the world is your acorn

An article in the New York Times today recaps a City Hall hearing in New York City. Test scores for the NYC fourth grade English test went up 10 percentage points this year. The question is, why? Mayer Bloomberg and the current director of testing, Dr. Lori Mei, want to say it has everything to do with educational reforms that have been put in place:

…new intervention programs that spot lagging students early, identify deficiencies and provide extra help; the mayor’s mandatory retention program, plus extra resources like summer school to help those students; Saturday academies that prepared students for the tests; the new citywide curriculum; and more professional development for teachers.

Mr. Robert Tobias, a previous testing director for the city, listed some good reasons to be suspicious. With so much test preparation, are kids learning the material or just learning to “beat the test”? More than 900 “English language learners”, students not fluent in English, were exempted this year, eliminating a low-scoring group. Content of the test was more engaging this year, including passages about children’s literature rather than the dry nonfiction passages in the past. This test is also in its 7th year of implementation, and studies have shown that scores inevitably go up as teachers become better at teaching to a particular format. Lastly, since so many districts in the state, not just NYC, are improving, it is possible that it is the scaling of the test rather than education reforms that are pulling test scores up.

I am definitely inclined to agree with Mr. Tobias. There’s just too much reliance placed on these tests, not to mention education reform targeting test results. Are we tending back toward that time when schools were seen as assembly lines, and children as unfinished raw materials to be sent through a machine and some uniform end product to be spat out? Folks who claim that standardized tests are better because they are a reliable and objective measure need to stand back and remember what it is that we are trying to measure here. Is it standardized clones that schools aim to produce? “Reliable and objective” is great for bundling hay or quality assessment of rubbermaids, perhaps. I don’t think it should be the basis of measuring the learning and growth of our children.

The article concludes with this uplifting thought:

Robert Jackson, a councilman, seemed sympathetic to Mr. Tobias, but said that with the election approaching, he needed to know how he could convey such nuanced testing subtleties to voters. “What do I tell them?” he asked.

“If I were you,” said Mr. Tobias, “I’d say test scores are going up.” The room exploded with laughter.

Mr. Tobias was kidding, but everyone knew, come fall, from Staten Island to the Bronx, from Yonkers to Buffalo, that was precisely the sound bite they’d hear on the TV news.

Test Scores Are Up. So Why Isn’t Everybody Cheering? [New York Times Online]

B (still looking for an appropriate nickname) forwarded this op-ed article to me this morning about how teachers are so grossly underpaid that many of them have to keep second jobs over the summer or even during the school year. The authors point out that the starting salary for a teacher with a master’s degree is around $15,000 less than the average across all professions. And with NCLB, there is even more pressure for teachers to do well, more job insecurity, but the same lousy salary. The only thing to work toward is not-getting-fired.

Imagine that scenario in the private sector. A chief executive decides he wants better performance from his company. He issues a mandate that all employees be highly qualified. Then he proposes, as No Child Left Behind does, that the staff members be more tightly controlled, that they conform closely to his top-down directives and that they be tested yearly to keep their jobs. And he wants all of this without raising salaries a penny. Who would want to work for such an outfit?

The authors then point out how rigorous demands are placed on teachers with serious consequences, yet so little respect is accorded the profession:

There’s almost something darkly comic about it all. We place the highest demands on a profession, and not just through the teacher-quality provisions of the legislation. We have unarticulated expectations that teachers be morally and ethically unimpeachable, possessed of dynamic, compelling personalities and agile minds and capable of guiding the learning, for example, of 35 hormonally charged 13-year-olds right after lunch.
After asking that of them, we pay them so little that they have to find work selling electronics and cleaning our houses. Is it any surprise that 45 percent of new teachers leave our schools within the first five years?

Why does this have to be an op-ed piece? Are these points not painfully obvious to any breathing human being? The authors suggest creating bonds to raise the necessary funds to find, train, and retain better educators. I don’t know anything about bonds, but it is clear that someone should be trying something to clear this problem up. It’s just like our government to put these laws in place without giving states the means to make the necessary changes.

Obviously, as a former teacher, it frustrates me to no end to think about this stuff. I think it has to do with the lack of respect that teachers get in this country. So many people think that it’s such an easy job, and that anyone with subject-matter knowledge can do it, and that teachers get it so great having so much vacation time. What people do not know is that good teachers need to give a little bit of themselves up every day to their students. It’s emotionally draining and time consuming. When I was teaching I worked 70 hour weeks, and that was when there were not special circumstances like exam-writing, parent conferences, sporting tournaments, or the like. I loved it, and I didn’t mind working hard for my kids, but it sure did burn when people told me that teachers should get paid less since they only work 9 months out of the year.

At any rate, I will quit with the ranting now. B is probably rolling her eyes as she reads. but hey, she started it, right?

Reading, Writing, Retailing [New York Times]

A Slashdot post from May highlights a consulting firm, Hollywood Math and Science Consulting, which helps television and movie producers to incorporate math into their scripts in a true and convincing manner. They make notes in the dialogue to make sure the math is as close to correct as possible, and the characters are interacting the way mathematicians would.

