Sunday, January 31, 2010

HOMETOWN GIRL

Hometown girl, hometown paper...front page of The Free Lance-Star, Fredericksburg, VA.




HIP, URBAN, REAL, AND RELEVANT

Cassandra Patrick (Miss Universe Malaysia 2009 1st Runner-up), Claudia Sibert (Miss Universe Malaysia 2009 2nd Runner Up), Joannebelle Ng (Miss Universe Malaysia 2009) and Andrea Fonseka (Miss Universe Malaysia 2004)

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 27 (Bernama) - The Miss Universe Malaysia Organisation (MUMO), in rebranding Miss Universe Malaysia 2010, is now seeking a brand new beauty queen that can sum up with these qualities: Hip, Urban, Real and Relevant. MUMO chairman Heah Sieu Lay said, after going through some revamp in the organisation, it decided to change the format because of the way the public perceived beauty pageant. "She must be smart, fresh and down to earth, has leadership skills, a great sense of humour and the basic foundation of being a beauty queen. "Traditionally the beauty element has been sufficient, but today the public seek a more street-smart beauty queen - she should not only look good in pictures, but also can deliver in so many other facets of life," he told reporters after a MUMO relaunch ceremony, here Wednesday. MORE HERE.

The ugly naked face of mayoral control

Tuesday night's marathon session of the Panel for Educational Policy at Brooklyn Tech that lasted till nearly 4 AM was one of the most inspiring and awful events I have ever witnessed.

Inspiring because there were thousands of people there to protest the closing of 19 schools, and hundreds spoke out, for more than eight hours: eloquently, angrily, passionately and intelligently, about why their schools should not be closed and why the administration's blind and reckless policies would hurt our most vulnerable children. These English language learners, special education students, poor and homeless, will likely be excluded from the new small schools and charter schools that will replace their schools, and will undoubtedly be discharged in huge numbers as these schools phase out, never to receive a fair chance at a high school diploma.

Parents, students and teachers cited facts and numbers, personal experience, trenchant analysis and damning evidence of the DOE's malignant neglect and botched statistics.

Though the testimony started at 6 PM and continued until 2:45 AM, it was never boring. Early on, there was even humor from Lisa Donlan and Jane Hirschmann, who put on an inspired puppet show -- excerpts of which are below.

It was inspiring because at long last, Joel Klein got the reception he deserved: booed, jeered, criticized, compared to the Bernie Madoff of educational policy, with his destructive Ponzi scheme of closing schools and shifting around high-needs students; a scheme that will soon collapse, when there is nowhere left for these children to go.

It was awful because nothing that anyone said made any difference in the final vote.

The PEP, which the legislature in their wisdom allowed to continue with its a supermajority of mayoral appointees, was intent on rubberstamping whatever flawed or ridiculous policies put forward by the administration.

Shamefully, there was not a word from the chair, David Chang, or any other mayoral appointee to any of the thousands of people who urged them to think twice. Only the independent members from Manhattan, Bronx, Queens and the Bronx voted no.

When Patrick Sullivan, Manhattan member, asked the mayoral "yes men" if they had anything to say to justify these closings, not one of them felt obligated to explain his or her vote.

This event should never have been allowed to occur in a city and a nation that calls itself a democracy; with all the power in the hands of one man to make the decisions for thousands of other people's children, but this is the ugly naked face of mayoral control.

See also City Panel Backs Closing of 19 Schools (NY Times), Public sentiment has turned against Mayor Bloomberg's dictatorial school reforms (Daily News); The School Closing Marathon (Gotham Gazette); School Vote Scene Report: Joel Klein Called "Racist," (Village Voice); City's reasoning for wanting to close Jamaica HS based on faulty statistics (YourNabe.com); Parents Battle for a Say in Educational Policy (Gabe Pressman, NBC); Panel Decides to Shutter 19 NYC Public Schools (NBC New York) NYC school officials vote to close 19 underperforming schools (7Online.com); Rage as 19 schools get the axe (New York Post); “Attack” on Brooklyn high schools (YourNabe.com.)

Charter school parent: Charter chickens come home to roost


Last week, we learned that Chancellor Klein sent a “Notice of Intention to Revoke Charter” letter to East New York Prep Charter School (ENYP). It’s not often that the Chancellor revokes charters, so this sent folks in charter land reeling.

