Why a Saturday roll out for NCLB revisions? Talking education is a win-win for most politicians, so why do it over a weekend news cycle?

So this was coming for awhile and there will be critics from states from both ends: too low compared to ours says Massachusetts, too intrusive says Texas. My only thought upon reading the Times article was who was involved (and explicitly thanked in the introduction to the document):

…the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers set the common-standards initiative in motion last year. They convened panels of English and math experts from the College Board and A.C.T., and from Achieve Inc., a group with years of experience working to upgrade graduation standards.

Hmmm…cue sarcastic, nicotine-soaked voice: I guess these were the only folks who know anything about standards. The document is here and is now open for a whole three weeks of review.

Re-discovering the wicked awesome records from the J. Geils Band lately. One favorite moment from Blow Your Face Out:


Peter Wolf hollers “Do it to it in Detroit City, let me hear you” and the band starts hammering, with Seth Justman starts pounding the piano, Magic Dick plays a wild harmonica solo. Then Peter Wolf says “Baby, baby…baby don’t leave me” and the Detroit crowd goes wild knowing it’s Motown, it’s their song, it’s their city…

update: KKC looked at me this AM as we’re listening and asks “why is that man looking for love? Why can’t he find it?”

in the country will have something to say about yesterday’s article in the New York Times on Teacher Preparation. Like most folks I was annoyed.

My biggest issue with the essay was that there was no sense that the purpose of education remains contested. Defined here, teaching is about improving test scores, something you can measure. You can easily judge whether or not teachers can improve scores. But such an approach ignores all of the structural factors that shape student lives and assumes that they are irrelevant if teachers could just teach better. And it ignores the things I want teachers to demonstrate to children, including my own:

humility: the ability to fail and keep trying

curiosity: the desire to keep learning

creativity: the willingness to try lots of different approaches to problems

I’m not sure these can be quantified, although I’m sure there’s someone out there trying.

It looks like the trash bill is going to go before council. I’m thinking I’m going to write to the Mayor and say:

Listen, I’ll happily pay the bill when you can demonstrate that the slumlord all-stars who own half of the homes on my block, whose home addresses range from Lower Merion to Gladwyen, who have nearly defaulted on several of their properties, have paid their bill.

The Mayor understands, even banks on, the folks who do the right thing while failing to address why so many neighborhoods continue to fall apart. Landlords get a pass, year after year.

I was talking to my son about a conversation the Cedar Park Neighbors are sponsoring, a conversation designed to elicit community thoughts on what Baltimore Avenue might look like in the future. I mentioned it to him because it’s been politicized, as some folks apparently felt threatened by the potential of a process where stakeholders might discuss the future of the Avenue. It’s hard to explain fifty years of class struggle and racial politics, but before I could begin, my son declared:

“Dad, it’s pretty easy: first, you rebuild the houses. Then, you get some people to move in.”

further evidence of why five-year olds rule. Reminded me of this recent essay at the NYRB about children’s imaginations and their moral development.

I feel for Mayor Nutter, I really do: there is no money and City Council simply won’t take on reforming the wage tax or real estate assessments and his own office can’t seem to make folks pay taxes. Few residents will accept service cuts of any sort, the loss of jobs depletes the wage tax kitty, and tax deadbeats create massive holes in the budget.

But charging for trash pick-up? My house of four, where we carefully recycle, where we collect batteries, light bulbs, and computer accessories to bring to the recycling center, where we compost as much as we can…each week we put out a single can of trash that’s not even full. Pretty much the only time we put out two is when I fill our second barrel with the trash and leaves that are blowing all over the street.

Meanwhile, the various landlords around me put out three to six packed barrels each week. Hardly seems fair that we’d all be charged the same thing, particularly when I’ll be the loser who actually pays the tax while the others will let it go.

(I understand that a weighted system would require an enforcement division that simply doesn’t exist).

Update: Ronnie Polaneczky says it all here.