Leaving No Child Left Behind behind

Neal McCluskey reports that some states are flirting with the idea of withdrawing from the federal No Child Left Behind program (NCLB). It's unlikely that many will, however, since it would mean giving up millions of dollars that go with the program.

This just makes me laugh. For years, I've been yelling at the liberal talking heads every time one of them describes NCLB as an "unfunded mandate." It is neither unfunded nor a mandate. If it were a mandate, states wouldn't have the choice of withdrawing; if it were unfunded, they wouldn't lose the accompanying money. I remember reading a Heritage Foundation study showing that states had millions in surplus NCLB funds on hand and were having trouble spending the money fast enough.

We so need to get government out of the education business.

Update: Ugh! Even Newt Gingrich is in favor of keeping the federal government involved in education. Not that long ago, the GOP was in favor of eliminating the Department of Education. Where have you gone, Ronald Reagan? Looks like I'll be yelling at conservative talking heads now too. *sigh*

Creative destruction

David Ignatius points to Pennsylvania as an example of what economist Joseph Schumpeter described as "creative destruction." As the steel industry began to decline under the forces of globalization, there was a great gnashing of teeth and a rush toward protectionism to save the industry and the jobs that went with it. But even as the protectionism failed, new industries were moving in to fill the vacuum, and Pennsylvania is emerging as a center of new industry.

But if ever there were a case that documents what the economist Joseph Schumpeter described as "creative destruction," it's what happened in Pennsylvania. Steel and other manufacturing industries were indeed shattered by competition from the globalized economy that was just emerging. But new industries that nobody could then have imagined took their place, and they provided new jobs, year after year.

Employment in Pennsylvania reached an all-time high in January 2008, and then fell slightly in February. People here fear that a steep recession may be coming. But as of February, the last month for which statistics are available, unemployment in Pennsylvania was just 4.9 percent. Since January 2003, the state has added a total of 178,000 new jobs, according to the state government.

Just as the agriculture industry once gave way to manufacturing, jobs lost in manufacturing are replaced with jobs in technology and communications. As long as states remain attractive to new business, investors will identify areas of surplus labor and move in to put them to work, and the new jobs often offer better salaries and benefits.

A glimpse of Pennsylvania's future comes from statistics gathered by the state's Department of Labor and Industry. It forecasts that by 2014, jobs in Pennsylvania will increase overall by 6.8 percent. But manufacturing jobs will decline by 19.5 percent, including a further 22 percent drop in the iron and steel sector, a 25 percent decline in motor-vehicle parts and a 21 percent fall in industrial machinery.

The new jobs will come in areas such as professional and technical services (up 17 percent by 2014), computer systems design (up 30 percent), wireless telephone (up 30 percent) and data processing (up 32 percent). This transformation is evident in Pennsylvania data recording gains in wages and salaries from 2003 to 2005. Pay rose 20 percent for information technology managers, 35 percent for biotech engineers, 24 percent for computer researchers.

When we hear about the numbers of jobs lost in a given industry, or those lost to "outsourcing," we seldom hear about the new jobs and industries that take their place. While there may actually be a net increase in jobs, journalists seldom follow up with those who have lost their jobs, so we only get the bad news.

[Via Betsy]

Obama's tax returns; liberal v conservative charity

Barack Obama recently released his tax returns for the last seven years. I'm not exactly sure why we ask candidates to do this. I don't recall any big "gotcha" moments from past elections. I wonder if we do it because there is a genuine chance that the forms could expose malfeasance or whether we just like to pry into people's private affairs.

I suspect the latter, though the cynic in me wonders why he only released seven years of returns and not eight. What's this guy hiding?

So anyway, here's a summary of Obama's returns, courtesy of TaxProf Blog:

The "big news" here is that the Obamas don't give much to charity, especially considering how much they make. That's not the kind of "gotcha" that disqualifies him from being president, but it's still kind of interesting.

Up until he started running for president, the Obamas earned an average of almost a quarter-million a year and gave about 1 percent of it to charity. In 2005, the Obamas became bona fide millionaires and increased their their donations four or five points.

I guess that's not a lot of money, percentage-wise, but I have to say that I could live for several years on 77 grand. I can't remember the last time I made half that much in a year. So I'm not real bothered by "how little" the Obamas give to charity. It's their money, and they can do what they want with it. (I am bothered that they gave $27,500 to Rev. Wright's church in the last couple of years, but that's a post for a different day.)

George Will provides some timely perspective on these matters as he looks at the differences in charitable donations between conservatives and liberals:

-- Although liberal families' incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household ($1,600 per year vs. $1,227).

-- Conservatives also donate more time and give more blood.

-- Residents of the states that voted for John Kerry in 2004 gave smaller percentages of their incomes to charity than did residents of states that voted for George Bush.

-- Bush carried 24 of the 25 states where charitable giving was above average.

-- In the 10 reddest states, in which Bush got more than 60 percent majorities, the average percentage of personal income donated to charity was 3.5. Residents of the bluest states, which gave Bush less than 40 percent, donated just 1.9 percent.

