I'm sorry I intimated in the other thread that you unwittingly echoed Halford's complaint in your last post. I know see that you are aware of all Internet traditions.
I'm sorry that no one else has posted on this thread that you took so much time composing for our amusement over the holidays. I now see that I made a very embarrassing typo in the previous comment.
I'm sorry that stormcrow is cross-posting to standpipe's blog like this without mentioning it.
No apologies forever. Rick Perry for President of the Universe.
I'm sorry that I can't find the Advil.
I'm sorry Stanley doesn't comment here anymore.
7: I've been rather busy. Your mothers are all quite demanding.
Which should have been Kobe3! But my wits were dulled by holiday fun.
Having just read this article about teachers and this other one, and experienced the holiday fun that so many of us experience, of the relative(s) who teach in public schools expressing their despair at the proliferation of standardized tests everywhere, I really wonder if there's a teacher anywhere in the country who actually welcomes the opportunity to get a raise based on "merit" in the way that so many bloggers think they should.
"Yes, the quantification of teaching will lead to some ossified teachers being fired, but it will lead to others finally getting credit for being excellent! Surely the sum is far more than zero."
I haven't met a teacher yet who sees Race To The Top and other schemes as anything other than a distraction from teaching. At one point you could spend a certain amount of time teaching X, a certain amount teaching Y, a certain amount teaching Z, and so on. Now you spend less time on each of those, because you have to do this pastime largely unrelated to teaching, in which you try to train students to take a test.
There must be some teachers out there who buy into the need for the information constant standardized testing will provide. It seems like this stuff is the bedrock dogma of everyone who calls themself a "school reformer". But I don't see teachers quoted in the media as spokespeople for "school reformers". Not even the teachers who are presumably loving their jobs at the KIPP schools and other poster children for the possibilities of a flexible teaching force. Only superintendents, entrepreneurs, philanthropists.
There must be some teachers out there who buy into the need for the information constant standardized testing will provide
I asked a local teacher about Race to the Top and why the teachers all hate it. The gist is, everything's data-driven, but they're looking at the wrong data: test scores vs. rate of improvement.
The general argument seems to be the following:
"Even if my students do improve, you know, what if I just have a bunch of hard-working kids one year, and a bunch of slackers the next year? And there could be one bad egg who disrupts everything and slows everyone down."
"Well, on a population level it works great. Obviously at the level of individual cases there's a lot of randomness."
"Yeah, but the entire point is to motivate those individual cases by incentivizing success, and all they see is the randomness."
The problem with rate of improvement is that when they rate schools on that, every improvement makes more improvement more difficult. They do that in the biz world too, and it's a way of keeping people always on edge and an excuse for firing a certain number of people each year.
If I was teaching to rate of improvement I'd aim for the minimal acceptable rate of improvement just to keep from outrunning myself.
As I understand, they don't always allow for ESL and developmentally disabled percentages.
The thing about good teachers is, they think of cool shit to do. Tests are not cool shit to do.
I recently saw a talk by an education scholar (this guy, who was rather bizarrely speaking in place of the rabbi, who was out of town, at the synagogue here when I went to services one Friday night) that was pretty interesting. He's a former teacher himself, and one of the points he made was that it's a big problem that teachers have basically no voice in debates over education policy in this country. He talked a lot about Finland, which is pretty famous in education policy circles for having really good outcomes through a policy of making teaching a well-paid, prestigious profession.
11
Education reform is all a bunch of nonsense. You have your smart kids and your dumb kids and trying to teach a dumb kid to be smart is like trying to teach a short kid to be tall.
But of course no one (least of all teachers) wants to admit that teachers don't make much difference and that there is little point in trying to identify good teachers or in paying them more. Teachers want to have it both ways, more pay and respect but no accountability for results.
I think teaching should command at least $100K. It's so much work to engage a developing human mind all day.
Right, and there are kids who know math and kids who don't.
The thing that drives me crazy about education policy debates in this country is that it all seems to be premised on the assumption that spending more money is absolutely not an option at all, so it ends up in these stupid squabbles over how to allocate the tiny amount of money we already spend. So you have the "reformers" on one side arguing for more testing and accountability to direct the money to the "best" teachers, and their main adversaries end up being the teacher's unions opposing those plans.
