Creeping dark.
Leaves in flight, down comforter held tight.
School rhythms, muffled halftime percussion.
Barren patio, first fire.
Peppermint herbal tea.
Fall
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Yearly Archives: 2011
SAT Reading, Writing Scores Hit Low
Based on the newsfeed, last week was a downer.
A record high one of six people are living below the $22,000 family of four poverty level. Tampa right wing nutters cheered the thought of an uninsured patient dying. Recently hired Detroit auto workers are paid one-half of their fellow assembly-liners’ wages. The University of California will raise tuition 16% a year indefinitely. The Palin kids were (allegedly) stuck with burnt mac and cheese (formatting guide—italics—quotes, underlined—tongue in cheek sarcasm). And then the week ended with the rare Seahawks-Mariners double zero*.
In keeping with the spirit of the week, Stephanie Banchero of the WSJ wrote:
SAT scores for the high-school graduating class of 2011 fell in all three subject areas, and the average reading and writing scores were the lowest ever recorded.
The results. . . revealed that only 43% of students posted a score high enough to indicate they were ready to succeed in college.
The report on the SAT comes on the heels of results from the ACT college-entrance exam that suggested only 25% of high-school graduates who took that exam were ready for college.
The average reading score dropped to 497 from 500 points in 2010, on a 200-to-800-point scale. That is the lowest score since 1972, when the College Board began calculating the average scores of individual graduating classes. The writing score dipped to 489, down from 491 last year. Writing scores have gone down almost every year since the exam was first given in 2006.
College Board officials offer two take-aways from the data (as reported by Banchero):
1) The declining scores can be attributed, in part, to a larger and more diverse test-taking population. As more students aim for college and sit for the exam, scores decline. Ten years ago, 8% of test takers were Latino, compared with 15% in 2011. For black students, the percentage jumped to 13%, compared with 9% in 2001. A growing percentage of students also grew up speaking a language other than English, and more than one-fifth of this year’s test takers were poor enough to receive a waiver to take the exam for free.
2) Students who took a core curriculum, defined as four years of English and three or more of math, natural science and social science, did much better. Still, only 49% of them posted a score high enough to be considered college-ready, compared with 30% of students who didn’t take a core. College Board officials noted that the reading scores have been declining most dramatically for students who took less than a core curriculum.
Banchero wraps up her story with Kent Williamson’s hypothesis for why reading and writing scores are declining. Williamson, the executive director of the National Council of Teachers of English, suspects declining scores are based upon a narrowing of how reading is taught. “In many schools, especially those most impoverished, reading programs are not about building cognitive abilities or a love of reading,” he said. “They are built around rote learning of language, and I think we are seeing the results of that.”
Unscientific as it may be, Williamson’s postulate resonates with me. Too few students are engaged by their teachers’ methods and their required, too often scripted, course material.
I’ll take the baton from Williamson and offer another unscientific hypothesis. Declining scores are proof that opinion leaders’ and policy makers’ single-minded focus on global economic competition isn’t the least bit motivating to K-12 students. That focus has created a debilitating disconnect. I’ll elaborate sometime soon.
In the meantime, here’s hoping for a more upbeat news week.
* I like our chances for setting the rarely reported “same city on Sundays consecutive quarters and innings goose egg” record.
We Need Smaller and Larger Classes
I’m never quite sure how the head high school swim coach will use me, his ace volunteer assistant, until I show up on the deck each afternoon. Lately, he’s been giving me the burners probably because I’m less skilled teaching new swimmers.
Yesterday though, while the rest of the team rotated through four different stroke clinics he gave me two neophytes. Yikes, over an hour, what am I going to do after suggesting one or two things? I surprised myself. The girls and I connected, they made huge strides in what they were struggling with, and the time flew. I listened to them talk about what they were finding most difficult—always being really tired even in the middle of short sets. Then I watched them swim and diagnosed the problem—short, choppy, way too fast arm and leg action coupled with three and four stroke breathing. One asked, “How do I keep from hyperventilating?”
