Best productivity app ever

Workflowy

• How I use Workflowy
• Workflowy review
• Workflowy review at PC Magazine
• A violin teacher using Workflowy to communicate with pupils

Looking at the "How I use Workflowy" post, I realize I have forgotten everything about GTD (Getting Things Done).

Interesting. The violin teacher is using Workflowy to assign and monitor practice.

One more reason to homeschool

The court held 9-5 that despite compulsory education laws the school did not have a "special relationship" with its students that would give rise to a duty to protect them from harm from other students.

District Not Liable in Student Bullying, Appeals Court Rules
Mark Walsh | June 06, 2013

Apple wins $50-million dollar LA contract (half-billion eventually)

Apple Recommended for Major L.A. Schools Tech. Contract
By Sean Cavanagh on June 14, 2013 8:00 AM

Apple Inc. has been recommended to receive a lucrative contract from the Los Angeles Unified School District to begin implementing one of the most ambitious education-technology projects in the country, with the city's school board scheduled to vote on the issue next week.

A selection committee that reviewed applications for the project has called for the board to vote at its meeting Tuesday to select the Silicon Valley company from the 13 proposals submitted for the project, according to a report to be presented to the panel.

If approved, the decision would award Apple $30 million to begin a project to provide the nation's second largest school district with one computing device for every student and teacher in 47 schools. But the contract could eventually prove much larger, because the district has called for eventually providing a device for every student in the 660,000-student system, a project expected to cost $500 million.

And a chicken in every pot!

Common Core la-la-la

In a memo to the board, Mark Hovatter, the system's chief facilities executive, said the initial phase of work will include providing computing devices, storage and charging stations, a learning management system, upgrades to local area networks, and other services. The overall scope of the first phase of the technology project is expected to cost $50 million.

All of the work is designed to support the district's transition to implementing the Common Core State Standards, and the creation of an "individualized, interactive, and information-rich learning environment," he said.

Heck.

Half a billion dollars is cheap if you're expecting high school kids to tell you who is to blame for Romeo and Juliet's deaths. You can't get a learning outcome like that with paper and pencil. No way.

APPR Q&A

A friend of mine estimates that my tiny district is going to spend around $1 million on APPR alone.

My entire state has gone crazy.

Crazier.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.2

Determine two or more themes or central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to produce a complex account; provide an objective summary of the text.
English Language Arts Standards » Reading: Literature » Grade 11-12

hmmmmm

Assuming this means what I think it means, I am not seeing the value of Standard CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.2.

Off the top of my head, it strikes me that a work of literary nonfiction sufficiently sophisticated to be amenable to "thematic analysis" is going to be quite difficult for most students to read and comprehend, let alone identify not one but two themes, and analyze how the two themes interact and build on one another to produce a complex account, providing an objective summary of the text in the process.

(And does an objective summary of a text ever involve extended analysis of themes?)

Also....themes?

In nonfiction?

I'm sure essays have themes (they must, right?), but I don't personally think of essays as having themes. I think of essays as having arguments. Arguments and evidence.

I have no idea what this standard means.

Or what a successful analysis of the way two themes interact and build on each other to produce a complex account would look like.

School is going to be so not fun if teachers actually try to teach these things.

How many Common Core standards are there?

According to Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, more than 1,300.

Drear

I've finally tuned in to Common Core a bit, mostly because I've been chatting with a Common Core person here in my town, who directed me to NYC's Tasks, Units & Student Work.

So today I took a quick look at NYC's sample ELA Tasks and Units and saw only one sample Task, across all 14 grades (Pre-K through Grade 12), that had anything whatsoever to do with fiction: Grade 9 Literacy in English Language Arts: Who Is to Blame for Romeo and Juliet’s Death.

It's always worse than you think!

Number one, Romeo and Juliet is too hard for 9th grade students to read, especially 9th grade students who've just spent 9 years reading "informational text" and writing "calls to action."

But, number two, even if 9th-grade students could read Romeo and Juliet, there is no earthly reason for anyone to undertake a "Task" that involves answering the question "Who Is to Blame for Romeo and Juliet's Death?"

Real English professors don't assign Tasks requiring students to figure out "Who Is To Blame for Romeo and Juliet's Death?" (Real English professors, in my experience, don't assign Tasks at all. They assign papers.)

Real English professors don't assign Tasks requiring students to figure out "Who Is To Blame for Romeo and Juliet's Death?" because Romeo and Juliet is a play, not a feature story in the New York Times. Romeo and Juliet are fictional characters; they don't actually exist.

