But the findings, I'm sorry to report, show that the United States needs to urgently accelerate student learning to remain competitive in the knowledge economy of the 21st century.

Arne Duncan

And I'm sorry to report that our knowledge economy--our bankers, masters of derivatives; our brokers, masters of the 30 millisecond trade; our mortgage lenders, masters of the liar loans; our MBA's, masters of the mega-mergers--is what got us into this mess.

We still grow a lot of corn, wheat and soybeans. We still have abundant sunshine, decent soil, and plenty of people willing to work.

We still have an aging infrastructure, plenty of iron ore and coal, and plenty of people willing to work.

We still have thousands of miles of coastline, sturdy boats, and plenty of people willing to harvest the grace of the sea.

***

The only things worth even a nickel in a true economy come from the earth. Water. Wheat. Lumber. Ore. Corn. Petroleum. Cotton. Wool. Soybeans.

The only things worth even a nickel in a true economy are tangible. You can hold them. They are not abstract.

Real gross domestic product--the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States--increased at an annual rate of 2.5 percent in the third quarter of 2010.

Bureau of Economic Analysis

A lot of knowledge-based professionals made a lot of money the past few months extracting money from the "real gross domestic product," money made from the incredibly fruitful land under our feet here in the States.

The unemployment rate "edged up" to 9.8% in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Fewer people working, more money made.

I live a few miles away from the Goethals Bridge, the Lincoln Tunnel, and Port Newark. No one pretends to hide the infrastructure in urban areas; the deterioration is obvious.

"More than a quarter of the nation’s bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. Leaky pipes lose an estimated seven billion gallons of clean drinking water every day. And aging sewage systems send billions of gallons of untreated wastewater cascading into the nation’s waterways each year."

Michael Cooper, New York Times, January 27, 2009

While those in power continue to siphon the goods of a growing economy, using fancy paper from fancy schools to lead fanciful lives, we keep telling the kids education matters because it will get you a good job.

Teaching a new generation of children how to take a piece of the pie they did not bake themselves will not make us stronger.

We do need children who can think, who can create, who can see the fallacies spewed by those now in charge by virtue of birth or connections or money.

A decent public education goes a long way to creating that kind of citizen. Education matters, even if Arne is confused as to why.

The photo is from The Real Views Online--North Central Louisiana's Multicultural Magazine.

READ MORE - Uncle Arne Pennybags

Whenever I post about the ludicrousness of using tools at inappropriately young ages, I get animated responses with similar themes. These replies are often anonymous, and often thoughtless.

I got one from my previous post that was neither anonymous nor thoughtless, and I thought it was worth carrying the discussion out in the open. Thank you, David!

Computers are the most powerful tool we have at our disposal and you want our kids to be ignorant of how they are used?

"Computers are the most powerful we have at our disposal" is dubious at best--I'd argue that the power of the tool depends on the task at hand (try hammering a nail with a mouse--yes, I'm an idiot).

But let's suppose for a moment that the computer is indeed the most powerful tool we have. Is its innate "power" your argument for why young children should be taught how to use them?

My car is the most powerful way for me to get around, but I'd rather the children keep away from the wheel until they can peer over the dashboard.

Do you think kids' parents, most of them anyway, have any clue how to use a computer as a tool?

Yes, I do, insofar as they need them for what parents do day to day, which is to say, live.

To be fair, they use computers every time they drive, use a microwave, an elevator, a video game, or EZ Pass, each a different task.

Maybe I am misunderstanding the thrust of your question. I do that a lot.

If you mean more esoteric stuff, like designing a database from scratch, well, maybe not. We got high school for that. I'd rather teach the kids how to bake from scratch--as in here's a bag of seeds, bake me a pie in 9 months, but I tend to be a bit extreme.

We do spend too much time in front of computers, this I agree with.

How do we fix this? I cannot control what happens in the child's home. What is the damage done by this? Are we contributing to the damage by reinforcing the activity in school?

However, what's the difference in health between sitting with a computer in front of you, or sitting with some paper to take notes? In either case, you are sitting instead of moving.

A great question--there's a couple of distinct points there, and I'll take each in turn:

Neither has great risks aside from physical inactivity that we know of--I suppose you could stab yourself in the eye and get paper cuts with the pencil and paper, and there have been case reports of children causing damage to their thighs from prolonged contact with hot laptops, and more than a few visits to the ER after tripping over wires, but I know those are not what you mean.

Some real longterm concerns may exist--two big ones in the past, monitor radiation and carpal tunnel syndrome, have been ameliorated. Longterm exposure to light may be a subtle issue not adequately explored, but again, I know these are not what you mean either.

There is a difference, though--a child pursuing an activity on paper has only the paper to deal with. Paper is mostly quiet unless you rustle it, and doesn't have flash or sizzle or anything else except sit there. It has, alas, no bling.

