Blame The School?

I have this conversation with students sometimes:  is it the school that compels you to take 4 AP classes at the same time?  Is it the school that schedules so many non-academic activities?  Is it the school that has you compete in multiple sports?

I have no doubt it's the school, backed up by the parents, that tells you that you must go to college.  But the school only provides opportunities for pressure, for the most part it's others who apply that pressure.

That's why I get fired up when people talk about the school when kids kill themselves:

His death is one of six apparent suicides at Fairfax’s W.T. Woodson High School during the past three years, including another student found dead the next day. The toll has left the school community reeling and prompted an urgent question: Why would so many teens from a single suburban school take their lives?

I don't think it's the school.  I think it's the community.

“There is too much stress in my life from school and the environment it creates, expectations for sports, expectations from my friends and expectations from my family,” Jack wrote. He ended with a simple: “Goodbye.”

School is the focus of a teenager's life.  Perhaps we need to clarify what is meant by "the school".  When I use that term, in general I'm referring to the adults who run it as opposed to the students who inhabit it.  Jack's list above indicates to me that school was a nexus for expectations from everybody in his life, not just the adults at his school.

Many wonder if there is a common thread. A number of parents and students said they worry about the fierce competition for limited spots in the state’s prestigious public university system.

This college arms race has got to stop.  We, the adults at school as well as the adults in the community, have got to stop insinuating, or even saying outright, that if you don't get into such-and-such a university, or any university at all, you won't be successful in life.  We've got to stop this masquerade of "college and career prep" wherein everyone has to go to some type of college, and some have to go to a Tier 1 school or be left behind.  That last one falls firmly on "the school's" shoulders

Kids get involved in that arms race because of adults.  Adults can look around all day and try to figure out why kids are killing themselves, but in this community it seems clear to me that the answer lies in the mirror.

Hat tip to Joanne Jacobs.

Welcome, Visitors!

It's interesting to check the Statcounter sometimes and see where visitors are coming from.  Consider these two:

click to enlarge

At first I thought, could these two places be any more different?  Then I realized they both involve "goofy".

Thank you ladies and gentlemen, I'll be here all week!  Be sure to tip your waiters and  waitresses.

The SAT and Intelligence

Having a high enough SAT score from "back in the day" can get you into Mensa, so the smart people have some faith in the SAT as an intelligence test.  There's plenty of evidence that such faith is merited:

The College Board—the standardized testing behemoth that develops and administers the SAT and other tests—has redesigned its flagship product again. Beginning in spring 2016, the writing section will be optional, the reading section will no longer test “obscure” vocabulary words, and the math section will put more emphasis on solving problems with real-world relevance. Overall, as the College Board explains on its website, “The redesigned SAT will more closely reflect the real work of college and career, where a flexible command of evidence—whether found in text or graphic [sic]—is more important than ever.”

A number of pressures may be behind this redesign. Perhaps it’s competition from the ACT, or fear that unless the SAT is made to seem more relevant, more colleges will go the way of Wake Forest, Brandeis, and Sarah Lawrence and join the “test optional admissions movement,” which already boasts several hundred members. Or maybe it’s the wave of bad press that standardized testing, in general, has received over the past few years.

Critics of standardized testing are grabbing this opportunity to take their best shot at the SAT. They make two main arguments. The first is simply that a person’s SAT score is essentially meaningless—that it says nothing about whether that person will go on to succeed in college. Leon Botstein, president of Bard College and longtime standardized testing critic, wrote in Time that the SAT “needs to be abandoned and replaced"...

Along the same lines, Elizabeth Kolbert wrote in The New Yorker that “the SAT measures those skills—and really only those skills—necessary for the SATs.”

But this argument is wrong. The SAT does predict success in college—not perfectly, but relatively well, especially given that it takes just a few hours to administer. And, unlike a “complex portrait” of a student’s life, it can be scored in an objective way. (In a recent New York Times op-ed, the University of New Hampshire psychologist John D. Mayer aptly described the SAT’s validity as an “astonishing achievement.”) In a study published in Psychological Science, University of Minnesota researchers Paul Sackett, Nathan Kuncel, and their colleagues investigated the relationship between SAT scores and college grades in a very large sample: nearly 150,000 students from 110 colleges and universities. SAT scores predicted first-year college GPA about as well as high school grades did, and the best prediction was achieved by considering both factors. Botstein, Boylan, and Kolbert are either unaware of this directly relevant, easily accessible, and widely disseminated empirical evidence, or they have decided to ignore it and base their claims on intuition and anecdote—or perhaps on their beliefs about the way the world should be rather than the way it is.

Furthermore, contrary to popular belief, it’s not just first-year college GPA that SAT scores predict. In a four-year study that started with nearly 3,000 college students, a team of Michigan State University researchers led by Neal Schmitt found that test score (SAT or ACT—whichever the student took) correlated strongly with cumulative GPA at the end of the fourth year. If the students were ranked on both their test scores and cumulative GPAs, those who had test scores in the top half (above the 50th percentile, or median) would have had a roughly two-thirds chance of having a cumulative GPA in the top half. By contrast, students with bottom-half SAT scores would be only one-third likely to make it to the top half in GPA.

Test scores also predicted whether the students graduated: A student who scored in the 95th percentile on the SAT or ACT was about 60 percent more likely to graduate than a student who scored in the 50th percentile. Similarly impressive evidence supports the validity of the SAT’s graduate school counterparts: the Graduate Record Examinations, the Law School Admissions Test, and the Graduate Management Admission Test. A 2007 Science article summed up the evidence succinctly: “Standardized admissions tests have positive and useful relationships with subsequent student accomplishments.”

SAT scores even predict success beyond the college years...

The second popular anti-SAT argument is that, if the test measures anything at all, it’s not cognitive skill but socioeconomic status...It’s true that economic background correlates with SAT scores. Kids from well-off families tend to do better on the SAT. However, the correlation is far from perfect. In the University of Minnesota study of nearly 150,000 students, the correlation between socioeconomic status, or SES, and SAT was not trivial but not huge. (A perfect correlation has a value of 1; this one was .25.) What this means is that there are plenty of low-income students who get good scores on the SAT; there are even likely to be low-income students among those who achieve a perfect score on the SAT.

A correlation of .25 is very small.

What this all means is that the SAT measures something—some stable characteristic of high school students other than their parents’ income—that translates into success in college. And what could that characteristic be? General intelligence.

As the SAT is changed from an intelligence test to more of an achievement test, its primary usefulness is diluted.

There's plenty more in the article, including much about IQ and intelligence, and I encourage you to go read the whole thing.  Very interesting.

'Murica

I have a foreign exchange student who is just great to have in class.  He's very bright, very interesting, and fun to be around.

Several months ago I suggested that if he truly wanted to experience America, he should shoot some firearms.  Today we went to the range :-)  He was a pretty good shot on the .22 rifle we took--but what was cool was that the guy on the range next to us let him fire off a few shots on a 9mm pistol and a .357 Magnum!

Afterwards we went to Marie Calendar's and had some apple pie.  We did not, however, contrary to my previous plans, sing God Bless America.  I still think he had an American experience today.

If his host doesn't take him, perhaps some weekend I'll take him to the Gold Discovery Site at Coloma.  It's California in a way that San Francisco and Hollywood and surfing are not.

It's One Thing To Think About It, It's Another To Do It

We've probably all had that thought; sometimes, some people just need a butt-kicking.  And while that atavistic thought is no doubt normal, most of us are smart enough not to act on it:

Florida’s St. Lucie County School Board officially fired veteran teacher Dru Dehart after their investigation found that she encouraged six 8th grade students to beat up 7th grader Radravious Williams, WPTV NewsChannel 5 reports...

