Thursday Cartoon Fun: Strip Search Edition

Teaching Is An Art (So Is Lawyering). VAM Can't Work: Updated

I came across a quote today from Sandra Day O'Connor:

"Attorney errors come in an infinite variety and are as likely to be
utterly harmless in a particular case as they are to be prejudicial. They
cannot be classified according to likelihood of causing prejudice. Nor can
they be defined with sufficient precision to inform defense attorneys
correctly just what conduct to avoid. Representation is an art, and an act
or omission that is unprofessional in one case may be sound or even
brilliant in another."

Yeah, teaching too. VAM can't work. It just can't.

Update: So I admit a friend and I are having an email exchange about this science vs. art thing. Here is why I say teaching --and lawyering and doctoring-- is more art than science:

Lawyers, doctors, teachers all have basic knowledge without which they
could not practice the art. These professions are art in the same way
jazz is art--it requires knowledge of music, but then you get to be
creative.

When 2 or 3 different people could perform the job differently and still
end up with a good expected outcome, that implies there is more than
science to it, there must be art.

My surgery required dumping my guts onto the table. I am sure there are
a few ways to do that and a few outcomes depending on the different
ways. I assume there is more than one good or bad way to do that.

Same with trying a case, or teaching a concept, or sewing up my gut.

Update II: Here is the rest of the email exchange. My friend, referred to below as "The Law" is a lawyer. I have summarized her emails to just the pertinent questions I am responding to.


TFT:

The science part of teaching is understanding how kids learn, not the subject matter (though in upper grades the subject matter knowledge is clearly crucial, but still it's not the sole science part). And, how kids learn varies, and science has a hard time pinning much down in this domain, leaving it to art and situational awareness that comes with practice.

Aren't the best trial lawyers performance artists as well as highly knowledgeable about precedents, torts, and whatever else you lawyers have to know about that you learn in law school and then promptly realize it wasn't all that helpful and the only way to get good at trial lawyering is to do it? And we measure trial lawyers by wins and losses, right? Not by their actual performance in the courtroom. Right? And surgeons are rated on survival rates, not on procedure, unless the outcome was bad, then procedures are looked at, right? All this sounds like teaching--we look at outcomes. Except that for teaching, like the family doctor, much of what they do is dependent on things they don't control--diet, homework, and the rest.

You can't measure art, really, can you? I mean, perhaps in the most rudimentary way--painters should use paint and understand something about form, shadow, line, and all that stuff (the science of the art), but one person's art is another person's garbage, right?

Art certainly isn't VAMable, I don't think.

Can we measure my progress by looking at (name redacted) [a middle class, white, gifted student who loved my class and was challenged, and who was tender to the Hispanic student. Sweet.]? Or should we look at (name redacted) [a Hispanic student whose father was in jail and was homeless off and on during the year and scored poorly but whose attitude towards life seemed to improve in my class], whose life was basically devastated from birth? [Middle class student] would have advanced without me. [Hispanic student] didn't advance much, but his sense of self I think got better in my class. Can we measure [Hispanic student]'s sense of self? I don't think so.

I think teaching is a lot like the 1984 case you write about--it's a judgement call reserved for those in charge--professional judgement. There is no standard we can measure against, so we have to measure against what the professionals have gleaned over their years as professionals practicing their art.

Perhaps my use of Art and Science are too broad, but I don't know how else to separate the 2 domains. I also think that there are fewer rules for teachers than other professions. It's more like a therapist than a doctor or lawyer. There are standards of care, policies about privacy and pedagogy (therapy) but each patient (class) is different and will be taught (therapized) differently. In both cases the professional is steeped in the science underpinning their profession, but the actual doing of it seems more like art--the thing the science-knowledge frees you to do.

How's that?

The Law:

Your first sentence answers one of my original questions, I wanted to know whether there was a science to the teaching, as opposed to the subject matter.

TFT:

VAM can't control for family attributes (SES). Of factors that impact a child's ability to learn (do well on a test, more accurately, which is NOT an accurate measure of the child's true ability), most knowledgeable folks say that between 10 and 30% of factors come from school, the rest come from home, as [made obvious] by [Hsp student] and [MC student], among others.

