Indictment of Schools, of Society, or Both?

From FrontPage Magazine:

What does it say about America that the killed and wounded soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are more likely to hail from Prattville, Alabama, Lincoln, Nebraska, Mansfield, Ohio, or Klamath Falls, Oregon, than New York City, Beverly Hills or Cambridge, Massachusetts? (cut to the stats--Darren)

• Of the Princeton University Class of 1956, more than half of the graduates went on to serve in the military (400 of 750); in 2004, that number was less than one percent (9 graduates). Sadly, among Ivy League schools, Princeton is in the lead for ROTC participation.
• During the 1956 school year, Stanford University had 1,100 students enrolled in ROTC; today, there are only 29.
• In 1969, seventy percent of the members of Congress were veterans; in 2004, only twenty-five percent were, with that representation falling rapidly.
• The percentage of members of Congress with children serving in the military is only slightly above one percent.
• While the old political clans of the Kennedys, Roosevelts and the Bushes have had many family members previously serving in combat, none of these privileged families (Democrat and Republican alike) has any relative in the military today.

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I have statistics from the Army that show that the middle class carries the largest share of military service in our country, not the (commonly cited and probably hoped-for by liberals) lower classes. But that is beside the point, which is this--why is military service no longer something which the upper classes value? Why and how have our schools turned into such anti-military fortresses that the Solomon Amendment was needed?

Southern California Hasn't Been So Good To Me

The last time I flew to Southern California, SkyWest canceled my flight from LAX to Orange County because there weren't enough people on the plane. Instead, they put us on a bus. There's so much more to that story, and it doesn't get any better, but that story isn't the point here.

On Monday of this week I flew Aloha Airlines direct to Orange County/John Wayne Airport--yeah, that'll show 'em! I was supposed to fly back Tuesday night--but some driver ran into a pole in Palmdale and knocked out air traffic control for most of Southern California. There were no flights in or out of LAX, Burbank, John Wayne, San Diego, and probably others, for a couple hours. I wonder if al-Qaeda knew it was so easy to affect air travel without even getting on board the aircraft. Fortunately I was able to bunk over with some people the extra night, and my son and his mother ensured Boomer had food and water. I was able to fly back home this morning--and still get everything done for my son's birthday party this evening (not his real birthday, but that's life sometimes).

I'm thinking that the Fates don't want me in Southern California. I'm 0-2 there now.

Writing Good Multiple Choice Tests

Right Wing Prof has excellent, practical suggestions.

Special Ed in College

It's not that I necessarily disagree with this, but I've never seen it put so bluntly before:

Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, disabled students from kindergarten through high school are entitled to an individualized education plan created by a pit crew of teachers and specialists.

It all stops in college, a surprise to students who may think administrators will know their needs, said Jane Warner, assistant director of services for disabled students at Virginia Tech University and co-organizer of College Bound, a collaboration of the Blacksburg school, Radford University and New River Community College. (emphasis mine--Darren)

CNN.com has the story about a program designed to give special ed students some knowledge and skills they'll need to succeed in college.

Cheap Homes For Teachers?

Now they tell me!

Homes are first offered to approved non-profit organizations, mostly in inner-city neighborhoods, at a 50 percent discount to their appraised values. The non-profits then rehabilitate and resell them.

Any properties not picked up by the non-profits are then offered to police officers and teachers at a 10 percent discount. HUD also recently began giving first shot at homes coming into the system to people made homeless by Hurricane Katrina at the same 10 percent discount. (emphasis mine--Darren)

If, after five days, no teacher, officer or Katrina victim makes an offer, HUD puts the properties on auction for the general public. At that point only buyers who intend to live in the house may bid.

Individuals can look at homes at HUD's Web site and Homesales.gov.

So there you go.

Governor Schwarzenegger Talks The Talk

Now will he walk the walk?

From today's San Jose Mercury News:

Recently, our State Board of Education and Legislature have engaged in intense discussions over how to best teach English language arts to our students, including which books to use and what is the appropriate curriculum.

The board's decision to maintain high standards for all our students and not push for separate books, curriculum and classes for students of different backgrounds is the right path.

California has made tremendous strides toward achieving world-class standards for our students. We must have only one standard for all our children and one way to test whether students are meeting that standard. We shouldn't segregate and isolate kids in separate classes simply because English is not their native language. We don't advance this course of action out of any false sense of pride or ego. We do so because it is best for our English-learning kids and for California's future.

It will be easier to believe his sincerity once the state Board of Education has its funding restored.

Simulation/Video of Flt. 77 Hitting the Pentagon

Yes, the moonbats say that a missile hit the Pentagon. Of course it did--the US government ran out of hijacked plans to fly into buildings and had to use a missile so enough people could die in order to start Chimpy McBushitler's war on the peace-loving peoples of the Middle East. Look what Israel's doing right now--it's all a Zionist conspiracy...you know, this conspiracy theory crap is entirely too easy to fake. I'll stop here before people think I'm being serious about that crap.

Anyway, here's a video simulation recreating the last moments of Flight 77 before it crashed into the Pentagon almost 5 years ago. The animation is spectacular--and haunting. It includes a cut-in to the security camera footage that was released not too long ago.

California's Gold Country

Someone I know remarked recently that I haven't had any travel-type posts lately. Since it's been more than a month since this post, I guess I'll take the implicit suggestion and describe today's day trip.

A friend of mine is rather into photography, so we drove an hour up into the Sierra foothills to go to Grass Valley and Nevada City, two towns in California's Gold Country. Both towns are former mining towns, and both have historical markers on several of the buildings on their main streets. Grass Valley seemed closed today--only the restaurants and bars were open--so we took a picture or two and then headed to Nevada City.

Nevada City was open for business. It sits in the foothills at over 2000 feet in elevation, but the heat that stifled the Sacramento Valley was still very much in evidence there. Just about every shop was open, though, which made wandering the streets nice. When we got too hot, we'd just pop into a store for a few minutes!

I don't know when it's heyday was, but I'd guess it reached a peak around a century ago and slowly slid into the small town that exists today. It's growing again, but the historic downtown hopefully won't change much. The residential neighborhoods nearby were quite the treat, and that's where I focused most of my picture-taking.

Enjoy.







Can you see the squirrel running along the roof?






Even though it looks like a church, this is actually part of the front of someone's house. It looks much nicer in black and white than in color, which is why I posted it this way.





I liked this weather vane on top of someone's carport. It looked dignified, somehow, when printed in sepia tones, and I hope you enjoy this picture.


Here's the creek that runs just a couple blocks from the main street of the historic downtown.


I took my son out for a root beer float after I got back, and as we passed our City Hall the temperature read 107 degrees at just after 5 pm. It was definitely well into the upper 90s in Nevada City, but with scenery like that above, it's tolerable.

Tibet

Last November I wrote about the foolishness of those who have "Free Tibet" bumper stickers on their cars but other than that, won't lift a finger to actually free Tibet. I'd recommend reading that short post before continuing on.

Given that background, how can this AP story from Yahoo do anything but discourage you?

Time, Tibetan exiles fear, is running out.

As the Dalai Lama ages, their dreams of returning to a free Tibet are slowly being crushed by a realization that they face a long bleak period without an international icon to plead their case before the world and keep them united...

