Re: Street creds for Obama?

I like your thinking on the metrics besides standardized testing. It
would be a way to get out of the now-unproductive fights around test
scores that everyone in this debate seems to engage in. I think there
are groups that look at the dropout rate, but most of the other metrics
you cite are not being tracked on a regular basis to my knowledge.
Also, people care about what you measure, so if you're measuring how
many kids are going to college and these other metrics, then it seems
like a smart way to deal with what we really care about (in grant lingo,
this is the outcome rather than the output).

Brennan

Roy Griffin wrote:
> With moderates and educational "reformers?"
>
> Obama, taking on unions, backs teacher merit pay
>
> "AP – President Barack Obama speaks about education at the 19th Annual Legislative Conference of the United … WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Tuesday embraced a new approach to public education that adds up to merit pay for the better teachers and longer days and school years for students."
>
> Alfie Kohn in his book Punished by Rewards pretty well summarized and demolished the arguments for this sort of thing ("merit pay") both in the educational system and society at large.
>
> My Polyanna-ish take on this is that it is political posturing by Obama to gain support for his general package--though I am fearful that he is serious about strengthening the charter school movement which I see as a Trojan horse for the school voucher movement which is a Trojan horse for the privatization of the schools, etc.--although I do think Obama himself is ultimately a supporter of the public school system...
>
> Although it is overwhelmingly complex task, fraught with political and social landmines, it seems to me that somebody somewhere ought to be working on establishing some definitive criteria for measuring educational "outcomes"--as they are wont to say in the ed business. In my mind outcomes evaluation would be something that would include standardized testing as only a small part. Or maybe it should not be included at all. It seems to be one of those little tails that always winds up wagging the dog.
>
> After you have a clear idea of what you want educational outcomes to be, then you can begin the discussion in earnest of how to get there.
>
> As far as outcomes, just off the top of my head--one doesn't need to use standardized testing, but statistical metanalysis and the like can be used to quantify and contrast various other kinds of data, e.g. what is the drop out rate for the schools, where do students go on to post-secondary and how are those schools ranked by the aribiters of various pecking orders (like the U.S. News & World Report surveys of colleges) how many students wind up in the criminal justice system, how many report life-long learning, how many are satisfied with their vocations--a bunch of stuff could go into the mix besides SAT scores and IQ tests...
>
> (Of course, there's probably a multitude of folks doing stuff like that & I just don't know about and/or it hasn't all been brought to one place. )
>
> R.
>
>
> http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/
>
>
>
>
>

No doubt about evolution,

but I think "natural selection" as the primary motor is dubious (see below).  It seems to be mere detailing as opposed to primary "fabrication."   The process I imagine is more holistic and more mysterious than we have imagined--perhaps more than we can imagine.  The below not only offers implicit support for the idea of panspermia, but also makes the concerns about genetically modified foods a little more worrisome...concerns that I heretofore had tended to pooh-pooh...

(From the website Cosmic Ancestry)

8 March 2009
HGT (horizontal gene transfer)  also turns out to be the rule rather than the exception in the third great domain of life, the eukaryotes. So comments science reporter Graham Lawton in New Scientist. Reviewing the challenge to the traditional "tree of life" that horizontal gene transfer presents, he affirms that HGT is already known to drive prokaryotic evolution. We think it also drives eukaryotic evolution, bringing the programs for new systems and features. Perhaps this understanding is not far off:

Other cases of HGT in multicellular organisms are coming in thick and fast. HGT has been documented in insects, fish and plants, anda few years ago a piece of snake DNA was found in cows (my italics).  The most likely agents of this genetic shuffling are viruses, which constantly cut and paste DNA from one genome into another, often across great taxonomic distances. In fact, by some reckonings, 40 to 50 per cent of the human genome consists of DNA imported horizontally by viruses, some of which has taken on vital biological functions.

Lawton reports that Michael Rose, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Irvine, goes even further: The tree of life is being politely buried, we all know that. What's less accepted is that our whole fundamental view of biology needs to change.

 Graham Lawton, "Why Darwin was wrong about the tree of life" [html], New Scientist, 21 Jan 2009.
 Viruses and Other Gene Transfer Mechanisms is the main related CA webpage [ What'sNEW about HGT ]
 The Tree of Life is a related CA webpage. "This problem is resolved if evolution makes extensive use of genes that are transfered horizontally."
 Thanks, Dr. Doron Goldberg.

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Street creds for Obama?

With moderates and educational "reformers?"

Obama, taking on unions, backs teacher merit pay
      
 "AP – President Barack Obama speaks about education at the 19th Annual Legislative Conference of the United … WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Tuesday embraced a new approach to public education that adds up to merit pay for the better teachers and longer days and school years for students."

Alfie Kohn in his book Punished by Rewards  pretty well summarized and demolished the arguments for this sort of thing ("merit pay") both in the educational system and society at large. 

My Polyanna-ish take on this is that it is political posturing by Obama to gain support for his general package--though I am fearful that he is serious about strengthening the charter school movement which I see as a Trojan horse for the school voucher movement which is a Trojan horse for the privatization of the schools, etc.--although I do think Obama himself is ultimately a supporter of the public school system...

Although it is overwhelmingly complex task, fraught with political and social landmines, it seems to me that somebody somewhere ought to be working on establishing some definitive criteria for measuring educational "outcomes"--as they are wont to say in the ed business.  In my mind outcomes evaluation would be something that would include standardized testing as only a small part.  Or maybe it should not be included at all.  It seems to be one of those little tails that always winds up wagging the dog. 

