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Scott Walker Still Having Some Teething Problems Balancing the Tea Party with the Mainstream GOP

Mother Jones

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I’ve been talking up Scott Walker as a good bet to win the Republican presidential nomination next year, but there’s no question that he first has to find the right balance between the bullheaded “Hulk Smash Democrats” persona designed to appeal to tea partiers and the more mild-mannered Midwestern executive persona designed to appeal to moderates and big-money donors. The latest example of his difficulties with this balancing act comes from a laughable attempt to change the mission statement of the University of Wisconsin. Here’s Walker’s proposal:

The mission of the system is to develop human resources to meet the state’s workforce needs, to discover and disseminate knowledge….

So far, no problem. He just wants to add a bit of boilerplate about training future workers. No one objects to that. But then there’s more. Everything he wants to delete is in bold:

….to extend knowledge and its application beyond the boundaries of its campuses and to serve and stimulate society by developing develop in students heightened intellectual, cultural, and humane sensitivities, scientific, professional and technological expertise, and a sense of purpose. Inherent in this broad mission are methods of instruction, research, extended training and public service designed to educate people and improve the human condition. Basic to every purpose of the system is the search for truth.

By cracky, we’ll not have our universities extending knowledge beyond the borders of their campuses! And the search for truth? Sounds like a steaming pile of secular liberal claptrap. Off with its head!

But that’s not the end of it. Heather Digby Parton describes what happened next:

After the changes were revealed publicly Walker made a hilariously fatuous claim worthy of Rosemary Woods and the 18 minute gap: somehow those changes just appeared and he didn’t know nothin’ about how they got there and anyway it was the University’s fault for “overlooking” it. He has had to backtrack from that as well, admitting that his people did make these changes and the university official argued vociferously against it. But none of it is his fault because well, it just isn’t. Or anyone else’s.

Last Wednesday, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Walker finally acknowledged that university officials had raised objections about the proposal but “had been told the changes were not open to debate.” And as the Sentinel graphic on the right shows, the proposed changes were, in fact, quite deliberate.

In any case, even Walker is now being forced to pretend it was all a big misunderstanding. So what happened? My guess is that his inner circle thought the changes might win Walker some brownie points with the tea party crowd, which has always been suspicious of long-haired academics and their lefty ideas, but failed to see how bad it would look among the less wild-eyed crowd that looks to Walker as a pragmatic executive type. Walker’s team is having trouble balancing those two constituencies, and that’s a problem since Walker’s key appeal is that he bridges the gap between them.

Needless to say, this dumb little affair won’t do Walker any long-term damage. It’s just a minor dust cloud. Nonetheless, it’s an instructive dust cloud. Clearly Walker still hasn’t quite managed to polish up the balancing act that’s his biggest source of strength in the 2016 presidential race. That’s something he needs to figure out in short order.

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Scott Walker Still Having Some Teething Problems Balancing the Tea Party with the Mainstream GOP

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How Smart Are American Kids? Amanda Ripley Responds

Mother Jones

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Yesterday I wrote a post that was critical of Amanda Ripley’s exclusive focus on the PISA test in her new book, The Smartest Kids in the World. There are other international tests that American kids do better on, after all, so looking solely at PISA makes our educational outcomes look worse than they probably are. Ripley emailed me the following response:

First of all, I am excited whenever anyone is interested in a debate about TIMSS versus PISA! I geeked out on this debate for many months while working on the book, and it was a pretty lonely existence—so I am happy to have an excuse to talk about it.

I agree it is critical to be skeptical of PISA—or any test or metric. All have their flaws. Which is why I spent a long time learning about all the various international tests—studying sample questions, reading about their strengths and weaknesses and analyzing their results over time.

In fact, I used many different data points to decide which countries to feature in the book, including high school graduation rates, college attainment rates, spending per pupil, rankings of national competitiveness and other economic indicators, as well as test data from TIMSS, PIRLS and NAEP.

