You could have seen this from a mile away. The local school board, in the midst of hiring a new superintendent, has released a document that describes "a glimpse of what may happen if St. Cloud school district voters defeat a property tax increase Nov. 4."

The cuts could include school closings, mass layoffs, reductions in activities and special education, and spending reserve dollars. More ideas are funneling in as Superintendent Bruce Watkins shares the proposals throughout the district.

The ideas represent more than $6 million in cuts. When the list is put before school board members in late May, it will be whittled to $4.3 million.

"They look terrible. When we look at them, there isn't a single thing on the list that is a reasonable alternative that would not affect the education of children," board Chairwoman Deb Lalley said.

A graphic (here in .pdf from the Times) leads with closing schools. Of course that's what they want you to see; "give me my levy or we'll shoot this school." In public finance, it's known as the Washington Monument strategy.

Within the article are the seeds of the fight.

Voters in 2007 rejected a request to renew a tax passed in 2003 that provided $4.8 million a year. That caused a budget shortfall for 2008-09 that the district plans to fill with $1.5 million in reductions and $3.3 million in reserves.

...In 2007, the district was more cautious about mentioning possible reductions until later in the campaign. The philosophy has shifted to determining potential reductions about a year before they would be made.

So they said no, but the school district's reply is "you didn't really mean that, did you?" When you think about what the 2003 tax levy was for...

One possibility eliminates the 30 teacher positions that were added with money from the property tax increase in 2003. Each teacher costs the district about $45,000. One proposal suggests laying off 30 to save $1.4 million.

Note that this saves more money than closing both of the junior highs, according to the graphic. This is what school districts should be saying: We can either close a school and keep student-teacher ratios at current levels, or we can keep the schools open and lay off some teachers and let ratios rise. We've discussed that point here before, and the evidence that ratios matter for learning is tenuous. So if people want to have neighborhood schools, and they've voted against the levy last time, why not accept the word of the voters and make the layoffs?

Because teachers make lousy Washington Monuments.

Labels: economics, education, St. Cloud

Kent Gardens Elementary school in Fairfax County, VA has banned tag on the playground announced principal, Ms. Robyn Hooker (why am I not surprised?).

She made her decision because the game has gotten out of hand. This refusal to let kids play because: someone might get hurt; someone plays too rough; someone might lose; etc. is the result of a catch-22 situation educators and parents have developed in the last 35+ years.

Over the past decades, when parents with the perfect child were told their child misbehaved, they began accusing teachers and school administrators of picking on their child. They threatened to sue the school system. The schools, wanting to avoid costly lawsuits, began hiring risk averse administrators, people who would find a way to avoid any conflict with parents, etc. The "perfect" Johnny or Susie learned that his/her parents would excuse their actions and behavior just got worse. Parents abdicated any responsibility for poor conduct by their kids.

Couple this avoidance mentality, "It's not my kid's fault" with the "nobody can lose" mindset, we now find ourselves in a situation where schools cannot discipline and kids can't play at recess anymore. They can't run, can't play ball, can't play tag - just tell me, what is a young child with energy to do? Oh, we put them on Ritalin. Excuse me people. Our schools need to be able to set behavior standards (not feel-good, nobody is bad pabulum) and be able to punish kids who go too far, then provide an environment where normal active kids can run off steam.

Active girls need recess but boys even more. They must be able to release energy, not be drugged to the point where they are zombies. I taught 4th, 5th, and 6th grades for nine years. The real fidgety ones were given extra classroom space. Recess provided all kids with a means of letting off steam and made it much easier for them to concentrate on academic matters.

Heck, if we let kids be kids but give them boundaries and enforce the boundaries, we might even be able to extend the academic school day because we could teach more.

Labels: education

In spite of 40 years of negative press and educating our children to believe we are the lousiest nation on the planet with a myriad of sins so horrible as to warrant extinction, some manage to escape this educational-institution imposed mind set and then do something extraordinary, really extraordinary.

We Americans, all shades, types and personalities, still possess a uniqueness rare on the planet - we encourage people to think. And, we still have some people who REALLY think well.

DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (thank goodness for acronyms), has just contracted with Deka to develop the latest in prosthetic devices. Please, please, please go to this website and watch the film on their latest human arm. It is unbelievable!

When we: tell our kids that we are a rotten nation; refuse to push our children in academic endeavors; ignore the good America has done; teach only one side of history, government, etc.; use Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon description that all children are above average; make excuses for not learning; let them believe they are unaccountable for anything; lie to them by keeping truths from them - all this leads to a nation that eventually may not function.

Yet, in spite of the victim-driven, anti-American mantra, we produce thinkers, dreamers, idealists that no other nation produces. The kind of invention you will see in this film occurs NO WHERE ELSE ON EARTH.

Wake up, you negative forces. Just imagine what we could do if we encouraged the positive traits of our people.

Labels: education, ingenuity, veterans

It is a very sad state of public education in the USA when school officials expose elementary school children to sexuality issues, AIDS, gay rights etcetera over the vehement objections of parents who wish to protect their children from this type of material at an early age

but

the same institution prevents high school students from being exposed to heroes, bonafide heroes, who are trying to protect the very system that that will not let them speak.

Forest Lake High School in Forest Lake, MN, home of Vets for Freedom Executive Director, Pete Hegseth, pulled the cowardly move of the day by refusing to let the national tour of Vets for Freedom meet with 150 social studies students. The excuse is listed here, it's very lame.

I hope the Forest Lake residents remember this when the next school board elections occur. You can voice your frustration with the superintendent, Lynn Steenblock by calling him at 651-982-8103. You can also reach the school board members here.

Labels: education

For decades I've used the phrase, "Train your brain" to encourage my students and others to learn more. Our nation has lived through 37+ years of telling kids that memorizing dates, facts, languages, etc. really isn't necessary. I use a times table fact test in my college Management Information Systems class. Students who were made to learn the facts do well, the "feel good" only group does not. Poorly performing students usually have to work harder. In my latest class a key reason to learn basic data was driven home.

The night's topic covered the more abstract computer software programs: neural networks, fuzzy logic, artificial intelligence, expert systems, etc. These areas of software development attempt and often succeed in producing products that think and move like humans - imagine robots.

What drove home the incredibly amazing function of the human brain (and my strong belief in the necessity of learning language symbols (alphabets and sounds), math facts, historical dates, geographical features, religious basics, etc.) was this article discussing the chess competitions between the world's greatest chess players and computers. The computer was processing 200,000,000 moves per second, a phenomenal capability. The computer doesn't "consciously" do the calculation. It is programmed to quickly assess a chess situation, "review" data and decide which move to make. Our human brains work much the same way.

The reason we must teach basic facts is this: a fact once learned is in the brain forever. The brain uses the facts it possesses automatically. When cultures developed written symbols for speech, they made rapid advances, therefore we must teach children written symbols to survive today. After memorizing the fact, 7 x 6 = 42, we rarely consciously calculate it but our brain uses that fact millions of time during our lives, naturally. When we commit to memory rivers, imports, exports, mountain ranges, belief systems, major cities, etc. we become able to picture where an event occurs - the necessary associations and correlations simply "appear."

Our brains are our mobile computers. Think of your brain as a muscle. If it is not exercised, it will atrophy. As a species and member of various groups on this planet, we owe it to ourselves and our posterity to make sure our children learn the symbols, math and geographic facts, balanced history, and yes, a foreign language. Only then, after discovering the world of information and committing basics to memory will they really succeed, which in turn gives them real self-confidence.

