Extra! Extra! The Ten Second News Links We’ve Overlooked!
There’s a phenomenon where someone writes an essay about this or that but someone else wants to discuss something that has not yet made it to Ten Second News.
This is unfair to everybody involved. It’s unfair to the guy who wrote the original essay because, presumably, he wants to talk about his original essay. It’s unfair to the guy who wants to talk about his link because it looks like he’s trying to change the subject. It’s unfair to the people who go to the comments to read up on the thoughts of the commentariat for the original essay and now we’re talking about some other guy’s links.
So!
The intention is to have one of these on the Sidebar at all times. If you want to talk about a link, post it here! Or, heck, use it as an open thread.
And, when it rolls off, we’ll make a new one. With a preamble just like this one.
Nichelle Nichols has passed. George Takei had a lovely eulogy.
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Bill Russell also.Report
Legend. Pour some out.Report
I watched the original series with my Dad. We have so few of the pillars of that show left. What an incredible human being. RIP.Report
I do find it . . . ironic . . . comedic . . . that Shatner seems to be outlasting them all. Though I hope George Takei outlives Shatner . . . .Report
As I heard the story, in one episode, Kirk and Uhura were to be captured by mind-controlling aliens, who being somewhat pervy, would make Kirk and Uhura kiss. (On cable it would have been far more interesting.) One of the muckety-mucks asked Shatner if he had any objections to kissing Nichols, and his answer was along the lines of “Are you f*****g kidding me?”Report
The show is more than 50 years old. There are three dead cast members of Glee.Report
I’m not exactly calling the mortality of TOS’ cast a tragedy- in truth almost all of them have lived to an age where their death, while sad, is merely an exclamation mark at the end of a long life. I suppose you could say I’m not mourning for them- I’m mourning for me.Report
Idle thoughts on The Crab Bucket:
Over the weekend, there was a tempest in a teapot in a particularly small corner of the Social Justice part of twitter.
I’ll try to explain…
Okay. A few weeks back, one of the crabs in the crab bucket was a YA author who got some pretty good traction by arguing that the argument that authors ought to read other books in the genre in which they’re writers was an ableist argument.
Seriously this started a *HUGE* fight over the whole question of ableism, genre fiction, you name it.
Well, it turns out, the crab in question also works at a major military contractor and has worked at this same major military contractor for about 15 years.
Well, the other crabs in the crab bucket did some quick math and started yelling something to the effect of “HOW DARE YOU LECTURE PEOPLE ON ABLEISM WHILE YOU’VE BEEN WORKING AT (major military contractor) SINCE THE BUSH ERA” and the fight seemed to switch to the whole issue of the problems of being really good at the crab bucket while, at the same time, working for (major military contractor).
Avery Edison condenses one side of the argument:
Now let me be clear: I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with working for a major military contractor. I don’t think that there’s anything particularly wrong with working for a major military contractor and using twitter to lecture others about the importance this or that intersectional thing.
But we are now on Day Three of the drama, the original writer has deleted his account, and the others in the crab bucket, having defeated one of the former crabs at the top layer of the bucket, have started taking turns arguing over the whole situation. The original person who pointed out that the person who outed the YA author was from an alt-right troll site and arguing over whether it’s worse to use the information from the alt-right troll site to crab bucket or whether it’s worse to crab bucket while working for a major military contractor.
And through it all, there’s this weird undercurrent about how the whole object level doesn’t seem to exist.
It’s all about the relationship of the crabs to the other crabs in the bucket.
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At the height of the pandemic, there was a tik tok kid who also did twitch streaming who also did witchcraft who learned that there was a problem with Native American women going missing. So she did what tik tok kids who also do twitch streaming who also do witchcraft do: She announced that there was going to be a special twitch show where she would cast protection spells on the behalf of Native American women.
This did not go over particularly well. The magick-skeptical people had responses of something to the effect of “good job, making this all about you” and even the magick-sympathetic had criticisms of doing this sort of thing. So the crab bucket did what the crab bucket does and dug through post history and found that the kid claimed “co-consciousness” with a handful of European deities and this went through all kinds of crab bucketing where the kid was educated that “co-consciousness” was an appropriative term and she should use the term “channeling” instead to “does the fact that she’s channeling European deities indicate white supremacy undertones?” to “I doubt that (goddess) really gets *THAT* excited over riding shotgun with an American drinking iced coffee with a flavor shot from Starbucks when she has access to the coffee made in her own native soil by people who actually know how to make espresso”.
After a brief period where she went through the “why are you attacking me, an ally?” phase, she apologized and just went back to being a tik tok kid who also does (less) twitch streaming who also does witchcraft (with less channeling).
There was a lot of it not being about the object level there as well. It’s all about the meta of the workings of the bucket.
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It feels like the more it becomes obvious that it’s about the bucket, the less clout there is to be had.Report
Hoo boy. The YA author was one of the people who helped dogpile Isabel Fall.
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Oh, and I should post something from the other side of the argument as well:
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I had no idea that this was a twitter of the day scandal since you placed it here. I think you vastly overestimate how much the general population knows or cares about twitter’s person of the day.Report
It’s sort of the reverse of how we political folk just assume that everyone is as outraged about Joe Manchin as we are, when almost no one even knows his name.
Which is why I really don’t mind when celebrities use their fame to publicize a political cause- a lot of people probably learn about Dobbs only because a famous actress tweets about it.Report
I would say the big difference is that people should know Joe Manchin’s name and how the Senate works and various other issues. This is knowledge on current affairs and how our government/democracy works (or fails). This story involves the twitter equivalent of a blowhard in a bar.Report
Agreed.
I’m betting that it is that way with most world events though.
Most people are unaware of the approaching danger until the day after it is too late.Report
This is a deliberate policy to allow the “well-connected” to live, and for you to die. It is why people who think that they understand current affairs through “watching the news” are in general, armchair bloviators at best — and parrots at worst.
If you can’t explain why “Build Back Better” was an anglosphere phenomenon, you’ve kinda missed the boat on world affairs.Report
My thoughts were primarily dealing with The Crab Bucket and using the scandal du jour as the crystalizing part of it.
I’m sure that the general population neither knows nor cares about this particular corner of the twitters.
But The Crab Bucket? They’re learning.Report
And the Crab Bucket is left wing twitter? I gotta agree with Saul. Fish what happens on Twitter- it’s a dumpster fire and everyone except the twitts knows it. Heck, even the twitts know it, they just don’t wanna get off the tiger and get eaten.Report
No, The Crab Bucket is not left wing twitter. The Venn Diagram’s circle of The Crab Bucket covers only a very small corner of left wing twitter.
As for left wing twitter’s relationship to “the real world”, the only real overlap with “the real world” appears to be the YA fiction market and occasionally some overlap with the military-industrial complex.Report
One of the things that the right wing excels at is nutpicking the platonic ideal of a strident, puritanical leftie on twitter/internet and making it seem like said random person has a direct line to Biden, Harris, Pelosi, and Schumer. This is real EAIAC territory considering we just found out that the GOP nominee governor for PA paid a consulting fee to the anti-Semitic GAB CEO.
I think a big problem is because a lot of journalism/media and political types are very online and it is easy to find examples of the strident twitter rando and somehow connect to blue cities exploring composting and denser housing. Or to the fact that your employer asks you to put gender pronouns in your e-mail handleReport
Saul, I’m a 3rd Party Voter. My criticisms of Biden, Harris, Pelosi, and Schumer will sound a lot more like a platonic ideal of a strident/puritanical nutjob than a real Democrat such as yourself.
“RESCHEDULE MARIJUANA!!! JUST RESCHEDULE IT!!!!”
See? I sound like a crazy person.
As for the journalism/media and political types lying down with strident, puritanical lefties and waking up with questions about ties to the MIC? Well, that’s between them, isn’t it?
Let me just say this: What I think the guy got wrong was the whole crab bucket game, not the whole job thing.Report
There is also apparently an issue of transrights and disability rights involved because Mardoll was apparently heavily involved in the sinking of the Men as a transphobic novel. The defenders see this as pretext for revenge.Report
If nothing else, you learned the internet’s philosophical jargon du jour.Report
I tend to think of crab buckets as dinner, not philosophy.Report
The thing I find remarkable about YA Twitter is how it seems to be one of the most vicious places in the internet and it is over books ostensibly for the late elementary school to high school set but mainly people between 10-14/15. These are adults fighting over it and very strongly. I wonder what percentage of YA readership is actually adult.Report
My completely unscientific understanding of the situation is that adults have become the market YA is actually catering to. We can all (ironically?) probably blame JK Rowling.Report
I’d like a bit more actual sales and demographic breakdowns.Report
It might be more a nostalgia factor, but with 21st century marketing muscle behind it.
One piece of anecdata is my 30 something co-worker who’s all in on Harry Potter. That shite is absolutely mind boggling.Report
“I had no idea that this was a twitter of the day scandal since you placed it here”
If only there were some kind of quick news-links roundup where the website writers could collect minor stuff the writers consider interesting but not worthy of a whole post.
