Friday, July 31, 2009

More waste and mismanagement at Tweed; when will it end?



In NYC, 2400 teachers remain on Absent Teacher Reserve, with no assignments, getting paid full salaries; while class sizes are expected to swell in the fall. (GothamSchools, Post, Daily News, NY Times)

What a fiasco! Can you imagine the headlines if our schools had still been run by the old Board of Education? These teachers ought to be offered for free of charge by DOE to any principal who wants to put them to work.

Meanwhile, the financial scandals at Tweed continue. Juan Gonzalez reveals that DOE is paying the company Future Technology Associates an average of $250,000 each, for 63 consultants, through a no-bid contract– though the company has no offices, only a mail drop in Brooklyn.

The contract with FTA began in 2005 at $2.5 million -- about when the company was founded -- and has now mushroomed to over $15.7 million per year. Their contract, to align DOE’s finances with the city’s financial reporting system, which is years behind schedule, is expected to be extended for five more years at $95 million. Meanwhile, the cuts to schools next year amount to $400 million.

FTA director Tamer Sevintuna is getting $348,000 for the project, more than any city official including Deputy Mayors, while his second-in-command is getting paid $345,000 – with a portion of their salaries up to now hidden -- drawn from the schools’ capital budget.



But that’s not all. Turns out that FTA’s contract workers, many of them on temporary work visas from India, are only getting paid about $70,000 a year , while the directors are raking off the rest as huge profits:

"None of us made anywhere near $100,000," said a former FTA consultant who claims he quit the company in disgust because of all the money the DOE was "wasting on an archaic system that was always crashing."

"They had all 60 of us working in one room that was hot, dirty and absolutely not what you would expect from such a well-funded business," the former consultant said. …."Most of the 60 people I worked with at FTA were from India," he said.

"Every few months, someone was heading back home temporarily because their visa had expired. A few even got paid while they worked on the project back in India."



Meanwhile, Photeine Anagnostopoulos, the DOE's chief operating officer, told Juan that their sweetheart deal with FTA is “better than competitive".



The growth of private contracting has hugely grown under this administration – a practice ripe with abuse.



See this April testimony from the City Comptroller, showing that one out of every five DOE contracts in 2007 and 2008 went over its maximum allotted amount by 25 percent or more, sometimes by millions of dollars.

An audit from the State Comptroller released in May reported that the DOE awarded 291 no-bid contracts between FY 2005 and FY 2008, for more than $340 million, and in most instances "failed to properly document" the reason why.

And this analysis from the NY Times, showing that despite hundreds of millions of dollars awarded the city from the state and the federal government to reduce class size over the last seven years, the number of classroom teachers has shrunk by more than 1600, while high-paid administrators and out-of-classroom positions have grown by over 10,000. The number of employees making over $100,000 has quadrupled – even after adjusting for inflation.

When are the Mayor and Chancellor going to be held accountable for their huge waste of taxpayer funds; while each year, our children suffer from worsening overcrowding and rising class sizes?

Breaking Down the IEP: Frequency, Location and Duration

The IEP document must include a statement of the special education, related services and program modifications to be provided to the student. In regards to those components, the statute includes an additional requirement that designates specific details about the services that must be included.

The IDEA requires the written IEP document to include:
"the projected date for the beginning of the services and modifications... and the anticipated frequency, location and duration of those services and modifications."
20 U.S.C. section 1414(d)(1)(A)(VIII).

When will the services and modifications described in the IEP begin?

The projected start date describes when the IEP will be "in effect" for this student. In many instances, an IEP can begin to be implemented right away. However, in some instances, the IEP team may be meeting for the purposes of determining services that are to begin at a later date, for example the following school year.

In any event, the IEP document needs to specifically state when the services are to begin. The District is required to implement that IEP consistent with the start date and in a manner that does not delay the provision of FAPE to the student.

What will be the frequency and duration of the services?

This is the "how often and how much" portion of the IEP. Once services are identified as necessary for the child, the IEP team needs to determine how often the child will recieve those services and how much time will be provided for each service. This determination should be individualized, and based on the child's identified unique needs, not based on a policy or district administrative decisions. For example, how often a child should recieve speech therapy should be based on his/her unique needs in the areas of speech, language and communication, how those needs impact his/her ability to access the curriculum, how these needs impact his/her functional skills, interactions with peers, etc, and other individual factors like attention span, or how the child generalizes skills. It should not be based on a district determination that all children with this disability recieve 2 times per week of speech therapy.