I've often wondered what would happen if the federal government decided to pay every teacher in America $100,000 a year. (I came up with the number independently of Stanley in 18, but it's interesting that he had a similar thought.) In practice they would probably put strings on it, like some sort of national curriculum standard or something, but I think even without that it would be a good idea that would probably improve the educational system considerably. It would be hugely expensive, of course, which is why it's never going to happen, but this is the kind of thing I think "education reform" should be about.
20
... but this is the kind of thing I think "education reform" should be about.
So education reform means paying teachers more even though there is no evidence that this would improve results. I see why this would appeal to teachers but I don't see why it should appeal to anyone else.
He's a former teacher himself, and one of the points he made was that it's a big problem that teachers have basically no voice in debates over education policy in this country.
Interesting compared to the reformist ideas in this country, that teachers have way too much power in education policy, by dint of having some power over their own working conditions, by dint of having collective bargaining rights.
No, education reform means ideas that are significantly different from the status quo; that idea is just one example. And sure, it might not work, but there are plenty of situations in which "spend a lot more money" is known to work well as a way of solving problems and I see no particular reason to conclude in advance that this isn't one of them.
This is one of the topics on which Yglesias has always been infuriatingly terrible, and one of the (few) advantages of his move to Slate has been that seems to write about education a lot less.
Not that he isn't still making terrible arguments about other subjects, of course.
23
No, education reform means ideas that are significantly different from the status quo; that idea is just one example. And sure, it might not work, but there are plenty of situations in which "spend a lot more money" is known to work well as a way of solving problems and I see no particular reason to conclude in advance that this isn't one of them.
How about that the fact that it has been tried and hasn't worked? Schools in the United States don't uniformly spend the same amount per pupil but there is no evidence that the districts that spend more get better results. The evidence is that (within the range commonly found in the United States) schools don't matter, students matter.
Like I'm going to take Cato's word for it.
23
No, education reform means ideas that are significantly different from the status quo; ...
Paying the same teachers more money to do the same things is not a significant change. Going to year round schools would be a bigger change to the status quo.
In math, performance of both boys and girls tracks very inversely with income inequality, across different countries.
I'm open to the possibility that these tests are measuring the right things and that teaching to the test is an improvement over teaching one's own possibly-haphazard curriculum. My main point is that every teacher I know just has no notion that this Reach For The Top business could even in theory accomplish anything. It's just more hoops to jump through. And given that the thing that is being measured seems to be the wrong thing, it seems like the changes are worse than nothing. Pre-reform: teachers try to do the right thing, but who knows whether they do it or not. Post-reform: teachers are now being judged on the wrong thing, so they have to focus on that instead of what they think is the right thing.
Maybe the average teacher is relying on slanted and inaccurate information from their union leaders here. But the people who are actually making the policy are either making no effort to explain the point of the policy, or are unable to communicate with the people "on the front lines".
32
Maybe the average teacher is relying on slanted and inaccurate information from their union leaders here. But the people who are actually making the policy are either making no effort to explain the point of the policy, or are unable to communicate with the people "on the front lines".
How about a third possibility, the policy is nonsensical? At least as regards improving schools as opposed to pandering to the electorate's prejudices.
28
Like I'm going to take Cato's word for it.
The claims are pretty simple. Kansas City spent a lot of money. Student achievement didn't go up. As far as I know these aren't seriously disputed. But you can shoot the messenger if you want.
I could dig into the details if I wanted, but I'm not feeling inclined to keep engaging you on this.
34
I could dig into the details if I wanted, but I'm not feeling inclined to keep engaging you on this.
Which is how idiotic education policy gets made, people have their prejudices and they aren't interested in contrary evidence.
My wife wouldn't mind making loads more money but she'd still be teaching classes of 30+ kids in a low income area. Finland might be getting a good outcome, but I bet it helps to have a homogenous society with a lot less inequality. We're decades into a successful campaign to fuck the middle and lower classes and our largest minority group of students is loaded with kids who don't speak English at home. Smaller class size and resources for a comprehensive program to bring up literacy would be a big help.
Finland might be getting a good outcome, but I bet it helps to have a homogenous society with a lot less inequality.