Who is responsible for Romeo and Juliet's Death?

You got me.

William Shakespeare, maybe?

If this is Common Core, public school is about to turn into 13 years of SAT reading.

Thirteen years of SAT reading is nobody's idea of a good time. Let us pray that our policy elites do not manage to lengthen the school year before Common Core passes from the stage.

What actual English professors think students in English classes should write about:
Norton: Writing About Literature
Norton: Identifying Topics
English paper thesis statements 

The complete list of sample ELA tasks and units.

Onward and upward

Nearly 80 percent of New York City high school graduates need to relearn basic skills before they can enter the City University’s community college system.

The number of kids behind the 8-ball is the highest in years, CBS2′s Marcia Kramer reported Thursday.

Officials: Most NYC High School Grads Need Remedial Help Before Entering CUNY Community Colleges | Basic Skills Like Reading, Writing And Math Need To Be Re-Learned | March 7, 2013 10:55 PM

Pop Quiz, Common Core edition

NOTE: the reading passage is on music.

Why does the author write that the Portuguese and the Spanish have been in California longer than the "Americans?"

A. to broaden the reader's idea of what should be considered "American" folk music

B. to argue that Hungarian, Finnish, and Armenian folk musics are not truly American

C. to suggest that "American" folk music is music that has not been imported to the continent

D. to convince the reader that the Portuguese and Spanish should not be considered minority groups in California

The moral life of downtown

Back from a quick trip to Illinois to see my niece graduate high school --- and finally posting this passage from a WSJ book review:

Almost two decades ago, Earl Shorris, a novelist and journalist, told the editor at his publishing house that he wanted to write a book about poverty in America. The editor, to his credit, said that he didn't want just another book describing the problem. He wanted a solution. So Shorris, who had attended the University of Chicago on a scholarship many years before and who was greatly influenced by its Great Books curriculum, hit upon the idea of teaching the core texts of Western civilization to people living in poverty, whose school experience had scanted the canon or skipped it entirely. His Eureka moment came when he was visiting a prison and conducting interviews for another book he was planning to write.

He asked one of the women at New York's Bedford Hills maximum-security prison why she thought the poor were poor. "Because they don't have the moral life of downtown," she replied. "What do you mean by the moral life?" Shorris asked. "You got to begin with the children . . . ," she said. "You've got to teach the moral life of downtown to the children. And the way you do that, Earl, is by taking them downtown to plays, museums, concerts, lectures." He asked whether she meant the humanities. Looking at him as if he were, as he puts it, "the stupidest man on earth," she replied: "Yes, Earl, the humanities."

What Would Socrates Do? By NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY April 16, 2013, 6:18 p.m. ET

Speaking of Scarsdale (warning: bad language)

Recording Of Angry Chaperone On Edgemont Bat Mitzvah Bus Hits YouTube

Here's the tape: https://soundcloud.com/scarsdale10583/barmitzvahrant

This reminds me of Mary Damer telling me that the single biggest challenge for a new teacher is classroom management, and that includes a teacher just coming out of the Marines.

Singapore Math explains the budget!

I'm back!

Just about.



The budget passed, making my district one of just 8 in all of New York state to pass a tax-cap override.

Damn the luck! 5.7% year-on-year increase in spending. The actual tax increase will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 8%.

I wish school districts had exit polls. How many 'Yes' voters knew they were voting for a $2.1 million dollar surplus? Not too many, I bet.

Of those 'yes' voters who did know they were voting to fund a budget surplus, many doubtlessly believed there was only $900k in the "fund balance," not the $2.1 million the district reported to the state.

Meanwhile Scarsdale voters clobbered their budget.

Maybe if we had dumped Trailblazers for Singapore Math when Scarsdale did, we'd be voting against $2-million dollar surpluses, too.

---

For the record, I was having a lot of difficulty grasping the fund balance until I drew the bar model. At least in my experience, the fungibility of money is counterintuitive. I kept getting caught up in worries about "programs" and "teachers" etc. It was quite difficult for me to grasp that we were voting on a surplus, not "programs" and not "teachers."

I'm certain many, many voters just didn't 'see' the budget in the way a bar model presents it: as one big chunk of money, with $2.1 million not dedicated to any item appearing in the budget. Yes votes were  votes for programs, not the surplus.