Darrisaw (the boy's mother) added, "[Dehart’s] remarks was, 'I got my eighth grade boys on you. You're not so tough now"...

WPEC CBS 12 spoke to Radravious’ parents about the board’s decision. “Through the entire situation and even when I got the news, I wasn’t, it’s no congratulations on ether side, because she's suffering and my son is still suffering," said Latasha Darrisaw. “As a person, as any parent, you want some kind of apology. But I guess we’ll get that whenever she’s ready.”

You Think Martin Bashir or Keith Olbermann Are Nice People?

I guess it's possible, but I don't see any stories like these about them.  Then again, they don't allow conservatives on MSNBC:

In the fall of 2013, I gave a TED talk on what I learned as a progressive, on-air talking head at Fox News, where I worked for two years before leaving and joining my current home, CNN. After all, one of the most frequent questions I was asked during my time at Fox was how I did it, how I was a fox in the henhouse – or a hen in the Fox house, if you will.

The questions came mostly from fellow liberals who had not watched much Fox News but had seen the most outlandish clips of Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity that had made it to "The Daily Show" or YouTube. They perhaps imagined that walking down the hallway outside makeup, Mr. O'Reilly might yell then, too, instead of just saying hello. That's a funny notion, but it couldn't be further from the truth.

 

My time at Fox News was marked by meeting and working with some of the kindest, smartest, and most talented people I've had the pleasure of meeting in life. As I said in my TED talk, Sean Hannity is one of the sweetest people you'll ever meet – and even now that I've parted ways with Fox, he remains a good friend and mentor.

For a radical progressive who once harbored negative stereotypes about folks on the right, it was a turning point for me to meet people such as Mr. Hannity, Karl Rove, Monica Crowley, Sarah Palin, and so many others, and see that – though we certainly disagree profoundly on political issues – they're personable and kind and human. Just like me.

I'm In A Profession of Idiots

Anyone want to defend the role of the school, the cops, or the courts in this one?  Misplaced faith in these fields does untold damage to our nation:

Here comes another story highlighting the danger of schools "outsourcing" their disciplinary problems to law enforcement. As we've stated before, this does nothing more than turn routine misconduct into criminal behavior, which is a great way to derail a student's future.

A Pennsylvania teen, who claimed to have been bullied constantly (and ignored by school administration), made an audio recording of his tormentors using a school-supplied iPad. He brought this to the school's attention, which duly responded by calling the cops… to have him arrested for violating Pennsylvania's wiretapping law...

The judge said that bullying victims should first bring the problem to their parents -- which this student did. Next, she says the parents should let the school administrators know -- which she did. Finally, she says, let the school handle it -- which it did. And now, the student faces her -- having followed all the proper steps -- charged with disorderly conduct. And yet, despite this, she asserts that the system works and, indeed, has always worked in regards to this particular school. Logical fallacy piled on top of logical fallacy until a bullied kid is charged with a crime while his recorded tormentors remain unpunished.

The judge refused to believe that any one these esteemed administrators could have screwed up, failing to believe that they, too, are human and as prone to failure as anyone else. If they've never screwed up in the fast, all future misdeeds are forgiven (and forgotten) in advance. This is the sort of rationale that should never be deployed by a supposedly impartial overseer like a judge, because it's just as wrong as assuming every authority figure involved here is an irredeemable monster.

Maybe the future holds better outcomes, but for right now, everyone involved had a chance to stop this from reaching this illogical conclusion, but no one -- from the administrators to their legal team to local law enforcement to the presiding judge -- was interested in reining this in. In the end, it looks as though an innate desire to punish someone was satisfied every step of the way.

Is it really illegal in Pennsylvania to record people in public? Do people have an "expectation of privacy" in the open areas of school?  Are you "wiretapping" in Pennsylvania if you set up a camera on a street corner?

Update, 4/21/14:  The disinfectant of sunlight has made the cockroaches scurry for cover:

Throughout the entire debacle, not a single person involved even considered the possibility that the student had committed no crime or the fact that he had followed all of the school's prescribed steps for reporting bullying incidents. Instead, the desire to punish someone was obliged every step of the way.

Finally, someone within the justice system has chosen to act like an adult, rather than a bunch of clique-y, vindictive children...

More specifically, both the wiretapping charge (which was apparently still brought despite the involved officer's statement otherwise) and the disorderly conduct charge (which the judge found the student guilty of) were dropped. 

The DA was the adult in this case, but:

While it's nice that the DA has dropped the charges and allowed the student to proceed through school without criminal charges hanging over his head, one wonders if this same outcome would have forthcoming without the attendant public outcry. Any adult can start acting like one with enough public shaming. But the application of a little common sense would have averted this incident completely.

Why I'm Not An Isolationist

There's a streak in the Republican Party, one that rears its ugly head every few years, and that streak is isolationism.  Closing your eyes and pulling the blankets over your head might be effective for a four-year-old who wants to hide from monsters, but it's not very effective in a world where headlines like this are run:

Washington drives the world to war

Washington has lost Crimea. Instead of admitting that its plan for grabbing Ukraine has gone amiss, Washington is unable to admit a mistake and, therefore, is pushing the crisis to more dangerous levels. Russia, China, and Iran are in the way of Washington's hegemony and are targeted for attack. The attack on Russia is mounting.

The 80's called and they want their foreign policy back?  What an idiot.

There are bad guys in the world.  Pretending they don't exist, and pretending you can reason with them, is not a valid foreign policy.

If this is what a "reset" looks like, I'd hate to see continued failure!  Perhaps now would be a good time for some of that "flexibility" that President Obama talked about with Medvedev.

Why I'm Not A Socialist

Socialism helps only those in power, who walk on whomever they can and must in order to stay in power:

A fascinating article by Francis Wilkinson appeared in Bloomberg View last week (h/t Instapundit). Wilkinson detailed the fact that income inequality between whites and blacks is worse in leftist cities...

Now to someone like me — a former liberal who became a conservative, in part, because I saw the devastation wrought on poor black neighborhoods by leftist policies — this is no surprise, not even all that interesting. What I did find riveting though were the desperate attempts by presumably left-leaning social scientists to explain the discrepancy away.

See, leftists think when government gives money to people, it’s a form of charity. It’s not. Charity ennobles the willing giver and creates responsibility in the receiver. When government confiscates one man’s wealth to give it to another, that’s a subsidy. Subsidy increases the thing subsidized. Always. Every time. Everywhere. Subsidize poverty, you get more poverty. Subsidize illegitimacy, you get more illegitimacy. Subsidize black victimhood, guess what? More black victimhood.

Blacks are poorer in leftist cities because of leftism. End of story.

Calling It What It Is--The Silliness of "Micro-Aggressions"

If there's anything left of the puerile concept of "micro-aggressions" after this author has had his say, I'd be extremely surprised:

Most of the students represent the .01% of American society. They can enjoy their four- to five-year hiatus from the American rat race, either due to wealthy parents or to charity in the forms of grants that allow them to pay the $60,000 per year plus in room, board, and tuition. Again, most Americans either do not have such money or access to such money to afford the quarter-million-dollar “under attack” Dartmouth experience.

President Hanlon apparently felt the students’ pain of what they had called “micro-aggressions,” or the day-to-day psychodramatic angst that these young elites feel that are their own versions of the world of the Wal-Mart checker, the roofer in Delano who nails in 105 degree August heat, or the tractor driver who has disked half-mile long rows day in and day out on the farm. If you have never done such things, and you have $60,000 a year to spend on Dartmouth, then I suppose you could conceivably dream up a micro-aggression of being tortured to read woman for womyn, or having to use either the boys’ or girls’ bathroom...