I told them there were four speeds—easy, steady, mod-hard, and hard, and they were spending all their time swimming mod-hard and hard. I got them to slow everything down, stretch things out, and breath more often. Slowing their arms and legs down and breathing more often felt odd to them, but they were thrilled to swim 50 yards without being winded. We also did flip turns and fine tuned race starts which included a lesson on how to wear goggles and tuck their chins so that their goggles don’t come off. They were very appreciative of my help and left practice more excited about the remainder of the season.
Crazily, we have forty-six swimmers, and most days, just four lanes. Those swimmers would have never got the individual attention they needed if I wasn’t volunteering. Working with them so closely reminded me how little imagination secondary school administrators and teachers have when it comes to class size. Irrespective of teachers’ methods and assessment practices, it’s as if 30ish students per class is mandated somewhere in the Old Testament. Thirty students is probably the optimal size for not really getting to know students individually and not using teaching resources as efficiently as possible.
The best elementary teachers solve the class size conundrum on their own. They brilliantly use learning centers to create more personalized learning environments. Their students are constantly moving from working independently, to working at small group learning centers, to whole class instruction.
In secondary schools, 30 students is sometimes too many. Like at swim practice yesterday, sometimes a teacher needs to listen to individual students, carefully assess what they already know and are able to do, thoughtfully diagnosis what they need to truly learn the necessary content and skills, observe, provide feedback, and repeat.
Ours is an outstanding public high school, yet after four years, Nineteen said she didn’t do much writing, and when she did, only one teacher ever provided specific feedback. Writing intensive classes, whether in English or Advanced Placement History, should be capped somewhere south of 30 so that teachers are able to assign papers, read them closely, and provide specific feedback on strengths and next steps.
And sometimes 30 is too few. Obviously, in order to have some classes with 16 or 18 students, there have to be others with 45 or 50. In ninth grade, Sixteen had math sixth period. She’d literally take a test, come home fifteen minutes later, log onto the school website, and announce her grade. Why should a teacher who slides bubbled-up Scantron sheets through a machine on the way to bball practice in less than 60 seconds be assigned the same number of students as the writing teacher who should be carefully marking three and four page essays on a regular basis?
If one’s lecturing, teaching discrete factual information, showing a PowerPoint about the digestive system for instance, and then using multiple choice exams, does it really matter if there are 30 or 60 or 75 students in the “audience”?
Granted, it’s tough to differentiate for 2,000 adolescents at a time in buildings that typically assume standard class sizes. But that doesn’t mean we’re destined to always have 30 students per class, or that each class has to be 55 minutes in length, or that all fifteen year olds are in the same classes does it?
Serena Williams, Teachers’ Strikes, Personal Experience
Midway during her US Open Final match against Sam Stosur, Serena yelled “Come on!” while hitting a blistering forehand winner. Points are supposed to be replayed following accidental yelps, but since this one was clearly intentional, the line judge followed the rules and awarded the point to Stosur. Stosur went on to upset Williams who unraveled and yelled “You’re out of control,” and “Really, don’t even look at me,” and my personal favorite, “You’re a hater, and you’re just unattractive inside.” Williams was fined $2k on Monday which I’m sure will inspire her to take a long hard look at her insides (sarcasm).
On Monday on ESPN2 two analysts debated the line judge’s decision—Jemelle Hill, a youngish, always thoughtful African-American female sportwriter, and Skip Bayless, a pasty white*, cocksure, middle aged male who is almost always the debate aggressor. The exchange was interesting viewing because Hill focused exclusively on William’s gender, never referencing her ethnicity. In essence, she argued that since MacEnroe’s epic outbursts (hilarious picturing Mac wrapping up one of those with “and you’re just unattractive inside”) men have gotten away with far, far worse on court behavior. She added that Andy Roddick’s US Open outbursts were at least as bad as Williams. Bayless wasn’t buying it insisting it was a pattern with Williams and that she got what she deserved and should be banned from next year’s Open. What? Hill kept coming back to the obvious double standard, and surprisingly, to Bayless’s credit, he conceded the point at the end of the segment.
