The Carnival of Education...

...is being hosted this week by the Columbus Education Association. Where the heck is that, you ask? Why, it's right here.

Democracy, More or Less

Every four years, I turn into a political junkie and spend a lot more time watching CNN. With Sirius satellite, I now have it in my car, so I'm never far from the genius pundits.

They're always willing to let me know who won the election well before anyone actually casts a vote. A few weeks back, they told me Hillary would win and everyone else was wasting valuable time. All last week, they told me Hillary was toast, and that Obama was unstoppable.

So while Hillary's not my favorite candidate, I was very happy to see her hold onto a lead last night, and even happier when MSNBC projected her as the winner (Flicking back and forth, I noticed that CNN and Fox didn't join in that projection until Obama actually came out to concede).

Hillary spoke very well, and clearly seemed to have taken a page from John Edwards' playbook, speaking about the disappearing middle class and corporate control (In fact, the moment when she teared up last week saw her saying how "personal" the campaign is, exactly what Edwards stressed at the ABC debate).

There's something really distasteful and grotesque about having 0.5% of the country determine who the presidential candidates will be. Two states have spoken, and there are 48 more to go. Here's someone else who thinks so:

Bush is Tested

While President Bush is in Chicago explaining how he knows NCLB has worked, one of those goshdarn lawyers has revived a troublesome lawsuit. Apparently, the plaintiffs complain, if the federal government requires testing and tutoring and whatever, it behooves them to fund these requirements.

It's hard to say what will happen, as Bush may take the matter to the Supreme Court, which has been known to rule in his favor before. But I like the idea of demanding things I won't have to pay for. I'd like better service in restaurants. I'd like a third faucet with an alternative to hot and cold, perhaps vodka. And many of my colleagues are clamoring for free donuts and prostitutes in teachers' lounges.

It's good to be in the federal government, where you get the best health coverage, you can vote raises for yourselves and then insist that states spend money on whatever you say. No wonder all those people are running around New Hampshire 24/7.

The New Primary Primer

The Education Wonks lament the fact that three states have so much power in determining who gets the nomination for President of the United States. Here at NYC Educator, we share that disappointment, and we have a simple proposal to remedy the situation.

Now Iowa, for example, has about 3 million inhabitants, while New York has closer to 20. Let's make this race interesting. Let's move up the primaries in The Education Wonks' home state, California, and ours in New York, so that they come first. Why should the folks in Iowa get to meet all those politicians in their coffee shops and diners? We have coffee shops and diners too.

Now skeptics among you will say, "Sure, NYC Educator, we can move the primaries, but won't that just move the problem somewhere else?" That's a fair question. But take a look at those politicians after they run all over Iowa drinking a hundred cups of coffee every day. They're working themselves to death. Just think how much harder they'd have to work if they were covering NY and CA instead of Iowa and New Hampshire.

Now sure, fewer of them would be able to keep up. But that's just natural selection. I think Republicans and Democrats can agree we want the toughest candidates possible. So if two or three collapse from massive coronaries, or simply fall off diner stools from sheer exhaustion, we'd know right away that they weren't up to the job.

Admittedly, we'd still have the problem of a few states determining who the candidates are. But you gotta admit, candidates who can visit every coffee shop in NY and CA probably deserve a shot at becoming President.

Who's Winning?

While pundits of all stripes are now discarding Hillary's inevitability and crowning Obama, here's a blogger declaring Hillary is ahead, because of the odd tradition of "superdelegates" that allows 40% of the delegates to vote as they wish, whether or not primary voters agree with them.

Rudy's Claim to Fame

Rudy runs on 9/11. But despite his elevation to sainthood on that day, his judgment was questionable at best. I share the feelings of some of these interviewees, who wonder what he actually did beyond looking good on television.



More here.

On Teaching...

...on Miss Cellania right now.

A Full Day

Imagine you're teaching a bunch of kids who barely speak English how to pass the English Regents exam. What can you do? You break it down to bare bones, try very hard to get them to understand and respond directly, and ask for four-paragraph compositions that marginally get the job done. You write sample compositions, and explain how you wrote them.