We deny children life when we make learning only about "feeling good" for one cannot give someone self-esteem - it must be earned and fact learning is the foundation. To really think, to draw conclusions, to understand who and what we and others are results in self-confidence and better decisions. Children know when they don't know. They may not be able to express the frustration but they know. And when they learn, they know they know - they get excited about learning more. My college students who do not know basic multiplication tables are at a disadvantage - because they know they don't know what they intuitively know they should know. This self-awareness eats away at their confidence just as it does with other students. It is time to demand knowledge of basics.

Labels: education

My students were assigned some very, very small mini-cases to present to the class. Students were to read the information, summarize it, identify the pros and cons or causes. They were to ascertain whether or not information was unclear, missing, etc. and provide solutions or clarifications.

One case discussed the fact that the US has 4x the number of software engineers as India, 6x the number of software engineers in China. The question was, why?

The student who had solved this situation was from Africa. His major explanations included these gems:

"America provides more access to education than anywhere else. Americans always look for a way to improve software, they know (have the freedom) to make improvements"

Note: this statement is from a foreign student who recognizes what we have. I only wish more Americans internalized this fact.

Labels: education

President and Mrs. Bush went on a tour of Africa from February 17-21 - by the few accounts I heard of, it was incredibly successful. Where's our mainstream media coverage? Not too many places.

And you think there is no bias? If Bush were a Democrat on a goodwill tour of Africa being received well, do you think our mainstream media would ignore it? No.

What is the basic problem here? Americans are not being informed of the really good things our president is doing. Whether we like it or not, we are the world leader and when our president makes a point of carrying representative democracy to nations craving for something besides a tribal mentality and our media ignores it, that is plain wrong.

President Bush has done more to alleviate the scourge of AIDs in the African continent than any one else, including all the do-gooders in Europe. A total of $15,000,000,000 has been allocated to help Africans with this disease. Coverage? None.

The U.S. is the largest donor to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), with more than 40 percent of that funding going to Africa in 2007. Coverage, none. (from White House memo)

Here are a few of the notices I found about this trip, nothing major.

NPR mini report - Note the snide, nasty remark in the second paragraph. Of course, this is NPR, funded by our tax dollars.

Rwanda: We cannot be everywhere but also must recognize that tribal conflicts too often are alive and well in many African nations. The US never colonized any nation in Africa. The Arabs and Europeans did, big time. Both groups, Arabs 700 years before the Europeans, engaged in pitting tribes against each other, originally for a source of slaves, later for other reasons. The Europeans left conflicting boundaries but based on my students, they also left decent school systems for boys and girls. The Arabs wiped out cultures, languages, etc. Schools appear to be for boys only. The US has provide far more hope, support, and direction than any other nation on the planet. Are our students taught this? No.

This unclear article in an unknown paper, includes this comment: "But as far as the international activist community is concerned, Bush's remarks fall on deaf ears." Part of the reason Bush's comments "fall on deaf ears" is because too much of the world's media likes to ignore Bush and any good done by the US while blaming us for any and all problems. They refuse to help, really help.

The list goes on - you get the picture. We need our media to we tout what we do right - which is a lot. When we and others on the planet only hear bad, incorrect, or politically negative news about the US, we all lose. Our children have nothing to believe in when they are shown and taught only the negative. Just ask yourself - what could or would you do if your parents and grandparents only told you what you did wrong? You would have no faith in yourself. A nation can only do good as long as it believes in itself - once that is gone, basic tribal (in the general definition of tribal) instincts take over - it's not pretty.

Labels: education, Media

At this very moment my husband and I are sitting in our office watching an incredibly clear, spectacular lunar eclipse. There is not a cloud in the sky. As we're watching, we're recalling where we were on July 20, 1969, almost 40 years ago - when NASA landed an American space capsule on the moon. It was a night (in the US, daytime in other places) to celebrate, cheer, be proud of what we Americans have always been good at - setting our minds to something and doing it.

It is sad that we dismantled the program and all the engineers who pulled off that achievement. It was awesome. Since then, we have dumbed down our education system, taught our kids most of where we have erred. They do not understand that massive accomplishments of countless men and women of the US. They don't learn that off shoots from the space program drove the computer industry, powdered drink beverage industry, metal alloys applied to wheelchairs, especially those for wheelchair athletes. Countless other inventions came from the space program because it demanded the best of everyone and our society thrives on continual improvement.

It is my sincere hope that that we will find a way back to setting national goals (vs vapid platitudes) and showing the world why we are what we are. We have much to be proud of - much. It's time we teach our children, and do it soon.

If you can, get the DVD for the movie, In the Shadow of the Moon which tells the story of US astronauts landing on the moon wonderfully. Summary is here.

Labels: education

I've been thinking about today's kids living in their protected world, where they are perfect, all brilliant, all beautiful, all talented. Too often, their parents wait on them, give them what they want (versus need), in other words, spoil them. Adults provide an excuse for failing, why something went wrong and usually someone else to blame. Personal accountability is avoided.

For decades, I loved watching ABC's "Wide World of Sports." It exposed me to sports I never knew existed. The best in the world attempted to win in their field. Sometimes they won, mostly, they didn't. It was life.

Recently I've be replaying the opening theme: "The Thrill of Victory (followed by incredible clips of athletes achieving success) and the Agony of Defeat" (followed by incredible clips of accidents, missed gates, poor landings, etc.). I learned from an early age that sometimes you win, sometimes you lose; sometimes it's your fault, sometimes not but only the individual can "fix" it.

When we prevent our children from experiencing losses and all those emotions that go with losing, we are robbing them of life. Adults who protect children so they never experience the "agony of defeat," are saddling them with an attitude that will result in far more failures in life. All will experience losses but if they do not learn how to handle them, they will lose confidence, not be able to cope. They will not learn that you can turnaround negatives, that personal changes can produce different results, that individual hard work benefits one and the team. If we continue raise our children in a la-la environment, they will not learn what they need to stay free because they will always expect someone else to "fix" their loss. They will look for the easy way out. Dictators are only too willing to take advantage of their delusions.

Labels: education

Most residents of the Twin Cities know Garrison Keillor, the brilliant creator of A Prairie Home Companion, one of the longest running radio shows on NPR. Mr. Keillor, along with so many in the entertainment industry, have spent the last seven years criticizing our President, his policies, our nation and anyone who supported President Bush.

There is an exception and for this, I thank Mr. Keillor. Sunday, February 3, he had an opinion piece in the Star Tribune newspaper. (I cannot seem to find it - perhaps it's been removed? kb adds: perhaps it's a reprint of this article in Salon a few days ago) The title, "And the righteous, it turns out, shall muck up the earth" discusses how liberals are failing to teach our children well. In this article he attacks the liberal mindset that simply accepts lower test scores for poor and minority children. He duly notes that "reading is the key to everything. Teaching children to read is a fundamental moral obligation of our society. That 27% (of MN's children are below basic proficiency in fourth grade) are at serious risk of crippling illiteracy is an outrageous scandal." He's right.

The vast majority of children can be taught to read if they are given good texts, teachers who really care, and a learning system based on phonics - not the garbage that has been spewed from the ivory tower institutions of the past 36+ years. My last school taught poor and minority kids to read, at grade level. It can be done.

