Saturday, July 31, 2010

New Journal on Native Literatures Launched

JEC Editorial board member, John Purdy, has launched a new journal called Native Literatures: Generation. The mission of this new journal is described as follows:

NLG is dedicated to providing a global forum for original works of literature by writers from the indigenous nations of North America and Hawai’i. Our goal is to support writers in their endeavors by offering a venue linking them with new audiences and potential publishers. Moreover, our magazine is designed to generate funds to provide financial support for writers through scholarships for their studies or grants for specific writing projects.

NLG is a quarterly, with content accessible online for three months with rights reverting to authors thereafter.

Submissions:

NLG is seeking original, unpublished works by writers from the indigenous nations of North America and Hawai’i. We publish in all genres: poetry, fiction (short stories but also novel excerpts if self-contained), creative nonfiction, drama and mixed-genre/media. We are seeking works that extend this body of literature by avoiding cliché and trite conventions through risk-taking and experimentation, but also through distinctive and engaging voices, exciting and innovative approaches. For full submission guidelines, please visit our website. For information, contact info@nativeliteratures.com or submissions@nativeliteratures.com

Congratulations John on the launching of your new magazine. Readers can check it out at: http://www.nativeliteratures.com/

ZEN ON SUNDAY


Miss South Africa 2010 first runner-up Matapa Maila dresses up for a fashion competition during the annual Durban July horse race on July 31, 2010 in Durban. The Durban Vodacom July handicap horse race is the biggest racing fashion and entertainment event on the African continent and a high profile social event, where South African celebrities dress up and watch the race. It attracts close to 70,000 spectators and bets are placed in excess of 18 million US dollars.

Diane Ravitch and Leonie Haimson on Democracy Now





Interviewed by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez on June 30, we discuss NY State's admission of test score inflation over the past five years, and how the lack of progress in NYC schools reveals the failure of test-based accountability policies to improve schools, even as these policies are being forced on the country as a whole by the Obama administration.

For the full segment on this issue, including clips of the Obama's speech before the Urban League, see the Democracy Now website.

EXPECTING MISS UNIVERSE BUT GETTING MISS IOWA

Miss Iowa USA 2010 Katherine Connors poses for photographers with Washington Nationals pitcher Miguel Batista before throwing out the first pitch at their MLB National League baseball game with the Philadelphia Phillies in Washington, July 30, 2010. The Nationals invited Connors to the game to make up for Batista's unintentional slight against her, telling reporters after he was booed by home fans for replacing Stephen Strasburg that the fans were disappointed the same way they would have been if they were expecting Miss Universe and got Miss Iowa instead.

SAVE THE DATE

Miss Vietnam World 2010 is set for August 21, at Vinpearl Land in Nha Trang. Male operatic pop vocal quartet, Il Divo, will serenade the contestants. In addition to a first-prize payola of VND500 million (US$26,000), the new Miss Vietnam World will receive a crown worth approximately VND1 billion ($52,000). While most beauty pageants only temporarily crown their victor with a faux tiara, this year’s Miss Vietnam World will get to keep a gem-studded platinum headpiece crafted by Zela Jewelry. Embossed with 606 luxurious diamonds and shaped like a blooming lotus, the crown was designed to represent the exquisite beauty of Vietnamese women. (Source: Thanh Nien News, 30-jul-2010)

Civil Rights - THIS IS ONE REASON WHY AN EDUCATION IN THE HUMANITIES/SOCIAL SCIENCES MATTERS

Let's take a look at the history of the civil rights movement to answer this question.

Side Note: This response is the first of many to the absurd remarks about the uselessness of education in the social sciences and/or the humanities. Stay tuned for more reasons why an education in the humanities and the social sciences matters.


Er-r-r, Um-m-m, Well, Hm-m-m: Mayor Dissembles in Blagojevichian Style

Attempting to respond to the recent, politically cataclysmic decline in the academic proficiency measurements whose "gains" he has insistently touted for the past six years, Mayor Bloomberg resorted in his news conference last week to the sort of double-talk dissembling we have come to associate with Rod Blagojevich. In so doing, he managed at one and the same time to refute the validity of the very measurement system upon which he has built his claimed education record, disparage those who aspire to a college education, and assert that it doesn't really matter what you measure or how you're measuring it as long as the numbers get better.

As reported by Maura Walz in "Going Gaga" at Gotham Schools (in far greater depth and detail than any of the missing-in-action local mainstream media), the Mayor first sought to defend himself using an "it's all relative, anyway" argument.

"Everybody can have their definition of what it [proficiency] means," the Mayor argued lamely. Later in the press conference, he even took the audacious step of asking reporters to stop referring to students who score a 3 or 4 on the NYS standardized (3 - 8) exams as "proficient"! Chancellor Klein, parroting the new party line of relativism, chimed in that "Level 3 is simply a single line," conveniently ignoring the thousands of press releases and millions of dollars the DOE has spent under his watch jerking schools over that "line in the sand" under threat of student retentions, teacher and principal dismissals, and school closures.

No doubt sensing that the relativism argument was not sufficiently convincing, the Mayor tried the Alfred E. Neumann, "What, me worry?" defense by suggesting that academic success (i.e., proficiency) was really not all that it was cracked up to be anyway. "The last time I checked, Lady Gaga is doing fine with just a year of college." Mr. Mayor, you might have noted that LeBron James is doing even "finer" with no years of college. Why should parents worry about education and college when they can aspire to the likes of Lady Gaga and LeBron James? With inspiration like that from their mayor, NYC kids should be taking to the city park basketball courts and music clubs in droves! Perhaps it's time to start creating report cards based on hoops talent and on-stage performance audacity.

Finally, the Mayor fell back on what might be called the "longitudinal data" defense, declaring along with Chancellor Klein that what has really mattered all along was improvement over time. In other words, the validity of the measurements are irrelevant as long as the numbers get better every year. Putting aside for the moment the data-corrupting impact of the Mayor/Chancellor's relentless mix of incentivizing principals and teachers while threatening job loss and school closure over those very measures, the sheer illogical senselessness of this argument is intellectually breathtaking. It's as if we spent eight years teaching students how to empty the ocean with teaspoons, finally realized that it wasn't working, but argued for continuing on the grounds that we've gotten better at it each year and our students are now spooning out 21.47% more water (ever so precisely measured to create more credibility) than they were eight years ago.

