This is my favorite way to waste time.

from icanhascheezburger.com

Assess This!

So what's new?

Work has been busy, school has been busy, and life has been busy. I've had at least 2 events each weekend the past two weekend - which means no sitting around in my pj's watching a marathon of "America's Next Top Model." Not that I would ever do that as a self-respecting educational scholar and defender of women's rights. But hey, we all have our weak moments.

I'm working right now on developing some more robust assessment methods for our program. While grades aren't the only thing that should inspire students to achieve in your classroom, it will certainly curtail the losers who don't even show up. I think there is one girl I haven't seen in a month. At least.

One thing I'm trying to do is incorporate corporate (hahaha - inCORPorate CORPorate) assessment methods into our curriculum. A blend of academic and professional assessments of the students can not only provide them the knowledge that we're looking at what they're doing, but also with knowledge about how companies assess performance.

Any thoughts? I know I have some regular readers out there in the "real world."

Let us please remember the disenfranchised...

...and by that I mean me and all DC residents. Kudos to Mark Plotkin for exercising his right to free speech and making it clear that this event is nothing more than a display of tokenism by the White House. Care about DC? Not when it comes to giving us voting rights. But sure, when it makes for a good photo op.

Malconent Minute. (Seagraves, M. WTOP Radio)

WTOP Reporter Gets Booted From White House. (DCist.com)

Motivation

I don't know why, but this motivates me. I will most likely finish my PhD in 5-6 years. I'll be done with my coursework in 2 (that is, if they accept all my master's credits).

For those who attempt it, the doctoral dissertation can loom on the horizon like Everest, gleaming invitingly as a challenge but often turning into a masochistic exercise once the ascent is begun. The average student takes 8.2 years to get a Ph.D.; in education, that figure surpasses 13 years. Fifty percent of students drop out along the way, with dissertations the major stumbling block. At commencement, the typical doctoral holder is 33, an age when peers are well along in their professions, and 12 percent of graduates are saddled with more than $50,000 in debt.

Nevertheless, education researchers like Barbara E. Lovitts, who has written a new book urging professors to clarify what they expect in dissertations; for example, to point out that professors “view the dissertation as a training exercise” and that students should stop trying for “a degree of perfection that’s unnecessary and unobtainable.”

"Exploring Ways to Shorten the Ascent to a PhD." (Berger, J. The New York Times. 10/3/07)

National Priorities Project?

Yeah, checking that one out (it's cited as the source for the data). Apparently it's a site called costofwar.org.

Not sure who funds it - but you know there's always an agenda, so I won't be sucked in.

Proof that Legislators Hate Teachers

There was an article a few years back in Harper's Magazine called, "Why We Hate Teachers," or something along those lines.

Well, as far as legislators go, it's true.

Under a fiscal 2008 spending bill the House of Representatives approved in July, support for the Teacher Quality Enhancement Grants program would fall by one-third, from $60 million in just-ended fiscal 2007 to $40 million. The Senate Appropriations Committee, which in June passed its spending bill that includes the U.S. Department of Education, would cut funding for the program to just $28.5 million—a drop of more than 50 percent.

The bill’s focus on collaboration with districts holds promise for improving high-poverty schools, but the proposed spending cuts may mean there’s not enough money to support such efforts, said Jane E. West, the vice president for government relations for the Washington-based American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.

One of my professors (ok, I just met her today, but she's amazing) said something interesting as we were discussing some of my research. She said that you have to decide what it is that deep down you really believe about students (or widgets, or whatever you happen to be in business for). If you say that "every child can meet high standards" the way NCLB does, but you don't believe it, then your actions won't reflect your beliefs and you'll become an inauthentic leader. Ok, that's paraphrase of what she said, but you get the idea.

I'm wondering what legislators really believe about children, teachers, and schools. Since there are 535 of them, it's difficult to tell. I refuse to reduce the discussion to "It'll be a great day when education gets all the money it wants and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy bombers." (Author unknown, quoted in You Said a Mouthful edited by Ronald D. Fuchs). I hate that quote, it always annoys the crap out of me, and it's always featured with a stupid daisy or some such hippie nonsense.

Now that I've gotten that out of my system.

There is some interesting data on what our legislators spend our dollars on... for some reason this site shows the percentages for a family in San Francisco, which I don't feel is particularly representative as far as cost of living goes, but anyway:

Where Do Your Tax Dollars Go? (from Education Portal)

Different states and even different cities distribute tax dollars differently. Here is an example of how the taxes paid by a median income family in San Francisco are spent:

Sector	$ Spent	%
Military	$1,731	27%
Health	$1,329	21%
Debt Interest (Non-Military)	$657	10%
Debt Interest (Military)	$580	9%
Income Security	$383	6%
Education	$289	5%
Veteran's Benefits	$214	3%
Nutrition	$167	3%
Housing	$119	2%
Natural Resources	$97	2%
Job Training	$19	0%
Other	$790	12%

Source: NationalPrioritiesProject.org

I'll let it speak for itself; but I wonder if this includes the local and state dollars spent on education as well as federal. It's important to note that historically education has been a local rather than a federal/national priority, and that speaks to some of the reasons why we spend federal dollars on war and local dollars on schools. Alabama can't have it's own army. But it can (sort of) fund its own schools.

Check out the article on "Why Politicians Hate Us" too. Interesting and funny.

"Teacher Ed Grants Would Be Slashed Under Pending Bills." (Klein, A. Education Week. 10/1/07. subscription required).

"Five Reasons Politicians Hate Us." (Onear, P. Chronicle of Higher Education. 10/2/07. May require subscription, I dunno 'cause I got one.)

Law School - Failure of a Model

More proof of the failure of the law school educational model.

"A law degree isn't necessarily a license to print money these days.

For graduates of elite law schools, prospects have never been better. Big law firms this year boosted their starting salaries to as high as $160,000. But the majority of law-school graduates are suffering from a supply-and-demand imbalance that's suppressing pay and job growth. The result: Graduates who don't score at the top of their class are struggling to find well-paying jobs to make payments on law-school debts that can exceed $100,000. Some are taking temporary contract work, reviewing documents for as little as $20 an hour, without benefits. And many are blaming their law schools for failing to warn them about the dark side of the job market."

If you go to the career services website of the school where I work, mean, median, mode and range of salaries earned by graduates is public data. Granted, there may be some survey problems. Some law schools offer the same, but only the highest earners respond.

