Placing the Blame - Student Debt.

The NYTimes has a long article detailing the money troubles of a recent grad with thousands in debt. Showing pictures of her in her fashionable clothes and a ten-speed bike, the reporter bemoans the seemingly vast numbers of students who, through no fault of their own, racked up enormous debt. The colleges and universities should do something, he rants. Deputize MBA students (?). The parents - are they at fault? Sallie Mae? CitiBank?  Yeah, CitiBank.

Puhlease. Just because she's pretty doesn't mean she's right. Just because CitiBank sucks doesn't mean they're wrong. Let's examine a few things.

"The balance on Cortney Munna’s loans is about $97,000, including all of her federal loans and her private debt from Sallie Mae and Citibank. What are her options for digging out?"

Holy crap. She must have really needed that degree if she was willing to incur that much debt. The prospects must have been good before the recession hit, wouldn't you think? I'll bet this was an MBA or engineering degree? She's got savant talent and is about to blow your doors off? Well, no.

"... since graduating with an interdisciplinary degree in religious and women’s studies."

Right there, you can tell this isn't going to end well. This is obviously not a financial wizard. She majored in touchy-feely on someone else's nickel. She went to NYU instead of CC or any of the SUNY campuses. It isn't all bad, though. She just got a raise. Now she makes almost as much as I do.

"She recently received a raise and now makes $22 an hour working for a photographer. After taxes, she takes home about $2,300 a month. Rent runs $750, and the full monthly payments on her student loans would be about $700 if they weren’t being deferred, which would not leave a lot left over."

Not a lot left? That would be $850 per month left over, maybe $30 per day. She is just out of college. She can brown-bag lunches like the rest of us. Share expenses. Skip the "going out" stuff. Bike to work instead of bus or car. Share the apartment. Get a second job, if she needs the money so badly. Get another, more useful college degree but not if it is solely to avoid paying your debt. When you are desperate, try 80-hour work weeks - it beats eight hours of tv and partying every night.

Another womyn's studies disaster. Cry me a river.

The article is copied below.

Placing the Blame as Students Are Buried in Debt

By RON LIEBER

Like many middle-class families, Cortney Munna and her mother began the college selection process with a grim determination. They would do whatever they could to get Cortney into the best possible college, and they maintained a blind faith that the investment would be worth it.

Today, however, Ms. Munna, a 26-year-old graduate of New York University, has nearly $100,000 in student loan debt from her four years in college, and affording the full monthly payments would be a struggle. For much of the time since her 2005 graduation, she’s been enrolled in night school, which allows her to defer loan payments.

This is not a long-term solution, because the interest on the loans continues to pile up. So in an eerie echo of the mortgage crisis, tens of thousands of people like Ms. Munna are facing a reckoning. They and their families made borrowing decisions based more on emotion than reason, much as subprime borrowers assumed the value of their houses would always go up.

Meanwhile, universities like N.Y.U. enrolled students without asking many questions about whether they could afford a $50,000 annual tuition bill. Then the colleges introduced the students to lenders who underwrote big loans without any idea of what the students might earn someday — just like the mortgage lenders who didn’t ask borrowers to verify their incomes.

Ms. Munna does not want to walk away from her loans in the same way many mortgage holders are. It would be difficult in any event because federal bankruptcy law makes it nearly impossible to discharge student loan debts. But unless she manages to improve her income quickly, she doesn’t have a lot of good options for digging out.

It is utterly depressing that there are so many people like her facing decades of payments, limited capacity to buy a home and a debt burden that can repel potential life partners. For starters, it’s a shared failure of parenting and loan underwriting.

But perhaps the biggest share lies with colleges and universities because they have the most knowledge of the financial aid process. And I would argue that they had an obligation to counsel students like Ms. Munna, who got in too far over their heads.

How many people are like her? According to the College Board’s Trends in Student Aid study, 10 percent of people who graduated in 2007-8 with student loans had borrowed $40,000 or more. The median debt for bachelor’s degree recipients who borrowed while attending private, nonprofit colleges was $22,380.
The Project on Student Debt, a research and advocacy organization in Oakland, Calif., used federal data to estimate that 206,000 people graduated from college (including many from for-profit universities) with more than $40,000 in student loan debt in that same period. That’s a ninefold increase over the number of people in 1996, using 2008 dollars.

The Family

No one forces borrowers to take out these loans, and Ms. Munna and her mother, Cathryn, have spent the years since her graduation trying to understand where they went wrong. Ms. Munna’s father died when she was 13, after a series of illnesses.

She started college at age 17 and borrowed as much money as she could under the federal loan program. To make up the difference between her grants and work study money and the total cost of attending, her mother co-signed two private loans with Sallie Mae totaling about $20,000.

When they applied for a third loan, however, Sallie Mae rejected the application, citing Cathryn’s credit history. She had returned to college herself to finish her bachelor’s degree and was also borrowing money. N.Y.U. suggested a federal Plus loan for parents, but that would have required immediate payments, something the mother couldn’t afford. So before Cortney’s junior year, N.Y.U. recommended that she apply for a private student loan on her own with Citibank.

Over the course of the next two years, starting when she was still a teenager, she borrowed about $40,000 from Citibank without thinking much about how she would pay it back. How could her mother have let her run up that debt, and why didn’t she try to make her daughter transfer to, say, the best school in the much cheaper state university system in New York? “All I could see was college, and a good college and how proud I was of her,” Cathryn said. “All we needed to do was get this education and get the good job. This is the thing that eats away at me, the naïveté on my part.”

But Cortney resists the idea that this is a tale of bad parenting. “To me, it would be an uncharitable reading,” she said. “My mother has tried her best, and I don’t blame her for anything in this.”

The Lender

Sallie Mae gets a pass here, in my view. A responsible grownup co-signed for its loans to the Munnas, and the company eventually cut them off.

But what was Citi thinking, handing over $40,000 to an undergraduate who had already amassed debt well into the five figures? This was, in effect, a “no doc” or at least a “low doc” subprime mortgage loan.

A Citi spokesman declined to comment, even though Ms. Munna was willing to sign a waiver giving Citi permission to talk about her loans. Perhaps the bank worried that once it approved one loan, cutting her off would have led her to drop out or transfer and have trouble paying back the loan.

Today, someone like Ms. Munna might not qualify for the $40,000 she borrowed. But as the economy rebounds, there is little doubt that plenty of lenders will step forward to roll the dice on desperate students, especially because the students generally can’t get rid of the debt in bankruptcy court.

The University

The financial aid office often has the best picture of what students like Ms. Munna are up against, because they see their families’ financial situation splayed out on the federal financial aid form. So why didn’t N.Y.U. tell Ms. Munna that she simply did not belong there once she’d passed, say, $60,000 in total debt?

