The newspaper – you know the thing made of paper your father used to read at the breakfast table -  is quickly going the way of the dodo.  Yes, people still have an appetite for news but they are getting it increasingly from electronic sources.  And not only from “traditional” outlets.  Now, more than ever,there are bloggers and other independent providers of information are becoming many people’s go-to sources for information. I know you have all heard this line of reasoning before, and I’m sure it is starting to sound a little stale. It is en vogue to decry the death of the print media.

Just last week Arkansas newspaper man John Brummett got into the act with a speech titled “The Burden of Freedom” (click here for his column on the same topic). I think Mr. Brummett and others of his ilk get a lot of things right and a few wrong (they cling a little too closely to old news gathering tactics in my opinion).  But regardless of my individual inclinations, I am glad someone is fighting this fight.  I am glad someone is bringing to our communal consciousness what could be lost if the citizens of our country can no longer rely on good journalism as a resource in their search for truth. It is simply not possible for us to keep up with (or find) all the tidbits of information we use to inform our lives on a daily basis.

But, I am not writing this blog post to pontificate about the economic realities the profession of journalism is facing. No, I am writing because our state’s largest newspaper is attempting to commit suicide, and its time for an intervention. In an era when most newspapers are adapting to the changing media environment and expanding their internet footprint, the Dem-Gaz (at least the northwest Arkansas edition) has nearly unplugged from the net. I understand the move to pay content may have been needed in these difficult times as all newspapers struggle to find a working business model, but the Dem-Gaz shrank their internet presence considerably in the process. It is now almost impossible to find old content (subscription or not) using Google’s news search, their own archive search, or even Lexis-Nexis.  After a day or two the content simply becomes lost somewhere in cyberspace.  And even if you do find the article you were looking for, they are likely to ask for another dollar or two to view it. The paper has effectively made their website obsolete as a research tool.  Anyone who is interested in old content must either purchase a paper everyday and clip things they think are interesting or make a trip to the library and sort through hundreds of articles to find the content they seek.

While it is true that the Dem-Gaz has cornered the market on print news in northwest Arkansas, they would do well to remember that they are not the only source of information. Other independent voices can quickly fill the void, and I expect that they will if the leaders of the Dem-Gaz do not come to their senses and start planning for the future instead of clinging to the past.

Didn’t Walter Hussman watch Pixar’s latest movie UP? You can’t just tie balloons to your paper and float away from reality.

In a new post, educational historian Diane Ravitch says, among other things:

As I predicted on this blog, President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are now the spear carriers for the GOP’s education policies of choice and accountability. An odd development, don’t you think? The Department of Education dangles nearly $5 billion before the states, but only if they agree to remove the caps on charter schools and any restrictions on using student test scores to evaluate teachers.

What is extraordinary about these regulations is that they have no credible basis in research. They just happen to be the programs and approaches favored by the people in power.

* * *

There is also no research that justifies the Obama administration’s belief that tying teacher evaluations to student scores will improve schools.

No research?

Take the charter school point first. In a study that Ravitch herself cites, the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University found that “states that have limits on the number of charter schools permitted to operate, known as caps, realize significantly lower academic growth than states without caps, around .03 standard deviations.”

To be sure, .03 standard deviations isn’t huge. But it’s something. And it’s a “credible basis” for the Obama administration to give states a financial incentive to eliminate charter school caps. I am aware of no studies finding any benefit whatsoever from state laws restricting the number of charter schools that can open. Incidentally, Arkansas currently restricts the number of charter schools statewide to 24. There is no basis for this limit.

Second, take the merit pay issue. No research? Consider David N. Figlio and Lawrence W. Kenny, “Individual Teacher Incentives and Student Performance,” Journal of Public Economics 91 no. 5-6 (2007): 901-14. Looking at national data from the National Education Longitudinal Study, they find that “test scores are higher in schools that offer individual financial incentives for good performance.” To be sure, Figlio and Kenny concede that their cross-sectional study can’t tell definitively whether it was better schools that adopted performance pay, rather than vice versa.

But here are a few studies that weren’t cross-sectional:

1) Gary Ritter and Josh Barnett, “When Merit Pay is Worth Pursuing,” Educational Leadership 66 no. 2 (2008). Ritter and Barnett studied a Little Rock merit pay program. After two years, “schools implementing the program achieved average gains of approximately seven percentile points for students in mathematics and reading. Scores of students in the pilot schools improved, whereas those of students in comparison schools decreased.”