After the stalemate with the State Legislature on changing the charter law for Race to the Top funding, this was bad news we did not need. The administration refused to lift the cap, since the legislature’s proposal would allow district parents to have input on school sitings – yet another way that parents in New York City have been excluded from the conversation on school reform.

Although charters are public schools, the practice of ignoring the district parents' concerns in co-locations can no longer continue. It seems the views of the actual stakeholders, public school parents in both the district and charter system, are always ignored.

The financial mismanagement and corporate chicanery that occurred at ENYP and other charter schools underscores the need for more accountability, transparency, parent voice and teacher protections at charter schools.

Parents complained to the DoE and were ignored. They also had no clue about the rules governing accountability in the charter contract. Teachers stood up for their students and were fired. Low performing and special ed students were expelled from the school so that Sheila Joseph could perform well with the only thing that charters are judged on – test scores.

Well, Sheila Joseph delivered on the test scores through her reign of terror and the cost of her success are the many expelled students, the families and students of ENYP who now have to find new schools for their children and her faculty and staff who now have to find new jobs.

I know many great school leaders and board members, but I also know many school leaders who view their charter school as their own fiefdom, teachers and staff as their serfs and students as their currency.

We need greater accountability, transparency, oversight of charters and their founding boards to ensure the East New York Prep Charter School debacle never happens again.

-- Mona Davids, President, NY Charter Parents Association

For more information about the closing of this school, see also
Head of charter school set to close fires back at teachers, DOE (GothamSchools); School flunks out (NY Post).

The Bush Tax Cuts Worked.

The ”Bush tax cuts on the rich” are generally viewed as a “failure”. If the criterion is that the tax cuts would have saved the economy from financial meltdown, that is certainly true. Of course it is absurd to think that cutting taxes by 3-5 percentage points would prevent a gigantic financial meltdown.

Another question is if the tax cuts were entirely self-financing, so that cutting taxes would completely pay for itself. This did not happen, nor should we have expected it to given what we know about short-medium run responsiveness of the tax base to tax rates.

However, this requirement is also too extreme. I think the important question is if tax cuts stimulate growth by a reasonable amount. For tax cuts to be completely self-financing, they have to stimulate growth enourmosly. This only happens either if the responsiveness to taxes is very high (in fact it seems to be moderately high) or if tax rates are extremly high (which they are not in the US.). But what if tax cuts in the American setting stimulates growth by a good deal, but not enough to be self-financing? Should we throw away a useful tool just because it is not Voodoo?

The detractors of the tax cuts seem to be going to the other extreme, arguing that the Bush tax cuts had no effect at all on growth, and that they were not at all self-financing, and therefore that supply-side economics is totally wrong.

But remember that actual supply side economics claims that tax cuts stimulate growth. It is only vulgar or straw-man supply side economics that claim that tax cuts always stimulate growth by the extreme amounts required for tax cuts to be 100% (or more) self financing.

Here research comes in. Economists have in fact studied the effects of the “Bush tax cuts for the rich” on the tax base. The answer is that they did stimulate the economy, and were partially self-financing, about 40% self-financing to be exact. That is a pretty good deal: for each $0.6 dollars that the government loses in revenue the private sector gains $1 dollars.

The paper “The 2001 and 2003 Tax Rate Reductions: An Overview and Estimate of the Taxable Income Response” By Gerald Auten, Robert Carroll and Geoffrey Gee in the National Tax journal in 2008 calculates the responsiveness of income on tax rates, and finds that also in this case did people whose tax rates go down increase their taxable income (their standard estimate of the elasticity of taxable income if 0.4 in this period, in line with the literature). Regarding the tax cuts for the rich, they find that:

“Overall, the increase in taxable income translates into higher revenues that offset about 39 percent of the static revenue loss associated with the reduction in the top two tax rates.”


Empirical evidence suggests that Supply side economics worked as predicted in theory, also regarding the Bush tax cuts.