The failure of the law school model is clear in this article. Universities open a law school as a cash cow, because you can offer large classes and save money on professors, resources, etc, unlike with most other graduate programs. Case in point: "Universities are starting up more law schools in part for prestige but also because they are money makers. Costs are low compared with other graduate schools and classrooms can be large. Since 1995, the number of ABA-accredited schools increased by 11%, to 196." Unlike say, a college of education, where most full-time grad students work on campus to defray the cost of tuition, law students generally pay full price.

Law schools are failing their students. I think this is the bottom line here. They're advertising a product (a career) on which they can't follow through. It's a shame, and having experienced it first hand with friends and loved ones, it makes me angry.

I think there's a separate issue here, too, of why people go to law school (it came up in some facebook conversations with friends) but I'll save that for another post.

Scrabble

Did you know you can play scrabble on facebook? The only issue is that there doesn't appear to be the extra points squares (you know, double letter points, triple word points, etc). I played scrabble with B on Friday night and as usual, lost. Being an English major I try to come up with the best words, although it's usually the use of points that helps you win. That would make sense, I suppose.

In any case, play scrabble with me on facebook! Right - like I need more time wasters at work.

It's a Sunny Day...

...outside and in my head, too. I'm still working on the Really Big Idea, but I need to get ready for launch. I will most likely preview the article that I'm writing here first, and then I will ask you for your help!

Right now I'm working on the title/website domain name.

A Really Big Idea

If you know me, you know that if I'm up at 11:50pm on a Thursday night (and I have to work tomorrow), something is up.

And something is up. I'm working on a really big idea, a huge idea. The problem is that I need a good wiki to do it, and word on the blogs is that Google is about to launch a wiki. I had been using PB Wiki, but the capacity is low (i.e. you can't load that many files). If I can get my idea to really take off, I will need more space than they can provide. I don't know that Google will have a more robust wiki, but it's worth waiting... although I'm hoping it doesn't take a month, by which time someone else could come up with the same really big idea and... well, there you go.

I'd love to share it, but I want to do it right. So please stay tuned. And remind me if I somehow get caught up in the day-to-day details of say, getting my car's emissions tested.

Vanishing Languages

"About 80 percent of the world's people speak 83 languages, while about 3,500 languages are spoken by just 0.2 percent of the world's population."

Just one stat from this article.

"Vanishing Languages Identified." (Weiss, R. The Washington Post. 9/19/2007)

Enduring Voices Project: National Geographic Society

Paris and Fashion, all in the same day

By now you can tell how much I'm procrastinating simply by how many articles I read today. You should see my office. I recycled about 10 newspapers and it barely made a dent! There are still papers everywhere, namely the Chronicles I'm busy not reading. Although that would be another good way to procrastinate. That and clean out all my coffee cups.

In any case, this first article reminded me of when I was working on my master's thesis and spent every day it was open at Pompidou. Known to most people as a museum, it also has a free library where all the great unwashed students go to do research. The queue would begin about an hour before the library opened (which was at NOON, people. Can you imagine how crazy this drove me? I hate getting to work after 8:30!) and people would cut in front of you continually.

Once you entered the library, things got a little better. I sat at my microfiche machine, reading 10-year old copies of Elle (don't ask), searching for truth by way of fashion. About four hours into my research, inevitably one of the unwashed Parisian students would ask me out on a date. The library is a well known lieu-de-drague, or pick-up-joint. This would terrify me and I would leave, scurrying back on the metro to my silent peach-carpeted apartment in the 16th arrondissement.

This article paints a different picture, but a poignant one.

"A Scholar's Paris." (Kaplan, A. The Chronicle of Higher Education. 9/14/07)

And now for fashion! There are a few professors in the business school who subscribe to the "LL-Bean-Jeans-and-T-shirt-backpack-one-of-the-students" look (I disapprove), but most look like they work in the dean's office. Or maybe that's because most of my interactions are with people who do work in the dean's office. Either way, it's a lot of Brooks Brothers.

"Frump and Circumstance." (Fogg, P. The Chronicle of Higher Education. 9/14/07)

Crazy name, that Fogg. At first I thought it was Frogg. That would be cool.

InsideCatholic.com

A friend of mine (from Sewanee, no less) wrote the headline column for 9/11. I was disappointed that I couldn't respond, but maybe they'll get that feature up.

InsideCatholic.com

Miller/McKeon Draft of Changes to NCLB

I like it! No foreign language yet, but we're getting there, right?

"House plan embraces subjects viewed as neglected." (Manzo, K. Education Week. 9/7/07.)

Thoughts on Florida Merit Pay as a way to avoid working

I'm avoiding my work, which stinks right now, and even my research project, which has hit a major snag. Usually I can do one to avoid the other, but right now it is not the case. I'm kind of bummed, actually. I haven't been this exhausted from work since my first year of teaching.

So, I am procrastinating by looking at policy. No Child Left Behind is up for re-authorization. A senator commented that reauthorization is like a get-well card; you have good intentions, but it doesn't help the person out that much. So there's going to be a large fight with many lobbying groups represented over what a "Get Well, America's Schools" card should say. Can you imagine? I can see some interest groups arguing over the apostrophe. "America doesn't own the schools! Schools are local!" Or something like that.

Man, I am bummed! I have to keep writing, it will allow me to focus on other things.

Also, I found an article about merit pay for schools that should surprise no one. And it's in the Orlando Sentinel, the closest thing I have to a hometown newspaper in the closest thing I have to a hometown!

Woah, apparently there was a 12-car crash on I-4. Whoops.

Anyway, back to merit pay. According to the email:

"At Palm Lake Elementary, two out of three teachers earned a bonus through Orange County Public Schools' merit-pay plan.
At Richmond Heights Elementary, the number was zero.
Palm Lake is a predominantly white school in the affluent Dr. Phillips area.
Richmond Heights is a predominantly black school in a poverty-stricken pocket of Orlando."

Apparently the "Special Teachers are Rewarded" program should really be named the "Special Teachers of White Children are Rewarded, and Sometimes Hispanic Children." I guess STWCAR isn't really as good of an acronym as STAR.

Again, merit pay can be a good thing, I think. What Orange County has done, though, is provide more ammunition to those who are against it. This is merit pay poorly executed, and should not represent what it can do. Although I have to find some research supporting my position; I'm basing my argument that merit pay can be good on gut feeling, which is not scientifically accurate.

Oh, and our beloved Hanushek makes an appearance - the relatively famous (at least for eduwonks like me) economist of education.

"Eric Hanushek, a member of the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education, said he was surprised by Orange's results. The Koret panel analyzed Florida's education system last year.

