Tag Archives: government

The downfall of Public Education, in snippets…

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Damany Lewis, a math teacher at Parks Middle School (three miles south of downtown Atlanta, Georgia, in Pittsburgh), and other teachers complained that the legislators who wrote No Child Left Behind must never have been near a school like Parks. He felt as if he and his colleagues were part of a nationwide “biological experiment” in which the variables—the fact that so many children were hungry and transient, and witnessing violence—hadn’t been controlled. David Berliner, the former dean of the school of education at Arizona State University, told me that, with the passage of the law, teachers were asked to compensate for factors outside their control. He said, “The people who say poverty is no excuse for low performance are now using teacher accountability as an excuse for doing nothing about poverty.”

… “an effective teacher three years in a row will completely close the gap between a child born in poverty and a child born to a middle-income family.” This theory, in its earliest form, derives from a study by William L. Sanders, a statistician formerly at the University of Tennessee, but the findings, which have contributed to a nationwide effort to rate teachers rigorously, have been overstated to the point of becoming a myth. According to a recent statement by the American Statistical Association, most studies show that teachers account for between one and fourteen per cent of variability in test scores.

John Ewing, who served as the executive director of the American Mathematical Society for fifteen years, told me that he is perplexed by educators’ “infatuation with data,” their faith that it is more authoritative than using their own judgment. He explains the problem in terms of Campbell’s law, a principle that describes the risks of using a single indicator to measure complex social phenomena: the greater the value placed on a quantitative measure, like test scores, the more likely it is that the people using it and the process it measures will be corrupted. “The end goal of education isn’t to get students to answer the right number of questions,” he said. “The goal is to have curious and creative students who can function in life.” In a 2011 paper in Notices of the American Mathematical Society, he warned that policymakers were using mathematics “to intimidate—to preëmpt debate about the goals of education and measures of success.”

…the stakes for testing in Georgia have escalated. Although the state is replacing the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test with a more comprehensive method of evaluation, this fall Georgia is implementing a new teacher-evaluation program that bases fifty per cent of a teacher’s assessment on test scores. The program, along with a merit-pay system, is required as a condition for receiving a four-hundred-million-dollar grant from President Obama’s Race to the Top program. Tim Callahan, the spokesman for the Professional Association of Georgia Educators, which represents eighty-four thousand teachers, told me, “The state is going down the same path as Atlanta, and we are not exactly enthused.” He said that many teachers have become so demoralized that they’re retiring early or transferring to private schools. He told me, “Our teachers’ best qualities—their sense of humor, their love for the subject, their excitement, their interest in students as individuals—are not being honored or valued, because those qualities aren’t measurable.”

[from here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/07/21/140721fa_fact_aviv?currentPage=all]

Guest post, posthumous, courtesy of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

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HARRISON BERGERON by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal 
before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter 
than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was 
stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 
211th, 212th, and 213 th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing 
vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General. 

Some things about living still weren't quite right, though. April for 
instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in 
that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron's fourteen- 
year-old son, Harrison, away. 

It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn't think about it very 
hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn't 
think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his 
intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his 
ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a 
government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would 
send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair 
advantage of their brains. 

George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel's 
cheeks, but she'd forgotten for the moment what they were about. 

On the television screen were ballerinas. 

A buzzer sounded in George's head. His thoughts fled in panic, like bandits 
from a burglar alarm. 

"That was a real pretty dance, that dance they just did," said Hazel. 

"Huh" said George. 

"That dance-it was nice," said Hazel. 

"Yup, " said George. He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. They 
weren't really very good-no better than anybody else would have been, anyway. 
They were burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and their faces 
were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty 
face, would feel like something the cat drug in. George was toying with the 
vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn't be handicapped. But he didn't get 
very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his 
thoughts . 

George winced. So did two out of the eight ballerinas. 

Hazel saw him wince. Having no mental handicap herself, she had to ask George 
what the latest sound had been. 

"Sounded like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a ball peen hammer, " said 
George . 

"I'd think it would be real interesting, hearing all the different sounds," 
said Hazel a little envious. "All the things they think up." 



"Urn, " said George. 

"Only, if I was Handicapper General, you know what I would do?" said Hazel. 
Hazel, as a matter of fact, bore a strong resemblance to the Handicapper 
General, a woman named Diana Moon Glampers. "If I was Diana Moon Glampers," 
said Hazel, "I'd have chimes on Sunday- just chimes. Kind of in honor of 
religion . " 

"I could think, if it was just chimes," said George. 

