GIGO

If your data is bad, the statistics generated from those numbers will also be bad:

The National Center for Education Statistics plans to check data on about 5,000 high schools after faulty information from the federal agency led to erroneous rankings for three high schools on U.S. News & World Report’s yearly “Best High Schools” report. 

Garbage in, garbage out.

It's Called *Home*work, But You Shouldn't Leave It In Someone Else's Home

You especially shouldn't leave it in a home you're burglarizing:

An 18-year-old Utah man was arrested on suspicion of burglary after police say he left his homework at the crime scene.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/05/14/3609555/teen-arrested-after-homework-left.html#storylink=cpy

The Morality of Unpaid Internships

I'm not sure I agree with this fellow, but he makes an interesting argument:

This summer, millions of students -- some graduating, some between school years -- will spend the summer working. Some will work at restaurants and on retail floors, where working is called "working." Some will work at think tanks and non-profit organizations, where working is called "interning." Estimates put the number of unpaid interns every year between 500,000 and one million. So, in a country where working for free is mostly illegal, a student population somewhere between the size of Tucson and Dallas will be working for free, in plain view.

A few years ago, I was a proud part of unpaid intern nation. I took unpaid internships at two think tanks, a campaign and a magazine. Were they useful? Definitely. Were they moral? Harder question.

I lean towards one of the arguments that he dismisses, that internships are used by students merely to gain education and a "leg up" on others when they apply for paid jobs.  That poorer students, who must support themselves with paid jobs, are at a disadvantage in this situation isn't enough (for me) to call the system immoral, as poorer students are at a disadvantage in almost every situation!  That's reality, not morality.

But I find his arguments interesting.  Not necessarily strong, but interesting.

The Long Gray Line

Over Spring Break I took my son to Philadelphia, and on the third day of that trip we made a day trip to West Point (posts here, here, and here). 

Periodically we sit down and watch tv or a movie together, and I thought that now that he's seen the place in person, it's time--so over the course of tonight and tomorrow night we'll watch The Long Gray Line, a John Ford classic from 1955. 

We stopped at an hour and a half into it, and he's still interested in the story.  Being on his JROTC program's color guard and saber guard teams, he was especially attentive to the parade shots (which were, admittedly, most impressive).

I enjoy these times.

Couldn't Happen To A Nicer Guy

The original link is here:

I’LL TAKE LEG-TINGLES FOR $200: Chris Matthews Bombs on ‘Jeopardy!’ After Repeatedly Mocking Palin for How She’d Do. Palin-mockery is a symptom of intellectual insecurity. Usually, that insecurity is well-founded. . . .

The Party of the Rich

From Instapundit:

POLITICO: Obama’s Wall Street Problem. “The giant $2 billion trading loss at JPMorgan Chase highlights a central problem in President Barack Obama’s case for a second term: Four years after the financial crisis nearly brought the nation to its knees, very little appears to have changed. . . . And now one of the largest banks in the United States, headed by a Democrat and operating with government guarantees, has turned in the kind of headline-grabbing, casino-style style loss that drives voters crazy and that Obama’s financial reform bill was supposed to stop.” Unexpectedly.

Plus this: “The guy in the street in 2008 and 2009 was worried about his or her deposits, and now it’s clear they should still be worried.”

I'm just saying.

And then there's this:

OBAMA GOES AFTER BAIN CAPITAL, but he’s vulnerable on Crony Capital. “We welcome the Obama campaign’s attempt to pivot back to jobs and a discussion of their failed record. Mitt Romney helped create more jobs in his private sector experience and more jobs as Governor of Massachusetts than President Obama has for the entire nation. President Obama has many questions to answer as to why his administration used the stimulus to reward wealthy campaign donors with taxpayer money for bad ideas like Solyndra, but 23 million Americans are still struggling to find jobs. If the Obama administration was less concerned about pleasing their wealthy donors and more concerned about creating jobs, America would be much better off.”

And this:

As Katrina reports, Mitt Romney left Bain Capital in 1999 to manage the Winter Olympics, two years before GST Steel declared bankruptcy. But that hasn’t stopped President Obama from blaming him for the company’s 2001 collapse. In a new Obama campaign video, ex-steel workers criticize Romney for being “out of touch” with the “average working person.” Left unmentioned (and blameless) is Jonathan Lavine.

