Blogging from the Capitol!

Ok, I’m not really in the Capitol.  I’m across the street in the State Office Building (affectionately referred to as the “SOB”), sitting in on the K-12 Finance Committee hearing.

Right now we’re hearing a bill about increasing scholarships grants to high school kids who graduate early.  Well that just finished, and next up is another bill about a grant program.

However, the bill before this one gave a shout out to AmeriCorps, so I figured I’d mention it… when I heard the conversation turn to AmeriCorps I said to myself, “that is totally going in my blog.”  The bill is HF 1046 and it increases funding for the Minnesota Reading Corps.  I know I know not Promise Fellows, but still… AmeriCorps!  What up!

My First NCAA Tournament Games

My dad and I went to the NCAA Men’s Tournament first round games at the Dome last weekend, and my friend and I went to the second round games.  These were the first ever tournament games I’ve been to, and I had a blast.

Here is my take on the teams that I saw play:

North Dakota State – These guys gave it their all in the first round against Kansas.  Their guard had one of the best performances I’ve ever seen in person.  The Dome was absolutely rocking with all of the NDSU fans.  Played Kansas VERY tough and were in the game until the final three minutes.

Kansas – Took care of buisness in both games.  IMO they rely too much on two players… which could be trouble if either one is in foul trouble or doesn’t play very well.  Aldrich is a beast.  Collins can’t miss (but also can’t play a lick of defense).

Dayton – GREAT spirit.  From the band (and their incredible leader) to the cheerleaders to the fans.  They brought that extra flair that makes the experience special.  Looked very good against West Virginia, but couldn’t make a shot to save their lives against Kansas.  Provided the best dunks of the weekend.

West Virginia – Very disappointing against Dayton.  I thought they would have played much better.  Good team.  Good coach.  Just wasn’t their day.

USC – Looked very good against MSU.  Lacked some size, but had great guard play and a very balanced attack.

Michigan State – The best team I saw this weekend.  Balanced attack.  Great defense.  Good size.  USC played them tough, but they stepped up when they had to.

Having seen the teams play in person, I’d have to say that Michigan State will beat Kansas next week.  I think they have the size to cause Aldrich some problems, and the guard play to cause Collins some trouble.  They also had a much more balanced attack than Kansas, which allows them to better absorb a below average performance from some of their players, as well as exploit any holes in the Kansas defense that open up.

Are You a Brit Without Ancestors?

I read a press release today about a new genealogy collection being released.  Something struck me as a tad odd.  The release began by stating that “One in two Brits with ancestors are found in the collection.”

Now, correct me if I’m wrong… but doesn’t that statement imply that there are Brits who don’t have ancestors?  I was under the impression that EVERYONE in Great Britain has ancestors.  In fact, I was under the impression that everyone on earth has ancestors.

The Gloves Came Off!

Well, they sorta did.

After weeks of cheery informational hearings, food prizes for finding “weird” symbols in bill language, and generally agreeing with everything everyone had to say, the gloves finally came off a bit this morning in the K-12 Education Policy Committee.  The reason?  They were taking amendments to the K-12 Education Policy Omnibus bill… an 80 or so page piece of legislation that lays out the education policy changes the legislature wishes to enact.  As a political junky, all the lovey dovey stuff from before gets real old real fast.  The disagreement and debate today, with amendments being defeated and divided and re-written and roll call votes and everything was great.  Two things stood out to me:

I still can’t understand he focus that some legislators have on testing to determine if a student is worthy of receiving a high school diploma.  There is a part of the bill that will create an alternative route to graduation for students who can’t pass the high stakes graduation test… and these legislators tried unsuccessfully to remove it from the bill.  They claim that having students receive diplomas without passing the test amounts to a lowering of 1) our expectations of our students and 2) our academic standards.  I can understand why people might think that, but something that one of these legislators said today didn’t sit well with me.  He basically said that knowledge was most important criteria for determining qualification for graduation.  I guess if you believe in high stakes testing that is what you inherently believe.  This seems to be a rather narrow view of what is important in the world.  Non-cognitive skills are just as important as cognitive skills.  If you ask me, being a decent human being and a good citizen is far more important than any test score for determining graduation.  Again, as I wrote before, we use subjective, non-numerical, non-test-like analysis for almost everything in our lives.  Why should graduation be any different?  Rant over.