Hanushek's own research shows that good teachers are mixed in at all kinds of schools, he said, so he can't account for the disparity or to what degree the state's formula, Orange's hiring practice or other issues influence the result."

Check out the article for yourself. I'd love to be on a "Task Force" for education. I also have several old posts on merit pay.

"Florida and Merit Pay." (2/12/07)
"Life School Balance." (2/19/07)

"Merit pay for teachers reveals sway of affluence." (Hobbes, E. The Orlando Sentinel. 9/9/07)

Email

All emails should: be brief, contain context for the reader, give the reader something to act on, and contain a deadline. Also I think all emails should have a signature with your contact information, including email address, phone, fax, and office address so when I'm FedEx-ing you a document, I know what office it is going to.

"Write a perfect email." (Wired How-To Wiki.)

Contents of My Brain

I would love to sit here and spill the contents of my brain to you. At the moment, my brain is off scheming about ways I can take a nap. I could lay down on the floor of my office and close the door with a "Please Knock" sign. Or discover a way to be sitting up and....

I just did it, and for a moment was in far away deliciousness. But back to here and now.

I have discovered that I often present people with the outcome of a carefully considered chain of thought, without letting them know many (or any) of the steps in-between genesis and completion. It's a problem, and it gets worse when I'm tired. Sometimes, though, explaining myself to other people makes me feel exhausted. It also makes me feel as if others don't trust me. I know that it's probably a combination of my communication difficulties and a lack of trust on the part of others. It's me, and it's them.

Just zoned out again, this time with my eyes open. I can't wait for an uninterrupted nap. Or uninterrupted time, where I can just think.

Dress for Success

At Sewanee we had class dress. I see no problem with this. Except for maybe regulations on colors people wear. Maybe if we had fewer girls who wore those shorts with writing on the rear, the world would be a better place.

"Business (School) Casual." (Guess, A. Inside Higher Ed. 8/22/07.)

Yay Sewanee's Right!

For good, accessible professors, a beautiful campus, and of course, lots of beer!

Sewanee: The University of the South (The Princeton Review online. Free registration required.)

Love is in the air

Students are trickling back onto college campuses this week. I noticed a definite increase in people walking around, arguing on cell phones, looking lost, looking angry, not looking as they walk into the street. Typical undergrad behavior! (Or adults in DC. But that's a different entry.)

Many are also coming back to romance, either with a fellow student, a staff member, or a teaching assistant/professor. Although many colleges have made rules against student/teacher relationships, it happens anyway. Especially when grad students who might be 24 or 25 teach a class with 300 undergrads, some of whom are also 24 or 25. At my undergrad, we had more of the actual "professor-dates-student" scandals. One English professor married not one but two of his (pretty and blonde) students. Not at the same time, of course. This isn't "Big Love." The word of warning for his advisees was, "That's not his daughter in the photo. Don't ask." I can't imagine asking about anyone's photos in their office, but maybe some people are nosy. A Geology professor married a student. Both of these men had wives and left them for students. Ouch!

My boyfriend thinks I must have gone to school in a terrible and sick place. It's difficult to explain that my undergrad was on 10,000 acres of nothing except for 1,300 students, a few professors, and a handful of administrative staff. A single professor didn't have many options (and I know a few who surreptitiously dated students). As for the professors who left their wives, well, I don't know. Boys will be boys?

I think universities should manage the situation rather than prevent it. Anyone see that episode of "The Office" where Jan had Michael sign a romance release form? "That's what she said." Ok, so maybe you're not a fan of the show. I think this type of legitimization would a) make professor/student relationships more boring, since they're sanctioned and you have to sign a form. Anything forbidden is much more exciting, and b) legally protect the university for the most part, rather than create a "rule made to be broken."

On another note, if you watch the HBO show "Flight of the Conchords," the band's rabid fan has a picture of herself with her husband in the dining room in last night's episode. When asked about it, she says, "Oh,that's my husband. He's quite a bit older than me. He was a professor, at my college, and there were all sorts of legal barriers keeping me away from him, from his family. But in the end love won out!" Ok, so maybe it's funnier in the show. But the fact that these sorts of relationships come up so much in popular culture means that they are real.

"A Right to Romance." (Wilson, R. The Chronicle of Higher Education. 8/17/07)

Teachers: Do Not Deviate

This article in the Washington Post points out the faults of standardized curriculum. Montgomery County, Maryland, fired a teacher who was highly praised by parents and created innovating experiences for her students, including an annual science project on stream pollution and nature walks. I guess actually experiencing science just doesn't match up educationally to sitting on your 3rd grade butt for 6 hours a day, 5 days a week reading about it.

As an educator and former classroom teacher, the part that upset me the most was one reason cited in Ms. Kim's hearing. Apparently she spent 50 minutes on a reading lesson for which the curriculum only allotted 20 minutes. If a teacher is no longer allowed to gauge her student's interest level, comprehension, and tailor the lessons to them, then teaching is no longer an art. I wouldn't even say it's a science. I think President Bush and Congress should develop robots to teach if this is what they think is best for children. Or outsource teaching to India. I certainly cannot see educated, caring professionals wanting to take a position such as this one.

"Teachers in Trouble, Parents Ignored: Part I." (Matthews, J. The Washington Post. Aug. 14, 2007).
I hope Ms. Kim is hired by one of the wonderful independent schools in the Washington area, where her passion for science and for teaching children will be appreciated.

Family

I wonder if blogs will become the new letters/journal. So many people a) complain about blogs; and/or b) lament the loss of letter and diary writing in our culture. I think they should take a look online. An old friend of mine responded to an old blog entry I wrote, and it occurred to me that we often treat these online forums as private places, when they are indeed public. I know, I'm a genius, it's only been in the news media for the past three years. So I'm slow.

I went to my cousin J's wedding this weekend - it was a wonderful ceremony in Estes Park, Colorado. The amazing thing about the wedding was that it was more like a family reunion. My dad and his two siblings (well, he has three, but that's a story for another day) and their children/significant others were all gathered in one place for a brief but happy moment. The joy of my Aunt J, the oldest sister, was palpable!

Everyone has difficulties with their families, but for many reasons I think my mother and father had it just about as bad as it gets. The forgiveness and love that I experienced this weekend, however, between siblings who all grew up in the same difficult household and by varied and circuitous paths made it out not only alive but well, will not long be forgotten.

