Number 2 Pencil

Bad language and bad manners

Is the f-word now not only acceptable, but appropriate for high-class events? And does part of the problem stem from a general lack of attention to manners, especially in child-rearing?

One night at the opera with my father, I noticed that the respectable-looking, rather dowdy middle-aged couple sitting next to me began to almost vibrate with excitement when the curtain rose. Evidently the set struck them as rather spectacular. "Oh, this is gonna be so f***ing great!" exclaimed the wife to her husband, who nodded benignly in agreement. While I was happy for them and their enthusiasm, I couldn't help but wonder: Since when did the f-word become so acceptable in what used to be called polite society that we now can even hear it at the opera?...

...there's a...disinclination to prevent actual children from behaving like foulmouthed banshees. Rachel Simmons' 2002 bestseller Odd Girl Out marshaled page after page of depressing tales of female adolescent cruelty...but never suggested that the perpetrators were simply badly brought up brats ill-suited for polite society.

Instead, Simmons argued, "girls in our society are not encouraged to express their anger, and so it goes underground" — oozing up in toxic little bubbles of middle-school sniping and ostracism. I'd say the real problem is that girls (and boys) are encouraged all too extravagantly in our society to express anger from an early age. Anyone who's seen a preschooler smack his mother or scream in a restaurant or push another child down at the playground — only to be earnestly asked by the concerned parent about what feelings led to such behavior — knows this is true.

Ms. Seipp isn't the only one who thinks parents are falling down the job. Muriel Grey writes that children who are not taught proper manners and behavior are seriously handicapped in life:

...we fail to take this as seriously as we ought. The bad manners of children, particularly of deprived, working-class and benefit-class children, is so often the subject of middle-class contempt, but very rarely examined with any real pity or concern. Just as we know full well that a great many children, leaving poor schools with no qualifications, are not stupid, but have just been sold short, we must also accept that the absence of anyone teaching them how to be charming, friendly and considerate, does not mean that they do not have the innate capacity to be so. It’s a sign that society at large does not consider the possession of good manners sufficiently important...

My parents certainly had no qualms about enforcing manners. I once saw a 10-year-old kid in Target hit his mom on the arm because she wouldn't buy him a toy. He told he hated her as he slapped her. Had I ever done that - or used the f-word - to my mom, I wouldn't be here writing this post today.

Photos don't kill people

How much crime and mayhem could result from a photo of a gun? Since when did a photo become a weapon? And since when did Douglas McKay High School (OR) become so terrified of guns that even photos of them are verboten?

My 15 year old daughter, Shea, out of sheer pride, took a picture of her brother to her high school to share with a teacher. Her brother, Bill, also a graduate of Douglas McKay High School in Salem, Oregon, is a US Marine and a decorated veteran of the Iraq war...

Shea, a freshman at McKay, has become acquainted with one of her teachers that her brother also had while in school...Mr. Costa has several pictures of McKay graduates hung in his classroom and Shea asked that if she brought a picture of Bill would he also hang it with the others. He of course said yes.

Shea proudly printed a picture of her brother and took it to school. The picture she selected is of her brother in Iraq, in combat uniform and holding a gun. Just, a typical picture of a Marine at work in a war zone. Mr. Costa asked the school administration for permission to hang the picture due to the graphic nature of the picture. He was denied, based on the fact that a gun is included in the picture. From there I’m told it was taken to the Salem-Keizer Administrative offices and it was scanned and the gun removed in order for it meet the guidelines of political correctness.

Michelle Malkin has posted the photo in question. The school's principal believes that posting this photo would send the wrong "message" to the students. And Head's Bunker loses his, well, head over this ridiculous story:

Has it come to this, really? Have we allowed such delusional people to run our schools, brainwashing our youth that there is no legitimate use for a weapon? Are they going to go through the school library and remove all images of guns from their history books? Are they going to take their foolish "no-tolerance" policy for guns and be consistent and strip their books of any significant event in which guns were used to liberate, defend, restore, and dispense justice?

I wouldn't taunt them, HB. I bet they would.

Update: The controversy appears to have been cleared up.

A beautiful day

Got my code set to run overnight, so I was able to leave work early. Got home in time to clean out my back garden and the garage, and now I'm relaxing in the library, watching Alice watch the world.

Statistics term of the day: Kurtosis

Kudos to all of you who knew kurtosis was next on the list! Kurtosis is the fourth moment of the distribution, and is the peakedness (that's three syllables, not two) of the distribution. From the Risk Glossary we get these lovely graphs:

The distribution on the right has greater kurtosis - more peaked, less flat - but it's possible that it has about the same SD as the graph on the left, which is more spread out but is thinner at the tails. Normal distributions are likely have a skew of 0 and a kurtosis of 3.The graph on the right is more likely to be leptokurtic (defined as a kurtosis value of greater than 3), while the graph on the left is platykurtic (kurtosis value less than 3).

You now know the first four moments of the distribution (mean, SD, skew, and kurtosis), which come in very handy for describing a set of scores. If a test score distribution has a mean of 75, an SD of 5, zero skew, but a kurtosis of 4, it might look very much like the right graph above. This would suggest a test on which most examinees score very close to the mean, with some out on the fat tails, and no real floor or ceiling effect (i.e., examinees aren't bunching up on the high or low end).

This is the funniest graph I've found to help you remember lepto (peaked) vs. platy (flat) in kurtosis:

Getting it in Georgia

Twenty-five public schools in Georgia have been named No Excuses schools.

The No Excuses Schools that beat the odds include 21 elementary schools, three middle schools and one high school. Atlanta Public Schools dominates the list, with 10 elementary schools among the 25 No Excuses Schools. That includes the high-achieving Capitol View Elementary, where 98 percent of students met or exceeded standards in spite of a poverty rate of 89 percent.

Three guesses as to how No Excuses schools view standardized tests, and the first two don't count.

The No Excuses project has identified seven common traits in low-income schools that excel:

Principals are free.
Principals use measurable goals to foster achievement.
Master teachers bring out the best in a faculty.
Rigorous and regular testing testing are used to improve student performance.
Achievement is the key to discipline.
Principals work with parents to make the home a center of learning.
Effort creates ability.

Emphasis mine. If you haven't read the report, "No Excuses: Lessons From 21 High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools," go do so. It's an easy read that will leave you with the realization that some educators actually get it. Go visit the Capitol View Elementary School webpage, too. The curriculum (such as this one for the third-grade year) looks delightful.