2) Adele Atkinson, Simon Burgess, Bronwyn Croxson, Paul Gregg, Carol Propper, Helen Slater and Deborah Wilson, “Evaluating the impact of performance-related pay for teachers in England”, Labour Economics 16 no. 3 (June 2009): 251-261 (a working version is available here). Atkinson et al. use a sophisticated methodology to evaluate a merit pay scheme in Englnad, controlling for pupil effects, school effects, and teacher effects. They find that “the scheme did improve test scores and value added increased on average by about 40% of a grade per pupil.”

3) Victor Lavy, “Performance Pay and Teachers’ Effort, Productivity, and Grading Ethics,” NBER Working Paper 10622. Lavy evaluates a merit pay program in Israel that gave cash bonuses to teachers whose students earned more “credits” on national graduation exams. He used two sophisticated methods: regression discontinuity design and propensity score matching. His results are substantively significant: As to one estimation, he notes that “the effect of treatment on credits earned in math is 0.256, a 18 percent improvement relative to the mean of the control schools (1.46). The effect of treatment on awarded credits in English is 0.361, a 17 percent improvement relative to the mean of the control schools (2.11).”

These aren’t the only studies, of course, and incentive schemes sometimes don’t show much benefit. Still, to claim that there is no evidence in their favor isn’t accurate. Once again, the position that lacks evidence here is the position that Obama and Duncan are trying to combat, i.e., that it should be illegal to use test score data to assess a teacher’s performance (as is the case in several states). These states might as well have passed a law stating that because so much of a patient’s health depends on factors outside a doctor’s control, it should therefore be illegal to consider whether a doctor’s patients were killed by incompetence.

On the bright side, I applaud Diane Ravitch’s announcement of the Partnership for 19th Century Skills.

Fall is upon us and football season is here.  All is right with the world. But there remains one pesky loose end which eats at the Razorback nation. Our beloved former starting quarterback Matt Jones still has not signed with an NFL team. How could this be? He has all the physical skills of an NFL player; at 6-6  and 203lb he can run a sub 4.4sec 40yd dash and has a vertical of nearly 40in.

Matt, who was the Jacksonville Jaguars’ 1st round pick in 2005, has had his share of problems since leaving the Razorbacks.  He was arrested in Fayetteville last year with a small amount of cocaine and he hasn’t exactly gotten along with the Jaguars’ coaches. Jones has a very laid back demeanor that can sometimes be (and often is) misinterpreted as apathy. But this kid can play.  Matt Jones ran the wildcat at Arkansas before the formation became the staple it is today. Here at Mid-Riffs we have decided to take a stand on this issue. We are calling on Jerry Jones to do the right thing and sign Matt Jones. Here is our reasoning:

1. Matt Jones is a Razorback and good at football
2. Dallas needs a receiver
3. Matt Jones is cheap and available

This plan has the added advantage of collecting all of the Arkansas Joneses (Jerry, Felix, and Matt) in one place. We believe this would create a triumvirate of Hogtastic Jonesiness in the Big D which could dominate the NFL from for years to come.

Jerry, you have taken a risk on Pacman Jones, Tank Johnson, and who can forget T.O.  Why not make a bet on Matt Jones? If not for your own sake, do it for Razorback fans everywhere.

News:
Matt Jones still isn’t in Cowboys Plans
Titans look at three WRs; don’t sign any
New York Times Review of the new Cowboys Stadium (just wanted to throw this one in here)

Of course, a great deal of activity on this blog will focus on the nuts and bolts of schools — tests, teachers, and even tiffs about school buildings. As mid-riff watchers are well aware, we have talked a bunch about the Fayetteville millage over the past week. 

For me, a mere academic, the local story is not as interesting as news across the Natural State.  And, since a lot of the recent back and forth has been controversial, let me engineer a change of pace and steer clear of controversy … I simply want to start your weekend off with some good news and talk about a report from a UA Research Unit — the Office for Education Policy (OEP).  The report, Highlighting Top Achieving Arkansas Schools, is by no means a fancy statistical analysis or a complicated study.  Instead, this OEP report merely recognizes the excellent performance of many students and schools throughout the state, thus reminding us of the true work of schools (teach kids stuff) and reminding us that our Arkansas schools may be doing better than many of us think. 

