Town of Kinderhook, your web page stinks!!!

I heard at one time in my life that town web sites were geared towards "open" government and keeping people informed.

Someone should convey that message to the town of Kinderhook, NY.
As of this morning, August 27, 2014, the page entitled "Town Board Meeting Minutes" looks like this:

Special Meeting 3-4-2014	Wed, Apr 2, 2014 2:56 PM	15K
March 19, 2014	Wed, Apr 2, 2014 2:56 PM	23K
February 10, 2014	Wed, Apr 2, 2014 2:55 PM	27K
January 13, 2014	Wed, Apr 2, 2014 2:55 PM	34K
December 30, 2013	Wed, Apr 2, 2014 2:54 PM	15K
December 9, 2013	Wed, Apr 2, 2014 2:54 PM	24K
December 18, 2013	Wed, Apr 2, 2014 2:54 PM	15K
November 16, 2013	Thu, Dec 12, 2013 12:02 PM	15K
November 2013	Thu, Dec 12, 2013 12:01 PM	23K
October 21, 2013	Thu, Dec 12, 2013 12:00 PM	24K
September 9, 2013	Thu, Oct 10, 2013 11:53 AM	24K
August 12, 2013	Thu, Oct 10, 2013 11:53 AM	24K
July 8, 2013	Thu, Oct 10, 2013 11:52 AM	28K
June 10, 2013	Thu, Oct 10, 2013 11:51 AM	26K
June 5, 2013	Thu, Oct 10, 2013 11:50 AM	16K
May 20, 2013	Thu, Oct 10, 2013 11:50 AM	24K
April 30, 2013	Tue, May 21, 2013 1:04 PM	15K
April 25, 2013	Tue, May 21, 2013 1:04 PM	15K
April 8, 2013	Tue, May 21, 2013 1:04 PM	22K
March 28, 2013	Tue, May 21, 2013 1:03 PM	16K

The date on the left is the date the minutes were posted on the web,

That is the good stuff!!! The page titled "Agendas and Minutes" looks like this:

Agendas and Minutes

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Minutes	Agendas

That's it!! Blank!!

That is how we are kept informed!!!  This is a town with no radio or TV or paper. (Oh, they do say our legal paper is the Hudson Register Star)

The town has a planning board. As of today, its page looks like this;

Planning Board Agendas

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PB Agenda 2-16-2012	Thu, Feb 9, 2012 10:02 PM	27K
PB Workshop Agenda 2-9-2012	Tue, Feb 7, 2012 7:12 PM	27K
PB Agenda 1-19-2012	Thu, Jan 12, 2012 7:52 PM	25K

There is more!

The Zoning Board of Appeals has a page. It looks like this:

ZBA Meeting Minutes

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ZBA Minutes 9-27-2012.pdf	Sun, Jan 12, 2014 12:59 PM	107K
ZBA Minutes 8-2-2012.pdf	Sun, Jan 12, 2014 12:59 PM	88K
ZBA Minutes 6-7-2012.pdf	Sun, Jan 12, 2014 12:58 PM	98K
ZBA Minutes 11.1.12.pdf	Sun, Jan 12, 2014 12:56 PM	1701K
ZBA Minutes 9.5.13.pdf	Sat, Dec 28, 2013 4:31 PM	166K
ZBA Minutes 6.27.13.pdf	Sat, Dec 28, 2013 4:30 PM	165K
ZBA Minutes 8.1.13.pdf	Wed, Sep 11, 2013 7:37 PM	201K
ZBA Minutes 5.2.13.pdf	Tue, Jul 2, 2013 9:57 PM	157K
ZBA Minutes 6.6.13.pdf	Tue, Jul 2, 2013 9:56 PM	169K
ZBA Minutes 4-5-2012	Thu, Jul 5, 2012 6:19 PM	44K
ZBA Minutes 3-1-2012	Thu, Jul 5, 2012 6:10 PM	37K
ZBA Minutes 2-2-2012	Sun, Mar 25, 2012 12:12 PM	42K
ZBA Minutes 2-3-2011	Thu, May 5, 2011 5:56 PM	27K
ZBA Minutes 12-2-10	Mon, Mar 7, 2011 5:20 PM	28K
ZBA Minutes 12-2-2010	Mon, Mar 7, 2011 4:20 PM	28K
ZBA Meeting Mnutes 01-7-10	Thu, Mar 18, 2010 8:07 PM	26K
ZBA Minutes - 10-1-09	Tue, Dec 8, 2009 12:05 PM	35K
ZBA Minutes - 9-3-09	Tue, Dec 8, 2009 12:05 PM	31K
ZBA Minutes - 8-6-09	Wed, Sep 9, 2009 4:05 PM	27K
ZBA Meetings Cancelled - 1-8, 2-5, 3-5, 4-2, 5-7;7-2-2009

