toward an uncertain future

I haven't posted in a little while, mostly because lately there hasn't been much in the way of new news. The Board has heard from concerned citizens at recent forums, and will continue to investigate options in the study session tomorrow night. As you can see from the graphic below, though, over a month remains until the Board has to adopt the budget.


True, the Olympia School District avoided a RIF. Some teachers still lost jobs, though, learning that their one-year contracts wouldn't be renewed. Other positions were eliminated through retirement. Right now, schools are individually finding out how the cuts will affect them next year.

For instance, Capital is potentially slated to lose over 4 FTEs in 2009-10, thanks to cuts and to declining enrollment. Last week I learned that, as the second-lowest ranking member of the English department--which could trim 1.8 FTEs--I should at least consider the possibility that I might work at a different school in the district this fall.

Regardless, the uncertainty I face is nothing compared to the uncertainty of those given pink slips, or coming out of ed school looking for jobs that no longer exist.

blazing through Friday

Friday was a bit of a crazy day for me. But at least it was a musical, poetically crazy day.

In 2nd period, a group presented its research on "old school rappers" that launched a discussion of image versus authenticity. (I learned that "old school," for sophomores, means the 90s. Ah, youth.) Third period took a poetry walk around the school, lucky enough to see the red-winged blackbird that occupies the freshman pond.

As they've been studying Langston Hughes' poetry, my three junior classes were introduced to the world of the Blues, hearing classics performed by Big Mama Thornton, Muddy Waters, Skip James, T-Bone Walker, and more. I started with Walker's "Stormy Monday," since it fits the classic pattern of the 12-bar blues. This would become significant later.

Class got out, and it was time to prepare for a Student Congress tournament for middle schoolers, with a small, but boisterous turnout. It was mostly a dry run for another we'll offer this coming fall.

But the day was just getting started. Up next: a drive out to Elma, or, more specifically, the Grays Harbor County Fairgrounds.

The formula: The Elma Relay for Life + The Mike Dean Project = annual tradition. Friday night from 11 until two, we played for the third time in three years.

As the Luminarium ceremony started, I saw a few Capital students from my junior classes across the way, waving frantically. Turned out they were part of a walking team, and they were as surprised to see me there as I was to see them. They eventually joined the energetic Elma crowd, right up front, blasted by Mike and Brian's rockin' guitars, Jeff's funked up bass groove, Kent's keyboard antics, and the powerful vocal stylings of the audience's other favorite teacher, Kim Hinderlie.

A couple songs into our set, Mike turned around and said, "Stormy Monday."

We launched in, and the Capital crew busted out in smiles. Later on, during a break, one said I must have planned it that way.

Of course I did.

post-music

Music critic Simon Reynolds on the movements between movements:

The after-zones of rock history are hard to grasp precisely because they're so various. This rich muddle demands identifying labels that are umbrella-broad and open-ended. Hence post-punk, not a genre so much as a space of possibility, out of which new genres formed: Goth, industrial, synthpop, mutant disco, and many more.

I can think of at least a couple more "post-" terms that could usefully redraw the map of pop music history...

And you'll have to click through to find out what they are.

today's Twitter links

1. Snohomish County emergency teams are tweeting.

2. Twitter's management team faces the future.

3. Tweeters--twitterers--should watch out for worms.

4. Twitter's jumping onto the tube.

5. Leading to the inevitable protest.

6. And the inevitable backlash.

if you're reading this, you're a socialist

At least, as Kevin Kelly defines the term.

Instead of gathering on collective farms, we gather in collective worlds. Instead of state factories, we have desktop factories connected to virtual co-ops. Instead of sharing drill bits, picks, and shovels, we share apps, scripts, and APIs. Instead of faceless politburos, we have faceless meritocracies, where the only thing that matters is getting things done. Instead of national production, we have peer production. Instead of government rations and subsidies, we have a bounty of free goods.

I recognize that the word socialism is bound to make many readers twitch. It carries tremendous cultural baggage, as do the related terms communal, communitarian, and collective. I use socialism because technically it is the best word to indicate a range of technologies that rely for their power on social interactions. Broadly, collective action is what Web sites and Net-connected apps generate when they harness input from the global audience. Of course, there's rhetorical danger in lumping so many types of organization under such an inflammatory heading. But there are no unsoiled terms available, so we might as well redeem this one.

The movement is organic rather than organized, and cooperative rather than collectivist. You're already a part of it.

But it needs a better name. "Socialism" is too fraught with connotation. "Collaborism" is a little unwieldy. "Synergism" is too corporate--and "corporate" is already taken.

There has to be a better, fresher noun.

Update: Jesse Walker for the counterpoint.

