Angus McKay

The pursuit of the greatest Root Beer continues with another evening of testing and ranking. This time I found a few new friends to try it with, in the hopes that I might find someone out there with similar taste. Here’s how it went.

 

I brought along some old, familiar names and was excited to find a Great American Root Beers Sampler box at Cost Plus World Market. This box contained 10 bottles of 5 different root beers all for just over $11. I had also received 4 bottles of Sprecher direct from Wisconsin, thanks to by good brother, James.  Thus, we found ourselves with 9 root beers to sip our way through.

 

There were six of us this time (they asked not to be named, so if you can recognize them from the photos it’s up to you).

Ranking 9 root beers is not an easy task. I, personally, ended up having to do a few general tiers. As usual, Virgil’s ranked number 1 by a long shot (seriously, there’s just nothing to compare). Then there were four that came in at the 2^nd tier: Trader Joe’s Vintage, Joe’s, Red Arrow, and Sprecher. Americana ranked dead last…that’s how I ranked them anyway.

The harder part came in the overall rankings. No two people chose the same root beer as their number one choice. Those that did rank separately at number 1 were: Bulldog, Virgil’s, Trader Joe’s Vintage, Joe’s, Sprecher, and Red Arrow.

Those that separately ranked last were: Sprecher (3 times), Americana, Virgil’s, and Dad’s.

Using a point system, based on individual votes, the root beers ranked as follows:

1^st Red Arrow

2^nd Bulldog

3^rd Frostie

4^th Trader Joe’s Vintage

5^th tie betweenVirgil’s and Joe’s

7^th Sprecher

8^th Americana

9^th Dad’s

 

 

 

For the past 10 years, I have wrestled with the issue of gay marriage. I have studied and pondered over it extensively. I have some very good friends who are openly gay. I have never felt that their sexual orientation was ever an issue in our friendship, and I always treated them the same as I treated my other friends. In the years that I have been pondering this issue, there have been a number of statements I have come across to which I would like to respond. I am not an eloquent writer, but I hope to make myself understood as clearly as possible. In the end, I do not necessarily expect people to agree with everything I am saying. My main intent is to bring understanding, so that people will not simply consider me to be a simple, blind-faith, narrow-minded bigot.

 

Being gay is not a choice.

True, in part. It is natural for some to be attracted to others of the same sex, and it is not their choice to have those natural attractions. The choice comes in when someone acts on those attractions. As a married man, with two children it is still natural for me to be attracted to women other than my wife. It is not my choice to have those attractions, but just because it is natural does not mean it is right. It becomes my choice when I dwell on those attractions and allow them to drive me to act on those attractions and betray the trust of my wife and children.

 

I could never believe in a God that does not openly love and accept me for who I am.

First off, God loves all of His children, regardless of their choices. That does not mean He approves of everything they do. I can, and do, love my children even though they sometimes make choices I don’t approve of.

Second, how arrogant we must be to treat God as if He were up for re-election as the Creator and Supreme Being of the universe. As if His omniscient perfection can be swayed by our puny opinions of how things should be. Just because my 3-year-old tells me it makes him sad when I tell him he can’t have another chocolate does not mean that I am going to change my mind, and it doesn’t mean that I am denying him that chocolate out of a lack of love or affection. I have greater knowledge and experience than my 3-year-old, just as God has infinitely more knowledge and experience than we do. Just because we don’t understand all the reasons He does things the way He does, doesn’t mean He is wrong and we are right.

 

Mormons hate gays.

When I deny my 3-year-old that chocolate, it doesn’t mean I hate my child. I do it because I love him and I want what is best for him, and I know that another chocolate will make him sick. He cannot see that at the time. All he sees is what he wants. We are often like a 3-year-old with God. He requires things of us that we do not understand. As a Mormon, I know that God has taught that homosexuality is wrong, and that it is not a lifestyle that He approves of, and therefore I cannot condone it. I cannot say that I fully understand all the reasons why He doesn’t approve of homosexuality. I cannot say I know all the consequences that will come about if we allow the legalization of gay marriage. I can say that I trust that God knows what is best, infinitely better than we do, and therefore I choose to stand by His word.

 

I’m a good member of the LDS Church, but I am in favor of gay marriage.