I'm sure they do, but one of the most interesting things the guy said is that they actually do even better than Norway, which has a similarly egalitarian society and a lot more money. So there does seem to be something there, although whether it could actually be transferred to the US is a different issue. And yeah, I don't mean to suggest that a bigger monetary investment in education could solve all the problems out there. Obviously there's more to it than that.
Some money wouldn't hurt to retain people. Granted, UT isn't known for high public salaries but 35k for someone with BS's in both chem and geology to teach middle schoolers? Sheesh.
Yeah, retention is one of the main things that the money idea is meant to address.
Huh, it seems that today the local paper has an interview with Abrams giving a bit more on his ideas.
26: Do you have a New Mexico-specific analysis of the issue or just think his argument is stupid in general?
I like that not a single comment addresses the OP.
41: Nothing specific beyond the obvious fact that the reason the growth rate in the Albuquerque metro area looks so good over the past 10 years is that it was so small to start with, plus the fact that while it wasn't as deep into the housing boom as some other Southwestern metros it's not at all clear that the recent past is a good guide to future growth. It's still a pretty small city by national standards, and there's no way it's getting a major league franchise any time soon.
I think comment 1 might address the OP in some way, but I don't really understand it.
There was an OP?
Nah, it was a video.
39
Yeah, retention is one of the main things that the money idea is meant to address.
What's the problem with retention? You have some attrition in the first few years as starting teachers discover that they don't like teaching and/or are terrible at it but after that doesn't the typical senority based pay schedule (in which your pay steadily rises with experience) lead to a low quit rate?
I once did a rough comparison of $ per pupil and SAT scores state by state. The two states which got pretty good results with low pay were North Dakota and Utah. The other states with good results all paid pretty well (better than average) and were mostly unionized.
However, the comparisons really should be district-to-district instead of state-to-state.
A one-time short-term experiment in one district is a poor test. The goal is to make HS teaching jobs competitive with other jobs for talented people, and to bring sharp people into the field and keep them.
Almost every single person important in ed reform has am extraneous agenda: they have something to sell to schools, they want to run government financed private schools, they want to destroy one more union, they want Christ back in the schools, they want to lower their tax bill, they believe that public education is unconstitutional, and at the level of the individual voter some of them just hate teachers as a group. Ex-reformer Diane Ravitz figured this out and switched sides.
The five schools I know about in three states are all pretty good, and none are elite suburban schools. All are union. Whatever problems there have been in my family were from youth culture, not from the schools. School reform is a blunt instrument which affects good and bad schools alike, and is unlikely to help good schools at all, and in its present form is equally likely to harm them.
My own suspicion is that the local problems of NYC, DC, and CA schools dominate the argument because that's where the lazy, stupid media concocts its stories. They're usually framed in terms of "minorities", as if anyone cares about minorities any other time.
DC schools are truly horrendous, and I don't quite understand why they are so much worse than other large urban schools.
I thought the hole in his Albuquerque basketball post was a failure to consider already existing sports teams in Albuquerque. Are the Isotopes selling out all their games? How does UNM's basketball income compare to other cities without pro sports teams? I haven't looked into it, but I suspect Austin and Columbus would be kicking their ass in college sports income.
UNM's Elizabeth Lambert has star potential.
Regarding Finland, according to this teachers in Finland are paid about half what teachers in the US are paid.
And this article points out that Swedish speaking Finns don't perform as well on Pisa as Finnish speaking Finns and that Estonia also does well by international standards. The author attributes this to language (Estonian and Finnish are closely related) but you could also speculate about ethnic differences (Swedish speaking Finns are closer genetically to Swedes than to other Finns).
re: 51
Heh. Most of that is fairly standard lower leagues hacking, but the hair-pull that completely up-ends her opponent about half-way through is pretty amazing.
Finnish teachers are respected. Finland is also a socialist society where material goals are less dominant.
When I was in Taiwan I got a Chinese book for Taiwanese going to the US. One of the memorable things it said was that in the US there is only one hierarchy, the hierarchy of wealth, whereas in Taiwan there were two, the hierarchy of wealth and another one which you'd call the hierarchy of respect or of culture. (The other interesting thing they said is that in the US law comes first, common sense or reason second, and connections third, whereas in Taiwan connections come first, common sense second, and the law third. However corrupt you think the US is, much of the world is much worse. The Chinese word for connections, guanxi, has no pejorative flavor at all.