A child, when not doing her paper homework, will get up and do something else wrestled to the ground by an adult, both of which expend energy. A child on a computer wanders away, too, to online games, to FaceBook, to ESPN, to a whole shiny digital world that distracts her like a magpie.

The real crime is the number of physical education programs which are being cut and the lack of outdoor education programs in most schools.

Here in New Jersey, physical education remains mandatory. Getting kids outside is, indeed, important. There are only so many hours in a day. If we both agree that children are spending too much time on computers and not enough time outdoors, well, it doesn't take a computer to mesh out a rational solution to that.

I agree completely, by the way, with Stephen Downes 10 things that you really need to learn. I work in a school where those 10 things are our primary curriculum and our content is secondary to them.

Do send a link to your school--while I am blessed to work in a great department in a wonderful school, we still have the state curriculum and an annual end of course here to contend with.

And yes, I accept emails.

That's King Ludd in the picture--I assume it's old enough to be PD.

READ MORE - A response to a technophile

“ I am an Ariel Student. That means that I AM THE BEST. The way that I show that I am the best is through: Good schoolwork, good behavior, good manners, and by being a good friend. That’s what it takes to be an Ariel Student.”

Ariel Community Academy Student Pledge

I left medicine so I could teach public high school.

Arne Duncan left professional basketball so that he could run the Ariel Education Initiative, the philanthropy efforts of a private corporation founded by John. W. Rogers, Jr., that makes money by manipulating money.

Mr. Rogers got stock certificates for Christmas and birthdays. He went to school at the same school as Arne, University of Chicago Lab School. He founded Ariel Investments at age 26.

Ms. Jewel Lafontant, a trustee of the Howard University who sat on the Board of Directors for both Mobil and Revlon, was one of the original investors. She had a lot of friends, friends who invested in Ariel.

Ms. Lafontant was John's mother.

John Rogers, Jr., comes from privilege. Arne Duncan comes from privilege. Their educational philosophy reflects this. Kids from privilege do better, on average, than those who do not.

The obvious, data-driven message? We need more rich and powerful (RAP) mothers. To this end, Arne Duncan and John Rogers are expected to announce the RAP Initiative by the end of this month:

Arne:
Sitting in the basement
At my mother's knee
I learned to spell success as
M-O-N-I-E

John:
Start a new fund
Forget equality
Education starts
With mommy's equity.

Arne and John:
Gotta be prepared
For the new century
Education's creed
In a word: usury

If you want to play, kids
And outcompete each other
Forget about the books, and
Get a RAP mother!

The video on the Ariel Education Initiative's home page focuses exclusively on investing in stocks.
Kids with ties and white shirts speak Wallstreetese. Cute!

John Rogers, Jr., image from Life.

READ MORE - That's a RAP

"Through this plan we are setting an ambitious goal: All students should graduate from high school prepared for college and a career – no matter who you are or where you come from."

President Obama, March 13, 2010

Mr. President, can we cut through the crap?

I'm a retired pediatrician. A lot of children are damaged--some by bad luck, many by bad choices made by others.

Yes, the photo is unsettling, yes, too many children have been lost because we did not acknowledge their potential, but your rhetoric is fanning a dangerous fire.

I teach healthy children, and I teach damaged children. I teach wealthy children, and I teach poor children. I teach children with fancy orthodontia, and children with rotting teeth.

I teach America, Mr. President. If you cannot see America from your perch in D.C., please spend a weekend back home in Chicago and remember the man you once were, or pretended to be.

Come to Bloomfield--our motto here is "Learn to live." Some of us have careers, some of us have jobs. Some of us went to college, some of us were apprenticed. Most of us are happy, even the good chunk of us who have neither careers nor degrees.

Focus on getting the jobs back, and towns like Bloomfield will fill them well. We send soldiers to war--our street signs carry the names of those killed and missing in action. We have young folks overseas now. We helped process uranium during World War II, and have the contaminated useless land to show for it.

Learn to live. Not learn to earn, not learn to serve Microsoft, but simply learn to live. Most of my students will leave BHS with decent academic skills and decent decency skills.

All the degrees in the world won't fix the plumbing. All the degrees in the world will not land a job that's now in Asia. All the degrees in the world will not make you a better citizen, friend, or lover.

Learn to live, Mr. President, and let us go about our business doing the same. And if you need the name of a decent carpenter, a decent bakery, a decent school, give me a call. We got them right here in Bloomfield, the America outside the Beltway.

The disturbing photo from Temple University is real, and it's human.
The classroom photo is from Bloomfield, 1914, found here, shared at the Bloomfield Historical site by David Petillo.

READ MORE - We "Learn to live," Mr. President

We're testing this week, and I'm cranky. Correlation?

