Prometheus 6

Boy's been busy.

The selections were made without regard to geographic balance, said Roland G. Fryer, a Harvard economist and principal investigator for the school's American Inequality Lab, which studies issues of poverty and race. Fryer said he built an algorithm that included the 28 District schools serving middle school students and generated about 30,000 possible combinations that gave him two blocs of 14: one to receive the cash incentives, and a control group that would not.

Fryer said the two groupings he selected were the most evenly balanced based on several criteria, including size and level of academic achievement.

"We wanted to make sure that the treatment and control groups were as alike as possible," said Fryer, who leads a similar program in the New York City schools.

Come on, now...you're doing this while Rhee is shaking up the whole system? How do you sort out the effect of that from the bribes?

And again, why isn't anyone using the ideas we know will improve the educational process instead of just experimenting on the kids?

WHy do I feel Mr. Fryer is exercising his famous insulation effect?

Fryer well appreciates that he can raise questions that most white scholars wouldn't dare. His collaborators, most of whom are white, appreciate this, too. ''Absolutely, there's an insulation effect,'' says the Harvard economist Edward L. Glaeser. ''There's no question that working with Roland is somewhat liberating.''

You realize the first charter school proposal came from Georgia, right? It was created in response to Brown v. Board of Ed. Its intent was to totally privatize the school system and maintain segregation while still paying for white student's education on the taxpayer's (including Black taxpayers) dime.

“If folks continue to talk about the blame and try to do the autopsies, a year from now we’ll be in the exact same place,” said William “Brad” Bryant, a state board member and Perdue’s liaison.

Perdue removed board Chairwoman Michelle Strong, along with members Sandra Scott, Yolanda Everett and Lois Baines-Hunter.

“It’s a great day to be an American,” Scott said, declining further comment.

Clayton schools’ fears are realized
Loss of accreditation triggers new exodus of students
By MEGAN MATTEUCCI, LAURA DIAMOND
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thursday, August 28, 2008

The stunning loss of accreditation for Clayton County schools left students, parents and residents reeling Thursday at the realization of “worthless” diplomas, dashed college dreams, depressed home values and an exodus of families.

The troubled 50,000-student district will become the first in the nation to lose accreditation since 1969.

This is right interesting. This is from C-SPAN, the call in segment where they were taking opinions on this paying students for grades thing. It's like 50 minutes because it gets everyone that called in on the topic.

Side note: It's hosted at archive,org, and uploading it truly tried my patience. But they flipped it to an embeddable format about as fast as YouTube would, and I like the player because it has no ads. I have to fiddle with the embed code to fit it on the page and shut off that damnable autoplay, but it's better than last time I messed with it. I can see using it for longish stuff. I need to check out blip.tv too.

Anyway, if you have the patience there's a lot to work with in here.

This is seriously not popular. The strongest point being made against it is that external rewards reduce the intrinsic value of the behavior being rewarded, because it's a general fact. The strongest favorable responses say it may be an effective intervention if structured differently, and that it teaches school is a parallel to a job.

Dr. Fryer said that the A.P. test incentive program shed no light on the efficacy of a separate one he is managing that rewards middle school students with cellphone minutes for good behavior, attendance and homework along with test scores.

I guess not. 

Cell phone minutes, huh?

“I’m surprised that that kind of money, that kind of incentives, doesn’t produce better results. It sort of undercuts the argument that the problem is the question of motivation.”

I am not in the least surprised. We have a vast amount of experience educating folks, but the priority has always been to fit the process into a fixed price that was set politically rather than by the requirements of the task.

Mixed Results on Paying City Students to Pass Tests
By ELISSA GOOTMAN

Offered up to $1,000 for scoring well on Advanced Placement exams, students at 31 New York City high schools took 345 more of the tests this year than last. But the number who passed declined slightly, raising questions about the effectiveness of increasingly popular pay-for-performance programs in schools here and across the country.

I do have feelings about the children he's supposed to be looking out for, though. Therefore, I would like to suggest he take advantage of his Harvard cred to get some help from The Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University.

