Mar 11, 2008
Posted | 4 comments
There are two warring camps in baseball: those who use statistics and objective data to drive decision-making and performance assessment vs. those who look to romance, nobility, experience, and all things idiosyncratic for both teaching and managing the game.
Sound familiar?
There’s a website called FireJoeMorgan.com [Joe Morgan was one of the best players in history, but he's probably the worst analyst in history, too] that pokes fun at bad sports journalism that is either factually inaccurate, refuses to recognize logic or weaves that delightful tapestry of both. Those rapscallions at FJM could switch over to education and they’d never miss a beat.
If we substituted a few words in the following article, we’d have a fine specimen of the defensive, willfully-ignorant, protectionist puffery that makes up the majority of education philosophy.
Background:
- Dusty Baker is the manager of the Cincinnati Reds. He famously defies common sense and logic with his commitment to… God knows what, but he sure is experienced.
- The Society for American Baseball Research [SABR] has over the last few decades led the scientific approach to baseball into its current state of maturity.
- Bill James is considered the father of what we call “sabermetrics.”
Here are a few selections from the article [original piece, FJM post]:
Baker judges by his senses: Knowing what makes his players tick more important than their stats
FJM: Dusty Baker can literally smell whether a guy has a couple hits in his bat. And if his bones ache while a starter is warming up, that means 6 2/3 IP, 4H, 1R. Welcome to the age of divining rods and augurs, Cincinnati.
Education Parallel: The UFT’s Randi Weingarten saying, “Any real educator can know within five minutes of walking into a classroom if a teacher is effective.â€
“The best baseball managing is done by the seat of your pants, using good, old-fashioned, pre-sabermetric logic.”
FJM: If I live in Cincinnati, I have just purchased a one-way ticket to Canada, draft-fleeing-style.
Education Parallel: See above and/or most teacher blog posts.
“If Baker manages by a book, it’s one inside his head, not one written by Bill James.”
FJM: Unfortunately, the book inside Dusty’s head is “Lightning” by Dean R. Koontz. This will not help him.
Education Parallel: Research? Oh, forgot the scare quotes. “Research?” Drill and kill?!? DI and the rest be damned. Let’s use every teacher’s personal experience and substandard academic experience, combine it with a commitment to social justice and equality, and out pops The Best Teacher Ever.
“Unless they’re intentional walks, or the big boppers are being pitched around, walks aren’t what you want from players hitting third through sixth. You want them up there smart-hacking.”
FJM: You want these guys to brain-swing. You want them to think-swipe. You don’t want your 3-6-hole hitters to engage in torque ignorance. You want them to cognitive-swivel.
Education Parallel: Just like traditional baseball managers who think that walks don’t matter [you know, getting on base, the opposite of making an out], too many teachers want their students to smart-hack instead of master the basics. Literacy and math skills? Psh. They’d rather assess kindergarten children on data collection and making simple graphs. Why would you want a child who can read when you can instead cultivate lifetime learners who know how to take ownership of their curricula and make supercute folding things?
“By-the-book managing is for men who aren’t confident in their ability to read players and situations. It’s for managers who don’t know their players’ personalities. It’s what you do so you can say later, after it backfires: “Don’t blame me. I went by the book.”"
FJM: What you are calling “by the book managing” is often completely thoughtless, ignorance-steeped tradition. 2-1 count with a guy on first? Hit and run. Leadoff guy gets on? Bunt him over. That’s by-the-book managing, and it’s dumb. What people like Bill James, and Rob Neyer, and BP, and Billy Beane advocate is: research, analysis, thought, science. But *&$% that. Let’s read some tea leaves.
Education Parallel: If you - an aspiring teacher, a parent or an education reformer - want to go by the book [or something else that is clearly effective], it’s because you can’t read the situation. You aren’t a certified teacher - you’re an ignorant outsider who can’t possibly understand what goes on. You’re just a hopeless caveman who doesn’t understand that acrostics are better than Coleridge or that school today just isn’t like your drill-and-kill Sputnik-era classroom. You’re insecure and inexperienced and you need “the book” to make up for both.