This month, China realized its decades-old ambition of linking Tibet to Beijing by train, heightening Tibetan concerns that Beijing is trying to crush Tibetan culture by swamping it with Han, the majority Chinese ethnic group.

Another worry is that the Dalai Lama's nonviolent philosophy, which won him the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, may die with him, possibly triggering a return to arms that most agree would be doomed to fail.

You read my November post, so you know what the Dalai Lama would think of this. And then there's the bad faith in which the Chinese deal with Tibet:

This month, Tibet's Chinese-appointed leader, Champa Phuntsok, described the Dalai Lama as a threat to China's security and unity. While the Tibetan leadership described its envoys' talks with Beijing as "fruitful," Phuntsok said they made "no substantial progress."

Ah yes, the Dalai Lama is a threat to Chinese security. Of course he is.

How might the Chinese deal with Tibet's monks? Might they steer clear of meddling in religion?

In 1995 the Dalai Lama chose a 6-year-old boy as the new Panchen Lama, the No. 2 figure in Tibetan Buddhism, who traditionally guides whoever becomes the next Dalai Lama. China promptly put the boy under house arrest and he has not been seen since.

Six months later, it appointed its own Panchen Lama, then 5, and pressured Buddhists to accept him.

Guess we've answered that question.

So again I ask those of you with the "Free Tibet" bumper stickers on your cars--exactly how do you expect to make that happen? What do you think should be done, materially, to free Tibet?

Cold On Global Warming

I like Ryan Sager's writing style, and this opinion piece on Democrats and global warming shows why.

Some of it is pure PC. Democrats know they're "supposed to" care about global warming and feel guilty about driving their SUVs back and forth to soccer practice and going through warehouses full of fast-food containers on family trips. But so long as the politicians play their prescribed roles (Democrats: furrowed-brow, ineffective concern; Republicans: utterly insincere, ineffective concern), it's just not a voting issue.

And he scores points with me here:

That was the premise of a recent exercise conducted by political scientist Bjorn Lomborg (author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist") with a number of U.N. diplomats (including U.S. Ambassador John Bolton). Lomborg gave each functionary a fictional $50 billion to spend on world problems - obliging them to chose which problems need to be solved first.

Anyone who mentions Bjorn Lomborg is OK in my book! But go read the article to find out how the UN diplomats spent their $50B. You'll find that your Kyoto-loving bureaucrats aren't even interested in addressing global warming fictitiously, much less in reality!

Can't Say I Blame 'Em

From CNN.com:

BOSTON, Massachusetts (Reuters) -- Prominent donors have delayed multimillion-dollar gifts to Harvard University since Lawrence Summers resigned as the school's president and a search began for his replacement, people familiar with the matter said Thursday.

I wouldn't support an anti-US, anti-military, anti-scientific university, either.

Gay "Propaganda" In The Classroom?

I agree with major Sacramento newspaper columnist Dan Walters:

The motives for the very unusual procedure are unclear, but it means that the full Assembly will vote in August on something that should trouble even those who support full equality for gays, including marriage rights. California law already mandates such see-no-evil history instruction for a wide array of ethnic groups, substituting feel-good propaganda for what should be scholarly study. Adding more groups to this exercise in academic affirmative action just makes it that much worse and sends an absolutely wrong message to young minds about the truthfulness of their textbooks. Kids should be getting their history straight -- warts and all -- not sanitized by politicians who are pursuing other agendas...

Treating all people, regardless of sexual orientation, with absolute equality is one thing. In seeking such equality in marriages and other fields, gay rights advocates, it could be said, are occupying the moral high ground. There's nothing moral about legally mandating propaganda of any kind in the classroom.

Actually, I'm all for getting rid of "academic affirmative action" in our textbooks anyway. I said as much last year when I wrote about so-called ethnomathematics:

Just today on her site, Joanne had a story about a soon-to-be-required class in African and African-American history for all students in Philadelphia. One of the points that came up in the comments was, if it's history that's taught, more power to them. If it's nothing more than an attempt at making black students feel good about themselves, it'll be a useless class. One person questions "the idea that 21st century people should feel proud of what people who looked sort of like them did centuries ago, maybe..."

Young people need to be shown that they need to accomplish something in their own lives and be proud of that, not to be proud by dubious association with a group hundreds of years and thousands of miles removed from them.

As it is for race and ethnicity, so it is for sexual orientation.

Anti-Business Insanity Will Run Chicago Into The Ground

Reading NewsAlert (see blogroll at left) I get to follow the travails of cities that are not only losing population but also adding fuel to the fire. Boston, Detroit, Chicago, and I think San Francisco are shooting themselves in the feet, refusing to accept reality whilst trying to maintain their socialist utopias. Actually, I think we're past that, and are now in the realm of socialist Potemkin villages.

This story out of Chicago, though, is complete and total insanity. Quoting from the Chicago Sun-Times:

Target is putting on hold plans to build three South Side stores — and making veiled threats to close existing Chicago stores — if the City Council mandates wage and benefit standards for such “big-box” retailers, aldermen warned Thursday... (The ordinance being considered is being "championed by organized labor" and applies only to very large businesses--Darren)

Wal-Mart has threatened to cancel plans to build as many as 20 new Chicago stores over the next five years if retailers are required to pay employees at least $10 an hour by July 1, 2010...

Ald. Carrie Austin (34th) said a Target pull-out would be devastating to the 32-acre shopping mall at 119th and Marshfield that developers had hoped to build, with help from a $23 million city subsidy. Home Depot would likely follow Target out the door. As many as 1,000 jobs would be lost, Austin said.

Referring to the anti-Wal-Mart movement that gave birth to the big-box ordinance, Austin said, “If you want to bully up on Wal-Mart, you’ve got to bring in the other ones and, damned if you do on them. If they suffer from it, too bad. If you want to control Wal-Mart, you should go about that a different way...”

Hairston called it little more than a scare tactic. And even if the threat turns out to be real, she’s standing firm in support of organized labor.

“Wal-Mart and Target could pay their people a living wage. Then, we wouldn’t have this problem and people could actually live on the money they made,” Hairston said.

“My position is my position. They’ll do what they have to do. I’ll do what I have to do. If they want to lose the more than $3 billion that is not being captured in my ward, that’s a bad business decision for them.”

Brookins said Wal-Mart executives have told him they may take the lead of the many riverboat casinos that ring Chicago and run free shuttle buses to their suburban stores if the big box ordinance passes.

Why would a city want to run big businesses out of its borders? Wal*Mart is already building in Chicago's suburbs because of the unfriendly climate in Chicago proper, and now that climate will attack other big box stores.

Why doesn't Chicago's government just admit that they don't want successful businesses, along with the tax revenue and jobs they provide, in their city? Why not just admit that these companies are a necessary evil that should be taxed and regulated to pay for more political patronage?

Update, 7/21/06: It seems that not everyone in Chicago is against Wal*Mart.

Student Free Speech

I've struggled with this topic, but I think I've finally formulated a rational, supportable opinion: The Supreme Court screwed up the Tinker case.

I was just reading this post about two different reactions to student free speech. The Independent Gay Forum is by and about gays but is not the typical leftist gay tripe; in other words, I've found interesting and intellectually challenging posts there, and the linked post is one of them.