HS teachers are held in real contempt in much of the US. Not something that can be improved by government, but the ed reformers actually work to increase the contempt.
Her teammates had to keep her away from the ref, too.
I'm a bit surprised at the lack of 'afters'. I.e. one of the other players team-mates going right through her legs about 5 minutes alter.
Soccer in Europe is a thug game, in the US it's a yuppie game. Lambert is a rare exception.
49
DC schools are truly horrendous, and I don't quite understand why they are so much worse than other large urban schools.
Inasmuch as white students in DC's schools do ok (see here for example for fourth grade math scores ) I think the answer is pretty obvious.
I've heard that other large urban schools have black people in them too, though.
54
Finnish teachers are respected. Finland is also a socialist society where material goals are less dominant.
Maybe not so much anymore .
According to a recent survey conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the gap between rich and poor has widened more in Finland than in any other wealthy industrialized country over the past decade. The survey indicates that he income disparities grew in Finland particularly fast in the period from 1995 to 2005.
...
Finland has rapidly moved from a traditional Nordic country with equal income, progeressive taxation, and income transfers towards Anglo-Saxon countries having a more pronounced inequality of earnings.
"In spite of the rapid growth rate, Finland is still a country with low inequality of incomes, clearly below the average."
They had a scare story in Forbes or the WSJ about cities with rapidly rising / falling crime rates. The ones with rising crime rates mostly had low crimes rates, and the ones with falling crime rates mostly had high crime rates. There were one or two real stories there of high-and-rising or low-and-falling, but mostly it was regression to mean.
Trends!
I look forward to your efforts, James, when you run for president, to deny authorship of your comments. Between the bullying -- always women who are expressing vulnerabilities -- and the racism, you're just a tiny man, a less interesting version of the Troll of the Sorrow.
60
I've heard that other large urban schools have black people in them too, though.
Generally not as high a fraction. It is true that blacks score relatively poorly in DC (compared to blacks elsewhere in the US). However in the table I linked Oregon blacks score just as poorly as DC blacks (215 to 215) while Oregon whites score much worse than DC whites (243 vrs 272). But overall Oregon scores better (237 to 222) and people aren't constantly talking about how terrible Oregon's schools are.
The majority of DC whites go to private schools, and judging by the numbers on James' table, it looks as though DC has segregated public schools. DC white students score 15 points higher than whites anywhere else, and DC black students score below average for black students, fifth up from the bottom.
A segregated system is what you'd expect from a system designed by the US Congress.
65
... it looks as though DC has segregated public schools. ...
Not really. Here is a newspaper columnist whining about the influx of white students.
Janney's graduating class will have the option of crossing Wisconsin Avenue and attending Alice Deal Middle School, also the beneficiary of a recent renovation. In decades past, the white and mostly middle-class families who make up Janney might have sent their offspring to a private middle school or moved to Maryland, where the public schools offered a better education. Now they are shipping their kids to Alice Deal en masse.
Deal, which has for years accepted students from across the city, is jammed. When my daughter attended it five years ago, half of her classmates were black. Now Deal is turning vanilla.
In fact Deal as of 2010-2011 was 39% white (and 37% black).
52: Even if these numbers are substantially correct, and don't, for instance, compare daycare workers to licensed teachers, or something foolish like that, I'm dubious about accepting any information from a source that refers to the Japanese currency unit as "yens".
What that looks like is that segregating is in process, and as soon as the DC schools improved white students started driving out the black students. Those schools are now unavailable to black students.
"Many black parents want to send their kids across the park to Deal and Wilson, and in years past, they could. Those days are o-v-e-r, because white families have returned to the neighborhood schools."
I would also note that, having looked over most of the occupations studied, most jobs in Finland seem to hover around $2000 per month, even for jobs that seem wildly disparate in terms of amount of post-secondary education and training necessary. Perhaps income inequality is indeed growing, but it's clearly starting out from something that approaches actual parity.
Presumably the "income" of American teachers includes the health insurance coverage, which teachers in Finland get from the government.
68
... and as soon as the DC schools improved white students started driving out the black students. ...
