The Vanishing American Technology Jobs Report Bush Sought to Bury

So much disinformation about America's competitiveness has been written. Those of us who work in high-technology have long known and suffered a degrading reality, American hi-tech jobs are being frittered away overseas and to ultra-rich international interests who own the current American political system.

The House Democrats have finally revealed the contents of a report that exposed the truth.

Why's it important here you might ask? The answer is that the American Public School system has been wrongly blamed for America's failure to compete. When the political system is corrupt, American workers don't stand a chance.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in Connecticut where many of us pray for the day politicians like Rob Simmons and Joe Lieberman are shown the door.

Recently, however, offshoring has begun to strike at the very high-tech jobs that we believed U.S. workers would move to fill as blue-collar opportunities shifted to other countries. A Cable News Network report in early March 2006 noted that 500,000 American jobs have migrated to India in recent years. That number is expected to triple in the next two years as American companies seek to cuts costs and streamline business. India is but one example of a country that seems to be gaining employment at the expense of American workers. Over the last six years, the U.S. has lost just under 3 million jobs due to offshoring.

Now, we are witnessing software engineering, computer design, research and development, radiology, architecture and design and other high-value-added positions moving offshore to low-wage markets such as India, China, Ireland, and Brazil.

For the past two years, Science Committee Democrats tried to get specific details and information from Federal experts on this alarming trend. Our efforts were met with resistance, stonewalled by Federal agencies, and a lack of the Committee's traditional bipartisan cooperation. The Federal Government did the research, taxpayers paid for the report and the Technology Administration produced its analysis and findings, yet the Administration buried the truth in rhetoric. Democrats wanted the data, and finally got it.

Click the title link for the whole shameless story.

Free Software: Zone Alarm

Protecting PCs from the bad guys is a non-trivial exercise. Spam, malwares, and dozens of viruses and whatnot are all widely circulated thanks to our teenagers engaging in indiscriminate web-surfing activities. It certainly happens in my household and I'm sure other parents and interested parties will know what I speak of.

Zone Alarm is a highly reviewed [though not infallible] tool that can help prtect you. Use it with one of my recommended anti-virus packages [search 'free' on this blog].

Desciption from CNET site:

ZoneAlarm is designed to protect your DSL- or cable-connected PC from hackers. This program includes four interlocking security services: a firewall, an application control, an Internet lock, and Zones. The firewall controls the door to your computer and allows only traffic you understand and initiate. The application control allows you to decide which applications can and cannot use the Internet. The Internet lock blocks Internet traffic while your computer is unattended or while you're not using the Internet, and it can be activated automatically with your computer's screensaver or after a set period of inactivity. Zones monitor all activity on your computer and alert you when a new application attempts to access the Internet. Version 6.5.722 removes McAfee installation gate and fixes an update problem with LastWriteTime.

Note:ZoneAlarm is free for individual and not-for-profit charitable entity use (excluding governmental entities and educational institutions).

Holier than Thou

I've been advocating that Connecticut schools be allowed to use blogging technology for some time now. My basic thesis is that teachers can blog the daily assignments for students [on some periodic basis] giving students and parents an exact idea of what the students are responsible for. And maybe class notes as well.

The very nice by-product of this is that students who are sick can keep up online.

But the second by-product is that when schools close for snow days or whatever reason, students and teachers can attend a school day virtually.

The only make-up days that need to be made up are days where there's no internet connection available.

But the real point I'm coming to is this, Yahoo just ran an article on the difficulty of scheduling. Parents, teachers, and everyone else want some certainty about vacation time and so on. Moving toward virtual makeup days make more personal choice possible.

Here's a sample of School schedules try to respect all faiths By Cara Anna, Associated Press Writer

It can get complicated. When Muslims in the Tampa Bay region of Florida asked for a day off to celebrate the end of Ramadan, another local religious group perked up.

"There was discussion in the Hindu community if we should also push for a holiday," said Nikhil Joshi, a board member of the national Hindu American Foundation.

The Hillsborough County school board responded by ending days off for all religious holidays. The move inspired more than 3,500 e-mails. Christian leaders pleaded for the Muslim holiday. Finally, the district restored this fall's original calendar, with days off for Good Friday, Easter Monday and the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur.

The Muslim community was relieved it hadn't hurt other faiths. The Hindu community decided not to ask for days off.

"You would hope in a country of religious freedom all would be recognized, but we know that's not practical," Joshi said.

School districts say they can't take days off for purely religious reasons, but they can act if they think operations are affected by students or staff taking the day off.

That practice gives school holidays a certain regional flair. Some schools close for the beginning of hunting season. San Francisco schools have Cesar Chavez Day on March 30 to celebrate farmworkers, and Chicago schools have March 5 to honor Casimir Pulaski, a Polish count who helped the American side in the Revolutionary War.

Religion is more sensitive. Some districts mark "special observance days" when no test or exam can be scheduled. Other districts find inspiration in the business world — each student gets a number of "floating" days to celebrate his or her own holidays with an excused absence.

"'Choose your own holiday' has become more popular," said Kathryn Lohre, assistant director of Harvard University's Pluralism Project, which studies diversity in religion. "It takes pressure off the school boards."

New Jersey's board of education now lists 76 excused religious holidays, from Russian Orthodox to Sikh. New York City schools are even more flexible. Students with a letter from parents get an excused absence for a holiday in any religion.

Some have tried the traditional route of schoolwide holidays, and failed. In Ohio, the Sycamore Community School District once canceled classes on the Jewish High Holy Days after some parents asked why schools closed on Good Friday. Muslim and Hindu parents then asked why they didn't get days off. The
American Civil Liberties Union sued the district.

The case was settled in 2000, and the High Holy Days became school days again.

Sensitivity, Sensibility, and Scumpunks

In today's Courant EngleHart published this cartoon and some commentary.

I pity the white urban teachers of today. They have to be part lawyer, part linguist and part multicultural education professor. The white teacher in Hartford who was charged with cultural insensitivity –– God how I hate that term –– in the first degree must call to mind the adage, "No good deed shall go unpunished."

When I read the comments from the UConn Neag School of Education multicultural professor –– who must be a perfect specimen of a human being –– I almost fell off my chair laughing. "Teachers have to create room for kids to express their own identity in a way that's meaningful" and then he ended his little lecture with a dig about white teachers living in the white suburbs.

I do want to thank him –– or her –– I wouldn't want to be culturally insensitive. Perfesser Perfect's PC gibberish formed today's cartoon in an instant. Word, dawg.

The whole episode sounds to me like another good reason to have uniforms AND STANDARDS of appearance in the public schools.

I have given many classroom talks in Hartford schools and it makes me angry to see so many good kids starved for knowledge being overshadowed by the few scumpunks who steal all the attention. Being a white man, can I say scumpunks, Perfessser Perfect? I made up the word. It's culturally inclusive.

The object of Englehart's is this story called, A Classroom Divide by Rachel Gottlieb. It is loaded with a powderkeg of oh-so-sensitive topics.

The boy, 13-year-old Jose Velez, accused his math teacher in a letter to school officials of using the word "faggot" during a discussion of Velez's appearance. The teacher, 49-year-old Robert Williams, vehemently denies using any slurs.

And of course a UConn sensitivity trainer responds,

This sort of conflict, Irizarry and Coleman said, shows why it is critical for urban districts to train their teachers to be culturally sensitive, even those who have been in classrooms for decades.

"I don't think this is an isolated incident. Things like this happened to me when I was growing up," Irizarry said. "This has to be put in its historical context. You're not just teaching kids, you're teaching kids in a specific context. Teachers have to create room for kids to express their own identity in a way that's meaningful."

Irizarry encourages urban districts to evaluate their history, art, literature and music curriculums to ensure they reflect subjects that are relevant to minority students; increase the recruitment and retention of minority teachers; use students as guides for some professional development in cultural sensitivity; and encourage teachers to attend some church services, walk the streets and shop in the area where they teach.

"If you're going to work in these communities, it's about more than what you need to know, it's about who you want to be. It's a lifestyle choice," Irizarry said. "Teachers have to want to cross these boundaries. You cannot become culturally connected from the cheap seats in the suburbs."

What Irazzary fails to mention is that the New York Times ran an editorial weeks ago by a scholar who asserts that it is precisely the culture of poverty, gangs, and lifestyle that is frustrating the assimilation of the poor into a generally welcoming society.

And students complaining about the insensitivity of teachers conveniently fail to mention that gay bashing, in your face n*g*r speech, and other exotic, inflammatory language are all perfectly acceptable vernaculars in their "own identity".

Forgive me for being verbose but here's a cheap seat suburban "gay" story.

A few years ago, my son returned home with an elementary school assignment and he was flustered, really bent out of shape.

What's the assignment?

I have to write a paper on what 'gay' means and I looked it up on the internet during study hall and found these disgusting pictures. The teacher in study hall wants to discipline me for looking up dirty pictures.