“Had somebody called me and said, ‘Do you have a clue where this is all headed?’, it would have been a slap in the face, but a slap in the face that I needed,” said Cathryn Munna. “When financial aid told her that they could get her $2,000 more in loans, they should have been saying ‘You are in deep doo-doo, little girl.’”

That’s not a role that the university wants to take on, though. “I think that would be completely inappropriate,” said Randall Deike, the vice president of enrollment management for N.Y.U., who oversees admissions and financial aid. “Some families will do whatever it takes for their son or daughter to be not just at N.Y.U., but any first-choice college. I’m not sure that’s always the best decision, but it’s one that they really have to make themselves.”

The complications here go well beyond the propriety of suggesting that a student enroll elsewhere. Colleges don’t always know how much debt its students are taking on, which makes it hard to offer good counsel. (N.Y.U. does appear to have known about all of Ms. Munna’s loans, though.)

Then there’s a branding problem. Urging students to attend a cheaper college or leave altogether suggests a lack of confidence about the earning potential of alumni. Nobody wants to admit that. And once a university starts encouraging middle-class students to go elsewhere, it must fill its classes with more children of the wealthy and a much smaller number of low-income students to whom it can afford to offer enormous scholarships. That’s hardly an ideal outcome either.

Finally, universities exist to enroll students, not turn them away. “Aid administrators want to keep their jobs,” said Joan H. Crissman, interim president and chief executive of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. “If the administration finds out that you’re encouraging students to go to a cheaper school just because you don’t think they can handle the debt load, I don’t think that’s going to mesh very well.”

That doesn’t change the fact, however, that the financial aid office is still in the best position to see trouble coming and do something to stop it. University officials should take on this obligation, even if they aren’t willing to advise students to attend another college.

Instead, they might deputize a gang of M.B.A. candidates or alumni in the financial services industry to offer free financial planning to admitted students and their families. Mr. Deike also noted that the bigger problem here is one of financial literacy. Fine. He and N.Y.U. are in a great position to solve for that by making every financial aid recipient take a financial planning class. The students could even use their families as the case study.

The Options

The balance on Cortney Munna’s loans is about $97,000, including all of her federal loans and her private debt from Sallie Mae and Citibank. What are her options for digging out?

Her mother can’t help without selling her bed and breakfast, and then she’d have no home. She could take her daughter in, but there aren’t good ways for her to earn a living in Alexandria Bay, in upstate New York.

Cortney could move someplace cheaper than her current home city of San Francisco, but she worries about her job prospects, even with her N.Y.U. diploma.
She recently received a raise and now makes $22 an hour working for a photographer. It’s the highest salary she’s earned since graduating with an interdisciplinary degree in religious and women’s studies. After taxes, she takes home about $2,300 a month. Rent runs $750, and the full monthly payments on her student loans would be about $700 if they weren’t being deferred, which would not leave a lot left over.

She may finally be earning enough to barely scrape by while still making the payments for the first time since she graduated, at least until interest rates rise and the payments on her loans with variable rates spiral up. And while her job requires her to work nights and weekends sometimes, she probably should find a flexible second job to try to bring in a few extra hundred dollars a month.

Ms. Munna understands this tough love, buck up, buckle-down advice. But she also badly wants to call a do-over on the last decade. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life slaving away to pay for an education I got for four years and would happily give back,” she said. “It feels wrong to me.”

Some Teachers should really just shut up.

The teacher who went foot to mouth against Gov. Christie really should just shut up. If the reports are true that she actually said she'd "love to earn $83kpy" and in fact makes $86kpy with benefits on top of that, then she has done much more damage to the teachers' cause than she probably realizes.

It does no one any good if the most visible spokesman whines hypocritically and gives the Gov enough ammunition to shoot down her argument. It does no one any good because lots of NY teachers make less with bigger courseloads. I don't make anywhere near that, even after nearly 30 years of teaching, but I don't have nearly the student load or the administrative hassle either of my readers do.

Lady, for all of us, please shut up.

Because it does matter. It matters in the court of public opinion. It matters in the court of John and Mary Smith when they go off to pay their local property taxes. It matters in the zeitgeist.

How much? The same post had this from NJ.com:

In an astonishing fall from grace that has taken only months, teachers have gone from respected and beloved members of the community to some of the most reviled. In a blink, they have trashed years of good will.
Once the patient darlings who nurtured our kids, teachers now look like insensitive, out-of-touch, can’t-think-for-themselves union robots who, when forced to face economic realities, clung to an insulting sense of entitlement, heartlessly sacrificed the jobs of colleagues, called the governor naughty names and used students as political pawns.
All while blaming everyone else.

It matters.

But Living in Monticello ain't bad.

It an otherwise typical post worrying about the upcoming "War on Bacon" and bemoaning Big Government, Breitbart includes this bit of historical poetry:

“I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give.” - Thomas Jefferson

ummm, bacon.

Koi Pond Puzzle

This geometric city park is perfectly square with a square koi pond in the middle. There's a circular walking path that is tangent to both squares at the indicated points. The pond is 3 feet deep. The area of the park is 4 acres.

What is the volume of the koi pond in gallons? (You’ll need to Google a few conversions.)

Answer in this backdated post.

Overlapping Squares Puzzle

Overlapping Squares

In the diagram, the 4 in. square overlaps the 3 in. square in such as way that the corner of the larger square is at the center of the smaller square. The 4 in. square has been rotated so that its side trisects the side of the 3 in. square. What is the area of the shaded portion?

answer, here, in a backdated post.

Checkbook Puzzle

Try this very simple checkbook-balancing problem.

Beginning balance for the month $54.00

Check #0221 $20.00 Check #0222 $20.00 Check #0223 $10.00 Check #0224 $ 4.00 Total $54.00

Balance $34.00 Balance $14.00 Balance $ 4.00 Balance $ 0.00 Total $52.00

You naturally added everything very carefully so you should be able to tell where the missing two dollars have gone.

Tough Times for Unemployed Teachers - or not.

According to the NYTimes: Teachers Facing Weakest Market in Years, it's tough to get a job because of all the other teachers out looking. Of course, this IS Westchester County, Long Island so it's not surprising that there are 3000 applicants for 8 jobs.

With all these teachers available, I wonder about the other complaint floating around the blogosphere: that of unavailable people to fit into charter school jobs. Charter schools were complaining to the Wall Street Journal about the oh-so-onerous restrictions on hiring non-teachers that I wrote about the other day. Either they can't find SchoolSpring.com or are simply offering too little money for too much work. Gotta keep up the salaries of the administration - inexperienced teaching at any cost.

Read More:
Back to the NYT and that glut of talent ... I wanted to know how many of these applications were from qualified people? Certified in some state? Certified in NY? Certified by Teach for America? Certified by the Online University of Wheaties Box? Reading further in the article reveals that there seemed to be qualified applicants; 200 were winnowed out of that 3000 and asked for interviews. Then they were given a timed writing test to further demonstrate ability, which shows the school's confidence in their resumes. There are probably 50 qualified people in that pile. Now at about 6 per job, how many would really fit the position and enjoy working with the kids?

