Drinking age discussion

I found this in the local paper and thought I'd bring up the topic.

Prohibition, then and now
September 25, 2008
By John M. McCardell Jr.

As a former college president who is all too familiar with the damage alcohol can inflict on the health and safety of young adults, I was intrigued to run across the observations of noted psychologist A.A. Brill as reported in The New York Times. Dr. Brill noted "that more people are drinking who never used to drink, that moderate drinkers have become heavy ones, that former drinkers of beer and light wine are drinking whiskey, brandy, gin, raw alcohol and other concentrated spirits."

That Dr. Brill's thoughts were reported by the Times in 1926, and referred to the effects of Prohibition on otherwise sober citizens does nothing to lessen my impression that they constitute an apt summary of the kinds of adverse effects produced by the modern-day equivalent of Prohibition - the federal mandate that establishes the legal drinking age at 21.

On Sept. 26, it will have been 75 years since the citizens of Vermont voted overwhelmingly to repeal the 18th Amendment, which had supplied the constitutional authority for Prohibition - a bold and misguided experiment intended to end the consumption of alcohol in this country.

Vermont's shared border with Canada made the state popular with smugglers, who transported illegal alcohol in vehicles with secret storage compartments, using smoke screens to conceal their activities. On Lake Champlain, liquor-laden submarine barges were towed just below the water's surface from the Canadian border headed for secret destinations in Vermont and New York. A Washington Post story reported on a Vermont senator, who was accidentally shot by Prohibition agents in 1924 and subsequently suffered dizzy spells as a result of his wounds.

After more than a decade, even Prohibition's initial supporters had had enough. In 1933, lopsided votes in favor of repeal in state after state ultimately sounded Prohibition's death knell.

But 51 years later a self-appointed moral majority led by Mothers Against Drunk Driving persuaded Congress to enact the National Legal Drinking Age Act of 1984. Once again, the federal government effectively usurped the power of the states to regulate alcohol, stipulating that any state with a legal drinking age lower than 21 risked the loss of 10 percent of its federal highway funds.

And how has this modern reprise of Prohibition worked out? Badly.

In the same way that the speakeasies of the 1920s and '30s functioned as havens where alcohol could be consumed out of the sight of enforcement officials, today's young adults frequent fraternity house basements and other hideaways where they engage in furtive binge drinking. There, suspended above a keg, tap in mouth, feet in the air, young people chug beer to the chants and cheers of fellow partygoers, and engage in games of Beer Pong, Kings, Flip Cup, and Beirut, whose foremost purpose is to get contestants drunk as quickly as possible. Private homes and college dorm rooms serve as venues for "pre-gaming," in which young people under the legal drinking age consume large amounts of alcohol in a short period of time in order to become and remain sufficiently intoxicated to spend a night moving from party to party.

It is no surprise that substantial numbers of these young adults become victims of alcohol poisoning, serious bodily injury, sexual abuse and worse. As with Prohibition, legal age 21 has had the predictable effect of worsening the problem it was intended to solve. Trying to eliminate an ingrained social behavior by legislative fiat simply does not work, as we should have learned from Prohibition. Such ill-advised policies simply drive the consumption of alcohol from public view, significantly increasing the hazards that irresponsible drinking imposes on the health and safety of us all.

The repeal of Prohibition and the return of jurisdiction for the regulation of alcohol consumption to the states drastically reduced the incentive to participate in the dangerous behaviors that accompanied the furtive consumption of alcohol spawned by speakeasies. We could profit by following this path.

Young adults should be treated as such, even when it comes to alcohol. If we devise ways to educate them about alcohol consumption in a broad way that goes beyond temperance lectures and scary messages about brain damage, we can certify that they have reached a level of understanding that qualifies them to exercise adult judgment.

We should reconsider the bad law and poor social policy that allow these problems to fester in the shadows. We do ourselves no favors by relegating drinking by any age group to the dark corners of society where the effects of risky behaviors remain unobserved and unaddressed until it is too late to do much about them.

Science scores are back - we're #1

So the scores are back in for the NCLB science testing - we're in the top three in the state for one grade and #1 in another.