I’m thinking a real short thing, something that doesn’t take more than ten seconds to read through and have a short think about.Report
I literally could not follow this but best I can tell is that some liberals were fighting with other liberals on Twitter?
Okay…
Ya know what would be kinda sorta good? If some conservatives were willing to fight with conservatives about a thing or two.Report
You mean like Trump?Report
It’s worth pointing out that the “working” this person did for a Major Military Contractor was in, like, the area of reviewing and approving service contracts for inventory-management software. This is not someone personally writing computer programs to optimize the seam lines on a fragmentation shell so that it kills orphan children with maximal efficiency.
“Well yeah but they still worked for ELLEM and had Opinions” brother if that’s where you’re going then you better never have ever had any association whatsoever with anyone who ever did anything bad, because you’re building a world where it matters that five years ago you Liked a tweet by a guy who was later found to be taking pictures of women at Pride marches without asking them first.Report
I believe the argument, as I understand it… here, I’ll let Shanley say it. People who believe it will be able to communicate the sentiment better than I could paraphrase it:
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While I did not participate in the online hubbub, and had never heard of the person at the center of it (and think doxing is universally bad), I don’t think it’s going too far to say that Lockheed-Martin is one of the largest, and in many ways worst, parts of the Military-Industrial complex, and that working for them, unless you have no other options, is bad because they are such bad actors. It’s not just that they build the planes that we use to bomb other countries; it’s that they are a big part of the machine that pushes us to continually be bombing other countries. This is the sort of thing that libertarians, certain types of conservatives, certain types of liberals, and leftists would mostly have agreed on even a few years ago. That is, these groups may have quibbled about when it’s OK to work for the worst actors in the military-industrial complex, but they’d at least have agreed that a.) the military-industrial complex is bad, and b.) Lockheed-Martin is a major actor in it, and therefore is itself bad.
The current hubbub, at least what I’ve seen of it, has largely not been among leftists, but between liberals, who in many cases have reacted to this situation along strictly, er, identitarian lines, and leftists, who have basically just said working for Lockheed-Martin is bad, period. There have been side discussions about doxing, but they’ve largely been ignored by the main participants (again, as far as I can tell).
Is this discourse irrelevant to the world outside of Twitter? However, I think it does reveal a fracture-point between leftists and liberals that exists in offline space as well, and as liberals have become increasingly dependent on a growing and increasingly independent left to win elections at every level, even as the fracture points make liberals, again, online and off, more and more critical of those to their left, these fracture points are not irrelevant to the offline world. In this case, it’s a fracture point between the anti-war left and identitarian progressives, but these fractures intersect with others, many of which also relate to how liberals and leftists view employers, workers, race, gender, disability, war, health care, and power generally, and they will affect elections, not because Twitter is stupid and somehow making people stupid, but because these ideological differences are real, and growing, and liberals are, at best, struggling to navigate them.Report
The eternal desire to ask “Why are you attacking me, an ally, instead of attacking the enemy?”
What makes this particularly good fodder for a dark comedy is that the person at the center of it did a great job of attacking allies in the service of getting them to be “better”.
“No wonder she found Isabel Fall’s story so personally offensive” was one of the better jokes I saw bandied about.
Wait, here’s a good one so the author can get the credit for it:
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That’s a good tweet.
I’ll just add that the extent to which liberals and leftists see each other as allies can vary quite substantially across the spectrum of liberals and leftists, and depending on the issues, and sometimes even, depending on whose in the Oval Office (e.g., on war).Report
Ana Mardoll has announced that he is leaving twitter.
Quote tweets keep making the joke “but not Lockheed?”Report
Dunno if you saw the person in question’s latest tweet thread, saying farewell to Twitter, but in it she swears she did not pile on Fall, and actually liked the story.Report
Responses to the tweet include screenshots of “receipts”, I guess.
Does that matter?
Does anything?Report
Mardoll was hardly the one “behind” the attacks, NK Jemisin did more (and with a higher public profile).Report
I’ve seen defenses that Mardoll only gave his take after the story was already pulled.
So… there’s that? I guess?
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Ha. So you’d actually be more okay with a YA writer who advocates for biological terrorism, than one who works for Lockheed Martin?
(Biological terrorism, in this case, is also known as “nonlethal methods of crowd dispersal.” As in “gets fewer people killed.”)Report
Do you think if liberals disappeared overnight that there will be a socialist-left majority in this country?Report
Damn, liberals as the people not left behind in Left Behind is a pretty good metaphor for how liberals see themselves.
Suffice it to say that leftists don’t distinguish liberals from conservatives to the extent that liberals distinguish themselves from conservatives, so removing one arm of American conservatism is unlikely to turn the whole county into a socialist utopia, no.
Worth noting, as a relevant aside, that one subject of debate among leftists is over whether conservative, though mostly apolitical workers would be easier to convince than “PMC” liberals, in large part because the Left Behind analogy is way too spot on for the latter. Really glad you gave me that one. I will be using it a lot going forward.Report
“I don’t think it’s going too far to say that Lockheed-Martin is one of the largest, and in many ways worst, parts of the Military-Industrial complex”
lolwut
Considering that you don’t even know how many hyphens there are in the company’s name, I doubt that you could even tell me what it actually does without looking it up.Report
I’ve hyphenated and not hyphenated it, but I’m glad you singled on that instead of what I said, mostly because I’m typing quickly, but I’m glad i un-muted you to see this silliness. Thanks.Report
(he didn’t know.)Report
Why does that matter?Report
Did you like the pictures from JWST?
If you did, then you damn better understand why it matters that people opining on this issue know what Lockheed Martin does.Report
What does that have to do with the hyphen? Or anything else for that matter?
Yes, Lockheed Martin does satellites. They do airborne and ground based weapons systems. They do underwater robots. They do rocket motors and rocket motor control systems. They do building control systems. They do a lot of software behind those systems.
And that’s just from memory based on my interactions with their people over the last decade. Am I now qualified to talk about them? Am I now qualified to opine about the quality or lack thereof of how they treat employees? Or the impacts of the actual things they make?
Because as pretty as those pictures are, they don’t negate the slaughter done at the hand of LM’s weapons systems. Not by a long shot.Report
“What does that have to do with the hyphen?”
lol
“why are you focusing on just a small part of the statement that doesn’t have anything to do with the main point” he said as he focused on a small part of the statement that didn’t have anything to do with the main point
“[A]s pretty as those pictures are, they don’t negate the slaughter done at the hand of LM’s weapons systems.”
…so, did you like the pictures from JWST?Report
Also, if you had to get somewhere, would you know where you are now and know how to get there?
And what’s the weather gonna be like this evening?Report
I work for the agency that forecasts the nation’s weather. Again, what’s that got to do with the discussion of LM?Report
“I work for the agency that forecasts the nation’s weather. ”
you, ah, you know who makes like half of those satellites, right?
like, if you’re upset about Working For Lockheed Martin, well. You sure do seem happy to be using the blood-soaked products of the babymurder industry. In fact, your job depends on them!Report
Imagine thinking a hyphen means something.
(By the way, my brother is obsessed with the war in Ukraine, and keeps sending me videos of HIMARS in action. I can’t remember, who makes those weapons that have expanded and likely extended the war, and further heightened tensions between the U.S. and Russia?)Report
Clearly to talk about their impact in the world you have to both know what they do, and how to spell their name properly. And if you can’t spell it properly, you can’t possibly know what they do . . . .Report
HIMARs are indeed manufactured by Lockheed Martin.Report
Yes, sorry, I was being silly.Report
Re-reading I can now see the sarcasm went over my head like a missile breaking the speed of sound.Report
The real scandal is the cancelling of Marietta.Report
The question of “Who is a legitimate target of our rage?” is, not surprisingly, an ancient question and has never been given a simple or easy answer.
And it doesn’t have much of a left/ right dimension to it. All armies or political factions grapple with it and have to eventually make their peace with whatever answer they arrive at.
I’ve heard people matter of factly explain to me how the rape and murder of four nuns in Central America in the 80s was a good thing actually, since it reduced the ability of the Communist Empire to argle barlge gibber squee.
During the Balkans War in the 90s I remember reading a story about street fighting in Sarajevo and how a woman was running for her life carrying her toddler.
A sniper hit her and she went down.
The toddler got up and was wandering in circles wailing.
A few seconds passed, until the sniper got a good angle and took out the toddler as well.
I reflected on that for a good long while. What series of choices and events brought that sniper to the moment, when he was looking through his scope at a toddler and choosing to pull the trigger?
Was he a madman? Not likely. More likely just a soldier who had been steeped in that bitter tea of rage and revenge, maybe having lost his own loved ones possibly.
But the point is that all this talk, like that tweet about how it doesn’t matter if you empty trash cans you are still part of the MIC seems…reckless somehow.
