Right Wing Nation

gets an A for the Carnival of Education.

The Carnival of Ed is posted. Now, for those of you who have never hosted a carnival, it’s pretty simple. People submit articles. You paste the URLs for the submitted articles, surround it with something, and you’re done.

A sixth-grader could do it.

But this blogger apparently cannot. Two of the best bloggers in the edusphere, Jane and Mamacita, were ignored? not included? forgotten? who knows? I know this because they left comments.

If you look on the blogger’s about page, you see this:

I have worked in the Education field for almost twenty years and have experienced it from almost every angle.

[ . . . ]

I have been a teacher for four years, receiving my certification via an alternative teaching certification program that demanded every ounce of me including a pledge to produce high-scoring testers with a panache for being led around like sheep. I managed to escape the brainwashing and focus on creating socially aware learners who will inherit the earth.

Let’s hope those learners are more capable than you, who can’t manage to paste a simple URL. I’ll be nice and ignore the substance-free idiot phrase, “socially aware.”

The Chancellor’s New Clothes gets a big red F.

Posted early this week. Here.

The Carnival of Ed is up.

and everything is assigned a number at the Carnival of Ed this week.

Posted!

Posted at McCain Blogs.

The Carnival of Ed is posted.

The Carnival of the Recipes.

The Carnival of Ed is posted. 154? Who knew?

The Carnival of Ed is up at History is Elementary.

The Carnival of Ed is posted.

The Carnival of Ed is posted.

Before I shut down, finish packing, and head out, the Carnival of Education will be at NYC Educator when it gets posted — at a decent hour, while I’m on the road. And speaking of NYC Educator, he and I were having a conversation about trolls. He’s been getting a lot of them lately, and what you may not know is that I get plenty of them. Here’s what I said to NYC Educator (you need to know, if you don’t already, that he’s a union man):

I have a policy. I don’t crap in other people’s yards. Now, I will take issue with an article on another blog if the reasoning or the data are bad, but I don’t do hit-and-runs. You can probably (and correctly) guess how I feel about unions, but you will notice that I have never “let it all hang out” on your blog.

I’ve had quite a few of those on mine. Usually, they end up in the moderation queue or Akismet catches them, and I delete them. I don’t care if somebody disagrees with me, but I do expect them to do so in a rational, calm, reasoned manner. Call me effete, but I tend to think civility a good thing.

Then, I got this in the queue today (I deleted the comment, but I’m going to post the whole thing, just to make the point):

A new comment on the post #4276 “My Ex-Students Are On Strike” is waiting for your approval
http://rightwingnation.com/2007/11/20/i-know-these-people/

Author : Joe Momma (IP: 70.141.146.242 , 70.141.146.242)
E-mail : jjam@aol.com
URL :
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=70.141.146.242
Comment:
Eat shit and die you freaking Bush loving asshole

Note that this was left on my article about the writers’ strike. The only thing in the comment that could be thought of as a topic is the President — the rest is just juvenile spewing. So do you see any reference, even tangential, to President Bush in that article? No? Neither do I.

I get these all the time. Like I said, if you want to disagree with me in a rational, reasonable manner, that’s great. But I will continue to delete all drive-by idiocy. If you want to demonstrate what a mouthbreathing infantile jackass you are, do it on your own blog.

Sorry about the delay — service outages. Also an apology that I couldn’t be as creative as I wanted, but I didn’t have the time. Anyway, welcome to the first Edublogger Conference. We hope that your hotel room is comfortable, and that you will have a great time while you’re here. Without further delay, here is our conference schedule.

12:00 - 1:00 Ranting Roundtable:

Hube on Edu-babble and the News Journal. Oh, but he’s not done, oh no. Here, he shows us how stupid some students can be.

Consent of the Governed opines quite firmly on an upcoming teacher trip to Red China.

Bellringers explains — not very patiently — that the classroom is not the YMCA.

Assistive Principles tells us what students taking the SAT are like (and boy, does this sound familiar).

Darren would like to live in this palatial estate.

