Dear Commons Community,

Speaking before an audience of about 2,000 members of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, its president, made the point that school reform in this country has been “hijacked” by those who blame all of our education ills on teachers. She called for more activism on the part of AFT members to fight back particularly in states like Wisconsin and New Jersey where political leaders take every opportunity to blast teachers.

I believe we need to be more active in fighting attacks on the profession and exposing not just politicians but others especially in the business community and in corporate-affiliated foundations that have promulgated that “the teachers are the problem”.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Being in San Jose right now, the “capital of Silicon Valley”, and as the proud owner of a Kindle, it is most appropriate that I post about a new ebook. The competition has just gotten keener with the announcement of iriver’s Story HD. The iriver Story HD, the first ereader featuring full integration with Google eBooks, will be available in the United States exclusively at Target Stores on July 17. (NOTE: iriver, inc. is the name of the manufacturer and does not use a capital as the first letter of its name).

The Story HD features a 7.3-ounce bodyweight, a six-inch high-definition (768×1024 pixels) E-ink display, a QWERTY keyboard and a $139.99 price tag. Customers can pick them up at Target’s website, or at retail locations nationwide. What is most important is that the new reader lets customers download content via WiFi from Google’s cloud-based library of over 3 million free works. Thousands more eBooks are also available for purchase on Google’s platform. Google eBooks are available for download by PCs and other compatible devices, however, the Story HD skips the step of having to download titles to a PC and then sync up the reader to access the books.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I am in San Jose, the unofficial capital of Silicon Valley, for the Sloan Consortium’s Emerging Technologies in Online Learning Symposium. I am looking forward to several of the speakers especially the keynote, Bryan Alexander, National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Here is a video clip of Derek Jeter’s 3,000th base hit.

Dear Commons Community,

Please save the date for a conference on Defending Public Higher Education that will be held at the Graduate Center on October 7, 2011. Over the course of the past three decades investment in public higher education has declined dramatically. Most American public university systems, such as California, Wisconsin, and Illinois, have experienced serious reductions in their state funding requiring dramatic cutbacks in academic programs and services they provide to their students. Here at the City University of New York (CUNY), we have gone from a tuition-free system as late as 1976 to one that receives over 45% of its operating budget from student fees and tuition. Based on the latest budget negotiations in New York State, it is likely that there will be tuition increases in each of the next five years. We will be discussing these and other issues at this conference.

Further details including registration information are available at the Conference Website.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Here is a video of 3-D printer that is making the rounds on youtube.com. Maybe I have not kept up with this technology but it is quite amazing.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

David Brooks column today examines the issue of how scarcity — whether of time, money or calories — affects your psychology. He refers to the work of two behavioral researchers, Eldar Shafir of Princeton and Sendhil Mullainathan of Harvard who have recently, with federal help, been exploring a theory that scarcity produces its own cognitive traits. For example, he reports one of their findings:

“Shafir and Mullainathan gave batteries of tests to Indian sugar farmers. After they sell their harvest, they live in relative prosperity. During this season, the farmers do well on the I.Q. and other tests. But before the harvest, they live amid scarcity and have to think hard about a thousand daily decisions. During these seasons, these same farmers do much worse on the tests. They appear to have lower I.Q.’s. They have more trouble controlling their attention. They are more shortsighted. Scarcity creates its own psychology.”

Mr. Brooks goes on to make the case that the federal government should seek to support this type of behavioral research, however, the major National Science Foundation Program that funded this work is slated for elimination. He concludes that this is short-sighted. Yes!

However, while I think this was a fine column on all counts, I was surprised that Mr. Brooks did not also make a connection between this account of I.Q. testing and the standardized testing policies in our public schools. Specifically if poverty affects adults taking I.Q. and other tests, how about children of the poor in our American cities who come to school hungry or who have many basic “life” problems with which to deal and then have to take high pressure standardized tests. It seems to me that if the research cited in the column indicates that poverty affects adults taking I.Q. tests that it could affect children taking standardized tests. This research calls into question whether children’s entire psychological state on the day of the test could affect one’s performance. In a sense, are poor children and children with other psychological and emotional needs always at a disadvantage in the high-stakes testing world that now characterizes our public schools?

Tony

Dear Commons Community.

The latest allegations in the phone hacking scandal at News Corporation have reached a new level. It no longer simply is a matter of a couple of rogue, overly zealous journalists infringing the privacy of celebrities in order to write some gossip about them. The News Corporation, owned by Rupert Murdoch (Fox News, New York Post), appears to engage routinely in large-scale hacking of individual cell phones and other mobile devices in order to get dirt on celebrities and political figures. However, when it was learned that the News of the World (Murdoch-owned British tabloid) hacked into and deleted some of the voice messages of a murdered schoolgirl, the newspaper has potentially impeded a criminal investigation. If true, this is not only wrong and illegal; it exhibits a fundamental lack of human decency.

If these allegations are true, for shame on Mr. Murdoch and his publication. He should take a good close look at his policies and the “anything for a buck” culture he has developed.

For a timeline of the evolution of the News Corporation and the hacking scandal, check out The Anatomy of a Phone Hacking Scandal provided by the New York Times.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

During the past year, I have posted on how the over-emphasis on standardized testing has created a culture of gaming and/or outright cheating by school leaders . In New York and Washington D.C., children and parents were systematically duped into thinking that the schools were doing a good job of education by pointing to the gains in standardized test scores only to find out that tests were dumbed down or that there was widespread cheating on the part of school administrators to inflate passing rates. The NY Times has an article exposing another great American City school system, Atlanta, for its wide spread cheating on student standardized tests. The article states that:

“The results of the [state] investigation, made public by Governor Nathan Deal, showed that the cheating occurred at 44 schools and involved at least 178 teachers and principals, almost half of whom have confessed, the governor said.

A culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation existed in the district…”

The Governor’s Report further concluded that:

“Cheating was caused by a number of factors but primarily by the pressure to meet targets in the data-driven environment and that
There was a major failure of leadership throughout Atlanta Public Schools with regard to the ethical administration of the 2009 CRCT.”

The outgoing Atlanta schools superintendent, Beverly L. Hall, joins the likes of Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, as “the shinning knights” of urban school reform who have been exposed as betrayers of the trusts of school children and their parents.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

New York Times columnist David Brooks speculates how the present debt limit impasse in Washington would resolve itself if the Republican Party was a normal political party fit to govern. Specifically:

“If the Republican Party were a normal party, it would take advantage of this amazing moment. It is being offered the deal of the century: trillions of dollars in spending cuts in exchange for a few hundred million dollars of revenue increases.

A normal Republican Party would seize the opportunity to put a long-term limit on the growth of government. It would seize the opportunity to put the country on a sound fiscal footing. It would seize the opportunity to do these things without putting any real crimp in economic growth.

The party is not being asked to raise marginal tax rates in a way that might pervert incentives. On the contrary, Republicans are merely being asked to close loopholes and eliminate tax expenditures that are themselves distortionary.”

His conclusion is:

“If the debt ceiling talks fail, independents voters will see that Democrats were willing to compromise but Republicans were not. If responsible Republicans don’t take control, independents will conclude that Republican fanaticism caused this default. They will conclude that Republicans are not fit to govern.

And they will be right. ”

Tony