Dear Commons Community,

New York Times columnist, Frank Bruni, has a piece today entitled, “The Scope of the Orlando Carnage.”  It should be read and reread.  Here is an excerpt:

“These locations are never random. These targets aren’t accidental. They’re the very vocabulary in which assailants like the Orlando gunman speak, and he chose a place where there’s drinking. And dancing. And where L.G.B.T. people congregate, feeling a sense of welcome, of belonging.

That last detail is already in the foreground of the deadliest mass shooting in American history — and rightly so.

But let’s be clear: This was no more an attack just on L.G.B.T. people than the bloodshed at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris was an attack solely on satirists.

Both were attacks on freedom itself. Both took aim at societies that, at their best, integrate and celebrate diverse points of view, diverse systems of belief, diverse ways to love. And to speak of either massacre more narrowly than that is to miss the greater message, the more pervasive danger and the truest stakes.

We don’t yet know all that much about Omar Mateen, who pulled the trigger, again and again, in a nightclub whose name connotes life, not death: Pulse. We’ll be learning more in the hours and days to come, including just how potently homophobia in particular factored into his actions, how much ideological influence the Islamic State or other extremists had, how extensive his planning was, how far back he began plotting this, and how much he knew about Pulse itself and the specific composition of its crowd on different nights of the week.

But we can assume — no, we can be sure — that he was lashing out at an America at odds with his darker, smaller, more oppressive mind-set. The people inside Pulse were citizens of it. More to the point, they were emblems of it. In Pulse they found a refuge. In Pulse they found joy. To him they deserved neither. And he communicated that with an assault rifle and bullets.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Once again we face the task of burying innocents because of a cowardly attack by a gunman driven by a distorted ideology of hate.  This time at a nightclub in Orlando where at least 50 people were killed early this morning.  Our sympathies go out to the families and friends of the victims and to the people of Orlando,  especially the LGBT community.

A group called We Are Orlando is coordinating vigils and memorial services that are and will be taking place around the country.    There are a number of  events planned for here in New York City.

Peace to all!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times has a featured article today on China’s admissions problems to its top universities.  The current system based on a single national test has historically  resulted in disproportionate numbers of admissions from wealthy urban families.  In an effort to change this, the government has proposed setting aside a certain number of admissions to its top universities in Beijing, Shanghai, and Nanjing to students from the poorer rural provinces.  This has sparked sharp demonstrations across the country both for and against the change in policy.  Here is an excerpt:

“Parents in at least two dozen Chinese cities have taken to the streets in recent weeks to denounce a government effort to expand access to higher education for students from less developed regions. The unusually fierce backlash is testing the Communist Party’s ability to manage class conflict, as well as the political acumen of its leader, Xi Jinping.

The nation’s cutthroat university admissions process has long been a source of anxiety and acrimony. But the breadth and intensity of the demonstrations, many of them organized on social media, appear to have taken the authorities by surprise.

At issue is China’s state-run system of higher education, in which top schools are concentrated in big prosperous cities, mostly on the coast, and weaker, underfunded schools dominate the nation’s interior.

Placement is determined almost exclusively by a single national exam, the gaokao, which was administered across China starting on Tuesday. The test is considered so important to one’s fate that many parents begin preparing their children for it before kindergarten. The government has threatened to imprison cheaters for up to seven years.

The exam gives the admissions system a meritocratic sheen, but the government also reserves most spaces in universities for students in the same city or province, in effect making it harder for applicants from the hinterlands to get into the nation’s best schools.

The authorities have sought to address the problem in recent years by admitting more students from underrepresented regions to the top colleges. Some provinces also award extra points on the test to students representing ethnic minorities.

This spring, the Ministry of Education announced that it would set aside a record 140,000 spaces — about 6.5 percent of spots in the top schools — for students from less developed provinces. But the ministry said it would force the schools to admit fewer local students to make room.

Against the backdrop of slowing economic growth, the plan set off a flurry of protests and counterprotests.

In Wuhan, a major city in central China known for its good universities, parents surrounded government offices to demand more spots for local students. In Harbin, a northeastern city, parents marched through the streets, calling the new admissions mandate unjust.

