Ken Nelson

 
Aerial shot of Kansas City schools

Between 1985 and 2003 Federal Judges took over Kansas City, Missouri and channeled 2 billion dollars to the school district. 

Not only did they double property taxes to pay this huge bill, but they imposed an income tax surcharge on everyone who lived or worked in the city.

…

Despite this massive effort, litigation failed either to improve the quality of education or to reduce racial isolation. Test scores continued to drop, and the percentage of minority students continued to rise. Eventually, black parents—who had long opposed the court’s heavy emphasis on "magnet schools" designed to draw whites into the school system—insisted upon a return to neighborhood schools.

Yesterday, the district voted a plan to shut down half their schools and fire 700 of their 3000 employees.

Why, exactly, do we think the Feds can run our health care any better?

This is another in the “What I’d do if I were Governor” posts…

My preferred way to handle schooling is to have parents pay for it and require children attend til age 18 or until they pass an adult competency test.

Pretty simple plan isn’t it?  I like it. And guess what… I’m living by it now! I pay for my two kids private and home schooled education. And… so you know, I also pay directly for about 8 other kids education that aren’t even mine. And… so you know, I also pay indirectly for a few million other kid that I never even heard of.

I like my plan so far, except for the part where I pay for a bureaucracy to mishandle millions of other people’s kids. What I buy directly I value more and monitor more.

Below I’ll answer your inane questions…

But Ken… I’ve got 8 kids and can’t afford it. 

Not my problem.  Find a scholarship. Take a loan. Adopt out some of them.

But Ken… my property taxes are just $800, it’s cheaper. 

You pay taxes your whole life. Your kids only go to school 12 years. Distribute your 12 years of schooling over your adult life and it beats property taxes. If you have a cash flow problem, choose a cheaper school or borrow and spread out the payments. And since it isn’t a government bureaucracy it will be cheaper than per pupil spending is now.

But Ken… it benefits everybody, so everybody should pay

Under my scheme everybody does pay. Very few people don’t have children, and I’d be glad to hit childless adults for a scholarship fund if it makes you happy.

But Ken… I value varsity sports.

Good. Pay for it yourself.

But Ken…. question interrupted

Look shut up, I don’t care what you say you value.  You clearly don’t value schooling if you want somebody else to decide how it is given to your kids. This is OBVIOUS. So shut up, or go back to school and learn to think.  They are YOUR kids, you should DECIDE what their schooling is.  Do you let somebody else dress them? Feed them? Discipline them?  Get real, schooling need be assisted by experts in certain areas (algebra, so forth), but you need to be in charge.

Apparently, men, are the hot commodity at colleges these days:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/fashion/07campus.html?pagewanted=all

Jayne Dallas, a senior studying advertising who was seated across the table, grumbled that the population of male undergraduates was even smaller when you looked at it as a dating pool. “Out of that 40 percent, there are maybe 20 percent that we would consider, and out of those 20, 10 have girlfriends, so all the girls are fighting over that other 10 percent,” she said.

Related… the marriage super market.

You see this in LDS culture here in Utah. The number of observant LDS women is more than observant LDS young men. Young men, who are active and return from successful missions,  date and marry much higher quality mates than you would otherwise expect for them.  To paraphrase Joe Jackson, Yes… she really is going out with him.

Kudos to Sen Buttars

Chris Buttars, a state Senator from West Jordan, UT has proposed controversial things before, largely related to social issues. But today, he really impressed me with his thoughts on education reform to save money.

He wants to get rid of the 12th grade:

Buttars argued before the Public Education Appropriations Subcommittee on Monday that 12th grade is essentially a wasted year, with high school seniors either already taking college courses, or just playing around. The students who are ready would move on, while some type of remedial system would be available for those who aren’t.

I don’t know the merits of the proposal. I instinctively like it because graduation would be based on skill, not time in the system.  But I’m happy to have it studied, honestly, before implementation.

But what I really like is his no sacred cows approach.  Naturally the education establishment hates the idea – which is a plus in its favor in my book.

You ought to read it sometime.

George Bush and John McCain, supposed “conservatives”, deserve our nation’s eternal ire and scorn, for foisting the No Child Left Behind Act on us.

As with most failed government programs, it never dies, it just provide a framework to blow out the money in ever higher amounts.

