Time to Agitate

Remember Bake Sales Won't Do It, my screed against how governments put children last? I heard Sandra Tsing Loh's KPCC piece suggesting the Million Mom March on Sacramento to protest suggested school funding cuts (what's left to cut?). I had been in despair about the changes in California public schools between the time Mark and I had been students and the school system experienced by Iris today. When I heard Sandra, I got all fired up and shouted at the radio, "Sign me up!"

Our annual Lair of the Golden Bear trip to northern California coincides with the California Children's Rally. What better time to introduce Iris to activism? It is the UC Berkeley Alumni camp and there should be plenty of seasoned activists in attendance. I hope to round up more rally goers, even if that means leaving camp at 6:30 AM in the morning to get to the capitol steps in Sacramento by 10:00 AM.

Go read the California Children's Rally website, particularly the FAQ, to learn more.

NEWS ADVISORY -- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT FOR MEDIA: Website: californiachildrensrally.com
Sandra Tsing Loh, (818) 426 1240 Youtube channel: RallyMoms

FIRST-EVER "CALIFORNIA CHILDREN’S RALLY"
Tuesday, June 17, 2008 at the Sacramento Capitol (front)

SACRAMENTO - 2008 marks both the 30th anniversary of the passage of Howard Jarvis’ Proposition 13 (June) and the 160th anniversary of California public schools. On Tuesday, June 17, parental frustration over perennial public education budget cuts (California currently ranks 46th in the U.S.) will be transformed into a rally celebrating a group who has no lobbyists, California’s future, and the most important "special interest" in the world--our children. Also celebrated will be some extraordinary heroes of California public school culture whose hearts, despite many odds, beat strong.

Proposition 13 is especially contemptible because, as a CA initiative, it needed only more than 1/2 of the votes to pass. However, the proposition states that it cannot be repealed by less than 2/3 of the voters, forever making prop 13 supporters' votes worth double their opposition's. (It passed, but not with 2/3 of the votes.) Moreover, the people most harmed by the proposition, children, could not vote. Talk about cowards.

Thinking about Proposition 13 makes my blood pressure shoot up and I need to go relax (maybe knit some lace?) and get to sleep.

Homework détente 3

A follow up to the thread, Homework plagiarism, Homework détente, Homework détente 2 and Open House.

Iris finished the satellite model and the first draft of the report last weekend with us riding herd, but not doing the project for her. At first, she wanted to make a satellite that would save our planet from global warming, a giant umbrella of some sort.

I could have just let her turn in her umbrella and world globe and let her be done with it, but I talked her out of it. As commentator Eric C. mentioned, it would have been better to ask Socratic questions. But she doesn't have any clue about the complexity and energy expenditure to put a giant umbrella in space. I told her that it had been suggested before and rejected as impractical.

Fortunately, she had seen Spy Kids 1-3 the weekend before that. (Don't ask why we let her watch so much TV that weekend.) The satellite section of the library was cleaned out, but the spy section contained 2 books (1 a gem) about spy satellites. She was hooked.

She started with a shoe box, but abandoned that for an IKEA desk organizer box with a lid. She found a little plastic snack box and some cardboard in the craft room and constructed a "camera". She covered it in foil while I covered the bigger box with foil. The foil represents solar photovotaic cells. I showed her how to create a hinge with clear package tape. She made the rest of the hinges.

With the globe, I showed her how the satellite has to store energy to operate in earth's shadow. She remembered the batteries in the clock she took apart last month and quickly ran downstairs for 2 AA batteries from our e-waste box. She taped them inside her spacecraft, with the battery ends touching a foil-covered part of the camera. (She was very proud that she observed and remembered that batteries need a metal contact.) She had both positive ends touching the camera and I showed her how batteries are usually alternated +/-. She made the change.

Mark printed out a 60's style space logo which she cut out and glued to the side. She told me that she could make a model of the plane that catches the film canisters that drop out the trap door of her satellite, but that would be showing off. No, she would not show off. She is done with her project.

Not so fast, she needs to rewrite the final draft in cursive.

Anyway, I periodically browse Trends in Japan; I like to look at the rampant creativity in the Street Style slide shows. Serendipitously, the top link on the main page goes to The Science of Origami. What should I see but a folded satellite antenna?

(Photo courtesy of Dr. Nojima Taketoshi)You pull opposite sides of the piece and the antenna blooms before your eyes, all while maintaining a steady center of gravity! Magical.

An artist's conception of the antenna in space.

Bake Sales Won't Do It

I've been looking at horrific pictures of pancaked school buildings in Sichuan Province and small corpses. The magnitude of the death toll in Sichuan and Burma is hard to fathom. James Fallows does an excellent job, putting people and faces to the numbers. Read Masses, and individuals, in China. The pictures of the kids in their classrooms and dormitories, before the quake, are heartbreaking.

First I felt sad, now I am MAD. Why do schools so often collapse in earthquakes? Why are schools and hospitals deathtraps instead of havens in disasters? Andrew Revkin has been following the story. Read In Smart, Wealthy World, Schools Still Fall. Why?, Citizens Challenge China on Fallen Schools and Earthquake in China Highlights the Vulnerability of Schools in Many Countries. Follow the many fine links.

The middle school where the largest group of kids was killed was a selective academy. Chengdu and the surrounding area had hung their hat on IT (information technology) as a way to pull themselves out of poverty. Computer world estimates that Chengdu is the 10th largest IT center globally. Many schools were built to train the next generation to move up the IT food chain.

