Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Too many people today focus on their feeeeeeeeeelings.  Facts don't care about your feelings.  Be honest when you answer this question:  Which is worse, President Trump hurting some reporters' feelings, or this?

He's playing with fire, but the president hasn't actually done anything to abridge press freedom, even if we fear what he might like to do. It's all words and bluster. Frankly, those concerned about this "war" should hope that Trump doesn't take lessons from several disturbing recent actions against reporters here in California.

The latest example came in Democratic San Francisco, but the scene isn't particularly uplifting of the city's oft-touted liberal values. After the unexpected death of the city's elected public defender, Jeff Adachi, a freelance reporter secured a copy of the related police report and apparently sold the information—some of it pretty salacious—to news outlets. The San Francisco Police Department wants to find the source of the leak.

"Police used a sledgehammer to try to get into (the reporter's) home and office and cuffed him for hours as they searched and subsequently removed dozens of cameras, cellphones, computers and other equipment used to gather news," the Associated Press reported. Police are trying to figure out his role in getting the report. The AP notes that it's not illegal for reporters to receive or publish information, even if it were improperly obtained by a third party. Police reports are supposed to be public records.

Which is truly the bigger threat to press freedom?

That's worse than anything Trump has tweeted about the media. Much worse.

A Thought So Sobering, It Makes You Want To Drink

A number of us went to 7th Period today, my school's name for happy hour.  We still have a week and a half of work left!

Anyway, we got to talking about how long we have until retirement, and if we'll make it that long considering all the idiocy coming out of downtown Sacramento as well as out of our own school district.  I don't know how or if I'll make it another 9 years, which is what I need in order to have a decent enough retirement paycheck that I won't have to supplement it too much.  That said, the students who are just now finishing 3rd grade are "my class"; when they graduate, I retire.

My student teacher from last year, finishing up her 1st year as one of our colleagues, said, "My graduating class won't be born until 2040."

Think about that.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Global Warming Statistics

This isn't a secret.  Every climate study program will tell you they do this:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration may have a boring name, but it has a very important job: It measures U.S. temperatures. Unfortunately, it seems to be a captive of the global warming religion. Its data are fraudulent.
 
What do we mean by fraudulent? How about this: NOAA has made repeated "adjustments" to its data, for the presumed scientific reason of making the data sets more accurate.

Nothing wrong with that. Except, all their changes point to one thing — lowering previously measured temperatures to show cooler weather in the past, and raising more recent temperatures to show warming in the recent present.

This creates a data illusion of ever-rising temperatures to match the increase in CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere since the mid-1800s, which global warming advocates say is a cause-and-effect relationship. The more CO2, the more warming.

But the actual measured temperature record shows something different: There have been hot years and hot decades since the turn of the last century, and colder years and colder decades. But the overall measured temperature shows no clear trend over the last century, at least not one that suggests runaway warming.

That is, until the NOAA's statisticians "adjust" the data. Using complex statistical models, they change the data to reflect not reality, but their underlying theories of global warming. That's clear from a simple fact of statistics: Data generate random errors, which cancel out over time. So by averaging data, the errors mostly disappear.

That's not what NOAA does.

According to the NOAA, the errors aren't random. They're systematic. As we noted, all of their temperature adjustments lean cooler in the distant past, and warmer in the more recent past. But they're very fuzzy about why this should be.

Grade Inflation

What does a grade signify?  I addressed that topic two weeks ago:

Some might say that a grade represents student achievement, how much a student has learned in relation to the course content standards—but that’s not exactly accurate. If it were, a student’s grade would be his/her grade on the final exam. So, in reality, a grade is sort of a weighted average of how much a student has learned in relation to the course content standards as well as how well they were able to “stay caught up” in that learning—periodic test and quiz grades, for example. Some say that if a student didn’t know the material last week, but knows it this week, the student’s grade should reflect that. Again, the logical conclusion of that line of thinking is that a semester grade should reflect what a student knows at the end of the semester—it should be the final exam grade.

