NYT Interactive Admissions Plotter
The NYT has this fancy, interactive plotter that shows how many Black and Hispanic students will be admitted based on different criteria.
Treating people differently on the bases of race for college admissions is found to be illegal because it is, by definition, racial discrimination. Universities are looking for legal ways around that.
While browsing the *Teachers* forum on Reddit, I read this post.
If you want to keep your jobs, and preserve the education system as it currently stands, VOTE in the 2024 presidential election.
The text of the post was a rant about how Trump promised to dismantle public education and collapse democracy in America. No one had commented, so I did:
The education system, as it currently stands, ain’t that great.
The original poster and a couple of dozen other people replied. A third were supportive, so I engaged the other two-thirds. Always be polite, but give no ground.
Several other people commented to disagree with the original post and started other threads.
After 200 comments, the original author withdrew her post. My comment has 28 up votes. I figured I’d be deep in negative numbers.
That’s a win. Not only did she withdraw, but many conservative teachers know that they aren’t alone.
WSJ: UW Chancellor Fired for Porn
WSJ: UW Chancellor Fired for Porn
The university system’s board of regents voted unanimously to terminate University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Chancellor Joe Gow during a closed session Wednesday evening. UW-La Crosse Provost Betsy Morgan will serve as interim chancellor following Gow’s dismissal, university system leaders said.
What could Gow have done that was so bad?
It isn’t clear what ChatGPT is good for, but that doesn’t stop people from predicting it’s going to take all the jobs. Try hiring a handyman or someone to cut your grass. They are busy and expensive.
This Wired article on ChatGPT, doesn’t help explain anything, but this post on Ace of Spade HQ makes sense.
ChatGPT – LLMs in general – are very good at form but absolutely terrible at function. That’s because they are supercharged autocorrect engines; they know only what words fit where, statistically.
They can make a legal filing that looks correct, but it will reference laws and decisions that don’t even exist.
Physical jobs like home maintenance or lawn care are safe, but knowledge work is where ChatGPT is supposed to be a threat. Teachers talk about this quite a bit.
Radio, television, videotapes and the internet were all predicted to replace classroom teachers. Instead, these technologies are effective for motivated people and tools for a teacher. That got me thinking about what ChatGPT could have helped me with when I was teaching.
Visual presentation, the form part of a lesson, was important to me, but function was critical. I can’t think of any aspect of lesson preparation, presentation or assessment where ChatGPT could help.
For the most part, teachers like their students and want to help them master the concepts. What teachers hate is the bureaucratic bullshit that ineffective administrators may insist on. It’s work that doesn’t advance the educational objective at all, and takes the teacher away from the core objective.
I would have been happy to set ChatGPT to generating lesson plans, curriculum benchmarks and pedagogical objectives to be submitted weekly. The content doesn’t matter because shitty administrators are dumb bullies.
Where they genuinely are transformative is in visual art, because there form largely is function.
I think I might like this ChatGPT ability. My PowerPoints, worksheets and assessments were loaded with copyright infringing images.
Free Press: David Sedaris Punching Down
Words, we are now regularly reminded, are violence. So too is silence. I read not long ago that capitalism is violence, as is misgendering someone. Ignoring someone is violence, but so too is paying them attention.
Sedaris is a cosmopolitan humorist, so he is describing coastal people and what is written by influencers on social media, but many young people don’t seem very resilient.
Who are these hothouse flowers, all so easily and consistently wounded? People whose parents never hit them, that’s who. People who don’t know what real pain is, but still want to throw the word around. When I was a child, a slap across the face was too minor to qualify as “casual violence.”
I’ve not raised children, but they do seem to benefit from some setbacks when they are young so they can handle setbacks when they get older. Having more family around who don’t treat a child like a precious flower does seem to do them some good.
If our schools are a mess it’s in large part due to these parents who think their kids are special, who get mad if you contradict their brilliance, if you give them a bad grade or, God forbid, try to take their phones away. Had one of my teachers told my mother that I was acting up in class, she’d have said, “Thank you so much for letting me know.” Then she’d have come to wherever I was—in front of the TV, or at the side of the TV making my way to the front of it—and slapped my sister Gretchen so hard her eyes would have crossed.
Most teachers would agree with that sentiment, but any talk of corporal punishment in schools is viewed as giving a student an abusive beating. Having gotten a swat in high school, I know it absolutely wasn’t that.
My swat was a miscarriage of justice, but I went along with it because I certainly deserved it for something. At no point did I consider calling my parents. They never mentioned it, so I’m not certain they knew that it happened.
It was after school. The assistant principal and teacher were present. The AP asked if you knew why you were getting a swat. I told them why. I got one swat, we shook hands, and it was over. Say what you want about corporal punishment, but boys are having much worse outcomes in our current system. Nobody has ever heard of a girl getting a swat.
Children now are like animals who have no natural predators left. Had I arrived at my elementary school with a bleeding head wound, explaining that my father had just thrown me out of his moving car because I was teasing my sister, the teacher would have handed me a Band-Aid, saying, “Well, I hope you learned a lesson from it.” Now, even a scratch on the back of your hand could get your parents locked up for abuse. And children know this!
Every parent I know is aware of this, but most are indulge their children more than their parents did.
In February 2021, then-president Kristina Johnson launched an initiative to hire 50 professors whose work focused on race and “social equity” and “100 underrepresented and BIPOC hires” (the acronym stands for black, indigenous and people of color). These reports show what higher education’s outsize investment in “diversity, equity and inclusion” looks like in practice. Ohio State sacrificed both academic freedom and scholarly excellence for the sake of a narrowly construed vision of diversity.
