Wisconsin public schools are among the lowest performing in the country. So it makes sense to me that this is one of the first teacher’s unions to get dissolved. And, this is a great example of how a union has outlasted its usefulness to the community. — Penelope Trunk Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Education
We Are All Wisconsiners Now!
Wisconsin has figured out a way to get all of its Democratic legislators to flee the state without so much as a BRB. How can we expand this nationwide? Elected officials hiding out in undisclosed locations to prevent a quorum should wake everyone up to the extent to which public employee unions control our political destiny. I have three words for the “sick” teachers in Wisconsin: Air Traffic Controllers. We live in a top-notch school district in Irvine but it’s not because the teachers are so great. It’s the effort of the kids and the support of their families. Even in a good district, the teachers are very replaceable. You’ll have to take my word for it but I could easily teach English, math or computer science at the high school level, even though I’m not government-certified to do so, and there are plenty of people in Wisconsin who could… Read more →
Three Words for Teachers
The state’s largest school district has joined those that have canceled classes due to teacher shortages caused by union protests at the state Capitol. — MPS Closed: Milwaukee Public Schools closed for Friday – WITI I’ve got three words for protesting teachers in Wisconsin: Air Traffic Controllers. Read more →
My Family’s Guide to Failure
At a recent family gathering, someone whom I won’t name here recommended to my son, a high school senior, that he start looking for a community college to attend for a couple of years before transferring to a four-year school. “That’s a good idea,” I said. “Do you have any more good ideas? Maybe he should punch himself in the face really hard.” One of the things I love about my boy is that when he does something, he puts his heart into it. He takes on the risk of failure. The safe approach — and historically the preferred method in my family — is to do things indifferently, fail, then announce that you weren’t really trying and that you could have succeeded if you’d wanted to.” We have family members who — despite, to my knowledge, having never done or said an intelligent thing in their lives — never… Read more →
High School Senior
My son, dismissing the need for parental advice in his senior year of high school: “You only know what people tell you. I know what’s going on.” Read more →
Teachers Unions
In our biggest school systems, it’s become virtually impossible to fight the teachers unions and fire bad teachers. The giant Los Angeles Unified school system, with 33,000 teachers, fires only about 21 a year, or fewer than 1 in 1,000, according to the findings of an L.A. Times investigation. Now either Los Angeles has the greatest teachers in the world or something is very wrong. Talk to parents and you’ll know the answer. — Mickey Kaus Read more →
Schools on Strike
“Can you take me to the Barnes and Noble by your work?” my son asks. “I need to get AP study guides.” I work in Aliso Viejo but since it’s Saturday and I’m not going to work, I ask why we can’t go to the Barnes and Noble right here in Irvine. “Asian kids are running rampant on the selection,” he says. “I’m guessing there’s not as much hustle and bustle in Aliso, especially since our schools don’t go on strike.” Read more →
Late Starts
Every Wednesday, the Irvine high schools have a late start — 9 a.m. instead of 8. Also: a few times a year, like today, they have something called a Super Late Start day, where classes don’t start till 9:50. My wife brings up a good point: Why don’t they ever have Super Early Start, where we drop the kids off at 6 a.m.? Read more →
The Importance of Doing Meaningful Work
Over the course of each academic term, he asks undergraduate and graduate business students three questions: A year out of this program what do you expect your job will be? What kind of job contributes the most to general well-being? Practicality aside, if you could be doing anything 10 years from now, what would it be? What’s striking is that there is almost no overlap among the students’ answers to these questions. . . . The question then becomes: Why are students studying so hard and paying so much to reach objectives that are neither what they dream of nor what they think of as especially responsible? — The Importance of Doing Meaningful Work – Forbes.com Read more →
Tips for Test Takers
My son has a math test today. He was up till 3 a.m. studying for it. In my experience, a positive mindset is essential to successful test-taking, so on the drive to school, I give him a piece of advice. “Walk into the classroom,” I say, “look at the teacher and lay down a challenge, like ‘Let’s do it.’” “It’s not her test,” the boy says. “What does that mean?” “It means every class takes the same test — Schneider, D’Antonio . . .” “THAT DOESN’T MATTER,” I say. “The important thing is to lay down the challenge. ‘Stop bitin’ on my styles.’ Granted, that one doesn’t make any sense, but it gives you the positive mental framework that you need for mathematical success.” Read more →
