We stopped education in Texas high schools yesterday to test students’ proficiency with the English language. English is a difficult enough subject that it merits its own testing day, so as not to discombobulate students for the other Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) tests.
All controversy aside, it’s a grind.
Yours truly won the straw that got to make sure students made it to the restroom from their testing rooms, and back, without discussing the contents of the exam or sneaking off a cell-phone conversation or text message. (Yes, testing rules require that students check in phones and other devices during the test.) Classes in bathroom monitoring and cell-phone jamming cannot be far away at America’s great institutions of learning about teaching.
And you think teachers are overpaid? In Belgium the restroom attendants get tips. Same at the old Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Not in Texas schools.
The worst part: None of us on bathroom duty knows what we did that we’re being punished for. (NB: This is a joke. Somebody had to do it, and English teachers did a lot of it, in order to keep them out of administering the tests, where they might be accused of doing something to aid cheating to raise scores — teachers who do their job well may get bathroom monitoring duty as a result . . .)
Dallas ISD and the Texas Education Agency had monitors to make sure our testing was secure enough, though I’m not certain such pains are taken to make sure the tests work. Our school is targeted for “reconstitution” if there are not dramatic improvements in TAKS scores in math and science, so the monitors hunt for errors. One wishes that wearing orange would keep the guns from being aimed at one, but one suspects it would only improve one’s targetability.
So we take it all seriously. One would hate to have been the cause of the demise of a community school for having committed some grand error in monitoring bathrooms.
It was one day of testing, but it cost us more than that. Schedules were rearranged Monday so that instead of our usual block scheduling, each student got a briefer session with her or his English teacher for last minute review and pep talk. Faculty meetings were for test administration instructions (required by regulation or law).
On test days, students are asked to leave their books and book bags at home (security for the test, mainly). What sort of education system discourages kids from carrying books <i>any day?</i>
Math, science and social studies tests come at the end of April and early May. Other tests dot the weeks until then. One teacher noted in a meeting last year that testing season marks the end of the education year, since little can be done once testing starts eating up the calendar in such huge chunks.
“Time on task,” Checker Finn used to note. When students spend time on a task, they learn it. Measure what students spend their time doing, you’ll figure out what they’re good at.
The convention delegates actually gathered on March 1, 1836, a month after they were elected and sent to Washington, a growing town on the Brazos River less than 100 miles northwest of what now is Houston.
The convention within weeks would adopt a constitution amid a swift series of events. While they were meeting, Travis and his men were killed at the Alamo. And just over another month later, Gen. Sam Houston’s army would defeat the Mexicans in the famous Battle of San Jacinto.
Author Jim Bevill found the order issued on March 2, 1836, for the first copies of the Texas Declaration of Independence in a collection donated to the Southern Methodist University library. The order had long been missing from the state archives. Photo by Michael Paulsen, Houston Chronicle
Bevill was doing research for his upcoming book, The Paper Republic, a history of the Republic of Texas from the viewpoint of economics rather than the usual military perspective.
The new Texas government was desperately short of money. Investors in New Orleans refused to give the fledgling country a loan until Texas officially declared independence from Mexico.
The document Bevill found was an order sent to San Felipe to have printers make five handwritten copies and 1,000 printed copies of the declaration.
Hope you have a good Texas Independence Day. We have grades due.
Former President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, visiting John J. Pershing Elementary in Dallas, February 25, 2008
Former President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, visiting John J. Pershing Elementary in Dallas, February 25, 2008. Photo from Dallas Independent School District, via Dallas Observer
This is from the press announcement by the Dallas Independent School District:
Former President George W. Bush and Mrs. Laura Bush made a surprise visit Wednesday to their neighborhood school, Dallas ISD’s John J.Pershing Elementary. Mr. Bush visited every classroom at the school and stayed for more than an hour.
“He and Mrs. Bush were very warm and inviting and they stopped and acknowledged every person in the school,” said Pershing principal Margarita Hernandez. “This is an experience that our children will never forget. President Bush made several students pledge and commit themselves to read more instead of watching TV. He told students that reading is the key to everything, including to being president.”