Like its spoken by people who aren’t aware of how smooth and easy the glide path is, from that tweet to looking down the scope at a toddler, or participating in the rape of a nun.
Who I’m sure, were part of some military industrial complex of an Evil Empire you just know they were.
I guess what I would suggest is a bit more caution from these sorts of people, and more careful reflection given before accepting these sterile fatwas from armchair commandos.
And I say this not in spite of, but because of the fact that we are in a very dangerous moment in American history, when that question may take on greater salience and urgency.Report
If you’re emptying trash cans, no one on Twitter is gonna say shit, most likely. The person in question was not emptying trash cans.
That said, it’d be good if in the short term, we could get the person emptying trash cans a job with a company whose technology is not currently extending and expanding a war that threatens to spill into a full-blown global, two-front cold war with very real risks of getting hot very quickly, and medium-term, if we could get rid of the contracts that lead the company to produce such technology, and in the long-term, have the workers of said company take control of it and, in solidarity with fellow workers world-wide, ensure that it never again bids for such a contract.Report
Here’s a fun analogy that might help you see how someone to your left might see it (instead of someone to your right):
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If we want that analogy to be actually similar to the real-world situation, your other friends need to be buying Serial Killer-made soap and Serial Killer-made leather handbags and Serial Killer-made scrimshaw art, and telling themselves that it’s okay to have these things because they aren’t actual meat.
(“well they’re just presenting an ANALOGY, those aren’t meant to be EXACT” yeah but the tweeter actually goes quite far in presenting the analogy as though it were an actual argument, which means criticisms of accuracy valid)Report
are you actually citing fucking Shanley in a statement you intend me to actually take seriouslyReport
Jaybird intends us to take all his stuff seriously – though probably not literally in every instance.
You’ve been warned . . . . .Report
Yes.
Yes I am.Report
There’s been lots of talk of arming teachers or teachers arming themselves.
Important context:
https://giffords.org/lawcenter/report/every-incident-of-mishandled-guns-in-schools/
While it touts itself has chronicling “every incident” it actually only has those which were “publicly reported” meaning it probably is missing quite a few that were not made public.Report
Naturally, it’s missing all the reported knife incidents in schools.
While many people may think guns are a Problem, with a capital P, knives in schools are a good deal of the ‘problem’ with bullies and the bullied (two guesses as to who brings the knife to school).
Knives are cheaper and easier to get than a gun, and feel more intimidating. Which doesn’t stop a gal from stabbity-stabbing the next girl, if she feels legitimately threatened.
Knife-usage by schoolgirls is “off narrative” for basically everyone (liberals and conservatives) so it’s tops on the list of “things we gotta cover up.”Report
If we’re making up non-reported incidents and declaring them to be occurring in hugely significant numbers, then I can make up any number of incidents where the teacher declared themselves to be armed and that stopped a situation from progressing.Report
Only that’s not what I did. I noted an error in its representation of what it is.Report
ahhahaha, no. No, that is not what you did. You said “…it probably is missing quite a few [incidents] that were not made public”, which is a statement that you believe there are a significant number of such incidents.Report
The title is” “Every Incident of Mishandled Guns in Schools.”
The first sentence reads: “Our comprehensive analysis finds there have been nearly 100 publicly reported incidents of mishandled guns at schools in the last five years.’
The title refers to the entire set.
The first sentence refers to a subset.
So, ahahahaha, yes, I did do what I said I did. I acknowledged what the article was (a partial reporting of incidents) and not what it claimed to be (a complete reporting of incidents) and offered a logical conclusion (some were left out).
If you want to argue that “quite a few” = “significant”, that’s on you. I never made that claim.Report
“If you want to argue that “quite a few” = “significant”, that’s on you. I never made that claim.”
if you didn’t mean it as “significant number” then…why did you post about it…?Report
To note that the headline was misleading.
Sorry that was so hard for you to understand.Report
You said “quite a few”, dude. You clearly meant something by that. Just stop talking about it, okay? You can’t post your way out of getting called out for saying something dumb.
This was something you talked about in counseling, wasn’t it?Report
Just stop talking about it, okay?
Try taking your own advice.Report
What dumb thing did I say? That the number publicly reported incidents is likely fewer than the number of all incidents?
“…probably missing quite a few…” is not a particularly bold claim. Sorry if it somehow offended your delicate sensibilities.Report
Anti-abortion activists receive thrashing in Kansas. Kansans reject stripping abortion rights from the state constitution in an overwhelming majority. So far 408,489 or 62.2 percent of the vote is no.Report
This is truly shocking, especially in light of the obfuscatory language used on the ballot.Report
It may also be a sign that Republicans finally went too far. Of course, this is set against a LOT of Trumpists winning primaries. Still, Kansas is a rebuke. Too bad the GOP won’t listen.Report
Apparently Alex Jones – and his attorneys – are not nearly as smart as they think they are:
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/alex-jones-caught-lying-sandy-hook-trial-1392160/Report
Jones’ testimony has been absolutely amazing. Dude said he didn’t have an email address. Then they pointed out his email address (because they have the entire content of his cell phone). So he said what he meant is that he doesn’t write emails, so they pointed out emails he’d written. So he said, no, sorry, what I meant was, I don’t write emails; I dictate them.Report
Apparently he also finally said under oath today that the attack was real but he got “suckered” into lying about it . . . . because apparently conservative have no agencyReport
These are not very bright people and things got out of hand. I’m still deciding whether it was an accident or an “accident” that the plaintiff’s attorneys received the cellphone data. In the end, Ken White is correct that the biggest issue is that lots of Americans either pay to want to here what Jones says and are willing to pay for it. The show apparently often makes between 100K-200K an episode and some episodes earn up to 800K. He also seems to have supporters in the vague inchoate category of “anti-establishment” types who are anti-anti Alex Jones which might be more indefensible.
My idea for a dark reboot of 12 monkeys is a time traveler who goes back to Austin in the 1990s are tries to convince the ironic hipsters of the day not to find amusement in Alex Jones.Report
The NFL will appeal the Deshaun Watson suspension.
https://touchdownwire.usatoday.com/2022/08/03/nfl-deshaun-watson-nflpa-appeal-suspension/
I predict embarrassment no matter the outcome.Report
(For clarity the appeal is to request a sterner punishment.)Report
Not sure embarrassment for the NFL… which is rare. Unless he sues and discovery reveals stuff.
The embarrassment is already out there, as Robinson basically said her hands were tied by the NFL’s lenient penalties in the past. Goodel can maybe show he’s not a total buttclown if he can get a harsher penalty to stick. Appealing to himself or his designee is part of the collectively bargained discipline process, so as lame as that seems, the NFLPA agreed to this.
Then again, it’s dumb to bet against Goodel fucking up.Report
Sleazy as Watson’s conduct was, Ben Roethlisberger was credibly accused of borderline (or perhaps actual) rape, and he got six games, later reduced to four when he didn’t rape anyone else in the off-season.Report
I think that was part of Robinson’s ultimate logic… that previous like incidents got 6 games or fewer. She said something to the effect that a more severe punishment would represent an unexpected departure from precedent.Report
That is also my understanding of her reasoning. What I was trying to get at is I think it’s kind of a no win for the NFL. There’s no objectively correct punishment, especially for something that looks like it’s going to stay out of the criminal realm. So they’ve had the criticism this week then they’ll have it again whenever the new sanction comes down, probably in the middle of the season when everyone had forgotten about it.Report
They could have just made it retroactive to last year, when he wouldn’t play, and fine him that year’s salary.Report
GOV. Ron DeSantis of Florida has decided he knows better then Hillsborough County voters who their county prosecutor should be:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/04/politics/desantis-suspends-prosecutor/index.htmlReport
Wait, there’s a Hillsborough County in Florida? There are no hills in Florida!Report
https://www.visitflorida.com/travel-ideas/articles/arts-history-britton-hill-highest-point-florida/#:~:text=At%20345%20feet%20above%20mean,point%22%20in%20the%20United%20States.Report
This is predictable. I don’t know whether to be shocked or not that the Florida Constitution gives this power to the governor over other elected officials. I’m not surprised that the Sheriff’s office supports the decision but I am horrified by the implication of the public support for the war against Democracy,Report
It’s in line with the current Republican plot to fire as many civil servants as possible and replace them with toadies answerable to the executive.