Edwonk shares his feelings about Daylight Savings Time.

NYC Educator asks, "Who needs bathrooms?"

Mike in Texas has budding movie star students!

1:30 - 3:00 Classroom Advice Presentations:

Patti on why she takes students for walks.

Mom is Teaching also takes the students outdoors.

Greg: How to teach the, you know, e-word.

Bill Ferriter offers important advice on keeping kids safe online.

Mr. Meyer has a new student.

Resource Junky also offers a list of safe sites.

Successful Teaching offers some valuable pointers on dealing with student disabilities.

Music Makes Sense discusses the importance of student seating.

Line 46 discusses the cardinal sin of writing.

Nucleus Learning on learning from teaching.

Writopia Lab has an interesting article on writing and video games.

Scenes from the Battleground has a large list of important advice.

3:30 - 4:30 State of Education Roundable:

Middle-aged Mindset has rather discouraging news about the dropout rate.

Shiloh Musings on the Israeli teachers’ strike.

Leader Talk discusses successful change, and raises questions.

Life without School discusses consumption.

Edwonkette looks at the NYC report card.

ABCTE discusses distinguished teachers.

Homeschool 2.0 casts an eye on the recent ETS report on education.

Matthew Tabor reviews Two Million Minutes.

My rambling thoughs on where we’re headed.

4:30 - 6:00 Dinner

6:30 - 7:30 Concurrent Session I: The Ongoing Conflict Roundtable

The Jose Vilson opines on the conflict, and the frustration it brings.

Horsesense and Nonsense gives the latest on teaching novels.

3σ to the Left has a problem colleague.

6:30 - 7:30 Concurrent Session II: The Importance of Art

Nancy Flanagan tells us about her students’ music projects.

Principled Discovery on art education.

Music Makes Seats Sense, on seating.

6:30 - 7:30 Concurrent Session III: A Bit Disturbing

Carol overhears a disturbing conversation.

Dangerously Irrelevant also hears a converation.

Mad Kane shares a poem.

Mrs. Bluebird makes her students even odder.

7:45 - 9:00 Concurrent Presentation I: Higher Education

What do you do when your college grad kids move back home? Matthew Paulson had some tips.

College and Finance offers sound advice on writing papers (just don’t tell anybody I said that).

Campus Grotto talks about preparing for finals. Every college student should read this.

Surfer Sam has tips for getting into law school.

Joanne Jacobs has some thoughts about college admissions.

Why Homeschool discusses the rising costs of higher education.

Ms. Cornelius wonders about admissions and priorities.

7:45 - 9:00 Concurrent Presentation II: Classroom Management

So You Want to Teach talks about relieving tension.

Chanman suggests that we look to Africa.

Whew! That’s it for this conference! Thank you to everyone who contributed to this week’s Carnival of Education. If you are interested in hosting one of these extravaganzas, please contact the Education Wonks at owlshome [at] earthlink [dot] net. Next week’s affair will be hosted by Edspresso. Send in your submissions by 3:00PM EST on Tuesday, November 13th. Submit your favorite education blog entries to us at edspresso@edreform.com or fill out the submission form to send your post.

This week’s carival is posted here.

The Carnival of Ed is up.

Before I begin, let me point out that today is the anniversary of the Nickel Mines Amish school shootings. My tribute is here. If you believe in God, please pray for all of those affected.

A digital moment of silence.

Even on vacation in Manhattan, I just can’t resist data. So when I saw EdWonk’s post about the most recent NCES report, of course I had to go download the data and do my own analysis. Trust, but verify, and all that.

In case you missed it, Margaret Spellings is all a-tither about the increase in math scores among 4th graders. Wait. That’s not exactly what she says:

“Student achievement is on the rise,” said Secretary Spellings. “No Child Left Behind is working. It’s doable, reasonable and necessary. Any efforts to weaken accountability would fly in the face of rising achievement.”

Spellings noted that 48 states and the District of Columbia either improved academically or held steady in all categories.