Desperate in Denver

Hmm, so slashing the pay for substitute teachers results in...a huge dearth of substitute teachers. Who would have thought?

Denver Public Schools is asking parents to fill in as substitute teachers. The school district said it's so short of subs that it's writing to parents in hopes that they'll step in. The shortage comes after daily pay for substitutes was cut from $120 to $81.

School officials say substitutes do not need teaching experience, just a college degree and a special certificate, which can be obtained.

Better yet, why don't those parents just homeschool? I mean, if you knew that your school was willing to let anyone with a degree and a certificate sub your kid, and that they were only going to pay them 81 bucks, and the school is trying to get you to sub your kid to boot - why not just eliminate the middleman altogether? Then you wouldn't have to follow all these guidelines, either.

She's not heavy, she's my teacher

As much as teachers complain about tests like the PRAXIS, I can't imagine what they'll say about this kind of assessment:

A state lawmaker has suggested Hawaii's public schoolteachers be forced to weigh in as part of the fight against obesity in students, KITV in Honolulu reported. [Hawai'i] State Rep. Rida Cabanilla introduced a resolution in the house requesting that the Board of Education establish an obesity database among public schoolteachers.

"You cannot keep a kid to a certain standard that you yourself is not willing to keep," Cabanilla said...The resolution calls for all public schoolteachers to weigh in every six months.

Not surprisingly, the union has already spoken:

The teachers union said it agrees that teachers are at the front line when it comes to the education and health of children, but it says the resolution is misguided. "I think at this point and time, the focus really needs to be on putting highly-qualified teachers in the classroom," Hawaii State Teachers Association President Roger Takabayashi said.

New catchphrase for the HSTA - "Highly-qualified teachers come in all sizes!"

Good news for Cleveland

Cleveland's miserable high school graduation appears to have improved considerably, and Jay Greene thinks he knows why:

When a Plain Dealer reporter asked me about the increase earlier this month, I said the numbers should be treated "with some healthy skepticism." I hadn't heard of a district making such rapid improvement in graduation rates...But I've updated my estimate for Cleveland's graduation rate, and found, I'm embarrassed to admit, that my skepticism was unwarranted. There does appear to be a large gain in graduation rates in recent years. According to my method of independently estimating graduation rates, Cleveland went from a 28 percent graduation rate for the class of 1998 to a 29 percent rate in 2000 and then jumped to 45 percent in 2002, the most recent year for which I can compute results. The improvement appears to be real.

...Cleveland began at such a low point that rapid improvement might have been somewhat easier. In 1998, Cleveland had the lowest graduation rate by far among large school districts nationwide...Second, Cleveland is home to a significant voucher program that may have placed pressure on the district to improve its quality...Third, the state takeover of Cleveland's schools may have been exactly the shock the district needed to turn itself around.

Cleveland, in essence, had nowhere to go but up, and two serious shakeups seem to have helped immensely. The national high school graduation rate is 71%; Ohio is actually above average, at 78%. So how did Cleveland get so bad to begin with?

One site, Catalyst For Cleveland Schools, claims the city lacks the " 'community pillars' like churches, large businesses and economically diverse schools" that other cities have. News station WCPN notes the following:

Cleveland ranked near the bottom in a number of categories - children who are disabled, who suffer from lead poisoning, and who live in poverty.

FairTest, not surprisingly, puts some of the blame on the Ohio graduation exit exam. What FairTest doesn't address is why students in Cleveland can't be expected to pass the items on this exam by the time they've completed 12 years of public schooling (caveat: this is the current version, not what might have been in place in 1995).

Sample reading item (following an approximately 540-word-count length essay entitle, "How The Turtle Got Her Shell"):

How do the emotions of the turtle change from before she discovers
her jewels are lost to after she realizes this fact?
A. joyful to spiteful
B. distressed to jovial
C. depressed to mirthful
D. cheerful to sorrowful

Sample math item (I've had to spell out mathematical notation):

The table below shows values for x and y.
x y
0 –1
1 0
2 3
3 8
4 15
5 24

A. y = x - 1
B. y = x + 19
C. y = x-squared - 1
D. y = 2(x-squared) - 5

Given that this exam is currently in place, yet Cleveland's graduation rates have nearly doubled, I'd say that, despite testing critics claims, the exam doesn't seem to be where the problem lay.

A policy for butter knives, but not for death threats

What's the opposite of the overzealous school principal expelling a student for possessing a butter knife? A student left dead because the school "bungled" a genuine death threat:

In the days preceding John Jasmer's Aug. 21, 2003, slaying, at least one school-district employee was aware of a murder plot, according to Seattle police. An independent school-district investigation revealed that two days before the slaying a parent told a district employee that members of the Roosevelt High's football team planned to kill Jasmer. On the day she received this information, the employee called a Roosevelt vice principal but only left a voice-mail message. The parent who brought the information forth also left a message for the vice principal, according to the school-district investigation. The vice principal said he didn't receive either message.

The district inquiry failed to provide solid answers on whether school officials followed threat policies upon learning about the murder plot. After Jasmer's slaying, a former district spokeswoman summed up the threat-notification policy as saying that all credible threats of violence or harm against a student, employee or public-school property should be promptly and appropriately addressed.

Sound Politics notes the other aspects to the story, but thinks this is evidence that the school district is going straight to hell.

Next up: "Dance your way to a higher score"

Schoolhouse Rock meets the SAT:

Pop culture references, jokes about dating and female empowerment messages - "Not Too Scary Vocabulary'' ($45.95) sure isn't your parents' SAT-prep program. Renee Mazer, a University of Pennsylvania Wharton School graduate and a standardized-test tutor for 17 years, uses poems and songs to help students study vocabulary in this seven-CD set. "I watch TV, what kids are watching, listen to the radio. Kids like 'That '70s Show,' and they are listening to the music I'm listening to. All those references are there.'' Some students have told Mazer their scores have jumped 70 to 150 points after using her prep kit.

Yummy

I did not receive one of these for Easter. My fiance is off the hook, since he had the flu all week.

Given that it's now on my Amazon wish list, you Devoted Readers are (hint, hint) not off the hook.

Putting NY teachers to the test

Hot on the heels of the ridiculous cheating scam one flunking NY teacher tried to pull, Newsday runs an article entitled, "Don't Stop Now In Testing Teachers."