Grades are important.  They should tell us something significant about a student's achievement.  I do not "round up" or any of that other silliness that some teachers do in order to artificially inflate a student's grade.  If you want an A-, earn at least 90% in the course.  OK, since our grading program compels me to round, I set it to round to the nearest tenth of a percentage point rather than to the nearest percentage point; thus, an 89.95% will round to a 90.0% A-, while an 89.94% will remain an 89.9% B+.  Minimum percentages to earn a certain grade (e.g., 80% for a B- or 83% for a B) are chiseled in stone for me, and students who want a higher grade know that I don't fudge grades for any reason.

OK, there's one caveat.  So that no student ever has an excuse just to give up, saying there's no reason to study or try because it's impossible for them to score 60+% and pass the course, I'll give a passing grade (D-) to any student who scores at least 70% on the final exam but whose overall grade is still not at least 60%.  If you can score 70% on my final exam, there's no reason to retake the course--you get a gift of a D- and on you go.

I doubt too many people will fault me for that policy.

So no, I don't artificially inflate students' grades.  I don't want to contribute to grade inflation.  but grade inflation is not just a high school phenomenon, not by a long shot:

Since the late 1960s, universities have increasingly suffered from grade inflation and an emphasis on ensuring that all admitted students graduate. At the same time, schools have become more liberal about accepting applicants based on unorthodox qualifications, from athletic ability to nonacademic accomplishments, disadvantageous backgrounds, and demonstrated social "awareness."

If these changes were simply used to admit a wider range of individuals who in the past would likely have been overlooked but who, given the opportunity, were capable of meeting the strict existing standards, this would be a laudable development. But that is not what has happened.

The old academic criteria, imperfect as they were, were in fact doing a reasonable job of selecting individuals able and willing to handle the rigors of traditional college. The blunt fact is that the majority of people who scored below a 1200 on the verbal and math sections of the SAT would have found it difficult or impossible to handle a curriculum like that required to earn a state-school engineering degree or comparable certification. Today, thanks to grade inflation, such students can and do pass through top schools with top honors, especially in the liberal arts...

Though grades have always been lower in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) subjects than in the arts and humanities, graduating from a good school with a degree in any major did not use to be a cakewalk. Average GPAs have risen by a full point or more since the late 1960s. Collegeinflation.com shows that at Michigan State, for example, the percentage of As doubled to about 30 percent of all grades from 1963 to 1973 and then rose again by about 50 percent from 1983 to 2013. This is consistent with other research on the widespread change in grading standards nationwide...

Standardized tests are frequently derided for advantaging the rich. But in fact, they are often the primary way for those without money and connections to make their case. Just imagine if the SAT were so easy that everyone got the same score. Who would more likely win admission to a top school: the wealthy world-traveler with prestigious extracurriculars (and a parent willing to donate a tidy sum to the university's endowment), or the scrappy straight-A student who spends his summers working for minimum wage to help cover his tuition...

Many will chide me and say that the U.S. system of higher education is the envy of the world. As an academic, I answer that this is only half-right. The U.S. higher education system is admired for its faculty research and the products of its graduate programs, not for its level of basic teaching—and the former areas, lucky for all of us, remain overwhelmingly meritocratic. Students at the doctoral level are selected with minimal regard for the "holistic" considerations so prevalent at the undergraduate level. They're generally drawn from around the world without attempts to represent different groups equally. If you doubt this, see how far your lacrosse championship or volunteer experience will go in compensating for low GRE math scores when applying to a Ph.D. program in economics or physics at a top-20 university.

The corrupt undergraduate admissions process at most schools today can flourish because the higher branches of the American academic tree are so good. But the lower branches are rotten with grade inflation and social promotion. The move away from an emphasis on genuine academic achievement and meritocratic promotion has done a disservice to the least well-off while offering more opportunities for the rich and connected to buy the trappings of success for their offspring.

A well-written article.

I Understand This Woman Completely, Even Though I Feel The Same Way For Reasons That Differ From Hers Only In Specifics

She's quitting teaching.  Here's why:

My school has little to no support from the district administration. Many people who make the decisions about my school have never stepped foot on our campus or been with our students for even a day...