I could go on, but I think the message is clear. 

Kinderhook, get your act together!

Can you drive while adding 2 digits numbers?

Today's Albany Times Union contains an Associated Press article written by Lauran Neergaard. Actually, the paper does not name the writer, just credits the story to the AP. A little searching discovered the article's author, and also some interesting headlines for the article. Here are three of them:

Peek into brain shows how kids learn math skills  from KOB4 in Albuquerque, NM

In math, memorizing counts out of Albany Times Union

Kids’ brains reorganize when learning math skills from Fallreporter.com out of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin

I find it interesting that each title creates a slightly different spin. The Fallreporter.com version promotes the stance that learning mathematics (which in this article is described as basic arithmetic) changes the way the brain operates. The KOB4 version might be taken to describe a more static brain which can reveal what is happening when kids learn math. The Times Union headline seems to stress the most basic form of remembering, known as memorization, as the big key.

I note that the Fond du Lac title matches the title used at ABC News (see it here)

Somehow, somewhere, somebody has to realize that memorization is only a short-term solution, and can only lead to a long-term skill if that which is memorized is then used repeatedly. In the case of arithmetic, this would require a delay in the use of calculators until arithmetic skills have been strongly embedded in the brain.

Take a moment to read Susan R. Barry's column from Psychology Today titled "Math and Memory", and  the Josef Parvizi (Stanford Medicine News Center) article "Mathematics or Memory?"

Start with the AP column and the two articles just named, and consider them in light of our big push to stop texting while driving. In what way is driving a car similar to doing arithmetic? Or is it the texting that is more like doing arithmetic? Can you text and do arithmetic simultaneously? Or is it easier to drive and do arithmetic easier? I would suspect that using a calculator while driving is very dangerous. Can you say that about doing basic arithmetic mentally and driving at the same time?

Unless and until you have carefully considered situations such as these, I would shy away from making claims that giving kids calculators is helping them.

Let's give the kids arithmetic, and keep the calculators away, until they are truly needed, not just wanted.

Think Again, Ms. Tucker

Cynthia Tucker's latest column (online here) which I first read in the Albany Times Union (7/29/14) is titled "Ineffective educators need to go". Brilliant.

Consider: Ineffective______________ need to go. I dare say you can pretty much fill in the blank with almost any profession and obtain a fairly accurate statement. For that matter, do not limit it to professions: fill it in with "toasters", "golf balls", "politicians", "garden hoses", "parents"...

The title of Ms. Tucker's column is probably meant to ignite the reader's passionate opinions, either for or against teachers. So be it. I agree with her title, but little else in her column.

One of her statements is:

It pains me to say this since I hail from a long line of educators, but schoolteachers have become a huge stumbling block to classroom reform.

She forgets to add the statement "Schoolteachers are some of the biggest proponents of classroom reform."

She also adds:

Good teachers deserve our whole-hearted support — higher salaries, better working conditions, more respect. But they ought to stop defending their weaker colleagues. Bad teachers need to be forced into another line of work.