You make them write until their hands bleed, you do drafts and more drafts, you read everything, and they rewrite everything. By the end of the semester, you think you've made progress.

Then two kids scan compositions you wrote, type their names on them, and fully expect a good grade. They don't expect you'll remember having written them yourself. They don't expect you to notice that they're responding to a different question and this answer no longer applies. They don't expect you to remember that the written notes they've been making have nothing to do with what they submitted.

Another kid hands you a summary of Moby Dick that's clearly plagiarized and has nothing to do with the question. You ask the kid what certain words mean, and the kid has no idea. You ask how the kid managed to use the words while not knowing what they meant, and the kid looks up at the sky.

Then a kid brings you a doctor's note, explaining he had a headache and couldn't come to school yesterday. It's from an obgyn, and it carries the signatures of three other teachers, who clearly haven't looked at it closely.

Finally, one kid hands you the entire text of The Cask of Amontillado. As your head bangs loudly on the desk, you seriously begin to wonder whether the other boy's gynecologist can help you with the pain.

Webmaster's Note

I'm going to have to ask that posters refrain from name-calling. Also, while you are free to say what you think, I'll ask you to refrain from telling me what I think, or other posters what they think. Posters here can speak for themselves.

Thank you.

Post-Iowa Analysis

For my money, the most interesting pundit around is Jon Swift. Here's a small portion of his take:

The biggest loser of all was Hillary Clinton. If she can't win in Iowa, where can she win? In every contested race since 1972 (Bill Clinton ran unopposed in 1996), the winner of the Iowa caucuses for the Democrats has gone on to be elected President, except for 1972, 1976, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 2000 and 2004...

You can read the rest right here.

God Created the First Teacher

On the 6th day, God created men and women. On the 7th day, He rested. Not so much to recuperate, but rather to prepare Himself for the work He was going to do on the next day. For it was on that day--the 8th day--that God created the first TEACHER.

This TEACHER, though taken from among men and women, had several significant modifications. In general, God made the TEACHER more durable than other men and women.

The TEACHER was made to arise at a very early hour and to go to bed no earlier than 11:30 p.m.--with no rest in between.

The TEACHER had to be able to withstand being locked up in an air-tight classroom for six hours on a rainy Monday.

And the TEACHER had to be fit to correct 103 term papers over Easter vacation.

Yes, God made the TEACHER tough ... but gentle, too.

The TEACHER was equipped with soft hands to wipe away the tears of the neglected and lonely student ... of those of the sixteen-year-old girl who was not asked to the prom.

And into the TEACHER God poured a generous amount of patience. Patience when a student asks to repeat the directions the TEACHER has just repeated for someone else. Patience when the kids forget their lunch money for the fourth day in a row. Patience when one-third of the class fails the test. Patience when the textbooks haven't arrived yet, and the semester starts tomorrow.

And God gave the TEACHER a heart slightly bigger than the average human heart. For the TEACHER's heart had to be big enough to love the kid who screams, "I hate this class - it's boring!" and to love the kid who runs out of the classroom at the end of the period without so much as a "good-bye," let alone a "thank you."

And lastly, God gave the TEACHER an abundant supply of HOPE. For God knew that the TEACHER would always be hoping. Hoping that the kids would someday learn how to spell ... Hoping not to have bus duty ... Hoping that Friday would come ... Hoping for a free day ... Hoping for deliverance ...

When God finished creating the TEACHER, He stepped back and admired the work of His hands. And God saw that the TEACHER was good. Very Good!

And God smiled, for when He looked at the TEACHER, He saw into the future. He knew that the future is in the hands of the TEACHERS. And because God loves Teachers so much, on the 9th day God created "Snow Days" and "Summer!"

-anonymous

Thanks to Schoolgal

We Try Harder

Last night I stayed up and watched a lot of CNN and MSNBC (and even a little Fox). I heard a lot of talk about Huckabee and Obama, of course, and I saw their speeches. I heard an awful lot of talk about Hillary, and what last night may have meant to her. But I didn't hear much, if anything, about John Edwards, who actually outpolled Hillary.

