The 1,200 teacher challenge

Dallas Morning News education blog reports the Dallas ISD needs to hire 1,200 new teachers by next fall — about 200 more than usual. 

We have great kids, we have a very good department, and Dallas pays better than most of the suburban districts in the area.  Vacancies existed through most of the school year.  Good candidates went other places.  It’s frustrating.

I’ll wager the hiring process would go faster, and work better, if teacher pay in Dallas were $5,000 higher.  I’d wager, as an administrator, that the $5,000/year raise for teachers would provide greater savings in hiring, tutoring, testing, and all other areas of academic performance.

But, then, I think supply/demand economics often works.  What do I know?

Two million minute challenge

Just over two weeks to graduation, son James is concerned about global competitiveness.  He’s off to study physics at Lawrence University in the fall; he is insistent I note the news in the paper this week.  I still have an active  stake in public schools, after all — good call, James.  Here’s his concern, below.

Each child has two million minutes of life over the four years of high school. Whether the U.S. can remain competitive in the global economy depends more than ever on how each child allocates those two million minutes.

A new film raises concerns that U.S. children are losing out against students from India and China.

Dallas Morning News business reporter Jim Landers wrote about the movie, “Two Million Minutes,” in an article May 6. It’s an indication of something that this is front page in the business section — an indication of genuine concern, one may hope.

Science and mathematics education gets the major attention in the film. One wishes this film could compete with the anti-science film “Expelled!” which still lingers malodrously in a few theatres across the nation.

Landers wrote:

2 Million Minutes argues that “the battle for America’s economic future isn’t being fought by our government. It’s being fought by our kids.”

And in a series of international comparisons, the U.S. kids are not doing so well. The one area where they score better than the rest is self-confidence.

Once they leave the eighth grade, students have a little more than 2 million minutes to get ready for work or college and the transition to being an adult. This documentary, made by high-tech entrepreneur Robert Compton, follows two high school seniors in Carmel, Ind., two in Bangalore, India, and two in Shanghai, China, to see how they use their time.

All six are bright, accomplished, college-bound individuals.

Our students spend a lot of time watching TV, working part-time jobs, playing sports and video games, but not so much on homework. The Chinese kids spend an extra month in school each year, more hours at school each day and more hours doing homework. By the time they graduate, Chinese students have spent more than twice as much time studying as their U.S. counterparts.

While one may hope kids will pay attention, one may be unhappy to recall the topic, and many of the same or similar numbers, were published nationally in the 1980s by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) at the U.S. Department of Education. I remember it well, since I was publisher for some of the work.

The website for the movie offers more details, including a calendar of screenings. DVDs are available, but at very high prices — $25 for home use, $100 for school or non-profit use. I’d love to show it to students; I can get a couple of much-needed PBS videos for that same price. I hope producers will work to arrange distribution competitive with opposition movies like Stein’s. I’ll wager “Expelled!” will hit the DVD market at about $10.00, with thousands of DVDs available for free to churches and anti-science organizations.

Landers chalks up some of the stakes, and we should all pay attention:

FALLING BEHIND IN EDUCATION

Nearly 60 percent of the patents filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in the field of information technology now originate in Asia.

The United States ranks 17th among nations in high-school graduation rate and 14th in college graduation rate.

In China, virtually all high school students study calculus; in the United States, 13 percent study calculus.

For every American elementary and secondary school student studying Chinese, there are 10,000 students in China studying English.

The average American youth now spends 66 percent more time watching television than in school.

SOURCE: “Is America Falling off the Flat Earth?” by Norman R. Augustine, chairman, National Academy of Sciences “Rising Above the Gathering Storm” committee

Education spending, per pupil, apples to apples

Utah rejected education vouchers last November, so the release from the Census bureau at the first of April probably got overlooked as not exactly important — I saw no major story on it in any medium.

Maybe it was the April 1 release date.

Whatever the reason for the lack of recognition, the figures are out from the Census Bureau, and Utah’s at the bottom end of spending per student lists, in the U.S. I wrote earlier that Utah gets a whale of a bargain, since teachers work miracles with the money they have. But miracles can only go so far. Utah’s educational performance has been sliding for 20 years. Investment will be required to stop the slide.

Utah’s per pupil spending is closer to a third that of New York’s.

Of course, spending levels do not guarantee results. New York and New Jersey lead the pack, but the District of Columbia comes in third place. Very few people I know would swap an education in Idaho, Utah or Arizona, the bottom three in per pupil spending, for an education in D.C.

