The Devil is Dancing Tonight
ArchPundit
This is almost as good as Jack Van Impe
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyH6XDaenJs[/youtube]
She is truly as bad of a demagogue as Beck.
2011
Must be a Friend of Petey Labarbera
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8oyA5JV7kA[/youtube]
AKA The new Friends of Dorothy.
They need to be disciplined!
Get Me a Black Man!
In a really odd op-ed published in Progress Illinois, academic argues that Herman Cain would be a great opponent for Republicans to put up against Obama. One can only wonder if Dan Proft and Bill Pascoe will sue him for plagiarism of their argument for Alan Keyes in 2004.
Just a Little Statistical Competence…Please
In 2014, the state test will switch to a new, more rigorous exam that will align with the Common Core, a set of curriculum standards adopted by states across the country to better prepare students for college.
Donoso, who is replacing Charles Payne, the interim chief education officer, is responsible for developing the district’s curriculum strategy and working with school leaders to carry it out. Her main focus in the coming years will be implementing the Common Core curriculum, which is designed to develop analytical skills beyond those currently tested on the ISAT.
Radner said CPS “needs to step it up” or scores are going to crash when the new test is given in 2014, calling the change “the biggest shift I’ve ever seen.”
“We can’t be complacent,” she said “This is a whole different generation of standards and assessment.”
Scores won’t crash. They will change and a bunch of statistically illiterate people will be outraged because the numbers meeting expectations will be lower. That has nothing to do with achievement levels falling–it has to do with using different standards. In fact, scores won’t be directly compared at all. What will be compared is the percent of students at level, below level, and above level. This is a pretty much pointless exercise in comparing the old standards to new standards given they are very different. It is extremely likely the CPS will do poorly on such measures not because of anything the CPS does, but who the students are in the CPS.
| Country | Poverty Rate | PISA score |
|---|---|---|
| United States | < 10% | 551 |
| Finland | 3.4% | 536 |
| Netherlands | 9.0% | 508 |
| Belgium | 6.7% | 506 |
| United States | 10% – 24.9% | 527 |
| Canada | 13.6% | 524 |
| New Zealand | 16.3% | 521 |
| Japan | 14.3% | 520 |
| Australia | 11.6% | 515 |
| United States | 25-49.9% | 502 |
| Estonia | 501 | |
| Switzerland | 501 | |
| Poland | 500 | |
| United States | 50-74.9% | 471 |
| Austria | 471 | |
| Turkey | 464 | |
| Chile | 449 | |
| United States | >75% | 446 |
| Mexico | 425 |
Of course, only Mexico fits in the final category, but notice that the US schools in each level of poverty perform at the very top of the world. The problem is that few other countries allow high percentages of their children to live in poverty as the US does. The United States, adjusted for poverty level, has students perform better than counterparts in other countries in every grouping.
That doesn’t mean we don’t need to provide the best education we can for the kids in high poverty schools, but the reality is those efforts will only be mildly successful because the chaos that accompanies poverty in those kids’ home lives will limit how the average student performs. More time in the classroom may be a good thing for many of these kids because it is more time in a structured environment that kids need and crave.
The students in poverty are able to achieve, but poverty itself is a limiting factor. Poverty breeds chaos in the home and that lack of structure will lead to poorer performance for those students. Some students overcome that and that’s wonderful, but the reality is that on average, socioeconomic status is the biggest predictor of student performance. We can make marginal improvements in high poverty populations, but ultimately, existing in poverty will put a limit on how much improvement can take place.
Any outrage at the system that our great paternalistic and condescending news organizations want to throw out would be much better focused on alleviating poverty first. The CPS needs improvement in many ways, but all of these pseudo privatized solutions are not going to solve the core problems and the data already show that they are not significantly better than the CPS.
African-American Migration to the Suburbs
Rich links to a very good article by the Chicago News Coop on black migration to the south suburbs. One of the issues not discussed directly is housing stock.
While he checked the mailbox at the end of his driveway in the Ridgeland Estates subdivision, he said he would be interested in returning to the city only if he could move into a condominium on the lakefront. The $1,700 that he spends on his monthly mortgage payments for his spacious home in Matteson would be enough for no more than a small unit in a desirable section of Chicago, he said.
As African-Americans have been able to move with less interference from discrimination, they are making many of the same housing choices that whites have been making for years. The reality is that much of the housing in Chicago and some inner ring suburbs are small and less attractive to people who want a large home. When you think about how to retain and attract residents, focusing only on jobs or education won’t work in isolation. Jobs can be kept by commuting and most parents have a limited ability to actually make an informed decision about the quality of a school. White parents, for example, tend to judge the quality of a school by the percentage of minority students attending it instead of actual performance measures. A big part of people choosing where to live is what kind of housing they can obtain. Many people want big homes today and not finding creative ways to address this means more middle class African-Americans will look elsewhere as they can.