Slow Growth and Rising Debt

From Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff:
As government debt levels explode in the aftermath of the financial crisis, there is  growing uncertainty about how quickly to exit from today’s extraordinary fiscal stimulus. Our research on the long history of financial crises suggests that choices are not easy, no matter how much one wants to believe the present illusion of normalcy in markets. Unless this time is different – which so far has not been the case – yesterday’s financial crisis could easily morph into tomorrow’s government debt crisis.
In previous cycles, international banking crises have often led to a wave of sovereign defaults a few years later. The dynamic is hardly surprising, since public debt soars after a financial crisis, rising by an average of over 80 per cent within three years. Public debt burdens soar owing to bail-outs, fiscal stimulus and the collapse in tax revenues. Not every banking crisis ends in default, but whenever there is a huge international wave of crises as we have just seen, some governments choose this route.
We do not anticipate outright defaults in the largest crisis-hit countries, certainly nothing like the dramatic de facto defaults of the 1930s when the US and Britain abandoned the gold standard. Monetary institutions are more stable (assuming the US Congress leaves them that way). Fundamentally, the size of the shock is less. But debt burdens are racing to thresholds of (roughly) 90 per cent of gross domestic product and above. That level has historically been associated with notably lower growth.
While the exact mechanism is not certain, we presume that at some point, interest rate premia react to unchecked deficits, forcing governments to tighten fiscal policy. Higher taxes have an especially deleterious effect on growth. We suspect that growth also slows as governments turn to financial repression to place debts at sub-market interest rates.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

HAUTE MORTAUD

Miss France 2009, Chloe Mortaud, walks the runway at Jean-Paul Gaultier Haute Couture fashion show as part of the Paris Fashion Week Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2010 on January 27, 2010 in Paris, France. Can you believe she didn't win Miss Universe or Miss World? What were the judges in the Bahamas and South Africa smoking?


MISS MYANMAR

Swe Zin Phyo smiles with her trophy after being crowned the 2010 Miss Myanmar Saturday, Jan. 30, 2010 in Yangon, Myanmar.

ZEN ON SUNDAY

Lucas Gil, Mister Brazil 2007

MORE MISS AMERICA

AP, 30-Jan-2010, LAS VEGAS — Miss Virginia Caressa Cameron won the 2010 Miss America title Saturday night after strutting in a skintight yellow dress, belting Beyonce's "Listen" from "Dreamgirls" and telling kids they should get outside more often. Cameron, a 22-year-old from Fredericksburg, Va., won a $50,000 scholarship and the crown in Las Vegas after a pageant that started with 53 contestants. She outlasted her opponents in swimsuit, evening gown, talent and interview competitions. Cameron is broadcast journalism student at Virginia Commonwealth University, and wants to become an anchor.

When asked during the interview portion of the competition her thoughts on fighting childhood obesity, Cameron said parents should curb television and video games. "We need to get our kids back outside, playing with sticks in the street like I did when I was little," she said. "Expand your mind, go outside and get to see what this world is like." Cameron said her win was a testament to her family's strength. "You can be and become anything that you want to be, even Miss America," she said. Miss California Kristy Cavinder was the first runner-up, winning $25,000. The young women who came out on stage at the beginning of the pageant and danced to "I Gotta Feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas are from all 50 states plus the District of Columbia, Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

MISS AMERICA MOT - 2010

Miss Virginia Caressa Cameron reacts after being named Miss America at the 2010 Miss America Pageant tonight during a glittering, gala ceremony in Las Vegas, Nevada. With Cameron are Miss New Mexico Nicole Miner and Miss Hawaii Raeceen Anuenue Woolford. 1st runner-up was Miss California Kristy Cavinder; 2nd runner-up was Miss Tennessee Stefanie Wittler; 3rd runner-up was Miss Louisiana Katherine Putnam; and 4th runner-up was Miss Kentucky Mallory Ervin. Miss New Mexico and Miss Hawaii rounded out the top 7

Life Imitates Art

I thought I was writing parody when I did that GBN piece reporting that Klein was looking to the Haiti earthquake as a model for destroying the NY city schools. But now a serious news story reports that Arne Duncan is saying that Katrina was the "best thing" for the New Orleans schools.

I figured I've either got to stop writing stuff that they not only take seriously but copy, or I've got to set my sights higher than the NYC DOE and see if Arne will hire me to work for the Feds.

