Apt. 11D

Spreadin' Love 537

January blahs? Good golly, yes. Grey skies are staring at me from the windows that surround my desk. I need to pull myself together and get to work.  A quick scan of the morning's headlines. 

A new study indicates that small, wealthy colleges aren't educating kids better than larger, public schools. 

Can decor save a marriage? 

I'm fascinated by the rising price of art. 

 

Spreadin' Love 536

I didn't spend a lot of time writing today. I had to recover from a particularly horrible special education meeting on Tuesday. Lunch with my sister and lots of lazy reading on the sofa happened. I have a quick window of time before I have to figure out dinner and get Jonah ready for a band concert. Some links for the lazy reading afternoon:

Did Clinton close the book on Bengazi?

A terrible account of being cyber-stalked. The good news is that it leads to a book deal. 

The close relationship between an editor and the writer. 

Bill and Hillary are looking for a home on the Hamptons. Didn't anyone tell them that the Hamptons are out, and the Catskills are in? 

An American Girl doll's life in a New York City library. 

How to deal with a mansplainer in Hillary .GIFs. 

Glad that more attention is going to improving the four year college graduation rate. 

The first editorial that I've ever read that discussed public pooping. 

AP Classes On Trial

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a quick link to an article in the New York Times that reported that Darmouth College had stopped accepting the credits for high school AP classes. I added a quick "good," after the link. A friend has been grilling me about my reaction to the article, and we've had an interesting back and forth about the benefits of AP classes. I thought I would open up the debate on the blog. 

I have no direct experience with AP classes. My kids are too young for them, and my high school only offerred AP Biology when I was in school. My reaction came from the perspective of a former college professor.

I am skeptical whether a high school class would have the same rigor and expectations of a college class. Elite high schools might provide the equivilent of a college class, but there is too much variation in high schools across the country. I also thought that these classes did not benefit the student, who would skip necessary introductory classes in college and be unprepared for the requirements of upper level college classes. 

My friend thought that AP classes helped students control college costs. His own experiences with AP classes were very positive, and he felt that they were the equivilent of an introductory college class. 

Curious what the Apt. 11D gang thinks about this. 

Spreadin' Love 535

I really do need to read George Saunders. Adrian Chen at Gawker demands that he writes a novel already. 

If you squint, this infographic looks like a New York skyline. 

You are going to die. 

A history of Vogue's Tone Deaf Editorials. 

Now colleges are producing too many elementary school teachers, too. What next? Do we have too many philsophers?

We're Better Than We Thought

Ugh. I meant to write about this paper and then forgot. Glad that Derek did it. 

Derek Thompson in the Atlantic wrote about a new study by Martin Carnoy and Richard Rothstein that found that when student data is broken down by class, our comparisons with other nations improve dramatically. 

When you break down student performance by social class, a more complicated, yet more hopeful, picture emerges, highlighted by two pieces of good news. First, our most disadvantaged students have improved their math scores faster than most comparable countries. Second, our most advantaged students are world-class readers.

Have Fun Storming The Castle!

From New York magazine: 

On an Australia to New Zealand flight, passenger Wynand Mullins wore a T-shirt with a name-tag graphic that read Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die. While the flight was boarding, a flight attendant asked Mullins if he could change his shirt, as it was making some of his fellow passengers ... not nervous, but maybe a little bit concerned. 

Inaugural Hangover

Am I the only Obama voter, who was seriously underwhelmed by the Inauguration? 

The inauguration felt like a Super Bowl half time show, complete with lip syncing singers and diamond dripping celebrities. A congo line? Really? 

The celebrity spectacle is perhaps all that is left, because everything from the speeches to the commentary spoke of despair. Like we've given up making changes. We're just biding time until this lame duck leaves and Hillary steps in. Four years is a long time to just hang out at a party. 

Time to put the dancing shoes away, Mr.  President, and get to work. 

Pensions for Public Employees

Eduwonk has an excellent list of the top issues in education policy. One of the big debates surrounds teachers' pensions. Rotherham writes,

The sustainability of teacher pensions has emerged as a major fiscal issue for states.  A few years ago the warnings about pensions were coming from just a few wonks, now policymakers in most states are paying attention to an overall pension shortfall of more than half a trillion dollars (double that when health care is factored in).  At the same time there is growing awareness of how the current pension systems shortchange many teachers – especially mobile ones and career shifters – and contribute to America’s broader retirement security problems.  Even absent a headline-grabbing fiscal crisis pensions will make news this year as policymakers try to sort out how to meet the different goals of fiscal sustainability, adequate retirement benefits for workers, and adapting relatively static pension systems to the more dynamic teacher labor market today.

The issue of pensions, not just for teachers, but all public employees, is a big issue here in New Jersey. The state has failed to contribute funds to the pension program, and many fear that the state will never be able to meet its obligations. There's more on the state's screwed up fiscal situation and its debt related to pensions here.  

Talk to anyone, even the most left-leaning voter in this state, about this topic, and the conversation quickly gets bitter. Most people love their local teachers and want them properly compensated, but the high property taxes and the behavior of top administrators makes many seeing red.

There is a suplus  of top education administrators in this state. Towns, which are unusally tiny compared to the rest of the country, each have their own superintendents who are responsible for two or three schools. Some towns are so small that they don't even have their own schools, but still have a superintendent. Those superintendents receive large salaries. Think $200,000. When they retire, they are entitled to their full salary and then can take on another position where they recieve another 6 figure salary. Local police chief can retire at age 55; some bring in $300,000. They are also able to double dip. 

Until the situation improves, we are going to continue to have a Republican governor in this state. 

I'm curious what my non-New Jersey readers think about this situation. 

Disruption in Education

Education is changing in a million different ways right now. When big change happens, there are winners and losers. The trouble is that I can't easily identify who's who. I'm not sure where it's all going. 

Read more about the impact of technology in education at Wired and MIT Technology Review. 

Haunted By High School

I chatted with one of Jonah's classmates at a neighborhood party a few weeks ago. She reported in teenage up-speak, "Jonah is semi-popular!" She and Jonah and all of their peers are infinitely aware of the pecking order at school. I cringed and had a flashback to my own high school. I had a foot in the brainy clique and the artsy clique and the sporty clique, so I wasn't a unhappy loner, but that whole experience of ranking still makes me shudder. 

At lunch with some friends the other day, I spoke with one woman who confessed that she wasn't a great student in school and went to a local community college when she graduated. She looked down, like the shame was still fresh. 

Studies are now showing that the frames that we find ourselves in high school have long term implications. The popular kids end up making more money. The princesses are passive. We have to relive high school through Facebook. 

New York Magazine has a great article, which sums up a bunch of the latest research. 

What was your label in high school? Has the label stuck?