Superintendent's Slide-Show on Merger-Related Issues

The Superintendent's blog presents More Information About the Scheduled Merger Meetings, Survey Results, and Tours at the Morrisville-Eaton and Hamilton School Districts. - Dr. Bowers - SuperintendentHamilton CSD

the power point that will be presented at the upcoming Merger Study Information Meetings

(If the slide-show at the bottom seems small, your browser probably has a "View/Zoom" menu option.)

Some of the terms will be unfamiliar to some readers; there are lists of acronyms at NYSED: State Aid Glossary but if you want to know what "High Cost Aid" actually is, look at the New York State Educational Terms Guide (pdf)

High Cost Aid – Aid available for resident students with disabilities served in a DSE approved public school or BOCES, for whom the annual cost exceeds three times the district’s Approved Operating Expense per TAPU for Expense (without limits).

Of course, then you may want to look up several other terms, or you may just say "oh, special needs kids, for whom we have a substantially expanded program over the past several years. Okay." Some terms you may want to Google for, like the GEA or Gap Elimination Adjustment

Those might now be the three dirtiest words in New York's public schools.

We see again that state aid expectations really can't be relied upon. (Some of us aren't even blaming the state for cutting aid; we're just sceptical of plans which depend on future aid not being cut.)

And each slide deserves thought... "Wealth of the Community" rising from $220M to $350M in the 2004-2010 period is of course partly inflation, but less than half, and you can think of that curve as a faded upstate echo of the housing bubble, but it's real enough, and the student decline was real enough too. Will either trend continue? We have more elementary students than at any time since 1997, and elementary students become high school students; Colgate just invested heavily in expanding the nursery school to meet expanded demand, and those are future elementary students. That suggests that the situation is much less urgent than the 2004-2010 trend suggested, but we really don't know what the trends of 2013-2065 will be, or even 2013-2026 for current students.

Note the penultimate "If We Don't Merge" slide, in particular "Increase political pressure to: return of the GEA, modify unfunded mandates." The basic problem is that New York State education, including our own, costs about twice as much as the national average without being obviously better, and many of the costs are imposed by Albany as items to be paid for by local taxes. "Return of the GEA" means paying for those with state taxes; "modify unfunded mandates" could mean funding them, or could mean removing them. Every one of them has defenders, with arguments as to why this cost isn't the one to cut.

No easy answers....

Online Smicha

A different note on online (higher) education at Using latest technology to train rabbis - Israel Jewish Scene, Ynetnews

Employing the use of cutting edge video conferencing, online forums, and a private discussion board, onlinesmicha.com in the past two years has ordained doctors, lawyers, chaplains, and other working professionals....
To receive smicha, students must pass written and oral tests covering the laws of Shabbat and Isur V'Heter in-depth, and must participate in a final test administered in person.
The rigorous, yet flexible program offers students of varying backgrounds with a Standard track and an Accelerated track both covering the laws of Basar B’Chalav (Meat with Dairy), Ta’aruvos (Mixtures), Melicha (Salting), Shabbat, and more.

I'm not certain that the "written and oral tests" are online, but of course they could be; the oral would presumably be handled via videoconference.

CourserA etc, legal limits?

The Chronicle of Higher Education says that Minnesota says online courses have to get local permission for Minnesota residents, but Professor Volokh says they're wrong: The Volokh Conspiracy » The First Amendment and Free Online Courses

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Minnesota has barred Coursera from offering free online courses — including ones that don’t even result in a degree — because it hasn’t properly registered as an educational institution with the Minnesota Office of Higher Education, and, presumably, because the universities and colleges that provide classes through Coursera have not gotten approval to use the term “college” or “university” from that Office...
if an entity — whether or not it has “college” or “university” in its name — offers free non-degree-granting courses, it is as shielded by the First Amendment as a newspaper Web site, a site aiming to educate people about some political or scientific issue, Wikipedia, or for that matter a blog.
...I’m not sure whether Coursera is planning to fight the Minnesota rules; but if it does, I think it will easily prevail.