In that vein, I asked Diane Ravitch on the NYC education news listserv: "If you ever meet with the guy [Duncan] again, maybe you could mention it? On the other hand, it doesn't sound like he listened to you, so as Gilda Radner used to say, "Never mind!"

Her response: "You have to stop circulating your stuff to the US DOE. Keep it close to the vest. Everyone is looking for new ideas, and you are consistently out there on the cutting edge. Maybe you could suggest to Joel and Arne that the latest and best idea, the one that catapults you to the head of the civil rights movement, is to save public education, not destroy it. And you are right: He didn't listen to me!"

Joel and Arne: Are you listening?

Friday, January 29, 2010

ECONOMICS!!

From my inbox:
Dear Dr. Mankiw,
I've been using your introductory textbook for a couple years. I tell students that in five years if all they remember about economics is the first chapter, then their efforts will not be wasted. To help them remember, I created this acrostic device. It finally occurred to me that it might be useful to others. So if you like it, feel free to use it, in class or in the 6th edition. The acrostic is ECONOMICS!! The attached explains the connection to the ten principles.

BTW, I am a regular reader of your blog, and I appreciate your views and the wide scope of views you moderate on your blog. You have directed me to quite a few places and opened doors I wouldn't have found so easily.

Best regards,

Gordon Boronow
Assistant Professor
Nyack College
Thank you, Gordon, for sharing this.  Here it is:

Ten Key Principles in Economics

Everything has a cost. There is no free lunch. There is always a trade-off.

Cost is what you give up to get something. In particular, opportunity cost is cost of the tradeoff.

One More. Rational people make decisions on the basis of the cost of one more unit (of consumption, of investment, of labor hour, etc.).

iNcentives work. People respond to incentives.

Open for trade. Trade can make all parties better off.

Markets Rock! Usually, markets are the best way to allocate scarce resources between producers and consumers.

Intervention in free markets is sometimes needed. (But watch out for the law of unintended effects!)

Concentrate on productivity. A country’s standard of living depends on how productive its economy is.

Sloshing in money leads to higher prices. Inflation is caused by excessive money supply.

!! Caution: In the short run, falling prices may lead to unemployment, and rising employment may lead to inflation.

Revealed Preferences on Capitalism vs. the Welfare State



The American left portrays the Nordic countries as welfare-state Utopias. Swedes may earn less than Americans, but because of extensive public programs the quality of life is much higher.

We can have endless subjective debate about which system is better, and where the quality of life is higher (crime versus freedom, money versus equality etc.). Not to get stock in subjective measures, what does objective behavior show?

It would be no challenge if we were to compare the U.S with the average welfare state, such as France, U.K or Italy. The Nordic states are however the most successful welfare states, the examples the American left likes to put forward. (incidentally this would be like me only using Colorado, Minnesota and Connecticut when comparing social and economic outcomes of the U.S versus Europe, but let us accept the challenge).

In my judgment it is roughly equally easy to move from the U.S to Scandinavia that it is to move from Scandinavia to America. If you really want to you can do it. You just need to find a job or find a partner (and it is quite easy to move a few years in order to study and somehow stay). Arguably it is easier to move from the U.S to Scandinavia, since there are fewer restrictions on work visas, and since higher education is free (I should say tax financed). On the other hand it is harder to Americans to learn the language (even though Americans don't actually need to speak Swedish in Sweden, since everyone speaks some English). Let us be generous and say that it is equally easy either way.

Keep in mind that these figures are recent immigration, people who are actually born in the U.S or Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland or Iceland that have chosen to migrate, not about ancestry.

According to the latest figures, there were 36.000 Americans in the five Nordic countries. According to the 2000 census, there are 140.000 people born in the five Nordic countries that have migrated to America.

So almost 4 times as many people have moved from the welfare state to capitalism than from capitalism to the welfare state. Voting with their feet, people choice America over the Nordic welfare states.





How would the left respond to this fact? I guess they could say something along the line that the American system is worse for the low-skilled, and the Nordic system worse for the high-skilled. Low-skilled Americans are however less likely to be entrepreneurial enough to move to another country to improve their lives, whereas high skilled Scandinavians seek out better opportunity in America.

