriate protests by those who who still allow a person to speak (rather than disrupt or cause speeches to be canceled).  I'm certainly against horrible people being held up as exemplars, though, as was the case a year and a half ago at UCLA.

Update, 2/20/16:  I'm always up for A Modest Proposal:

After my column appeared, a friend of liberty at Williams pointed out to me that the college library contains some books written by Derbyshire.  He said two, but a little investigation revealed that the Sawyer Library actually contains four printed books by Derbyshire...

Indeed, let us now move to my modest proposal.  If  John Derbyshire is a practitioner of "hate speech," as Adam Falk assured us he was, then how can Williams College, an echt correct institution where everyone believes (or at least says) the same thing about all contentious issues regarding sex, race, the virtues (or, more to the point, the vices) of traditional American values and, oh, so many other things — how can Williams, I say, countenance the presence in its midst of not one, not two, but FOUR books by the swine Derbyshire?

Adam Falk made a preliminary gesture by disinviting John Derbyshire from coming to Williams. But surely, when Williams has in its possession four of Derbyshire's books,  that is too timid a response.  He and the deans and all right-minded (by which I mean left-leaning) students should organize a public holocaust of Derbyshire's books.  After all, the works of someone who is guilty of expressing contraband opinions must not be allowed the implicit endorsement of space on the shelves of Sawyer Library....Burning his books in public, with appropriate expressions of contrition laced with smug self-satisfaction, should go a long way towards providing a much needed catharsis.  The event should, of course, be filmed and made widely available as a model of how the contemporary American college and university ought to deal with speech that its self-appointed guardians disagree with.  It is sure to be an exemplary performance, and I am only sorry (though I am not surprised) that the Williams library has no books by me to add to the conflagration.

More Darned Expenses

I took a friend out to lunch today; that was voluntary, so it doesn't count as an expense.

I noticed that my vacuum cleaner wasn't working.  It' didn't take long to figure out that the belt had broken, but what caused it?  Not being a talented repair guy and just magically knowing how it was supposed to work, it took me another 15 minutes or so just to figure out that the roller itself was bad--and that is what caused the belt to break.  $35 in parts on Bissell's web site.

I went out to visit some family tonight.  I have a Camry; after you turn the car off, the lights stay on for about 30 seconds, presumably so you can get to the door of the house without being in the dark.  Anyway, I noticed one of the taillights is out.  I'll make a trip to Auto Zone tomorrow...should I do that before or after I plug in the code reader to find out why my Check Engine light is still on?

My first-world problems are pretty severe.

Update, 2/19/16:   Used the code reader to turn off the Check Engine light and it has yet to come back on.  Could it be that the new gas cap fixed the problem?

Also, I had a light bulb left over from the last time I changed bulbs out--so no additional cost for the car!

The vacuum cleaner parts should arrive next Tuesday.