Public Schools Spent $9,138 Per Student in 2006

School districts in the United States spent an average of $9,138 per student in fiscal year 2006, an increase of $437 from 2005, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released today.

Public Education Finances: 2006 offers a comprehensive look at the revenues and expenditures of public school districts at the national and state levels. The report includes detailed tables that allow for the calculation of per pupil expenditures. Highlights from these tables include spending on instruction, support services, construction, salaries and benefits of the more than 15,000 school districts. Public school districts include elementary and secondary school systems.

All the census statistics are on-line, for free. Policy makers can mine these data for insights — will they? You may download the data in spreadsheet or comma-delimited data form.

The rest of the press release is pure policy talking points:

Public school systems received $521.1 billion in funding from federal, state and local sources in 2006, a 6.7 percent increase over 2005. Total expenditures reached $526.6 billion, a 6 percent increase. (See Table 1.)

State governments contributed the greatest share of funding to public school systems (47 percent), followed by local sources (44 percent) and the federal government (9 percent). (See Table 5.)

School district spending per pupil was highest in New York ($14,884), followed by New Jersey ($14,630) and the District of Columbia ($13,446). States where school districts spent the lowest amount per pupil were Utah ($5,437), Idaho ($6,440) and Arizona ($6,472). (See Tables 8 and 11.)

Of the total expenditures for elementary and secondary education, current spending made up $451 billion (85.7 percent) and capital outlay $59 billion (11.2 percent). (See Table 1.)

From current spending, school districts allotted $271.8 billion to elementary and secondary instruction. Of that amount, $184.4 billion (68 percent) went to salaries and $58.5 billion went to employee benefits (22 percent). Another $156 billion went to support services. (See Table 6.)

Of the $156 billion spent on support services, 28 percent went to operations and maintenance, and 5 percent went to general administration. Of the states that used 10 percent or more of their support services on general administration expenditures, North Dakota topped the list at 14 percent. General administration includes the activities of the boards of education and the offices of the superintendent. (See Table 7.)

Of the $59 billion in capital outlay, $45 billion (77 percent) was spent on construction, $5 billion (8 percent) was spent on land and existing structures, and $8.7 billion (15 percent) went to equipment. (See Table 9.)

State government contributions per student averaged $5,018 nationally. Hawaii had the largest revenue from state sources per pupil ($13,301). South Dakota had the least state revenue per student ($2,922). (See Table 11.)

The percentage of state government financing for public education was highest in Hawaii (89.9 percent) and lowest in Nebraska (31.4 percent). (See Table 5.)

The average contribution per pupil from local sources was $4,779, with the highest amount from the District of Columbia ($16,195), which comprises a single urban district (and therefore does not receive state financing). The state with the smallest contribution from local sources was Hawaii ($265). (See Table 11).

The percentage of local revenue for school districts was highest in Illinois (59.1 percent) and lowest in Hawaii (1.8 percent). (See Table 5.)

On average, the federal government contributed $974 per student enrolled in public school systems. Federal contributions ranged from $2,181 per student in Alaska to $627 in Nevada (See Table 11).

The percentage of public school system revenues from the federal government was highest in Mississippi (20.1 percent) and lowest in New Jersey (4.3 percent). (See Table 5.)

Spending on transportation represented 12.4 percent of support services. New York and West Virginia spent the largest percent from support services on transportation (21 percent). Hawaii (5.4 percent) and California (7.2 percent) spent the least. (See Table 7.)

Total school district debt increased by 8.5 percent from the prior year to $322.7 billion in fiscal year 2006. (See Table 10.)

China hammered by “globalization” - why students should study

Economics, history and geography, and “vocational” teachers take note:  David Brooks’ column, “The Cognitive Age,” in the New York Times today should be a warmup in your classes next week.  See why in this excerpt:

The chief force reshaping manufacturing is technological change (hastened by competition with other companies in Canada, Germany or down the street). Thanks to innovation, manufacturing productivity has doubled over two decades. Employers now require fewer but more highly skilled workers. Technological change affects China just as it does the America. William Overholt of the RAND Corporation has noted that between 1994 and 2004 the Chinese shed 25 million manufacturing jobs, 10 times more than the U.S.

The central process driving this is not globalization. It’s the skills revolution. We’re moving into a more demanding cognitive age. In order to thrive, people are compelled to become better at absorbing, processing and combining information. This is happening in localized and globalized sectors, and it would be happening even if you tore up every free trade deal ever inked.