Applying is not like it used to be. It's easy to apply for multiple positions on SchoolSpring.com - click a button and done. No fuss, no expense, no effort. Click on one, click on fifty. No Problem.

Any mention of a position really brings out the flakes, whackjobs and mouthbreathers. Some aren't qualified to drive to the school, never mind teach. Others are frantically clicking "Apply" without even reading whether they've got any training for the particular courses. I guess the thought is "I can click, why not apply?" The answer, for those not catching the sarcasm, is "because you're applying to teach math and you got Cs and Ds throughout college and never once took a class higher than Algebra for Non-College Bound Students."

What's tough is for truly qualified teachers who are suddenly laid off is to get through that enormous crowd and make it into the final stages. Once there, they have a great chance because quality is so rare these days.

PELHAM, N.Y. — In the month since Pelham Memorial High School in Westchester County advertised seven teaching jobs, it has been flooded with 3,010 applications from candidates as far away as California. The Port Washington District on Long Island is sorting through 3,620 applications for eight positions — the largest pool the superintendent has seen in his 41-year career.

Valedictorian Speeches

I appreciate the writing and the eloquence. They've found their own voices but not yet fully developed their own opinions - some of what they say is rehashed talking points - but it is nice to hear seniors who can speak well and are starting to accept the mantle of adulthood.

Read more:
from the Atlanta Journal Constitution:
Metro Atlanta high school grads discuss their generation's top issues

It’s graduation season once again. Youthful optimism, energy and results born of hard-won achievement are each found in great measure at high school commencement exercises.

It is oft-repeated but in no way trite to note that Atlanta’s youth really do represent our future, as they come of age during a time freighted with both opportunity and risk for our region, state, nation and world.

We’ve written often in the past year about the bold leadership, ideas and innovation that are needed for Atlanta to keep moving ahead. The ranks of those leaders will no doubt one day soon include members of the class of 2010.

Given that inevitability, we invited a group of high school seniors to address what they believe are the main issues facing their generation.

The essays that resulted give us hope for a better future:


‘A shrinking incentive to work hard’
By Stephen Lago, valedictorian at Blessed Trinity Catholic High School in Roswell

The biggest issue facing our generation is complacency: a growing attitude of indifference and a tendency to shirk responsibility by forcing it onto the shoulders of others.

On a grand scale, young adults tend to endorse politicians who support destructive national policies. On a more personal level, massive credit card debt among many American youth speaks to rising complacency. And the misguided ideal of achieving the greatest gain in exchange for the least amount of work has nearly eclipsed the once-vaunted belief in a strong work ethic.

This complacency springs from two underlying sources: a general sense of entitlement and a distorted sense of self-importance.

The sense of entitlement comes from five decades of politicians who have pandered to voters by promising unearned benefits paid for with money that does not exist. The result is a shrinking incentive to work hard and a growing national debt. Only by planning for the future and acting accordingly will we be able to avoid the inherent dangers in this present arrangement.

A prevalent belief now is that society should take care of each individual because every person is important. The truth is that each person is important because they can help society. It is through our works, achievements, innovations, and imagination that we are vindicated and our place in society is justified.

With hard work and perseverance, each generation has the potential to go farther than the one which preceded it. Many in the Google generation have rejected that notion in favor of minimalism and the expectation of instant results.

Fortunately, this growing sense of complacency is largely self-inflicted. By re-evaluating our present path and taking calculated measures on both the personal and national levels, we can fix it, but only if we act sooner rather than later.


‘Misuse of freedoms’ fetters us
By My Ngoc, valedictorian at Parkview High School in Gwinnett County

The next generation is growing up in a world in which technological advances have eradicated or minimized almost all problems of the past. People no longer live in fear of famine, disease, or severe destruction by natural disasters. Human progress is evident through increasing life expectancies and decreasing death rates all over the world. Though our survival is more ensured than ever, we risk losing our minds to the mass culture that has developed -- nothing sums up this phenomenon better than philosopher Soren Kierkegaard’s words: “People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”

We have always taken pride in our freedom of speech, but we forget to think about the quality of the words that come out; too often, they are only a regurgitation of ideas sprouting from the ever-expanding pool of mass media which, over an extended time, implants “pseudo-perceptions” inside our minds.

We live in a country founded upon the ideals of freedom, yet the misuse of our freedoms has in many ways chained us into a mental slavery.

The world today is very comfortable. And because the need to reform the world is no longer as great as it used to be, the next generation has become more focused on dominating the current system instead of pioneering a better one, as our forefathers did.

Greater freedom brings with it greater responsibility, and we must make sure that if we have our ability to speak freely, we must never, ever, lose our ability to think freely.

If American culture is centered on the individual, then why do we, knowing that conformity is a threat to our vitality, continue to live in such hypocrisy?


‘Actively breathe frugality’
By Jared Isenstein, salutatorian at Woodward Academy

The virtues of personal responsibility and hard work allowed America to become the most prosperous, generous and free nation on Earth, and it needs these qualities to continue to thrive. The excellence of this country firmly resides in its people’s character; a nation of immigrants who felt fortunate to have the opportunity to succeed.

Over the last decades, like mirror images of each other, the government and the public have overspent, borrowed, and used credit to purchase without regard to cost. We now buy things on credit for immediate satisfaction, rather than using layaway, which delays gratification but upholds fiscal responsibility.

The problem is systemic and both parts, private and governmental, must be fixed simultaneously for a lasting solution. It is incumbent on my generation to correct this irresponsibility and to actively breathe frugality and inject temperance into this country’s core.

The shortsightedness by the public, from buying homes with no money down, or buying a flat-screen TV worth a month’s paycheck, has already hurt our country. The price in diligence and sacrifice necessary to bring about achievement is increasingly seen as not worth its price. Americans may be forgetting that satisfaction is directly proportional to the effort expended in an endeavor.

It falls to today’s youth and young adults to succeed where our parents stumbled. Delayed gratification is my generation’s most pressing virtue.

Americans cannot continue to take the easy, temporary solution to the spending predicament. We must sooner or later come to terms with an increasingly painful dose of spending cuts or suffer potentially dire consequences.

I look to my fellow youth to join me in striving for personal responsibility and self-reliance, as difficult as these virtues may seem.


‘Mediocrity has become the norm’
By Orane Douglas, salutatorian at Atlanta’s New Schools at Carver

Apathy is rampant among many young people today. Students are often not willing to work hard to attain success. Mediocrity has become the norm for many of my generation. Many students feel success is owed to them and that it is society’s role to provide it. This false belief has led to complacency.