For example, the first section of the report highlights the top 20 elementary and middle schools across the entire state in both Math and Literacy.  In many of these schools, more than 90% of the school’s students are scoring at advanced or proficient on the state’s exams.  Topping the list of elementary schools was the Vilonia Academy of Technology for math (100% of its students earned score of proficient or advanced) and the Park Magnet School in Hot Springs for literacy.  For middle schools, the Vilonia Academy of Service Learning and Technology led the state in math scores while the Umpire High School in Wickes and the Lisa Academy Middle School topped the state on the literacy exam.

Is this just a list of the state’s most advantaged schools?  Sure, on these lists, we find some of the usual suspects — wealthy schools in the Conways, Bentonvilles, Bryants, and Fayettevilles of the state — posting very high numbers.  But we also see so-called poor schools in the top spots on these lists, emphasizing the fact that AR schools and teachers are able to effectively educate rich and poor students alike.

This is what is so compelling about the second section of the OEP report, just released this week, which focuses exclusively on high achievement in high-poverty schools.  On these pages, we find schools like Eudora Elementary in Lakeside, Richland Elementary in West Memphis, Noble Lower Elementary in Hamburg, and Bragg Elementary in West Memphis – each of these schools are populated entirely with students eligible for free and reduced lunches.  In other words, these kids are poor.  In the face of such poverty, more than 90% of the students in these schools scored at proficient or advanced on the 2009 Arkansas Benchmark Math exam.  On the literacy exams, on which only 70% of the state’s elementary students achieve at proficient or advanced levels, three of our state’s poorest schools boasted scores easily besting the state average.  Each of these three schools serve students that are all poor according to our free lunch measure, yet more than 85% the elementary students in Richland Elementary in West Memphis, Noble Lower Elementary in Hamburg, and Portland Elementary in Hamburg scored at proficient or advanced on the 2009 Arkansas Benchmark Literacy exam.

On the exams given to middle school students, which are more challenging to students in the entire state, students in the aforementioned Umpire High School  performed exceptionally well.  While all of the students at Umpire High are eligible for free and reduced lunches, 93% of the school’s middle level students scored at proficient or advanced on the 2009 Math and Literacy Exams. 

Before you scoff at these results, let’s be clear … these exams are not simple!  If you don’t believe me, take a look for yourself at the details on the Arkansas Department of Education website.  Check out questions 1 thru 10 on the eighth grade math exam (send in all the correct answers and you win a prize!).   To do so, you’ll need to brush up on your knowledge of probability, compute the volume of a pyramid, and figure out how to interpret a box and whisker plot.  Good Luck!

If that’s too hard for you, you may want to take a look at some of the 5th grade elementary level math questions.  Here’s an example test item from page 12:

Question:  Josh purchased 4 shirts, 3 pairs of pants, and 2 ties that can be combined to create several new outfits.  If an outfit consists of 1 shirt, 1 pair of pants, and 1 tie, how many different outfit combinations can Josh choose?  Show all your work and/or explain your answer.

Perhaps you were able to do this fifth grade question, but I imagine the 8th grade questions gave you some trouble.  Nevertheless, there is a valuable lesson to be learned (or at least reinforced) here, and it has nothing to do with probability, volume, or box and whisker plots.   Rather, this OEP report provides a stark and simple reminder that all kids, regardless of socioeconomic environment or financial poverty, can learn and achieve at high levels.  Let’s congratulate the teachers at these Arkansas “beating the odds” schools for working hard to help their students not view poverty as an excuse, but rather as a mere hurdle on the way to academic success.

(Guest post by Jay P. Greene)

The Fayetteville school board and district leaders fully supported a plan that was soundly rejected by the voters this week.  How did school officials so badly mis-read what voters wanted?  It’s especially puzzling how school officials could have seriously misjudged their constituents given the years of deliberations, countless hours of public meetings and charrettes, and even a commissioned opinion poll.

Unfortunately, these countless rituals of public input are exactly what misled school officials to support an unpopular plan.  They were misled because these rituals of public input are better indicators of the views of the self-selected, small minority of people with the most intense (and often the most extreme) preferences than they are indicators of what the electorate would want.  School officials mistook the opinions of this self-selected few as the voice of the people.

School officials also hired consultants to lead these public conversations, but in doing so they were steering discussions in a pre-determined direction.  Bringing in education consultant Tony Wagner and requiring all school employees to read his book steered the plan toward a high school divided into small learning communities.  That idea didn’t come from the voters.  It came from certain school officials, was made the topic of discussion in schools and community events, and then was echoed back to school officials.