The globalization paradigm emphasizes the fact that information can now travel 15,000 miles in an instant. But the most important part of information’s journey is the last few inches — the space between a person’s eyes or ears and the various regions of the brain. Does the individual have the capacity to understand the information? Does he or she have the training to exploit it? Are there cultural assumptions that distort the way it is perceived?

Back again: Measles

Copy a couple of these articles and give them to your school nurse to pass out to people who say they don’t want to inoculate their kids.

• New York Times, measles at highest level in years
• Washington Post, CDC cites biggest increase in measles since 2001
• Reuters
• Los Angeles Times
• ABC News
  

In 1991, we could have inoculated every unvaccinated child under the age of 10, in Dallas County, for much less than $20,000. Then the epidemic hit. One of the early hospitalizations for the company I worked with was $100,000. One kid went in, and after $1 million of care, spent the rest of his life in a local hospital (another decade).

The economic arguments for measles vaccination should be clear.

Update: Bug Girl is right (see her comment below):  Go check out Orac’s post on the issue, “Antivaccinationsim versus measles in the U.S.:  Are the chickens coming home to roost.”  I was posting in a hurry; Orac is posting after visiting the issue several times.  Contrast Orac’s views as a physician with those of people who tend to get herded into panics without the facts, only through the fault of not having the facts about the dangers of the diseases they let off the hook (make no mistake: most of these people are well-meaning).

My more complete measles story, below the fold.

$1 billion boondoggle: Bush’s reading program doesn’t work

From today’s New York Times:

By SAM DILLON

Published: May 2, 2008

President Bush’s $1 billion a year initiative to teach reading to low-income children has not helped improve their reading comprehension, according to a Department of Education report released on Thursday.

Read the study here:

Created under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001, the Reading First program provides assistance to states and districts in using research-based reading programs and instructional materials for students in kindergarten through third grade and in introducing related professional development and assessments. The program’s purpose is to ensure that increased proportions of students read at or above grade level, have mastery of the essential components of early reading, and that all students can read at or above grade level by the end of grade 3. The law requires that an independent, rigorous evaluation of the program be conducted to determine if the program influences teaching practices, mastery of early reading components, and student reading comprehension. This interim report presents the impacts of Reading First on classroom reading instruction and student reading comprehension during the 2004-05 and 2005-06 school years.

The evaluation found that Reading First did have positive, statistically significant impacts on the total class time spent on the five essential components of reading instruction promoted by the program. The study also found that, on average across the 18 study sites, Reading First did not have statistically significant impacts on student reading comprehension test scores in grades 1-3. A final report on the impacts from 2004-2007 (three school years with Reading First funding) and on the relationships between changes in instructional practice and student reading comprehension is expected in late 2008.

The inaccuracy and spin go all the way to 11

There’s a guy who doesn’t like my comments on his blog, so he’s banned me. Every once in a while I find a headline or link to something, and it takes me over there — and I remember why he doesn’t like my comments.

Rationality and accuracy are barriers to be overcome for some bloggers, and this guy often falls into that category. Today he’s bummed that gay students and their friends and relatives protest bullying of gays with a Day of Silence. Neil Simpson wrote:

The Day of Silence (where schools encourage kids to be completely silent for a day to protest alleged discrimination against gays) is back, and students’ rights are being violated left and right. It is bad enough that they disrupt the learning process for a whole day, but now some schools aren’t permitting students to miss school that day or instituting other requirements.

Okay, that’s enough. I gotta stop the quoting and make corrections. “Where schools encourage kids to be completely silent for a day?” There is no such place. This is a fabrication of someone. Who?

The link in the quoted paragraph goes to Kevin Bussey’s blog; from there we get a link to a story in WorldNet Daily, perhaps the single greatest source of information pollution on the internet.

But read the story — even WND doesn’t claim that schools are supporting the event. WND only decries the fact that schools won’t bully kids into not supporting the anti-bullying campaign (irony drips from every serif of this story . . .).

Gay clubs and the “Day of Silence” have no purpose in schools. The GLBTX propoganda machine just uses the Trojan Horse of being anti-bullying to get them in. It is all part of the drive not just for tolerance, not just for affirmation, but to silence all critics.