The test--the high stakes test at the end of the year--is what VAM uses. That fact alone makes VAM useless, as one test on one day does not accurately reflect much of anything about the teacher or the student. I suppose that if the whole class did incredibly well, or badly, one could generalize about the teacher. But that's obvious. It's when VAM is used to differentiate between teachers who, on the whole, are relatively similar. VAM does not have the power to do it--it's too prone to error. It is not a measure that can be used, as the variables can't be controlled like they can in industry by controlling inputs (materials/students).

Reformers would have you believe that there is a science to teaching (pedagogy) and charters have figured it out. And that's bullshit. Charters have figured out how to control inputs. There is no science of pedagogy, really. That's my argument--pedagogy is an art. Teaching is an art. Sure, it has some science behind it--brain development, motor development, some stable psychological concepts, but for the most part, it's art.

So, the reformers abuse science's power by giving it more than it deserves in this domain, and they belittle the art of teaching by scripting teachers with curricula that claim to be research based (science) when they aren't cuz there ain't no science they can actually point to, and the research is usually not actual research but a working paper from the publisher or a CMO funded meta-review. Remember, Everyday Math is "research based" but most mathematicians pillory it for its stupidity. It was pushed through after packing the board of the What Works Clearinghouse.

The actual research performed over the past 70 years shows, unequivocally, that home factors make or break a kid. Not teachers. Not schools. Not curricula. Home is where the issues are. And that is where poverty lives.

The reform movement uses bullshit disguised as science (the NYT article on that latest "study" being a perfect example). They can't acknowledge poverty because that would undercut their scheme that claims they know how to save kids with their new pedagogy that is in evidence in their charters that do well. Except few of them do, and the ones that do well control their inputs. Ask KIPP, Aspire, HCZ, HSA and the rest. They've all been in trouble for scheming the inputs.

How's that?

The Law:

Or is good teaching like pornography -- I know it when I see it?

TFT:

Yes. It's exactly like pornography--you know it when you see it. Seriously. Like your lawyer scenario. Porn, teaching, lawyering--non-VAMable.

Activists, educators and academics you should be aware of include:

Dr. Diane Ravitch
Dr. Deborah Meier
Dr. Stephen Krashen
Dr. Shaun Johnson
Anthony Cody
Leoni Haimson
Matt Damon
Jon Stewart
P.L. Thomas



Here are some links to experts. Some are a bit long, but you can and should do it!

--Richard Rothstein looks at An overemphasis on teachers

--and Rothstein again, with others:

Narrowing the Achievement Gap for Low-Income Children: A 19-Year Life Cycle Approach

By Richard Rothstein, Tamara Wilder and Whitney C. Allgood | 2008

--One and another by Jim Horn (of Cambridge College) on VAM.

Friday Bonus Cartoon Fun: Evidence? Edition

DADT Suspended By Judge

From the Advocate:

A federal judge has blocked enforcement of "don't ask, don't tell" and has instructed the Defense Department immediately to "suspend and discontinue any investigation, or discharge, separation, or other proceeding" related to the policy.

U.S. District judge Virginia A. Phillips, who presided over the federal challenge to DADT that went to trial in Riverside, Calif. in July, entered her judgment shortly before noon Pacific time on Tuesday. The injunction becomes effective immediately, although Justice Department attorneys have previously objected in court to the immediate halt of DADT enforcement and may appeal Phillips's ruling to the U.S. court of appeals for the ninth circuit....

What Kids Deserve, In Legalese

Although Congress is unlikely to achieve consensus on these complex issues, its duty to enact “appropriate legislation” under Section 5 is best understood as a duty of legislative rationality in construing the Fourteenth Amendment’s substantive guarantees and in choosing the means to effectuate those guarantees. By legislative rationality, I mean something more than what is required under the judicial doctrine of rational basis review, whose undemanding standard serves not as a genuine test of rationality but as a “paradigm of judicial restraint.”

In addressing the questions above, Congress must pursue a deliberative inquiry (through the usual devices of hearings, reports, and public debate) into the meaning of national citizenship and its educational prerequisites, and it must take steps reasonably calculated to ameliorate conditions that deny children adequate opportunity to achieve those prerequisites. Importantly, a legislative commitment to educational adequacy would give priority to the most glaring educational needs over the workaday politics of budget wrangling and special interest accommodation. If educational adequacy for equal citizenship has constitutional stature, then legislative enactment of its essential substance must reflect something more than pedestrian political bargaining. This idea is analogous to notions of legislative duty that state courts have inferred from state constitutions in educational adequacy cases. [emphasis mine]

From The Yale Law Journal: Education, Equality, and National Citizenship

That's what I'm talkin' 'bout!