It’s kind of interesting how math has become more than just everyone’s worst memory of high school lately. What with “Good Will Hunting”, “A Beautiful Mind”, and “Murder by Numbers”, we are seeing math in mainstream culture more as something that can actually generate some neat ideas. Mathemeticians are also being portrayed more; often as lunatics, but lesbians all started out as serial killers and vampires, right? I just wonder if there will be some sort of cultural shift that will allow for reactions other than cringes when math comes up in conversation.

Mathematicians Become Hollywood Consultants [Slashdot]
Math whiz fights terror with smarts [MIT News Office]
Math Professor Goes Hollywood [Harvard Crimson]

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Go see it! I had a “date” last night with my straight alter ego, P Galore. She took me to see Laughing Wild, put on by the Huntington Theater Company. The show is really just two monologues and a short playlet. The first two monologues are given by a woman who is slightly nuts, slightly hilarious, and somehow sympathetic. She tells us about an encounter in the tuna fish aisle at the supermarket, where a man is standing in her way, and she doesn’t say anything, but just waits behind him becoming more and more agitated until she eventually knocks him on the head in frustration. She talks about trying to get a cab and finding herself in an argument with a driver who is off duty. As she goes on, you realize that you partially agree with her, and her character is someone you can relate to. At the same time she is so helpless, lonely, and erratic that it’s a little scary. At points in her monologue I found myself laughing and depressed at the same time.

The second monologue is given by a man (the author of the play), who has a speech prepared about his new positive attitude, acquired through some sort of thinking positive seminar. Yet, try as he might, he keeps slipping away from his notes and into rants about the things he hates and fears. A highlight is when he talks about how people can possibly think that God sent AIDS to punish homos. He imagines a conversation between God and Gabriel, where God suddenly decides, in the 1970’s, to invent AIDS. It will be a blood-borne disease which will punish drug addicts, homosexuals, Haitians, and hemopheliacs. Clearly. This character is also somewhat pathetic, somewhat sympathetic, and very hilarious.

The second act, the playlet, brings the two characters together in a series of dreams that they seem to share. I won’t say more than that, but the show definitely gave me a little bit of entertainment and a lot to think about. If you get a chance, definitely see it!

Debra Monk and Christopher Durang Start ‘Laughing Wild’ in Boston [Playbill Online]

Since I have lots of computer projects to do this summer, and I have been trapped in front of about 35 computers with little responsibility for about 6 hours now, I decided to tool around the internet instead of being productive. Anyway I decided to check out folks’ first blog posts, to see how they started. Hothouse seems to have just jumped in, without acknowledging anything new happening. Of course, they could have been posting somewhere else before and neglected to migrate previous posts.

Most blogs have some sort of awkward introduction, where the author introduces him or herself and the context of or reason for blogging. My favorite is Aunt B’s intro at Tiny Cat Pants. Her voice is so distinct, and she seems to have figured out her style before even beginning. She also has a great nicknaming system, which I think I will steal adopt. Hope she does not mind.

My First Post [Tiny Cat Pants]

B and I will actually be in Nashville for this! We are heading down on Saturday to look at places to live. B will finally get to see, feel, smell, taste, and hear the city for herself. I will get to check out the gay scene. And hopefully a lease will be signed by Monday afternoon - wish us luck!

For the fifth year the Out on the Deck Summer Concert Series will provide live musical performances, with each concert benefiting a local non-profit. Hosted in the home, and on the large backyard deck, complete with stage, of Bev Clendenen and Anne Moorman, the concerts feature local artists with a variety of musical styles…. As in the past, the series will kick-off with a special Straight But Not Narrow edition, scheduled for June 18. This season opener will, as last year, benefit PFLAG Nashville. Details of this, and other concerts, will be announced soon.

Out on the Deck Concert Series Returns [Church Street Freedom Press]
Directions [Pink Flamingo Flash]

as we all know, the two most important things NOT to do after drinking heavily are
1. telecommunicating
2. cooking (esp deep frying)
and, of course, a third is driving but that is a given.

Anyway, I read about this alcohol sensing device which can check your alcohol consumption through your skin. So it could be stuck onto steering wheels or gloves, or more importantly your telephone, keyboard, stove dials. Brilliant!

Steering wheel alcohol lock [engadget]
Steering wheel checks alcohol consumption [USA Today]

Someone posted a query on the lj davis_square community about how to get rid of her stuff, and got some great suggestions.
reuse@mit.edu
Goodwill in Davis Square, Somerville
Poor Little Rich Girl in Davis Square, Somerville
the shelter on College Ave (anyone know more details?)
Boomerangs in JP or Brighton which benefits AIDS Action

Stuff [davis_square]

Nashville’s News Channel 5+ has begun a gay news program in conjunction with the newspaper, Out & About.

Each show will air four times a month on NewsChannel 5+, featuring a format of news, business, and entertainment segments geared especially toward the gay and lesbian audience. [Out & About Nashville]

Apparently some conservatives are not so pleased about it. I wrote a quick email thanking News Channel 5+. You should feel free to as well:
MBonnett@newschannel5.com
news@newschannel5.com

Out and About Today [News Channel 5+]
Nashville gets get gay television show Out & About Today [Queer Day]
Out & About Today hits the airwaves on NewsChannel 5+ on June 11 [Out & About Nashville]
Fundies Frothing at the Mouth Over Upcoming Gay TV Show [Tennessee Guerilla Women]