But why do very liberal universities do very illiberal things like raise their costs consistently above the rate of inflation, for which, in similar circumstances, food markets or gas stations would be chastised? And why do very liberal professors over the last three decades insist on teaching fewer classes for more money, in a world where nurses do not serve fewer patients for greater salaries? And why do universities in general depend on graduate teachers, part-time lecturers and adjunct faculty to teach many courses that are identical to those taught by full, tenured faculty at rates of compensation three times higher — in an exploitative way that Target or Costco would be fined for? And why, if students are suffering from such micro-aggressions, do they have dorms and student unions and recreation centers that have metamorphosized from the motel like conditions of the past into Club Med resorts, with indoor pools, rock-climbing walls, and Starbucks latte bars?

The point is that the Dartmouth students themselves are creations of the very exploitation they project onto others. They and their faculties enjoy privileges undreamed up by 99.9% of the population. DeVry and Phoenix trade schools cannot afford to offer Dartmouth-like race, class, and gender courses to contextualize their accounting, computer programming and nursing programs because none of their students have the cash for such psychodramatic indulgences. Our aggrieved .01% can play act that they are embattled, precisely because free market capitalism gave them those dramatic opportunities in a way unknown in Mexico or the Congo. (all boldface mine--Darren)

Remember, these are the very people who wail about so-called social justice.

I Tell My Students This All The Time

Unless they go to Stanford, it doesn't matter as much where they go to college as how well they do in college and what they can do with what they've learned.  Some, though, just can't "risk" falling behind in the university arms race:

This month, high school seniors across America are receiving college decision letters of acceptance and rejection. Many of these students, and their parents, will think that where they go to college will significantly affect their employment future.

They think wrong. Today, whether you go to college retains some importance in your employment options. But where you go to college is of almost no importance. Whether your degree, for example, is from UCLA or from less prestigious Sonoma State matters far less than your academic performance and the skills you can show employers.

Research on the impact of college selection has focused on comparing the earnings of graduates of different colleges. In 1999, economists Alan Krueger and Stacy Berg Dale published a widely-read study that compared the earnings of graduates of elite colleges with those of “moderately selective” schools. The latter group was composed of persons who had been admitted to an elite college but chose to attend another school.

The economists found that the earnings of the two groups 20 years after graduation differed little or not at all. In a larger follow up study, released in 2011 and covering 19,000 college graduates, the economists reached a similar conclusion: Whether you went to University of Penn or Penn State, Williams College or Miami University of Ohio, job outcomes were unaffected in terms of earnings.

Eagle Ceremony

Last Friday my son's JROTC unit had their annual military ball.  My son is the 2nd from the right (their left, our right) in this video of the Eagle Ceremony, and also carried the US colors during the retirement of the colors.

Yes, I'm a proud father.

First Day of Spring Break...

...and I wake up with a headache.  Just can't get going today.  What a waste!

Want To See A Heartwarming Story?

Watch the video here.

The Real-World Benefit of Geekitude

Do you need to change your passwords?  Choose some that no one would guess!

Among the peskier things about personal computing is the never-ending call to create passwords. One for email, one for Facebook, one to download Dayton Ward's newest e-book from Amazon. To that end, we'd like to recommend 10 Star Trek-based passwords, some of which you'd need the M5 Computer itself to break.

I have "themes" I use for different types of sites.  For example, email sites might be movie names, and commerce sites might be lakes.  I also know a few states and their years of admission to the Union, so that makes for another good theme.  Easy to remember and long and varied enough to be secure!

I Hope She's Right

Megan McArdle says single-payer healthcare isn't on the horizon here in the US:

Of the plans that states have hatched for the Affordable Care Act, none has been bolder than that of Vermont, which wants to implement a single-payer health-care system, along the lines of what you might find in Britain or Canada. One government-operated system will cover all 620,000 of Vermont’s citizens. The hope is that such a system will allow Vermont to get costs down closer to Canada’s, as well as improve health by coordinating care and ensuring universal coverage.

Just two small issues need to be resolved before the state gets to all systems go: First, it needs the federal government to grant waivers allowing Vermont to divert Medicaid and other health-care funding into the single-payer system. And second, Vermont needs to find some way to pay for it.

Although Act 48 required Vermont to create a single-payer system by 2017, the state hasn’t drafted a bill spelling out how to raise the additional $1.6 billion a year (based on the state's estimate) the system needs. The state collected only $2.7 billion in tax revenue in fiscal year 2012, so that's a vexingly large sum to scrape together...

So this is going to be expensive. So expensive that I doubt Vermont is actually going to go forward with it.

This should be instructive for those who hope -- or fear -- that Obamacare has all been an elaborate preliminary to a nationwide single-payer system. It isn’t. The politics are impossible, and even if they weren’t, the financing would be unthinkable.

It's not like we haven't before spent money we don't have, though.

Open House

Normally I can't stand Open House.  I understand Back To School Night in September, but not Open House in April--at least, not for high school, I don't.  I get the elementary school purpose of it, but it's not any fun for so many of us in high school.  But it's in our contract, we've gotta do it, ugh.

This year our math department tried something a little different.  Instead of each of us being in our classrooms, we set up a couple tables outside our department chair's room.  Each of us brought something as an example of the work our students do--I brought a bowl of M&M's and a description of my statistics class' Chi-Square Goodness of Fit Project.  I hooked up my 70" flatscreen tv  (yeah I do!!!) out there next to our tables and our department chair, for example, had a looping slideshow of his students working on their "indirect measurement lab" outside (using indirect measurement to determine the height of the flagpole, for instance).

All the math teachers were in one place.  We could see what each other was doing, it freed us up individually to go see what other departments were doing (I was amazed at some of the ceramics work a couple of my students had done)--and if a parent had a question about which class their student should take next year, well, here are the teachers right here who can tell you about your options because they teach those classes!

I haven't found a teacher yet who didn't prefer it to being caged in our classrooms.  It actually made the evening tolerable.

Isn't Brandeis a "Jewish" University?

Like Notre Dame is a "Catholic" university?  Anyway, I just can't fathom why Jews are such good liberals:

Brandeis University originally invited Ayaan Hirsi Ali to receive an honorary degree at its spring commencement, and created a storm of controversy on its campus. It has now withdrawn that offer, and may have created a storm of controversy outside of its campus as well. The former Dutch parliamentarian has long spoken out against the excesses of Islam, from her own painful personal experience to the radicalism that fuels terrorism and war. Apparently, Brandeis just figured this out...

So, first question: What did Brandeis intend when it offered Ali the degree in the first place? After all, her mission has been pretty clear over the last decade or so. There does not appear to be an alternate line of activism or scholarship taken up by Ali in the intervening time, so presumably Brandeis intended to honor her work in this field. Second question: What changed?

That brings us to the third question. Did no one at Brandeis bother to Google Ali before offering her the degree? Her speeches don’t pull punches about her perspectives on Islam and its practices. It’s a little late in 2014 for President Lawrence to be shocked, shocked at “certain of her past statements” in relation to the work that they apparently wanted to honor.

To answer the second question — because so far, questions one and three don’t lend themselves to answers other than incompetence – what changed is that the faculty erupted in outrage when it saw Ali on the list. Out of 350 faculty, “more than 85″ signed a petition demanding her removal from the honors list. The petition was started by the Muslim Students Association, which should have been easily foreseen by Brandeis in the first place. If popular opposition was enough to cancel the offer, then Brandeis shouldn’t have made it in the first place. Now, they look both incompetent and pusillanimous.

Yeah, I'm definitely going with "both".   Maybe throw in some raaaaaaaacism and some sexxxxxxism, too, just for good liberal measure.

Brandeis has a Muslim Students Association?  Brandeis?  They're so open-minded their brains have fallen out.