I'll tell you the truth, you don't have to look around Harvard very long to find something applicable to your work. Might be wrong...Roland...but it's applicable.

This isn't wrong, though. Check out the executive summary of A Science-Based Framework for Early Childhood Policy. Does his experiment touch on ANY of this? If not, I have to wonder what is the point of ignoring over 40 years of research on programs that have proven to be successful in favor of handing out $100 or so. Is he trying to find a method that improves education results without changing the education process? Because that would be really curious.

PBS's The Newshour did a segment on paying children to study. There's no streaming video or transcript up, but the full audio of the segment is available. Key points that should give folks pause: math scores were the only ones that improved, scores dropped when the payments were no longer available, kids became bitter when their parents took the money.

LATER: I just opened up the comments on this one. Anonymous comments will not have to wait for my approval.

This time the agreement is pretty absolute. Bits 'o emphasis added here and there...

...why be nervous about the prospects for reform? Because it’s hard to get universal care established in the first place. There are, I’d argue, three big hurdles.

First, the Democrats have to win the election — and win it by enough to face down Republicans, who are still, 42 years after Medicare went into operation, denouncing “socialized medicine.”

Second, they have to overcome the public’s fear of change.

Some health care reformers wanted the Democrats to endorse a single-payer, Medicare-type system for all. On the sheer economic merits, they’re right: single-payer would be more efficient than a system that preserves a role for private insurance companies.

Black folks, historians and people working in Black and/or Confederate History have lost a great supporter. Except those who don't like truth...

Dear Friend,

It is with great sadness that we mourn the loss of our Executive Council member, the historian and archivist  Dr. Walter B. Hill, Jr.  Walter was a tireless advocate for ASALH since joining in 1970. He served as Vice President from 1996-1998 and was a member of the Executive Council from 1995 until his passing. He carried out his work  with honor and integrity as he supported the mission and vision of the Association. He was beloved by all of the members of the Council, the Advisory Board, and the entire ASALH community. Walter developed partnerships between ASALH and similar organizations such as The HistoryMakers and The African American Civil War Museum.

Walter Bowers Hill, Jr., was born in St. Louis, Missouri on May 22, 1949. After finishing high school, Hill enrolled in the College of Wooster, earning a B.A. degree in history in 1971. From there, he attended Northern Illinois University, studying American history. Earning an M.A. degree in 1973, he returned to school to earn a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in 1988.

After completing his master's degree, Hill taught at St. Louis University from 1974 to 1977. He returned to school in the fall of 1977 to work towards the Ph.D. in U.S. History at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland. He worked as a graduate teaching assistant and later as an instructor in the Afro-American Studies Program between 1982 and 1983. While working towards the Ph.D., he also worked at the National Archives and Records Administration as a Graduate Intermittent Research Student until 1983 in the Office of the Archivist and Office of Federal Records. From 1983 to 1984, he held a Pre-Doctoral Fellowship at the Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.

Upon completing the Pre-Doctoral Fellowship in 1984, he returned to the National Archives and Records Administration as an Archivist with the Office of the National Archives where he remained for seven years. In 1990, he left to work in the Office of Public Program, assuming the Director of the Modern Archives Institute and Subject Specialist for Afro-American History. He remained with the Office until 1995 when he departed for the new facility in College Park, Maryland and assumed the position of Senior Archivist and Subject Area Specialist for Afro-American History and Federal Records. In 1984, Hill became an Adjunct Professor of Afro-American History in the Afro-American Studies Department, Howard University, Washington, D.C. and taught courses in Afro-American history for the next two decades.

As a noted historian, Hill appeared in several documentaries, as well as on Good Morning America, Washington Journal and Fox TV. He served on the editorial board of the African American History Bulletin, the Executive Council of the Association for the Study of Afro-American History and on the advisory board of The HistoryMakers, among others. He has also written extensively, his work appearing in such journals as the Newsletter of the American Historical Association and the Journal of Minority Issues.

Hill passed away on July 29, 2008 at the age of 59.