-- People who reject the idea that "government has a responsibility to reduce income inequality" give an average of four times more than people who accept that proposition.

Good data points to have handy next time someone talks about how conservatives are so greedy.

Massive ice shelf collapses

I've been posting a fair bit on evidence that undercuts global warmism. Here's a bit of evidence which supports it (at least the warming part, regardless of whether it's man-made).

At 5,282 square miles the Wilkins Ice Shelf is one of the largest on the Antarctic Peninsula. It is also the latest casualty of global warming.

Satellite images released today by the British Antarctic Survey and the National Snow and Ice Data Center reveal a massive collapse over the past month—disintegration resulting in, most recently, a breakaway iceberg seven times the size of Manhattan.

Now, the entire shelf is attached by a single strip of ice less than 4 miles wide. "The ice shelf is hanging by a thread," said Professor David Vaughan of the BAS. "We'll know in the next few days or weeks what its fate will be." Over the last few decades the western Antarctic Peninsula has seen the biggest temperature change on Earth. It has also experienced an increasing number of major collapses as warmer temperatures and previously unexposed ocean waves erode its shelves. Wilkins, which scientists believe is at least a few hundred years old, is the largest yet to succumb, and likely a harbinger of more to come.

Update: Well, not so fast. Turns out there is an active underwater volcano near the ice shelf which is heating up the surrounding water and lubricating the ice shelves.

"Universal" health care continues to disappoint

Still another reason why universal national socialized health care is a bad idea:

Women in labor turned away from UK hospitals
Thu Mar 20, 2008 11:56am EDT

By Avril Ormsby

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - Nearly half of Britain's National Health Service (NHS) maternity units had to turn away women in labor last year because they were full, figures showed on Thursday.

Furthermore, a shortage of facilities or staff led to almost one in 10 of these units closing more than 10 times.

One closed 28 times, while another was forced to shut its doors 39 times.

Saddam's Pre-War Ties to Islamic Terrorists

Engram at Back Talk has become a daily stop for me. He writes frequently on the War in Iraq and draws on a wide variety of sources to get a fuller picture of what's going on there.

Today, he takes a look at a recently released Pentagon report which, contrary to most media reports, documents pre-war links between Saddam and various Islamic terrorist groups. Along the way, he includes some handy links to reports on other aspects of the war that receive little attention:

• The flow of foreign fighters into Iraq has declined
• Many of the foreign fighters who are already there are seeking to leave
• Jihadist leaders acknowledge serious setbacks in Iraq
• al Qaeda's popularity throughout the Muslim world has suffered a severe setback since the invasion.

Why did Oprah leave Obama's church?

Ever since I heard that Oprah Winfrey was once a member of Chicago's Trinity United Church, I've been waiting for someone to stick a microphone under her nose and ask her why she quit. If she admitted it was because of Jeremiah Wright's hate filled sermons, it would severely undercut Barack Obama's claim that he wasn't aware of such things despite his 23 years with the church and intimate relationship with Wright. I have no idea why no one is pushing this now, but it turns out that Newsmax reported on this quite some time ago:

Obama’s most famous celebrity backer, Oprah Winfrey began attending Wright’s church in 1984. Last year, Newsmax magazine reported that Winfrey abruptly stopped attending years ago, and suggested that she did so to distance herself from Wright’s inflammatory rhetoric. She soon found herself a target of Wright, who excoriated her for having broken with “traditional faith.”

And there is further evidence to undermine Obama's claims:

The Reverend Wright’s anti-white theology that Senator Obama expressed surprise over is evident on the church’s website. The site says the congregation subscribes to what it calls the Black Value System, which is described as a disavowal of “our racist competitive society” and the pursuit of “middle-classness.” That is defined as a way for American society to “snare” blacks rather than “killing them off directly” or “placing them in concentration camps,” just as the country structures “an economic environment that induces captive youth to fill the jails and prisons.”

It's tough to believe Obama was blind to all this for 23 years. If he isn't lying, he's demonstrated a degree of unawareness and naivete that we cannot afford in a president.

The game of racism in America

There's a discussion at Dean's World about racism in general and the Obama/Wright issue in particular. Here is my contribution:

A poster wrote: We’re still a nation in denial - to a large extent we’ve accepted the sins of our past but continue to be wilfully blind about how that past continues to shape the present and constrains all our futures.

To which I replied: You say “nation,” but what you mean is white people, and in that context, I disagree. Whites have been acknowledging and accepting the sins of the past for years. They have expunged racism from the law. They’ve gone further and rewritten the law to impose racism against Whites into the law. They’ve poured billions of dollars into the Black community and continue to do so.

It’s no longer fair to say Whites are blind to the past, the present, or the future. There’s only so much they can do about the past, and they have done it — mostly without receiving credit. Fair enough. Having done what they can, Whites have mostly moved on.