Teachers Union Backs Down

From the major Sacramento newspaper:

The threat of a ballot initiative did the trick, persuading the California Teachers Association to negotiate a new process for teacher dismissal...

Voters surely would have approved this initiative, after the Legislature in 2012 and 2013 had shown itself unable to buck CTA opposition to pass a bill streamlining the current labyrinthine teacher dismissal process...

But now the old one-size-fits-all process that treated dismissal for lewd acts or drug dealing the same as chronic tardiness is gone in a new bill, Assembly Bill 215 by Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan, D-Alamo.

The bill creates a separate, fast-track hearing process after a school board has voted to fire a teacher for misconduct involving sex, drugs or violent offenses against children.

EdVoice promises to withdraw the initiative if the bill becomes law by mid-June. Gov. Jerry Brown has said he would sign it.

Under the bill’s fast-track process, a hearing would begin 60 days after a suspended or dismissed teacher makes a request. The hearing would have to be completed within seven months. In the past, a hearing might not get underway for months and could drag on for years.

The hearing would be conducted by an administrative law judge, not the current three-person panel that includes two teachers, one chosen by the suspended or dismissed teacher and one by the school district...

The bill also seeks to clarify that school districts can suspend teachers without pay. If districts do suspend teachers with pay, the bill would allow districts to recover salary and benefits if they win.

To protect the innocent, those making false allegations would face serious penalties.

Teachers facing dismissal because of poor performance still would have their cases heard by a three-person panel, including one teacher chosen by the district and one by the accused teacher.

This sounds exceedingly common sensical to me.  One wonders why a union of professionals would oppose it--unless they just protect teachers, as opposed to protecting good teachers who have been wronged.

A Tale of Two...Well, It Ain't Cities

Both of these stories deal with words that rhyme with "cities".

The first:

Some middle school students in Indiana are being punished for getting a peek at their teacher’s bare chest on a school-issued iPad.

A group of students at Highland Middle School were playing with the iPad during a lesson when the topless picture popped up on the screen, according to affiliate WRTV.

It’s believed that the teacher accidentally synched her personal iPhone with the iPad, transferring the scandalous photo.

The second:

A 79-year-old substitute teacher in New Hampshire is leaving her longtime job after a dispute with school administrators over Facebook.

According to CNN affiliate WMUR, Carol Thebarge has been working as a substitute teacher in Claremont, New Hampshire, for the past 35 years, but when school administrators at Stevens High School told her she had to choose between her job and being "friends" with her students on Facebook, she chose her students.

To be fair, the rhyming word for the second one is plural.  There's only one old lady in the story.  The pun fails.  The fun pales.  Something.

Total Hypocrisy, Coming From A Democrat

Remember the story about the Asians who got up in arms over a new proposed affirmative action law in California?

Weeks after some Asian American lawmakers killed a measure to restore affirmative action in California’s public colleges by withdrawing their support, backlash from Democrats who supported the effort is surfacing in the Capitol and on the campaign trail...

On Monday, several members of the Legislature’s black and Latino caucuses withheld their votes on a non-controversial bill, killing a measure by Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi. Last week, six black and Latino Democrats sent Sen. Ted Lieu a letter withdrawing their endorsement in his race for Congress. Muratsuchi and Lieu are both Asian Americans and Democrats from Torrance. 

I guess they have to hang together or else hang separately.

Here's a quote just dripping with hyprocrisy:

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, said he plans to convene a public forum in the coming weeks where supporters of affirmative action – including several Asian American groups – will talk about how to bring race-conscious decision-making back to California colleges.

The discussion, so far, he said, has been too harsh.

“The way that this debate and discussion has been had so far shows the danger in deliberately trying to divide people along racial and ethnic lines,” Steinberg said. “That’s not the way we should be having a very important discussion.” (emphasis mine--Darren)

I have nothing but 4-letter words to say in response to that.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/04/08/6304269/backlash-over-affirmative-action.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/04/08/6304269/backlash-over-affirmative-action.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/04/08/6304269/backlash-over-affirmative-action.html#storylink=cp

Obamacare In The News

Who could have foreseen this?

Americans have recently been hit with some of the largest premium increases in years, according to a Morgan Stanley survey of insurance brokers.

The investment bank’s April survey of 148 brokers found that this quarter, the average premium increase for customers renewing an insurance plan is 12 percent in the small group market and 11 percent in the individual market, according to Forbes’ Scott Gottlieb.

The hikes — the largest in the past three years, according to Morgan Stanley’s quarterly reports — are “largely due to changes under the [Affordable Care Act],” analysts concluded. Rates have been growing increasingly fast throughout all of 2013, after a period of drops in 2012.

I'm shocked.  Shocked, I tell you.


The administration is exaggerating the hosannas of Obamacare?  Again, I'm shocked!

A major new Gallup survey suggests the ObamaCare sign-up numbers are not as soaring as the White House claims. 

Even Gallup's numbers are suspicious, though:

Gallup has a fairly honest headline: “In U.S., Uninsured Rate Lowest Since 2008″. But, hm, what happened in 2008...

Since Obama was inaugurated in 20082009, the net change is from 15.4 percent uninsured to 15.6 percent. So the net effect has been that by the Gallup Survey the number of uninsured has improved in the last year, but gotten worse since Obama was inaugurated, and is 1.2 percent worse than under Bush.  

If it's so great, why did they have to lie to the public to get what support they got, pass it without a single Republican vote, and continue to lie and dissemble now that it's law?

Answer:  because socialism doesn't work--except for the people in charge.

It's Not My Racism, It's Your Behavior

We can make all the excuses we want for poor behavior, and we can even make the Orwellian claim that punishing bad behavior is "blaming the victim".  Do people really believe that crap, or do they merely say it because the truth sucks too much?  It's hard to believe that bad behavior in school is now a political issue, that it's not common sense to address it head on:

The day before Anderson shot at a rival “crew” member and killed a passenger, the Obama department released data showing that black students are suspended at three times the rate of white students. “The civil-rights industry predictably greeted this information as yet more proof that schools are biased against black students,” writes Mac Donald.

But “behavioral differences, not racism, drive the disparity between black and white student suspensions,” she argues...

“The lack of impulse control that results in such mindless violence on the streets unavoidably shows up in the classroom as well,” writes Mac Donald. “It defies common sense that a group with such high rates of lawlessness outside school would display model behavior inside school.”

The Obama administration’s anti-suspension campaign will undermine school safety, argues Hans Bader, a former attorney in the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights. He cites a study by University of Cincinnati criminologist John Paul Wright, which found racial disparities in suspensions and discipline are caused by disparities in student behavior.

Suspensions, et. al., are markers of bad behavior that should be corrected, not signs of racism.  Too many suspensions is a sign that too many students are acting in socially unacceptable ways--in other words, they're out of control.

Freedom of Association, Freedom of Expression, and Business

The case the high court declined to hear:

The Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal from Christian photographers who were fined and admonished by the New Mexico Supreme Court for declining to work a same-sex ceremony, in what could be a blow to religious business owners...

Elaine Huguenin said she also has a right of artistic expression under the First Amendment that allows her to choose what pictures to take, or refrain from taking. 

I understand the “artistic expression” argument—and in fact, I’ve been trying to think of a way to word that for quite awhile now.

We as a society have decided that we’re not going to allow businesses to refuse service to customers—we’re long past the days of “no coloreds allowed”. However, there are differences between types of businesses.

If your business sells widgets in a store, you will sell widgets to anyone. That’s what we as a society say is part of the arrangement of getting a license to conduct business.

However, if some rich patron wants to commission a portrait, is the artist required to paint it? Of course the answer is no. If a corporation wants to hire an architectural firm to design a building, is the firm required to design the building? Of course not.  Must a photographer photograph a child's birthday party (age discrimination!)?  Of course not.  The difference in these examples, as opposed to the widget store, is that there is an element of artistic expression.