Needless to say my wife and I went ballistic. What the hell are they thinking? We don't want our kids bashing gays however, we don't want them looking up the subject on the internet, and why is this a school project?

It turns out that my son and his friends were wise-cracking in class using the word gay to describe the actions of some other kid in class. The teacher rightfully put a stop to that dialogue and lectured them that gay was a lifestyle choice and that the boys using it as a slur was wrong and furthermore they should know what it really means and so on.

So this teacher naively asked my son to "look it up and write a paper on it" probably expecting my son to come home discuss the incident and write under our supervision.

Instead, to avoid admitting his duplicity, my son dutifully used his studyhall time to "look it up". The internet is unkind for this kind of research. My son was shaken by the porn he found, the study hall teacher shocked, and we were all fuming.

It all got straightened out in the end. There are no educational villans but the lesson for everyone involved was that everything is complex these days and its easy to get it wrong. And those who get it wrong aren't evil, they're just human, like me and you and that teacher and students in Hartford and in the cheap seats.

Can We Declare a War on Stupidity Please

Godfrey Daniels! What is the legislature thinking about? Today's Courant informs us that thanks to the ethical lapses of the Rowland/Rell administration, new ethical guidelines were developed to prevent the ethically challenged politicians from accepting gifts like jacuzzis for their cottages.

Thanks to the genius of our CT lawmakers this law seems to include the elimination of corporate technology gifts to schools. Where do these Homers come from? Honestly. Does anyone in the State House use their heads?

People, get out and vote on August 8.

Ethics Rules May Hurt Schools
State Agency Asked To Clarify Law Restricting Gifts
July 21, 2006
By ROBERT A. FRAHM, Courant Staff Writer

According to an opinion issued by the Office of State Ethics, the law bans all gifts to state agencies from donors or companies who pay for registered lobbyists or who seek to do business with the agencies. That includes many major corporations in the state.

The law does not apply to local school districts, but it does affect the technical high school system, for example, because of its status as a state institution.

The issue prompted a letter to the ethics office this week from State Board of Education Chairman Allan Taylor, who sought clarification on the new law.

Taylor cited the technical high school system as an example, saying it relies on gifts ranging from scholarships sponsored by Northeast Utilities to a recent $141,000 donation of heating and air-conditioning equipment from a group of companies including Carrier Corp.

Taylor also mentioned the $25,000 from financial services company ING that pays for the state's annual teacher of the year recognition ceremony and helps send the winning teacher to a national reception in Washington, D.C., and conferences in Texas and Alabama.

Although such gifts were acceptable in the past, state-operated schools and prospective donors can expect that future donations will be subject to a case-by-case review, said Meredith Trimble, director of education for the Office of State Ethics.

"Their concern is legitimate," she said.

"It's just pretty clear the way the statute is written. If they are a regulated donor and what they provide is a gift to the state - from a fax machine to cash to free training - it is no longer permissible."

The new rules could hinder efforts to forge ties between schools and businesses, some officials say.

"I don't think this was the intent" of the law, said Rachel Rubin, an expert on ethics who reviews compliance issues for the University of Connecticut. "We have a mandate to raise private money. It kind of puts us in a Catch-22."

NEA's Jonathan Kozol interview

“I’m going to encourage teachers...to speak out politically, to rise up and protest, not only against this testing madness...but also about the perpetual separation of our children so they don’t know each other any longer in America.”
—Jonathan Kozol

Kozol is one of my heroes from college. When I was studying teaching and education "Death at an Early Age" was one of the first books I read on the subject. I've never forgotten it.

In this interview, Kozol talks about Teacher Power. Teachers need to start speaking out and flexing their muscles on behalf of curriculum and innovation for everyone's sake.

February 2006, Teacher Power, Jonathan Kozol wants to team up with NEA in a new movement to banish ‘apartheid schooling.’

Increasingly, it’s up to NEA and other advocates for the teaching profession, like Kozol, to defend the conditions and job security that make it possible for good teachers to work their magic, and also stave off an onslaught of misguided federal dictates. Dictates like the high-stakes testing craze, which Kozol believes is “not to benefit children but to humiliate the public enterprise in order to set the stage for the voucher program.”

“[The bureaucrats] are so accustomed to making decisions for us, about us, without us, in spite of us, and think that we should follow those dictates and mandates without having anything to say,” NEA President Reg Weaver said to Kozol during a recent meeting in Washington, D.C.

“They don’t give us credit for having the professionalism, the knowledge, the care we must have in our classrooms today for kids.”

“What a way to welcome a teacher to a school system!” said Kozol. “‘Oh, we’re so happy to have you in our school. Here’s a teacher-proof lesson which is so perfect that even you can’t do it wrong.’”

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

The Rolling Stone magazine is running the disturbing speculation that the draft will be making a comeback. This is bad news for all teens.

The Return of the Draft -
With the army desperate for recruits, should college students be packing their bags for Canada? - Rolling Stone

Desperate for troops, the Army has lowered its standards to let in twenty-five percent more high school dropouts, and the Marines are now offering as much as $30,000 to anyone who re-enlists. To understand the scope of the crisis, consider this: The United States is pouring nearly as much money into incentives for new recruits -- almost $300 million -- as it is into international tsunami relief.

"The Army's maxed out here," says retired Gen. Merrill McPeak, who served as Air Force chief of staff under the first President Bush. "The Defense Department and the president seem to be still operating off the rosy scenario that this will be over soon, that this pain is temporary and therefore we'll just grit our teeth, hunker down and get out on the other side of this. That's a bad assumption." The Bush administration has sworn up and down that it will never reinstate a draft. During the campaign last year, the president dismissed the idea as nothing more than "rumors on the Internets" and declared, "We're not going to have a draft -- period." Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in an Op-Ed blaming "conspiracy mongers" for "attempting to scare and mislead young Americans," insisted that "the idea of reinstating the draft has never been debated, endorsed, discussed, theorized, pondered or even whispered by anyone in the Bush administration."

That assertion is demonstrably false. According to an internal Selective Service memo made public under the Freedom of Information Act, the agency's acting director met with two of Rumsfeld's undersecretaries in February 2003 precisely to debate, discuss and ponder a return to the draft. The memo duly notes the administration's aversion to a draft but adds, "Defense manpower officials concede there are critical shortages of military personnel with certain special skills, such as medical personnel, linguists, computer network engineers, etc." The potentially prohibitive cost of "attracting and retaining such personnel for military service," the memo adds, has led "some officials to conclude that, while a conventional draft may never be needed, a draft of men and women possessing these critical skills may be warranted in a future crisis." This new draft, it suggests, could be invoked to meet the needs of both the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security.

The memo then proposes, in detail, that the Selective Service be "re-engineered" to cover all Americans -- "men and (for the first time) women" -- ages eighteen to thirty-four.

Jonathan Kozol on Teacher Power

Jonathan Kozol's NEA interviews are fascinating listening. Also, this an excerpt from his book, The Shame of a Nation to stimulate your intellectual appetite.

Public policy has largely turned its back upon the aspirations represented by these instances of school desegregation. “Even many Black leaders,” notes education analyst Richard Rothstein, weary of the struggle over mandatory busing programs to achieve desegregation, “have given up on integration,” arguing, in his words, that “a Black child does not need white classmates in order to learn.” So education policies, instead, he says, “now aim to raise scores in [the] schools that black children attend.”

“That effort,” he writes, “will be flawed even if it succeeds.” The 1954 decision, he reminds us, “was not about raising scores” for children of minorities “but about giving Black children access to majority culture, so they could negotiate it more confidently. . . . For African-Americans to have equal opportunity, higher test scores will not suffice. It is foolhardy to think Black children can be taught, no matter how well, in isolation and then have the skills and confidence as adults to succeed in a white world where they have no experience.”

Margaret Spellings Dirty Little Secret

There are numerous buried studies that refute the claim that America's schools represent a threat to our ability to globally compete or that our children are suffering some kind of miseducation at the hands of incompetent fools. They never get the traction they deserve because bad press about school performance is main stream media's (MSM) party line. It sells.

And, of course, the Departments of Education at the Federal and State levels genuflect and defer to the political impetus to promote these kinds of fallacies. But truth is a funny thing. The right-wing fanaticism about school performance is starting to be exposed for what it is and always was - bullshit.

This from the New York Times article, Public Schools Perform Near Private Ones in Study by DIANA JEAN SCHEMO.

The report, which compared fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math scores in 2003 from nearly 7,000 public schools and more than 530 private schools, found that fourth graders attending public school did significantly better in math than comparable fourth graders in private schools. Additionally, it found that students in conservative Christian schools lagged significantly behind their counterparts in public schools on eighth-grade math.

The study, carrying the imprimatur of the National Center for Education Statistics, part of the Education Department, was contracted to the Educational Testing Service and delivered to the department last year.

It went through a lengthy peer review and includes an extended section of caveats about its limitations and calling such a comparison of public and private schools “of modest utility.”

Its release, on a summer Friday, was made with without a news conference or comment from Education Secretary Margaret Spellings.

Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association, the union for millions of teachers, said the findings showed that public schools were “doing an outstanding job” and that if the results had been favorable to private schools, “there would have been press conferences and glowing statements about private schools.”

“The administration has been giving public schools a beating since the beginning” to advance its political agenda, Mr. Weaver said, of promoting charter schools and taxpayer-financed vouchers for private schools as alternatives to failing traditional public schools.

Something that this report hints at is that "The report separated private schools by type and found that among private school students, those in Lutheran schools performed best, while those in conservative Christian schools did worst."

I cannot help but wonder whether or not the complaints coming from Colleges and Universities about the need for remedial courses in reading and math are in fact an indictment of public school graduates and not more specifically certain private school graduate clusters pulling down public school graduate's accomplishments.

The Time for Virtual Makeup Days is Here

The latest War in the Middle East will dramatically affect the cost of busing school children in the coming school years. It is time for the Department of Education to recognise the need to allow school districts to implement online, virtual school days for any and all make-up days schools miss during the course of a year.

The link takes you to my original proposal for virtual make-up days.

Here's Juan Cole's speculation of what may be on the immediate horizon:

Is the Arab Spring turning to Dust under Israeli Bombardment?

Petroleum hit $76.70 a barrel on Thursday, a record high price, in reaction to the new Middle East crisis. (Though in real terms, the 1980 post-Iranian revolution crisis price was probably $80 a barrel in today's dollars). To those of you in the Gen-X and younger generations, let me welcome you to the late 1970s. The only pleasures of that day of which you are now denied are standing in long lines just to fill up your tank and stagflation or combined high inflation with economic stagnation. If George W. Bush's wise stewardship of the world continues in this brilliant fashion, you may yet have those joys, as well.

Gary Hart's assessment is here;

We have some lessons in democracy to be learned here at home. Democracy does not work without accountability. Today there is no accountability in American democracy.

On the other hand, perhaps there will be in 2006 and 2008...if the Democrats recapture conviction and courage.

p.s. And, by the way, how do you like $4 a gallon gasoline?

Republican Scheme that "Mortgages Black People"

As everyone should well know, politicians like Rob Simmons who receive dubious sources of funding from lobbyists who suddenly come under judicial scrutiny magnanimously -cough- "donate to charities".

It is unclear how pervasive the following scheme became but how can any American not find these ideas despicable. But aside from the obvious new political low that something like this may appear, it is precisely why education continues to scream with glaring gaps in achievement. The poor and minority populations remain hostage to politicians who want little more than to exploit them.

Read and weep if you have any tears left.

Ralph Reed Allegedly Mulled ‘Mortgaging Black People’

Only Senator Dodd didn’t go along with the plan. In fact, he was mightily pissed his good name had gotten dragged into such a scam, a point he made quite clear during an Indian Affairs Committee hearing.

The failed con took more than a year to play out, by which time the Tiguas were pretty much broke. So Abramoff came up with a way for his marks to continue paying him: the Tigua Elder Legacy Project. Abramoff would arrange, at no cost to the tribe, a life-insurance policy for every Tigua 75 or older. When those elders died, the death benefits would be paid to Eshkol Academy, a private school Abramoff had founded near Washington. Eshkol, in turn, would then pay Abramoff’s fee to continue lobbying on behalf of the surviving Tiguas. Morbid opportunism disguised as charity: Each dead Tigua would be cash in the lobbyist’s pocket.

The Tiguas declined the offer. “It felt uncomfortable,” a Tigua official told the Senate committee last November.

The Tigua-death-fund offer had been made in March 2003. Four months later, Abramoff was pitching Reed—his connection to Christians—the Black Churches Insurance Program. There was only one difference: It would be huge, to use Abramoff’s word.

“Yeah,” a former associate of Reed’s says, “it sounds like Jack approached Reed about mortgaging old black people.”

Can the Dept of Education Bureaucrats Be Taught to Respect School Districts?

I can't resist. I came across an article that I ignored for days because it sounded ridiculous but it kept on showing up as a most popular story at the New York Times. It's hilarious and true.

When I was studying for my education certification at Doane College so many years ago, we read B. F. Skinner that dealt with behavior modification techniques that could be applied to classroom discipline situations. I had always had an ethical dilemna about the potential abuse of this stuff but it does work.

In any case, as I read this rediscovery of an ancient art piece I was idly wondering to myself if the BOE members could somehow use it to train politicians to stop passing stupid education legislation and so on. See what you think.

Modern Love: What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage
by AMY SUTHERLAND, published: June 25, 2006 in the New York Times

The exotic animal known as Scott is a loner, but an alpha male. So hierarchy matters, but being in a group doesn't so much. He has the balance of a gymnast, but moves slowly, especially when getting dressed. Skiing comes naturally, but being on time does not. He's an omnivore, and what a trainer would call food-driven.

Once I started thinking this way, I couldn't stop. At the school in California, I'd be scribbling notes on how to walk an emu or have a wolf accept you as a pack member, but I'd be thinking, "I can't wait to try this on Scott."

On a field trip with the students, I listened to a professional trainer describe how he had taught African crested cranes to stop landing on his head and shoulders. He did this by training the leggy birds to land on mats on the ground. This, he explained, is what is called an "incompatible behavior," a simple but brilliant concept.

Rather than teach the cranes to stop landing on him, the trainer taught the birds something else, a behavior that would make the undesirable behavior impossible. The birds couldn't alight on the mats and his head simultaneously.

At home, I came up with incompatible behaviors for Scott to keep him from crowding me while I cooked. To lure him away from the stove, I piled up parsley for him to chop or cheese for him to grate at the other end of the kitchen island. Or I'd set out a bowl of chips and salsa across the room. Soon I'd done it: no more Scott hovering around me while I cooked.

I followed the students to SeaWorld San Diego, where a dolphin trainer introduced me to least reinforcing syndrome (L. R. S.). When a dolphin does something wrong, the trainer doesn't respond in any way. He stands still for a few beats, careful not to look at the dolphin, and then returns to work. The idea is that any response, positive or negative, fuels a behavior. If a behavior provokes no response, it typically dies away.

In the margins of my notes I wrote, "Try on Scott!"

It was only a matter of time before he was again tearing around the house searching for his keys, at which point I said nothing and kept at what I was doing. It took a lot of discipline to maintain my calm, but results were immediate and stunning. His temper fell far shy of its usual pitch and then waned like a fast-moving storm. I felt as if I should throw him a mackerel.

Hurray! Holly Nelson and Bing Xu won the duct tape competition!!!

Now if we can only figure out how to get them out of those outfits...

Lieberman is Poster Boy for Dysfunctional Politicians

In the recent debate between Ned Lamont and Lieberman, only Lamont talked about education with any conviction. We should be thankful for that. Education suffers the same fate in Washington that ecological issues, social security, and healthcare do. Far too much sloganeering, sugar-coated platitudes, and disingenuous concern plague all these important discussions.

The Main Stream Media (MSM) is catching up and finally giving us some straight talk. This should be a belated education for Lieberman and the legion of Democrats and Republicans who play blind, deaf and dumb with their constituencies.

Joe Conaston's Lieberman Misses Point of Opponents
tells us a lot about being dysfunctional to a constituency (click title link for the entire piece).

After 18 years in the Senate, his fervent insistence that he is a lifelong devotee of “progressive causes” and his endorsement by major liberal organizations only seem to mask his accommodation with Washington’s conservative status quo.

Mr. Lieberman dutifully recites his opposition to “tax cuts for the rich” and “privatizing Social Security,” and his support of “universal health insurance” and “affordable health care.” When he utters those phrases, unfortunately, they ring hollow to many rank-and-file Democrats.

Actually, the syndrome afflicting him is found among entrenched veterans of both parties, especially those who appear more concerned with connections and contributions than values or ideals.

Lieberman's Real Problem by Harold Meyerson (Washington Post) is equally blunt.

No great mystery enshrouds the challenge to Lieberman, nor is the campaign of his challenger, Ned Lamont, a jihad of crazed nit-pickers. Lieberman has simply and rightly been caught up in the fundamental dynamics of Politics 2006, in which Democrats are doing their damnedest to unseat all the president's enablers in this year's elections. As well, Lieberman's broader politics are at odds with those of his fellow Northeastern Democrats. He is not being opposed because he doesn't reflect the views of his Democratic constituents 100 percent of the time. He is being opposed because he leads causes many of them find repugnant.

Education and dialogues about education have suffered dangerously under Bush and his enablers and the voters know this. They know it on a host of issues. Voters are hurting.

But so are schools and our children. If you care about anything other than money, vote differently on August 8 and in November. Don't send messages to the Statehouse or Washington - send new, competent representatives.

It's in your hands.

Free Software: A Graphical Math Calculator, Ump

From the site:

Ump is a graphical, easy to use math program, which works with complex numbers, matrices, functions and much more.
Ump is released under the terms of Gnu GPL.

Peter Tork Keeps Getting Rave Reviews

I wrote a short review of Peter's one man concert that benefitted Joshua's Trust. I received yet another very nice reply that confirms how well liked Peter's latest venture is.