The Exhaustion of Team Building

Today and yesterday were team-building retreats for my team here at work, and I am EXHAUSTED. Just FYI. Not even capable of writing. However, I will say that it's an enormously useful activity, and part of the reason I'm exhausted is that I'm excited about what we might be able to accomplish. But I think I'm going to go home now. I'm sitting here waiting for my phone to ring with what might be another project for my students - I've been playing phone tag with this one client for over a week now.

Once I get back on track, I'm hoping to bring more about education and how it relates to my new job into the blog. But baby steps right now. I need to go home and put away my laundry. I'm only one person.

The Dodge Neon

In 2002, when I got back from Paris, my mom made me get rid of my 1995 Dodge Neon and gave me her 2000 Jeep. (I think it's funny that I've only owned Chrysler vehicles.) Lately I have been reminiscing about my little, black, two-door Neon, so sporty and yet so dorky. My best friend and I had fun times in Orlando cruising downtown listening to Montell Jordan's "This is How We Do It," over and over. (I could totally go for listening to that song right now...)

Anyway, I'd really love to find the original magazine ad for the car that I cut out and taped all over my bedroom. You know, the one with the front view of the car and it said, "Hi." Never did I think my parents would buy me the car for Christmas - but they did! It was a happy day, and I loved that car. Probably would still be driving it like a crazy person if I had it.

The Neon is no longer, apparently, according to this blog. It made me kind of sad - it's as if an era of my life ended and I didn't even know it.

"Looking Back: Dodge Neon." (Neff, J. Autoblog. 10/07/05)

Sleep, Death, Etc.

Oscar the Cat - you don't want him in your hospital room! Maybe this is why my cat wakes me up at 5:30am; he thinks I might be dead because I've stopped thrashing around the bed. Oh, that's about the aforementioned sleeping problem.

"A Day in the Life of Oscar the Cat." (Dosa, D. M. New England Journal of Medicine. Vol. 357: 328-329. July 26, 2007)

Lunch

I just wanted someone to see how amazing my lunch is. Heirloom tomato from Pennsylvania, whole grain baguette, and sinful Camenbert from upstate New York. Wow. Mmmmm.

Pavement Pounding

Wow. So I haven't posted since March 13th, when would be when my internship started getting busy, I began looking for jobs, and my coursework became extra busy. In short, I'm focusing on getting enough sleep rather than blogging.

I do have some good leads on jobs, all in education of course, so I'll let you know when the next developments happen! Until then, sorry to say, but my blogging may be dark until after about May 15th.

Iran

This is amazing. I'm fascinated by Iran, and I think that we do need to stop the propaganda - and it's on both sides. My dream would be to have Iranians come to the United States for a few years, teach Farsi, and then go back to Iran and tell about how the U.S. really is. I'm actually thinking of developing my paper for Transcultural Education around this sort of idea... backed up with methodology, of course.

I've only watched the first few minutes... but look at the women in the video. They still mark that Iranian society is very different from our own.

"Rageh Inside Iran." (Google Video.)

Culture and War

This, from the Cato Institute, is interesting. I'd give you a review, but I'm up to my elbows right now in oral history and other reading.

"The American Way of War: Cultural Barriers to Successful Counterinsurgency." (Record, J. 9/1/2006).

Calling all Language Teachers!

I saw this on the OELA newsline - a place to come learn about best practices in foreign language teaching. If you can make it, I think it would be a great resource!!!

2007 Teacher Workshops (ed.gov)

Why I Quit Teaching French

Unfortunately, rumor or not... this is more and more becoming the case.

"A Phaseout of French? Sifting Fact and Rumor." (De Vise, D. The Washington Post. March 1, 2007.)

Hmong

I've been interested in the Hmong people ever since I read The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman.

Which is why I clicked on this article when I saw it... and was baffled. Why would someone attack a group of people who has been through so much just trying to survive? And how does this help make anyone a better lawyer? This just adds to my sentiment that lawyers need more courses in cross-cultural understanding and law... and that their professors need to take them, too.
Publish
"Anti-Hmong Comments Set Off a Law School." (Rosser, S. Inside Higher Ed. February 26, 2007.)

Coffee Break Spanish!

Check this out! This site also has some related blog entries about language podcasts. I do need to brush up my Spanish... how cool.

"The #3 Podcast on iTunes: Coffee Break Spanish and the Threat to Traditional Media." (Open Culture, www.oculture.com, posted 1/06/07.)

Our Mother Tongue

I find this article interesting, because it confirms some information passed along to me by a Lebanese student last semester. I interviewed Lebanese students who attended French and British schools, and one of the students told me that many of his friends applied for "Arabic exempt" status because their Arabic wasn't up to the level of writing and reading at the college level. And it's their native language.

This also gives a good sense of how diverse the Middle East, especially the upper classes are. They speak a mixture of French, English, Arabic, and other languages in the home, to the detriment of their native and cultural heritage language.

"Mother tongue loses in the race of languages." (Constantine, Z. and Al Lawati, A. gulfnews.com. Feb. 20, 2007.)

Believing What You Read

In my transcultural education class on Wednesday, we had a wonderful Spanish professor speak to us about "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants." Are you "fluent" in new technology, or do you find yourself learning the language and not always getting the idioms? I think I'm both - I write out some things by hand, but I live much of my life online, as you can tell from my love of this blog!

One thing that came up was Wikipedia, and how students use it as the ultimate source for information. Wikipedia can be great for learning about issues that have not yet come up in more traditional journals or in books; however, there is an authenticity/subjectivity problem at times. I think Wikipedia does a pretty good job of self-monitoring; however, this professor dismissed it categorically, which I think demonstrates her "digital immigrant" status.

What I glean from the plethora of information available in the digital age is that all sources can be suspect, and all sources can be useful. Even a book has an author who writes from a certain viewpoint. Maybe the problem with Wikipedia is that we don't know exactly who is writing them, so we can't say what how/why the viewpoint might be skewed. Which is probably why, incidentally, that conservatives started Conservapedia (fyi, apparently conservatives are less native to the digital era than liberals, because this link appears to be down) ... if you come up with a conservative alternative, then the original must be horribly liberal, right? -Sigh-

I'm not really speaking in terms of liberal/conservative - I'm so tired of that. Rather, I'm interested in more minute details of a person's views - why they might be supporting a particular viewpoint. Do they have a son or daughter with a disability, and so they feel differently about those issues? Does their job or social class give them a particular perspective?

Which brings me back to the original impetus behind talking about this, which was a press release from the Department of Education touting the Secretary's visit to a school in Tampa. I read it, but it's so hard to gauge what's real and what's fluff. There's such a dearth of good educational research out there.