But in Luoyang, a city in Henan Province, one of China’s poorest and most populous, protesters countered that children should be treated with “equal love.” And in Baoding, a few hours’ drive southwest of Beijing, parents accused the government of coddling the urban elite at the expense of rural students.

“When they need water, land and crops, they come and take it,” said Lu Jian, 42, an electrician who participated in the protests in Baoding. “But they won’t let our kids study in Beijing.”

I have been fortunate to make two trips to China (2001 and 2006) as part of education exchanges with colleagues from CUNY and our counterparts in Shanxi Province.  The issue is a serious one that evokes great passion on the part of the Chinese people.  The national testing system permeates all discussions about college admission and education in general and is about as high-stakes as exists.  Parents push their students to start preparing for the test in primary school.  It is a sad situation based on a testing system that has existed for centuries.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Mitt Romney yesterday criticized Donald Trump for promoting “trickle-down racism”. As reported by CNN and other media:

“Mitt Romney suggested Friday that Donald Trump’s election could legitimize racism and misogyny, ushering in a change in the moral fabric of American society.

The 2012 Republican nominee, who has openly opposed Trump’s candidacy, went further than he has before in outlining to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer how the country’s character would suffer in a Trump White House. Trump’s rhetoric has caused even some other Republicans to label him a racist, and Romney said he would not be able to paper over his incendiary remarks.

“I don’t want to see trickle-down racism,” Romney said in an interview here in a suite overlooking the Wasatch Mountains, where he is hosting his yearly ideas conference. “I don’t want to see a president of the United States saying things which change the character of the generations of Americans that are following. Presidents have an impact on the nature of our nation, and trickle-down racism, trickle-down bigotry, trickle-down misogyny, all these things are extraordinarily dangerous to the heart and character of America…

Romney once again ruled out running himself, but he was also candid about independent efforts to recruit a challenger. Several sought-after Republicans, including Ben Sasse and author David French, have taken passes. “

This is a good characterization of Trump. He excites crowds and appeals to their base instincts including racism and bigotry.

Tony

Dear Commons Community, 

Yesterday was the finale of the Digital Research Institute.   Ten sessions were held in the morning focusing on a number of practical topics including Grant & Fellowship Tips, Copyright, and Digital Project Preservation.  I participated in a three-hour session on Text Analysis led by Michelle McSweeney. Michelle provided fine insights into issues of analyzing text material including word searches, extracting context, tokens (unique sequences), sorting, etc.  She was very effective in her presentation and it was obvious that she had much experience in doing this type of analysis.

In the afternoon, Matt Gold and Lisa Rhody summed up the week’s activities and then asked each participant to give a brief presentation on what they learned at the Institute and more importantly, how they would apply it to their own research projects.  It was a fine finish to a fine week of stimulating presentations and discussions.

Bravo and Brava to Matt, Lisa, the Digital Fellows, and all the participants!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

SRI issued a report earlier this year on adaptive learning based on a series of research projects at 14 colleges/universities.  The results at best are mixed.  Here are some key findings:

EFFECTS ON STUDENT LEARNING AND COURSE COMPLETION

• Some adaptive courseware implementations (4 of the 15 with a data set adequate for analysis) resulted in slightly higher average course grades, but the majority had no discernible impact on grades.
• Overall, in the 16 grantee-provided data sets appropriate for estimating courseware impacts on course completion, the odds of successfully completing a course were not affected by the use of adaptive courseware.
• Only seven controlled side-by-side comparisons of scores on common learning assessments were available; the average impact of adaptability for these seven was modest but significantly positive.

Michael Feldstein has a good summary in today’s issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education.

“The researchers do a good job of teasing out some of the variables that may make incremental but real differences on educational impact. That by itself makes the study worth reading.

More generally, the study does provide a reality check on the role of the learning sciences in the craft of education. We are learning more about how people learn all the time. But we are still at the basic research level, and we face daunting methodological challenges.

Professors should be encouraged to develop a basic level of educational-research literacy so that they can factor research into their professional judgment of which approaches to use in their teaching. But at the end of the day, that research is unlikely to yield any simple educational-technology prescriptions that will produce drastic across-the-board gains.