So what? Just as low scores are meaningless in the long run, so are these high scores. The students are the difference, not the teaching. Last year, these same teachers were "below average" because the students didn't do well and probably next year we'll be back down in the pack again. Does this mean that their skills as teachers have somehow improved for this cohort and then will have diminished next year? Pretty silly if you think about it that way, isn't it?

When are the bean counters going to figure out that the manufacturing model isn't an appropriate analogy for education. You have a group of students here. You can't reject any with flaws as you can with raw materials for the assembly line. You can attempt to standardize the process but without consistency in the construction material, you get variations in the final product. Those variations can neither be eliminated nor minimized.

You can improve the process but it'll only be incremental. The students are the key and they are not consistent. Sometimes you get lucky and the kids get it and sometimes you don't get lucky and the state puts you on the checklist.

MEAH.

I celebrate because they're my friends, not because they're superior to the rest of the state. When the 11th grade scores come back, let's hope the coins comes up heads again.

A Great Debate Tonight

Regardless of the side you're on, I think you'll have to agree that this evening's debate is one of the best in my memory. Kudos to those who set it up, kudos to the candidates for agreeing to the format, and kudos to Lehrer for bringing back the classic debate.

Both candidates are looking presidential and both sound very good. Classroom teachers should replay this one many times.

True Education Research - YAY!

Thank whatever gods ye want ... at last they're doing research.

New Effort Aims to Test Theories of Education
By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ / NEW YORK TIMES
September 24, 2008

Roland G. Fryer Jr., a Harvard economist, has often complained that while pharmaceutical companies have poured billions of dollars each year into studying new drugs and Boeing devoted $3 billion to develop the 777 jet, there has been little spent on efforts to scientifically test educational theories.

Now Dr. Fryer has quit his part-time post as chief equality officer of the New York City public schools to lead a $44 million effort, called the Educational Innovation Laboratory, to bring the rigor of research and development to education. The initiative will team economists, marketers and others interested in turning around struggling schools with educators in New York, Washington and Chicago.

Backed by the Broad Foundation, founded by the billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad, and other private groups, the research is intended to infuse education with the data-driven approach that is common in science and business, Dr. Fryer said. He compared the current methods of educational research to the prescriptions of an ineffective doctor.

“If the doctor said to you, ‘You have a cold; here are three pills my buddy in Charlotte uses and he says they work,’ you would run out and find another doctor,” Dr. Fryer said. “Somehow, in education, that approach is O.K.”

In its first year, the research group plans to focus on incentive programs, including controversial ideas like giving students cash for good test scores, an approach that Dr. Fryer has tested in New York since June 2007.

Each of the three school districts working with the institute will use a different plan to encourage high achievement, with researchers tracking the effect of each on student performance.

New York schools plan to continue Dr. Fryer’s experiment of paying students in the fourth and seventh grades up to $500 a year for doing well on reading and math tests. A separate Fryer initiative, which rewarded 3,000 New York middle school students with cellphone minutes for academic performance and classroom behavior, was discontinued because the city did not raise enough money from private donors to pay for it this fall.

Conclusive evidence about the effectiveness of such programs has been scant, and Dr. Fryer said officials are still examining the data on last year’s cash incentives. He said he hoped that the cellphone idea would gain traction in other cities.

Dr. Fryer said the new institute would be able to identify what works so that educators across the country could prioritize their spending.

“We will have the willingness to try new things and be wrong — the type of humbleness to say, ‘I have no idea whether this will work, but I’m going to try,’ ” he said.

The Broad Foundation, based in Los Angeles, has pledged $6 million to fund the institute for three years, and the school districts are expected to front half the cost of any projects they launch with the Education Innovation Laboratory. Organizers are seeking other foundation grants to cover additional costs.

Mr. Broad has been a generous and aggressive advocate of education issues, with mixed results. He has invested in charter schools, run training programs for urban school leaders, and he finances a prize that awards districts for narrowing the achievement gap among income and ethnic groups.

Mr. Broad’s collaboration with Dr. Fryer, 31, began on Christmas Eve when Mr. Broad called Dr. Fryer to congratulate him on earning tenure from Harvard, the youngest black professor to do so.