Whites just don’t have the incentives to hate Blacks the way they used to, and by and large most don’t. People act in their own self interests, which means that White business owners, consumers, and employers are happy to do business with Blacks, because it improves their bottom line. There’s just no profit in racism anymore.

A large portion of Blacks have moved on also, for the same reasons. Their interests are also best served when they simply move on and work to improve their lives. That’s why we’re seeing the number of Black millionaires skyrocket, why we’re seeing Black CEOs in charge of large corporations, why the Black middle class is growing like crazy, and why Black home ownership is at an all time high.

On the other hand, there is a large group of Blacks who haven’t moved on. They see everything through the lens of racism. This is a choice they make, and there is little that Whites or other enlightened Blacks can do about it. They can’t heal those who wallow in racism, because they don’t want to be healed.

And it is these “wallowers” that, as you put it, are “wilfully (sic) blind about how that past continues to shape the present and constrains all our futures. They don’t see how they continue to poison themselves and hold themselves, and the country, down.

And they don’t want to see, because the truth is that they act on incentives too. They have learned that there is money and power in racism — whether it be people who sell it, like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, or people who buy it, like the congregants in these “black liberation theology” churches. By preying on White guilt, they keep a constant stream of money coming into their communities, going to programs which the years have shown us do not work. But it makes heroes of these Black leaders, and makes others, Black and White, feel like they are doing something to solve the problem and fight injustice.

They’ve even done a fine job of rigging this game they play, where they claim a “conversation” about racism is needed. But it’s not a real conversation. Someone like Jeremiah Wright can say anything he pleases and be excused for it and praised as a great Black leader. Meanwhile, Whites sit in silence because they will be called racist for any utterance in response. So, Whites shut up — allowing the “wallowers” to claim that Whites don’t want an open discussion — and Whites go back to living their lives.

One day, Obama gives a speech proclaiming that it’s time to have an open discussion about racism in America. The very next day, Obama and his staff squelch that conversation by saying it’s a distraction and we need to be talking about the “real” issues in this campaign. He isn’t interested in a conversation about race. He never was. He’s been campaigning for a year and never chose to broach subject — not until the world caught the stench of his preacher/mentor/father figure.

And the game continues…

I need a new word

Every time I read a story like this, I think I need a new word to describe the behavior -- something that encapsulates both the utter foolishness and the monumental damage being wrought. The word ENGLAND is now considered offensive, for crying out loud.

PATRIOTIC squaddie Craig Briggs has been barred from joining the police — because he’s got an ENGLAND tattoo on his arm.

The Iraq veteran, 22, had wanted to be a cop since childhood and was advised to join the Army to get experience first.

But when he applied he was told: “Unfortunately, some people feel intimidated by the word England.”

Last night Craig, who has just completed 4½ years with the 3rd Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment, said: “I am shocked and disgusted.

"I don’t understand how it can cause offence. It is our country, after all.”

I'm disgusted too, though I can't say I'm shocked. Though this was in England, I can just imagine it happening in the U.S., with people being offended by the word AMERICA. It's like the whole world has gone off its meds -- practicing extreme acts of intolerance, and justifying them in the name of tolerance. Sometimes I'm glad I'm going to die soon, so I won't have to witness what's to come.

[Via The Corner]

More evidence to undermine global warmism

Jennifer Marohasy, biologist and senior fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs in Melbourne talks about new evidence that runs counter to the "consensus" on global warming.

Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth stillwarming?" (sic)

She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."

Duffy: "Is this a matter of any controversy?"

Marohasy: "Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognises that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued. . .

[I]f carbon dioxide is driving temperature then you'd expect that. . . temperatures should be going up. . . So (it's) very unexpected, not something that's being discussed. It should be being discussed, though, because it's very significant. . .

[T]he head of the IPCC has suggested natural factors are compensating for the increasing carbon dioxide levels and I guess, to some extent, that's what sceptics have been saying for some time: that, yes, carbon dioxide will give you some warming but there are a whole lot of other factors that may compensate or that may augment the warming from elevated levels of carbon dioxide."

Duffy: "Can you tell us about NASA's Aqua satellite, because I understand some of the data we're now getting is quite important in our understanding of how climate works?"

Marohasy: "That's right. The satellite was only launched in 2002 and it enabled the collection of data, not just on temperature but also on cloud formation and water vapour. What all the climate models suggest is that, when you've got warming from additional carbon dioxide, this will result in increased water vapour, so you're going to get a positive feedback. That's what the models have been indicating. What this great data from the NASA Aqua satellite ... (is) actually showing is just the opposite, that with a little bit of warming, weather processes are compensating, so they're actually limiting the greenhouse effect and you're getting a negative rather than a positive feedback. . .

"These findings actually aren't being disputed by the meteorological community. They're having trouble digesting the findings, they're acknowledging the findings, they're acknowledging that the data from NASA's Aqua satellite is not how the models predict, and I think they're about to recognise that the models really do need to be overhauled and that when they are overhauled they will probably show greatly reduced future warming projected as a consequence of carbon dioxide. . .

