6/10/11
6/9/11
Happy Birthday, Les Paul
I had a black Les Paul just like the one down there but had to sell it so I could eat. I loved that thing. And just look at that dude! He was cooler than you and me put together.
Lester William Polsfuss (June 9, 1915 – August 12, 2009)—known as Les Paul—was an American jazz and country guitarist, songwriter and inventor. He was a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar which "made the sound of rock and roll possible". He is credited with many recording innovations. Although he was not the first to use the technique, his early experiments with overdubbing (also known as sound on sound),[6] delay effects such as tape delay, phasing effects and multitrack recording were among the first to attract widespread attention.
His innovative talents extended into his playing style, including licks, trills, chording sequences, fretting techniques and timing, which set him apart from his contemporaries and inspired many guitarists of the present day. He recorded with his wife Mary Ford in the 1950s, and they sold millions of records.
Among his many honors, Paul is one of a handful of artists with a permanent, stand-alone exhibit in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He is prominently named by the music museum on its website as an "architect" and a "key inductee" along with Sam Phillips and Alan Freed.
6/8/11
"Mitigating poverty will improve education outcomes"...
This is no better than saying we can’t fix schools until we “fix poverty.” Anti-poverty policy, though costly, is very effective in the U.S., and education is only one among many factors that contribute to poverty and inequality (as is partially evident in the fact that much of the rise in inequality in the U.S. has occurred among similarly-educated people). In addition, while improving public education will help millions of people, the benefits will elude everyone who is beyond school age. These people need help now, and no amount of K-12 education reform will provide it. [emphasis mine]
Mitigating poverty will improve education outcomes, and vice-versa. So let’s not allow either to be an “excuse” for failing to comprehensively address the other.
6/5/11
6/4/11
Lawrence Eagleburger, R.I.P.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The only career foreign service officer to rise to the position of secretary of state, was a straightforward diplomat whose exuberant style masked a hard-driving commitment to solving tangled foreign policy problems.I'll reserve judgment.
"As good as they come," recalled his immediate predecessor as America's top diplomat.
Eagleburger, who died Saturday at age 80, held the job late in George H.W. Bush's presidency, culminating a distinguished diplomatic career.
Doug Noon: "As for me, I am done caring about reformist nonsense."
Doug Noon is tired of the nonsense, just like the rest of us in the trenches. Here is a snippet of his latest lament, and it's a sad state of affairs he is describing.
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...As for me, I am done caring about reformist nonsense. At a staff meeting earlier this year we were discussing our AimsWeb Data Boards put up around the room to show how many students in each grade level are below proficient, at risk, or proficient based on how well they handled an oral one-minute timed reading. To me, this was a disgusting display of a brain-dead method to evaluate reading. We were asked to say what we planned to do to improve our students’ scores. Since the data showed lots of kids scoring “below proficient” in first and second grade and very few in that category by the time they got to sixth, I observed that the trend was positive, and that at least as far as word-calling skills go, we seem to be doing all right. Teachers at each grade level announced what they planned to do, like focus on comprehension, vocabulary, decoding – the usual. When it was my turn, I said I’d be going with the happiness plan. What’s that? It’s getting the kids to enjoy reading so that they do it on their own. How does it work? Easy. Give them choices and time to read every day, and then celebrate their accomplishments. I got a round of applause. Kind of sad, really, when I think about what that might mean.
6/3/11
Jack Kevorkian, R.I.P.
Dr. Jack Kevorkian, aka "Doctor Death" has died.
Jack Kevorkian — embraced as a compassionate crusader and reviled as a murderous crank — died early this morning.Detroit Free Press
Known as Dr. Death even before launching his fierce advocacy and practice of assisted suicides, Kevorkian, 83, died at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, where he had been hospitalized with kidney and heart problems.
6/2/11
The Charter School Myth Take-down
School Finance 101 is good at explaining data, especially the lies used to misrepresent the data by those who would like to push their charter agenda. To wit:
The Offensively Defensive Ideology of Charter SchoolingRead the rest, and the excellent point by point take-down (and links) here.
There now exists a fair amount of evidence that Charter schools in many locations, especially high performing charter schools in New Jersey and New York tend to serve much smaller shares of low income, special education and limited English proficient students (see various links that follow). And in some cases, high performing charter schools, especially charter middle schools, experience dramatic attrition between 6th and 8th grade, often the same grades over which student achievement climbs, suggesting that a “pushing out” form of attrition is partly accounting for charter achievement levels.
As I’ve stated many times on this blog, the extent to which we are concerned about these issues is a matter of perspective. It is entirely possible that a school – charter, private or otherwise – can achieve not only high performance levels but also greater achievement growth by serving a selective student population, including selection of students on the front end and attrition of students along the way. After all, one of the largest “within school effects on student performance” is the composition of the peer group.
From a parent (or child) perspective, one is relatively unconcerned whether the positive school effect is function of selectivity of peer group and attrition, so long as there is a positive effect.
But, from a public policy perspective, the model is only useful if the majority of positive effects are not due to peer group selectivity and attrition, but rather to the efficacy and transferability of the educational models, programs and strategies. To put it very bluntly, charters (or magnet schools) cannot dramatically improve overall performance in low income communities by this approach, because there simply aren’t enough less poor, fluent English speaking, non-disabled children to go around. They are not a replacement for the current public system, because their successes are in many cases based on doing things they couldn’t if they actually tried to serve everyone.
Again, this is not to say that some high performing charters aren’t essentially effective magnet school programs that do provide improved opportunities for select few. But that’s what they are.
But rather than acknowledging these issues and recognizing charters and their successes for what they are (or aren’t), charter pundits have developed a series of very intriguing (albeit largely unfounded) defensive responses (read excuses) to the available data. These include the arguments that:
6/1/11
A Pretend Letter To Obama From This Brazen Teacher
I have mentioned This Brazen Teacher a few times because she is awesome, brilliant, fearless and kind.
I think her new video (she claims she is new at the video making) hits it out of the park. Spread the word. Share the vid.
I think her new video (she claims she is new at the video making) hits it out of the park. Spread the word. Share the vid.
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