Whatever the IEP team determines, the IEP document must include a statement that is specific as to the frequency and duration of the services, so that all of those involved in developing and in implementing the IEP fully understand exactly what is to be provided.

What will be the location of the services?

Location can relate to several different considerations. Location may mean whether the service is to be provided within the child's classroom setting or whether the service is to be provided in a separate setting, like a therapy room, clinic setting, or counseling office. Location may mean whether the service will be provided at the school the child attends or at a private or non-public agency's office, like the office of a private speech pathologist or occupational therapy. Finally, location may mean the actual school that the child will attend and where the child will recieve services, although this definition of location causes much debate.

The IEP document is required to specifically identify the location of the services. Although there are many different things the IEP team should consider in determining location and how it should be described, the team should avoid generalized statements like "a district school location" and try to include specific information that gives the parents and other team members enough detail to understand what is being provided.

Importance of this information

"The amount of services to be provided must be stated in the IEP so that the level of the agency's commitment of resources will be clear to the parents and other IEP team members." Appendix A to 34 C.F.R. part 300, at Q35. This required content serves the purpose of clarifying the District's implementation duties, so that all persons working with the child understand what is to be provided and at what rate. It also serves the purpose of providing parents with enough information to meaningfully participate in the development of the IEP and fully consider the appropriateness of what is being offered. A parent may agree, for example, that her child requires speech therapy, but without knowing how much speech therapy is offered, it would be impossible for the parent to know if the IEP was appropriate.

The requirement that the IEP document location of services is a cause of much debate. Location in terms of in-class versus out-of-class (or the "push-in" model versus "pull-out" model) may be debated between parents and educators. In recent years, more emphasis has been placed on providing "push-in" services within the classroom setting or other natural environments. While this model is supported by the idea of providing services in the least restrictive environment, parents often feel that their child cannot fully benefit without more individualized services outside of the classroom setting.

Location in terms of the physcial school site is also a debate. In many cases, judges have agreed with school districts that the specific school site is an administrative decision, and that therefore failure to designate the specific school is not a FAPE violation, depsite the requirement that the IEP designate the "location" of services and program modifications to be provided. In some specific cases, however, the failure to identify a specific school has been found to deny student a FAPE. See, for example, A.K. v. Alexandria City School Board, 484 F.3d 672 (4th Cir 2007).

As with any component of the IEP, if the team determines that a specific location is requried to provide the student a FAPE, then that location needs to be specifically identified. In any case, some information describing the location of the services, along with the frequency and duration of the services, must be provided to conform to the statute and allow parents to meaningfully participate in the process.


Manifesto

Cosmic order is rooted in the Logos. Today, mathematicians continue to discover truth through beauty, and modern science forgets the “poetic” qualities of nature at its peril. The idea of beauty contains the key to the healing of our fragmented, secularized, and alienated culture. This is how I summed up the thrust of the book at the end of the Introduction:

The way we educate is the way we pass on or transform our culture. It carries within it a message about our values, priorities and the way we structure the world. The fragmentation of education into disciplines teaches us that the world is made of bits we can use and consume as we choose. This fragmentation is a denial of ultimate meaning. Contemporary education therefore tends to the elimination of meaning – except in the sense of a meaning that we impose by force upon the world.

The keys to meaning are (and always have been) form, gestalt, beauty, interiority, relationship, radiance, and purpose. An education for meaning would therefore begin with an education in the perception of form. The “re-enchantment” of education would open our eyes to the meaning and beauty of the cosmos.

Education begins in the family and ends in the Trinity. Praise (of beauty), service (of goodness), and contemplation (of truth) are essential to the full expression of our humanity. The cosmos is liturgical by its very nature.

Mysterious inexhaustible depth
I have found in an article by Catherine Pickstock in the collection Radical Orthodoxy which she edited with John Milbank and Graham Ward, an essay entitled "Soul, City and Cosmos after Augustine", the following paragraph of which contains in concentrated form much that I am trying to say in this book. Speaking of the psyche as a "musical reality" she writes:
It is this notion which always held together what we now think of as sciences and arts, and ensured that the topics of the quadrivium always had a qualitative aesthetic dimension. To say that the essence of beauty is in number, as Augustine and, later, Bonaventure and a host of medieval followers do, sounds to us like an attempt to reduce aesthetics to science and formal rules. However, this would be to neglect the fact that for the tradition, number had a qualitative dimension and a mysterious inexhaustible depth. It was in fact the very break up of this tradition which generated the duality of science and art, along with a series of other dualities in which the modern West remains trapped.