As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, you are asked, at least 4 times a year, to raise your right hand in token of your sustaining of the leaders of the church, most importantly you sustain the president of the church as a “prophet, seer, and revelator”. If you are a faithful member then you raise your hand and give your sustaining vote. To do this, but then turn around and say, “but, I’m in favor of gay marriage” is really not much short of blatant hypocrisy. The prophet, whom you sustained, has informed us of God’s views on gay marriage. If we sustain him as the prophet, namely as the mouthpiece of the Lord, then we must also accept his statement on gay marriage. If he is wrong about his position on gay marriage, then he is not a prophet, but merely a nice guy with some good ideas and therefore we should not be sustaining him.

When Jesus claimed to be the son of God, and we say we believe in Jesus Christ, then we accept him as the Son of God. If we don’t believe in him, then he is merely a nice guy with some good ideas (who also happens to have power over death and disease).

Why anyone would associate themselves with a religion that they do not wholly accept is incomprehensible to me. Either you believe it, or you do not. Selective faith is no faith at all. True faith is rarely, if ever, convenient. It may go against our natural inclinations. It may go against accepted views and worldly logic. It may require us to sacrifice things we hold very dear. That is the nature of faith.

If you find yourself in the position of being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, but you disagree with the Church’s position on gay marriage, then I would seriously question why you are a member of the church at all.

 

Obviously I do not expect anyone to simply accept what I have said unconditionally. I know that much of this is based upon a firm belief in God, and an understanding of the nature of God as taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. If anyone would like to know for themselves whether what I am saying has any real validity, I invite you find out. Two great places to begin are the Book of Mormon, or Mormon.org

In my relentless quest to find the perfect root beer, I decided to celebrate my birthday by driving all over the valley buying specialty root beers. My travels took me to Cracker Barrel, Sprouts, Whole Foods (which has an amazing selection of gourmet sodas by the way), and Bashas’ (my loyalty runs deep, and they do carry Virgil’s).

 

I then invited a few old friends over, to join me in taste-testing the beverages. Here is the rundown:

 

The Beverages

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Virgil’s (of course), Stewart’s, Joe’s, Trader Joe’s Vintage, and Death Valley

The Judges

 

 

Christopher David Ross (aka “Ross”)

This man is married to a girl 10 years his junior. He sells used cars, and speaks fluent Russian. He is completely unaware that there is a skeleton of a Tyrannosaur behind him. He was also completely unaware that I was taking this photo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jerald Christian Glass (aka “JC”)

The bearded philosopher. This man once weighed over 300 pounds! A member of the legendary Mensa, he is a thinker! He looks like a thinker! He looks like he’s probably thinking right now!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lee Roy Andersen (aka “Lee”)

Athlete, accountant, and father of 4. This man’s legs were once described as being “like candy bars”. This man actually smiled for the camera.

 

 

 

 

 

As you may have discerned from the above photos: the root beers were poured into indistinguishable cups (5 oz. Dixie cups to be precise), and labeled only with the letters A-E. Thus, the judges had no idea which soda they were tasting. They carefully tasted each beverage, ranking them as they went. The results are as follows:

Ross:

1^st Joe’s

2^nd Death Valley

3^rd Stewart’s

4^th Trader Joe’s Vintage

5^th Virgil’s

Ross said that Joe’s was the “sweetest” and was therefore his top choice. He believed that the Virgil’s was “spiked” when he first tasted it.

 

JC:

1^st Joe’s

2^nd Trader Joe’s Vintage

3^rd Stewart’s

4^th Death Valley

5^th Virgil’s

 

Lee

1^st Stewart’s

2^nd Trader Joe’s Vintage

3^rd Joe’s

4^th Virgil’s

5^th Death Valley

Lee said that Stewart’s tasted like your traditional A&W root beer, and thus was his top choice. He said that Death Valley had a nasty aftertaste, which earned it its place at the bottom.

 

My own personal rankings, with commentary, are as follows:

1^st Virgil’s (one sip, and I knew exactly what it was, and why I love it so)

2^nd Trader Joe’s Vintage

3^rd Joe’s (This one and Trader Joe’s were both very good, and I really struggled to rank them between each other. Is it the name?)