Update II: Jason Kuznicki on the closest approximation to utopia.

spilling coffee in the name of science

A space elevator is one kitchen mess closer to reality.

“The idea came by itself,” Golubovic told PhysOrg.com. “I was thinking how to make things move easily and quickly up the traditional Tsiolkovsky-type space elevators. In my kitchen, I was mixing coffee in my cup too vigorously and the centrifugal force on the rotating coffee won over gravity to make some of the coffee lift and splash out the cup. This was my ‘eureka’ that lead to adding a similar conceptual feature to the old space elevator idea, the internal rotation. Indeed, much like the coffee would lift and splash out the cup if rotated fast enough, the climbers on our Rotating Space Elevator will be lifted up by the centrifugal force winning over gravity.”

[via Instapundit]

Saturday with the Mariners and Mom

Top of the sixth. Dave Sims announces, "This inning it'll be Gutierrez, Ichiro, and Chavez." Gutierrez stands in. In the Anderson household, the following conversation occurs.

Mom: Is that Ichiro?
Dad: No, it's Gutierrez.
[Gutierrez hits the ball down the third base line and bolts to first. San Fran's third baseman Uribe makes the play, but it's a foul ball. Gutierrez heads back to the plate.]
Mom: Is he out?
Me: No. It was a foul ball.
Mom: Then they should punish him.
Dad: Why would they punish him?
Mom: Because he did something he isn't supposed to do.
Dad, amused: Then they should punish Uribe for throwing it.
Mom: He shouldn't do things that are confusing.
Dad: It's not confusing. Everyone knows what's going on.
Mom: Baseball is ridiculous.

A minute or two later:

Dad, teasing: Here's ol' what's his name.
Mom: Who?
Dad: Ichiro.
Mom: I can't see his face. All I can see is the top of his head. It could be anybody.... He does a dance at the plate. Doesn't he? He does. He was shaking his hips and everything... [Ichiro singles.] Come on, Ichiro. You need to get home or you're no good.

When Dave Niehaus retires, I know who should replace him.

MST3K evolves

Clark Stooksbury on the natural history of the greatest television show of all time:

Speaking at the 2008 San Diego Comic Con, the actor Patton Oswalt aptly compared the early fan efforts on behalf of Mystery Science Theater—sending videotapes to friends in areas where the show was not available—to the ways people use YouTube and MySpace today. Now many of the show’s writers and performers are using the Web to directly reach fans old and new without the middleman of cable TV. Neither Cinematic Titanic nor Rifftrax is a rehash of Mystery Science Theater 3000, but both are recognizable descendants. And both continue to transmute cinematic dross into comedy gold.

Any excuse to use the word "transmute."

Hughes of an afternoon

It was such a perfect afternoon--so perfect that it even started early, at about 11:30, when I took the first of my three junior classes outside on a poetry walk, just the thing before lunch, and, for that matter, after. Glorious sunshine. Ducks swimming beside the shopping cart in the retention pond. Flag football on the practice field. Middle schoolers smoking on the trails. Scotchbroom waxing.

Students took scrap paper and a pencil, jotting down observations along the way.

Before each jaunt, I'd tell the class we were about to visit the confluence of civilization and nature. To our right, the nouveau-industrial designs of a contemporary high school; to our left, a forest. This led to my favorite exchange, overheard on the trail:

"Smell those flowers?"
"Yeah. Flowers... of nature."
"And just over there is a stump... of nature."
"Yes. And--oh! A dragonfly of nature!"
"No, that's a dragonfly of civilization."

Best of all was the live silence in the fifteen minutes that followed each walk, students scribbling, transmuting their notes into poetry as the ghost of Langston Hughes floated overhead.

public to District: save our sports

At the first of two public forums concerning potential budget cuts, Olympians showed up to advocate for activities facing the axe.

Swimmers, golfers, gymnasts and drill team members, their parents and coaches urged Olympia School District officials to reconsider cutting or reducing their activities during a forum Tuesday night.

About 100 people came to Marshall Middle School to share their thoughts about the latest 2009-10 budget-cut proposals, which addresses a shortfall of about $2 million....

What hopes might students, parents, and coaches have? Superintendent Bill Lahmann:

Lahmann said that last year’s forums made a difference to the final proposal; the outdoors school and drill team were saved from cuts last year after the public forums.

“Last year, we had a little bit of flexibility, but I don’t know how much flexibility we have this year,” he said. “But we have a school board that really does listen to our community.”

Flexible points still include administrative positions, systemic efficiencies, and the ending fund balance, which could dip below the 5% recommended by the District.

stop, drop your jaw, roll your eyes

The stupid, it burns:

District fire chief Jon Bugher told The Peninsula Daily News he was stunned to discover several people playing lighter tag.

