How to Pad a Story

[Media] Writers: So you've got a cogent and timely 3,500-word piece about results-based educational standards, but your editor is demanding 6,200 words. Whatever shall you do?

It's quite a pickle. Fortunately, Malcolm Gladwell's got it all figured out: Just interpolate a tedious football metaphor! It may ruin an otherwise decent article, but you can comfort yourself in the knowledge that neither educators nor football fans will ever summon enough patience to finish reading it.

Here's the condensed version of Gladwell's "Most Likely to Succeed," Dec. 15, New Yorker:

Football, blah blah blah, football.

Some important people have reasoned that the performance of teachers in the U.S. education system can be judged by how much their students learn over the course of a school year. They call this "value-added analysis."

Football, yada yada, "offensive gaps," college vs. NFL bullshit. Also, this boldly homoerotic quote: "In the spread, you see a lot of guys wide open." Yet even more football, blah blah blah, football.

Some teachers do a better job at keeping students' attention than others. Experts can determine which are which by watching videotaped classroom sessions. Good teachers have a knack for engaging students as individuals, whereas bad teachers seem to regard the classroom as a mass of undifferentiated humanity. A guy named Jacob Kounin says the good teachers have something called "withiness."

Some people believe that the great success of the financial sector could be replicated in the public school system if Wall Street's Lord of the Flies-style hiring standards were applied to teachers: Financial firms interview a lot of potential employees, but very few make the cut. Then, over the next five years, almost everybody gets fired.

Such a scheme would cost taxpayers more than the present track-and-tenure system, but the idea holds appeal for those who think both teachers' unions and standards-based reformers are on the wrong course.

Football, football, oh god kill me now, football, blah blah blah, football.

(Brandon Burt)

Teacher, Teacher, I Declare

[Education] Since state governments these days are so busy looking for new ways to give our money to rich people, they've stopped worrying about all the little things--especially, educating those little things. (Maybe uneducated adults are more easily exploited by corporate bastards.)

But, it doesn't look like the numbskulls on the hill are going to be giving us any love anytime soon, so maybe we should leave them to debate exactly what it is they think we should all be doing in the bedroom, while we take matters into our own hands. So to speak.

I'm intrigued by the microfunding model at DonorsChoose.org. Teachers write proposals for classroom projects, books and equipment, and then the magic of the Intertubes takes care of the rest--donors can give any amount they choose toward any any project they favor.

If you'd rather your largess apply close to home, it's possible to search by state. One junior-high-school teacher in Ogden really seems to want a $1,100 "document camera" for some reason. (It's to get kids excited about historical documents. While I don't begrudge educators anything, with my own limited funds, I'd have to think hard about that one.)

But others are more comprehensible to my mind, like the elementary school teacher in Davis County who needs a "root farm"--I think it must be a kind of a glass case where kids can see the creepy root systems of plants growing. Pretty cheap at less than $150 for two of them. (A lot of people don't realize that the part of a plant you can see is actually only half the plant. The rest is underground.) The root farm sounds so cool I think every school should have one. And DonorsChoose.org is so cool, I think everybody should see it.

HB241 Keeping Undocumented Kids Uneducated

[Legislature] Rep. Glenn Donnelson's (R-Ogden) HB241 that moves to repeal in-state tuition for the children of undocumented immigrants now awaits the yea or nay of the state senate before getting passed onto the Guv's desk.

If there is any sound principle that stands out from the pissed-off rhetoric on both sides of this issue, it is the plea recently issued by the LDS church. This thing needs to be considered in reference to real impact, today and more importantly tomorrow, with compassion.

In essence HB241 is a message bill--but with teeth. It would deprive children of undocumented immigrants with a chance at affordable higher education, even if they've spent all of their high school career in Utah. The message Donnelson hopes to send is one to the federal government, that if the Feds can't fix a federal problem than it will be up to individual states to craft policies that will ultimately motivate federal policy.

But could there be other "messages" we could send? Ones which might not be as defiant, but might actually have more impact?