For years, the city employed hordes of teachers who had been in the classrooms for years, even though they never had been able to pass the teacher certification exams. One exam tests the teacher's general knowledge of basic skills such as reading, writing and math, while the other tests the teacher's knowledge of the subject he or she teaches...

Wayne Brightly was able to remain in the classroom for 13 years because he was hired before the new rules took effect and because he got several extensions of his temporary teacher's license. But he hadn't passed the exam in his subject area. His last extension was due to expire in August.

The educators I talked to said the certification reforms have improved the quality of teachers over all, aided by programs such as Teach for America and NYC Teaching Fellows, which have drawn new recruits by making teaching seem a cooler and more professional job. The written exams matter because research shows that students perform better when their teachers have high verbal skills and a mastery of the subjects they teach.

I don't know which specialty exam covers Brightly's subject area, but here's the Liberal Arts and Science test (LAST) is here.

Where in the world are our geography standards?

American high-schoolers tend to fare poorly when faced with geography questions, and the nation's geography teachers want to do something about it:

A Roper poll commissioned by the National Geographic Society several years ago found that just 13 percent of Americans between the age of 18 and 24, or one in seven, could find Iraq on a map, and 83 percent could not locate Afghanistan...As a result of this survey and similar reports, nonprofit organizations have taken up the cause of trying to improve Americans' awareness of geography and its importance; those people most concerned include some of the country's dedicated teachers... Ms. Bednarz sees an improvement in younger students' awareness but remains concerned, she says, "about general public ignorance." Being able to name, spell and locate places correctly, she says, is only a small part of the field of geography that often gets filed away in school curricula under a social studies label. Context and connections are geography's meat and potatoes. Geographers pride themselves on being connectors whose major task is studying relationships between people and places...

...[Ms. Bednarz] admits it was discouraging to find that only 20 percent of her college geography class last semester could find Thailand on a map or locate the site of the earthquake that triggered the tsunami.

(Via the Gadfly.)

Exercising his right to speak about bad ideologies

It's very hard to believe this is not an April Fool's joke - the assistant news editor of Lehigh University's student newspaper calls for the redistribution of just about everything:

And now, citizens, we must fight for a more egalitarian society in the United States. It is my opinion that the greatest expression of democracy and equality is the communist system and that it is time for Americans to push for a social revolution where production is made “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs,” as Karl Marx said...

Besides basic humanistic values, a communist United States would allow all residents to have access to an education of equal quality and value. Capital and racial discrimination would no longer exist. With this new education and in the continuation of the current development of grades at Lehigh, with one-third of students obtaining a 3.5 GPA or higher every semester, a communistic approach to grading could be put into place. The current inflation and leveling out of grades could lead to, just as with capital, an elimination of grades.

Students would study for pure scholastic interest and would put in as much effort as they felt necessary. Instead of spending time learning what is sometimes considered futile, scholars would only learn what they felt useful to them...

Two quick questions for Olivier Lewis:

1. Can he name a country that follows Marx's principles and is a success, and by success I mean, "the government doesn't spend a great deal of time, money, paperwork, and bullets trying to prevent its citizens from leaving"?
2. If I am allowed to work harder in school than my fellow man, how is it possible that we could each end up with an education of equal quality? Wouldn't equalizing education require me to work no more and no less than my school mates?

Love the part about distributing income. If I'm guaranteed an income of $38K a year, no more and no less, no matter how hard I work, why do I want to go to college at all?

(Via FrontPage Magazine.)

Update: And as for equalization of income and giving everyone only what they "need," see what happens when you try to equalize things and take the luxury goods away from those who feel they deserve them?

Bored in Bentleyville

Apparently, some misbehaving students couldn't think of a better hiding place for their stash than the local high school:

School officials have discovered a secret hideaway at Bentworth High School, in the small coal-patch town of Bentleyville, Pennsylvania. The secret room was behind a hallway hatch used to access pipes. Inside, officials found marijuana roaches, candles, and a disposable camera with pictures of a boy bound with duct tape and a girl flashing her breasts.

Police say no crimes were committed but at least ten students have been disciplined. However, some parents think officials aren't taking the secret hideaway seriously enough. Kay Keen, a former PTA vice president, says those sorts of things shouldn't be happening in a school.

Guess there's not that much to do in coal-mining towns these days.

Statistics Term of the Day: Skew

Skewness is simply a measure of the non-symmetry of your distribution; thus, we can add it to measures of central tendency and variability in describing our distributions of scores. When distributions are skewed, this means that scores within that distribution are piled up on one end (or tail) more than on the other.

Skew can be negative or positive. To remember direction of skew, think of the positive/negative number scale, with the "negative" being to the left, and "positive" being to the right. The "skew" part is actually the skinny part of the distribution, not the end where all the numbers pile up. Thus, this distribution (which is what you'd see when measuring personal income, or number of children per family) is positively skewed:

Whereas this distribution of scores (such as you might see on a very easy exam) is negatively skewed:

You'd think that direction of skew would be easy to remember, but my time spent tutoring and teaching entry-level statistics suggests otherwise. Remember SK = "skew" = "skinny part". Graphing your data will make skew evident, but most statistical packages also calculate a statistic that quantifies the amount of skew in your data. In a skewed distribution, the mean, median, and mode may differ markedly from one another, so understanding the skew is crucial when describing your data (and in performing inferential stastistics, as we'll discuss later on). A nice discussion of the skew as the third moment of the distribution (with pretty graphs, too) can be found here.

And that's all, folks. Have a very Good Friday and a lovely Easter, and to avoid eating too many Peeps, try blasting them for a change.

More reason to worry

From the National Center for Education Statistics (a fabulous resource, I should note) comes a profile of the American high school sophomore, circa 2002. The results? Not too wonderful.

Oh, sure, over half of the sample of 15,362 students are playing sports, and the majority had positive views of their schools. Eighty-eight percent feel safe at school. Most felt well-informed about school rules. And they're ambitious - 81.9% felt they would complete at least some college classes in their lifetime; over half thought they would earn at least a four-year degree.

