AISD’s IDEA: Unanswered Questions
To the AISD Board of Trustees:
I have serious concerns with the proposal to partner with IDEA putting charter schools into East Austin. I’m no expert, but in listening and reading I still have three questions that deserve honest discussion before you move forward.
First, what’s wrong, and what’s right, in our Eastside schools? Inadequate yearly progress is a metric, not a reason. Coming from Lee Elementary, we’re blown away by Metz. Mr. Sanhueza is not only the best teacher my daughter’s ever had, he’s the best I’ve ever known. And he’s not alone. These folks are exceptional. I know Metz won’t be directly affected, but have you learned all you can from them? Have you tried to spread the quality you already have in the Eastside? If you can’t identify and explain exceptional from mediocre, how do you know what to preserve and what to replace?
Second, how does IDEA work? What have they figured out? What can they do that we can’t? Curriculum? Teachers? Or, are they simply not educating kids with the most difficulty learning and behaving, thereby improving test scores without even having to increase student performance? Not clear. How will IDEA keep its promise, and at what cost to other priorities such as dual language instruction?
Third, is it right for Austin? At your meeting last month, I heard the frustration, and I also heard how others have placed their hope in charter schools, so why shouldn’t we? Not good enough. Desperation and peer pressure make bad decisions. This is Austin, Texas, and you’re our school board. If you can’t tell us why this is right for Austin, it’s not.
Bottom line: I don’t want to feel my district is punting when they should be huddling their team and figuring out how to move down the field. This is Austin, these are our kids, and we deserve better.
By Luke M. Muszkiewicz
Public comment at AISD Board of Trustees Meeting on 12/12/2011
Audio for Maurice Sendak is now available. (Slideshow of images from Bumble-Ardy here)
Source: NPR
The high cost to self-employed workers and small businesses of the private, employer-based health care system in place in the United States may act as a significant deterrent to small start-up companies, an experience not shared by entrepreneurs in countries with universal access to health care.
Obama’s Job Speech
Good speech, President Obama. Especially the part having nothing to do with policy where you ask us all to simply do better, to work for an America deserving of our legacy. Because despite the rhetoric, politicians don’t create jobs, invent, or teach. We do. But most of us benefit from leadership, and for that I thank you. Technically speaking, I’m all for cutting employer-paid payroll taxes — I buy that that makes it easier to employ, but it is sad that increasing top tax brackets is off the table. Historically speaking, there is simply no correlation between top income tax rates and job growth, prosperity, etc.
What’s high school for?
Perhaps we could endeavor to teach our future the following:
- How to focus intently on a problem until it’s solved.
- The benefit of postponing short-term satisfaction in exchange for long-term success.
- How to read critically.
- The power of being able to lead groups of peers without receiving clear delegated authority.
- An understanding of the extraordinary power of the scientific method, in just about any situation or endeavor.
-How to persuasively present ideas in multiple forms, especially in writing and before a group.
-Project management. Self-management and the management of ideas, projects and people.
-Personal finance. Understanding the truth about money and debt and leverage.
-An insatiable desire (and the ability) to learn more. Forever.
-Most of all, the self-reliance that comes from understanding that relentless hard work can be applied to solve problems worth solving.
Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.
(via nprfreshair)
Source: nefffy
Gordon Matta-Clark’s Small Graffiti: Truck Fragment
In other words, when we think we’re reasoning, we may instead be rationalizing. Or to use an analogy offered by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt: We may think we’re being scientists, but we’re actually being lawyers. Our ‘reasoning’ is a means to a predetermined end—winning our ‘case’—and is shot through with biases. They include ‘confirmation bias,’ in which we give greater heed to evidence and arguments that bolster our beliefs, and ‘disconfirmation bias,’ in which we expend disproportionate energy trying to debunk or refute views and arguments that we find uncongenial.
It’s sad, but it’s also … great, really. Imagine if you’d seen everything good, or if you knew about everything good. Imagine if you really got to all the recordings and books and movies you’re ‘supposed to see.’ Imagine you got through everybody’s list, until everything you hadn’t read didn’t really need reading. That would imply that all the cultural value the world has managed to produce since a glob of primordial ooze first picked up a violin is so tiny and insignificant that a single human being can gobble all of it in one lifetime. That would make us failures, I think.
