Links for the Day
Posted by SBuck | Education, Fayetteville, AR, Politics | September 28, 2009
1. Barack Obama — possibly inspired by the 7:30 to 5 pm schedule at KIPP schools — wants to lengthen school days. Some telling quotes from the article:
“Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas,” the president said earlier this year. “Not with Malia and Sasha, not in my family, and probably not in yours. But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom.” . . .
Summer is a crucial time for kids, especially poorer kids, because poverty is linked to problems that interfere with learning, such as hunger and less involvement by their parents.
That makes poor children almost totally dependent on their learning experience at school, said Karl Alexander, a sociology professor at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University, home of the National Center for Summer Learning.
The subtext here is that smart kids like yours and mine don’t necessarily need more time in school, but we’ve got to think about all of those kids who are better off at school than at home.
2. In Arkansas news, the “fool poor people into forking over their money to handsomely-paid bureaucrats” program — i.e., the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery — started today. Note: you have a much higher chance of being struck by lightning than of winning anything significant in the lottery. The Fayetteville Flyer has a tantalizing breakdown of what you can buy in order to help Ernie Passailaigue get a bigger house.
3. The New York Times magazine asked several folks, including Charles Murray, Diane Ravitch, and others, to opine on the purpose of education. Ravitch’s question — why do we educate at all? — is thought-provoking.
4. Dan Willingham cogently explains why if you want to understand what you read, you have to know something about the subject.
5. The results of the Fayetteville millage election appear to be more lopsided than originally reported. The certified results show the millage failed 64% to 37%, or 6,382 to 3,672. There is no indication why around 400 votes seem to have switched sides.
6. From the New York Times, a former test grader essentially makes a case that multiple choice tests are better than those that allow open-ended writing.
Stuart Buck said: “The results of the Fayetteville millage election appear to be more lopsided than originally reported. The certified results show the millage failed 64% to 37%, or 6,382 to 3,672. There is no indication why around 400 votes seem to have switched sides.”
According to John Borrow, the discrepancy was due entirely to the use of defective “in-house” paper ballots – affecting only those votes cast early at the courthouse.
If my calculations are correct, then the early voting results should have been the following:
FOR the millage: 762 (1175-413)
AGAINST the millage: 1058 (630+428)
So, as it turns out, 58% of early voters were against the millage.
Want another (unfortunately graphic) reason to elongate school days?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzRYTYZ-EhE
This is a video of Derrion Albert getting beaten to death last Thursday in Chicago on his way home from school. Many of us are fortunate to be removed from the daily threats facing the good kids just trying to make it in our nation’s inner cities, but the call to keep those students in school longer is a very real attempt to save their lives. Here is the money quote from the AP report on the incident:
“The violence stemmed from a shooting early Thursday morning involving two groups of students, said Tandra Simonton, a spokeswoman for the Cook County prosecutor’s office. When school ended, members of the two groups began fighting.”
Notice those very important words “when school ended”.
Thanks for the info Rupert. I guess that explains why Alan Wilbourn’s early tweets ended up being so off.
Unfortunately Coach, that video has been removed. While I sympathize with your feelings on this, I don’t think elongating the school day is the proper response to street violence. It seems as if the beating could just as well have happened at 5:30 if the school day had been longer. Of course that’s easy for me to say here in the comfort of Fayetteville.
Senor Kisida,
Absolutely valid point.
I guess I would just hope that later in the day there would be a higher probability of at least one or two somewhat responsible adults being around that would do something to stop a street-consuming gang melee, or that the increased amount of time passing between events would give students more time to either a)reflect and decide not to go on a rampage or b) be victims of their fleeting attention spans and forget about it or c) talk about it to the wrong person who would then rat them out to a teacher/administrator/remotely responsible adult who could do something to try and stop it.
But, that is some admittedly wishful thinking on my part.