Posts filed under 'Education'
Paul Krugman once again calls out the idiocy of the short sighted fiscal conservatives who worship at the alter of a balanced budget, no matter the true cost to the economy or the social safety net.
No modern American president would repeat the fiscal mistake of 1932, in which the federal government tried to balance its budget in the face of a severe recession. The Obama administration will put deficit concerns on hold while it fights the economic crisis.
But even as Washington tries to rescue the economy, the nation will be reeling from the actions of 50 Herbert Hoovers — state governors who are slashing spending in a time of recession, often at the expense both of their most vulnerable constituents and of the nation’s economic future.
Sadly, Governor Gregoire, after all of her enlightened talk on the campaign trail, has cowardly decided to embrace her inner Herbert Hoover in order to please her political opponents, who, no doubt, will reward her with more smears and personal attacks.
Here are some of the highlights of Gregoire’s atrocious budget from the P-I:
HIGHER EDUCATION: Gov. Chris Gregoire proposes a $300 million reduction in higher education, including a 13 percent reduction for the state’s research and regional institutions. Raises for faculty and staff are suspended.
K-12 EDUCATION: Suspends nearly a quarter of the money from the voter-approved initiative to ensure smaller class sizes, and suspends the entirety of another initiative for cost-of-living raises for teachers.
PUBLIC SAFETY: Gregoire proposes eliminating the requirement to supervise misdemeanor criminals and low-risk felony offenders once they are released from prison, saving nearly $70 million. Sex offenders and violent criminals would still fall under supervision. She also proposes early release for elderly and ill criminals, and deporting noncitizens who have committed property or drug offenses.
HUMAN SERVICES: Gregoire suggests saving $160 million by eliminating grants to people in the General Assistance- Unemployable program. About 21,000 people, as well as 6,500 people in a program for alcoholism and drug addiction, would stop receiving assistance.
HEALTH CARE: Gregoire wants to continue providing access to health care for low-income residents, but is calling for a $252 million reduction in the state basic health plan, a 42 percent reduction. Medical coverage would also be eliminated for those in the General Assistance- Unemployable program, and the state would no longer buy vaccines for children not covered by Medicaid.
PUGET SOUND: Gregoire is seeking more than $284 million for Puget Sound recovery projects, including hatchery production and toxic prevention and cleanup. But she suggests closing 13 state parks.
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December 30th, 2008
We all know the bees are in trouble right now, but the question becomes—what can you and I do about it?
Here is one way to help. Gretchen LeBuhn, an associate professor of biology at San Francisco State University, has created a citizen science project which is looking for volunteer bee watchers.
This is how it works. After registering at The Great Sunflower Project website, you will receive a packet of sunflower seeds, a growing guide, and a bee identification kit.
Once your planted sunflowers bloom, your bee watching duties will begin. Twice a month, for about 30 minutes each session, you will document how many, of which type of bees, are visiting your sunflowers.
After your data is recorded, you will submitted this information back to the study through the Great Sunflower Project website. Couldn’t be simpler, right?
So, join me and other citizen scientists around the country this summer to do something for the bees. After all, bees are responsible for every third bite of food. It seems like the least we can do.
April 25th, 2008
When adults praise effort, rather than intelligence, children are given control over their academic success. This approach encourages kids to persist when faced with difficult questions, take risks during problem solving, and–over time, develop personal autonomy. All of which, are key characteristics for a competitive, 21st century work force.
In follow-up interviews, Dweck discovered that those who think that innate intelligence is the key to success begin to discount the importance of effort. I am smart, the kids’ reasoning goes; I don’t need to put out effort. Expending effort becomes stigmatized—it’s public proof that you can’t cut it on your natural gifts.
Repeating her experiments, Dweck found this effect of praise on performance held true for students of every socioeconomic class. It hit both boys and girls—the very brightest girls especially (they collapsed the most following failure). Even preschoolers weren’t immune to the inverse power of praise.
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April 23rd, 2008
E.O. Wilson’s brilliant project comes to life.
The 30,000 species in the database now is miniscule, not even 2% of the 1.8 million species known to science. No surprise, then, that it will take til 2017 to fill the database with 250 years of scientific exploration and discovery.
"It is exciting to anticipate the scientific chords we might hear once 1.8 million notes are brought together through this instrument," says Jim Edwards, Executive Director of the EOL. “Potential EOL users are professional and citizen scientists, teachers, students, media, environmental managers, families and artists. The site will link the public and scientific community in a collaborative way that’s without precedent in scale.”
What, exactly, is the Encyclopedia of Life? Check out this clip:
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February 29th, 2008
This article puts together all of the disastrous pieces of Bush’s elitist economic ideology.
It explains, in easy to understand terms, what went wrong, and a common sense approach to creating economic value, rather than destroying it.
This straight forward plan includes, investing in alternative energy and infrastructure (people and things), creating a single-payer national health plan, raising taxes on the super-rich, and balancing the national budget.
One way to think of what the administration has done, is as a leveraged buyout. That’s when someone buys a company, using the company itself as the collateral for the loan used to purchase it, usually at very high interest, then pays off the interest by cutting the work force and salaries, selling outsets and even breaking up the company.
It’s good for the guy who makes the deal, skims the cream off the top and gets rich. (The company that Mitt Romney got rich working for specialized in doing that.) It’s good for the lenders, who get a good return (if the buyer is able to squeeze enough money out of his purchase), but it’s bad for the work force, bad for the company, and, if no one comes along to replace it, bad for the business as a whole.
We’ve experienced a leveraged buyout of the national economy.
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January 19th, 2008
Great article on creativity, which offers some tip on how to maintain core competencies, and still be able to embrace ambiguity
The more knowledge you possess the less you think outside the box. Experts in a field can benefit from an outsider’s perspective. This is particularly relevant to the gadgets we make and the software we write. A telling sentence from the article: "It ’s why engineers design products ultimately useful only to other engineers."
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January 3rd, 2008
Why doesn’t the United States take education as seriously as its economic rivals?
Despite an improved economy, many Japanese are feeling a sense of insecurity about the nation’s schools, which once turned out students who consistently ranked at the top of international tests. That is no longer true, which is why many people here are looking for lessons from India, the country the Japanese see as the world’s ascendant education superpower.
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January 2nd, 2008
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