4^th Death Valley (tasted a little on the cream soda side)

5^th Stewart’s (flavorless fizz compared to the others)

 

The results of this experiment have lead me to only one conclusion: my friends have very poor taste (which probably explains why they’re my friends).

 

To me, Virgil’s has a much richer, more colorful, lush flavor. It is certainly not your traditional root beer, which may be why nobody else likes it as much.

 

The Follow-up

I had my brother-in-law Jeff Decker (the one on the right) do a follow-up testing the next day.

He had been a part of my very first root beer tasting event, which took place last Thanksgiving, and which I failed to document sufficiently to place on my blog. He had a slight disadvantage, this time, in that my other friends had taken the rest of the Joe’s and Stewart’s home with them, so he only had 3 to choose from: Virgil’s, Death Valley, and Trader Joe’s Vintage.

 

Jeff’s rankings with his own commentary are as follows:

1^st Death Valley (subtle aftertaste)

2^nd Trader Joe’s Vintage (Straight root beer)

3^rd Virgil’s (aftertaste reminiscent of rum)

 

There you have it, folks! Five root beers. Five judges. Each with there own taste and description.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are noticeable efforts being made to put the blame on Wall Street for the global economic crisis that seems to be only growing worse by the day. While I am a strong opponent of corporate greed, I don’t believe we can truly place all the blame on them. This crisis came about by all of us: the millions of people who have used, and continue to use, dishonest practices for their personal gain. Banks and mortgage companies preying upon people they knew could not afford to pay back the loans they were handing out; consumers who were not honest with themselves, or with the bank, as to their ability to pay off such loans; citizens being dishonest about their taxes; politicians being dishonest about what they are doing with those taxes, and on it goes. Can we really point any fingers? Can any one of us honestly say that we would not have done what Wall Street did had we been in their position? While I would like to think I would not, I really don’t know, because I have never been put in that situation. We have to acknowledge that much of the “99%” is just as much to blame for this as anyone. Anyone who has promoted dishonest behavior by simply perpetuating it in their own lives is to blame for the crisis we are in.

Only by accepting that personal responsibility can we turn this around. Until we acknowledge our own wrongdoings and decide that indeed “honesty is the best policy” none of these problems will ever go away. They may abate for a time, but they will always return, they will always be lingering at the door.

We can create regulations, pass legislation, cut or increase taxes, increase or limit government, point fingers, increase law enforcement, increase penalties, or any number of other remedies, but the problems will not go away until we are prepared to accept honesty as our personal responsibility, and live by and encourage honesty in everything we do.

Every law passed, every measure taken has never been more than a band-aid to try and cover and suppress the infectious cancer that we have allowed to run rampant through our societies. It will never be enough, and we cannot ignore it.

Let us turn from that gloomy perspective and look at this from a new angle. Consider for a moment all the money, time, energy and other resources that are dedicated primarily to preventing and/or repairing the damage caused by dishonest behavior. Millions of people make a living in jobs that were created solely for this purpose. Now a short-sighted person might point out how dishonesty has created so many jobs, and is therefore an essential part of society. Well, let’s consider what kind of a world this would be if we could take all those resources of which we’ve been speaking, and refocus their use on positive things. Think of the advancements in science, medicine, technology, overcoming poverty and hunger, education, and all the many other positive aspects of life that could be improved with all that time, money, energy, and that many people that could be dedicated to those pursuits. A global Utopia could be so easily brought about if we all adopted that one simple principle of honesty. This is not the responsibility of anyone else. This is the responsibility of each and every one of us. Every single one of us has the responsibility to be honest and to teach honesty to those who come after us. It begins with everyone choosing to be honest, regardless of what others may choose. We can only change the world by changing ourselves. This is not a casual “tell the truth” honesty of which we speak. It means absolute honesty in every aspect of our lives. In school, at work, at home, in our finances, in our daily interactions with others, in our business transactions, and with ourselves; we must be completely and absolutely honest. It means not taking advantage of people, it means not withholding information, it means not rationalizing any action that benefits us at the detriment of others. It means acknowledging that we may not know all the facts, that we may not be in a position to judge what is best for another person, and thus we must be willing to listen to and consider the thoughts of someone whose opinion is different from our own. It means being willing to accept that we are not perfect and that we all can and should seek to improve every day.