Of course, every bit of this is founded on the demonstrably false premise that being a "3" or a "4" in math and reading at any and all points between Grades 3 and 8 somehow defines one as being educated. All it actually appears to signify so far is that one is adequately proficient at taking the NYS standardized Math and/or ELA exams. No known positive correlation exists between being a "low 3" and being successful on the NAEPs, the SATs, high school graduation, college acceptance, or anything else. To the contrary, recent data on required freshman remediation of incoming NYC public school students from SUNY/CUNY suggest that the correlation, if it exists, could just as well be negative, that focusing so intently on a single pair of exams and a single pair of success measures deprives students, as one might reasonably expect, of a genuine education.

The bottom line from last week's news conference? Don't expect to see any changes forthcoming. In true George W. Bush style, today's politician never questions him/herself, never rethinks his/her approach, and never admits he/she might have made a mistake. Dissemble, obfuscate, and rationalize -- no matter the continuing cost and damage done to the city's children. After all, one of them could just be (ugh!) the next Lady Gaga.

The Risk of a Fiscal Crisis

CBO offers a useful issues brief.

Stocks Look Cheap

Friday, July 30, 2010

MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE

Access Hollywood, 30-jul-2010: Bret Michaels is set to host the 2010 Miss Universe pageant this year alongside NBC’s “Today” show anchor Natalie Morales, Access Hollywood has confirmed. The rocker-turned-reality star will not be the first “Celebrity Apprentice” alum to host the pageant. Last year’s Miss Universe pageant was hosted by “Celebrity Apprentice” and “Deal or No Deal” star Claudia Jordan and Access Hollywood’s Billy Bush.

Klein's confidential email blasting the Times

In an email received by accident today, and sent me by a friendly source, Joel Klein blasts the NY Times coverage of the test score scandal this way: “NYT is outrageous.“



Interesting how he says the Times article is “outrageo
us.” I thought today’s article was relatively mild myself. Or perhaps he meant yesterday’s piece?



In any case, Klein then adds: “There will be pushback (in addition to today’s DN edit) ahead but the oppos are trying to move their agenda with this.” You bet we are!



When the entire Bloom/Klein agenda has been revealed to be a failure, we’d be fools not to point that out.



The Daily News editorial that he is referring to is even more ridiculous than

ever. These guys have lost all sense of reality. Entitled Way to Go, Kids! it still maintains the fiction, with a straight face, that the progress under Bloom/Klein has been terrific, while ignoring how their house of cards has completely fallen apart.



Klein's email message is

addressed to Whitney Tilson. Tilson is a charter school/ hedgefund privateer, founder of the

pro-charter group Democrats for Education Reform, and writes one of the silliest blogs on the planet (amusingly lampooned by Billionaires for Educational Reform).



Here is their entire exchange.

__

JK wrote:

Put together stuff for him re scale score re ros, big 4 from 02, etc, s-chart stuff, the chart

showing whichever cut scores we moved up, and the naep stuff. Let me see.



From: Whitney Tilson [mailto:wtilson@t2partnersllc.com]

Sent: Friday, July 30, 2010 4:57 PM

To: Klein Joel I.

Subject: RE: test data

Thx for the heads up on the Daily News editorial – I’ll include it in my next email.

Please send me whatever you have on the results.

Thx!



From: Klein Joel I. [mailto:JKlein@schools.nyc.gov]

Sent: Friday, July 30, 2010 4:43 PM

To: Whitney Tilson

Subject: RE: YPO dinner on March 8, 9 or 10th?

Btw, thanks for the shout out today. NYT is outrageous. There will be pushback (in addition to today’s DN edit) ahead but the oppos are trying to move their agenda with this. If you ever want details regarding the results, including strong results in 3 or 4 naeps, i can get to you. Enjoy the weekend.

The Spirit Level authors Wilkinson and Picket caught lying

We respond to the lies and distortions of mainstream economic research by Wilkinson and Picket.

I typically don't approve of appeals to authority, but since Wilkinson and Picket are masters of playing this game, and falsely market themselves to the media and broader public as representatives of mainstream research, I have no choice but give them a dose of their own medicine.

Some highlights:

• Wilkinson and Picket, pressed into a corner, now suddenly claim that Nobel prize winner James Heckman’s research supports their conclusions! When I asked professor Heckman about this, sending him the link to Wilkinson and Picket’s text, James Heckman answered bluntly:

This is a misreprentation of my work.

How dare these two charlatans casually distort the work of one of the leading economist in the world and put the authority of his name and research behind their unsubstantiated claims?

If they are willing to lie about even James Heckman himself, are we supposed to trust them regarding the "200 studies" that they assert demonstrate a causal link between income inequality and health?

• Wilkinson and Picket further claim that the Princeton professor Angus Deaton is not an expert and that, consequently, his review study in the Journal of Economic Literature, which arrives at the opposite conclusion to that of Wilkinson and Picket, is not worth citing. This is despite the fact that this paper appeared in a much more prestigious journal, with 3 times the impact factor, and has been cited twice as often by other scholars as Wilkinson and Picket's own work.

Leading economists consider Deaton enough of an expert to ask him to write the review article in the flagship review journal of the profession. According to Ideas, of tens of thousands active economists, Deaton is the 56th highest ranked economist on the planet.

Wilkinson and Picket (from the universities of Nottingham and York), give themselves the right to dismiss mainstream economic research when it fails to support their conclusions, not even acknowledging the existence of this more rigorous and objective work. Wilkinson and Picket are thereby failing to comply with the basic rules of scientific conduct. The naïve readers that trust Wilkinson and Picket are being fooled about the state of mainstream economic research.