A society of men, not laws is their goal.Report
The tricky and dark part here is how I can see the logic that at one time, this provision could have been instituted to defend good governance and fight corruption/society of men kind of stuff. Everything is really a double-edged sword.Report
I have friends who live in Hillsborough County. They are somewhat shocked at this development.Report
Sandy Hook parents receive 4.1 million verdict from jury in their defamation case against Alex Jones: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/08/04/us/alex-jones-sandy-hookReport
And let’s remember this is the first of several compensatory damage award. The punative damages are still pending trial I believe.Report
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The 10 secondiest of 10 second news.Report
Sinema appears to be a yes for the Inflation Reduction Act, with concessions of course.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/08/04/inflation-reduction-act-sinema/Report
I am torn. Sure the carried interest loophole surviving is onorous and noxious but my understanding is the alternative pay-for she finagled (a tax on stock buybacks) actually generates more revenue than the loophole policy would have. I can’t, honestly, muster any venom for her today (she should still be primaried out in ’24 though).Report
Recession my left butt cheek:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/04/economy/monthly-jobs-report-preview-july/index.htmlReport
Hard to wrap my head around a labor market that so heavily favors workers, combined with supply chain issues and some level of capital strike that keep supply low, resulting in inflation at a jogging pace, even as the fed keeps doing things that should make the labor market worse for workers. I see economists using language like “paradigm failure” and similarly dramatic phrases. Weird, wild times.
If Austin, where housing prices almost doubled in 2 years (and rent doubled in 1!), is any indication, the fed has managed to slow the housing market, but it feels like that’s only gonna last as long as the Fed has their foot firmly on the break. As soon as they let up, it’ll take off again.Report
The good economists will acknowledge that they are trying to make rational sense of irrational actors.
That aside, all the fundamentals are strong despite slight slips in GDP. That tells me that GDP is probably not doing us any good measuring our national economic status.Report
There is such a thing as a short, shallow recession. Obviously politicians can’t say this but such a thing may well be the right policy outcome, or at least the best we can do with imperfect tools; that being enough of a slowdown to curb inflation without a prolonged downturn, and hopefully a quick return to sustainable growth. We don’t need to try to redefine terms over something so easily articulated.Report
That’s…
(he took a second searching for a word)
That’s sexist.Report
That’s deranged, but funny.Report
I thought accusations of sexism were passé. At least give me misogynistic.Report
This isn’t a recession, it’s a misidentified growth. Economists sometimes assign labels by guessing. Trans booms are booms.Report
I think we do need to redefine terms in as much as slight declines in GDP for two quarters – your short shallow recession – aren’t being backed up by the fundamentals. Which to me says that defining “growth” through the lens of GDP is no longer adequate to describe what we are witnessing.Report
I hope you’re right. Sinema has signed onto Manchins bill so it looks like a bit more deflationary pressure is on the way along with an extension of ACA subsidies and some decent work on climate change. This has been an astonishingly productive congress.Report
The biggest surprise for me was that Manchin pretty much dropped his demands to prop up all fossil fuels and settled for natural gas. Interesting data point: a couple of years ago, the dollar value of NG produced in West Virginia passed the dollar value of coal produced in WV. Manchin got guarantees for a pipeline that should ensure WV will sell large amounts of gas for (probably) many years to come.Report
It surprised me too. I just reinforces for me that Manchin is understandable and preferable to any alternative from his state. I can’t say I’m a Manchin fan but I can’t muster any real dislike for him.
Normally I’d take a gratuitous swipe at Sinema at this point but she appears to have signed on to the bill and not done any serious harm (maybe even slightly improved it?) so I’m giving her a pass today. She still should be primaried out in 2024 though.Report
I would like to see them do the IRA and the allegedly agreed upon changes to the electoral count act. If that happens I would consider them to have knocked it out of the park based on how slim the majority is.
To your comment above re: Sinema I am with you, but also don’t have it in me to be angry about it today.Report
Agreed entirely. If they can horse whisper an electoral count reform bill through then it’ll be a triumph of a legislative session regardless of how the election turns out.Report
A recession with hundreds of thousands of new jobs each month, an unemployment rate so low that economists would call it full employment, and record profits for capital, is well and truly shallow, to the point of being nonexistent.
I don’t know that this will be short, though. The supply chain doesn’t look like it’s going to be un-fished anytime soon, and even record measures by the Fed haven’t managed to turn the job market from extremely pro-worker to even slightly more pro-employer, with unemployment actually dropping, and wages still high. Unless something else big (a miracle in U.S.-Russia relations? I dunno) happens to slow inflation, we have to assume the Fed is gonna get even more aggressive, right? Something’s gotta give somewhere, and I don’t know why it would give quickly, or what reasons there are to believe the recovery would be quick either. Feels more like we’re running along a cliff than that we’ve taken a quick, shallow dip.Report
I would assume we will see more rate hikes. I also agree that we are at a weird, probably unprecedented moment in modern times.Report
It’s super weird, agreed.Report
The boomers have finally started retiring (or other).
They’ve been the foundation of the economy for so freakin’ long, people have forgotten what it means when a large chunk of the workforce isn’t there when it’s needed.
The closest I’d compare it to is the mid-90’s when they needed IT workers but didn’t even have names for half the stuff they needed.Report
As noted time and time again, economic data about one period doesn’t change economic data in another. The economy could be increasing 50% this quarter and it wouldn’t affect whether there was a recession in the first two quarters of the year. Your resistance to the term “recession” isn’t based on principle.Report
As I said after the second straight quarter of slight negative GDP was announced, I agree by the definition of recession we may have had one. I just think the definition needs a serious analysis because everything else says we didn’t.Report
I guess I missed the subtle analysis in “Recession my left butt cheek”. I didn’t miss that you cited recent data while apparently questioning a prior recession though.Report
Oh, and when you say that everything but real GDP declining for two quarters says there wasn’t a recession, I don’t think you’re recognizing how broad a measure of the economy real GDP is. It’s not like it excludes wages, or manufacturing, or basically anything else economic.Report
Wages remain up. Hiring remains up. Industrial production has gone flat but isn’t really declining. retail isn’t declining – though its not growing either. Crude Oil Prices and gas prices have fallen for 6 or so weeks. Most of the important factors that should drive GDP seem to be going in positive directions while GDP had two quarters of slight (i.e. under 2%) decline. So something is off in that reckoning. We would be well served to find out what, and fix the analysis.Report
July employment numbers – not part of 2nd quarter
last six weeks or so of oil prices – mostly not part of 2nd quarterReport
We’ve had 19 straight months of job growth. which is very much part of both those quarters.Report
If you don’t want to admit that there was probably a recession, fine, don’t. At least admit that you’re arguing that there wasn’t a recession.Report
Three times, in two threads now, I have said that according to the NBER definition we may be or have been in a mild recession. Don’t know how to make that clearer.
What I’m arguing however is that determining a recession based on GDP downturns – when so many of the underlying fundamentals are increasing or stable – may no longer be a good, solid, data driven way to make the determination.Report
You made it clear when you said “Recession my left butt cheek”. Unless you were describing a physiological problem.Report
let’s try it this way: I believe the NBER’s decision criteria – under which we appear to be in a mild recession – are wrong and no longer account for how our economy actually functions based on the status and trends of the underlying fundamentals.Report
It’s important to note here that the 2% reduction in Q1 was an annualized rate, and that real GDP in Q2 2022 was 99.4% of real GDP in Q4 2021. That is, the actual decline has been only 0.6%.
I think the Democrats in general and to a lesser extent Biden personally have been awful on economic policy, and that the country owes a great debt to Manchin and Sinema for keeping their worst instincts in check, so the Democrats certainly don’t deserve credit for good stewardship of the economy, but I agree that we’re not in a recession in any meaningful sense of the term.Report
Consider this: we had two quarters – 6 months – of GDP decline in the middle of 19 months of job growth. those two things alone don’t usually co occur . . .Report
It’s still a recession. Maybe next quarter we’ll see growth again and the recession will be a very brief shallow one. I don’t see why that’d necessitate a reappraisal of the definition of the word recession.Report
Seems like a binary understanding — yes/no on recession — may not be the most useful analysis of the economy. Not all recessions are created equal.Report
I never said they were- but to start grumbling about the term “recession” and argue it should be redefined or reconsidered when the recession in question may present a problem for our side of the political spectrum is unhealthy thinking. That’s the kind of stuff the right went careening off down and we don’t want to end up like them.Report
Sorry… this wasn’t meant to be a direct response to you as much as a general contribution to the thread.
If this is what we typically call a recession, we should call it a recession.
And if we don’t typically panic at the mere mention of a recession because not all recessions are equal and other things matter, then we shouldn’t panic and should look at those other things.Report
He just stated that all recessions aren’t equal when he speculated that the possible last/current one could be short and shallow. I haven’t heard anyone say that recessions are equal, although I’ve seen Philip push back at the mere possibility that someone could think that. When liberals start attacking a word it’s never out of a desire for clarity.Report
That’s the seasonally-adjusted first cut at the number, which is basically a statistical guess with wide error bars. Ask me what the job gains were when we get the non-adjusted third estimate in a few months.Report
Well, you have to understand…
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Let’s all vote for the people most likely to make that change!Report
I have no idea who that would be.
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But you have to admire the clever politics of this, no?
Biden speaks a few words about decriminalization and pleases the left wing of the base, but allows the DOJ to be drug warriors, blocking the “soft on OuttaControlCrime!!1!” from the right.