The corollary: it's easy for administrators and school boards to blow smoke where the fund balance is concerned. In our case, the superintendent and board president, who was running for re-election, told the local newspaper that we "really" had only $900K in the fund because a) the federal government might not send the $700K it's supposed to send and b) $400K was being used to pay a tax cert. The first claim is absurd; the second is misleading because the district ran more than the legally allowed surplus this year (you can see that on the documents).

Normally the way things work is that whenever the fund balance is too high, the district pays down debt to get back below the limit. I'm sure that's what they did with the $400K. District documents show an extra $300K surplus between last year and this, apart from the $2 million dollar surplus.)

Source:
Singapore math explains the budget

1/2 chapter left, then back to ktm!

Month of May:

• Polish Debbie's book (which is going to be a bestseller!)
• Write Introduction to "Writing Supplement" with Katie B
• Deal with annual school-board-and-budget mishegoss (we're in the 4%!)
• Either finish basal ganglia project or STOP thinking about basal ganglia
• Finish semester at Learning Center

Intense.

Speaking of the election, this year's outing features:

• a 5.7% spending increase in a 1.26%-inflation environment
• a budget that breaks the tax cap
• a 4.85% tax increase that will actually be 7 or 8% 
• multiple "She lies!" accusations flying around town
• mayoral interventions on behalf of aforementioned 5.7% spending increase
• fear mongering 
• smoke blowing 
• etc.

On the bright side, I'm thinking the best of the 4 candidates may actually get elected, which would be a big change after the last two elections. We'll see.

And the district isn't doing get-out-the-vote robo calls this year. That's fantastic.

Still. I don't want to go through another Irvington school board/budget election, ever. But I figure we've got two more to go before we can get to Riverdale. Or wherever else we decamp to.

Bonus content: subtraction is harder than addition

Early College

We just found out that someone from my son's high school will be going to Simon's Rock, which is part of Bard College. Does anyone have any comments about this college or how well early college works? Simon's Rock appears to be the only early college that's accredited.

It seems to me that a better (cheaper) way would be to take a lot of AP classes in high school and find a college that accepts those credits. Then again, don't many colleges give you only one semester credit for a full year AP class? Does anyone know of colleges where you can graduate a year early just because of AP classes? Would it be better to take classes from a local community college than to take AP classes? Do some high schools pay for college classes?

I suppose that colleges do not like accepting high school credits because that's kind of like saying that some of their courses are at a high school level. Then again, they might not like accepting credits from community colleges either. However, many state universities have specific paths that allow community college students a (no loss) transfer path after two years.

I can see that in some cases, AP classes are not as strong as those in college. However, I think that many high school students can handle very high level college classes. For my son, I see AP classes as ways to show that he is a strong college prospect, not as a way to graduate college early. But what if students take online classes provided by a college like MIT? Will MIT allow that student to graduate early or to just get advanced placement? Is a college degree all about time or some particular level of learning? A degree is based on degree requirements and number of credits, but colleges don't seem to give away those credits as easily as advanced placement.

single-sex schools

Ed was talking this morning with a neighbor who also sent her son to Hogwarts. He's been accepted by a very selective (and terrific) college, and she said he would never have gotten in if he'd stayed in the public schools here. (Per pupil spending: $28,517) 

I'm sure she's right.

Abstract
Despite the voluminous literature on the potentials of single-sex schools, there is no consensus on the effects of single-sex schools because of student selection of school types. We exploit a unique feature of schooling in Seoul—the random assignment of students into single-sex versus coeducational high schools—to assess causal effects of single-sex schools on college entrance exam scores and college attendance. Our validation of the random assignment shows comparable socio- economic backgrounds and prior academic achievement of students attending single-sex schools and coeducational schools, which increases the credibility of our causal estimates of single-sex school effects. The three-level hierarchical model shows that attending all-boys schools or all-girls schools, rather than coeducational schools, is significantly associated with higher average scores on Korean and English test scores. Applying the school district fixed-effects models, we find that single-sex schools produce a higher percentage of graduates who attended four-year colleges and a lower percentage of graduates who attended two-year junior colleges than do coeducational schools. The positive effects of single-sex schools remain substantial, even after we take into account various school-level variables, such as teacher quality, the student-teacher ratio, the proportion of students receiving lunch support, and whether the schools are public or private.

Home stretch

2 chapters left to go!

Monty and the pigeon

I remember, back when Carolyn J. & I first started writing the original Kitchen Table Math, the Monty Hall problem coming up. I had never heard of it.