• I am a blogger. When I wanted to measure the correlation between patents and inequality, I went to the homepage of the World Intellectual Property Organization and downloaded the data. The correlation between per capita patents and inequality was not statistically significant, and went in the opposite direction of what Wilkinson and Picket wrote. Wilkinson and Picket claim to represent serious science. It now turns out that their source for patents is the amateur internet site Nationmaster, not the original source as they initially claimed!

Wilkinson and Picket, who claim to present science, have lower data standards in their research than a blogger they are debating with does when writing a blog entry about their work.

• When defending their claims that income inequality caused higher mortality, they over and over claimed that there are "200" (or sometimes 300) studies that prove this causal link. If you look at their actual review study, you will notice that the source of this claim of external validity are 2 review articles. One of the two is by the paragons of scientific virtue Wilkinson and Picket themselves.

• The second study (Kondo et al. 2009) of 28 papers explicitly makes clear that is not looking at causation, but “association”. In economic jargon you write "association" when you do not feel confident that you have established a causal link. Not all 28 articles in the Kondo et al. study even find a statistically significant link, with the authors warning that the results should be interpreted with

"caution given the heterogeneity between studies, as well as the attenuation of the risk estimates in analyses that attempted to control for the unmeasured characteristics of areas with high levels of income inequality."

• The Wilkinson and Picket paper is not about mortality at all. They themselves write “We compiled a list of 155 published reports of research on the relation between income distribution and population health.”

Of the 155 papers, they find “A tally of numbers showed 88 wholly supportive Analyses” and 44 which they call partially supportive (mixed evidence).

They look at 155 papers, but even they actually only find clear results for 88. Yet they keep saying they have “200” papers, leaving the reader to believe 200 papers support their claims. In the Wall Street Journal they went further, and gave the impression they had “300” supporting articles. The 300 figure is the number of citations they have in their book, which is obviously very far from 300 papers all supporting their claims...

• Here is the killer: Read the Wilkinson and Picket criteria for selecting a paper that they later present as having proven a causal link:

“We classified them as wholly supportive if they reported only statistically significant associations between greater income inequality and poorer population health”

A statistical “association” is not evidence of causality. Association just means that two variables are statistically related, not that one is causing the other. This is what scientists write when they do not have enough evidence to establish causation convincingly.

Thus the Wikipedia page for association for example writes:

“In quantitative research, the term "association" is often used to emphasize that a relationship being discussed is not necessarily causal”

Adding controls does not magically make something causal, unless your model specification is correct and you are actually control for all determinants of the dependent variable that are correlated with the independent variable of interest. This is very difficult with complex variables such as health and inequality.

So Wilkinson and Picket are using double standards. In their published research they picked studies that did not have (or even claim to have) established a causal link, but in their representation of this research to the broader public they pretend that there is evidence for causation between inequality and poor health.

• When we asked for a paper showing a causal link between life expectancy and inequality,, they linked to study from China. The study looks at the statistical association between the Gini coefficient and “self-reported health” in some Chinese provinces.

First of all, we asked about life expectancy, but you if you look carefully you will see that this study is about self-reported health. The dishonesty never ends with these two people.

Second, Wilkinson and Picket understand too little about modern methodology in social sciences to realize that this is also a correlational study!

I will again repeat the standard criteria in modern social science: When you have variables related in complex ways, such as inequality and health, running a regression is just not enough. You either have to have to model the exact relationship between health and inequality, including all possible confounding variables, or use experimental or at least quasi-experimental methods to try to tease causal patterns out of the observational data.

Wilkison and Picket go from “200” studies to failing to cite EVEN ONE study that established a causal link between income inequality and life expectancy.

The market for ideas like other markets operates by the laws of supply and demand. There is clearly a large demand for the claims of Wilkinson and Picket, that equality is not only morally preferable (which I agree with), but scientifically proven to cause all sorts of good outcomes.

Because of this demand from politicians and journalists, Wilkinson and Picket were tempted to write their unscientific book. This book ignores more serious work in economics, distorts evidence, cherry picks data, relies on correlation rather than causation, prefers data from amateur sites on the internet to the original source data, and reports relationships which turn out not to be statistically significant.

Journalists, leftist, and Sweden’s Social Democratic party leader Mona Sahlin, trusted Wilkinson and Picket. One reason is because they wanted to believe that their message was true. The other, more problematic reason is that people have been taught to trust scientists, and Wilkinson and Picket have falsely marketed their shoddy ideological work as science.

Wilkinson and Picket are abusing the trust of the public in academia, which is their perhaps most serious crime, far worse than the offense of simply being wrong. The lesson is, I believe, that journalists and politicians need to be more careful of false prophets, especially if they market themselves as "scientists".

Thursday, July 29, 2010

UGG


9News, 29-jul-2010: High-heeled ugg boots are the footwear that will represent Australia on the feet of our Miss Universe contestant Jesinta Campbell. The daring national costume is a pastiche of Australiana including a one-piece swimsuit hand-painted by an Aboriginal artist, a wool shoulder shrug and flamenco style rainbow-hued skirt. Designed by Sydney woman Natasha Dwyer, who works under the Arthur Ave label, the dress will be shown in Las Vegas when 18 year-old Campbell competes alongside other beauties for the coveted Miss Universe crown.

A Great Resource for Teachers

Several times, we have referred our readers to a very helpful website called, American Indians in Children’s Literature. Just in time for the fall semester, the website has put up several lists of Top Ten Book Recommendations for teachers in the elementary, middle schools, and high schools, who are looking for some authentic readings for their classrooms. There is also a link to an article, "Native Voices," by Debbie Reese from the School Library Journal where readers can find annotations.

The site is run by Debbie Reese, who provides helpful criteria for teachers to use in making selections. Be sure to check out her section on “Evaluate from an informed perspective.” You will find information on Guidelines for Evaluating American Indian websites, Resources for research projects, Tribally-owned Websites, Images of Indians in Children's Books.

A member of the Nambe Pueblo in northern New Mexico and former school teacher, Debbie Reese currently teaches in UIUC's American Indian Studies program.

Keep up the good work Debbie.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Question

Did you pursue an education only for a future return, i.e., was it merely an investment and nothing beyond that?