But why have sex clubs and school-sponsored protest days just for that? All you need is a simple and thoroughly enforced anti-bullying policy:

If you physically or verbally harass other students on or off school grounds you will have swift and serious consequences. It doesn’t matter if you are bullying because they are gay / straight / fat / thin / smart / dumb / pretty / ugly / etc., or if it is just because you are a mean jerk. Zero tolerance. Training over. Now go to class and learn something.

Bullying is wrong. I would always protect gays if they were being bullied, but that isn’t what this issue is really about. If it was, then the kids who are picked on for all those other reasons should get a special day as well, and schools wouldn’t persecute students who wanted to opt out of this special day.

Just a stand against bullying? Maybe Simpson will take a stand against bullying, you think? Maybe Simpson would urge his friends at the Texas State Board of Education to rejoin the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE). Texas pulled out a few months back, protesting the anti-bullying curriculum NASB had put together. The Texas officials — speaking for themselves, not necessarily the people of Texas, let me assure you — said they didn’t like the part that said “don’t bully gays.”

When stuff like that happens, people will on occasion use their First Amendment right to petition and right to assemble and freedom of speech to protest the stupidity. In the immediate case, the protest takes the form of remaining silent.

When gays and the friends of gays don’t speak, it makes the hardcore fundies crazy. The voices in their heads seem so much louder.

Nuts.

Quote of the moment: Utah Phillips, to graduates

Those of you lucky — or unlucky — enough to be giving commencement addresses are polishing them right now, if you have any sense about getting these things done before deadline.

Consider the wisdom of the not-well-enough-known folksinger, Utah Phillips, who is said to have once said to a high school class:

“You are about to be told, again, that you are America’s most valuable natural resource. Have you seen what this country does to its valuable natural resources?” -Utah Phillips, addressing a high school class.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Rob Lopresti and his trademarked Unfamiliar Quotations. [Hey, Rob: Got a more detailed citation on that one?]

Obama: Science in science classrooms, please

We haven’t persuaded the candidates to discuss science policy, though it directly affects health care policy, the war in Iraq, climate change, and housing.  That scrappy little newspaper in York, Pennsylvania got Barack Obama to go on the record against teaching intelligent design, though.

Obama gave about five minutes to a reporter from the York Daily Record, the paper that led the nation in reporting on the Kitzmiller case.  They scooped again:

Q: York County was recently in the news for a lawsuit involving the teaching of intelligent design. What’s your attitude regarding the teaching of evolution in public schools?

A: “I’m a Christian, and I believe in parents being able to provide children with religious instruction without interference from the state.

But I also believe our schools are there to teach worldly knowledge and science. I believe in evolution, and I believe there’s a difference between science and faith. That doesn’t make faith any less important than science.

It just means they’re two different things. And I think it’s a mistake to try to cloud the teaching of science with theories that frankly don’t hold up to scientific inquiry.”

Has either Clinton or McCain gone on the record on the issue yet?

Tip of the old scrub brush to the blogs of the Dallas Morning News.

Science funding: Kicking our future away

Drat.

We get Charlie Rose’s program late here — generally after midnight. I’m up to my ears with charitable organization duties (”Just Say No!”), work where I came in midstream, family health issues, and other typical aggravations of trying live a well-examined life.

I caught most of an hour discussion on science in America, featuring Sir Paul Nurse, president of Rockefeller University and Nobel laureate, Bruce Alberts, editor of Science, Shirley Ann Jackson, president of  Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Harold Varmus, Nobel winner and president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and Lisa Randall, the Harvard nuclear physicist (string theory).

It was a great policy discussion. It had great humor, and great wisdom. And at the end, Rose thanked Nurse and others for helping him put on a 13-part seminar on science policy.

Thirteen parts? And I caught just the last few minutes of #13?

There is the Charlie Rose archives! Here’s the show I caught, “The Imperative of Science.” Great discussion. Scary — Lisa Randall notes that the action in physics has moved to CERN, in Europe, and the search for the Higgs Boson. Varmus and Nurse talk about restrictions in funding that bite at our ability to keep the world lead in education and science. Educators, especially in science, should watch.

Are we kicking away our ability to lead in technology, health care, and other vital economic areas? One cannot help but wonder in listening to these people discuss the difficulty of getting support for critical research during the Bush administration. They each stressed the hope that the next president will be one literate in science.

Pfizer underwrote the series. The entire series is available for viewing at a site Pfizer set up.  (Signs of change:  Notice that physics is represented by two women; there are signs of hope in American science.)