Kids competed for the right to leave their families and villages behind to live in crammed dormitories and attend huge classes in order to lift themselves and their families out of poverty. Look at the picture of a typical dormitory room on Fallows' blog. The 18 girls that shared that room had fewer possessions between them than what my daughter has in one corner of her room. Those girls had nothing but pluck, brains and willingness to work hard.

What did the officials give them? Death traps. It's not just China according to Andrew Revkin.

Experts on earthquake dangers have warned for years that tens of millions of students in thousands of schools, from Asia to the Americas, face similar risks, yet programs to reinforce existing schools or require that new ones be built to extra-sturdy standards are inconsistent, slow and inadequately financed.

This is even true in western Canada and the United States.

Why do we take care of kids and schools last (after prisons and pensions and medical services for the elderly)? Why is there money to fund shiny computer labs, but not basic safety?

Andrew Revkin points to military spending as a place with plenty of money. Remember the bumper sticker, "Imagine a world where the schools have all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold bake sales"?

I once attended a meeting at an Air Force Base which was interrupted at noon by the public address system. The announcements of bake sales benefiting this and that military (social and medical) need droned on for what seemed like 5 minutes. When it was over, I looked over at the colonel running the meeting and asked, "What was that about?" He said it was a daily occurrence.

Great, now we are running bake sales to fund both our schools and our Air Force. There is no way we can ever bake enough.

Homework détente 2

Following up on Homework détente and Homework plagiarism, Iris' year end third grade assignment makes me eat my words.

She brought home multi-page instructions about the assignment. The teacher wants the kids to design and build a spacecraft from common household objects-no kits allowed. Furthermore, the kids need to write a report explaining the purpose of their spacecraft and how function determines form. The handout explained that parent participation is required for this assignment. The projects will be on display during the year end open house.

This assignment just makes me ill, but not because I worry that Iris' project won't measure up. You see, her school is less than a mile from the birthplace of GPS. Our neighborhood had once been working class. But, starting in the 1970s after the first oil shocks, highly educated space industry workers have been moving into urban infill townhouses and condos within walking distance to their workplaces.

The kids in her class go home to everything from section 8 apartments to million dollar townhouses. Their parents are as likely to be a PhD as a high school dropout.

Is it really fair to assign spacecraft design as homework? Some of the parents design spacecraft professionally! How is everyone else going to compete with that?

Additionally, the city library has been cleaned out of spacecraft books. Fortunately, the library at work is so good, historians petition for permission to use it for space race research. Now I understand why so many of my coworkers brought their kids in to the library during lunch.

I'm dreading open house already.

Homework détente

Oona over at Hopeless but not serious posted about Homework plagiarism. How much should parents help their child with homework?

It is no secret that I fall squarely in the camp of minimum involvement. But she makes some interesting counterarguments that hadn't occurred to me.

What if your child is the only one that is turning in her own work? What if she is being graded on a curve against the work of everyone else's parents? Do K-5 grades have any lasting impact upon one's life?

Clearly, we have a collective responsibility to practice homework détente.

Go over there and join the fray. And don't let the grammar police give you stage fright. :-)

Obligatory Earth Day Post

The Beach Cities Health District installed vegetable gardens at area schools, complete with drip irrigation, organic soil and fertilizer. Each classroom takes care of a raised bed of vegetables. Today, Earth Day, the kids began to harvest the fruits of their labor.

Free-range tomatoes! (Look ma, no cage!)

Organic strawberries.

Look at the size of these radishes.

Thanks to Janel Bagby from Beach Cities Health District and parent volunteer, Kim Dunn. (Parent volunteer, Lisa, and another BCHD employee did not arrive in time for the picture.)

Iris came home talking about how spinach is the most nutritious vegetable and how she wanted to try it. I found some spinach in the freezer and made creamed spinach out of it. She took one bite and pushed it away. She did eat her soba and tofu though.

False Choices and Jargon

Oonae over at Hopeless but not serious wrote about jargon in academic language in Simple problems, complex solutions. She dissected Russell Jacoby's jargon-filled rant against the use of false “binary oppositions”.

I have been ruminating about both issues (and bullshit) lately.

Why are we either "working moms" or "stay at home moms"? Why are mothers forced to choose? Why do employers demand "ideal workers" who can work at any hour and travel any where at the drop of a hat? Why do most men feel entitled to put their careers ahead of their partner's? All those shirked duties have to get done and who do you think picks up the pieces and keeps the family going?

It's not bad enough that Silda Spitzer felt that she had to quit her demanding job when her husband ran for higher office, but we have to hold her painful and private choices up for ridicule. Read Linda Hirshman's incredibly mean-spirited and unfair attack on Silda Spitzer. I've blogged about Linda Hirshman before, and I agree with her on some issues, but this is beyond the pale.

For those of us who live in the "reality-based community", you may want to read Debating Whether "Stay-At-Home Mom" Is A Worthwhile Profession for levity. (Thanks to Laura at 11D for pointing out this link.) Here is an excerpt but you should read the whole thing.

John Hawkins: I don't know. My last job before I went into blogging was doing tech support. One day they had a big meeting and told us they were laying us all off -- but, we could take huge cuts in salary and benefits to stay on. I said, "no, thanks." That's a bad break. She had a bad break, too.

I see being a stay at home mom as an honorable profession, one that is as good as pretty much any other. It's not everybody's cup of tea, but I think it's a great choice for the women who want and are able to do it.

Allison Sommer: Yeah, but you can take your skills and experience elsewhere. It's harder for a 50-year-old woman to do a lot with her "resume" of bearing someone's kids and running their house and giving dinner parties for their friends.

