A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste

Last week on social media I encountered a former student of mine from three years ago.  I didn't remember him.

I keep PDF's of my grades, and have for about 5 years now.  Today I went through the lists of names of students in my classes from the last few years.  I can't believe how many of them whose faces I cannot bring to mind, and how many whose names I just don't remember.  I've never been very good at names, but this is ridiculous.

I have 12 more years to teach before I can afford to retire.  I worry that my mind won't make it that far.

Went to the DMV Today

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

I've written about the Department of Motor Vehicles before, at least here and here.  In the latter link I discussed my recent scheduling of today's DMV appointment.

The only time I could schedule an appointment that (probably) wouldn't conflict with work was today at 9:30--I had a 2-hr prep period (none yesterday) that ended at 10:00 but that was the best I could do.  I left school at 9:10 and arrived shortly before 9:30.

The line stretched out of the building and down through the parking lot.  Not at all remembering my experience outlined in the first link above, I went to the front of the line and sure enough, there was a very short line for those of us with appointments.  Walk-ins at this particular office are a nightmare.

I got to a window, checked in for my appointment, and was given a number--now I had to wait like everyone else.  However, my number was called before 9:35, so that wasn't bad at all.  The woman at the window I was sent to ignored me for about a minute and then graciously acknowledged my presence.

I had to renew my driver's license and get a new picture because my last picture was 15 years old; I figured while I was there I might as well renew my motorcycle registration, which I received a few days ago.  The lady took my registration paperwork and asked for a check for several dozen dollars.  I asked, "How much for the license renewal?  I can write just one check."  Her reply:  "It's got to be two checks--two different systems."  Of course there are.  I wrote a check and she handed me a new registration and license plate sticker.  Then she directed me to another window.

The lady at that window was waiting for me.  She gave me an eye test which I barely passed; I wear only one contact lens for "monovision", so my left eye is uncorrected.  Wearing one lens gives me 20/20 vision and depth perception, and allows me to see up close and at a distance without putting on reading glasses or the like.  I didn't realize that I needed at least 20/100 in both eyes individually in order to pass!  After spending a few moments focusing and such I was able to succeed.  If I remember in the future, I need to take my glasses with me to such appointments and not wear my contact!

Then I was sent to the line to get my new picture.  Got it, was given a temporary license, was told I'd receive my actual license in 5-7 working days, and off I went.

I got back to school at 10:00.  My class started at 10:05.  The teacher who had planned to cover for me in case I was late was just opening my classroom door.  All told I had been gone for 50 minutes.

Not bad.

Dodging a Bullet--Why This Presidential Election Is So Personally Important To Me

The teachers unions dodged a bullet today.  The Friedrichs case, widely believed on both sides of the political spectrum to be the death knell for forced unionism, was decided 4-4 today.  At best, the case can be reheard after a new president chooses a new justice.

My personal free association rights hang in the balance.  That is one reason why this presidential election is so important to me.

From CNN:

In an unexpected victory for union supporters, the Supreme Court said Tuesday it was evenly divided in a case concerning public sector unions, and therefore it affirmed the lower court decision in organized labor's favor.

The result leaves intact a nearly 40-year-old precedent and is most likely reflective of the impact that Justice Antonin Scalia's death had on pending cases.

At oral arguments, the high court seemed poised to deal a major blow to unions and overrule precedent, but with Scalia's death there were no longer five justices available to do so.

Fox News:

The Supreme Court split 4-4 Tuesday on a challenge brought by public school teachers who objected to paying union dues, delivering a big win for the unions – in the first major case where the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s vote would have proved decisive.

The California teachers in the case had challenged a state law requiring non-union workers to pay “fair share” fees into the public-employee unions to cover collective bargaining costs.

The court, with its split decision, left in place a lower court ruling favoring the unions.

