“As governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney vetoed a bill paying for kosher food for our seniors in nursing homes. Holocaust survivors, who for the first time, were forced to eat non-kosher, because Romney thought $5 was too much to pay for our grandparents to eat kosher.” Gingrich’s robocall then urges voters to cast votes for Gingrich, saying, “Tuesday you can end Mitt Romney’s hypocrisy on religious freedom, with a vote for Newt Gingrich.”

-Evidence that Newt Gingrich thinks the Florida electorate is comprised entirely of gullible Jews.

Small Victories For Common Sense

Apparently, someone at Stony Brook got around to realizing the dumb move they made, because this came to my inbox today:

A message to all Stony Brook University students:

Please disregard any new charges on the fall bill reflecting an Academic Excellence and Success fee of $37.50 and out-of-state tuition associated with the implementation of Stony Brook University’s NY SUNY 2020 plan.

The next bill you receive for the spring 2012 semester will reflect the new charges. We regret any inconvenience this has caused, and if a payment has already been made, the University will implement a credit balance to the Spring semester bill.

Please call the Student Accounts Office at (631) 632-2455 with any questions about your account and we will be happy to assist you; or visit www.stonybrook.edu/bursar.

This is an automatically generated email, please do not reply to it.

Student Accounts
Stony Brook Univeristy

Still, I’m not quite sure what it means.  Did they decide not to charge $37.50 on the fall bill, and are just moving the fall charge over to the spring bill?  We shall see.

Bad Timing in University Grifting

This morning, I awoke to the following email sent from the university where I spend my academic time and money:

Dear Stony Brook Students and Families,

We are writing to let you know that, as part of the new SUNY tuition plan, all Stony Brook students will be billed a $75 Academic Excellence and Success fee ($37.50 per semester for fall 2011 and spring 2012). This fee will be posted to your account in SOLAR and will be due and payable on January 15, 2012.

This fee will help bring the university much-needed resources to strengthen our academic programs in many ways, including improving the student-faculty ratio, providing timely access to classes needed for graduation, and creating new opportunities for students to work directly with some of the very best professors in the nation. The plan also provides for additional grants and scholarships.

You may recall that the new tuition and fee plan was first announced before the start of the fall semester; however, Stony Brook could not implement the Academic Excellence and Success fee until it was officially approved by the state, which occurred yesterday.

If you are eligible for one of the above mentioned grants or scholarships, it will be posted as anticipated aid, reflected on your student account on SOLAR by Friday, December 16th.

For any questions about your account, please call the Student Accounts Office at (631) 632-2455, or visit www.stonybrook.edu/bursar.

We hope you will continue to find your Stony Brook education to be an extraordinary value. Thank you for your continued support of the university.

Sincerely,

Student Accounts

Stony Brook University

Needless to say, I have a few bones to pick with what Stony Brook has decided to do and how they have decided to do it.  It is one thing to announce a fee prior to implementation, but Stony Brook is now implementing a retroactive fee.  They are going to charge me $37.50 for a semester that has already ended.  As if I hadn’t already given them ~$1,300 for that semester (to say nothing of what I have given them over the course of a 13 year association that has to this point seen my purchase of one bachelor’s, two master’s, and half of a professional certificate).  Could you imagine a private institution attempting to charge extra for services already rendered?  It almost reads like a bad joke.

The name of the fee is another particular gripe for me.  ”Academic Excellence and Success Fee”?  Seriously?!?  As if this $75 was the crucial difference between a high-quality education and the alternative.  That’s some hard-core doublespeak.  I would be in awe, if money wasn’t being taken out of my pocket.  Whoever the university has in charge of these things should definitely think about a career in politics.  If it were me, I’d call it what it is:  The “We’re taking more of your money because we can Fee”.  

Finally, in what is perhaps the worst aspect of the whole thing, the offered justification is flimsy beyond all measure.  The fee will provide apparently provide “much-needed resources”.  Okay.  Less okay, when you consider the fact that 48 hours ago, the University announced a combined private and public grant totaling more than 180 million dollars.  It is shocking to me that no one in the PR department thought for a moment that perhaps waiting a week or so before sending out an email reminding the student body that we were on the hook for more scratch would be a wise move.  

Lame.  Lame in purpose.  Lame in planning.  Lame in execution.  Lame. 

I call BS on this News Story.

This one has all the hallmarks of some bit of internet gossip that got accidentally picked up by a local news station.

“Butt-chugging?”  No way.  At the very least, not in any sort of numbers that warrant mention in news media.

This is difficult to watch.  I enjoy the made up words almost as much as I enjoy the looks on the faces of some of the contestants as they try to figure out what the most correct thing to say is.  Most of them fail in that task pretty miserably.

Another Plug For Digital Literacy

Here is a link to a summary of a study on the most common passcodes used on iPhones.  1234?!?  Really?!?!

Somehow you know that the people with the most obvious passcodes are also the people with the most inappropriately personal material on their phones.

“Last time I consulted an atlas, it is clear we are living in New York, in the United States of America — not in China or North Korea,” he said. “In those countries, government presumes daily to ‘redefine’ rights, relationships, values, and natural law. There, communiqués from the government can dictate the size of families, who lives and who dies, and what the very definition of ‘family’ and ‘marriage’ means.”