Ah. Improved or held steady — that is, didn’t improve, but didn’t get worse. I’m not sure I’d crow about that, but perhaps that’s just me. At any rate, I went to the NCES site and downloaded the 4th grade math assessment score data for 2003, 2005, and 2007. Unfortunately, there data (as I’ve bemoaned before) is aggregated, and these are state mean scores, but you use what you can get. Here are the descriptive stats:

Yes, the mean scores show an increase over the three years sampled, but not much. Look closer, and there’s a great big waving red flag. See the mean for 2003, 237.05? Now, look at the 95% Confidence Interval for 2007, and note that the 2005 mean falls within that interval.

A confidence interval is analogous to a margin of error. Since these data are aggregated by state, we calculate the interval to extrapolate the true means. So from the data we have, there is a 95% probability that the true mean 4th grade math assessment score for 2003 falls between 235.78 and 231.97, and so forth. The fact that the 2005 mean falls within the confidence interval (margin of error) for the 2007 scores strongly suggests that there is no statistically significant difference between the 2005 and 2007 scores.

To check, we ran ANOVA:

In order for there to be a statistically significant difference, F must be larger than the F crit, and the last time I checked my calculator, 2.46 was not larger than 3.94. Indeed, the value of P is greater than 0.05, so there is no statistically significant difference between the 2005 and 2007 scores. Interestingly, on the NCES site, once you have constructed your data table, you can click a little button that says something like, "Are they statistically significant?" and curious, I did that, and selected variables. All I got was a set of grids with grey boxes, and I have no idea what that was supposed to mean. Is the NCES claiming statistical significance? Well, I could read the report, but 1) you know how I feel about PDF files, and 2) I’m in Manhattan and have better things to do with my time. So no, I didn’t read the report, and yes, I probably should, but later, after I’m back home.

It may very well be that if we analyzed the data aggregated by school district rather than state, there would be a statistically significant difference between the two years’ scores (that is, aggregating the data by state may mask the significance). But that I have no way to test that, since the NCES does not offer school district as an aggregate. Still, I call shennanigans on the NCES, and Margaret Spellings’s statement should have been that, "48 states and the District of Columbia held steady in all categories," again, not something I’d brag about.

Okay, that’s enough. I’m in Manhattan. Time to go find lunch.

The Ed Carnival is posted (that’s early!)

Check out the Carnival of Education.

The Carnival of Education is posted.

But before I go, the Carnival of Education is posted.

The Carnival of Ed is posted.

Forgot the Carnival of Education.

It’s posted at Education in Texas.

The 4th of July Carnival of Education is posted at NYC Educator!

This week’s Carnival of Education is up, and I stopped on this article by the Science Goddess:

I was amazed when I moved here and discovered that the high school had an espresso cart. Kids bought and sold coffee, for crying out loud—something you would never have seen in the southwest US.

First, kudos to the kids for being entrepeneurs. Back at the business school, student organizations sold food and coffee (doughnuts and bagels in the morning, pizza at noon, and cookies — specifically, seriously kick-ass oatmeal raisin cookies — in the afternoon) on the first floor. I emptied my wallet of cash every day down there, partly because I was hungry, and partly because they got no funding from the university and only their own efforts. Imagine students not on the public dole!

But after my initial applause, I got to this (emphasis mine, of course):

There is a definitely coffee culture here in the northwest. Don’t let the cliches fool you. And if you need any more evidence, take a look at this article about how the district administration offices in the Edmonds School District have a new $15K espresso machine, even as jobs are being cut.

I could say it’s outrageous, but that would miss the issue. It’s fiscally irresponsible. And for the sake of clarification, let’s contrast the school district (well, really their new $15K espresso machine) and a large, financially well-off, midwestern business school (well, really their lack of a new $15K espresso machine).

There is a faculty lounge, a staff lounge, and two student lounges (one for undergrads and one for grads). The faculty and staff lounges have those huge, party-sized percolators (and the coffee sucks, unless you like cheap, weak coffee). That’s the only state-subsidized coffee in the entire business school.