And Leo Casey’s dad can beat up your dad.
“Anyone with a laptop can locate the Web site baseball-reference.com and sound like an expert. Anyone with a library card can pick up one of James’ mind-numbing baseball “abstracts,” in which the author makes the game sound like a first cousin to biomechanical engineering.”
FJM: Which is why it boggles the mind that some people don’t. Especially the ones paid millions of dollars to operate one of 30 several-hundred-million-dollar franchises. And for the record, I’m not trying to sound like an expert. I’m trying to sound like a dude with a computer who can look %$#^ up and point out that Adam Dunn is doing just fine, thank you, and if you start making him swing at pitches he doesn’t like, you’re going to screw up your team.
Education Parallel: We’re all just stat-loving Googlemonkeys who think we know education. We might be successful writers, parents, businesspeople, etc., but we’re not teachers. We didn’t go to ed school. We don’t get it.
Article: “It ain’t that scientific.”
FJM: It’s not purely scientific. But it goddamn is kind of scientific.
Education Parallel: Constant reductio ad absurdum of any structured instruction, belief in objective data, etc. We’re not compassionate and we dehumanize kids with our insistence on the non-fruity. We hate kids, we’re mean, we’re big doo-doo heads. And we’re committed to pumping out a nation full of automatons who will be the cogs in our corporate… oh, whatever.
*Wrings hands in wry pleasure, waxes mustache*
You can read the rest of FJM’s commentary here. Parallels a-plenty.
Mar 9, 2008
Posted | 2 comments
A large pool of auditions has been narrowed down to those competing to become the Top 8 finalists for the Toyota 5th Grader Challenge - it’s time to cast your vote.
This local competition is modeled after Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? and pairs a student with an adult to answer questions about academics and pop culture. Your votes determine who of the five finalists will move on to the next stage of competition.
So, if you’ve got a minute, watch this brief video of Justin Tynon and toss him your vote. [Click here to cast your vote; one vote per valid e-mail address.] He’s quick on his feet and confident.
I competed at the national level in high school and college level quiz competitions. Few questions are so obscure or difficult that all the contestants are stumped - the best competitors react quickly. They don’t spend time thinking [they don't have to] and they don’t care if they’re wrong [they usually aren't].
One of my favorite collegiate quiz-memories was in a 4-on-4 competition with Harvard. The question was, “What alphanumeric - ?”
I don’t know the rest of the question. I rang in with, “bra size” and it was the right answer. Really, how many other common alphanumeric things do we have? I’m sure that gamble could’ve gone horribly wrong, but it didn’t [we beat them roughly 515-65 in that match, though we lost the day's competition].
Remember, Master Tynon: be quick, be confident and don’t care if you give an answer that might make you look absolutely ridiculous.
Hopefully we’ll see you in the top 8! Especially if everyone reading this throws you a vote [hint].
Mar 5, 2008
Posted | 0 comments
There’s a law on the books demanding that public school administrators and school board members in New York State think of state funds as money printed for the sole purpose of meeting their district’s needs. Again, that money isn’t generated from taxpayers, it’s just printed, well… whenever, put on a debit card and shipped to the business office to offset local taxes. No one anywhere bears the financial burden. It’s all unicorns and ice cream castles in the air.
[Actually, this can't be a law. If it was a real statute, the vast majority of board members and administrators would be completely ignorant of it. Must be something else.]
I subscribe to just under 100 public school newsletters. Irvington Union Free School District’s “This Week in Your School District,” an e-mail newsletter written and distributed by board member Paul Mandel, is a weekly comedy of errors. It might be a technical burp, like pointing readers to a link and then never giving it; it might be egregious grammar errors that would make a 7th grader blush in embarrassment.
Or it might be a complete and total disregard for taxpayers in the whole of New York State.