John Hawkins: True. But, there's more to life than having a nice resume when you are 50 years old.

Allison Sommer: I also think it's a totally legit life choice to be respected, particularly when the kids are small and school age. But I see it as a very problematic way to make it a lifetime career, profession, whatever.

John Hawkins: Depends on your marriage situation.

Allison Sommer: Exactly. Which is why girls should not be raised to bank on it as a "career choice."

John Hawkins: There are probably more women who succeeded in that "career choice" than any other world wide and in the US, over any period in history. That doesn't mean the other ones are bad, or that stay-at-home-mom is the best for everyone, but it works out very well for a lot of women.

Allison Sommer: Depends on your definition of success.

The part about his last job explains everything.

Another false choice harms both scientists who are mothers and our nation as a whole. If you follow the hand-wringing about the lack of females in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields, you are familiar with the "pipeline" analogy. Much ado is made of putting more girls in the pipeline to increase output of women at the end. Actually, the situation is more acute than that. We possibly don't have enough people of any gender willing to enter the pipeline. And the pipeline is extremely leaky.

If we want to rectify the situation, maybe we can start with the way we frame the problem. Who wants to be the output of a pipeline? Why are there no efforts to bring people who have left STEM to come back to work in those fields? Instead, we just import more indentured servants on H1B visas which moves the benchmark "ideal worker" even further away from the reality of working parents.

Wow, this post got long. I will have to write about jargon in a separate post.

Aside:
Do you remember the days when tech support calls from the US were answered in the US? Often they were answered by mothers working at home with young children. (One could hear the occasional child competing for attention at the other end of the call.)

The companies set them up with an extra phone line and a computerized database of common questions and answers. The women could set their status as available or unavailable and calls to 800 customer service lines were automatically routed to workers who set their status as available. They were paid for the time they worked.

Occasionally, when the women collected enough good customer reviews and their children were older, they moved into higher level troubleshooting positions that required more skill and training.

Where are those jobs now?

Say it ain't so

The University of California is facing huge shortfalls of money (and goodwill). So what did the regents of the University of California do? They hired a new president, and will pay him twice as much as the outgoing one.

Big sigh.

This is so wrong.

He is going to ask the faculty and staff for huge sacrifices. He is going to ask the students to pay ~10% more fees. How is he going to have the political capital to ask others to sacrifice, when he is pulling in on order of $800,000/year in salary and deferred compensation (pension)?

How is he going to get any money out of me (or any alumni) with a salary like that?

The UC search committee argue that this is only a 12% pay raise for him and that the UC system is larger than the UT system. But UT is partly funded by oil revenues. A friend who interviewed for a position there was shown the actual oil wells (which the above link says were decommissioned in 1990). But I digress.

Executive compensation is a hot button issue for me. The whole rationale is suspect.

One argument, which is made in this case, is that you have to pay top dollar in the competition for talent. So you take a survey of comparative pay and then you give the new hire above the going rate because he is better than average. Why else would you hire him, right?

But the people who determine the compensation tend to be in the same type of positions as the people they are hiring. So they will be on the receiving end of the largess some day. Your above average pay day will arrive shortly if you play the game right.

The second argument is that he will not be the highest paid UC employee. He will be out earned by several athletic coaches. Grrr. Is the UC a university or a farm team for pro sports? Enough said.

He will also be out earned by several medical school professors with clinical practices on the side. Compensation of medical providers is another hot button issue for me so let's not go there lest my blood pressure go even higher.

The UC system has historically been been led by a scientist or engineer who has risen from within the ranks. Yudof will be the first lawyer to head up the UC. Oh, that explains why he is worth so much more than the previous presidents. (Read the "aside" below.)

And let's not discuss why investment bankers need to be paid bigger bonuses in a bad year to keep them from jumping jobs. Or why hedge fund managers should enjoy an effective tax rate 1/3 of mine while earning 1000 times my salary because they are providing such a valuable service to society.

Let's Whip Inflation Now--starting with executive compensation.

Hopefully, the shortage of US citizens with Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) skills will result in an increase in my salary. Maybe I will make 1/900 as much as a hedge fund manager some day.

Links:
LAT story on his hiring
Contra Costa Times story
NYT on Executive compensation and backscratching
Internet Resource Guide for Executive Compensation (UCB's COHRE)

Aside:
A friend (and fellow mother) and I compared hours worked and salaries. In the last year she worked (she is one of those opt-out mothers that Linda Hirshman rails against), she earned more than ten times my full-time equivalent salary while working nearly twice as many hours as I do. I work 36 hours a week or 90% time. You do the math.

She earned a BS in science before going to law school. She paid her dues as an associate in a major law firm. We figure, that's equivalent to earning a PhD in science and doing a postdoc. She figures she is as smart as her scientist friends who stayed on the science track. Yet the paydays are so different. She will be the first one to admit that her work, helping rich people sue each other, is not as beneficial to society as science research (even mediocre science research which she figures does no harm, unlike the legal profession). Is it any wonder that an intelligent and thoughtful person would save up her enormous salary and quit at the first opportunity?

EPGY and miscellany

Speaking of IDL, I need to order a copy for Iris' use. At AGU, one of their sales reps said that she could set Iris up with a student version of IDL because we are partially homeschooling/unschooling her. She has also been taking on-line math from EPGY (Educational Program for Gifted Youth).

When Iris found out about EPGY, she was resistant. The first reason was kind of cute. She saw on the EPGY website that they were affiliated with Stanford University. She was worried that, if she became a Stanford student, she wouldn't be allowed to go to Lair of the Bear (UC Berkeley alumni family camp) anymore. I reassured her that she would always be welcome at Lair, so long as she joined the Cal alumni association.