Teaching children to read is a must but so is teaching children to respect the law, even when we don't like the results. Children must also be taught that our nation was created to give people a chance to rule themselves, the first ever on such a massive scale. We made mistakes but what sets us apart is we correct them.

While I commend Mr. Keillor on this op-ed, I hope he will also start to realize the damage done to a nation's people (including their children) when far too many famous people spend too much of their media capital dissing our nation, our history, our elected officials, etc. At least Mr. Keillor knows where the reading problem is. His key quote: "It is morally disgusting if Democrats throw out Republican programs that are good for children." I never thought I'd read a comment like this by him.

Again, thank you, Mr. Keillor

Labels: education

There was of course much attention paid to the new EdWeek Quality Counts comparison of the educational system in the fifty states. The StarTribune headline blares "State gets D+ for aid to teachers" and has the usual wheeze for more state money from the usual suspects.

State Rep. Mindy Greiling, DFL-Roseville, and chairwoman of the House K-12 finance division, argued that such findings show that "the chickens have come home to roost" in terms of the state's inadequate funding of education.

And the usual whining occurs that the scoring of these items is somehow unfair:

Advanced degrees, experience and national board certification seem to be overlooked in favor of state-mandated tools, which can be dicey, he said. "A lot of these things are best addressed at the local level," [Rob Panning-Miller, president of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers] said.

The scores are here though, and I encourage you to look at a comparison of MN to other states nearby. Wisconsin scores better than Minnesota in school finance, spending 4.1% of its taxable resources on education versus 3.5% in this state. But that is simply grading inputs as if it were outputs. If the schools of Minnesota wanted to score better, they could have looked at the actual scoring within the area of teacher quality. What do we lack, looking at their scoring?

• Unlike any of our neighbors (IA, ND, SD and WI), MN does not require any formal coursework in the area they will teach in. They are required to take a test in the subject matter, however. That means the person teaching economics in the ninth-grade class might not have had any more than a single course in it (a "baby principles" or "econ for poets" as we call it.)
• Teacher evaluation is not tied to student achievement. Why would this be? What evaluation we do is not annual, either.
• Mentoring for beginning teachers. Think of one of the main reasons we support teacher education in the state university system (we used to be St. Cloud Normal School before we were SCSU). Yet we do not mentor new teachers, which may need some to leave the system. That money is thereby wasted.

You could point out more, I'd guess, but these are three that do not require a whole lot more money, and certainly not money that is going to show up in teacher salaries -- and that's why I doubt we'd see them.

So do we give aid to teachers? We do, just not in the way that they want. The important story in this report is that we are not doing well in evaluation of what we're getting for the money we put in. We need more transparency, we need more attention to young teachers, and yes we need more evaluation. Perhaps when we have those things it would be easier for schools to raise money from levy referenda.

UPDATE: Leo has a grade for the writers at the STrib.

Labels: education, Minnesota

This image, from a new article in Foreign Policy by Stefan Theil, should concern us with attitudes towards trade internationally going forward. But there's plenty more where this came from. I listened to Littlest last night ask Mrs. S a question from her U.S. history text: "What would a white Southerner in 1860 think of the 13th Amendment?" What do you think the answer was that the questioner was looking for? Such examples abound in discussion of economics as well. (And note, Littlest goes to a private school. There will be a discussion of this later with the teacher.)

A survey of attitudes in the US in 1980 and 1989 (discussed here) came to the conclusion that the American public is generally favorably inclined towards capitalism. An interesting paragraph:

An interesting difference exists for an item drawn from the writings of Robert H. Bork, erstwhile Supreme Court nominee: "Capitalism is more than an economic system-it is a complex of institutions, attitudes, and cultures." Eighty-four percent of the general public in 1980 agreed with this statement, compared with 77 percent in 1989. This suggests that perhaps people perceived capitalism somewhat differently in 1989 than they did in 1980. It is possible that the general public viewed capitalism more simplistically in 1989 than in 1980.

The survey also found a sharp increase in the number of males in particular responding positively to the statement, "Capitalism Must Be Altered Before Any Significant Improvements in Human Welfare Can Be Realized."

I think that emphases on "new-school paternalism" or "populism" are part of this continuing process of believing we can alter market outcomes without worrying about the "institutions, attitudes and cultures" that underlie it. David Strom argues that we are "woefully undereducated when it comes to the real roots of our enduring prosperity." But it wasn't always so.

Labels: economics, education

I would have posted this Friday but the meetings took too much time. Anyway, here she is on whether we know that older textbooks or sharing textbooks in our local schools is harming student performance. It dawned on my this AM that we have many students in college who make the decision to share textbooks, or rent them, or buy older editions. Do those students do worse on exams than those who buy the 'right' copy and own it themselves? I'm not as sure.

Labels: education, Mrs. S

THe St. Cloud Times ran a story in yesterday's paper announcing that Sauk Rapids property taxes will rise. The subheading reads "Hike reflects loss of Local Government Aid." Yet inside the story we learn, that isn't entirely true.

The final general fund budget was set at $5.19 million, a 9 percent increase compared with the 2007 budget.

The budget was approved without much deviation from the preliminary budget, Finance Director Jack Kahlhamer said.

It includes an additional $20,000 for the street maintenance budget, as it will cost more to maintain the downtown beautification efforts related to the bridge project.

The city also agreed to fully pay for the Sauk Rapids-Rice school resource officer.

The school district decided it no longer could pay its share of the officer’s salary, Kahlhamer said.

Sauk Rapids is also looking to add one full-time position, either a police officer or maintenance worker, he said.

But the decision to hire a new employee could depend on funding outlooks — and Local Government Aid — in the years ahead.

The city will see a reduction of $140,000 in LGA in 2008 and is unsure whether cuts will continue.

OK, let's do a little math. 9% of $5.19 million is $467,100. LGA is falling by $140,000. Another $20,000 is going to downtown beautification after the building of the new Sauk Rapids bridge. (As someone who drives through downtown SR each weekday morning during the school year, I will say you are getting at least some value for that $20k.)

That leaves over $300,000. What do we know about it? We know the school district, which lost a levy vote last month, decided to cut a position and that the city chose to pay for it instead. Perhaps this was agreed between the city and district, but at any rate it supports a claim that the city is raising your taxes because the district couldn't. We know the city is also looking for money for another position as well. It will choose to do so depending on whether more milk flows from the LGA teat.

So why does the newspaper run a sub-head reading "Hike reflects loss of Local Government Aid"?? Why not say "Hike reflects hiring decisions of Local Government"?

Note that this same newspaper, in the very same section, runs an editorial criticizing the vintage of science textbooks the school board is using. What is their preferred method of paying for this?

This board points the bulk of the blame at state and federal governments for everything from unfunded mandates to an outdated K-12 education funding formula. To say nothing of neither entity having a credible estimate as to what it takes to educate today's students to today's standards.

That's not to say St. Cloud school board members and district administration are free of blame. Clearly, more local diligence the past several years likely would have raised awareness, perhaps even funds, to address this situation.

Obviously the paper has forgotten the basics of budget constraints. Deciding to have newer textbooks or prettier downtowns or an extra maintenance worker can be paid for in three ways: you can tax more, you can borrow more, or you can spend less on something else. The Times editorial board and its headline writers appear blind to that last choice. If the newspaper were to, let's say, hire another reporter, it could either raise prices on the paper or its ads, it could borrow more money from its Gannett parent, or it could cut spending somewhere else in the office. I know the people at the Times, they are smart people, they know that choice and make it EVERY DAY. What is it, then, that blinds them to using that same logic to a textbook?