The meteorological community at the moment is really just coming to terms with the output from this NASA Aqua satellite and (climate scientist) Roy Spencer's interpretation of them. His work is published, his work is accepted, but I think people are still in shock at this point."

As more empirical evidence comes in, the "science" behind global warming is starting to be exposed, and scientists are becoming more comfortable about speaking out. I suspect (and hope) we'll reach critic mass soon and cooler heads will prevail, before we severely harm our economy. If that happens, don't expect a lot of hoopla about it. Like the War in Iraq, you'll simply stop hearing about it when there is good news to report.

[Via Dean's World]

On the 5th anniversary of the War in Iraq

A nice recap of the good that's come from the War in Iraq can be found at No Pasaran (via Economic Freedom), including some welcome statistics:

Oh, but we didn't find WMDs?

On the contrary, U.S. troops found more than 500 weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. True, we didn't find an operational nuclear weapon, but U.N. inspectors found lots of equipment and plans clearly showing that Iraq had been working on one — and intended to do so again.

All of these are facts. And so are the following:

Iraq is today a growing economy again. From 2002 through 2006, the most recent year for which data are available, per capita GDP in dollars jumped 110%.

Before the war, there were some 833,000 people with telephones. Today, there's 9.8 million. Fewer than 5,000 people were on the Internet during Saddam's rein of terror; today, it's a quarter million.

There were no private TV stations under Saddam; today Iraq has more than 50. There are at least 260 independent newspapers and magazines in Iraq, vs. none under Saddam. Just 1.5 million cars were registered before the war; by 2005, that had hit 3.1 million.

In short, by almost any objective measure one might choose, Iraqis are today much better off than they were under Saddam. Those that deny this are, frankly, deluded.

Better still, Saddam's jackbooted minions no longer pull people screaming out of their homes for torture sessions and murder.

By some estimates, an average of 50,000 people died each year from Saddam's campaigns of genocide, ethnic cleansing and political murder. Last year, the peak of the surge, there were 18,000 civilian deaths — mostly by terrorists.

Today, Iraq's nascent democracy, though imperfect, seems solid. A recent look at the Index of Political Freedom shows Iraq ranking as the fourth-freest country in the Mideast, out of 20. Those who term the war a "failure" need to define that term.

Since the surge began a year ago, nearly every indicator of violence in the country is down, and down sharply: civilian fatalities, off 80% from the peak; enemy attacks, off 40%; bombings, off 81%.

Yes, U.S. fatalities are nearing 4,000. And every death of every brave soldier is a tragedy. But we lost more soldiers on D-Day.

In 2007 — widely reported by the media last summer as the "worst" yet during the war — 901 American troops lost their lives. By comparison, during the Clinton administration, an average of 938 American soldiers died each year in the military. The notion that we've suffered unconscionable troop losses is false and misleading. This is the most bloodless war in history.

So far, we've spent about $500 billion on the war — less than 1% of our GDP over the past five years. Yet with that money, we've perhaps recast the history of the Mideast, giving its people a chance to throw off the shackles of tyranny and to live in peaceful democracies. We've bashed al-Qaida severely, killing key leaders and demoralizing the terrorist group's followers.

Partial transcripts of Wright's sermons

Defenders of Obama and Pastor Wright have been claiming that the video we've been seeing on TV and the Internet has been taken out of context. I've been waiting for someone to post the sermons in their entirety. CNN has posted partial transcripts of two of the sermons here and here.

I may post on this story and the issues it raises at some point, but I'd want them to be thoughtful posts, and I still have a lot of thinking to do.

NCLB slips away, along with billions of tax dollars

Schools to catch a break on No Child standards
Strict 'No Child' rules may soften for some failures
By Stephanie Banchero | Tribune reporter
March 19, 2008

The Bush administration said Tuesday that it is willing to soften its long-held stance that every failing school, whether it fails marginally or miserably, be treated the same.

Under a plan unveiled by U.S. Sec. of Education Margaret Spellings, states would be allowed to differentiate how they label—and punish—schools, based on the degree to which a given school fails to meet No Child Left Behind standards.

A school that missed only one achievement target, for example, could get a more favorable label and less severe sanctions than a school that missed several achievement goals.

This sounds like trouble. Under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), states are allowed to set their own definitions of "Adequate Yearly Progress." If they choose to scam the system by setting extremely modest yearly goals, they can meet the technical requirements of NCLB, while not delivering any real improvement in student achievement. If this new plan is adopted, states will not only be able to set their own goals, they will be able to decide on the consequences for failure to meet these goals.

Allowing states to police and regulate themselves severely undermines the whole point of NCLB, which increased federal education funding by 50% in exchange for schools being accountable to external standards. Returning that accountability to the states allows them to continue to receive all those extra funds while making a mockery of meaningful accountability. I recently posted about the perils of self-monitoring in education, and this is more of the same: a giant leap backward, toward the failed policies NCLB was drafted to remedy.