Diane Ravitch and Unions

As many of you know, I have a great amount of respect for the scholarly work of Diane Ravitch. Here she is again proving not to be merely a tool of the neo-conservative reform movement by supporting teacher's unions. She makes great points about unions being a) protective of teachers' rights and b) the real problem being bad leadership and poor hiring/tenure decisions.

We would all do well to remember the historical conditions in which teacher unions came about, as Ravitch does. The gender inequities and a world in which a teacher is fired for marrying or becoming pregnant... through the grapevine, I've head of stories that are not too far off from that happening today. As for today in New York City in the current climate of accountability:

Teachers found that they were in trouble if they did not teach exactly as the mayor and chancellor dictated, if they did not follow the scripted cookie-cutter format of mini-lessons, if their bulletin boards did not meet detailed specifications, or if their classroom furniture was not precisely as prescribed by regulation. In these past few years, I have often been confronted by teachers who asked what they could do when their supervisors and coaches insisted that they teach in ways they (the teachers) believed were wrong. I could only answer that they should be glad they belonged to a union with the power to protect them from “oppressive supervision,” to use the term that was familiar to the founders of Local 2 of the AFT.

And again, I really don't want to be a teacher again. Cookie-cutter was never my teaching style. Standing and shouting out our new vocab words - now that's some fun.

"Why Teacher Unions are Good for Teachers and the Public." (Ravitch, D. American Educator. Winter 2006-2007.)

What, They Don't Already?

From "Dramatic Plan for Language Programs," Inside Higher Ed, Jan 2, 2007, a quote from Michael Geisler, a panel member who is dean of the language schools and study abroad and a professor of German at Middlebury College (yay Middlebury!).

Every graduate program should include a course in applied linguistics, he said, focusing on the latest advances in understanding of cognition, identity, bilingualism, and other topics.

They don't already? That's frightening.

I guess thinking back to my program at Middlebury, I did these things, but I'm not sure if they were required or not. I took translation, linguistics, and composition classes which dealt nicely with these issues.

The MLA report says that language programs should become more like area studies programs.... what will happen to language-resistant area studies programs?

Changes in Higher Ed Foreign Langauge

Some of these things are new-ish, and some of these things I was unaware of. Hard to keep up with everything - I think that's why I should bring the focus of this blog back to my original intent, foreign language education.

Item #1: The MLA is about to release a report calling for a shift in higher education language learning from literature to a cultural/economic/historical focus. I'll let you know when I get access to it, but there are a few articles at the bottom of this post that can help you figure out the gist.

Item #2: Drake University (in Des Moines, IA) did away with language programs in 2001 (funny that that same year, we became focused on them again, no?). However, they started a new program, which allows them to teach more languages using small groups, online forums, and graduate students leading discussion groups.

While many applaud the approach of moving away from literature, our precious PhD language professors are understandably nervous. With no need for PhDs to teach language, where does that leave those us (too) highly educated French, Spanish, and German speakers with PhDs? One critic, Rosemary G. Feal, the MLA’s executive director and a former Spanish professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo, poses this question:
“The question is: What comes next? After the foundational experiences, colleges and universities need to offer the opportunity to delve into academic content — in history, economics, popular culture, film,” Feal said, questioning how much of this could be taught without professors. She added that “professors with advanced degrees in languages are uniquely qualified” to offer such instruction.

I agree that the higher level content should be taught by full professors. However, the sad truth is that many of our high school students enter college with little to no adequate language training. Even with four years of language training, it's unlikely they'll need the expertise offered by professors with advanced degrees. Generally, these professors don't revel in teaching lower levels of language - what I did as a middle school French teacher. That's why they're not teaching at the secondary level.

And thus begins a vicious cycle - students in college with no access to interesting, engaging foreign language classes, fewer college graduates fluent in a second language who can teach, and then fewer and fewer secondary students taught well by engaging and academically well-equipped foreign language teachers. And then they enter college where only literature is the focus.... no wonder there were only three French majors my year at Sewanee.

Why don't we start with the basics... and eventually we will have a need for expert professors in the languages, because there will be a demand for it. Maybe what we need now are professors dedicated to teaching lower levels of language, who are passionate about it, rather than being "the foremost Proust scholar in America." Because, really, what's more important? A guy who writes pages and pages of one sentence about a darn tea cake, or students who speak fluidly in a second or third language and talk about the news, politics, and yes, even pop culture, of the day?

Articles to flesh out you knowledge of these topics by checking out the following articles:

"Languages Without a Language Faculty." (Jaschik, S. Inside Higher Ed. Feb. 21, 2007.)

"Dramatic Plan for Language Programs." (Jaschik, S. Inside Higher Ed. Jan 2, 2007.)

"About Drake University Language Acquisition Program." (From www.drake.edu.)

"CIC Announces New Keck Foundation Grant for Transforming Language Instruction." (Press Release Feb. 9, 2007. Contact Laura Wilcox, (202) 466-7230.)

Spare the Rod and Spoil the Teacher

Wow. Yikes. I'm all for merit pay if we can find a nuanced way to institute it. And I'm all for getting bad teachers out of the system. But remember a few posts ago when I said I was thinking of going back into teaching?

This article has convinced me otherwise, all in the course of a few short hours. A "bipartisan" commission on NCLB proposes that teachers who are "chronically ineffective" must be blocked from low-performing schools.

Sounds fair, right? We don't want bad teachers in our schools. The problem is, they want to tie the performance of teachers and principals once again to test scores. And although I agree that we need to find a solid way to measure teachers, this again does not seem right to me. What kind of school culture are we creating when the teachers very jobs rest on how well the student does on a test?

Some would say it creates a culture of accountability, which is what we generally have in corporate America. (Ahem. Ken Lay, anyone?). Teachers (especially those newbies) will work hard to figure out exactly what to do to help students score well on tests.

But then you throw in kids with learning disabilities (in higher numbers in low-performing schools). You throw in "English as a Second Language" learners, for whom the Department of Ed will make no concessions on tests. You throw in an unsupportive home life, where kids don't have a stable environment where they can rest, eat, study... or where they're working for $25 an hour as a pipefitter to support the family. This happens in New Jersey - B's mom is an English teacher and one of her students makes more than I ever have as a pipefitter.

And then you make the teacher responsible for all of this, and hire or fire her based on it. Wow. That does not sound like a profession I want to enter. And this is what tens of thousands of college graduates might be thinking right now.