You are confusing cause and effect.
... Those schools are now unavailable to black students. ...
Deal is 37% black as I stated above, Wilson is 49% black (and 21% white).
Shearer, you always mix up trends and states. Finland is becoming less egalitarian but it is still egalitarian, the schools are mixed but they're trending white.
You're confusing cause and effect. They weren't bad schools when the white kids started going there. They were already improved schools.
The majority of DC whites go to private schools
A friend of mine grew up there and went to private school. Her brother was against private schools, so their mother paid for him to go to public school in Maryland.
72
You're confusing cause and effect. They weren't bad schools when the white kids started going there. They were already improved schools.
White students at Deal test a lot better than black students. So as the fraction of whites goes up so do overall test scores. This is likely the only "improvement".
I don't know why anyone bothers discussing this topic with Shearer, ffs.
Shearer, white DC students test better than white students in any state in the union. They didn't used to go to the public schools, but now they do. What are the chances that their elite parents started sending their precious darlings to a generic failing slum school, and then made it into a good school? Isn't it more likely that parents noticed that the local mixed race public school was a pretty good school, so they started sending their kids there? With the outcome being that the one good school in the DC district started becoming all white. We'll see how that trend ends up, but already there are black kids being excluded.
I was hoping for more corroboration of the "Estonians genetically superior to Swedes" hypothesis, instead of the same old white supremacy.
78
Shearer, white DC students test better than white students in any state in the union. They didn't used to go to the public schools, but now they do. ...
This isn't new. DC white students scored better (in 4th grade mathematics) in 2005 and 2000 also.
We're talking about why white students are starting to attend public schools, Shearer.
The select white students in the DC schools would, as a group, outperform the white students in any state in the union. Why are they now attending public schools, driving out black kids? The point I'm trying to raise is that as soon as the DC schools develop a decent mixed-race school, a single school in a large system, it starts becoming all white. So resegregation makes sure that any improvement only goes to white people. That looks like the trend, at least.
59: Inasmuch as white students in DC's schools do ok (see here for example for fourth grade math scores ) I think the answer is pretty obvious.
Do I have to read the whole thread in order to understand what this means? Don't enable Shearer, people.
The unfoggetariat needs to change the subject. Xmas is over and it's time to get to work, people.
Oh for god's sake, I just read 17.
On preview, this is long.
11 is interesting, though I haven't clicked through to the linked articles.
I haven't met a teacher yet who sees Race To The Top and other schemes as anything other than a distraction from teaching. At one point you could spend a certain amount of time teaching X, a certain amount teaching Y, a certain amount teaching Z, and so on. Now you spend less time on each of those, because you have to do this pastime largely unrelated to teaching, in which you try to train students to take a test.
I talked to a friend who's a 4th grade teacher for quite a while on Xmas Eve Day: his complaint about Race to the Top is less about teaching to the test, or even about the need to meet benchmarks for what kids should know by grade X, than it is about the sheer amount of paperwork involved in providing data on first this (which is fine), and now that (okay, also understandable), but now this as well, and this, and this and this. The data-crunching exercises he finds required of him have reached epic proportions -- he gets to school at 6:30 a.m. and doesn't leave until 6 p.m, as a matter of course. Nearly half of his time is spent doing data entry, grappling with the dysfunctional reporting programs by which he must submit his reports, and calling tech support because some field or other wouldn't accept more than 256 characters, and rather than giving him a chance to correct that field, his entire data set was wiped as he was required to start over.
It's a distraction from teaching, you bet. He recently demanded to know from his principal how this was helping him teach in any way.
On the merit pay business: it works differently in different states and regions, but my friend did see an immediate pay raise once merit pay was instituted this year. However, the new system here in Maryland, or perhaps just Baltimore City, rewards extra-curricular (beyond teaching) activities, like taking professional development courses or running the school's chess club, and doesn't dock points for being a shitty teacher. My friend disagrees with his union on this matter. It allows for shitty teachers to gain bonus stars! for extra-credit activities.
Provisional conclusions we reached: (1) The flurry of directives regarding reporting are coming from the very top down, from bureaucrats who don't realize that yo, teachers do not have a whole staff assistant, or whole department, in the office -- as the higher-ups do -- who takes care of data entry and moving the data around and submitting reports to appropriate places.