Now the Obama administration wants in on the fun, as they propose to change NCLB to be the money funnel they want it to be.  This means doing what the teachers unions want, and you can rest assured the children and education aren’t at all the focus

The Federal Government has no Constitutional role here. Nor can it play an effective role. This monstrosity needs to be killed.

Alas, it won’t be. Like so many other wastes of our money, the special interests (public sector unions) have their hands in our wallets and refuse to take them out.

And no, commenter Carl, this isn’t a “General Welfare” clause thing. That clause doesn’t mean “do whatever the hell you want”.

Math teacher in Brockton, MA 

A teacher at a school in Massachusetts that recently had a school shooting writes into the Boston Globe:

Although this removes potential hostages and makes it nearly impossible for the shooter to acquire preselected targets, it unfairly rewards resourceful children who move to safety off-site more shrewdly and efficiently than others.

Uhmmm… so let me get this right. You are SO interested in fairness that being equally at risk of getting shot matters to you?  A valid procedure that reduces the casualties in a school shooting should not be done because it rewards resourceful children?

Oh… and how about this jewel:

But as a progressive, I would sooner lay my child to rest than succumb to the belief that the use of a gun for self-defense is somehow not in itself a gun crime.

His silly ideals are more important than his child. But he probably doesn’t have a child, so he is quite happy to play roulette with yours.

Wonder who he voted for??

Bjarne Stroustrup, inventor of the C++ programming language, says that universities should focus less on creating new Computer Science (CS) professors and more on developing professional software engineers:

My suggestion is to define a structure of CS education based on a core plus specializations and application areas, aiming eventually at licensing of software artifacts and at least some of the CS professionals who produce them. This might go hand-in-hand with an emphasis on lifelong industry/academia involvement for technical experts.

I disagree emphatically with creating a licensed guild. But the rest I generally agree with.

I regularly meet with the Computer Science faculty of one local college, and I’m about to join the curriculum committee of a computer science department at another Utah college as well.  I have strong opinions, formed in the forge of wasted money on failed software projects, on what should be taught in a computer science degree.

Stroustrup pegs it:

It would contain much of the established CS curriculum—algorithms, data structures, machine architecture, programming (principled), some math (primarily to teach proof-based and quantitative reasoning), and systems (such as operating systems and databases). To integrate that knowledge and to get an idea of how to handle larger problems, every student must complete several group projects (you could call that basic software engineering). It is essential that there is a balance between the theoretical and the practical—CS is not just principles and theorems, and it is not just hacking code.

Basically, I want it hard. And what he proposes sounds a lot like what I had in college.  ESPECIALLY the more math (the hard kind) part because the quantitative reasoning it teaches seems missing from many of the graduates I hire or interview.

So what happened? Where did the rigor go?   Many (most?) of them had cook book calculus as their highest math, never getting into the exotic mind benders like differential equations, or linear methods, that put quantitative hair on your chest.

Computer Science enrollment dropped 70% since I was in school in the early 80’s.  Other paths (Information Systems, Microsoft Network certification for example) into the field caused part of the drop, but also a general recognition that industry would hire you _without_ a degree.  So why spend the time and money?

Lately, the kind of person entering the degree has changed too. They are still “geeks” but many are “gaming geeks” focused on video games.  The geeks of early CS were algorithm/logic geeks – they built puzzles, enjoyed logic, and ultimately built up languages like C++, and operating systems like Unix.  As Stroustrup suggests, for many:

"programming" has become a strange combination of unprincipled hacking and invoking other people’s libraries (with only the vaguest idea of what’s going on).

When I meet with CS faculty, I say "make it hard!”, “challenge them” and make them fix other people’s code.    Because if we are going to have less CS graduates, lets at least make them top notch.

 
I’m off to seek employment for you son!

Despite voting for Obama over 90% of the time, young blacks have depression era unemployment right now.

Joblessness for 16-to-24-year-old black men has reached Great Depression proportions — 34.5 percent in October, more than three times the rate for the general U.S. population.

The story then covers some sob cases which I will ignore because it isn’t surprising that a 24 year old with little job history and on probation for dealing drugs has some trouble finding work….

What I’ll discuss, instead, is what I believe was his main reason for having achieved so little in his 24 years.