Lavine, according to the Los Angeles Times, is a top Obama bundler and a managing director at Bain Capital. Lavine, who has raised over $100,000 for the president, was at the firm when GST Steel declared bankruptcy.

Shades of the Stasi

Doesn't this sound a bit too secret police-y?

New Jersey education officials will no longer use a standardized test question that asked third-graders to reveal a secret and write about why it was difficult to keep.

The question appeared on the writing portion of some versions of the New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge given to third-graders this past week. And it drew criticism from some parents, who thought it was inappropriate.

The state Department of Education says the question was reviewed and approved by it and a panel of teachers. They said it was only being tried out and would not count in the students' scores.

Could they come up with no better writing prompt than that?  No?  Then fire them all.

Why I'm Not A Socialist

Over the past 7+ years of writing this blog I've given many reasons, and related many anecdotes, about why why socialism is bad.  They summarize quite nicely to socialism withers the human spirit.  Here's another of those anecdotes:

In the end, I concluded, what set the United States apart from Spain was the difference between earned success and learned helplessness.

Earned success means defining your future as you see fit and achieving that success on the basis of merit and hard work. It allows you to measure your life's "profit" however you want, be it in money, making beautiful music, or helping people learn English. Earned success is at the root of American exceptionalism.

The link between earned success and life satisfaction is well established by researchers. The University of Chicago's General Social Survey, for example, reveals that people who say they feel "very successful" or "completely successful" in their work lives are twice as likely to say they are very happy than people who feel "somewhat successful." It doesn't matter if they earn more or less income; the differences persist.

The opposite of earned success is "learned helplessness," a term coined by Martin Seligman, the eminent psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. It refers to what happens if rewards and punishments are not tied to merit: People simply give up and stop trying to succeed.

During experiments, Mr. Seligman observed that when people realized they were powerless to influence their circumstances, they would become depressed and had difficulty performing even ordinary tasks. In an interview in the New York Times, Mr. Seligman said: "We found that even when good things occurred that weren't earned, like nickels coming out of slot machines, it did not increase people's well-being. It produced helplessness. People gave up and became passive."

Learned helplessness was what my wife and I observed then, and still do today, in social-democratic Spain. The recession, rigid labor markets, and excessive welfare spending have pushed unemployment to 24.4%, with youth joblessness over 50%. Nearly half of adults under 35 live with their parents. Unable to earn their success, Spaniards fight to keep unearned government benefits.

Meanwhile, their collective happiness—already relatively low—has withered. According to the nonprofit World Values Survey, 20% of Spaniards said they were "very happy" about their lives in 1981. This fell to 14% by 2007, even before the economic downturn.

That trajectory should be a cautionary tale to Americans who are watching the U.S. government careen toward a system that is every bit as socially democratic as Spain's.

Wealth For Me But Not For Thee

From Instapundit:

LIFE IN THE ONE PERCENT: “Socialist Hollande owns three homes on the Riviera,” according to the London Evening Standard. “Francois Hollande, 57, who ‘dislikes the rich’ and wants to revolutionise his country with high taxes and an onslaught against bankers, is in fact hugely wealthy himself.”

Great Lunch

Just got back from lunch with a former student of mine who will graduate from the Naval Academy in a couple weeks.  After some graduation leave he'll start his masters degree in aeronautical engineering at MIT.  This is the caliber of student with which I'm periodically privileged to work.

California's "Education Budget"

Yesterday after our staff meeting our union rep gave us an update on the state of district finances and contract negotiations.  We got the best case financial scenario (the district has a little extra money if Governor Brown's tax hikes get approved in next November's election) as well as the worst case (the district has to cut even more if the tax hikes aren't approved).  One teacher stormed by me in frustration, saying to no one in particular, "More cuts?  When will this end?"

Well, Teacher X, it will end when you quit voting for the Democrats who keep running this state down the economic drain.  It will end when you stop supporting a political party that chases businesses and jobs out of the state.  It will end when you stop killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.  It will end when you quit voting to take from the productive and give to the unproductive out of some misplaced and misguided sense of "fairness".