In February 14′s TWiYSD, Mandel explains budgetary proposals in “View on Board: Athletics, Transportation and Building & Grounds Budgets”:
At the time of the budget vote, the District will ask voters to approve approximately $650,000 worth of EXCEL Aid projects, one-time grants which are 100% funded by New York State. These projects will include replacing the Main Street School gym bleachers and floor, replacing the Main Street School public address and fire alarm systems and improving the Middle School public address system (providing access to the Middle School art rooms and CMS Rooms). Voters must approve these projects, but it is vital that everyone understand there is absolutely no cost to taxpayers for these important projects.
Bolded/underlined emphases appear in the original newsletter; they aren’t editorialized.
Mandel is right about one thing - it is vital that everyone understands how this all works. It’s just that Mandel doesn’t realize that he and the board on whose behalf he’s speaking need the most remediation.
The simple truth is that taxpayers bear the cost of all state-funded projects - period. In a tiny way, we in Otsego County foot the bill for IUFSD’s EXCEL Aid. Irvington’s residents do the same for us. That’s how being a resident of New York State works.
School boards are famous for thinking of finances only in terms of their local levy. Responsible districts delineate the difference properly: “no additional increases in local school taxes,” etc. Not only do those districts tell the truth, but it’s the responsible way to recognize how funding works.
Remember: if it comes from state funds, it’s a cost to us. Just because it’s not part of your local levy doesn’t mean we don’t pay.
I’d consider these gaffes semantics if I didn’t see it over and over again. And again. And again.
There’s a serious conceptual misunderstanding in public education - though admittedly, sometimes it’s just these board members/admins being lazy and reckless with their words - about taxes. In this, Mandel and IUFSD are unremarkable.
I’ve sent around the following letter; anyone who wishes is welcome to reproduce and distribute it.
And to Mandel, I believe, as you likely do, that everyone can learn - even experienced adults who treat the rest of their state with contempt. I’m available for one-on-one Civics/Government tutoring if you or others on the board are interested: $150/hr.
My primary interest is public education. I read over 7,000 pieces a month on the topic and subscribe to nearly 100 district newsletters from across the country. Occasionally one district or an individual stands proud from the rest - for better or worse.
The February 14 newsletter from IUFSD’s Paul Mandel, titled “View on Board: Athletics, Transportation and Building & Grounds Budgets,” is an attempt by Mandel to justify budget increases in each of the topics in the title. It’s standard fare for board members and administrators to distribute such apologia and, in the District’s defense, most of the increases detailed are unavoidable. Such is public education.
But in the penultimate paragraph, Mandel commits an egregious error as he describes the $650,000 EXCEL Aid package on which voters will decide. This project will “replac[e] the Main Street School gym bleachers and floor†and improve the public address system in the Middle School. He goes on: “Voters must approve these projects, but it is vital that everyone understand there is absolutely no cost to taxpayers for these important projects.†The phrase “absolutely no cost to taxpayers†was made bold and underlined so you folks in Irvington wouldn’t have to bother thinking about it – Mandel has already done it for you.
Mandel’s huckster act conveniently glosses over one important point: New York State taxpayers have already given up the money used in EXCEL projects like the one proposed for IUFSD. The $2.6 billion slated for EXCEL aid didn’t appear when the Fiscal Fairy waved her magic wand.
I have to assume that Mandel meant to suggest that Irvington taxpayers wouldn’t see any additional tax burdens if the EXCEL-based project is approved. In lieu of such pesky clarity, he used sloppy language that masked the honest impact of the project’s approval.
One is compelled to wonder whether the statement is deliberately misleading – if so, it wouldn’t be the first time a school board member pulled a fast one – but that point is nearly moot. Whether out of malice or simply clumsy ignorance, Mandel’s gaffe demonstrates unforgivable contempt for taxpayers in the District and the larger state surrounding it.
Third-rate sales pitches by a public school pismire notwithstanding, honest debate about our schools depends on honest information. If IUFSD is serious about garnering the support not just of its locals but also of taxpayers statewide, they would do well to embrace that honesty.