The school board has made its choices: It chose to continue to use vintage textbooks. Now I don't know what new things have happened in physics in the last decade that are imperative to put in front of high school students in their textbooks (is there a webpage that can substitute?) But was it imperative enough to get teachers to accept a lower salary? Was it imperative enough to forgo keyless entries in all classrooms? Was it imperative enough to kill off a couple trips for the dance team?

Your budget reflects your choices, but the choices will only be rational when the budget constraint is hardened. The Times is wheezing for softening that constraint, and its headlines reflect that the only ones who will have to face a hard budget constraint are taxpayers.

Who always have.

Labels: education, St. Cloud, taxes

I was reading Bryan Caplan distinguishing his views on parenting from Steve Levitt's, and not finding myself really lining up on one side of the other. I'm not entirely sure it's necessary that my kids like me when they grow up, but I care about how they turn out, and I wouldn't mind it if they were willing to provide some support in my final days on the planet (if I turn out to die in a way that one could foretell by a few weeks or more.)

I have two children. Most readers know about Littlest, but Oldest (from my first marriage) is not often mentioned because he is older by a decade and does not live at home. We do not talk every day like some parents do with their twenty-somethings. He walks to work from his apartment here in town, and I see him some days and we wave. We both like to text. But get together? Maybe once a month. He's pretty independent and I want to respect that. A measure of my success or failure as a parent is not in my view how many times a month I see him.

In the comments to Caplan's post someone mentioned an article from last year by Orson Scott Card that says two very important things: "good is good enough", and take the long view:

What is the measure of happiness? I suppose everyone has their own idea, but species-wide, the prevailing notion might run something like this:

When your kids reach the age of 50:

1. They're married to somebody they like and trust.

2. They're supporting themselves.

3. Their own kids are growing up decently.

4. Everybody in the family is speaking to each other.

5. They're all good people -- contributing to society and living by the rules.

That's an achievable standard, isn't it? It doesn't look so hard.

Of course, your kids can make horrible choices that put the kibosh on some of these things. But if you teach them what's expected of a good person, and show it in your own life, you can't force them not to make bad choices. That happens, and it's sad, and all you can do then is help them work through the consequences of those choices and try to salvage happiness at the end of the road.

In fact, raising kids who are hardworking, self-supporting, reliable, kindly people who get along with each other is hard enough that I think any parents who achieve it have a right to be perfectly content with the job they did.

Why, then, do so many parents set impossible standards for themselves and their children, guaranteeing that they -- and their children -- will fail, and making everybody miserable in the process?

There are times where Mrs. S worries Littlest will be harmed in some way, that we cannot assure her safety. We worry about the choices our kids make, and perhaps that's wise if it turns out they are lousy risk-assessors. We would like to be sure they can MAKE IT TO 50! That seems worth worrying about, though understanding there are some risks you can't reduce to zero. But what your kids do for a living, whether they are the best they can be, may not be as important as just getting them to be self-sustaining people in families that care for each other when they hit the age you are. When someone says to me about my child "She's a good kid" or "He's a very nice young man" I sometimes hear a 'but' as in "but he could be ..." To which I would like to say, "yeah, so could we all. Your point is...?"

So this the first Christmas season in which I am over 50, and I'd like to congratulate my parents on going five-for-five with me (assuming I'm capable of judging #3 and #5). If I'm lucky, I'll live long enough to see if I did as well.

Labels: education, marriage, Mrs. S

While reading this post by Mark Perry (and drawing on a graphic from Ironman at Political Calculations) I remembered we had a paper presented to us last month by David Lang at Sacramento State looking at similar information. Here's the paper in .doc form that David presented. Two points I'd make:

1. The choice of major isn't just driven by ability. There seems to be a correlation that has students from lower income families more likely to choose education as their major. If income and SAT scores are correlated, the correlation between education majors and SAT scores might be a mask for some other causal pattern.
2. Those lower income students also tend to take more math and science in their college curricula. In short, students from lower income families who have the math skills tend to go into science and technology -- it offers a fast turnaround to a good-paying job. The humanities majors tend to get students from higher-income families because these are in some sense superior goods. If Mom and Dad will keep Assistant Professor Buffy in a nice apartment and without car payments, she's more likely to be willing to major in Victorian literature.

So before making claims that our students stink because our teachers aren't very good, we should think harder about what data supports that claim. If we know ed majors come from these backgrounds perhaps more can be done to prepare them to teach.

Labels: economics, education

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that SAT scores for teachers who passed the Praxis test for licensing had SAT verbal scores 13 above those who took the test eight years ago.

The report credits “a confluence of policy changes at the federal, state, and institutional levels” for improvements in the academic quality of teachers. Among the policies it specifically cites as having an impact are stricter admissions standards for teacher-education programs; changes in accreditation requirements that put more emphasis on how much is learned by students in teacher-education programs; and a provision in the Higher Education Act, as reauthorized in 1998, requiring all states and institutions that prepare teachers to report licensure-test passing rates.

So you make it harder to get in, and make states report passing rates, and the scores go up. That doesn't seem too mysterious to me.

Labels: education, higher education

Via Yahoo News:

The New Hampshire chapter of the National Education Association, the country's largest teachers union, has endorsed Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mike Huckabee for the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations respectively, sources said Wednesday.

This is the first time the 16,000-member group has endorsed a Republican candidate, despite estimates that a quarter of its members are Republicans.

I laughed when during the YouTube/CNN debate Huckabee said his campaign was in need of all the endorsements it could get, including in that instance Log Cabin Republicans. But in that case he said he'd take support without changing his views. He may not have changed his education views, but they are different from the rest of the GOP field, as reported in today's Concord Monitor:

Huckabee became the first Republican yesterday to be endorsed by the New Hampshire chapter of the National Education Association. In a short press conference, President Rhonda Wesolowski lauded Huckabee's opposition to school vouchers and his commitment to arts and music education.

But Huckabee also favors "testing teachers" and replacing those who do not meet established standards. The NEA has been critical of the practice, as well as the federal No Child Left Behind law, parts of which Huckabee supports.

Still, Wesolowski said NEA-New Hampshire liked that Huckabee favors measuring student growth over time as opposed to judging a teacher's effectiveness by how students score on a single test. She said the group didn't ask Huckabee much about No Child Left Behind, since he wasn't a member of the Congress that passed the law. Huckabee, who backed President Bush in 2004, initially supported it.

Now one should give Huckabee credit for going to the teachers unions and asking for their support -- would that other GOP candidates would do so! But opposing vouchers and supporting higher spending make him less than appealing to Republicans for whom education is an issue of concern. A governor that mandates an hour of arts and music instruction per week, which Huckabee did in 2005, is not someone who supports local control. I find that pretty odd for any chapter of the NEA to support.

The Monitor article has a great deal of information about Huckabee's education record, so those so interested are invited to read it.

Labels: education, politics

It will be interesting to hear what objections the education establishment have to school choice this time. Rep. Michele Bachmann has introduced a bill for school choice for foster children.

Currently, when foster children change homes, many must transfer schools if their new home is located in a different school district. The bipartisan School Choice for Foster Kids Act would give states the flexibility to make younger foster children eligible for education vouchers – currently designated for students 16 to 23 years old – through the Chafee Foster Care Independence Program. It would allow foster parents to send a child to his or her original school or to choose a school that can undertake the unique challenges their foster child may face.