Here's how bad it is:

Gov. Jerry Brown warned Californians on Thursday to brace for another round of difficult budget cuts as he hand-delivered boxes of petitions to election officials requesting that his proposed tax hike be placed on the November ballot.

Brown, who is expected to unveil his revised budget proposal Monday, said he needed far more than the $4.2 billion in spending reductions he asked for in January. And he continued to raise the specter of even deeper wounds to public schools, colleges and other state services if his bid for tax hikes fails.

Remember, California's budgets are now passed by a simple majority, not a 2/3 majority, meaning they pass without the need for any bipartisanship or a single Republican vote.  Democrats own this mess--have for years, really--and don't seem to be doing such a good job at getting us out of it.

So, Teacher X, it's not going to end any time soon.  But I'll bet I know how you're still going to vote this November, all the while wondering why we're in this mess.

Update, 5/13/12:  This is how we roll in California:

Brown says that, now that the "real" numbers are out, he's going to have to present a revised budget featuring more of the dread "draconian cuts." He promises that cuts will fall heavily on public education spending, prisons, state parks, and other areas that the average person considers to be basic functions of state government. Meanwhile, it will be full speed ahead on high speed rail, the Air Resources Board, the DREAM Act, six-figure pensions to 55-year olds, and welfare benefits and "free" health care to illegal aliens. 

Of course, says Brown, we can avoid all that by passing his "temporary" (hah!) tax increases on the November ballot. Brown really is a social democrat. He obviously thinks "austerity" means cutting essential services and raising taxes while keeping the welfare/redistributionist state intact. It hasn't worked in Europe, so why the heck does he think it'll work here?

A Brilliant Point

From Joanne's blog:

Frank Fleming offers a modest proposal to solve the student loan and debt problem: Set a minimum age of 30 for college loans.

In a sane world, if a teenager walked into a bank and said, “I would like a $50,000 loan to major in modern dance,” the bank manager would call security, who would then pummel the stupid kid, and everyone would end up smarter for it. But what happens instead is that Uncle Sam walks by and says, “I like his moxy. Give him the loan; I’ll guarantee it. And I’ll make sure he can’t ever get out of his stupid choice through bankruptcy.” So they give this giant amount of money to a dumb kid, and then the colleges are waiting outside, saying, “Hey! They’re giving huge loans to moron teenagers; we need to get some of that money!” So we have colleges preying on these gullible saps, increasing costs while their diplomas plummet in value in a complete mockery of our capitalistic system.

We don’t let 18-year-olds buy alcohol,  Fleming points out. Why let them borrow huge sums of money? If the borrowing age for student loans was set at 30, borrowers “might actually have some idea of what money is and what debt means.”

I don't know why this is "a modest proposal", as I could take it entirely seriously--unlike the eating of Irish babies.

On a related note, I truly don't understand why parental income is taken into account when determining what price to charge adults for college.  That's some crazy market distortion, there.

"A Weirdly Glamorous View Of Socialism and Communism"

Watch a man from the former Soviet Union school this OWS punk.

There's No 1st Amendment in Britain

Quite the conundrum:

Catholic schools in Wales are under fire after circulating a petition against the Welsh government's plans to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples, the Telegraph reports.

Last month, the Catholic Education Service asked 365 secondary schools in England and Wales to begin circulating a letter by the Archbishops of Westminster and Southwark defending the traditional definition of marriage. They also reportedly encouraged schools to promote the Coalition for Marriage campaign petition...

While the schools insist they are merely teaching Catholic values, secular and humanist campaigners accuse the schools of "political indoctrination" by promoting the campaign among students, the Telegraph reports.

The Welsh government is now reviewing whether the schools are breaking equality and political impartiality laws by circulating the archbishops' letter.

Well, it's a conundrum if you believe in religious liberty.

Donkey Show?

Where did they even come up with this idea?  I certainly wasn't thinking such things in 6th grade:

Authorities in Mexico's Gulf coast state of Campeche said Wednesday they are investigating how a porn video was made by sixth-graders inside their school.