I’m not willing to go all the way with the artistic expression, though. If the patron wants you to paint a nude and you don’t do nudes, then you don’t paint it. Is a florist an artist, or are they selling flowers? How much individuality, how much creativity, goes into each wedding cake, as opposed to a painting?  What is the difference between "I don't do kids' birthday parties" and "I don't do gay weddings"?

When I worked for a small custom computer cable assembly firm, we didn't have to accept every order that came through the door (but we did accept them because we needed the money).   When must a business accept business, and when can it decline?

These are, to me, interesting questions worthy of exploration. The New Mexico Supreme Court did a disservice by not fleshing out the limits.

The Politics of Global Warming

From Gallup:

A lack of formal education in general is clearly not a factor in Americans' failure to be more concerned about global warming; Americans who have not attended college are no less concerned than those with a college degree or postgraduate education.

Politics are important in understanding American attitudes about global warming. The issue has become highly politicized in recent years, and that polarization shows up across a number of indicators. At the core, Democrats appear to have widely accepted the warnings about global warming, and well over half today say they worry about it a great deal. On the other hand, less than 20% of Republicans worry a great deal, while almost two-thirds say they worry only a little or not at all. So long as global warming remains a politically charged issue, it will likely lag behind other environmental issues as a public concern.

The data show that political independents are much closer to Republicans than to Democrats on the issue, should I wonder why that was left out of the above commentary?

What Web Browser Do I Use?

I'm not someone who believes everything has to be a political act.  Politics is politics, web browsing is web browsing.  So while I'm disgusted with Mozilla's recent firing of its new CEO for holding the same opinion of traditional marriage in 2008 as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton did (but not yet as "enlightened" as Dick Cheney's), I'm not going to delete Firefox and switch to another browser.

Having my internet searches tracked bothers me, though, which is why I stay away from Google.  I use Trackmenot (opinions differ on whether or not it's any good) in Firefox, and now my default search engine is Duckduckgo.  I don't think either of these is going to keep me safe from government snooping, but they might make it harder for companies to identify me specifically. 

Math Standards

At our last department meeting we looked a little more deeply into the Common Core Algebra 2 standards, and reading them reminded me of the 1989 National Council of Teachers of Mathematics standards.  From the Wikipedia:

The controversial 1989 NCTM Standards called for more emphasis on conceptual understanding and problem solving informed by a constructivist understanding of how children learn. The increased emphasis on concepts required decreased emphasis on direct instruction of facts and algorithms. This decrease of traditional rote learning was sometimes understood by both critics and proponents of the standards to mean elimination of basic skills and precise answers, but NCTM has refuted this interpretation.^[4]

In reform mathematics, students are exposed to algebraic concepts such as patterns and the commutative property as early as first grade. Standard arithmetic methods are not taught until children have had an opportunity to explore and understand how mathematical principles work, usually by first inventing their own methods for solving problems and sometimes ending with children's guided discovery of traditional methods. The Standards called for a de-emphasis of complex calculation drills.

The standards set forth a democratic vision that for the first time set out to promote equity and mathematical power as a goal for all students, including women and underrepresented minorities. The use of calculators and manipulatives was encouraged and rote memorization were de-emphasized. The 1989 standards encouraged writing in order to learn expression of mathematical ideas. All students were expected to master enough mathematics to succeed in college, and rather than defining success by rank order, uniform, high standards were set for all students. Explicit goals of standards based education reform were to require all students to pass high standards of performance, to improve international competitiveness, eliminate the achievement gap and produce a productive labor force. Such beliefs were considered congruent with the democratic vision of outcome-based education and standards based education reform that all students will meet standards. The U.S. Department of Education named several standards-based curricula as "exemplary", though a group of academics responded in protest with an ad taken out in the Washington Post, noting selection was made largely on which curricula implemented the standards most extensively rather than on demonstrated improvements in test scores.^{[citation needed]}

The standards soon became the basis for many new federally funded curricula such as the Core-Plus Mathematics Project and became the foundation of many local and state curriculum frameworks. Although the standards were the consensus of those teaching mathematics in the context of real life, they also became a lightning rod of criticism as "math wars" erupted in some communities that were opposed to some of the more radical changes to mathematics instruction such as Mathland's Fantasy Lunch and what some dubbed "rainforest algebra". Some students complained that their new math courses placed them into remedial math in college, though later research found students from traditional curricula were going into remedial math in even greater numbers. (See Andover debate.)

In the United States, curricula are set at the state or local level. The California State Board of Education [1] was one of the first to embrace the 1989 standards, and also among the first to move back towards traditional standards.^[5]

That description certainly fits Common Core, doesn't it?

Finding California's version of the Common Core standards online is easy, getting the 1989 NCTM standards is a bit harder.  Anyone have a link?

One thing I definitely don't like about the Common Core standards is their imprecision.  California's 1997 math standards were easy to understand--any math teacher reading them would know exactly what students were to learn.  I certainly am not clear on what this standard, for example, means:

Compare properties of two functions each represented in a different way (algebraically, graphically, numerically in tables, or by verbal descriptions). 

How about these?

Prove simple laws of logarithms.
Prove the Pythagorean identity...
Prove polynomial identities and use them to describe numerical relationships.

What constitutes a "proof" of these at the Algebra 2 level? What does the third one even mean?

I believe in clarity.  I'm sure that if someone were to provide me with more detail, I would absolutely know what and how to teach.  However, if I cannot read the standards and know for sure what to teach, what good are the standards?  If there is room for (mis)interpretation, then the standards are not standard at all.  California's Common Core Algebra 2 standards start on page 82/164 at the link above, how many of them would you question?

This is a goatscrew.

Let's Play Jeopardy!

Honolulu, Kona, California's North Coast, Las Vegas

Why Are So Few California Students Truly "College Ready"?

The news doesn't sound so good:

Fewer than 4 in 10 California high school students are completing the requirements to be eligible for the state's public universities, fueling worries of a shortage of college-educated workers when the value of a bachelor's degree has never been higher...

In 1994, 32 percent of public school graduates met the course and grade prerequisites, known as "A-G requirements" because they cover seven subject areas. For the Class of 2012, it was 38 percent...

The sobering numbers do not tell the whole story, according to John Rogers, director of UCLA's Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access. Once students who drop out or do not finish high school in four years are removed from the equation, the proportion of public high school graduates who met the UC and CSU entrance criteria in 2012 drops to 30 percent statewide, 20 percent for Latinos and 18 percent for African-Americans, Rogers said.

Looks to me like we're doing better than we were in 1994, when we were using Whole Language and fuzzy math here in California.  The math standards under Common Core are taking us back, but that's for a different post.

So why are so few students prepared?  Part of the reason is the fault of schools, but I honestly believe that the lion's share of the reason is culture.

California State Teachers Retirement System

What?  Here in sunny California, the Golden State, where everything is hunky-dorey and Obamacare is praised in story and song--here in California, the teachers retirement system is going broke?  Who would ever have thought such a thing?

CalSTRS said Thursday that its long-term funding shortfall has risen to $73.7 billion, a stark reminder of the financial issues facing the teachers’ pension fund.

The newest tally reflects CalSTRS’ financial condition as of last June 30. The pension fund said the shortfall grew by $2.7 billion in the 12 months since the previous valuation of June 30, 2012.

What fraction of the state budget is that $74 billion? Page 3/54 here shows it to be about half the current annual state budget.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/04/03/6294221/calstrs-says-pension-funding-gap.html#storylink=cpy

It's Been A Long Time Since I've Agreed With Andrew Sullivan

In general I've ignored Andrew Sullivan since he went wackadoo on the Iraq War, but he's right on this one:

The guy who had the gall to express his First Amendment rights and favor Prop 8 in California by donating $1,000 has just been scalped by some gay activists. After an OKCupid decision to boycott Mozilla, the recently appointed Brendan Eich just resigned under pressure...