A "teachable" moment for us all



For parents who are understandably agonized about the steep drop in state test scores at their children’s schools, as reported by the NY State Ed Dept. and various news outlets today, this is what they should keep in mind:

  • Since the city experienced a 34-39% decline in the percent of students scoring at proficiency; any school that saw a drop smaller than that is doing okay.
  • However bad a school’s test scores, it is not the fault of teachers, principals, parents or the kids themselves; it is the fault of the people running the system. Their names are Bloomberg and Klein, and they should hang their heads in shame. For years, they have insisted that the state exams were more reliable than the NAEPs, and refused to make the real reforms that would improve our children’s opportunity to learn, like reducing class size. And since their value-added achievements which they insist should determine teacher pay and tenure are next to nil; they should be forced to resign.
  • The state is also at fault by colluding in the fiction of improving test results for the past five years, all to make it seem as though their high-stakes accountability policies were producing results.
More than anything else, as Steve Koss writes below, today's revelations (which are not revelations to people who have been reading this blog) should teach us all that TEST SCORES ARE NOT EVERYTHING.



Our kids – and our schools –should excel in all areas, not just on standardized tests, and the more policymakers focus on test scores to the exclusion of all else, as has happened in recent years, the less real learning will occur in our schools and the more our children will suffer.



It's as though a doctor only weighed his patients, and decided on that basis alone whether they were healthy. Not only could the scale be defective, as occurred in this case; but even if not, the patient could be slowly dying, and he would never know.

Tag in tagiranje ali teg in tegiranje . . . ali morebiti kako drugače?

K pisanju me je vzpodbudila nedavna objava na spletniku slovenske digitalne knjižnice in potem še na Facebooku, ki najavlja za manj spretne uporabnike pomoč v obliki kratkih informativnih videoposnetkov. ". . . Prisrčne čebelice vam bodo tagiranje predstavile na zelo preprost in simpatičen način. . . " Zbodel me je izraz tagiranje, kot me vedno znova zbode napis Označevalci (tagi) pod vsakim

Race to the Top Analysis: Spreading The Wealth

EPILOGUE (8/24/2010): Well, my predictions below didn't quite pan out. FL and RI came in strong, but IL and SC flopped (but by mere points, of course). I was almost right that with two large states funded -- Florida and New York -- it would limit the number of winners. But the predicted nine became ten with the surprise inclusion of Hawaii (75 mil) among the winners, along with DC (also only 75 mil). For more on the winners, see here.

---

Education Week (and its Politics K-12 blog), the Hechinger Report, the New America Foundation's Ed Money Watch, and the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education have provided some excellent Race to the Top Phase 2 analysis.

Based on Phase 1 scores, reviews of Phase 2 applications, and other considerations, I believe Florida, Illinois, Rhode Island and South Carolina are locks for Phase 2 funding. [UPDATE (8/4/2010): One thing that should be concerning to Georgia is an extremely low level of district buy-in (14%) to its application. The only two other states below 50% buy-in are California (18%) -- by design -- and Pennsylvania (32%). As a result I've moved Georgia from a 'lock' to a 'strong' contender.]

Further, I think that Colorado, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania have strong chances at winning Phase 2 funding. (That would place the remaining finalists -- Arizona, California, District of Columbia, Hawaii and New Jersey -- outside the winners' circle.) That said, which and how many states will eventually be funded from the remaining pot of $3.4 billion is largely contingent upon the successes of the Big Three, each eligible to win $700 million: Florida, New York and California. The presence of numerous $400 million eligible states in the mix also has the potential to limit the number of winners.

Let's look at a variety of scenarios, assuming in each case that Florida can bank on the $700 million. Of the three, I think New York has the next best shot at the dollars, with California's chances slightly less. In each case, I have listed the states in Phase One rank order (so feel free to replace any with your preference).

Scenario #1 (Florida only)
TOTAL = $3.375 billion 11 States
STATE
Florida
MAX. AWARD
$700,000,000
PHASE 1 RANK
4
Georgia$400,000,0003
Illinois
So. Carolina
$400,000,000
$175,000,000
5
6
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
Kentucky
$400,000,000
$75,000,000
$175,000,000
7
8
9
Ohio$400,000,00010
Louisiana$175,000,00011
No. Carolina
$400,000,00012
DC$75,000,00016


Scenario #2 (Florida & New York)
TOTAL = $3.425 billion 9 States

STATE
Florida
MAX. AWARD
$700,000,000
PHASE 1 RANK
4
New York
Georgia
$700,000,000
$400,000,000
15
3
Illinois
So. Carolina
$400,000,000
$175,000,000
5
6
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
Kentucky
$400,000,000
$75,000,000
$175,000,000
7
8
9
Ohio $400,000,000 10


Scenario #3 (Florida, New York & California)
TOTAL = $3.325 billion 8 States
STATE
Florida
MAX. AWARD
$700,000,000
PHASE 1 RANK
4
New York
California
Georgia
$700,000,000
$700,000,000
$400,000,000
15
27
3
Illinois
So. Carolina
$400,000,000
$175,000,000
5
6
Rhode Island
Kentucky
$75,000,000
$175,000,000
8
9
DC
$75,000,000
16




Scenario #4 (Max. Applicants w/ Florida)

TOTAL = $3.4 billion 12 States

STATE
Florida
MAX. AWARD
$700,000,000
PHASE 1 RANK
4
Georgia $400,000,000 3
Illinois $400,000,000 5
So. Carolina
$175,000,000 6
Pennsylvania $400,000,000 7
Rhode Island
$75,000,000 8
Kentucky $175,000,000 9
Ohio $400,000,000 10
Louisiana $175,000,000 11
Massachusetts $250,000,000 13
Colorado $175,000,000 14
DC $75,000,000 16


Unless Florida somehow manages to fall on its face in Phase 2, I don't think it is realistic to envision more than 12 applicants receiving funding -- and that would require one of the $400 million-eligible states (such as North Carolina or Ohio) to be eclipsed and knocked out by a smaller state ranked lower in Phase 1 (such as Colorado, Massachusetts and/or the District of Columbia) or by Maryland, which did not apply in Phase 1 [see Scenario #4]. So although the U.S. Department of Education has dangled the possibility of as many as 15 Phase 2 winners, I don't see realistically how we can get there.