I first saw him in 04, on CSPAN, at some event Tom Harkin hosted. He was very impressive, and it was very disappointing to see him play second banana to John Kerry's bumbling campaign.

I don't know if it was my compulsive channel-changing or not, but I didn't see this last night. Here's a voice that's largely absent from cable news, and through the miracle of the internet, you can hear it right here, right now:

You Passed the Test. Here's Your Money.

Today's New York Times reports that Joel Klein is out on the stump again, telling the world what a great job he's doing. Thus he visited District 26, which was actually doing very well long before his arrival. Nonetheless it's still doing well, and that's what passes for success under this administration. If the building hasn't fallen down yet, it's because they were propping it up when no one was looking.

Yet still, there came a voice of dissent in the form of Assemblyman Mark Weprin:

Mr. Weprin, a Queens Democrat, seized nearly five minutes of the news conference to lambaste the grading system and the Bloomberg administration’s focus on standardized testing to measure achievement.

“Our schools have turned — I know the chancellor is standing here, but — to Stanley Kaplan courses in a lot of ways,” Mr. Weprin said, referring to a large test preparation company.

Lacing his comments with apologies for being “impolite,” Mr. Weprin said, “Too much focus is trying to get the right answers on tests and not enough focus on, in my opinion, on learning. And a good teacher doesn’t just teach how to get the right answers, a good teacher inspires, and a lot of that is being lost in our schools.”

I agree that a good teacher inspires more than simply how well to fill in bubbles, but I seem to be in the minority on this one. Still, the truth is that even great reformers Klein and Bloomberg have failed to achieve more correctly filled bubbles on tests they couldn't manipulate. Mr. Klein emphasized the versatility of his programs by asking whether the kids studied art:

The school's art teacher, Rita Rothenberg, said she works with most of the school's students once a week, though that particular class of fourth-graders does not visit her at the moment.

Oh well. So what do these awards mean? Philissa at the Inside Schools Blog calculates it comes to about 30 bucks per kid, and adds:

I wonder why the amounts being disbursed are not all multiples of $30 -- perhaps it's a result of the DOE's class size reduction plan that diminished classes by an average of just a fraction of a kid each?

Yes, in a mere six years, they've cleverly managed to remove 20% of one kid from each classroom. How do they do it? Maybe by loading schools like mine to over 250% capacity. But that 30 bucks surely makes up for both the overcrowding, the cold-in-the-winter, hot-in-the-summer trailers, and the crumbling buildings they sit behind.

Nothing shows you care quite like 30 bucks. Try approaching your significant other and saying, "Wow. You look like thirty bucks." Let us know how that works out for you.

Thanks to Schoolgal

On Language (and Monsters)

In Edwize, Randi Weingarten's internet mouthpiece Leo Casey accuses Joe Williams of calling Robert Jackson of CFE "a pimp." What Williams said, exactly, was, "courtesty of YouTube we get to watch a prominent NYC politician pimp himself on behalf of the lowest-performing teachers in the NYC schools..."

Now there is a distinction to be made here. Apparently unbeknownst to Mr. Casey, English utilizes both nouns and verbs. Williams was using "pimp" in the new and trendy verb form, as in "Leo Casey pimped the worst contract I've ever seen," or "Randi Weingarten pimped mayoral control." Personally, I don't interpret Mr. Jackson's actions remotely as Joe Williams does, and I couldn't disagree with Williams more. But unlike Leo Casey, I tend to read things before I criticize them.

Frankly, I know some remarkably bad teachers who've never been targeted for anything. I've also seen the DoE place teachers in rubber rooms for using school fax machines to communicate with the press. I've seen people targeted on the basis of schoolyard battles with administrators on numerous occasions, I've seen teachers suspended without pay based on unsubstantiated ultimately false allegations, and I've seen Tweed invest public resources into vilifying its critics (like Diane Ravitch). I have no logical reason to believe the DoE we know and love will target incompetence when there are personal vendettas to be settled (and there are always personal vendettas). This administration, like its predecessor, loves incompetent teachers, as they keep the focus off of Tweed (whose top accountability officer literally runs from parents).