That post started off with the Tinker case, decided by the US Supreme Court in 1969, which ruled that wearing a black armband to school to protest the Vietnam War was "symbolic speech" and hence could not be prohibited under the 1st Amendment. How does one identify the dividing line between symbolic speech and outright action? How can real speech be limited in certain situations (reasonable time/place/manner restrictions, yelling "fire!" in a croweded theater), but so-called symbolic speech cannot have the same reasonable time/place/manner restrictions? I'm left to wonder if the Supremes weren't smoking some of that good Nevada County sins when they crafted that debacle of a decision.

The linked article then shows two very different responses to free speech at school:

This bit of history is relevant because the Ninth Circuit now must decide whether a California sophomore named Tyler Chase Harper was unfairly sent home from his high school for wearing a t-shirt saying "Homosexuality is shameful." The overt sloganeering is certain uncivil, but is it also political speech protected by liberal jurisprudence? If so, then opponents of the t-shirt must prove it is a form of harassment that keeps gay students from learning in order to have it banned.

and

Meanwhile, here's another public school culture-war skirmish. At Howell High School in Michigan, when the Diversity Club hung a rainbow flag in a hallway, it was allowed to remain despite a petition by Christian conservatives. That prompted these students to create a Traditional Values Club and produce their own flag. Now, faculty members have voted that both flags should be displayed only in classrooms during club meetings.

It's unfortunate that the comments are not as stimulating as the post itself.

So, given that students can protest a war at school, thereby showing their political beliefs, why can students not show off their religious beliefs? Is it because, in the first place above, it makes others feel bad? I don't get cheery when I see students (or teachers) wearing Che Guevara shirts--should they be banned? Apparently they can't be, according to Tinker. So where does a school draw the line, given Tinker's muddy terrain? Students in my own district, many who were religious Eastern European immigrants, were punished this year for wearing not-gay-friendly shirts to school and protesting outside the school.

The whole field of law is a mess, and it started in 1969.

I'm not very religious. I'm definitely a believer, but no one will ever be able to use my behavior to justify calling me a devoutist (unfortunately). Still, the anti-Christian occurrences in our schools are frequent enough to raise my ire several degrees. The second story is one in a long list of such events, and reflects poorly on the so-called open-mindedness of the staff at that school.

What if students wanted to start a KKK chapter? Obviously a school would not allow such a club. Yet MEChA chapters exist in many schools, and they're a vile, racist organization. Where is the line drawn? Legal/illegal, positive/negative? Under what circumstances might a Traditional Values Club be banned? And is there a freedom of association/freedom of religion argument for such a club? It gets muddy very fast, doesn't it?

This story from New York state is also pretty interesting. A student, as a way of protesting what he saw as overly-strict rules at his school, had a very interesting yearbook quote: "Ein Folk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuerher." Using Hitler's patriotic quote was this student's way of saying that his school administration was running a police state.

17-year-old Galen Barbour submitted Hitler's quote at the start of the school year. It originated as a Nazi era slogan. But that was not Barbour's inspiration, instead he says he was merely protesting against the school's strict policies.


"The school is just this playground for discipline now. They'll bust you for going to the bathroom without a hall pass. They'll bust you for having a coffee mug... I used the quote because to me Hitler in ways represents a historical police state," said Barbour.

Instead of punishing young Galen, the powers that be gave him sensitivity training.

Barbour sat down with three teachers from the high school who had personal ties to the holocaust.

"I'm sure it was an impulsive decision by the student and I'm sure that student probably regrets it by now," said (Superintendent) Keith.

Maybe he could just have worn an armband with a swastika. What would the Tinker supporters have to say about that?

The final crushing of dissent, though, comes at the end of the story:

Superintendent Keith says more faculty advisors will be added to the yearbook staff to make sure controversial quotes will not be overlooked again.

I'm sure they won't be. And then the 1st Amendment arguments will start all over again.

$22,000 Per Student and the Schools Still Suck

In Marin County, liberal stronghold and home of American Taliban John Walker, sits little Sausalito. Joanne (see blogroll at left) reports that in upscale Sausalito they spend over $22,000 per student per year in the local schools and the performance of students still sucks.

You can go read Joanne's post; I'm going to quote one of her commenters here:

But the point is that bags of money, contrary to the never ending complaints by supporters of the status quo, won't do the job. Not that we need this further datapoint but it's nice to have the observation confirmed, again.

Also, it's my opinion that elevation-by-osmosis is a crock as well. Just dragging kids twenty or thirty miles so they can rub up against all those suburban kids, with their disciplined and purposeful life (yeah, right), is both patronizing and unsupported by any evidence.

The problem isn't that there are struggling urban schools. The problem is that there are urban school districts. A couple of cities may be trembling on the edge of addressing that problem. Bloomberg wants to do an end-around the state legislature which won't officially raise the charter cap by creating defact charters and the mayor of Indianapolis has gone to the state legislature to get the city district rolled into the municipal government.

It'd be nice to have a reason for the continued existance of school districts other then inertia and political will but I don't think there is one.

I'm sure the NEA and CTA can concoct reasons why even more money should be spent on these kids. And I'll only mention in passing that direct instruction with standards-based curricula might help here....

Interesting Comment From a Leftie

Every once in awhile, if I'm in a coffee shop or someplace like that, I like to pick up the Sacramento News and Review, the local "alternative weekly" paper. Such papers are overwhelmingly liberal papers, at least as far as the editorials and readership go, but there's always something interesting in them. Even some of the viciously anti-Conservative comics can get a chuckle out of me; This Modern World, by Tom Tomorrow, is hilarious, even though he and I would never agree on politics.

The paper comes out every Thursday, and I picked up the July 6th issue because the cover mentioned an essay about Rush Limbaugh and the Viagra situation. Gotta see if the lib was going to be funny about that; unfortunately, the essay wasn't as funny as the quotes I'd heard from Limbaugh on the topic. But there was still the rest of the paper to go.

One letter to the editor caught my eye. Apparently in a prior issue, someone wrote an article that portrayed pit bulls in a negative light. Here's the final paragraph of a letter in response to that article:

I would caution SN&R, a paper that proposes to be progressive in its thinking, from allowing further unfair slights such as Mr. Reany's to be printed amongst its pages. In all fairness, a dog of any classification should be judged on its individual deeds, not according to its mythical, and many times inaccurate, legend.

My regular readers can already see where I'm going to go with this.

No conservative would use the word "progressive" as the writer did above; we'd say "liberal". The writer is clearly a lib. In geometry terms, that's a "given".

So this lib thinks dogs should be judged on individual deeds and not as members of a breed (group). How many times must I say it? One of the many differences between the American Left and Right is that the right sees people as individuals while the Left sees people only as groups--hence, the identity politics of the left. And here we have a leftie who is willing to treat a dog as an individual. I wonder if he'd give the same consideration to a human.

NEA Has Secretly Paid Millions to Discredit NCLB

Joanne Jacobs and EIA (see blogroll at left for both) have posts today which discuss the NEA's secret war against the No Child Left Behind Act. USA Today has what is to me the most obvious point about NEA hypocrisy:

The law's critics cried foul in 2005, when documents revealed that the Bush administration paid TV and radio commentator Armstrong Williams $240,000 to promote it on his syndicated programs. The revelations led to a government-wide inquiry.

NEA wasn't too fond of the Williams deal. How, then, do they explain this?

The nation's largest teachers union has spent more than $8 million in a stealth campaign against President Bush's education reform law, paying for research and political opposition in an effort to derail it, according to a Washington think tank that supports the law.