However remember that the left typically argues that the welfare state is better for all society, including the high skilled! Furthermore, 60% of the people who have moved from the Nordic countries to America have no college degrees.

In economics revealed preferences are considered more reliable than cheap talk, and revealed preferences in this case support capitalism over the welfare state.

Jumping to Conclusions

In a recent post on Education Week's Inside School Research blog, Debra Viadero offers a caution about President Obama's support for community colleges. Pointing to her recent article on community college research that indicated how much more we need to know about how best to improve completion rates in that sector, she questions whether the president would be wiser to place his bets on career colleges. She says that a recent study by the Educational Policy Institute (EPI) and an ongoing program of research by James Rosenbaum and colleagues support her contention that community colleges ought to take cues from career colleges.

In my opinion, this talented reporter is jumping to conclusions.

Yes, the graduation rates at two-year for-profit colleges exceed those at two-year public colleges. No one disputes that. That does not necessarily mean, however, that career colleges are outperforming community colleges, or that community colleges should take steps to become more like career colleges. The plausible alternative explanations for the differences in results are numerous. For example, the students attending the two types of colleges may differ in important yet unmeasured ways, ways that are associated with chances of graduation (what researchers refer to as selection bias). Is one group more economically or educationally advantaged? More motivated? More apt to have a family, nighttime work, or receive tuition support from an employer? It's also possible that the differences in graduation rates stem from constraints that community colleges face but career colleges do not-for example, inadequate resources or a lack of control over mission or governance. It's one thing to point to differences in practices between the community colleges and for-profit colleges, and another thing to attribute those differences to variation in the "will" or intentions of practitioners, rather than attribute them to under-funding and all that comes with it.

Establishing that community colleges have poorer graduation rates than career colleges for reasons they can and should do something about requires evidence that the two differ on one or more key aspects that is causally linked to college completion. Say we knew that smaller classes caused better student retention-and community colleges have larger classes than career colleges. We'd then be able to say, there's something community colleges ought to fix. But we don't have evidence that that's the case.

Instead, research simply establishes that (a) career and community colleges have different graduation rates and (b) career and community colleges (sometimes) employ different institutional practices. Rosenbaum and his colleagues have done a nice job, as Viadero notes, of documenting the latter-using qualitative methods, mostly at colleges in the Chicago area. But they have not shown that those practices cause observable differences in graduation rates. Moreover, while they've produced one paper indicating that differences in the student populations at career and community colleges do not appear to account for disparities in outcomes, that analysis is based solely on a limited set of observable characteristics-and therefore don't rule out the possibility that different levels of student motivation, for example, are really the culprit. Just think about how students get to college-many at career colleges are actively recruited (sometimes off their living room couches) while many at community colleges effectively wander in the door. Why would we think, then, that career and community colleges are serving the same kinds of people and producing different results?

There's another consideration Viadero neglects, and that's college costs. Students at career colleges leave with far more debt than students at community colleges. Data from the 2007-2008 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study reveal that 61% of community college students graduate with less than $10,000 in debt, compared to only 22% of students graduating from 2 year for-profits. In contrast, 19% of graduates from 2 year for-profits have $30,000 or more in student loans, compared to only 5% of community college graduates. Nearly all students (98%) finishing at 2 year for-profit colleges have taken on a loan, compared to just 38% of community college graduates. Is that a problem? Is it offset by higher rates of graduation? The answers are far from clear. Absent better ones we shouldn't be relying on evidence like EPI's---a study of career colleges' high graduation rates that was supported by the Imagine America Foundation, formerly the Career College Foundation, established in 1982 as the research, scholarship and training provider for the nation's career colleges. Full-text of that study wasn't even placed online for researchers to fully vet!

Community colleges have a long, rich history of serving this nation. Sure, there's room for improvement, but without more solid evidence of which changes are needed let's not jump to conclusions and tout the for-profits as a model to which they ought to aspire. We might end up in a bigger mess than we're already in.