This apathy can be addressed by schools. If students are given the opportunity to learn in an environment where they are challenged, they will aim higher. Supportive teachers and dedicated administrators help foster a positive environment . My experience in a small learning community has taught me to overcome mediocrity. I have been challenged and supported academically by my teachers. Providing additional help whenever needed, they make themselves readily available to students so that they can be better prepared for college.

As a child of a single parent, I have my mother as a guide . Her sacrifices and values have served as a positive beacon. While I could have easily become a statistic, her example directed me away from negative influences. Others, who have not had the guidance I have had, may not have felt as compelled to succeed . Some young people feel they can do just enough to get by and still be successful. Many don’t see the importance of education, and thus don’t make it a priority.

These issues are the responsibility of the entire community. Teens are constantly bombarded by images of greed and selfishness. More positive role models are needed . There are many positive leaders in the Atlanta community, but they aren’t as obvious to students as the negative figures.

It is incumbent upon all of us to do our part and change the present to better the future.


‘We should care about others’
By Allison Boden, salutatorian at Lakeside High School in DeKalb County

When picking up a newspaper, turning on the television or reading an article on the internet, it is easy to discover issues that affect all of us. It’s also easy to ignore those that apparently do not directly affect us.

What prompts us to respond? When does it matter to us? When should we care? What is the most important issue? Is it terrorism, healthcare, the lack of jobs, immigration, the stability of the economy, or environmental pollution? My answer is -- all of the above.

An overarching theme that relates these problems is a general lack of concern for the welfare of others. Our society is so competitive and materialistic that most people focus on themselves and no one else. Does everyone deserve health care? Why does it matter if other people are out of a job when mine is stable? How do the deaths of people across the globe affect me? What’s the matter with polluting the earth and destroying the habitats of animals when I won’t be alive to see the effects?

My answer is: because we should care about others. If each of us would take more individual responsibility and accountability for our actions and treated others the way we want to be treated, finding solutions to many issues would be simplified.

We should care how our actions affect ourselves and future generations. We should care about the plants and animal species becoming extinct and endangered every day. And we should care about the thousands of innocent lives being lost because of disputes over land, oil, or religion. However, the fact is that our society today does not care enough, and that is the biggest issue of them all.

The Missing Word Puzzle

"Here is an odd little criss-cross puzzle wherein you are to discover a word, which when placed in the vacant space, so as to be read twice, will make the sentence complete, beginning at THE and ending with ESCAPED.
- Sam Loyd, Cyclopedia of Puzzles, 1914

The Turf Puzzle

To show how little the patrons of the turf know about the theory of odds as practiced at the race track, let readers seek a solution to the following elementary problem:
If the odds are 7 to 3 against Apple Pie and 6 to 5 against Bumble Bee, what should be the odds against the famous running horse Cucumber?
-Sam Loyd, Cyclopedia of Puzzles, 1914

Letters to the Editor, vol1 i2: Certification and the Alternate Track

A Letter to WSJ complained about charter schools not being allowed to hire non-teachers to teach. He felt that people switching over from pretty much any career would be acceptable as teachers - retirees, engineers, scientists, artists.

I doubt that a long career designing automobile engine parts for Ford, for example, would be good training for an algebra teacher. Oh, that person would have lots of "real-world" knowledge but absolutely no idea of how to deal with a classroom full of teenagers. There has to be some training, some mentoring. There also has to be a vetting process, some way to determine whether the prospect is actually knowledgeable about the subject and able to teach it to kids and I'm not talking about a 30 minute interview with my principal.

If some wunderkind exists, he can get into teaching pretty easily. How? Every state has some form of "peer review" process in which a differently trained person with the desire to become a teacher can submit a portfolio demonstrating knowledge and ability in the various aspects of being a teacher. I did it this way - 100ish pages of descriptions, letters, transcripts, explanations and other evidence. Presto! Four weeks later, I had a license.

Some states are more difficult about it. Teach for America is much easier about it. Results vary, but there has to be some sort of hurdle, else you wind up with too many dilettante teachers who crap out in the first month and leave the students hanging. I've seen this kind of thing happen all too often in private schools (because they don't have to hire credentialed teachers) - incoming genius ready to save the world and show his incredible talents to the poor downtrodden students who had been, until his arrival, horribly confused and mistreated by the "lifers." The office pool was always won by Halloween.

Why do we allow liberals to waste such valuable talent? Because, by and large, it doesn't exist. There just aren't thousands of people willing and able to become teachers -- who haven't got the smarts to do "peer review." Skill in the computer design center working with adults all day and lots of autonomy (that word again!) doesn't carry over to solving the real problems handling a room full of teenagers who couldn't give less of a damn about fractions.

Bottom line: It's pretty damn easy to get a license -- if you've got the potential to be a good teacher. If you don't, then the hoops are useful in weeding you out.

As for the editorial - come on, people. Blaming the failures of charter schools on a perceived lack of autonomy in hiring teachers is pretty lame. Just because most charter schools can't do better than the public schools they steal from despite the selection and rejection of pupils ...


click the header to view the letter and the editorial, below the jump.

We Should Encourage The Talented to Teach
A WALL STREET JOURNAL Letter to the Editor, MAY 20, 2010

Your May 15 editorial "Hobbling Charter Schools" notes, "Teacher certification rules block charters from hiring mid-career changers, retirees, engineers, scientists, artists and other professionals who might best meet the needs of students but have not been officially licensed by the state." What a terrible waste of talent. In my day (the 1940s and '50s) I had a physics teacher in high school who was a physicist at a local company and was one of the best instructors I ever had. We had a retired stockbroker in college who was an outstanding instructor on personal finance.
Why do we allow liberals to waste such valuable talent?
Ralph Hallock
Hayden, Idaho

The editorial began:
"The promise of charter schools is that they'll improve student performance in return for exemptions from the staffing, curriculum and budget requirements of traditional public schools. The reality is often very different. According to a new study from the Fordham Institute, too many charter schools lack the operational autonomy they need to be effective."

Yearbooks Two

original article, but I copied it below if that link breaks.

I can understand missing a bird in a photo or a double-entendre inside joke in a comment. I can't understand allowing the student to do whatever.

"She told me it was their yearbook and they could put whatever they wanted to put on it," the advisor said.

If the article is accurate, the students knew exactly how the community would take it and did it anyway. They were making a statement and none of those in positions of authority did a damned thing.

"The custom has been for me to approve the cover, but it was not brought to me this year," she said. "It was . . . published sooner than usual, and now we are dealing with the aftermath."

I wonder if that principal expects people to believe that?

Some senior pictures were left out, there was a "hidden message" that no one managed to notice, the cover is either a cool riff on on a good Sunday or a dig at the school depending on who you ask and in what context, and everyone is now furiously distancing themselves from any critical thinking.