Hill was far more insightful and persuasive than Bayless, because, I’m assuming, she has direct, first-hand experience with gender and race-based double standards in her professional life. She knows it as soon as she sees it. I wish the moderator had asked Jemelle if she thought Serena’s race also impacted the public’s (and Bayless’s) stronger negative reaction to her outburst. But I digress.
Tacoma, Washington teachers are on strike. Among the issues, the district wants greater flexibility in moving teachers from program to program and school to school to better meet the needs of struggling students. Teachers want continuity and are fearful of one superintendent or one principal arbitrarily moving them from year to year. I hope I’m wrong, but given the stagnant economy, high unemployment rate, and growing antipathy for public unions, I predict the teachers will struggle to win the community’s support.
Also, only a very small percentage of the public has direct, first-hand experience with the challenges of public school teaching. Just as Bayless struggled to see a gender double standard in professional tennis, the public can’t see things from the teachers’ vantage point. I empathize with the teachers. Few people, even if they freely chose to enter the profession, would passively and indefinitely accept their modest (and reduced) pay, their increasing class sizes, and their district and schools’ top-down management.
I hope the public union vitriol is tempered, the conflicts can be resolved, and the strike is short for the students and families it will definitely inconvenience.
* Just as African-Americans are able to use the “N” word, I can use the “PW” phrase because I am PW.
It Could Be Far, Far Worse
For the most part, I’m grateful for the numerous blessings in my life including my health; my wife; my daughters; my mom, siblings and extended family; my personal freedom and civil rights; my work; access to excellent films and literature; the Pacific Northwest, and a surplus of Honey Bunches of Oats.
But I get frustrated with myself for not being as appreciative as I should all the time. Sometimes, when sitting in faculty meetings, or in traffic, or for hours at the doctor’s office, I can even begin to feel sorry for myself.
The ancient Stoics had a strategy for being joyful, negative visualization. Negative visualization entails taking a few minutes out of one’s enjoyment of life a few times each day or week to think about how all the most positive things in one’s life could be taken away. What if a loved one were to suddenly die? What would my life be like without my wife? Without a daughter? Without my mother? What if I was severely injured and couldn’t swim, cycle, or run? What if we lost all our life savings through disastrous decision making or an unprecedented financial meltdown?
All of those questions combined pale in comparison to one I’ve been batting around this past week: what if I lived in North Korea?
I’m fascinated by North Korea partly because I briefly lived in 1990 Marxist Ethiopia, partly because the curtain around it is drawn so incredibly tight, and partly because of Bradley K. Martin’s lengthy, riveting history of 20th Century Korea, Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty.
Yesterday, I finished another genius work titled Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick. One hundred eighty five, five star customer reviews on Amazon, not bad. Demick, a former LA Times correspondent based in Seoul, tells the story of six North Koreans she got to know after they defected first to China, then South Korea. She introduces each character when things are, as always in North Korea, extremely repressive, and then they endure the mid 90’s collapse of the already pitiful economy and the famine that killed somewhere between ten and twenty percent of the population, including some of their parents, siblings, and young students.
It’s going to take awhile to shake this book. Actually, I hope I never do. In fact, the next time I look in the frig and wonder what to make given the paucity of pickings, I hope I’ll remember that some North Koreans are picking individual kernels of corn and grains of rice from animal waste and then eating them or climbing trees to cut off and then eat the soft underside of the bark. The next time the internet is down, I hope I remember that in North Korea there is no internet. And the next time my government demonstrates its fallibility, I hope I remember that in North Korea government officials burn unopened letters in the winter for warmth.