If It’s Them or Me, It’s Me
Authorities say a motorist has driven off a cliff, plunging about 200 feet down a steep canyon near Calabasas, after swerving to avoid an animal on the road. — Driver Avoids Animal, Careens Off Calabasas Cliff – cbs2.com Ouch — was he a PETA member? I like animals. I ran over a squirrel once and I felt terrible about it but the little critter just dashed right out in front of my car. However — in the event of having to make a split-second decision between clobbering an animal and driving off a cliff, well, the animal is going to get it. On a side note, kudos to the headline writer for the alliteration: “Careens Off Calabasas Cliff.” Who says a liberal arts education isn’t good for anything? Read more →
Here’s a Tip If You Want to Talk to Me
As a member of the Trojan Network and a graduate of the School of Engineering, I make myself available to answer questions from current USC engineering students about what life might have in store for them. I got an email today from a young man who included this priceless bit of information: “When you got your master’s degree, I was one year old.” Really?! It seems like just last week but thanks for reminding me that 20 years have gone by. Look kids — if you want to do a computation like that, go ahead, but keep the results to yourself . . . Read more →
How to Get an A in Hell
At Northwood High School, Honors Euro Lit is known by its acronym — HEL (pronounced hell) — and widely regarded as the hardest class at the school. In order to get an A in the class for the first semester, my son needed a very high score — around a 98 — on the final exam, didn’t get it, and finished with a semester grade of 89.27 — a high B. If he’d had at least an 89.5, the teacher would have rounded it up to an A. So out of 1,000+ possible points over the course of the semester, an 89.27 means you missed an A by only three or four points. I’ve always encouraged the boy to be proactive with his teachers. Some people call this “sucking up” but I’ve been a teacher myself and I can tell you that teachers like students who are engaged and make… Read more →
I Don’t Think Anybody Knows
One of the hardest things to convey to students is how often the answer to a question is, “I don’t know, and I don’t think anybody does know.” — NeuroDojo: How can we turn teaching problems into teaching puzzles? Read more →
What Would Hope Do?
A young lady named Hope Xu — from University High right here in Irvine — scored a perfect 2400 on this year’s SAT exam. I’ve advised my 16-year-old son that henceforth, when he’s faced with a tough decision in life, he should ask himself the question “What would Hope Xu do?” I know one thing she wouldn’t do and that is to run into her dad’s bedroom at 11 p.m. and start doing flying front kicks when he’s trying to sleep. “Why are you doing that?” I ask him. “I just drank a Red Bull,” he says, then dances back out the door singing a song I don’t recognize . . . Read more →
Diversity in Practice
This is how “diversity” works in practice: Intellectual contention is drowned out in a sea of emotion, much of it phony. Members of designated victim groups respond to a serious argument with “pain” and “shock” and accusations of “hate,” and university administrators make a show of pretending to care. — Best of the Web Today Read more →
Homework Follies
Worked some physics problems with my boy last night . . . the subject at hand was torque, which his textbook expresses in units of mN. “Back in my day, we used to measure torque in foot-pounds,” I said. “What’s mN? Millinewtons?” “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess so.” “OK, we’re off to a great start!” Read more →
The Path of Trojan Dominance
Steven B. Sample, president of the University of Southern California since 1991, announced on Nov. 2 that he will retire in August 2010. Sample is widely credited with bringing about an institutional rise at USC that is unparalleled in American higher education. — USC News I’m so proud of what USC’s been able to accomplish academically under the leadership of Dr. Sample. When I went to USC in the pre-Sample era, the conventional wisdom in Southern California was that the rich kids went to USC and the smart kids went to UCLA. (No one in my immediate family is or ever has been rich. I was able to attend USC on an academic scholarship, although it must be admitted that my wife and I both have rich but not overly bright cousins who also graduated as Trojans.) Since 1991 though, SAT scores at USC have gone up more than 300… Read more →
I Got an A on My Report Card
Every Minute Counts
We were trying to figure out what time the boy needed to wake up to get to the PSAT test on time. The test is at 9 a.m., check-in starts at 8:40, it takes 10 minutes or so to drive to the school, and 30 minutes for him to get out of bed, have some breakfast and get ready to go, so I was thinking he’d need to get up at 8 a.m. “WHAT?!” he shouted. “That’s too early! I’ll be the first person there!” “OK,” I said, “what time do you think would be good?” “8:05,” he said. Read more →