“Instead of separating foster children from trusted friends and teachers, we should give them the opportunity to stay at a school if it is fulfilling their needs,” said Bachmann. “We should also allow families to choose the school that is best equipped to serve their foster child.”

That last sentence begs the question: Why just for foster children?

The Chafee program mentioned provides federal dollars to assist teens transitioning out of foster care. In the enabling legislation (P.L. 106-169 -- it's Appendix B in this FAQ about the program) there was a Congressional finding in 1999 that money should go "several years before high school graduation and continuing ... until the young adults emancipated from foster care establish independence or reach 21 years of age." But the Chafee program, as I understand it, only sends money to states and has the states create the vouchers. I have not seen the text of the School Choice for Foster Kids bill yet, and it's not on the House website. I've written to ask for that information.

Labels: education

My several careers as a teacher have covered every level, from primary grades through undergraduates, graduate school, and specialized seminars for adults in the business world, at locations from coast to coast. My current classes tend to have a substantial proportion of foreign-born immigrants from all over the planet, Asia, Africa, Europe and South America. They have included just about every shade of skin and sexual preference there is, along with a huge sampling of the world’s tribes, clans, nationalities, religions and ideologies. They come from an enormous range of socioeconomic backgrounds, with varying personalities, styles of thinking, and methods for interacting with others. They all bring their various biases from past experiences into the classroom. Of course I do, too.

One statement I make to my students in the very first class of each semester is that "The only color that matters is the gray stuff between your ears." This simple line negates so many prejudices it is unreal.

I treat this statement very seriously, and apply it in a variety of ways throughout the semester. For example, I assign group mini-projects for work to be completed in class, while scrambling the composition of every group for each new assignment. The students have to adapt to each new small-group dynamic. They learn to focus on getting the best possible contribution from every member of the group. Some use their gray matter better than others, which affects the results for which they are all responsible.

Because my expectations and standards are clearly set out in the detailed syllabus I present in the first class meeting, my students learn very quickly that outward appearances have little to do with the value of the contributions they get from their fellow students.

Labels: education, higher education

John Hinderaker has found the best story about this Thanksgiving -- a "Director of Equity, Race and Learning Support" who uses the Thanksgiving story to create resentment among native American tribes for "500 years of betrayal returned for friendship." Hey that's great. I hope s/he* decides next to invite guilt on the Fourth of July, for being so mean to the British. I mean, they gave us the common law and our common language, and look how we thank them! You KNOW this list is going to show up in his/her professional development report to demonstrate his/her work accomplishments.

John notices this Fox News story on the matter, which includes a quote from a native American in Seattle:

The spirit of Thanksgiving, of people working together to help each other, is the spirit I think that needs to grow in this country, because this country has gotten very divisive.

To the Seattle School District's director of Equity, Race and Learning Support, a special Thanksgiving wish from my friends at Fraters Libertas.

*This is not a bow to PC. I have no idea if someone named "Caprice" is a man or a woman. But no way is someone named "Caprice" a conservative -- you'd use "Cap" or "Cappy" instead if you were.

Labels: education

Normally I don't refer to Powerline because so many people read it. However, if you don't, you simply must see John's video of his youngest daughter's chorus. Part of the program was sung by the elementary students only. Much of the rest was performed by the four high school choirs. The finale, a combined chorus rendition of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" - it is wonderful!!!

Many (many) years ago, grades five through eight, I participated in city-wide music concerts sponsored by the Catholic schools in my hometown. Participants included at least 500 band members and 1000+ choir members. The finale was always "God Bless America" and it brought down the house. This video of John Hinderaker's daughter's concert brought back the memories, the tears and had the same emotional effect. Simply awesome!

Labels: education

I've been meaning to write this for a few days. I saw a link from Lileks on the Minnesota Early Learning Foundation. I was reasonably sure I knew what that was about, after hearing Strom interview Art Rolnick a couple weeks ago. Sure enough, MELF is the attempt by Rolnick and others to see if the economic research on benefits from early childhood education are something one can intentionally do (as opposed to finding benefits from early childhood ed in natural settings, where the addition of education is perhaps the by-product of something else.)

United Health is giving money away to boost its corporate image, and MELF got $2 million. MELF is funding a $30 million pilot project in St. Paul.

Early childhood programs show "the biggest bang for the buck," Rolnick said. A $20,000 per-child, two-year investment could show a return of up to 20 percent for society each year of the child's adult life -- in the form of higher income, taxes paid, staying off welfare and staying out of jail.

His proposal: A market-based system to fund scholarships for low-income families. They would get scholarships of $10,000 to $13,000 per year per kid to use for high-quality child care.

...An eventual endowment of $1.5 billion to $2 billion, he said, would fund the program for nearly all Minnesota families in poverty.

"This one-time investment," Rolnick said, "is roughly the cost of two stadiums."

In the Strom interview, Rolnick states that the project will provide results that will be public and assessable by independent researchers (focusing on 1200 families in Frogtown.) I don't know all the details of the program -- the program includes counseling of parents on educational choices, so if a parent has two preschoolers, you only need one counseling, but there'd be a scholarship for each child -- but the issue is one of scalability, as the originators clearly understand.

Small-scale early-childhood-development programs have been shown to work, but can their success be reproduced on a much larger scale? There are reasons to be skeptical; some recent attempts at scaling up early-childhood development have been disappointing. But based on a careful review of past and current programs, we believe that large-scale efforts can succeed if they incorporate four key features: careful focus, parental involvement, outcome orientation, and long-term commitment.

The project seems something worth trying; it's a good thing that both liberal and conservative groups can agree to put effort into finding out whether the larger scale is viable. Here's a status report of what they've done so far.

Labels: education, Minnesota

Gary links to a Tarryl Clark press release that argues for a state fix to the property tax so that the state can provide funding for education. I'm going to very selectively quote this, so be sure to go read the whole release -- you are invited to quarrel with the interpretation I am about to give by arguing these are out of context. I think not.

“Property taxpayers are overburdened with requests to cover the gaps created by Gov. Tim Pawlenty,” said Clark. “Those gaps are the result of policies that shift more and more of the cost of government from wealthy people to the middle class.”

We've had the argument already (see, for example, here) whether we have enough progressivity in the income tax. Clark has made this point before. And she makes it again and again in this press release:

“Property taxpayers are at their limit. They support public education – but it’s increasingly difficult to pay for schools through a tax that isn’t based on the ability to pay. It’s time for Gov. Pawlenty to end the march to mediocrity and properly fund our schools through a fairer system of taxation.”

In three separate places then, in a 255-word press release, she brings up the fairness issue (the italicized pieces.) She then points to wording in the Minnesota Constitution that she says isn't being met.

“Nearly 100 school districts asking taxpayers to make up for state government’s neglect is proof that isn’t happening. In years past, school funding was there, and referenda questions dealt with construction of new buildings and enhancements. Now they’re asking for enough money just to hang on.”

Now, people who understand school finance (which is a Byzantine structure here in MN) would point out that the state bribes school districts to pass these operating levies. You have to impose a levy of a certain type -- often imposed by the school board without a referendum -- in order to get matching money from the state. (I rely on this booklet from the Center for Public Finance Research for much of this.) The share of school financing that comes from the state aid is quite large, in 2004-05 coming up to 82% of state plus local. Interestingly, the report notes that in the 1930s, the share of public education paid by the state was around 30%. As I recall, the Minnesota Constitution pre-dates 1930.