They Just Suck
It looks like the Ricketts are as good at being awful owners even more than the Tribune Company was.
When Jerry Reinsdorf even looks good.
No, No It’s Not Wrong Oneman
Is it wrong…
To hope somehow that Rod Blagojevich would have to serve time in the same cell as Jay Marrioti.
Posted by OneMan
Tweet of the Year…At Least
Priceless.
As you might guess I’ve paid more attention today than I have to this story in three years. What has me fascinated right now is just how crazy Nancy Grace is and how irresponsible CNN is for letting that lunatic on the air. The attacks on the jury for being cowards for not talking to the press show an incredible lack of self awareness given the likely reaction from people like her and the people she has influence over.
I’m not quite sure how a case like this was filed as first degree murder when there apparently was no direct evidence of when the death occurred, how it occurred, or where it occurred. Was the mom involved? Probably. But probably is reasonable doubt. This notion that no parent would ever do such a thing as dumping the body misses the point. The mother and her family are quite clearly fucked up. Fucked up people do fucked up things. To convict someone that fucked up you still need evidence of what specifically they did. Pointing to the woman and saying she’s obviously crazy and a bad mother isn’t evidence of a murder.
One other thing–why always in Florida? Why?
Ahhh…School Politics
With all of the problems the Chicago Public Schools face, you might think I’d find this little tussle just a silly sideshow:
After the initial sit-in last year, CPS agreed to the parents’ demand for a library and agreed to spare a nearby field house from demolition. However, the district said, the library would be built inside the school, not in the field house, as parents had asked.
Parents at the time accepted that plan, so long as the library was not constructed in newly rehabbed areas of the school. But as the district tried to begin construction of the $400,000 library last week, some parents, community agitators and leftist activists from across the city converged on the neighborhood, blocking construction crews from entering the school.
Protesters said a library inside the school would displace special education classes — an assertion CPS denies. Instead, the group asked the district to support an estimated $750,000 project to transform the run-down, one-story field house into a parent center and library. And the group recently added a new demand: That CPS pay part of the cost of the field house project.
It’s actually a perfect example of stupidity that makes actual changes in the District, or any district nearly impossible. I’m not that thrilled with Brizzard and do not see him as what the CPS needs. However, trying to extort the rehab of a field house out of a cash strapped district and blocking a library in a school is absurd and a perfect example of the kind of myopic view of activists less concerned with the District’s ability to concentrate on teaching and performance.
If you want neighborhood development the CPS may be a good partner, but it’s not a cash cow for pet projects.
Most Important Article of the Day
Census: Number of black children living in 25 biggest US cities drops by half-million
Last year’s census found that the number of black, non-Hispanic children living in New York City had fallen by 22.4 percent in 10 years. In raw numbers, that meant 127,058 fewer black kids living in the city of Jay Z and Spike Lee, even as the number of black adults grew slightly.
The same pattern has repeated from coast to coast. Los Angeles saw a 31.8 percent decline in its population of black children, far surpassing the 6.9 percent drop in black adults. The number of black children in Atlanta fell by 27 percent. It was down 31 percent in Chicago and 37.6 percent in Detroit. Oakland, Calif. saw a drop of 42.3 percent, an exodus that fell only 6 percentage points below the decline in flood-ravaged New Orleans.
—-
Demographics experts said a combination of factors appeared to be at work. Americans in general are having fewer children than they once did, due mostly to increased use of birth control. That has been true, too, among black mothers. Teen pregnancy rates among blacks have also plummeted.
But the more significant trend, experts said, may be a migration by young black parents to the suburbs.
Saint Louis had the same phenomenon occur. One of the issues the article doesn’t cover and will become more clear as the rest of the Census data is released is that much of hte housing being moved out of is falling down and there is a cheap supply of obsolescent housing in the inner ring suburbs. As middle class families have gotten smaller we also expect better housing with more bedrooms and bathrooms. Much of the housing from pre-and post-war inner ring suburbs is small and doesn’t have what modern middle class families expect. This has created a glut of cheap housing in a lot of suburbs allowing many working class and working poor black families to move out to inner ring suburbs.
One interesting impact will be on education and it can be seen in many inner ring suburban districts already. Instead of being able to focus improvements in big school districts, the new reality means that multiple districts have to be addressed making the process that much harder.
The other area is public safety where the challenge of addressing crime is far harder when the problem crosses multiple jurisdictions.