"Well-maybe make 'em real loud," said Hazel. "I think I'd make a good 
Handicapper General." 

"Good as anybody else," said George. 

"Who knows better than I do what normal is?" said Hazel. 

"Right," said George. He began to think glimmeringly about his abnormal son 
who was now in jail, about Harrison, but a twenty-one-gun salute in his head 
stopped that. 

"Boy!" said Hazel, "that was a doozy, wasn't it?" 

It was such a doozy that George was white and trembling, and tears stood on 
the rims of his red eyes. Two of the eight ballerinas had collapsed to the 
studio floor, were holding their temples. 

"All of a sudden you look so tired," said Hazel. "Why don't you stretch out 
on the sofa, so's you can rest your handicap bag on the pillows, honeybunch." 
She was referring to the forty-seven pounds of birdshot in a canvas bag, 
which was padlocked around George's neck. "Go on and rest the bag for a 
little while," she said. "I don't care if you're not equal to me for a 
while . " 

George weighed the bag with his hands. "I don't mind it," he said. "I don't 
notice it any more. It's just a part of me." 

"You been so tired lately-kind of wore out," said Hazel. "If there was just 
some way we could make a little hole in the bottom of the bag, and just take 
out a few of them lead balls. Just a few." 

"Two years in prison and two thousand dollars fine for every ball I took 
out," said George. "I don't call that a bargain." 

"If you could just take a few out when you came home from work," said Hazel. 
"I mean-you don't compete with anybody around here. You just set around." 

"If I tried to get away with it," said George, "then other people ' d get away 
with it-and pretty soon we'd be right back to the dark ages again, with 
everybody competing against everybody else. You wouldn't like that, would 
you?" 

"I'd hate it," said Hazel. 

"There you are," said George. The minute people start cheating on laws, what 
do you think happens to society?" 



If Hazel hadn't been able to come up with an answer to this question, George 
couldn't have supplied one. A siren was going off in his head. 

"Reckon it'd fall all apart," said Hazel. 

"What would?" said George blankly. 

"Society," said Hazel uncertainly. "Wasn't that what you just said? 

"Who knows?" said George. 

The television program was suddenly interrupted for a news bulletin. It 
wasn't clear at first as to what the bulletin was about, since the announcer, 
like all announcers, had a serious speech impediment. For about half a 
minute, and in a state of high excitement, the announcer tried to say, 
"Ladies and Gentlemen." 

He finally gave up, handed the bulletin to a ballerina to read. 

"That's all right-" Hazel said of the announcer, "he tried. That's the big 
thing. He tried to do the best he could with what God gave him. He should get 
a nice raise for trying so hard." 

"Ladies and Gentlemen," said the ballerina, reading the bulletin. She must 
have been extraordinarily beautiful, because the mask she wore was hideous. 
And it was easy to see that she was the strongest and most graceful of all 
the dancers, for her handicap bags were as big as those worn by two-hundred 
pound men. 

And she had to apologize at once for her voice, which was a very unfair voice 
for a woman to use. Her voice was a warm, luminous, timeless melody. "Excuse 
me-" she said, and she began again, making her voice absolutely 
uncompetitive . 

"Harrison Bergeron, age fourteen," she said in a grackle squawk, "has just 
escaped from jail, where he was held on suspicion of plotting to overthrow 
the government. He is a genius and an athlete, is under-handicapped, and 
should be regarded as extremely dangerous." 

A police photograph of Harrison Bergeron was flashed on the screen-upside 
down, then sideways, upside down again, then right side up. The picture 
showed the full length of Harrison against a background calibrated in feet 
and inches. He was exactly seven feet tall. 

The rest of Harrison's appearance was Halloween and hardware. Nobody had ever 
born heavier handicaps. He had outgrown hindrances faster than the H-G men 
could think them up. Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, he 
wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses. 
The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him 
whanging headaches besides. 

Scrap metal was hung all over him. Ordinarily, there was a certain symmetry, 
a military neatness to the handicaps issued to strong people, but Harrison 
looked like a walking junkyard. In the race of life, Harrison carried three 
hundred pounds . 