Losing the Marianne Williamson vote to the Yang Gang isn’t even a rounding error.Report
He’s one heck of a politician, that’s for sure.Report
I’m sure we can find someone.Report
“If you look at countries throughout the world, the only ones that don’t have a drug problem are those that institute the death penalty for drug dealers.”
-Donald Trump
https://twitter.com/LauraJedeed/status/1556061615585386497Report
It still has to get past the House again (and I want to say that if the House changes it then the Senate has to vote on it again and it’ll be like ping-pong and so that tells me that it’s unlikely that the House will change it) but then it looks like Biden will sign it.Report
Reconciliation bill, so if the House changes it the bill goes to a conference committee, and if something comes out of that both chambers vote on it w/o further amendment. House is currently in recess, will apparently return this coming Friday to vote.Report
“Look, I don’t want any wounded guys in the parade,” Trump said. “This doesn’t look good for me.” He explained with distaste that at the Bastille Day parade there had been several formations of injured veterans, including wheelchair-bound soldiers who had lost limbs in battle.
Kelly could not believe what he was hearing. “Those are the heroes,” he told Trump. “In our society, there’s only one group of people who are more heroic than they are—and they are buried over in Arlington.” Kelly did not mention that his own son Robert, a lieutenant killed in action in Afghanistan, was among the dead interred there.
“I don’t want them,” Trump repeated. “It doesn’t look good for me.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/08/trump-book-hitler-milley-kelly/
Hillary was wrong. Not half, but 100% of the people who vote for this man are objectively deplorable people.Report
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I gotta say: The ability to remember last time kinda sucks.
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The real question is whether such an act would help or hurt Abbott among the TX electorate.Report
It certainly would help Texas with the whole “there’s nothing wrong with preferring legal immigrants” argument.Report
For those of you into that sort of thing, Metallica is currently undergoing cancellation.
We could have saved everybody a lot of trouble if we had just listened to the PMRC in the first place.Report
Shadow operation by Dave Mustaine?Report
Apparently, one of the sources for the problematicity is Axl Rose.
Which tells me that we are in for a rough ride.Report
I couldn’t finish it.
But maybe you can.
(This is #65 in a series.)Report
I also couldn’t finish it, but man, if those are the charges, pretty much every artist from the 70s and 80s is fished.
On the other hand, Metallica should be canceled for everything they’ve released after Master of Puppets, so…Report
I suspect that the majority of the non-ephemeral pop groups of the 70’s and 80’s are resilient enough to withstand the coming storm.
Sure, Leif Garrett is going to have a rough time.
But Metallica is going to pick up more fans from people saying “have you heard their song Sanitarium?” than they will lose from people merely asking the question “Isn’t that song kind of ableist?”
Someone should point these youngsters to Behind The Music. There is a *TON* of well-documented stuff out there to drop one’s jaw to.
GUYS GUYS HAVE YOU HEARD THE LED ZEPPELIN SHARK STORY YOU’RE NEVER GOING TO WANT TO LISTEN TO STAIRWAY EVER AGAIN AFTER I TELL IT TO YOU
“What? I’ve never heard this ‘stairway’ song.”
“Oh, you’ve never heard Stairway to Heaven? Here, let me queue it up… no wait. We should probably start with Black Dog. No wait. We should probably start with the first album…”Report
The young people already cancelled Zeppelin for plagiarism.Report
My wife once asked me if, as a fan of heavy music, I considered it gauche to like Metallica. I struggled a bit with the answer, but ultimately think it’s a no. They’ve done too much for the genre, and too many serious fans and artists started with them even if they are almost inevitably outgrown. No matter how embarrassing some of their efforts have been you can’t totally write them off.Report
I’m not a huge Metallica fan, mostly because I’ve never been a big metal fan, but I am mostly joking about the post-Master of Puppets stuff, ’cause they were essentially written off by the heavy metal folks when the Black Album came out.Report
Metallica is to be overcome.
But preferably because one has discovered Sepultura rather than learning that “Harvester of Sorrow” might have some anti-choice themes.Report
Morrissey setting-up a consulting business for 80s artists navigating cancellation.Report
“For those of you into that sort of thing, Metallica is currently undergoing cancellation.”
I think you meant Metallica remains as popular as ever despite a TikTok expressing concerns about them getting some likes.
There is nothing on Google about this, nothing on their Wiki page.
Can we PLEASE stop this crap?Report
And now comes the state, interjecting itself into the relationship between parents and children, because the state knows better then the parents and children about whether a child should carry a fetus to term.
https://www.npr.org/2022/08/10/1116716749/a-nebraska-woman-is-charged-with-helping-her-daughter-have-an-abortionReport
The fetus’s age puts him right on the edge of viability. Abortion pills are typically not recommended after the first trimester, so there was likely medical risk, but IANAOB-GYN. This was an medically-unsupervised induced labor. Isn’t there a line somewhere that the government can get involved when a parent and a 17-year-old agree to do something illegal?
And I wonder why they burned it before they went to bury it.Report
Also noteworthy is that this isn’t an escalation of restriction, despite “And now comes the state…”. The law was passed pre-Dobbs. Even under Roe the state would have a stake in protecting the fetus at this age.Report
The prosecutor stated he had never enforced this law pre-Dobbs due to Roe. Seems had Roe not been struck down, he wouldn’t have done so here. And frankly had Roe not been struck down the woman and her mom likely would have had access to abortion services, so this could be medically supervised.Report
The abortion took place before early June, according to the article. So the 17-year-old had been pregnant since before New Years, and her mother got the drugs and induced the abortion before the Dobbs ruling.Report
The Abortion Statute charge is an add on.Report
Yeah, I was wrong initially, and corrected my comment.Report
Salman Rushdie was reportedly stabbed on stage about an hour ago. No word on his current condition.Report
That’s horrible.
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Elizabeth Warren releases bombshell:
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I’ve always wondered whether she’s dumb enough to actually believe the things she says about economic policy, or just dishonestly pandering to those who are.
This clarifies the issue somewhat.Report
The first thing that *I* thought about was the whole thing about the whole issue revolving around snake emojis.
At the time, I was told that they were sexist.
Anyway, now I know that it’s hella more complicated than I thought it was.Report
JB, it’s obviously metaphor… I doubt anyone walked up to her and actually said “I’d vote for you”Report
Serious Jaybird bait below:
https://time.com/6205084/phonics-science-of-reading-teachers/
Phonics apparently works for students, but is disliked by (some) teachers and teaching groups.Report
“What is the point of education?”
“To provide middle-class jobs.”Report
“What is the point of education?”
“To provide middle-class jobs.”
Somewhere in the last week I saw someone pose the question, “What is the point of universities?” The assertion was that the points are, and have always been: (1) preserve the current base of knowledge; (2) train the next generation of people who will preserve the base; and (3) create additional knowledge to add to the base. And if times are tough, (3) can be dropped for a few generations. They conceded that in recent decades a fourth point — run four-year trade schools — has been added because it generates large income streams.Report
“To maintain an endowment.”Report
One of the earliest of Cain’s Laws™ said, “Any situation in which it is easier to accumulate wealth by manipulating paper assets than by producing the underlying goods and services will end badly.” Universities run to maintain an endowment rather than achieve points (1)-(3) will end badly.Report
I saw that. Kind of mind boggling.Report
I would like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that teachers are experts in their field and know what’s best for students, and that we need to shut up and defer to their superior judgment.Report
I can get more in the weeds if anyone is actually interested (the internet discourse I’ve already seen elsewhere on this topic tells me folks aren’t) but this article and others like it gloss over a very fundamental and far more complex question than folks realize: What do we mean when we say ‘reading?’
In summary, we’ve know for decades (at least since I was in school in early 2000s) that a phonemic-heavy approach supports decoding skills (e.g., literally being able to see letters and words on a page and read them aloud correctly) and a more whole language-heavy approach supports comprehension skills.
Further, phonemic-heavy instruction tends to lead to negative attitudes towards reading among children.
So, in short, phonics makes good “readers” in the way we tend to think about reading but makes kids not wanna read. Whole language makes bad “readers” in the way we tend to think about reading but makes kids wanna read.
The primary take away: use both, which is what most schools do.
The “push” here is largely among layman who look at decoding scores and latch onto that and that alone, arguing that it is the “science on reading.”Report
Okay… dug in anyway…
Overall, that article is far more nuanced, balanced, and investigative than others I’ve seen on the topic. But you really have to read the whole thing to get past the way this conversation has been framed more broadly, namely that parents armed with data from “reading scientists” know the best way to teach reading and teachers/schools are sticking fingers in their ears and choosing to ignore any research.
The article also doesn’t address some of the things I mention above, namely outcomes beyond decoding.
Decoding matters, but it isn’t the ONLY thing that matters.