As the Gadfly notes, though, those ambitions don't exactly square with reality:

There is...quite a lot [of information] about their reading and math prowess based on a specially tailored test. That test gauged reading proficiency at three different levels and math skills at five levels. The news is not good. While most tenth graders possess very basic skills, the percentage who can read at the level of "simple inference" is less than half and the fraction that can handle "intermediate level" math concepts (and formulate "multi-step solutions to word problems") is just one in five. Yet when asked about their educational aspirations, 72 percent expect to graduate from a four-year college and half expect to earn a graduate degree. Talk about a major mismatch between hope and reality.

He's not kidding. Quotes from the report:

[In reading] Under half (46 percent) of 10th-graders were at level 2 (ability to make relatively simple inferences beyond the author’s main thought and/or understand and evaluate abstract concepts). Eight percent of sophomores were able to demonstrate mastery at level 3 (ability to make complex inferences or evaluative judgments that require piecing together multiple sources of nformation from the passage). (p 92-93)

Sophomores reported spending approximately 10 hours per week on homework in all subjects, 5 hours in school and 6 hours outside of school (table 18). Of this total, students spent about 5 hours weekly on mathematics homework and about 4 hours on English homework...most differences in the time spent on homework overall were due to differences in the time spent on homework outside of school. (p. 106)

About two-thirds (67 percent) could perform simple operations with decimals, fractions, powers, and roots...At level 4, one-fifth (20 percent) were proficient, that is, could understand intermediate-level mathematical concepts and/or demonstrate ability to formulate multistep solutions to word problems. Level 5 involves solving complex multistep word problems and mastery of material found in advanced mathematics courses...just 1 percent of sophomores were proficient at level 5. (p.125)

...over one-third of sophomores expected that a 4-year college degree would be their highest degree (36 percent), another 20 percent planned to obtain a master’s degree, and about one in six anticipated receiving an advanced
degree, such as a Ph.D. (16 percent). (p. 155)

Results disaggregated by race are even less cheerful:

For example, among sophomores who expected to complete at least a 4-year degree, at reading level 2 (simple inference), 31 percent of Blacks, 35 percent of Hispanics, and 65 percent of Whites were proficient. Among sophomores who expected to complete at least a 4-year degree, at level 4 of mathematics (intermediate concepts), 6 percent of Blacks and 12 percent of Hispanics, contrasted to 33 percent of Whites, were proficient.

You read that right. Some kids who expect to get a four-year degree are no further along in reading - by 10th grade - than "show[ing] mastery of simple reading comprehension, including reproduction of detail and/or the author’s main thought," and no further along in math than "perform[ing] simple problem solving that involved the understanding of low-level mathematical concepts."

Update: I've listed this post on Wizbang's Carnival of the Trackbacks. This is a regular post on Wizbang on which readers can list any posts they want in the trackbacks; go check it out and see what Wizbang's readers think is essential reading for the week.

Missing the forest for the trees

Would you be upset if your child's elementary school was named after a former president who also owned slaves?

Parents, students and teachers at Berkeley's Thomas Jefferson Elementary School will soon vote on whether to rename their school because the nation's third president was a slave owner. The question of whether to rename the school has been debated for more than two years -- since several teachers, including an African American mother of three former Jefferson students, said Jefferson's moniker offended them and suggested a name change.

Found via Joanne, who also notes that California's graduation rate is at a low 71%, with only "about half of California's African American and Latino ninth-grade boys graduat[ing] from high school within four years." Doesn't that suggest that debating a school's name change for two years was a bit of waste of time and energy?

And I can't even deal with this - it makes my head hurt. I guess it's okay to be "imperfect" as long as you're PC about it.

So much for spiking the punch

In response to evidence of a little underage drinking, school officials in Belmont, MA, follow the "time-honored traditions" (according to Wizbang) of handling the situation in the worst possible way.

According to the Boston Herald article:

Belmont Superintendent Dr. Peter Holland said the trouble began when chaperones noticed 10-15 out of the 450 students at the dance acting "in an impaired state.'' Some students were vomiting and at least one teen passed out in mid-conversation, Holland said.

Sounds bad, but the response (as summarized by Wizbang) was worse:

(1) Overreact. They shut down the dance and called for ambulances. 14 ambulances. After fighting over the 6 drunken teenagers who could plausibly be taken to the hospital for intoxication, the other eight went back to their station.

(2) Give the offenders a slap on the wrist. Monday morning, Belmont school officials gave twelve of the now-sober louts their punishment. For showing up at the dance intoxicated, in violation of several state laws, they decided to send a strong message. All the miscreants were given a one-day suspension.

(3) Punish all the other students as well, so the offenders don't feel picked on. School officials over in Westwood decided they would learn a lesson from Belmont's problem. From now on, all students attending dances in Westwood will have to blow into breathalyzers ($300-$500 each).

Is it just me, or doesn't it seem like (a) isolating the offenders & calling the cops, (b) calling all their parents to come them after getting a BAC reading, and (c) kicking all the offenders out of school for at least a week would be the more rational response? It's outrageous that any student will have to blow into a breathalyzer to enter a dance from now on. I also have to disagree with the commenter on Wizbang's site who says this is related to NCLB; wouldn't calling 14 ambulances be making this seem like more trouble for the school than it is, not less?

Oh, and let's talk margin of errors on breathalyzers; this site puts it at 50%. Where does this school intend to set the BAC bar? Will students have to blow a perfect zero score to be admitted? I would assume they would set the bar that low, since drinking is illegal for those under 21, but what does that mean with such a large margin of error? Breathalyzers most definitely are NOT perfect measures of blood alcohol content, which is why those drivers pulled over who blow high numbers on the BAC are almost always given blood tests as well.

If the school was worried about lawsuits now, just wait until they bar some lawyer's daughter from her senior prom for blowing a .02 on a breathalyzer. Now THAT will be a fun lawsuit to watch.

Testing round-up

Despite recent criticism by UC officials, the College Board trustees voted overwhelmingly to continue using the PSAT as a scholarship qualifier. The arguments used by those opposing the PSAT are exemplified here, where one critic makes it clear that he doesn't consider it fair that students from wealthier homes do better on tests.

Apparently, recent NY DOE practice math items were a lesson in spotting errors. Unreadable graphics, misspellings, items with no right answers...not a pretty sight. (The Powerline guys are succinct: "I assume that pretty much all fourth-graders can spell 'fourth.' So who in the world writes this stuff?"

