Weekend Notes—December 18, 2010

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Miscellaneous notes unrelated to the blog’s laser focus on questioning education conventional wisdom.

• Saw a great documentary on Yao Ming five years ago. He’s very personable and likable. Since seeing that film I’ve followed him. It’s disappointing to learn he’s out for the season and that he’s probably played his last NBA game. China’s Bill Walton sans the scruffy beard, unrivaled college education, and Grateful Dead vibe.

• The GalPal turned 50 recently. Sometimes a picture is worth a 1,000 words. Fifteen’s gift tells you everything you need to know about what it’s like to live with a teenager.

• For me at least, swimming is very different from running and cycling in that I have to think about my form all the time. I get lazy and revert to muscle memory which means my elbows aren’t high enough, I cross over a bit, my stroke gets too short, and I don’t complete my stroke underwater. The challenge is trying to change these flaws simultaneously. The obvious answer is to work on one at a time, but sometimes when I try to add an additional correction in, the previous fix unravels. And the harder the set and the deeper in a workout, the worse my form. I’d probably be better off just doing slow drills for a month. Whatever I do, I swim nearly identical splits. Today’s 100’s were 1:25’s with toys (paddles/buoy).

• Just when I thought Lance was over the 2009 Black Hills Triathlon, he wants me to commit to racing the Boise Half Ironperson with him. He’s dastardly. It has a noon start. I’d begin the run around 3:3op in Boise in mid-June. I was born in Boise and I love symmetry. Maybe, like a Pacific Northwest salmon, I should return to and die in Boise? I’d rather do this race.

• The more minimalist in orientation I become, the less I like traditional Christmas gift giving. I know I should focus on the spirit of the giving and be more appreciative, it just seems most gifts don’t fill any real need and unnecessarily contribute to clutter. If you’re still wondering what to get me, massage gift certificates are $47 at the Briggs YMCA.

• It’s nice having Eighteen home from college. She had a great first trimester. Proud of her and just hoping and praying I can hang with her in the pool Monday.

• In the shocker of the week, I created a twitter account (@PressingPause) and as of today, I have one follower. Look out Linkedin and Facebook.

Thanks for reading. Have a nice weekend.

Teacher Appreciation

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Classrooms are organic entities. Each class session contributes in some small way to negative or positive momentum.

This fall my first year writing seminar titled “Teaching’s Challenges and Rewards” began positively and then got better and better. It was a great group of young adults who got to know one another during orientation. From the beginning they decided to give my more student-centered course design and informality the benefit of the doubt.

I lead discussions one and two, and then they paired up and took turns co-leading discussions three through ten. The first pair did a great job preparing their guide, facilitating the discussion, and setting the bar high. Afterwards, I detailed exactly what they had done so well thus nudging the bar even higher. And during that first discussion I purposely sat on the floor, out of sight of most of them, to ensure it would truly be their discussion.

Did their writing improve? For the most part yes as they’re in the process of detailing in their final papers.

One of the students was a Portland hipster who was committed to becoming a nurse. I liked her a lot. Mid-semester she confided in us that she spent a lot of her senior year in high school hiking in and around Portland. She was personable, a thinker, and always had nice insights.

A few weeks ago, after class, she asked if she could talk to me. Turns out she was troubled because the course content had gotten under skin. Now she explained, “I think I want to teach secondary science more than I want to become a nurse.” I told her she had time to learn more about both and that it was a win-win situation, she’d be a great nurse or teacher, both important, selfless professions. Complicating her future was rewarding.

The students’ final papers are trickling into my inbox. Several have added notes like this most recent one, “Thank you for teaching such a wonderful class in my first semester at college! I really enjoyed my time, and I look forward to the next three and a half years I get to spend at this university. This was a very interesting intro class and you were a very good professor to have! I appreciate all of your hard work!”

That’s not meant to be self-congratulatory. I share it knowing I can’t take much credit for the course’s success. It was a great course mostly because they always came prepared, they interacted thoughtfully with one another, and they worked hard on all of their papers. There wouldn’t have been a whole lot I could have done if they came unprepared, refused to engage one another, and threw their papers together at the last minute. If this sample of young people is any indication, I’m happy to report the world is not going to hell in a handbasket.