Spellings plans to grant the leeway to up to 10 states that submit pilot projects this spring. The programs would not require a change in law.

In exchange, chosen states would agree to target their efforts and resources toward helping the most chronically failing schools, which nationally, have shown minimal progress.

More backtracking. The additional funds distributed by NCLB were to be reserved for functional schools. No longer would we reward incompetence by funneling valuable resources to schools that utterly failed our children. Schools that showed improvement were to be supported, while bad schools were to be identified and restructured for success.

Why resume pouring money into "chronically failing schools" after we've spent billions of dollars over the past four decades proving that it doesn't make them better?

I always assumed that NCLB, despite any demonstrated progress, would be watered down until all accountability was washed away and nothing was left but the hemorrhaging of billions of taxpayer dollars. This is the government after all. I just didn't think it would happen this quickly.

Conservatives underrepresented in the media

Right underrepresented in press's diversity
By Jennifer Harper
March 18, 2008

Only 6 percent of the national press corps describe themselves as "conservative" in a population that includes reporters, editors and producers from major television and radio networks, daily newspapers, news wires and online sources.

Those who consider themselves "very conservative" amount to just 2 percent, according to a wide-ranging survey of 585 journalists and news executives released yesterday by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

In contrast, 36 percent of the overall population generally consider themselves conservative.

Empirical evidence regarding school choice

Andrew Coulson shares "A Quick Guide to Scholarly Literature on School Choice." Looks like a good source to have handy should one want to look at some actual empirical evidence.

Cooking the education books

The New York Times
March 20, 2008
States’ Data Obscure How Few Finish High School
By SAM DILLON

JACKSON, Miss. — When it comes to high school graduation rates, Mississippi keeps two sets of books.

One team of statisticians working at the state education headquarters here recently calculated the official graduation rate at a respectable 87 percent, which Mississippi reported to Washington. But in another office piled with computer printouts, a second team of number crunchers came up with a different rate: a more sobering 63 percent.

The state schools superintendent, Hank Bounds, says the lower rate is more accurate and uses it in a campaign to combat a dropout crisis.

...

Like Mississippi, many states use an inflated graduation rate for federal reporting requirements under the No Child Left Behind law and a different one at home. As a result, researchers say, federal figures obscure a dropout epidemic so severe that only about 70 percent of the one million American students who start ninth grade each year graduate four years later.

Sad to say, this isn't remotely surprising. If No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has demonstrated nothing else, it's that educators are cheaters and will use any means to scam the system. If they worked as hard at teaching and complying with NCLB as they do whining about it and finding ways around it, we'd be seeing a lot more progress.

And why does it take two separate teams to compute drop-out rates? Granted they are dealing with large numbers, but this isn't rocket science. Apparently the data they need is in the computer that spit out those piles of printouts. Decide on a formula and have the computer go to work. Computers love doing that kind of stuff. A single first-year programmer could implement this, saving all the tax dollars we're spending on these teams to come up with conflicting results.

California, for example, sends to Washington an official graduation rate of 83 percent but reports an estimated 67 percent on a state Web site. Delaware reported 84 percent to the federal government but publicized four lower rates at home.

I guess Delaware has five different teams working on this and still can't figure it out. Tell me again why we put our children in the hands of these people?

The multiple rates have many causes. Some states have long obscured their real numbers to avoid embarrassment. Others have only recently developed data-tracking systems that allow them to follow dropouts accurately.

This is education malpractice, pure and simple. "Obscuring the real numbers" is a dishonest way of saying lying. When a business does this, people go to jail. When our school system does this, people keep their jobs and we sit around scratching our heads about why things aren't improving despite throwing massive amounts of money at the problem.

The No Child law is also at fault. The law set ambitious goals, enforced through sanctions, to make every student proficient in math and reading. But it established no national school completion goals.

Note the highlighted portion. It will come up again later. For now, suffice it to say that an education law as comprehensive as NCLB should be tracking drop-out rates, although this still doesn't excuse the states from lying about their drop-out statistics. Blaming NCLB is pure deflection from the problem of corruption at the state level.

Furthermore, although the law requires schools to make only minimal annual improvements in their rates, reporting lower rates to Washington could nevertheless cause more high schools to be labeled failing — a disincentive for accurate reporting.

A little confusing. Apparently, NCLB didn't establish national goals but does require states to report and improve drop-out rates, which sounds like a good thing.

This sounds similar to the way NCLB handles test scores. Rather than imposing national goals that must be met each year, each state is responsible for defining its own yearly goals. This allows states to game the system, and many have, by setting extremely modest definitions of Adequate Yearly Progress.

The difference here is that ,while student achievement is measured through tests administered by a third-party, the reporting of drop-out rates is built on the honor system, where those who are being monitored (the educators) are trusted to report their progress accurately. Sadly, it turns out that they aren't very honorable.

With Congressional efforts to rewrite the law stalled, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has begun using her executive powers to correct the weaknesses in it. Ms. Spellings’s efforts started Tuesday with a measure aimed at focusing resources on the nation’s worst schools. Graduation rates are also on her agenda.