What one change in public education would you implement to improve the quality of education?
Teachers say, “Get better parents.” That’s true, but not helpful. We teach the students we have. Public schools are a condensed version of the community. If the community is dysfunctional, the children of the community aren’t likely to be much better.
This article touches on the problem. Many schools were doing a decent job before Covid, but the lock down screwed up many students. The tempting solution was for administrators to ask that teachers “show grace”. To normal people, that means lower the standards.
“Rosie” averaged an 83 in core classes and tested more than two months above grade level in fifth grade in 2019. She was absent three days. In 2022, Rosie was 10 months below grade level in math and reading and absent 10 days. She averaged an 83.
Most parents care more about grades than they do about education. Weak administrators push for teachers to lower standards because few parents will object.
For decades at North Royalton, the policy was that every AP student was required to take the AP test. Nobody compiles the stats, but after talking to AP teachers from all over the country, that policy is not wide spread. An AP teacher’s average AP score is inflated if the downer cows don’t finish.
Most of my colleagues at North Royalton expected a student’s AP score to roughly correspond to their final grade. It might go up or down a point, but a ‘D’ student doesn’t get a 5, and an ‘A’ student doesn’t get a 2.
In elementary school, there are several mandated tests. A student reading well below grade level should not be getting an ‘A’ in a reading class.
How can a parent determine if a school has high academic standards?
Ask about the class average. Even in an AP class filled with smart kids, the class average should be about 80%. Yeah, I know. We say a ‘C’ is average, but nobody believes that.
Remedial classes are tougher. The failing students are really failing. They may not do anything, so have a 25% in the class. There may be a lot of them. A decent class average would only count the students who are actually sentient.
Twice in the last week, I’ve been asked about former students without the former student being present. As a seasoned professional, these situations are not awkward.
The first time, I was at a game night with a bunch of guys of recent acquaintance. Art mentioned that his nephew had been in my class. The name rang no bells in my head. While Art was saying that his nephew had enjoyed my class, recollection was dawning. I recall the name and may recall the kid.
This is where being a professional comes in. I made no effort to describe the student pictured in my mind, and just said, yeah, I think so, but I’d have to see a photo. Implying that I’m good with faces, not so good with names.
The second time, I was at a garage sale on my street. A woman of my vintage said that I looked familiar. I gave her a brief rundown, and she said, “That’s it. My daughter had you at Normandy.”
The daughter is now 42 years old, but I recalled her immediately. She had striking blue eyes like her mum, had a calm and imperturbable manner and was taking three science classes at the same time.
Mom was amazed at my impression of a wizened old teacher who fondly remembers every one of his former students. As we talked, she went on to mention a few other students, who I again recalled with clarity and a few anecdotes. Why did this go so well?
The daughter and friends were all high-flyers. Well-mannered, handsome, smart, congenial and motivated. That’s part of it. The other part is that I’d only been teaching for a few years, so had only taught a few hundred students. By the time I’d had the previously mentioned nephew, I’d had four or five times more students. Nearly a couple of thousand.
Seniors often ask if I will miss them after they graduate. This is going to sound bad. I tell them, “Honestly, by the 4th of July, I won’t even remember Mrs. Yappel’s name, and she’s right next door. I will miss you in the Fall, when the new students come in. They will be all mopey, boring and dumb, like you guys were when you came in. That’s when I will miss you terribly.”
Over the summer, I don’t have any reason to remember them, so those memory cells all go dormant. When I retired, I thought those memory cells were dying off. Talking to that mom, we talked about a few staff members that I hadn’t seen or thought about in 20 years. Most of it came back.
Memory seems to work like that when we get old. My mother, at 90 years old, recalled many stories from her childhood, but wasn’t great on more current events. Perhaps when we are young, events seem more intense and important. As we get older, nothing is as shocking, so not worth committing to memory.
NYT: Teachers can’t hold kids accountable.
NYT: Teachers can’t hold kids accountable.
This New York Times editorial about teaching covers real problems that are collapsing public education, but nothing here is new. These problems were evident the entire time I’ve been teaching, but Covid allowed the wreckers and degenerates to go all in. They are opposed by parent groups, but it’s a tough slog.
Kriste Smith gets $10k for North Royalton
Schools that work well, do so because they have a few teachers like Kriste. North Royalton tends to have a lot of them, even though the administration doesn’t know or care.
During my last year at Royalton, Kriste and I powered walked around the school during our 10th period free time. Superficially, I have almost nothing in common with Kriste, but we could talk for hours. She feels the same duty to her students, and is deeply committed to North Royalton.
Kriste was a counselor for years, but when the opportunity presented itself, she moved back to the classroom to teach business classes. As she built up the program, she was continually blocked by administration in her efforts to get books and resources to improve the student experience. There were times when she was on the verge of tears because of the callous way the administration ignored her requests.
Administrators like to think that they have a vision for the school, and just need to manipulate the puppets to make it a reality. It doesn’t work that way. A good administration sees the teaching staff as talent, that can be nurtured and developed. Kriste Smith is an indefatigable teacher with a huge heart. No teacher gets everything they want, but Kriste always deserves to be heard and a smart administrator would help her in any way possible.
I haven’t talked to Kriste about this grant, but it looks like the administration wasn’t giving her the support she needed to do the best for her students. She looked for other avenues to get there.
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