Similarly the insistence that teachers’ performance be reviewed based on numerical cost/benefit-ish data baffles me.  I won’t rant about this one because the rant is pretty similar to the one I just had.

In the end, thankfully, most of these amendments were blocked.

They had to recess this morning because they ran out of time, but the committee will be back for round two tonight at 6:30 PM.  Let’s hope the excitement continues!

Things I Like #29: Using NCAA-Style Brackets for Things Other Than NCAA Basketball

While nothing can compare to the actual NCAA brackets, I always enjoy the random other brackets that people come up with this time of year.  People LOVE brackets.  Put anything in a bracket and people will get into it.  They will offer analysis and make picks and everything.  Try it sometime.  You’ll see.  Here are three shining examples of brackets that have nothing to do with sports:

1) Barney’s Women Slept With: Although not from this year, I saw this classic HIMYM episode the other night.  It features not only the real tournament bracket, but a bracket of the women that Barney has slept with.  And a drunk debate as they fill it out.  Incredible.

2) Best Week Ever’s 90s Movies: Another great one.  I counted yesterday and I haven’t seen 37 of the 64 movies… but still, my personal shortcomings don’t shouldn’t discourage the acknowledgement of  great bracket usage.

3) Colin Cowherd’s Cereal:  This is a perfect example of the “put anything into a bracket and people will love it” bracket.  ESPN Radio personality Colin Cowherd created a cereal bracket (to prove that very point) and had people vote online to determine the winner of each matchup.  In the final, Cheerios narrowly beat out Frosted Flakes to claim the title of Herd Breakfast Bracket Champion.  Check out the results here to see how your favorite cereal did: http://sports.espn.go.com/espnradio/bracket?page=theherd/cereal

Legendary

I was cruising the Crystal Palace FC supporter’s website this morning (www.holmesdale.net) and I came across a posting from someone with the user name “Beastie.”  He/she posted, and I quote, “I’d happily contribute.  It would be legendary.”  “Beastie,” whoever you are, you have just scored major Mess points for using the word “legendary” during the course of your everyday life.  Well played, sir.  Well played.

Big Mess

My dad is known as “Big Mess”, “Papa Mess”, “Pops” and sometimes even “Scott”.  He is amazing and he came to visit this past weekend for my birthday.  Some of you got to meet him.  We had a great time (more on that once I get pics of the Dome uploaded).

I love my dad.  A son could not ask for a better father or a better role model.  I don’t hesitate to say that I want to be just like my dad when I grow up, not in terms of being a teacher like him, but in terms of the kind of person and father that he’s been and continues to be.  Without him, neither my brother or I would be the people we are today… and for that we owe my dad a great deal of thanks.

High Stakes Testing

There’s been a lot of talk this legislative session about student assessments – specifically high stakes testing.  I continue to be amazed at how some people insist on requiring students to pass such a test in order to graduate from high school.  They claim that the requirement is necessary to make sure that our schools are turning out students that are ready for post-secondary life / school.  I just don’t get it.  These summative assessments, required by NCLB, are of great use in assessing two things: 1) what a student knows at a particular moment in time and 2) the effectiveness at a system of teaching the material on the test.  Notice what these tests don’t measure: how well prepared a student is for the next phase in their life.  Or what kind of person they are.  Or how successful they will be.  Spending all of the money that we do on this sort of testing seems to me to be a colossal waste of staff time and money – two things that our schools are perilously short on right now.

These tests were a waste of time for me when I was in high school.  You could have spoken to any one of my teachers.  Or my coaches.  Or my guidance counselor.  Or my friends’ parents.  Or even to me.  They all would have told you that I was a decent kid who deserved to graduate from high school and was as well prepared as I could be for whatever was going to come next.  I’m not saying this to brag – the vast majority of the people I went to high school with would have fit into that category with me.  Everyone knew the kids that we thought were going to struggle when high school was over.  We didn’t need a test to tell us.  All the test did was waste time we could have spent learning, waste paid, on the clock hours of teachers, and waste the state’s money.