Manifesto

Cosmic order is rooted in the Logos. Today, mathematicians continue to discover truth through beauty, and modern science forgets the “poetic” qualities of nature at its peril. The idea of beauty contains the key to the healing of our fragmented, secularized, and alienated culture. This is how I summed up the thrust of the book at the end of the Introduction:

The way we educate is the way we pass on or transform our culture. It carries within it a message about our values, priorities and the way we structure the world. The fragmentation of education into disciplines teaches us that the world is made of bits we can use and consume as we choose. This fragmentation is a denial of ultimate meaning. Contemporary education therefore tends to the elimination of meaning – except in the sense of a meaning that we impose by force upon the world.

The keys to meaning are (and always have been) form, gestalt, beauty, interiority, relationship, radiance, and purpose. An education for meaning would therefore begin with an education in the perception of form. The “re-enchantment” of education would open our eyes to the meaning and beauty of the cosmos.

Education begins in the family and ends in the Trinity. Praise (of beauty), service (of goodness), and contemplation (of truth) are essential to the full expression of our humanity. The cosmos is liturgical by its very nature.

Mysterious inexhaustible depth
I have found in an article by Catherine Pickstock in the collection Radical Orthodoxy which she edited with John Milbank and Graham Ward, an essay entitled "Soul, City and Cosmos after Augustine", the following paragraph of which contains in concentrated form much that I am trying to say in this book. Speaking of the psyche as a "musical reality" she writes:
It is this notion which always held together what we now think of as sciences and arts, and ensured that the topics of the quadrivium always had a qualitative aesthetic dimension. To say that the essence of beauty is in number, as Augustine and, later, Bonaventure and a host of medieval followers do, sounds to us like an attempt to reduce aesthetics to science and formal rules. However, this would be to neglect the fact that for the tradition, number had a qualitative dimension and a mysterious inexhaustible depth. It was in fact the very break up of this tradition which generated the duality of science and art, along with a series of other dualities in which the modern West remains trapped.

The scariest thing you'll read all year



Check out Daily Politics, entitled Mayor for Life:



Asked today whether there's any guarantee he won't try to seek a fourth term if his current bid for a third works out, Mayor Bloomberg didn't exactly rule out the possibility.

The mayor first simply opted for the old "law does not permit it" response. When a reporter noted the law didn't used to permit more than two, four-year terms, either, Bloomberg said:

"But it does now. It permits only three terms, so I don’t know. Talk to your City Council. Let me point out that I had no intention of running for a (third) term up until near the end, as you know."



Does no one remember that Bloomberg promised Ron Lauder his own charter commission -- to reimpose term limits once he had won a third term? But no one should be surprised if he goes back on his word, once again.





Breaking Down the IEP: State- and District-wide Assessments

The IDEA requires that the written IEP document include:

"a statement of any individual appropriate accommodations that are necessary to measure the academic achievement and functional performance of the child on State and districtwide assessments...; and if the IEP team determines that the child shall take alternative assessment on a particular State or districtwide assessment of student achievement, a statement of why (AA) the child cannot participate in the regular assessment; and (BB) the particular alternative assessment selected is appropriate for the child."
20 U.S.C. section 1414(d)(1)(A)(VI)

What are state and district-wide assessments?

A lot can be written and discussed about the topic of state-wide and district-wide assessments, especially in regards to "high stakes testing." Because this blog post is focused on what is required content in the IEP related to such assessments, only a brief overview is provided: State-wide assessments are standardized measures utilized by school districts throughout the state to determine a child's academic achievement within a particular grade level. These assessments are determined by state law or the state department of education, and are utilized to measure a school's performance. Some states mandate specific tests that are used as part of the determination of whether a child moves from grade to grade, or whether a student earns a diploma. Because performance on these tests has such an impact, these tests are referred to as "high-stakes testing." District-wide assessments are standardized measures utilized within a local education agency / school district, as determined by district policy. These measures may be given at the end of the year, or periodically throughout the year. Sometimes, they are directly tied to the curriculum a school district is using. Periodic or yearly district-wide assessments are used for a variety of reasons, such as determining a child's progress, determining which students require intervention within the general education program, etc.

What individually appropriate accommodations are necessary and how should they be documented?