And how it happened seems related to this statistic a bit later in the article:

Lower-income white teens were more likely to find work than upper-income black teens, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, and even blacks who graduate from college suffer from joblessness at twice the rate of their white peers.

When I was starting my career as a software engineer, I sent out about 300 resumes. This yielded one interview.  My Dad, however, worked his network and hooked me up with several interviews.  Three of which resulted in job offers.

I imagine the Dad effect is even bigger in construction and with less skilled labor.  Who do you think gets the entry jobs at these industries?  The kids of the Dads that work there, or the kids of their friends, or the friends of their kids.

Black culture has lost the Dad network.  Their culture having replacing fathers with government and cult figures like Obama, young blacks find  themselves at a real disadvantage.  Obama may steal some of my money for you, but he isn’t going to get you a job, nor the skills to progress in a career.  Dads do that.

The 24 year old drug dealer that claims to want to work had no Dad around to teach him and has no Dad out their hawking his virtues – that has to make it a lot harder to find entry level work. 

Dad for Obama was a bad trade.

 
Useless?

This is disturbing but not surprising:

During their first math class at one of CUNY’s four-year colleges, 90% of 200 students tested couldn’t solve a simple algebra problem, the report by the CUNY Council of Math Chairs found. Only a third could convert a fraction into a decimal.

Sandra Stotsky thinks this is because education majors teach math and make math curriculums.

I’m sympathetic to her view but would point out that my wife, with an accounting degree, handily teaches algebra and fraction conversion to our home schooled 12 year old. Anybody who knows it can teach it, if they use an effective teaching method.

It isn’t so much that it is silly education majors designing curriculum, it is that they are silly. Silly mathematicians would make the same mistakes. The key is to do what works, not what you want to work.

Two theories lie behind the educators’ new approach to math teaching: “cultural-historical activity theory” and “constructivism.” According to cultural-historical activity theory, schooling as it exists today reinforces an illegitimate social order. Typical of this mindset is Brian Greer, a mathematics educator at Portland State University, who argues “against the goal of ‘algebra for all’ on the grounds that . . . most individuals in our society do not need to have studied algebra.” According to Greer, the proper approach to teaching math “now questions whether mathematics as a school subject should continue to be dominated by mathematics as an academic discipline or should reflect more fully the range of mathematical activities in which humans engage.” The primary role of math teachers, constructivists say in turn, shouldn’t be to explain or otherwise try to “transfer” their mathematical knowledge to students; that would be ineffective. Instead, they must help the students construct their own understanding of mathematics and find their own math solutions.

Uhmm… bad idea.  Do such professors ask students to ditch the wheel and invent something else?

As to the argument that most people do not need to know how to do algebra in their daily life. I agree. You know them, they wear name tags at work but don’t carry guns.

Even if you don’t use it daily, I want a country loaded with adults that have at some point been intellectually challenged by abstract problems – like algebra.  They may not need the algebra but they will need how their mind works once it can sort out algebra.

A: Crime, high taxes, high costs, nasty traffic, corrupt government, unionized, and bad schools…. 

Q: Why do so many people flee blue states?

 
Just another black culture exploiter

Black leaders like Jesse Jackson need to take a little time off from blaming white people for everything and start stigmatizing single motherhood in the black community, and start teaching that every time a child is born to some poor single mother, it’s a tragedy.

From Amy Alkon on “The Daddy Gap”.

My wife drives our son’s home schooling… but Daddy is in there swinging too.

I might actually respect Barack Obama as “something different” if he used his first black Presidency, and rare “together” black family, to spur change in the culture he isn’t from, but has spent years exploiting and never seriously risked political capitol to fix.

Sometime, when I get back in my blogging groove, I’ll try to find numbers about America’s educational performance factoring OUT blacks.  I recall seeing those stats last year and it really struck home how bad they are doing and how much of the growth of our government depends on their culture’s failure.

Put another way… there really wouldn’t be that many “children left behind” if it weren’t for black culture’s failure.

Is it racist to view it that way?  Some may view raising the point as racist.  I take a risk writing about the topic. But then again, I meet black people that have escaped the clutch of that failed culture. So I know the “race” capable of much more than the culture they are trapped in permits.   Call me a “culturist”, if you must…. I’ll accept that.