Those references just scratch the surface of how evil the Kim dictatorship is and how utterly brutal life is in North Korea. My vote for the worst address in the world. I’m surprised more North Koreans don’t attempt to escape across the Tumen River. And the frustrating thing is the world seems content not to do anything probably because they threaten to unleash their military might on Japan and South Korea. That “can’t do anything” mindset is much tougher to accept given Demick’s storytelling. We are at best selective humanitarians.
Thank you Deborah Demick for the disorienting stories and the reminder that life is far, far worse in North Korea than people as privileged as myself can ever fully grasp.
Confused Ten Years On
Has it really been ten years?
When it comes to remembering the horrific events of 9-11, I have to admit to a certain confusion.
I don’t understand people’s profound fear of subsequent terrorist attacks relative to other more serious threats to their health, longevity, and quality of life. One half of the U.S. population is expected to be obese by 2030 meaning heart disease and related health problems will explode. One in eight women will get breast cancer. And add Alzheimers, drunk driving, gun violence, and driving while texting to the list of everyday domestic threats to our health, longevity, and quality of life. As a road runner, road cyclist, and driver, I’m much more likely to die from someone in my community texting while driving than I from foreign terrorists.
Of course evil exists and we have to continue to be vigilant, but the “fear paradox” is probably explained by the scale of the 9-11 attacks, the surreal images of the damage permanently etched in our minds, and the fact that we’re more emotional than rational beings. Also, gun and traffic deaths are sporadic, happening in different locations at different times, each death like a drip from a leaky faucet, remaining unconnected and relatively inconsequential in our minds. In contrast, 9-11 was an unprecedented gusher of violence and death replayed on television over and over and over. But I don’t understand why we’re settling for thinking so sloppily.
I don’t understand people’s self-congratulatory “there haven’t been any attacks since” mindset. In terrorism score-keeping, only large-scale attacks on American citizens count? People forget how many foreign nationals were killed on 9-11 and ignore how many terrorist attacks have occurred throughout the world in the last ten years. I don’t understand how many of my fellow Christians in particular emphasize their nationality at the expense of their humanity.
I don’t understand what we’ve learned about the terrorist threat. Ten years on do we have any better understanding of why we were attacked? Or of our fellow citizens of Muslim faith?
I don’t understand why we’re content to let our government fill foreign skies with as many drones as they want. Are young men less likely to die for their religion today? A focus on preventing additional terrorist acts is of course necessary, but we shouldn’t lose focus on the other threats I’ve highlighted, and we shouldn’t pretend military might is a long-term fix.
On Sunday, besides watching football, consider pressing pause with me and reflecting in silence for a few minutes on not just the tragic events of 9/11/01 and the lives lost and the families shattered, but what we can do to create healthier, safer, and more secure neighborhoods, cities, states, provinces, countries, and world over the next ten years.
Should Schools Screen for Mental Health Problems in Teens?
From a recent WSJ article by Laura Landro:
With rising concern about adolescent depression and suicide, more schools are turning to screening tests to identify those at risk and, if necessary, help them get treatment. Voluntary screenings are being offered through school health classes, school-based health clinics and community agencies, which then can refer children for diagnosis and treatment to school psychologists or local health care providers.
. . . According to the National Institute of Mental Health, half of all cases of mental illness start by age 14, and about 11% of adolescents have a depressive disorder by age 18. Left untreated, such issues can lead to high dropout rates, substance abuse, violence—and suicide, the third-leading cause of death in adolescents. In a study of 2,500 students who went through the Fond du Lac program at six public high schools between 2005 and 2009, published last week in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, nearly 20% were identified as at risk, of whom 73.6% were not receiving treatment at the time of screening. Among that group, more than three-quarters completed at least one visit with a mental-health provider within 90 days after referral to school and community services.