State Education Department spokesman Omar Kantun said the video was apparently made in an empty classroom during recess in late April.

"It is real, the case is real, the video exists," Kantun said. "The Education Department is very concerned."

He said an investigation is being conducted by his department and the teachers union to determine whether any adults were involved.

Click on the link to find out what they were doing. I'll bet you'll be surprised.

Is This Really Worth Pitching A Fit Over?

I don't know what causes some parents to get their panties in a bunch over silly things like this:

A Florida high school science teacher faces dismissal amid allegations that she used a "cone of shame" dog collar to discipline students.

Pasco County Schools Superintendent Heather Fiorentino has recommended firing Laurie Bailey-Cutkomp, 47, for putting a dog collar on at least eight of her ninth-grade students during two days last month.

The collar was reportedly the type used to prevent animals from licking their wounds after surgery. "Cone of shame" is a reference to the animated film "Up," which Bailey-Cutkomp had previously shown to students...

Some of her students say it was all a joke, in good fun.

I guess some parents must want their kids to be suspended from class for even the most minor infractions, because that's about all we teachers are left with.  I know of a teacher who's had threats from a parent over assigning a detention.

It's Not About Learning At All

If parents want to put their kids in such a school, I guess I'm ok with that, but how can so-called educators support this?  Answer:  it's not about education.

A Los Angeles charter school with low test scores will stay open, reports the LA Times. Academia Semillas del Pueblo has friends on the school board who overruled a closure recommendation by administrators.

The school teaches in English, Spanish and Nahuatl, an indigenous language of Mexico, notes the Times. The co-founders are “dedicated to teaching culture that stretches back to before colonial Mexico.” An International Baccalaureate program has been added.

But students test poorly compared to similar students in other schools, including those taught in languages other than English.

This Berkeley Student Has A Cool Dorm Room

I don't know this Berkeleyite's political leanings, but these tidbits about his dorm room entertain me nonetheless:

After several months, Cal-Berkeley freshman Derek Low created "BRAD," the Berkeley Ridiculously Automated Dorm, Berkeleyside.com reported Monday.

Low can remotely manage lighting and curtain positioning, create the perfect atmosphere for homework, set the mood for romance and impress fellow dormies with his "party mode."

Everything is designed to work through voice commands, wireless remote or a computer application. Low even has a motion detector that will turn on the lights and open the curtain when he returns from class, Time magazine reported.

Sounds a little bit like my room at Aria last summer.

LA Students Will Have To Pass College-Prep Classes To Graduate

So much stupidity in so little a space:

Students "will rise to the challenge as they always do," he (the superintendent) told the Board of Education. "Gone must be the days when some youth get orange juice and some get orange drink."

First, students don't always rise to the challenge.  The guy in charge of the education of the students of Los Angeles should know that from experience.  Anyone who could say something so stupid shouldn’t be in education, much less the superintendent of the 2nd largest district in the country.

And I don't even know what he's talking about in his second sentence.

Who's Waging The "War on Women"?

The libs--and it's been going on a long time.  Remember this, feminists?

 I confess, it was pretty riveting when John McCain trotted out Sarah Palin for the first time. Like many people, I thought, “Damn, a hyperconservative, fuckable, Type A, antiabortion, Christian Stepford wife in a ‘sexy librarian’ costume — as a vice president"...

But ideologically, she is their hardcore pornographic centerfold spread, revealing the ugliest underside of Republican ambitions — their insanely zealous and cynical drive to win power by any means necessary, even at the cost of actual leadership.

Sarah Palin is a bit comical, like one of those cutthroat Texas cheerleader stage moms....

As a woman who does not believe what Palin believes, the thought of such an opportunistic anti-female in the White House — in the Cheney chair, no less — is akin to ideological brain rape.

Is it OK to say such things, as long as the speaker is a woman?

Clarence Thomas and Thomas Sowell and Condi Rice aren't "authentic" blacks because they don't toe a liberal line, and Sarah Palin will be subjected to every misogynist stereotype possible because she doesn't, either.

But don't judge them based on their race or sex.

Liberals are the biggest hypocrites of all.

Update:  More.