Mr. Broad asked Dr. Fryer to come up with “the next big idea” in education, and Dr. Fryer began consulting with companies that market to younger people. By summer, the idea for the Education Innovation Laboratory had been hatched.

“We’re looking for people that want to run an urban district that is not satisfied with the status quo, that recognizes that you need reform, you need change,” Mr. Broad said, “and recognizes how far America has fallen behind other nations in public education.”

Education Research

One of these that I remember fondly is the "no lazy students" one. My principal read that and instituted a new policy the next day. We were not allowed to give a 0 for missing work -- we had to allow it to be made up, since "no child would ever choose to not do his work."

It is why I have such a visceral reaction to most education research. Principals, school boards and teachers (especially teachers) read preliminary research results and jump to wrong-headed conclusions. Then the school gets turned upside down to institute some "new" idea. Let's build "open classrooms" so the children can learn cooperatively with the teachers "doing inter-disciplinary work."

BLEAH.

Education research relies on classroom anecdotes, faulty numbers
PETER BERGER, Vermont middle school teacher / Schenectady (NY) Sunday Gazette
Sept. 14, 2008

Education experts always claim their latest breakthrough is based on "what the research tells us."

Consider these specimens of actual education research:

* A study of juvenile crime determined that most of it happens after school, as opposed to during school, when most juveniles are in school, or after 11 at night, when most juveniles are in bed.

* According to a sexuality specialist, teenagers who drink are more likely to have sex. This confirmed what teenagers themselves discovered at drive-in movies.

* Investigators probing adolescent behavior calculated that a 20-cent tax on six-packs of beer would lower gonorrhea rates for 15- to 19-year-olds by 9 percent.

Their findings rest on the assumption that teenagers who are thinking of having sex will decide not to if it costs them each an extra dime.

* A bestselling pediatrician-turned-education-expert deduced there's no such thing as a lazy student.

His "science" tells him that children never "decide not to make an effort."

* British and American researchers concurred that overweight kids are more likely to be picked on.

* A Georgia team discovered that eighth-graders who study algebra tend to do better in "higher level" ninth-grade math classes. Also there appears to be a correlation between success in ninth-grade English and reading lots of books in eighth grade.

* ACT analysts determined that students who can read "complex" material are more likely to be ready for college than students who can't.

* Students rejected by their classmates are more likely to withdraw from school activities. Preschoolers whose parents drink and smoke are more likely to choose alcohol and cigarette accessories for their Barbie dolls.

* Students who rank in the bottom fifth of basic skills have a low probability of completing college. Kids with "academically oriented friends" tend to do better academically, while kids whose friends are "delinquent types" are more likely to wind up in trouble.

Impressed?

Gender gap

In 1993, research conclusively told us that girls were achieving less than boys and were victims of a gender gap. By 1994, these conclusions were under attack, and by 1999, the data were telling us that boys, not girls, were achieving less and were victims of a gender gap.

The research also validated single-sex schooling until a March 1998 report cast doubt on the value of single-sex schooling, a charge that was irrefutable until an April 1998 report confirmed the benefit in single-sex classes.

In 2001, the research demanded that schools "give single-sex classes a chance," except when it concluded with equal certainty that single-sex programs were a failure.

When most people think of research, they picture facts, figures and experimental results. Unfortunately, education's numbers come from standardized testing, which has proven so unreliable that its reputation for producing meaningful data lies in well-deserved ruin. When RAND concludes that today's standardized tests identify not "good" and "bad" schools, but "lucky" and "unlucky" schools, you've definitely got a data problem.

When education researchers aren't citing faulty numbers, they're basing their conclusions on feelings.

For example, those conflicting gender studies rested on notoriously unreliable student surveys and evidence as weightless as "boys call out in class eight times more often than girls," which is why scholars and critics complained about flawed research claims, a small body of research and questionable findings.

Similarly, a 2004 evaluation of Maine's statewide laptop distribution announced that laptops made a "significant and positive impact" on the quality of work and student achievement. Except those rosy conclusions were based on the perceptions of teachers, parents, and students, on their "opinions, but not actual hard data." In other words, the evidence consisted of what students and teachers believed had happened, not on any documented improvement in student performance.