Similarly, the design “charrettes” led by consultants from New Orleans were not truly open brain-storming sessions about a new high school.  If they were, how did several small break-out groups independently arrive at the same Trail of Tears design concept?

There is nothing inherently wrong with holding public discussions on important decisions or with bringing in expert consultants to inform and direct those conversations.  The problem is in falsely believing that what results from those discussions is in fact the opinion of the community.  They are more like echo-chambers, repeating back the preferences that school officials had going into them.

But school officials saw the community discussions as a sign of general public support for their vision.  They even went so far as to describe the plan that was developed from these events as “The People’s Plan.”  And then when asked why voters should support the millage, the advocates and editorial writers told us that it was The People’s Plan and had come from us so we should support what the community had developed.

This People’s Plan campaign strategy almost felt like bullying.  If you weren’t among the tiny, minority of atypical people who could spend evening after evening in community discussions, you had lost your chance to have a say.  It was time for you to get in line and support what the involved people had already determined.

Perhaps for this reason opponents of the millage stayed generally quiet during the campaign.  Yes, there was a handful of active letter writers and a Facebook group with fewer than ten members, but there was no organized opposition, no “vote no” yard signs, and a string of elite (even if tepid)  community endorsements.  But in the privacy of the voting booth, people clearly felt free to open-up and clearly say no.  Once the result had been announced, opponents discovered that they weren’t so isolated, and Facebook pages began to light-up with people explaining their reasons for opposing the millage despite their commitment to education and their understanding of shortcomings of the existing facility.

The solution is not to hold even more public input rituals to scale back the cost of the project but leave all other decisions in place.  Presumably, the $116 million price tag followed from all of the design and policy decisions that had preceded it.  If all of the design and policy goals could have been met for a lower cost, why wasn’t the initial millage for a lesser amount?

Instead, the solution is to stop the echo-chamber decision-making of meetings, charrettes, and consultants, and start with real leadership.  School officials should step-up and tell us what they think would be educationally desirable at a reasonable cost.  Of course, it is difficult for them to gauge what the community would consider a reasonable cost without public input, but the election result has given them better feedback than any town-hall discussion or charrette ever will.

Superintendent Vicki Thomas is particularly well-positioned to offer her vision of our educational future.  She bears no responsibility for the development of the failed millage plan and can start with a fresh slate.  We hired her to lead our schools and leadership is what we need.  She has enough information from voters and past public meetings to assess the community’s priorities.  Now she can give us a new plan and convince us that it is what she thinks is best, not what she thinks we told her to say.

Jay P. Greene is endowed professor of education reform at the University of Arkansas and a parent of three children in Fayetteville public schools.

Oklahoma’s Flaming Lips made an appearance on The Colbert Report last night.  Stephen grilled Wayne Coyne about the fact that Oklahoma governor Brad Henry made the band’s song “Do You Realize” the Official Rock Song of Oklahoma, despite it’s “questionable” lyrics.  Wayne Coyne does a good job of defending the song’s message.  I wonder what would make a good Official Rock Rock Song of Arkansas….

Here is the video for “Do You Realize.”

Flaming Lips – Do You Realize??

Reports are coming out that the nays have it in the Fayetteville millage election.  After reporting early numbers via twitter that made passage look like a slamdunk (1,175 for and 630 against), Alan Wilbourn is now tweeting that the unofficial vote total is 4,085 for and 5,954 against. Over ten thousand Fayetteville residents cast ballots on the millage issue. That is quite a turnout for a special election. The table below provides a breakdown of the voting numbers.

Here is The Morning News article about the election.

The proposal to build a new high school failed to get voter approval.  So, what happens now?  Check back later today tomorrow (Sept. 17th) for some good riffing on this very topic.

Check out the description here.

Anyone who has an iPhone should immediately drop whatever they are doing and download this app.  Anyone who is anyone has already downloaded it. Get with the program before you get left behind.

Go Hogs beat Georgia!

Click here if you are wondering about the title of this post.

Here at Mid-Riffs we don’t like to be all serious all the time.  Occasionally (probably on Fridays, but obviously not without exception) we’ll lighten up on all the ranting and the riffing and the general expressions of outrage so that we can focus on unearthing the truth on more fun topics.  This is one of those posts.