It involved squirting themselves with lighter fluid, lighting the clothing of the person who is "it" and beating out the flames.

As if we needed another asinine reason to visit the emergency room.

Gregoire rides the wish-horse of reform

Today Governor Gregoire signed a galloping reform bill.

The plan would create smaller classes, full-day kindergarten and a longer high school day to give students a chance to meet higher credit requirements.

It would also distribute state education dollars based on a new formula, but does not include a plan for paying for the changes....

In a room filled with supporters of the reform bill, the governor echoed the sentiments of its critics by also speaking about what was missing from the legislation: a way to pay for it....

Lawmakers and government officials have estimated the reforms could add as much as $4 billion a year to the just under $7 billion the state already spends on K-12 education annually.

Gregoire noted that the Legislature is working to address the lack of money by phasing in the reforms over about eight years and assigning a Quality Education Council to make sure the financing system is put in place.

"If wishes were horses," goes the old saying, "beggars would ride." Step one was beggaring education. Now we get our wish-horse.

they call it wisdom literature

During the Iraq War, an officer in the Pentagon was a little too fond of placing Bible verses on the cover of intelligence reports.

Strangely, he never included Ecclesiastes 9:11.

a call for grading reform

In the pages of the vaunted Onion A.V. Club blog, noted educational theorist Josh Modell provides one of the best possible arguments for grading reform.

Letter grades are relative, and nowhere on the site (or in our reviewers' minds, I don't think) does an A or A- mean that a movie (or CD or book or videogame) is one of the best ever made. I certainly don't believe that Crank 2 is one of the best movies ever made. But what that A- did signify, and what I think high grades on The A.V. Club generally signify, is success. In my eyes (and in the eyes of Keith Phipps and Scott Tobias, who both enjoyed Crank 2), the movie was successful at what it was trying to be: weird, almost parodic, and over-the-top. Those seemed to be its goals, and it delivered. It was certainly never boring or cliched, and much of the time it was actually pretty incredible. For people who like these types of movies (and I can think of very few analogs for this particular movie), Crank 2 was pretty great. So what grade do you give to a movie that you think is highly entertaining and successful but exists in a genre that's not allowed a high grade?

That gets into what I like to think of as "genre profiling." You haven't seen the movie, and yet you know it's not possible that it deserves an A-. To some degree I agree with you: Action movies (even outliers like this one) are, by definition, incapable of being among the greatest films of all time. And that's fine, but it's a bit unfair to ghettoize them so much that an A (or even a B) grade is off the table. It's like deciding that the fat kid in gym class couldn't possibly do better than a B-, and then grading him accordingly. (What if he's a phenomenal goalie?) All of our writers understand--and I think our readers are sharp enough to understand--that Crank 2 isn't even in the same universe of greatness as The Godfather or (insert your all-time fave here).

It's true that A or A- grades in film are pretty rare at The A.V. Club, and I appreciate that that makes them more trustworthy. What I tell the music writers is that if something is getting an A or A-, it should be one of their personal favorites--top 10, if not higher--of the year. Crank 2 could very well end up one of my favorite movies of 2009. (And no, I'm not some sort of action junkie--my faves of last year were Synecdoche NY, Ballast, Snow Angels, Dear Zachary, and Wendy & Lucy, and I think this year's action hit, Taken, is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. It got a C-.)

By now you've guessed that Modell isn't actually an educational theorist. Which is too bad.

not a good excuse for plagiarism

The situation:

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has admitted to using a paragraph virtually word-for-word from a prominent liberal blogger without attribution.

Dowd acknowledged the error in an e-mail to the Huffington Post on Sunday, the Web site reported. The Times corrected her column online to give proper credit for the material to Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall.

The explanation in Dowd's own words:

josh is right. I didn't read his blog last week, and didn't have any idea he had made that point until you informed me just now.

i was talking to a friend of mine Friday about what I was writing who suggested I make this point, expressing it in a cogent -- and I assumed spontaneous -- way and I wanted to weave the idea into my column.

but, clearly, my friend must have read josh marshall without mentioning that to me.
we're fixing it on the web, to give josh credit, and will include a note, as well as a formal correction tomorrow.

How not to excuse your own plagiarism: "No, I didn't copy it from that guy. I copied it from somebody else."

scaring yourself to death

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, riffing, once said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. On a related note, NewScientist's Helen Pilcher tackles a fascinating topic: the deadly nocebo.

The placebo effect has an evil twin: the nocebo effect, in which dummy pills and negative expectations can produce harmful effects. The term "nocebo", which means "I will harm", was not coined until the 1960s, and the phenomenon has been far less studied than the placebo effect. It's not easy, after all, to get ethical approval for studies designed to make people feel worse.