NEA President Massa Reg doesn't quite come off sounding like a genius:

Weaver says that the NEA supports the law's goals but that it "is fundamentally flawed and changes need to be made. And nobody is more qualified to lead that effort than the people who are in the education front lines every day."

He says 86 groups have joined him to call for changes; though the union "might identify specific research questions we would like to see answered," there is "absolutely no quid pro quo" in the work it finances, he says.

Whom does this law help the most? Clearly, it's inner city kids--the law shines the spotlight on the failure of these kids, their schools, and in all probability the culture of poverty that encourages continued failure. Keeping that in mind, let's take a look at a partial list of the organizations to whom the NEA is giving money to fight this law:

Joe Williams examined U.S. Labor Department LM-2 forms, which unions had to begin filing last year, and found that the NEA spent about $7.65 million supporting a start-up lobbying group called Communities for Quality Education, which has been critical of the law. The NEA also has funded, to a much lesser extent, other groups critical of the law, including the National Conference of Black Mayors, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the National Conference of State Legislatures and the Harvard Civil Rights Project.

The mind boggles.

Air Force Academy Grad Runs For Congress...

...and his television ad will certainly have some people talking!

My opinion--it's not the best ad, and it's a bit heavy-handed, but you have to admire his integrity.

Unionizing Substitute Teachers

My local union, which won't allow me to be a member because I refuse to be a member of the state and national unions as well, has what can only be described as among the stupidest ideas on the planet--the leadership is considering unionizing our district's substitute teachers. There's so much wrong with this proposal that I almost don't know where to start.

1. If subs become union members, they'll also have to be CTA/NEA members. Those fees are fixed, and I don't think there's a lower fee for subs. That means that subs, who make a whopping $100/day when they work, will pay a disproportionate amount of their salaries to a union.

2. Substitutes often register with several local districts, thereby increasing their chances of getting a job on any particular day. Making it more expensive to work in our district, which already is not the highest-paying in the area, will have the practical result of reducing the number of substitutes available to us.

3. The union says that by unionizing the substitutes, we can have a more "professional" sub cadre--because then we'd be able to provide more/better training for them. What training does the union need to provide? The quality, training, and qualifications of teachers is the responsibility of the school district, not the union. Even still, if the union thinks subs could be better, why not just provide training now? How would their membership in the union make them more trainable? Shouldn't the union's position be that the district should bring subs up to standard, if they are in fact substandard? ("Sub"standard--get it! Sometimes I slay myself.)

4. Is the union saying there's something wrong with the subs we currently have? "You suck--join our union" doesn't sound like the greatest rallying cry.

5. Here's a selfish reason. There's only so much money for salaries--it truly is a zero-sum game. Bargain for the subs and get more for them, that means I don't get as much.

If you can identify other reasons why this is a bad idea, please list them in the comments.

It's obvious that this isn't really an issue about sub competence, although oddly that's how it's being sold. It's clearly nothing more than an entrenched bureaucracy, the union, trying to grow itself. CTA did it by recently voting to allow non-teacher school workers to join CTA, no doubt ticking off the classified employees' California State Education Association.

I've said it before and I'll say it again--a union that gets my money against my will should at least focus on my pay, benefits, and working conditions. Taking that money and trying to unionize others--so it can be entitled to their money as well--doesn't sit well with me. And it shouldn't sit well with my fellow teachers, either.

Foreign College Students Complain of Exchange Program Conditions on Gulf Coast

Reading this story just tied my stomach in knots. I'll just state here that you shouldn't crap on someone just because you have the opportunity to do so.

Milton Friedman on Unions (and Education In General)

The traitorous Los Angeles Times has an interesting little story about a reporter's (and blogger's, I think) meeting with economist Milton Friedman.

"The fundamental thing that's wrong with our present setup of elementary and secondary schooling is that it's a case in which the government is subsidizing a product," he says. "If you subsidize the producers, as we do in schooling, they have every incentive to have a status quo, and a non-progressive system, because they are a monopoly."

Some won't like this:

"It's very clear that the people who suffer most in our present system are people in the slums — blacks, Hispanics, the poor, the underclass."

When I ask him about the "achievement gap" separating low-scoring black and Latino students from better-scoring whites and Asians, he blames my "friends in the union."

"They are running a system that maximizes the gap in performance…. Tell me, where is the gap between the poor and rich wider than it is in schooling?"

Go read the whole thing.

More Press Arrogance

Robert Novak discusses his obviously-starring role in Plamegate, and in the process reveals (yet again) how journalists view themselves as some sort of specially-protected class of high priests.

I have cooperated in the investigation while trying to protect journalistic privileges under the First Amendment and shield sources who have not revealed themselves.

My attorneys advised me that I had no certain constitutional basis to refuse cooperation if subpoenaed by a grand jury. To do so would make me subject to imprisonment and inevitably result in court decisions that would diminish press freedom, all at heavy personal legal costs...I had not identified my sources to my attorneys, and I told them I would not reveal them to the FBI. (emphasis mine--Darren)

The problem facing me was that the special prosecutor had obtained signed waivers from every official who might have given me information about Wilson's wife.

That created a dilemma. I did not believe blanket waivers in any way relieved me of my journalistic responsibility to protect a source. Hamilton told me that I was sure to lose a case in the courts at great expense. Nevertheless, I still felt I could not reveal their names.

When I testified before the grand jury, I was permitted to read a statement that I had written expressing my discomfort at disclosing confidential conversations with news sources. (So-called shield laws are a travesty of justice--Darren.)

How did Novak get Plame's name and why did he publish it?

Joe Wilson's wife's role in instituting her husband's mission was revealed to me in the middle of a long interview with an official who I have previously said was not a political gunslinger. After the federal investigation was announced, he told me through a third party that the disclosure was inadvertent on his part. (emphasis mine--Darren)

Following my interview with the primary source, I sought out the second administration official and the CIA spokesman for confirmation. I learned Valerie Plame's name from Joe Wilson's entry in "Who's Who in America."

I considered his wife's role in initiating Wilson's mission, later confirmed by the Senate Intelligence Committee, to be a previously undisclosed part of an important news story. I reported it on that basis.

Congress shall pass no law abridging freedom of the press. That doesn't mean that anything that might somehow possibly inhibit the press must be forbidden; if it did, then how could we tax news organizations? Don't OSHA regulations cost the press some money, and hence abridge their freedom? I don't think anyone is ready to go there, but journalists will ignore that inconvenient fact and still assert that they're somehow immune to grand juries and to the very judiciary whose activism they so love.

These high priests need to be brought back to earth.


And now, the political commentary. Lefties, I'm sure you'll be disappointed by this statement by Mr. Novak:

I have revealed Rove's name because his attorney has divulged the substance of our conversation, though in a form different from my recollection. I have revealed Harlow's name because he has publicly disclosed his version of our conversation, which also differs from my recollection. My primary source has not come forward to identify himself.

Did you get that? Karl Rove was not the primary source. His role is explained in the article.

Also, Novak states that Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald knew the identity of the leaker(s) of Plame's identity.

In other words, the special prosecutor knew the names of my sources.

When I testified before the grand jury, I was permitted to read a statement that I had written expressing my discomfort at disclosing confidential conversations with news sources. It should be remembered that the special prosecutor knew their identities and did not learn them from me.