I also share it to highlight how much easier it is to teach adults. It’s rare for elementary, middle, and high school students to write or tell their teachers how much they appreciate them. That’s why K-12 teachers deserve much, much more of the public’s respect. Instead of scapegoating them for a litany of social and economic problems over which they have little to no control, we should compensate for their students’ who too often take them for granted by acknowledging the importance of their work, tangibly honoring it, and making sure they know they’re appreciated.

Failing at Education Reform

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There are three keys.

1st) Spend lots of money and time coming up with goals so lofty that they aren’t really achievable and so vague that they can’t be meaningfully assessed. As a safety measure, make sure the goals are irrelevant to the teacher-student relationship so that if they’re accidentally accomplished, they won’t have much of an impact on student learning.

2nd) Prepare lots of PowerPoint presentations and write reports filled with JAA (jargon and acronyms) to mask nebulous thinking and create an insider “we’re in the know and you’re not” feel to things. If successful, few people will understand well enough to ask questions so no real rationale for proposed changes will be necessary.

3rd) Most importantly of all, exclude teachers as much as humanly possible. Always think top-down. Teachers aren’t that smart and they just get in the way with their insights into classroom life and such. This is easy to do, just don’t communicate much about scheduled meetings, and as a back up, schedule them during the school day. Be consistent in sending the message, “This work is too important to include you.” Remember, you attended school for 12-13 years, you’re an expert. Teachers need you to tell them what to do. They’re depending upon you.

That’s all there really is to it.

Washington State’s 2010 Education Reform Plan provides an especially fine example of these principles at work.

1st) Four goals:

1) Enter kindergarten prepared for success in school and life.

2) Compete in mathematics and science nationally and internationally.

3) Attain high academic standards regardless of race, ethnicity, income, or gender.

4) Graduate able to succeed in college, training, and careers.

All in all, lofty, vague, dancing around the teacher-student relationship. Exemplary application of the goal-setting principles.

2nd) See the PowerPoint and report links above. If you’re not a teacher, read them. If you’re a teacher, you should be grading or preparing for tomorrow.

3rd) Note in the report the PowerPoint slide titled “Process for Soliciting Feedback”, bullet point two, “Engage stakeholder groups”. This is the reformers finest moment. This slide is worth a thousand words.

Granted, there’s never a perfect example. Turns out there are a couple of classroom teachers on the Professional Educator Standards Board, and I’m not sure, but there may be a few more lurking within other groups. But Washington State deserves major credit for articulating goals and planning how to meet them with teachers almost entirely excluded.

Grade Fog

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New and improved.

Props to Tyre for clearly posing the question. “Should students be rewarded for being friendly, prepared, compliant, a good school citizen, well organized, and hard-working? Or should grades represent exclusively a student’s mastery of the material?”

The buzzword is “standards-based grading”.

The better question is whether grades should represent exclusively a student’s mastery of the material or whether more subjective variables such as their attitude, citizenship, and effort should also be taken into consideration.

It’s hard to disagree with the standards-based graders assertion that assessment must rest primarily on mastery of course material. I want master pilots, plumbers, surgeons, and bridge builders. The question though is how far down that road to travel. For example, inevitably some students can demonstrate mastery of course material without attending class at all so why not eliminate compulsory attendance laws?

Related to that, why require athletes to attend practice, or musicians and actors to attend rehearsals if they are gamers who inevitably rise to the occasion once the race begins or curtain goes up? In actuality, the advocates are arguing for “standards-based grading lite”.

Also, everyone of us knows a litany of really smart people who never fulfill their personal or work-life potential because their flawed interpersonal skills and/or anemic work ethic.

Returning to my extracurricular references. Obviously athletes on a swim relay team, musicians in an orchestra, and actors in a drama troupe have to work together to achieve success. Just as it’s preposterous to think about a basketball player showing up at a game and trying to run a complicated offense or an actor showing up on opening night and having the necessary timing down, most students are going to take jobs that require them to be team members.

The standard grade-basers are arguing that as long as the student has the necessary knowledge in her head, she’s good to go. But is she?