Let me know if you can make heads or tails out of this coverage of an education-related speech by Professor Joel Spring of Queens College. I can't, especially the part about how competition in schools and intellectual freedom are somehow mutually exclusive. (Free reg required.)

In Northview, MI, they're using cool cereal bowls as part of the breakfast of champions, in order to facilitate learning (and improve test scores).

Another op-ed sees a link between increased emphasis on test scores and the Red Lake School massacre. I agree, though, that schools need to help students feel safe emotionally as part of the academic environment.

The first catblogging of Spring

At our intake center, we have Scout, who is as fluffy and soft as a plush stuffed toy, and just about as docile:

And on St. Patrick's Day, we got Erin, Little Mistress of the Big Round Spinning Toy:

Blog madness

Something bizarre is going on with the blog. It keeps losing posts when I try to update, and the comments are gone again. Once again, I ask for your patience while I try to figure out what's going on.

Update: The comments are now operational, but not trackbacks.

Update # 2: I have no earthly idea what's going on. If anyone knows where the code may have become screwed up so that I'm getting this weird right indent with each post, please email me at kimberly-at-kimberlyswygert-dot-com. Thanks!

Update # 3: Hallelujah. I had a copy of my entire main index template saved on my hard drive here at work. Looks like we're good to go. Trackbacks are still screwy - you have to click on the Trackbacks link, then again on that same link when it opens the comments page - but that can wait.

Will test for food

I can't improve upon this NY Daily News headline - "Schooolhouse Crock." The zinger here is how the cheater got caught:

A Bronx teacher who repeatedly flunked his state certification exam paid a formerly homeless man with a developmental disorder $2 to take the test for him, authorities said yesterday. The illegal stand-in - who looks nothing like teacher Wayne Brightly - not only passed the high-stakes test, he scored so much better than the teacher had previously that the state knew something was wrong, officials said.

This might seem like an indictment of the exam except for the fact that the homeless man, Rubin Leitner, has more college degrees than Brightly, and was already in the process of tutoring him for the exam. Brightly, who has flunked the exam before, apparently figured he'd have a better shot at keeping his $59,000 yearly salary if he forced an overweight white man (Brightly is neither of those) who wasn't even a teacher to take the exam for him.

If the purpose of the exam is to flunk the hopelessly dumb, I say it's been validated here.

Give me a home where the jump-ropers roam

The NYTimes reports that, even in the more livable cities, families with kids are choosing to live elsewhere:

It is a problem unlike the urban woes of cities like Detroit and Baltimore, where families have fled decaying neighborhoods, business areas and schools. Portland is one of the nation's top draws for the kind of educated, self-starting urbanites that midsize cities are competing to attract. But as these cities are remodeled to match the tastes of people living well in neighborhoods that were nearly abandoned a generation ago, they are struggling to hold on to enough children to keep schools running and parks alive with young voices.

San Francisco, where the median house price is now about $700,000, had the lowest percentage of people under 18 of any large city in the nation, 14.5 percent, compared with 25.7 percent nationwide, the 2000 census reported. Seattle, where there are more dogs than children, was a close second. Boston, Honolulu, Portland, Miami, Denver, Minneapolis, Austin and Atlanta, all considered, healthy, vibrant urban areas, were not far behind.

The birth rates for American women are down, and city public schools tend not to be as highly-rated as suburban schools, but that's not the whole story. Parents just can't afford the space they need to rear children in most cities.

I find this article fascinating in part because I work in Philadelphia. I don't know where it is on the list of "healthy, vibrant" urban areas, but certainly there are some trendy neighborhoods where crime is very low. However, the cost of housing here has skyrocketed lately. The last place I rented in the Art Museum area was a house that was only 700 square feet and in desperate need of repair, yet its price nearly tripled in six years. When I looked to buy, almost anything safe in Philly was far more than I wanted to pay.

So I ended up in the 'burbs - albeit burbs that are contiguous to the city, but the 'burbs nonetheless. Upper Darby has incredibly inexpensive housing, and a family with only one breadwinner can easily afford to buy a 1500-square-foot rowhome. I don't remember seeing that many kids in the city neighborhoods I inhabited before, whereas my current block is stuffed to the gills with children of every shape, size, and color. The humongous Upper Darby High School has close to 3000 students, and there's another public high school (in a separate district) just a mile or two away. Upper Darby is 80,000 people packed into less than 8 square miles, and I'd bet half the inhabitants are under 18 (there are nine public elementary schools in the district).

Portland may be suffering the loss of school district monies, but if you ask me, Upper Darby has a bit too much of a good thing. It's fun on Halloween, but not when you're trying to parallel park on a narrow one-way street with parking on both sides and little girls double-dutching in vacant spots.

(Via Joanne.)

Opting out in Colorado

In Colorado, the number of "conscientious objectors" against standardized testing is on the rise:

[Brentwood Middle School principal John Diebold] said that 10 of the school's 670 students opted out of this year's standardized tests, more than any previous year. He has to honor the parents' right to choose while dealing with the negative affects the decisions have on his school.

When a student opts out of the test, the school receives a minus score for that test, which affects the "report card" the school receives from the Colorado Department of Education. Diebold said he uses the test results to gauge what they are doing well and what they need to improve.

"When parents have their kids opt out of the test it's hard to get the total picture of what your school's capabilities are because your whole school is not testing," Diebold said. "There are no legal ramifications, but it wouldn't be something I would advise."

Antoinette Medina is one student who is opting out; her mother was apparently influenced by testing critic Don Perl, who claims the Colorado State Assessment Program exams (CSAP) create a gap between the "haves" who do well, and the "have-nots" who don't. It's odd, isn't it, the way the test itself is seen as the stumbling block, as though if the test were removed, there would no longer be a gap between those who learn basic skills and those who don't. All that would vanish with the test's removal would be an objective way of assessing the amount of material students have learned.

As for whether or not the CSAP items measure learning, I've yet to see the test's critics present any evidence suggesting that the test items are not valid for the purpose for which they're being used. There are plenty of released items online if you'd like to check them out for yourselves.

Ok, maybe I want to live

After almost a whole week of illness, my fiance's fever has finally broken, and my cough, while loud and wracking, doesn't seem to be getting worse. I'm working from home today, and probably won't get a Statistics Term of the Day up until tomorrow. Sorry for the delay.