But be that as it may, let's suppose Senator Clark is right that schools need this money. Again, refer to the fact that three times she mentions fairness or tax cuts for the wealthy. Here's the question we should put to her: Suppose I could design for you a plan that gets more money to public education that was distribution-neutral. Would you support it? I'm encouraging any challenger for state House next year to put this question to an incumbent. Why? In another context, health care, Greg Mankiw points out the same thing. You'll see that I've simply replaced the words "health care" with the words "public education". You decide if it works.

Observing dissatisfaction with the U.S. healthcare public education system, they [pundits of the left and Democratic leaders] are using reform as a Trojan Horse to push for more redistribution of income. Almost all sweeping health public education reform proposals involve higher taxes on the rich to provide benefits for those farther down the economic ladder. The redistribution, rather than health reform, is sometimes the main objective.

To judge whether my conjecture is correct, ask your favorite pundit of the left the following: What health public education reform would you favor if the reform were required to be distribution-neutral? That is, you can change the rules of the health public education system but you cannot change the distribution of economic resources between rich and poor. My guess is that your favorite pundit would either object to the question or answer by retreating to more modest reforms. If so, this suggests that calls for sweeping reform are mainly motivated by the desire for increased redistribution.

Children are used, once again, as a stalking horse for a desire to take from Peter to give to Paul. It should be apparent that Clark fears that the support of Paul will not be enough to keep her party in power.

Labels: economics, education, Minnesota, taxes

There are times where something you say lays a seed that you get to watch grow. One time in a conversation with Gary Gross, I talked about zero-based budgeting. On the phone later he expressed how much he liked the term and wanted to learn more about it. A little education followed.

In the wake of several failed school levies, the newspapers have already started to get letters about where to go next (beyond the usual "back to the voters next year" answer. That's to be expected.) A Write Now in the local paper -- almost offering the Times as a blog for letter writers -- argues that schools have too many administrators. The comments after quickly filled, including this from former mayor John Ellenbecker.

Could we please have the specifics of which administrators are excess? If they can be identified specificly then we could have a legitimate discussion on the merits of that position.

Gary quickly replied,

That's the wrong question, John. The question should be "which administrators are necessary"?

Bingo: Zero based budgeting.

Now certainly you can dig up statistics suggesting bloat. Mark J. Perry argues that private schools have much lower costs than public and thus must have excess administrators (as well as higher class sizes, without any appreciable difference in test performances.) Now certainly mandated higher spending for special education is one distortion in that calculation, but can it explain all that difference? The only way to answer that is to ask for a proper accounting. (Kudos to the Times editorial board this AM for its understanding of that point.) Allocate teachers and administrators from zero so that a dollar spent anywhere gets the same additional amount of improvement in student learning, and you will have budgeted well. Then, if you want to receive more, tell us the amount of additional learning received on the investment. If all you talk about is cost and not about the benefits that parents and non-parents alike care about, levy votes will continue to be difficult.

When the staff/student ratio rises faster than the teacher/student ratio, as Prof. Perry also shows, you have some explaining to do, and some reason for me to wonder why a failed levy will lead to larger class sizes. Why do schools need to increase instructional staff at a faster rate than that at which it increases its teachers?

Labels: education

Someone said to me, who voted in South St. Cloud last night, "I knew the levies were going to fail when I was easily the youngest voter in the polling place." He's in his forties.

Maybe that was it, but the failure of the levies in St. Cloud and Sauk Rapids-Rice are also to do with some other events. I was watching the City of St. Cloud returns come in, and in the city the first levy -- to renew an expiring levy and extend another -- was ahead by about 300 votes out of over 7000 cast. But the votes in Waite Park and St. Augusta came in very negative late in the evening and turned the tide.

The Sauk Rapids-Rice vote was a little more expected. The district had not asked for money for years, but some campaigning against the levy seemed to be helpful, and the late announcement that teacher contracts were waiting to see what happened with the vote could not have been helpful.

Meanwhile, there were a few interesting St. Cloud city council elections. Experience won out in Ward 1, where Dave Masters defeated Garner Moffatt. Moffatt's friends on this campus put up illegal signs in school hallways (our young DFLers can't seem to understand this part of the law), but there was little campus turnout. In Ward 3, John Libert won handily over Karen Langsjoen. People will wonder if this was the result of the debate last Friday -- I don't know if it made a difference or not, and we never will. In Ward 4, two long-time popular incumbents squared off in our new boundaries, and Bob Johnson defeated Mike Landy -- really, the only defeat of a conservative in the election. And Sonja Berg lost the at-large seat to John Pederson. If I was Dave Kleis, I think I'd be pretty happy this morning.

Gary has more.

Labels: education, St. Cloud

Being an economist in a smaller place, and particularly one willing to speak on public policy, means you get lots of calls for commentary. One such call showed up Thursday night while I was driving back from watching the World Series: an 8am appearance on Hot Talk to talk about the school levy in the St. Cloud school district. I got all of about three minutes in, just enough time to say something I thought was relatively non-controversial -- increasing property taxes tends to push down house prices, which around here (and damn near anywhere else in America) don't need any more pushing.

I guess it was controversial to one of the other people on the show, school board president Jerry von Korff. I received Friday night an exhaustive email suggesting that I am incorrect on this basic point. So I spent a little time thinking before returning his email -- indeed, I get to be wrong every day here on Scholars -- and then sent the following back to him (personal notes edited out):

I think there are two points on which we have some disagreement. First, that property values include some prospective valuation of both tax and government service flows and, second, that the cost of 7% of 742's income would be catastrophic. While I think it would hurt, I don't think it's nearly so calamitous, except to the employment prospects of some teachers.

One of the points you did not make in the part of Barnett's show that I heard was that the property tax paid by 742 residents if the tax did not pass would fall, and not by a little bit. Had I had enough time, I would have read the data from your own FAQ. So a no vote is in essence a vote for property tax owners to receive a tax cut. People have a right to make that choice. The possibility of that choice means that the expected value of taxes to be paid on a house are lower right now than they will be if the levy passes. (That doesn't mean, by the way, that I think the levy will fail; in fact I'll be surprised if it does. But that would not invalidate this analysis.)

The value of that tax cut has an immediate benefit, in the form of lower taxes, and a second benefit in the form of lowering the PITI -- principal, interest, taxes and insurance -- on a house in the district. (Added here later, not in letter: The district has a tax calculator that says on a $150k valued house you would only pay a net increase of $1.50 a month, but what the top line really says that if the levy expires you get a tax cut, which I estimate to be about $9.80 a month. On net, then, the vote is costing you $11.30 a month.) That means that more buyers would qualify for a mortgage to buy that house, and certainly that means house prices could be sustained. Surely you are aware of this from your work with appraisers, and I apologize for boring you with things you already know, but this was the basis of my comment. I'd expect any economist to agree that if the number of people who can afford to be a house falls, demand declines leading to a drop in price, all other things equal.

Now to the second point, which you probably are thinking right now: The reduction in services in the district would be a negative for potential homeowners with children. Laying off teachers means increased class sizes, and you may wish to argue that this will lead to parents wanting to move to Sartell or SRR [Sauk Rapids-Rice] districts. This would make those houses even less desirable! you might claim.