I'll try to get a sample of Colleen's review. Citilife's link is here.

The Political Spin on the Boy/Girl "Crisis"

A college professor [identified as amike] of 34 years experience wrote the following observations. I cite them because in reading the literature there is a weary, predictable redundancy in complaints about what entering freshmen know and don't know.

The pretention of academics is simply overbearing when it comes to pointing out their perceived deficiencies of youth. These observations are more interesting because of the gender context.

Unspoken in any of these discussions is a factoid about college that a guidance counselor tipped me off to. Today's college graduates are taking longer to graduate by two years. These days a typical graduate will spend six years getting what used to be a four-year degree. This comes as a shock to me and other parents as well.

But here's the gender divide observations. See what you think.

I've been in the ed biz for 34 years now, and I am really curious to see how this chain develops. Those of on the faculty side of the desk are stuck (this is not a complaint) with what comes in the door on the first day of class. I haven't tried to tally the changes over the last 30 years, save the students of the millennium generation (is that what we're supposed to call them?) are a tad more docile than the students I first taught during the tail end of the Viet Nam war. Here's a couple of observations, and I'm wondering if they tally with any other faculty who may drop by to comment here. First...let me say that I teach undergraduates exclusively, in History and American Studies, and about 60/40 per cent general education requirement students (the havetas) and 40 per cent majors (the wantas)

Observations without proof:

* Men do less well in the required courses than women do. They're less willing to devote time to things they're made to study, and more vocally resentful of the idea of required courses.

* Women do better on collaborative work then men do. They're more group oriented in the ways they interact. They're more willing to assist each other and more subtle about making sure the members of the group pull their weight.

* Women are more willing to make use of academic resources available to them: tutors, the learning center, and faculty office hours. Men, especially men who have diagnosed learning disorders (such as dyslexia) are far less likely to avail themselves of the assistance available to them by law. They feel, somehow, that asking for help is a sign of weakness, and they'll take a lower grade rather than show that particular sign.

* Among the average students (we get those, and I rather like working with those) men are more likely to ask questions related to technical issues (how long, does it have to be typed) and women are more likely to ask clarification questions...what do you mean by. . .

* Neither sex handles the written language well. They handle it worse, if anything, than students did thirty years ago. Neither seems to think that grammar matters, or that clothing what they think in powerful language is important.

* Women are more vocal than they were twenty years ago. Neither sex is as vocal as it was thirty years ago. Neither sex is as willing to contradict faculty positions or risk being wrong as the best students were when I began my career. Some of my colleagues breathe a sigh of relief about this. I rather miss the fracases into which some class sessions developed.

All in all, I wish my students worried less about what I thought and more about what they thought. I can see why Americans have been so passive regarding power structures in general and government in particular. Perhaps the one thing good which might develop out of the current national situation is the reawakening of youthful anger.

Mike

Science Lab Safety

Students should always keep in mind that wearing a lab coat and safety glasses are important equipment in keeping themselves safe.

Arresting Teens, Heavy-handed Discipline

I was watching C-Span the other night. It was a show about a recently published book called Tiger Force. During the Vietnam War, Tiger Force was a special ops military unit that was off the books. And for a period of years it was out of control as well with unit members performing heinous war crimes in Vietnam.

The authors concluded that the behavior was a direct result of negligent and unethical supervision by the superior officers. One of the comments about a soldier, a California surfer, who was intimidated into killing a prisoner in cold blood remains in my head screaming for resolution. The authors went on to say that once he had committed that murder the rest of the horrible things he would do followed with an easy discompassion. Once a certain line is crossed there's little more to regret.

In just the past few weeks I have read numerous stories from many states about police intervening in teenage high school activities. Today the police are no longer the friendly neighborhood watchmen of the past. With the ratcheting up of tensions thanks to the political commercialization of terrorism, police no longer exercise patience, understanding, nor do they dismiss teenaged behavior with a stern warning.

More disconcertingly, school officials in far too many CT school districts seem to play the police card casually as though teenagers are somehow hardened criminals deserving a rough time.

I offer the following links to some very disturbing incidents that bring into question the quality of educational administration.

Read here and here to get a flavor of what's going on.

I have no doubt that there are times where police involvement is absolutely necessary but it seems to me that society needs to begin thinking about staffing community relations specialists who can act as para-professional police authorities who are less likely to over-react to teens and children misbehaving.

And it would be nice if school administrators used better judgment as well.

Hurray! Microsoft to Support Open Document Formats

This is very good news indeed. Far too many school districts are in love with spending taxpayer money needlessly on vendor-specific products usually to the detriment of the community.

Now, even districts who think they're using superior vendor products because it costs money will no longer be able to force teachers, parents, and students to go out and buy that product just to be able to keep themselves from looking poor.

Here's the news announcement;

Microsoft to Support OpenDocument by Nate Mook, BetaNews, July 6, 2006, 2:19 AM

Although it was reported in May that the OpenDocument Foundation was working on a compatibility plug-in, Microsoft's decision to spearhead the effort is quite an about-face for the Redmond company. OpenDocument has become a thorn in Microsoft's side, with a number of governments looking to move to standardized document formats.

The release of OpenOffice.org 2.0 finally provided a viable and free alternative to Microsoft's ubiquitous Office suite, as well as bringing OpenDocument into the limelight. ODF is backed by the OASIS standards body and was certified by the International Standards Organization (ISO). The state of Massachusetts turned up the heat last September, announcing plans to switch to ODF and OpenOffice.org by January 1, 2007.

Microsoft responded to the public pressure by developing its own Open XML formats, which it has submitted to European standards body Ecma for certification. The company has long said it would not support OpenDocument, claiming a lack of interest from customers and noting the necessity for backwards compatibility with older Microsoft Office versions.

However, Microsoft is now acknowledging the importance of interoperability and says it wants to make choice an option for its customers.

"We believe that Open XML meets the needs of millions of organizations for a new approach to file formats, so we are sharing it with the industry by submitting it, with others, to become a worldwide standard," said Microsoft XML architect Jean Paoli. "Yet it is very important that customers have the freedom to choose from a range of technologies to meet their diverse needs."

By providing a downloadable add-in that enables customers to import OpenDocument files and export to the format, Microsoft is also making Office 2007 a possibility for businesses and governments like Massachusetts that do opt to switch to ODF. But the translation will not be seamless, the company concedes.

The OpenOffice suite of tools can be downloaded free from here.

Uncle Sam: Pre-Teen Predator?

A disturbing article from the Associated Press indicates that the latest issue of Cobblestone magazine is little more than a military propaganda piece. This goes hand-in-hand with other military recruitment efforts aimed at children too young to realize they're irrevocably signing up to perform military service.

Why these practices of targeting immature and unwitting children to be persuaded to make life choices before they are old enough to make those choices is inexplicable and irresponsible on the government's part.

From: Preteen Mag Accused of Military Pitching, by the Associated Press, Published: July 3, 2006, New York Times

Most controversial has been a set of classroom guides that accompany the magazine, which suggest teachers invite a soldier, Army recruiter or veteran to speak to their classes and ask students whether they might want to join the Army someday.

One of the teaching guides -- written by Mary Lawson, a teacher in Saint Cloud., Fla. -- suggests having students write essays pretending they are going to join the Army: ''Have them decide which career they feel they would qualify for and write a paper to persuade a recruiter why that should be the career.''

This magazine's editors can claim responsibility all they like but the fact of the matter is that the government should have a much more restrictive policy about who they're recruiting. The editors fail to explain why military recruitment is suddenly such a compelling topic for young teens.

Nor do they bother to mention new recruitment programs aimed at younger and younger adolescents.

Nor is this as innocent as it may seem. Insidious is our vocabulary word of the day.

Cheap Thrills

Use the link to play an ant game. Using the cursor click a morsel of food into the ant's sandbox.

Just something to do on a hot summer day.

Region 19 Needs a Federal Lobbyist

No wonder we're not being served in Washington. We aren't greasing the wheels enough. As a liberal I'm for lowering the cost of government and returning the money to the taxpayers. But as you can see from this New York Times piece, municipalities are helping themselves to slovenly excessive helpings of tax dollars. All kinds of subsidies, public works pork-barrel projects, and political schenanighans are being paid for with our hard-earned money.

It looks to be an easy game to play, -cough- political payoffs -cough- I mean, passing the hat around the community to pay off a lobbying firm appears to work quite effectively. In schools we teach that elected government officials are expected to fulfill these duties as part of their official duties, but that's all wrong.

It's pointless to complain. Based on the interactive media chart, Simmons looks to be running a quite an operation in his hometown area. Gee, I thought he was looking out for our interests as well. We aren't on the list though. Do we drop off the money in an unmarked brown paper bag?

Maybe then we'll receive some of those tax dollars back.

Student Testing a National Scam? I'm Shocked!