While this administration routinely breaks every promise it's ever made about class size (most recently reneging on a promise to take kids out of trailers), while it makes no progress whatsoever on test scores it can't manipulate, while it focuses more on making Mayor Bloomberg President Bloomberg than actually improving public schools, it's in dire need of a scapegoat. And that scapegoat is going to be unionized teachers, of course.

The fact is, without mayoral control, and the 05 contract that earned Ms. Weingarten the admiration of teacher basher/"Texas Miracle" hoaxter Rod Paige, we wouldn't have the anti-labor, anti-teacher monster that Tweed has become. Ms. Weingarten and her minions give Bloomberg and Klein everything for less than nothing, and repeatedly feign indignation when they come back and demand more. Why don't these people learn from their mistakes? In fact, in very predictable fashion, the so-called "gotcha" squad came about immediately after Ms. Weingarten gave the mayor merit pay.

When you throw a monster a piece of raw meat, it may stop it temporarily. But it will be hungry again tomorrow. Weingarten and company have been feeding the monster for years, and have yet to figure out it will always demand more.

Gosh Beav, How Do I Maintain Discipline?

Follow the intrepid Mr. Grimes as he miraculously transforms from Scrooge to good ol' boy in less than 15 minutes.

The Carnival of Education...

..is up and running, over at So You Want to Teach. The affable host has shown extraordinary taste and discernment by selecting an article from this blog as the no. 1 pick, so don't miss it.

There's Something You Don't See Every Day...

In Kalona, Iowa, a largely Mennonite area, there's a new program where young children are learning Arabic. And to judge from the article, they've got an enthusiastic and inspiring teacher. Not only that, but the town's using a federal grant of $200,000 to help support the first three years of the program (which hopefully won't be the last).

Stories like these amaze me because we seem to have learned very little about teaching language in the US. The best language learners are young children, and standard practice in most schools is to withhold serious instruction until high school, or close to it. In Nassau County, where I live, there are only two districts that offer dual language programs in Spanish beginning with kindergarten. The idea is to get two classes together, one dominant in each language, and instruct both classes in both languages. I know of only one school in NYC that's tried it (and they like it).

Of course, if you don't have enough kids who speak the target language, you'll have to take another approach, as they do in Iowa. But in a city like NY, you've got speakers of many languages, and in that, the resources for great programs. It's too bad Tweed is fixated on test scores and squeezing as many kids as possible into classrooms. We've got potential here for some really worthwhile programs.

Too bad the kids are all filling in bubbles to try to improve the Mayor's stats.

Hu's in Charge Here?

Modern Wonders

I think I've seen this before, maybe at Instructivist. But Joanne Jacobs just pointed to it, and she found it at Kitchen Table Math.

It's the fabulous Educational Jargon Generator. Do you have to make a presentation at the next meeting? Dazzle your administration with phrases like "empower proactive units" or "engineer mission-critical pedagogy." Who needs an expensive and time-consuming administration degree when you've got a simple tool like this one?

If this sort of talk simply makes you nauseous, and why wouldn't it, you can inflict your pain on others (perhaps even the supervisors who make you listen to that sort of talk) with the handy-dandy "Annoy-a-tron." It's simple to use:

3 simple steps.

Turn on.*

Hide it.

Muahahaha...

They're only $9.99, folks, and a great way to kick off the new year.

Work

Bob Rosner at ABCNews.com writes that Japanese workers are some of the hardest working in the world. They total 1,842 work hours a year.

In fact, the Japanese are so renowned for work that the culture has a word for the condition known as death from overwork - it's called "karoshi."

The Japanese government has admitted 147 cases of karoshi in the last year for workers who regularly put in 70-80 hours of work a week and suffered heart attacks, strokes or other fatal health conditions as a result of overwork.

Now we "lazy" Americans don't have a term in our culture for the condition of death from overwork, but perhaps we should. It turns out that Americans actually work longer hours than even the Japanese. We work 1,979 hours a year.

That's right, Americans are now the hardest working people on the planet, having passed the Japanese in annual work hours back in the 1990's.