I think I remember, too, saying a couple of times, on the blog, that I came away from writing Animals in Translation thinking birds might just be as smart as people, or smarter. I didn't want to think that, particularly; How smart are birds, anyway? wasn't the topic of the book, which was mostly about mammals, not birds. But every time Temple told me a bird story, I would think hmmmmm.

The crow-and-the-rifle story, about a crow repeatedly taunting a rancher, has never left me.

So naturally, when I saw "Pigeons, Humans, and the Monty Hall Dilemma," I had to look.

The Monty Hall Dilemma is a probability puzzle that is notorious for eliciting suboptimal decisions from humans. A participant is given a choice from among three doors, one of which conceals a valuable prize. After an initial selection, one of the remaining, nonwinning doors is opened, and the participant is given a chance to switch to the other unopened door. The probability of winning is higher if the participant switches. Pigeons maximize their wins by switching on virtually all trials of a Monty Hall Dilemma analogue, whereas humans utilize a suboptimal strategy involving probability matching. Possible reasons for the difference between these two species’ performance are considered.

Pigeons, Humans, and the Monty Hall Dilemma by Walter T. Herbranson Current Directions in Psychological Science 2012 21: 297

No time to read or even skim --- but looking forward.

1974 parody of college freshman writing

I'm on the home stretch! Four more chapters of Debbie's wonderful book, and we're there.

In the meantime, here's a 1974 parody of college freshman writing that contains not a single grammatical error, dangling modifier, comma splice, or sentence beginning with some variant of "In the report it stated." Apparently bad freshman writing in 1974 was quite a bit less bad than bad student writing in 2013.

For the record, I think it's rude to call student writing "intellectually vacuous trash."

[I wrote this parody of a freshman theme to preservemy sanity while struggling to read a batch of themes during one Christmas holiday. The lesson here may be that if we continue assigning themes on such impossible topics as friendship, love, or wisdom, we deserve to get the intellectually vacuous trash that students write for us.]

FRIENDSHIP
WALTER S. MINOT

Statement of Intent: My purpose in this theme is to define very specifically the real meaning of true friendship.

In today's modern world, true friendship is very rare and hard to accomplish. Webster defines friendship as the state or fact of being friends. Thus it can be easily seen that in order for friendship to have a state of existence there must be friends, because without friends there would be no friendship.

True friendship denotes more than just being friendly with someone. We are amicable with many people who are not really true friends. This is not true friendship. Truly real friendship happens only when two people are really true friends. In order to have a friend, you must be a friend first, or you won't have any friends. Everyone needs a friend, or his or her life will be very alienated.

A friend is a person who helps you up when you are down. You may have many but can have a few true friends. A friend is someone who acquaintances, you only  will continue being your friend even if you do something bad to him. He will adhere to you through thick and thin, through rain or shine. If you took your best friend's girl away from him, he would still be your friend.

On mutual respect is based true friendship. A good example of this is the friendship between Allen Whitehall and Robert Epstein. If Al needed a dime to buy flowers for his widowed mother who has arthritis and Bob had a dime, he would give it to him no matter what the cost of the personal sacrifice.

As I have shown, true friendshipis the greatest thing anyone can have. Without friends, no man can stand alone. I can only finalize my definition with these words:

True friendship is eternal and it should last a lifetime.

Gannon College Erie, Pa.

College Composition and Communication, Vol. 25, No. 2 (May, 1974), p. 154    

a palisadesk post

I don't remember now, but I think palisadesk may have been writing comments on kitchen table math from the beginning.

I do remember my first impression: WOW.

This person knows what he/she is talking about.

My first impression was right. In all these years, I don't think I've ever seen palisadesk stray from the mark.

So when Surfer got sick, and palisadesk turned out to have saved a dog with mast cell cancer^* (it would be palisadesk, wouldn't it?)......I was initially thinking 'vegan' and then palisadesk weighed in with her quasi-ketogenic^** approach to treating mast cell cancer via diet.....

.....And a few weeks into the whole business, contemplating my growing collection of resources on dog cancer, Kinvaet, mast cell cancer, obesity as a precursor and possible cause of mast cell cancer, diet, etc, etc......it occurred to me that my best best was just to do whatever palisadesk did and call it a day.

And that's pretty much what I did.

At this moment, Surfer is better than I've seen him in a long time. He's frisky; he's acting like a much younger dog. And he's turning 12.

Surfer may yet die of mast cell cancer, of course. Just a moment ago he walked past me and I spotted a new bump on his side. That's been another fun part of the mast cell adventure: Surfer sprouts lypomas on a monthly basis, and I can't tell the difference between a lypoma and a mast cell tumor. So I spend a lot of time palpating new growths (and old growths I can't remember whether I've seen before): a bad idea because palpating a mast cell tumor can cause it to "degranulate," sending the dog into an instantaneous and fatal case of anaphylactic shock. I have been specifically warned not to be palpating growths.