Two things here. First, why is this being addressed so late in the game? NCLB has been law since January, 2002. This is just more evidence that the government, especially the national government, should have as little to do with educating our children as possible.

Second, Spellings intends to direct additional resources to the nation's worst schools. Whether this is the best approach or not (I think not), it is in direct contradiction to the spirit of NCLB, which notably broke from the failed throw-money-at-the-problem approach that we took for decades. NCLB introduced a new approach where additional resources are awarded only as long as schools continue to improve student achievement.

In an interview, Ms. Spellings said she might require states to calculate their graduation rate according to one federal formula.

“I’m considering settling this once and for all,” she said, “by defining a single federal graduation rate and requesting states to report it that way. That would finally put this issue to rest.”

Now this I don't get. She might require states to use such a formula? Why the ambivalence? If the problem is as bad as reported, providing a clear cut definition of exactly what we are tracking should be a slam dunk.

More importantly, Spellings is wrong in concluding that a federal definition of graduation rate would put the issue to rest. While creating a standardized formula is a fine idea, it won't force schools to stop lying about their drop-out rates. As long as schools are in charge of policing themselves, there is nothing to prevent them from continuing to keep two sets of books and report inflated graduation rates to Washington. The "disincentive for accurate reporting," as the article puts it, remains.

In 2001, the year the law was drafted, one of the first of a string of revisionist studies argued that the nation’s schools were losing more students than previously thought.

...

Still, Congress did not make dropouts a central focus of the law. And when states negotiated their plans to carry it out, the Bush administration allowed them to use dozens of different ways to report graduation rates.

Again, why did it take seven years to address a known issue?

As an example, New Mexico defined its rate as the percentage of enrolled 12th graders who received a diploma. That method grossly undercounts dropouts by ignoring all students who leave before the 12th grade.

So they only count the number of kids that drop out during their senior year; all those that drop out before that are ignored. Thus, they are not technically lying. But reporting a meaningless number to misrepresent their actual performance is blatantly dishonest. It violates the public trust and betrays the very children these schools were created to serve. The people behind these tactics should be fired and banned from the profession.

The law also allowed states to establish their own goals for improving graduation rates. Many set them low. Nevada, for instance, pledged to get just 50 percent of its students to graduate on time. And since the law required no annual measures of progress, California proposed that even a one-tenth of 1 percent annual improvement in its graduation rate should suffice.

Again, educational malpractice. These people should be consumed with improving our dismal school system. Instead, they devote their time and energy toward exploiting legal loopholes to give the appearance of progress where none is being made.

Daniel J. Losen, who has studied dropout reporting for the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, said he once pointed out to a [California] state official that, at that pace, it would take California 500 years to meet its graduation goal.

“In California, we’re patient,” Mr. Losen recalled the official saying.

Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.

Most troublesome to some experts was the way the No Child law’s mandate to bring students to proficiency on tests, coupled with its lack of a requirement that they graduate, created a perverse incentive to push students to drop out. If low-achieving students leave school early, a school’s performance can rise.

No study has documented that the law has produced such an effect nationwide. Experts say they believe many low-scoring students are prodded to leave school, often by school officials urging them to seek an equivalency certificate known as a General Educational Development diploma.

NCLB needs to be amended to fix this, but again, blaming this on NCLB is absurd. The low-life scum that are sacrificing our kids so that they can appear to be doing their jobs must be identified and punished. Unfortunately, this brand of child abuse will remain as long as our schools are government run and under the thumbs of the teachers unions, which block any type of meaningful education reforms.

For more examples of the scams being played, read the whole article. I don't have the stomach to continue.

More unknowns regarding climate change

The Mystery of Global Warming's Missing Heat
by Richard Harris

Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them.

The article also points out that there are a number of "natural thermostats" which aren't understood. Clouds, for instance. . .

. . . can either trap heat and turn up the temperature, or reflect sunlight and help cool the planet.

That can't be directly measured at the moment, however.

"Unfortunately, we don't have adequate tracking of clouds to determine exactly what role they've been playing during this period," Trenberth says.

Or any period, for that matter. As I've said before, climate is a complex system. There are many variables we don't know how to account for, and undoubtedly more that we aren't even aware of. None of these variables can be reliably included in the computer models which are being used as "evidence" of a global "crisis."

Stopping the fall of the dollar

I continue to read more on economics in hopes of gaining some understanding of what's happening and why. This portion of an interview with Steve Forbes caught my attention:

Q: In the current issue of Forbes magazine, you say we’re in for the biggest bout of inflation we’ve seen since Jimmy Carter’s administration. Inflation is caused by government. So what has the Bush administration been doing wrong?

A: Well, it did not do anything to shore up the value of the dollar and ask the Fed to cooperate in that. There are various time-tested methods to do that. It all boils down to when you spill something, you soak it up. The Fed could sell bonds that remove excess money from the economy. The Bush administration could work with the G-7 (European countries) to do exchange operations -- you know, buying dollars to shore that up. Our allies would be quite willing to do it. They find the fall of the dollar very disturbing, very disruptive. So you take positive steps.