"Tougher Standards Urged for Federal Education Law." (Schemo, D. The New York Times. Feb. 14th, 2007).

Benefits to Society?

This article demonstrates how far we have come from Horace Mann's common school as a place that prepared children for society, an endeavor we used to all feel we had a stake in. Not anymore, at least not out west. "What do I care if the kids can read?" the Scottsdale retiree says.

Well, if they can't read, and they can't find work, and you have a million-dollar house, then sir, they might just come rob you. It's in all of our interest to educate our children - as you and I grow old, they'll be finding cures for our Twinkie-Cheeto-and-Cell-Phone-Bluetooth induced diseases. Or they can rob us and steal our car and be on welfare (which you, I might point out, sir, also don't want to pay for).

Hmmm.

"A School District with Low Taxes and No Schools." (Steinhauer, J. The New York Times. Feb. 16th, 2007.)

Life School Balance

I'm working on an oral history project that involves interviewing my father about his life - I'm focusing on his schooling, at least for this part of the project, but it's funny how the important things in his life seem to have happened outside of school.

Which brings me back to the STAR Program in Florida that rewards teachers whose students score in the top 5% of the FCAT. Governor Christ wants to base the pay raises on other factors, such as principal reviews. Great. However, this article refers to Jones High School, in Orlando, that has been unable to bring their scores above "F" for the past five years. I don't know how much the school can do to bring up any one child's test scores, beyond hiring good teachers. School is not the only influential factor in a person's life; there's a whole world influencing their learning. And look at the income level of Jones students and Boone (a high school in a more affluent neighborhood) students... so the teachers may be doing good work, raising test scores, but their students have less stable home lives, or are working to support their families, and so they don't get a raise.

I believe in merit pay... but I think that we've got to find a nuanced, refined way of instituting it.

Florida and Merit Pay

The Florida legislature passed the STAR (Special Teachers are Rewarded) program last year, and it's based on teacher's improvements in FCAT scores, the standardized test in Florida. Great. However, FCAT leaves out a lot of teachers, namely, foreign language teachers.

Governor Crist is tweaking the program. I'll read more when I'm not working, but here are a few articles to get you started.

"Crist Likely to Tweak FCAT, Schools." (L. Postal. The Orlando Sentinel. Feb 2, 2007).
"Opinion: On Bonus Pay, Listen to Teachers." (St. Petersburg Times. Feb 12, 2007).
"Opinion: Good Salaries Retain Good Teachers." (K. Aronowitz. Miami Herald. Jan 27, 2007.)

I Can See You!

I have this site reader on my blog, and it's amazing what it can pick up. You can see all the people who have come to look at your blog. There's me, obviously, but then I can see when my dad visits, and also that people from Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Weifang in China have visited, as well as people from Copenhagen, Denmark, Boston, Massachusetts, and Fairfax, Virginia.

So hello! And welcome. Leave a comment sometime!

Hoover Institute Fellow Named Asst. Secretary of Ed

Quelle surprise. Bush named Bill Evers, Hoover Institute (a conservative think-tank) to be the new assistant secretary of education for planning, evaluation, and policy development. He's well-versed in the school accountability rhetoric.

I actually have favorable feelings to the Hoover Institute; they've published some interesting work on Florida schools that I feel has merit.

One interesting note... he served in Iraq in 2003 as a senior advisor to Paul Bremer, and wrote about Iraq's "Constitutional Crossroads" in the National Review on 8/15/07. Bang up job as an education advisor, it seems, given that the University of Bagdhad is so safe and all. Maybe he was focusing on K-12 (or the Iraqi equivalent).

Fighting Monolingualism

This article in the Guardian reports that the British Academy is calling for students to speak a second language as a requirement for university entry. The article points out an important idea - if we don't have language-proficient students coming out of university (and that's awfully late for them to start learning a language), then we won't have elementary and secondary teachers to teach languages. And then the problem continues.

Lord Dearing (I guess that means he's in the house of Lords... not too clear/interested about British political organization) is working on a report about languages. You can read a copy of the report... or at least the preliminary findings.

I always question what policy makers mean by "speak a second language." Everyone can agree on the general idea of speaking second languages, but the devil always lies in the details. What level? Level 2? Level 5? Does "speak" include both written and oral/aural (speaking/listening) components? Who does the testing? What about heritage speakers of language who may have lower levels of literacy but are fluent speakers? Which curriculum should be used to help students reach the desired level of fluency? And what's that desired level of fluency again?

I'm also reminded of what people generally tell me when it comes up that I was a French teacher. "Oh, I took French in high school," they say. "Can't speak a word of it now." People don't generally tell you that they took math in high school and now can't add. What's amazing is that they're often proud of their second language illiteracy.

Playing the Name Game

I received an email from my dad that was interesting and that brought me back to a class about links between foundations, funding, and activist groups I took last year. Since he reads this blog regularly :), I figured writing about it here is just as good as responding to him by email!

Emails that accompanied the video link all testified to its veracity and objectivity. So I checked it out, and immediately noticed in the intro the name of an author and an institution. So before watching the rest of the video, I looked up the organization. It's called NumbersUSA and suggests that visitors "Use this website to fight the U.S. population threat to environment, farmland, community quality of life, schools, wage fairness, and freedom." The text is on a background of snow-covered mountains (and they're based in Virginia... hmm. However, many people with the organization are from Colorado. Guess that explains the mountains.)

NumbersUSA has been around, at least according to tax records, since 2002. Now there are two organizations, NumbersUSA Action and NumbersUSA Education and Research Foundation. It's probably for a tax purpose that they have two organizations. In any case, it looks as if they paid their director Roy Beck $105,050 last year. Nobody else who works there seems to have been paid, though. That doesn't really matter, I guess, but I did find it interesting. Now, where does that money come from?

The only contributing group I could find, through mediatransparency.org (full disclosure: generally seen as a left-leaning website) was the Sarah Scaife Foundation, a group funded by the Mellon industrial oil and banking fortune (primarily through stock holdings in Gulf oil). You can see the Media Transparency profile of the Sarah Scaife Foundation as well. Now, people are allowed to do what they will with their money, including influence legislation. And the more money you have, the more you can influence legislation. I don't always like it, but that's the way our oligarchic-capitalistic society works. And I am free to refute your research findings - it's the beauty of the First Amendment. I do think it is important to know where information comes from, though, before making an ultimate decision on it.

I do find it interesting that in their list of links, the site has a link and an essay called "No to Immigrant Bashing," and when you watch the video, the speaker emphasizes this point.