Running amok at West Seattle High

At West Seattle High School, the organization Operation Support Our Troops provided three pro-military speakers for what they were told would be a balanced presentation of issues surrounding the war. Instead, they walked into the most moonbattish spectacle you could imagine:

Three invited pro-military speakers were shocked last Friday when they arrived for a West Seattle High student assembly to confront a theater stage strewn with figures costumed as Iraqi men, women and children splashed with blood. It was a warm-up for the "Iraq Awareness Assembly" so no students except the actual actors saw the skit before the military guests complained to principal Susan Derse and she put a stop to it. And here comes the crucial part: no teachers or advisers were on hand or evidently even aware of the content although that part is one of several things still under investigation...

For Nadine Gulit of Operation Support Our Troops, the spectacle was sickening. She had been asked by student organizers to provide three speakers and she delivered. "I was told there would be three on each side. No debates. No rebuttal," she said in the e-mail she fired off to members of the Seattle School Board. "At no time was I referred to a teacher nor did a teacher contact me. As I walked into the theater there was a young girl wearing a mask and crawling on the floor. And, over the loud speaker (someone) was denouncing our military, saying 'Americans are killing my family!' "

...With her speakers in tow, Gulit saw the bloodied figures on the floor. Stage right were students in orange Abu Ghraib-style prison jumpsuits, hoods over heads, pounding on plates with spoons. Next, a student dressed as a grieving Iraqi woman knelt near a bloody body while, over a microphone, a narrator wailed the story of civilians shot, kicked and beaten by American soldiers.

Not exactly the civil, balanced forum that Operation Support the Troops was led to expect. Matt Rosenberg lets fly:

Seattle's flailing, public schools are seeking to "stave off bankruptcy" of more than one kind. It's a disgrace that time best used for core subject mastery is squandered to advance an anti-American, anti-military political agenda. Please note that I am talking about the loaded, unbalanced depiction of our country's role, and our military's essence in Iraq; not the different, and entirely acceptable expression of opposition to the Iraq War. Both sides were in fact aired at the speaking forum, which continued as planned, after the principal pulled the plug on the stealth "performance art" planned for the event.

A post-forum writing assignment on the war would have been a good idea, as opposed to politicized theatrics beforehand. As the State Superintendent of Public Instruction reports, only one-third of the West Seattle High School 10th graders tested last school year could pass all three mandatory sections (reading, writing, math) of the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL); which will be required for graduation as of 2008.

The seque from this disgrace to the low passing rates is a nice touch. Brian Crouch of Sound Politics has a follow-up that quotes in full a letter written to the the Seattle school board by Major Terry Thomas, USMC, who was present for the whole shebang. This paragraph says it all:

Within the auditorium, numerous adults appeared to have been supervising this behavior and children were literally running amok. What is going on in your classrooms and auditoriums? Who supervised this program? Who are these grown adults dressed as prisoners and performing such the attics on the stage of our public schools? Since when has it become Seattle School Board policy to take an official anti-troops position and declare returning combat veterans from Iraq such as myself as killers of innocent women and children as if this war were some sick sport. As an Iraq war veteran I am outraged by what I witnessed going on at West Seattle High School!

My only complaint is that Major Thomas should have put the words "grown adults" above in double-quotes, as any person who would have willingly participated in this type of outrageous ambush is neither a grown-up nor an adult.

(Everybody scooped me on this, because it happened last week while I was bogged down and getting sick, but here are a few more takes on it: Michelle Malkin, The Prickly Pear, and Hennessy's View, who actually has some emails from WSHS administrators.)

Update: Lots of comments over at LGF on this topic.

Reading while eating is a valuable skill in life

I would have absolutely rebelled had this rule been in effect at my school:

My son just told me that in his school all the kids bring iPods to lunch but -- get this -- they're not allowed to bring books to lunch. Now, to be reasonable, I'm assuming that's because books are big and clunky and iPods aren't.

Hmmm. Books - especially for kids - aren't always that big and clunky. And some students - I'm thinking of myself here - always have books in their hands. And surely not every child can afford an iPod? My guess is that, at that school, some kid chucked their hardcopy version of Harry Potter at an unsuspecting head, but it would be sad if the result were the banning of all lunchroom books, rather than the removal of the book tossers.

(Via Joanne.)

Why blogs should be encouraged in schools

From Baldilocks comes an emerging new perception of the benefits of blogging (via Instapundit):

I was kind of thrilled to find out that I could research and write a 600-word paper in three hours. Blogging is like weightlifting for bloviators.

Sisu runs with this idea:

Here's a thought. Journalism schools* -- and other writing programs -- should have students maintain a blog as part of their training in good writing (probably some already do). As our best English teachers always said, the way to become a good writer is to read good writing and write, write, write...

Let me run with it even more. The quality of writing skills produced by our K-12 public school system is obviously a concern, and the recent essay additions to both the SAT and ACT are reflections of that. Surely I wasn't the only one who noticed that some criticisms about the new SAT writing section were of the type, "How could we possibly expect students who are college-bound to write a concise essay in only 25 minutes?"

I got news for those critics - even if we grant them the argument that college-bound students shouldn't be expected to do this (and I don't), I bet that if those students were blogging, they'd be able to get a decent essay up in that time, perhaps in even less time if the topic was hot and they wanted to be the first one out with it. Oh sure, I bet the younger the blogger, the more likely you'd see "creative" grammar, spelling, punctuation, debate styles, etc going unchecked on the page. But when it comes right down to it, that blogger would still be learning the power of the written word for communication, even if they do spell their name "cRi$tOpHeR." With reader feedback, they'd be learning how to improve their communication too, once they realized that they'd misstated or misspelled or mis-conveyed something one time too often.

I will admit that I am one of the more optimistic folks when it comes to youngsters and blogging. I do have one more argument for why kids in school should blog, though, that has nothing to do with learning to write, and everything to do with understanding the rights granted to them by the First Amendment. The cases that you see in the news where schoolchildren are punished for thoughts written online and off (of which this and this and this and this are only a few examples) are horrifying.

Bloggers write what they know. Students in our public school system know their public school system, and they should be perfectly free to write positively or negatively about their experiences (should they lie about those experiences, well, it's never too early for aspiring writers to learn about U.S. libel laws, either). If schools really want to get more students interested in writing, they can start by reminding them of their First Amendment rights, and stop implementing zero-tolerance rules that snare every diarist and blogger who's had a bad day.