Pershing Elementary has an enrollment of 482 students and is located at 5715 Meaders Lane in Dallas. This past school year, it received the Recognized ranking from the Texas Education Agency.
No interruptions this time.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Neil deGrasse Tyson casts spells over the audience at the University of Texas at Arlington, on February 17, 2009 - UT-Arlington photo
America’s living-room astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson came to Texas. Last Tuesday he spent a day trying to inspire college kids to study physics, or to stick with physics, and then he spent the evening with 3,000 close friends in an auditorium at the University of Texas-Arlington, talking about how much fun physics is, and how the use of real science and reason could improve our lives.
The greatest scientist of all time was Isaac Newton. “Hands down. Darwin and those other guys pale by comparison. Newton is the reason we have seat belts, because he proved objects in motion stay in motion. If you ask people in cars who are not wearing seat belts if they ever took a college class in physics they say no, every single time.”
About using math illiteracy to distort truth, Tyson said he was called for jury duty and the defendant was charged with possession of 6,000 milligrams of a controlled substance.
“Why would you say that? Six thousand milligrams is 6 grams, about the weight of a dime,” he said. When a newspaper headline proclaims half of the children at a school are below average on a test, he said, no one stops to think that’s what average means.”
On the importance the media places on celebrity news, Tyson showed a newspaper cover with a near full-page cover story on entertainer Michael Jackson and two important news stories teased in small boxes above the fold. Tyson said the country suffers from a “warped sense of what is important.”
Great scientific discoveries have not come about because people are interested in science, Tyson said. Just like the voyage of Columbus, funded by Queen Isabella of Spain, discovery is spurred by wars, cold wars and economic gain, he said. The only other inspiration for counties to spend lots of money is to celebrate royalty or deities, like with the Pyramids or the great cathedrals in Italy.
“We live in a country where people are afraid of the number 13. It’s delusional,” Tyson said, pointing to a book titled, “How to Protect Yourself from Alien Invasion” and the hysteria a few years ago with the Mars Hoax, with lots of science fiction circulating because Mars came closer to Earth than it had in 60,000 years. The widely circulated reports overlooked the fact that Mars was just a few inches closer and that was completely insignificant, Tyson said.
And then, according to the blog Politex, from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (one of America’s legendary newspapers now facing the crises that seems to afflict all our better news organizations) someone asked him about creationism:
During the Q&A, an audience member asked Tyson about conservative members of the state Board of Education who want to teach the “weaknesses” of the theory of evolution in Texas high school classrooms.
“I think they should stay in the Sunday school,” Tyson said. Calling intelligent design theory a “philosophy of ignorance,” he argued that a lack of appreciation for basic scienctific principles will hurt America’s scientific output, which has been the largest economic engine in the country’s history.
“If nonscience works its way into the science classroom, it marks…the beginning of the end of the economic strength this country has known,” Tyson said.
Tyson, who spent time in Washington, D.C. after being appointed to committees by then-President George W. Bush, went on to say that he always knew a Republican judge in Pennsylvania would ultimately side with evolution backers in the high-profile Dover education case in 2005. The judge understood that respecting science is good for the US economy, Tyson said.
“What I learned from my tours of duty in Washington is no Republican wants to die poor,” Tyson said.
He’s right about Republicans ( said the former employee of Orrin Hatch/William Bennett/Lamar Alexander). I hope it’s true for Texas Republicans, especially those on the Texas State Board of Education.
On Darwin’s birthday, two Texas legislators wrote about the stakes in the tussle between creationists on the one side, and educators, scientists and economic development on the other, in the Houston Chronicle.
Somebody gets it! Will Gov. Rick Perry and SBOE Chairman Don McLeroy get the message? McLeroy was reappointed as chairman a week ago — but the appointment must be approved by the State Senate. Is a fight possible?
[Can a newspaper copyright the words of public servants doing their jobs?]
Feb. 12, 2009, 12:14AM
As scientists and educators across Texas and the nation mark the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin with calls for a renewed commitment to science education, the State Board of Education continues to engage in narrow theological debate about the validity of evolution. If Texas schoolchildren are to succeed in the 21st Century economy, the SBOE must focus less on internal philosophical differences and more on improving science instruction.