A nicely written editorial in the New York Times reinforces an ugly truth about schools - they cheat on test results. They fudge, dodge, cheat, and do whatever they can to avoid responsibility. Sounds a lot like the Bush administration.

We get lectured every other day about this stuff so we're all deaf to it. For the historical record, here's a dose of truth. I'm bolding the elephant in the living room.

Editorial, New York Times, The School Testing Dodge, published: July 2, 2006.

Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), a research institute run jointly by Stanford and the University of California, showed that in many states students who performed brilliantly on state tests scored dismally on the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is currently the strongest, most well-respected test in the country.

The study analyzed state-level testing practices from 1992 to 2005. It found that many states were dumbing down their tests or shifting the proficiency targets in math and reading, creating a fraudulent appearance of progress and making it impossible to tell how well students were actually performing.

Not all states have tried to evade the truth. The tests in Massachusetts, for example, yield performance results that are reasonably close to the federal standard. Not so for states like Oklahoma, where the score gap between state and federal tests has averaged 48 points in reading and 60 points in math, according to the PACE report. The states that want to mislead the government — and their own residents — use a variety of dodges, including setting passing scores low, using weak tests and switching tests from year to year to prevent unflattering comparisons over time. These strategies become transparent when the same students who perform so well on state tests do poorly on the more rigorous federal exam. Most alarming of all, the PACE study finds that the gap between student reading performance on the state and federal tests has actually grown wider over time — which suggests that claims of reading progress in many states are in fact phony.

John Kerry on Net Neutrality

From [in part];

Stopping the Big Giveaway - by John Kerry

Editor’s Note: The following is a guest blog for SavetheInternet.com by Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.):

I voted against this lousy bill for two reasons: because net neutrality and internet build-out are crucial to building a more modern and fair Information Society, and both were pushed aside by the Republicans.

Everyone says they don’t want the new world we’re living in to be marked by the digital divide — the term is so clichéd it’s turned to mush — but yesterday was a test of who is willing to ask corporate America to do anything to fix it, and the Commerce Committee failed miserably. Why are United States Senators afraid to say that companies should be expected to foster growth by building out their broadband networks to increase access?

Free and open access to the internet is something all Americans should enjoy, regardless of what financial means they’re born into or where they live. It is profoundly disappointing that the Senate is going let a handful of companies hold internet access hostage by legalizing the cherry-picking of cable service providers and new entrants. That is a dynamic that would leave some communities with inferior service, higher cable rates, and even the loss of service. Not to mention inadequate internet service — in the age of the information.

This bill was passed in committee over our objections. Now we need to fight to either fix it or kill it in the full Senate. Senator Wyden has already drawn a line in the sand — putting a “hold” on the bill, which prevents it from going forward for now. But there will be a day of reckoning on this legislation soon, make no mistake about it, and we need you to get engaged — pressure your Senators, follow the issue, demand net neutrality and build-out.

Enough said.

School 2.0; Confront the Boy's Education Crisis

We're being lied to again. It matters very little. In the reign of terror that the Bush administration has been, few people care. Politicians believe that Americans will believe anything because we so often do.

For instance, the other day Joe Lieberman accused Ned Lamont of being a Republican! Could Lewis Carroll have written anything more absurd? Yet, we are daily bombarded with news that 40 years ago would have been described as nothing less than a bad acid trip requiring psychiatric observation. Today, this is typical Fox/MSM news - nothing shocks, nothing is obscene, humiliation is the order of the day.

The other day I posted a study indicating that there was no 'boy crisis' and another indicating what wonderful [by government standards] graduation rates students have today. The pieces smelled funny.

A few months ago the LA Times [as posted here earlier] reported that graduation rates, drop-out rates, and post-secondary statistics were very dubious. First, bad statistics mean trouble for school administrators so excuses like, "the dog ate the data" are not unusual to disguise troubled school practices. Secondly, fudging this data to look better has become a national education priority to artificially prop up the NCLB elixar being shopped by the federal Department of Education.

Let's re-examine whether or not there's an anti-boy bias in education. Click on the title link to read more. Here's a discussion point or two;

The Problem with Boys by Tom Chiarella
Esquire Magazine, July 2006, Volume 146, Issue 1

There's something equally forbidden about arguing the ongoing boys crisis. It's a loser. It doesn't sell. It doesn't translate as much more than a hobbyhorse for conservative think tanks.

But here's the deal if you are a boy in this country right now: You're twice as likely as a girl to be diagnosed with an attention-deficit or learning disorder. You're more likely to score worse on standardized reading and writing tests. You're more likely to be held back in school. You're more likely to drop out of school. If you do graduate, you're less likely to go to college. If you do go to college, you will get lower grades and, once again, you will be less likely to graduate. You'll be twice as likely to abuse alcohol, and until you are twenty-four, you are five times as likely to kill your self. You are more than sixteen times as likely to go to prison.

"As long as ten years ago, we started seeing the data that showed boys were slipping behind," says Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust, an advocacy group for low-income and minority students. "People were still arguing: We don't have a boys problem, we have a girls problem. It just didn't match what these data say. There's still a lot of resistance among rank-and-file educators."

The growing achievement gap between boys and girls has landed in our laps. Fueled by slim percentages in some cases, the numbers are stacking up over time. We're faced with the accrual of a significant population of boys who aren't well prepared for either school or work. "The problem," says Haycock,"is what this will add up to in twenty years."

...and...

In the classroom, there's ample evidence that certain changes could help boys prosper. They like to do their work in bite-sized chunks. They need differing levels of activity, often tied to some element of competition or short-term goal. They tend to gravitate toward nonfiction in their reading—more facts, shorter pieces. They need physical activity, too, up to four recesses a day, to stay focused.

We also have to think about the way boys put the world together outside the classroom. In England, gaps in achievement have been attributed, in part, to what is known as laddishness. Since boys tend to run in packs, their values are defined by the boys who lead them. There's a sort of antiestablishment disaffection passed from boy to boy, a sense that school doesn't matter. Educators there used that pattern as a means to reinvent it. They used intensely focused mentorship, aimed at the pack leaders, to break down these attitudes, cracking into the structures that keep boys distant from school.

Women forced the issue with girls. Men have to do the same with boys. As it is now, men don't even have the language to discuss what it means to be male. Forget the Right and the Left. I am as skeptical of character training, championed by conservatives as the answer to the crisis, as I am scornful of sensitivity training, which put our classrooms in their current posture. We don't need a new orthodoxy. We need a deeper sense of involvement.

Men have to be willing to care about the way boys are being treated, taught, and cared for in this country and advocate for them. Find the books that boys read—they are out there—and make sure they are in the libraries and under the Christmas trees. If the classrooms don't work, men must be in the schools—at the PTA meetings, at parent-teacher conferences, in front of school boards, in classes teaching or just talking about their jobs. Young men, men without children, must take a stake and volunteer to coach, to counsel, to read to kids. You can't wait for fatherhood to hit you in the face. Men whose children are grown must mentor a new generation of children. Select two boys, the ones who need it, the ones you know are hurting. Take a lesson from Joel Klein and convince two more men to do the same. Two more men: That's your assignment.

Go talk to boys. You don't have to use baby talk with them or buy them things. You just have to listen to them. Ask them who they are. The answers they give may not always make sense, but talk to enough of them and you will surely realize that boys themselves are not the problem. And it sure as hell isn't women or girls.

The problem is men.

Powerful stuff. Read the entire article, it is very worthwhile.

Action Alert: Help Preserve Internet Freedom

Wyden to Block Telecom Bill Without Net Neutrality
June 28th, 2006 by tkarr

U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has placed a “hold” on major telecommunications legislation recently approved by the Senate Commerce Committee until clear language is included in the legislation that prevents discrimination in Internet access.

Immediately following the Commerce Committee’s vote against a Net Neutrality amendment, Senator Wyden marched onto the floor of the Senate to demand that the legislation include stronger safeguards against phone and cable company discrimination.

“The major telecommunications legislation reported today by the Senate Commerce Committee is badly flawed,” Wyden told the Senate, according to the transcript of his speech:

“The bill makes a number of major changes in the country’s telecommunications law but there is one provision that is nothing more than a license to discriminate. Without a clear policy preserving the neutrality of the Internet and without tough sanctions against those who would discriminate, the Internet will be forever changed for the worse.”

Click the links to see where you can contact a Senator to advocate for net neutral communications legislation. This is as important as the Bill of Rights. No kidding.

Good News; Only 10% of CT Children Living in Poverty.

Yeah, isn't that great news. The national average of children living in poverty is a whopping 18%.

The good news doesn't end there either. I received a CABE document saying that Connecticut [and you have to be sitting down for this news] passed a new law allowing state funds to be spent to fund NCLB. Can you stand it? That's right, not only are the feds underfunding this steaming pile of legislation but the State of Connecticut has just empowered the feds to further underfund Connecticut schools. Yep, Connecticut already underfunds local school districts but has found money in their magic taxpayer-funded giant wallet to support NCLB.

Now if the State would simply fund the local schools for trivialities like, um, education.