The second reason took longer to resolve. She had to do EPGY on top of all the classwork and homework that her classmates did. She felt like she was being punished for being smart. However, having joined the third grade in the middle of the school year, she needed to demonstrate mastery of the curriculum she had missed. This led to frequent temper tantrums each evening. As she progressed ahead of the classwork, her school allowed her time during the school day to do EPGY. (Parents and the school, if the school is paying the EPGY tuition, receive weekly progress reports.)

She passed the third grade math final exam today. We promised her one month of Club Penguin membership for each grade she completes. I thought that would make CP membership an occasional treat. I hadn't realized how fast she can progress when motivated. A promise is a promise. I will write more about CB as I learn more from watching her play.

What are women for?

I have quit weeping sniveling and am busily doing research and gathering materials for our big meeting with the school officials in two weeks. I am aghast at the number of "experts" that have suggested that I quit work and home school. Not one suggested that my husband do the same.

She is a girl. I, too, was a girl, full of idealism and spatial skills that rarely occur in nature, much less in the same person. ;-) Through much effort and expense, I trained for my dream career, performing environmental science research in the public interest.

Like I wrote in The Mommy Wars,

One point that is not discussed much is the obligation that women in traditionally male occupations feel to not let down the women coming up after them. Throughout my education, I heard comments about how so and so (professors) had a point in not supporting female graduate students because women were going to quit science anyway when they had kids. Thus, scarce resources were preserved for men who would presumably stay in science. Therefore, if we quit, then we will prove those people right and make it more difficult for younger women.

While I was ill last month, I watched Raise the Red Lantern. Read a description of the movie and the criticism about 'Confusion Ethics' here. The wives depicted in the movie have value only as bearers of male children.

What was the point of educating me if I were to quit (paid, market) work now? What is the point of educating my daughter? Why go through this charade cycle if our only value to society is when we bear a male child/future worker? (Hopefully, one that shares our spatial and analytical reasoning skills.)

iPod U

I read the LA Times story about university lectures available for free from several universities. Apparently, the top rockstar at iPod U is UC Berkeley's philosophy professor, Hubert Dreyfus. Philosophy 6: Man, God and Society in Western Literature is the most popular lecture series.

That brings back memories. Dreyfus' picture in the LAT story shows his hair is gray now. The reading list is as I remembered. Back then, I was a 17 year old engineering major swamped with lectures, labs, and weekly theoretical problem sets and practical labs (with reports!) for each of my 3 other classes in math, chemistry and computer science. I didn't give the assigned reading for Philosophy 6 the close reading that I gave my technical classes.

Also, I found the vocabulary of the humanities professors and TAs esoteric. I'd never heard anyone use the phrase, 'paradigm shift' before that class. I recall having to look up paradigm in the dictionary because the usage didn't square with my understanding of the meaning of the word paradigm that I learned in science classes. When I approached my philosophy TA for help, she might as well have been speaking a foreign language. Then I asked the professor after class. Again, unintelligible. (Science and philosophy are two disciplines divided by a common language. LOL)

Maybe, now that I have more life experience under my belt, I can try again to understand his lectures. There is enough room on my iPod to download the entire 29 lecture series. I still have the old class reader. (During my stuff diet inventory of my books, I found my old philosophy and history readers from college.)

Iris has been asking all sorts of existential questions lately. She is obsessed with Greek mythology. She thinks the world would be a better place if people believed in gods instead of a single god again. She needs to read more about creation myths around the world. I just happen to have that in one of my old readers. See, you never know when you are going to need the old baggage, impedimenta, that you save. Hmm, I can give her my old Latin textbooks, too.

Aside:
Many people assume that Iris is named after the flower. After all, I grow several types of irises in the garden. Additionally, many girls are named after flowers, myself included (but in Chinese). That is not quite the whole story.

Mark and I were sitting in the dining room when he asked me what those pretty purple flowers were in the backyard. I said they were irises. Didn't he remember from the time we bicycle toured around Mendocino and Sonoma counties in the spring? He asked me the name of the blue flowers by the road and I pointed out the characteristics of irises to him. (He also didn't know that those pretty yellow flowers were the California state flower, the golden poppy. It is a mystery how he graduated from high school in California.)

Anyway, he said, "Iris is a girls' name. I think she is a Grecian or Roman goddess. Let's look it up." So we ran upstairs (he ran, I waddled) and pulled the dogeared copy of Edith Hamilton's Mythology off the shelf. Iris is the Grecian goddess of the rainbow, a wonderful name for a multi-racial child.

When she was old enough to ask how she got her name, we told her about the goddess. She was enthralled, reading every Greek mythology book she could get her hands on. In addition to playing princesses and fairies, Iris likes to direct her playmates in 'gods and goddesses' play. But first, they have to decide if they are playing Greek or Roman. I asked her the difference. She says they have to use different names and the stories get a little garbled in the Roman version which gives them more freedom to improvise. Oh.

What is Lego class?

Ann asked why Iris needs to attend a class to put together Legos. That's a good question. I thought I would show you some samples of stuff she puts together in her weekly class at Mr. B's Bricks.

Last Spring, she did the simple machines series of experiments using an older version of the Mindstorms set. The Lego didactic materials are very impressive. The kids are given a booklet that shows, step-by-step, how to put together a project. At some steps, there are little characters on the side (like in IKEA assembly instructions) jumping up and down (pay attention) or scratching their head (what is going on here?).