We also believe that if we want to improve student outcomes, especially in high-poverty schools, nothing is more important than ensuring that there are effective teachers in every classroom and effective leaders in every school.

Arne the Scarecrow, March 3, 2010
House Committee on Education and Labor

I used to work in the projects--Stella Wright Homes, Mravalag Manor, Hayes Homes, Bradley Court, Pennington Court--an America we keep hidden in polite company.

Teachers matter, and they matter a lot. But they do not matter as much as food, as heat in February, as albuterol for wheezing. They do not matter as much as coats and underwear. They do not matter as much as a quiet bed, a caring guardian. Abraham Maslow mentioned this way back before Arne was born with the silver spoon up the wrong side of his alimentary canal

Just when I thought his crüe was creepingly complete, with Al Sharpton and Newt Gingrich serving as Arne's Dementors, he has now recruited General Powell.




Under the leadership of our Founding Chairman, General Colin Powell, and our current Board Chair, Alma Powell, the Alliance has become the nation’s largest partnership focused on the well-being of our young people.

America's Promise Alliance blurb

Ah, the well-being of our young people--the same man whose false words ("Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a post-September 11th world") helped lead our young people into a disastrous unwinnable war now has joined the crüe.

Powell's little white lie was driven by data, no?

***

It's testing week. I see my kids working hard on tests that have little value.

I can save a few bucks by pointing out the obvious--there will be a strong correlation between my students' socioeconomic status (a fancy way of separating the full and empty bellies) and their scores.

Yep, teachers matter. Yep, we cannot lower expectations because a child was foolish enough to pick a poor placenta. But until someone shows me a definitive study showing that poor districts are going out of their way to hire incompetent teachers, I'm going to continue to point out the obvious.

I've pulled live cockroaches out of children's ears. I've begged for asthma medicine (and may have borrowed some, too). I've stolen antibiotics. I've treated toddlers for gonorrhea and tuberculosis.

Want to guess how they fared later in life on these tests?

Arne, do you really believe the nonsense you spout? Really?

READ MORE - Cult of personality

Big news around here is that our school met the state's requirements for NCLB this year. Unless brain surgery becomes more advanced, though, we're doomed by 2014, as are all public schools.

We got the expected slew of emails: "commitment" led to "lofty dividends," we have "pride" and "satisfaction," and for the administration, this must be one heap of steaming relief after a long streak of just missing the cut-off.

It's a heap of steaming relief for me, too--it means that for at least one more year, I can teach unscripted lessons based on real observations, real science, real thinking.

We've gotten so ingrained to AYP we've forgotten just what it is that we accomplished--most of our kids passed a test designed by God knows who to measure God knows what.

Our property values are preserved. Our administration will avoid "Ring Around the Rosie." The townsfolk believe they're getting their money's worth. The budget gets passed.

Any thrill beyond "Whew, that gets the state off our backs," however, is misplaced. No sense giving the AYP nonsense any more gravitas than what it deserves. The emperor has no clothes. There, I said it.

It is nice, though, not to have to explain to my neighbor why we don't suck.

The image is from a woodcut, so I figure it's well past copyright issues.
Who does woodcutting anymore? Who grinds flour?
Who reads these acknowledgments?

READ MORE - Break out the Kool-Aid!

August is the silly season, and while The Al and Newt Show promises to be entertaining, that Arne even proposed it does not bode well for his leadership. He may be the Secretary, but he's got plenty of competition for Chief of Silly.

Today I nominate John F. Jennings.

Jack Jennings is the President and CEO of the Center on Education Policy (CEP), "a national, independent advocate for public education and for more effective public schools."

The CEP is funded by several foundations, including The George Gund Foundation (whose "focus is on the transformation of public education in Cleveland in order to equip children from early childhood onward with the skills they ultimately will need to meet the demands of college"), the Joyce Foundation (part of whose mission is "promoting innovations such as charter schools"), and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I leave it to you, gentle reader, to judge how independent the CEP truly is.

Despite the Act-Arne-No-Longer-Calls-NCLB, the WSJ reported yesterday that recently released SAT scores fell a tiny bit for the class of 2009, and racial gaps widened.

Jack Jennings was quoted in yesterday's Wall Street Journal:

"The bottom line is the country is changing dramatically. Unless minority kids are educated better, we are going to be in trouble because pretty soon they are going to be the majority."

Jack Jennings
President & CEO, Center on Education Policy

Let's dissect this.

"We" are not in trouble yet, because "we" are the majority. It's not a problem until "they" become the majority.

If Mr. Jennings was quoted correctly, he should resign.

I don't need a libel suit to add to my joys of imminently pending colonoscopy and gum scrapings, so I won't speculate what he might have meant, though I do invite the CEP to offer their interpretation.

Don't be fooled by the suits, the smiles, the touching condescension--a few very powerful people with more money than sense want to use public education for their private gain. Every now and then they expose their ends (so to speak).