Go see, from Pfizer’s website on the series:

The Charlie Rose Science Series

• Episode 1: The Brain — Exploring the human brain from psychoanalysis to cutting edge research.
• Episode 2: The Human Genome — Exploring the contributions that have been made to science through the discovering and mapping of human DNA.
• Episode 3: Longevity — An in-depth discussion of longevity and aging from the latest research on calorie restriction, anti-aging drugs, genetic manipulation to the social and economic implications of an increase in human life span. (Longevity News Release)
• Episode 4: Cancer — A discussion of the latest advances in cancer, from the genetics to cancer prevention, early detection, diagnosis, treatment and management of care. (Cancer News Release)
• Episode 5: Stem Cells — A roundtable discussion on the latest advances in embryonic and adult stem cell research, their implications, and potential to change the way medicine is practiced.
• Episode 6: Obesity — An informative dialogue on the growing obesity epidemic, its impact on overall health and the latest research to help understand, treat and prevent obesity. (Obesity News Release)
• Episode 7: HIV/AIDS — A panel of leading experts addresses current treatment and prevention strategies, and new medical breakthroughs being used in the fight against HIV/AIDS. (HIV/AIDS News Release)
• Episode 8: Pandemics — An exploration of factors that could create a global pandemic and how the science and public health leaders are addressing the crisis. (Pandemics News Release)
• Episode 9: Heart Disease — A panel of experts explores the biology and genetics of cardiovascular disease, prevention and treatment, the development of medical, surgical and interventional therapies and steps individuals can take toward a heart-healthy lifestyle. (Heart Disease News Release)
• Episode 10: Global Health — A roundtable discussion on initiatives aimed at fighting infectious diseases, protecting women and children, and strengthening global public health systems. (Global Health News Release)
• Episode 11: Human Sexuality — A panel of experts explores major trends in human sexual behavior, sexual desire and satisfaction, and sexual dysfunction issues. (Human Sexuality News Release)

• Episode 12: Diseases of the Brain — Examines the science of brain exploration, diseases that affect the brain throughout the life cycle, current brain research, and new technologies. (Disease of the Brain News Release)

I wish all news programs covered science so well, and made their material so readily available.

Chairman McLeroy to Texas Hispanics: “Drop dead!”

With evidence mounting that the politically-motivated rewrite of English standards in Texas schools would harm the education of Spanish-speaking students, the Chairman of the Texas Education Agency told state legislators, English language experts and educators that he will not allow time to analyze the proposed changes to see if they are appropriate, let alone time for changes to the standards.

In short, McLeroy told Texas Hispanics to “drop dead.”

Board chairman Don McLeroy insisted that major changes to the proposed updates are no longer possible. Advocates say the standards need opinions from experts who have researched Hispanic children and understand their learning styles.

“There is no way that ignoring such a sizable chunk of this population from consideration of education policy will do anything but harm the opportunity of a generation,” Herrero said.

McLeroy said there had been plenty of time for experts to weigh in earlier on new curriculum standards. He said he was shocked by accusations that he and others board members are trying to shortchange Hispanic students.

“There’s no malice at all, none, zip, nada. There’s just no time to get another expert in,” McLeroy said. “None of us would do anything to hurt any group of children or any (individual) child. What we want is for them to be successful in the English language because it’s so important.”

In the latest of a string of politically charged bulldozings, McLeroy is pushing standards substituted at the last minute for standards Texas educators had worked on for three years. McLeroy hired a political consulting group to rewrite the standards and substituted the rewrite in a meeting earlier this year (you’ll see my bias when you read the story in the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram). Educators, parents, legislators and community leaders criticized the action for disregarding the educational needs of Texas students.

“It’s just ignorance on their part,” said Mary Helen Berlanga, a 26-year board member from Corpus Christi.

The board is set to take a preliminary vote March 27 on the new English language arts and readings standards, which will influence new textbooks for the 2009-10 school year.

A four-member board subcommittee signaled its intent Wednesday to stick with that schedule after state Rep. Abel Herrero, D-Robstown, pleaded to let Latino experts review the standards first.

McLeroy is flexing never-tried-before political muscles in a series of changes at TEA. Last year he led the SBOE to arbitrarily reject a math book by a major publisher, daring legal action, hoping he could finally win a case establishing that the board can reject books on political grounds. Biology books are due for a review in the near future, and science and biology standards will be rewritten before that process.