When she reaches those steps, the instructor walks over to discuss the things she is supposed to notice or try. (I imagine the teachers' manual goes into more detail than the student booklets.) Then, the kids are given a problem that is not shown in the students' booklet and left alone to work out a solution. Whenever my schedule allows it, I stay for class and work independent of Iris. Let's just say the puzzles are challenging. One time, I got a different solution than the 7 year old kid beside me--and it took me longer. Mr. B said that the boy came up with the most common solution and I came up with the second most common solution. (See what I mean about the teacher's manual?)

Anyway, the teachers are around and available, but do not interfere with the kids' exploration. They help only when asked or if the kids are ready for the 'challenge' problem/puzzle.

You can see some of the projects on my Google videos page. Look for the ones uploaded last spring.

In the current Fall session, she is using the MSM Motorized Simple Machines kit.


This is a pumpkin for Halloween and a project that teaches the relationship between gear ratios and torque. I have a longer video in which Iris explains how the gear ratios determine how hard it is to stop the turntable. Alas, it is over 100 Mb and I can't upload it. It is really cute.


Here is a partially built conveyor belt.

Eventually, the kids will graduate up to the Lego robotics kit. They will learn how to write computer programs that control the robots. The kids can also join a competitive Lego team. I wasn't aware before this that there was a competitive Lego league.

Most of the pupils at Mr. B's Bricks are boys. When I pick Iris up early from daycare on Fridays for Lego, one of Iris' (girl) school friends keeps saying how much she wants to go, too. I asked her dad if she could take the class the same time as Iris. I even offered to walk the girl to her house after class.

The father scoffed, "$100 to watch a kid play with Legos? What a ripoff!" ($100 for 8 semi-private 1-hour lessons with individually tailored curricula.) Then he got into his Lexus and drove off. I drive a Toyota (and Mark rides a bike), which is why we have money left over to pay Mr. B.

Where the time goes

I put this in the comments for Other, but decided to repeat and expound upon it in a separate post.

A decade ago, when we bought in this neighborhood, our local public school used to get very respectable math scores and above average language scores. It is a very mixed neighborhood in both racial and economic terms. You can see section 8 apartments and million dollar + townhouses existing on the same block. Back then, about 1/4 of the children in the school qualified for subsidized school lunches. About the same number were English learners and the children spoke 30 different languages at home. (These statistics were gleaned from a variety of school websites when we were home shopping.)

Our neighbors said that the principal had been there forever and she was beloved by kids, parents and teachers. She supported multi-age classrooms and clustering. The earlier test scores showed that the school was reasonably effective, given the diverse backgrounds of the families here. It certainly wasn't failing. We thought that would be a fine place to send our future children.

Just as Iris was about to start school, the principal retired. Her replacement did not last a year. The district also went through 3 superintendents in 2 years. The newest superintendent's first hire was the new principal of Iris' school. He was to be the model of the new vision for the district. Gone were the combined first and second grade classrooms (where we had hoped Iris would spend just one year before advancing to third grade). Gone were 'elitist' programs such as gifted programs.

In answer to Mardel's question about how they fill the day, here's a synopsis. (This schedule is my recollection of the schedule they handed out at the beginning of the year and may be off slightly. But you get the gist.)

They have PE from 8:15 to 8:30. Since test scores show a 'weakness' in language arts, the first ~3 hours of the day, when the children are freshest, are devoted to language arts. (There is a 15 minute recess in the middle of that.) Lunch is 11:15 to noon.

After lunch, the children get 45 minutes of math 3 times a week. Never mind the research that shows people are more receptive to learning math in the early morning. The other two days, they go to the computer lab and play some kind of math computer game. Then they get 15 minutes of silent reading time. After another recess, the kids get 45 minutes of other.

Wednesdays are early dismissal so the kids go home or to daycare after silent reading. Fridays, they have library period. Another of those days, they get 30 minutes of music. Once a month, they get art. Birthdays are also celebrated in the other time slot. So they get history, social science or plain old science for 45 minutes about twice a week.

Science is tested only in the later grades so they start devoting more time to it in 5th grade.

This is how science becomes an optional after school activity, dependent on a volunteer parent and funded by the PTA. Other parent volunteers run a chess club one afternoon a week. Chess and an after school dance class (fee charged) conflict and Iris chose dance.

I have written about this earlier in The metrics are running the insane asylum and Who is keeping score and why? We really need to pay attention to the shortcomings of the metrics. I saw nothing wrong with the earlier test scores. According to the other parents, the test scores rose, not because the kids are learning so much more, but because the kids are drilled on them so much. In fact, they are learning less than before.

But the language arts scores did increase slightly under the new methods. The math scores have been stagnant. In other schools in our district, the math scores have already started to go down. Parents are complaining about the obsession with language arts and the disappearance of everything else. Parents are pulling their kids out of the public schools, especially the gifted kids.

In the mean time, gentrification continues. The newcomers are wealthier and presumably better educated than the ones driven out. The number of students receiving subsidized lunches has been halved. It should surprise no one if average language arts test scores increase when kids that aren't fluent in English are replaced with kids who are. The only meaningful statistic would be a 'growth model' of progress for the individual children.

I read that, in some wealthier districts, test scores are starting to decline because parents are pulling high-performing kids out of public schools. Many kids aren't learning anything and the parents can afford to leave. This leaves the neediest kids even more isolated and worse off. Is this what they mean by school reform? If the intent of NCLB is to disgust parents to the point that it erodes support for public schools, then it has succeeded.