POSTSCRIPT:

I have now obtained a copy of the full EPI report. My suspicions were correct: the authors use nothing more than simple descriptive comparisons of students' characteristics and degree completion rates (calculated using NCES's DAS system, likely without propering weighting) to support their causal claims about the "benefits" of attending community college. For example, they write "The report suggests that career colleges work harder to provide appropriate student services and support" but present no data on institutional services or effort expended, particularly any tied to student outcomes. Their final conclusion -- "statistically, not only do students attending career colleges perform as well as or better than many other students attending comparative public institutions, but they persist in and complete their education while typically being more economically, educationally and socially challenged than other students"-- is based on nothing more than comparisons of sample means (no regression, no nothing). C'mon folks, this ain't the kind of research any consumer ought to be taking seriously. Glad to see Kevin Carey agrees.

State Teacher Policies Suck!

I'm sure glad that Kate Walsh and company weren't my professors in college. Damn! They are tough graders! With the exception of eight southern states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas) that received a 'C' and three northern states (Maine, Montana, Vermont) that received a 'F', every U.S. state received some version of a 'D' in the latest edition of the National Council on Teacher Quality's State Teacher Policy Yearbook. In grading the states, the authors look at five broad teacher quality areas (and numerous metrics within them): teacher preparation, expanding the pool of teachers, identifying effective teachers, retaining effective teachers, and exiting ineffective teachers.

While it is easy to poke holes at some of the National Council on Teacher Quality's seemingly ideologically-driven work (such as, I believe, its excessive focus on teacher pensions), much of its state policy analysis has a strong foothold in research and is one of the most comprehensive and regular analyses of state teacher policies. Like it or not, there is an increasing alignment between the NCTQ's scorecard and that employed by the U.S. Department of Education in the Race to the Top competition. The entire report should not be dismissed because of who they are (or are perceived to be). States should feel challenged by some of the analysis within the Yearbook and should consider looking to the "best practice" states identified under some of the metrics.

Here's a brief summary of the report's findings:
  • State teacher policies are "broken, outdated and inflexible."
  • Evaluation and tenure policies take too little or no account of classroom effectiveness. 47 states "allow tenure to be awarded virtually automatically."
  • States are "complicit" on keeping ineffective teachers in classrooms. Only 1 state separates dismissal policy for poor performance from criminal and moral violations.
  • Few states provide robust enough alternate routes into teaching.
  • States' requirements for elementary teacher, middle-school teacher and special education teacher preparation are inadequate.
  • There is too little accountability for teacher preparation in state policy. Only 5 states set minimum standards for teacher preparation program performance.
  • States "cling to outmoded compensation structures," including the single salary schedule.
My primary quibble with the report is that it appears to completely and utterly discount the role of induction, mentoring and professional development in strengthening teacher effectiveness. Even if we prepare teachers better, recruit non-traditional candidates into the profession, retain them longer, compensate them differently, make evaluations more regular and meaningful, and find appropriate ways to terminate the small fraction of truly incompetent ones, it still will not be enough to maximize teacher effectiveness. There will continue to be a need for high-quality, individualized support upon entry into the profession and regular opportunities for data-driven, instructionally-focused professional development through a teacher's career. Professional development is not featured as a metric in the report at all and induction only enters as a criteria with regard to teacher retention, rather than teacher effectiveness -- which is where its most important power truly lies. That said, the evaluative criteria the report lays out about induction policy (on page 183-184 of the printed report) are worth noting and includes elements that states must attend to: mentoring of sufficient frequency and duration, mentoring provided at the start of the school year, and attentive mentor selection and high-quality training.

I won't beat this horse any further today, but check out these past posts for greater substance on what I'm getting at here with regard to the inadequate focus on the developmental needs of new and veteran teachers:

Race To The Top: Under The Hood
RttT: Redefining Teacher Effectiveness
Measurement Is Not Destiny

In other news, experts are doubting the likelihood of a 2010 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, so these state teacher policies with an added dose of Race to the Top reforms is likely to be where it's at over the next year plus.

Simplexity


The world as a whole is complex, but it is also a unity. It is “simplex”, founded on simple principles. Poets, painters, scientists and mathematicians are all searching for simplexity in their own way. Aesthetic pleasure is very largely the delight we feel in seeing order, meaning and relationship – the beauty that Coleridge called unity in variety. But it has to be an order unforced, seemingly spontaneous, rather than brutally imposed upon the material. The world as a whole is beautiful in just this sense.