The change will only begin when each one of us takes it upon ourselves. When we are ready to say, “I am to blame. I need to change. I cannot blame anyone else until I have done my part. I will do my part, and I will change, and then the real change can begin.”

I’ve managed to transfer a number of the posts from my old blog over to this new one, though there are many there that will probably never make it.  There were just too many complications with the transfer process (namely because I got ahead of myself at the start and unwittingly eliminated a very important step in the process).

More to come…

So the system is broken. That has been established. We can rant about the problems all we want, for there are a great many and they are not difficult to discern. The question presents itself: what is to be done? The answer is not a simple one, nor can it be summed up easily. But, here I will begin to work for that reform that I seek by presenting ideas toward a real and lasting solution to the problem of our education system.

We find the root of the problem at the birth of our present educational system. It is a system designed for the industrial age, when the majority of people would be working in jobs that required redundant processes with prescribed results. There was very little focus on innovation or creativity, because most jobs simply required that you follow a pre-set pattern and your success depended on your ability to adhere to the guidelines that were set. Summer vacation was put in place based on a tragic misconception that the mind is like a farmer’s field that cannot be constantly cultivated for fear the nutrients in the soil will become depleted. The truth is, the human mind has an amazing capacity for storing information, and the more consistently it is used and exercised the more able it becomes to retain and process new information.

In our day, and in the future, those who succeed will be those who have learned to invent and adapt to an ever-changing economic climate. We are in an age where there is little – if any – job security, and people have to rely on their own ingenuity and adaptability to keep a steady income. Those who are most successful are those who invent new ways of doing things, not those who are experts at following a prescribed process.

This brings us to the education system. The first change we need to make is to get rid of the 3 month Summer vacation and move to a year-round schedule. This will provide our children with greater continuity in their learning, and prevent the ever-increasing burn-out from week after week of school, with the occasional holiday break. The amount of time spent in school will be the same, but it will be more evenly spread out over the year.

This isn’t such revolutionary idea, and many school districts have already adopted the year-round schedule.

Let’s move on to the real reform.

The next part of the system that needs to go is the overly-narrowed grouping of students by age. This concept has little scientific, social, or logical basis. Extensive neurological studies have shown that the brains of girls and boys develop in different ways, and at different rates. It was specifically found that there are certain parts of the brain where the development in girls is around two years ahead of the boys. There are other regions of the brain where the boys were found to be ahead of the girls. In essence: expecting all boys and girls of the same age to perform at the same level in all areas of education is a ridiculously flawed concept. When we do demand equal performance based on age, we find those who are not yet developed to that level become frustrated. What’s worse, is that we then slap an ‘F’ on their report card, indicating that they have failed to measure up to the ill-conceived standards we’ve set, and the children begin to develop a hatred for the system we’re pushing them through.

On a social level, if you consider your own work environment, how often do you find people grouped by age? Of those you socialize with, how many are within a year of your own age? Those age-specific camaraderies we may have are primarily because we were put through the age-based education system ourselves, and thus forced to only associate with others of our same age.

The whole division by grade is another flawed idea. To say that every 9th-grade student must take Algebra 1, regardless of ability or background, is a grossly misinformed over-generalization on level with saying that all African-Americans play basketball and listen to rap music.

Students need to be able to interact with, and work alongside other students of different ages and abilities. While there should be some general separation such that certain age ranges are placed together (so we don’t end up with 18-year-olds in the same class as the 8-year-olds), no two people are alike, and we have to interact with people of all ages, races, abilities, and backgrounds to get through daily life. We must, therefore, do away with everyone born within the same 12-month period being grouped separately from students only a year or two apart from them. .

When we correct the grouping by age, and the division of grade-levels, we basically eliminate the concept of failure. Students are expected to perform to their own level of ability (constantly striving to improve that ability, of course), and never told they aren’t good enough because they didn’t do as much, or as well as the other kids in the classroom. Advancements in learning and ability are celebrated, and failure is no longer failure, but becomes a learning tool to guide future attempts and practice, rather than a label.

Demanding that all children be ready to graduate from high-school after 12 years is no longer necessary. For some it will take longer than others, but there is no need to emphasize that fact by “holding back” a student, or telling her that she’s not going to graduate “on time”. When each child learns at his or her own pace, each child has no need to feel “behind” or “slow”.