The American Educational Research Association even endorses a research tool they call "data poems." Employing this method, educators can "focus, interpret, clarify, and communicate qualitative research" by writing and reciting a poem.

Don't look for this species of research at a physicists convention.

Not a science

Education research rarely satisfies real scientific standards. That's partly because education isn't a science. It's an art and a craft.

That doesn't mean that teachers don't need knowledge of their subjects, or that I can't improve my technique in the classroom.

But education research is fundamentally anecdotal, so that what I observe free in my classroom isn't necessarily any less valid or informative than an expensive study of someone else's classroom, especially when most of those studies are conducted by experts who have rarely, if ever, worked in a classroom.

The education establishment has lavished a fortune on research that's yielded mostly meaningless data and sentiment dressed up as evidence. Schools have squandered scant resources and time hopping on research-based bandwagons.

Even worse, decades of students have been the unwitting guinea pigs of a pseudo-science that more often suits education experts' philosophical preferences than it serves either students or the truth.

The nation, its schools and our students would be better served by common sense.

If the research tells us anything, that's it.

Exercise and Academics

For those who are interested, here's one of the studies:
Grissom, James (2005), Physical Fitness and Academic Achievement, Journal of Exercise Physiology online, v8, n1

Grissom evaluated the relationship between physical fitness and academic achievement. TO do so, FITNESSGRAM physical fitness test scores were compared to reading and mathematics scores on the standardized achievement tests. Subjects included all 5th, 7th and 9th grade students in California public schools in 2002 for whom there was a complete set of data. The researcher found that as overall fitness scores improved, mean achievement score also improved. The relationship between fitness and academic achievement appeared to be stronger for females than males and stronger for higher socio-economic status (SES) than than SES students. (Paragraph written by the meeting presenters - I have not read the executive summary.

Now THAT's the way to run a study. Use all the students. Try to find out if gender or socio-economic status plays a commanding role, a large role, a partial role or no role at all. Don't claim your one study has all the answers or is somehow "extremely important."

Early Morning Exercise helps academics

I went to a state-wide math teacher conference last week. Among the topics presented were abstracts from four education research studies. Essentially, they said that exercise in the morning was correlated with improved test scores. We read the abstracts and the presenters asked for opinions. A teacher in the back said she didn't think she would have 20 minutes at the beginning of each class for exercise, and could this really be true?

It really made me wonder whether she could read.

Talk Like a Pirate Day Weekend

Yes, it's time for the annual "Talk Like a Pirate Day" which happened to be Friday the 19th. Since it was Friday, though, it got extended to the whole weekend.

Arrrrrr.

To help all the pirate-deficient folks out there ...


Tip o' the hat to Casting Out Nines.

Fear leads to political view? Bunk.

From Slashdot.org:

Researchers writing in Science report that the political orientation of test subjects who have strong views is linked to how easy they are to startle. They found that subjects who were more fearful were more likely to have right wing views, such as being in favor of capital punishment and higher defense budgets. The researchers suggest that this psychological difference is why it is so difficult to change people's minds in political arguments.

I wish the researchers would just shut up. They've got worse than nothing. They've got junk. There are so many holes in this research, there's nothing left but hot air. Let's add a little information from the Science article.

The authors first conducted a random telephone survey of Lincoln residents to find some who held strong political opinions. Then 46 selected respondents were invited to come in to the lab and fill in questionnaires to reveal political beliefs and personality traits. Participants were then given two types of tests to measure physiological responses to threat.

Let's list the sampling problems:

• There was a preliminary phone survey
  selection bias - who a. has a landline phone not a cellphone, b. answers the phone when the researchers call, and c. takes the time for a survey)
• Local residents with "strong political views". Define strong and decide what kind of people will come over that way in a survey. You will note that the researchers eliminated those who did not react strongly politically but were very afraid. That group is an important control.
• Local means Lincoln Nebraska, hardly a bastion of liberalism in a red state ... would the same results come from a group in Chicago?
• They were all white and elderly, living in an Urban Area. How about white elderly rural? Or perhaps some other color or age group?
• They invited 46 to come into the lab. First, a very small number. Second they were invited to come in for research. This took them for the day - what, no job? What of the people who declined to come in?