As I mentioned above, student organizations sell food and coffee on the first floor (but their coffee sucks too). One of the local coffee houses runs a stand where you can buy a good, strong, double espresso (or if you like such stuff, lattes and so forth — me, I prefer my espresso straight up). Or you can walk across the street to the dorm immediately to the north, and buy pretty good strong coffee at the food court (did I mention that food services at the university were entirely privatized about fifteen years ago?) Or if you’re too lazy to walk either there, or to the coffee cart (or to be fair, only have a few minutes and really need a dose of caffeine before class), you can (ta-dum!) bring your own espresso machine to your office!

I did that. I had a small espresso machine in my office. It wasn’t so much that I was too lazy to walk as it was that I’m an early bird who (God willing) taught 8 o’clock classes (there’s not much competition for those, so if you like ‘em, you pretty much got ‘em), and I’d get to work around 6:30, 7:00 at the latest, often before anybody had started selling coffee.

I could probably have gotten the university to pay for that espresso machine, had I tried. I did not, just because I didn’t think I was entitled to state-subsidized caffeine. And you’ll note that the financially well-off business school doesn’t provide much in the way of state-subsidized caffeine, either, whereas the school district apparently thinks everybody is entitled to all the espresso they want — at state expense.

What’s that you say? They bought it, so it’s not state expense? Well of course, it is. They bought it with taxes — you know, the “We need more money for education!” taxes.

Guess what, folks? You’re not entitled to espresso. Or cigarettes. Or chocolate truffles. If you want espresso, a cigarette, or a truffle, go right ahead — just pay for it out of your own pocket. And that leads me to another point of irritation.

Quite a few times on edublogs, I’ve seen teachers whining about having to buy pencils or paper or God knows what for their students because the school district wouldn’t supply it, and never have I responded. Well, I’m going to respond now.

Suck it up, boys and girls. I have no sympathy. When I was a grad student and making far, far less money than the lowest paid public school teacher in the nation, there were things my program would not supply, so I did. Out of my own pocket. And I made one hell of a lot less money than any of you whiners did — plus, I never whined about it. If the class needs it, they need it. If the school board or administration won’t supply it, and the parents won’t supply it, well, then you have to.

Suck it up. That’s the real world. There ain’t no free lunch, kids. Grow up, and stop whining.

of Ed is up.

I may just have to boycott the Carnival of Education. Four times now, I have submitted an article and seen it disappear into the black hole. Twice when I inquired, I got no response from the carnival host. Once, I got an idiotic response from the idiot who was hosting, “I couldn’t figure out where to fit it in my cute little creative scheme, so I just didn’t add it, sorry!” This moron obviously is one of these crayon-and-poster-board mouthbreathers. And the last time, I got a comment here, saying he was sorry and he’d add it if I sent the URL. I sent the URL. I got no response, and it didn’t get added. That was today.

Once, twice, even three times–even with the “it didn’t fit my construction paper and glitter project theme!” moron hosting–and who cares. Four times, oh well, that’s pissed me off.

Then, I volunteered to host, used to every time I submitted an article. Naw. Instead, we got the idiot who had a cute little creative scheme she had to work articles around. I don’t know if Ed Wonk noticed, but I stopped volunteering. Sorry, I can’t fucking be bothered. So don’t ask, because the answer will be, “Sorry, but I have to clip my toenails.”

You wonder what’s wrong with education, when the educators are irresponsible, drooling idiots?

Fuck the Carnival of Education. Seriously. This carnival is almost as much of a joke as the Watchers Council, composed of equally irresponsible morons who can’t be bothered to answer email they have solicited. What a bunch of children.

Me, I’ll stick with the adults.

I gave myself my last injection of this year-long treatment today, and I went to the range to celebrate. I didn’t do too well: The one side effect (from the pills, not the injections) that refused to go away was the vision thing. I have a few things to mail, so while I’m gone, enjoy the latest Carnival of Education.

The Carnival of Education is posted!

The Carnival of Education is up!

The Carnival of Education is posted.