The IEP document must include individually appropriate accommodations based on the particular student's unique needs that are necessary on district-wide or state-wide testing. Accommodations should be those which the child needs in order to have an equal opportunity to participate in the assessment, and so that the assessment measures the child's academic achievement with minimal impact by that child's disability. If, for example, a child is extremely distracted in a large group setting, a separate testing area may be necessary.

The IEP document should be specific about these accommodations, avoiding generic language that is not easily interpretted by anyone reviewing and implementing the accommodations. It should specifically spell out what accommodations are needed and how those accommodations will be provided / implemented.

Will accommodations affect how the tests are normed or graded?

Another issue that could be discussed in length, but will only be discussed for purposes of this post briefly, is the issue of how accommodations affect the norming or grading of an assessment measure. This is a question that parents should ask during an IEP team's discussion of accommodations. Accommodations that seriously change what is actually being measured are actually modifications, and these may mean that the test is not "normed" or even that it is not reported for purposes of the school district's accountability reporting. If you want to see what your child knows as compared to same-grade peers, normed assessments may give you a good indication, assuming that appropriate accommodations have been given to give your child a fair chance. In any event, this is a discussion that impacts the parents ability to fully participate and understand what accommodations are appropriate, and so this discussion should be held when the IEP team is determining what to document about accommodations.

What are alternative assessments and how are they to be documented in the IEP?

Alternative assessments are related to the provision of alternative curriculum standards that are modified, rather than based upon grade level curriculum standards. If a child is recieving alternative curriculum rather than general education curriculum with modifications, accommodations and supports, then the IEP team may determine that the child should participate in alternative assessment measures, rather than the standardized district-wide or state-wide testing. Again, this is an issue that can and should be discussed in length elsewhere. For purposes of this blog, it is important for IEP participants to understand what should and must be documented with regards to this issue.

The IEP document must include a statement of why the student cannot participate in the regular district-wide or state-wide assessment. This statement should be specific to the child and based on the individual child's unique needs, rather than a generic statement. A statement, for example, that "because of Child's autism, the statewide testing is not appropriate," is not a clear statement of why the child cannot participate. This statement would seem to indicate that no child with autism could participate, which is certainly not the case for any disability. Therefore, the statement should include specific information regarding that particular child, and why the child cannot participate. Specific information will be useful down the line because as the child's needs change and he/she makes progress, it will be easier to reevaluate whether the regular standardized measure is now appropriate.

The IEP document also must specify what particular alternative assessment was selected and why that particular alternative assessment is appropriate for that specific student. Again, this statement should be based on the child's individual needs, rather than generic language about an assessment measure. It is interesting to consider that the IDEA requires such a statement, given that most districts utilize one alternative assessment measure that is used for all students who cannot participate in regular testing. The language of the required content in regards to alternative assessments implies that the IEP team is to make an individualized determination and to document a clear explanation of how that determination was based on the child's individual needs.

Fast Fact Friday: School of Residence

The terms "neighborhood school," "school of residence," or "home school" are often used interchangeably by school districts, parents and others. A child's "school of residence" is the specific school site that he or she would attend if not disabled. "School of residence" is determined by a district procedure that is used to determine what school each child in the district is assigned to, usually it is determined geographically according to the address of the parents. This is the school you would enroll your child in if there wasn't an IEP in the mix.

There is no absolute requirement that children attend their school of residence, even if they are fully included in a general education setting. The choice of appropriate placement depends on the child's unique needs as determined by the IEP team. Some school districts have policies that require all kids with IEPs who are placed in general education to be placed in their home school. Although this may be beneficial to some kids, there are parents who have concerns about the lack of an individualized decision in these situations. On the other hand, many parents may be in a school district that does not have such a policy, but instead may have a practice of grouping kids with IEPs at particular school sites that have inclusion support and other services. Parents in those districts may be concerned about the fact that their child then cannot be included in their "neighborhood school" with kids from their community.

Ultimately, parents have to be included in any team that is making placement decisions about their child. A child's school of residence is one placement consideration on the continuum of available options, and parents should think about the positive benefits of placement in the neighborhood school and discuss these benefits with the team.

California's higher education system could face decline

Sallie Mae and their Lobbying Showdown


This piece by Danielle Knight, "Lobbying Showdown Over the Future of Student Loans," deserves attention.