Let’s start with the necessary knowledge, but not end there. I’m down with factoring in everything in Tyre’s opening list except “compliance” which is antithetical to independent, critical thinking upon which a meaningful education is built.

School-based teacher teams should identify important dispositions and interpersonal skills and then assess them in and outside of classrooms. Self-assessment should play an integral role. No doubt narrative will prove more useful than traditional letter grades.

Budget Blues

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Washington State—2011—Proposed cuts in education spending—in millions of dollars.

K-12 & Higher Education Spending Reductions
Use of federal education dollars (“Education Jobs”) (208.1)
Higher Education Across-the-Board Reductions (51.1)
Eliminate K-4 Enhancement (effective February 1) (39.4)
Reduce education reform programs (9.2)
Reduce OSPI administration and program funding (3.7)
Total (311.4)

S.O.B.

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2010 state of the blog.

I’ve studied reader statistics, top posts of all time, and taken a critical look at the blog. I’ve also studied successful blogs and identified certain commonalities.

My conclusion is I’ve failed. Yes, readership continues steadily upwards, but at too slow a pace. Participation is limited to some friends and family. I appreciate their comments, but after three years, it’s not nearly enough of a dialogue.

Why? Two reasons I think, my ambivalence towards social networking and my lack of focus. The lack of focus seems especially significant. Simply put, widely read blogs have a much clearer focus. They are “go to” blogs on one topic whether aging, triathlon, or baking. As you know if you’re a regular reader, my listed categories don’t really do justice to just how eclectic my interests tend to be.

Seven of the top ten most read posts of all time are education related. Bummer because professionally I feel like I did at mile 21 of the Seattle Marathon, running completely on fumes. The good news is I (think) I have a sabbatical coming up which will no doubt prove regenerative. On top of the fatigue, my normal healthy skepticism about the state of the national educational discussion has evolved into serious cynicism.

Then again education is what I know the most about. And when I skim the top rated education blogs, I have a sense that even in my depleted state I can make distinctive contributions within that part of the blogosphere.

So I’m going to try to write my way out of my professional funk by focusing much more closely on teaching and learning. I still intend on casting a pretty wide net, focusing on education writ large and not just formal schooling. And I’ll still provide the occasional fitness update.

Not sure yet, but contemplating a title change.

The metamorphis will take place over the remainder of the month. You’ll notice some changes starting with Monday’s post on a 11/27/10 NY Times article by Peg Tyre titled “A’s for Good Behavior“. Have your reading done ahead of time and please join me then.

Hope you stick around and make commenting a 2011 resolution.

This Just In

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We have a winner of the Byrnes Family 2010 Positive Attitude award. The winner scored high on several criterion including:

• Takes initiative to completes chores and does so with good cheer.

• Never holds a grudge.

• Celebrates every member of the family every day.

• Most upbeat, most consistently.

• Always up for a walk or car trip.

• Most beloved by neighbors.

• Greets every visitor with unbridled enthusiasm.

• Most likely to snuggle with others on the couch while watching t.v.

* While he lost points for sometimes rolling in his own feces, he had enough of a cushion to still win going away.

The All Important Middle School Years

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For adults with children at home. If that doesn’t describe you, consider forwarding the link to a parent friend.

I’m not God’s gift to parenting, I’m sharing my story in the hope of provoking conversation and proving helpful in some small way.

As a young parent I had a hunch. My adolescence and gut told me that the quality of my daughters’ close friend decision-making would go a long ways to determining how they’d turn out as young adults. Consequently, we talked about it a lot and both daughters processed our teaching, but in very different ways.

Social scientists are finding out what many parents already know, siblings are often remarkably different one from another. In fact, they’re finding out they’re almost as different as a random sampling of children.

Our daughters’ close friend decision-making stories are illustrative of two things: 1) how different siblings often are, and 2) how true my initial hunch was that the nature of children’s close friend decision-making greatly influences who they become as young adults.