(2) It would be delightful if this flurry of directives, and the resultant reports and data, generated actual feedback for the teachers on the ground. They do not.
My own suspicion is that the local problems of NYC, DC, and CA schools dominate the argument because that's where the lazy, stupid media concocts its stories.
I have this fantasy that someday I will have time to do one or more of the data analysis projects I want to work on. Media laziness, both in the logistical sense and in the pejorative sense, is going to be near the top of the list.
Yo James, here's a thought experiment for you: Let's say you're right, and some people are Just Not As Smart As the Others. Which is a bigger waste of talent and money, educating all young people with the understanding that some of them won't benefit as much as the others? Or educating all young people with the understanding that some who are really smart in one area are going to grow up to be viciously anti-social in others?
Somebody funded your math education, is what I'm saying. Actually a lot of somebodies. And yet here you are, wasting all that fine education being hateful on the Internet. Kind of a shame.
Sorry 84 was so long.
If a clarification is at all needed, the sort of data-manipulation my friend is being asked to do, and which he should not have to do himself is this: okay, now that you've provided metrics on the achievement level of each of these students on each of these various fronts, break it down by race. Now by gender.
To which I can only say: don't you guys have that information, the race and gender of each of these students, yourselves? In a master database? So you can do that breakdown?
It seems clear that there's a staffing problem somewhere along the line. One of my recurrent beefs about our much-vaunted drive to generate electronic records is that staffpersons who are skilled and trained in these areas will be needed to handle the tasks. Absent funds for such staff, it is not workable.
80
We're talking about why white students are starting to attend public schools, Shearer.
Part of the reason is the white population of DC is increasing (from 30.8% in 2000 to 38.5% in 2010). And as the schools become whiter a greater percentage of white parents are willing to send their children to them.
81
The select white students in the DC schools would, as a group, outperform the white students in any state in the union. ...
So DC's schools get no credit for the relatively good performance of the white students but all the blame for the relatively poor performance of the black students. Seems a bit one-sided to me.
This is a very odd school district, including the best-educated white students in the US and the worst-educated black students in the US (almost). Among other things, I'm saying that this cannot be explained by generic, one-size-fits all James B. Shearer racism, since it's atypical.
The Unfoggetariat is failing to provide adequate material.
89
This is a very odd school district, including the best-educated white students in the US and the worst-educated black students in the US (almost). Among other things, I'm saying that this cannot be explained by generic, one-size-fits all James B. Shearer racism, since it's atypical.
It's hard to explain if you believe all whites are the same and all blacks are the same. If not it is easy. Btw West Viriginia is the flip side ranking 52nd for whites and 10th for blacks. Anyway I am not trying to explain it, just pointing out it is a little odd to claim DC's schools are uniquely awful when white students do fine in them and black students don't do any worse than in Oregon whose schools don't get nearly the same amount of abuse.
I was talking to a friend of mine about the situation in Hungary (which he knew something about and I knew nothing about). Hungary has recently elected an extremely nationalistic government that amended its constitution to basically permanently cement its position running the country. My friend commented that the Hungarian nationalists regard themselves as unjustly ignored by the world for their many contributions, such as the fact that they invented nuclear weapons. Suddenly this made Istvan Hargittai's book, "The Martians of Science" seem like a much less attractive idea.
Actually, in Oregon they do get that abuse. OR and WV are not big on the media radar.
85
Somebody funded your math education, is what I'm saying. Actually a lot of somebodies. ...
The public schools I attended were probably a bit above average but nothing extraordinary. My high school didn't offer calculus so I checked a book out of the public library and taught myself enough to be excused from the 2 year calculus sequence at Caltech. So perhaps I should be grateful to Andrew Carnegie but I don't feel particularly indebted to the public school system.
And yet here you are, wasting all that fine education ...
I do have a job you know. And it does use my math ability (not so much the education although the PhD from MIT probably helped get the job).
It's adorable that you attended the nonprofit corporation known as MIT and yet think that the education subsidies I was referring to began and ended with your K-12 education.
*******
Right, so: More interesting things to talk about! I met an FBI agent recently who was wearing peep-toe shoes. I regret to announce that my immediate and very sexist reaction was "How unprofessional."