What could possibly go wrong?

Read more:

Yearbook stirs controversy

By KEVIN LEWIS Herald Editor

"Time Well Wasted."
That cover theme of this year's Plainview High School yearbook along with a page containing a vulgar, hidden message from two students have triggered a fire storm of controversy and resulted in the principal calling it "an embarrassment" and issuing a plethora of apologies.
"There (are) many issues with the yearbook . . . that I am currently addressing," Principal Lisa Kersh said Friday.
Among them is the "Time Well Wasted" theme, apparently taken from a song by country music singer Brad Paisley with cover artwork of a melting digital clock inspired by surrealist painter Salvador Dali.
"If you look at that cover it's saying school is a waste of time," Kersh said. "That's how people would naturally perceive that."
While the theme of the yearbook, which is supported by advertising from local businesses, reportedly was meant to be a play on words and another way to say "time well spent" and was not intended to be negative, it didn't come off that way to many parents, teachers and even other students.
"My initial reaction was dismay that the students felt that way, shock that the phrase was allowed to be put on the cover and, honestly, as a teacher I was insulted," Marcie Featherston, who teaches math at PHS, said.
Fellow PHS math teacher Kelly Shackelford said she was "shocked and hurt" by the cover.
"I and other teachers work our tails off to give these students the best education that we can possibly give them, and at the end of the year all we have to show for it is a yearbook stating that it was a waste of time," Shackelford said. "In a position like this one, if you are going to print something negative that is going to be part of the school from this time forward and it can't be erased, make sure that it is the opinion of everyone you represent, not just a few.
Another teacher, Janet Cunningham who teaches English at Estacado Junior High and whose son Mark is a senior at PHS, also feels the theme is inappropriate.
"As educators we should be uplifting," she said. "I think the title is indicative of what a lot of parents are worried about in our district right now."
Featherston said yearbook sponsor Nicole Jackson told her that the student-inspired theme is how the yearbook staff feels about their time at PHS "because most teenagers feel like school is a waste of time and do not realize until later in life that it really is not a waste."
Featherston said she also spoke with two of the yearbook's student editors.
"They said they really did not feel that way. They were just frustrated that students can get all the way to graduation with little to no effort, skipping classes and not doing their work, while others work very hard to get there and they end up with the same diploma."
Featherston went on to say she asked Jackson, who did not return an e-mail from the Herald seeking comment, if "Time Well Wasted" was an appropriate yearbook theme even if students feel that way. "She told me it was their yearbook and they could put whatever they wanted to put on it," Featherston said.
That's not true, according to Kersh.
"The custom has been for me to approve the cover, but it was not brought to me this year," she said. "It was . . . published sooner than usual, and now we are dealing with the aftermath."
Kersh also was not buying the "deeper meaning" explanation, which may be supported by Dali, who felt that all time was wasted and time that has passed is gone forever and you cannot get it back.
"People look at things at face value," Kersh said. "If someone has to look up or Google a Web site to find a meaning, that's a problem. You don't put something with deeper meaning because the average person . . . isn't privy" to it.
"The front of a yearbook is not the place to do that."
Featherston agreed.
"Personally, I felt that it was an inappropriate thing to put on the cover since it does have multiple meanings, some of which are very negative and not representative of everyone's views," she said.
Student reaction about the theme appears to be mixed.
"I believe the students that made the yearbook more than likely meant well, but they really could've used a different phrase," freshman Briana Villarreal said.
Another freshman, Kourtney Bradshaw, said it's being blown out of proportion.
"I don't get why people are making a big deal out of this," she said. "I get everyone's point, but really, it's done and you can't go back and change it. Besides, in a way it was time well wasted. We think that school is a waste now, but in the future we'll appreciate it."
At least one student editor of the yearbook initially said he wanted to comment but changed his mind.
An even bigger issue, though, may be the hidden message found on one of the pages sponsored by two senior boys. The message is composed of the first letter in each line of the following narrative:
"Finally, after four years of aimlessly roaming these glorious halls
Under the brilliant guidance of our teachers we have learned so much
Choosing the high road, these four years have made us better people,
Kind and nurturing teachers ingratiated this establishment in our hearts.
Paragon of educational excellence, oh Plainview High School
Hail thee, the Alma Mater of our formative years.
So long PHS!"
"It has caused a lot of problems," Kersh said.
She said the two students said the message was coincidence.
"They said it was an accident that it lined up that way," said Kersh, who like the deeper theme meaning didn't buy that either. "No, it wasn't."
She said she didn't immediately notice the hidden message, "but one teacher who does a lot of anagrams caught it immediately."
Kersh said she's "heard it from parents, faculty big time and students. They're saying, ‘That is our senior yearbook, and it's too late to do anything about it.' "
Cunningham, the Estacado teacher, called it "crudeness in the lowest form.
"The annual staff will have some difficult decisions concerning whether it is worth letting individual students have their own pages in the future," she added. "I served as annual sponsor in another district, and I know that editing is a big job and responsibility. If this was an oversight, I really do understand. However, at the same time, there has to be accountability somewhere."
Kersh said she's "addressing the situation" and said discipline, which she cannot discuss due to privacy laws, is forthcoming.
"My apologies for this embarrassment to PHS and our faculty and students," she said.
And, if that wasn't enough, apparently some seniors' photos were left out of the yearbook.
Sometimes when it rains, it pours.
(Contact Kevin Lewis at 806-296-1353 or kwlewis@hearstnp.com. Become his fan on Facebook.)

Yearbooks in the News.

Tom, at Stop Trying to Inspire Me picked up on the article in The Free-Lance Star that Massaponax High School's yearbook is being recalled for a "True Confessions" page, among other things.

Lots of truth, anonymously told. Students are dismayed when the book gets pulled.

First, where the hell was the advisor and the administration? The yearbook is all online these days, even down to the image editing. The advisor has passwords for each kid and has a higher level password for herself. Nothing gets published without her knowledge. She could have reviewed the material and locked the pages. She did not. The administration also has high-level passwords and could have reviewed the material as well, but did not.

"Rodkey said the yearbook is a student publication, overseen by an advisor. He said he did not want to cast the staff or advisor in a negative light."

Bull. Not making a decision is equivalent to approval. The joke that seems funny now is crude in a few years, stupid in a few more, and just plain mean-spirited after that. The mis-attributed "Quotable Quote" would be a lawsuit in any other publication. The previous yearbook was called "Scandalous" and many parents agreed. It does give one something to think about.

I've found that the biggest student misconception is "It's OUR yearbook and we can write anything we want."

Um, no, it's not. And you've got Facebook for that.

The yearbook may be ABOUT the students but it doesn't belong to them.