School board elections are coming up in a few months. Don’t forget to question your candidates on their understanding of public school finances. It’s usually an awfully telling way to find out not just what they know, but how they think about the community and the public good.
Mar 4, 2008
Posted | 2 comments
25 years ago, Ball State University [Muncie, Indiana] created an Entrepreneurship major with a final exam worthy of the label “high-stakes.” The New Venture Creation course - the capstone of BSU’s Entrepreneurship major and the only one of its kind - draws upon 4 years of study in the liberal arts and business. The course’s premise is simple; students create a business plan through the semester and present it to a panel of businessmen at the end.
Pitch your plan successfully and you pass. But drop the ball and you not only fail the course, but you don’t graduate from BSU with a degree in entrepreneurship [though the ~25% who fail are welcome to try again next semester].
And as exciting and unique as a ‘winner-takes-all’ philosophy is in higher education, it might not even be the most compelling aspect of BSU’s ambitious entrepreneurship project.
The program, a division of BSU’s Miller College of Business, started in 1983. It has always been about purposeful innovation, says Dr. Larry Cox, Director of the Entrepreneurship Center. “We try to be unique - we try to do what no one else is doing or we try to find new ways to do it.”
Consider the Nascent 500 Business Plan Challenge that the Center began last year. Most business plan competitions are roughly the same; teams submit proposals that are judged on their merits or their relevance to the competition’s mission. But the Nascent 500 builds on that model and embodies the commitment to the entrepreneurial spirit that Cox and the Center tout:
- 500-word abstracts accompany a business plan submitted for evaluation; 12 undergraduate teams move on to qualifying at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway;
- $500 is awarded to each member of the 12 qualifying teams;
- Teams have 500 words to pitch their plan to investors in the back of a limousine as it makes a lap around the Speedway.
“We took the standard business plan competition model and changed the experience. We attract a good, competitive group and we have a lot of fun.”
Four teams advance to compete for $18,000 in prizes. The winning team takes home $10,000 and, of course, a quart of milk to gulp after their victory lap [click here to watch last year's highlights].
In short, BSU practices exactly the entrepreneurship that they preach.
In his 3-year tenure at the Center, Cox has continued the innovation that has made Ball State a nationally-recognized name in entrepreneurship education. Traditionally, Cox explains, schools focus on the implementation of business plans, raising capital, etc. BSU focuses not just on those standards, but also on creating and developing ideas.
“We’ve built [the Center] around the idea that entrepreneurship, at its core, is creative problem-solving. The search for the idea is the search for a problem that’s worth solving,” Cox says. “First, we teach them how to find a problem.”
The Entrepreneurship major consists of nine courses; electives, other majors/minors and required liberal arts courses are often the inspiration for projects in and out of school. “We start with passion. Our students bring some content to the table from personal and professional interests,” Cox explains.
And that marriage between process and content - mixing prior knowledge, academic studies and problem-solving - is what makes BSU’s Entrepreneurship major such an impressive undergraduate track. Students leave the program with practical, relevant knowledge and experience with the processes in which it operates. They enter the job market ready to contribute - and Entrepreneur Magazine, US News and Princeton Review and others notice year after year.
Graduating seniors get a unique opportunity to meet and network with successful entrepreneurs through The Ascent Awards, given annually by the Entrepreneurship Center to those who not only impress with their business success, but also with the “energy, grit and determination of the undertaking.” Ten businesspeople are listed for the students; they choose 3 who they want to emulate.
The idea, Cox says, is “to reach out nationally and find people who have not quite hit the radar screen or who are unique in some way.” Then Ball State students talk with the three finalists and ask them about the challenges they faced - and especially how they dealt with them - on the way to their entrepreneurial success. A dinner caps the festivities, at which the three finalists are honored and a winner is announced [click here for a recap video of the 2007 Ascent Awards].