Hill was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on September 11, 2003.

I assume the question (what do you make of this) is asking what I think they're doing rather than just my opinion about what they're doing, which is positive overall.

I think they're turning the young men into Americans without disconnecting them from being Black. They do it by connecting them to each other. What makes them typically American is the collective belief that the are not collective. Achievement > affiliation is not correct, because it is through one's affiliations that achievement is recognized.

But that's okay...you got three ways of dealing with dual consciousness: merge them, kill one or surf the wave of the interference patterns. This is method three; and having made that choice the program looks pretty good.

Because I don't want to repeat myself:

Does OpinionJournal EVER present honest analysis?
A long-standing question has been answered
John Tierney spins a bad report card

All that was about vouchers for Catholic schools, and it didn't fly. What's a dedicated voucher proponent to do?

You go to D.C.

Once again, lawmakers are willing to impose on the District something they wouldn't contemplate for their home districts.

Of course. Why do you think D.C. school system got screwed? D.C. has been the victim of every urban experiment some Congressman wanted to run, because...

It matters not a whit to Mr. Souder or the NRA that District residents have a right of self-governance.

They do not.

Funds Found for New Charters
By Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 26, 2008; B04

The District will use a $7.5 million education reserve fund to pay for the seven former Catholic schools slated to reopen as secular charter schools next month, and it will be able to find more money if necessary, officials said this week.

The D.C. Council allocated $366 million in May for 63 charter schools as part of its fiscal 2009 budget. Financing for the Center City Public Charter Schools was omitted, officials said, because Center City's application was not approved by the charter school board until June 16.

The Catholic school conversions are unusual, they said, because most charters spend 12 to 15 months between approval and opening to find buildings and staff. Center City's seven campuses are ready to accept students.

The city missed its first quarterly payment to Center City -- due July 15 under District law. The next installment is due in October.

Dr. Barbara Ann Teer’s Pioneering Vision Leaves a Cultural Legacy

Dr. Barbara Ann Teer, Founder, Visionary and CEO of the National Black Theatre Inc, made her transition peacefully at home Monday, July 21, 2008. Dr. Teer was an icon in the healing art of Black Theatre. Leaving behind a lucrative show business career in 1967, she came to Harlem in 1968 and founded the National Black Theatre (NBT). This began a 40-year passion that changed the cultural landscape of the theatrical world. She created a new cultural art form by blending cultural appreciation, performing arts and community advocacy. In 1983, she expanded that vision with the purchase of a 64,000 sq ft building located at 125 Street & Fifth Avenue. There she created a thriving cultural and business complex housing the largest New Sacred Yoruba Art collection in the western hemisphere. Through a commitment to her vision and purpose, the National Black Theatre is a world-class institution that inspires cultural transformation, social change, human re-development, historic relevance, and futuristic innovation.

Boys not better than girls at maths, study finds

"The so-called gender gap in math skills seems to be at least partially correlated to environmental factors," Sapienza said. "The gap doesn't exist in countries in which men and women have access to similar resources and opportunities."

Researchers analysed data from more than 276,000 children in 40 countries who took the 2003 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) - the internationally standardised test of maths, reading, science and problem-solving ability.

Globally, boys tend to outperform girls in maths (on average girls score 10.5 points lower than boys) but in more "gender equal societies" such as Iceland, Sweden and Norway, girls scored as well as boys or better.