Zero tolerance policies of school system bureaucrats put a 1st grader in reform school for a folding fork, knife and spoon combination:

A Delaware first-grader who wanted to eat lunch at school with his favorite camping utensil, a combination of folding fork, knife and spoon, now faces 45 days in the district’s alternative school for troublemakers.

Do not be surprised by the lunacy created when you run a system by and for bureaucrats.

The obvious thing is to not ban anything in particular, but to punish incorrect use.

This is the 3rd day of home schooling Brian (7th grade).

For now we mainly are trying to sort out materials for algebra and science. Until that is sorted out he is proceeding along with algebra book from his former school.

Part of what we learned is that he is actually not as well grounded in the fundamentals needed for algebra as we thought.  I suspected this, but it was masked by the way the he could figure it out on the fly for the Algebra I course in public school.  For instance, yesterday, I asked… “Since I put in the new chip in the truck, I’m getting 13 miles to the gallon. About what percent better is that over the 12 I got before?”.  And he couldn’t solve it.

Fortunately home schooling lets us find holes AND we have the flexibility to turn on a dime and plug the holes.  First we confirmed the suspicion with a placement test and then bought materials to plug the holes. After two or three weeks remedial practicae, he will proceed on with Algebra 1 as planned, only better grounded to succeed.

Home school takes work, but three days into it we remain excited and undaunted.

What entity isn’t forced to get better constantly?

Last night I shopped for a video camera. Initially I went to Best Buy, figuring they would have a good selection and competent advice.  They had 10 or so to choose from, in a range of prices. But 15 minutes of waiting brought no blue shirted helpers.

So… we went to Wal-Mart.  At Wal-Mart we found an ample selection, lower prices, and a helpful associate that knew the cameras and had all the manuals available to answer questions he didn’t know.

Guess where I bought a camera?  

Wal-Mart saw a weakness, interestingly in themselves, information. So they improved their associate training, made information available to them, all while keeping prices low.

And they got my business last night, and the sales of the last 3 LCD TV’s I’ve bought.

I benefitted from Wal-Mart’s competitive drive. Only Best Buy suffered.

After shopping I returned home and found a message from a candidate for the Utah Senate:

How­ever, I don’t want to cut pub­lic edu­ca­tion spend­ing.

And I just had to shake my head that even conservatives entering politics throw out all their day to day experience of the benefits of competition when it comes to things government controls.

Only forcing schools to compete would guarantee improvements. Just shoveling money to them guarantees no quality improvements.

A voucher, good at any school (public, private, or home school) would drive quality up fast – just like the race between Best Buy and Wal-Mart.

Who would cry? I suppose the professionals administering the teachers unions would. Note I exclude teachers from this, because I think their lot would improve dramatically once talent could earn more based on merit not time.

Put another way, I’d love to see Wal-School.

Update: More competition.

Our new school

When we split our time between Utah and Vermont, we planned to home school. We decided, however, that the Montessori school our kids attended in St. George was probably better than we could do with kids of that age.

Our 12 year old son, Brian, entered public school this year because the Montessori stops at 6th grade.  He has attended a public 7th grade since mid August.  And it has largely been a waste of time. He spent the first couple weeks being  indoctrinated in the school and various class “rules”.  He won’t cover new areas in the classes we prioritize (English, Math, Science) for most of this year. In English, it might be two or three years til they reach what he has already done. 

Concerned over academic idling, time spent on material we wouldn’t prioritize (Home Economics, Channel 1, Keyboarding), and the general inconvenience of being tied to a bureaucracy’s rules and schedules, we’ve mulled home schooling for the last couple weeks.

Tonight we held a family meeting where we decided to home school Brian for the 7th grade. Jenny will continue in Montessori.

Utah law makes this relatively simple. Our school system also supports homeschoolers via testing services, allowing involvement with extra curricular activities and even attending classes on a case by case basis.

Thinking it over, I believe we started thinking this way on our RV trip this summer. Wouldn’t it be nice to have the flexibility to do this in the off season, we thought. And wouldn’t a trip to Europe be more comfortable and cheaper without the flood of summer tourists accompanying us?  We saw so many things we would like to go back and see or do that are only available Sept – Jun. 

So off we go. The nation, the world, as our class room.  I’ll report periodically.

Update: This KenNelson.com post WAY back in Jan forecast home schooling. Interestingly, I didn’t foresee curriculum problems.