The video itself focuses on numbers - numbers of immigrants, numbers of "native" born Americans, and the growth in these populations over the next several years based on census data. Mr. Beck, author and director of the center, also does this demonstration with jawbreakers, each one representing one million people from the third world. Basically, he argues visually that even though a million people from the developing world could come to America to have a better life each year, billions more would still be in their own countries suffering.

I have no doubt that Mr. Beck used real census data to come up with his presentation. However, data and numbers have no meaning outside of the context in which they are presented. As I watched the video, I kept thinking, "What's happening to the world population during this same time period?" (roughly the next 100 years). If the world population is exploding, I have no doubt the U.S. will experience the same amount of pressure. At some point, we're all going to have to learn how to share our resources regardless.

Update on the Internship thing

Happy Superbowl. I'd be watching it, but I can't see through the foggy camera lenses.

I was wrong about the reasons why internships during the school year aren't allowed for our majors. Apparently, it has to do with the faculty members - since a faculty member must be the one to supervise the internship, many departments no longer allow their teachers to do it. Supervising internships takes away from the academic subjects the students need to learn during the school year. Since so many departments stopped allowing it, to not disadvantage the other majors, it became a school-wide policy.

That's the story. But try explaining it to the one guy who wants the internship during the year, because Merrill Lynch won't pay him to do cold calling but they still want free labor. It appears clear to me who the real culprit is here.

Web Link

I posted here. Go me.

Bureaucracy and Democracy

The problem with bureaucracy is that people create it to avoid work. Because of that, bureaucracy works for most people, most of the time, but not every person is always going to be happy, get what they want... in fact, I think there is a large chunk of people who get underserved by bureaucracy.

The word bureaucracy comes from the French "bureau" (desk/office), and the Greek "-cracy" meaning rule. Since I don't know Greek, or anything about Greece, I'll stick to the French. "Bureau" means desk. One of the quotations in the Oxford English Dictionary uses "office tyranny" to describe bureaucracy. And that's exactly what it is. It's a bunch of little people in little offices with little rules, and something about the whole process makes all people petty.

Why do bureaucracies develop? Basically, there are so many people and problems to treat, and only so many hours in the day. So a bureaucracy begins to form. It begins with a few forms that people have to fill out, and a few policies to make things run more smoothly. The problem arises when you have several bureaucratic organizations with several different, sometimes conflicting, sets of policies and paperwork.

Case in point - where I work, we only allow our majors to do internships in the summertime. I'm not actually sure why that policy developed, but I'm sure it arose out of experience. Students may have been doing internships during the school year, and it impacted their schoolwork. So they tried to drop classes after the drop/add date but appealed so they wouldn't receive a penalty in their grade. This, of course, is not an excuse to drop a course after a drop/add date (normally the only thing that counts is a death in the immediate family, extreme illness, etc). Yet if the school allows their majors to do such a thing... you see where this gets us. It's not difficult, once you get to know students and how they operate, how these policies develop.

Let's take a conflicting policy, however. A student is offered an internship at a high-power financial firm, like Morgan Stanley or Barclay's. For liability reasons, the company can not employ the student without compensation. Compensation can include pay, which costs the company money, or it can include college credit, for which the student pays and costs the company nothing.

You see where the conflict begins to develop. The student cannot do the internship unless he receives credit, yet for various policy reasons (often developed because previous students abused privilege), he cannot get credit. So he calls the front desk of the advising office (i.e. me) to complain, asks for the dean, calls the career center, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The next step (which I'm waiting for now) is for him to have his parents call us.

Bureaucracy. It's not democracy, that's for sure.

NCLB

I received an email this morning that a hearing for the No Child Left Behind reauthorization will take place in the Senate on Thursday, Feb. 8 in 216 Hart Building at 10am. It came from my department listserv... and I thought, wow, you guys are actually interested in something taking place inside the Beltway?

I'm catty. Oh well.

In case you wanted to attend or listen online/on CSPAN, there you go!

No Chinese

Wow. I have to say that today has been just plain awful. And not even any snow to make class tonight go away.

In any case, the Palo Alto school board has rejected a Chinese plan for two classrooms, mostly because it's "undemocratic" and wouldn't be offered to everyone. That most of these programs start small and grow seems beyond them. Plus, couldn't they do a lottery of everyone who is interested? It seems that's a nice compromise between democracy and starting the new program. Or, don't do the program at all. Ok, I see how that's... better?

"Palo Alto Board Rejects Classes in Mandarin." (McKinley, J. The New York Times. Feb. 1, 2007.)

Barbaric Yawp

Actually, it's more like a barbaric yawn. You know, a really loud one.

So I've recently realized that I often feature opinion articles in the guise of news, and make no distinction between them and news stories. It seems that news and opinion bleed together these days anyway, but I'll try now to do a better job of distinguishing them for you.

Today in the Washington Post, conservative columnist George Will wrote about school choice at Sumner Elementary School, the historical landmark famous for rejecting Linda Brown in 1950 from enrolling, thus leading to the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. Will compares the rejection of Linda Brown by Sumner then to the school board's rejection now of a charter school that wishes to use the now closed school facility.

While the comparison is obviously one designed to provoke, Will does make an interesting point that liberal activists such as the ACLU are often behind opposition to charter schools. I think the liberal view stems from two ideological points: 1) public schools which serve all should be the principle recipients of state/federal funding for education, rather than a loosely-supervised network of sectarian, non-sectarian, and other schools; and 2) the funding that might go to sectarian schools would violate the separation of church and state that while it is not in the Constitution per se, is protected as many see by the First Amendment clause that the state shall establish no religion.

What the liberal activists don't acknowledge is that minority groups underserved by the public school systems in many areas have a strong desire to have more school choice. The system as it is established now makes it so the only people who benefit from the best public schools schools are those who can afford the property taxes to live in those districts, and the upper echelon don't even bother with the public schools, regardless of the high property tax they pay. They send their kids to private schools where they can mingle with others like themselves.

My issue with charter schools and school choice at the moment is that small schools don't allow for diverse subjects to be taught, because the schools just don't have the resources. So which subjects suffer? Art, music, and foreign language. Plus the evidence is inconclusive that small schools work better; this article from Business Week about a Gates Foundation funded school outside of Denver provides an interesting case study.

That's my thought for this morning. Back to being the fall guy for professors who don't want to let students into their classes, and to being told I can't go to the bathroom by my professor. What a life. I can't wait to have a real job.

"A Tide for School Choice." (Will, G. The Washington Post. Thursday, Feb. 1, 2007. Page A15.)