Related Posts:

IT'S NOT ABOUT THE TESTS!

Over the last ten days, at least a portion of the long-known truth about the ineffectualness of the State's Grade 3 - 8 standardized Math and ELA exams and high school Regents exams has finally being acknowledged by the NYS Board of Regents and the local print media (New York Times and Daily News and NY Post). By way of validation, newspaper reports today indicate that the re-measured proficiency rate of NYS and NYC students is far, far lower than has been repeatedly claimed and ostentatiously touted by state and local politicians, particularly in NYC.

Calls for "new and improved" examinations with realistic cut scores that more honestly assess proficiency as a measure of academic readiness for higher level study are certainly not unwelcome. After all, if testing is a devil we have to live with, at least it can be a devil with a little more integrity, one that serves educators as well as students and their parents as a more accurate gauge of academic progress and readiness. It is difficult to oppose a movement toward more honest and realistic assessment; this writer for one is not opposed in principle.

Be that as it may, this ostensibly good news must be tempered with reminders of a harsh reality: the real issue has never been about the test scores, but how they are now (mis)used at every level of the educational and political hierarchy. From NCLB and Race to the Top to state-level departments of education to local school districts, from mayors (cough, cough) to school superintendents (cough, cough again) to principals, from assessing principals and teachers to closing schools, from drill and kill and teaching to the test to shorting other curricular areas, and from incentivized, institutionalized manipulation to outright fraud and cheating, the abuse of standardized testing has reached such epidemic proportions throughout the country that public school education in many places is hardly recognizable any more.

Standardized test scores have become the scourge of the American education system. In New York, simply reconstructing the exams and raising the cut scores will do nothing more than address a symptom, one reflected in overly generous assessment of students' academic progress and readiness.
While the change is needed, it will also conveniently eliminate a major structural criticism of the current education reform movement that those "reformers" will be happy to see removed; it's not for nothing that the New York Times, NY Daily News, and NY Post editorial boards jumped on the "revise the NYS standardized exam bandwagon" so quickly and enthusiastically. That alone should warn everyone of the underlying reality of this situation and their agenda. To wit: test, test, and test some more; measure, measure, and measure some more; incentivize and otherwise hold teachers, principals, and entire schools accountable based on those results.

The yardstick may end up being different, but schools will still be driven toward all the ills of score inflation. As long as people like Joel Klein insist that a single, annual exam (or any number or combination of exams) can determine everything from a child's readiness to a teacher's worthiness to a principal's evaluation to whether a school should be closed, the institutionalized response will inevitably lead to the same place we're at today: score inflation, teaching to the test, altering curricula and classroom time allotments to what is being measured and to the detriment of everything else, favoring repetition and drill over exploration and creativity, systemic cheating, manipulation of data, etc.

Perversely enough, under the current "test, measure, incentivize, and hold accountable" regime, revising the NYS exams and making them more honest but more difficult may damage public education even more than the current system has done. Why? When the tests were easier and more predictable, teachers at schools with higher percentages of on-track students could accommodate the state exams while largely pursuing the curricular and instructional approaches they felt best motivated and engaged their students. The more difficult the exams, ceteris paribus (all other things held equal), the more time and effort teachers may feel required to devote to teaching to the test.

The Times, Daily News, and Post will welcome revised, more academically honest standardized exams with open arms; these cheers represent little more than a classic example of "audience misdirection." Mayor Bloomberg will shuffle and dissemble over the collapse of his educational house of cards built on exam scores now acknowledged as meaningless while likely belittling those who dare question him. Chancellor Klein will do a rationalizing dance by claiming that even though the exams were worthless, NYC still did better on them than Rochester, Buffalo, or Syracuse. Change for the better will be promised and touted, but all the upbeat focus on the superficial (the content, form, structure, difficulty, and cut scores of the exams) will merely mask the deeper, more fundamental issues, the ones the education reform crowd would rather not talk about.

Just remember -- it's not, and never was, about the exams, but about they are used. Or more accurately phrased, misused. Since that shows no current prospect of changing, little else among the many ills being inflicted on American public education by the misnamed "education reform movement" is likely to be addressed.

After all, consider that the Times today quotes NYS Education Chancellor Merryl Tisch as stating: "Now that we are facing the hard truth that not all of the gains were as advertised [providing significant evidence that she must have spent the last five years living in the Antarctic], we have to take a look at what we can do differently. These results will finally provide real unimpeachable evidence about to be used for accountability (italics mine)." Not diagnosis of students strengths and weaknesses, not teacher self-assessment, not revision of time allocation to address areas of widespread, persistent weakness, not quality of curriculum, not readiness for high school or college. Just accountability, and more of the same!!!


Mana Duluan, Ayam atau Telur? Ini Jawabnya!


VIVAnews - Para ilmuwan berhasil menjawab salah satu tebak-tebakan tertua di dunia, mana yang lebih dulu, ayam, atau telur?

Melalui komputer super, tim dari Universitas Sheffield dan Warwick, Inggris menemukan jawabannya. Apakah itu? Ayam.

Kepada laman Harian The Sun, ketua tim peneliti menjelaskan bagaimana mereka berhasil memecahkan teka-teki tersebut.

"Apa yang kami temukan adalah 'kecelakaan' yang menyenangkan. Awalnya, tujuan penelitian kami adalah menemukan bagaimana binatang membuat cangkang telur."

Menurutnya, selama ini, masyarakat telah menganggap remeh ayam. Kami tidak menyadari proses luar biasa yang ditunjukan para ayam dalam proses pembuatan telur.

"Sadarkah Anda, ketika memecahkan kulit telur rebus di pagi hari, Anda sedang menyaksikan salah satu material luar biasa di dunia."

Cangkang telur memiliki kekuatan sangat luar biasa, meski beratnya sangat ringan. Manusia tak bisa membuat benda seperti itu, bahkan yang mendekatinya.