The result is an unlikely victory for organized labor after it seemed almost certain the high court would rule 5-4 to overturn a system in place nearly 40 years. The court is operating with only eight justices after the death of Scalia, who had been expected to rule against the unions.

The one-sentence opinion Tuesday does not set a national precedent and does not identify how each justice voted. It simply upholds a decision from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that applies to California and eight other Western states.

Update: Forbes:

Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association was one of the highly anticipated cases of this Term. The Court was to decide whether public employee unions can garnish the wages of non-union members to support the unions’ collective bargaining and other political activities, without those workers’ consent. Rebecca Friedrichs and other teachers challenged California laws that granted the union special permission to garnish their wages as a violation of their First Amendment rights. PLF supported the teachers with an amicus brief. Oral arguments looked promising for the teachers, and the teachers’ unions began preparing for life without agency shop fees. Then Justice Scalia passed away and the landscape changed. As California teacher Darren Miller lamented, “Friedrichs is probably the last time in my life I’ll get a chance to be free of forced unionism as a teacher, and now that chance has suffered a body blow.”

Miller called it, at least for the time being. Today, the Supreme Court affirmed the Ninth Circuit’s ruling in favor of the unions, in a 4-4 tie.

Today’s decision allows the union to continue to trample individual teachers’ constitutional rights as they have been doing since 1977’s decision in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education. The Abood case allows unions to garnish wages of non-union members to pay for collective bargaining, which, in the public sector, is rife with politics and lobbying. While Abood lives for today, the fact remains that the Court significantly weakened Abood in two recent union dues cases—Knox v. Service Employees International Union and Harris v. Quinn—both of which noted that the decision in Abood was based on faulty premises and an unrealistic view of public-employee unionism, with the resulting infringement on individual rights. For this reason, I offer Miller and other California teachers this hope: Resolution of this fight is delayed, but it is not over.

The author is a principal attorney with Pacific Legal Foundation.

Update #2, 3/31/16:

The California teacher challenging compulsory union dues will file a request for the Supreme Court to rehear her case after it deadlocked on her petition to overturn longstanding precedent.

“We are very patient people and we are definitely in this for the long haul,” veteran teacher Rebecca Friedrichs said in a Tuesday conference call with reporters. “In our view it simply delays the final outcome … I am very hopeful that the justices will let us reargue the case.”  link

The Definition of Counterproductive

Usually, teachers unions do everything they can, by fair means or foul, to get people into their union or at least to get them to pay dues.  The Chicago Teachers Union is giving teachers a get-out-of-the-union free card, if this story is to be believed:

Some Chicago Public Schools teachers who aren’t sold on their union’s decision to call a one-day strike will face consequences if they cross the picket line on April 1.

A South Side high school teacher who asked not to be identified told me that she learned her plan to show up to school on the so-called “Day of Action” would get her kicked out of the union.

“It was said to me as a matter of fact that the consequence of choosing to come to school is being kicked out of the union,” the teacher said. “I’m furious about the whole thing"...

CTU financial secretary Kristine Mayle said teachers considering showing up to work on April 1 have been informed of provisions in the union bylaws that relate to “strike breakers” that date back to at least 1971.

“We put out information in response to questions but we are not trying to threaten members. But if someone crosses the picket line they undermine the union. We have to do this together or it doesn’t work,” Mayle said.

“We are following the constitution. If you cross the picket line you are considered a strikebreaker. Once that is reported to the office … we have a series of meetings and the committee determines whether to revoke your union membership.”

A teacher excommunicated by CTU would still have to pay union fees because they receive the benefits of contract negotiations, but they lose other benefits including union-provided liability insurance, according to a memo sent to a member who crossed the picket line during the 2012 teachers strike obtained by DNAinfo Chicago.

Any organization that has to threaten you in order to keep you in line isn't worth your time, membership, or money.  Two words:  agency fee.

Hat tip:  Larry Sand, President of the California Teachers Empowerment Network.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

If you don't know, ask anyone who's taken a basic economics course:

California legislators and labor unions have reached an agreement that will take the state’s minimum wage from $10 to $15 an hour.