A few items Ms. Tucker ought to recognize:

1. Teachers are not the ones who hire and fire other teachers. Neither do teacher unions. That responsibility falls in the hands of administrators and school boards. 
2. By state law (at least in NY) teacher salaries are the negotiated by unions with the districts.
3. Nobody trusts anybody to be the judge of good teacher vs bad teacher.  Yet, someone would have to judge, if Ms. Tuckers utopia is to become a reality.
4. No teacher gets tenure when hired. It is granted by school boards, generally upon recommendation by administrators.

Greensboro, NC newspaper "News & Record" had an article in its May 31, 2014 issue that included the statement 

Critics say teachers too often get tenure simply by continuing to show up for work and that bad teachers can be too expensive to fire.

Whose fault is that? Who gets the blame? That article, from the Associated Press, also talks about an ongoing North Carolina push to get teachers to waive their tenure rights in return for a pay raise. Imagine the general idea of giving up a right in exchange for cash!  

If the truth be told, spending all this time and energy addressing teachers, tenure, accountability and reform, is time spent addressing a symptom. If we want our schools to be more successful, we need a culture and society in which education is respected. A small start in that direction might be news media in this country taking a portion of their sports budget and instead reporting on successful students in the local schools. Imagine media slowly spreading the word about what academic success looks like and what it entails.

I am not saying that the world of teachers does not have room for improvement. What I am saying is that the end result will not be better if all we do is appease the gripes of those who blame it all on teachers, and it could, indeed, be much worse.

The News That is Missing

The clip here is from today's Albany Times Union, but I would expect, being an Associated Press story, that it also appeared elsewhere.  It strikes me for a few key reasons:

1. With redeployment of 313 officers due to 48 more incidents, does it imply that, had there been a reduction of 48 shootings, the NYPD would have taken 313 officers out of those areas?
2. Did the increase occur in the "high crime streets"?  I would have thought that the AP would have asked that, and included the answer in the story.
3. Would the story have the same impact if the story had said that there was 1 shooting for every 14893 residents, up from 1 for every 16284 residents. Would the impact be stronger or weaker? (This is based on estimated 2012 population of 8.37 million.)
4. The 313 officers redeployed. Where did they come from? Did crime rate in those areas go down?
5. The officers have been redeployed for 90 days. Does that mean that mean NYPD expects the perceived need to decrease on October 6? To what would they attribute this?
6. If 3 guns shoot 8 bullets in 1 "event", is that 1 shooting, 3 shootings, or 8 shootings?
7. Is this increase attributable to more guns, more people with guns, or some other factor?
8. If this increase is a random statistical bump, and due to the general process known as "regression to the mean" is followed by a comparable decrease, will this redeployment be called a success? (Just as I followed up my hole-in-one with a couple double bogies.)

The scary thing here is that in this age of tweets and texts, a lot of people are getting a lot of their "news" in digital strings shorter than this story. This is in direct competition with the push in the world of education to greater thinking and learning skills.  

If nothing else, people should be working to lengthen their attention spans and strengthen their skills. In aid to this cause, the news media should produce stories that promote both of those goals. What seems to be happening is that media has regressed in both those areas over time. Just look at the evolution of Time magazine.

The Chicago Tribune, on May 18 of this year, had this story on their web site:

Are words going out of style? At a time when the public's hunger for news reaches new heights, it is startling to hear the new word-count limits that Reuters and The Associated Press have imposed on their reporters.

Top editors at Reuters sent out a memo in early May that asks its writers in the Americas to trim their copy to 300 to 500 words for all but the most "distinctive" stories — meaning stories that offer something that nobody else does. A top editor at AP set similar limits for his staff.

The Washington Post on May 12 contributed (see here):

This is a short news article about how news articles are becoming shorter. 

The world’s largest independent news organization, the Associated Press, for one, has told its journalists to cut the fat — and keep their stories between 300 and 500 words, a length in which this story (301 words) would easily fit. 