Other

Other stands for everything that isn't on the standardized tests mandated by No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Because there is so little time for science in Iris' elementary school, a concerned mother volunteered her time to run an after school science program once a week. The PTA gave her $800 for materials. There are so many things she would like to do with the children, but she doesn't have enough time or money. (BTW, this is the last year she can do this. Next year, she has to go back to the paid labor market to support her family.)

Interest was so high; last year, she had to divide the kids up into two groups, each attending on alternate weeks. Even then, the groups were too large for her to handle. This year, she limited the kids further by dividing them up by grade. Different grades attend in rotation. So kids get science in 45 minute sessions, every other week, for 1-2 months. If I do the math right, that is about 2-3 hours a year per child that signs up. About 2/3 of the children at the school sign up.

Art is also a monthly activity, run by volunteers. One parent per classroom, usually a mother, attends a one hour training class led by an art teacher. That parent volunteer than goes into the classroom and repeats the lesson with the children. It is done during the regular school day, unlike science.

Apparently, our local school is not the only one that has relegated science to an optional, volunteer led activity. I recently received an email from sciencekit.com about their after school science kits. They have a whole page dedicated to helping parents find funding sources for after school science classes!

Do we sound like a nation that is serious about tackling the complex scientific and technological challenges that face us? Bake sales for science?

NCLB. RIP.

Public vs Private Schools

Reading Learning to Conform by Fredrick Kunkle gave me a shock of recognition. Their family's experiences and ours are eerily similar, even though we are on opposite coasts.

Mark and I still don't know if we did the right thing by moving Iris from a private to a public school. She was perfectly happy and well-served educationally by the private school. The public school 2 blocks away appears to be obsessed with testing standards to the exclusion of all else. Iris is extremely bored academically and hasn't made any close friends at her new school. She still mainly plays on weekends with kids she met at her old school and the daycare center before that.

But, when she was at the private school, there were uncomfortable conversations about why she had been to Hawaii only once and not every year like other kids. Why didn't she have a nanny? Why didn't we have a second house? Why is our house so small? Were we poor? Why did I have to work? Why don't I go back to the daddy store and get a rich one so I can be a stay at home mom (SAHM)?

The old school was a strange atmosphere. Several of the family's were embroiled in divorces that lasted much longer than the marriages. These are the divorces that lawyer's salivate over. There were tens of millions (or possibly a hundred million, depending on stock prices) at stake. This was not an appropriate milieu for a child of two scientists working at a non-profit. I just flinch every time I think about the carbon footprint of some of the families at that school.

There is an upside to public schools. With the money we saved, we upgraded an occasional babysitter to a two night a week nanny. With the extra help around the house, my health improved. (We were so sad when she moved away for college.) Best of all, no more mommies with breast implants to contend with.

Halloween Time Crunch

Sandy Banks wants to know if there is an equivalent "bah, humbug" expression for Halloween. So would I. I hate sugar holidays, especially ones that fall a mere days before Iris' birthday.

Try preparing to throw a kid's birthday party in the week leading up to Halloween. Line up with the crowds of people, trying to enter the party supply stores. Don't say that we should have prepared in advance. You try bugging people to get their the RSVPs in by an early deadline.

Iris pestered me about decorating for Halloween. I told her that maybe we can arrange for her to be adopted by our next door neighbors who decorate for all the holidays. She didn't find it funny.

Store bought costumes are so cheaply made and tacky, despite their inflated prices. Plus, I worry about exploitation. (This is no idle worry as the recent Gap fiasco proved.) This year, I dispensed with all guilt. I bought Iris a flimsy witch costume from a dance supply store in Westwood. I also bought her a long-sleeved black t-shirt to wear underneath it for warmth.

This year, I will live vicariously by reading the blog of a woman who is sewing a fairy costume inspired by Madeleine Vionnet and the book, “In the Realm of the Never Fairies, The Secret World of Pixie Hollow”. She does breathtakingly lovely work. She is hand painting silk petals for the dress! Click next at the bottom of each post. So far, she has written 4 posts in the thread.

Instead of throwing a big party, Iris will go to Disneyland with 3 of her best friends on Sunday. Iris will bring cupcakes to her soccer game on Saturday, her birthday; it was our turn to bring snacks anyway. There will be no goodie bags!

Instead of cupcakes in her classroom, I asked her teacher if she would prefer a visit from Kathy's Critters (aka the Bug Lady). Kathy will bring her insect and reptile zoo to her classroom, point out which ones are native and which are exotic, and discuss characteristics that make natives particularly well-adapted for our locale. There will be no sugar in the classroom and Kathy will wrap up just in time for lunch. I need only write a check for the tax-deductible cost.

(The district has no money for this kind of enrichment activity. In fact, they have no time for science because they spend 3 hours each day drilling for the reading and writing tests and 45 minutes for math. That leaves little time (30-45 minutes per day) and no money for art, music, history, geography, social science, or plain old science. One short weekly music lesson was saved because of the correlation between music and higher math test scores. Art is now a once a month and rushed activity, led by a volunteer docent mom.)

Well, the weekend is a little more hectic than I let on. We are hosting 4 family members in town for Iris' birthday. We will hold some sort of family dinner on Saturday night. Iris has informed us what kind of cake she expects.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I caught the cold going around. That puts me off my drug regimen once again. In addition, I lost my voice. About twice a year, I catch an infection bad enough to set off a cascade of auto-immune symptoms in my throat. It would be laryngitis and a sore throat in a normal person, but I am not normal. It usually takes 3 weeks, 21 days (I keep track), before I can talk again. Once, my throat swelled up so badly that I had to go in for IV fluids, antibiotics and powerful painkillers. The doctor said I was this close from asphyxiation.