Why not draft legislation that would help relieve the difficulties and backlogs on legal immigration? Why not draft legislation that would allow better education and resources for foreign consulates to help guide people naturally through the immigration process?

Whatever we do in the meantime, why take away a great opportunity for children of undocumented immigrants? Fairness to taxpayers you might say. Well there's actually interesting evidence to suggest that the current system brings in more revenue for the state by bringing in students to higher ed who would not have otherwise attempted to go into college if they had to pay out of state tuition. Check out page 34 of this study done by a team of Utah researchers.

And lastly why do you have to deny in-state tuition to these kids because they can't legally work when they graduate? What about if they want to start their own business. What if they want to go into the arts? The greatest benefits of a college education aren't always what make you "marketable." There is a world of perspectives, history, philosophy, forums for civic engagement and community service that college can provide to young people that they cannot find anywhere else.

Finally even if the feds decide that they will even with a new president put off comprehensive immigration reform for another year. If you have a student who graduates from a Utah school and then is forced to go back to their home country and apply and wait for citizenship, wouldn't you prefer that when this person does come back to the U.S. that they already have an education? (Eric S. Peterson)

Rethinking Dope

[Drugs] A rag-tag band of University of Utah professors from every discipline from Philosophy, Political Science to Law and Pharmacotherapy are trying to shake things up with a new book on society's contradictory views and policies on drugs.

The question they ask is why doesn't society approach all controlled substances from some form of uniform policy?

The interdisciplinary tack these scholars take doesn't pull any punches, whether it's questioning what role political lobbying has in keeping alcohol legal and marijuana illegal, or positing whether or not there are stiffer penalties for possession of crack vs. cocaine because of racist implications of crack abuse by certain poor African American populations.

Certainly drug contradictions here in Zion abound where so many Utahns have witnessed the cultural norms about the harmlessness of prescription drugs. Such naive beliefs have pushed many casual pill poppers from a party drug to the hard realities of heroin, as was written this month in City Weekly. (Eric S. Peterson)

Don't Call Us Dumbasses

[Vouchbags] The day-after analysis on the unceremonious death of vouchers keeps rolling in.*

My favorite: The crushing blow against tax-funded, private school vouchers (62 percent to 38 percent) came because voters simply couldn't cut through the conflicting, muddy advertising from both sides. So, not fully understanding the issue, people merely punted and kept the status quo.

KSL radio's Doug Wright opened his talk show with almost those very words this morning. Comment boards at KSL and the Deseret Morning News, too (surprised?). Wright, with that ponderous Sunday-go-to-to meetin' voice, described how very "offended" he was by the ads on both sides.

The "status quo" argument is plain absurd. Strip this ballot measure down to its underpants and you find a movement fueled by constituents (that's all of us in Utah) deeply pissed off by the arrogance of a handful of GOP legislators and well-heeled lobbyists (Overstock.com Patrick Byrne out in front) who pushed the voucher bill through early this year against all average-folk protests.

So in the days ahead, as everyone scrambles to dissect the reason(s) why vouchers were such a colossal failure, remember the taxpayers, stupid. The citizens. The people who back up the legislators' paychecks. Opinion polls showed huge opposition to vouchers from Day One. Bill sponsor Rep. Steve Urquhart (R-St. George) and others kept arguing if people really understood the voucher concept they'd support it. We just weren't smart enough, or patient enough to figure it out, the subtext went.

We understand. It's pretty simple for most--at least 62 percent of us. If you want to send your kids to private school, please do. But since this is a country (and state) that values every child's right to a taxpayer-funded, public education we'd like to put our money toward improving what we have, thanks.

The foundation of this mess rests on the actions of a few legislators who thought they would steamroll the people. They either misread their constituents or didn't give a rat's ass anyway. They gambled; they lost.

If pundits/bloggers/talk show hosts want to call that a vote for the status quo, fine. Just don't insult our intelligence while doing it. (Holly Mullen)

* Tip of the Salt Blog hat to keen observer Greg Bumpus of Draper, who shot the above photo while driving to work in Orem this a.m. Here's the link to licensing info.