Beyond that, the simple idea of tying an overall evaluation of anything to one moment in time seems crazy.  I’m going to use a sports analogy here because… well because I’m me.  It’s a baseball one too:

Let’s say that you are a scouting director for a major league team.  It is your job to analyze young baseball players and sign the best ones for your team.  In a way, you are deciding who gets to graduate from being a high school or college player to being a pro player.  Using a high stakes test to decide high school graduation is like basing your scouting analysis off of one showcase game.  No, it’s worse than that.  It’s like basing your scouting analysis off of the box score of one showcase game.  Hmm, that kid went 0-4.  We’d better not sign him.  Yikes!  That kid went 5-5!  Sign him now!  See how crazy this sounds?  What the box score won’t tell you is that the kid that went 0-4 hit four line drives that happened to get caught.  He has a great swing.  He’s also 6’2”, has incredible speed, and a cannon for an arm.  It also won’t tell you that he was playing third base when his natural position was left field, making him uncomfortable all game.  He will be a quality professional player.  It won’t tell you that the kid who went 5-5 was 5’3” and can barely run or throw.  Three of his hits were broken bat pop ups that happened to fall in between fielders.  One was a swinging bunt that the catcher tripped trying to field, and the last one should have been ruled an error.  He has absolutely no future in baseball.  If you really wanted to do your job well you wouldn’t rely on the statistics from any single game… or even on statistics at all.  You would send scouts to watch the players… see how they run… see what kind of swings they have… how the carry themselves… how they play the game… even talk with them to see what kind of kids they are.  You would talk to coaches and parents.  After gathering all of this information you would sit down and make some decisions.  I know I made a rather extreme example, but on an all or nothing high stakes graduation test the results are pretty extreme – graduate or not.

Instead of sinking time and money into tests, why don’t we sink time and money into school staff?  Get high quality school staff that can accurately judge whether or not a student deserves to graduate and is prepared for the next step in their life.  And then why don’t we trust them?  People who actually interact with the student can judge that far better than a test with an arbitrary graduation cut off test score set by someone sitting in a cube in the Department of Education.  Why are we willing to settle for such one dimensional measures in our education system when we NEVER would in ANY other area of our life.  For hiring someone for a job, for buying a car, for asking someone out, for making friends, for choosing colleges… we always go beyond simple numbers and try to get a feel for someone or something before committing to it.  Why do we settle for so much less when it comes to our K-12 students?

The… Netherlands???

This is incredible.  Incomprehensible.  It’s still early and I’m having trouble coming up with words to describe just how miraculous the Netherlands TWO victories over the Dominican Republic at the World Baseball Classic are.  I think I’d struggle no matter what time it was.  So let’s go to the numbers.  The DR has 23 current major leaguers.  The Netherlands has 2.  The DR has 4 current all stars.  The Netherlands has 0.  The DR pitchers have 518 major league victories.  The Netherlands’ pitchers have 95 (and 90 belong to one player).  Finally, if you were to pay the salary for the entire DR team last year you would be out about $83 million.  The Dutch team would cost you $400,000.  The DR team is more than 200 times as expensive.  Say all you want about it being spring training and players not being in top shape yet, this will go down as one of the greatest upsets in the history of sports.  I bet a lot of people didn’t even know they played baseball in the Netherlands.  These games have been simply amazing.

The Amazing Race: And With That, Romance Was Dead…

**WARNING: Spoilerrrrrrrrr Alert!!!***

I cannot even begin to describe how upset I was last night as I watched the latest installment of the Amazing Race Does Russia.  Amanda and Kris, over the course of the hour, became my favorite team from this year’s race.  Hands down.  I just love ’em.  Earlier I wrote that their weakness could be facing adversity and the fact they might turn on each other.  I think they passed that test with flying colors last night.  Now, it’s easy to be ok with things going poorly when you know you’re philiminated anyway (every time a team knows it’s eliminated, because it is a day behind everyone else, the members always get reflective and sentimental), but I think they handled the setback on the detour quite well.

Also, with their philimination, there is no more romance on the show.  The two married couples and the two dating couples have been the first four teams kicked off the show.  That sucks.

Also, major dick move by Margie and Luke with the U-Turn.  It’s one thing to play the U-Turn if you know the team is gonna be close to you – that passes as playing the game.  U-Turning someone who you KNEW was literally hours behind you is not ok.  They lost major Mess Points last night.