"Masalahnya, kita tak tahu bagaimana ayam membuat cangkangnya."

Tim peneliti lalu menggunakan komputer super milik Dewan Riset Sains Inggris (UK Science Research Council) yang berbasis di Edinburgh. Komputer itu dinamakan HECToR (High End Computing Terascale Resource).

"Kami ingin menelusuri bagaimana telur terbentuk, dengan melihat proses detail telur secara mikroskopis."



Yang pertama dicari adalah, mengetahui 'resep' yang digunakan ayam untuk membuat cangkang telur.

"Dengan bantuan komputer canggih, Kami memecahkan masalah ini selama berminggu-minggu. Sementara, ayam bisa menyusun cangkang itu hanya dalam semalam."

Lucunya, pemilihan cangkang telur ayam sebagai fokus penelitian benar-benar tak disengaja. Para peneliti memilih telur ayam karena proteinnya sederhana untuk ditelaah.

Namun hasilnya ternyata sangat mengejutkan. "Kami memecahkan teka-teki sepanjang masa. Ini mengagumkan."

Hasilnya, ditemukan protein khusus yang ada di tubuh ayam. Protein itu adalah adalah 'tukang bangunan' tanpa lelah, menyusun bagian-bagian cangkang mikroskopis membentuk cangkang telur.

Protein itu menginisiasi proses pembentukan cangkang sebelum menyusun bagian telur yang lain.

Tanpa protein pembangun tersebut, telur tak mungkin terbentuk. Dan, protein itu hanya ditemukan di rahim ayam. "Itu berati ayam ada duluan sebelum telur."

Tapi, dari mana ayam berasal?

Beberapa teori mengatakan, nenek moyang ayam menciptakan telur zaman Dinosaurus.

"Penemuan kami sangat potensial. Sebab, cangkang telur dibentuk dari banyak kristal kecil. Kita bisa menggunakan informasi ini untuk mengetahui cara membuat dan menghancurkan struktur kristal lainnya."

Sebagai contoh, untuk menghilangkan kerak di ceret maupun pipa. Penelitian ini juga berimplikasi medis.

"Karena tubuh kita menggunakan metode yang sama untuk membuat gigi dan tulang, kita bisa belajar lebih banyak tentang bagaimana membangun kembali tulang manusia." (adi)

By Elin Yunita Kristanti - Kamis, 15 Jul

Do Kindergarten Teachers Matter More than Parents?

New research on the value of kindergarten teachers is remarkable

In fact, it seems a bit hard to believe. If kindergarten teachers matter as much as this new research suggests, then you would think that parents would have a large influence on their kids' adult outcomes. After all, you spend a lot more time with your parents than in your kindergarten class. But much research in behavioral genetics finds very little evidence for significant parental effects. (See Judith Harris's The Nurture Assumption.) So I am puzzled.

Update: Judith Harris emails me:
I guess it's been a while since you read my book. In Chapter 11 of The Nurture Assumption I described the case of a gifted first-grade teacher, "Miss A," who had a long-lasting beneficial effect on her students, and I proposed an explanation of how and why this happened.
Yes, it has been a while, and since I am now at the Jersey shore, I don't have a copy handy. I much appreciate the correction.

Update 2: From Raj Chetty, one of the authors of the study:
I'm writing in reference to your interesting comment about our Kindergarten paper. I think our results are actually consistent with your perfectly sensible intuition that parents should matter more than teachers, for two reasons:

(1) the Kindergarten class effects are large in aggregate but explain a small share of the variance in earnings (less than 5%) overall. A better class leads to higher average earnings (3% higher earnings for a 1 SD improvement in teacher quality), but there is a lot of variation around the mean.

(2) The best evidence I've seen on the long term impacts of parents is this quasi-experimental paper by Bruce Sacerdote published in the QJE. It shows that parental characteristics explain about three times more of the variation in adult outcomes than KG classes, consistent with your intuition.
Thanks!

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Scrapping UPSR & PMR: MoE Roundtable

Educationists and parents want UPSR, PMR to stay
UPDATED @ 03:21:48 PM 27-07-2010By Boo Su-Lyn July 27, 2010

PUTRAJAYA, July 27 — Political parties and educationists want the UPSR and PMR public examinations retained, an Education Ministry dialogue was told today.

Representatives from political parties like DAP and MIC and non-governmental organisations such as the Parent Action Group for Education Malaysia (PAGE) and the United Chinese School Committees Association of Malaysia (Dong Zong) said that today’s meeting of about 40 representatives saw a chorus of reservation against abolishing the two public examinations.

“Majority do not agree to abolish both,” said Dong Zong representative Dr Lai Hoi Chaw today.

“Majority also thought this exam system has to be modified,” he added, saying that creative content should be increased in the examination system.

Lai, the deputy director of the Malaysian Independent Chinese Secondary School Unified Examination Committee under Dong Zong, said that Dong Zong rejected the UPSR move until the government proposed a detailed alternative student assessment system.

“We do not agree to abolish UPSR immediately until we know more about the alternative formula,” Lai said, adding that the group would also decide on the matter of PMR when an alternative assessment system was proposed.

Lai also demanded for the school-based assessment proposal by Malaysia Examination Board director Datuk Dr Salbiah Ismail at the discussion today to be made public.

Salbiah’s proposal included creating an internal school assessment system and a guided methodology on how to conduct assessments up to the Form 5 SPM level, as well as implementing “psychometric tests” on students’ emotions and character, said DAP national publicity secretary Tony Pua.

Pua said Salbiah’s proposal showed that the Education Ministry seemed to have decided to scrap the two public examinations even before talks were completed.

Education Director-General Tan Sri Alimuddin Mohd Dom said last week that a report on the roundtable discussions would be submitted to the Education Minister by the end of August.

The ministry’s first official roundtable discussion took place on July 19, and was attended by over 120 educators, district education officers and teachers’ unions representatives.

The National Union of the Teaching Profession (NUTP), the Sarawak Teachers’ Union, the West Malaysia Malay Teachers’ Union, and education academics reportedly favoured replacing the two public examinations with school-based assessments.