And to offset his good looks, the H-G men required that he wear at all times 
a red rubber ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his 
even white teeth with black caps at snaggle-tooth random. 

"If you see this boy, " said the ballerina, "do not - I repeat, do not - try 
to reason with him." 

There was the shriek of a door being torn from its hinges. 

Screams and barking cries of consternation came from the television set. The 
photograph of Harrison Bergeron on the screen jumped again and again, as 
though dancing to the tune of an earthquake. 

George Bergeron correctly identified the earthquake, and well he might have - 
for many was the time his own home had danced to the same crashing tune. "My 
God-" said George, "that must be Harrison!" 

The realization was blasted from his mind instantly by the sound of an 
automobile collision in his head. 

When George could open his eyes again, the photograph of Harrison was gone. A 
living, breathing Harrison filled the screen. 

Clanking, clownish, and huge, Harrison stood - in the center of the studio. 
The knob of the uprooted studio door was still in his hand. Ballerinas, 
technicians, musicians, and announcers cowered on their knees before him, 
expecting to die. 

"I am the Emperor!" cried Harrison. "Do you hear? I am the Emperor! Everybody 
must do what I say at once!" He stamped his foot and the studio shook. 

"Even as I stand here" he bellowed, "crippled, hobbled, sickened - I am a 
greater ruler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can 
become ! " 

Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper, tore 
straps guaranteed to support five thousand pounds. 

Harrison's scrap-iron handicaps crashed to the floor. 

Harrison thrust his thumbs under the bar of the padlock that secured his head 
harness. The bar snapped like celery. Harrison smashed his headphones and 
spectacles against the wall. 

He flung away his rubber-ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor, 
the god of thunder. 

"I shall now select my Empress!" he said, looking down on the cowering 

people. "Let 

the first woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and her throne!" 

A moment passed, and then a ballerina arose, swaying like a willow. 

Harrison plucked the mental handicap from her ear, snapped off her physical 
handicaps with marvelous delicacy. Last of all he removed her mask. 

She was blindingly beautiful. 



"Now-" said Harrison, taking her hand, "shall we show the people the meaning 
of the word dance? Music!" he commanded. 

The musicians scrambled back into their chairs, and Harrison stripped them of 
their handicaps, too. "Play your best," he told them, "and I'll make you 
barons and dukes and earls." 

The music began. It was normal at first-cheap, silly, false. But Harrison 
snatched two musicians from their chairs, waved them like batons as he sang 
the music as he wanted it played. He slammed them back into their chairs. 

The music began again and was much improved. 

Harrison and his Empress merely listened to the music for a while-listened 
gravely, as though synchronizing their heartbeats with it. 

They shifted their weights to their toes. 

Harrison placed his big hands on the girls tiny waist, letting her sense the 
weightlessness that would soon be hers. 

And then, in an explosion of joy and grace, into the air they sprang! 

Not only were the laws of the land abandoned, but the law of gravity and the 
laws of motion as well. 

They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced, capered, gamboled, and spun. 

They leaped like deer on the moon. 

The studio ceiling was thirty feet high, but each leap brought the dancers 
nearer to it. 

It became their obvious intention to kiss the ceiling. They kissed it. 

And then, neutraling gravity with love and pure will, they remained suspended 
in air inches below the ceiling, and they kissed each other for a long, long 
time . 

It was then that Diana Moon Clampers, the Handicapper General, came into the 
studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the 
Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor. 

Diana Moon Clampers loaded the gun again. She aimed it at the musicians and 
told them they had ten seconds to get their handicaps back on. 

It was then that the Bergerons' television tube burned out. 

Hazel turned to comment about the blackout to George. But George had gone out 
into the kitchen for a can of beer. 

George came back in with the beer, paused while a handicap signal shook him 
up. And then he sat down again. "You been crying" he said to Hazel. 

"Yup, " she said. 



"What about?" he said. 

"I forget," she said. "Something real sad on television." 

"What was it?" he said. 

"It's all kind of mixed up in my mind," said Hazel. 

"Forget sad things," said George. 

"I always do," said Hazel. 

"That's my girl," said George. He winced. There was the sound of a rivetting 
gun in his head. 

"Gee - I could tell that one was a doozy, " said Hazel. 

"You can say that again," said George. 

"Gee-" said Hazel, "I could tell that one was a doozy." 

"Harrison Bergeron" is copyrighted by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., 1961.