You probably heard a news story or two recently about the newly remastered versions of all the original Beatles albums.  Fans of good music can now shell out lots of money for The Beatles Stereo Box Set (~$180) and The  Beatles Mono Box Set (~$230); both of which are the result of a reported four year project to bring the Beatles into the 21st Century.  The last major overhaul was in 1987–you know, forever ago.

Always a competent wordsmith, Philip Martin of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette had an excellent review on Sunday, and his opening paragraphs are worth reprinting here:

To begin to talk about the Beatles is to begin to talk about water, so pertinent, pervasive and invisible is their influence. You can ignore the Beatles, and it is a simple thing to forget about them, but to say that you don’t like them makes no sense. You don’t like water? You are water, amigo.

Or maybe not. There certainly are people who profess to not like the Beatles, although we shouldn’t pretend that those contrarian impulses are any more important than they are. The Beatles – John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr – are monumental, essential to anyone’s understanding of the second half of the 20th century. For better or worse they changed the meaning of pop music; they have transcended taste.

Got that?  Water.  Still, there’s always a few naysayers out there who just enjoy being called crazy. I actually have a friend who tries to argue that the Stones were better.  Insane, right?  Believe me, everyone feels sorry for him.  Those of us in the know can still disagree over who was the best Beatle (John) or who was the best ex-Beatle (George of course), but if you can’t admit that they are the best rock and roll band ever, you’re living in a fantasy.

The release of the remastered albums also has smart people arguing over which versions are better, the stereo or the mono versions (when appropriate).  Would-be purists claim that the recordings that were originally released in mono should remain that way, claiming that mono is the way they were meant to be heard.  I disagree.  The level of technology at the time required mono recordings.  It wasn’t a purposeful choice, just a matter of circumstance.

I would argue that the goal should be to try, as best as possible, to make the recordings sound like the Beatles are in my living room, playing a show for me.  What could be a more “true” way to hear the Beatles?  And since my living room is three-dimensional, and the laws of physics would prevent the fab four from occupying the same space at the same time, I think the stereo versions must come closer to sounding like the Beatles are in my living room.

With that settled, the question still remains: How much better are the remastered versions?  After giving them a semi-thorough listen, I can tell you–not that much.  But if they were drastically different, that would be a bad thing, right?  You don’t want to mess too much with some of the most widely known and successful songs in history.  To attempt to put it in words, the remastered songs have a broader range and they sound a bit clearer.  Paul’s bass sounds much tighter on some songs.  The vocals sound generally smoother.  The stereo mixes are balanced better.

That said, there is something to be said for the “older” sounding original versions.  The overall familiarity of the original tracks—with all of the mud, hisses, and pops—have a warm and comforting nostalgic quality.  They are the versions we’re all used to.  They are a part of history.  We’re used to hearing the Beatles sound like they were recorded forty years ago the same way we’re used to thinking about the pre-1930s world in black and white.

So last night I listened to the old versions and the remastered versions for quite  a while and made a lot of comparisons, and honestly most of the time I could hardly tell a difference.  Below I have selected a few tracks where I found the differences to be most obvious.  If you can’t hear the differences on these, then you probably don’t need to update your collection anytime soon. I can tell you that if don’t play these loud, preferably with headphones, you won’t hear any difference at all.

All of these are just clips, which will frustrate you but keep me out of trouble.

Here’s “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” which sounds cleaner and smoother in the remastered version.

You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away – Before

You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away – After

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The remastered version of “Girl” is an obvious improvement.  The big winners here are the bass and vocals.

Girl – Before

Girl – After

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I’ve always really liked the Harrison track  “Long Long Long” from the White Album.  Don’t know it? I don’t think many people do, and part of the reason is that the mix on the original was so muted that it hardly asks to be noticed.  The remastered version is much clearer and gets closer to the overall  sound this song always deserved.

Long Long Long -  Before

Long Long Long – After

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And, last but not least, listen to the bass and overall clarity on the remastered “Lovely Rita.”  The remastered version really just jumps off the page.  If you can’t hear the difference on this one, or if you don’t like the new version,  then rushing out to buy the remasters does not need to be at the top of your to-do list:

Lovely Rita – Before

Lovely Rita -  After

If you can’t hear much of a difference, maybe you should just grab The Beatles Rock Band for the kids.  I can tell you from experience that it’s pretty awesome when your five year old runs around the house singing A Hard Day’s Night over and over.