Update: From Mike M. comes this tale of a student who got in trouble for telling the truth online:

It all began when [Central High School student Eliazar] Velasquez, who is 17, set out to photograph [Principal Elaine] Almagno taking a smoke on school property. State law says no one can smoke within 25 feet of a school building. A friend tipped him off about her favorite spot -- in the parking lot. Armed with a digital camera, Velasquez caught her smoking beside an open door on March 7, around 4 p.m...A few days later, he posted the pictures on his Web site, centralscoop.tripod.com...

"This is a principal we're talking about. She is a leader. And here we caught her smoking on school grounds; breaking the law. . . . We feel that Ms. Almagno is not suited to be principal of Central High School. Don't take my word for it. I have pictures!"

Last Friday, Velasquez was called to the principal's office. He says Almagno began grilling him: "Tell me, who helped you design the Web site?" Velasquez said Almagno called in the school police officer, then searched his book bag. There, she found the fliers, which said, "Wanna see Mrs. Almagno take part in some illegal activities? Wanna see her breaking the law on school property? Go to centralscoop.tripod.com"...

That same day, Harold Metts, the assistant principal and also a Democratic state representative, told Velasquez he was suspended.

Um, Almagno was the one breaking the law here, right? Is it against the law to take photographs on school property? Is it against the law for a 17-year-old to have a website? Is it against the law to publish non-pornographic photos on that website?

It's not against the law to be a pest, and Velasquez seems to have a talent for it:

In a letter to Velasquez's parents, Metts wrote that the teenager was being punished for harassing and slandering the principal and the dean of students, John Hunt. Velasquez had taken a memo written by Hunt, circled a couple of grammatical errors, then posted copies of the memo around the school.

So let me get this straight. Almagno can break state law with impunity, and the dean of students doesn't know the difference between "they're" and "their" - yet Velasquez and his website are somehow the problem? Do you think any student would have the guts to post anything remotely negative about Central High School on a personal website now, after what's happened here?

And let's not even get into the paranoia and condescension that would lead a high school principal to insist that a 17-year-old isn't capable of building a website on his own.

Now for some good news. In the comments, journalist Linda Seebach describes how her son Peter benefited greatly from Usenet in middle school. Now he's a professional writer with his own blog; here he talks about the importance of learning to write quickly and automatically.

Tragedy in Minnesota, Update #2

Well, it didn't take long for experts to link the most recent school shooting and the rise of standardized testing:

In the five years since the Columbine High School tragedy, American students have grown accustomed to security officers and lockdown drills. But on Monday, the extra security failed to stop another shooting at a school, providing a reminder that the solution is not more metal detectors but closer relationships between students and educators, experts said...

The number of violent deaths in and around schools rose last year to 49 after dropping for three years in a row, according to data collected by Kenneth Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, an independent consulting firm. A total of 28 such deaths have occurred this academic year, including the Red Lake killings. The Education Department disputes the methodology used by Trump but has yet to come up with its own figures for the past two years.

Trump attributed the rise in violence to a variety of factors, including cuts in school safety funding and the overriding emphasis placed by many school districts on improving standardized test scores. He said that school safety issues have ended up "on the back burner in too many schools," with administrators feeling that "their jobs are on the line if their test scores don't improve."

As well they should be on the line, as far as I'm concerned. And it's hard to see how a focus on basic skills education and testing necessarily leads to a decrease in focus on school safety. I don't believe any principal out there thinks that kids can learn, and test, well in a war zone.

Weise sounds like one mixed-up kid:

...Weise was different and seemed to delight in the fact.

"He wore black a lot and painted his face," said Ashley Morrison, a 17-year-old student who escaped from Monday's shooting rampage at the school that left eight dead, including Weise. "... Every time I'd seen him in school he wore a trench coat."

Another student, Parston Graves Jr., 16, said Weise drew a strange and perhaps foreshadowing sketch a month ago. It was a guitar-strumming skeleton with a caption that read, "March to the death song 'til your boots fill with blood."

Should the school have done something? Would it have been possible for them to do anything drastic if Weise had not committed any crimes? Assuming the school had been focusing more lately on raising standardized test scores, does it really make sense to assume that that must be why Weise was somehow overlooked? Or is a culture in which teachers and administrators are afraid to make individual judgments about disturbed children (hence the zero-tolerance rules) more likely the culprit?

Texas cheating rates

A former school superintendent has been indicted for "tampering with government records" in an investigation of misdeeds that include cheating on standardized tests:

The indictment of Charles Matthews on a single count of tampering with government records was announced Tuesday by the Dallas County district attorney's office. On Monday, the Texas education commissioner decided to take full control of the school district after a report that confirmed extensive cheating on the state's standardized tests...

Cedric Davis, former chief of the district's police force, appealed for fairness in the ongoing investigations of the school district's woes. Davis, who is credited as a whistle-blower in the case, asserted that wrongdoings were probably committed "from top to bottom." He noted that clerks reportedly participated in the alleged tampering of attendance records and teachers reportedly fudged test scores...

Matthews was also indicted in October for allegedly destroying records sought by investigators who are investigating the school district's finances. Matthews was subsequently fired.

These preliminary report findings are just stunning:

According to a preliminary state report, two-thirds of educators involved in giving the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills last year were involved in "testing irregularities," The Associated Press reported.

Investigators found that some students who finished the test early were told to correct answers on other students' answer sheets and some educators prepared answer keys for students. In some classrooms, students were told to raise their hands so their answers could be checked before they moved to the next question.

Every time educators participate in cheating like this, several myths come to seem more like fact:

1. Educators cannot handle pressure
2. Students cannot be expected to learn basic skills and take tests on them.
3. All testing is flawed because educators are willing to cheat.

I don't know about you, but those are three myths that I'd love to see shot down. Events like the recent ones in Texas aren't helping with that.

Teacher unhappiness in the UK

Doesn't sound like things are going too well on the other side of the pond:

Nearly half of the country's secondary school teachers have suffered mental health problems due to worsening pupil behaviour, a survey has revealed. The research, by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, on 300 secondary school teachers, showed that abuse at the hands of pupils had left 46 per cent taking antidepressants or facing long lay-offs from school through stress.

One teacher told researchers he had been assaulted 10 times during 18 years in the profession and had suffered two breakdowns. He said he had been on antidepressants for more than three years as a result.