Just to survive teaching at my school, I’ve had to become someone I don’t like. I have become short-tempered, authoritative, controlling and hardened, and it is been spilling over into my personal life. I don’t like the person I am becoming and it is affecting my mental and physical health.

The Instapundit, a daily read for me, periodically posts stories of teachers or school administrators behaving badly and taglines them with something akin to "I’m beginning to think that sending your kids to public schools is a species of child abuse."  I get his point, especially given the quantity of bad teacher/administrator stories out there, the type of which I also post.  But I don't think he understands how rotten the system as a whole is, and how it's parents (often with threats of lawsuits)--who convince administrators to give in to what in any other field would be considered asininity--who make the system rotten.

I understand Ms. Goolsby's feelings.  I share them.

9 Days of Work Left

We start early and get out late--but we have the "ski week" holiday off in February, and we had a few scattered 3-day weekends, so it all evens out in the wash.

I'll be happy when Wednesday, June 12th is in the books.  I've got places to go starting the 13th.

A Good Day To Buy Coins

I received my Numismatic News today, and a couple stories pointed me to some coins I just had to buy.

From the UK's Royal Mint:  a ₤2 D-Day commemorative and a ₤5 200th anniversary commemorative of Queen Victoria's birth

From the US Mint:  a half-dollar and a silver dollar commemorative of Apollo 11

You have those days, right?  Where you just have to order a couple coins?

An Anniversary

Thirty-two years ago today, West Point's Class of '87 graduated.  It was one of the proudest moments of my life.

So I Guess Their Arguments Against Janus Were Wrong?

Not only were their arguments obviously wrong, one wonders why they were so hell-bent on compelling me to give them money.  Was my money so important to them, or was it just the compulsion they liked so much?

NEA had projected a loss of as many as 200,000 members in addition to 90,000 agency-fee payers after the Supreme Court decision. Instead, as of March, more than 217,000 new members had joined NEA since the Janus decision, and the Association has more members today than it did last year before the Court’s decision. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), with 1.7 million members, added 88,500 members by the beginning of this year, which offset the 84,000 agency-fee payers the union lost after the ruling. Even case defendant AFSCME reports that for every member opting out since Janus, the union has gained seven new members.

I'm Skeptical

Is this really why some students are chronically absent?

More than 7,700 Sacramento City Unified School District students, about 16 percent, were “chronically absent” from school last year, missing more than 10 percent of school days, according to data from the district. That’s higher than the statewide average of 11 percent.

Not having access to transportation is the top reason kids miss school, Sacramento City Councilman Jay Schenirer says.

That’s why he is proposing to let all children in kindergarten through 12th grade who live or go to school in Sacramento ride public transit — buses and light rail — for free.

Is the $1 million (initial) price tag truly justified?

Scratch Tim Cook, And A Marxist Bleeds

Tim Cook, the head of Apple, is an awful little Marxist, isn't he?

During Tulane University’s recent commencement ceremony, Apple CEO Tim Cook confessed to the graduating class that “in some important ways, my generation has failed you.” He’s right, but for all the wrong reasons.

Cook told the students he regrets that his generation “spent too much time debating” – a strange lament in a democratic republic. How does Cook wish his generation had behaved?

“We’ve been too focused on the fight and not focused enough on progress,” he said, referring to the issue of climate change.

Our nation’s deliberative processes might suffice for trivial political questions, but when it comes to important issues like climate change – or global warming, or global cooling, or whichever pseudo-scientific term the politicians parrot this week – Cook seems to believe we must suspend our nation’s system of self-government in favor of whichever policy progressives deem necessary.

Lord, save us from those who seek to save us from ourselves.

By the end of his speech, Cook took to fear-mongering. The “threats and danger” have become too great. We must stifle debate and give the government room to grow if we hope to stop the disasters “that seem to be happening more and more frequently,” he said.

I know what let's do, let's draft a Five Year Plan!

Government doesn't need to grow. It needs to shrink.

Cook is an idiot.