Improving education is not like eradicating polio. Educational research is more likely to be useful as a tool for helping faculty members become more-skilled practitioners than it is as a way of finding a miracle cure.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) came out swinging yesterday at Donald Trump just before endorsing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for president.

 “Donald Trump is a loud, nasty, thin-skinned fraud who has never risked anything for anyone and who serves no one but himself,” Warren said at the American Constitution Society of Law and Policy National Convention in Washington.  As reported in The Huffington Post:

“Warren, who has railed against the presumptive GOP nominee for the past several weeks, unleashed a withering condemnation of Trump’s racist attacks on federal judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over two lawsuits against Trump University. 

“He’s a Mexican,” Trump said of the judge last week. “We’re building a wall between here and Mexico. The answer is, he is giving us very unfair rulings — rulings that people can’t even believe.”

Trump has said Curiel, a U.S. citizen born in Indiana to Mexican immigrants, should be dismissed from the case because of his “Mexican heritage.” He also called him a “hater.”

“You should be ashamed of yourself, ashamed,” Warren said. “Ashamed for using the megaphone of a presidential campaign to attack a judge’s character and integrity simply because you think you have some God-given right to steal people’s money and get away with it. You shame yourself and you shame this great country.”

She continued: “Like all federal judges, Judge Curiel is bound by the federal code of judicial ethics not to respond to these attacks. Trump is picking on someone who is ethically bound not to defend himself — exactly what you would expect from a thin-skinned, racist bully.”

“You, Donald Trump, are a total disgrace,” she added.

Trump’s attacks have created a firestorm for Republicans, as many party members are twisting themselves in knots to defend their nominee without alienating voters. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) called Trump’s statements the “textbook definition of racism,” but still intends to vote for him.

Warren’s volleys lifted her already-bitter feud with Trump to a new level, and gave a glimpse of what’s to come as she goes public with her support of Clinton.”

There are only 150 days left until the election on November 8^th.

Tony

Dear Commons Community, 

Today’s morning sessions included Mapping Software, Machine Learning, and Web Frameworks.  I attended the Mapping Software presentation given by Steve Romalewski.  It was obvious he knew his topic well.  He provided an excellent conceptual overview of maps and mapping, available software, and file formats.  He then proceeded to involve the participants in developing a mapping application based on 2013 New York City voting data.   

In the afternoon, Lisa Rhody provided a practical presentation (Project Laboratory) designed to integrate all that has been presented this week. She challenged the audience to develop projects based on their new-found knowledge and then walked them through a process for designing and organizing their ideas.

Both sessions were very helpful!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, has a piece today on why our country needs a new Republican Party.  Here is his argument:

“If a party could declare moral bankruptcy, today’s Republican Party would be in Chapter 11.

This party needs to just shut itself down and start over — now. Seriously, someone please start a New Republican Party!

America needs a healthy two-party system. America needs a healthy center-right party to ensure that the Democrats remain a healthy center-left party. America needs a center-right party ready to offer market-based solutions to issues like climate change. America needs a center-right party that will support common-sense gun laws. America needs a center-right party that will support common-sense fiscal policy. America needs a center-right party to support both free trade and aid to workers impacted by it. America needs a center-right party that appreciates how much more complicated foreign policy is today, when you have to manage weak and collapsing nations, not just muscle strong ones.

But this Republican Party is none of those things. Today’s G.O.P. is to governing what Trump University is to education — an ethically challenged enterprise that enriches and perpetuates itself by shedding all pretense of standing for real principles, or a truly relevant value proposition, and instead plays on the ignorance and fears of the public.

It is just an empty shell, selling pieces of itself to the highest bidders, — policy by policy — a little to the Tea Party over here, a little to Big Oil over there, a little to the gun lobby, to antitax zealots, to climate-change deniers. And before you know it, the party stands for an incoherent mess of ideas unrelated to any theory of where the world is going or how America actually becomes great again in the 21st century.”

It may be too late for the GOP to heed Friedman’s call.  Donald Trump is all it has right now.

Tony