That time, they had been watching the situation for a week. They couldn't give me steroids to bring down the inflammation because that would have dragged out the infection. Yet, they couldn't keep me in the hospital because that is a dangerous place for people with compromised immune systems. Medicine is an art, not a science. It was horrible, but I am not sure anyone could have done anything different that would have been better. Well, maybe they could have given me the good painkillers earlier. ;-P

Of course I am on the schedule to speak at an upcoming satellite health meeting in 3 weeks. Gotta rest. On the bright side, silence actually makes me more productive at work.

Today, I kick back in bed with tea with honey and a good book.

The Metrics are Running the Insane Asylum

James Watson really stuck his foot in his mouth. Much ink and pixels has been spilled about what he allegedly said and meant (he says he was misquoted or quoted out of context).

Even if he did say the quotes in the Sunday Times, I think the professional pundits are missing something important.

He says that he is “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”, and I know that this “hot potato” is going to be difficult to address. His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”. He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of colour, because “there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don’t promote them when they haven’t succeeded at the lower level”. He writes that “there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so”.

A test score gap is not the same thing as an intelligence gap. On what basis do we believe that these tests actually measure "intelligence"? What is intelligence anyway and is it measureable? Why blame the people who score low and not the test makers?

When a professor at Berkeley gave an exam in which the scores were mostly clustered around a lower point than he usually aimed for, he apologized to the class. He said that it showed he had not taught us well, and he had not designed the test well. We recovered some of the material which the class had struggled with in the exam. Then he wrote another exam and had several graduate students take the exam to make sure that the wording on the second test was clear. After refinement, he adminstered the second test to the undergraduates.

What makes an exam good in his eyes? First, it should cover understanding of the material. Second, he believed that the test should be that happy medium of difficulty that created a spread in the test scores. If the scores were all clustered around 30-40%, he couldn't sort the strong from the weak students. He aimed for a Gaussian (aka normal aka bell curve) distribution with an average of 70% and about 10% of the class above 90%.

That got me thinking about exams as a reflection of the test maker instead of the test takers. If a test does not sufficiently spread out the scores, does it mean that the test is not sufficiently exploring the differences between the test takers?

This is of particular interest to me as a woman in science. Much has been made about the gender differences in standardized test scores, especially in the mathematical part of the tests. Women score lower than men in the math part of the SAT and earn higher grades in college. If the SAT is supposed to be as predictor of success in college, then something is wrong with the test.*

On IQ tests, both genders have about the same mean score, but the spread is much larger for men than women. This is used as a justification for the low representation of women in math and science. In general, people in these fields come from the higher 'tails' of the distribution. If there are fewer women in these tails, then the low representation of women in math and science is a reflection of a natural disparity in aptitude instead of subtle (or not so subtle) discrimination in the culture. (Remember Larry Summers?)

Have you ever read a movie or book review which said that the female characters were "flat"? That is, the male writer or movie maker had too weak of an understanding of females to create three-dimensional female characters? Why isn't the same criticism leveled at standardized test makers that are flattening out the differences between females in their scoring schema?

The Atlantic Monthly has run several excellent articles about the history and culture of testing. Read The Structure of Success, The Great Sorting and Lemann on Testing.

Historically, the tests were designed by white men for other white men. If non-whites and females do not score as well as white men, is that the fault of the test-takers or the test-makers? Recall that, not so long ago, people used to say that Asians are genetically inferior because we did not score as well as whites on IQ tests. A generation later, Asians outscore whites. Did our genetics change in just one generation? No, the tests were translated so we could take the tests in our native languages. ;-) OK, there were some other changes in nutrition, schooling and economic gains.

I have written quite a bit about school testing under the Education tag. In particular, Who's keeping score and why? has many links about school testing.

* One argument for the GPA difference is that women more frequently major in the humanities than in engineering or the sciences. Average GPAs in the humanities are significantly higher than in science and engineering. Well, the differences in GPA persist even when controlled for differences in average GPA between majors. In fact, a MIT study in the 1980s showed that, for MIT students with the same high school GPA to earn the same MIT GPA, the boy needed to score 150 points higher on the SAT. It is safe to assume that the girls (and boys) at MIT are all majoring in science and engineering.

Back to why metrics can lead us astray. Let's look at college rankings.

It is October which means it is time to rank colleges. When I look at their metrics, I can't help but think about the ways that higher education has changed in the US in the last twenty years or so since ranking mania hit. Look at the methodology for the US News and World Reports rankings.

1. Student selectivity accounts for 15% of the score. The more applicants schools attract, the more they can reject, making them appear more selective. 25-75 percentile SAT scores also are counted. That is why schools are increasingly obsessed with applicants' SAT scores. Many schools are buying them by giving "merit" scholarships to students with high SAT scores. Thus, a test score that correlates most highly with parental income is being used as a basis to reward students who are least likely to have financial barriers to college. This reduces the amount available for need-based financial aid, further increasing the affordability gap for students from low and middle income families.
   