From the Courant;

State's Children Better Off This Year, Study Says, June 27, 2006, By MAYA RAO, Courant Staff Writer

The study reports that 10 percent of children in Connecticut are living in poverty, better than the 11 percent reported last year. The national average is 18 percent.

But 25 percent of Connecticut's children live at income levels that are twice the federal poverty level or less. Even at the higher income level, the families are considered low-income because of Connecticut's high cost of living, Carroll said.

Sue Wilson, a researcher at the Child Health and Development Institute of Farmington, said families in the state generally are not considered self-sufficient until their incomes rise to at least three times the federal poverty level.

"We are a high-income, high-cost state, so the national poverty level is really magnified ... and it falls heavily on families with young children," Wilson said.

I only mention news like this because Joe Lieberman and Rob Simmons contimue to blow smoke up our pant legs about what they've done for Connecticut. With representation like this in Washington, who needs enemies?

And the State legislators need to have their heads examined as well. The teacher's pension fund is being raided, NCLB is being funded but local schools are still begging voters for funding, and tax relief is nowhere in sight.

Hopefully the voters will wake these people up in the coming election.

Beatles Mutation

I don't know who the sacred cowboy is but these tracks are worth a summer vacation listen. File them under musical education. [Click on the link and beware the Blue Meanies]

The Reactionary 'Boy' Crisis?

Just when we thought the education dialogue between government and local school districts couldn't get any more absurd comes this new report that turns everything we worry about on its head. Reading crisis? Math crisis? No.

This generation is smarter and better prepared than their predecessors. I'm not kidding.

Study Casts Doubt On the 'Boy Crisis', Improving Test Scores Cut Into Girls' Lead by Jay Mathews, Washington Post Staff Writer, Monday, June 26, 2006.

According to the report, reading achievement by 9-year-old boys increased 15 points on a 500-point scale between 1971 and 2004, and girls that age increased seven points, remaining five points ahead of boys. Reading achievement for 13-year-olds improved four points for boys and three points for girls, with girls 10 points ahead. Among 17-year-olds, there was almost no change in reading achievement, with girls up one point, boys down one point and girls 14 points ahead.

In mathematics achievement between 1973 and 2004, 9-year-old boys gained 25 points and girls gained 20 points, with boys ending up three points ahead. Thirteen-year-old boys increased 18 points and girls 12 points, with boys three points ahead. Among 17-year-olds, boys lost one point, girls gained four and boys were three points ahead.

The report notes that boys are far more likely to be diagnosed with learning disabilities. Two-thirds of students in special education classes are male. But, it notes, "the number of girls with disabilities has also grown rapidly in recent decades, meaning this is not just a boy issue."

...and...

Some of today's focus on boys might be backlash to legal remedies such as the 1972 Title IX law set up to ensure equality in education for girls, critics say. For several decades, school systems have worked to steer girls into more skilled math and science classes. Now girls in high school appear to be better prepared for college than boys, the report said. But, it adds, both sexes are taking more college-level courses, such as calculus, than ever.

More men are enrolling in college, and the share of men ages 25 to 29 with a college degree, 22 percent, is significantly higher than that of older men. The study did note that women are enrolling and graduating from college at higher rates than men.

The "boy crisis," the report says, has been used by conservative authors who accuse "misguided feminists" of lavishing resources on female students at the expense of males and by liberal authors who say schools are "forcing all children into a teacher-led pedagogical box that is particularly ill-suited to boys' interests and learning styles."

"Yet there is not sufficient evidence -- or the right kind of evidence -- available to draw firm conclusions," the report says. "As a result, there is a sort of free market for theories about why boys are underperforming girls in school, with parents, educators, media, and the public choosing to give credence to the explanations that are the best marketed and that most appeal to their pre-existing preferences."

It occurs to me that legal mandates like Title IX, NCLB, and others are historical artifacts that do more to distort education, parents, and children than they do to remedy whatever perceived social ill they're intended to resolve. Education needs a break from the manufactured issues that currently pollute our understanding of how children learn.

Up by 40 Points, Time for the Full Court Press

My son plays summer league basketball and he and the rest of the EO Smith squad enjoy it for what it is - an opportunity to play together, get some exercise, and hopefully hone some skills as a team.

But last night only five players showed up meaning there were no substitutions available. Usually this is a good thing. The fellows who show up get the minutes they each want. And it's a great opportunity to show what you can do.

But last night Windsor's team showed up with ten players, enough to substitute every player so that the player was fresh every five minutes. Again, no big deal.

But by five minutes into the game Windsor pressed EO and by that time the lead was commanding and would do nothing but increase all game long. The final score was a fifty point differential.

By the end of the game I was curious as to the number of fouls each team had committed because Windsor had run the full court press against EO SMith the entire game even after a comfortable and insurmountable lead.

In my book this is unethical and unconscionable and quite frankly I think the coach should be removed. Here's why.

First, this is poor sportsmanship. No sportsman one plays any game to humiliate or to be humiliated. Period.

Secondly, this is a summer league activity. The gym is hot and the league has certain rules that are intended to prevent injuries. For example, you can't dunk. If you do it's a technical foul that awards the other team four points [if memory serves me correctly] and the ball.

Yet, no such rule is applied to overwhelming the other team by sheer numbers and force. This is not the first time I have watched opposing coaches press a full game against another team that is clearly overwhelmed for one reason or another. And I've seen this happen in very young leagues where small town teams play rabid bigger town teams. Often the kids are not natural athletes but that's beside my immediate argument.

My argument is not about the winning or losing because that is truly inconsequential in a pickup game. And a team that's short of players is not inferior to a team rich in bench strength so better and worse are not the issue either.

And EO Smith players are very well conditioned so that is not the issue - they played, took a humiliating loss, and walked away humbled but it didn't kill them so hopefully they got better.

I talked to one of the referees after the game questioning why with such an obvious mismatch they didn't call the game to control the action a bit more - one team's players playing every minute under continuous duress and the other freely substituting everybody every four minutes with the expressed intent of running the undermanned team ragged.

I was told that a.) "This is just summer league, B.) "Don't worry, we wouldn't foul out anyone from your team, C.) "What do you want me to do call the game differently?", and D.) "I can't let what happens on the sidelines effect my calling of the game."

I was put in a logical and ethical bind myself. Point D is true and self-evident. The ref can't weight bad coaching, undermanned teams and over-manned teams into consideration. They can't.

But my answer (after sleeping on it) to Point C is that I do expect referees to call a game differently in certain circumstances. These games are meaningless. Would Windsor have suffered winning by 40, 30, 20 instead of 50 because a referee slowed the game down a bit allowing a five man team a breather occasionally? I doubt it.

Besides, the referee already was using Point A to disarm my protest, "Who cares?" But with Point B, he already admitted that the game was being called "differently". By calling fewer fouls on both teams the five man team HAD to play the full game but the other team was also commiting fouls that were not being called. In reality this exascerbates the plight of the under-manned team. They have to play and they have to play without hope of getting a call to slow the tempo of the game.

And honestly, I listen to NBA games where the announcer says unapologetically, "the referees are taking control of this game early to keep it from getting out of hand". Are the NBA referees out of line? No.

Someday, I'll read that kid collapse on the court because a rogue summer league basketball coach "is just practicing the fast break" for a full game against an overwhelmed team. I'll remember that a player isn't allowed to dunk because he might get hurt but he can be run ragged by misguided coaches in a hot sweaty gym and nobody raises an eyebrow.

Anyone remember the The Middle Class?

The Washington Post ran an article the other day that talks about a study examining the disappearing middle class neighborhoods in American cities.

We all know New Orleans was and maybe still is America's poorest city but few know Connecticut's big cities are not far behind. Under Bush, we all make believe we need more data to identify "failing schools". Presumably this is a mystery despite over fifty years of knowing full well exactly where these schools are.

Yet our participatory Homerism prevents us from any objectivity here. We are living in the dark ages of belligerent belief systems that can call into question every obvious scientific and sociological truth we hold dear. So America pretends that No Child Left Behind metrics will somehow reveal more desirable truths than the fact that poverty and poverty neighborhoods cheat those children.

The manufactured truth America, white, black and otherwise want to prove is that their child is being shortchanged as though learning to read was a biological truth like growing a head. NCLB trivializes learning, children, and diminishes the professionalism of teachers.

So, out of the blue this article reports that:

"No city in America has gotten more integrated by income in the last 30 years," said Alan Berube, an urban demographer at Brookings who worked on the report.

"It means that if you are not living in one of the well-off areas, you are not going to have access to the same amenities - good schools and safe environment - that you could find 30 years ago," he said.

Let's repeat the important assertion that the Brookings Institute makes. That is if you are not living in one of the well-off areas, you are not going to have access to the same amenities - good schools and safe environment.

If Brookings doesn't need NCLB to establish this fact why is the Department of Education confused? After all, this is OBVIOUS. I mean it. You don't need NCLB or Brookings or some Libertarian think tank to figure this stuff out. This is remedial 7th grade social studies.