Admission of Guilt?

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Bill Kling, Huntsville City Council member, as well as the entire state of Alabama, admitted guilt today in the contribution toward global warming and use of herbicides/pesticides to reduce the bee/bird population by reiterating the demand (a/k/a Ordinance No. 86-294 entitled “The Huntsville, Alabama, Grass and Weed Ordinance”) that residents maintain an inedible crop of grasses at a certain height that does not allow the grass to produce flowers and thus seeds all for the sake of “a way to help keep the community looking its best.””

As I backed my back looking for backup in the backyard to back down…I’ll be right back

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My Earth roots call me and when they do I give them full attention to avoid the remorse and regret that might creep into my thoughts when I bounding across the surface of Mars on a mission, alone with my gear but connected to the ever-present local overlay of the universe we shall call the ISSA Net (Inner Solar System Alliance Network).

Most recently, the Earth roots look like an acronym called the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a supranational organisation that, similar to the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) Financial Services Annex, serves as a nongovernmental body.

Given that I sit in the rectangular box-shaped architectural feature called a living room in which a 39-inch Emerson HDTV plays light classical music sent by the Charter Communications cable TV service through a Cisco Explorer digital cable TV converter box while I sip blackened liquid called Donut Shop coffee heated and dispensed from a Keurig coffee machine and type this blog entry on an Apple iPad (2nd generation), I am a corporate weenie, so take this blog entry with a grain of salt and a dose of tautological Möbius strip reality.

In my future, the concept of individual nations that are full of people who elect/select their leaders is passé.

Instead, people will often identify themselves with their tribal histories but they will live under the umbrella of a single fully-integrated global system, a seamless interchange of goods and services, with the requisite enforced laws and regulations to facilitate the interchange.

We will have the perceived freedom to not participate in that system, a freedom that few will exercise due to early indoctrination into the system, hooked on the chemical cues from conception, and verbal/visual cues from prebirth.

En masse, we will continue to transform this planet and flow with the transformational changes to the environment.

Meanwhile, a small group of people work on an escape plan, designing, testing and building the transportation devices that will carry life-supporting equipment off this planet.

The majority of the seven-plus billion of us and our ecosystems are serving that small group.

Thus, rather than an enemy, the TPP, TISA and similar organisations serve our extraterrestrial exploration plans.

Today is Friday, July 4th, 2014, according to the calendar on this tablet computer, many times more powerful than the computing system that powered the Apollo 11 Moon exploration spaceship, the day that a group of people, primarily Northern European men, declared independence from the rule of law governed by a monarchical leader in Great Britain during the 18th Century A.D.

We on Earth’s sister planet 200 marsyears from now will have vague memories of that event but it pales in comparison to the announcement of the first sol of operation for the Inner Solar System Alliance, an organisation not tied to one geographical feature or even one group of humans, but a consortium of sets of states of energy all created from components of this universe (terms such as human being, robot, cyborg, etc., will have fallen into disuse by then).

Be not afraid of the future.

Embrace change.

Celebrate your ancestry at the same time.

First bug!

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Grace-Hopper-first-bug=H96566k

 

From wikipedia: While Grace Hopper was working on a Mark II Computer at a US Navy research lab in Dahlgren, Virginia in 1947, her associates discovered a moth stuck in a relay and thereby impeding operation, whereupon she remarked that they were “debugging” the system. Though the term bug had been in use for many years in engineering[42][43] to refer to small glitches and inexplicable problems, Admiral Hopper did bring the term into popularity.[44] The remains of the moth can be found in the group’s log book at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.[45]

My response to the newly proposed FAA regulation

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My father was a passionate builder of balsa model airplanes. I literally have drawers full of the planes he built and kits he had not finished. It hurts me to see the new regulations proposed by the FAA to dampen interest in so fundamental a hobby for many of who enjoy model aircraft.

Thus, I gladly submitted a personal response to the U.S. government for the FAA to stop or reconsider the wording of the potential new regulations…

The need to educate children in the disciplines of STE(A)M [Science, Technology, Engineering, (Art), and Mathematics] is more important now than ever. Getting them involved in hobbies like model aircraft is part of the excitement of those disciplines.

My father and I bonded when my father took me to my first model flying event when I was five years old in 1967, continuing my father’s fascination with aircraft from his childhood during WWII. He and I built balsa airplanes together since I was six. I flew my first U-line plane when I was a teenager and was fascinated, even back in the middle 1970s, at the fun both adults and children had flying model helicopters, even though back then they were expensive and hard to fly.