What we do know suggests the impact of nocebo is far-reaching. "Voodoo death, if it exists, may represent an extreme form of the nocebo phenomenon," says anthropologist Robert Hahn of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, who has studied the nocebo effect.

In clinical trials, around a quarter of patients in control groups - those given supposedly inert therapies - experience negative side effects. The severity of these side effects sometimes matches those associated with real drugs. A retrospective study of 15 trials involving thousands of patients prescribed either beta blockers or a control showed that both groups reported comparable levels of side effects, including fatigue, depressive symptoms and sexual dysfunction. A similar number had to withdraw from the studies because of them.

The effect is played out in "anticipatory nauseau," "mass psychogenic illness," and who knows what other maladies. By now, someone you know has probably already contracted sympathetic swine flu.

"Hey ump, your sensor's miscalibrated!"

Is it time for virtual refs to replace the men and women in stripes, wonders Colin Barras of NewScientist.

Referees have got their hands on some advanced technology, which is already vastly improving the fairness of sports. For example, Hawk-Eye ball-tracking software is now used to examine contested calls in tennis, and photo-finish cameras in athletics can now take 3000 snapshots per second to reveal the winner.

But there is the potential for technology to do much more – even to take over the enforcement of the rules altogether. That could spare some sports refs from the unpleasant consequences of a bad call, which in extreme cases can lead to death threats. As Harding's team points out, it could also limit the scope for corrupt officials to influence a game.

So perhaps the time has come for the fans, competitors, and sport organisers who embrace technology in many areas to allow referees and umpires to do the same.

Spend enough time watching NBA refs in action, and you might be inclined to agree.

Of course, everyone knows that the real reason virtual refs are resisted so fervently isn't the desire for preserving the purity of sport, but for preserving the all-holy blame-it-on-the-ump. You just can't sass a circuitboard.

Fools Play brings it... to CHS

I've recently revived improv at CHS as part of Capital Academy, the afterschool classes designed to make up for the hours and hours of time lost due to the roof collapse this past December. The workshop, called the Art of Improv, is merely educational right now, but with enough effort and energy, we just might be throwing a show together before the end of the year.

Today, Chris Harris and CHS's own Josh Hird of Fools Play came as guest instructors, teaching students their patented approach to the theory of improv. If you had been there, you'd have learned about offers, salsa, suspension, and "jibba jabba."

Suffice it to say: it was awesome, and I'm sorry you missed it.

breaking: Olympia SD's budget cut recommendations for 2009-2010

This afternoon the Olympia School District released its list of recommended budget changes for the 2009-2010 year [PDF]. The largest cuts would come from reducing the Ending Fund Balance to 5%, saving $850,000, and backfilling special education with $400,000 in stimulus funds. Other significant recommended cuts are included in the graphic below.

(Some cuts--notably those made to particular high school athletics--are bound to be unpopular. Some cuts are a little opaque; for instance, I'm going to find out what that "Special Events Fund" includes, since $100,000 probably represents a goodly number of stipends at all levels.)

The community is invited to comment on the proposed cuts at upcoming meetings.

May 19, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Marshall Middle School, 3939 20th Avenue NW, Olympia 98502

May 21, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Washington Middle School, 3100 Cain Road SE, Olympia 98501

An overview of the budget is available here [PDF].

Update: More details available at Venice Buhain's blog at The Olympian.

Update II: The "special events fund" is used differently at each school. For instance, it might include stipends to support teachers who run charity campaigns, or who write letters of recommendation for seniors (the case at CHS), or who advise clubs. It's a lot of little stipends rolled up in one $100,000 cut.

your cheatin' WASL

Surprise to no one: a high-stakes test induces "irregularities," including cheating by both students and teachers. KIRO's breathless story:

A four-month KIRO Team 7 Investigation uncovers hundreds of cases where students and teachers failed to play fair on mandatory assessment tests.

Investigative Reporter Chris Halsne proves how a little cheating can go a long way in improving scores and reputations.

Under the Washington Open Records Act, KIRO Team 7 Investigators acquired reports of around 650 WASL "irregularities" filed in the past three years.

We dug deep into that data and found accusations of cheating, which could falsely improve scores, spread out in 317 different schools in more than 100 districts.

Texting answers, using dictionaries and calculators, and teachers helping kids score math points are just a few examples of cheating reported to the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Our research also found that plenty of classroom cheating goes unreported – something students we interviewed confirmed.

Out of curiosity, I looked at the 2008 data for some local districts. The results are a little less than overwhelming. Some calculator mistakes (that didn't affect the outcome, apparently), an overzealous scribe, students passing notes, some "non-allowed accommodations," and, my personal favorite, "staff members [sic] cell phone went off during testing."