That is, except to the current regime.

The Globalization Steamroller has No Brakes

Today the Courant reports that Connecticut teachers who could have had their jobs put in jeopardy by new bureaucratic educational quality metrics are safe.

U.S., State Reach Accord, Feds Approve Local Procedures For Evaluating Educators, June 21, 2006, By ROBERT A. FRAHM, Courant Staff Writer

Earlier this spring, Sternberg said she feared the federal law might require teachers to undergo testing or further training to demonstrate their competence. Now, however, U.S. officials have agreed that they can establish their qualifications in job reviews conducted by local school districts.

Betty Sternburg did a nice job with this as she continues to impress me with the job she's done. She's recently resigned and I will miss her because it may go downhill from here at the State Department of Education.

Of course this crisis in teacher qualifications is wholly manufactured by a Federal Department of Education that's being run like Abu Ghraib prison. The idea is to punish older teachers by creating a bureaucratic double-standard that essentially puts their jobs at risk [you know, to save money].

In Connecticut this is a nasty business. Teachers are required to teach after death to receive their pensions, so harassing twenty and thirty year veteran teachers is about as low as the Federal government can stoop. Actually, they've stooped much lower but I get sick thinking about that part.

A subplot to this story is Margaret Spellings's Magical Mysterty Tours to our global competitors. When she is not acting as Laura Bush's hand maiden, Margaret is learning about -cough- improving education. More and more states are importing inexpensive teacher stand-ins and implementing virtual classes delivered from overseas.

Teachers should be afraid. Be very afraid. Ask anyone who works with computers. When a Washington politician says they want to learn something in India, China, or a third-world competitor they come home with cash sticking out of their shorts and a new plan for outsourcing in their legislation.

Students Stuck Up at the Prom

Please take a minute to vote for two EOSmith students who participated in an aristic endeavor called "Stuck at the Prom". Holly Nelson designed and created matching prom outfits made of duct tape.

In this contest EO Smith can be awarded a cash prize to honor Holly's creativity, hard work, and courage (they attended the prom wearing these creations).

I've made the voting link easy (title link or):

http://tinyurl.com/s8g6n

Bing Xu and Holly Nelson's entry appears on PAGE 9 and is entry # 3781.

Enjoy the site and give them your vote. There are tons of enties so every vote counts! All the site requires is an email address after you make your selection.

And if the voting makes you feel good spread the word.

School 2.0, American Education on Learning Steroids

The latest ruling in Colorado that allows common law marriages for 15 year olds underscores an important phenomenon in American teenager's biology and cultural reality. Children are maturing faster than ever before.

This is not to imply that they're smarter or more capable of succeeding on their own - simply that they are different. Add to this reality the acceleration of technology that they swim in and we are looking at an entirely different sociological phenomenon.

Yet our schools haven't changed aside from cosmetic arguments and methodologies intended to obfuscate the shame second-class education being delivered on silver platters to the poor.

School needs to change forever.

First, the Jr high school years need to be recalibrated from grades 7 - 9 to 7 - 8.5. Teens should start high school in mid-year of eighth grade. They are old enough for it and the senior-itis that afflicts these teens will diminish due to the necessity of learning the new high school environments.

For the high schools, this half-semester is an opportunity to recalibrate the curriculum to learn about this class of students intimately with testing and guidance.

At the high school level, the same metric will apply. Second semester seniors will need to leave the building to perform their last semester. This means a semester of earning college money, directed study, or volunteerism. Again, senior-itis is eliminated, local businesses and non-profits acquire an inexpensive talent pool, and students get a taste of real life.

And, as long as we're re-inventing school, let's make NCLB testing optional. Those parents who want it for heir children can request it, those who don't can eliminate the headache, schools will save money and regain some interest. The true finding of NCLB testing is this: the more emphasis schools put on learning the so-called core competencies, the worse the result.

There's a good reason for this effect. Learning isn't an exclusive function of compartmentalized knowledge nor do children learn in a linear, progressive fashion.

The School 2.0 movement (I'm feeling my oats today), instead recognises that all children are unique and learn in symphonic harmony with the maturity of their biological and environmental stimuli. For curriculum this means eliminating hierarchical curriculum schemes with right-sized learning.

School 2.0 will require as much intensive upfront learning as communities can provide. Head-start programs, healthy eating initiatives, recommended entertainment venues, and nap time opportunities must become standard fare. Arithmetic will be mastered by grade 7.5 or remedite in the first year before taking higher math courses.

In the high schools, cross-departmental and cross-grade level learning initiatives must become at least 50% of every student's curriculum. And here, I can already hear the groan of teachers who will say, "We already TRIED that and it didn't work so get off our asses." Sorry, try it again, this time in harmony.

We'll develop School 2.0 together. Let's think and talk. The future's rushing this way.

Want an Educational Revolution?

I ask the question because here it is, Father's Day, and the household is obsessed with final exams.

I cannot help but think if we schedule testing the day after Mother's day that this country would finally wake up to the insanity of all this testing and so little payoff.

Happy Father's Day to all the dads cruising the internet instead of being served a cold beer.

Act to Preserve the Internet

The politics of big business can only destroy a good thing. The above link gives you all the information you need to know about what Congress is attempting to do to the internet. Don't let the internet become wholly manipulated by business interests.

What little Freedom of Expression that exists, exists thanks to the brave voices using the internet to keep Main Stream Media honest.

Here's an overview from Act For Change;

Fortunately, Senators Snowe (R-Maine) and Dorgan (D-North Dakota) have introduced S. 2917, the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2006. This bill will encode network neutrality into law by prohibiting telephone and cable companies from charging information providers premium fees on content. It will also prohibit preferential pricing for access tiers, and has a meaningful enforcement mechanism to deter network discrimination.

This is our last, best chance at preserving net neutrality -- so take action today!

Call to action
Tell your Senators to support S. 2917, the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2006.

Deadline: June 20, 2006

Project Gutenburg - 18,000 Free eBooks

For schools who operate on razor thin budgets and in poor communities where household incomes are also tight, the books offered here for the reading are a treasure.

The fact that people read web pages 25% slower than paper print may also incrrease a child's ability to grasp context and content - an experiement worth measuring by any educational specialists looking for a graduate thesis.

Technology Void in the Classroom

When Americans look for FAILURE, they need look no further than the myopic stupidity of No Child Left Behind. The national delusion that NCLB will somehow magically correct the social ills of public schools is no less insane than a half-dozen other Bush initiatives. The difference being that NCLB experiments not only with a few generations of children but does so at the expense of America's well-being.

There are still a few of us who care about the health of the nation and cringe at the self-destructive practices in American high schools. In my experience the following report is no exagerration. NCLB legislates a testing of teachers and students that emphasizes silo content specialties. Yet the modern world is expanding information theory in precisely the opposite way.

American school teachers need to understand information retrieval mechanisms, information organization and dissemination mechanisms, and dozens of other technical and organizational skills and methodologies far more urgently than they need to worry about becoming content specialists. There is neither time, money, or incentive for teachers to lift a finger.

NCLB is a toxic educational waste dump. Teachers are so buzy fretting over perpetual testing and frivilous factoid exercises that the students never learn how to learn, value information, think, intellectually breathe, follow their bliss, or become a real person. We are creating a Pinnochio generation of micro-managed, Fox News terrorized young people who are devoid of initiative, as technically illiterate as their teachers, and treated as easy pickings by credit vultures (the federal government being one of the hungriest predators).

A report in Information Week merely confirms the obvious.

Report: High Schools Fail To Meet Needs Of Tech-Driven World

Roughly only a quarter of U.S. high schools require students to take computer science courses, due in part to a misperception that computers are for video games and surfing the Internet, says a new report.

By K.C. Jones, TechWeb.com, Jun 12, 2006 12:10 PM

"The United States cannot ignore the fact that there will be a shortage of qualified candidates for the 1.5 million computer and information technology jobs by 2012," co-author of the report and CSTA President Chris Stephenson said in a prepared statement. "This report provides a call to action for a variety of audiences to help others acknowledge computer science as the fundamental field that it is."

-snip-

CSTA issued a statement saying the report should serve as a "wakeup call to the United States on how far behind it has fallen in treating computer science education as a core knowledge requirement for all educated citizens."

There is no doubt in my mind that sounding wake-up calls to the "What Me Worry" administration will produce little more than more really bad ideas, so I'm looking to responsible citizens to vote hard come November. Don't just send these political idiots a message, boot them the hell out of office like you mean it.

Unions are getting smarter

If Connecticut and Connecticut's schools are going to improve, the Teacher's Union needs to step up. The rate of technological change will not wait for teachers who think the future is a linear progression of missed opportunities that are of no consequence. Change matters.

When I'm begging that we embrace change, become masters of our school's destinies, and evangelize the benefits of technological change I often am greeted by indifference. Teachers, administrators, and too many others assume that there are no consequences for watching the world go by. They misread the historical trajectory of the world's wealth and our critical need to move.