However, PAGE chairman Datin Noor Azimah Abdul Rahim said that her organisation favoured retaining the two public examinations because a school-based assessment system was open to abuse.

“If we were to rely on school-based assessment, it is subject to manipulation, leaks, favouritism. A national assessment is independent,” said Azimah.

“Most (in the discussion) were in favour of keeping both (examinations), but with the adjustments of making it better,” added Azimah, pointing out that the focus of the current examination system on rote should be replaced with more open-ended questions.

Academic Tan Sri Datuk Seri Panglima Dr Abdul Rahman Arshad also called for the rigid examination system to be revised instead of abolishing UPSR and PMR.

“We must change the nature of the exam. You don’t demolish everything,” said the University-College Sedaya International chancellor.

“A good number are for adjustments to be made,” added Abdul Rahman.

MIC representative Tan Sri Professor T. Marimuthu said that his party was against scrapping the UPSR and PMR examinations, citing concerns of a school-based assessment system that is open to abuse.

“We are concerned about teacher load and teacher bias in a school-based assessment,” said the MIC education committee chairman.

Marimuthu added that the MIC wanted UPSR especially to be retained and for the government to address the pressure faced by UPSR students.

“Any change must be based on informed research. I am not sure what research has been done on this,” said Marimuthu, adding that majority in the discussion wanted to retain the two public examinations.

The DAP is also against scrapping the UPSR and PMR examinations and claimed yesterday that students performed better when subjected to public examinations as shown by international research.

“If the government is insistent in proceeding, as it appears to be, to scrap the exams, do a pilot project first,” said Pua, adding that the government should compare those who took public examinations and those who did not after several years.

“The consequence of scrapping exams for the whole country at one go is a highly risky move. We call for the (Education) Ministry not to repeat the mistake of PPSMI,” said Pua, pointing out that Putrajaya had proceeded with implementing the policy of teaching science and mathematics in English despite public reservation but was forced to abolish it a few years later.

What Price Control?

Dear friends,

Organizing life is almost more time-consuming than living it! I'm overwhelmed with pieces of paper that I can't bare to throw out, but can't bare to keep. So, I need to organize them! But as I do so, more and more appear.

My daughter-in-law, Tricia, discovered a huge file full of old letters to and from me going back to my teens. The Lily Archive at Indiana University wants them but first I have to see what makes sense for them to archive. I have spent hours at it and already discovered two letters that I immediately tore up, and a few I put aside in a "to be thrown out" pile. Then there are those that have sentimental value to me but do not belong in an archive dedicated to teaching. In those days before e-mail, and before telephoning seemed cheap enough to make long long-distance calls, many of the letters are long arguments for and against particular ideas.

I had forgotten about the Antioch co-op job in an Indianapolis Day Care Center. I did it because I wanted to visit with my Uncle Marty and my cousins Jeremy and Daniel who lived there. It was clear that I was not a very responsive assistant teacher and was impatient with restless children who refused to go to sleep at nap time (when I could then read), and whose parent's came late (so I couldn't leave early). It definitely inspired me not to take any education courses when I got to the U of Chicago which I was urged to do as a married woman who might need a fall-back job.

Yet in fact becoming an accidental teacher opened up the world to me in intriguing ways. It altered the way I saw and heard, and the way I understood politics, history and human behavior! There's no subject that seemed "boring". My democratic leanings from childhood were strengthened as it became more and more obvious that 12 plus years of schooling was such a poor preparation for democracy. The strong-willed, skepticism that is essential alongside of the habit of seeing and feeling the world from different perspectives (call it empathy?) is precisely what schooling dulls rather than nurtures, what is stronger at age 5 than 15.

I reread a short speech Susan Sontag gave to Vassar graduates in 2005 and realized how strongly I identified with her admonition: "Don't allow yourself to be patronized, condescended to" and "Don't be afraid."

When I visit many "acclaimed schools" for poor children I'm struck by how hard the adults work at putting kids "in their place", at public humiliation and condescension. The way the children's families are too often talked about by school adults is unnerving. Yet school adults are also the object of a similar condescension. But the connection between the two is somehow lost.

Too many of our schools are organized around fear and thus the "solutions"/reforms are too. The details are similar to those that drive prisons. The unspoken motto from school to classroom design revolves around issues of control: what will happen if we don't control them? In the same way I was struck by how easily teachers are intimidated by the authorities who rule their lives, how much principals fear "downtown", and parents fear the teachers--and the teachers fear the parents! It isn't universal, but it is widespread. The common answer: tough love and "no excuses".

The old-fashioned eccentric teacher who locked herself and her kids in her "castle" has all but disappeared: along with the strong-willed teacher who could create an alternate environment.

What we have forgotten is that part of being a good citizen is being skillful at resisting authority, organizing "our side" on behalf of common interests. It is our faith in our superior numbers that may be called upon to trump the power of guns and money. Democracy is always a fragile ideal, probably never fully realizable. It requires strong feisty citizens with a sense of their "entitlement" and an awareness that democracy is an exercise in balanced power. Learning to exercise power is as important as learning to be cooperative, who knows there is another story worth hearing (excuses?), is prepared to compromise, see the world from many perspectives, and have a good sense of humor. Adults teach these conflicting traits to kids in part by example ideally. What may seem like petty requests to us may, for kids, be matters of honor and integrity. But not if we adults have grown accustomed to swallowing our honor.

I heard a rightwing Republican congressman (Steve King from Iowa) speaking on TV about the Second amendment. It is not, he said, about hunting or protecting ourselves individually. We need guns, he continued, so we can confront a tyrannous government. He happened to think we were on the brink of an Obama-dictatorship. He was right: in 1776 the rebels saw liberty as closely allied to our ability to challenge a dictator with an armed citizenry. He is wrong about those guns, but he is right that democracy is always endangered and has a tendency toward centralization of power in few and fewer hands that must be resisted. If not by guns, what is the alternative?