Senator Frank Lautenberg Introduces Smart Oil Drilling Bill

I wrote earlier that we need to drill concurrent relief wells. Now Senator Lautenberg has introduced a bill to do just that...

"My bill takes a common-sense step to contain damages that come with the inherently dangerous drilling business. If relief wells had been in place before the BP rig explosion, the gushing oil could have been stopped in weeks instead of months," Lautenberg said in a statement sent to the Huffington Post. "Clean energy that will reduce our dependence on oil is the long-term solution - but while offshore drilling continues in the Gulf and Alaska, this bill provides a proven way to contain oil spill drilling disasters. I will also continue to oppose any energy proposal in the Senate that does not protect New Jersey from oil drilling in the Atlantic."

h/t JM

Friday Cartoon Bonus Fun: Confusion Prince Edition

Lock 'Em Up And Throw Away The Key

Indefinite Detention - Now good for more than terrorists!

By BJ Bjornson

You know, for the “Land of the Free”, you all sure do like the idea of putting people behind bars forever.

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that federal officials can indefinitely hold inmates considered "sexually dangerous" after their prison terms are complete.

The high court in a 7-2 judgment reversed a lower court decision that said Congress overstepped its authority in allowing indefinite detentions of considered "sexually dangerous."

"The statute is a 'necessary and proper' means of exercising the federal authority that permits Congress to create federal criminal laws, to punish their violation, to imprison violators, to provide appropriately for those imprisoned and to maintain the security of those who are not imprisoned but who may be affected by the federal imprisonment of others," said Justice Stephen Breyer, writing the majority opinion.

As John Cole puts it, why even bother with a sentence? I suppose it will make folks feel better to say they’re tossing these guys away for a few years when in actual fact as soon as they’re behind bars, the key’s going to get thrown away.

And I can’t wait to see what the reaction will be to the fact that the lawyer arguing the government’s case was Elena Kagan, now Supreme Court nominee Kagan, and that the dissenters were Thomas and Scalia.

No links here. Go to the link for links.

How Do I Get To School If Mom's In Jail?

I am not sure how good an idea this is:

California may jail parents if kids are truant

Talk about parental responsibility. The California Senate just passed a bill that could send parents to jail for up to a year if their kids -- from kindergarten through eighth grade -- miss too much school.

Senate Bill 1317 is actually a public safety measure, according to State Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), because children who don’t attend school regularly or drop out early are more likely to turn to crime.

"Three-quarters of our state inmate population are high school dropouts," Leno was quoted as saying by the Fresno Bee.

According to the Associated Press, parents whose kids miss too much school could be subject to up to a year in jail and a $2,000 fine, though judges could put the punishment on hold to give parents a chance to get their kids to class.

The Fresno Bee reported that the bill would apply to parents or guardians of children age 6 or older in kindergarten through eighth grade.

The rest at the link.

Icelandic Bankers Arrested

Hey America, it can be done...

REYKJAVIK — More than a year and a half after Iceland's major banks failed, all but sinking the country's economy, police have begun rounding up a number of top bankers while other former executives and owners face a two-billion-dollar lawsuit.

Since Iceland's three largest banks -- Kaupthing, Landsbanki and Glitnir -- collapsed in late 2008, their former executives and owners have largely been living untroubled lives abroad.

But the publication last month of a parliamentary inquiry into the island nation's profound financial and economic crisis signaled a turning of the tide, laying much of the blame for the downfall on the former bank heads who had taken "inappropriate loans from the banks" they worked for.

On Wednesday, the administrators of Glitnir's liquidation announced they had filed a two-billion-dollar (1.6-billion-euro) lawsuit in a New York court against former large shareholders and executives for alleged fraud.

[...] In addition to its New York suit, Glitnir said it had "secured a freezing order from the High Court in London against Jon Asgeir Johannesson's worldwide assets, including two apartments in Manhattan's exclusive Gramercy Park neighbourhood for which he paid approximately 25 million dollars."

Gudbjartsdottir said Johannesson had just 48 hours to come up with a satisfactory list of his assets.

"If he does not give the right information he faces a jail sentence," she said.

Four former Kaupthing executives, who all live in Luxembourg, have meanwhile been arrested in Iceland in the past week and Interpol has issued an international arrest warrant for that bank's ex-chairman, Sigurdur Einarsson.