When we eliminate the concept of failure, we take the painful, hateful part out of learning; and students will learn and achieve because they want to, not out of fear of failure.

On the topic of grades, let us consider the A – F categorization of our children and schools. When we correct the grouping by age, we also eliminate the need for a letter-grading system. All students will be given a real opportunity to master each skill, or concept they learn. It will no longer be a matter of “you didn’t learn this well enough in the first nine weeks of school, therefore you have failed this quarter”. Or even, “you did pretty well, but could have done a lot better this quarter, so you only get a C.”

The idea will be that students move on only as they master the concepts, so that when they move on, they will be fully prepared for the next level.

Each year, as a geometry teacher, I find myself having to re-teach Algebra 1 to my students. The fact is that, according to our present system, they should have all learned the concepts of Algebra 1 the year before, but many of them only “learned” it to a ‘C’ or ‘D’ level, meaning they don’t really have a firm grasp on it. Yet, we push them forward, expecting them to somehow make up for the information they already lack, while still taking in all the new information we have prepared for them in Geometry. The truth is that even many of the ‘A’ and ‘B’ students don’t remember many of the concepts from the year before because they never actually learned them. These are the students who simply managed to retain enough information to fill in enough of the right answers on a test. But that’s a matter we’ll have to discuss at a later time.

For now, I will simply reemphasize the first changes I would make in our present education system; namely: Year-round schedule, correction of age-based grouping, and elimination of K-12 grade levels and the A-F grading scale by allowing each student to master concepts before moving on.

The solution needs to begin from the bottom. Those students presently in jr. high and high school have already been so molded by the current system that there is little hope they will be able to grasp the concept of self-directed education, and will more than likely take advantage of the situation and avoid work altogether.

We need to begin at the elementary level, and then progress up into the secondary level as those kids reach that age.

I do not consider myself qualified to be a math teacher. I really don’t feel that I have a deep enough understanding to effectively guide my students through the concepts. Having said that, it should be understood that I meet all the requirements to be labeled “highly qualified” by our state. Achieving that simply requires paying $100 and passing a multiple choice test. I passed the test with flying colors in both math and music. I can honestly say I didn’t know half of what I was tested on in the music exam. (That should give you an idea of how accurate multiple-choice tests are at assessing understanding.) Yet, with all of this considered, I have been working for over 3 years as a math teacher.

While I do not consider myself an effective teacher, it should be known that students in my class do as well as students in most other teachers’ classes. I might even say that I’m a pretty good teacher when judged by the criteria we are accustomed to looking for. Most of my students pass my class, along with the district- and state-imposed exams.

The truth is I manage to stay a day or two ahead, and that gets me by. That’s not an uncommon scenario in public education.

I know that I am not effective because of what I see. I can teach a concept to my students, give them homework on it, then give them a test on it. Most of them will demonstrate “proficiency” in the concept by passing the test (meaning 60%, or more, of their work shown is correct). But, then a week or two passes, and I bring that concept back to their attention to be used in a slightly different scenario, and suddenly it is as though they had never seen it before. Most of them will give up instantly, some of them will flounder for a bit in a struggle to recall the information, and a very select few will remember and be able to proceed unaided.

Is this a call to rise up in arms and tear down the evil force of public school teachers? Certainly not. The truth is that there is little we can do about it. With each new school year, there is a list of new demands placed upon us as teachers: from making ourselves available before and after school and during our lunch break for tutoring, to contacting every parent who’s child is in danger of failing (there has even been the suggestion that we should be texting our students when they don’t show up for class). These may seem like reasonable requests, but when added to the amount of time it takes to prepare lessons, grade homework and tests, and all that goes on in between, we are basically expected to work 10-12 hours a day, though our contracts specifically state we are only committed to working from 7:30am-3:30pm. As the demands increase, our compensation does not. And when you consider that each new generation of students coming through is significantly less motivated, and more disrespectful than the last, you begin to see why we might find our energies waning.

If you’re looking for someone who really has some influence over the situation, I would first say look to the parents of these students. But, as few people are really willing to take the responsibility upon themselves, we can look higher up instead. Look to the district leaders and superintendents who determine the requirements for becoming a teacher, and maintaining a teaching position. If you find it unsettling that the vast majority of the people making the decisions about education policy have little or no background in education then you are beginning to see the light. Would you hire a history teacher to design and build your home? Would you pay a personal injury lawyer to handle your finances? I should think not.