It has to be about the football kids and soccer kids, the goths and the jocks, the drama club and the drama queens, those who did nothing for four years and those on the Ivy track. It should have the loners and the clubbies, winners and losers (pictured that one time when they looked good). No one should ever have to hide a picture. Every senior should have a formal and at least one candid. Every picture and every comment must meet the "parent shows to grandparent and both smile" test.

It's the kids' yearbook,
and the parents',
and grandparents',
and the community's,
and the library's,
and the faculty's,
and the friends and fans of the sports teams,
and for the kids twenty years hence to show their children.

Everything in it must be something to make all those people look back fondly. Publishing things like "I have sex with people just to feel wanted." "I worry all the time my ex-boyfriend will use the naked picture I sent him to ruin my life."
"I had an abortion and my mom doesn't know." "I once did so much pot that I woke up high." "I'm pregnant with my best friend's boyfriend's kid."

What in hell were the adults thinking?

The Lily-Pad Problem

Proposition – If the water lily is ten inches above the water, and disappears under the surface at a point distant twenty-one inches, what is the depth of the lake?

Click title to Read further

The poet Longfellow was a fine mathematician who often spoke about the advantage of clothing our mathematical problems in such attractive or congenial garb as would appeal to the fancy of the student in place of following the dry, technical language of the textbooks. He would connect the proposition with some familiar subject which best explains the problems to be solved.

A clever kindergarten illustration of a mathematical theorem leaves a clearer and more lasting impression upon the mind of a student than a whole term of uncongenial study.

He always held mathematics to be the most important branch of knowledge taught in our colleges and high schools, for the reason that it enters so largely into all of the arts and sciences, and yet the average student graduates with such an undying aversion to figures that he speedily dismisses all recollections of them from his mind.

The water lily problem is one of several introduced in Longfellow's "Kavanah", written while occupying the Chair of Modern Languages in Harvard University, 1849. It is so simple that anyone, even without a knowledge of mathematics or geometry, could solve it with a pair of compasses or rule, and yet it illustrates an important geometrical truth in a never-to-be-forgotten way, which many graduates have never grasped at all.

I forget the exact language of the problem, as he described it to me personally during a discussion of the subject, but he told of a water lily growing in a lake; the flower was one span above the surface of the water, and when swayed by the breeze, would touch the surface at a distance of two cubits, from which data it was desired to compute the depth of the lake.

Now, let us suppose, as shown in the sketch, that the water lily is ten inches above the surface of the water, and that if it were pulled over to one side it would disappear under the surface at a point distant twenty-one inches from where it now stands, say just where the young lady is supposed to have drawn it, which shows that the two flowers are anchored to the same root at the bottom of the lake, what is the depth of the water?

Sam Loyd
"Cyclopedia of Puzzles", Lamb Publishing, New York, 1914

Critical Thinking needs critical facts

From a website begging to teach me critical thinking:
“With No Child Left Behind in the rearview mirror, it's time to broaden your students' horizons. Now teachers can focus on critical thinking, comprehension and meaningful expression. Critical thinking is the most valuable skill we can teach our children. With it, kids can find any fact and solve any problem.”

Actually, no. And yes.

Yes, you can find any fact.
No, you can’t solve any problem.

The acquisition of facts allows the brain/mind to juggle those facts and judge whether or not something is true, to extend the facts beyond what is known and extrapolate to an unknown, to devise a new formula from the old, to push the boundaries of understanding beyond the limits.

Critical thinking, by itself, is not enough. “If I have seen far, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants.” Critical thinking is that “Seeing far.” We must build upon our past, expand our knowledge and push our learning forward.

Without resistance and thinking, one cannot have learning. Learning is hard. Understanding new things is hard. If it isn’t, then the new thing probably isn’t new. It may have been unthought-of, but it isn’t new. The spark was needed but the groundwork had been laid.

Before you can be a critical thinker, you must have some facts to critically think about. Before one can decode a word problem and reduce it down to its essence, one must first understand the essence. Only then can we see the frills and verbiage that obscure the true problem.

Surface area of a house … “What’s the formula?” There isn’t one. It’s a collection of known figures for which we do have formulas.

If Your Theory is Foolish ...

Any new theory first is attacked as absurd; then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant; finally it seems to be important, so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it!
-- William James (1842-1910)

Just because I attack your new theory of educational practice as absurd does not mean that it will someday be true.
-- Curmudgeon (2010)

College Degree isn't working out for everyone.

via Joanne Jacobs: The Class of 2010 borrowed lots of money to attend expensive universities and graduate with skills the labor market doesn’t want, writes Joe Queenan in the Wall Street Journal.

SO?

The whole "college degree gets you a million more over your lifetime" thing was bull all along. It was based on a selected sample comparing apples and oranges.


Here's a bit o' truth for all you students out there.

• All college degrees are NOT created equal. Sorry.
• "Womyn's Studies" and "Black Studies" and "I don't do math so I'm going to be an elementary ed teacher." Don't expect to paid like a rockstar if you can't play a lick.
• This is what happens when you slack your way through classes and start your drinking on Thursday (We don't want Friday classes).  Too much selfish and childish behavior - fewer hours spent doing homework and more spent on your little iPhone and on those video games and TV. Most college students are lazy slackers more interested in beer than work.
• This is the result of searching for the professor who gives out easy As or who rewards the girls with the biggest chest, instead of those who learned something. Choosing a school based on the nearby beach or the quality of the babes doesn't translate to learning anything, you know.

Maybe you SHOULD have been a plumber. Tech school WAS an option, you know. So is the military, though their standards may be a little too high for someone of your obvious talent and sensibilities.

If you're stupid enough to take lame and useless courses and expect a rapid payoff once out of college, I frankly don't care if you have that millstone around your neck. (I'd have said 'albatross' but too few students would get the reference - lack of employment is a punishment for hubris- driven college course selection).

I'm not sorry for having this opinion, kids. You set up your education - this was not a snap judgment. You were not forced into doing this. You demanded your parents hard-earned money for some of this education cost and you took out the loans for the rest. You slept through class or skipped it to go to Spring Break. What did you expect?

You get what you pay for, or in this case what you worked for (or didn't).

If you did take rigorous courses and worked hard, got a good degree and still got laid off, then I do sympathize and wish you better luck. My guess is that you'll be able to get a good job much faster than that other idiot. You'll also be able to work up the ladder faster, too.

The slacker in college is still a slacker in life. He's screwed either way. Don't be that guy.

Arizona Improves its Teacher Corps

In this WSJ article,

"Nearly half the teachers at Creighton, a K-8 school in a Hispanic neighborhood of Phoenix, are native Spanish speakers. State auditors have reported to the district that some teachers pronounce words such as violet as "biolet," think as "tink" and swallow the ending sounds of words, as they sometimes do in Spanish.
These teachers "are very good educators who understand the culture" of their students, said Ms. Agneessens, Creighton's principal. "Teachers should speak grammatically correct English," she acknowledged, but added, "I object to the nuance of punishment for accent."