Some groups oppose mental health screening programs because: 1) they believe the screenings interfere with issues that should be the domain of the family and 2) they lead to over-prescription of psychiatric meds. Opponents to screenings are also afraid 3A) kids who aren’t really depressed may answer questions in a way that makes them seem so and that 3B) children will be wrongly identified as problematic and stigmatized, or that 4) parents will be penalized if they don’t seek treatment. And 5) Howard Adelman, co-director of the Center for Mental Health in Schools at UCLA believes that teachers are adept enough at picking out kids at risk without screening programs.
Marian Sheridan, coordinator for health and safety for Wisconsin’s Fond du Lac school district, counters that it is a “false perception” that schools and parents know which kids need help.
Sheridan is right, Adelman wrong.
“It’s not something a lot of kids like to talk about with their parents,” a 24 year-old who first started experiencing symptoms of depression in the eight grade contends, adding, “they may not want to bring it up at school either.”
Sixty percent of Fond du Lac’s eligible students were screened last year which I guess means 40% of parents didn’t provide consent. Obviously school-based mental health screenings are something upon which reasonable people can disagree.
I’m opposed to mindlessly holding teachers accountable for childhood obesity and more and more obviously non-academic responsibilities, but this quick-hit program has proven to make a positive difference in the adolescents that participate in it. As a result, I’m all for the expansion of voluntary mental health screening test programs for secondary students.
Parenting Styles and Self Esteem at Age 33
At first glance Tina Fey’s autobio Bossypants is a quick, light, summer beach-type read that some may assume she wrote to capitalize on her growing fame. In actuality, it contains lots of important insights about class, sexual orientation, parenting practices, sexism, and the creative process. I dig her humor, her writing, her politics, her toughness.
One would have to credit her dad, Don Fey, with her toughness. In an early chapter she tells his story. She ends that chapter with this:
My dad has visited me at work over the years and I’ve noticed that powerful men react to him in a weird way. They “stand down”. The first time Lorne Michaels met my dad, he said afterward, “Your father is. . . impressive.” They meet Don Fey and it rearranges something in their brain about me. Alec Baldwin took a long look at him and have him a firm handshake. “This is your dad, huh?” What are they realizing? I wonder. That they’d better never mess with me, or Don Fey will yell at them? That I have high expectations for the men in my life because I have a strong father figure? Only Colin Quinn was direct about it. “Your father doesn’t fucking play games. You would never come home with a shamrock tattoo in that house.”
My dad, also named Don, would have liked Don Fey. My siblings and I, like the peeps who worked for him, had a healthy fear of my dad. He was tough-minded, but never even close to abusive. We were taught to answer the phone, “Byrnes residence, Ron speaking.” Of course he just answered it, “Don Byrnes”. We learned the planets didn’t revolve around us.
In the later stages of Bossypants TF writes:
I have once or twice been offered a “mother of the year” award by working-mom groups or a mommy magazine, and I always decline. How cold they possibly know if I’m a good mother? How can any of us know until the kid is about thirty-three and all the personality dust has really settled?
Amen to that. I have a good fifteen years to go before you can judge my parenting. I don’t pretend to have it all together.
In a chapter titled, “The Mother’s Prayer for Its Daughter,” Fey writes:
And when she one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of Hollister, give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends, for I will not have that Shit. I will not have it.
Fey, based upon her unparalleled genius for self-deprecation, has self-esteem to spare. Similarly, I would score well on a self-esteem eval. My guess is, Alice Fey, TF’s five year old, is going to have above average self-esteem. Why? In part because her mom will not have that Shit.
I suspect many of my peers with children would say the “old school” parents named Don from the 60’s and 70’s weren’t nearly affectionate enough. But sometimes modern day affection-based parenting crosses over into an “I’m going to be my child’s older more stable friend” approach to child-rearing that I’m guessing results in 33 year-olds with more self-esteem issues than the children of more strict, less therapeutic “old school” parents like the Dons.