Why, then, did Fitzgerald drag out his interviews and allow speculations regarding the President and Karl Rove? Might it have been, dare I say it, political?

So, let's close here. "Outing" Plame was not, according to Novak, done to embarrass Joe Wilson. It was not done intentionally. All your leftie machinations seem to be nothing more than projection--reading your own fears and other psychoses onto members of the Bush Administration. Even if the original/primary source was President Bush himself, it's clear that there was no harmful intent (althought it would still be a mistake). And the person who first identified Plame by name was--Robert Novak himself.

OK, lefties. Where do you go from here? Do you keep digging that hole you're in? Or do you admit you were wrong? I'm dying to find out.

Numeracy of College Students

It's entirely too easy for teachers to read about the academic gaps individual students might have, and in both amazement and frustration throw up our hands and in despair cry out, "Kids these days!"

I try to avoid that course of action, but then sometimes I read something and I have to wonder, "How could he not know this?"

World Politics = High School

When I saw an article with that as the the theme, I just had to read it.

The closing was pretty good.

Can You Say, "Disingenuous"? I Knew You Could!

California Educator Magazine. I threw out the May issue because I had too much other stuff to write about. Summer usually brings with it a dearth of education-related material, so the June issue becomes the target of my typing fingers. And what a good target it is!

My previous two posts provide ample fodder to those clear-thinking individuals who try to understand the union's contortions of reality. How, though, can such a person understand the article that appears on page 29?

A bill that blames teacher transfer rights for problems schools of greatest need have in attracting and retaining highly qualified teachers has survived the Senate despite CTA's opposition...SB1655 by Senate Education Chair Jack Scott (D-Pasadena) would remove a chapter's right to bargain transfer policies from the collective bargaining law.

Ok, I think I understand that. Scott--a "friend of education" in CTA parlance because of that "D" after his name--has proposed a bill that would take teacher transfer rights out of district collective bargaining agreements and codify them in state law. CTA opposes this, but why?

Under the bill's provisions, principals in Decile 1-3 schools would not have to accept any transfer applicant, even if the teacher is fully credentialed and "highly qualified" as defined by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).

Why might a principal not want to accept a specific applicant for a job?

A principal would be allowed to bar a teacher who is outspoken about curriculum and other needed changes or who is a union activist.

So who's in charge of a school, the principal or the teachers? It's the principal whose job's on the line if a school underperforms; I say let the principal choose his/her staff and see what happens. Worried about a union activist? I'd think a principal in such circumstances would be far more worried about having to accept someone who already knows better than anyone else what needs to be done and hence wouldn't go along with needed reforms. CTA's concerns ring hollow to me.

What's one of the perennial whines about underperforming schools? That good teachers transfer out of bad schools once they get a little seniority. How does CTA couch more opposition to this bill?

The bill could have the effect of keeping highly qualified teachers from transferring into the schools that need them the most.

I'm sorry if I just don't believe them. I'll tell you right here and now the only reason CTA is concerned about this bill. If it can't be negotiated, there's that much less for negotiators and the CTA to work on. That means that CTA is that much less useful. Their opposition to this bill is nothing more than self-protection.

But what's the real problem with underperforming schools? Apparently it's not great teachers, whom CTA thinks are applying to such schools in droves.

The bill does nothing to make schools of greatest need more attractvie places to teach--like giving them an infusion of money, lowering class size, improving safety conditions, or requiring high-quality principals. (emphasis mine--Darren)

You knew that was going to be the answer, didn't you? Like a broken record. Note how the problems are money and bad principals? Isn't is always thus?

Fairfield-Suisun, A Perpetual Hellhole

Page 26 of California Educator, mouthpiece rag of the CTA, has an article about yet another protest in the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District, located about an hour away from the capital. These protests are nothing new; in fact, they're rather common. Apparently Fairfield-Suisun is a cesspit.

If the CTA truly wanted what is best for its members, it would put a lot of money into that district. It would attract attention, discuss school board elections, ensure it's members don't roll over and accept yet another contract that amounts to eating dung--in short, it would work for results. However, that's not what CTA is all about. In fact, I dare say that CTA likes having that cesspit; the status quo, through convoluted reasoning that only a union hack could understand, actually serves CTA's interests in a couple areas:

• the 1200 teachers in that district still have a need for CTA, despite the fact that nothing changes; and
• CTA gets a beautiful demon-enemy in the form of the district administration, a demon-enemy they can point out to other districts and say "You need us to protect you from people like them".

I grow tired of reading about those people. To paraphrase the vernacular, either crap or get off the pot.

CTA's Muddled Positions

I'm not a union member but they still send me their union rag. I don't have a birdcage to line so I guess I should read it. But oh, it's a good thing I don't have ulcers to be irritated.

The June issue is all about social promotion and retention of students. At first glance that would be good, especially when the cover story seems to lean against social promotion. The first couple of articles might well give the right-thinking among us goosebumps--could CTA finally be coming around?

Sadly, no. Apparently, social promotion is only bad when a school district (read: administration) doesn't impose rigorous standards for students to meet. Yes, the valiant teachers fight an uphill battle against a weak administration (see pp. 6-7) that only wants to keep parents placated by moving their children along.... If only the school district had rigorous standards for students to meet, everything would be fine.

Sure, and what's CTA's position when the state wants to impose rigorous standards for students to meet? One size doesn't fit all! Standardized tests don't tell you anything! My creativity is being stifled! My guess is that teachers, and teachers alone, should decide who passes and who doesn't. We can decide that for our classes, but we cannot be the creators and arbiters of district policy.

Then I turn to p. 18 and read the article entitled "CAHSEE: The threat that gets their attention". Again, you have to wonder--given CTA's open hostility to the exit exam, how could this article appear?

In high school, where social promotion is not a possibility under normal circumstances, the exit exam may well be the first time students are held truly accountable for their academic performance.

Even students who consider the exam unfair admit that it made them put out effort like never before.

And a few paragraphs later, there's this:

"They hold teachers accountable and schools accountable, so why not kids?" he (a teacher) asks. "Sometimes by the time they get to high school, it can be too late." p. 19

That sounds like a ringing endorsement of the exit exam to me. Has CTA gone schizophrenic?

Apparently, the answer is yes. Keeping in mind what we just read about the exit exam, let's take a gander at what we find on p. 32.

The state is entertaining the idea of eliminating the CCTC (California Commission on Teacher Credentialing) and moving its duties to the State Board of Education or the California Department of Education. While CTA would like to see a majority of teachers on the licensure board, chosen in a manner similar to that of the State Teachers' Retirement System board, Council decided it does not want the body that deals with the high school exit exam, academic standards, STAR testing and No Child Left Behind to deal with teacher credentials.

So, where exactly does CTA stand again? Is the exit exam a good thing, or not? Are high standards a good thing, or not? And if we like high standards, is testing to ensure we meet those standards a good thing, or not?

I'm not really surprised. It's not like this is the first time that CTA's been inconsistent within the same issue of the rag.

Spying? Or Good Parenting?

Car: Devices can record distance, speed and driving behavior, such as hard braking and sharp turning. Some pinpoint a car's location using Global Positioning System technology and alert parents if a teen driver exceeds a certain speed or leaves a defined geographic area. One, the CarChip, costs $139. Monthly services cost $20 and up.