Knight provides some telling statistics on the amount of money that Sallie Mae shelled out to the biggest and brightest on K Street to beef up their lobbying efforts and defend the student lending industry (in the first half of this year, they've already spent $2 million). Sallie Mae is clearly nervous about the Obama administration's plans to restructure the student loan industry. There have already been several pieces in the last few months where Obama discusses the need to essentially cut out this "middle man" in the student lending process. Financial aid might be given back to the Department of Education entirely. It's presently run in part by privatized companies like Sallie Mae. As a result of sky-rocketing tuition costs, Sallie Mae enjoyed hefty profits in the 1990s, around the time it went private. Then the Great Recession hit them too.

Now Sallie Mae and other lenders (like Nelnet) are fighting two different battles: a political one and a financial one. It's no surprise that they're focused on the political fight. When companies feel threatened and smell change in the air that will affect their profits as a result of D.C. - those "meddling" lawmakers - they spend LOTS of money to campaign for their survival. That's the way business works. Plus, they have some amount of control when it comes to the political battles.

However, when it comes to the financial fight there are two problems out of their control:

1) Growing delinquencies in non-subsidized student loans (those are the ones that aren't backed by the U.S. government) are on the rise, and as a result, as Knight explains, "the company reported a loss of $122 million for the most recent quarter, compared with a profit of $265 million a year earlier."

2) There is a growing movement of students who understand that they are being charged unfairly and punished by companies like Sallie Mae - there is strong evidence that suggests that these companies are unwilling to work with lenders because they have profited from charging high interest rates and so forth. As a result of this growing frustration, in late January, an attorney, Robert Applebaum, started a Facebook Group called Forgive Student Loan Debt. The number of people who currently belong to this group is well over 200,000, and it continues to grow every day.

Sallie Mae might be able to cover the costs for lobbying, line the pockets of those on the Hill, and therefore win the political battle. But what are they going to do about the financial one?

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Thoughtful Selection: The First Thing Speaker Should Do During Preparation

Speaking is always very much critical point to have effective communication. An expert who have effective communication skill always need to have good command over speaking skill. Effective speaking skill will always help people to build an effective communication etween people through building rapport and exchanging feedbacks. You have to work hard to improve your speaking skill as to improve your effective communication skill. In this regard, i am here discussing the phase where you need to select what you are going to deliver through your speech.

The first important decision in making a selection of material is what you are going to leave out, not what you are going to put in. Talks are not for the transfer of a mass of information from one mind to others. That job is better done by paper. They are best used to give an overview of the subject, to create interest and enthusiasm. If you are already expert in a subject, you must now decide what the audience don’t need to know; if you have to work on a new subject, as soon as you have understood it, you will have to make decisions about what is not needed in the talk.

It is a mistake to try to pad the talk out with masses of information and detail, in the belief that the audience will be impressed by your knowledge. They won’t be—they will simply go to sleep. The amount of information which can be absorbed in one session when listening is strictly limited. The listening situation is quite different from sitting down with a book at a desk, and making notes. When listening, it is not possible to do more than gain an overall impression, and perhaps a handful of facts. Hard, dense packed information, cannot be communicated in talks; it is a mistake to try.

This fact is common experience—think how many actual details you remember from the last technical talk you heard—but it is encouraging to find it supported by research. Erskine and O’Morchoe did an experiment, in which they taught one class only essential principles with little detail, and then compared their knowledge with another class which had been given a lot of details. The first class did better. Their conclusion was that too much material causes interference, and the audience remember less, not more.

Too much detail, then, is counter-productive in a talk (to use one of the familiar buzz-words of the 1970s). Factual information can only be used as illustration, or example, never as the substance of the talk. A verbal presentation communicates attitudes, enthusiasms, impressions, not facts. To try to battle against this natural situation will only alienate the audience, and reduce, not increase, the amount of information that is remembered. If you use cleverly designed visual aids, you may be able to incorporate a few figures and hard facts. But you certainly cannot expect the talk to be the source of reference for this information.

If you need to transfer a mass of solid figures, it is best to give a handout, with the figures tabulated for reference. You can then refer to a sample selection of the figures during the presentation, to illustrate the general point. But the aim of the talk should not be to learn detail. If you are talking on a technical subject, the audience should leave the talk with a desire to go further into the subject, or an impression of the range of complexity the subject embraces. They should not, and cannot, expect to walk out of the room with a mass of figures, facts, and details securely pinned inside their heads. Talks don’t do this. Detailed learning has to be done with paper at a desk; talks are for interest and general information, not the transfer of a dense mass of information.