Think of the word biopic. Everyone I’ve ever heard pronounce that word says “bi-o-pick” pronouncing the first two syllables like “bio.” Which is more or less what a straight phonics approach would teach you to do. But… that isn’t actually how the word is pronounced. Or, rather, how it SHOULD be pronounced. It should be pronounce “bi-ah-pick” with the first two syllables like “biography.” Because biopic is actually a portmanteau of the words “biographical” and “picture”. Which you would know from a more language-based understanding of the word.
But, here’s the thing… it is actually okay to say “bi-o-pick” because most of us are language descriptivists and we understand what people mean when they say “bi-o-pick” and we’re pretty much just all okay when we say it that way.
So, you can see how quickly this stuff gets really complicated and ceases to fit into neat boxes of “JUST TEACH IT THIS WAY!” Especially with a language as complex as English, which is really a mash up of so many languages that it is really complicated to learn.
If you want a takeaway from this article, you have to read to the very end and you’ll find:
“Not every child needs systematic instruction in phonics. Some can figure out the patterns for themselves. And phonics instruction alone is not enough. But the past several decades seem to have proved that a more intense focus on the letter sounds hurts nobody, and the many children who need it flounder without it. There are no panaceas in education. Even the most science-steeped curriculum will not help if it is not implemented thoughtfully, with support from principals, literacy coaches, school-district officials, and the public purse.”
That is very different than:
“Phonics apparently works for students, but is disliked by (some) teachers and teaching groups.”
And it certainly shouldn’t be “mind boggling.”Report
Oh, and we definitely need to focus more on dyslexia and other reading/learning challenges, making sure we better address those needs for students and don’t always separate “best practice for special needs” and general best practices. But that’s a different soapbox for a different day.Report
For me, I look at it through the lens of this:
I think that if the numbers are somewhere between “1 out of 6” and “1 out of 4” then we’re in “THIS SHIT ISN’T WORKING”.
It is within the context of “Only 18.6% of Black students in OUSD are reading on grade level” that I am reading:
Sure, if your numbers are somewhere between “3 out of 4” and “5 out of 6”, maybe (*MAYBE*) you could have the conversation about the importance of instilling the joys of a deep reading experience. Hey, kids. Let me tell you a little story about a girl named “Hermione” and her friend “Harry”.
But we aren’t there.
We’re talking about schools that have numbers in the *TEENS* for proficiency, a program that had the best proficiency improvements, and teachers complaining about “the man”.Report
So we have a problem: low reading scores.
And we have a potential solution: a different reading curriculum.
One thing to consider (from the original article): “A McKinsey report found that students in 2021 were about four months behind in reading compared with nonpandemic years. The Brookings Institute found a 15% increase in the gaps in reading proficiency between students at the wealthiest and most impoverished schools. A study out of the Netherlands found that even a relatively short eight-week lockdown led to a learning loss of a fifth of a year.”
So maybe we have a subproblem to our problem: a worldwide pandemic that was devastating to schools, particularly for low-income and at-risk learners.
Even still, to get from problem to solution, we have to navigate things like:
“But retraining busy teachers takes a while and doesn’t necessarily change what they do in the classroom. “There are tens of thousands of schools in the United States, and nobody really monitors what goes on in those schools,” says Shanahan, who in nonpandemic times visits 40 or 50 schools a year. “A lot of times the teachers have no idea that they’re not teaching things that are beneficial to the kids.”
Even if the teachers are equipped to teach a new way, they need the support of their principals and superintendents. Stacy Pim, an elementary reading specialist in Virginia, began to use more of her instruction time to teach first-grade students letter-sound correspondence in the fall of 2020, after she noticed that in prior years, the skills of first-graders at her school had not improved. “By the time they got to second grade, we were having a whole classroom of children who were below grade level,” she says. Moreover, because of the pandemic learning gaps, she felt her students were not able to tackle the work that the curriculum was offering. But, she says, her administrator told her she needed to stay with her school’s balanced-literacy program. Feeling stuck, and with her own kids to deal with, she resigned.”
-AND-
“Pim was not alone. The pandemic was extremely hard on teachers, typically nurturing, underpaid souls who got into the profession because they wanted to help others. Recent surveys have showed a sharp uptick in those wanting to leave the profession early. Making matters worse, the discussion about reading quickly became like so many others in education: less about children and improving techniques and more about finger-pointing and blame. It also became politicized, since it was mostly progressive states that used methods that leaned toward child-led learning and more conservative ones that embraced the traditional phonics-heavy methods.”
Now, if you want to focus on a few people who will give really choice quotes that make teachers seem like the bad guys, by all means do so. But singling out those people — heck, even eliminating those people — isn’t actually going to get us to address the problem by implementing the potential solution. There is a whole bunch of stuff that needs to happen to get us from problem to solution.
And one of the things that DOESN’T help — as noted in the quote above — is saying, “Look at that dumb dumb teacher over their and their political agenda.”
You seem to have read my comments as, “We shouldn’t make this change.”
No.
I support reading curriculum reform. That means pursuing solutions.
I want us to do more of this: “Burkins and Yates wrote a new book, Shifting the Balance, to try to build a bridge between the two camps. It is selling well, but the duo are wary of its success because it leaves them open to attacks from both sides. “People I’ve had great respect for in the field are being really criticized,” says Yates.
The two write that they had to make a pact not to give in to defensiveness…”
and less of this…
“A Facebook group called The Science of Reading—What I Should Have Learned in College has more than 165,000 members, most of them aggrieved parents or bewildered and angry teachers.”Report
Now, if you want to focus on a few people who will give really choice quotes that make teachers seem like the bad guys, by all means do so. But singling out those people — heck, even eliminating those people — isn’t actually going to get us to address the problem by implementing the potential solution. There is a whole bunch of stuff that needs to happen to get us from problem to solution.
I’d say that being “the fastest-gaining urban district in California for reading” implies something like being somewhere in the neighborhood of “the right track”. At the very least, it implies that the awful situation is being addressed to some degree and when the fastest-gaining slows down to the point where you’re, oh, third-fastest or something you should look at stuff like what your numbers are now and whether you need additional tweaks.
I mean, let’s face it: if 5 out of 6 kids are reading at proficiency, you’re in a pretty good place. Let’s look at the Best School Districts in Colorado. Hey! #1 is in my town!
Cheyenne Mountain School District No. 12! Graduation rate: 96% (72% reading proficient and 61% math proficient).
I look at that and think “72%? And that’s the *BEST* one?”
But, sure. Let’s assume that almost 3 out of 4 is great. Hurray! 72%!
What’s an appropriate goal for a school that is sitting around 18%?
From where I sit, “fastest-gaining” is a pretty decent (and achievable) goal.
You say:
Now, if you want to focus on a few people who will give really choice quotes that make teachers seem like the bad guys, by all means do so.
Let’s look at the juicy paragraph:
Sure, those quotes are juicy. Mmmm!
But let’s look at one sentence in isolation. One without a quote in it at all:
Weaver, the giver of the juicy quote in the second paragraph in the story, has since changed his tune. Let’s look at the juicy quotes in the last paragraph in the story:
Sounds like that last question is the important one.
What did we do when things were working?
For one, I’m guessing that one of the things they did was see the point of education as “teaching kids to read” rather than giving opportunities for teachers to more fully experience the joys of giving rich literary experiences to the kids in the Gold Reading Group.Report
I’ll quote this part again…
From the link: “Hanford’s reporting laid the blame for the neglect of a foundational reading practice largely at two doors: curriculum publishers, which market programs that critics say are not supported by science; and schools of education, which are slow to change the way they teach teachers to teach reading.”
We agree on the problem.
We agree on the solution.
Where we disagree is on how to get from problem to solution.
If you want to focus your energies on individual teachers or groups of teachers, I can tell you we aren’t going to get far.
I’m not saying those teachers don’t exist nor that they aren’t contributing factors to the problem. I’m saying focusing on them misses the forest for the trees.
But, again, “The system isn’t well designed for reform,” isn’t sexy.
What’s a little bit sexier is, “Major institutions stand in the way of reform.” So if that greases your wheels, I’m good with that framing.
“Woke-ass teachers want to focus on their political agenda and not on teaching kds” is sexy AF… but that framing isn’t going to get us anywhere, no matter how true it may be for individual teachers or particular groups of teachers.Report
If you want to focus your energies on individual teachers or groups of teachers, I can tell you we aren’t going to get far.
At this point, my energies are focused on “18.6%”.
The woke teachers who want to focus on their political agenda might be part of the problem, but, for me, the problem is the 18.6%.
You know what I’d do if *I* wanted to avoid talking about the 18.6%?
I’d start talking about racism.Report
Whose talking about racism? I’m not.
I keep pointing you towards root causes and you keep saying “No.”
That feels weird to me.Report
“Root causes”.
If I absolutely had to guess, I’d say that the root causes are parents that offload the responsibility of teaching children to read to schools rather than killing and drilling at home. Going through “Monster at the End of this Book” and saying “sound it out” a couple dozen times and carving out Wednesday night to be “Library Night” where you take the kids to the library and say “YOU CAN ONLY CHECK OUT THREE” and create a sense of false urgency in them.