Modern science describes the world as to a large extent “self-organizing”, because sophisticated and unpredictable patterns are now thought to emerge spontaneously from the indefinite repetition of simple algorithms. Furthermore they do so without violating the law of entropy. Evolution is then held to account for the refinement of those patterns through the process of selection. None of this - if true - is incompatible with theism (although it makes Intelligent Design look a bit foolish). The Christian God is the principle of existence itself, the creator without whom there would be nothing either simple or complex to admire. (For the compatibility of theistic faith with an up-to-date cosmology see Stephen Barr’s Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, reviewed here.)  If with complexity emerges unpredictability, this merely highlights the possibility of a higher-level order we call providence, governing coincidence and chance. God is the principle of order, and thus the ever-present source of unity as well as diversity.

If science interests you, take this awesome trip through the known universe. (The image above, by the way, is a fractal from Wikimedia Commons. For more on fractals see this clip on fractals in Africa.)

Simplexity


The world as a whole is complex, but it is also a unity. It is “simplex”, founded on simple principles. Poets, painters, scientists and mathematicians are all searching for simplexity in their own way. Aesthetic pleasure is very largely the delight we feel in seeing order, meaning and relationship – the beauty that Coleridge called unity in variety. But it has to be an order unforced, seemingly spontaneous, rather than brutally imposed upon the material. The world as a whole is beautiful in just this sense.

Modern science describes the world as to a large extent “self-organizing”, because sophisticated and unpredictable patterns are now thought to emerge spontaneously from the indefinite repetition of simple algorithms. Furthermore they do so without violating the law of entropy. Evolution is then held to account for the refinement of those patterns through the process of selection. None of this - if true - is incompatible with theism (although it makes Intelligent Design look a bit foolish). The Christian God is the principle of existence itself, the creator without whom there would be nothing either simple or complex to admire. (For the compatibility of theistic faith with an up-to-date cosmology see Stephen Barr’s Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, reviewed here.)  If with complexity emerges unpredictability, this merely highlights the possibility of a higher-level order we call providence, governing coincidence and chance. God is the principle of order, and thus the ever-present source of unity as well as diversity.

If science interests you, take this awesome trip through the known universe. (The image above, by the way, is a fractal from Wikimedia Commons. For more on fractals see this clip on fractals in Africa.)

Bloomberg Finally Turned Out of Office

January 29, 2010 (GBN News): Mayor Michael Bloomberg, after spending over $100 million to overturn term limits and win re-election for a third term, has ironically been run out of City Hall by a twelve year old girl. The Mayor was abruptly whisked away to an undisclosed location when the girl, part of a group of students protesting the planned relocation of their school, approached the mayor.

“When they showed up,” Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott told GBN News, “we thought at first that they might be charter school students coming to thank the Mayor for his support. But then it turned out that they were public school students, not authorized to be on the premises. In this day and age of terrorism, we felt that it was prudent to get the Mayor away from there as soon as possible.”

A spokesperson for Mr. Bloomberg later minimized the incident. “The Mayor was never in danger, and security initially wasn’t going to take such a drastic step. But when he heard they were public school students, his first reaction was, ‘Ugh, get me out of here.’ So they felt it was best to comply with his wishes.”

Klein to Visit Haiti Schools

January 29, 2010 (GBN News): NY City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein plans a trip next week to earthquake-ravaged Haiti, in order to see for himself the effects on the country’s school system, sources have told GBN News. Mr. Klein was said to have been struck by the fact that 97% of the schools in the capital of Port-Au-Prince were destroyed, and he was hoping to see if he could replicate the situation in the New York City schools.

The Chancellor, who sat through hours of angry testimony at this week’s PEP meeting opposing his plan to close 20 city schools, has been trying to find a way to close schools without having to face thousands of hostile parents, teachers and students. “An act of God is the only way to do this,” Mr. Klein was said to have told aides. “You never hear about the Almighty having to face a bunch of rabble without even being able to check his Blackberry or go to the bathroom.”

J. Fredrick Runson, professor of Education at Manhattan University, said that while it may seem that the Haiti solution is a bit drastic, the public here may not see much of a difference. “After all,” he told GBN News, “if he’s trying to destroy the NY City schools, he’s already accomplished most of that goal.”