2. Faculty resources account for another 20% of the score. The two largest factors are faculty compensation (35% of the 20%) and class size (30% of the 20%). Percent full-time faculty only account for 5% of the 20%. A school can increase their ranking by using more part-time non-tenure track faculty at slave wages to bring down their class sizes. They can use part of that cost savings to increase the amount they pay their "super-star" faculty that perform research and teach very little. Voila! They have become a "better school". No wonder the nationwide percentage of college faculty that is tenure track has fallen below 50%. Do part-time "freeway flyer" faculty teaching 2-3 classes at several schools provide a better experience for the students? It doesn't matter at all in this ranking system.
3. Last, but not least, let's look at $. Financial resources and alumni giving account for 10% and 5% of the total score respectively. The larger the endowment, the higher the score. A generation ago, school endowments were used to subsidize the cost of an education, either by lowering the tuition for all students, or by giving scholarships for low and middle income students. The ranking gives no reward for financial accessibility. Is it any wonder that college endowments and tuition have soared in tandem? The income alone from Harvard's endowment, ~$30 Billion, is sufficient to provide free tuition for all their students. Will they do that? Of course not. Having the largest endowment gives bragging rights and boosts their rankings. Furthermore, arch-rival Yale's endowment, ~$22 Billion, might surpass theirs. (Managing college endowments is now a significant industry covered by the press as if they were horse races. Why doesn't the press ever question why the endowments have grown to such staggering size as annual tuition at selective colleges rises above 100% of the median family income?)
   

Further reading about college admissions:
The Big Picture The Atlantic Monthly covers college admissions in Fall 2004.
Atlantic Unbound interview with James Fallows

We give in and go with the flow.
So, if we hold such metrics in such contempt, why did we recently sign Iris up for a standardized test? We want to send her to the Center for Talented Youth camp next summer. It is a camp for gifted children. We wanted her to be challenged intellectually and to meet other kids like herself. The only way for her to get into the program is for her to take one of several standardized "intelligence" tests and to score high. Can you believe that the application deadline for camp in June 2008 is December 1, 2007?

I don't want to give the impression that I am against metrics in general. I spend my professional life exploring data and devising metrics to help pull out the important stories in the data. Because of my experiences, I have become acutely aware that poorly selected metrics can skew or miss the story. We need to be careful about the use of metrics. And, we should change the metrics now and then to stay one step ahead of those who would game the metrics.

I must get to sleep. I am taking a class with Cindy Rinne tomorrow.

Back to School

She selected her outfit for the first day of school months ago. She wore turquoise socks with coral mary janes. She is a natural born Fauvist.


I did not position that man in the Cal cap. I never met him before the first day of school. Their family recently moved here from Japan.

Iris was placed in a second grade classroom along with two boys who will be doing third grade math with her. Her teacher was not able to get an aide for the three children who are ahead. So she wondered if Iris could help the boys while she was busy with the rest of the kids. I provided some math curriculum to get them started. It just takes too long for the school to order stuff. I have no idea why.

Old News

I came across this old Boston Globe article from 2005 recently. NSF reported that, of all women who earned doctorates in science (and mathematics) between 1997-2001, more attended Berkeley as undergraduates than any other school. Jenny Harrison is quoted extensively.

All of the top 10 schools, with the exception of Cornell and Harvard, were also state flagship universities. But raw numbers do not tell the whole story. Some schools have larger undergraduate populations than others. For instance, a higher percentage of Caltech ( ~250 undergraduates per class) graduates might earn doctorates than Cal (~4-5000 undergraduates per class).

Mark wanted to know the comparable rankings for men. I recall an earlier study that showed successful scientists were most likely to have attended state flagship universities as undergrads. A few private schools such as MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Cornell, Northwestern rounded out the list but the Ivies were not hotbeds for science. (Cornell is both an Ivy and a state agricultural college.)

That said, there is something special about Berkeley. The undergraduate populations of other state flagship universities, especially the large Midwestern schools, overshadow Berkeley's. Yet Berkeley produces more people who go on to earn PhDs in science and engineering than other larger schools.

I am not a sociologist, but I think that the heavy debt loads incurred by students at the Ivies would scare students away from a career path as risky and low-paid (relative to other professions with fewer years of training) as science.

Read Cream of the Crop: The Impact of Elite Education in the Decade After College
Jenny Harrison's impact upon my career

No Child Gets Ahead

Susan Goodkin and David G. Gold wrote an Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post, The Gifted Children Left Behind. They assert that No Child Left Behind harms gifted children in that the schools devote nearly all their resources to getting kids that might pass the standards, but are not guaranteed to pass them without a great deal of drilling. The drilling bores the gifted and nearly gifted students to tears and kills their love of learning.

Nothing left to say except, I agree. That squares with my experience with our local public school, principal and superintendent. (The teachers have been great, despite getting no support from the district.)

The disturbing thing is, I think my local school district wants us to pull our daughter out of public school and put her back in private school. Why else would they stonewall us? Why else would they promise in October to buy appropriate curriculum materials for her, but deliver them the last week of April? Why would they repeatedly ask her why we put her in public school?

If we follow the growth model, she progressed about 2 months in her first academic year in a public school. We gave them a first-grader that loved school and learning and had mastered skills on average two grade levels ahead (based on their assessment the first week of school). At the end of the school year, they gave us a kid who begged to get out of going to school every morning, was about the same place in math, and had progressed slightly in reading and writing.

I disagree with Half Changed World about the merit of clustering gifted kids together. Some people think it is harmful to the self-image of both the kids identified as gifted (IQ>130) and the ones not. I am sympathetic to this argument. But research has also shown that kids tend to befriend kids within 30 IQ points of each other.

Putting an exceptionally or profoundly gifted (IQ>160) child in a regular classroom is an incredibly alienating and lonely experience for the child. My husband and I only felt normal and accepted when we were in segregated gifted classrooms. Only then, were we free to be ourselves and safe from bullying. We know the difference. Why is it elitist to want to give our daughter the same experience that was given to us?