The first task, then, is to select the material, and reduce the bulk of detail to manageable proportions. Selection, however, requires an aim, and this aim must be specific, not vague. It is impossible to make decisions about whether to reject, or leave in, a particular fact unless there is a very definite image of the audience and its aims in mind. So you must always select your material not for a general talk on the subject, but for a specific speaking task: for this audience, this task, and this amount of time. One consequence of this rule is that each talk you give must be considered separately. A general purpose talk will probably result in a vague presentation which will satisfy none of its audiences.

Another factor which must be considered when selecting information is the unloading rate, and the digestibility of what you are saying. People who are experts in a subject often fail to remember that it has taken them many years to get their minds around it all, and that what seems second nature to them now, may be confusing and alarming to a newcomer. The rate at which new information is offered is an important factor in the ability of the mind to absorb it. This factor, often not even considered, is so important that it is worth spending a little time on it.

Typically, experts assume the audience can absorb information faster than they actually can. I have rarely seen an expert making his subject too simple. So it is fairly safe to assume that you must introduce new ideas more slowly than you think necessary, and never more quickly. There are many techniques available to modify the rate at which new information is provided. You can, for example, modify the rate by repetition, example and anecdote. Simply repeating the same information in different words effectively halves the unloading rate. You can also open up more breathing space between ideas by adding new examples, which illustrate the same point, and you can provide a rest, while focusing on the same point, by including some amusing anecdote which relates to it.

One technique to ease the shock of new information is like getting into cold water by taking a wild plunge. It works by giving the audience a full list of the topics and key words at the beginning of the talk. This is the sudden plunge, and they will then need reassuring that it is not as frightening as it sounds. You can then go back to the beginning, and start again with the first point, slowly making it clear. It is worth spending rather longer on the first point, giving lots of examples and supporting information, because if the audience can be made to understand the first point, they will approach the rest with more confidence. By shocking the audience with their inability to comprehend the whole subject, and then proving to them that they can, after all, be brought to understand the first point they come to, you will boost their confidence in their ability to learn.

Mix old and new Material in Your Speech

Another way of reducing the unloading rate is to ensure that there is a mixture of old and new information. Some speakers seem to think that they must retail only new facts, and can ignore the old facts. This is not so. The old facts are the foundations on which the new facts must be built. These foundations will be buried under all the other daily information the audience must cope with. You must uncover, bring to light, or remind the audience of what they already know before adding new information. It also controls the overall unloading rate. A mixture of familiar facts amongst the new reduces the total strain on memory and comprehension. It gives the audience a satisfying feeling of competence. The feeling of smugness, in the unspoken reaction ‘we know that’, will transfer to a feeling of interest and respect if it is followed by the reaction, ‘but we didn’t know that’. If, just when the feeling is becoming, ‘we can’t cope with all this’, you introduce more familiar material, the audience will feel themselves on firm ground again. By alternating familiar and strange, new and old, the audience’s comprehension is kept flexible and alert.

The technique of mixing familiar and new is supported by theorists of communication. Umberto Eco makes a technical point about the communication of information, which confirms this important principle in selecting information. The content of a presentation cannot be all new; some of it must be familiar, even repetitious, in order to orientate, and rest, the listener’s mind. Eco insists that there must be:

communication dialectic between probability and improbability (that is between the obvious and the new—and ultimately, in a more technical phraseology, between meaning and information). A high rate of improbability runs the risk of not being received, and therefore the message must be tempered in small degree with conventionalities, commonplaces, and must be reiterated…One of the problems in message-coding is the balance between the obvious and the new. How few conventionalities are necessary to communicate a piece of information (as a new thing?).

To achieve this controlled unloading rate, with a mixture of familiar and new information, you must carefully select the examples and analogies. Of course, it is not possible to give a formula for the exact unloading rate appropriate for a particular audience, or to provide an infallible rule so your presentation will be just right. But this doesn’t matter. What matters is that you have thought about the problem, and are aware that you must watch the rate at which you put out new ideas.

Judging the selection of material is more a matter of conscious awareness, than of perfect correctness. Thinking is what matters; don’t blunder on oblivious. Audiences are flexible, subjects have many different ways in which they can be presented, there is usually a willingness to learn in the audience, and an ability to figure it out for themselves. The only rules are to remain aware of audience reaction as you talk, and be prepared to modify what you are saying if blank incomprehension, or glazed stares of boredom, meet what you have said so far.