Resisting the centralization of schooling of who decides what my children are taught and where the school's moral code is spelled out requires being "armed" by the powers that come with citizenship. We need new words that distinguish the kind of heated argument that democracy arouses if its decisions matter from winner/loser arguments that are only an exercise in exerting power over others. We depend upon such arguments, we depend such compromises, we depend upon resistance. Yet there is only one public institution where these habits of heart and mind might be developed: our schools. It is a shift in our picture of the tasks of schooling. To produce a community in which the young are learning from those older and wiser about democracy will take time to invent. Such schooling habits will not spring into being overnight. We will need to develop norms that make arguments, resistance, skepticism and solidarity and a good laugh at ourselves tolerable, even cherished. It does not happen just in a course of Civics, but in all the activities of the school staff meeting, parent meetings, math classes, phys ed classes, music, and even the playground.

After I finish sorting all those letters, maybe I will have time to figure this out. Maybe soon I will be ready to prescribe how democracy is best taught. But probably not.

More another time.

Deborah

Race to the Top, Phase 2 Finalists

Education Week's Michele McNeil and Alyson Klein at Politics K-12 have the scoop on the Race to the Top, Phase 2 finalists. There are 19 of them:
  • Arizona
  • California
  • Colorado
  • District of Columbia
  • Florida
  • Georgia
  • Hawaii
  • Illinois
  • Kentucky
  • Louisiana
  • Maryland
  • Massachusetts
  • New Jersey
  • New York
  • North Carolina
  • Ohio
  • Pennsylvania
  • Rhode Island
  • South Carolina
Generally, I think this is about the number of and group of applicants that most expected, including me. The two biggest surprises on the list are Arizona (although it received support from Gates in Phase 2) and Hawaii. There are no shocking omissions from the list, although some felt that the likes of Arkansas, Connecticut, Michigan, Oklahoma and Utah had outside shots at success.

Want to read all the finalists' applications to see what's so good about 'em? You can find links to all the applications here.

Winners are expected to be named by the U.S. Department of Education in late August or early September.

Readings for the Pigou Club

  1. Gib Metcalf makes the case.  (He suggests that club members email their support for higher Pigovian taxes to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility.)
  2. USA Today joins the club.

Monday, July 26, 2010

Academic Studies Support Retaining Examinations

The call by Ministry of Education to abolish UPSR and PMR examinations must not be based on proper quantitative and qualitative studies and not based on unsubstantiated fads or whims of the day

The Ministry of Education is currently studying seriously on the proposal to abolish UPSR and PMR examinations in order to improve the standards of education and to create more “thinking” students rather than those relying purely on 'regurgitation' to pass examinations.

The response from the public and interested parties to date has been generally in favour of such abolition, with some expressing reservation.

I'll like to call upon the Ministry of Education to conduct a more scientific or quantitative study determine the effects of examinations on a student and his or her achievements before taking the hasty and drastic measure of abolishing examinations only to suffer irreversible damage to the quality of our education subsequently.

There are a lot of studies conducted by academics at top universities around the world on the impact of “central exams” and their effects on the educational achievements of the students. Most of these studies however almost always concludes that central examinations have substantial positive impact on the students. The following findings by eminent academics are as follow:


1. “How Central Exams Affect Educational Achievement: International Evidence from TIMSS and TIMSS-Repeat” by Ludger Woessmann (2002) of John F Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

The data used in the paper are sourced from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS; 1994-1995) and the TIMSS-Repeat (1998-1999) covering 40 nations. They include performance data in both math and science for about 450,000 students, as well as background data on families, school resources and institutional setting for individual students, teachers and schools.

This study showed that “students in countries with central exit-exam systems perform 35 to 47 percent of an international standard deviation in test scores better in their middle-school years in both mathematics and science than students in countries without central exams.”


2. “The Effect Of Central Exit Examinations On Student Achievement: Quasi-Experimental Evidence From TIMSS Germany” by Hendrik Jürges & Kerstin Schneider & Felix Büchel, 2003.

This paper makes use of the regional variation in schooling legislation within the German secondary education system to estimate the effect of central exit examinations on student performance. The study concluded that “students in federal states with central exit examinations clearly outperform students in other federal states” although they did qualify that part of the difference could be attributable to other factors.


3. “Are National Exit Examinations Important for Educational Efficiency?” by John H. Bishop (1999), Cornell University

Students in countries with national exit exams exams tend to outperform students in other countries in science, math, reading, and geography, when national economic development levels are accounted for.

A study of the elimination of the Swedish exit examination system in the 1970s, in combination with changes in the way university applicants were selected, also “appears to have led to a decline in the number of upper secondary school students taking rigorous courses in mathematics and science.”

This study covered extensively data sourced from (i) TIMSS, (ii) the reading literacy of 14 year olds in the International Association of the Evaluation of Educational Achievement's (IEA) Reading Study, Science, (iii) math and geography scores of 13 year olds on the International Assessment of Educational Progress (IAEP) for 16 nations and (iv) Science and math scores of 13 year olds in nine Canadian provinces.


4. “The Effect of National Standard and Curriculum-Based Exams on Achievement” by John H. Bishop (1997)

In this study, Bishop concluded that “our review of the evidence suggests that the claims of the advocates of standards and examination based reform of American secondary education my be right. The countries and Canadian provinces with such system outperform other countries at comparable levels of development.

This study also looked at the (i) TIMSS data, (ii) the International Assessment of Educational Progress 1991 covering 15 nations including England, Switzerland, Taiwan and Korea and (iii) the Canada IAEP 1990-91 with data from more than 1,400 schools.


Studies which provides contrary conclusions are few and far in between and often focuses on the negative impact of excessive stress on a student while accepting that a moderate amount of stress for the students is beneficial in terms of student achievement.

Given the above studies, I'll like to reiterate my earlier assertion that it is the nature of examinations and teaching methods which will determine the quality of student achievements and not the fact as to whether examinations are abolished.

Even if the UPSR and PMR is abolished, but the nature of the Form 5 SPM examination as well as the teaching methods and quality remains unchanged, then the student output from our education system will remain little changed from what it is today. In fact, the removal of examinations may disincentivise students, particularly from the lower income groups as well as from families with lower educational qualifications to fare worse than before due to the lack of uniform achievement standards.