When Schools Give In

I recently did a post on schools giving in on discipline with regards to special education students, and Joanne recently did one on schools that have seemingly given up on trying to discipline students.  These two are not the only such posts in existence, the problem is rampant across the country.  The problem was created the moment school administrators decided it was easier to give in than to do what's right.

I thought of that as I read this story from the New York Times about emergency room doctors who prescribe opioids to known addicts:

But, as one of my colleagues whom I greatly respect said to me in the emergency room recently: “Why wouldn’t I give patients a Percocet prescription? It makes their life easier and my life easier.” Another colleague overhead this and wholeheartedly agreed, speaking truth to the fact that the system is set up so that refusing these demands is much more difficult and time-consuming than it is to simply give in to them.

What is this doctor's solution to her problem (and to mine)?

But the truth is, a deep cultural shift within our health care system is needed. Physicians need to know that if they don’t prescribe a narcotic because it’s not clinically indicated, or worse yet, because the patient already has an addiction problem, that they have the backing of administrators at every level, from their own department to the head of the hospital all the way up to state officials. If patients are seeking narcotics and have a documented history of doing so — and become combative or refuse to leave after discharge — they may need to be escorted out of the emergency room by security and their treatment terminated to avoid interrupting the care of other patients.

What my patient said to me that Saturday morning is right: We health care providers created the problem. Now it’s up to us to take steps to try to solve it.

What makes absolute sense in medicine is the furthest thing from reality in education.  The words from West Point's Cadet Prayer come back to me: Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong.

Hyperinflation

I went to a coin show today, and in addition to some fine coins (including coins of both Caracalla and Geta, the Cain and Abel of ancient Rome) I picked up a new banknote.  It was only $1 so I could afford it.

In this post I posted pictures of some of my "inflationary notes".  I now have notes from three of the greatest hyperinflationary periods of the 20th Century.

Weimar Germany, 1923:

click to enlarge

The first note is a 1000 Mark note counterstamped to be worth 1 billion Marks.  It was cheaper and faster to release counterstamped notes than to produce new notes.  But they still produced new notes, and the second one is 5 billion Marks.  It's printed only on one side.  Wikipedia has details on the rate of inflation, which peaked at around 29,500% in one month.

Hungary, 1946, and Zimbabwe, 2008:

My new note is from Hungary, where the unit of currency at the start of 1946 was the pengo.  The first note above is 1 million milpengos, or 1 million million (1 trillion) pengos.  Milpengos were later replaced by b-pengos, or 1 trillion pengos, so my note above was clearly not at the end of the inflationary period.  Wikipedia has details on the rate of inflation, which peaked between 13 and 42 trillion percent in one month.  Hungary in 1946 still holds the Guiness Book record for highest inflation rate of all time.

Zimbabwe's is the most recent hyperinflation, taking place not even a decade ago.  Wikipedia has some details on the rate of inflation, but figures vary so much that it's hard to know which to trust.

A compilation of hyperinflation rates is available here.

Best of Enemies

A couple days ago I bought the documentary Best of Enemies, about the 1968 election discussions between William F. Buckley, Jr., and Gore Vidal.

I thought the "debates" would be better; instead, what I saw was two men (who clearly hated each other) trying to knock the other one down with verbal repartee.  While I agreed with Buckley I thought Vidal was the more "entertaining", having won the jabbing contest.  Perhaps viewers in 1968 were more sophisticated, not having had strong doses of reality- and low-attention-span TV.

One thing that Buckley said really sickened Vidal, but it seems to me to be a universal truth.  I cannot imagine how anyone can argue with it.  It was 3 simple words:  Freedom breeds inequality.  If it weren't true I'd be a fighter pilot.  Or an astronaut.  Or a San Francisco 49er.  Or a surfer.  And I'd be rich.