Archbishop Timothy Dolan, demonstrating just how irrelevant the Catholic Church has become

“To the best of your knowledge, what proportion of climate scientists think that global warming is caused mostly by human activities?” Here are the (dismal) results:
81 to 100 % (of climate scientists) — 15 % (of Americans)
61 to 80 % — 18 %
41 to 60 % — 18 %
21 to 40 % — 12 %
0 to 20 % — 7 %
Don’t know enough to say — 32 %”

A suggestion that all of that oil lobby money is working
Artifacts from the Field:  Are you kidding me? The photo is the explanatory aide that teachers were given this week to help inform students how to fill out the new regents multiple choice sheets.  The sheets, which are optical scanned, are filled out in pen.  This necessitates all sorts of odd symbolism should a child decide to change his/her mind after filling in their first choice. Essentially, the new testing language is as follows: Students fill in the circle for the first choice. Should a student decide another circle is more appropriate, they fill in that circle, and place a clear, obvious X through the former choice. This mode could continue through all four circles. If a student decides to revisit a circle that had previously been “X’d”, they must then surround the X’d circle with a clear, obvious new circle. All in all, it’s about as bad a system to use with children as you could possibly design.  Why pencils (and their accompanying erasers) have been deemed to be no longer sufficient after 100 or so odd years of Regents exams is beyond me.  But then again, I’m not getting paid by New York State to act as if I have solutions for problems that don’t really exist. High-res

Artifacts from the Field:  Are you kidding me?

The photo is the explanatory aide that teachers were given this week to help inform students how to fill out the new regents multiple choice sheets.  The sheets, which are optical scanned, are filled out in pen.  This necessitates all sorts of odd symbolism should a child decide to change his/her mind after filling in their first choice.

Essentially, the new testing language is as follows:

  1. Students fill in the circle for the first choice.
  2. Should a student decide another circle is more appropriate, they fill in that circle, and place a clear, obvious X through the former choice.
  3. This mode could continue through all four circles.
  4. If a student decides to revisit a circle that had previously been “X’d”, they must then surround the X’d circle with a clear, obvious new circle.

All in all, it’s about as bad a system to use with children as you could possibly design.  Why pencils (and their accompanying erasers) have been deemed to be no longer sufficient after 100 or so odd years of Regents exams is beyond me.  But then again, I’m not getting paid by New York State to act as if I have solutions for problems that don’t really exist.

“If you can find a service or a good available on Google or the Internet, then the federal government probably doesn’t need to be providing that good or service,” he said. “The post office, the government printing office, Amtrak, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and others were all built for a time in our country and a different chapter in our economy when the private sector didn’t adequately provide those services. But that’s no longer the case.”

-A demonstration of the fact that Tim Pawlenty really doesn’t understand how a search engine works.

Unsurprisingly, Rick Santorum is not acceptable.

The link above proves once again that the best thing about the former senator from Pennsylvania is what happens when you google his last name (and why you shouldn’t piss off a demographic more tech-savvy than you are).  

On Mucking It Up

Yesterday, I had the questionable pleasure of sitting in a meeting at District Office, wherein the most recent thoughts from the state regarding changes to the evaluation process for teachers (and Principals, though we focused mostly on teachers).  These guidelines are still being developed, but the state feels they are far enough along to release an FAQ regarding what they think will be the process.  

The discussion was very interesting, and incredibly frustrating.  All of the later came from the document linked above, and the fact that a room full of teachers and administrators was at a total loss as to how things are going to work in this brave new world.  Here, for you, are the highlights:

  • 20% of the new annual evaluation will be computed by the state.  In the case of those of us who teach subjects that culminate in a Regents exam, this will be determined by taking our scores and comparing us to other, similar situations in the district.  From this comparison, according to formulae and prognostications that are not, to my knowledge, in the public domain, the state will determine what portion of that 20% we should be awarded.  The state is still deciding how to determine this 20% for teachers who teach classes that do not end in a Regents.
  • 20% of the new annual evaluation will be computed by the district.  This will be based on locally-established measures of student growth, though the determination of just how much growth has occurred during a year will be accomplished by rubrics that the state is currently deciding who to pay to create.  Our district is proposing the administration of an exam on day one, followed by the midterm at mid-year, and culminating with a final.  
  • The remaining 60% will be determined through the completion of a new Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR).  I can’t find an online copy to link to here, but I can tell you that the new version is a 21-page checklist (modeled on the “common core” state standards) that replaces the current 1-page checklist that my district uses. 
  • The state is requiring implementation of this process for all core-subject area teachers in grades 4-8 starting in 2011-2012, but recommends implementation for all levels during that year, so that’s what we are looking to do.

I don’t think it takes too much imagination to understand just how stupid this plan is.  I’ll withhold judgement on the magic formulae that are used to calculate my effectiveness until I see them in action, but I have a hard time believing that any formula is going to do the job the state thinks this one will do.  I also have to think that moving to a 21-page end-of-year evaluation is going to be a tremendous headache for administrators.  Ours are already overburdened with responsibilities.  Throwing this on the pile just seems insulting (especially when we consider the fact that the governor is in the process of capping taxes and limiting salaries to no more than he makes).  How this is going to bring the kinds of folks in to school administration and teaching who are going to move the ball forward is a bit beyone me, but I’m clearly not of a mind that can understand these kinds of ideas about school improvement.

All of this comes from an attempt by New York to comply with regulations developed by the federal Department of Education to participate in their “competitive” process to receive money from the “Race to The Top” program.  Money that we didn’t particularly receive.  So now the state finds itself in a position of shrinking budgets, diminishing enthusiasm for the profession among the professionals who staff our schools, and now spending time and money on formulae and rubrics to be in compliance with a program that we are barely participating in.  Stay classy, State Ed.