That’s 500 words, max, on just about every one of the 2,000 or so stories AP journalists report each day, from ballgames to bomb blasts to the latest political skulduggery. 

Exceptions: AP has told its reporters that the top one or two stories in each state may run between 500 and 700 words, and the top global stories of the day may be a practically Faulknerian 700-plus words. Reporters in AP’s newly expanded investigative unit will be permitted to bust the limits. 

Why? The news service says many of its members — 15,000 or so newspapers, Web sites, and radio and TV stations around the world — lack the staff to trim stories to fit their shrinking news holes. What’s more, AP says, readers can get turned off by longer stories, especially on mobile devices, an increasingly popular way for people to get the day’s news. 

“We need to be more disciplined about what needs to be said,” Kathleen Carroll, AP’s executive editor, said in a (short) interview. “We don’t do enough distilling and honing, and we end up making our readers do more work.”

If anyone is concerned as to how to improve education, and wishes to get a clear sense of the Common Core, do not trust what you know, as the media has cut your information in a desire to keep it simple.

Come on America, we can do better. 

Those "aha!" Moments.

Here is a very simple application of GeoGebra that I created this morning in about half an hour.
Simply created, yet totally impossible when I was a student, and largely impossible and generally improbable when I was a teacher. It depends on the correct technology and a teacher who can make it or at least use it.

Little technological things like this have the potential for creating those "aha!" moments, the presence of which are mileposts in the life of the mathematician, the absence of which create the dead ends of the math phobic.

We need to go out of our way to enable these "aha!" moments.
Improving the mathematical skills and knowledge of our country requires it.
If you wish to download the file itself and make your own modifications, you can get it here.

Correlation coefficient of linear fit?

The Common Core State Standards Initiative has, in its High School Statistics and Probability section, the statement 

Compute (using technology) and interpret the correlation coefficient of a linear fit.

You can find it here.

I suppose I can accept the utilitarian notion of being able to computer something on a calculator while having no idea where it comes from, as long as the result can be interpreted correctly.

I do have a problem with question 11 from the New York State Algebra I (Common Core) exam. 

I see nothing in here involving interpretation or understanding. All I see is a question asking whether or not the student could remember a cook-book recipe from their calculator's user manual. Pity the poor teacher whose students have the gamut of calculators. (After all, school cannot be a mandate for using a certain company's products.)  I must assume that this question is not testing the students ability to state the coordinate names for the points, as the question requires a number of steps beyond that.

What I do see here is a lousy test question. 

As for the relevance of the topic itself, well, that is debatable. If Algebra I is considered as an introductory high school course, I say absolutely not. Comprehension of correlation coefficient requires a skills base and a time commitment better suited to a later course. If Algebra I is considered an exit exam, perhaps the situation changes. Since New York now considers Algebra I regents exam as both an introductory course (anything below it is considered remedial) and an exit course, in a one-size-fits-all scenario, things are very confusing.

By the way, I looked at NYSED's page regarding this test. It is here, and as of today, all its links are password-protected. 

A Fee? Charging potential teachers for double-checking a grade?

If you believe that a score (not a condition code) on one or more rubrics was reported in error, you may submit a request for a score confirmation in writing. The fee is $200. Information about the score confirmation service is available on edtpa.com.

The above statement I found on the edtpa web site. Find the full page here.

This is an example of Pearson creating a process that both discourages complaints and creates cash flow all at the same time.  Whether or not you believe that evaluating new teachers should be contracted out to a foreign-based company, the job of that company is to get things correct. If and when they make mistakes, which they will, they should make financial amends to the affected individuals by refunding money already paid. They should not create a cash cow for themselves.

Speaking of edtpa, The Huffington Post has a must read written by Alan Singer of Hofstra University. His column The "Big Lie" Behind the High-Stakes Testing of Student Teachers describes many of the other issues surrounding the involvement of Pearson in the certification of New York State teachers.

The best thing that can happen in New York right now is for Pearson's involvement in anything be ended.