Of course I believe in freedom before the law, and of Equal Justice Under Law.  I also believe we're all equal in the eyes of God.  But we have different abilities, different desires, different beliefs, and our personal freedom gives us the ability to pursue for ourselves that which we can given our abilities, desires, and beliefs.  Forced equality of abilities, or of outcomes based on abilities and beliefs, truly brings us all down to the level of the least able.

That's why government shouldn't try to make everyone "equal"--as I wrote about in my previous post.

The End Of Education

Joanne has a post that says much more than she probably planned for it to:

Tracking in eighth grade — usually in math — correlates with higher scores on AP tests at the end of high school, concludes the 2016 Brown Center Report on American Education.

The quote at the end is the most telling:

San Francisco Unified middle schools no longer teach algebra, as part of the shift to Common Core standards, reported Ana Tintocalis for KQED last year.

For years, all eighth graders took algebra and many failed, said Lizzy Hull Barnes.  Now no one will take algebra till ninth grade.

This “is a social justice issue for SFUSD,” writes Tintocalis. “District officials say the controversial practice of tracking students — or separating them based on talent and ability — is simply wrong.”

No, what's "simply wrong" is what I identified in my comment on Joanne's post:

That, in a nutshell, is why we in education have lost all credibility. It’s clear that SFUSD doesn’t believe all children should reach their potential, and they’re willing to hold some kids back in order to make that belief a reality.

Fair Is Fair

I'm not saying this law is right, it's not. I'm not saying it was enforced the way laws should be, either.

However, such laws--and there are myriad laws that are primarily enforced against men--will only be gotten rid of when they're equally enforced against women. Or, in this case, girls:

Twelve-year-old Breana Evans was arrested after pinching a boy’s butt at an Orlando-area middle school and charged with misdemeanor battery for the cheeky attack.

“I regret it because I didn’t know it would lead to this,” Evans told WKMG. “I feel like it’s just stupid — just a stupid charge that shouldn’t have to happen.”

Her victim, a fellow classmate at Milwee Middle School, didn’t want to press charges, but his mother jumped in and told police he wanted the preteen prosecuted for battery.

Not that it matters legally, of course, but left unsaid in the article is whether or not the boy liked it.

32 Years Ago Today

It was on this date that they met:

Five high school students, all different stereotypes, meet in detention, where they pour their hearts out to each other, and discover how they have a lot more in common than they thought. 

It's in the first few seconds:

Debasing The Coinage

A useful trick for "saving" money used to be debasing the coinage--putting less silver or gold in a coin than the face value stated.  When people discovered this was happening, inflation became rampant.

We've gotten rid of that today, we just don't put any precious metal in our coins.

In the 1990s, the heyday of Whole Language and Fuzzy Math, education took such a turn for the worse that taxpayers, those who fund education, had enough.  A high school diploma was no longer indicative even of an ability to read, and standardized testing in schools took on greater prominence with NCLB.  Jobs that used to require only a high school diploma started requiring college degrees, not because the jobs were more difficult, but because a degree meant some modicum of learning existed in the holder.

What's happening on college campuses today, where seemingly everything is important except actually learning something of value--and no, protesting about chalk writings is not of value--has devalued university degrees that outside testing of college students is now being discussed:

The New America Foundation is out with a new white paper, written by Fredrik DeBoer of Purdue University, on the prospects for a standardized or semi-standardized system of testing for college students...

The paper, while attentive to concerns about unreliability and unintended consequences, is cautiously optimistic about the impact such an assessment system would have on higher education quality. And it suggests that the results could help the federal government control tuition increases by steering subsidies away from low-performing schools.

Go ahead, college students of today, keep shooting yourselves in the foot.

Scratch that, it's time for the adults to assert themselves.  Shut up and get back to class.  We're tired of funding your hissy fits.

Consistency

Foolish consistency may be the hobgoblin of little minds, but inconsistency just makes you look like a partisan hack, an idiot, or worse.