Today, the hobby is still the same. Model builders and flyers still go out with their family to enjoy the hobby together and, thanks to lower costs, children can, under the supervision of adults, learn to build and fly their own aircraft.

Please do not remove the joy of building AND flying model aircraft for this generation and generations to come. We need today’s children to learn to become scientists and engineers through the fun of applying math and science principles through indoor/outdoor hobbies like model aircraft.

A call to action for flying model hobbyists!

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Dear RICHARD,

AMA’s Areas of Concern Regarding the FAA Interpretive Rule for Model Aircraft

On Tuesday, June 24th AMA issued a member alert expressing concern over some provisions in the FAA’s interpretation of the Special Rule for Model Aircraft established by Congress in the FAA modernization and Reform Act of 2012. In that alert, we let members know that we would be following up with today’s alert that explains AMA’s concerns in greater detail.

We need you to take action now and respond by July 25, 2014 to the FAA Interpretation of the Special Rule for Model Aircraft that was released June 23, 2014. The Academy has reviewed the rule and is extremely disappointed and troubled be the approach the FAA has chosen to take in regards to this issue.

FAA’s Interpretive Rule

To help you respond to the FAA, we have outlined AMA’s major concerns in the bullets below. A more in-depth explanation of our concerns can be found at AMA’s Concerns.

Throughout the rule the FAA takes great latitude in determining Congress’ intentions and in placing tightly worded restrictions through its “plain-language” interpretation of the text.

The FAA uses the plain language doctrine to create a regulatory prohibition of the use of a specific type of technology.

FAA’s overreaching interpretation of the language in the Public Law is evident in the rule’s interpretation of the requirement that model aircraft be “flown strictly for hobby or recreational use.”

Although the FAA acknowledges that manned aviation flights that are incidental to a business are not considered commercial under the regulations, the rule states that model aircraft flights flown incidental to a business are not hobby or recreation related.

The rule overlooks the law’s clear intention to encompass the supporting aeromodeling industry under the provision of the Special Rule, “aircraft being developed as a model aircraft.” The rule’s strict interpretation of hobby versus business puts in question the activities of the principals and employees of the billion dollar industry that supplies and supports the hobby.

The Public Law states that when model aircraft are, “flown within 5 miles of an airport, the operator of the aircraft (must) provide(s) the airport operator and the airport air traffic control tower (when an air traffic facility is located at the airport) with prior notice of the operation. However the rule indicates that approval of the airport operator is required. Although it is understood that making notification to the airport and/or ATC will open a dialog as to whether the planned activity is safe to proceed, there is no intent in the law that this be a request for permission on the part of the model aircraft pilot.

The Interpretive Rule establishes new restrictions and prohibitions to which model aircraft have never been subject. This is counter to the Public Law which reads, “The Federal Aviation Administration may not promulgate any rule or regulation regarding a model aircraft or an aircraft being developed as a model aircraft,…” if established criteria are met.

The Interpretive Rule attempts to negate the entire Public Law by stating, “Other rules in part 91, or other parts of the regulations, may apply to model aircraft operations, depending on the particular circumstances of the operation. This in and of itself makes model aircraft enthusiasts accountable to the entire litany of regulations found in Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations, something that was never intended by Congress and until now never required by the FAA.

How to Respond to the FAA.

All AMA members, family and friends need to take action now to let the FAA know that this rule significantly impacts the entire aeromodeling community and that this community is resolute and committed to protecting the hobby.

There are four methods to submit a comment. Emailing your comment is the fastest and most convenient method. All comments must include the docket number FAA-2014-0396. Tips for submitting your comments.

Email: Go to http://cl.exct.net/?qs=74e25126b0b0905a645adc8934471955f85c7878b85f2164fe9afc77ac7b7879. Follow the online instructions for sending your comments electronically.

Mail: Send Comments to Docket Operations, M-30; US Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE., West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, West Building Ground Floor, Washington, DC 20590-0001.

Hand Delivery: Take comments to Docket Operations in Room W12-140 of the West Building Ground Floor at 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE., Washington, DC, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays.

Fax: (202) 493-2251.

DEADLINE TO COMMENT: On or before July 25, 2014