Will he now be forced to walk through the streets in shame? Why not the stocks? The whole episode disgusts me – as it should disgust anyone interested in a tolerant and diverse society. If this is the gay rights movement today – hounding our opponents with a fanaticism more like the religious right than anyone else – then count me out. If we are about intimidating the free speech of others, we are no better than the anti-gay bullies who came before us.

Get a clue, Andrew--the left isn't interested in a tolerant society.

Voter Fraud

Liberals like to prevent attempts at stopping or even finding out about voter fraud, and then question the motives of conservatives who want to require ID for voting to ensure there's no voter fraud.  They always say, There is no voter fraud!  No?

State elections officials in North Carolina are investigating hundreds of cases of potential voter fraud after identifying thousands of registered voters with personal information matching those of voters who voted in other states in 2012...

WRAL.com reported that 81 residents who died before election day were recorded as casting a ballot. While about 30 of those voters appear to have legally cast ballots before election day, Strach said "there are between 40 and 50 [voters] who had died at a time that that's not possible."

I agree with Nelson Mandela--get an ID, and vote!

How bad is it out there?

The North Carolina State Board of Elections has found thousands of instances of voter fraud in the state, thanks to a 28-state crosscheck of voter rolls. Initial findings suggest widespread election fraud.

765 voters with an exact match of first and last name, DOB and last four digits of SSN were registered in N.C. and another state and voted in N.C. and the other state in the 2012 general election.
35,750 voters with the same first and last name and DOB were registered in N.C. and another state and voted in both states in the 2012 general election.
155,692 voters with the same first and last name, DOB and last four digits of SSN were registered in N.C. and another state – and the latest date of registration or voter activity did not take place within N.C...

The Interstate Crosscheck examines 101 million voter records in more than two dozen participating states.

The findings, while large, leave open the question of just how widespread double voting might be since 22 states did not participate in the Interstate Crosscheck.

I don't know who these people voted for.  Doesn't matter to me if they voted for my guy or the other guy, it's voter fraud and I want it prevented.

So I'm calling you out, liberals.  Do you think this is a problem, or not?  Do you have a better way of preventing it than showing ID, or not?  What is your solution?

My Hometown

Sacramento Timelapse from Justin Majeczky on Vimeo.

Let's Play "Who's The Racist Ideologue?"

If teaching is a political act, as some claim, how should I teach?  My politics are most assuredly not the same as those who claim teaching is a political act; I don't think they'd like it very much if I forced politics down my students' throats.

Having said that, though, how can any sane person think this way?

The session was facilitated by Kim Radersma, a former high school English teacher in California and Colorado. Radersma is currently working toward her Ph. D. in critical whiteness studies at Brock University in Ontario, Canada.

Radersma argued that teachers must fight against the oppressive structure in education and society. She said anyone who is going into teaching and education must be a political figure.

"Teaching is a political act, and you can't choose to be neutral. You are either a pawn used to perpetuate a system of oppression or you are fighting against it," Radersma said during the session. "And if you think you are neutral, you are a pawn."

She said educators need to challenge the system, otherwise they are giving in to white supremacy. Radersma also argued the first step is realizing that all white people are carrying the signs of oppression.

"Being a white person who does anti-racist work is like being an alcoholic. I will never be recovered by my alcoholism, to use the metaphor," Radersma said. "I have to everyday wake up and acknowledge that I am so deeply imbedded with racist thoughts and notions and actions in my body that I have to choose everyday to do anti-racist work and think in an anti-racist way."

She argued that until white people admit they have a problem, they will not be able to fight against white privilege.

"We've been raised to be good. 'I'm a good white person,' and yet to realize I carry within me these dark, horrible thoughts and perceptions is hard to admit. And yet like the alcoholic, what's the first step? Admitting you have a problem," she told the session attendees.

Without any exaggeration I have to say that this is a very sick person who needs help.

Who Will Protect Us???

You definitely want to hear the kid's question and Friedman's answer to it:


Cut to today:

The government knew about GM ignition problems and did nothing
The agency charged with keeping drivers safe has some explaining to do.

Didn't Friedman warn us about collusion between corporations and government?

Has CNN Covered The Leland Yee Story Yet?

I haven't seen such story yet, and I just searched for his name on their site.  If you don't know who he is, let me fill you in:

California State senator (and, until last week, candidate for secretary of state) Leland Yee was well-known as an anti-gun activist. Then, last week, he was indicted for, yes, conspiring to smuggle guns and rocket launchers between mobsters and terrorists in exchange for massive bribes. Some highlights, as excerpted by San Francisco Magazine.

Yee told an FBI agent that, in exchange for $2 million in cash, he'd fill a shopping list of weapons, which he took personal responsibility for delivering, according to the indictment. He also allegedly "masterminded" a complex scheme bring illegal weapons into the country, agreeing to "facilitate" a meeting with an illegal arms dealer to arrange for the weapons to be imported via Newark, N.J. In arranging all of this, the indictment said, Yee relied on connections with Filipino terrorist groups who could supply "heavy" weapons, including the Muslim terrorists of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Yee allegedly noted that the Muslim terrorists had no reservations about kidnapping, extortion and murder.

This all sounds like news. You've got charges of huge bribes, rampant hypocrisy, illegal weapons and even a connection with foreign terrorists — and from a leading politician in an important state.

But — and here's the part Hollywood would miss — outside of local media like San Francisco magazine, the coverage was surprisingly muted.The New York Times buried the story as a one-paragraph Associated Press report on page A21, with the bland dog-bites-man headline, "California: State Senator Accused of Corruption." This even though Yee was suspended, along with two others, from the California state senate in light of the indictment.

Pretty big news, right?  Why do you think CNN wouldn't cover this while they do cover "note to tardy boss gets him fired"?  I think we already know the answer.

CNN, home (also until last week) of Piers Morgan, whom Yee had praised for his anti-gun activism, didn't report the story at all. When prodded by viewers, the network snarked that it doesn't do state senators. Which is odd, because searching the name of my own state senator, Stacey Campfield, turns up a page of results, involving criticisms of him for saying something "extreme". Meanwhile, CNN found time to bash Wisconsin state senator and supporter of Gov. Scott Walker, Randy Hopper over marital problems.

But there's a difference. They're Republicans. When Republicans do things that embarrass their party, the national media are happy to take note, even if they're mere state senators. But when Democrats like Yee get busted for actual felonies, and pretty dramatic ones at that, the press suddenly isn't interested.

Some might call that "media bias".

Red Wedding

I'm a Game of Thrones fan and just this past weekend watched the Red Wedding episode on dvd.  If you don't know what that reference is, and you're not the squeamish type, then click here.  If the link doesn't work anymore, try "Game of Thrones Red Wedding" and see what YouTube pulls up for you.

I gave a test today.  It may as well have been the Red Wedding.  Already planning the reteaching!

Combining Pre-Calculus and Statistics, The Two Courses I Teach

The current course I'm taking for my master's program, Mathematical Statistics, is difficult but fun.  We're learning how to estimate function parameters based on data.  An easy example would be if you believe that your data are distributed in accordance with a normal distribution, and based on the data you try to determine mu and sigma (the mean and standard deviation).  Normal distributions are pretty easy; what would you do if your data is explained by an exponential distribution (parameter is lambda), or a gamma distribution (two parameters, alpha and lambda)?

I'm going to get a bit "inside baseball" here, but we're talking about sufficient statistics--instead of looking at an entire set of data, what summary statistics of that data would suffice to allow us to estimate the unknown parameters?  It's not always mean and standard dev!  If our function is part of the "exponential family" of functions, we can rewrite the function in such a certain way that the sufficient statistics become apparent.