Language Policy on Cap Hill

Thought that if anything at all in my blog interests you, this definitely will. The Senate subcommittee on Oversight of Government Managament. You can watch or read pdfs of those who testified. Basically, the hearing deals with foreign language education policy, as it functions across a broad swath of government.

You'll have to forgive me, I'm exceedingly tired today for an unknown reason. I just had too big of a lunch? Don't know. Anyway, here's the link.

New Orleans: The solution is teachers?

Rarely do I post from another blog... dunno why, I just haven't before. Anyway, this post talks about the recent crime spree in New Orleans, and how it might be due to a lack of solid education systems. In other words, kids are committing crimes rather than sitting in class. Sounds like the rationale for big city school systems back at the turn of the century. Enjoy!

"Feds send more cops, but not teachers, to New Orleans." (From Facing South. Posted 1/26/07 12:22 pm.)

More FLA!

A couple articles on the sad state of Florida's higher education system... which fits right into my theory that the state is doing little to retain their brightest students.

"Florida's Failures: Blunt words for the state's university system." (Daytona Beach News-Journal Online. January 29th, 2007.)

"Planning for Florida's Educational Future; Our opinion: Not every school can, or should, aspire to elite status." (Miami Herald online. January 29th, 2007.)

Yeah!

Just one more thing... the Hoover Report gives the following as a recommendation:

13. ...Florida should move toward a more streamlined approach to certification. The state should allow principals to hire any candidate, provided they have a bachelor’s degree, can demonstrate substantive competence, and can pass a background check. Passage of subsequent requirements or coursework should not be required, if a teacher is meeting administrator expectations. To help eliminate poorly performing teachers, Florida should increase the probationary period of new teachers from three to five years to allow districts a reasonable length of time to observe their performance and make retention decisions.

This is what I'm talking about. Why should I (and so many other qualified individuals) be prevented from being teachers? I've taught for three years and have a master's degree in my subject (and will have another one soon!). I love that the state requirements could actually keep me from helping kids. It's just ridiculous.

FLA part deux

FYI, the opinion piece in my last post cites the Koret Task Force. The Hoover Institution, a right-leaning research organization/think tank, funded the Koret Task Force. However, I've read Hoover posts for about a year, and although they're very liberal in the economic sense, I think they're pretty rational - not really a bunch of right wing crazies or anything. So Koret did a whole report on Florida, and if you'd like to look at it, here it is!

FLA! FLA!

Nothing to be proud of here from my home state, folks. Florida is apparently so incompetent that they can't even tell you what their graduation rate is.

I think a larger problem lies in the fact that so few of Florida's best and brightest want to stay in the state. Everyone I know, with the exception of my best friend, seems to have left - especially the people who went to top-25 colleges. They're living in New York, Boston, Washington DC (that would be me, I guess... as well as a few other grads from my high school I've randomly run into). Florida provides no incentive for any of us to stay. There's no cultural life, there are no cities based around an economy other than tourism, and about 10 months of God-awful weather. Maybe I'm wrong and there have been some cultural developments, but I became tired of going to a place where every restaurant you eat at is owned by some large, faceless corporation.

If the state doesn't do anything to keep the best and the brightest in house, then there's no way that the graduation rate can go up. I'm not volunteering to go back... but maybe they can look at some other states who have attempted to keep their brightest from fleeing. I mean, I like beaches as much as the next person, but I want to be able to have a fulfilling career that is intellectual stimulating and a variety of activities to do on the weekend. I also wanted to be surrounded by other smart and interesting people. Florida offered none of that to me, and it certainly doesn't seem to want to try.

"Graduation rate debate." (From The Tampa Tribune, published in Ocala.com on January 26th, 2007.)

Takeover

I have to say that my laziness is the only thing preventing me from posting. Lately I've been worried about "leaving no trace" and hurting myself professionally by keeping a blog.

Nonetheless, for now I am pushing on.

Neil McCluskey raises the interesting Republican paradox of No Child Left Behind - reaching into the local domain normally controlled by schools and pretending they're not. Check out this line from the State of the Union:

" Now the task is to build on the success, without watering down standards, without taking control from local communities, and without backsliding and calling it reform. We can lift student achievement even higher by giving local leaders flexibility to turn around failing schools, and by giving families with children stuck in failing schools the right to choose someplace better. (Applause.) We must increase funds for students who struggle -- and make sure these children get the special help they need." (from whitehouse.gov)

So somehow we're both supposed to set high standards and let localities control their schools. We're going to dictate that school districts set their own high standards, but not tell them what the standards are? Or let them do whatever they want and just have a rhetoric of high standards? Not sure. Basically, what he's really saying is that we're going to demonstrate how crappy our public schools really are and let the whole thing be run privately.

"First We Take Your Money, Then We Take Your Schools." (N. McClusky. Newark Star-Ledger. Oct. 23, 2006.)

Ahem.

I know some people who need to read this article. Big question is, what if your boss brings her kids to work? And they're sick? Not sure what you're supposed to do about that.

Although I do really like the idea of an on-site day care center for emergencies. That would really help out parents.

"When the Office Becomes Your Day Care Center." (Vilano, M. The New York Times. Jan. 7, 2007)

Notes on Hanushek

Eric Hanushek has been criticized for his methods in the study about the rise in school expenditures and the fall in school achievement for how he weighted different surveys - basically, if you're not interested in statistics, you probably don't care about much more than his findings have been refuted... but not, in my opinion, completely disproven.

This article refers to Hanushek and makes the links between school expenditures and school achivement clear to a non-stat type person. The author also creates a "Teachability Index" (ouch) for different students and uses it to compare teachability to expenditures.

My only worry is that if we assume kids are "unteachable," will we still try and teach them? What will we do to make them more teachable?

"Myths of the Teachers's Union." (Greene, J. FrontPage.com. 1/9/07.)

What's Paucity Mean?

As you can see, I'm retooling the ol' blog. Never fear, hopefully I will get it right. I might just have to go back to the old style. I'm not too fond of this one... or maybe host it someplace else. We'll see.

In any case, this article is rather interesting. It talks about Diane Ravitch and how she wrote a book with a son about cultural literacy, and how our society seems to be afflicted by a dearth of good words to use. Even politicians and policy makers quote past speeches, not up to creating a new and powerful language themselves. Interesting, given how many speechwriters there are out there.

"Limp Language Leaves Kids with an Awesome Paucity." (Kersten, K. The Star Tribune. Jan. 7th, 2007).