Forbes makes the problem, and the solution, sound pretty straight forward: there is too much money in the system, and here are a couple of time-tested ways to fix it. I assume not everyone agrees with him, else the problem would be solved. (To wit, I think I just heard Glenn Beck say that Alan Greenspan thinks we need to get more money into the system to help grow the economy. So I remain lost on all this.)

Anyway, I understand how selling bonds would remove money from the system. I'm fuzzy about Forbes' second suggestion of encouraging exchange operations. Does this mean that we take a large chunk of dollars and exchange them for other currencies? That takes money out of the system, but then what? Do we hold onto the foreign currencies until our dollar recovers and then sell them?

Later in the interview:

Q: There have been Republicans screwing up the economy. What are the chances that either President Obama or President Clinton will fix things right?

A: The Democrats will probably make the situation worse, because they believe in tax increases. They want to raise taxes, not cut them, which would make us less competitive, which would hurt job creation and innovation. So they would compound the problem.

Again, I'm lost. After making the case that we need to take some money out of the system, Forbes favors tax cuts, which would put even more money into the system.

I'd sure like to understand all this stuff, so I could at least have an idea of who is making sense. I follow the news closely enough so that I'm aware that an awful lot of the "experts" on other issues don't know what they are talking about. I assume the same is true in economics. I just can't figure out who I should be listening to.

Vocabulary: traduce

Via thefreedictionary.com:

tra·duce (tr-ds, -dys) tr.v. tra·duced, tra·duc·ing, tra·duc·es To cause humiliation or disgrace to by making malicious and false statements. See Synonyms at malign. [Latin trdcere, to lead as a spectacle, dishonor : tr-, trns-, trans- + dcere, to lead; see deuk- in Indo-European roots.] tra·ducement n. tra·ducer n. tra·ducing·ly adv.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2003. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Thesaurus Legend: Synonyms Related Words Antonyms

Verb

1.

traduce - speak unfavorably about; "She badmouths her husband everywhere" badmouth, drag through the mud, malign asperse, besmirch, calumniate, defame, slander, smirch, denigrate, sully, smear - charge falsely or with malicious intent; attack the good name and reputation of someone; "The journalists have defamed me!" "The article in the paper sullied my reputation"

Prostate cancer research

These stats, comparing funding for prostate cancer to that of breast cancer, caught my attention:

Government spending for prostate cancer lags, too. In 2007, the National Cancer Institute spent an estimated $551.1 million on breast cancer research and $305.6 million on prostate cancer. For 2008, the Defense Department, which has a history of supporting health research, has allocated $138 million for breast cancer and $80 million for prostate cancer.

I think I remember reading years ago (perhaps in Warren Farrell's The Myth of Male Power) that funding for breast cancer was 400% higher than for prostate cancer. If so, the numbers above represent progress, despite the continuing funding gap.

Also, as the article points out, there are greater problems than simply a lack of funding:

Prostate cancer researchers say the real problem is not so much financing as enlisting doctors and patients on board for clinical trials.

Black tea as a aide to controlling diabetes

A new study suggests that ingredients in black tea may help in controlling type-2 diabetes.

How the humble cuppa could conquer diabetes

By Kate Foster
Ingredients in black tea mimic insulin to fight deadly disease

IT IS the world's most popular drink, enjoyed everywhere from building sites to The Ritz.

But now scientists have discovered that the great British cuppa holds the potential to fight one of the nation's biggest life-threatening diseases.

Groundbreaking research by scientists at Dundee University has revealed that ordinary tea may have the potential to help combat type 2 diabetes, which affects around 200,000 Scots.

The scientists have discovered ingredients in black tea mimic the action of the hormone insulin, which is deficient in people with diabetes.

They say the next step is to establish whether drinking more tea could help treat diabetes or even prevent it occurring in the first place.

I have type-2 diabetes, so I always have an eye out for new studies. If an idea isn't too wacky or expensive, I'll sometimes give it a shot, even if the jury is still out on whether it actually works. I take cinnamon, for example, because there was a study a few years back that suggested it might help. Figure it can't hurt.

As it turns out, I drink a lot of tea. My favorite is plain old-fashioned Lipton instant tea, which I like at half-strength. I hate Lipton Brisk, as I do most kinds of "fancy" teas. Just the plain, boring stuff for me.

What I don't know is whether Lipton qualifies as a "black tea." I'm thinking probably not. (The stuff looks brown to me.) Plus, its instant, so I'm betting any good stuff has been freeze dried out of it. *sigh*

Via Economic Freedom

GW: keeping things in perspective

Some thoughts on a recent NYT article on this year's cooling trend:

March 2, 2008
Skeptics on Human Climate Impact Seize on Cold Spell
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

The world has seen some extraordinary winter conditions in both hemispheres over the past year: snow in Johannesburg last June and in Baghdad in January, Arctic sea ice returning with a vengeance after a record retreat last summer, paralyzing blizzards in China, and a sharp drop in the globe’s average temperature.