Cell phones: GPS enables parents to locate a child's phone on an online map. One service will text message parents if the phone leaves a predetermined zone. Monthly services typically cost $10 to $20.

Software: Various programs can track Web activity and record online chats, instant messages and e-mail. Parents can receive reports and alerts by e-mail and, in some cases, by phone or text message. Prices range from $40 to $100 in one-time or annual fees.

I'm of the "good parenting" camp. We humans learn from our mistakes, and if parents can catch their kids in the midst of making a bad decision, that's even better. I'm not convinced we need to put our children in harm's way.

Those who know me will marvel at these statements, since I'm constantly telling my son to go out and play and I chastise him when he calls every ten minutes asking if he can do this or that or walk 10 feet to someone else's house (no, I didn't give him his cell phone). However, there's a difference of degree here--how much trouble might he get into if he goes to another friend's house for awhile, vs. how much trouble could he get into if he were of driving age, or surfing the internet as a teenage boy? I want him to learn to make good decisions now, while he's young, and he won't learn to do that if I don't let him make any decisions on his own. Usually, I tell him that if he has to call and ask if he can do something or go somewhere in our neighborhood, I'll just tell him no. Learn to make decisions on your own, and if I find out you've made bad decisions, well, we'll learn from those....

So back to the story:

Paige White was surprised when her parents figured out soon after she started driving last year that she'd gone 9 miles to a party, not 4 miles to the friend's house she'd told them she was visiting. It seemed to her almost as if her car was bugged.

It was.

Paige's parents had installed a device in their daughter's SUV that can tell them not only how far she's driven, but how fast and whether she's made any sudden stops or hard turns.

"I was kind of mad because I felt it was an invasion of my privacy," said the Los Gatos resident, now 17.

If you're lying to your parents about driving to a party, hon, you've got bigger issues to deal with than an invasion of your privacy. Why does she think it's ok for her to lie, but not for her parents to catch her in that lie? What kind of thought process is going through that girl's head?

Here's another story from the article, one that is clearly good parenting.

One Pleasant Hill mother has been using SpectorSoft's eBlaster for about a year to track her sons' online activity, including instant messaging. She's found the boys, 14 and 16, looking at "light porn" and discussing oral sex, and she's ferreted out weekend parties where no adults were going to be home. In those cases, she's made family plans without telling her sons what she knew.

Bravo, mom! Excellent way to handle the situation. In addition to her "soft" way of handling it, she's keeping her "intelligence source" secret. BTW, mom, don't let the New York Times in on your identity.

I know the teenagers won't be the biggest fans of this type of gadgetry, but I'd be interested in hearing their opinions. And parents? What do you think?

Update, 7/15/06: Here's another story about how parents are trying to influence their teenagers' driving. I like this quote:

"Parents will say, 'I have a good teen, I trust my teen,' " said Gary Direnfeld, founder of the "I Promise Program" for teen driving safety. "But, the issue isn't trust. The issue is lack of judgment, lack of experience."

As a wise man once said, "Trust, but verify."

Joining Forces To Fight For High Standards

Things in Sacramento are getting yucky. Governor Schwarzenegger appointed an idiot (Bersin) to the state Board of Education, a Board member resigned (presumably) because of the way the Board's being treated, Jackie Goldberg is shooting off her mouth again in an attempt to lower standards--this apparently was enough to convince two previous governors, Republican Pete Wilson and Democrat Gray Davis, to sent an open letter to the folks in Sacramento, urging them to maintain the high standards the state currently has.

Read the following snips from this San Francisco Chronicle article and see who seems to make more sense, the former governors or Jackie Goldberg.

So pitched is the ideological battle that after the state Board of Education rejected in April a Democratic lawmaker's plan to create new instructional materials for English learners, angry legislators zeroed out funding for the board in the budget signed by Schwarzenegger on June 30.

"Sacramento is awash in misinformation about the recent history and intentions of California's school reform strategy. As the governors who led this work, we believe it is time to remind the public of the facts," Republican Wilson and Democrat Davis wrote in their letter.

"Standards provide a measure of excellence regardless of one's skin color, family income or ZIP code. We believe that if we set expectations high, students will respond," the two men wrote. "Not every child will fully meet the challenge, but all will benefit from the effort."

Lowering or weakening academic standards would create "educational apartheid," they wrote.

"When the hell did Pete Wilson or Gray Davis last teach school or last work with English language learners in a classroom? The answer is never," replied Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, D-Los Angeles and chairwoman of the lower house's education committee.

Like I said, who makes more sense? You can use the search engine at the top of this page to find out more about Jackie Goldberg--unless you're a complete and total nutcase, you won't be impressed by what you read.

Goldberg and another legislator want 9 years of so-called bilingual education for English Learners--even though study after study shows what they want doesn't work. We tried that in California already, and it doesn't work. Why does Goldberg want this? It buys her votes from the bilingual ed lobby. What does work? Structured English Immersion, in which children are put in English-only classes in which the instruction is geared not only to teaching academic content but also English itself.

"The governor has some personal experience in this area. He learned by coming to this country and immersing himself in the language," said Sabrina Lockhart, a Schwarzenegger spokeswoman. "Test scores show English learners do better when they are immersed in the language."

But Goldberg didn't get her way when the Board last met, so what did she do?

The budget sent by the Democrat-controlled Legislature to Schwarzenegger contained no money for the board.

Don't do what we want? We won't fund the Board of Education anymore. I have nothing but disgust for Jackie Goldberg and her ilk.

Bravo for the two previous governors, though, for attempting to keep the work they began moving in the right direction. I hope their influence is enough to persuade the yahoos in Sacramento to do what's right.

US Economy

Remember all those polls and surveys you hear and read about that tell what bad shape Americans think their economy is in? Let's look at some facts and ditch the emotion for just a moment:

Did you know that just over the past 11 quarters, dating back to the June 2003 Bush tax cuts, America has increased the size of its entire economy by 20 percent? In less than three years, the U.S. economic pie has expanded by $2.2 trillion, an output add-on that is roughly the same size as the total Chinese economy, and much larger than the total economic size of nations like India, Mexico, Ireland, and Belgium.

But here's another suppressed fact: Since the 2003 tax cuts, tax-revenue collections from the expanding economy have been surging at double-digit rates while the deficit is constantly being revised downward.

Investors now keep nearly 50 percent more of their after-tax capital returns -- an enormous increase that has resulted in a remarkably profitable and highly productive business sector. While the overall economy has grown by one-fifth since mid-2003, private business investment has expanded by 37 percent.

There are several other facts in Kudlow's article--go read them if you find this kind of information interesting. I like his closing, however:

It is this American economic dynamism that separates our ongoing prosperity from the overtaxed and overregulated stutter-start stagnation of industrial economies in Western Europe and Japan.

Did someone say prosperity?

Ran Into A Student At The Mall Today

I had a disturbing experience at the mall today.

As I was wandering about the mall I noticed one of my recently-former students in line with his mother at the Cinnabon. Deciding to be a smart-aleck, I went and stood right next to this student to see how long it would take him to notice me.

I waited. They ordered. I waited. They got their food. I waited. They started walking away. "What, you don't say 'hey' anymore?"