(Oh, here's a photo of Jack--in case you were wondering....)

Al and Newt photo by Alex Wong, Getty Images, via USA Today.
The portrait of Mr. Jennings was lifted from the Tuscon Citizen.

READ MORE - Arne, meet Jack Jennings

Arne Duncan carries a lot of weight in Washington. He's the education go-to guy. If he were a neighbor ranting about schools at a barbecue, I'd just nod a few times then wander away--he doesn't listen, he makes stuff up, and I'm not sure of his command of the mother tongue.

I now have two people to avoid at barbecues--Justice Thomas.

In an 8-1 vote, the Supreme Court ruled that another student's accusation of having prescription strength ibuprofen (4 tabs' worth of the over-the-counter variety) does not allow school officials to conduct a strip search.

Clarence Thomas' response would have been the perfect sentence for Ms. Sciala, my 8th grade teacher who made us diagram sentences; she would have saved it for the final exam:

“Redding would not have been the first person to conceal pills in her undergarments,” he wrote. “Nor will she be the last after today’s decision, which announced the safest places to secrete contraband in school.”

NY Times, June 25

The first (and screamingly obvious) objection, Your Honor--she did not have the pills. You can hide behind the pluperfect subjunctive (help me here, grammar sharks) of the first clause, but the "nor will she be the last" unveils your confusion. You appear to believe that she did, in fact, hide them in her netherlands.

Had you diagrammed your sentence ahead of time, you would have seen this. Ms. Sciala would be crowing. If this were a verbal response, all would be forgiven. But it's not. It's written.

“Preservation of order, discipline and safety in public schools is simply not the domain of the Constitution,” he wrote.

NY Times, June 25

Um, no kidding, Mr. Thomas. When was the last time you set foot in a classroom of 13-year-olds? (What better ad for prescription strength Advil?)

You can substitute "public spaces" for "public schools" and still be mostly correct.

If you're argument is that the Constitution does not extend to public schools, well, you're wrong. If you want to say that children are not protected by the Constitution, that's sad but true, no argument there. But no one is going to peek at my pubes looking for a contraband prescription drug in the school--the adults in the building still have Constitutional rights.

The Constitution is a feisty document--you might consider reading it, Mr. Thomas.

One more point.

If you knew anything at all about our tadpoles at thirteen, you would have realized that putting a tablet of anything anywhere near the "safest places to secrete contraband in school” will turn on the yuk trigger in the vast majority of even the hard-core ibuprofen addicts.

And next time, consider using a word besides "secrete." It's creepy in this context.

Yes, I was trying to be cute, using the subjunctive. No, it didn't work.

READ MORE - Clarifying Clarence

Go peek at the Federal Department of Education website--try to find the NCLB logo. Try to find the words "No Child Left Behind."

Then try to find any changes beyond that.

I do think the name 'No Child Left Behind' is absolutely toxic;
I think we have to start over.

Arne Duncan in USA Today, May 5
I'm so naive--I thought he meant start over with NCLB.

What to do, what to do? How do we maintain a Spellingesque reality? How do we convince people that the NCLB is still good for them?

It's been an interesting month. A major study demonstrated that charter schools do not, in fact, outperform public schools, Texas tells the feds to kiss its yellow rose and refuses to follow "voluntary" national standards, and Duncan revises his Listening and Learning tour to avoid the wrath of D.C.

What to do, what to do?

Rebrand!

It worked for Phillip Morris. Remember them? They're now Altria Group. And they still sell cigarettes.

So Mr. Duncan got incented enough to erase No Child Left Behind. The logos are off the website, and off the letterheads. The new name is....um...the new name...guys, where'd you put it?

OK, no new name yet.

A month ago, Mr. Duncan had a plan:

He said he would like to hold a contest for school kids to come up with a new name.

Arne Duncan, again in USA Today, May 5

This is like asking Anne Boleyn to name the sword that severed her neck.

So, Mr. Duncan, you like basketball analogies, let me explain it to you nice and slow. My New Jersey Nets went 17-65 about 20 years ago. They were, indeed, "absolutely toxic." How can you fix a team like that?

Do you think changing the uniforms would have made a lick's worth of difference?

(Maybe Duncan is right after all--the Nets change to a new uniform in 1990-91, and their record did, in fact, improve to 26-56.)

Go read Schools Matter, the best website I've found that keeps the spotlight on the unfolding disaster Formerly Known as NCLB.







And Section 1905 of the No Child Left Behind Act?

The Federal gummint shall not "mandate, direct, or control a state, local educational agency, or school's specific instructional content, academic achievement standards and assessments, curriculum or program of instruction."

The logo is public, the photo of the old Nets uniform is not--it looks like NBAHOOPS by the logo.

READ MORE - Section 1905