Why?

Because they are not qualified to do so. Their area of expertise has little or nothing to do with what you’ve asked. It just doesn’t make sense.
And yet, year after year, we elect people with no experience or background in education to run our education system. These people know little, if anything, about the revolutionary philosophies of Piaget and Montessori. All they know is the system they grew up in, and the misconceptions they were fed along the way. Now our nation finds itself in a crisis, and the leaders want to do more of the same things that got us into this mess. They want “higher standards” by requiring more math and science credits to graduate. They want more testing and more homework. They want all the things that breed a deep loathing for learning within the very children they are trying to teach. They want complete control over every minute of the school day.

The longer we continue on this downward trend, the closer we come to a complete collapse of the education system. We’ll discuss more of that later…

Dear Mr. President, Mr./Ms. Governor, and all other elected officials,

I am writing on behalf of the teachers of the public education system to inform you that, by our standards and assessment, you are failing. We have therefore seen it necessary that we step in and run the government for you, as you have demonstrated poor performance for an extended period.

Performance was assessed by randomly selecting politicians, sitting them in desks in a room with bare walls (we couldn’t allow cheating from the posters), and administering a timed test that required they fill in bubbles on a sheet of paper. The selected politicians were consistently unable to fill in enough of the correct bubbles in the given time frame, and therefore received the following grades:

Domestic Policy: F

Foreign Policy: F

Finance: F

Homeland Security: D

Education Policy: F-

Civil Rights: F

The passing mark for Homeland Security was given as a concession because your Secretary of Defense figured out how to fill in the bubbles to make smiley faces, and we concluded it demonstrated a sense if creativity, and thus augmented the grade.

We will assume control of the government on January 2 of the upcoming year. You need not ask our qualifications in doing so. We are merely following your example of assuming that you know more about education than we do, in spite of the fact that we are the ones who have earned Masters Degrees in that field, and you have no knowledge or experience there other than your own time spent as students 20-60 years ago.

The first item on our agenda will be to reinstitute corporal punishment, namely for the purpose of using it on you when you don’t behave properly.

Sincerely,

The Teachers

With the upcoming elections, there are a lot of races to be interested in, and all of them are important to varying degrees. For myself, as a teacher, and a person who is passionate about education reform, I take particular interest in the Superintendent of Public Instruction. I’ve been through both candidates websites, and watched their televised debate. Overall I see them both using similar slogans (“higher standards”, “back to basics”, etc.), and that doesn’t surprise me. These are the same slogans that politicians have been using with regards to education for decades. In the end, their approach is always some slight variation on the same theme: find some way to make teachers get their students to score higher on standardized tests.

This years race has much of the usual rhetoric. John Huppenthal bases all his ideas on piles of research that he’s been collecting over the years. Penny Kotterman bases her ideas primarily on her 18 years experience as a classroom teacher, and further time as the President of the AEA.

I found the debate informative, and somewhat amusing. Here’s what I have to say about it:

Huppenthal made a few interesting statements in his opening remarks. The first that really struck me was, “To ensure our graduates can attain high-paying jobs, I’ll place a renewed emphasis on math and science skills.”

A few years back the State of Arizona passed a law that requires that this year’s sophomores pass a minimum of 4 years of math in order to graduate. What that breaks down to is that every student who wants to graduate will have to pass Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2, and Trigonometry. As a math teacher, I love math, and I enjoy doing it, but I also know that there are very few people out there like me. How many people do you know that love math? Of those people, how many do you think would change their mind about math if they were required to take 4 years of it?

Compulsion breeds contempt, and forcing every math-hating student to take more math will only lead them to hate it all the more. I predict that in the year 2013 we will see a significant drop in the number of graduates, unless there is a change to the math requirement. The fact is that knowing more math does not necessarily make better people, or better students. You will simply see more students giving up earlier because they are standing at the foot of Mount Everest without the equipment, or the desire to climb.

Huppenthal went on to say, “I’ve helped turn around schools and entire school districts using high standards and accountability systems.”

Does this have anything to do with Arizona’s recent plummet in educational rank? I don’t know, but it’s just a thought.