After you have a clear idea of what you want educational outcomes to be, then you can begin the discussion in earnest of how to get there.  

As far as outcomes, just off the top of my head--one doesn't need to use standardized testing, but statistical metanalysis and the like can be used to quantify and contrast various other kinds of data, e.g. what is the drop out rate for the schools, where do students go on to post-secondary and how are those schools ranked by the aribiters of various pecking orders (like the U.S. News & World Report surveys of colleges) how many students wind up in the criminal justice system, how many report life-long learning, how many are satisfied with their vocations--a bunch of stuff could go into the mix besides SAT scores and IQ tests...

(Of course, there's probably a multitude of folks doing stuff like that & I just don't know about and/or it hasn't all been brought to one place. )

R.

 
http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Metaphysical spring rumination

Lying awake in the greening dark right before a March sunrise,
My blood hums quietly with a thousand desires,
Gentler than before, but still pluripotent, evasive of names and taxonomy,

I believe the Buddhists were wrong about this World of Desire,
It's worth the suffering--and the satisfactions--and
Had there been no samsara,
Nirvana would  have had to invent it.
Because it did.

Perhaps I do  not know what I am saying,
But why should I care?

Now I'm up and around and

There's that "rosy-fingered dawn" (an orange rose in this case)
   on one side,
That paling moon on the other.

R.

 
http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Things that go burp! in the night (poem)

I am now reasonably sure 
Extradimensional monsters come out at night
And gobble up
Tape measures, pencils, socks (always in increments of 1/2 pair

at    
     a 

          time)

But always spare the spent ballpoints...

 
http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

No comment.

Cited on Huffington Post:

Vatican defends Brazil excommunicationMarch 8, 2009, 6:40 am
A senior Vatican cleric has defended the excommunication of the mother and doctors of a nine-year-old girl who had an abortion in Brazil after being raped.
Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, head of the Catholic church's Congregation for Bishops, told the daily La Stampa on Saturday that the twins the girl had been carrying had a right to live.
"It is a sad case but the real problem is that the twins conceived were two innocent persons, who had the right to live and could not be eliminated," he said.
Re, who also heads the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, added: "Life must always be protected, the attack on the Brazilian church is unjustified."
The row was triggered by the termination on Wednesday of twin foetuses carried by a nine-year-old allegedly raped by her stepfather in the Brazilian state of Pernambuco.
The regional archbishop, Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, pronounced excommunication for the mother for authorising the operation and doctors who carried it out for fear that the slim girl would not survive carrying the foetuses to term.
"God's law is above any human law. So when a human law ... is contrary to God's law, this human law has no value," Cardoso had said.
He also said the accused stepfather would not be expelled from the church. Although the man allegedly committed "a heinous crime ... the abortion - the elimination of an innocent life - was more serious".
Battista Re agreed, saying: "Excommunication for those who carried out the abortion is just" as a pregnancy termination always meant ending an innocent life.
The case has sparked fierce debate in Brazil, where abortion is illegal except in cases of rape or if the woman's health is in danger.
On Friday, President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva hit out at Sobrinho's decision, saying: "As a Christian and a Catholic, I deeply regret that a bishop of the Catholic church has such a conservative attitude."
"The doctors did what had to be done: save the life of a girl of nine years old," he said, adding that "in this case, the medical profession was more right than the church."
One of the doctors involved in the abortion, Rivaldo Albuquerque, told Globo television that he would keep going to mass, regardless of the archbishop's order.
"The people want a church full of forgiveness, love and mercy," he said.
Health Minister Jose Gomes Temporao also slammed the archbishop.
"Two things strike me: the assault on the girl and the position of this bishop, which is truly lamentable," he said.
The girl, who was not identified because she is a minor, was last week found to be four months' pregnant after being taken to hospital suffering stomach pains.
Officials said she told them she had suffered sexual abuse by her stepfather since the age of six.
Police said the 23-year-old stepfather also allegedly sexually abused the girl's physically handicapped 14-year-old sister.
He was arrested a week ago and is being kept in protective custody. If convicted, he faces up to 15 years in prison.
The website of the news group Globo reported that another girl, aged 11, had been found to be seven months pregnant following alleged sexual abuse at the hands of her adoptive father.
The girl has said she does not intend to seek an abortion, according to reports. 
http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Playing 11th Dimensional Chess or Muddling Through?

Two issues:  Obama DOJ's supposedly confusing and apparently supportive attitude toward the Bushies' efforts to expand the executive via the "state secrets" rulings and the failure, thus far, to nationalize the failing banks.

The latter is especially odd since most economists, left, right and center, who are not crazy partisans, seem to have a consensus that nationalization is not only desireable but inevitable.  I have no idea what the explanation is.  Perhaps there is such a degree of internal debate within the administration, given who Geithner and Summers are, that Obama is having difficulty figuring out the political calculus on the subject, given all the other rhubarbs going on about the economy

I remain hopeful that Obama's apparent equivocations on state secrets and the like are indeed merely part of a cautious political calculation of some sort & he is biding his time to fix it down the road.   Somebody in The Hague has suggested that President Bush could be next in line after the current president of the Sudan is indicted for war crimes...my spirits rise at the thought...but with such speculation out in the open in international conversations, well, it seems to me to lay a whole new set of political mine fields in this area.  If Bush were actually to be indicted, the political pressure on Obama to defy the International Court would be enormous--in fact, he might not have much choice if he wants his presidency to survive...(I don't know if Obama has reversed the decision to not be a party to the International Criminal Court--last I heard, it was in the works to change it...)

R.
 
http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/