Furthermore, despite additional reflection (and interaction), my reaction did not noticeably improve. So! Wardrobe signaling among US law enforcement professionals: any value?
I fear that I have a negative reaction to peep-toe shoes regardless.
[various caveats about sandals deleted]
Therefore I can draw no conclusion about this particular circumstance.
My high school didn't offer calculus so I checked a book out of the public library and taught myself enough to be excused from the 2 year calculus sequence at Caltech.
How enlightened! Every time I tried to get out of a class because I already knew the material, I was told "sorry, it's a requirement." (Or, by one high school math teacher, "we can't have you get too far ahead! what would they teach you in college?")
The semiotics of women's footwear is so baffling and opaque to me, it might as well be string theory.
My high school didn't offer calculus. I'd skipped Algebra II so there was no additional math class available to me. The math teacher was not daunted and told me to take Calc by correspondence course and he would assist. He was willing and able. I was, and remain, unable to work independently on something when I know I don't have to finish it. Despite the help, I barely got going. I took accelerated honors calc as an undergrad and did great. Then I forgot everything.
You know, James is just so demented on these matters that I'm hard pressed not to call for his banning. You'd think he hadn't heard about Gene Marks' recent Forbes piece, or all the responses it received.
I don't know what's wrong with you, James, but give it a rest.
||
I'm off to Canada tomorrow. Going to the "city" I'm visiting feels like a giant trip to the Olive Garden.
BF's annoying sister-in-law will be there. Mother will be stressed, because her husband is getting brain surgery. (He's coping better than she is. She sent an e-mail warning my BF not to say anything he would regret.
|>
Regarding more important matters, 100: Here's the thing about peep-toe shoes. Are your one's toes not squished together in the toe region of a typical woman's dressy(ish) shoe? They are. Does one want to display this squished-together-toeness to the public? No.
Not everyone will agree, of course.
Going to the "city" I'm visiting feels like a giant trip to the Olive Garden.
Peterborough?
I never took Calculus. I took Algebra I, Geometry, and Algebra II/Pre-Calc. I then switched to a Statistics course at VCU, rather than doing the high school's curriculum.
105: Ha, exactly what popped into my head. Never been there, had always pictured it as more of a trip to the health food store...
They sent one of the math teachers back to school to learn something to teach my friend Jonathan in high school. Discrete math. Or as we liked to call it "discreet math" (in hushed tones). God, what nerds.
99
How enlightened! ...
It was my understanding that Caltech did this because a lot of the students that did take calculus in high school hadn't actually learned the material. So they just gave everyone a test. There was a bit of a downside in that I probably didn't know the material as well as I would have if I had had to take the courses.
96
It's adorable that you attended the nonprofit corporation known as MIT and yet think that the education subsidies I was referring to began and ended with your K-12 education.
And I received an NSF fellowship. What's your point exactly? Places like MIT (and Harvard) know its a waste of time to spend a lot of effort on teaching, they know the most important thing is to pick their students carefully so that is what they do.
109: So you really think black kids are just dumb? I mean, really.
The kicker here is that, depending on family heritage, Shearer's got some black slave ancestor he doesn't even know about.
james' mom thought she was passing, until her son's staggering ignorance revealed her true racial heritage. let us draw the curtain across this sordid tale, unfoggetarians.
minor temptation to begin re-writing JBS pauly shore-style: "did you guys know I'm very smart? I know math! and I loooove hot dogs!"
I just re-playing the mental image of him realizing the fact that he's black. Yo.
I'm sorry this thread didn't die at Kobe3! like it deserved.
Nice pyramidal parentheticals in the other thread, Smearcase.
(Did not want to disrupt the pattern.)
(But someone will probably come along and unwittingly do so.)
(These comments should be read as a tribute to Smearcase's comments.)
114
I just re-playing the mental image of him realizing the fact that he's black. Yo.
Like one black ancestor in 128 (or whatever) would make you black. Wouldn't bother me at all although it is pretty unlikely from what I know of my ancestors.
"Mathematicians of the Antebellum South born 150 years too late" for $400, Alex.
