stimulant

Michael Battista’s short essay is full of pretty effective rhetoric:

“How would you react if your doctor treated you or your children with methods that were 10 to 15 years out-of-date, ignored current scientific findings about diseases and medical treatments, and contradicted all professional recommendations for practice? It is highly unlikely that you would passively ignore such practice.

Yet that is exactly what happens with traditional mathematics teaching, which is still the norm in our nation’s schools. For most students, school mathematics is an endless sequence of memorizing and forgetting facts and procedures that make little sense to them. Though the same topics are taught and retaught year after year, the students do not learn them. Numerous scientific studies have shown that traditional methods of teaching mathematics not only are ineffective but also seriously stunt the growth of students’ mathematical reasoning and problem-solving skills.2 Traditional methods ignore recommendations by professional organizations in mathematics education, and they ignore modern scientific research on how children learn mathematics. Yet traditional teaching continues, taking its toll on the nation and on individuals.”

I’m not kidding:

“The 35-year-old had his visa cancelled after recently pleading no contest to gun and drug charges in the US.

‘He doesn’t seem the sort of bloke we want in this country,’ Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews told Sydney’s Macquarie Radio.”

But she seems excited about changing higher education [for the better]:

“Is it fine that college tuition has outpaced inflation?” she asked in a National Press Club speech. “Is it fine that only half our students graduate on time? Is it fine that students often graduate so saddled with debt that they can’t buy a home or start a family? None of this seems fine to me.”

A funny criticism:

“The American Association of University Professors says the emerging vision of higher education is only a marketplace, focused on outcomes and skills. Developing a love of learning and civic virtues, the group says, ‘are marginalized to the point of irrelevance.’”

I certainly share their qualms: it does seem that Spelling is looking to commodify education further. But complaining that, “Developing a love of learning and civic virtues, the group says, ‘are marginalized to the point of irrelevance.’” rings hollow, given what college already is.

Mostly, it’s exciting that a receptive, pro-active official is looking to change the way higher education works.

You should check him out. He’s absolutely amazing. And it would seem that other people think so, too.

When I read this story about the gap in university mental health services, I immediately interpreted it as, “Well, school makes people unhappy!”.

But looking at the “Serious Psychological Distress” of the CDC’s NHIS indicated that the incidence of psychologically distressed students at Sacramento state (about 1000 students every year, from a student body of 28000) wasn’t far off from the national average of ~3%.

*pop*

When I read this
story about the gap in university mental health services, I
immediately interpreted it as, “Well, school makes people unhappy!”.

But looking at the
“Serious Psychological Distress” of the CDC’s NHIS indicated that
the incidence of psychologically distressed students at Sacramento state
(about 1000 students every year, from a student body of 28000) wasn’t
far off from the national average of ~3%.

*pop*

But not for teachers?

“The tentative deal reached this week between the principals union and the city is being hailed as progress, in part because it provides for merit pay of up to $50,000 a year for principals who excel. Those principals, however, will have to manage their teachers without any ability to pay them more or less based on their performance.”

While I’m pretty dubious of merit pay (any reform needing a metric usually means testing, rather than teaching), I am also surprised by this:

“It’s always been a mystery to us why the unions oppose merit pay. No one, after all, is talking about reducing the pay of bad teachers, though that would be an improvement on the current system. The discussion is just about paying good teachers more.”

If testing is currently a fact of life, anyway, why do unions oppose merit pay? There are a couple obvious reasons (e.g. school politics is already ridiculously petty and catty, in my experience), but admitting any of them seems a bit self-incriminating.

Update:This is one, anti-union explanation of what’s going on:

Under state policies that either explicitly authorize or tacitly sanction union monopolies, roughly two-thirds of K-12 public school teachers nationwide, including union members and non-members alike, are forced to accept an “exclusive” union agent as their sole spokesman in contract negotiations. Effectively, that means teacher union officials dictate what the compensation policy is.

And here are a few pro-union ideas to balance it out: ‘If there is extra money for merit pay, then why does that money not go to the kids?’ asked Frank Cherry, a sixth-grade teacher at Imperial Beach Elementary School and president of the Southwest Teachers Association. “When somebody’s in La Jolla getting merit pay and we have kids here who don’t have food, something’s wrong there. […] Terry Pesta, president of the San Diego Education Association, the union for San Diego city schools teachers, said: ‘There are so many factors that weigh into student achievement. This is looking at a simple solution of blaming the teachers.’”

Honestly, I’m suspicious [of teacher’s unions].

But doesn’t this sound like a cross between discussions about prison and mental spa lavatory designs?

“Aural privacy?” “Passive supervision?” Ridiculous?

To make a prairie, it takes a clover and one bee,

One clover, and a bee,

And revery.

The revery alone will do,

If bees are few.

There are no salesmen, no scams, no horizontal integration — nothing corporate about [education]!

It’s funny how helpful it is to encapsulate big ideas concisely: “Education is a commodity” leads directly to daily realizations about what I see around me in school and media. It’s a pretty helpful strategy when you’re thinking about a question: articulate it well, and keep it in the back of your mind at all times.

So much is so rotten.