So Few Students

Yesterday was Senior Cut Day, also known as Senior "Have mommy call in so it's not really a cut" Day. My 4th period class has no seniors, and 6th period has only 1 senior. 1st, 3rd, and 5th periods are overwhelmingly seniors.

Only 1 student in my 1st period class showed up. Only 1 student in 3rd, and 1 student in 5th. My one senior in 6th period didn't show--should I make her make-up quiz exponentially harder? :-)

It was a pretty easy day for me.

"The Most Important Quiz Of My High School Career"

I've taught no new material in my statistics classes this month.  I've devoted the month mostly to review, with a lot of emphasis on doing statistics on an advanced calculator.  The days of using tables are over for my students, and this month they've honed their skills on the ancient-but-still-useful TI-83 (yes, I'd prefer 84's, but at over $100 apiece...).

Today was the TI-83 Quiz, the last graded exercise prior to the final exam.  It was the last chance my students had prior to the final exam to test their knowledge under exam conditions.  One student said to me that this quiz was the most important quiz of his high school career.  Why, you might ask?

I excuse from taking the final those students who have 97% or above going into the final.  This student had 97.3% going into this quiz.  This quiz was the decider.

He will not be taking the final exam :-)

What's Your Solution To This, Lefties?

Instapundit quotes Larry Elder paraphrasing Thomas Sowell:

LARRY ELDER: The Left’s Battle Against ‘Inequality’ Leaves Out One Critical Factor. “In his book Discrimination and Disparities, economist Thomas Sowell notes that a disproportionate percentage of first-born siblings become National Merit scholars compared to siblings born later, presumably because the first-born starts life with no sibling competition for parental attention. This, says Sowell, illustrates the absurdities of expecting equal results when equal results do not even occur within the same family among siblings raised under the same roof with the same parents.”

I Never Did Like Common Core

Years ago I anticipated this would be the problem, at least in math:

With irresistible prodding by Gates and then-President Obama, the Common Core national standards were adopted by the vast majority of states, which have also adopted tests and curricula aligned with those standards.

But a new large-scale study by the federally funded Center for Standards, Alignment, Instruction, and Learning (C-SAIL) has found that since the adoption of Common Core there has been a decline in key test scores.

C-SAIL researchers analyzed changes in student performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, from 2010 to 2017.

They had assumed that Common Core would raise student performance on the NAEP exam, but they were in for a surprise.

“Contrary to our expectation,” they reported, the data revealed that the Common Core standards produced “significant negative effects on 4th graders’ reading achievement during the 7 years after the adoption of the new standards.”

When analyzing the results of a selected group of states, fourth-grade reading achievement would have improved more “had the states continued with their old standards, thus reflecting negative effects of the new [Common Core] standards.”

In other words, if those states had ignored the entreaties by Gates, Obama, et al., they would have been better off.

In addition to the decline in reading performance among fourth graders, the C-SAIL study also found that Common Core “had a significant negative effect on 8th graders’ math achievement.”

What’s more, the performance of students declined significantly in specific reading and math categories, such as literacy experience and numbers properties, the longer Common Core was in effect.

Study co-author Mengli Song said: “It’s rather unexpected. The magnitude of the negative effects [of Common Core] tend to increase over time…”

…Some blame the failure of Common Core on process issues, such as lack of adequate teacher training, but the key culprits are the standards themselves and the type of teaching promoted by Common Core.

When Common Core was first being adopted by states, James Milgram, a Stanford math professor who served on a key Common Core committee, warned that by the end of the fifth grade the material covered by Common Core’s math standards “was more than a year behind the early grade expectations of high-achieving countries,” and that “by the end of the seventh grade, [Common] Core standards are roughly two years behind.”

By high school, “Common Core — in its fullness — does not prepare students even for a full pre-calculus class,” notes Ze’ev Wurman, a former senior education policy advisor under President George W. Bush.

It wasn't hard to look at the standards and see the difference.

Held Accountable

A couple days ago I linked to a video showing a snowflake getting arrested for a sign with which she didn't agree.  The look on her face is precious as it transforms from innocent to defiant to confused to shocked to mortified as she realizes, as the interaction with the police officer continues, that her ridiculous left-wing excuses, eyelash-batting, and eventual tears won't keep her from being held accountable for her actions.