A few months ago my stats students learned about the binomial distribution--a distribution that allows you to determine, for example, the likelihood of getting 7 heads if you flip a fair coin 10 times (it's a little under 12%).  The formula is f(x|p)=nCx*p^x*(1-p)^(n-x).

Recently my pre-calculus students have been reviewing logarithm operations and functions.

So in my Mathematical Statistics lesson tonight we were determining the sufficient statistics for the binomial distribution.  The way the distribution is written above, though, it doesn't (at first glance) appear to be of the exponential family.  However, if we employ a little advanced algebra, we find that it is of the exponential family and can be rewritten in a way that reveals the sufficient statistic.

The algebraic manipulations?  e^(ln x)=x and ln a^b=b ln a, just the material I've been going over with my pre-calculus students.  Using those facts I can rewrite p^x as e^(x ln p) and (1-p)^(n-x) as e^(n-x)ln(1-p).  I'll skip the rest of the work, just noting that I think it's cool when I can tie what I'm learning directly to what I'm teaching.  It's the reason I'm pursuing this particular degree instead of a generic Master's Degree in Education, because this degree is actually going to make me a better math teacher.

FAIL

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

President Obama, in a speech to Congress in September 2009, stated that the central goal of the Affordable Care Act was extending health-care coverage to the "more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage." Yet here we are nearing the end of open enrollment, and the number of Americans who lack insurance exceeds 30 million...

BY THE NUMBERS

14: percentage of Affordable Care Act enrollees as of Feb. 1 who were previously uninsured

900,000: number of current enrollees who would be previously uninsured assuming the same percentage

10: estimated percentage of U.S. uninsured covered by the ACA so far

So we are left with two not-mutually-exclusive conclusions we can draw about Obamacare:  it's an abject failure in its stated goal, and/or its stated goal is not its actual goal.

Either way, you have only the Democrats, and the people who voted for them, to thank for this.  Remember, Obamacare passed without a single Republican vote in either house of Congress.  Have Republicans ever passed such a debacle that way?

Drain The Swamp

In case you're having trouble keeping track lately of all the Democrats who have been arrested for some form or other of corruption, there's a good list here.

The institutional press will keep us informed of Republican misdeeds, have no doubt.

The Only Surprise Would Be If The Card Were Marked "Republican"

Looking at the picture there's no way to know who marked the form, or even if the couple is perpetrating a hoax.  I'm being slightly skeptical here; I'd be more so if this didn't fit the lefties' modus operandi so well:

A local couple called 10News concerned after they received an envelope from the state's Obamacare website, Covered California. Inside was a letter discussing voter registration and a registration card pre-marked with an "x" in the box next to Democratic Party.

The couple – who did not want their identity revealed – received the letter and voter registration card from their health insurance provider Covered California, the state-run agency that implements President Obama's Affordable Care Act.

What's entertaining is how they were told to report the problem:

(Covered California) Spokeswoman Anne Gonzales stated, "We are mailing voter registration material. However, the application forms come directly from the Secretary of State's office, with no fields pre-marked. The individual should contact the Secretary of State, which takes these violations of election law extremely seriously, and they will investigate, using the unique serial number."

If this had happened next year, Leland Yee could have been Secretary of State.  (I'd post a CNN link but they're not covering the story.)

Some of What's Wrong With Common Core

I don't like the Common Core math standards.  They're a step down from what California has had for the past 15 years.  This article hits it out of the park:

There is also some willful deception or self-deception here.  If you state that henceforth all children should be able to do X, because that’s the new standard, does this mean that all children can do X?  Can even half the children do X?  Read some of the verbose standards, and you’ll probably conclude that virtually no kid can do X.

There seems to be a belief in magic.  Outline impressive goals (“internationally benchmarked,” no less) in a technical, officious way, and every kid will automatically soar to high levels.  But why would that happen?  Teachers still have to teach, and students still have to learn the information, fact by fact.  But our Education Establishment hates all those traditional practices.  It’s so much simpler to proclaim that henceforth all children will be college- and career-ready.  Presto!  That was easy.

Bill Gates and Common Core are obsessed with arranging things in standardized patterns, coast to coast.  So we must have standards that will somehow apply to everyone.  Then we need identical curricula, and we’ll need identical tests.  All of these things will be aligned to each other and symmetrically arranged, like so many neat stacks of boxes in a shoe store’s warehouse.  And no one, from that point forward, will be able to think outside those boxes, try something new, or tell the Education Establishment to take a hike and stop annoying us...

I suspected from the start that Common Core would be a fraud and a failure for a simple reason: it recycled all the bad theories and methods from the last 75 years....  (boldface mine--Darren)

I’m not sure whether they tricked (Core Supporter Bill) Gates or he let himself be tricked.  But everybody knows by now that Common Core accepted all the worst nonsense in Reform Math.  (That’s why we see so many articles and stories about impossible math homework.)  Similarly, Constructivism is the official dogma throughout Common Core.  This quackery orders teachers not to teach; students must figure out everything for themselves.  Similarly again, Common Core embraced sophistries from Whole Word, those sophistries being the cause of our illiteracy problem...

Bill Gates was seeing a world where every seventh-grade history class would be identical to all the others, as if that’s more efficient.  Ideally for him, they would use books and software created by his companies.  But never mind how much Gates makes.  We wouldn't mind if the children were being well-educated.  But he was in cahoots with people who had never been primarily interested in making children well-educated.  The goal, ever since the time of John Dewey, was to make children cooperative, largely incapable of independent thought, and easy to govern.  (boldface mine--Darren)

Back in the 90s we saw what happened when fuzzy math and so-called whole language were the rule of the day.  They're back, 15 years later, and probably won't go away till I retire in about 15 more years.  What's sad is that I'm not paid to teach, I'm paid to do what the bosses tell me.  I've been teaching for 17 years; for the remainder of my time I'll get paid to help dumb down our students.

My role will warp into that of a fireman in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.

Update:  You don't like the dig at Dewey above?   This quote is attributed to him:

Independent self people (would be) a counterproductive anachronism in the collective society of the future [...] (where) people will be defined by their associations.

I don't know if he actually said it or not--but it sounds like something he'd say.  Perhaps it's genuine, perhaps it's "fake but accurate".

Priorities of the Press

Why does HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius still have a job?  Why has she not been held in contempt of Congress, or charged with perjuring herself before Congress?

You and I know why: Because she’ll say whatever she’s told to say, whether it’s true or not. Whether it hurts people or not. Whether it even makes sense or not. She’ll tell any lie necessary, and then she’ll go home and sleep like a baby.

Good work, if you can get it.

Of course, she can’t say that. And she doesn’t have to answer to you anyway, you miserable serfs upon whom she feeds....

Certainly the press isn't worked up over this.  That wouldn't fit their narrative or further their goals.

Perhaps socialism means never having to say you're sorry.

So if the press isn't worried about the 13th (illegal and unilateral/fiat) extension of Obamacare, or about the Secretary's lies about it, what are they worried about?

He, too, was arrested on Wednesday, for allegedly arranging deals to procure M16s and rocket launchers to be smuggled into California after being purchased from Muslim terrorists in the Philippines. Sen. Yee was working with a Chinese gangster named “Shrimp Boy.”

Apparently, Yee was much less concerned about the spread of weapons of mass destruction when he was talking to his fellow hoods than when he was pontificating on CNN: “People want to get whatever they want to get. Do I care? No, I don’t care. People need certain things.”

Like, rocket launchers.

Two-gun Yee is the third Democrat state senator to be arrested in California this week. Earlier it was state Sen. Rod Wright (perjury) and then Ron Calderon (bribery).