Last month, the board once again got bogged down in a bitter dispute over this issue. Members tentatively approved new science curriculum standards that protect teaching of evolution in one area, while creationists succeeded in watering it down elsewhere. Sadly, it was just the latest battle in the “culture war” being fought by a board that decides what more than 4.7 million Texas children learn in their public schools.
Families should be the primary educators on matters of faith, not our public schools. Regardless of board members’ personal beliefs on creationism and evolution, science classrooms are not the place for resolving such disagreements about faith. Those classrooms should focus on science.
Despite one’s personal stance on evolution, its teaching is critical to the study of all the biological sciences.
Scientists from our state’s universities have expressed this to the board, and have warned that watering down science education would undermine biotechnology, medical and other industries that are crucial to our state’s future.
Last session, the Legislature committed to investing $3 billion over the next 10 years in making Texas the global leader in cancer research and finding cures. This historic investment is certain to bring economic and academic opportunities to our state.
Sadly, even as our state takes one step forward, the SBOE moves us two steps back by continuing to support a diminished standard for science education. Texas’ credibility and its investment in research and technology are placed at risk by these ongoing, unproductive debates.
This is a critical issue and a critical time. Study after study has demonstrated that states which do well in science education have the brightest long-term economic future. According to Gov. Rick Perry’s Select Commission on Higher Education and Global Competitiveness, despite improved scores in math and reading, Texas’ students continue to lag alarmingly behind other states in science proficiency.
The National Assessment of Education Progress revealed that only 23 percent of Texas 8th graders achieved proficiency in science, compared with 41 percent of students in the top-performing states — the states with which we compete for jobs.
Yet the board continues to undermine high-quality science instruction, allowing our students to slip further behind.
To ensure that the SBOE works as it should, we have filed legislation to place the board under periodic review by the Sunset Advisory Commission and hold them accountable for their performance, just as we do the Texas Education Agency and other state agencies.
The decisions of the SBOE not only impact millions of young lives on a daily basis, but impact the economic progress of our state as well.
For these reasons and many others, the public has a right to full disclosure and oversight.
The board has escaped such scrutiny for far too long. The disregard for educators, instructional experts and scientists can’t continue. It’s time to take a closer look at the operations and policies of the State Board of Education.
Our state, and especially our kids, deserve better.
Ellis represents the Houston area and parts of Fort Bend County; Rose represents Blanco, Caldwell and Hays counties.
That hissing sound you hear is hope leaking out of Texas scientists, educators and students. Those trucks you hear are the moving trucks of science-based industries, leaving Texas for California (!), Massachusetts, Utah, New York, Florida and other states where science is taught well in public schools and assumed to be an educational priority.
In administrative hearings at the federal level, it’s a crime to knowingly present false testimony to an agency which might rely on that information to make a decision.
In Texas? The law is not so clear — but Discovery Institute’s John West celebrates false information used by the State Board of Education in considering science standards. (This is one reason, I suspect, why creationists are not more active at the federal level — their tactics are not only unethical, but also illegal.)
Sadly, shockingly but not surprisingly, the false information was presented by SBOE Chairman Don McLeroy in theform of nuggets from the creationist quote mines.
Morning Edition,February 3, 2009 – Fifty years after his death at 22, rock ‘n’ roll founding father Buddy Holly is still cool. On Feb. 3, 1959, Buddy Holly, along with J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson and Ritchie Valens, died in a plane crash while touring the Midwest. Holly would have been 72 by now — and probably still rocking and rolling. Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and Elvis Costello have all paid tribute to Holly as a major influence.
But the music itself wasn’t his only contribution. Holly was among the first artists to use the studio as an instrument: He spent days crafting songs and experimenting with techniques that were still new in the recording business.
History is an odd business. Holly’s old hometown is Lubbock, Texas. Lubbock, itself in an odd, welcomed Prairie Renaissance, features a Rock and Roll Museum and a set of Buddy Holly glasses that would dwarf the Colossus at Rhodes. But his family is at odds with the city on the use of his name on local streets and promotional materials.
Sculpture of Buddy Holly's glasses, at the Buddy Holly Center, Lubbock - Roundamerica.com
The indomitable and always informative Coturnix at Blog Around the Clock pointed to this excerpt from an interview Richard Dawkins did with Randolph Nesse. Randy Nesse is one of the most visible exponents of Darwinian medicine. Nesse argues that much of modern medicine, especially the treatments and cures, is incomprehensible except in the light of evolution theory.
In short, Nesse is saying that the ability of physicians to diagnose and treat disease depends on accurate understandings and applications of evolution theory.
Creationists are working to be sure that Nesse’s points are kept from Texas high school students in science classes. From this interview, you can see why scientists ask the State Board of Education to ask Texas educators to teach science instead. Actions of creationists are directed at preventing information such as this from getting to Texas students, to keep them in the dark.
From the video, you can get to the other four segments of Dr. Dawkins’ interview of Nesse; look at all of them, and ask yourself whether Texas children should be deprived of knowing about this stuff
“The Importance of Evolution for Medicine,” chapter by Nesse in Evolutionary Medicine, Second Edition, Edited by: W. R. Trevathan, J. J. McKenna and E. O. Smith, New York, Oxford University Press: 416-432
Testimony of Richard Neavel, PhD, to the Texas State Board of Education January 21, 2009
I oppose the inclusion of strengths and weaknesses in the TEKS and I’m going to do a show and tell about why.
At the last public hearing, Board member Gail Lowe asked me whether I was familiar with “polystrate fossils.” I had to admit that I wasn’t.
I Googled the term, and found creationist Paul Ackerman writing: “Polystrate fossils in numerous places around the world are one dramatic piece of evidence that the [young earth] creationists may be right [about earth’s history].” (Footnote [1])
Now I know why I wasn’t familiar with them. Geologists don’t refer to polystrate fossils – creationists do.
Ms. Lowe questioned me about the Lompoc whale fossil that was supposed to be “standing up” within many strata, that is layers of rock. How could this happen, she asked if the strata accumulated over millions of years. (See Figure 1 – next page and Footnote [2].)
That’s the kind of question a student might ask to demonstrate weaknesses of geologic theories.
I didn’t have an answer, so I researched it and here’s what I found.
The fossil is found in Miocene-age rocks about 10 million years old near Lompoc, California.
Creationists have cited it as an anomaly ever since it was uncovered.
Creationists explain it by saying a catastrophe, such as Noah’s flood, buried the whale very quickly.
Here’s what really happened.
Lompy, the whale, is eating plankton in a lagoon off the California coast 10 million years ago.
The ones he doesn’t eat die and their shells drift down to make a silica-rich, oozy sediment.
OH!. OH! Heart attack. Lompy dies, rolls over and sinks to the bottom of the lagoon. (Figure 2)
He rots away, and his skeleton gets covered with more sediment. (Figure 3)
The sediments harden to rock. Along comes a mountain-building force and the rocks are tilted up.
A company mines the rock, called diatomaceous earth, and uncovers Lompy’s skeleton. (Figure 4)
Creationists go wild – it’s a miracle – a whale on its tail.
I’m a PhD geologist and I didn’t have a ready answer to Ms. Lowe’s questions about polystrate fossils.
Do you think a high school science teacher would be able to answer a student’s questions about Lompy?
Members of the Board: Do you really want students to waste time discussing this kind of creationist nonsense in science class? Not weaknesses – just nonsense.
Every other creationist so-called “scientific weakness” can be explained just like this by real scientists — but not necessarily by high school teachers.
PLEASE! PLEASE! DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS EDUCATION. IT’S TOO IMPORTANT TO AMERICA’S FUTURE.
PLEASE BE PATRIOTIC. THANK YOU.
ANY QUESTIONS, CLASS?
[Pictures coming when I can get them to stick in the file! — E.D.]
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
In Texas, however, evolution and science education are under assault today as the State Board of Education (SBOE) looks at revising science standards for public schools. Creationists have been sharpening their knives for months, with a stiff-necked creationist heading SBOE as a fifth columnist.
SBOE votes today (perhaps already, but I can’t find the story of a vote). At issue is the recommendations by scientists, educators and parents to teach evolution without creationist language that misleads students. SBOE Chairman Don McLeroy has vowed to insert more religion into science classes. The board is nearly evenly split between creationists and backers of science, so the vote could go either way.
Here at the Bathtub we’ll feature testimony from science supporters in a few posts, as we can snag them from witnesses.
McLeroy and his supporters at SBOE worked hard to stack the witness list, to prevent testimony from parents, teachers, scientists and educators who all favor new standards that eliminate a decade-old statement about “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution theory, hoary old creationist propaganda that has no place in a curriculum for the 21st century. Several science witnesses were bumped from testifying, and the board was quite rude to some of America’s best scientists, appearing to fear what the scientists had to say.
Why not teach our children the best we know, rather than junk we don’t know at all?
Mr. Bratteng’s 13 Questions
Why does giving vitamin and mineral supplements to undernourished anemic individuals cause so many of them to die of bacterial infections?
Why did Dr. Heimlich have to develop a maneuver to dislodge food particles from people’s wind pipes?
Dr. Henry Heimlich
Why does each of your eyes have a blind spot and strong a tendency toward retinal detachment? But a squid whose eyesight is just as sharp does not have these flaws?
Why are depression and obesity at epidemic levels in the United States?
When Europeans came to the Americas, why did 90 percent of the Native Americans die of European diseases but not many Europeans died of American diseases?
Why do pregnant women get morning sickness?
Why do people in industrialized countries have a greater tendency to get Crohn’s disease and asthma?
Why does malaria still kill over a million people each year?*
Why are so many of the product Depends sold each year?
Why do people given anti-diarrheal medication take twice as long to recover from dysentery as untreated ones?
Why do people of European descent have a fairly high frequency of an allele that can make them resistant to HIV infection?
Close to home: Why do older men often have urinary problems?
Cedar tree near Austin, Texas
And why do so many people in Austin get cedar fever?
Of course, I don’t have the list of all the answers! (Can you help me out, Dear Reader? List what you know in comments.)
American Red Cross poster on Heimlich Maneuver, from BusinessInsider
* Update November 2016: Actually, malaria death rates have been below a million/year worldwide since 2000; in 2015, fewer than 470,000 people died. At other posts on this blog you can learn that most of this great progress against malaria has been accomplished without DDT. Mr. Bratteng’s question remains valid, despite the happy decline in malaria deaths.
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Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Until now, their existence was merely hypothetical – this is the first time that any have actually been found in a fossil. Other, more advanced stages in feather evolution have been described, so Beipaiosaurus provides the final piece in a series of structures that takes us from simple filaments to the more advanced feathers of other dinosaurs to the complex quills that keep modern birds aloft.
The simple feathers were discovered by Xu Xing, the famous Chinese palaeontologist who discovered such species as Microraptor and Dilong, among many others. The filaments are longer and broader than those possessed by other dinosaurs andXu calls them “elongated, broad, filamentous feathers” or EBFFs.
Each is about 10-15cm long and 2mm wide – not exactly thick, but still 10-20 times broader than the simple feathers of Sinosauropteryx. They are also unusually stiff, for despite the rigours of death and fossilisation, very few of them are curved or bent.
In other species of extinct dinosaur, simple feathers probably helped to insulate their bodies. But Beipaiosaurus’s feathers were too patchily distributed to have provided much in the way of insulation and they certainly weren’t complex enough for flight.
Instead, Xu thinks that the animal used them for display – their length and stiffness are well-suited for such a purpose, and they’re only found on parts of the body that bear display feathers in modern birds. They provide strong evidence that feathers were used for display long before they were co-opted for flight.
So, what’s that? 243,694 “missing links,” now found? 243,694 for science, 0 for creationism. Isn’t there a five-inning rule in science?
It will be interesting to watch the next round of hearings at the Texas State Board of Education, to see what sort of excuse creationists will invent for why this chunk of science isn’t exactly what it seems to be.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