A couple days ago another leftist--a teacher this time, rather than a college student--was held accountable for her execrable behavior:

In a case in which he described Antifa activist Yvette Felarca's legal claims "entirely frivilous," California District Judge Vince Chhabria recently ordered her to pay the $22,000 in legal fees incurred by Judicial Watch, and the $4,000 in litigation costs.

Felarca, a middle school teacher in the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD), and two co-plaintiffs, had sued the BUSD to try to prevent it from turning over to Judicial Watch their communications mentioning Felarca, Antifa, and BAMN, By Any Means Necessary...

“This is a huge victory for Judicial Watch against Antifa and the violent left,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Ms. Felarca attacked Judicial Watch without basis and the court was right to reject her ploy to deny our ‘right to know’ because we don’t share her violent left views.”

I've mentioned Felarca in other posts.  Real gem, that one.

Frustrating

I signed my evaluation form today.  It was 13 pages long.  And I had to do most of the writing.  What a waste of my time and energy.  Things like that frustrate me to no end.

See, it's not so much an "evaluation" anymore as it is a "system of professional growth".  Yawn.  Just tell me if I'm doing a good job, or not.  In case of disagreement, have an appeal process in place.  Seems reasonable to me.

13 pages that I had to write on.  How many trees died unnecessarily for that?

I'm up for another "growth" in 5 years.  If the current program stays in place, that will be my last "growth", as I plan to retire in 9 years.

I Wasn't Even A Marketing Major

There's a strip mall on my route to work.  Having worked at the same school for 16 years now, I've passed that strip mall twice a day times 185 days times 16 years...and there was a store in there that would periodically make me wonder.

Dress Barn.

Now, I'm no marketing genius, but in what way is Dress Barn a good name?  No, it's not a "western" clothing store.  It is, as one of my students described it today, a "mom store".  So it seems to me like the name of the store implies that cows shop there--not the image I think they'd want to convey to their female clientele.  It's a name that I always thought was just darned odd.

Oddly enough, it's not in that strip mall anymore.  I didn't notice when the store closed and the sign came down--clearly it didn't captivate my attention--but dang, what a name.

What brings up a post about the name of a women's clothing store?  I saw a headline today:

Dressbarn is going out of business

 I am not shocked at this, not shocked at all.

An Argument For Vouchers

Do you support vouchers for K-12 education, or not?  Why or why not?

Here are a couple points from DC:

Washington, D.C. voucher students did no better in reading and math than students who applied for vouchers but lost the lottery, a new study shows. However the voucher students felt safer and had better attendance, reports Andrew Ujifusa in Education Week.

Arguments for both sides there, but what about this?

Choice provides the same academic outcomes at one-third the cost, concludes Corey DeAngelis in the Washington Examiner. “Public schools in D.C. spend around $28,000 per student each year, while the average private school voucher amount is only around $9,600 per student each year in D.C.”

That's significant.

Interesting Constitutional Clash

I find Texas' argument compelling:

Texas is asserting its sovereign immunity against Congress, telling Democrats on two congressional committees this week that the state has no obligation to comply with their investigative demands.

Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office says that as a state with sovereign powers under the Constitution, Texas can’t be treated like a federal agency or Cabinet secretary who can be compelled to comply.

“Texas does not draw its authority from the United States or the United States Constitution, but from its status as a dual sovereign within the union,” Jeffrey C. Mateer, first assistant attorney general, wrote in a letter Monday to the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

Mr. Mateer fired off a similar letter Wednesday to the House Ways and Means Committee rebuffing its attempts, saying the state wouldn’t stand to be treated like a “subdivision of the federal government or a private citizen.”

“Granting Congress the power to exercise ‘oversight’ over the constitutional officers of a state engaged in the lawful exercise of that state’s core authority would undermine the fabric of our system of dual sovereignty,” Mr. Mateer wrote.

If a court ordered the turnover of documents, that would be a different story, I think.