Anyway.
My take is merely that fewer than 1 out of 5 black students can read at proficiency and fewer than 1 out of 4 Hispanic students can read at proficiency.
This strikes me as being one hell of an indictment against the system as a whole.
Like, I find myself trying to look for a corner of the system that doesn’t need to be fired/changed/punished and I’m in a dang sphere.
I submit: there are so very many things that need to be changed that even if we changed the curriculum back to whatever we were using when 50% of kids were at proficiency and changing the teaching schools to teach whatever it was that they were teaching when 50% of kids were at proficiency that it would be a decade before we had 40% of kids at proficiency.
It would be a decade before we were within 10% of 50%.
What I want to talk about is the question that Weaver himself asked:
“What did we do when things were working?”Report
So you recognize it is a systemic problem. Cool! We agree.
Weaver asks a good question.
Beyond that, I suggest we stop listening to Weaver as we look ahead to answering it and doing more of that.Report
I think that Weaver is of interest for a handful of reasons.
For one, he’s one of the voices of reform for going back to the way it was before he and his screwed everything up.
He was one of the people who fought to change things. I suppose we could look at his reasons for why he was fighting to change things and maybe come up with some things to take into account to help us prevent people from trying to change things for the worse in the future…
But I’ll just look at his assessment of “we did this and it was kinda working, then we stopped doing it and it got worse, now I think we should go back” and say that it at least has the whole “acknowledgment of the problem existing at all” thing going on.
He changed things. He noticed that they got worse. He wants to change things back.
You’d think that this would be less noteworthy but here we are.Report
Well, I think it is noteworthy because the reason he wanted to change things in the first place touches on a major culture war flashpoint.
I’m suggesting we avoid getting bogged down in that and instead focused on what works and how we can do more of it.
This discussion began online several months ago and precious little of it is focused on that part of the conversation. Which is why I’ve tended to avoid it.
If folks want to learn more reading education and how we can do it better and take steps to realize that, F yea man, let’s do it.
If folks want to use this issue as another cudgel in the culture war, not only am I uninterested in that, but I’d argue that they aren’t actually interested in improving things. At least not in places like Oakland and Baltimore.
Weaver is an interesting piece of the puzzle. But, again, I think these are FAR more interesting voices we should be listening to:
“Burkins and Yates wrote a new book, Shifting the Balance, to try to build a bridge between the two camps. It is selling well, but the duo are wary of its success because it leaves them open to attacks from both sides. “People I’ve had great respect for in the field are being really criticized,” says Yates.
The two write that they had to make a pact not to give in to defensiveness…”
If you’re getting attacked from both sides, you’re either doing something really wrong or really right. I think these two are much more likely in the “really right” camp. So if you’re focused on doing what’s right and not on choosing sides, let’s focus on them.Report
There are two things going on with the changing things in the first place:
1. His emotional response to the original way of doing things
2. His stated justifications for changing
The story itself is somewhat sparse on details for #1. “It worked for students, but not so much for teachers.” What does that mean? The paragraph concludes “And we hated it.”
So what was going on there?
I’m guessing that the complaint was that teaching this part was tedious and unpleasant. It wasn’t “fun”. You know what’s fun? Handing a copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to a kid. Frog and Toad. Mouse and the Motorcycle. That’s a delight!
“Sound it out”
“Sound it out”
“Sound it out”
That sucks.
That’s my best guess for why it didn’t work for teachers.
And that’s something that we probably need to address somehow. I mean, above and beyond explaining to teachers that, yes, there are sysadmin jobs that have parts that suck and grocery store stocking jobs that have parts that suck and fireman jobs that have parts that suck too.
Come up with “fun” curriculums that make it more “fun” to say “Sound it out” for the umpteenth time.
As for #2, I think it’s important that we notice when these arguments pop up in the future.
We seem to have one example of them being used as cover for a much more mundane argument. That’s interesting. Maybe it could be used as cover for much more mundane arguments in different circumstances.
BUT!
AND HERE’S THE POINT!
He’s not arguing that now.
He’s arguing “we changed things in the name of fighting racism and we made things worse for BIPOC children.”
Caring about fighting racism, in this case, means “helping more Children of Color get proficient at reading”.
But let’s say that injecting culture war language into this discussion is *BAD*.
Like, to the point where we know we can’t trust someone who talks about “racism” when we’re just trying to talk about getting “less than 20% of these kids reading” to “something around 50%”.
Burkins and Yates might be great.
But at this point, I think that the most important thing to do is STOP THE BLEEDING.
HOLY CRAP LESS THAN 20% HOLY CRAP STOP THE BLEEDING
And, in this case, just switching back to what we were doing back before we changed things would, at least, get us back to the place where they were the fastest-gaining urban district in California for reading.Report
And I’ve been thinking about this some more:
Graduation rate: 96% (72% reading proficient and 61% math proficient).
Doing some math off the top of my head, there is a 24% difference between the reading proficiency rate and the graduation rate. There is a 35% difference when it comes to math.
Assuming 100% overlap on the math/reading less-than-proficients, that means that there are 24% of those kids graduating who are neither proficient in math nor reading.
Which strikes me as bonkers.Report
Well, at the risk of asking a seemingly simple but really complex question that will feel annoying…
What do we mean by “graduate”? Some schools will allow you to “graduate” insofar as they’ll say, “You passed all the required courses… congrats!” But you won’t actually get a diploma because you fail to demonstrate proficiency on state-wide testing.
So… did those kids graduate and get diplomas despite not meeting basic proficiency standards?
Or did they “graduate” and leave school but don’t get an actual diploma or at least not one that is worth anything because it indicates they failed proficiency standards?
I agree that that seems bonkers. But I also know that reporting on this stuff often misses things like, “We need to define what ‘reading’ or ‘graduated’ mean.”
My stepdaughter made honor roll in high school. Pretty dope, right?! Only… the thing is… she was basically given passing grades because she has learning difficulties that the school can’t or won’t really address. But, hey, she handed in most of her homework so they gave her a B in math even though by their own acknowledgement she didn’t learn any math this year. But she’ll probably graduate with a Bish average and she’ll be exempted from state testing because of her learning needs which means she may count as a 0/1 in the proficiency calculation or maybe as a 0/0 or maybe as a 1/1… who knows. But the most likely outcome is she graduates and gets a diploma but is never even asked to demonstrate proficiency and the school knows this so what is their motivation to do more than give her B-for-effort grades (other than to shut me up now that I’ve weaseled my way into her IEP meetings)?
So… again… what do we mean by “graduate”?
And this is in a GOOD school!Report
Which is why these conversations are so hard to have.
“These teachers/schools don’t know how to or don’t want to teach kids to read!!!”
“Well, actually, they’re pursuing different reading outcomes.”
“But isn’t reading just reading?!”
“No, it’s not that simple!”
“Well, they’re not teaching them to read the way I want to!”
“Ah, okay, now we’re getting somewhere.”
The problem is… and this is on EVERYONE… we rarely get to even that second statement.
ETA:
It more likely goes like this…
“These teachers/schools don’t know how to or don’t want to teach kids to read!!!”
“WHY DO YOU HATE TEACHERS?!”Report
I admit to assuming that “graduate” means “get a high school diploma”.
I admit to never before encountering the idea that you could graduate high school but not get a diploma.
I know in New York, they had three flavors of diploma: General, Regents, and Honors.
The Honors one was the good one and the Regents one was the okay one.
But the people who got a General one also graduated high school.
Or did they “graduate” and leave school but don’t get an actual diploma or at least not one that is worth anything because it indicates they failed proficiency standards?
So “General” would be the one that isn’t worth anything, I guess.
When I graduated high school back in the stone age here in Colorado, I wanna say that we had one kind of diploma. People had to talk about their SAT scores if they wanted to distinguish themselves.
And people who graduated high school got it.Report
See? It’s never quite as simple as it seems.
Every state is different. Here is info on NJ:
https://www.nj.gov/education/assessment/requirements/2023_2025.shtml
So I guess there are multiple pathways to graduating without demonstrating proficiency. Is that good? Bad? I dunno. How can you demonstrate without meeting basic proficiency standards? How can you deny a kid a diploma when he got As and Bs but his school basically screwed him?
And how many schools are gaming the numbers one way or another?
Oy…Report
I know that there are kids who graduate without being proficient in reading and math.
I was hoping that that number was in the single digits.
It seems like we’re papering over cracks in the foundation.
Looks good, for now.Report
Don’t pay attention to graduation rates. They can juice those numbers.Report
I don’t have time to go through every state but I remain struck by how the best school district in the state has these numbers:
72% reading proficient and 61% math proficient.
I look at those numbers and don’t think “best school district in the state”.
I see a failing school district.
(I suppose that those terms aren’t mutually exclusive.)
Edit: I picked Vermont at random and their best school district is Reading 84% and math 79%.