Kotterman followed up with her opening statement in which she said, “We really need to get back to the basics to invest in the long term.”

This is one of my favorite phrases in education. I always wish I could be there when someone says it so I can say, “Excuse me, but can you tell me at what point in time we left the basics?”

The candidates then spent a few minutes bickering over money matters. They both said that money isn’t the solution, in multiple ways, and yet they couldn’t agree on that point.

This turned them to a discussion on Florida, which supposedly has a very successful education system, judging by their repeated references to it. What Kotterman had to say about our efforts to mimic Florida’s education was, “There are things you need to know about Florida. Florida has a per-people funding level that’s $2000 higher than ours. (so, the money does matter then?) They fund full-day kindergarten, which our legislature voted to cut. They fund Pre-school education, which we voted to put on the ballot and take away…”

Did you know that America outspends every other country in the world on per-student spending? Yet we rank very low on the education charts. Did you also know that Finland, one of the highest ranking countries when it comes to education, doesn’t start their children in school until age 7. Why? Because their system is based on what they know about child development (unlike ours which is based on gut reactions of politicians). In Finland they’ve recognized that children under age 7 aren’t ready for the structured classroom environment. Within our own nation, research has shown that the benefits of kindergarten are only noticeable up to the 3^rd grade. So, do we really need full-day kindergarten and preschool programs? Or is this just a way to take responsibility away from parents (who, by the way, are the primary key to their child’s success in education)?

Let me be clear: I’m not saying that children can’t learn before age 7 (on the contrary, they are extremely adept at learning in those early years). What I’m saying is that putting children in a structured classroom environment too early can be detrimental to their development. There are many other ways for them to be learning without having to be placed in a formalized classroom setting 6 hours a day.

Both candidates managed to take a brief moment in the middle of the debate to summarize their core ideas. Huppenthal said, “High standards, accountability, and discipline in the Classroom.”

Kotterman: “Improve teacher quality, and focus on class size.”

The debate turned to accountability, and how each candidate would implement that. I found one statement by Huppenthal very interesting, “Our experience has been that performance pay is critical, and doing it right is critically important. When I started in 1993, I went over 700 research studies, found no working models, developed a completely new concept. I started that as a pilot program in Arizona, spread it to our Career Ladder Program, and state-wide. A lot of school districts aren’t doing it correctly, but we are a pioneer.”

So, my question here is: if in over 700 studies you couldn’t find a working model, what makes you think that performance pay is the right way to go? And, what is it about your model that leads so many of our districts to use it incorrectly?

The main point that I liked about Huppenthal was that he likes to use research-based formulas, which is not such a bad thing. I don’t like the fact that he believes, “In order for a child to graduate from high school, they have to pass a test.”

I wonder why he hasn’t managed to come across the growing mound of research that shows that standardized testing is actually detrimental to education. It forces teachers to teach to the test, and focus solely on their students’ test-taking abilities. The focus is then taken from actual teaching and learning, and put solely on testing. We could go on and talk about the inaccuracy of standardized test scores (I personally know a number of students who passed the AIMS test without knowing how to find the area of a rectangle), how they favor race and economic status (if you’re middle or upper-class and white, you’re almost guaranteed to pass), create test anxiety, and a number of other factors, but we’ll save that for a later time.

What I liked about Kotterman was that she did not agree with high-stakes testing, and her belief that, “We ought to emulate our education system after successful models that are working, not just in the United States, but around the world.” The key there being “around the world”.

Based on my research, my choice in this race would probably be Kotterman, though I honestly don’t believe that either candidate holds the real solution to our education problem.   The changes our system needs run far deeper than funding and higher standards. The fact is that our standards are already very high, but there’s very little follow-through on maintaining those standards (I personally know of principals who require a teacher to give a passing grade to a student if the teacher didn’t manage to speak directly to the parent about the failing grade).   The change needs to get to the root of the problem (i.e. method), which I’ll have to talk more about later.

 

Hello to my few and faithful readers.  You may, or may not, have noticed that the blog has been down for a while and now has a new look.  This is because I switched hosts for my website.  There have been some complications with the transfer of my blog, so hopefully I will be able to get those worked out soon and have all the original content back up.

Thanks for your patience,

Angus McKay