I certainly agree that those teaching English should be fluent in English. It's less important for them to be New England Private School Stereotypes. (Mr. Chips left this building years ago.) If only all teachers and administrators were fluent in English (which apparently mine is not, despite being a WASP), that would be a very good thing for all of the kids, white, Hispanic, Asian, whatever.

It would be nice if they were all fluent in mathematics, too, but I wish for too much.

The accent, though, is a much dicier matter for me. Knowledge can be acquired. Style can be learned. Strategies can be developed. Accents are forever.

Einstein spoke with an accent. Arianna Huffington. Henry Kissinger. Lucille Ball and Dezi Arnaz. Half the engineering faculty in this country speak with accents. Which "accent" is the Arizona DOE putting out as acceptable? Is it just the Hispanic accents they are denouncing? Careful how you answer that.

Would Arnold Schwarzenegger be allowed to teach in Arizona?

I speak with an accent, too. I try for different ones to crack up the students - I'm quite proud of my North Carolina and my Kain-tucky. Every Southerner I know speaks with a distinct drawl. Most Texans can't seem to pronounce "you" with one syllable and three letters, not to mention most of the rest of that bastardized version of English. The Welsh guy and the German and Italian teachers all have accents - duh. Every wanna-be gansta kid (black or white, though the white kids are funnier) works on a pretentious, ridiculous accent that practically guarantees that they will never be taken seriously in an intellectual context. Ebonics was a sick joke.

And Arizona is concerned with "tink"?

Letters to the Editor - issue one

Just ranting. This might be my response if I were to write to the Gazette. (see original letter below) I won't because I don't live anywhere near there, but ...

I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but letters like this one quoted below fill me with a sense of wonder and maybe a little despair -- wonder that the writer has so little knowledge of how the world works (or simply refuses to look beyond a talkinghead-type sound bite) and despair that we have a media with its echo chamber forums determined to perpetuate the false notions dreamed up in a fit of rage.

First, I wish that other states would include income sensitivity in their property-tax calculations to account for those who can't afford to pay. Here in the Socialist State of Vermont, property taxes are capped at 4.5% of household income. Its a fair compromise for a state that has little industry and most of its wealth tied up in property and it makes a lot of these complaints moot.

The wonder? The writer is essentially complaining that teachers (and their unions) are greedy bastards, "teaching students to pursue their own advantage regardless of the cost to their neighbor ... [snip] ... teachers’ unions are unwilling to forgo salary increases."

Click on the title for more

Why, exactly, should teachers give up a salary increase or accept a pay cut? I'm real sorry about the families who lost their source of income but I have a family, too. We both work and we make a good living. Why should I have to give back some of my wages just because someone else lost their job?

If one group of people loses a job, how does that mean that a second unrelated group must also lose their jobs or necessarily accept pay cuts? Can I simply look around and find those people who got a pay increase this year or who got jobs this year and demand a teacher increase based on them instead? Teacher pay and waitress pay should not be tied together. How about teacher pay and Bank Executives pay?

Why do people think like this? I think it's the disparity in public emotion between the loss and the gain of a job. People lash out without really thinking.

Unemployment is a big deal because of its affect on people, all at once. It's a particularly difficult and embarrassing time. Jobless people are in a definite crunch and attract understandable sympathy. I get that. (Some unemployed are more of a jerk about it - demanding a job as a right instead of looking for one or demanding that the new job pay as much as the old one.) What I don't get is why I should necessarily be the one who has to take a paycut to "pay" for it.

The other side of unemployment is much quieter. Getting a job is quiet celebration. All those folks get jobs at different times and they usually just go about their new job quietly with little fanfare, grateful that they can now be productive and fiercely protective of their job and paycheck.

Whence the despair? For me, it comes from considering that the media and the people of the community seem to be in an escalating competition to be more radical and unreasonable. The echo chamber of "teachers suck" letters gets a bit much. Forget the bad spelling and grammar, ignore the atrocious mathematical errors or the forgotten lessons of history. Forget that this is a fallacy of relevance (argumentum ad misericordiam).

Teachers are held responsible for all kinds of things - even those completely out of their control. Somehow, forcing a pay cut on them will cure those ills and inspire those teachers to do even more.

The same people who would (or have already)

1. do most anything to get a good-paying job at the plywood factory, or dealership
2. wonder why on Earth they should take a pay cut or voluntarily give up their job because unemployment is high in the community,
3. fight fiercely to keep that job, join a union and expect that union to negotiate on their behalf
4. look askance at an idea to make their own pay vary by as much as 25% and base that variation not on the quality of the work they do but on the quality of the materials they use or on the ability of workers they didn't choose and can't fire.
5. desire seniority rules to protect their own job and preventing the company from firing someone because a raw newbie is cheaper.
6. expect a raise every year regardless of any added value to the company

... would then ask teachers to accept layoffs and pay cuts because of unemployment in the community, complain that teachers have seniority rules and "tenure", complain about the teachers' union working for the benefit of its members and feel it appropriate to put their wage-scale decisions into the hands of diffident teenagers. And justify their complaint because teachers are "teaching the wrong lesson" to the children.

But, I teach logic. What do I know?

Greedy teachers setting an unhealthy example for their students

A Schenectady (NY) Daily Gazette Letter to the Editor
May 14, 2010

The most disturbing thing about our school budget process is that our educators, by their actions, are teaching students to pursue their own advantage regardless of the cost to their neighbor.

While many of us totter on the precipice of financial ruin, teachers’ unions are unwilling to forgo salary increases. School districts and most state legislators have turned a deaf ear to Gov. Paterson’s pleas for caps on school taxes despite New York state’s desperate financial situation, shrinking tax base and unstable economy.

Amidst all this avarice, I have seen no concern for the plight of the jobless and the vast majority whose incomes are shrinking. For example, at the Broadalbin-Perth school district budget hearing, one woman shared her heartbreaking story: She has been laid off from her job and, with only a trickle of income remaining, can barely make ends meet. The school board expressed no concern that she, and many others, will likely lose their homes if property taxes continue to increase.

Although I find the educator’s modeling of the “me, me” attitude disturbing, I find what the schools are teaching me more alarming. I have been a highly optimistic person. My zest for life has enabled me to prevail in my battle against two life-threatening diseases. I now find myself increasingly pessimistic. The determined gleam in my eyes is now only a flicker. If the Broadalbin-Perth school district’s budget is approved, my taxes, which have increased 400 percent in the past 10 years, will go up still another 14 percent. Even the contingency budget has a confounding tax increase of 9 percent.

If the citizens vote down the school budget, what will the students be told? In Broadalbin-Perth, I am afraid that they will hear that voters are selfishly denying them their sports programs. However, I hope that enlightened teachers will tell them the truth: Our taxes are too high; New Yorkers are leaving the state in record numbers and many who are jobless or retired cannot afford the 9 percent increase and may be forced to sell their homes.