Adia Harvey at racism review

Lastly, I felt that the July 24 story about race and education overstated, as mainstream media outlets frequently do, the “acting white” phenomenon among Black Americans. The show reported that for many Black Americans, school success is perceived as “acting white,” which leads African Americans to shun it in favor of pursuing other routes to popularity. The “acting white” argument, first introduced in academic circles by Signathia Fordham and John Ogbu “Black Students’ School Success: Coping with the Burden of ‘Acting White,’” has been retested and analyzed among many other researchers who find little empirical support for this theory. In short, Fordham and Ogbu state that Black students don’t perform well academically in part because they see it as “acting white,” and because they recognize that in a racially unequal society, there will be little reward for their educational efforts. Yet numerous other scholars have performed more empirically sophisticated tests of this theory and have gleaned different results. In several articles, Jim Ainsworth and Douglas Downey have argued that Black students who earn high grades are very popular among their peers and believe that their educational gains will earn them occupational rewards down the line. Sociologist Karolyn Tyson has also argued that Black students with high grades are popular among peers, and that their academic achievement is met with positive regard rather than negative sanction. This is not to say that Black children never taunt others with “acting white,” but that a well-documented body of research suggests that this label may be given for reasons other than academic success, and that it is likely not the deterrent to academic achievement that Fordham and Ogbu initially suggested. It is rather unfortunate that CNN ignored a body of social science literature that challenges this theory in order to perpetuate what cultural critic Michael Eric Dyson has referred to as “the academic equivalent of an urban legend.”

Once again, lawmakers are willing to impose on the District something they wouldn't contemplate for their home districts.

Of course. Why do you think D.C. school system got screwed? D.C. has been the victim of every urban experiment some Congressman wanted to run, because...

It matters not a whit to Mr. Souder or the NRA that District residents have a right of self-governance.

They do not. Just try that crap in New York City, Boston or Dallas. You remember what happened when the Feds came in to tell local school districts in the South how to act, right?

Trigger-Happy on the Hill
Writing D.C. gun laws isn't Congress's job.
Friday, July 25, 2008; A20

DISTRICT residents are sadly accustomed to congressional interference in their affairs [P6: See? No self rule]. Usually, the meddling comes in a bid to overturn local legislation. But a move to actually write a new gun law for the District represents a new low. Or, as Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) called it, "a special outrage."

author: Douglas A. Blackmon asin: 0385506252 binding: Hardcover list price: $29.95 USD amazon price: $19.77 USD

In March 2007, People Magazine published an article titled The Last Slaves of Mississippi? which told the story of Mae Miller and her family, who were said to be held as slaves until the early 60s. I heard of the article when it was published but didn't read it. Honestly, I wasn't sure I believed it. I felt there was only an outside possibility it was for real and truthfully I may not have wanted proof.

I just read it. In light of the information in Slavery by Another Name, it now sounds plausible.

Ads Hope to Inject U.S. School Challenges Into White House Race
By Michael Alison Chandler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 13, 2008; C07

Amid a presidential campaign dominated by debate about the economy and the war in Iraq, an advertising campaign scheduled to debut in Northern Virginia and elsewhere tomorrow is seeking to spotlight challenges facing U.S. schools.

A 30-second television spot shows a blond-haired boy raising the flags of dozens of countries, including Finland and South Korea and Japan, onto one flagpole as ominous orchestral music plays in the background. In a voiceover, actress Jamie Lee Curtis says: "This boy's future isn't looking so good. The schools in every one of these countries are outperforming ours."

"You have failed to develop the trust necessary to build a cooperative relationship between outside sources and the school system," the evaluation said. "You have demonstrated unethical behavior by providing information to outside sources for the purpose of discrediting Loudoun County Public Schools."

Minority Groups Decry Ouster of School Advocate
By Kameel Stanley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 9, 2008; B02

Loudoun County's minority community is criticizing school officials for failing to renew the contract of the district's first supervisor for outreach.

Despite months of lobbying from teachers, parents and organizations representing minorities, the school system ended its contract last month with Beverly Bennett-Roberts, who was hired nearly three years ago to lead the district's diversity efforts.

Focus on School Reform
A new coalition presses the presidential candidates to face the problems of public education.
Monday, July 7, 2008; A12

SAY WHAT YOU will about the Rev. Al Sharpton, it is hard to ignore -- or deter -- him. And that is good news for those interested in fixing the nation's troubled public schools. In giving his voice to school reform as a true civil rights issue, Mr. Sharpton may help change the nature of the debate. Equally significant is his willingness and that of other leaders in a recently formed coalition to challenge traditional allies in the cause of black and brown children.