111
So you really think black kids are just dumb? I mean, really
I think the main reason black kids do worse in American schools than white kids on average is that the mean IQ of American blacks is about 85 as compared to about 100 for American whites. The reasons for this IQ difference are debatable but I don't think anyone seriously claims it is because of the schools or that the schools can do much about it.
Oh, ffs. Go find yourself a Bell Curve support group.
26
Speaking of terrible Yglesias arguments here he claims housing bubbles are different than other bubbles because when a housing bubble bursts you still have the houses. Which is nonsense, this is true of any bubble which isn't a complete fraud. When the tulip bubble burst you still had the tulips.
If you guys would spend a little bit less time arguing with James about race, and a little more time preventing Hungary from sliding into fascism, the world would be a better place today.
All that I can contribute to that conversation is that when I spent a semester at the University of Sussex, I had a professor whose name was also István.* He had a gorgeous Hungarian accent and regaled us with stories of going to school in the winter by sleigh when he was a boy.
*I care enough about Hungary to get the accent right. Unlike Someguy I could name.
102
... You'd think he hadn't heard about Gene Marks' recent Forbes piece, or all the responses it received.
I hadn't read the piece until now. I don't know why you are associating it with me since it does not represent my views. This sentence should have given you a clue.
... My kids are no smarter than similar kids their age from the inner city. ...
Putting that aside the piece is all about out hustling the other poor black kids so you can get one of the few tickets out. Which may (or may not) be good advice for an individual but obviously does nothing for the group as a whole.
I don't know why I'd even respond to this, but all of the black-with-trauma-history-but-no-obvious-fetal-alcohol-syndrome kids (boys, in fact) whose foster care files we read had IQs well above 85 despite having the kinds of educational deficiencies common to kids who've been in foster care a long time and missed a lot of school. So if even they are above this "average" then I'm not sure where we're supposed to find the half who are below.
128
If you are doubting the average IQ of black Americans really is about 85 here is a wikipedia article about a 1995 report by a American Psychological Association task force on the general topic of IQ.
There was a long-standing 15 point or 1 SD difference between the intelligence test scores of African Americans and White Americans, though it might have narrowed slightly in the then recent years. The difference was largest on those tests, verbal or non-verbal, that best represented the general intelligence factor (g). Controlled studies of the way the tests were formulated and administered had shown that this did not contribute substantially to the difference. Attempts to devise tests that would minimize disadvantages of this kind had been unsuccessful. The scores predicted future achievement equally well for blacks and whites. "The cause of that differential is not known; it is apparently not due to any simple form of bias in the content or administration of the tests themselves. The Flynn effect shows that environmental factors can produce differences of at least this magnitude, but that effect is mysterious in its own right. Several culturally based explanations of the Black/ White IQ differential have been proposed; some are plausible, but so far none has been conclusively supported. There is even less empirical support for a genetic interpretation. In short, no adequate explanation of the differential between the IQ means of Blacks and Whites is presently available."
128 129
I should add the 85 estimate is for adults. IQ tests for children (particularly very young children) are not very reliable and if I recall correctly show a lesser racial difference (which increases with age).
126: I'm too polite to point it out most of the time, but it's Söm̧éģùý.
How does one pronounce that square in Hungarian?
Hungarian black kids drive like this.
James, you have a Ph.D. in math, and yet you are citing someone who considers "g" a real thing.
134
James, you have a Ph.D. in math, and yet you are citing someone who considers "g" a real thing.
The arguments about the reality or lack thereof of g tend to make my eyes glaze over. Do you have a simple explanation of why people who refer to g as if it were real should be cast into the outer darkness? Does the same objection apply to the stock market term beta?
134.1 is such a perfect refutation of the notion of g that I almost suspect one of you of sock-puppeting James.
108: very cool. I always joke about discreet math, too.
Cont'd
My prof for discrete math was the most awesome ewok of a dude.
the same objections apply to the stock market term beta.
139
the same objections apply to the stock market term beta.
And does that mean beta is a meaningless concept and anyone who uses it can't be trusted on anything?
someone who considers "g" a real thing.
has now stuck in my mind as:
Ain't nothing but a "g" thing baby
Two loc'ed out crackers going crazy
Free Press is the label that pays me
Untestable so you can't demonstrate this
Thanks for that.