I think the GalPal and I have done an admirable job splitting the difference. We’re affectionate with our daughters, but they also know we have clear limits and always expect to be respected. They’d probably say we’re one-part touchy-feely, one part, will not have that Shit.
[Postscript—thinking about this further, maybe strict but loving parenting contributes to children’s later resilience more than it does their self-esteem. I’ve theorized about where self esteem comes from before here.]
Jacking Around
From the Associated Press:
Jack Nicklaus is trying something new to get more people to play golf. He is holding events at his Muirfield Village Golf Club in which the cup will be twice as large and the tournaments only will be 12 holes.
Nicklaus is concerned that fewer people are playing golf. He says it’s important to think beyond the traditional rules and try something different to make the game more appealing.
That would be THE Jack Nicklaus I idolized growing up, making his “make it two-thirds as long and far easier” logic all the more painful to process.
When marathon participation someday drops off, race officials will no doubt make marathon running more appealing by Jacking it, making it a gradual downhill 17.5 mile “fun run”.
We should probably Jack the 500 free in high school swimming too. The new more appealing “335 yard free” will be even more popular now that participants can wear fins.
And paying taxes shouldn’t be such an onerous task. Let’s Jack them. Just do your best to pay two-thirds of what you would normally owe and try to do it by June 15th if at all possible.
Time we Jack the fence at Safeco and move it in a third of the way. At least when the M’s are at bat. Offense is appealing. Similarly, let’s increase the size of soccer goals by a third. On fire now. I’m going to Jack the house-cleaning, the yard work, and my exposure to Tea-Partiers.
Obviously we have a lot of work to do making things more appealing, but at least now, thanks to the Golden Bear, we have a model. What do you say, let’s start Jacking around.
Trapped Deep in a Fem Vortex
In 1998, shortly after we moved to the upper left-hand corner of the lower forty-eight, we discovered a wonderful lake less than a mile from our crib. Once the GalPal and I became full-fledged lake swimmers, I felt it my duty to caution her about the “vortex” in the middle that swirled in violent secrecy and pulled down any unsuspecting swimmer that dared too close to it. She half-bought it, which was so gratifying I of course had to pull the same stunt on the daughts once they got old enough to venture across the lake.
What goes around comes around.
Just recently, when I got to one of the later chapters in Tina Fey’s very humorous bio, Bossypants, I suddenly realized that I have been pulled down by a seriously strong, all pervasive female vortex. TF had to know I was thoroughly enjoying her book, but a chapter on breast feeding? Really?! That’s taking serious advantage.
I took the time I would have spent reading that chapter and instead reflected on the fact that I’m surrounded by at least two or three women almost all the time. Afternoons in the fall, I help coach 40+ young womens. On my visit with my mom right now in FL, the GalPal, daughts and I are overlapping with my sister and her daught. What do you call a gender ratio of six to one? Normalcy.
Would it really have been so hard for the GalPal to give me a son?! Prior to my first move, did she conspire with my mother, her mother, and my sister, to put some sort of feminist hex on me as some sort of twisted joke?
I pray to God that you didn’t see me sitting among the sisterhood (mom, sissy, and GalPal) at The Help in an Orlando theater last week, dabbing back tears near the end. That confession alone introduces the possibility I may be too far gone. For shitsake, I refer to romantic comedies as “romcoms”, I routinely pick up feminine products at Costco, and I’ve been known to watch Glee, SupperNanny, and the Home and Garden channel.
In the life of this blog, this is post #507. Thank you very much. And I’ve never dedicated any of the previous 506 to anyone. But I’m dedicating this badboy (can I use that term?) to a fellow brother dangling dangerously close to the fem vortex—18 month old Kai UptheStreet. Too innocent to feel the tug of the vortex. His army dad gets deployed occasionally. His mom just gave birth to his fifth sister. Someday he’ll have his “Tina Fey” moment.
Hang in little man, hang in.
Pressing Pause 