Studying entrepreneurship isn’t a license to pretend that you’re a high-profile venture capitalist through 4 years of college. The academic rigor and professional experience provided by Ball State University’s Entrepreneurship major inspire 40% of its graduates to start a business after leaving the University. “If you think about entrepreneurship and economic development,” Cox says, “it’s central to our economic well-being. When [students] come in, we don’t define their career path. We ask them, ‘What’s your dream? What are you excited about?’”
Ball State University’s Entrepreneurship Center teaches them how to evaluate what they’re passionate about and make it into a business. Cox sums up the program and says what every department head in the country would like to say with sincerity about his graduates: “They go on and implement what they’ve learned.”
Feb 29, 2008
Posted | 2 comments
Eduwonkette gives the Moneyball/education links in chronological order - my original entry is here.
I’m pleased that the issue is getting some attention. It’s a worthwhile discussion and there are important points on both sides.
The UFT’s Leo Casey responded to my post by telling us that teachers are not commodities. After waxing impotent on the romance of our national pastime, Casey advises that we gird ourselves before continuing:
“You will quickly find yourself waist deep in a big muddy [sic] of ad hominem arguments, which begin with an all-out Tabor assault on the distinguished New York Times sports columnist Murray Chass, the author of the column I cited as criticism of Beane’s statistical measures.”
Though Casey is talking about a post written by an Andrew Tabor, I’ll take responsibility and respond for Andy. He goes on:
“Chass is a baseball “traditionalist,†and for Tabor this means he is “obnoxiously wrong,†“grating,†“a crotchety, stubborn, pigheaded SOB,†…well you get the drift.”
At least Chass isn’t lonely in the “obnoxiously wrong” pen.
Murray Chass’ contributions to baseball journalism are rivaled by few; that’s why his 40+ years of insight earned him the Baseball Writers Association of America nod for the J.G. Taylor Spink award in 2003. He doesn’t have a plaque, but he’s got a permanent spot in the National Baseball Hall of Fame because he earned the respect of his colleagues. And, even though I find little of his current analysis compelling, I’d defend his place in the annals of baseball lore.
There’s no doubt that Chass is famous for rejecting many statistical measures of the game - he thinks that they have had, are having, and will continue to have a negative effect on how baseball is played and how fans regard baseball. His Wikipedia entry has a decent line describing his philosophy:
“Chass is a noted baseball traditionalist who laments the shift in baseball news coverage from daily beat-report biographies (the common purview of columnists like Chass) to more statistics-driven analysis (sometimes called sabermetrics), exemplified by Baseball Prospectus and used by both fantasy baseball leagues and, increasingly, Major League Baseball team management.”
He might be right. But, as I showed in his Feb. 27, 2007 Times piece, he is often crotchety, stubborn, pigheaded, etc. about his stance. It’s part of his charm; it’s the niche he’s chosen to carve. Some love him, some love to hate him, but he generates passion and discussion on both sides.
In a striking, but not uncommon, display of intellectual irresponsibility, Casey cherrypicked those words with the hope - or more likely, the certainty - that readers wouldn’t click through to see my original text. In describing Chass’ stance, I said:
“That’s fine, because Murray Chass is a traditionalist to a fault and I’m used to him being obnoxiously wrong about some things. He’s grating and charming at the same time and sportswriting would be less interesting without him. Every sector needs a crotchety, stubborn, pigheaded SOB here and there, and Chass is one of baseball’s.”
Chass is obnoxiously wrong about some things, which implies that he’s quite right about others. Casey omitted “charming” and my comment that sportswriting would be lesser without his contributions. Casey did this because it was convenient for him to do so. He shamelessly betrayed my clear intent to bolster a poor argument he couldn’t otherwise support.
I truly believe that we need Chasses in every sector [and I'll probably be one eventually]. We all need Andy Rooneys, Jonathan Kozols and the like. Sometimes they seem irrational and crazy; other times they give us sober, sound commentary that snaps us back to reality when we need it most.
And, like Chass, I’m a traditionalist. I don’t equate traditionalism or conservatism with “bad,” and Casey’s implication that I do is inexcusable and unsupportable. Traditionalism can, however, be a problem when it causes one to be willfully blind to potential progress - or resisting exploration that might result in that progress.