As it turns out, international test data is strongly correlated from one test to another. (The correlation between TIMSS 2007 and PISA 2007 was 0.93.) But as you note, there are some differences between PISA and TIMSS findings. In the end, I made a very conscious decision to prioritize PISA findings for two main reasons:

  1. PISA is a test administered to 15-year-olds, which means it catches kids closer to the end of their compulsory schooling. TIMSS is given to 4th and 8th graders, which is useful, too, but I was most interested in the cumulative effects of countries’ education systems, rather than the midpoint.
  2. Unlike TIMSS, PISA was designed to test students’ abilities to apply knowledge to solve real-world problems and think for themselves. (TIMSS is a test of school curriculum.) I was most interested in those higher-order thinking skills, since they are increasingly valuable in the modern economy. To see if the hype on PISA was true, I took the test myself, and I found it to be a remarkably sophisticated test.

You are right that American kids do better on TIMSS, especially in reading. And you are right that many people exaggerate our failings relative to other countries. It drives me nuts. Which is why I went to great lengths throughout the book to avoid such hyperbole.

I feel weird quoting myself, but just in case you don’t believe me, this is from p. 4: “The vast majority of countries did not manage to educate all their kids to high levels, not even all of their better-off kids. Compared to most countries, the United States was typical, not much better nor much worse…Our elementary students did fine on international tests, thank you very much, especially in reading. The problems arose in math and science, and they became most obvious when our kids grew into teenagers….”

Anyway, this is a healthy debate to be having, but some things are fairly clear. We now have a lower high-school graduation rate than about 20 other countries. Our young adults perform far below young adults in many other countries, including Finland, especially in numeracy, according to the results of the new PIAAC test (yet another ridiculous acronym!).

There is no need for alarmism, but there is need for concern. Even our wealthiest teenagers, those in the top quartile of the country based on socioeconomic background, perform 18th in the world on the PISA math test compared to wealthy kids worldwide. And those kids have highly educated parents and attend some of the best resourced school in the world.

We could do better. We could do worse. Whatever we do, I am grateful for the chance to debate these complicated matters in an open-minded and civil way.

For now, I’ll let Ripley have the last word on this. But I’ve put The Smartest Kids in the World on my reading list, and I may have more to say after I’ve made my way through it.

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How Smart Are American Kids? Amanda Ripley Responds

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Japan played down nuclear troubles as it fought for Olympic hosting rights

Japan played down nuclear troubles as it fought for Olympic hosting rights

François Péladeau

A country struggling to cope with an ongoing nuclear disaster might not seem the obvious choice to host the Olympics.

But Japan on Sunday was awarded the right to host the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo.

How did Japan’s leaders win the support of the notoriously corrupt International Olympic Committee? In part by playing down the seriousness of the Fukushima disaster’s lingering effects. From The Guardian on Friday:

Hiroshi Hase, an MP and former Olympic wrestler, told reporters in the Argentinian capital that contamination from Fukushima was “not even an issue” for the health of people in Tokyo, located 150 miles south of Fukushima Daiichi.

With the IOC decision imminent, Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of Japan’s nuclear regulation authority, criticised Tepco for inflating fears around the world by releasing misleading data about the water leaks. …

Tanaka said reports that the water leaks represented another catastrophe at the plant had been overblown, adding that the quantity of radiation leaking into the Pacific Ocean would have “no meaningful effect” on the environment.

From wire reports published in The Japan Times on Saturday:

Tokyo Gov. Naoki Inose, at his final news conference before the selection of the host city for the 2020 Summer Olympics, blasted media coverage of the Fukushima nuclear crisis and said people should not believe scare stories. …

“So much rumor has been conveyed by the media.” …

The government whitewashing was not appreciated by Japanese citizens whose lives have been upturned by the nuclear meltdown and ensuing troubles:

Residents in Fukushima Prefecture have reacted angrily to remarks by Tokyo’s Olympic bid chief in the city’s final pitch to host the 2020 Games, saying he made light of their plight.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

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Japan played down nuclear troubles as it fought for Olympic hosting rights

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for September 3, 2013

Mother Jones

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Marines with Golf Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, Afghan Territorial Force 444, and British soldiers exit a CH-53E Super Stallion assigned to Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 462, at Qal’ah-ye Badam, Helmand province, Afghanistan, Aug. 31, 2013. HMH-462 transported 2/8, ATF-444 and British soldiers during a joint interdiction operation. US Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Gabriela Garcia/Released.

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for September 3, 2013

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