About 6,000 scores from when the website started in 2003 to the present are in question, GMAC spokeswoman Judy Phair said Wednesday. It's unclear how many test-takers are involved because they can take the test several times a year.

The council plans to match data with test-takers and cancel the scores of anyone who it determines knowingly used Scoretop to cheat on the test. It will also notify the schools that received scores, and perhaps prevent cheaters from retaking the test. Phair said she couldn't offer a timetable on the process.

Business school exam publisher tracking down Web cheaters
July 3, 2008

RICHMOND, VA. — Prospective and current graduate business students who used a website to cheat on entrance examinations over the last five years could have their scores thrown out.

If CareFirst is not fulfilling its charitable public-health mission -- a charge by the District that CareFirst firmly rejects -- then why is the mayor seeking and accepting CareFirst money for a purpose that has nothing to do with public health?

Tainted Money For D.C. Schools
By Colbert I. King
Saturday, June 28, 2008; A15

What to think about the nonprofit D.C. Public Education Fund created by Mayor Adrian Fenty? It is supposed to have a good purpose: raising funds in the private sector to help the public schools with their operating budgets.

Fenty is said to be following the lead of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who tapped well-heeled New Yorkers for money for schools after he was elected.

But is Fenty going about it the right way?

Should he, for example, solicit money for his private D.C. Public Education Fund from an organization that the District government is suing?

The Nation's Most Elite Public Schools
By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 23, 2008; 6:13 AM

I am ranking them by one of the most common, and to me most annoying, measures of high school worth--average total reading and math SAT scores. Those test results are most closely tied to the income of the families that raise these fine students. There is something of that relationship at these schools too. But once you get this many bright students together, SAT becomes largely irrelevant, since they have all gone far beyond the 10th-grade reading comprehension and math puzzles that make up those exams. Notice, for instance, the surprises. Some very well-known elite schools have much lower average SATs than some others. Some selective high schools with terrific reputations, like Lowell in San Francisco, do not have high enough SAT averages to make the Public Elites list and so remain on the main list. It shows how little significance SAT numbers have.

Time Magazine has published a story about a cohort of teenaged girls who made a pregnancy pact. The New York Times basically rewrote the article today (they gave credit to Time), though it adds an interview with a school board member. You can read either, but read one of them.

School officials started looking into the matter as early as October after an unusual number of girls began filing into the school clinic to find out if they were pregnant. By May, several students had returned multiple times to get pregnancy tests, and on hearing the results, "some girls seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant than when they were," Sullivan says. All it took was a few simple questions before nearly half the expecting students, none older than 16, confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together.

“Banks are not philanthropic agencies,” said Pat Watkins, director of financial aid at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla. The institution was recently informed by Wells Fargo that the bank would not extend loans to its students anymore, Dr. Watkins said. If lenders cannot make the profit they require on loans, she said, “a lot of the banks will just say, we’re out of the business completely, you pushed us out.”

Bill Promotes Universal College Loans
By JONATHAN D. GLATER

Responding to reports that some lenders have stopped offering federal loans at community and other colleges, two Democratic senators introduced legislation Tuesday to prohibit lenders from picking and choosing among institutions.

Under the proposal, lenders that participate in the federal loan program would have to extend credit to any eligible student, regardless of such things as income or the number of years of education, as long as the college is part of the program.

The government already guarantees the loans at nearly full value.

PBS' The Newshour has been running a series on the reconstruction of the two most imperiled school districts in the country: Washington, D.C. and New Orleans. This segment is about teaching first graders to read in New Orleans.

I think it's quite the revealing report. They visited three schools: one that was undamagedby Hurricane Katrina and two that were housed in temporary buildings...one of which was swamped by 4-5 times the number of returning families than it was budgeted for. The results they found was pretty much what you'd expect.

Still, I got kind of a kick out of watching these 5-6 year old reading with comprehension in the first two schools. And you have to ask, what's going to happen to the kids that attend school #3, where the classes are crowded and most of the teachers are new and/or uncertified. Will they come to grief...and will they be condemned in the name of personal responsibility?