It is no wonder that some scientists, opinion writers, political operatives and other people who challenge warnings about dangerous human-caused global warming have jumped on this as a teachable moment.

...

So what is happening?

According to a host of climate experts, including some who question the extent and risks of global warming, it is mostly good old-fashioned weather, along with a cold kick from the tropical Pacific Ocean, which is in its La Niña phase for a few more months, a year after it was in the opposite warm El Niño pattern.

It's refreshing to read a story about global warming that doesn't claim there is a "consensus" on the matter or that "the debate is over." Of course this really isn't a story about global warming; it's a report of evidence that runs counter to the global warming theory.

So the "consensus" is now a "host." And that host actually includes "some who question the extent and risks of global warming."

It's nice to see that those "political operatives and other people who challenge warnings about dangerous human-caused global warming" have something to contribute for a change, instead of being dismissed as "deniers" of the faith. How reasonable all these crazies are now that they are making a point that the "consensus" embraces.

Notice, also, the sudden restraint being shown by the global warming bunch--how they caution us that a period of record cooling doesn't indicate a longterm trend, that weather fluctuations are normal, and that this is a "teachable moment."

Yet I recall many instances of severe hurricanes or other weather phenomenon being offered up as "proof" of man-made global warming. I don't remember those being described as "teachable moments" when the "deniers" tried to make the same points.

If anything else is afoot — like some cooling related to sunspot cycles or slow shifts in ocean and atmospheric patterns that can influence temperatures — an array of scientists who have staked out differing positions on the overall threat from global warming agree that there is no way to pinpoint whether such a new force is at work.

Now isn't that interesting. The "deniers" have been pointing out for years that the computer models being used to forecast global warming gloom-n-doom don't take into consideration things like solar activity -- i.e. the Earth (and the other planets) get hotter when the sun becomes more active. Now that things are cooling off, the "consensus" is suddenly discovering the importance of such phenomena; solar activity and ocean and air patterns are considered "new forces at work." I'd be curious to know how these factors contribute to global cooling and not global warming.

More clucking about the cold is likely over the next several days. The Heartland Institute, a public policy research group in Chicago opposed to regulatory approaches to environmental problems, is holding a conference in Times Square on Monday and Tuesday aimed at exploring questions about the cause and dangers of climate change.

The event will convene an array of scientists, economists, statisticians and libertarian commentators holding a dizzying range of views on the changing climate — from those who see a human influence but think it is not dangerous, to others who say global warming is a hoax, the sun’s fault or beneficial. Many attendees say it is the dawn of a new paradigm. But many climate scientists and environmental campaigners say it is the skeptics’ last stand.

Michael E. Schlesinger, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, said that any focus on the last few months or years as evidence undermining the established theory that accumulating greenhouse gases are making the world warmer was, at best, a waste of time and, at worst, a harmful distraction.

Ah, global warming skeptics are "clucking at the cold" and hold "a dizzying range of views." Now we're back on message.

And note the non sequitur. Schlesinger's comment is placed so as to suggest that the conference itself is a waste of time. But Schlesinger is commenting only on the issue of whether a small slice of data can tell us anything about a longterm trend. There's nothing in this story (or anywhere else I'm aware of) that suggests that anyone at the conference will be making that case; to the contrary, it sounds like the convention will be addressing global warming in its entirety.

Interviews and e-mail exchanges with half a dozen polar climate and ice experts last week produced a rough consensus: Even with the extensive refreezing of Arctic waters in the deep chill of the sunless boreal winter, the fresh-formed ice remains far thinner than the yards-thick, years-old ice that dominated the region until the 1990s.

A "rough consensus." Have to get that consensus word in there somewhere, I guess. But note, the issue is whether the Arctic ice is thinner now than it was before 1990. This is a point of fact -- either it's thinner or it's not.

If the best we can do is get a "rough consensus" from our polar and ice experts on this single, measurable data point -- and if solar, air, and ocean patterns are considered "new forces" which aren't fully understood -- how can we have any degree of confidence (let alone a consensus) on what's going on with our complex climate system?

Let the debate continue.

Can computer models predict the past?

New study increases concerns about climate model reliability

ROCHESTER, NY (Dec. 11, 2007) A new study comparing the composite output of 22 leading global climate models with actual climate data finds that the models do an unsatisfactory job of mimicking climate change in key portions of the atmosphere.

This research, published on-line Wednesday in the Royal Meteorological Society's International Journal of Climatology*, raises new concerns about the reliability of models used to forecast global warming.

The usual discussion is whether the climate model forecasts of Earth's climate 100 years or so into the future are realistic, said the lead author, Dr. David H. Douglass from the University of Rochester. Here we have something more fundamental: Can the models accurately explain the climate from the recent past? It seems that the answer is no.

...

The 22 climate models used in this study are the same models used by the UN Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), which recently shared a Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore.