Archive for March, 2010
National Curriculum Standards, Yawn
I came in this morning planning to blog about the proposed new national curriculum standards, the latest iteration of our national infatuation with doing things on a national level for no real purpose other than a nagging feeling that somebody, somewhere might be doing something at a level lower than what The Experts recommend.
Fortunately I can save a lot of time by just turning it over to Cato’s Neal McCluskey, who points out that the coming “discussion” about what’s in the standards misses the real problem: the standards themselves.
Hit it, Neal:
As I’ve blathered about on numerous occasions, it makes little sense to expect all kids to master all the same things at the same rates. All kids are different – they have different talents, desires, and abilities — and to impose one, “best” progression on them is simply illogical.
Another problem with imposing a single standard nationwide — and yes, this will be imposed, unless states suddenly decide they don’t like getting their citizen’s tax dollars back from Uncle Sam – is that it prevents competition between curricula. And that, in turn, kills innovation, the lifeblood of progress. So unless these standards have achieved perfection — and I’m pretty sure they haven’t — it’s a very dangerous thing to make them the end-all and be-all.
Finally, no matter how brilliant the draft standards, there is no reason to believe that they will drive meaningful educational improvement. Government schools will still be government schools, and the people employed by them will still have very little incentive to push kids to excellence, and every incentive to game the system to make the standards toothless. And no one yet has offered a decent proposal, other than school-choice supporters, for getting around that very inconvenient, public-schooling truth.
All of these problems help to explain why there is no convincing empirical evidence that national standards drive superior educational outcomes. Unfortunately, most national-standards advocates will talk themselves blue in the face about what’s in the standards, but avoid at all costs the question of whether standardization makes sense in the first place.
Neal’s second point is critical: there is absolutely no question that these standards will soon be tied to federal school funding. Congress wields this power like a cudgel. In a decade, there will be nothing optional about any of this. Local school boards will be mere mandarins for federal education bureaucrats.
And on a related note, here’s George Will this morning on Obama’s managerial progressivism.
Cass Sunstein and other people’s transparency
Cass Sunstein gave a talk at Brookings today about “the power of open government.” (Transcript here.) He stressed the key points of the administration’s Open Government Directive: transparency, collaboration, and participation. What I found interesting, though, is that all the examples he gave of open government were in fact examples of someone besides government being open.
He cited the new product recall database from the Consumer Product Safety Commission as a great example of open government. He also mentioned a tire safety ratings database from DoT, the toxic release inventory from EPA, nutrition labeling, FAA flight delay information, and OSHA workplace death tallies. I’m glad these data are public, but these are not about open government.
As Sunstein said, disclosure is a “high impact, low cost” form of regulation. It keeps actors accountable for their performance and this nudges them to behave well. But if disclosure works for regulated industries, it should work for government, too. To me that’s what open government is about–government disclosing its own performance, not just the performance of those it regulates.
Sunstein did mention the new OIRA dashboard, which is meant to give users a view to all of the Office’s open proceedings. (The site, however, was down during his talk–and still is as of this writing–because it is “experiencing technical difficulties.”) First, I haven’t seen any data in the new dashboard that wasn’t previously available at RegInfo.gov. Second, we need more than just disclosure of what matters are before OIRA now, we need information on performance, something Brookings’s Ted Gayer alluded to when he asked about the prospects of more retrospective review.
For example, Sunstein talked about the President’s SAVE Award program, which asks federal employees to submit ideas for budget savings. Thousands were collected and voted on and the winner was a VA employee who suggested that patients be allowed to take unused medicines home with them. Previously, unused portions of medicine were thrown away when the patient was discharged. Wonderful idea and a very laudable process of collaboration and participation to get at it.
My question is about transparency in performance: what happened to the administator(s) under whom drugs were systematically wasted? Were they fired or reprimanded? Did we at least have a management review of how such a policy came to be? Not to be punitive, but accountability must have consequences.
Losing Independents in Virginia
I don’t get the political logic of Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli picking a fight on gay-rights with the states’ colleges and universities. This is quickly becoming a national story, as even John Stewart devoted a segment to the issue last night.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Gaywatch – Virginia Edition | ||||
|
||||
After an election cycle where Republicans in Virginia found a way to win more libertarian-leaning independents by emphasizing spending and anger towards Washington, why pick an issue so alienating to this new, hard-won constituency? Why now? I don’t get it.
Interdisciplinary survey of Chatroulette
The award for academic entrepreneurialism goes to Alex Leavitt & Tim Hwang who earlier this week release the paper “Chatroulette: An Initial Surey.” Conducted over two days, the study “sampled 201 ChatRoulette sessions, noting characteristics such as group size and gender.”
They find that Chatroulette is “a probabilistic community: a community shaped by a platform which mediates the encounters between its users by eliminating lasting connections between them.” Uh-huh. I think it’s just easier to say that it’s a microcosm of the larger (and earlier) Internet–exhibitionists of the world, meet the voyeurs.
Putting the sample size aside, they found some interesting stats. Males accounted for 87% of their sessions, and 5% of chatters were exposing their genitals. While those two figures are probably related, “This suggests that–in spite of common assumptions–that the large majority of ChatRoulette users do not utilize the platform for sexual purposes.”
They finally make some interesting predictions about where Chatroulette, as a probabilistic community, will head.
After ChatRoulette users become more acquainted with the system (ie., do not browse solely to explore), we predict a decrease in explicit content, an increase in the consolidation of content genres, and an increase in the formation of celebrity figures.
Anyhow, this is all by way of making an excuse to link to this short video I made of persons on Chatroulette reacting to seeing Numa Numa Kid presented as their chat partner. Enjoy.
Bets I’m Willing to Make
I’m willing to stake $100 on each of these outcomes.
Outcome 1. By the end of 2013, a bill will be introduced in a US state or federal legislative body limiting the number of calories that a restaurant can serve a patron in one sitting (soup to nuts). It will, of course, be the restaurant’s obligation to count the number of calories served in a given meal, a costly proposition that increases meal costs (not to mention the menu costs) and will put small restaurants out of business.
But no bother: Who objects to paying $23 for a cheeseburger at T.J. O’Handjobs if Darci, who will be taking care of y’all tonight, is helping to keep our arteries unclogged and our waistlines slender? In this scenario, a dialog could run as follows:
Waiter: How was everything?
Woman: Excellent.
Man: Could we see a dessert menu?
Waiter: For the lady, of course. Though I am afraid sir has already consumed 1400 calories. Would sir care for an espresso or black coffee?
Clearly, this scenario plays out better in a nicer restaurant, preferably the kind where waiters wear poly-blend tuxedos and clip-on bow ties. At T.J.O.’s, they will have a special “Fatty Fatty Two-by-Four” hat they’ll put on you, and the staff will gather around to irrythmically clap and call you names. You’ll be given a celery stalk with a candle on it to celebrate your edacity.
Outcome 2. By the end of 2013, a bill will be introduced in a US state or federal legislative body requiring the registration of the MAC addresses of all networked devices upon point of purchase. For the less geeky amongst you, a MAC (media access control) address is a unique three or five octet identifier permanently assigned to every network adapter or interface card; think of it as your WiFi adapter’s social security number. Every networked device has one or more; your computer, Blackberry, iPhone, Kindle, TiVo, Slingbox, VoIP phone, and perhaps late model car and refrigerator all have them.
Think this is crazy? I bet you thought ten years ago that the idea that you’d have to show a drivers license to a pharmacist and sign a legally binding non-resale agreement to purchase Sudafed was crazy too.
Ostensibly, MAC registration will be done to prevent malicious hackers from accessing the networks that so many companies and households do a piss-poor job of locking down. The sponsoring legislator will probably throw in some half-baked argument about child pornography as well. Of course, any hacker worth his salt can spoof a MAC address, and millions of unregistered network cards are already out there, but hey: it’s for the children.
Anyone care to stake a bet against either of these outcomes? Note that I’m not suggesting that they’ll pass, just that they’ll be introduced. I’ll denominate the bet either in 2010 dollars or 2014 dollars, allowing a meta-bet on near-term inflation.
Takers?
Should laptops be banned from class?
The Post has a piece on the “trend” of banning laptops in college classes.
[Georgetown law prof David] Cole has banned laptops from his classes, compelling students to take notes the way their parents did: on paper. A generation ago, academia embraced the laptop as the most welcome classroom innovation since the ballpoint pen. But during the past decade, it has evolved into a powerful distraction. Wireless Internet connections tempt students away from note-typing to e-mail, blogs, YouTube videos, sports scores, even online gaming — all the diversions of a home computer beamed into the classroom to compete with the professor for the student’s attention.
Cole, who teaches a course on “democracy and coercion” says laptops are “an attractive nuisance.”
My co-teacher and I have debated the merits of a ban for our class at GMU Law, and while I’ve vacillated on my position, I’ve ultimately taken the libertarian approach. Our students are all big boys and girls paying lots of money for a law education at a top school. If they want to surf the internet during class, that’s their choice as long as they don’t bother anyone else. We provide a clear incentive, though. A full 20 percent of their grade is class participation, and we’re serious about it.
Ultimately I think UVA’s Sive Vaidhyanathan nails it on the head: “If students don’t want to pay attention, the laptop is the least of your problems.”
Edward Tufte to recovery board
President Obama has named famed design and data visualization expert Edward Tufte to the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel, which advises the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board. They’re the ones who own Recovery.gov, and I can only hope that Tufte will bring some of his insights to that abomination of a website. Sadly it might be a few million dollars too late.
Stuff I Read Today
Nudge, nudge? Wink, wink.
Red Sea Pedestrians of southern Africa. (H/T Aaron M.)
“These Chileans are such can-do people.”
Radley Balko on COMPSTAT; Heather MacDonald wrote on it last month.
Boring as political strategy
Obama and the Dems seem to have (perhaps inadvertently) arrived at an effective messaging strategy on health care–boring.
I tried to watch the health care summit, but found it painfully boring. Many others did too. Even this weekend’s Saturday Night Live skit mocking the president on health care was boring.
Makes me wonder whether all this boring isn’t strategic. In grad school, I used to marvel at David Gergen’s ability to be strategically boring. If he was confronted with a tough or controversial question, he’d just talk boring at it until people would give up. Boring is perhaps the best defense against angry. And angry is definitely what the Dem’s don’t want as they make a final push to pass health care.
Make Your Own Tory Election Poster
Make your own David Cameron presidential parliamentary election posters.
Tea party as “radically anticonservative”
Every once in awhile, David Brooks just nails it:
But the Tea Partiers are closer to the New Left. They don’t seek to form a counter-establishment because they don’t believe in establishments or in authority structures… For this reason, both the New Left and the Tea Party movement are radically anticonservative. Conservatism is built on the idea of original sin — on the assumption of human fallibility and uncertainty. To remedy our fallen condition, conservatives believe in civilization — in social structures, permanent institutions and just authorities, which embody the accumulated wisdom of the ages and structure individual longings.
I think this helps explain why it makes more sense to call the Tea Party movement libertarian than conservative.
This is my favorite Brooks column since “Ward Three Morality”, on the new social code for the rich set by the Obama aides, Democratic staffers, regulators, and senior civil servants who live in Washington, DC’s Ward 3. Still a good read.
Roger Ebert half gets it, but that’s half enough
Roger Eebert has announced an online subscription service. On his blog, he writes what he calls a “justification” for the move. While he echoes the familiar complaints of old media–he’s not getting paid for his writing, he doesn’t make enough from ads and big ad buys overlook him, etc.–he seems to understand that trying to force people to pay for his content is just not possible.
If I go behind a firewall, however, and a high school student in Mexico is doing some research, there are lots of other excellent critics on the web, and everybody knows it. I’m pretty sure I could get more than 35 subscribers, but a million?
Ebert also laments that micropayments have not proven workable. He waxes romantic about how after learning of the concept from Nicholas Negroponte’s writing, he and Gene Siskel salivated of the amounts they could make if their readers were willing to pay just two cents a page.
Despite all his charming bellyaching, though, he’s making the right move. All the blog and review content that he now makes available for free will remain free. He’s creating a premium service at $5 a year for which you get extra members-only content and other perks.
I think a key component of his premium package will be a member-only discussion forum. A simple thing like a $5 a year fee is enough of a speed bump that it will keep out anyone not serious about serious discussion. Because of the fee, the level of discourse will no doubt be better than other free online movie forums, and that will attract others who will want to pay the fee to get in.
More old media should take this route. The tribes that would form around different publications would be fascinating. Publications could create quality communities and largely avoid the costs of moderation all while getting paid. I’ll be back in a year to announce the Sometime Right Premium Forum.
General Electric Presents Greece
Two members of the German Parliament are suggesting that the Greek government should sell off some of their uninhabited islands for cash. This being Europe, and this being Germany, it didn’t take long for comparisons to the Second World War to emerge. Even the conservative daily Die Welt has called on Chancellor Angela Merkel to apologize for the suggestion. So the idea is probably a non-starter.
Presumably, the progenitors of this idea mean that Greece should sell the property rights of the island to private investors, and that they will continue to be Greek territory. But why not take this idea on step further? Why not sell off the soverignty attached to the islands as well and make them the sovereign property of another state altogether? After all, the only islands in question are uninhabited and owned wholly by the Greek government; it’s not as if someone will go to bed one night with a house in Greece and wake up the next morning to find he now lives in Japan.
Or better yet, why not sell an island or two to a consortium of people who want to set up their own sovereign state? It could be like seasteading without having to go to all the inconvenience of creating new land on the high seas. We tend to think of sovereign states as possessing timeless and immutable borders, but 150 years ago Germany didn’t exist, and then it was split in two for 45 years before being reunited. The Westphalian state order doesn’t preclude changing borders, only using violence to change those borders. (Don’t mention the war.)
If this fails, Greece could simply sell national naming rights. “General Electric presents Greece” has a certain ring to it.
Alternatively, the Greek government could make significant structural reforms, create a plan to repay funds borrowed from other EU countries, and get the public sector unions on board with changes. But why go to all that work when you can just put the ol’ territorial integrity on the block?
Rangeling
Pardon my cynicism. But I suspect that much of the Democrats’ anger over Rangel’s ethical mishaps is just faux indignation designed to, er, wrangle the gavel away from the 79 year old. Ways and Means chairmanships don’t change hands very often. Might as well use whatever excuse you can. Because the Ethics Committee reprimand that Rangel’s staffers knew that American Airlines paid for his plane flight to a conference–seems to me to be the weakest ethics charge of the bunch.
Can you figure out the scam?
For a few months now I’ve been receiving spam messages that go something like this:
Hello, I am bobby.frost business owner and i am emailing you to ask if you have any 3000 Gallon Vertical Water Tank,Capacity: 3001 Gallons,Size: 95″D x 106″H,Weight: 400 lbs in stock for sale and also i would like to know the price without shipping.Also let me know the method of payment you do accept .Let me know Asap Thanks, bobby.frost
Essentially they are contacting me as if I sell the item they want and asking for a quote. They come from obviously different senders, and they all seem to request quotes for industrial products (water tanks, chain link fencing, pipes and tubing, etc.)
So what is the scam here? I’ve looked everywhere online and can’t find any mention of this type of spam. Here’s a list from Wikipedia and one from the federal government. It’s not as if they’re trying to sell me a winning lottery ticket; they’re offering to buy something from me that I didn’t advertise.
The only thing I can imagine is that I’m expected to realize that I can quote them a price higher than I can buy the item for which they’re asking and then this will turn into some scam. That seems implausible, though. Any ideas?
In the meantime, I’m responding to one of these to see what happens. I’ll keep you posted.