What a crime wave, in less than one week. So guess what most of the networks led with on their newscasts last night? The 5-month-old story of Gov. Chris Christie’s Bridgegate. Because it has one thing going for it that none of these other stories had, the only thing that matters to the corrupt American media.

Christie is a Republican.

There are so few left in the institutional press who have any scruples at all, save for helping their own tribe of liberals.

If Student Athletes Are Actually Employees of the University...

...is their scholarship their pay?  And if so, shouldn't they have to pay income taxes on those scholarships?

There's plenty of improvement that can be made in the way the NCAA does business, but introducing labor unions into college student athletics is definitely not the way to make such improvements.  Talk about the cure being worse than the disease!

Honestly--and I'm serious about this--it's time to get rid of intercollegiate athletics.  Let the NFL and the NBA create their own farm leagues.  Students can participate in intramurals.

I do not see why someone should get a scholarship because they can run fast, swim fast, hit a ball with a stick, or come into contact with a ball with some part of their body.  Outside of giving people something to watch on weekends (and some weekdays), how does athletics further the academic purpose of the school?  If higher education is such a "public good" that I as a taxpayer have to subsidize it, then someone should explain to me how intercollegiate athletics is also such a public good.

Yes, I'm one of those crazies who thinks colleges and universities should be centers of learning.

President Obama Is Weak

So says Condi Rice:

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Barack Obama of dramatically weakening the United States' position in the world, drawing a straight line between Obama’s ever-yielding foreign policy and the increasing troubles around the world.

“Right now, there’s a vacuum,” she told a crowd of more than two thousand attending the National Republican Congressional Committee’s annual dinner last night in Washington, D.C. “There’s a vacuum because we’ve decided to lower our voice. We’ve decided to step back. We’ve decided that if we step back and lower our voice, others will lead, other things will fill that vacuum.” Citing Bashar al Assad’s slaughter in Syria, Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, al Qaeda’s triumphant return to Fallujah, Iraq, and China’s nationalist fervor, she concluded: “When America steps back and there is a vacuum, trouble will fill that vacuum.”

Rice – measured in tone, but very tough on substance – excoriated Obama administration policies without ever mentioning the president by name. She mocked the naïve hope that “international norms” would fill the vacuum left by U.S. retreat and blasted the president for hiding behind the weariness of the public.

“I fully understand the sense of weariness. I fully understand that we must think: ‘Us, again?’ I know that we’ve been through two wars. I know that we’ve been vigilant against terrorism. I know that it’s hard. But leaders can’t afford to get tired. Leaders can’t afford to be weary.”

I've been reminded by blacks--for what reason, I can't fathom!--that President Obama is half-white.  I've also been told by race hustlers that blacks can't be racist against whites since whites are the majority/power group.  That's all a prelude to this:  You can't blame Rice's comments on racism--she's blacker than he is.  I guess that kind of matters to lefties.

I Took A Practice "Smarter Balanced" Test Today

Teachers at my school today took the practice Smarter Balanced test so that we'd know what it was like, what problems our students might encounter, and what type of questions would be asked.

I will say this:  some of the 11th grade math questions were worded in an obtuse way.  I will say that we have highly qualified, very competent math teachers at my school, and some of the problems had a few of us gathered around trying to figure out exactly what a problem was asking for.  If it takes 3 good math teachers, two with masters degrees and one working on one, to figure out what an Algebra 1 question is asking, then the question isn't a good one.

There's a difference between rigor, that which requires a depth of knowledge and skill, and confusion, which makes the problem unnecessarily hard while obscuring the actual math.

One question in particular bothered me.  It was about a right triangle, blah blah blah, and had 3 boxes for answers.  In one box was cos A < sin A, in the second was cos A = sin A, and in the third was cos A < sin A.  Below the box was a fourth box with a bunch of integer angle values.  I can't remember exactly how the question was worded, but I couldn't tell if clicking and dragging one angle value into each box was sufficient to answer the question or if I had to put all 10 or so angle values in one of the boxes in order to get credit.  That kind of confusion shouldn't be acceptable, especially for a test that will be given to half the high school juniors in the country.

Update, 3/29/14:  Thanks to Mr. W in the comments, here are all the questions and the solutions.     Scroll down to page 14/24 of the pdf file, or page 13 as shown on the picture (problem 682), to see the trig question I mentioned above.  Note the ambiguity in the directions:  Drag possible measures of angle A into the correct column.  Thinking like a high school student, I have satisfied the requirements of this problem if I have put one value in each column.  If it said "drag all possible measures of angle A" the instructions would be clear.

This is part of what's wrong with the way math is sometimes covered.  It should be excessively clear what is being asked; when it's not, math becomes some mysterious task of trying to divine what the teacher (or test) actually wants you to perform.

With this pdf file you can see the questions that were asked.  Do you agree with me about the wording of some of those questions?

If you're so inclined, take a look at the performance task.  Don't think like a drone here, but really explore the problem.  Is "fair" defined?  Will everyone define "fair" the same way?  Are you comfortable with a performance task for which you're only given credit if you agree with the problem-writer's (unexpressed) view of "fair"?

For this item, a full-credit response (2 points) include:

agreeing with the claim

AND

justifying the response by citing at least one comparison between values used in the two systems.

Why must two values be given?  Where is that requirement stated?  There are other ways, even ways that match the author's (unstated) definition of "fair", that don't require listing specific points.

I know the fuzzy math proponents like subjectiveness, but this performance task is fundamentally flawed.

I'm Not Sure How To Respond To This

I don't know what schools had to do, or how many applied, in order to be considered for this grant, but on the face of it things don't look good for government education centers in California:

Of all the schools in California, thousands, only one, a charter school chain, qualified for the national “Race to the Top” honors.  What does this say about government schools in California?  To me it is simple, it proves what has been said about California government schools, there are mediocre or maybe good or terrible, but not great.

“Rocketship Education, with eight K-5 charter schools in San Jose, one in Milwaukee and invitations to expand into urban districts in other states, is the sole finalist from California competing for $120 million in the second district Race to the Top competition.

The U.S. Department of Education announced the finalists last week for the federal grant program for education innovation; nationwide, 29 districts and two charter organizations qualified as finalists.”

Obama: Also Against The Iraq War Before He Supported It

The man knows partisanship and little else:

Today, President Obama came full circle, explicitly defending the Iraq War in a speech in Brussels as he tried to counter arguments by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin has used the example of American intervention in Iraq (among other places) in an attempt to justify Russia's intervention in, and annexation of, the Crimea.

Moreover, Russia has pointed to America’s decision to go into Iraq as an example of Western hypocrisy.  Now, it is true that the Iraq War was a subject of vigorous debate not just around the world, but in the United States as well.  I participated in that debate and I opposed our military intervention there.  But even in Iraq, America sought to work within the international system.  We did not claim or annex Iraq’s territory.  We did not grab its resources for our own gain.  Instead, we ended our war and left Iraq to its people and a fully sovereign Iraqi state that could make decisions about its own future.

Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post is quite outraged by the remarks above, and responds point-by-point to the president's defense of the war with familiar left-wing arguments.

You don't have to agree that the entire effort was an attempt to enrich Halliburton in order to feel a small amount of empathy for Grim and the serious-minded "progressives" who took Obama at his word. (Only a small amount--they were quite eager to be duped.)

Yes, Obama still notes that he opposed the Iraq war. But there is no longer any philosophical or practical basis for his opposition, at least judged by his own actions in office.

What is left of his anti-war stance--such as it was--is pure partisanship, the same calculation that saw him rail against raising the debt ceiling as a Senator, then, once in the White House, insist that Congress raise it repeatedly.

He's a failure and an embarrassment.