Moving against Hispanic students on the English standards, if successful, would tend to demonstrate that Texas educato needs to dance to the red book writings of Chairman McLeroy. While 47% of Texas public school students are Hispanic, Hispanic voters have generally packed less clout.

McLeroy appears to be counting on Obama and Clinton Democrats to demonstrate apathy again near the general election. If election numbers from the March primary hold up, McLeroy will remain chairman of the SBOE, but the legislature will be likely to shift against many of the actions he’s pushed since assuming the chair, and may turn antagonistically Democratic.

The stakes are higher for Texas students.

Critics of the process asked the subcommittee to allow an expert in Hispanic culture and language to assess the proposed new standards before a preliminary vote next week by the full education board.

The four-member subcommittee that worked on the curriculum did not include anyone of Hispanic descent, or anyone from South or West Texas, and critics said the committee did not seek advice from anyone with expertise in Hispanic language or culture.

Statewide, 47 percent of the more than 4.6 million public school students are Hispanic. Eighty-nine percent of El Paso County’s 173,000 students are Hispanic.

According to the Texas Education Agency, about 16 percent of students statewide and about 28 percent of students in El Paso County in 2006 had limited English proficiency.

Resources:

• Betsy Oney in the online Pegasus, “Whose interests do these elected officials represent anyway?”
• Houston Chronicle story, “State panel rejects Latino call for input on curriculum“
• KVEO-TV, “Board of Education Looks To Change Curriculum“
• Brownsville, Texas, Monitor, “State board education member urges public to rally for classroom …“
• El Paso Times, “Legislators say education panel lacks Hispanic“
• Draft TEKS ELAR (March 19, 2008) (in .pdf format)

DDT conference: Safe or not? Who will report?

March 14 beckons from the near horizon. A group of scientists and policy wonks will gather at Alma College, in Alma, Michigan, to look at the issues of DDT and health. This is the first major conference of its kind since the POPs Treaty, at least.

Controversy again swirls around DDT, with a large industry campaign again after the reputation of Rachel Carson just the same as in 1963 — though Ms. Carson has been dead since 1964. The disinformation campaign also impugns environmentalists, health care workers (especially if they’ve ever worked for the World Health Organization), Al Gore (there is no rationale), and when the minions think they can get away with it, it impugns bed nets and stagnant pool draining.

This public relations campaign against Rachel Carson enjoys a great deal of success. Oklahoma’s Sen. Tom Coburn, who seems never to have met an insult to a scientist he couldn’t use, successfully stopped the U.S. Senate from passing a bill naming a post office in honor of Rachel Carson, one of Coburn’s greatest legislative achievements. Several people in Congress, including Utah’s Rep. Rob Bishop, were similarly hornswoggled.

This conference could put real, accurate information in front of the public.

Are my expectations way too high? I hope reporting from this conference might inject sanity, comity, humility and courtesy back into the discussions of how to treat malaria, and whether DDT should ever be used.

Associated Press? Reuters? New York Times? Chicago Tribune? Detroit News, or Detroit Free Press? Lansing State Journal?

Who will report from the conference?

I hope major news outlets will have reporters there.

Resources:

• The Morning Sun, from middle Michigan: “International Experts to Attend DDT Conference
  
• International Society for Environmental Epidemiology signs on to cosponsor conference (Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub)
  
• March 14 conference on DDT and health (Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub)
• Historic photos, DDT in Alma, Michigan, from Alma College
• Conference registration information
• DDT conference agenda
• DDT conference presenters
• “Study links water pollution to cancer,” Macomb (Michigan) Daily, February 20, 2008; a Centers for Disease Control study showing health effects from pollution including DDT in Central Michigan, was repressed; study author demoted, study leaked by Center for Public Integrity

Troublemaker: Chat with Checker Finn, March 5

With all the irony, implicit and explicit, I will be proctoring a test Wednesday.

You, however, would be well advised to tune into this discussion described below:

This Week’s Live Chat

Troublemaker: A Personal History of School Reform Since Sputnik
When: Wednesday, March 5, 2 p.m., Eastern time
Submit questions in advance.

Please join us for this online chat to get an insider’s view of school-reform movements over the past five decades.

In a new book titled Troublemaker: A Personal History of School Reform Since Sputnik, Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the Washington-based Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, provides a close-up history of postwar education reform and his own role in it. Mr. Finn, assistant secretary of education under Ronald Reagan, and an aide to politicians as different as Richard Nixon and Daniel Moynihan, recounts how his own experiences have shaped his changing and often contentious views of educational improvement efforts, from school choice to standards-based education to the professionalization of teaching.