For me, those numbers strike me as “a little better than merely satisfactory”.
What the heck.Report
Well, “proficiency” is usually determined by standardized testing done over a few days.
Many would argue that isn’t the best way to guage proficiency. How was 16-year-old Jay feel sitting down for consecutive days of 3-hour testing blocks that would make or break his high school career and graduation prospects?
But many thought teachers who can give B-for-effort grades was also inadequate.
So here we are…
ETA: Not defending any of this. Merely describing.Report
I cop that my description was pithy and probably not totally fair. And to play off Slade’s comment, I do not find it mind boggling in the least that there are different perspectives of what is most effective, on the merits. To Jaybird’s comment though, I do find it disturbing that, at least per the article, there is apparently a debate on something other than the merits of what is most effective.
Now there’s a great quote from Michael Crichton about journalism and stories about wet streets causing rain which may well be part of the story. Maybe that’s what this is. Nevertheless it isn’t like we haven’t had a lot of questions about what public schools prioritize over the last 2 years and I think it’s fair game to ask if we don’t have a problem here as well.Report
Blargh. Comment got eaten. Don’t have the energy to re-do it but the main takeaway is that seeing this as “Woke-ass teacher wants to keep my kid dumb because of their political ideology” is wrong and doesn’t help us solve the problem. “The system is very poorly setup to implement reform and we need to address that” is probably something we’d all agree on but that doesn’t make sexy headlines.
From the link: “Hanford’s reporting laid the blame for the neglect of a foundational reading practice largely at two doors: curriculum publishers, which market programs that critics say are not supported by science; and schools of education, which are slow to change the way they teach teachers to teach reading.”Report
It does seem to me like we get kind of the worst of both worlds with the way federalism plays out on educational policy. On the one hand we have a lack of centralized authority which allows jurisdictions to independently go off the reservation on a number of issues in really negative ways. On the other it seems like the economics of publishing and training result in a lot of capture and group think that make it difficult for local districts to be agile or respond independently to the specific needs they’re dealing with on the ground.
Like the whole language approach may well work just fine, or fine enough for jurisdictions lacking certain challenges. At the same time I can think of nothing more important for the children of a place like Baltimore to come out learning to read and it’s offensive to the core IMO to even consider other, less tangible priorities. But if all of those places are effectively being treated the same or similarly on curriculum due to the vagaries of the publishing and training systems I’d say it’s a major failure of public policy.Report
Just on the curriculum front, did you know that Texas and California ed policy often dictates ed policy in other states? Textbook publishers don’t like making different editions for different states, so they tend to just focus on the biggest buyers, which are Texas and California.
It doesn’t always happen and may be happening less now that more and more is online, but its a non-governmental, market-based factor that adds to the sludge you describe.
And that isn’t an excuse for anything or even necessarily a factor for reading curriculum (textbooks factor most into science, math, and soc sci/history), but again I just want to point out how complicated all this is and folks (not you) who think it is as simple as just saying, “Well Baltimore should do more phonics,” really don’t know how all this works.
Want to improve Baltimore’s reading outcomes? Reform the curriculum and put in place a comprehensive, fully funded training program to get teachers and school leaders fully prepared to implement it.
I bet you could quickly name a half dozen tripping points for that becoming a reality.Report
I have heard that before about CA and TX.
And the greatest degree of my sympathy for the plight of teachers comes from proximity to a jurisdiction like Baltimore. To me it’s always been incredibly stupid to think that the output is about public school teachers just not being up to snuff as opposed to being a natural consequence of all kinds of inputs totally outside of the school system’s control.
At the same time I do wonder what the hell is going on with the enormous amount of state subsidy that’s going into it. Who needs to be bought off? And don’t the results beg for a willingness to think outside of the box? Because it’s hard to see how it could be worse.Report
“To me it’s always been incredibly stupid to think that the output is about public school teachers just not being up to snuff as opposed to being a natural consequence of all kinds of inputs totally outside of the school system’s control.”
There’s a lot of good meat on this and I think the simplest way to think about it is that we’re looking at a dynamic. It’s not just about teachers and not just about kids/families but about how all that interacts. One of my favorite ways to think about my work as a teacher is to say that every September I get a group of students and I spend some time getting to know them so I understand my starting point. I then think about where their end point is ideally supposed to be. And I work day in and day out on crafting the route from Start to End.
Each year, each school, each classroom is going to have a different start point. Ideally, we have the same end point, with allowances for keeping expectations reasonable and achievable given context*. And then we carve the path.
* This needs to be VERY carefully done. Like, if Baltimore Kindergarteners are on average 4 months behind Chevy Chase’s, it wouldn’t be reasonable to expect Baltimore teachers to achieve 13 months of growth in 9 months. But maybe they can get 10 or 11. Then you make sure 1st grade gains a month or two. And 2nd grade. And so on. You don’t say, “Well, they started behind so don’t worry about where they end up” nor do you say, “Well, the whole year was a failure because they didn’t reach the finish line.”
Good education reform is a long-term process that we (collectively) are rarely willing to commit to.
As to where the funding goes, I can’t speak to any individual system. But I have no doubt there is both tons of waste AND still not enough money. In part because these quick-fix reform efforts often cost a ton of money and then are abandoned. So it could be that schools are cash strapped to implement these reforms because they wasted money on prior reforms. On top of whatever else they wasted money on.Report
Education becomes a proxy battleground for a lot of culture war issues.
From what I’ve seen, the single most explanatory variable to explain education outcomes is parental involvement. A household where education is stressed and valued, where parents take a participatory role in their children’s learning will usually have a good outcome whereas one that doesn’t, won’t.
There are of course, other variables which can affect this- things like wealth, social and cultural milieus and so forth as well as pedagogy and school funding and administration.
Unionized teachers versus nonunion, public school versus private school just don’t seem to have much explanatory power for outcomes.
In this particular article, it smelled like the author was fishing for a way to shoehorn an argument over pedagogy into some culture war over “tradition” versus “progressive” even though the two sides don’t actually align that way.Report
From what I’ve seen, the single most explanatory variable to explain education outcomes is parental involvement.
Evidence from twin studies suggest that, especially in high school, genes contribute significantly more to variance in educational achievement than shared environment (which includes things like parental SES and involvement). Unlike for general cognitive ability and and personality traits, there does seem to be a nonnegligible share of variance attributable to shared environment even in older adolescents, but heritability is quite high and genes account for the lion’s share.Report
The hereditary variable doesn’t seem to last though. If it did, we would expect to see a steady progression from generation to generation, where smart people pass improved genes onto offspring, get a good education, then have more smart offspring who get the benefit of both genes and a favorable environment.
But we dont. Today’s smart people don’t appear to be much of an improvement over their grandparents or great grandparents.
And in the other direction, a good educational outcome still occurs regularly with parents of mediocre intelligence (AKA everyone).Report
Regression to the mean. Just to make up some numbers: Two parents each with a 120 IQ will more likely have a child with a 115 IQ than a 125 IQ. Still very likely to be above average.Report
Makes you wonder if there’s some limits on how good the pattern matching engine that does the hard work for all of us can be. Or how specialized. We’ve all — or at least those of us of a certain age and professional training — have heard the old joke about the brilliant physicist whose wife pinned notes to his suit coat that said, “Don’t offer me a ride home, I drove the car today.”
We’re pushing close to lots of physical limits. May only be able to push a wetware brain so far.Report
You seem to have a number of conceptions about how heredity works. First, “Shared environment affects academic achievement” doesn’t mean that having a higher income or education increases your children’s academic performance with no diminishing returns. Twin studies can quantify how much shared environmental factors contribute to variance in an outcome, but they don’t tell us how much specific components of the shared environment matter.
So the contribution of shared environment to academic achievement might not have anything at all to do with income or education. It could be parenting style, for example. If income is a factor, it might matter only up to a fairly low threshold, such that after reaching the 40th income percentile, additional income has no effect on academic achievement. The effect of additional income might even turn negative past a certain point: Consider the example of the stereotypical Asian immigrant parents: Maybe parents who are hungry for upward mobility push their children the hardest.
So it’s not at all clear that there should be any kind of positive feedback loop here, and even if there is one for a generation or two, it might be self-limiting.
Also, high heritability doesn’t mean that every child is a perfect average of his parents. It works out that way on average, but because of the random shuffling of genes in meiosis, a child’s exact genetic inheritance is not fixed until conception.
Also, as PD Shaw points out, the effects of non-shared environment (the collective term for the poorly understood factors that cause identical twins to turn out differently even when raised together) can lead to regression towards the mean, yet another reason not to expect the children of smart parents to consistently be even smarter.Report
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Signature fraud? My word!Report
I suppose we can be grateful that said fraud was caught before damage could be done.Report
If you can’t deal with “Just sign the petition and we’ll let the Secretary of State sort it out,” don’t move to a western state :^) Or County Recorder if it’s at that level.Report
Signature suppression?Report