Parents might believe this. But they would find that smaller class sizes really are not that helpful to student learning. The evidence from Project STAR in Tennessee done by economists like Eric Hanushek or Caroline Minter Hoxby are pretty clear that there are many better ways of spending money than by keeping class sizes at, say, 20 rather than 25. Hanushek has a meta-study that looks at evidence from a hundred or so separate pieces of research and there's just no evidence that 742's students would be helped by maintaining class sizes two students less than they would be if the levy went down. (Two is my very quick-and-dirty estimate from the MDE's statistics. If it's much more, you should show me why that's true.) In STAR, Hanushek found that a 10% reduction in classroom size cost about $850 a student but raised student achievement only 0.02 standard deviations. Surely you could find a better way to spend the money.

I have a great deal of sympathy for your point on the unfunded mandate of NCLB and if the district made accountability the key of its pitch, arguing that to do so it needed money for online testing, I might be willing to support something here. But if you can only argue that the loss is in classroom size and extra-curriculars, I have a hard time with the argument that these will offset the loss in demand for houses by pricing out the lower-income families who can't qualify the PITI for their mortgages. I have less sympathy for the outcry over the state's funding formula, but that's really not the point here. I'm indifferent whether the state charges me more taxes and transfers them to you or the school district issue a bond and ask me to pay for it. If anything was to tip the scale, it would be that the bond implies local control. Given your comment on NCLB, I'd think you'd be for that.

Many school districts and legislators use this comment on class sizes as the trump card -- you wouldn't want your child in a larger class, she'd get less attention that way. So here's the question: At what point is the class small enough? Go ahead, ask your teacher or your school board this question. If 20 is better than 25, is 15 better than 20? If so, then is 10 better than 15? Should we have one for every student? I mean, if money wasn't an object, at what point do the gains become so small that the district and its teachers would decide to do something else with the money?

And when they tell you they want to hold class sizes down, ask if they've got enough rooms for those kids. Are they planning to come back and ask for another building levy to house those extra -- but smaller! better! -- classes? Ask them as well, as Hanushek did to Congress nine years ago, whether they are aware that between 1950 and 1995, pupil-teacher ratios fell by 35% ... without much of any change in performance?

One also needs to talk to parents and get information out about the cost of reducing class sizes compared to the benefits. Many school officials believe the voters will react negatively to increasing class sizes by voting with their feet. They may be right. To the extent that you can reduce that reaction, you might help a school board move in the right direction.

I have had a fairly long exchange with von Korff since writing this, and without either of us conceding much he and I have found a way to talk about teacher productivity. It's what we really want to know: How can we make teaching and teachers more effective? There's no doubt that much of what happens in the classroom is outside the teacher's control, and that a simple look at test scores without including environmental factors matters. We won't necessarily agree on what the right set of environmental factors are, and maybe we never will. But what also matters -- and on this I think we have some agreement -- is that teachers need to be incentivized to use the best methods. In his view, that requires smaller classes. In mine, that's a huge opportunity to discuss whether we could find a better delivery method that might mean larger classes. If the focus is on output rather than input, on production rather than class size, therein lies the possibility of real changes that matter.

In short, what's the optimal student-teacher ratio? The economic research I mentioned above suggests there's a very flat range of achievement scores for classes between about fifteen and thirty students. Where's your school? Again, I beg you to look up your own district's data. It's not hard to find, and it's not hard to understand.

Labels: education, St. Cloud

Tonight was the premier opening of the documentary film, Indoctrinate U brought to the Twin CIties by the Minnesota Association of Scholars. Producer, Thor Halvorssen and Director, Evan Maloney joined 65 supporters for a dinner at McNamara Alumni Center at the University of Minnesota. We learned the background of the movie, what it took to get it to its current state, and future plans.

Minneapolis-St. Paul is the first location to offer multiple showings of the film. You can see it at the Oak Street Cinema near the U of MN campus. Times are as follows:
Saturday/Sunday 7:15, with a 5:15 Matinee each day;
Monday through Thursday 7:15 and 9:15, with 5:15 Matinees Tuesday & Wednesday

If you are a college student, a parent with college students, a future college student, this movie is a must see. What has happened since the 1960's on our campuses is a disgrace, a waste of taxpayer money, but most importantly, a defeat for the open exchange of ideas. Our nation has thrived on the exchange of ideas, different opinions, and the right to express them. Forcing students to adhere to a one-sided philosophy is bad for all.

Labels: education, Freedom

In economics, you look often for natural experiments to test a hypothesis. In Florida, schools are graded and vouchers are given to students in schools who "fail" the test twice. Thus one failure doesn't invoke a penalty but increases incentives to improve performance.

Rajashri Chakrabarti writes about these incentives. (h/t: WSJ Real Time Economics). Because the Florida program only requires a school to get to minimum standards in one area of the three 'R's, Chakrabarti tests whether the schools focused on one subject over the other two. They do: the focus is on writing rather than reading and arithmetic "because it was easiest to improve in."

Case studies reported in Goldhaber and Hannaway (2004) are very much consistent with this picture: ‘Writing came first “because this is the easiest to pass”...“With writing there’s a script; it’s pretty much first we did this, then we did this, and finally we did that, and using that simple sequencing in your writing you would get a passing grade.”’

Telephone interviews conducted by me with school administrators in several F schools in different Florida districts also show a similar picture. They reveal widespread beliefs among school administrators that writing scores were much easier to improve in than reading and math scores. They say that they focused on writing in various ways after the program. They established a “team approach in writing” which introduced writing across the curriculum. This approach incorporated writing components in other subject areas also such as history, geography, etc. to increase the students’ practice in writing. They also introduced school wide projects in writing, longer time blocks in writing, and writing components in lower grades.

That is an interesting result, reasons for which I do not really know but can speculate. If you are grading writing, it has to be by a template -- "three points for this; five for that"; the template is something teachers will know. As a result, they can teach to the template. That and repetition, it appears, did the trick. Is this learning? To some extent yes, but it would be useful to know if there were cross-effects to other student subject areas. It doesn't appear to be so, but the results are not clear on that question.

The study also finds that schools focused on the low-performing students, but that the higher-performing students did not suffer a decrease in scores as a result. If anything, the higher-performing student results went up with the lower-performing students, just not as much.

The important point is that the threat of vouchers appears to motivate some behavioral change in teaching strategies that improve learning. It is another example of why the voucher program is worth further investigation and study, and supports the claims of its advocates.

Labels: education

A few months ago Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp submitted articles describing supposed ugly behavior of American soldiers to the left-leaning New Republic Magazine (TNR). The descriptions reported were absurd to anyone who has a clue about the caliber of our military. Of course, the left is not interested in supporting our military but will eagerly publish anything that is critical, but check facts? Nah. Writers in the blogosphere took one look at the articles and immediately, red flags appeared.

Further research indicated that TNR had done minimal fact checking and ignored the full disclosure practice of identifying relationships with staff. Turns out at the time of Mr. Beauchamp's written submissions, his wife worked at The New Republic.

Over the past 10 weeks, TNR editors have refused to admit their errors, have pulled the articles, and entered the "hide in the cave" zone. Appears they want people to forget their lack of editorial responsibility. TNR accused the Army of stonewalling - yet it's TNR who has been stonewalling the truth. Our Army did its investigation and concluded the stories were false.

Yesterday, Drudge got copies of the Army's investigation and conversations between the TNR edictors and Mr. Beauchamp who now wants the whole thing to go away - I wonder why??? The Drudge documents are now gone but can be accessed through Michelle Malkin's website.