Sherrie Giles
Broadalbin

Validating the material. Justifying the curriculum.

I'm all for the real world. I live here, too. But not everything I do is directly related to what I'll be doing tomorrow. Sometimes, I'm just guessing. Most of the time I know what's useful and what isn't.

What I refuse to do is to always justify every topic and problem that I teach as being useful to every student for every day of their future lives. I won't even guarantee that every topic will be "useful" even just once for each student. I can never do that because I know that every kid is different and will have different needs. Some kids are losers who will grow out of being losers -- what you were sure was useless last year may suddenly become very useful tomorrow.

This question arose when f(t) posted about some circle theorems and asked "What are these good for?" One answer included the following: "On the other hand, there are millions of other problems/concepts that also do that AND are useful in 'real life.' So, why do we do these that are so disconnected?"

The problem with always requiring "a real-world application or you'll dump the material" is that all of math can be reduced to this absurd level if you try hard enough. As can poetry. And chemistry. and history. and art. (and grammar and writing, if you took my principal's example). Every topic can be eliminated by somebody.

"When am I EVER going to use this?" becomes a weapon instead of a question.

Why not teach it "just because?"

Why should my short-sighted, intensely hormonal, spring-addled students have the right of refusal over anything they don't immediately see a purpose for? I can see a couple of blue-collar uses for those circle and tangent rules above. If I can't convince a student that a machinist, draftsman or custom motorcycle builder would need at least an understanding of this stuff, should it be eliminated? I don't think so.

Sometimes they just need to follow the leader. "We're doing it because I think it's neat, it's part of the course, it fits here and we have the time."

As math teachers, we need to refocus the question and answer it ourselves. We need to take the question out of the mouths of the lazy and decide what does, indeed, make for a good curriculum. If something like those circle theorems can be used in any meaningful way either later in life or later in the week, then WE should decide. If they have no purpose other than intellectual curiosity, then they have that going for them, don't they?

Geometrical theorems are rarely useful in the raw as it were, but in combination with other knowledge, make a different problem solvable. It's a polygon inscribed in a circle -- or is it a bolt-pattern for a truck wheel? Tangents and circles, central and inscribed angles, external angles come together all the time in machining and manufacture.

To answer the original question:
Every time I see these theorems, I think of the guys on Junkyard wars who recited geometrical theory when building a go-kart. They won.

Some other comments:
"My take on it is that the people behind the unified 10-12 curriculum looked at circle geometry and asked these same questions of "why?", had no answer, and got rid of them. " The commenter didn't get rid of them but the powers-that-be did.

"I don't consider "it's interesting" a good enough justification, because there are plenty of things that are both interesting and relevant to what students will later see of pure mathematics." In other words, justify or get replaced.

"it's a mathematical dead end." and "but I can't even think of a later pure-mathematics connection. Shouldn't we be suspicious of anything that's a "stub" in the curriculum?" I can't think of a reason for it, so let's be suspicious of it?

In the running for HIP

"A third-grader in a small Texas school district received a week's detention for merely possessing a Jolly Rancher. Leighann Adair, 10, was eating lunch Monday when a teacher confiscated the candy. Her parents said she was in tears when she arrived home later that afternoon and handed them the detention notice. But school officials are defending the sentence, saying the school was abiding by a state guideline that banned 'minimal nutrition' foods. 'Whether or not I agree with the guidelines, we have to follow the rules,' said school superintendent Jack Ellis."

Because you're an idiot?

Not all percussionists are talented

Some are built.

An amazing shot.

From the Times Online:

A BRITISH Army sniper has set a new sharpshooting distance record by killing two Taliban machinegunners in Afghanistan from more than 1 mile away. The shooting — which took place while Harrison’s colleagues came under attack — was at such extreme range that the 8.59mm bullets took almost three seconds to reach their target after leaving the barrel of the rifle at almost three times the speed of sound. The distance to Harrison’s two targets was measured by a GPS system at 8,120ft, or 1.54 miles.

The speed of sound in air is 340m/s or 1125 ft/s. The L115A3 has muzzle velocity of 936 m/s (3071 ft/s) and has an effective range of 1500m or 4920 ft. He hit TWO guys at nearly twice that.

What can you do with this?

Last year, one of the fish developed a fungal infection:

We don't care much about this particular one as it was a 12 cent feeder fish but the same pond has other fish.  The koi, for example, are quite valuable. If we did nothing, this one might infect the rest.  So we needed PIMAFIX, but how much?
More below.

That's not too detailed a picture. You can give them this one following or let them search it out on the Interwebs. They need to find the text at the bottom of the bottle that describes the dosage proportions.

Next comes the question, "How big is the pond?" "Well, I don't really know. Certainly not the number of gallons or liters. But it is a pretty decent circle.

The sides are pretty steep. I guess we can assume the general shape of a cylinder. Maybe drop a percentage off the total?

So, how to measure? I didn't bring my math teacher's 100 meter tape so I walked around it and counted steps. One lap around the pond took me 65 steps, and my steps are pretty close to one yard long. I walked very close to the edges and the side walls are steep. When I drained the pond years ago to get out the boat motor someone had thrown in (don't ask) the bottom was roughly a flat bowl shape. The depth is 6 – 8 feet, depending on the weather.

I've got the blue bottle at school:
Bottle of PIMAFIX
Net 16 fl. Oz (473ml)
Treats up to 2,400 US Gallons (9.085L)
Add 2 teaspoonfuls (10ml) for every 50 US Gallons (190L) or 1/4 cup (60ml)for every 300 US Gallons (1,135L) of water


Take it away!  Give as much or as little as your kids can handle or need.  Good Luck.

p.s. The fish didn't make it.  But the other one that developed it did, and the one that developed the same infection this year also seems to be doing well.  It's a pretty common situation whenever the slimecoat is scraped off or damaged.  Breeding frenzy and the rubbing that results from it can be a cause.  This year's fish has a large cut, probably an owl or other bird, but the cut and the fungal infection are both improving.

WCYDWT? Really. I don't know yet.

Honest. I just found it and it struck me. What can you do with this?

MWRA is activating its emergency water supplies such as the Sudbury Aqueduct, Chestnut Hill Reservoir and Spot Pond Reservoir. THIS WATER WILL NOT BE SUITABLE FOR DRINKING, but can be used for bathing, flushing and fire protection.

The leak is located at the location where the MetroWest Water Supply Tunnel meets the City Tunnel on Recreation Road. This 120-inch diameter pipe transports water to our communities east of Weston – as far north as Wilmington and south to Stoughton. Water is leaking into the Charles River at rate of over 8 million gallons an hour.

http://www.mwra.com/updates/leak.html