At that point he realized who I was and the three of us chatted for several minutes. He noted that I was wearing an orange shirt and (non-orange) shorts--a disguise more than enough to camouflage myself amongst the masses. I also noted that I was wearing flip-flops and hadn't shaven this morning--this was me in my true form, a scrub. All that shaving and dressing up I do during the school year, well, that isn't the real me! And we started on a several-minute-long conversation. But here's where it gets disturbing. I can't be the only teacher who experiences this next part.

You see, I couldn't remember this student's name.

It's not that he wasn't someone I really interacted with much. On the contrary, I genuinely enjoyed working with him this past year. And school got out less than a month ago. Try as I might, I couldn't remember his name.

It happens each year. As soon as that last bell rings in early June, I do a total brain dump. Maybe I need to make room for the 170+ names I'll have to memorize with faces in late August, or maybe the Alzheimers that ravaged the memories of both my grandmothers is stalking me entirely too soon. Whatever the reason, the problem exists--I forget students' names very quickly.

And here was the boy standing right in front of me, carrying on a conversation.

Even when his mother dropped his first name, I still couldn't remember his last name. As much as I enjoyed talking to them, I stood in abject fear of being found out--I didn't know the name of the person I was talking to. I've always been bad with names; that's not an excuse, just an observation. I'm not proud of it, but neither do I have any conscious control over it.

It wasn't until about 10 minutes after our conversation ended that his last name, and hence his total identity, came to me. And what's really weird is the route that realization took in my brain. You see, I could see his writing in my mind. I could see his assignments in my mind--not his actual assignments, as I obviously don't have a photographic memory, but assignments that he could have done. And as I scrolled up the paper in my mind, then his name came into view. It took his first name and visualizations of his writing before I could unlock his last name from the secret storage places of my own mind.

No doubt some psychologist could have a field day with that information. For my part, I'm just glad that I finally, even if belatedly, was able to remember the information I so desperately sought.

How Nerdy Am I?

I think this came more from my knowledge of math and science than from my knowledge of computers....

Gays--Why This Support For The Democrat Party?

I've said it before and the stats bear me out: the only group that votes more reliably Democrat than blacks is gays. Why?

I'M CONFUSED: "Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean called the rationale used in a decision by the New York appeals court reaffirming a ban on gay marriage 'bigoted and outdated.'"

How do we square that with this? "Democratic Party Chair Howard Dean has contradicted his party's platform and infuriated gay rights advocates by saying the party's platform states 'marriage is between a man and a woman.'"

Am I missing something? I realize, of course, that a "bigoted" rationale could conceivably produce an un-bigoted result -- marriage only between a man and a woman, which Dean apparently favors -- but that's more nuance than I usually expect from Dean. Something like that certainly calls for more explanation.

Update, 7/9/06: I have to copy this entire Instapundit post because it's just too good:

GAY MARRIAGE UPDATE: "Presidential hopeful, Hillary Clinton has disappointed the New York gay community by specifically leaving out any pledges on gay marriage in her call for equality for gay people."

Michael Petrelis is critical. "Speak up on gay marriage, Senator Clinton, if only because it is never acceptable for public officials to remain silent on important civil rights issues."

UPDATE: The Boston Globe is ordering gay employees to get married or lose their benefits.

Hm.

Taliban Man Ousted From Yale

Word on the street is that Yale has buckled under the pressure of public knowledge that the former Taliban Ambassador-at-large, Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, is studying in New Haven--and he won't be soon enough. Granted, he was not in a degree-granting program, but the mere fact that he was studying at Yale instead of at Guantanamo is shocking. Yale came under the spotlight last year when news of Hashemi's presence hit the blogosphere; what was it someone once said about sunlight being the best disinfectant?

Apparently the NY Times has finally posted their story about the subject.

Update, 7/8/06: Apparently I misspoke. He can stay and study if he wishes, but he cannot get a Yale degree.

Humorous Post About Global Warming

Well said in just four short sentences, and that's if you include "No." as a sentence.

NEA Shows Hypocrisy (Again)

From EIA (see blogroll at left), as usual:

Legislative Amendment 6 was approved. It puts NEA in opposition to the use of voter ID. A delegate was kind enough to point out to me that NEA secret ballot elections, such as the ones that took place yesterday and today, require the delegates to produce photo ID before they can vote. Fraud in a vote for a one-year seat on the NEA Board of Directors is apparently more worrisome than fraud in a vote for President of the United States.

Why would any organization, left or right, be against this requirement, unless they expect to get some fraudulent votes going their way?

This Week's Carnival of Education

It's here! And unlike the new Superman, it's about Truth, Justice, and the American Way!

Chilean Students Protest For A Better Education

Oh the times, they are a'changin'.

SANTIAGO, Chile - They call themselves the "penguins" for their white-on-dark school uniforms, but what 700,000 Chilean high school kids have pulled off in recent days signals the emergence of a new generation in a nation transformed from dictatorship to democracy.

Marching in the streets and occupying schools, the teenagers' three-week revolt against their decrepit education system became known as the "Penguin Revolution," Chile's biggest protest since democracy was restored in 1990.

Chile's teenagers, the first generation born in the twilight of Gen. Augusto Pinochet's 17-year military dictatorship, have discovered strength in numbers, winning $200 million in new spending — a 2.78 percent increase in the annual education budget — and representation on a council that will propose sweeping reforms.

"The students have learned the power of having a voice," sociologist Manuel Antonio Garreton said.

It's all the more striking in a nation that had been cowed into silence by a dictatorship during which 3,100 people died or disappeared. The student protests have emboldened other groups — health care workers staging a one-day nationwide strike Tuesday for better working conditions, victims of violence demanding justice, even drivers upset about gasoline prices.

Felipe Anabalon, 18, says his parents were at school during the dictatorship and could not demonstrate "because they could have been killed." (emphasis mine--Darren)

That, dear readers, is what it means to live under oppression. When you live in a country in which you can publicly whine about how oppressed you are, you are not oppressed. Let's read on:

Chile is an economic success story whose free-market foundations were laid during the dictatorship, and fewer than 20 percent live in poverty. But inequalities linger, most noticeably in its education system: schools lack books or winter heating, teachers are underpaid and indifferent, and even the poorest students must pay $40 to take the high school exams that decide whether they will get into college.

The students targeted a particularly unpopular law from the final days of the dictatorship that shifted most responsibility for funding education from government to municipalities, causing wide gaps in quality between rich and poor areas.

We have just the opposite situation in California, and still there's the so-called problem of underfunding. Seems like neither system is guaranteed to provide enough money for education!

There's plenty more to this story. Go read the whole thing while the link remains good.

Update, 7/5/06: Here's a more permanent link.

News From the NEA Convention

My mole at the convention hasn't contacted me, so like the rest of the world I must get my information straight from the Education Intelligence Agency. NBI stands for "new business item".

NBI 33 reads, "NEA will create a committee to explore joining with other associations and organizations interested in public education with the purpose of creating, using the NEA website, a website dedicated to defending public education from negative propaganda in the media."

As Yoda might say: "Do, or do not. There is no 'create a committee to explore.'"

I guess the education-textbook complex never issues propaganda.

* I just liked the vocabulary used in NBI 35, which calls on NEA to educate its members about NCLB and instruct them "in the necessary steps to impede its reauthorization."

Yes, because that's what a good teacher should be doing.

* NBI 39 calls on NEA to publish an open letter to President Bush and the U.S. Congress under the headline "Support our Troops and Their Families – Bring the Troops Home Now." Apparently top-down mandates from non-practitioners are OK when it comes to national defense. Maybe the troops should be consulted before anything is done in their name.