In this regard, the sixth to eighth grade time period seems especially important. Near the end of fifth grade Eighteen announced that she wanted to go to a small, independent, academically oriented middle school. “But all your friends are going to Washington Middle School.” “I’ll make new ones.” There were 32-34 people in her sixth grade class and the girls subdivided into two groups of eight or so. For some reason I can’t quite explain, Eighteen had no interest in working her way into the “cool” group. Instead, she became very good friends with other girls who were perfectly happy being the “geeks at a school for geeks”.

Individually and collectively they were unusually secure in themselves for twelve and thirteen year olds. Consequently, they unwittingly denied the “cool” group their primary leverage, elevated social status. Social status is only a competition when two or more groups willing enter into competition. Eighteen and her friends opted out of the competition altogether. It was a beautiful thing. They did well in school, they did meaningful community service, they excelled in music and athletics, they encouraged each other academically, they avoided the pitfalls of drugs and alcohol, and then they expanded their circle two and three-fold in their large, comprehensive high school. Now they’re doing well in excellent colleges across the country.

The GalPal and I could have been forgiven if we thought “This is cake.”

When Fifteen was twelve, she decided to attend small, independent, academic middle school too. Similar class size, similar subdivision of girls, totally different outcome. Fifteen wanted in the “in” group. The alpha cool student quickly picked up on this and from the get go took advantage of it by being friendly one day or week and nasty the next. The rest of the inner circle followed the alpha cool student’s lead, so socially, sixth and seventh grade was a hellish time. In an effort to try to fit in she compromised her true values and sense of self. Fortunately, she did this before the “in” group had access to drugs and alcohol.

By eighth grade, she gave up trying to be accepted by a group that she began to realize she didn’t really want to be a part of anyways. Socially, she spent most of the year alternating between making friends with seventh graders and hanging out by herself. Throughout this time, her mom and dad were impressing upon her the importance of befriending people who bring out the best in you, who make you a better person than you otherwise would be. She was tired, frustrated, sad, and very receptive to our teaching at that point.

High school has been redemptive. She has wonderful friends who share her values of doing well in school, respecting oneself and others, being physically active, and she’s healthier and happier than ever. She has a bright future.

She returned from a party the other day where she caught up with a middle school friend who attends a different high school. She learned the alpha cool student has fallen off the straight and narrow and no one from that inner circle is friends with her anymore. I feel badly for her and Fifteen probably does too. Her middle school meanness seemed rooted in insecurities that no doubt have gotten the best of her.

Post-party Fifteen reflected that she’s “so glad” she went through social hell when she did because now she has a better feel for who she is and how to choose and make close friends that share her values. Mutual friendships, friends that willingly accept one another’s quirks, friends that continuously welcome other people into their circle, friends that inspire.

That chapter of our family life was anything but cake. It was hard to watch without swooping in, but had we helicoptered in, we very likely would have shortchanged the personal discoveries and growth Fifteen experienced.

I couldn’t be more proud of her and grateful for her great leap forward.

Housing Prices

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The conversation turned to real estate on a recent Saturday run when I shared my opinion that many sellers in our community were slow to grasp the correction as evidenced by their overpriced houses languishing on the market for six months to a few years.

You would have thought I suggested we extend our 10 miler another 16.2 just for the fun of it. The right wing nutters immediately jumped on me for assuming I knew more about free markets and home values than the actual homeowners themselves. And more importantly, who did I think I was, homeowners have the right to price their houses however they want.

Of course they do just like they have the right to be irrational and waste money more generally. Check out this chart:

credit—Jodi Ashline Newsletter

In the end, the average “priced right” and “priced reduced” home sell for the same price, but the “price reduced” home is on the market an extra 162 days. If “price reduced” homeowner has $100k in equity, and that equity was invested for 162 days @ 5%, they passed on earning $2,219. That’s the cost of exercising your constitutional right to overprice your home.

Around here at least, it appears that the larger and more expensive the home the greater the tendency to overprice it. That’s counterintuitive if one assumes, on average, the most well-to-do homeowners are the most business savvy, but I digress. We can also assume a much smaller pool of prospective buyers (I know it only takes one) and therefore the “average days on market” I suspect is far greater than 197, but for consistency sake we’ll stick with that.