I also take umbrage with Casey’s characterization of my comments re: Chass as cheap ad hominem tactics. They aren’t. An ad hominem strategy is one that discounts an argument by pointing to personal attributes, characteristics, beliefs, etc. that are unrelated to that argument. Saying that Chass’ thoughts on baseball mean less because he’s a rotten father [hypothetical] would qualify as ad hominem. Suggesting that Chass’ points are invalid because he’s dumb, fat [both hypothetical] or looks funny [always debatable] are ad hominems.
Citing Chass’ body of professional work - statements made by him about his refusal to investigate in good faith the merits of an argument he summarily struck down - is anything but ad hominem. I exposed a deficiency in his reasoning - the reasoning that Leo Casey championed in what he thought was a refutation of Kevin Carey’s argument. Laying bare the flaws in Casey’s or Chass’ dialectic might make them feel bad, but they aren’t ad hominem attacks. He goes on:
“And that’s only the half of it. It seems that the fact I cited Murray Chass is grounds for another wave of ad hominems aimed in my direction: this proves that I am “witless†and “engaging in disingenuous propaganda.†“Very UFT of you,†he writes about me, as I were supposed to take this as the supreme insult.”
Casey’s use of Chass was a poor way to support his argument, as I showed in my original post. In his response, Casey willfully and knowledgeably twisted information for the benefit of his argument.
I said “Very UFT of you,” and referenced “disingenuous propaganda,” because Casey has, in addition to the offenses detailed above, persistently engaged in irresponsible, all-around intellectual slovenliness:
- Accused Disney of engaging in a conspiracy to erase the record of his past award [debunked here];
- Accused unjustly a rival organization of using Nazi symbolism - involving historically-common workers’ rights imagery, no less;
- Asked for “open, lively debate” in education, while censoring comments by his own union’s members on Edwize, deleting/denying trackbacks from critical posts, etc.
Casey accuses me of setting up straw men, then reduces my position to suggesting that teachers are no better than slaves, simply, “commodities, property to be bought and sold on a marketplace, waiting to be exploited.” Then he references the landmark labor case Flood v. Kuhn, saying that Flood “spoke eloquently on this very subject [workers as commodities].” Teachers can change jobs while MLB players were subject to the reserve clause; LAUSD can’t trade a teacher against his will to NYC Schools; etc.
Once again, ignorance trumps fact and does a disservice to both sides of the argument.
Mercifully, his last paragraph:
“Tabor’s suggestion that reducing teachers to commodities has anything to do with improving education is a perspective only possible from outside of actual classrooms and schools. Ever since Socrates, teachers have known that at its core, education is a matter of human relationship and human dialogue, between ourselves and our students. It is about the development — not the exploitation — of human potential.”
Casey exploits another fallacy [and seizes upon only the most heinous definition of exploit]: the emotional appeal. How dare I - or anyone else - criticize the development of mankind? Or suppress human relationships and dialogue? [I'm such a heartless guy that I argued here and elsewhere that we need to respect the dignity of the profession.]
If I were Casey’s superior at the UFT [or a corresponding superior at the AFT], I’d be embarrassed. I would be ashamed that a man previously lauded for teaching - one who is surrounded by educators and works on their behalf - presents arguments like a petty, particularly unremarkable 8th grader. I’d suspend his work on the Edwize blog and enroll him in community college classes in both Composition and Reasoning/Argumentation. It’s a start.
If I were paying dues to the UFT, I’d be outraged - and I wouldn’t put up with it anymore.
For some brief commentary [that has some merit] on using value-added metrics to evaluate teaching, see Ed Muir’s short response on the AFT’s NCLBlog or Steve Koss’s [less compelling to me, but still worth reading] piece at NYC Public School Parents.
For knee-jerk, partisan pouting based on fallacies - unburdened by even 30 seconds of Google research - by all means, continue to read Edwize.