Now, I'm all for research but you need proper research before you go trumpeting your results. Otherwise it's interesting only to researchers but much more needs to be done to make it important to society. Publishing it in Science, which is fairly well read, gives it traction in society as a whole. The fact that it leads directly into a Liberal stereotype of the Conservative ("they're just old, white, and afraid of their shadows.) will simply help this myth along.

Let's invent a response: "It is simply to let wishy-washy liberals feel good about themselves by denigrating those who are smarter and more self-assured than they. Notice that there were no Special Forces or conservative veterans in that sample? There were no young capitalists? There were no football players? There were no Hispanics or Blacks or Asians? It was all old white people who were afraid and who were old therefore conservative."

That last part was written to illustrate how quickly this kind of research can generate spin on both sides by being too limited in scope and sample, by being too limited in it's results, and by being too limited in imagination. I think this area of research shows some promise but so much more must be done. I think Dr. Fowler, below, needs to tone it down and stop pretending.

"These findings are extremely important," says political scientist James Fowler at the University of California, San Diego, who has been doing research linking certain gene variations to political activity.

They may be important to you, Doc, but not to anyone else at this point. Just because they fit your specialty doesn't make them true or important. If they contradicted Dr. Fowler, would he have declared them "extremely important?" Probably not.

"In essence, the authors have filled in a 'missing link' between genes and brains on the one hand and psychological personalities and political attitudes on the other."

Actually, they haven't filled in anything. They've only scratched a surface and opened a door that will require a lot more work before anyone can say anything with certainty. I'm not surprised that the following information was left until the end.

He adds that the subject pool is limited to "a handful of white subjects from Nebraska, ... but many great ideas start with a simple test."

And so do the lousy, wrong, spiteful, and stereotypical ideas, Doc. Remember Tuskegee?

Go Guard

So there I am on the sidelines of the football game between two small rural schools. In conversation with a fan, I hear that the woman who was also prowling the sidelines with a camera was in fact a quite generous benefactor.

She thought that her local public school needed a football team. She discussed it with the school and found out that money was the issue. So she donated it.

All.

Everything the school needed for player equipment and game-day stuff.

Oh, and one more thing ... she gave the school that $20,000 check just before deploying to Iraq again.

That's right. National Guard.

For serving her country and community, for giving back when no one expected it, for going above and beyond:

Hoo-ah.

Everyone gets a medal, now.

The education parallels are obvious.

Wow. "Sarah and Hillary" on SNL

If it doesn't appear here, try the direct link.

UNvaccinated children get the measles more often.

At the Chicagoist:

Illinois Measles On The Rise
Illinois had more cases of measles than any other state this year, and according to the CDC, most of the people infected were unvaccinated children who are homeschooled. According to Cook County Public Health Department's Catherine Counard, not vaccinating a child affects more than just one person. "[Parents are] making a choice for the entire community. Because they're putting others at risk. And if their children become infected and expose a newborn infant who then dies, thats a pretty serious consequence."

Well, duh.

At the risk of being too analytical, though, I disagree with the health official in this sense. The community as a whole is unaffected. The age to vaccinate is 12-15 months and the primary transmission vector is schoolchildren well past that age. The only ones at risk are the child's own family, not the infants of the community at large. Only those who have made the same decision share the same worry.

At what point does the mother no longer have the right to make decisions for her own children? How about decisions that the rest of us deem stupid? What if we're all wrong? As someone who identifies himself as a libertarian, I would put be very hesitant to remove this fundamental choice from the parent.

As a nation, we've gone too far in many ways. We've turned into a Nanny State. We pretend we can remove all chance of any injury however minor, and go to extreme lengths even to avoid what might be termed "beneficial injury."

My kids are vaccinated. They are safe against measles. We made our decision and these homeschooled kids are not a danger to the rest of us, only themselves. This other parent has been informed and has made a decision. May she never have cause to regret it and if she does have cause to regret it, may she have the strength of her convictions to sustain her.