OUTRAGE AFTER 1/26 PEP MEETING


I sent the following letter to my state and city representatives after the 1/26 PEP meeting:

I am a NYC public school parent of a high school student at LaGuardia, where I serve on the SLT. I am writing to express how appalled I am at the outcome of the so-called "hearing" Tuesday night at the NYC Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) held at Brooklyn Tech. I was in attendance from 6 pm, when testimony began, until 12:30, and I know that testimony went on well beyond that, until nearly 3 am, when the mayoral appointees on the panel voted (unconscionably!) to close 19 schools.

Thank you to all the legislators who came to speak on behalf of the schools. Thanks to Borough President Scott Stringer, Council Member Robert Jackson and other City Council members in the districts affected, and Public Advocate Bill deBlasio. Thanks also to Patrick Sullivan, PEP member, who consistently challenges the DOE on its consistently cynical, misguided decisions.

Mayor Bloomberg was quoted in the Times today as saying "We listened very carefully, but nobody made a convincing case." Perhaps we should buy him and the puppet members of the panel hearing aides!

I was there. I listened to 6 1/2 hours of testimony. I was extremely moved as student after student, teacher after teacher, parent after parent got up and made a case for their schools.

I learned:

• The DOE statistics, the ones that they were basing their "decision" on, were often wrong. The schools presented the panel with accurate statistics.

• Many of the schools slated to be closed received passing "grades" from the DOE, garnered "proficient" status on their Quality Reviews, and had earned teacher bonuses for improvement.

• Most of the schools affected have populations that will not be served by the small and much more exclusive charter schools that will replace them: ELLs, special ed students, students who live in shelters or foster homes, students who have scored low on tests, teen-aged mothers.

• The DOE is saying that these schools don't meet the criteria for 4-year graduation rates. But significant numbers of students at these schools do go on to get diplomas after 5 or 6 years. This seems to me to be a great accomplishment. Can a teen-aged mother get her degree in 4 years? What about a student hopping from shelter to shelter?

• Closing down these schools will create a domino effect. These students will get transferred to other large schools, contributing to further overcrowding, and setting them up for “failure” (and subsequent closing) as well.

But more than that, I learned that a school is more than statistics. I was reminded that a good school is a web of connections and relationships between teachers/administration and students/families/community. I heard students speak eloquently about teachers they love, teachers who have challenged them to learn, who stay after school long hours to run clubs and tutoring programs. I also heard teachers speak passionately about specific students who came in discouraged and with low scores, but who then went on succeed. An in case after case, I was moved to tears.

A school is so much more than (manipulated) DOE statistics. The DOE should get off of ARIS. They should dismantle their bloated and myopic accountability office and get their butts into a classroom. They should stay a day, 2 days, 3, a week, a month, a year. Chancellor Klein should apprentice himself to the educators who are on the front lines. And while he is at it, he should attend staff meetings and team meetings, and why not staff development workshops at university education departments, we have plenty in this city: TC Columbia, Bank Street, NYU, Hunter and CUNY. Then he will know what education is. Then he would never close these schools and turn the system over to his billionaire business cronies who want to drop in and "reform" the system. Re-form to what? To a system that can put $ into their pockets?

I am appalled at what passes for democracy in this city: an arrogant, billionaire bully mayor who buys off or intimidates everyone who dares to challenge him, a pit bull chancellor who has no education background whatsoever, who has no respect for experienced educators, and who accepts counsel only from the business community. Where are the nationally respected education elders who would work with and advise you, Chancellor Klein? What happened to Shelley Harwayne? And Carmen FariƱa? Why did they flee the system?

And so now, in the wake of the PEP's decision, we are left with the question: where will the students who attend the shuttered schools go? Thousands and thousands of students are affected. Many will no doubt drop out or be discharged. The DOE just sacrificed them. And what will these students -- the hundreds who scraped up the courage to stand up and speak, the ones who heard their teachers plead their cases, the ones who organized, gathering statistics and powerful anecdotal examples of what their schools mean to them, how they have buoyed and supported them -- what will these students now think of the democratic process in this city?

Mayoral control? This is the result.

Sincerely,

Jan Carr