Let’s consider a waterfront home that is four times the average at $1,317,392. Ultimately, after 197 days, overpriced sellers have to reduce their price $251,008 ($62,752 x 4). Let’s compensate for the too short “average days on market” by assuming that our waterfront sellers own their home outright. If “expensive price reduced” homeowner has $1,066,384 (the final sale price) in equity and had invested that for the too short 162 days @ 5%, they passed on earning $23,665.

To which the nutters might say, “That’s waterfront sellers right.” Which again, of course is right, just irrational.

Since I’m on math fire, and the nutters are down for the count again, one related thought. One oft repeated housing axiom is that housing corrections don’t matter if you’re buying and selling into the same down market. That’s only true in one of three possible scenarios—buying and selling similar priced homes. It doesn’t hold for buying a more or less expensive home than sold.

For example, consider the case of buying a more expensive home. Imagine you could sell your existing home for $300k or $100k less than its peak 2007 valuation. You buy a home for $1m or $250k less than its peak 2007 valuation. Had you made that move in 2007, it would have cost $1,250,000-$400,000 or $850,000. Today, the equation is $1m-$300,000 or $700,000 for a savings of $150k.

The opposite is also true. As a result of the correction, it’s more expensive to move down. Imagine you could sell your existing home for $600k or $200k less than its peak 2007 valuation. You buy a home for $300k or $100k less than its peak 2007 valuation. Had you made the move in 2007, you would have pocketed $400k, $800k sale price-$400k purchase price. Making that move today you would only pocket $300k, $600k sale price-$300k purchase price.

So assuming one has the resources, it makes more sense to move up in down markets and down in up markets.

School’s out nutters. Do they give out Economics Nobels for this stuff?

Stop Exercising

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If you’re not saving for your seventies, eighties, and nineties.

Olga Kotelko is considered one of the world’s greatest athletes, holding 23 world records, 17 in her current age category, 90 to 95.

From the NYTimes Magazine:

At last fall’s Lahti championship, Kotelko threw a javelin more than 20 feet farther than her nearest age-group rival. At the World Masters Games in Sydney, Kotelko’s time in the 100 meters — 23.95 seconds — was faster than that of some finalists in the 80-to-84-year category, two brackets down. World Masters Athletics, the governing body of masters track, uses “age-graded” tables developed by statisticians to create a kind of standard score, expressed as a percentage, for any athletic feat. The world record for any given event would theoretically be assigned 100 percent. But a number of Kotelko’s marks — in shot put, high jump, 100-meter dash — top 100 percent. Because there are so few competitors over 90, age-graded scores are still guesswork.

Suspected of doping by some of her competitors, OK borrows from Lance’s playbook and repeatedly points out she’s never failed a test. Kidding of course.

Scientists researching the linkages between exercise, fitness, and longevity are busily studying OK and are finding the linkages are even stronger than suspected.

This type of fitness news is always heralded by the exercise community of which I’m a part, but is it really good news? I wonder because of another steady stream of stories about the elderly today—that they’re not saving nearly enough for their post-retirement lives. What if thirty, forty, and fifty-something spenders are also committed exercisers and then have to live through their sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties on reduced Social Security benefits and their meager savings?

If you’re not saving for your distant future, maybe you should stop exercising.

Sometimes I wonder what a Saturday morning 10 miler with the team costs. Setting aside our time (it’s Saturday morning after all), let’s assume we’re wearing $100 shoes that last for 500 miles. That’s 2% of $100 or $2 in shoe wear and tear. Next, let’s assume we’re wearing a shirt, shorts, and socks that cost $70 new. They last at least 140 runs so another 50 cents. Then I eat and drink a lot more throughout the day than I otherwise would if I was sedentary, so approximately $2.50 for a total of $5. This is where if I had a contract with MasterCard I’d write, “And the raunchy, witty banter, priceless.”

But I’ve never factored in the hidden “Olga Kotelko” cost. Of course there are no guarantees, life is fragile, but the odds are the team and I are extending our lives each Saturday morning. I’m not sure how to quantify that.

That’s okay though because I’m choosing to think positively about my longevity and saving for the distant future. Which is why I’m going to continue training for the 2052 Senior Games.