For background, please read:
“Lessons Learned: A Self-Styled ‘Troublemaker’ Shares Wisdom Gleaned From 57 Years in Education,” Education Week, February 27, 2008.

[Here's a version that doesn't require a subscription.]

About the guest:

• Chester E. Finn Jr. is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, and senior editor of Education Next. He is the author of We Must Take Charge: Our Schools and Our Future and many other books.

Submit questions in advance.

No special equipment other than Internet access is needed to participate in this text-based chat. A transcript will be posted shortly after the completion of the chat.

Finn is one of those guys whose views you may not always like, with whom you may not always agree, but to whom you must listen, because you will always learn something from him.

Embarrassing lure of creationism

You know the syndrome: Someone is caught in a scandal relating to sex, and then they take an offer to pose nude for pornography, and end up merely as a naked embarrassment to everybody.

Same syndrome, but mercifully, without the nudism (yet): Creationists taking it just a bit too far. Two examples.

Example 1: Don McLeroy, newly appointed to the chair of the Texas State Board of Education, was embarrassed by the release of tapes of a talk he gave in a church, demonstrating for anyone who didn’t already know that he’s opposed to teaching science in biology, especially if that science involves evolution. Bad enough?

He’s posted a transcript of the tape on his own website. It almost appears he’s hoping for an appointment as a “fellow” of the Discovery Institute.

McLeroy may have posted the transcript to try to correct a statement the transcripts say he made: “”Remember keep chipping away at the objective empirical evidence.”

At McLeroy’s website, it’s listed like this: “Remember keep chipping away with the objective empirical evidence.” It’s a subtle difference, but it suggests McLeroy is ill-informed enough that he thinks there may be evidence to support creationism, rather than devious enough to urge the denial of reality. Bob, at Hot Dogs, Pretzels and Perplexing Questions, wrote:

I’m not quite sure what to make of all this. Was it a Freudian slip? Did he innocently misspeak? Or could it be that he edited the text after the fact? Either way, I don’t think it makes that much of a difference. They have no objective empirical evidence of their own to chip away with, just the objective empirical evidence they stubbornly attempt to chip away at, and to no avail. I’ll leave the discovery of any other discrepancies as an exercise for the reader, at least for now.

McLeroy shows no desire to appear neutral, as employees of TEA are now required to be toward science — or “neutered” toward science, as one might say.

Example 2: McLeroy’s Islamist partner, Adnan Oktar ( aka “Harun Yahya”), is a continuing embarrassment. This isn’t news, but I stumbled across the actual images he pirated — and they are impressive.

The Atlas of Creation purports to show that no evolution has occurred between a few fossil forms and modern forms of animals — therefore, Oktar concludes in his book, evolution could not have occurred at all. Oktar couldn’t sell the book, so he sent copies of the thing to school libraries across Europe, and then to selected people and school libraries across North America.

The book is beautifully printed and bound, with hundreds of full color plates — it must have cost a fortune to produce.

And so, Oktar had to make economies somewhere. He chose to plagiarize photos and not bother with lawyers to procure rights to print the photos. He also chose to abandon the use of fact checkers, it appears.

And so we get embarrassments, like Oktar comparing this caddis fly, below, to one caught in amber, and concluding there’s been no evolution. The problem, as you can plainly see from the photo I borrow from Forbidden Music, is that the “living” example is actually a fishing lure; Oktar has plagiarized a photograph of one of Graham Owen’s wonderul fishing lures.

Jesus urged his followers to become “fishers of men.” McLeroy and Oktar have confused such imprecations, horribly, with the hoax P. T. Barnum line, that there’s a sucker born every minute.

Owen’s lures are designed to fool fish. If McLeroy and Oktar have their way, Texas school children may end up as ignorant as the fish, and as easily fooled.

Epidemiologists sign on to Alma DDT conference

Meanwhile, back in reality, the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology signed on to cosponsor the conference on DDT’s effects on human health and the environment at Alma College in Michigan, set for March 14.

Religionists and conservative pundits won’t boycott the conference. But they won’t be there, either, I’ll wager. They don’t want to confuse their rants with the facts, you see.

Do we know any bloggers up Alma College way (Alma, Michigan, in the heart of the peninsula) who might attend the conference and provide hourly reports? Ed Brayton, are you close? Got a day to play blog journalist for a good cause?