We are also some of the most productive workers on the planet. Productivity has grown steadily since 2000. According to the BBC

During the five years from 2000 to 2005, the US economy grew in size from $9.8 trillion to $11.2 trillion, an increase in real terms of 14%. Productivity - the measure of the output of the economy per worker employed - grew even more strongly, by 16.6%.

Americans are working longer and harder than any other people in any other industrialized country on the planet and are more productive than ever, yet the overwhelming majority have seen little economic gain from all this work and all this productivity.

According to Paul Waldman at The American Prospect, real wages in 2007 are actually lower now than they were before the recession in 2001 and barely higher than they were 35 years ago.

Millions of people lack health coverage, manufacturing and service jobs continue to be moved overseas, further undercutting any real wages gains for many Americans.

Many Americans have made up for the slim gains in real wages by taking on debt to maintain their standards of living.

Personal credit card debt in America is equal to 100% of GDP. Total credit market debt, including mortgage debt, is nearly equal to 325% of GDP.

For awhile, increases in home values helped people borrow enough money to maintain their standards of living even as inflation increased and their wages didn't keep pace. But now home values across the country are tanking and many people are suddenly finding that they own homes that are worth less than their mortgages.

Nouriel Roubini writes on his blog that we are in the midst of the worst housing recession since the Great Depression and home values are likely to fall 20% overall around the country while some of the more bubblicious real estate markets like California, Florida, Nevada, Arizona, etc.) could see value declines of 40%.

While most Americans can no longer tap the equity in their homes for money, credit cards aren't much of an option either.

Credit card debt is near an all-time high and the Associated Press reported on Christmas Eve that delinquencies and defaults on credit card payments have sky-rocketed in the latter part of 2007. The worst-hit areas have been the South and the Midwest where real estate market problems and job losses have exacerbated economic problems for people. Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Economy.com, said he expects delinquencies and defaults to get much worse in 2008.

With energy and food costs at or near all-time highs (oil is above $97 a barrel; wheat, soybeans and other commodities are at highs for the year), with health care costs increasing far above the annual inflation rate, with real wage gains stagnant and with many Americans carrying astronomical debt loads, I wonder just why we are working so long and so hard with such productivity.

And it turns out that we're doing it so that the top 10% of the country - and especially the top 1% - can do better than they have at any time since before the Great Depression:

Income inequality grew significantly in 2005, with the top 1 percent of Americans — those with incomes that year of more than $348,000 — receiving their largest share of national income since 1928, analysis of newly released tax data shows.

The top 10 percent, roughly those earning more than $100,000, also reached a level of income share not seen since before the Depression.

While total reported income in the United States increased almost 9 percent in 2005, the most recent year for which such data is available, average incomes for those in the bottom 90 percent dipped slightly compared with the year before, dropping $172, or 0.6 percent.

The gains went largely to the top 1 percent, whose incomes rose to an average of more than $1.1 million each, an increase of more than $139,000, or about 14 percent.

The new data also shows that the top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Per person, the top group received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottom half earned, nearly doubling the gap from 1980.

As for the really, really rich - the Mayor Bloombergs of the country - they've done the best of any other group in the last 30 years. Since the 1970's, Forbes has been tracking what it calls the CLEWI - the Cost Of Living Extremely Well index. While the Consumer Price Index (CPI) - which tracks the increase in the cost of living for average Americans - has doubled since 1982, the CLEWI - which tracks the cost of living for the really, really wealthy - has quadrupled in the last 25 years. But the amount of money the extremely wealthy have made during that time has increased ten-fold. So these days, the extremely wealthy are spending a lot less money to live as well as they did 25-30 years ago.

And you, my fellow Americans, with your hard work and your long hours and your increased productivity and your unused vacation time and your weekend work days, have brought this to pass.

Mayor Moneybags and Steve Forbes and the really, really wealthy thank you from the bottom of their greedy little souls. And the people just under them on the economic ladder, the investment bankers and the hedge fund managers and the corporate CEO's, also thank you as they hand themselves huge bonuses this Christmas and begrudge you, the average American worker, any increase in wages or health benefits.

Happy New Year everybody and take solace in one thing - at least it's not as bad for you as it is for the Little Tramp in that picture at the top of this post.

Not yet, at any rate.