Today's younger generation is being financially squeezed into a life of indenture to credit companies at the very time when our president and his band of merry buffoons are draining our ability as a nation to maintain our financial stability.

Within a single generation we may experience a generational political blowback that will include the outsourcing of teaching positions to foreign virtual education suppliers. The cost of education at every level is beginning to exceed the benefit. Teachers have to get the message. And that message is to row, to add value to education so that these kids are the world's best prepared thinkers.

We cannot afford to bicker or pass the buck. Let's work together instead of looking for handouts, five-year plans, or special dispensations. The future is here now. Let's embrace it, teach it, and own our destiny. The alternative is unacceptable.

There is hope in that the UAW is beginning to realize that unions must begin to exercise responsibility for making success happen here. Teachers should take notes. The national treasury is a bank vault full of debt.

From today's Courant:

UAW Chief: It's Time To Fight
Says Industry's Woes Require New Solutions, Union Involvement
1:35 PM EDT, June 13, 2006
By TOM KRISHER, Associated Press

In a speech to about 1,300 members at the UAW's 34th convention in Las Vegas, Gettelfinger seemed to be preparing the union for a different relationship with the troubled domestic automakers as they face challenging times.

"Like it or not, these challenges aren't the kind that can be ridden out," he said. "They demand new and farsighted solutions - and we must be an integral part of developing these solutions."

POP QUIZ: What kind of thinking must unions do?

The View from the Titanic or is it the Hindenburgh?

Art Skerker alerted us last week [click the link to see his blog entry] that the Federal House of Representatives eliminated the Enhancing Education through Technology (NCLB Title II, Part D) program that is “a program that provides teachers and students with the technology resources that are improving teaching and learning and allowing our nation to compete effectively in the 21st century workforce.”

Before we go any further let me just vent a little - WHEN WILL CONNECTICUT STOP VOTING FOR WORTHLESS REPRESENTATION LIKE ROB SIMMONS AND NANCY JOHNSON? WHEN? Oh wait, as long as we're mentioning worthless representation let's not forget, Joe Lieberman. Let's put it this way, students need not learn arithmetic to count what all these politicians have done for Connecticut. The answer is zilch, nada, "I don't know", or "None of the above".

Okay, I feel better now. But that leaves a giant yellow elephant standing in the national living room.

America is in real trouble people. The utter insanity of the Bush administration has so comprehensively dibilitated this nation's priorities, national wealth, and ability to compete that the future is looking grim as we slide head first into an abyss of bizarre psuedo-conservative politics.

MSNBC recently ran this story:

How Long Will America Lead the World? by Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek

It is not just writers like Prestowitz who are sounding alarms. Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE, reflects on the growing competence and cost advantage of countries like China and even Mexico and says, "It's unclear how many manufacturers will choose to keep their businesses in the United States." Intel's Andy Grove is more blunt. "America ... [is going] down the tubes," he says, "and the worst part is nobody knows it. They're all in denial, patting themselves on the back, as the Titanic heads for the iceberg full speed ahead."

Much of the concern centers on the erosion of science and technology in the U.S., particularly in education. Eight months ago, the national academies of sciences, engineering and medicine came together to put out a report that argued that the "scientific and technical building blocks of our economic leadership are eroding at a time when many nations are gathering strength."

Oh. And that quote is from the optimists. I bolded Andy Grove's comments in case you're speed reading. The sociopaths in the House of Representatives would do well to get their heads out of the political -cough- "troughs" long enough to to start funding education like it needs to be because the nation's welfare is truly at stake.

And if you're a voter, you damned well need to write these people, call these people, and run these people out of our government [and out of this country as far as I'm concerned] before they do any more real harm. We have got to take back the schools and regain our nation will to lead before it's too late.

And the hour is already late. Sound some alarms. We need better schools, better priorities, and better politicians. Business as usual is killing the country.

More Free School Tools: Google Calendar

You'll notice a new Region 19 Calendar on the left panel that will hold region 19 Committee dates, agendas and notes. The calendar will never be comprehensive but this is a vast improvement over the closed software solutions schools usually pay for expensively.

You'll notice that meeting places are mapped directly to Google Maps providing driving directions and so on.

By using Google Calendars, you can compare multiple calendars against each other listing as many events as you want to prioritise.

Meanwhile CABE is promoting a State of Connecticut boondoggle that can't do half as much and is costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands. Oh well, it's only money to burn.

Try the Googgle Calendar out. It will import your existing school Outlook calendar in a snap making it available to everyone in the community not just those on a local network.

Oh, and you can examine these calendars from your cell phone.

Technophobia in the Classroom

The rage today is to be lectured by corporations, politicians, and educationalists about the importance of students being 'exposed'to technology, learning the latest computer jargon, and so on. One would think that those doing the lecturing were technologically saavy themselves. They usually aren't.

This game of aggressive language that oozes the progressive vision of technological prowess has a sad underbelly of passive acceptance and even outright stonewalling when acts of conviction are required.

What most of these loud advocates for technology education usually are saying is that they want somebody else to teach, use, and learn something new - "we're 100% behind you all the way!" In practice many of these people will not raise a finger to help themselves or anyone else introduce new ideas, techniques, or classroom methods. Floating downstream, attending meetings, and arguing pointless bullet agenda items is filling enough for their palates.

This is too bad. The tsunami of changes rushing our way will consume us if we are incapable of understanding and coping with their consequences. What is coming in just a few scant years is nothing less than centuries of change compressed into years and months recursively. For the Federal or State government to legislate quaint political homilies as these waves of change crest is sinful.

Schools need to stop testing factoids and begin preparing students for dealing with massive streams of data, with an information society unlike anything imaginable, with enhanced human counterparts, and machines smarter than natural humans can ever be. Yes, curriculums need to begin to address learning in entirely different ways, emphasizing entirely different metrics. And it has to happen NOW.

The ability to skim and assess information quickly is more important than memorizing facts. The ability to be fungible is more important than conformity and comfortable familiarity.

And so teachers who don't practice open-minded attitudes toward innovations and who refuse to change or exercise new technologies are teaching the wrong lesson. Stonewalling, belligerence, and passive resistence are unacceptable role-models for students. We cannot preach our global preparedness while educating an intellectual labor force of technophobes. Teachers, administrators, and government need to be active partners in embracing change especially when it comes to school and curriculum innovations.

Free Software Preview: Google Spreadsheets

Click on the link to test drive Google's collaborative Spreadsheet.

This is where I want the Region 19 budget details to live, in a publicly readable spreadsheet that anyone can take a look at.

Also this is nice for math, science, and lots of other school projects and club accounting activities.

EO Smith Golfers Take Note:

Virtually Integrating Our Schools

I take the persistence of poverty in America as a given. Those who care about eliminating poverty and classism in America are powerless to change its inevitability and ubiquity. And the consequence of poverty is racism, benign bigotry, and poverty community schools hopelessly mired in failure.

Our society continues to condone and tolerate this phenomenon with a vengence. NCLB pogram advocates only obfuscate the tolerance and further nurturing of a convenient underclass. The political invention of "failing schools" neatly skirts the fact that poor children are hopelessly trapped in urban social warfare reservations.

Recent studies uncover the lie that a child in a failing school can simply transfer across to the next school to get out of a failing one. Failing schools are clustered in geopolitical constructs that may as well be prisons of poverty and violence for those trapped in the confines of these ghettos. To call the recent rash of shootings and killings in Hartford a tragedy is not enough. Even tragedy mourns when one tragedy begets another and another. Any conscientious human being is numbed by the slaughter of children randomly shooting children.

In the one-upsmanship of American society, racism and classism observe no color lines. Those who empower racism and poverty are as likely to be black or spanish middleclass citizens as white. In every case, the same arguments are made. The shiftless and lazy arguments that forty years ago slurred minority populations are now exercised without question toward helpless and politically impotent child populations. The arguments are so compelling that arming poor kids with guns so that they can thin the ranks is de facto social policy.

My words will not change a thing so I resign myself to the same profession that Jonathan Kozol endeavors to be, merely a witness. I have rarely found truth to be a worthwhile virtue but I exercise the reckless honor anyway, usually at my own expense.

Assuming that nothing changes [and very little has in my lifetime] these violent urban operas will continue to persist and feed the nightly news broadcasts with a profitable fill of blood and tears and empty homilies.

However there is something that liberal educational evangelists can do to at least virtually integrate the classrooms of urban fortress schools and that is to advocate for the wide adoption of collaborative educational tools. There is little or no expense involved. Numerous online tools exist that can allow students in suburban school sto collaborate on a like assignment in an urban school.

For example, an English class reading the same book, might ask students to individually be teamed up with a counterpart at another school and write an essay or produce a dialogue about what they read. Recent studies indicate that a student is more likely to communicate with a person online than a student sitting next to them. while many lament this phenomenon, it offers opportunity to teachers to use it to broaden discussions beyond their school walls.

I created a writeboard here and sent it to some random educators. Let's see if they're saavy enough to respond.

Region 19 Funny Pages

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