Vivid and entertaining examples are often the best way to engage an audience’s attention, and to ease the passage of new information. But this does not mean that you should load example after example onto an already satiated audience. Avoid indiscriminate use of all the examples you can think of; choose only the best ones. The examples and analogies you do use must be brief, familiar and concrete. It is often difficult to think of good examples, and one writer on the subject, Donald Bligh, admits that, ‘Personally I find that I can never think of good examples at the time of lecturing. They therefore have to be prepared in advance. In fact it is quite a good idea to collect examples at all times.’ Following the second principle of this chapter, it is a good plan to have more examples than you need, and to make a selection as you talk, depending on which type of examples seems to strike a sympathetic chord, and how much relaxation, or increase, of the unloading rate the situation requires.

There is no doubt that the best way to make the talk memorable is to use materials which are specially relevant to the audience, dramatic, or simply funny. But this can go too far. One speaker, a most distinguished man in his own field, tried to make his lectures memorable in an unusual way. Gray Walter, the famous neurologist, ‘asserted that essential ingredients of a successful lecture were humour, horror and sex. To provide for this alleged desire for sensation, in an erudite lecture on ‘Brain mechanisms and learning’ he used coloured backgrounds for tabulated data in which such outlines as bathing beauties were engraved in white.’ The problem with such tactics is that the audience can sense when they are being pandered to, and soon resent it.

To set out to entertain before anything else will not only fail to communicate the necessary information, it will probably lose the respect of the audience as well. The ideal, as in everything to do with speaking, is to provide as much change and variety as possible. So mix theory with anecdotes; and mix humour with serious points. If you have just given a dry, detailed and strenuous exposition, lighten the atmosphere with an amusing story. And if you have just told a long anecdote, take the opportunity to emphasize a complex theoretical point immediately afterwards. In this way the audience is kept alert by the ever changing demands being made on their attention.

Preparation Is Very Important for Any Speaker

Communication effectively is an art. Effective communication required a people to share his/her thoughts with audience. Speaking is the way of sharing their thoughts. So effective speaking skill is very important to achieve success in communication. And to have such success in communication, it is required that people need to develop their communication skill. Here, i will discuss about the preparation part of speaking which is very important to have success in communication.

If I were asked to give a one word explanation of the sort of confident, organized presentation we all envy, it would be preparation. The confidence comes from the speaker’s knowledge that he or she has everything ready, has thought through the whole subject, and has enough of the right material to support the presentation. The sense of organization comes from the careful arrangements and selection of what is said, so that all the points are part of a logical order. Neither of these virtues are available to the speaker who bets on his luck (or cheek) and just talks off the cuff. Good speakers are prepared.

How do you achieve this? It is as much to do with the audience’s abilities as the speaker’s, and it is about the logic of organization, as much as the psychology of presentation. But the aim of all the advice is the same—that secure and admirable sense of being well prepared. There are two simple pieces of advice which start this process of preparation in the right way. Firstly, ask yourself what the aim of the talk is, rather than what the subject of the talk is. The first is much more specific than the second. If you plan to talk about a particular subject, you may feel the need to mention everything there is to know about that subject. But if the aim of the talk is to arouse the audience’s enthusiasm for a research project on that topic, a brief sketch of the more exciting possibilities would be more relevant. A complete catalogue of every aspect will merely bore them, and will achieve exactly the opposite result.

There are many cases where the aim may be rather different from the subject. The advantage of thinking about the aim is also that thenthe decisions include the audience, and the audience’s perceptions and needs, not just the speaker’s ideas and knowledge. In practice, a very common mistake is to prepare a presentation as a speech on, for example, ‘Heavy water reactors’, without thinking whether the audience is interested in technical details or scare stories. If the aim is to reassure a local population that the heavy water reactor being built next to them is perfectly safe, then a lot of technical details about the design will probably scare them witless! Think of all your decisions when preparing the talk in terms of what you want the talk to achieve, and not in terms of what the bare topic of the talk is.

The second piece of simple advice is to prepare more material than you need. The idea of preparing ‘just the right amount’ is foolish. Until you start talking, you won’t really know how much material you are going to get through, And if you insist on battling on to the bitter end of what you have prepared, you will almost certainly get the timing wrong, as well as turning the talk into a marathon. Talking should never be a dutiful forced march, it should always be an exploration, a discussion, a fascinating glimpse of the subject. It is an opportunity to learn about something new, which has to stop when the allotted time runs out. The best talks all end too soon, and the sense of having more to say, but having no more time, is the most satisfactory impression to leave.