Hear hear! How many times must I say it--consistency is not a strong suit of the left.

Here are a few suggested amendments to the union's legislative program:

* Legislative Amendment 6 would put NEA on record in opposition to voter identification at polling places.

Of course! Because voting is too important to restrict it to only legal, living, American voters.

* Legislative Amendment 8 would have NEA call for the repeal of NCLB.

* Legislative Amendment 10 directs NEA to call on the federal government to restore the old dates for Daylight Savings Time.

Because that's an important component of Darren's pay, benefits, and working conditions.

You people who continue to be NEA members--how long can you put up with this? Surely cognitive dissonance will affect you eventually.

Dog Bites Man--NEA To Challenge "No Child Left Behind" Law

What a shocker. They don't like NCLB. I'll bet they also say that class sizes are too large and pay is too low.

The plan approved Monday calls for increases in the $23.5 billion budget currently authorized by Congress and a decrease in the number of students in each classroom. The union also is calling for a national minimum wage of $40,000 a year for teachers.

What a shock! Can I call 'em, or what?!

I actually found the information at the end of the article to be the most interesting because it might mean that the NEA actually told the truth about something:

Packer said Monday's vote reflects a recent NEA member attitude survey of 1,000 NEA members, which found a majority dislikes the No Child Left Behind Act but would rather modify it than repeal it.

About 30 percent of NEA members approve of the law, the survey found.

If I were an NEA member, I'd be part of that 30%. But I'm not, so I'm not.

I find it interesting that the NEA, however slowly, might start playing ball here with the Republicans.

"We're moving from just being critics to saying this is our own vision," Packer said. "It is very powerful because it's the voices of classroom teachers."

In an hourlong discussion, only three of the 9,000 members of the union's Representative Assembly argued against the lobbying effort. They said the law was too flawed to fix and wanted the union to focus on repealing it.

A significant number of delegates shouted "No" during the vote, but not enough to swing the outcome.

Might the union higher-ups have finally realized that they've effectively shut themselves out of the decision-making process for the last 5 1/2 years, and that maybe they should try a different technique besides "complain, degrade, and attack" if they want to be taken seriously at all? Naw, that's too much to hope for. That would probably be reading too much into this one particular event.

Update, 6:15 pm: The Education Intelligence Agency provides this commentary straight from the convention:

It's difficult to take seriously all the NCLB horror stories about soul-deadening curriculum, skyrocketing school budget deficits, employees thrown out into the streets, and intimidated and frightened students, when not a single state has turned down the money appropriated by Congress to implement it. Reject the money, avoid NCLB mandates.

When the education establishment truly embraces the Tenth Amendment (item #6), we'll all be better off. Don't take the handout and then complain when you're asked to chop wood.

What's So Great About America?

There is so much that is good in this article that if I started quoting from it, I'd end up quoting the whole darned thing. So go read the whole thing and see what's so great about America--through the eyes of an Indian immigrant.

Women's Group Wants Woman Removed From National Math Panel

From EdWeek (registration currently required):

An advocacy group that promotes increased participation for women in mathematics is calling for the removal of the vice chairwoman of a newly formed national panel studying how to improve student performance in that subject, citing objections over research she conducted in the 1980s on gender differences in math reasoning...

The association, which is based in Fairfax, Va., and says it has 4,100 members, takes issue with three articles written by Ms. Benbow in the 1980s. One of those articles examines the possibility of differences in mathematical reasoning ability between males and females, particularly among those with strong ability in the subject.

The Association for Women in Mathematics’ petition says that the articles conveyed the belief that there are “intrinsic gender differences that favor males at the highest levels of mathematics.” The petition argues that there is considerable research that contradicts Ms. Benbow’s findings...

But Ms. Benbow, a widely published scholar, said she stood completely by the research in the three articles cited by the association. The first article, “Sex Differences in Mathematical Ability: Fact or Artifact,” appeared in the journal Science in 1980; a second article was published in Science in 1983; and the third appeared in Behavioral and Brain Science in 1988. Subsequent research has drawn similar conclusions to hers, Ms. Benbow said in an interview at the meeting. She said she had no plans to step down from the panel.

Ms. Benbow noted that she has conducted extensive research on how gifted girls and boys learn math, work that she believes has benefited both females and males in that subject.

Dr. Summers, President of Harvard, was forced out after making a comment that differences between men and women in this field should be studied.

Why is it that if someone mentions that there might be a difference between how men and women process information, and that that possibility merits study, some people get their panties in a bunch, but then those same people will turn around and discuss how blacks learn differently from whites and teachers need different strategies to teach black and Hispanic kids.

How many times must I say it--consistency is not a strong point of the left.

Hiking

My regular readers might have noticed that I didn't add much to this blog yesterday, and it tood forever for comments to be approved and posted. There's a good reason, and it wasn't laziness.

A couple friends and I went up into the Sierra to go hiking yesterday. I'm apparently not 25 anymore, which is how old I was when I hiked the 14 miles (and 7,000 vertical feet) up the Barr Trail to the summit of Pikes Peak in 5 1/2 hrs, and after a 45 min rest turned around and hiked the 14 miles back down in 4 1/2 hrs.

No, nothing so dramatic this time.

We hiked up Round Top in the El Dorado National Forest, east of Sacramento and kinda-sorta on the way to Lake Tahoe. I wish we'd known yesterday about the station mentioned in that link, although one friend said he did see remnants of a foundation.

Last year when we hiked it there was no snow at all. It was a long winter this year and snow was still abundant. The small lake partway up--still lots of ice, with a deep blue arctic color. Summit pictures I've seen on other web sites don't do it justice--it's steep, it's jagged, and the wind blows viciously. It's no Everest, but for us rookies, it's a fairly good hike.

Good thing I went in the hot tub last night. Muscles are only moderately sore today!

Selling Lesson Plans

Joanne (see blogroll at left) has the story about a web site where teachers can buy lesson plans from other teachers.

If your time is valuable to you, it might not be a bad idea!

A New Class Enters West Point

Now that the Class of 2010 is getting settled into its summer training in Basic Cadet Training (or have they now changed the title to Cadet Basic Training), I thought it would be fun to share some statistics about this latest group of young people whom the left will decry as warmongers.

Class of 2010 stats (straight from the Superintendent's briefing slides for parents)
Admitted: 1315 (my class was larger, and we were only in a Cold War)
Combat vets: 25 men and 3 women
Average SAT score (out of 1600): 1283
6% African-American
8% Hispanic
14% Women
International cadets representing the following countries: Belize, Cameroon, Iraq, Latvia, Malaysia, Maldives, Nicaragua, Palau (didn't even know they had a military), Peru, Romania, Rwanda, and Thailand

I have no word on whether or not the Latin Americans are counted as part of the 8% listed as Hispanic.

Just for fun, I thought I'd mention the other countries represented at West Point in the Classes of 2007-2009: Afghanistan, Albania, Brunei, Bulgaria, Chad (after the Grenada invasion we used to joke about training options in Chad--seriously!), Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Tunisia

Those are amazing lists of countries. Yes, I know it's been 19 years, but when I was a cadet several of those countries weren't even independent countries, and a few others were behind the Iron Curtain. Others weren't very friendly to the US. If you need any proof that times change, this list can certainly provide some.