From C&L

Thursday Cartoon Fun: Blind Justice Edition

Recruiting Those Who Have Killed

From Think Progress:

According to KOLD Channel 5 News in Arizona, local militiaman Bill Davis is recruiting “combat veterans, with kill records, to camp out and patrol” along the U.S.-Mexico border. “If it comes to when shots are fired in the general direction of these guys, they have my authorization to return fire, if they’re in defense of their life or their buddy next to them, return fire, stop it as fast as it starts, and they’re capable of it,” Davis told reporters. Despite a warning from Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada that the militia’s plan is “very dangerous” and “very risky,” Davis is pressing forward:

“If we think they’re carrying drugs, weapons, contraband, we’ll get out in front of ‘em and stop ‘em,” says Davis. “They won’t get past us. You can write into that what you want, short of shooting them.”

Lower Merion School District Spies

The Lower Merion School District spied using webcams. Yes they did!

But in at least five instances, school employees let the Web cams keep clicking for days or weeks after students found their missing laptops, according to the review. Those computers - programmed to snap a photo and capture a screen shot every 15 minutes when the machine was on - fired nearly 13,000 images back to the school district servers.

Saturday Super Duper Bonus Cartoon Fun: Goldman Sachs Edition

Federal Judge: Day of Prayer Unconstitutional

Federal judge rules Day of Prayer unconstitutional

MADISON, Wis. — A federal judge in Wisconsin ruled the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional Thursday, saying the day amounts to a call for religious action.
U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb wrote that the government can no more enact laws supporting a day of prayer than it can encourage citizens to fast during Ramadan, attend a synagogue or practice magic.
"In fact, it is because the nature of prayer is so personal and can have such a powerful effect on a community that the government may not use its authority to try to influence an individual's decision whether and when to pray," Crabb wrote.

Federal Judge Orders End To Segregated Schools. Again.

Miss. county schools ordered to comply with desegregation order

A federal judge Tuesday ordered a rural county in southwestern Mississippi to stop segregating its schools by grouping African American students into all-black classrooms and allowing white students to transfer to the county's only majority-white school, the U.S. Justice Department announced.

More at the link.

Arrest The Pope

A new facebook page for your enjoyment.  Surely we can get at least 10,000,000 fans!

"No Religious Test Shall Ever Be Required As A Qualification..."

Lawsuit threatened over atheist councilman in NC

RALEIGH, N.C. – Asheville City Councilman Cecil Bothwell believes in ending the death penalty, conserving water and reforming government — but he doesn't believe in God. His political opponents say that's a sin that makes him unworthy of serving in office, and they've got the North Carolina Constitution on their side.

Bothwell's detractors are threatening to take the city to court for swearing him in, even though the state's antiquated requirement that officeholders believe in God is unenforceable because it violates the U.S. Consititution.

"The question of whether or not God exists is not particularly interesting to me and it's certainly not relevant to public office," the recently elected 59-year-old said.

Bothwell ran this fall on a platform that also included limiting the height of downtown buildings and saving trees in the city's core, views that appealed to voters in the liberal-leaning community at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains. When Bothwell was sworn into office on Monday, he used an alternative oath that doesn't require officials to swear on a Bible or reference "Almighty God."

That has riled conservative activists, who cite a little-noticed quirk in North Carolina's Constitution that disqualifies officeholders "who shall deny the being of Almighty God." The provision was included when the document was drafted in 1868 and wasn't revised when North Carolina amended its constitution in 1971. One foe, H.K. Edgerton, is threatening to file a lawsuit in state court against the city to challenge Bothwell's appointment.

Let's remember a couple of things. First, the United States Constitution Supremacy Clause:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

And now Article VI, section 6, of the Constitution of the United States:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

Obviously, the North Carolina law is unconstitutional. And disgusting. And insulting. Where are the adults?

Justice Scalia Is An Insensitive Jerk: Updated

Yesterday Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a good friend of Justice Ginsburg (hopefully not for much longer), let it be known that he thinks crosses, like the one they say Jesus died on, are for everyone!

What a jerk.

Here are the pertinent pages:

Update: Someone thought my Ginsburg comment made reference to her health. NO, NO, NO. I meant that I hope she abandons him as a friend. He doesn't deserve her!

Blackwater: Murder Inc.

From The Nation:

A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company's owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."[emphasis mine]

Sure sounds possible to me! Remember this post?