The talk is also more interesting if the audience feel you are stepping smartly through the topic, summarizing far deeper knowledge and just mentioning the more interesting aspects. This impression is created if the speaker has more material than he needs at his finger tips; the need to summarize and curtail while he or she talks keeps up the level of tension, interest, and expectation. An audience should never come out of a talk feeling that the subject, like them, is exhausted. They should always be fired, rather than quenched. This happens best, if you prepare more material than you need. The habit of having extra material also allows you flexibility in timing when giving the talk, and helps you to answer questions at the end.

News Alert about Student Loans

Obama just might be fired up to take on Sallie Mae. This story deserves attention . . .

Quinnipiac shiftily changes questions on mayoral control ---- yet again.



The latest Q poll appears to find that voters overwhelmingly approve mayoral control. Here’s an excerpt from today’s NY Post:

“City voters support continuing mayoral control of education by a 2-to-1 margin -- an all-time high, according to a poll released yesterday.”

Here’s an excerpt from the latest Quinnipiac press release:

New York City voters approve 57 - 30 percent of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's handling of public schools and say 56 - 24 percent that the Mayor's takeover of the schools has been a success. These are Bloomberg's highest scores on both questions.

…."The biggest opponents of mayoral control of the schools are state senators from Manhattan and Brooklyn, but two-thirds of Manhattan voters and more than 50 percent of Brooklyn voters say let the Mayor do it," Carroll said.

But actually the difference is insignificant between this month’s and last month’s results, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 or 2.7 percentage points.

                     Jul 29   Jun 17  
                     2009    2009     



Continue 57 56
Stop                 30      32      
DK/NA             12      12      

Moreover, Quinnipiac has altered the questions asked on school governance so many times that it is impossible to judge whether there is any trend towards mayoral control at all.

In fact, whenever voters have been given the chance to opt for a third choice -- that the mayor could share power -- they have resoundingly come out in favor.

For example, the July 2007 and July 2008 Q polls asked voters if the next mayor should retain complete control of the public schools, share control with an independent school board, or give up control. Both years, a solid majority of voters said that the next Mayor should share power with an independent board:

                           Jul 16   Jul 26
                            2008    2007
 
Retain control          29      28
Share control           55      51
Give up control          8       9
DK/NA                        7     11

In July 2007 the headline was: New York City Voters Tell Quinnipiac University Poll; Most Say Bring Back Board Of Education.”

Then, incomprehensibly, Quinnipiac dropped that choice, even though a majority of voters had consistently supported it.

Instead, in the January 2009 and February 2009 polls, they gave respondents only the choice of whether the Mayor should retain control or give it up. (Give it up to what? They didn’t say.) The results were predictable: voters understandably favored retaining mayoral control over an unnamed and undefined alternative.

Without alerting the press that they had eliminated the voters’ favorite option they reported their findings this way in the January press release: “Mayoral control of the public schools should continue, voters say 56 - 34 percent. Voters with children in public schools support mayoral control 57 - 39 percent. “

Later, when asked why respondents no longer were offered the option of the Mayor sharing control with an independent board, Maurice Carroll of Quinnipiac explained to the NY Times that they had decided that independent” was too positive a word. Hmm.

Then, in March 2009 and June 2009 the next set of Quinnipiac polls offered respondents new choices – not the excessively “positive” one of the Mayor sharing power with an independent board, but instead the possibility of sharing control with the City Council and/or the Borough Presidents. Both times, most voters again favored these power-sharing arrangements.

TREND: Do you think the mayor should share control of the public schools with the city council or not?

                     Jun 17 Mar 24
                     2009    2009
 
Yes                 52      53
No                   37      37
DK/NA       11   11
 

TREND: Do you think the mayor should share control of the public schools with the borough presidents or not?

                     Jun 17 Mar 24
Yes                   49      50
No                     41      41
DK/NA              10         8

Then inexplicably, in the latest poll, the Q pollsters again dropped these questions, but merely asked whether the mayor should retain power, or give it up to an undefined authority – knowing full well that every time in the past they offered voters the chance to choose power-sharing, they approved.

Indeed, see this May 2009 Marist poll, in which voters were asked if “the responsibility for running the city's public schools should remain under Mayor Bloomberg or should responsibility be given to an appointed citywide Panel on Education Policy?” 60 percent of voters preferred that the authority be given to an appointed citywide Panel compared to 32% for continued mayoral control.



As most pollsters know, the results you get depend on what questions you choose to ask, and how.