Update:  if you can't see the picture (I can in the "create post" view but not in the website view), click here.

This Summer Vs. Next

Can a Star Trek fan go to Alberta, Canada, and not go to the town of Vulcan?  If if a Star Trek fan goes to Vulcan, can a Star Trek fan miss the 50th Anniversary of Star Trek Vul-Con?

A Star Trek fan cannot.

I'm going to hitch up my fiberglass camping trailer, the USS Egg-terprise, and head up there this summer.  Should be fun.

With Summer '16 confirmed, I'm looking ahead to Summer '17:

Have to find someone to go with, though.  I can't afford an extra $4700-$5500 to travel solo, and that's what it would be since the cabins are per person/double occupancy.

Anyway, that's my dream trip for 2017.  We'll see how that works out!

Hard To Believe

I filed my taxes on March 13th.  Today, while checking my account for something entirely different, I see that both my federal and state refunds were credited to me yesterday--just over a week later. 

Gotta love computers.

How I'm Spending Spring Break

We've had some rain, but the sky is clear today and the weather reports look clear into next week.  Perhaps I'll take a day trip to Reno or something :)

Until then, I've been working at home.  I usually don't bring work home with me to grade but needed to this week.  So far I've finished my two classes' worth of pre-calculus quizzes, and I'm working my way through my statistics projects at a rate of 5 per day (that takes me about an hour).

I've also committed to adding one paragraph each day to each of the papers I'm writing in my History of Educational Thought class.  That should allow me to have them finished well in advance of the April 10 due date for rough drafts.

I sure know how to have fun, don't I?!

A Decent Thing To Do

It's a crappy reason to get a scholarship named after you, though:

A new scholarship named in honor of Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management student Taylor Force will honor his contributions to both the university and to his country by supporting graduates of the U.S. military academies attending Owen. Force, 28, was killed in a terrorist attack March 8 in Tel Aviv, Israel. 

Force was a first-year MBA student and a 2009 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He was in Israel as part of an Owen trip to study global entrepreneurship. Vanderbilt Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos announced the scholarship during the Vanderbilt memorial service held for Force on campus March 18...

The new scholarship will provide financial support to qualified Owen students with first preference given to graduates of the United States Military Academy at West Point.  Second preference will be given to graduates of the United States Air Force Academy or the United States Naval Academy. 

Coding In Schools

From the major Sacramento newspaper, which I noticed today is getting smaller and smaller:

California is home to Silicon Valley, a hub of technological innovation. The computer industry boasts hundreds of thousands of well-paying information technology jobs, with more on the way. IT departments are now a staple of corporate America.

Yet the large majority of California’s public high schools don’t offer dedicated computer science or computer programming courses, according to a Sacramento Bee review of teacher assignment data from the California Department of Education.

What do you think might be some of the reasons for this, hm?

There is a stark disconnect between those numbers and the amount of computer science education offered in California public high schools. More California high school students take ceramics courses than take dedicated computer programming courses, according to state data. Far more students take art, band, chorus, psychology or French courses than courses devoted to computer science. Students are almost 20 times as likely to take Advanced Placement English language or literature as they are to take AP computer science...

Keeshin is among several experts who pointed to a basic challenge schools face in trying to expand the computer curriculum: a lack of qualified teachers. Teaching positions in California tend to pay far less than what someone can make as a computer programmer or engineer. The median salary for a programmer in California is about $90,000. The median high school teacher’s salary is $70,000...

Prospective high school teachers generally obtain a single-subject credential in the discipline they plan to teach. But California does not offer computer science certification for teachers. Instead, teacher candidates interested in computer science usually get certified in math, business or industrial technology. Creating a new single-subject credential would require an act of the Legislature...

Educators point to other barriers as well: During the last decade, the federal No Child Left Behind standards focused attention on core academic subjects such as math and English. Schools faced penalties if their students failed to perform well on tests that measured proficiency in those core subjects. Computer programming was not among the skill sets emphasized.