I'm sure palisadesk would say Don't do that.

Anyway, as I say, Surfer may yet die of mast cell cancer.

But if he does, my view of palisadesk's advice won't change. Mean survival time for surgical treatment alone, without chemo, is 18 weeks. (Mean time from diagnosis? from date of surgery? Nobody ever seems to say.) Surfer had his surgery February 4, and I'm pretty sure he developed the tumor in early January. (The vet found the tumor during a routine check-up.)

So it's 12 weeks since the surgery, a good 16 weeks since the tumor appeared, and the Kinavet didn't work out. And Surfer is not on his last legs.

I may be tempting fate, writing that.

But that's fine.

[pause]

Hmmm.

I'm listening to the YouTube discussion of Kinavet. You're supposed to wear gloves to pick up a Kinavet pill your dog has spit out.

How many Kinavet pills did Surfer spit out?

And how many did I pick up with my bare hands?^***

A lot.

Oh, well.

This may be one of the best review articles I've seen: Clinical Management of Mast Cell Tumors in Dogs

^* The dog is still alive today, 10 years later.
^**or really ketogenic - I don't want to put words into palisadesk's mouth
^*** I could not get pills down Surfer's throat wearing gloves. I tried. I didn't know the bit about "the seal being broken" once the pill has been spit out, however.

Home stretch! back soon--

Down to the last 100 pages of Debbie's book, which is fantastic.

So still no blogging, but ----- I have bullet points!

• The tuna cure: Surfer and Abby now eat tuna, lentils, and olive oil (plus, starting in the past week, a few carrots). Basically: a low-rent version of palisadesk's high-protein diet for mast cell cancer in dogs. Surfer--who, it turns out, can't tolerate chemo--appears to be fine. (But we'll see.) The younger vet told me mast cell cancer is the dog equivalent of pancreatic cancer: Surfer, with a Stage 3 diagnosis, was a goner unless the Kinavet worked. Older vet, back now from his own brush with death, says: "It's not a death sentence." (Ed says: Can we always see the older vet?) Funnily enough, we encountered the same division of labor during the two years my mother was sick. The younger doctors would waylay my siblings and me for The Talk (Your mother is dying. Let her die with dignity. If she doesn't want to die with dignity, persuade her.) Then the older docs would say things like "In intensive care we support your mother's organs until her body is strong enough to handle those functions again." The older docs were always right. And they never mentioned death with dignity, which was wise because my mother didn't give two figs for dignity.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• Common Core illustrative texts v. what 7th graders read in my districtxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• 4.6% tax increase proposed (I'm voting no, thank you for asking)xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• Borrowing to pay teachers: the tax-cert loopholexxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• SAT score decline (also in bullets)xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• Erica Meltzer's book is out!!!xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• New high school principal for Irvington who worked for TFA

One board member told me that when the board met the new principal he must have used the word accountability in every other sentence.

Are we the first affluent district ever to hire a TFA person?

We may be. A TFA alum certainly seems out of place here in Westchester, where affluent districts are snapping up superintendents fleeing New Jersey's salary cap.

Our new super replaces the superintendent against whom a number of us waged a running battle for 5 long years (or was it 6?). He is a man in his late 30s or early 40s, trained in elementary education, whose only previous experience--in New Jersey, where his wife and son continue to live--was heading a tiny K-5 district.

We are paying him $250K per year on a 5-year contract. During a minor depression.^* (Did I mention I'm voting no on the budget?)

I think it's possible, perhaps likely, the TFA hire would not have happened without 6 years of citizens' op eds on the Irvington Parents Forum.

Ed told me, when I started the Forum, that revolutions always have writers.

I believe him, and All revolutions have writers has been my essential reason for carrying on. Well, one of the essential reasons, the other essential reason being that both sides of my family came from Ulster.

That said, I don't expect a revolution. The new superintendent has thus far been more of the same, and he was supposed to be The One; all 5 board members said so. The new principal will come into a gatekeeping culture that has been in place for many, many years.

The single best observation anyone ever made to me concerning my district's unshakeable self-regard:

...[W]e're great because 10 kids do spectacular things by senior year. The other 150 will get by and there are no glaring inadequacies.

That's not going to be easy to change.

^* Depression at historinhas