Mr. Beauchamp is the product of an education system that tells everyone they're special without providing grounding in honesty, integrity, and personal responsibility. Because Beauchamp had access to a left-leaning, anti-Bush and anti-US military magazine, by his own admission, he submitted articles based on fantasy and gross extrapolation of facts (one article appears to be an based on the actions of German soldiers in Afghanistan a couple of years ago). He dreamed about being another Hemingway.

When we teach children that everything and anything goes, and they are not accountable for what they say and do, they develop a very warped idea of life and will have major difficulties living on their own. Mr. Beauchamp got caught. Hopefully he'll learn from this experience. On the other hand, TNR does not appear to have learned anything from this experience. A once decent left of center magazine has shown its inability to deal with facts that do not support thier bias, again.

Labels: education, Freedom, soldiers

It's that time of the year when a school district's thoughts turn to money. (Do they ever turn anywhere else? -- ed.) I listened to KNSI this morning and heard this report:

If school levy referendums don’t pass districts say they will be forced to make more cuts.

Sauk-Rapids Rice Superintendent Greg Vandal says if their operating levy doesn’t pass they would have to make about a million and half dollars in cuts. The cuts would come on top of three and a half million dollars worth of cuts made in the past three years.

St. Cloud schools Superintendent Bruce Watkins says they would look at cutting about five and half million over the next two year. That includes teachers, transportation and activities.

99 of Minnesota’s 341 school districts have levies on the November sixth ballot.

Over in the St. Cloud Times, the editorial says "c'mon! it's just $2 more per day! What is the matter with you people?" But for Rocori, the district under consideration, average teacher salaries last year were $49,759; its superintendent is making almost $110,000. That's more than $21,000 less than the Sauk Rapids-Rice superintendent makes, but that's not the point. There are about 120 FTE teachers in the Rocori district for 2006-07 school year, down from 126 FTE in 2002-2003, but they are also down 59 (2275 vs 2334) students over this time period. The district has not had a cut in the number of administrators, and has added 1.5 full time positions in non-instructional staff. (All date from the Minnesota Department of Education.) But you still need to sacrifice a bagel and cream cheese to them, every day.

I opened my mail the other night to see the official notice of the levy vote in St. Cloud. We have an expiring levy here which they wish to renew and juice an extra $20-30 a year on the average home. So it's sold as costing just a few dollars more, but in essence we are being asked for an increase of $180 on that house if we let the old levy expire. In a world where home sellers are having trouble finding buyers, the extra levy amounts to a decrease in the price of their house, as some potential buyers are priced out of the market.

Speed Gibson correctly notes that when they say they'll lay off teachers, they mean it.

First off, they will follow through on their threats, for it's schools first, students second. They are indeed that ruthless. Meanwhile, they'll get started working on the next referendum, wasting more time and money.

Second, we no-voters (of either party) will get the blame, i.e. give them yet another excuse for failure. Even the conscientious staffers, and there are many, will be disheartened, maybe pull up a little. Similarly, students will be told we grinches are too cheap to give them a quality education, giving them a reason to merely get by.

And in the final analysis, the Legislature will eventually give them what they want anyway. That's where the battle must happen, and without making the kids suffer while we sort this out.

That, and the begging that continues from teachers, many of whom are in fact trying to create good projects. Russ Roberts, commenting on one website that solicits voluntary contributions for schools, says the problem is incentives:

The tragedy is that creative teachers probably do struggle to find funding for creative projects. That's because they're in public schools. There is little or no incentive for funding increases to please the customers, be they students or their parents.

Alas, In 2007, donors have already funded $4,176,945 worth of resources for students through DonorsChoose. Please, if you are one of those donors, give your money elsewhere. Help students get out of a system that wastes resources on such an extraordinary scale. Give to a charity that helps students get into private schools where there is at least some accountability.

"But that's heartless! You will allow kids with good parents to opt out of public schools leaving them only the kids with bad parents." Which is to suggest something: It is up to us to provide for accountability of public schools, and to insist that school officials and legislators meet our expectations. Will this happen? Like Speed Gibson, I'm skeptical.

But quitting cannot be an option. If you are in one of those 99 districts that are seeking more money from taxpayers, you should use the Minnesota Dept. of Education data download website to get statistics such as what is happening to enrollment and likely to happen in the future? (The State Demographer's website is good for that too.) What is happening to the number of teachers and how much are they paid? What about administrators? Non-instructional staff? What about graduation rates? Test scores? All that data is available now (one good benefit of No Child Left Behind). Do the research, and impress your friends with your knowledge. You might educate a few.

Labels: education, Minnesota, taxes

King has posted about the Armenian genocide committed by the Ottoman Turks after WW I. It was an example of atrocious, murderous behavior by one ethnic group towards another.

Upon rereading some of King's posts, I was struck by a key point about education that King made. Most western nations over the centuries have practiced one kind of self criticism or another. Whether it's the Judea-Christian heritage and the concept of sin, forgiveness, and change that causes the self criticism, I don't know. But, I'm willing to bet this kind of self-criticism does not exist in very many cultures.

The US, through its MSM and much education, has taken self criticism to an extreme, to the point where our children often only hear of our errors, mistakes, etc. but not the incredible achievements we have made. What other country has gone to war, against itself, to free a part of its population? You can debate the main causes of the Civil War but one key result was slavery was outlawed. We still struggled but our ancestors fought, died, and outlawed one of humanity's most degrading practices.

This paragraph from King's post says a lot. I did once attend a commemoration at Claremont for the 80th anniversary of April 24, what we call Martyrs Day. Armenian-American students whom I was advising organized a panel, emceed by Mrs. Scholar -- while I held our infant Littlest in the back -- and to which we had brought a survivor who was 85 by this time and was six during the march to Der el-Zor. While he spoke we got treated to people with their own placards and shouts. Tempers flared as they said we were liars. My aunt, who lives in southern California and was in attendance, became very angry. But instead we talked with these Turkish students, who said they were told about this meeting not by our signs around campus but by letter. They never said who sent it, but I have a guess. When asked what they know about the history of the Armenians and Greeks of their country during and after World War I, they said they did not really know the stories, they were not taught. We eventually settled down, shook hands and went on our way, we back to our memories and parents telling us stories, and they back to their fatherland and ... nothing.

What is very important in this paragraph is that these anti-Armenian protesters, by their own admission, WERE NOT TAUGHT the murderous parts of their history. Ethnic groups will be around forever and all have their embarrassing and often cruel practices in their history. Ignoring horrendous acts against others by ancestors or current representatives is wrong and bodes poorly for peace or any other positive development for human kind.

All ethnic groups or nations cheat their societies when they teach only the negative or the positive. When people are denied the chance to learn true history, the good and the bad, all lose. If and when those mistaught learn the truth, as ugly or enlightening as it may be, they can rightly question everything else they were taught.

Labels: Armenia, education, higher education

As many of you know, I teach MIS at Metropolitan State University in the Twin Cities. Major advantages of teaching at Metro include: small class size and older students, average age is mid-late 20's. This means mom and dad are most likely not funding their journey through college. These students realize they need the degree and for the most part are willing to work to attain it.

One topic covered in MIS is the System Development Life Cycle (SDLC), a guideline for identifying the necessities to install a new computer application. We study it from the technical side then after counting off, I divide the class into groups to apply the metho