I call BS on the NCLB excuse.  California's Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) System not only predated NCLB, but required more testing, more often than did NCLB.

Similarly, computer programming is not among the core admission requirements at California’s public universities. The University of California publishes a list of “A-G” subject requirements for students who want to attend one of the system’s colleges. Those requirements include history, English, mathematics, laboratory science, foreign language, and visual and performing arts. Computer science courses are considered one of multiple “college-preparatory electives.”

Nearby UC Davis has created "off the shelf" curricula for integrating computing, robotics, or both into high school math classes.  It's not like this can't be done.

Do you want to know why it isn't being done?  Because education isn't a priority in California.  "Surely you jest", some of you say, when you see how much of the state budget is taken up by education.  On the other hand, California has some of the largest class sizes in the country.  It has some of the lowest test scores in the country.  California's infrastructure, including schools, is crumbling--but we have money to blow on high-speed rail from Fresno to Bakersfield or some such, we have money to blow on social programs (California has less than 1/8 of the US population but has 1/3 of US welfare cases), we have money to blow on environmental rules that encourage businesses to relocate outside of California.  I don't know what California's priorities are, but I know what they aren't. 

Do you think my school district would pay to send us to UC Davis' training, or for the computers and other equipment needed to outfit our high schools for these classes?  No, because then we couldn't support assistant superintendents, like one for "labor relations", or our many directors, like our ones for "equity" or for "community relations".  We couldn't bring in Canadian motivational speakers.

In a few years I'll have to renew my teaching credential, at a cost of over $100.  Why?  What is the point of having me pay just to be issued a credential--that's not even on paper, but is just in a computer?  Why do I pay for the privilege of being a teacher?  Do cops, firefighters, legislators, mayors, office workers, CalTrans workers, etc, pay for their jobs, too?

California is screwed up.  That is why we don't teach programming in schools.

Freakin' DMV

For the first time in 15 years I have to renew my drivers license in person.  DMV recommends making an appointment, so make an appointment I did.  Or at least, I tried:

System Unavailable

The online Appointment System is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later. For further assistance, please call 1-800-777-0133 during normal business hours.

At 9:45 on a Sunday night.  Does anyone think the system is being overloaded at this time, or that scheduled maintenance is being performed?

In California, we pay some of the highest taxes and fees in the country for this.

Update, 3/21/16:  The system is working this morning.   Unfortunately, it's not what you might call user-friendly.  It can tell me the first available appointment time at the DMV office I want, but of course that time is during my working hours.  So I put in a later time and I get the following message:

Sorry, no appointment is available for the date and/or time entered. Please make another selection.

No, it won't show me what dates/times are available.  *sigh*

What Kind Of Idiot Teacher Does This?

I've shown questionable videos in class before.  For example, yesterday--the last day of school before spring break--towards the end of one of my classes, we were done with instruction but I didn't want the class to start loitering near the door and get loud.  They respond to music, even my 80s music, and somehow we got on the topic of Billy Idol.  I showed a Billy Idol video--and part of it had Billy in the shower washing coloring off of his face.  Nothing below his chest was shown, but it was a little awkward when I'm projecting a large image of Billy in the shower.  Fortunately the bell rang rather soon after that.

I actually hadn't seen the video before, I just knew and liked the song, so mine was an unintentional mistake.  This teacher's mistake was intentional:

A Bronx middle-school teacher rattled her students — including one who was near tears — by showing an ISIS video of a terrorist beheading a journalist, documents show.

South Bronx Academy for Applied Media veteran Alexiss Nazario faced termination, but was let off with a $300 fine last summer after acknowledging she made a mistake by not previewing the clip or getting the principal’s permission...

The students testified that the video blacked out the actual beheading but showed its gruesome aftermath: the man’s severed head placed on top of his own chest.