Wikipedia says

Volokh is noted for his scholarship on the First and Second Amendments to the United States Constitution

and has been cited in Supreme Court opinions and all that; maybe all is well.
Or then again, maybe not.

Update: Slate adds Minnesota bans Coursera: State takes bold stand against free education.

Honorable mentions go to New York City’s Taxi and Limousine Commission for driving out Uber’s online taxi-hailing service and to automobile dealers’ groups in four states for trying to have Tesla dealerships declared illegal. But the grand prize in this week’s unexpectedly heated competition for most creative use of government to stifle innovation has to go to Minnesota.... ... ... ... ...
Hear that, kids? The Internet is no place for learning. You can Facebook and Twitter and play World of Warcraft all you want, but if you want to study Machine Learning, Principles of Macroeconomics, or Modern & Contemporary American Poetry, you’re going to have to take it elsewhere.

And Adam Smith was right...you can't and shouldn't set government to zero, but the more of it you choose, the more representation you get for those who have a seat at the table and want to protect it, at whatever cost to the public.
(Or then again again again, maybe not.)

TED Talk on Creativity (and Patents&Copyright)

Kirby Ferguson's TED Talk: "Embrace the Remix" - a must-see - Boing Boing

creativity comes about as the result of creative re-use of others' work. It's not just explicit remixes and samples -- everything from the iPhone to Bob Dylan's music are made out of other peoples' inventions and creations.

It's possible that there is some domain in which creativity is often, or at least sometimes, a matter of someone who stays in an attic alone until the Great Work pops out, but this is certainly not the usual case, and the creativity which education (and "intellectual property" law) should encourage is certainly not of that sort. Creativity is, in common usage, a matter of adding something to the remix. Our current laws are actually anticonstitutional in that they actively discourage the creativity, the "progress", that the Constitution says they should promote. And yet we want to encourage creativity in that context. Hmm.
Or then again, maybe not.

To Be Educated...

A note from slightly longer ago than most of my notes:

Every systematic science, the humblest and the noblest alike, seems to admit of two distinct kinds of proficiency; one of which may be properly called scientific knowledge of the subject, while the other is a kind of educational acquaintance with it. For an educated man should be able to form a fair off-hand judgement as to the goodness or badness of the method used by a professor in his exposition. To be educated is in fact to be able to do this...

On the Parts of Animals, Book I Ch. 1; Aristotle

And I was thinking of this in the context of a Washington Post argument about chemistry requirements -- "Why Are You Forcing My Son to Take Chemistry?". In the Pipeline:

It's short, but it can be summarized as My son will not be a chemist. He will not be a scientist. A year of chemistry class will do nothing for him but make him miserable. He could be taking something else that would be doing him more good. And this father is probably right about his son, who's 15, not becoming any sort of scientist....

And today I see -- You Should Take Chemistry: A Response. In the Pipeline:

Should your son be forced to take chemistry? Absolutely. But the curriculum needs to be rethought in a way that would instill practical knowledge, curiosity about the world, and an appetite for at least understanding scientific achievement and its necessity/implications.
People don’t have to become scientists if they don’t want to, but they should have a fundamental understanding of scientific concepts. That way, people like myself need not be terrified that an ignorant public will vote to slash funding for scientific research and understanding...

So I wonder...it seems to me that the guy being quoted is going further than he should. It would be great to instill curiosity about the world and appetites for healthy things, it would be great if those who buy fish (or grow gardens) knew about elementary chemical concepts like pH, but what we need is for future voters to be educated in the Aristotelian sense. They need to be able to tell who to trust, in a world in which they cannot trust the authority of government because those who hold that authority frequently don't know what they're talking about, or possibly don't dare admit what they know because this would offend their core supporters.
Or then again, maybe not.

School Choice & the Law

There seems to be a lot going on in the area of school choice, but at the moment it's mostly going on in courtrooms: School Choice Marches Forward : Education Next

Now, in 2012, it is still not clear whether the legislative advance of school-choice bills in 2011 made more education options available or simply ushered in a bevy of new lawsuits. Maybe both.

Sigh.