The survey also revealed that 72 per cent of teachers had considered quitting their jobs because they were worn out by some pupils' persistent disruptive behaviour...One in seven (14 per cent) said they had suffered actually bodily harm from pupils. However, in many of the cases, the school had turned a blind eye to abuse and failed to exclude the pupils involved.

I'm wondering how this sample was chosen. Was it random? Or were inner-city schools more likely to be chosen? Also, the article mentions 300 teachers researched, but does that mean 300 surveys were returned? Out of how many sent out? Certainly, an emotional topic like this could have produced quite a self-selection effect, if only the teachers who are completely fed up with things were the most likely to respond.

Interestingly, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers have voted, at their annual conference, to oppose the idea of 200 private academies being set up to replace inner-city schools. The ATL claims that the public sector could run these new private academies, but at the same time they claim their hands are tied in dealing with their own students. It sounds like they view the suggestion of private academies as a way for the best students to be siphoned off, while the problems with public schools go untreated.

Carnival Week 7

The Carnival of Education, Week 7, is up, with Jenny D guest-hosting.

Every week, I am amazed at the amount of quality output from edubloggers out there. But I guess I shouldn't be.

Kill me now. I mean it.

Now my fiance has the flu. Shivering, whimpering, being totally helpless about the whole thing. He didn't get a bit of sleep last night - was up all night coughing. I know he's really sick, too, because (a) he didn't go to work, and (b) he let me give him medication without much of a fight. Normally it's WWIII just trying to get some ibuprofen down his throat when he has a whopping headache, but this morning he dutifully took the Nyquil I poured for him.

The cats are probably confused, though happy - "What, you mean one of them is always going to stay home with us all day? Really? Wheeee!"

Tragedy in Minnesota, updated

More strange details are emerging regarding the school shooting earlier this week. The shooter, 16-year-old Jeff Weise, wore a bulletproof vest during the attack. He apparently admired Adolf Hitler, and had posted online at the website of the Libertarian National Socialist Green Party (lovely sounding group, isn't it?), whose ULR is nazi.org. Wizbang quotes Weise as admiring the "ideals" of the group, and the often-irreverant Jeff Goldstein gets serious:

Moral: if a kid claiming to love Nazis threatens violence, take him seriously.

Jeff links to a blogger living near where the shooting occurred, who says the following:

The Red Lake Ojibwe reservation is about 40 minutes from the very northwest corner of the Leech Lake reservation where I live. I played sports against the Red Lake Warriors in high school. I played VFW and Legion baseball alongside a handful of friends from Red Lake on Bemidji's team in the early 1990s. I still see several of them each summer in the local softball league, and we take a minute to say hi, catch up on life. Despite the wrenching poverty and desperate squalor that infests much of the Red Lake rez - one of the poorest places you will ever see - the Red Lakers I know are (by and large) happy people, no different than you or me...

Perhaps the most frightening aspect of this for me - even more than the fact that this shooting happened in my back yard - is the fact that these school slayings have happened all across America and all across the socioeconomic spectrum...What has gone so horribly wrong? What has changed so drastically that school kids now work out their anger with shotguns and pistols rather that with fists and, in extreme cases, the occasional knife fight? And what can we hope to do to halt this disturbing trend?

Statistics term of the Day: Standardized scores

The head's still pretty clogged, folks, so this one will be a quickie.

Now that we've learned some wonderful things about measures of spread and measures of central tendency, let's see a way we can use those to determine where someone's score lies within a distribution.

Let's say you have twin fifth-graders (bless your heart), enrolled in two different math classes. Bonnie comes home with a 75 on her math test, while Clyde has an 80. Clyde's score is higher, sure, but can you really compare the two? And how can you tell which of your kids is doing better within their class?

That's where z-scores (or standardized scores) come in. Z-scores tell you precisely where an observation lies within a distribution (they also tell you something about how representative a sample is of a population, but we'll get to that later).

Every score in a distribution has a corresponding z-score, or standardized score. All you need to calculate the z-score of a population is (a) the observed, or raw score, (b) the mean, and (c) the standard deviation. Let's consider Bonnie's class to be population #1, and Clyde's class to be population #2.

Bonnie's class has a mean of 71 and an SD of 2, while Clyde's class has a mean of 77 and an SD of 3. Hmm. We can tell already just from this information that both kids are above the mean in their class, so we know they're doing better than average. But how much better? To find the answer to this, we simply subtract the class mean from each score, and divide by the class's standard deviation.

Bonnie's z-score = (75-71)/2 = 4/2 = +2
Clyde's z-score = (80-77)/3 = 3/3 = +1

These scores of +2 and +1 are on the z-score metric, which has a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of 1. The positive sign tells us that Bonnie and Clyde's scores both fall above the mean, and their scores are in the standard deviation metric - Bonnie's score is 2 SDs above the class mean, while Clyde's is 1 SD above his class's mean. So, even though Clyde's raw score is higher, Bonnie is actually doing better in her class.

Can we really compare the two in this way? Yes, we can. This is one of things for which standardized scores are very useful. Without standardization, comparing Bonnie and Clyde's scores are like comparing apples to oranges.

One caveat to remember here. You can standardize any score, as long as you know the mean and SD. However, it's not as useful to standardize scores that come from a non-normal population, because the z-score transformation assumes that the underlying distribution is normal. For many psychological measures, it is, but it is important to be aware of any non-normality in the population. The assumption of normality doesn't matter so much for small comparisons like this; it matters a great deal when we get to probability and the use of z-scores to find areas underneath the curve.

One common error that people make is to misremember what standardization actually does. Standardization does not turn non-normal distributions into normal ones - a z-score distribution will always be the same as the underlying raw score distribution. The math2.org website gives this graphic to remind you of what the z-score distribution is assumed to be:

Secretary Spellings speaks out

Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings defends tests in the Hartford Courant:

Connecticut Education Commissioner Betty Sternberg has asked the U.S. Department of Education to exempt half of the state's students from annual testing under the No Child Left Behind Act. She said, "Adding tests in grades 3, 5 and 7 ... will tell us nothing that we do not already know about our students' achievement."

I disagree. For one thing, it will tell you how well your third-, fifth- and seventh-graders are doing. Teachers cannot remedy weaknesses they don't see. The whole point of assessing students regularly is to catch problems early so they can be fixed before it's too late...

Connecticut has received more than $23 million to develop its assessments.